Overall, I’d like to think I am overly responsive to my kids and their need for time with Dad. But sometimes, things in life get crazy and the “Dad, can you shoot some baskets with me?” has to be answered with an exhausted no. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. This week I started a new [...]

Ok, this won’t be a news flash to many but let me just say it, Stephen Baldwin is a putz. I say this not because he’s the untalented brother in a largely untalented family, or that he’s gotten paid a ridiculous amount of money to make some ridiculously bad movies (“The Flinstones in Viva Las Vegas” [...]

My Mom never let me get away with fake sick days as a kid. I always thought it was because she was a nurse and saw right through the times I was faking it. Then I thought, well, she just wanted me to get a good education. Now I see it’s all pretty simple – [...]

I’m wearing a beard these days, and I’m not alone. Maybe its a figment of my imagination, or simply recognition that I am now part of a large, hirsute fraternity, but i’m suddenly  noticing beards popping up on guys all over. A-list celebrities like George Clooney, Adrian Brody, Bradd Pitt and Tobey McGuire sporting them. [...]

Here’s a given, kids love stories. Here’s one that’s not, they like your stories more than they like Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle and all the other prophets of kiddie-book profit. I don’t know how it started but my kids, 6 and 4, just love hearing an old yarn from Mom or Dad. I know what [...]

One of the pleasures in life for any hard working dad is beer (just as long as you’re not a raging alcoholic, but that’s a post for another day.” Us dads like all types of beer. We started out drinking the cheap stuff (i.e. anything we could get our hands on as teenagers and college [...]

Once upon a time, there were monsters. When I was growing up, monsters were a metaphor for everything I was ever afraid of – creatures that crawled on nameless appendages through the abandoned toys and clothes under my bed and in my closet. No matter what movie they appeared in, they were the villain, standing [...]

I love my wife, I really do. But she’s a cat chick. Not the kind of cat chick that was destined to turn into a cat lady, just a chick that liked her Joni Mitchell, a cup of hot tea and a cat on her lap while she read some John Updike. I was able [...]

There is brooding: “Looks like I’m going nowhere.” There is hubris: “This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.” There is fear: “… and that would lead them back … home.” There is loss: “There is nothing you could have done, Luke.” And, of course, there is a new hope: “I will come [...]

It’s not fair for me to question the actions of one Richard Roden. But I’m sure going to do it anyway. Richard is 71. He has 10 children, untold numbers of grandchildren. And now he appears to be England’s oldest father … of twins. That’s little Ruby in his arm at right. And her look [...]