I am a tall, very WASPy-looking middle-aged man who is a magnet for all kinds of xenophobic remarks. I don’t know why but people of all races, creeds and colors feel free to confide in me their prejudices and ignorance. When this happens in a social situation I say, truthfully, that my grandparents were immigrants and…

I don’t know if this helps but these massive layoffs and “restructurings” have been around for at least a decade, certainly since the deep recession of 2008. There is no shame attached to being laid off anymore, everyone’s been there at this point. When you’re looking for new work this will not be a handicap, like it…

So you don’t actually live in LA?

We have the CD! We keep it in the car. Whenever my husband and I go on road trips, with the hound in the back seat sticking his head out the window on the passenger side so the slobber flies onto my head, I take the occasion to vent and express my anxieties of all kinds, work (or lack thereof), family, friends, the…

Oh, so many stars for you! I cried with laughter through the whole thing. I’m going to the dog run in a few minutes. When people see my puffy tear-stained eyes they’re going to assume someone died.

I want “lesbian pony wrangler” to be one of the choices on common occupation-predictive personality tests.

I like Henry V. It contains the line, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”, which I trot out every time I’m in a group entering a party or visiting a restaurant.

Too late I guess but take them for Singaporean fusion! Are you actually in Singapore? I’m not and I’ve never had Singaporean fusion but I’d love to try it. And I live in New York, home to every cuisine known to humankind.

About reading a book and everyone taking part: I’ve done this with friends! It’s really fun. I have a lot of actor friends so when we do it we pick an awful book and we do impersonations. One time we did The DaVinci Code. One of my friends was William Shatner playing Robert Langdon and another friend was Lucille Ball…

Well since you’re a teacher you must bring them in and show them to your students.

That letter from Ronald Reagan was amazing. I am picturing him and Mommy in the private quarters of the White House perfecting their dance moves to “Wanna Be Starting Something” played on continuous repeat. Maybe they had the “cassingle” and a boombox. Since you’re only 36: A cassingle was a cassette tape that only…

I wonder what Donald Trump imagines America would look like without immigrants, like his forebears. Completely unpopulated, I guess. Even the “Native Americans” migrated over somehow across the Bering Strait, either over an ice bridge or on crude boats sailing along the west side of what is now Canada.

I just attended a college reunion and basically that’s what it was like. Except I wasn’t yet in an urn. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen drunken people in their early 50s attempting “The Safety Dance.”

It was a little strange for me so I just let my hand hover over the body for a little bit. But the decedent was beloved and it was packed so the people behind me saw that I didn’t actually stroke his cheek or pat him on the head or touch his hands and I got grief for it from the grief-stricken mourners.

I once went to a funeral where everyone was supposed to get up at the end and file past the open casket and touch the body and then turn to the family sitting in the first pew and murmur condolences, like it was some kind of bizarro-world wedding reception line. I still have nightmares.

A Jewish friend of mine died by drug-induced suicide and there was the quck service and get him into the ground and then sitting shiva. I would like to have seen him one last time.

I was at a yard sale once and there was a huge box of Chick tracts for $1. So I bought it. There were like 400 of them, each one different, each one insane in its own way. Guess what everyone I knew got as a Christmas card enclosure in 1989? Merry early Christmas, everyone!

If it weren’t for Jews there’d be no Catholics (Jesus was not born Catholic; Catholics arose through a belief in Him) and if it weren’t for Catholics there would be no Protestants (there would be nothng to Protest against.)

I’m way too late to be jumping in like this but whenever my husband starts berating me for sins real or imagined I sing “Jesus Loves Me”. That shuts him up.

Yay, thank you Madeleine, on behalf of the entire morbid faction of the Jezebel commentariat!