December 21, 2016: The Dick Van Dyke Show probably made television’s first good joke about race. In “That’s My Boy??,” which aired in September of 1963, Rob tells his guests the story, shown in flashback, of how he was certain that he had brought the wrong baby home from the hospital. He was finally proved wrong when he met the couple with whom he was sure he had switched babies—and saw that they were black. This got a huge laugh from the show’s live audience: the twist was clever, unforeseen, and a little bit audacious. This is not a bad blueprint, it seems to me, for how to “do race”—then a new frontier, subject-matter-wise—on network television: with equal parts smarts, surprise, and cheek. The White Shadow, which ran on CBS from 1978 to 1981, exhibited all three attributes constantly, and guess what? It’s the subject of my latest Best Forgotten column at The Awl.

November 7, 2016: I am the world’s worst interviewer—just ask the great Tippi Hedren. I interviewed her by telephone in September, and the transcript that I made shows that I barely let her get a word in edgewise. But what she managed to squeeze in informed my piece about her, which has just come out in V magazine and which I wish hadn’t been reduced to 500-odd words due to a last-minute space crunch. Fortunately, the piece will eventually live in its 1,500-word version online. I recommend either or both, and I promise that neither version contains too much Nell.

November 23, 2016: Hey, look! Here’s the long-form version now!

October 22, 2016: When I was between boyfriends in the early nineties (it would actually turn out to be the same boyfriend), I’d duck into Reading International (RIP) in Harvard Square and sneak a peek at a book about then-ascendant Guns N’ Roses. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Guns N’ Roses was my boyfriend substitute. Today Salon posted “Are You My (Substitute) Mother?,” my piece about how celebrities make pretty good fill-ins for missing people in our lives—and there’s nothing wrong with that. Perfectly normal. No psychological cause for concern. Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

October 19, 2016: Desi Arnaz believed that one reason for “I Love Lucy”’s galactic success was that it didn’t insult any member of its audience: “The only ones close to an ethnic joke were the ones about Ricky’s accent, and of course those were in the category of making fun of yourself, which is fine,” he wrote in his incomparably titled 1976 memoir, A Book. Me, I think Arnaz was a full fifty percent of the reason “I Love Lucy” was such a smash, and—hey, would you look at that?—I make my case today in the latest piece for my Awl column, Best Forgotten.

October 3, 2016: “What the hell was that?” is a perfectly reasonable response to any performance by the great Geraldine Page. Her best movie was 1964’s unfairly forgotten Dear Heart, and The Awl was nice enough to let me prattle on about it here, in the first entry in my Best Forgotten column.

September 21, 2016: By all means, let’s raise an existential question about the ubiquity of the modern celebrity memoir. (The Awl just posted my squinty-eyed look at the phenomenon, “What Becomes a Legend Most?”) But do let’s embrace the celebrity memoir when the result is as good as this and this and this, okay?

July 28, 2016: Ain’t this nifty? The Awl has just posted “How to Get Rid of Books,” the third wee essay in my three-part series (still) formerly titled Your Books: Three Essays on What to Do with Them; here’s zee link. Where this one came from: a couple of years ago, I began selecting books to read from my shelves according to the projected likelihood that I wouldn’t like them, by which I mean that I hoped I wouldn’t: a negative response to a book would give me license to dump it. So continues my plight to solve the first world–est problem of all: too many damn books. Won’t you think of the children?

July 27, 2016: Well lookee there: The Awl just posted the second essay in my three-part series formerly titled Your Books: Three Essays on What to Do with Them; you can read the essay, “How to Read a Book and Walk at the Same Time,” here. I love the art that The Awl came up with for this one (you know that Horrid Henry rules, right?).

July 26, 2016: First: happy Mick Jagger’s birthday (which actually has nothing to do with this photo of Keith). Second: okay, so this is a lovely development: The Awl has just posted the first in my series of three short essays about my (very nervous) relationship with books (original series title: Your Books: Three Essays on What to Do with Them). You can read the first essay, “How to Read More Books Now That You’re Old,” here, and you can read the other two essays tomorrow and the next day. (If you know me at all, you know that I will be pestering you to read them when the time comes.)

July 19, 2016: So there: I told you the next one would be a non-blonde. Anyway, I wrote about the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls for V magazine‘s fall preview issue, and I just got my ravishing copies in the mail today. This assignment was funner than hell because I could immerse myself in my three favorite subjects: creative types in New York at midcentury. Say, were you thinking of asking me to write about a not very creative Nebraskan of the future? Oh dear…

August 1, 2016: Ooh! It’s online!