When I got the email notification in gmail, all the gmail ads included on the side were lice-remedy links. As near as I can tell, this is because moppety mentioned something about having something "in her head." I nearly choked.

You've made my head itch from a thousand miles away.

Last year or so, somebody here shared a link to an article (was is Slate or Salon?) about a woman who worked long overtime hours as a high paid hair colorist (a salon speciality) in order to afford ultra-expensive couture clothes. Does anyone remember this and can link me up again?

Huh. The Yahoo!News page linked to an article about thesmokinggun.com's just-posted investigation of memoirist James Frey, which I'd just a few minutes ago found from a link on Salon.com.

Fraudulent writers are weirdly fascinating: all that time and energy invested in the persona, the invented past, propping it all up. Or cheerfully playing with it (like JT Leroy) or stubbornly withholding any information at all aside from the words themselves (like blinvisible playwright Jane Martin, who may be Jane Martin but also may be a man, a husband-and-wife writing team, or a collective). And the journalists and researchers who can cause such terrible harm -- and again with the huge amounts of time and energy, along with high visibility and the high likelihood of getting caught and of really awful consequences.

Compared to someone like the Korean cloning researcher whose lab research and thousands of pages of findings have fallen in like a house of cards over the last few weeks, Frey is terribly small potatoes. But, still, weirdly mesmerizing (to me, anyhow).

like blinvisible playwright Jane Martin, who may be Jane Martin but also may be a man

It's a man, baby! (I'm totally convinced it is, and as such, rant every time Martin is included in women playwright anthologies.)

I remember it, but want to say it was a New York Times article. Alas that I am not your Nilly, Theo.

Alas that I am not your Nilly, Theo.

Now I'm imagining a country song,

I'm sorry, honey, I just can't be your Nilly
You'll just have to find that stuff on your own

It's a man, baby! (I'm totally convinced it is, and as such, rant every time Martin is included in women playwright anthologies.)

What tipped you over? I'm in the vague and fuzzy probably-a-man-but-not-totally-convinced camp, with one foot in possibly-a-collective.

Also, seriously impressed at the ability of the person or persons behind Martin's persona to maintain total blinvisibility for so long.

What tipped you over?

Wossname from Louisville always directs the world premiere (except for the latest one, which my friend Michael Dixon is directing - I think), and speaks for "her", and.... It smells.

AARG! I bought a tagless t-shirt only to discover that it has a tag on the side seam at my waist. It's driving me nuts.

(It really is the little things that moves people to killing sprees.)

Hilary Swank and Husband Chad Lowe Split

And now they can both go be gay?

Seriously, the news makes me oddly sad. They always seemed so sweet.