An Evil Weekend

There are days when the world stacks tragedy and pain and violent evil one after another, waves of blood rolling over our screens and souls. This was a weekend of evil.

Rob and Michele Reiner are dead, killed in their own home, with police calling it an apparent homicide, and the investigation is still unfolding. When the story broke, my brain did that trick where it tries to bargain with reality: maybe it’s wrong, it’s perhaps a mistake, maybe the universe will walk it back.

But it won’t. It never does.

And now Rob is gone.

A friend, one of those rare Hollywood men who could be ferocious in his convictions without losing his warmth and humor. He made people laugh, yes. He made people argue, yes. His creative genius? Unrivaled. But he was, at bottom, a human being, smart, funny, warm, present, there. The kind you expect to still be in the world because the world needs men like that to stay upright.

But evil doesn’t care about what we need. Evil wants an opening.

Then Brown. A gunman opened fire inside an academic building during finals, two students killed, nine injured, families shattered into before-and-after. The investigation, botched and clumsy so far, isn’t helping explain the horror.

And a world away in summery Bondi Beach, people gathered for Hanukkah by the water, and a father and son attacked the celebration and turned it into a slaughterhouse. Fifteen dead, over 40 hurt, a nation trying to name the thing it just saw...