Archive for June 2013
A hard roll is actually soft. You probably knew that already, but I didn’t.
For the first 35 years of my life, I never ordered an egg sandwich on a hard roll because who the hell would want an egg sandwich on a hard roll? Except it turns out that a hard roll isn’t hard. It’s soft. Elysha pointed this out to me when we started dating. We were…
Read MoreFold a shirt in under 2 seconds
I’ve tried it about half a dozen times so far and have failed every time. I’m not giving up.
Read MoreBeauty pageants must end now.
I would like to propose that every man, woman and child in the United States sign a pledge refusing to participate in or watch any beauty pageant like the Miss USA Pageant ever again. Pageants are bizarre and awful. Teams of judges stare at young women in ball gowns and swimsuits and score them on…
Read MoreLiterary perfection
As a father, a teacher and an author, I cannot imagine a better image than this one. If she wasn’t four years-old, I’d accuse my daughter of setting this up in an effort to acquire something else later on.
Read MoreI’m proud to say I’ve never done this. Or this. Or this.
Last week I proclaimed pride in not knowing who Amanda Bynes is. Since making that claim, I have learned that she is or was a child actor. What she is today is still a mystery to me because I don’t care and don’t want to know. Based upon the comments that I see about her…
Read MoreThe Moth: Call Me Dad
The following is a story that I told at a Moth StorySLAM at The Bell House in Brooklyn in March of this year. The theme of the night was Money. I told a story about my stepfather’s attempt to get me to call him “Dad.” It was the first time in my storytelling career that…
Read MoreA mother’s nightgown teaches a woman a universal truth of life.
Katy Waldman of Slate wrote a piece about mistaking her mother’s nightgown for a sundress and accidentally wearing it to work. Want to guess what happened when this twenty something editor of Slate arrived at the office wearing her 60-year-old mother’s nightgown? If you said absolutely nothing, you’d be correct. Most miraculously of all, no…
Read MoreWedding etiquette torn down by one of the most popular advice columnists in the world. I’m impressed.
Emily Yoffe, the Ask Prudence advice communist for Slate, recently did a podcast in which people were able to ask questions about wedding etiquette via the telephone as part of Slate’s wedding issue. Yoffe tends to lean toward tradition and formality, which differs from my natural inclinations, but I found myself both in agreement and…
Read MoreThe Three Little Pigs and Jose?
My advice: Listen to The Diary of Anne Frank on a 1995 Sony Walkman
The first time I read The Diary of Anne Frank, I listened to the audiobook on a Sony Walkman. It was 1995, and the recording was on cassette tape. This was by far the best way to read Anne Frank’s diary for the first time. I was raking leaves on my front lawn. It was…
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