In 1979, my parents would attend Saturday Night Live parties thrown by our neighbors in suburban Philadelphia. We children were always dragged along, encouraged to play nicely in a hideously paneled basement, with the hope that we would pass out long before the TV show began. Most of us followed suit, but as a spiteful insomniac, I would bribe my little sister to stay up with me in order to creep up the stairs to see what the big deal was. The poor thing would usually fall asleep on the top step, but I could hear the skreetchy jazzy opening music of SNL and then the exciting cast introductions. I could never keep my eyes open much past that, but would always remember a boozy neighbor yelling that Gilda Radner “should have a sandwich!” Then laughs all around. (This coming from Mr. M. who yet other, uninvited neighbors would say, “could barely keep the shirt on his back, from his little Atlantic City problem.”) Invariably on the heel of the laughter from the witty sandwich comment, Mrs. S. would jump in with “And someone should throw that Laraine Newman a bucket of chicken too!” More hilarity. And this from the woman who drank hairspray when she ran out of “the good stuff.” Ironically, I never heard anyone hoot and yell that John Belushi (whose contempt for female writers was savage) should drop the fucking cheeseburger. I’m not judging my parents’ neighbors or their choices in life. My point is that they are just normal, flawed, vulnerable, occasionally graceful, sometimes vile humans, just like “Gilda and Laraine”. When Angelina Jolie and her pin thin arms and dramatic leg pose took center stage at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, it was clear that we, as an...