When word leaks out that you’re going to be interviewing Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, the stars of Lethal Weapon and its new sequel, called (what else?) Lethal Weapon 2, you can count on getting two reactions. Reaction No. 1 (from females of all ages): “MEL GIBSON?!? Oh, my God!…
You can’t help it. Chat with Valley moms Susan Fitzgerald and Lori Drinkard, and all you can think is, “There but for the grace of the fertility gods go I.” As you may have noticed, I spend a lot of time bellyaching about the difficulties of raising one kid. Just…
One minute is such a relative length of time. For example: Stick a frozen turkey in the microwave, hit the high button, and sixty seconds later you’ll still have a frozen turkey. Do the same thing to, oh, a live frog, and you’ll alter its molecular structure. All over your…
When planning family vacations, the normal course of action is to sit down months in advance, scan road maps, study travel guides and wrangle tips from anyone who’s ever been outside the city limits. But parents, in their haste to decide where they’ll have fun, invariably forget to ask the…
Here–in all their pure, unexpurgated horror–are the three ugliest words you can hear after you’ve accepted a dinner-party invitation: “Grandma can’t baby-sit.” If just reading that sentence didn’t soak your shorts in cold sweat, you either don’t have a four-year-old, your four-year-old doesn’t have a grandma, or you’re never invited…
I don’t know why so many pregnant folks race to the nearest ultrasound machine the second their fetus is old enough to announce its gender. As far as I’m concerned, not knowing exactly what you’re getting is half the fun of pre-parenting. (The other half occurred during my wife’s final…
If there is a normal career path for Academy Award-winning actresses, Geena Davis certainly isn’t following it. Prior to being Oscarized in March for her performance in The Accidental Tourist as a dog trainer at the Meow Bow Animal Hospital who is in love with a reluctant travel writer, Davis’…
When you write a newspaper column, some people automatically assume that you must know something. Incredible, I know, but it happens. To disprove this notion, I will now answer my reader mail. Q: My eighteen-month-old daughter takes long naps, goes to sleep early at night and still sleeps late. What…
Based on my son’s growth rate, his pediatrician estimates he’ll grow to be about six feet six or seven. This is not wonderful news. When I chose to become a parent, it never occurred to me that I might one day have to buy groceries for a Jolly Teen Giant…
I used to look forward to my son’s birthday, but the event isn’t nearly as much fun as it once was. The lad is catching on. First birthdays are the best. One-year-olds have no idea what a birthday is, and no expectations means no disappointments. You don’t have to deck…
The experts agree that mothers do not have a biological, psychological or natural advantage that automatically makes them better kiddie-caretakers than fathers. Obviously, the experts have never watched a guy change a diaper. There are many areas in which men excel. They grow superior mustaches. They can wear boxer shorts…
I love being a dad. But the job is not without certain minuscule details that make me want to remove my clothes, climb the exterior of the Hyatt Regency and do birdcalls until someone takes me to a nice, safe place where I can’t hurt myself. For instance: Plastic-strip thermometers…
The human brain is a thing of mystery. It can get us to the moon, cure diseases, and solve equations of enormous complexity. Yet all you need is one loose mental connection to qualify as a slack-witted, dim-sighted, dead-from-the-neck-up and dead-from-the-neck-down simpleton. Take me for an example: I’m a smoker…
Warning: If you aren’t a parent and have no intention of becoming one, read no farther. The following contains information you don’t want to know, wouldn’t understand, and are in no way equipped to stomach. There. Now that the pantywaists among you have moved on to the Puzzle page, we…
The Rooftops coming-attractions trailer certainly appears to be promoting a dance movie. And because the film is directed by Robert West Side Story Wise and executive-produced by Taylor White Nights Hackford, there seems no reason to believe otherwise. Heck, even the press materials say the thing “explodes with music and…
It happens, occasionally, in the middle of the night. I wake up screaming in fear that someone might one day mistake this space for some kind of advice column. This has yet to occur, thank God. But it could. If anyone can mistake Alan Thicke for an entertainer or John…
Writer-director John Milius seems to have a lot of important thoughts he’d like to impart with his new action-adventure film, Farewell to the King–but the only message you’re likely to get is, You Can’t Avoid History. That observation floats to the top of this murky mess only because it’s repeated…
It’s not often you can pinpoint exactly where a generally terrific movie goes dead wrong–but that’s no hard chore while watching New York Stories, a three-part anthology of unrelated minifilms directed by Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Francis Coppola. This unusual project derails after Scorsese’s vignette and gets back on…
ACT ONE. (It is 9 p.m. in a living room that would look like a toy store if toy stores had no shelves and the merchandise didn’t come in boxes. Visible in the clutter are a large, bearded man and a small, unbearded boy. The man looks at his watch…
I started out as a model parent. And I’d still be a model parent if my wife had had a hysterical pregnancy instead of a kid. Before my son was born, the rules by which he’d live his life were all charted out. I’d witnessed the mistakes of other parents…
Two long-time friends recently decided to get married after seventeen years of dating. How this could happen in 1989 America is beyond me. But it did. The wedding was to be a major northern California to-do, attended by some two hundred of the bride and groom’s most intimate intimates, many…
What is this? Some sort of fluke? How is it possible that Cousins could be the sweetest, tangiest romantic-comedy treat since Moonstruck? The film’s odds for success certainly don’t seem very high going in. It’s a Yank remake of a popular French comedy (1975’s acclaimed Cousin, Cousine), a subgenre reamed…
