Are you bored by your current gym routines?  Do your old Nautilus or Cybex circuits leave you yawning as well as sweating?  Has your motivation for spinning and Pilates diminished along with your waistline?  Fear not, intrepid workout warrior, for there's a new fitness program o… Read full post »

1. men Won't STOP for directions

While no longer as common a grievance since the advent of GPS, this still remains the second most divisive issue between the sexes, right behind allegiance to The Three Stooges.  We don't need directions because we're only/… Read full post »

The recent announcement that Baz Luhrmann plans to direct a remake of "The Great Gatsby" in 3D has caused a great stir in both literary and cinema circles.  The film, due to be shot in Luhrmann's native Australia this August, will star Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy… Read full post »

At the tender age of fourteen, I abandoned hearth, home, tube, and fridge and went off to boarding school for three years.  When I arrived at Williston Academy in the fall of 1964, I was a chubby lad of 160 lbs., but after three months, I was twenty pounds lighter and… Read full post »

It's not bad enough that our president must endure scurrilous allegations about his birth, nationality and religion.  It's not enough that he is constantly barraged by the spittle-flecked ranting of the lunatic Right or that he is demonized by his opponents both inside and outside of the governm… Read full post »

[Another priceless find from my '70s writing archive, the following is an ode to my hometown, composed a few months after I moved here.  As is clear from the snide tone, I wasn't thrilled by the lack of urban excitement (or overnight parking), and I hated the overall geriatric feel of… Read full post »

A few weeks back, it was announced that Italy was looking for a corporate sponsor to help defray the restoration costs of their most popular tourist attraction, the Colosseum in Rome.  In exchange, said sponsor would be permitted to place advertising on the outside of/… Read full post »

With the nationwide release of Toy Story 3 this weekend, a whole new generation of kids will be emptying their parent's wallets for Woody and Buzz Lightyear action figures, lunch boxes, underwear, can openers, and whatever other junk Disney-Pixar can plaster their pictures on.  And the producers… Read full post »

A Tale in Three Parts

From 1957 through 1959, I spent my summers at Camp Onota in Pittsfield, MA, where for two months each year, several acres around a lake in the Berkshires became a distant suburb of Westchester County, New York.  Although I lived in state and much closer/… Read full post »

The Drake Passage around Cape Horn, the direct North Face route up Everest, El Camino del Muerte (the Death Road) in Bolivia - all of these legendary paths are fraught with peril and require consummate skills and iron nerves to navigate.  But none has ever aroused the level of sheer dread… Read full post »

WASHINGTON - GOP senators emerged today in nearly unanimous opposition to the larceny reform bill passed in the House earlier this week by a margin of three votes.  The thirteen-hundred-page piece of legislation would place severe restrictions and oversight on the unlawful or fraudulent removal… Read full post »

Last week, my wife called me into the living room to watch Buzz Aldrin's performance on Dancing with the Stars.  Aldrin, the eighty-year-old former astronaut and second man on the moon, graced the stage with all the style and brio he displayed while clomping around the lunar surface in 1969.&nbs… Read full post »

Nostalgia, like arthritis and constipation, is a curse of the elderly. Some get teary about the house they grew up in or the joys of their high school years.  Others yearn for their first car or the songs that accompanied their courtship.  Personally, I pine for the days when vampires didn'… Read full post »

"Nothing in Excess" was the inscription on the Temple at Delphi, and despite the fact that it closed for business a few years back, I doubt many people would disagree with that sentiment today.  Yet in the convoluted world of food and dieting, this simple concept has been overshadowed both by… Read full post »

On Tuesday, I received a letter from Lawrence Bacow, president of my alma mater, Tufts University.  He asked me to become a participant in the school's Student Ambassador Program - well, me and 93,000 other alumni, but I'm still honored and humbled by the offer.… Read full post »

We Americans love our mythic history more than our actual history.  This is understandable since real history can be ambiguous and unpleasant while national myths are reassuring and optimistic.  They are feel-good fantasies promulgated to boost civic pride and, like all myths ancient and mo… Read full post »

In recent years, the most popular concept in the advertising world has been viral marketing, the use of social networks and word-of-mouth to increase brand awareness and sales.  Lately, I've been besieged by a different form of advertising that I like to call sterile marketing, the targeted prom… Read full post »

Unless you've been in a coma for the last fifty years, you've been subjected to some discussion of the value of exercise in dieting.  Almost all the experts agree that it's a good idea - unlike other issues surrounding weight loss which are disputed constantly, lengthily, and with… Read full post »