I have a blog. Perhaps you have a blog. It seems these days that everyone has a blog. So that my daughter has a blog should have come as no surprise. After all, she’s 13 and lives on the internet (albeit in a variety of post-modern chat personae). Still, though, it isn’t what one expects…
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Being a writer, I understand the need for universiality, that feeling that the movie’s main message somehow applies to the lives of every family member. “Life As a House?” No problem. For the divorced couple it is about reconcilation. For a terminal or chronic patient, hope and living in the face of death. Teenagers? The…
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So. There I was, sitting with my daughter in the restaurant, chatting. I mentioned something about something incidental and, like sometimes happens, the girl behind the bar chimed in. And that was okay. I’d talked to her many times before. After all, I’ve only been going to her restaurant since it opened. I’ve always enjoyed…
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Laissez les bon temps rouler! It’s kind of hard to explain Mardi Gras in New Orleans to someone who has never been here during the five final days of Carnival season, commonly referred to (albeit incorrectly) as “Mardi Gras.” Mardi Gras is, in fact, right this very minute only 34 minutes old. It is the…
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I’m a big believer in decadence. So after spending an entire day largely either naked or in my PJ’s watching my West WIng dvd set, I decided to fix a double cup of hot chocolate while watching Celebrity Poker while my oven self-cleans. We’ll divert here for a moment because I think it’s a great…
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I have a friend that, in the past month, has made my week twice–simply by sharing with me a bit of humor she found in the oddest places. I’m not talking about irony. I refer instead to genuine humor. Things people created to be funny that are actually, surprisingly, funny. The first came two days…
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Christmas has always been a very odd time for me and–by extension–my family. Since we hold no particular religious attachment to the holiday, I’ve always marveled at the way Christians choose to celebrate the birth of their savior. (I can’t fathom, for instance, Objectivists erecting trees and buying gifts, even for themselves, on Ayn Rand’s…
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Since Colleen was off work tonight, we decided to give the kids their presents tonight. Tomorrow evening, after she gets off work, they’ll do presents again with the extended family on her side, and then the next day with their dad and his family. I always marvelled at Christmas when I was a kid. A…
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If you had told me what I was facing in helming a magazine, I would have laughed, not believed you. After all, my impression of magazine editing is–sorry–was based solely on the portrayals of Ben Fong-Torres in “Almost Famous” and the guy from TNR played by Hank Azaria in “Shattered Glass”. But let me tell…
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This has been an interesting couple of weeks. Bush won an astounding reelection and I got promoted. Almost as if the Fates were saying “Hey, we know how you feel. So here’s a consolation prize.” This happens in life, it seems. We get down about things not going our way and then they do. Thus…
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