Mommy with a Penis

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 ...

I have never written about movie awards before but something magical happened to me this year that prompted me to change all that. For the first time in all the years I've been an active member of the Screen Actors Guild I was randomly chosen to be part of the elite SAG Nominating Committee for film.  What this means is that I got to watch a shitload of this season's films and then voted for who, in my estimation, should be nominated for the SAG Award in the following categories: best lead male and lead female, best supporting male and supporting female, best performance by a cast, and best stunt ensemble (go figure). It's an interesting film season, in that there isn't a decisive front runner in any category. Remember a few years back when Helen Mirren graced the silver screen in  The Queen ? She received endless accolades, sashayed down many a red carpet, and, according to IMDb , snatched up no less than 29 statuettes, plaques, ribbons and bangles portrayin...

I had no idea this would happen. Really.  The whole thing started with an innocuous phone call. LESBIAN FRIEND: How would you and Michael like to be interviewed for the magazine my wife works for? The article would be about gay parenting. Sort of like a real life Modern Family . ME: Cool. See. An interview. That was the extent of it. Emails were sent, phone calls were made, and before I knew it a photo shoot was scheduled to occur in my house. Now, one might imagine any photographer worth his or her aperture would provide his or her own equipment. But somehow the photographer that came to my house to shoot my family neglected to bring any lighting apparatus of any sort, and on a day that was fifty-two shades of battleship gray. Trust me, my bullshit meter was going crazy.  The photographer busied himself moving my living room furniture around, trying to find a glimmer of natural light (knocking my standing lamp over in the process) as Michael...

I know of a fourteen-year-old young man who was finally given permission. He convinced his parents to let him ride the train into the city to take a summer musical theater class. Every Tuesday and Thursday for six weeks he rode his gold Schwinn to the nearby suburban train station. After responsibly locking up the bike, the young man purchased a round trip ticket and boarded a San Francisco-bound train. Once in The City, he connected to a bus that would take him up Third Avenue and make a left onto Geary. This young man would then disembark at Union Square Park and walk two blocks west to the American Conservatory Theatre where the class took place. One day, as he was taking the train from the hustle and bustle back home he entered into what he considered a grown-up conversation with a well turned out  older man of twenty-five or twenty-six, who wore a light wool sports jacket of charcoal grey with brown pinstripes. The young man, now feeling confident with his life path, poured...