I did not expect to find, while I was reporting on an arch-Communist playwright in Berlin, a children’s book for my 3-year-old daughter. But I did, for a very Eastern Bloc price of just €6. The author of poems like “Venus and Stalin,” Peter Hacks also wrote children’s stories. This one, The Bear at the Hunter’s Ball, …
Monthly Archives: November 2009
My Son Will Be an Uneducated Sap
Hate to say it, J.P., but the chances of your getting an education similar to the private, prep-school one that I received are nil. I went to a fancy Upper West Side private school, where I received advanced instruction in insider trading, pasta kneading, and the ethical justifications for moral lapses. The cost to send …
Bad Dads We (Don’t) Love: Papa Pederast
Stories like this one put me completely at ease with my own flaws as a parent. Whatever decisions I make as a father, I can pretty much guarantee I won’t become the ringleader, along with my children, of a murderous, child-abusing cabal in rural western Missouri. Actually, stop reading the linked article after first few …
What Almost Made Me Cry Today: “Marley & Me”
I may not like dogs or Jennifer Aniston, but watching Owen Wilson as a somewhat smarmy newspaper columnist saying good-bye to his dying, incorrigible pooch was almost too much for me. Almost. On a man-tears scale of 1 to 10, I’d give this is 6. Next time, make the dog a cat.