Last week, I found myself concurrently reading two books by two different men named Hedges. I found the coincidence extraordinary. 1. Peter Hedges, The Heights If you are one of my regular readers, you may recall that before my illustrious career as a writer, I dabbled in the theatre. My undergraduate degree is, in fact, in… Read more »
The gauntlet has been thrown. Or dropped. Or flung. Or slapped or traded or leveled or whatever it is that gauntlets are used to do. A gauntlet has been, well, whatevered, and a challenge has presented itself, and it, the challenge, has not been leveled against this Stay-At-Home Dad proper, but instead, against his daughter…. Read more »
A few months ago I was walking down Broadway on my way home from a successful Saturday shopping expedition. About a block from my apartment I spotted a girl wearing one of the very pieces Iʼd just purchased, and momentarily stalled in my tracks. Surely it came as no surprise that the mass-market retailer had… Read more »
Having a first child is like throwing a hand grenade into a marriage. —Nora Ephron, Heartburn I’ve been reading a lot about Nora Ephron recently. Her death shocked and saddened the entire island of Manhattan, the country, and perhaps the world. I have yet to read Heartburn, her 1983 roman à clef about husband, Carl Bernstein… Read more »
In October of 1960, Mom was pulling for Kennedy and Dad was rooting for Nixon. I couldn’t have cared less one way or the other—my thoughts were on baseball. The Pittsburgh Pirates had just crushed my heart by beating the Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series (to this day, I still wonder… Read more »
The extent of my exposure to Stephen King includes: 1) Catching an accidental glimpse of the cover of Pet Cemetery when I was five and getting so freaked out by the screeching, skeletal cat that for years I took pains to stay several feet away from the book, which always seemed to pop up (mysteriously!) in different places around… Read more »
This week is a tough week for NYC. No one will ever forget where they were on September 11, 2001. I was in Spanish class at North Broward Prep, and we had a substitute teacher who kept insisting we finish our quiz. I told her to suck it and ran out of the room to… Read more »
Recently, I dragged my daughter along with me on what I can only describe as (gulp) an illicit rendezvous. By the time this column comes out, this Stay-At-Home Dad may very well no longer be a Stay-At-Home Dad, but instead just some guy, just some anonymous dude, just one more A-hole out on the street… Read more »
When I was a child, my best friend Beth and I loved to play a game called Teenagers. The object of the game was to act like teenagers and involved props (lip-gloss, pocketbooks). Beth always wanted her alter-ego to be nineteen, but I felt there was something brassy and garish about that number. For me,… Read more »
After some very creative mental gymnastics, my wife and I have decided to rename our apartment. Now, don’t get the idea that we are some kind of silly people who had previously christened our little (but lovely) one-bedroom tenement as Howard or Hector or Hanley or Fred, and are now changing it to Marguerite or… Read more »
