You've been looking forward to your European jaunt for months; you're all packed; you board the plane; you register at the hotel; you do some sightseeing; you eat dinner at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city; the next morning you have a scratchy throat; by nightfall you have a fever.

Once upon a time, perhaps in high school or college or both, you had a very special sweetheart. Maybe two. Possibly eight. Whatever. At the time, you were madly in love with each of them. You did everything together, mostly sex. For some long-forgotten reason, you broke up. Now, 30...

Dude, I don't have a clue what this sequester deal is but Chelsea told me when it hits our town, it's gonna be really sweet. School will be a blast. Chelsea says we won't have to worry about getting called on in class because there'll be like two hundred kids...

My daughters are grown up now -- both of them in their mid-twenties, both well-adjusted and successful -- but I remember receiving a lot of unsolicited (and mostly misguided) advice and criticism from childless people regarding the way my wife and I were raising them. Many of these so-called authorities...

Seriously? You've based a health diet on my eating habits? That's hilarious! Folks, a habit is something you do a lot. If I ate anything at all, it was a miracle.

Here's a typical carte du jour of my culinary intake:

Breakfast: Nothing.

Lunch: Nothing.

Dinner: A stick.

According...

With one exception, all of my friends use computers. They also own smartphones. Most have an iPad, an iPod, a GPS, a Kindle or a Nook. They frequently shop on the Internet and use MapQuest. They have a Facebook page and get their news from the Web. Some play Words...

Fellow Republicans: As you know, our party is in a wilderness right now so it is incumbent upon us to blast our way out of this jungle of doom with a veritable buckshot spray of repackaged ideas.

Some people say we're out of touch. Stuff and nonsense!

First off,...

It is 1963 and you are 10 years old. One night, your family decides to go out to dinner. When you arrive at the restaurant, your father opens the car door for your mother. At the entrance, he opens that door too, then politely ushers her inside. In the foyer,...

Congrats on your new book deal, Sarah, and kudos to the editors at Harper Collins for having the wisdom to give you a shot at fiction. I am so looking forward to reading your soon-to-be-ghostwritten fantasy novel about the War on Christmas. It's already on my Amazon wish list along...

My son Morris is a nice Jewish boy -- he calls me once a week; he was an honor student in high school and college; he goes to shul on the High Holidays and he comes home every week for Shabbat. He's so thoughtful he brings me a special cupcake...

These are hard times for entrepreneurs like me. For some inexplicable reason, I failed to get backing for my hybrid automobile that runs solely on the power of windmills attached to the car roof. Go figure. I guess there just isn't enough venture capital to go around these days, not...

Back in the day, my memory was as sharp as the bell-bottom jeans and velvet suits I used to wear without embarrassment. Movie trivia was my strong suit. In those days, if you asked me the name of the actor who played Sascha, the bartender in Casablanca, the answer would...

OK, you just bought a jar of kosher pickles and you're dying to put one on the burger you just barbecued. You should be able to just unscrew the lid easily, remove the juicy pickle from its briny bathwater and slap it on the meat. This used to be easy....

A year ago, my family staged an intervention. They said I'd become addicted to Facebook and it was destroying my life and the lives of my family and friends. Of course I denied it. Me? Addicted to Facebook? No way. While they made their case, I was Facebook-chatting on my...

Now that Christmas is over (thank you, Jesus) and New Year's Eve is but a flash of disconnected hallucinations, it's time to let your facial muscles recover from the agonizing strain of faking holiday cheer and take an appraising look at some of the useless junk you received from well-meaning...

Oy! It's almost Christmas again. What a megillah!

So here's the story: My wife is a shiksa of the Catholic faith and I'm a lazy Jew so we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. What a tsoris! Granted, Hanukkah doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles -- just a...

1. Isn't it a little odd that Santa and Mrs. Claus have never had children? Has Mrs. Claus had an abortion? Are the Clauses pro-choice?

2. Are the elves unionized? Do they have collective bargaining rights? Huge pensions? Too much vacation time? Health care plans? If so, why hasn't Santa...

Some people claim that God created teenagers so parents wouldn't die of utter despair when their formerly adorable children left the nest and toddled off to college. This theory -- which was probably more prevalent a generation ago -- holds that teenagers are so obnoxious, rude, insufferable, so infuriatingly contrary,...

Since getting royally trounced in the election, Republicans, imitating the logic and behavior usually limited to kindergarten recess, have been trying desperately to figure out how they could possibly have lost. How could a man who blatantly changed his positions on almost everything be defeated? How could his 16th century...

I first met Nate when he was in junior high school. My daughter was running for president of the student council and had promised Nate a date to the Spring Dance and a CD mix of Polish reggae music if he signed on as her pollster. At the beginning of...