Disney unveiled the newest of the Disney Princesses, Princess Merida from the Academy Award winning animated film Brave, and as part of translating her from screen to full merchandise character they tweaked her appearance a bit, as you can see in the image below: First off, you can see that the style of illustration is different, Merida from the original film looks almost like claymation or some other stop motion animation figure (especially in the…Read More
The Food and Drug Administration this week announced that the controversial emergency contraceptive “PlanB” tablet has been approved as an over-the-counter drug, and that it’s going to be available for women “15 and older” to purchase. In case you don’t know what PlanB is, it’s levonorgestrel, a drug that a woman can take after unprotected sex to avoid getting pregnant. Or, to phrase it another way, it’s the morning-after instant abortion pill. While the intent…Read More
My 13yo son G’s life is a bit confusing. He goes to a school that discourages media consumption but his best friend has a TV and Xbox in his room. He lives part time with a mom who doesn’t have cable and thinks media is uniformly bad unless it’s from the 70s or earlier (he’s seen every episode of The Brady Bunch, G-d help him), and even then, well, everyone’s life would be better if…Read More
Let me set this up: my son’s in 7th grade and so far things are moving along smoothly, with us parents having created a reasonably respectful community where we can talk about things, socialize on occasion and generally help nurture each other’s children as we all go through the first steps of our children’s adolescence. But there’s more going on when our children hit the teen years, and the pressures and opportunities for mischief get…Read More
It’s not news to anyone who knows me that I get a lot of review products. Whether they’re iPhone cases, laptops, computer bags, DVDs or even foods, being a blogger has definitely paid off in terms of things we get to try out and play with. One of the most surprising categories of products I get are men’s grooming gadgets. In fact, I think I have about seven different electric razors from Panasonic, Norelco and…Read More
My teen daughter and I had been planning a Superbowl party together for weeks. She was going to invite some of her friends, I would invite some of mine, and we’d have a fun time watching the game / the ads and sharing a lot of snacks. Yet yesterday, when the game rolled around, she stayed with her Mom. Problem was, I forgot to take momentum into account. Before I explain what I mean by…Read More
As a father’s rights advocate, I’m the first to grumble and complain about news stories that decry the lack of female role models in contemporary culture. The reality is quite the contrary, as far as I can tell: the male/female pendulum has swung far towards female rights, towards canonizing women, particularly where parenting is concerned. It’s all over our movies, TV and literature: men as immature cads and potential rapists, while women are nurturing mothers-to-be….Read More
This should be entitled “The Ballad of Teen Clothing”, perhaps, but I find it baffling that my otherwise highly engaged and aware teen daughter A-, who is now 16 and cooks for her siblings, helps with lots of chores, etc, has a blind spot when it comes to clothes. If you have a teen you know what I’m talking about. They take off their clothes and just drop them on the floor at that spot….Read More
Being an author myself, I seem to know a disproportionate number of other authors, and it’s a rare week that one of my friends isn’t announcing the publication of a new tech book or even a work of fiction. Great fun and, of course, it’s always fascinating to compare my knowledge of them and their public persona with the narrative style of their book. Often their written work is an extension of themselves, as I…Read More
I’m still not sure how this happened, but my oldest girl somehow turned sixteen in the last few weeks. Sixteen. Where’d the time go? Actually, I think that the relative nature of time is best demonstrated by watching children grow up, because there are definitely moments when I have felt time creep along far too slowly even while I’m also aware of it rushing pell-mell. Even those infinitely long evenings of tension and dissent are…Read More
