Let Them Eat That Unwrapped Candy!

 
 I’m so old I remember back when Halloween was supposed to scare the kids.
Now it’s got a lot of parents shaking in their schlocky costumes, terrified that if they let their kids go trick or treating those kids may meet a fate far worse than too many Mary Janes. (“The candy everyone wishes was something [...]

Serial Killers and You: A Match Made In Fiction

By Leonard Cassuto
Note to readers: Cassuto is an English professor at Fordham University and Author of the just released, “Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories.”
 
Today’s hyper-vigilant parenting is haunted by a figure behind the curtain: the serial killer.  He’s the boogeyman that slinks through every parent’s nightmares, the predator on the prowl, looking [...]

WORD OF THE YEAR!

So in England a woman named Susie Dent publishes a book, “Words of the Year,” every, well, year. The latest edition just came out and in addition to winners like “boytox” (Botox for men) and “momnesia,” defined as “a mother’s forgetfulness in the first year after a child’s birth,” (which isn’t nearly long enough), you [...]

WHY ARE WE CHAUFFEURING OUR KIDS TO THE BUS STOP?

The old joke — never that funny, actually — is about a rich lady who takes her grown son on a vacation to Florida. When she gets to the hotel, she lavishly tips the bellhop to pull her son out of the limo and carry him upstairs.
“Can’t your son walk?” the bellhop asks.
“Of course he [...]