Lorraine Devon Wilke

Some shows rise or fall on the star power of a charismatic lead, some rely on solid writing and era-centric plot twists, while others seduce with flash, style and the conviction that they've struck the Zeitgeist at just the right moment to have cool quotient locked. Mad Men...

We already knew young King Joffrey ("Game of Thrones") was a monster. If it wasn't the perpetual sneer or the seething arrogance pouring from every pore, it might have been the beheading of his betrothed's father in front of his betrothed. That always signals trouble. So why, I...

April 29, 1992, the first time in my life I'd experienced a sense of true anarchy and danger. To a girl from a Midwest farm town who had lived a protected existence even in the feistier environs of Los Angeles, this was a stunning turn. As my husband and I...

The noise and flurry of life is cacophonous at times. The demands of work and family, the vagaries of relationships, the roar of political opposition and religious divides. There are outrages over vigilante murders and politician's wives. Racial animus is couched in birth certificates and Tea Parties. We deflect the...

I'm late to this game. Didn't even know it was being played. At least not till I noticed "pinning" going on at Facebook or Twitter and had no idea what this Pinterest thing was or why any of us should be paying attention (I tend to be on...

Let's get honest and quit dancing around the issue with statements about "religious freedom" and "war on Christianity" and "saving our flock from government intervention."

Sex terrifies the religious.

Oh, they're having it, pretty much like anyone else, but sex as a concept terrifies Catholics, selected Protestants, certainly Mormons (though...

I am politically oversaturated. I've written about it, read about it, thrown a sock at it when necessary (that would be TV after a minute or two of GOP debates), and I'm as sick of it as a regretful glutton following a hotdog eating contest (pull any pun out of...

Remember that time, right after and extending from 9/11, when there was much incendiary, spittle-flying, vein-popping debate about whether there was a good Muslim to be found anywhere on this earth? Pundits, politicians and just plain people couldn't seem to wrap their brains around the idea that even within this...

This election process of ours has become reminiscent of an overcooked, deeply redundant television series written by a cabal of hacks with no concern for freshness of tone or inventiveness of detail, relying instead on weary bromides, eye-rolling hyperbole, sophomoric name-calling and the deadening boredom of clichéd characters made interesting...

Remember when hardly anyone beyond lead guitarists, assembly line workers and those in the medical industry knew about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? It was just this oddly named thing -- disease, injury, we didn't know what -- that registered as hazily as Bruxism or Glossophobia. Then we...

Is it just me or is there something inordinately mean about sending out medical insurance rate hike packages in time for the very last day of the year? Just when we're wrapping up the holiday, taking down the tree, rebalancing the checkbook, tightening our belts to compensate for the joy...

I was in line behind a woman tightly wrapped in a Christmas sweater; strained eyes, pale face, the dry lips of a slightly manic and dehydrated overachiever. Panting ever-so-slightly, she hugged a packaged iPad to her chest and with an edge of madness, leaned in as if we were trench...

Write that down a few hundred times. Say it out loud a few times more. This is important, Virginia, because some would have you believe if you say something often enough and loud enough it becomes truth so -- just in case the theory holds -- let's be sure what...

While watching the very disturbing video of Lt. John Pike pepper spraying non-violent and seated UC Davis students, one of the more searing images of recent days, beyond the gut-churning view of uniformed men spraying toxic chemicals directly into the mouths and faces of teenagers trying on their...

As crowds occupy cities to protest the dubious moral codes and fancy financial finagling of big business and bigger Wall Street; as Republicans rail against taxes and regulations on the 1% under the guise of protecting the 99; as Dems struggle with competing missions within their own party, and all...

Most of us saw the YouTube video of Texas Judge William Adams beating the living daylights out of his teenaged daughter with a belt. We watched as he twisted and turned her like a pig on a spit, whacking away at whatever body part he could get to...

We left off last May, looking ahead to the boy's First Summer Home Since College (Empty Next Syndrome...Coming Home). Before I could write a follow-up to the questions posed in that piece, the original entry in this series, My Very Cool Roommate Is Moving Out, was...

I grew up in an era when Joni Mitchell's declaration that "we don't need no piece of paper from the city hall" seemed just about right and the very idea of eschewing the shackles of conventional marriage thrilled us wild children of the times. Who needed contracts and rules and...

It's strange to grieve a man you didn't know but grieve I am. I'm not going to try to explain or justify it; when a brilliant mind and a true innovator leaves this earth, it's just... sad. Particularly when Charles Manson is still here.

Some people just tap into a...

Churlish is a word one rarely gets to use in normal conversation. "Stop being such a... churlish fellow!" does not readily roll off the tongue in modern repartee. But lately I find myself thinking it, often in response to one thing or another I'm reading; usually comments, Facebook contributions, hatchet...