Mental Health Will Drive You Mad
The latest news concerning Lindsay Lohan—that her father is using voice mails she left for him as proof that he needs to forcibly commit her—is evidence of many things, not the least of which is that for the mass audience that consumes this sort of drivel, mental health issues are nothing more than entertainment fodder, something to be vaguely amused by as they peruse their daily doses of Twitter, Facebook and whatever other passing fancies that are nothing more than a momentary distraction in their humdrum lives.Well in my family and thousands of others like it, mental health is n

Just Another Saturday Night
I have never really had much imagination when it comes to Halloween costumes. Mostly just bought a cheapie mask at Sears or some such. Nor have I ever really had much enthusiasm for the holiday beyond the obvious candy windfall. These days, like many things in our Modern World, Halloween has become competitive to the point of ridiculousness. As in, how obscure/trendy/ironic can you be and still have people know who you are? Just having a well made costume and a well thought out idea isn’t enough anymore. And if you’re in a major city and are of the female persuasion, there is, of course, the mandatory (and completely unimaginative) sexy fill-in-the-blank costume outfitted by your favori

Sense and Colonel Brandon
I somehow got away with not reading any Jane Austen until I was out of college. Don’t really know why; I guess she didn’t appeal to me until I was old enough to have had some of the life experiences she dealt with in her amazing novels. In the last ten years or so, however, I have grown fond of Ms. Austen and her cavalcade of characters: the righteous Mr. Darcy, well-meaning Emma Woodhouse, mischievous ne’er do wells like Wickham and Willoughby. But lately I am especially enamored of the saintly Col. Brandon of Sense and Sensibility fame. For those not familiar, Col. Brandon is pretty much the perfect man. He’s wealthy, steadfast, reliable, good-natured and though

God's Driftin' in Heaven
At one time missing a Springsteen show at The Spectrum would’ve been unthinkable to me, but lately it just hasn’t seemed to matter that much. Not even the fact that last night was the last time he’d be playing there—for real this time—made a difference to me. He could play my dream set list and I’d still feel there was something missing. And there was. Yeah, despite the fact that he played not one but two of my handful of favorite (and obscure) songs—one of them hadn’t been played in 28 years—I remain convinced that I would have, on some level, been disappointed by last night’s final performance at the venerated arena in South Philly had I been

Know Thyself
My mom doesn’t know who her father was. Not literally; he did live in the same house with her and her mother and older brother for a brief time. But he was never there much, she was really young when he left, and he never really had much to do with her anyway. So though she knows his name and dimly recalls his appearance, she can’t really say that she ever really knew him.When I was a little girl, everything surrounding my grandfather—her dad—was a big mystery. I knew the man my grandmother—we called her Nana—was married to at the time was not my mom’s dad and was curious about what the circumstances were that brought her to divorce my grandfather and marry him, bu