Today’s kids are disappointing in so many ways. Lazy, street-dumb, entitled and fat. And while eating too much candy may explain the latter, from what I saw on Halloween on Saturday it doesn’t come from any lack of not trying. For my twin brother and I growing up in Brockton in the late 70′s, Halloween was a [...]

Back when I was growing up in the 1970′s, pumpkin carving was a fairly straight forward: you cut a hole at the top, scoop the guts out, carve two triangle eyes, a triangle nose and a toothy grin and you’re done. Now the Internet brings to my doorstep all manner of variations on the toothy triangle face: a Che Guevara-faced pumpkin and a naughty pumpkin, giant squids. There are all manner of puking pumpkins — an idea so obvious and funny that I’m ashamed that it never occurred to me. No surprise, then, that these pumpkin carving Mozarts leave earth bound mortals like myself end up feeling like Salieri by comparison.

During the larval stage, moms tend to take charge on Halloween costumes. And at that point, it really doesn’t matter. Your baby really doesn’t care if you’ve stuffed him into an Eeyore costume or turned him into a drooling jack o’ lantern. Mom gets the pics to plaster all over Flickr and you potentially have [...]

This week the kids, wife and I attended the haunted hallway at my oldest’s grammar school. It was very creative and scared the crap out of the kids and event startled the wife a couple of times. The best action, however, was outside in the 45 minute line that we waited in. Overheard: Mom: “Dylan, [...]