Lance Baker, my high school boyfriend (who's now happily married with a baby on the way—congrats, Lance!), as Algy in the 2004 production of Earnest at Chicago's Court Theatre.
Subject line of a reader email received this morning: "I think earnestness is cool." I usually think of it as enthusiasm with a reasonable side of skepticism, but earnestness, in the Importance of Being sense, is also up my alley. Thank you, emailer. (It no longer feels right to hyphenate the word "email," except when necessary for work. It's just closed up in my head—e plus mail. It is mail. In five years I bet all stylebooks will have united them for good. Plus, my name is almost "Email," so it feels perfectly natural to type it all together—there are those who have called me "Emaily.")

Update: I swear I didn't know Hilton Als was reviewing the new BAM production of the play this week: "The modern literature Wilde is referring to here includes the play we are watching, which, until its final, improbable moments, has very little to do with simple truth and much to do with pretense; loyalties and affections are dropped and picked up like the stitches in an especially complicated piece of needlework."