Things I’ve Been Meaning to Blog About Since I Last Blogged

Jim Behrle, from “Princess Problems”

• Roger Ebert died. I cried in my car. Twitter still feels empty. He infiltrated my cultural consciousness very deeply, in a way that I didn’t realize until he died. I feel for his heroic wife, Chaz, and I like to watch Ebert’s TED Talk when I feel like giving up.

• I went to a Roman Polanski double-feature, and it made me wonder: If someone who’s an excellent artist, a person whose work deals with gender and sexuality in an interesting and meditative way, turns out to be a rapist, what’s the feminist viewer’s responsibility? (Also, if the Manson family kills your wife, do you get a free pass on your own massive behavioral issues? A friend argued this; I’m not convinced. And is Woody Allen just as bad as Polanski, if we consider all factors and points of view? There’s a lot of questions here.)
• Let’s not do Bikram yoga anymore. (May write more on this later.)
• Losing Happy Endings was rough. If NBC cancels Hannibal, I’m going to have a bad time. (Although, on Hulu, they always pair Hannibal with food ads, and it’s a bit much.)
• I recently had the privilege of seeing and interviewing Joey Ryan of the Milk Carton Kids. They’re a couple of real talents and showmen. A very youthful, exuberant and sincere bluegrass band opened for them. They’re called The Barefoot Movement and they are brilliant.
• I’m about to start mentoring for WriteGirl–I’m thrilled. I’ll help a girl, meet other women writers, and write more. Pow!

Sorry for the silence!

I started this blog as a place where I could write regularly, but it’s been hard to time my ideas  so they’re at regular intervals. Plus, with the horrific events that recently occurred on the east coast, it’s hard to justify adding another futile blog post to the howling abyss of the Internet. Those thoughts are coming–like everyone, I have a lot–but not just yet.

I also have some thoughts about Cosmopolitan‘s new editor, how we look at infidelity and how that relates to gender, but it’s Christmas and we’re all kind of in a weird place. So I might not write until post-apocalyptic days.

Here to tide you over, if you’re interested, is a review of a Mountain Goats concert I did for Music Scene magazine. I’m proud of the review; then again, it’s really easy to write about something you love.