For "We Think Alone," July asked friends to choose an email from their "sent" folders; the email must cohere to one of 10 themes. The first of 10 aggregations of stars' private thoughts went out today -- organized around the theme of "money" -- and readers found that "Girls" creator Lena Dunham is just parsimonious enough to turn down a $24,000 sofa, but spendthrift enough to consider it.

According to the sent email forwarded to "We Think Alone" subscribers, Dunham's assistant wrote her with the specs on a custom Swedish sofa:

TOTAL PRICE (estimate) INCLUDING SHIPPING $24,035.24

TOTAL TIMEFRAME: 10 Weeks to make it, 6-10 weeks to ship it from Sweden.16-20 weeks

The price to make the Liljevalch Sofa is $14,878.93 plus the fabric which is $283.56 per meter and we would need 20 meters of fabric. So the entire cost of the couch would be $20,554.39.

Shipping the sofa:  It will take between 16 and 20 weeks to make and ship the sofa to us (from Sweden and will cost $3,080.85, plus $400.00 in customs charges.

whenever you pick the fabric I can order for you! :) xox

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Here's a sample of what she has to say:

Asked about the response to the episode where Hannah lands a doctor played by Patrick Wilson for a two-day romp: "I get so tired of having to cry out "misogyny," but that's what's going on in this situation. People questioning the idea that a woman could sleep with a man who defied her lot in the looks bracket hews so closely to these really outdated ideas about what makes a woman worth spending time with. Really? Can you not imagine a world in which a girl who's sexually down for anything and oddly gregarious pulls a guy out of his shell for two days?

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And yet, more than anything, the pre-season-3 excitement about a new cast member ("This Has Got to Be Marnie's New Boyfriend on 'Girls,' Right?," asked an Atlantic Wire headline; "Zegen may fill the void left by the sudden departure of Christopher Abbott," noted Deadline, more sedately) may feel like much ado about nothing for those who remember the hubbub over Donald Glover's casting, or Patrick Wilson's.

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1. You've probably seen Zegen on TV or film already. He's appeared in "Adventureland," played Damien Keefe in "Rescue Me," acts as mobster Bugsy Siegel on "Boardwalk Empire" and appears alongside "Girls" co-star Adam Driver in "Frances Ha," currently out in theaters. Here's a reel with some of his scenes:

Michael Zegen Reel from Michael Zegen on Vimeo.

2. Zegen graduated from Skidmore College with a degree in theater and got his first big break on TV playing Dwight the Troubled Teen on "Late Show With David Letterman." He told Black Book Mag:

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Levine initially attempted to make clear that he'd been joking:

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However, he eventually apologized to the nation that has made "The Voice" a career-reviving hit. "I obviously love my country very much and my comments last night were made purely out of frustration," said Levine:

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So naturally it must be just like "Girls"! Except it isn't. At all.

Hannah Horvath, the hero of "Girls," is younger than Frances and far more confident in her art. Although Hannah's family won't help her pay the bills, she seems to, as of late, magically have enough money to pay the bills every month. Frances, with a few more years of disillusionment under her belt, faces down far more serious challenges than does Hannah -- which isn't a criticism of "Girls."

But none of those differences have stopped the easy comparisons. Turns out there really is a more pernicious and lazy cultural reference than comparing anything in the 1960s to Don Draper's life, or equating anything quirky and indie with "Portlandia." Please, let's come to an understanding: Culture writers of America, we will believe you know about "Girls" even if you don't compare everything about young people in cities to Lena Dunham.

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This double-axel troll -- millennials are the worst! All they do is play on their smartphones! But, actually, they are great! Columnist Joel Stein tells you why! -- is admirably executed. (A video at Time's website indicates that the full story, not yet online, is unlikely to be positive: Stein, the writer, "lives like a millennial" by compulsively documenting himself, a trope that felt a little clichéd when describing the Gen-X'ers of "Reality Bites.")

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Measure, measure, measure.
We learn to measure first.
We spend our days measuring. And when we count we start at one.

Every number after is in relation to one.
Two is one after one.
Three is two after one. And so on.
Every child knows that one is the beginning from which all other numbers arise.

And every child knows that one is Whiteness.

The beginning.

In the beginning there was Whiteness. This is the glittering starting point. This is The Default. This is what we measure everything else against.

It’s clear that we as Black and Brown Americans, are still recovering from the racist indoctrinations of the past 500 years. Though laughable it sounds, white Americans, too, have suffered from this crime. As our country began and brown races were systematically denied the right to be human and so internalized the role of the savage, white consciousness bullied its way into objectivity. The white mind became the unbiased mind that objectively observed all the rest. This is called The Default: The belief that the white experience is a neutral and objective experience and white consciousness is the standard consciousness unless otherwise specified. White culture, and American culture as a whole, suffers from the tragedy of whiteness as the default setting.

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Abbott, who played Charlie, Marnie's (Allison Williams) on-again (and now off, permanently) boyfriend, "didn’t like the direction things are going in," a source told the Post. He's also apparently "at odds with" series creator Lena Dunham, so much so that he's walking away from the show that first "put him on the map."

Abbott's rep confirmed the news to the Post, saying:

“[Chris] is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd [Apatow], and the entire ‘Girls’ cast and crew, but right now he’s working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show.”

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Laura Miller, a Yankee, was enlightened by former newspaper reporter Tracy Thompson's deeply personal account of the transformation of Georgia, titled "The New Mind of the South":

Thompson gives "The New Mind of the South" a muscular tension that a merely nostalgic memoir or a self-effacing work of reportage could never achieve. She vividly recalls the embracing evangelical church life of her 1960s youth, when the religion was "otherworldly and apolitical" and therefore a marked contrast to the activist fundamentalism that arose in the 1970s or the show-bizzy extravaganza of a megachurch she visits in suburban Atlanta. Yet the latter, an outpost of the "prosperity gospel," turns out to be more multiracial and feminist than she expected. Such churches can’t provide her with the comfort she once found in the small church where her family used to worship, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing some good.

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These roles include "caucasian heavy set ages 18-25 patient," "chainsmoking nurse," and "African American patient ages 37-40 well dressed business man with high end suits and/or business casual." Looks like Hannah might be making another trip to the hospital!

The casting breakdown also includes "Latin maintenance worker type" and "Latin social worker type." The series was subject to criticisms, particularly in its first season, that minorities were invisible or relegated to service-worker positions like nannies or, well, maintenance workers; in the second season, Dunham cast the actor Donald Glover, who is black, as a love interest.

Actors who can pull off any of these parts -- or "alcoholic with teased hair," or "Caucasian slovenly, beer gut, balding male" -- should move quickly; Dunham has previously said that season 3 will begin shooting this month.

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So how can we make peace with this Hannah, who, after finally getting what she wants — a good (enough) job and a nice(ish) boy — is overcome by OCD, a terribly crippling condition in real life, and possibly so in drama. A very smart commenter on Facebook recently noted that the ear-poking seems almost an act of desperation, as if Hannah were trying to dig out her neurosis with a Q-tip. It certainly does, but what about losing Adam has caused this syndrome? Is it stopping her from writing the book? Is the book stopping her from writing Adam? Was the plot stopping Dunham from writing an explanation for either of these? Hannah is poking around for answers, lost and alone. As are we.

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Since it still needs to be said, not being "in any state to make a decision for herself" meets the legal definition for rape across the U.S. So here's a question for that guy: What did he do to try to stop it?

According to the prosecutor's opening statement Wednesday, these witnesses saw one of the defendants, Trent Mays, try to force oral sex on the girl, but her mouth wouldn't open. They saw the other defendant, Ma'Lik Richmond, digitally penetrate the girl while she was passed out on a couch. Though the girls' friends apparently tried to prevent her from continuing on with the boys, so far there's been no indication the witnesses intervened with the boys who no one has disputed were capable of decision-making. And preliminary research shows that the intervention of such bystanders could make the difference in preventing rape.

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BUT NOT QUITE YET.

As we begin this season's penultimate episode, we slide up into what I have begun to think of as a Dunhamian shot: the bed and bedroom seen from the side, like Freud's ideal diorama. In this bedroom are the yet-more-encoupled Nat (Natalia) and Adam, about to make love. We know this because Natalia says, “I'm ready to have sex now,” telling Adam “You've been really nice all week,” then laying out information and prohibitions, including “no soft touching” (takes her out of the moment) and coming outside (“I'm on the pill”). Though his expression is briefly inscrutable, Adam reacts to these proscriptions with relief. “I will do all of those things ... I like how clear you are with me.” How, responds Natalia beatifically, could a person do anything any other way?

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The "Asssscat" show, which runs every Sunday at UCB for $10, is organized into improvised comedy and monologues. The way the show works is that initially, someone in the audience will raise a one-word suggestion, which becomes a prompt for a monologue. After the monologist riffs (for about two minutes), her monologue then becomes the inspiration for a series of scenes improved by UCB performers. Together, they perform three to four sets during the night.

As last night's monologist, Dunham shared intimate stories about her experiences in college, a video game-addicted ex-boyfriend and her wild cousin, excerpts below:

On cousins, Dunham explains that she has a cousin who loves to party and used to live with her parents. He also worked on the set of "Girls":

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The author of books including "Bel Canto" and "State of Wonder," who also runs a Nashville bookstore, couldn't seem farther removed from the world of HBO's "Girls" -- a show whose characters seem likely to read Sheila Heti or Vice magazine. Besides, as Patchett told Salon, she doesn't watch TV.

And yet, last night's episode name-checked the author, when the mother of Lena Dunham's character announces that she's having a wonderful time at an academic conference in New York.

"It has been such an awesome conference," says Becky Ann Baker's character, a prim middle-aged, upper-middle-class woman. "I never thought I'd meet so many other women who feel the same way I do about Ann Patchett." The joke here, perhaps, is that Patchett is the sort of tasteful, excellent, high-mid-brow author for whom women like Hannah's mother would, near-universally, feel a strong affinity.

Patchett is flattered. "I heard about the reference this morning from an old boyfriend who called me a 'meme,' and then I had to ask him what a 'meme' was," Patchett told Salon via email. "It's very nice to think that someone at the show would take the trouble to put me in the cultural loop when clearly I am so far out of it."

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