Paul LaRosa

A couple of years ago, I was having lunch with a friend and telling him about the memoir I was writing.

"What makes you think anyone would want to read about your life?" he asked.

It was a reasonable question because I'm not famous, drug-addicted, bulimic or any of the...

Last summer, I was driving around Georgia with a female colleague who was approximately 40 years old and, for whatever reason, the conversation made its way to the subject of music and I casually mentioned Tommy, the rock opera by The Who.

"What's that? Never heard of it," my colleague...

The runaway bestseller 50 Shades of Grey written by an Australian woman named E.L. James, clearly has captured the hearts and hormones of women across America -- the question is why? Is it possible that so many women dream of becoming the submissive partner of a...

Last week, I went to the memorial service for a friend I grew up with. We walked to school together. We played touch football and all sorts of sports together. We sat next to each other at the first-run showing of A Hard Day's Night. But somewhere our paths diverged....

The New York Times magazine recently ran a story headlined: "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body." It was one of those articles that takes the contrarian viewpoint, seemingly just to be provocative. And in that way, it succeeds. It's also one of those articles that allows the yoga...

The "Barefoot Bandit" is on my mind.

The so-called bandit actually is a 20-year-old high school dropout named Colton Harris-Moore who yesterday was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to more than 30 counts of theft.

I've been thinking about him in relation to a woman named...

It's hard to sympathize with Alec Baldwin, a short-fused celebrity living a rarified life ignoring the pleadings of a lowly flight attendant and yet... I kind of know where he's coming from.

I too have a problem with many of the rules and regulations of air travel that can make...

Of all The Beatles, I've always been partial to Paul for obvious reasons but the more I read about him lately, the more I'm convinced that maybe I've been underestimating him all these years.

I know that sounds ridiculous for the man who likely is the world's greatest living songwriter...

I went to a documentary Monday night titled Mister Rogers and Me made by an MTV producer (of all people) who says he received a profound message from Mister Rogers when the great man was actually the producer's neighbor in Nantucket.

"I feel so strongly," Mister Rogers told...

Considering how long email has been around and how ubiquitous it is, it's a source of amazement to me that some people still do not know how to use it correctly.

Last week, in the middle of a very busy time at work, I was getting bombarded with so many...

Have you ever wondered if those reviews you read on Amazon, TripAdvisor and Yelp are for real? Well, I have and, according to a story in the New York Times, many of them are bought and paid for.

The Times story says it found an ad on Craigslist...

It happened again last week on my daily subway commute from Brooklyn to 'the city.'

A man in his 50s boarded the train and was sweating profusely through his blue dress shirt. He looked spent, exhausted. A seat nearby opened up and he went for it but pulled up short...

Given the extraordinary coverage generated by the Casey Anthony case, it might seem as though nothing could compare. But long before the internet, there was Alice Crimmins.

She was the Casey Anthony of her time, a mother excoriated for her randy behavior, her name and story splashed across the front...

It's been a crazy week in the American justice system.

First, the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (aka DSK) fell apart because the credibility of his accuser, a hotel maid, got trashed. Coming on the heels of that news, 12 jurors agreed unanimously, and in record time, that Casey Anthony could...

It's not that I like Gov. Andrew Cuomo because he is Italian American. I like that he is Italian American, and he's making us proud.

In helping to pass the right of gays to marry in New York State, Cuomo did the right thing. He put aside his Catholicism and...

It's the economy, stupid.

Yeah, right. That's the famous phrase created by the Clinton team that supposedly got him elected president. Gotta remember the economy. I've been thinking about the economy a lot lately and the problem I have is that the way we look at our economy seems stupid,...

This past week, 26-year-old Raymond Clark admitted that he killed Yale University student Annie Le, 24, whose body was found stuffed behind a wall on the day she was to be married, her jaw and collar bones broken.

"I take full responsibility for my actions," he told the...

The former site of the World Trade Center towers cost $508 million to build and it will have the new Freedom Tower, reflecting pools and waterfalls. Millions of people are expected to visit it when it opens on the 10th anniversary of the bombings this coming September, but one thing...

I thought of that famous quote by William Faulkner the other day as I cleaning my basement and found a t-shirt I wore in high school gym class at Cardinal Hayes -- as a freshman! The year was 1971 and, if memory serves, it wasn't washed all that often. (Luckily,...

After visiting my son for the last time at Tulane University in New Orleans (he graduated!), I decided on this final trip to take a tour of the Ninth Ward and see the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina six years ago. Without seeking it out specifically, the...