Flavorwire’s listicle of literary couples, while juicy (“I weep for the eight years I spent…worshipping his image with him, and I weep for whatever else I was cheated of due to that time-serving”–Martha Gelhorn on Ernest Hemingway), doesn’t even scratch the surface. Where are Sartre, de Beauvoir, and their detail-sharing open relationship (pro-tip for young existentialists: this rarely works out). What about bisexual addicts & Morocco fetishists Paul and Jane Bowles? Drunk commies Dashiell Hammet and Lillian Hellman? And where are today’s tempestuous writer couples, hurling drinks at Paris Review parties?

Oh, they’re buying luxury brownstones and worrying about how they love their husbands too much. Blech. Today’s offensively private and healthy inter-writer relationships rob us of the gloriously drunken, sexually dysfunctional liter-romances of yore. Why have writers’ relationships gotten so boring?

• Not enough letter writing. Consider this mash-note from Rebecca West to H.G. Wells: “You’ve literally ruined me. I’m burned down to my foundations.” Yikes. While the torrid love lives of today’s writers might be uncovered by future biographers, emails are easy to delete, and lengthy love/”you’ve ruined me” letters are a dying art.  (Though $10 says Franzen’s got some.)
• Gay Pride. Fine, yes, it’s essential that society progress from the shame and judgement that kept gays and lesbians in the closet for centuries. But what about the great literary marriages of convenience? Everybody is so open now, they don’t make fraught, sexless contracts with other similarly tortured writers. And literary gossip suffers.
• Not enough alcoholism. The common denominator in so many of history’s most passionate writer-couplings just isn’t as common these days. Raise a glass to our bygone friend, crippling addiction.
• Psychopharmacology. Many of the “eccentric,” “tortured” writers of yesteryear were probably “mentally ill.” Now that bi-polar, depressed writers can be treated, they might not have such dysfunctional relationships. Or they do, but the pills lessen the risk of scotch throwing and revenge-sonnet writing.

But perhaps there is drama brewing behind those staid Brooklyn walls? One can only hope, for the sake of literature.

Oh hello!  I wrote this piece about the seminal racist studio propaganda clip-movie, 1974′s That’s Entertainment!

This is awesome. BUT WRONG! Marry Buscemi, F (Because this is a family blog that two people read) Imperioli, Kill Gandolfini. That’s right I said it! Two enter, one leaves, Gandolfini!

So, obviously, my son is going to be a hugely talented singer, actor, and tween musk designer. And I am going to profit from his talent, because I am a great mother, duh. But before we pack the bag for Encino, my son has got to work on his chops. His toddling may play on the field where he plays, but it will not cut it in Branson, or in High School Musical 4, Electric Bugalour. So we’re going to start running this tape, working on his box step and awkward line-readings, coaching him on weird grammy-kissin’ and premature assertions of lady-lovin’, and deepening his dimples with gentle (but firm) poking. Also maybe some veneers. Nickelodeon, here we come! Thanks Uncle David Roth, the Writer!



if i didn’t work with children, i might consider using this screensaver, for real.

yeah, so i was just checking the celebrity baby horoscopes, like you do. i’m either going to have a libra or a scorpio baby, and these horoscopes tell me– the anxious expectant mother– which babies i will be incapable of loving because of the position of the stars upon their birth. it takes a lot of pressure off, frankly. i mean, if it’s just not in a gemini to be able to love, say, a virgo, then so be it. i mean, sorry baby, but mamma can’t battle the stars. luckily, i am not going to have a damn lazy capricorn baby like harlow madden:

HARLOW MADDEN – CAPRICORN – 1/11/08
“Harlow has a lot of creative potential but she lacks motivation,” Knight says of Nicole Richie and Joel Madden’s 7-month-old daughter.

let me tell you something: there will be no lazy layabout newborns in the house of roake and check, my friends, rest assured. our boy-child will be brimming with motivation. that baby is going to get.shit.done, son. trust.

Stephen Baldwin’s God: fond of extreme sports, functional illiteracy; totally cool with eight-ball cravings. Not cool with Clinton, African debt relief, Bono.
I present to you the Radar interview with born-again Stephen Baldwin, edited and set to dinosaur imagery.

Click here to see the cartoon.

E! red carpet coverage of the Grammys highlight: some third string interviewer (still better than Ryan Seacrest, #5 on my ‘who to kill when the revolution comes’ list) is awkwardly questioning Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. The interview is not particularly scintillating, but luckily the camera strategy of E! is designed to accommodate the ADD/pop culture idiocy attention span of its average viewer.

They continue to run the interview with Death Cab in a little bubble on the lower left quarter of the screen, and as Ben talks about the Show Box theatre the wide shot focuses on: anonymous video slut bending over in a blue satin ‘porn star interprets classy’ peekaboo dress, complete with strategic absences of fabric around the ass and fake boobs. Then, as Ben continues to prattle about great indy venues, the nameless P.R. whore taking up the majority of the screen slithers her body to full vertical glory: she convulses her chest and hair back and swivels her hips’n'butt while throwing her best ‘come-hither for I shall verily blow you’ look at the assembled cameras. I imagine it’s a reenactment of the particularly skeezy pole dance she performed in order to secure her ’50 Cent Entourage’ Grammy ticket. She’s essentially stripping for the camera, and though no one seems to know who the hell she is, well, when a big-booty-ho has, in her one desperate bid for fame, decided to flash her goodies for the camera, that trumps Seth’s favorite band any day.

But then, because maybe your attention is starting to wane as you realize that she will not actually be performing a ping-pong from the hoo-ha trick on cable: in the top right hand corner comes an image of a tuxedoed teenage boy playing an electric violin! And Ben Gibbard is still talking! I love E!

I am watching Angels in America while looking at hyper-Christian Candace “Full House” Cameron’s website. These two entertainment statements are only at odds if you will have them be. Both are strange and sincere meditations on faith, spirit, and political commitment– though on opposite sides of the political divide– but the important thing is, they are connected. Through the TV and film producer & director T.L. Trang. Look it up. Also, look at Angels in America.