Relief Shopper

Posted inColumns, Family, Food

I try to help around the house as much as I can. My limited skills (and interest) disqualify me from many chores, but I still like to think I contribute to the common good.

The other night I could see that my wife just needed a break. She had a busy week. I needed to step up my game.

Lucky for me, the task Maria needed help with ranked up there as one of my favorites – grocery shopping.

‘Mad Men’ Decision

Posted inTV
As white people everywhere know, "Mad Men" returns to the air on Sunday. We have suffered silently and whitely for more than 500 days. Well, not all of us. I…

Revenge of the Bean Burger

Posted inColumns, Food

I have to give my wife credit. She only wanted to try something different and make dinner a little more healthy.

A month or so ago, Maria found a recipe for bean burgers. When I saw it laying around the kitchen, I started to laugh.

Bean burgers sounded like something a group of people in a mountain commune would eat for a special occasion. That didn’t fit my profile.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. As we get older, we do have to pay more attention to the things we eat.

I already try to limit the amount of red meat I eat. Every once in a while, I will go for turkey burgers to try and mix things up. Why not bean burgers?

Best Weekend Ever

Posted inAmerica, Columns, March Madness, St. Patrick's Day

A lot of people have placed an undue focus on 2012 because they think the Mayans predicted the world would end later this year.

We can accomplish very little by sitting and talking about the absurdity of an ancient culture using some stone tablet thousands of years ago to accurately predict the apocalypse. We’d probably be funnier than the skit “Saturday Night Live” did on it a couple of months ago, but that’s not important right now.

What’s important is how this whole doomsday discussion has missed the one truly amazing thing about the 2012 calendar, a special alignment which happens this week.

The first two days of March Madness fall directly prior to St. Patrick’s Day, which falls on a Saturday.

Admitting My Shameful Secret

Posted inColumns, Movies, TV

I admitted a deep, dark secret to some friends the other day. I felt much better afterwards, even though they gave me some grief for my transgression.

While I feel good about taking this step with some people close to me, I don’t know if I can bring myself to make the same admission here. With time, understanding and an opportunity to right this wrong, I might muster up the courage eventually.

We had somehow fallen into an online discussion about television and movies. I would say I don’t know how we ended up on the topic, but I know exactly how we did. We love television and movies.

What I don’t know is how the conversation pushed me to list the iconic American movies I have never seen. Trust me, it’s quite a list. Luckily, a few people made me feel better about my admission by baring their movie-not-watching soul a little bit.