This is the kind of story that makes you feel good to be alive. Or slit your wrists. A family in the south had fallen on hard times. They were out of work, out of money, but — hold on to your Kryptonite — not out of luck. As they were cleaning out the attic, because the house they had owned for 60 years was now in foreclosure, they came across a pile of old comics....

Or is it just that some people ON Facebook are dead? No, really. As Facebook gets older, so do its users: people over 65 are joining at a greater rate than any other age group. And some of these people, poor dears, pass on. No, they haven’t switched to MySpace. They’ve gone to the Great Internet In the Sky. But here on Planet Earth, dearly departed...

Yes, yes, I know. Grief has only seven stages. But this is more complicated. Stage 1: Regret: Why am I taking this trip? Why? Because it’s a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 (a dream of mine), that’s why, and it leaves from Brooklyn, a cab ride away. No plane! No security lines! No being trapped in a flying sardine can with people who mess up the bathroom in...

Ah, Rome, the Eternal City. Forget about San Francisco: you can leave your heart here faster than you can say, “Ciao, Baby!” I, however, held on to my heart, but left my underwear. Let me explain! I was in Rome with my business partner, Diana, and we went shopping for tennis outfits at this really nice store near the Trevi Fountain. They had good prices...

The e-mail message from Rome said simply: Bring Colace. The reply from NY was equally succinct:  Relief is on the way! If this isn’t the most the most effective communication in the history of the Internet, I’ll eat my cappello. But wait. What’s behind these messages between the Old Country and the New World? Isn’t Italy famous for great...

If there are no fireworks in your relationship, you’re in trouble. I was in trouble. The guy I eventually married — the key word here, folks, is “eventually” — and I were about to have our first Fourth of July together. Yes, that SUCH a girly thing to say. But I take these things seriously and I wanted there to be, well, fireworks! Literally....

 Nobody doesn’t like Betty White. Hell, she inspired an unprecedented Facebook campaign to get her on SNL, where she said — with wide eyes and perfect timing  — that before all this she didn’t even know what Facebook was. And now that she does, it sounds like “a huge waste of time.”  She’s saying worse things than that:...

No matter how colorful they are — and they are very colorful this year — buying a bathing suit will give you the blues. What can I say? A few adjectives spring to mind: Dreaded, humiliating, humbling (not exactly the same as humiliating), life-negating, tiring, stressful. (Please feel free to join in!) And then there are the nouns: Disaster, failure, disappointment,...