Bill O’Reilly has the coldest, meanest, creepiest eyes I have ever seen; the kind that make you feel as though he might actually crush you just for the fun of it. I had the displeasure of looking into those eyes ten years ago when hosting a booksigning for the Fox News star to promote his latest angry rant – Culture Warrior - a book about the “culture war” between good upstanding traditional Americans and bad progressive Americans. Blah, blahdiddy, blah… I was working as an e

Last night I watched the movie Complete Unknown about a woman (played by Rachel Weisz) who continually reinvents herself, leaving an old life behind and creating a new one in a different country along with a whole new persona - from geisha-style magician’s assistant to biologist studying frogs to ER nurse to teacher. How she manages to fake being an ER nurse is beyond me but let’s just ignore that for the sake of this discussion. “There’s this moment when you’re a blank slate

* Published in The Guardian This month it will be ten years since my memoir, Grief Girl, was published and only now am I beginning to understand the havoc it wreaked upon my life. Before writing a memoir about my parents dying in a road accident when I was 14 I went around saying, “So my parents died, what’s the big deal?” I wholeheartedly believed that I had come away unscathed. When the topic of parents came up in conversation I would say, “Oh, my parents are retired; they

People I like and know not to be idiots, are praising Arnold Schwarzenegger on social media with phrases like “Arnold for President!”, “Go Arnold!”, and “I really love what Arnold is saying about the environment”. Because some of these people are my friends, and I try not to insult those in my social circle, I refrain from commenting on their misguided statements. I hit the delete button after responding with a “What are you thinking? Have you learned nothing?! Do you really