The Cheap Seats

Every kid secretly wants a nickname. Correction - every kid secretly wants a good nickname. Some of us were given monikers by our parents that - while endearing at the time - we were glad never made it into the public's consciousness. As a child my mom called me Shorty (you can imagine my relief when this died out). To be clear, my brother was very tall growing up, so stop snickering please.     Being a few years younger than my brother, his friends transferred his nickname to me, modifying it by adding the word Little (yes, yes, ha ha) in front of it. So I became Little Booge (origin unknown, but the oo is pronounced like the oo in oops - the e is silent). Eventually, after my brother moved on, my friends dropped Little (hallelujah) and interchangeably called me Booge, Bergy  or Burglar (after a youthful indiscretion that included petty theft, a batting glove and a Montgomery Wards security guard).     Anyhoo, only Berg...

For anyone who knows me - even a little bit - I superficially come across as sarcastic, mildly opinionated and somewhat aloof. The sarcasm is for my own amusement. The opinions are primarily reserved for people and things I can only describe as silly. But my aloofness is personal. It papers over a facade that is actually deeply nostalgic and sentimental. As I have passed over the hump of my 40's, this gene is more and more dominant. Oh sure, I've always been able to sneak out a tear or two while watching an emotional movie or listening to a moving passage of music (damn you, Yo-Yo Ma), but over the past few years daily life seems to have served up more and more tissue opportunities. So - why now? I once described becoming a parent with these words - The moment that tiny, fragile child emerges and fills you with speechless awe, you realize that you are no longer the most important person in your own life . A little overdra...

Overnight Success. This label is used to describe someone or something that has a had meteoric rise to fame, fortune, influence or popularity. The tag suggests that the achievements have been unearned somehow, as if luck and timing were the key factors rather than unnoticed hard work and years of unswerving time and attention. So it seems - at first glance - with the issue of Same-Sex Marriage in America. The truth is that no minority group in the United States has ever gained their full citizenship rights within a short period of time - not in a year, not in a decade, not in one generation, not in a century. The momentum and pace of acceptance for same-sex marriage in many American states does, however, seem surprising to the casual observer. The reality is that the most recent effort for equal marital rights is only the most recent leg of a much longer journey. This struggle has included issues of personal...

I love Ralphie Wiggum - the hapless, dimwitted boy on the long-running show, the Simpsons. It's hard not to love a kid who is mostly unaware of his surroundings, his low IQ or the fact that he is the clueless butt of classmates' jokes. And whether Ralph's finger is buried deep in his nose, his gums are bleeding or he just told his father that he " made global warming in his pants ," the viewer is always rooting for him even when they are also laughing at him. Ralphie's all-time greatest, "laugh out loud" comment came after he received his report card. Simply and convincingly, Ralph unknowingly proved his principal's point by exclaiming (click on link), " Me Fail English, That's Unpossible! " The English language, of course, is always changing. The internet in particular has given life to numerous words never heard before - wiki, tweet, google, wifi - to name only a few. Still other words, spoken from the mouths of babes (...