"Apter identifies five categories of difficult mother: the angry mother, the controlling mother, the narcissistic mother, the envious mother and the emotionally unavailable mother. She is careful to caution that only around 20 per cent of mothers will fall into these categories – the rest are just normal, flawed humans – but if your parent does fit one of these types, it can have a profound effect on whom you become." —Now I know they say "only around 20 per cent," but let's be honest, it's all of them. Which one was yours?

Photo by artproem, via Shutterstock

As noted yesterday, the National Portrait Gallery removed David Wojnarowicz’s video “Fire in My Belly” after denunciations from the Catholic League and incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner. Boehner represents Ohio’s 8th district, an area just north of Cincinnati, where coverage of the art scandal is completely absent in the local press—outcry is at a minimum if it exists at all.

Right now I just happen to be in Fairfield, Ohio, visiting my parents for the holidays. Who better to give some local perspective to liberal urbanites incensed by the seemingly jarring insensitivity and grandstanding of Boehner and the Catholic League than my mother, a [...]

Singer/songwriter Mike "Perfume Genius" Hadreas has cast his mother, Carmen Hadreas-Boggs, in the new video for his song "Dark Parts." First they sit around the house with their dogs. Then they go out into the backyard and do a Hawaiian sort-of dance around a campfire. (Leaving a pot on the stove, which makes me me nervous. Let's just hope they didn't put on DogTV for the dogs.) And then they take a walk in the woods and hug and climb a tree. It all ends up being very moving—as befits a song with the beautiful sentiment of taking the dark part of someone else's heart into your [...]

I definitely think Thanksgiving is better than Passover. Although the latter has the edge in terms of length, elaborateness and specificity of the ritual meal, the former pulls ahead with better food (despite lacking charoset), and none of that “thank you god for bringing us out of Egypt by your mighty hand” business.

I stopped going to synagogue in high school (other than weddings and bar/bat mizvahs—benei mitzvah for those of you who like proper Hebrew pluralizations, cause yeah, I still got it), stopped fasting for Yom Kippur in college and was never very good at a week without leavened bread, but it took me several years after that [...]