If perhaps you were intrigued by the idea of podcasts by comedians but you aren't interested in living in a male-only world, as Paul Brownfield, the author of this past weekend's Times mag piece on podcasts by comedians does, here are a few things for you to explore! READ MORE

If you fly a lot, you'll either be caught up on your fine literature reading or more likely on the comedies that are available in the iTunes store, home of DRM and overpriced rentals. (Also home to movies that are difficult to watch on planes, because suddenly there's boobies on your bright portable device and you're like "Oh my God, there's an eight-year-old about 20 inches behind me.") After the comedies that launched a thousand post-"Are Women Funny" magazine pieces, then in the iterated form of "Are Women Box Office" magazine pieces—those would be about Bridesmaids and then about Anna Faris, because of course we're all so very concerned about box office, since we're all Hollywood executives—there's a weird moment now when it's not really clear what comedy is and what comedy is okay and what's a boy comedy and what's a girl comedy, which all ends up meaning that dudes can't really have sex in movies anymore. READ MORE

I have three or four things I want to put together. First is The Social Network which I resisted seeing for a very long time (“You’ll love it. It’s great!” It wasn’t.) And second is The Rite which I’ve wanted to see ever since those previews months back. I finally had my paws on The Rite thanks to Netflix but then I couldn’t find anyone to watch it with me at this artist colony I’ve been at all month and I’m leaving tomorrow. So alone and in the deep of the night I watched The Rite in bed. Third and fourth I think is the current economic crisis in America which has been up for me in a female-related way since mid-July with the non-appointment of Elizabeth Warren to the head of the CFPB (Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau). What an idea! Right? That consumers should be protected in America! It’s so amazing that this brilliant person, Elizabeth Warren, who actually knows more about bankruptcy than anyone else in the country and is not from the ruling class, decided to put her expertise to work, you know, fixing things, helping the system work—mainly by imagining how it could be (like why not create a mortgage contract that people can read!) and then knocking on doors until she got the go-ahead from the White House to form a government agency that actually oversees banks large and small and credit companies and loans to college students—an agency which will make sure that the people who do business with these companies, not other companies, but people—the CFPB is now almost ready to begin overseeing the contingency that these actual people won’t get screwed again... you know, like the song. Oh, I guess I was fooled again. Elizabeth Warren takes a leave from teaching at Harvard to create this agency so naturally she is not appointed to direct it. READ MORE

In a brave experiment, Molly McAleer, a biological woman who lives in Los Angeles, has been hired by showrunner Michael Patrick King for CBS' "Two Broke Girls," which was picked up by the network in mid-May, and will allegedly air between "How I Met Your Mother" and "Two and a Half Men." READ MORE

Sure, there are funny gays in various entertainment fields, such as shoe design and Condé Nast magazines, but let us think of gays in actual comedy. Okay, so there's Ellen. That guy ANT. Neil Patrick Harris. And... hmm. READ MORE

How many movies passed the Bechdel Test this year so far? Yes, sure, it's a black/white, pass/fail set of criteria, which means that plenty of unconcerned products pass. So this year: From Prada to Nada and Bridesmaids both pass, which... might be sort of besides the point, or might be a related but more capitalist point? Jane Eyre squeaks under the wire. Briefly, Red Riding Hood too, which, uh. On a technicality, Paul. And Sucker Punch—though it's also castigated as the most misogynist film in ages. Also The Last Lions, I think, if you count lady lions talking to other lady lions, I think, but maybe they are just talking about men. Though not sure if the lady lions have names? What else? Kind of maybe Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son! (Later this year: Crazy, Stupid, Love, Bad Teacher and The Help all do.) But first among them is Hanna, which is a vastly terrific film! Here's my own movie test: when the trailer is terrific, I am now highly suspicious about the movie. (See: Battle: Los Angeles. Awesome trailer, garbagey movie.) So the Hanna trailer had me concerned. But no! Exceeds expectations. Would do business again. Oscars all around! If anything, I wanted another 20 minutes of it. Or 200. Would happily take several sequels and a long-lasting franchise and an amusement park ride.

Ooh, smoke billowing at 14th and I, NW, in D.C.! Maybe it's all the hot air being burned right now on Cabalist in the wake of that story on up-and-coming journalist-and-blogger Beltway Insiders, the one that had an all-male cast. Cabalist, should you not be a manly Beltway Insider yourself, is the email listserv Journolist replacement, where the in-the-know politicos discuss amongst themselves the weighty wonky workings of the world. (I'm jealous! I want in!) Here's a brief note to our wonky Cabalistic boyfriends in D.C.: whenever a reporter calls, you always ask with whom else he is speaking. And who his editor is. And what his brief is. And you make yourself familiar with his work. And then you make suggestions of who else he should talk to! That's called "not getting set up." There's no excuse for a reporter to be surprised by another reporter! And it actually is the subject's responsibility to do that, and the subjects of stories often actually do know in advance what the article is going to say—because they ask questions. And what's more, there's plenty of people who happily say "actually, please do not write about 'how awesome' I am." Because it might not be good for them. READ MORE

"The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other's behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact." READ MORE

When I think about being female I think about being loved. What I mean by that: I have a little exercise I do when I present my work or speak publicly or even write (like this). In order to build up my courage I try to imagine myself deeply loved. Because there are men whose lives I’ve avidly followed—out of admiration for their work or their “way.” Paolo Pasolini always comes to mind. I love his work, his films, his poetry, his writings on film and literature, his life, all of it, even his death. How did he do it—make such amazing work and stand up so boldly as a queer and a Marxist in a Catholic country in the face of so much (as his violent death proved) hate. I have one clear answer. He was loved. Pasolini’s mother was wild about him. We joke about this syndrome—Oh she was an Italian mother, but she could just have well been a Jewish mother, an Irish mother, an African-American one. A mother loves her son. And so does a country. And that is much to count on. So I try to conjure that for myself particularly when I’m writing or saying something that seems both vulnerable and important so I don’t have to be defending myself so hard. I try and act like its mine. The culture. That I’m its beloved son. It’s not an impossible conceit. But it’s hard. Because a woman, reflexively, often feels unloved. When I saw the recent Vida pie charts that showed how low the numbers are of female writers getting reviewed in the mainstream press I just wasn’t surprised at all though I did cringe. When you see your oldest fears reflected back at you in the hard bright light of day it doesn’t feel good. Because a woman is someone who grew up observing that a whole lot more was being imagined by everyone for her brother and the boys around her in school. If she’s a talented artist she’s told that she could probably teach art to children when she grows up and then she hears the boy who’s good in art get told by the same teacher that one day he could grow up to be a commercial artist. The adult doing the talking in these kinds of exchanges is most often female. And the woman who is still a child begins to wonder if her childhood is already gone because she has been already replaced in the future by a woman who will be teaching children like herself. And will she tell them that they too will not so much fail but vanish before their lives can even begin. These pie charts don’t surprise me. They just demonstrate that a lot of us can easily become just a few of us or even just one of us. I am mildly curious about whether the situation in book reviewing (or even publishing) was actually better for a while during and right after the 70s, the heyday of feminism, but you know I’m not that curious. That thrilling rise then dogged fall would only underline the sad fact that the increased interest in women’s writings for a decade or so was a kind of fleeting impulse, like the interest-in-incest moment, just “a thing,” not a deep cultural shift like the comprehension that slavery or human sacrifice are wrong and we just won’t ever go there again. But to have such a deep sea change in a culture and keep it you have put the reins of its institutions permanently in other hands and let them stay there. “They” would have to have become “you.” And you (whether you were male or female) would have long concluded that women’s writing is either just writing or no different than men’s or equally interesting, or even better. And that perspective would by now be so embedded in our cultural sense of self that the Times or Harpers or The New York Review of Books would no more likely to be short changing women’s books today anymore than they would pull quietly away from reviewing books written in English in order to uphold a belief that the only good work being written today is by African, South American or Icelandic authors. And think nobody would notice. Reasonable people of course would smile and insist that the NYRB be renamed The New York Review of African Books or South American Books or Icelandic. It would have to happen, the NYRB would have to own their bias eventually, what they were doing, the editor would have to issue a statement or else the publication would become a total joke. But to publish a review today that purportedly reviews “all” books yet in fact is dedicated to the project of mainly reviewing men’s without acknowledging that kind of bias sort of begs the question—the operating presumption must be that “we” “all know” that men’s writing is in fact better or more important than women’s—is the real deal and the only thing disputing this is feminism and since that’s “over” (phew) we are back to business as usual. When I say business I mean that there’s just a whole lot of money talking. That’s what’s going on. The more culturally generous moment we’re all missing (whether it ever truly happened or not) was tied to a booming economy. Men weren’t actually sharing space in the 70s and 80s—the doors just got a little wider for a while. And now that there’s less money to go around in book publishing and the surrounding media it seems like what’s getting shoved out is women. That’s what I believe is happening, don’t you. I think we can do this, right? The editor might ask his staff holding up the cover of the next great all-male issue that dare not speak its name—and his staff probably includes a few females and queers—who want to be in on “the conversation.” Who could blame them for that? Well I can. Can’t you? I mean what are we doing here after all. READ MORE