February 26, 2023: Actually, I don’t mean that Edward. Dear Edward is an Apple TV+ show that I write about in a piece for Salon that runs today (see here). In the piece, I compare the experience of Dear Edward’s fictional title character, a twelve-year-old boy, with that of the real-life twelve-year-old Prince Harry as presented in his memoir, Spare. (Edward and Harry both lost parents in a horrific crash.) So I really could have gone with a picture of Prince Harry here, but I didn’t because his guitar solos are crap.

February 17, 2023: No, she doesn’t (although of course she’s been there). But the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (Mexico’s public radio) was nice enough to reach out to me for input on a piece they did to celebrate Yoko’s ninetieth birthday, which is tomorrow. Here’s the link if you’d like to hear my thoughts in Spanish. I’ve never spoken Spanish before. I wonder what I said?

December 31, 2022: I know you don’t care, and I don’t care that you don’t care. I’m still going to supply my list of the year’s five best books about Old Hollywood. Traditionally I end up reading five books about Old Hollywood in a given year if I’m lucky (you know by now that I pretty much read only books that I’ve been assigned to review, right?), so my list ends up being something of a big duh, at least for me. However, this year I actually managed to read six books about Old Hollywood, so there was indeed some winnowing, albeit the kind the takes one-seventeenth of a second. Still: actual winnowing happened. So here, winnowed, are my top five, in alphabetical order. I said winnowed.

The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock by Christine Madrid French

Big Red: A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles by Jerome Charyn

Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower

Inventing the It Girl: How Elinor Glyn Created the Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood by Hilary A. Hallett

Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century by Stephen Galloway

November 20, 2022: This picture of Tom Jones? It will make sense if you watch Prime Video’s Mammals. While you’re at it, you can read my write-up on the series, which Salon runs today, right here. Thanks, pussycat.

August 13, 2022: So…Salon just posted “Monogamy, without the ‘-ish’: A humble and definitely not cool defense of ​the closed relationship” (see here), an essay I wrote about…well, what I just said. In the piece I explain why, although Audrey Hepburn is tremendous and supremely honorable and all that, I’m also kind of mad at her. Are you maybe a little mad at her too?

August 2, 2022: Say, remember when three years ago I wrote that piece for The Cut about how I think marriages and partnerships stand a better chance when both halves keep their money separate (see here)? You don’t? Well, that’s okay: a swell gent named Zach Rodham, who works for ATTN:, recently found the piece and contacted me and interviewed me and the husband on the subject. Our interview just went up (see the links below) if you want to see/hear it and marvel at how quickly I speak. (Yes, I know I have a problem. I’m working on it.)

Facebook: https://fb.watch/eF6vylM5EU/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgw-xBZFm0a/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Twitter: https://twitter.com/attn/status/1554514888214454272?s=20&t=E50SNURLQMssAHW8v-Eaeg

July 25, 2022: Guess what? I found a second way to get into The New Yorker; it’s via the magazine’s Mail page. My letter, on Louis Menand’s “The Grapefruit Artist,” from the June 20 issue, was (I’m not mature enough to resist saying) rewritten quite a bit, but I stand by the sentiment. You can read my letter here, in the August 1 issue, and you can read my young-adult/general interest biography Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies, cowritten with Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky, by ordering it at your local library if you don’t feel the need to own it, which is fine by me. Next up: I score a hat trick by winning The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest. Won’t you save a step and congratulate me now?

June 14, 2022: Well, when it comes to getting serious gun control to happen in this country, he may be. Here’s where you can find my appeal to the head Metallican in the age of mass shootings.

May 8, 2022: …is not something that Tom Burke’s character says in any of the Strike episodes to date. Nor does Cormoran Strike have anything to do with 10 Days, the debut thriller by Jule Selbo that I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), other than being a crime-solving amputee like the protagonist of Selbo’s novel. Say, did you know that it’s sometimes really hard to come up with clever tie-in images to plug my book reviews? True!

March 28, 2022: So…I’ve just written my first Briefly Noted for The New Yorker; it’s in the April 4 issue, which is online today, and the book is Kathryn Davis’s Aurelia, Aurélia. And it looks as though they’ll be having me back for more, but don’t worry: I won’t post about every Briefly Noted I write (although I really want to, you know).

Okay, that’s all. Carry on.