Mommy with a Penis

I get George Zimmerman. Now, before you go all gooseshit on me, take a gander... A young white man walked down an uncommonly deserted New York side street at one AM. Approaching him from the other direction were three black youths. The closer they got the more the white man felt discomfort. Whether this could be attributed to the time of night, the lack of fellow New Yorkers about, the dark clothes the young black men were wearing, or the conspiratorial air they were giving off, the white man couldn't tell you. However, he  became keenly aware of the hairs on his arm standing at attention and the wallet in his front pocket banging against his thigh every time he took a step. He  cursed the fact he didn't take the longer route on the more brightly lit, more densely populated thoroughfare.   Just before the youths passed, they spread out, causing a wider birth for the white man to skirt around. Even with that obstacle, the white man took a larger-than-necess...

I wrote this piece almost a year ago for an online magazine that never published the article. On Thursday night, July 18th, at 7:00 pm PST, I will be talking with Christopher and Amanda at LNR Radio about this article and being an anti-attachment parent. Click on  LNR Radio  for the link. And you can  share your own thoughts by calling in live 10PM EST/7PM PST (718) 766-4652 or leave us comments on Twitter (@LNRradio) or on Facebook. It's certainly no mystery that parenting styles have changed since my parents' generation. In their day, if the kids weren't bleeding profusely or suffering from a fractured limb, then everything must be peaches and cream. My parents ignored the fact that mine was the generation of growing pot in the basement and pocketing Quaalude, instead they released us unto the world and then turned a scotch and soda blind eye, muttering blithely to themselves: no news must be good news. Now, as if to brutally combat the previous generation's...

Perhaps you'll say I drank the Kool-Aid, and quite possibly you would be well within your rights to do so. And I'm sure if you are child free, or only have boy cubs, on the outside looking in, you'd probably jeer, "If I had a girl I would  never  succumb. What losers." But I'm telling you, when you happen upon that impressive storefront this unimaginable tide washes over you, and you can't think of anything else that would make your little girl (or fem boy) happy. And this has nothing to do with peer pressure. It's not like all of Maxwell's friends taunted her with  we got ours, when are you going to get yours?  No, this sickness belongs to the parents. And it's insidious, and pernicious, and very, very  real.  The Kool-Aid from which I have sipped is American Girl. And I'm not the only flabbergasted parent with a drained Dixie cup in my hand and a Black Cherry moustache on my face. No, this last holiday season, many family members and c...

A scene played out between Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton on Downton Abbey  last night, and the subject, parenting . For those of you entirely out of the know, Smith (right) plays the Dowager Countess, a woman who doesn't mince words and sounds and acts as if she just walked off the stage of an Oscar Wilde play. Wilton's Cousin Isobel is less well-to-do, but equally steadfast in her beliefs. These two hens cluck and spar with each other every chance they get. DOWAGER COUNTESS: One forgets about parenthood. The on-and-on-ness of it. COUSIN ISOBEL: Were you a very involved mother with Robert and Rosamund? DOWAGER COUNTESS: Does it surprise you? COUSIN ISOBEL: A bit. I'd imagined them surrounded by nannies and governesses being starched and ironed to spend an hour with you after tea. DOWAGER COUNTESS: Yes, but it was an hour every day. COUSIN ISOBEL: I see, yes. How tiring.

No Christmas after December 25th. Isn't that the unspoken rule? And anyone who doesn't throw away the tree, take down the lights, pack away the inflatable Frosty lawn decor should get fined lots and lots of money. I don't want to see any lingering holly or mistletoe, taste eggnog-flavored cappuccino, smell any roasted chestnuts or god awful peppermint scented candles, or watch the  Laverne and Shirley  rerun "Christmas Eve at the Booby Hatch " outside the month of December.   What is with people who cover their house with Christmas lights, run up electric bill, deepen their carbon footprint and yet refuse to take them down in a timely manner? Or as my cousin-in-law, Greg, so eloquently put it, "Get your Flocking Xmas tree out of the house, it's February already."  Three weeks ago, Sebastian had his regularly scheduled physical. He goes to Children's Hospital here in Los Angeles. And in this bastion of wellness there is, quite incongr...

It's a little known fact that Jodie Foster is my twin sister. Get out of town I can practically hear you say. But it's true. The Academy Award winning, husky-voiced actress of such seminal works as  Foxes  and  Freaky Friday (the original)   and your very own Mommy with a Penis are sibs. This out-of-left-field revelation might not be too hard to swallow considering Little Sis's (I'm older by fourteen minutes) penchant for privacy. But with her unusual and perhaps inappropriate coming out at the Golden Globes, I thought I'd shed some light onto this lesser known fact and come out a little myself. I can understand if there are nonbelievers out there, so I submit to you the facts: most obviously we have the same last name, we are exactly the same age (which she blurted over and over at the beginning of her Golden Globe speech, thanks a lot Jode), we are both children of California, and we both prefer to cavort with our own gender. And if that doesn't satisfy ...