I'm looking at a photo of myself topless.

I'm five years old, playing the role of an Indian in my kindergarten Thanksgiving Day play, red war paint on my chest and cheeks, and a paper feather painfully stuck in my head. I remember being much more concerned about exposing my...

Ever since my parents threw my brother and me into the back seat of the station wagon for films like Benji and The Bad News Bears, I've loved going to the movies. My particular fascination: horror films.

I saw Burnt Offerings at...

The night before the first day of school was always the longest night of my life.

I'd lie wide awake for hours, wondering about my locker location, who my lunch table neighbors would be, what my teachers would be like, and whether my Trapper Keeper...

It seems like a new celebrity father gets divorced every week. Recent divorced dads include Jon Gosselin, Robin Williams, Usher, Mel Gibson, Bradley Whitford, Edward Furlong, and Thomas Jane -- and those are just the famous ones. Roughly half of all American marriages...

Now that Hollywood's drawn kid movie inspiration from books, cartoons, and, now, TOYS ("Transformers", "G.I. Joe", and ummmmm, "My Little Pony"), one must ask: What's left to be scraped at the bottom of the kids media barrel?

Consider the following ideas that may or may not be sitting on...

Today's New York Times reports on the crazy, aberrant, corrupting, ban-worthy teen behavior known as... hugging.

Contemporary adolescents are apparently more prone to gender-neutral, race-neutral, and attraction-neutral hugging that any generation of Americans in history. Amongst teens, hugging is now as common as showing your underwear in public...

When my kids stay with me as part of their weekly custody arrangement, we usually spend Saturday mornings eating my wife's homemade pancakes and watching a movie I taped from either the High School Musical channel or the Sponge Bob channel. My nine-year-old son handles...

The trend in giving your company a nonsense name reached a new high when Sci Fi channel announced it was changing its name to "Syfy."

Sci Fi Channel president Dave Howe explains the change to TV Week:

"It made us feel much cooler,...

Around this time last year, a proposed parenting memoir by Britney Spears' mother was "delayed indefinitely" after her 16 year-old daughter Jamie Lynn announced she was pregnant. Of course, Britney Spears' mom putting out a book about successful parenting is kinda like...like...like...well, it's like Britney Spears' mom putting out...

I attended the Academy Awards in 1991 and 1992. You may remember them as the years Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs took home multiple awards, but it's more likely you don't remember them at all.

I didn't go as a nominee -- that kind of...

What holiday is less connected to its actual historical roots than Valentine's Day? Jesus gets a reasonably strong shout-out on his birthday. President's Day may be the perfect occasion for an underwear sale, but at least Washington's face graces the newspaper ads. Even Punxsutawney Phil got a movie deal. But...

I've seen about 25 Super Bowls, about a third of them at Super Bowl parties. (I'm defining "party" here as simply not being alone). The oddest was a Super Bowl party/law school study group session in 1991, when the Giants beat the Bills by a single point. We brought cases...

The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has declared January 26-30 "No Name-Calling Week." They're trying to call attention to the destructive effects of name-calling and its ugly stepsisters: harassment and bullying. Considering how gay Americans are still subject to open harassment and...

First, full disclosure: Bernard Madoff is in my extended family, and many in my family were victimized by his fraud. While I've shared close airspace with Bernie less than 10 times in my life, I've grown up knowing other headline-making Madoffs, and have always found them to be people of...

I haven't been so good to my own body lately. I'd like to blame the French toast, the mocha lattes, the pizza, and what I call the vast buffalo wing conspiracy. But the blame really lies within myself. I've developed an eat-it-if-it's-there approach to food that has my bathroom scale...

Somewhere in Africa, there's a goat with an unsuspecting Kenyan family's name on it. I adopted the animal for them after coming across the idea in a holiday catalog from the non-profit group Heifer International. But the gift wasn't only for the Kenyan family; it was also for my...

After the election, I knew I should be happy. Not only did my side win, but a year's worth of CNN-fueled dread and anxiety had come to a final end, and I had more free time to enjoy pastimes like eating, sleeping, and watching...

A while back, my kids and I attended my town's annual Halloween Parade and Costume Contest. I was the Cat in the Hat, my son was Sam I Am, and my girls were Things 1 and 2. The judges were roaming anonymously among us, so I approached anyone holding a...

Tomorrow, October 16, is "National Boss Day," according to my company-reimbursed desk calendar. Wikipedia describes it as "a day for employees to thank their superiors for being kind and fair throughout the year."

When you finish laughing, read on...

I'm not celebrating National Boss Day with the...

Perhaps the most frustrating staple of post-debate network news coverage is that all-too-familiar battleground state focus group, the 20 or so "undecided" or "persuadable" voters sitting -- perhaps locked -- in a sterile room, their fingers fatigued from operating reaction dials for 90 minutes straight.

At some point in...