Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category

A Not So Gilded Birdcage

Monday, June 4th, 2018

Nathan Lane and the late Robin Williams are two of the funniest people ever to have graced this planet.  Put them together in a movie and you’re pretty much guaranteed outrageous hilarity.  That’s what happened in The Birdcage, a remake of the french farce La Cage aux Folles.  In it, Lane and Williams are a gay couple who own a drag club in Miami, Florida where Lane is the star performer.  They are also the parents of college student Val who has fallen in love with fellow student Barbara.  The problem?  Barbara’s father is an ultra-conservative, republican Senator, played by Gene Hackman.  Of course, Barbara’s parents want to meet their potential in-laws before consenting to and announcing the engagement.

To avoid friction, Val asks his fathers to play it straight when the Senator and his family come to visit and the laughs are pretty much non-stop for the rest of the film. 

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Crazy in Labor

Saturday, August 15th, 2015
Source: Facebook/WOTE

Source: Facebook/WOTE

Having a baby is a crazy time in anyone’s life.  Whether it’s your first child and you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into or your third and it’s all been-there-done-that, it’s surely going to be a crazy, hectic time.  And yet, many of us manage to fit in some wild stuff in between labor pains.  There are the usual things like not getting any medication to help with the pain (you put me in that much pain and I’d be breaking into the prison pharmacy if I had to) or eating a hearty meal only to throw it up shortly thereafter.

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Yes, Moms Really Are Hotter

Monday, August 10th, 2015
Source: YouTube

Source: YouTube

By far, the most attractive quality in a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is confidence.  Add competence to that and there’s no way simple physical beauty can compete.

With that in mind, I’ve always felt that moms — women who have their act together and are raising their kids with love and care — are more far attractive than those “barely legal teens” you hear so much about on the internet.  And, based on a new video from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the Gregory Brothers, it sounds like I’m not alone in that assessment.

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Talking to Anti-Vaxxers

Friday, February 6th, 2015

With the sudden resurgence of a disease thought eradicated in the US, vaccines have come, once again, to the forefront of the news in general and the parenting world in particular.  Specifically, the measles vaccine is one of the (if not *the*) most successful vaccines in the history of, well, vaccines.  And yet, there have been 102 cases in 14 states in January of 2015 alone.  For reference, in the eleven years from 2002 to 2012, nine years saw fewer than 100 cases.

Recently, parenting website The Stir published an article outlining the “22 Things Never to Say to Moms Who Don’t Vaccinate.”  Needless to say, I take exception with a number of them.

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The Color of Milk

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

You come to an intersection — a red light means stop and a green light means go.  Yellow, well, there are different schools of thought, but the other two are always the same.  Around here, we have three “trash” bins — one for actual garbage, one for recyclables, and one for compostables.  They’re always black, blue, and green, respectively.  There’s never any doubt — food scraps go in the green bin, bottles and cans in the blue one.  Doesn’t matter whose house you’re at, you know where to scrape your plate.  Unfortunately, not every industry is so considerate.

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In Praise of the Plastic Wastebasket

Monday, February 13th, 2012

In my bedroom, we have a nice wooden wastebasket that, more-or-less, matches my parents’ antique dressers.  It was a good find at Costco some years ago.  For the kids, however, I’m not interested in anything other than an inexpensive plastic wastebasket.  Sure, it’s tacky and cheap looking and maybe even bad for the environment, but there’s a very good reason I wouldn’t have anything else.

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Sending Kids Off To School In Style

Sunday, June 5th, 2011

It may seem odd to be talking about putting kids on the bus to school when the school year is winding down or even, for many school districts, over and done with, but for one high school sophomore in American Fork, Utah, the morning send-off may be the best part about being through with school.  It seems his dad loves him so much, he was willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to show that love — including by putting on a wedding dress.

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Of Bicycles and Inspiration

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

There have been many great speeches in our history. From Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream, the power of words to move and to motivate us should never be underestimated. That inspiration, too, can come from the most unexpected places. While we expect wisdom from political leaders and activists and occasionally find someone on television with something important to say and the ability to express it, sometimes powerful insight and motivation comes from the most unexpected places — like a little boy who just learned to ride his bike.

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Happy Birthday To You… Tube!

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

Six years ago, if you wanted to show the video of your kid’s first day of preschool to your friends and family, chances are, you plugged your camcorder into the television set, fiddled with channels and inputs, and eventually got it working.  If you had family far away or were just technologically inclined, you might have loaded the video onto your computer and burned a DVD to pop in the mail.  Not so anymore.  Today, everyone just uploads their videos to YouTube.  This month, the service we all rely on turns six years old.

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Talking to Kids about the Rapture

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

If you’re reading this, no doubt you’ve realized that the rapture, predicted by Harold Camping of the Family Radio Network to occur on May 21, 2011, came and went and you were left behind. Chances are, this also means your kids were not taken home to Jesus either and, almost certainly, they’ll notice Monday morning that some of their friends aren’t in class and won’t be ever again. This will likely result in some confusion for your children and, as is so often the case in times of tragedy, they will need your support, guidance, and wisdom to cope with their new situation.

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