Got back from a great day at the beach yesterday to find an interesting box in the mail. Here you see Malcolm, fascinated by the contents. The contents: iPhone, 4G (x2) = love. The kids are amazed and jealous that Mom and Dad finally have the latest technology. Everything’s up to date, until the next version [...]
The 4th of July is the grandest holiday in the summer season at our town’s swimming pool. First, there’s a small parade of old cars, old politicians, young Scouts, a rag-tag band of musicians, and a huge flotilla of kids on anything with wheels. The kids and bikes, scooters, and strollers are all gussied up in red, [...]
I’ve been reading that M. Night Shyamalan is persona non grata for the casting choices in his latest directorial adventure, The Last Airbender. Asians are being called upon to boycott the film. I know nothing about this movie or the anime show upon which it is based, but I gather that the main characters are supposed to [...]
I’m musing on school lunches today, because of two articles that popped up this morning. This essay was in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, on the end of 21 years of packing school lunches. And on a more somber note, this was sent by my friend Linda. The end of school means the end of a guaranteed meal for [...]
It’s graduation time. I hope nobody ever invites me to be a graduation speaker. How impossible is it to come up with original words of wisdom these days? Especially in the wake of that fake graduation speech that swept the internet a few years ago. Falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, it had such memorable lines as [...]
Recently, the English author Martin Amis has been publicly raked over the coals for being a bad godparent. Apparently a young woman recently glanced at one of his books and said to her mother, “Have you heard of Martin Amis?” and the mother tartly replied, “Yes, he’s YOUR GODFATHER.” Amis, who was publicly lambasted some years [...]
Every day, we are bombarded by tales of scurrilous dishonesty. From BP to Blogovitch, from swinging sports-stars to pedophilic priests, it’s easy to conclude that, as I wrote in a recent post, everybody fibs. But the steady pile up of lies and the lying liars who tell them has started to get to me, like poison slowly [...]
When it comes to body image, my theory is this: you are whatever you were as a child. Were you thin or fat during your formative years? That’s your body image for life, right there, regardless of what the scale and the mirror say. If you were a pudgy child but are now a thin adult, [...]
In recent years, the bird population has exploded around our house. Each morning, we awaken to a dawn chorus, featuring a soloist who chirps the following hackneyed song: “Birdie, birdie, tweet tweet tweet tweet.” Every since Chris pointed out those lyrics, it’s all I can hear. Then there’s the Belushi Bird. It sings “cheeburger, cheeburger,” like [...]
You know you’re in Philadelphia if you hear the words “down the shore.” We were lucky enough to be invited to the Jersey shore over Memorial Day weekend, a tradition of several years standing, thanks to our generous friends Linda and Kevin. Perhaps because I failed to even pack a swimming suit, the water this [...]
