I didn't look that scary in high school. I must have weighed about 100 pounds. No tattoos yet. Various hair colors. Both my ears pierced. Most people thought I was a girl right away. I had a habit of wearing skirts, too, completing the illusion. I wasn't scaring anyone. In my defense, I wasn't really trying to scare anyone. Not like my friend Vincent in whiteface and a giant shock of black hair threatening to spit blood on people if they didn't give him a dollar in the hallways. This was the winning tactic I think. People were half convinced he was a zombie. He really liked that.

 
It’s not as if Carol Anshaw is my idol.  It’s not as if she’s my crush. It’s not even as if I’ve longed for years to meet her. She is, however one of several writers to whose work I connected instantly, whose novels I have read repeatedly, and whose turns of phrase have seemed to me particularly profound. Of course by particularly profound I mean reflective of my specific worldview. Isn’t that what reading is essentially about?

In theory a reader reads to stroll outside of her specific mental neighborhood, to allow the scenery there to change her. However, most often the lines that strike us, the paragraphs we underline, the passages that alter our lives, all resonate not because they are stunning in their novelty, but because they are somehow deeply familiar. And that familiarity can have unintended emotional consequences; it can cause a reader to feel unjustifiably connected to a writer.

 
From high school jazz musician and self-effacing garage band guitarist to opening for folk rock icons Dar Williams, Melissa Ferrick and Lucy Kaplansky, Courtney Robbins’ muscular rhythms and melodic grace are impossible not to tap along to. Infused with raw nostalgia and emotional urgency, Robbins’ music artfully blends the taut intimacy of an acoustic affair with galloping riffs and a fragile, folk sensibility. Courtney took some time out of her Sunday afternoon to talk with Dramanonymous about her upcoming album, creating poetry out of politics and the repercussions of throwing a pie in Ann Coulter’s face.

With the release of her candid new book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel has opened up a lifetime of her secrets for all to see.

Yesterday, I was at a sort of fancy hotel. You could tell it was fancy because the lobby looked the same at night as it did during the day. This is what you pay for with fancy hotels: the illusion that it is constantly 7:23 PM. I think a bunch of experts got together and decided that 7:23 PM was the sexiest time of the day. Everyone's had time to distance him or herself from work and yet still the entire evening is wide open for fun. 7:23 PM is a turn-on.

So I was in the elevator going up to our floor sometime last evening, I think it may have been 7:23 PM. There were a number of people in the elevator and I did what I always do whenever I get into an elevator with strangers: tried to figure out which one of us would get eaten first in case of a power outage.