Merrill Markoe

Though the Woolsey Fire took out Mr. Dylan's fence and hedge, it was not able to destroy his Christmas spirit.

For almost a decade, I have had an unhealthy obsession with the Christmas lights on Bob Dylan's Malibu home. Here's what I learned from this year's display.

It's that time of year again when we use Bob Dylan's Christmas decorations to decode everything that happened over the past 12 months.

For the first time in years, Bob Dylan upgraded his Christmas display. I found deeper meaning in every new string of lights.

The Wende Museum houses a treasure trove of more than 100,000 objects from the former Eastern Bloc, ranging from Stasi audio tapes to East German household cleaning products.

In the interest of reassuring struggling students, I offer this partial catalog of some of the many bad ideas I accumulated during my college years. Trust me—life gets better after graduation.

It had all the fanfare of the Oscars, but with way more dildos.

The single string of festive lights hung up at one of Bob Dylan's many homes has transfixed me for years.

It's hard to believe that clubs that exclude women from membership still exist, but they do. Maybe a little gender mixing would be helpful at a time when the news is full of terrifying sexual assault allegations.

The detective who showed up at 5 AM was not much older-looking than Samantha's friends. (Not that Samantha ever hung out with clean-cut guys like this. Why should she when there were still heroin addicts in bands who needed a doormat?)