Having been raised by one hoarder and once married to another, I myself am a big purger. No way do I want to ever again live in a house crammed with crap. Nor, when I check out, do I want to leave my son to sort through 5,000 coffee cans of rusty nails, a vast collection of headless Barbies, and a stack of National Geographics dating back to the 1800s. So, several times a year, I go through my already very small pile of possessions and I purge. I take bags of clothes and kitchen stuff to my favorite thrift store, Top Drawer. I redistribute CDs I’ve imported to my Mac. And, once in awhile, I part with books, which is a little bit more difficult, as books and yarn are the two things I would hoard if I did hoard. ...

What sets Laura and her show apart is a wild imagination and an ability to get the audience inside her head. Not only that, but she pulls this off with no set to speak of and very few props, key among what little she uses being a ukulele and a shopping cart. Luna Tart, the character, much like her creator, is not just from another era, she’s from another planet....

Local writer Spike Gillespie (along with a dozen of her closest friends) has been holding forth on the subject of wookin pa nub in all the wrong places. The Dick Monologues run once a month at Hyde Park Theater. When we walked in, there was a sea of women with tiny plastic cups of red wine. Any trepidation over being surrounded by that many sleeveless tops quickly dissipated as the raucously hilarious women (and......