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On the first Christmas Eve that Crankenstein and I spent together, before she went to a midnight church service while I hung out with her cat, we stopped by my parents’ house for dinner. It was a casual, secular affair attended mostly by atheists and Jews — my parents, siblings and maternal grandma — and marked […]

In which I explain the fate of the Golden Girls episode guide while maligning content-scraping bots and plagiarists.

In which I share a Hanukkah memory and discuss whether Muriel’s being raised Jewish (and reveal her real name).

Prepare to fall asleep! In this, the sixth installment of Crankcast, I discuss a little bit of everything, from site changes and tennis (including the Sabalenka-Świątek rivalry) to starting an antidepressant and whether it’s weird to write personal posts like ‘Gone Girl.’ This was recorded a few weeks ago, prior to the ATP Finals in

The Washington Post has been trying its best lately to make readers cry, between an article about a young Ukrainian couple that died together following a whirlwind wartime romance to breathless coverage of a fabled affair between two blue-throated macaws in Brazil. My eyes have stayed dry so far, but this nearly got me: In

For this week’s Crankcast, no talking, just some pictures from my life. I’ll probably only leave this up for a few days since I’m not big on sharing non-movie images, but it’s a holiday offering of sorts since Thanksgiving will preempt next week’s Crankcast. [Video removed] Most of it’s pretty self-explanatory. If you need any

I’ve written a bit here about Crankenstein and music in the past — see “By Way of Sorrow” and “Jesus to a Child” — and here we are in conversation about one of her favorite genres: depressing and distressing Celtic and Appalachian folk music. There are no explicit lyric warnings on these songs, but would

Special guest Crankenstein joins me in the studio (i.e., at our dining room table) as we discuss Stalked by My Doctor and the first of its many sequels. Muriel also contributes. Apologies for the excessive laughter in Part I — Crankenstein looked quite earnest at times and it kept cracking me up. Here’s the pre-screening

Trying something new and we’ll see if it works: an audio message from yours truly. I’m not sure that there will be future volumes, so enjoy this future Grammy winner while you can — and note a correction: “Some Enchanted Evening” is the potato reunion post. I must’ve been picturing potatoes dressed as Olivia Newton-John

This weekend we hosted Crankenstein’s mom, who dropped in while traveling to a religious event, and I was again reminded that the most confusing relationships I’ve ever had are those involving my in-laws. Though Crankenstein and I do our best to get along with them, I’ll never forget that they weren’t great parents to her.