It was The Summer of Our Discontent, or at the very least, Our Profound Crankiness.  Here in the East, it started in June with endless rain. It seemed as if it rained every day. Probably because it did rain practically every day. It broke some kind of record, not the kind of record you want to break. It’s like getting into Guinness for hiccuping for 40...

And if possible, send money. You think it’s easy being a blogger? Even when people love your posts, they almost never send money. There’s just so damn much competition out there. And some of it is good! Besides the other 50 million blogs, and all the funny e-mails, there are those wonderful letters where someone offers you $1.5 million if you will only...

Oh, The Indignities of Travel . . . The e-mail message I sent from Rome was brief: Bring Colace. The reply from New York equally succinct: Relief is on the way! If this isn’t the most effective communication in the history of the Internet, I’ll eat my cappello. So what’s the story behind these messages between the Old Country and the New World?...

The warning signs of a Bad Dating Situation (or BADS) are like the clues in a cheesy detective story: obvious to everyone but the victim. Let’s face it, this guy is wrong for you, probably for the planet as a whole, but you, my sweet, are in total denial. If this were a song parody, it’d go something like, “You’ve got the BADS and that...

IS PRIVACY DEAD? You have to ask? With a few clicks on Google or Bing, you can find out almost anything about almost anyone. Isn’t it amazing just how much dirt we all seem to crave -and of course, the media loves giving it to us. Sure, if you’re a celbrity, you give up privacy. But really! Long before the ghoulish media coverage of Michael...

Wanna buy an apartment in New York? The good news is: prices are down and so are mortgage rates. The bad news is, you’re going to need a letter of recommendation. Here in the Big Apple, you not only have to plunk down an obscene amount of money for a space you’d laugh at if you didn’t know better, you also have to get past the dreaded coop board....

What do women want? Love? Sure. Money? Of course. Cosmetics? Now you’re talking! Rita Rudner nails it in her very funny routine about those “free gifts” — you know the ones, where you buy something you don’t need to get a bunch of things you don’t want. It’s twue, so twue.  I can rationalize falling for this a few summers ago because I was...

A minute ago, I tripped on the oriental rug in my office. Bad carpet! And if I weren’t so naturally graceful (not), I could have fallen. And if I had fallen, I might have hurt myself (Ouch!), and the rest of the afternoon and maybe the evening or even many days thereafter would have been taken up with dealing with that. I mean, I could have sprained an ankle,...