One of the things I liked best about Brokeback Mountain (besides gorgeous lanky fellas in jeans frollicking like randy rams) was that it spent time fleshing out the main characters’ relationship with their respective wives. You got a complicated taste of the initial attractions, the creeping estrangement, the ultimate heartache. The wives were not presented […] Continue reading →

In honor of the Oscars tonight, I’m throwing up this post from our old Blogspot site, with updates! On Dove’s website, you can read why each of tonight’s winning films are NOT APPROVED! Got a cold call from the Dove Foundation, a nonprofit committed to lobbying Hollywood to make more “good, morally sound” movies that […] Continue reading →

Teacher Ken’s post over at DailyKos today was the right message for me to hear right now. I’m facing down the prospect of preschool for my son, and I live in a town where education = competition. The pointy campanile on the UCBerkeley campus rises above the city like a lighthouse, a warning to every […] Continue reading →

One of my favorite pit stops is Howard Kunstler’s Eyesore of the Month. Every month, he calls out a building somewhere for offending his sensibilities. More often than not, the crimes are transgressions of function, like this bike lane that funnels riders into a sewer grate. Many of his peeves are on behalf of children: […] Continue reading →

Oh, you mean mothers aren’t leaving the workforce in droves, realizing that “feminism has failed them,” and embracing happy housewifery as their true calling? This New York Times article is much drier that all those heaving proclamations, but it perhaps offers a more complete picture of what’s happening. Basically, since the 1950s, women have been […] Continue reading →

There’s a website for women who used sperm banks to have children. It’s called www.donorsiblingregistry.com, and it enables the turkey baster set to connect with one other and discover whether their kids have half-siblings. A sperm donor in Virginia – Mr. 401, if you please – “fathered” (and I mean that in the most limited […] Continue reading →

I’ve had the flu all week, but I’ve been making a half-hearted attempt to push through my responsibilities anyway, going to work and spewing my germs around, grocery shopping, cooking for my guys, folding clothes, reading Jude books and cleaning up his poopy diapers. Last night I hit a wall. You know how there’s always […] Continue reading →

In 2004, the FDA visited the question of whether Plan B – commonly referred to as the “morning after pill” – should be available without a prescription. The agency’s staff and advisory panel said yes, antiabortion groups said hell no. The FDA leadership got cold feet and decided not to decide, kowtowing to the wishes […] Continue reading →

There’s a movie coming out in March – Thank You for Smoking – that sounds pretty funny. Here’s a boiled down synopsis: The hero of THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is Nick Naylor (AARON ECKHART), chief spokesman for Big Tobacco, who makes his living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers…Nick goes on a PR […] Continue reading →

My adolescent years were a complete secret to my parents. They might have gone riffling through my diary for clues of my thoughts, feelings, and covert activities, but they really weren’t very interested. (Although what I was doing at the time was very, very interesting.) I’ve known other parents who tried to scale the wall […] Continue reading →