My 33 Books of 2025
A fun year for reading, with a good mix of the genres I enjoy. I only count the books I read cover-to-cover and were I to count everything I read for work in which I jump around or read only 3/4s, we’d have a much longer list. I read a lot more poetry this year,…
2025 Year In Review: La La Land
I began writing this after a relentless 24 hours of miserable news. Another mass shooting on a college campus, a massacre of Australian Jews on the first night of Hanukkah, the stabbing deaths of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, in their home, by their adult son. The barrage of bad news…
Newslettering
I’ve been quiet on this here blog because I am doing most of my personal writing and updates over on my Substack these days, where there is more community. While I’m mixed on how the platform’s trying to turn into yet-another-social-media platform, I do like hanging out there for the most part, and writing to…
Cat and Mouse
Throughout 2025 my cat, Abe, has taken it upon himself to “go hunting” and bring me his spoils. True story: One morning I awoke to the sound of chirping IN MY OWN BED and it was a tiny motionless bird that my cat had dragged in. This morning I awoke to the sound of my…
My TED Talk
GAAAH I can’t help myself, I’m just going to say it: Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. It’s about the ways that technology changes how we see ourselves. It’s something I’ve been exploring for years now, both in my reporting, and in my book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty…
I Heart LA
The skies are clear today, making the contrast between the giant plumes of smoke out my window so striking against blue skies. My home is in on LA’s Westside near the coast, but not in a canyon or the hills, which are the two types of places most threatened by the multiple fires that broke…
My 35 Books of 2024
It feels like 2024 was the year of the divorce memoir, and a lot of them written by people in my age cohort, so I ended up reading a lot of stories of miserable marriages and disappointing partners. I know everyone was wild for All Fours, but I only liked it in bits because I…
Deck The Balls, The West Coast Revivals
A humble party I threw together in 2012 back in Washington DC has now turned into a mega-event in my LA backyard. In its original conception, Deck the Balls was an intimate ball-themed potluck/competition in which guests would bring ball-shaped foods to pair with the penis shaped gingerbread cookies my ex-husband Matty and I made…
2024 in Review: Nonstop Nonsense
It was the year of brat summer, calling things weird, and being very mindful/very demure. The Dodgers won the World Series. TikTok faces an imminent ban. Kamala Harris enjoyed a flawless campaign rollout after Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate, not that it made any difference in the election outcome. US election results marked the full realization…
Alternate Realities
“This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance…
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