June 9, 2024: By “Here” I mean here in New England, a good chunk of which is Maine, a significant portion of which is Bangor, which is basically where Thomas E. Ricks set his thriller Everyone Knows But You, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here). Oh, and I chose the photo at left because (a) as you should know by now, Gilligan’s Island amuses me; (b) Gilligan did his share of lobstering, like the people in Ricks’s book; and (c) following a dark turn of events, I have been advised that it’s unwise under copyright law to copy photographs that aren’t from Wikimedia Commons or another public-domain site.

May 17, 2024: Here’s my Shelf Awareness interview with Kathleen Hanna to coincide with the release of her swell new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk. It’s definitely one of my non-terrible interviews, mostly because I let her get a word in edgewise. (I still feel bad about my Tippi Hedren interview of some years back. Do you think that’s why she’s stopped giving them?)

May 12, 2024: Today, on what some are calling Mother’s Day, Salon is kindly running a piece I wrote (original title: “A Mary Tyler Mom: Remembering a stylish mother and a bad daughterly moment”) about my mom, Judy McConnell (1941-2010); see here. (I’m honestly a little relieved that the essay takes a dark turn at the end; otherwise I would have worried that I’m getting soft.) Incidentally, this marks the third piece, after this one and this one, that I’ve written about my mom and her side of my family. Who knew there was still so much left to say about Wasps?

May 12, 2024: With its cast of six animated thirtysomethings in perfect male-female balance, Darby Kane’s thriller–horror novel crossbreed The Engagement Party kept reminding me of the Friends friends having a murderously bad day. In my review, out today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), I milk the Friends parallel more than it probably deserves, but please don’t mistake that for an apology.

April 7, 2024: Liv Andersson’s new thriller, Leave the Lights On, is nothing like Fatal Attraction, as I say in my review, out today in the Portland Press Herald (see here). To prove the negative, here’s a Wikimedia Commons image of Glenn Close in a scene not from Fatal Attraction.

December 31, 2023: I’m back (not that you were waiting) with another list of books on Old Hollywood. Presented alphabetically below are the ten I read (and I’m pretty sure you didn’t) in 2023, with links to my reviews (that you shouldn’t feel obliged to read) (except for the one on Cuddles because it’s really good).

A.K.A. Lucy: The Dynamic and Determined Life of Lucille Ball (2023) by Sarah Royal

The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe (2023) by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler

Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided (2023) by Scott Eyman

C’mom, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock (2023) by David Fantle and Tom Johnson

Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History (2023) by Yunte Huang

The Devil’s Playground (2023) by Craig Russell

Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession (2023) by Laurence Leamer

Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen (2023) by Sarah James

The Story of Cuddles: My Life Under the Emperor Francis Joseph, Adolf Hitler, and the Warner Brothers (1954) by S. Z. Sakall

Up with the Sun (2023) by Thomas Mallon

December 6, 2023: In 1953’s Small Town Girl, a character played by Hungarian-born S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (1883-1955) frets about a big-city lady-killer played by Farley Granger: “That fellow makes monkeyshines with all our daughters. He keep them up till three a.m. and kisses them New York–style.” It’s an adorable line delivered adorably by an adorable actor I’ve become a little obsessed with. Today the great Bright Lights Film Journal runs my Sakall piece (see here), which explains how, although those cuteness-spiked roles grated on him, his Hollywood career literally saved his life.

August 17, 2023: Vogue.com kindly just posted a shortened version of a piece I wrote in defense of the Steves of the world, and specifically the Steve of And Just Like That… Read it (here) and weep for the diminution of unbridled passion in the long-form marriage, and then get over it by realizing you’ve (probably) got it good.

PS: What’s that, you say? You dimly recall that I already wrote about And Just Like That…? I did, and it was last year, and it was in The Cut, and here it is again.

April 28, 2023: Don’t be scared. Claire Dederer has a really aces new book out called Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (I reviewed it for Shelf Awareness here); it’s about what to do about our love for good art made by bad guys and gals. Today Shelf runs my interview with Dederer, which you can read here.

March 30, 2023: Salon has just posted (see here) my essay “Look at him: Why can’t straight guys acknowledge male beauty without freaking out?” It’s about why…what I just said right there. Did you forget already? Anyway, in the piece, I cite examples of straight guys who have gotten testy when attention has been drawn to various men’s facial loveliness, and to my memory there has been no bigger straight-male-rage magnet than Evan Dando, who has always seemed like a kindly, yogurt-swilling, straight-male-rage-undeserving fellow, don’t you think?