If she's a lawyer, I think it's admirable that she is trying to find a non-court/injunction/custody battle solution. It sounds like she is at the end of her rope, and with good reason. It's not enough to say, "But he's your son," if he turns into a hillbilly, a mulleted Jesus freak (love the bit about the best drugs are to be found at religious camp), especially if she has spent her whole life running away from that environment. Don't we all have a relative or two who stuns us with how spectacularly different they are from us?

I make him out to be about 17: 2006 - (1993 [Jurassic Park year] - 4) = 17) and if so he's pretty much out on his own soon anyway. I'd let the kid know that he is always welcome back in his mother's life at any time, and keep trying to talk to him. Make a note of the dates and times. Show him that you never gave up on him, that you thought allowing him some freedom seemed best. I would also write a long letter to him explaining her choices, the role her mother played, and what she tried to give him and why. Have it notarized and give it to him when he tries to reestablish contact in a couple of years. Print out the letter to Cary and stick it all in a shoebox. Then give yourself a break and get on with your life.

I have become quite attached to "Big Love," though more for the family drama than the Bill versus Roman struggle. I don't find that particularly compelling -- couldn't Bill just somehow have his lawyer have the state turn a spotlight on the compound? It is the three women and the children in the family that I am interested in (and I normally don't care how or if a family "grows" on television).

Margene irritated the hell out of me at first, but that has changed completely. She's cute and daffy, but deeply committed to her family and sister-wives. The look on Barb's face when asked point-blank if she was a polygamist was excruciating, and I loved Nikki's freak-out after being exposed. As Roman's daughter she probably does know something about being the focus of disapproving neighbors. Remember when the missionaries shook the dust off their shoes on her property? Her renunciation of them was expertly done.

Of all the great things about this show, I think my favorite was when Jenny O'Hara, one of Bruce Dern's wives, is sitting in front of the television. Condi Rice is talking and she just looks up for a moment and says, "Uppity." That said everything to me about these people. As likable as they may be on the show, they are also deeply marginalized and completely unevolved.

Yeah, that was a nice moment in the terribly awkward finale. I understand the impulse to let us in on how special the time was in your lives, but talking about the show in such vaunted terms left me cold. Its a sitcom, not a vaccine or anything.

I saw Megan Mullaley on Broadway in "How to Succeed" so I knew she could sing; Sean Hayes was a nice surprise.

In Alan Bennett's new play, "The History Boys," the teacher Hector corrects a student who has asserted that memorials are built so that we never forget. No, Hector says, memorials are built for the exact opposite reason: so that we can forget; move on and forget.

While I was watching the play all I could think of was the grotesque political machinations, the lachrymose intransigence, and the endless demands made by people who should by now realize that the time for memorialization has passed. The squabbling and the obscene costs have become the story, not the remembrance of the victims. Sic transit gloria, indeed.

Whenever I go to Los Angeles, I enjoy nothing more than a drive throughout the area. I get unjustifiably nostalgic about the time and place, though I was too young and too far away to experience it first-hand. The review tells me that this is a book for me. Driving around the canyons there I feel an odd bittersweet feeling. There are times I swear I can feel the moment that the hippie-dippie, harmonious, and non-threatening group of like-minded musicians turned into the haunt of the rancidly deranged, the psychotic hangers-on, and those for whom dope became an all-consuming avocation.

I think that is what I find so fascinating about that time and place. I have not the faintest connection to it (not even really a fan of the music) but it seems the very hills hold secrets and remain saddened at the way the scene played itself out.

Jeb in 2008? That would mean an astounding nine -- NINE! -- successive presidential election cycles in which a Dole or Bush was on the Republican national ticket. If Liddy Dole weren't proving herself to be such a non-entity in the Senate I would truly be scared for 2012 or 2016.

Christ.