The sun was out and the temperature was already in the mid-60s by the time I arrived for my early shift at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts's Boston branch two weeks ago and put on my purple clinic escort penny. I'd volunteered as an escort for only three months,...

After watching California's Carrie Prejean get all choked up after Donald Trump said that she and the bags of silicone she shares skin with will get to keep her state's Miss USA honors, it's difficult not to envy the British.

It's not that seeing a second-tier beauty queen's...

During the last few weeks, I've sat in front of my television consuming mounds of cheese curls and take-out wondering how I can get me some of that Huffington Post Investigative Fund money. Surely there had to be something out there worth looking into, but the news networks sounded...

The giant meme-generator that calls itself Facebook spat out an application last week that was a guided tour of the newspaper industry's living museum.

The Worthless Gifts for Print News Veterans app allows writers and editors in various states of employment to send each other gifts that once...

On March 20, 1990, a speeding tractor-trailer collided with Gloria Estefan's bus, leaving her spine shattered and her soft-rock career in jeopardy.

But a year later, when she appeared during the American Music Awards and sing "Coming Out of the Dark," she got a standing ovation. Crowds flocked to...

There are a lot of individuals to thank for Slumdog Millionaire's eight Academy Awards and its best picture win, but the biggest is a stories-high radioactive reptile with an extreme distaste for Tokyo.

Yes, Godzilla. Without him, most foreign films wouldn't make it past customs. Few could have imagined...

In the week that followed the still-murky incident that led to Chris Brown being arrested, Rihanna being bruised and beaten and nearly everyone with a microphone in front of his or her face willing to offer an opinion, insight became a rare commodity.

Brown didn't dispense much wisdom when he...

Netflix is the most disgusting crème brulee the entertainment industry has ever served up.

It is a sweet, appealing crust of blockbusters, independent films and Oscar nominees covering a deep cistern of some of the most obscure and sometimes unwatchable crap imaginable. Chuck Alessi loves it just for that...

From the desk of:
Harold P. Stuffedsuit
Publicist
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Dear adoring public,

We at the Academy would like to congratulate Slumdog Millionaire on its history-making 10 nominations. In acknowledging the grand collective effort that made this film a reality, and...

Eight hours after the nation inaugurated its 44th president, a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus driver made her way through one Boston's lightly traveled and lightly served routes with her young daughter by her side.

The girl, roughly five or six years old, passed the time by greeting riders and...

If anyone is worried about Barack Obama's presidency bearing any resemblance whatsoever to George W. Bush's, the last few weeks should put your mind at ease.

Obama is still more than a week away from being inaugurated and he's already faced more questions from his his party and his supporters...

Marley & Me has committed sins that are unforgivable even by dog film standards. It adapted the sappiest memoir not written by Mitch Albom, exploited the holiday movie crowd for $37 million in box office returns and extended Owen Wilson's stay in family comedy purgatory.

Though it patronized the...

It's roughly two weeks until Christmas and Americans have been subjected to nearly two months' worth of Christmas songs. This recession-style holiday season has been a Clockwork Orange-style assault on the senses, with hapless shoppers, commuters and television viewers bombarded by all things Bing and Blitzen.

Concealed in...

The first full week in December hasn't passed, yet it feels as if it's been Christmas forever.

This doesn't mean that this blog entry will burst into song and tiny anthropomorphic woodland creatures and mythical men made of snow will opine that every day should be Christmas. If this were...

Sometime in the near future, a young man will ride the L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan wearing a bandanna around his neck, $100 jeans with a studded belt and a crisp, new Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt.

We hate to break this to you, Axl Rose, but this person has...

On Nov. 4, 2008, a proclamation that had echoed through the American lexicon for nearly a decade was crushed beneath the weight of history:

"If he wins, I'm moving to Canada."

Uttered in liberal enclaves from Cambridge to the Castro District since the Florida recounts in 2000,...

Please don't be angry with Sarah Palin for excluding all those big, funny places with skyscrapers from "Real America" and its "Pro-America" borders. Nor should you blame John McCain's adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer for excluding Northern Virginia from the "Real Virginia," or Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann for looking...

If there's anything more repugnant than blatant pandering, it's xenophobia.

How else can you explain Barack Obama and John McCain's handling of the plumber issue during Wednesday night's debate? Clearly, both presidential candidates knew that this plumber would be someone with universal appeal to average Americans and would provide a...

When I was little more than three years old, my father pulled me into the living room, scooped my infant sister from her crib and yelled like a madman as the U.S. men's hockey team went onto its Winter Olympics win over the Soviet Union in 1980. In that moment,...

It's homecoming season at America's institutions of higher learning, which means one thing for parents and students alike: Inoffensive casual dining.

Homecoming and Parents Weekend is often the first time parents and their collegiate children have seen each other since loading the car with big-box discount dormware and parting ways....