DIARY

Ramshackle Glam Audioblog: The (Real) Story Behind “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”

August 18, 2021

This is the most interesting thing about me, according to many, many (most?) people: The fact that I was fired from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

It’s a tricky thing, writing about an incident that so clearly paints me as the sad sack, the bitter ex-actress who coulda been a star! …and then wasn’t, and was instead relegated to a footnote in the storied history of a television show. I’m that guy who was almost on Friends instead of Matt LeBlanc. I’m the fifth Beatle.

This is my story.

Listen to all the Audioblog episodes here.

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DIARY

Beginning Of An Era

July 27, 2021

My children have moved several times over the course of their lives. Probably too many. I have worried about this - about the effect all these moves might have on their sense of security; their understanding of "home." Not long ago, I confessed this to a friend - one who has moved her own children several times, including transcontinentally - and what she said to me was this: "There are parents who stay still. You don't. That's simply the mother they have, and it's neither a good thing nor a bad thing...it's just one of the things that make your family what it is."

I like to think that's true; that they'll grow up feeling like they've had the opportunity to experience many different places, and that those places - and the people who they've met and loved - are still a part of them. It is true that they have a mother who is restless, and who tends to impose her restlessness upon them, but along with all that restlessness comes adventure.

I grew up in a completely different set of circumstances. Shortly after I was born, my parents bought an apartment on the West Side of Manhattan, in a converted piano factory with massive arches that used to frame horse stalls, and wrought-iron balconies crisscrossing a large central courtyard that grew tulips in the spring and was the stage for what I firmly believe was the world's scariest Halloween display come fall. Most of the residents were in the theater or film industry; that was who gravitated towards Hell's Kitchen back then - or maybe it was just the only place in the city they could afford. When I was twelve, a director who lived on the first floor asked me - out of the blue - to audition for a commercial, and by the end of the day I had an agent and had set off down a path that would shape the next two decades of my life. I feel the butterfly effects of that chance meeting in my life still.

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Home

Shall We Spring Clean?

May 13, 2021

I do not especially love cleaning…but I love Spring Cleaning. Mostly because you can apply the idea way beyond the reaches of your rugs: Spring is a great time to chop off a few inches of hair, streamline your wardrobe to highlight those pieces you really do wear, and whittle down your beauty products to the bare necessities. You can even - stay with me, here - spring clean your mind. (Click here for a Tarot spread for spiritual decluttering.)

In other words: I think about it less as "cleaning," and more as "simplifying."

Below, alllll the ideas you could possibly want if you're in a simple life kinda mood this weekend.

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Crafts for the Uncrafty

How To Make A Gorgeous Floral Arrangement…With Supermarket Flowers

May 3, 2021

First experience with floral foam went stunningly well.

Did you know I am a professional flower arranger? Right, neither did I.

First: I am super aware that this does not look easy. It is so easy. I whipped this arrangement – which is nice and low, so you can put it on your dining room table without completely obliterating your view of your fellow diners - up using exclusively grocery store-bought flowers, and in about ten minutes.

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Lifestyle

Five Right-This-Moment Favorites

April 27, 2021

OK, my actual right-this-moment favorite thing is "napping every g-damned day while my kids are in school BECAUSE I CAN," but putting that aside for a moment: Here's what I'm very, very into right now.

1. All things vintage Betsey Johnson. Betsey is my neighbor, which is actual #lifegoals - she tools around our neighborhood in a golf cart rocking the most amazing neon dreadlocks, and I have never (like literally not once) seen her emerge into public without red lipstick and what appears to be every ring she owns - but my love affair with her eponymous brand goes way, way back. I lucked into inheriting the incredible blouse pictured above (more shots here) from my mom, but if you search "vintage Betsey Johnson" on Etsy you'll find a treasure trove of light-as-air floral dresses that are, IMO, absolutely perfect for Spring 2021 and our re-emergence into real life (remember that?!).

2. Kristin Hannah books. A few weeks ago I solicited book recs on Instagram, and THANK YOU to everyone who recommended The Great Alone. Kristin Hannah's epic novel about a 1970s family who moves to the Alaskan frontier and has to cope with the father's increasingly terrifying PTSD symptoms from his stint in Vietnam is, quite simply, one of the best works of fiction I've ever read - so much so that I immediately ordered and read The Nightingale, Hannah's earlier novel about sisters living in France during the WWII German occupation, and...again. One of the best works of fiction I've ever read. (I actually hugged it when I finished, which is the weird thing I do when I read something I truly love.) Currently waiting on The Four Winds to arrive.

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