One afternoon I got a notice from the post office that I had three parcels waiting for me. I had been expecting a script, but not a parcel. I drove to the post office to pick them up. They were boxes from my sister. I recognized them: It was my mother’s crystal. When my mother had a stroke and developed dementia, she moved in with my sister. My sister got the dining room set, my…
Growing up, I didn’t think my mother liked me. I knew she had to love me, she was my mother. But I wasn’t sure she liked me, or at least she didn’t know how to handle me. Mom was quiet and melancholy; I was brash and angry. Melancholy and anger were the mechanisms we each used to cope with the family’s dysfunction. But we had little in common. Well, except for the dysfunction. But I…
A month ago I had milestone birthday, one of those digits that officially disqualifies you from making another youthful blunder, like wearing a miniskirt or growing a hipster beard or thinking you have forever to live out your dream. I have terrible timing. I left the Groundlings comedy troupe, to pursue an MFA in screenwriting so I could learn to write stories beyond the “three-minute sketch with wigs.” Right after I left, several of my…
Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent, when the faithful honor Jesus’ forty-day temptation in the wilderness by abstaining from booze, sex, and facebook; whereas on the day before, Mardi Gras, the unfaithful go to New Orleans to film Girls Gone Wild videos. “Mardi Gras” is French for “Fat Tuesday.” The Anglicans call it “Shrove Tuesday” and celebrate by eating pancakes. I wondered if “shrove” was Anglican for “fat.” After all, pancakes can make you fat;…
