On Main Character Syndrome, Identity Theft, and the introduction of Jimmy Con I've suffered from main character syndrome for most of my life. I suppose having an extraordinarily overdramatic mother helped establish that foundation pretty early. In our household, life wasn't simply lived. It was performed. Every inconvenience had the potential to become a crisis. Every disagreement could escalate into a three-act tragedy. Every emotional disturbance required an audience, prefe

recently read something about Heath Ledger’s journal while he was preparing to play the Joker in The Dark Knight. There was a post on Instagram showing pages from it—images, scribbled thoughts, disturbing references, fragments of things he was apparently studying while trying to crawl inside the head of Gotham’s most maniacal villain. It was fascinating. It was also fucking dark. First off, I should establish that I’m partial to Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Picture five-year-old J