Words to Live By
I wanted to share a couple recent cultural happenings that you may not be aware of. Frank Buckles had a birthday. And singer Ke$ha knocked Susan Boyle off the No.1 spot on the album sales charts. Now, you may not have heard of either of these two people. Or, if you have, you may be […]
A Sweet, Salty Facebook Tale
I’ve never really been a social network supporter. It’s all seemed kind of silly to me, really. Just thinking about the idea of MySpace and Facebook took up more time than I wanted to spend. My philosophy has always been pretty straight-forward: Why waste my life reading notes from someone on the other side of […]
The New Face of New Faces
Mankind has always gone gaga over beauty. From the voluptuous paintings in Egyptian tombs to the airbrushed magazine covers of Hollywood icons, the beautiful have historically grabbed our attention and invited us to adore them. But today’s advanced plastic surgery is playing a pied piper’s tune of perfection that’s starting to become a little—well, ugly. […]
A Decade at the Movies … Not So Bad?
I really love watching movies. Call me a masochist, but even after countless hours of screening flicks for review, I’ll sometimes put my notebook and pen aside and happily plant my over-padded backside in an under-padded theater seat. I’ll be honest, though, when we crossed the finish line for the decade, my initial reaction was […]
The Decade of the Shrinking Celebrity
Remember who was in the celebrity news way back in 1999? The Spice Girls were still strutting their British girl-power stuff. Angelina Jolie was the twentysomething “it” girl. Tom Cruise was getting “sexiest star” and “beautiful people” of the year awards, still a long way from his Scientology/Oprah show meltdown. Madonna had made it through […]
It’s All About the Mooooola
Now, I’m not all about money. I probably would’ve been quite content to live in the agrarian days of yore when you’d go out and barter a cow for bags of seed corn. But as I was buying Christmas gifts and trying to ignore my bank account’s plaintive cries for mercy, I came upon a […]
Dicey Digital Diversions
The Federal Trade Commission recently issued a report titled Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks, that examined 27 virtual online worlds. The sites the FTC talked about included digital playgrounds such as Build a Bearville, IMVU, Neopets, Runescape and Second Life. And, if you know anything about online video gaming, you will have immediately […]
Boston Teen Party
Kids are stepping it up in Boston. A panel of 14 teens recently started pointing to some contemporary music and telling their peers, “watch out for this junk.” And their list of noxious tunes included well-known hits from artists such as Lady Gaga and rapper T-Pain. It all started with the Boston Public Health Commission […]
Star Pressure
A while back I spouted a bit about director Roman Polanski, his 30-year-old sex crimes, and the celebrities who rallied together demanding that he be exonerated. Well, a tiny tidbit of side news about that ongoing saga popped up recently. And I thought it was interesting … in a non-Polanski way. OK, that may sound […]
Lying Liars’ Lies, Part Deux
I know we talked a little about lies in a recent blog, but here’s another little tidbit from a different angle. A new study from the Josephson Institute of Ethics suggests a strong connection between dishonest teens and dishonest adults. If you make a habit of lying or cheating in your high school years, the […]