While other girls my age were mooning over the two Coreys and wearing New Kids on the Block buttons as large as a salad plate, I quietly crushed on Davy Jones, Chad & Jeremy and Peter Blair Dennis Bernard Noone. Gently caressing my mom’s gatefold LP The Best of Herman’s…

Modern spinmeisters covet the talents of someone such as Alonso Quijana, the chivalrous but insane protagonist of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. To be able to turn yourself into a knight, a sway-backed nag into a mighty steed, a dishrag into a silk scarf and a barmaid/whore into the ideal…

In the early ’70s, crowds flocked to see Enter the Dragon, and all of a sudden, everybody was kung-fu fighting. While Bruce Lee has gone to the great dojo in the sky, one legend lives on: Chuck Norris. More than a faux Texas Ranger, more than an Internet punch line,…

Living the sheltered suburban life that we do, it’s sometimes hard to relate to “urban” music. Take, for example, the band WAR. One may think, “Well, actually, none of my friends know a low rider. All of my friends know the safety and economy of Japanese- and German-built vehicles with…

Nothing says summer like the sound of an approaching ice-cream truck, the laughter of children splashing in front-lawn sprinklers and the sight of Flea and Anthony Kiedis biking down the street dressed only in cock socks. Actually, they say that nothing chafes like bare butt on a glitter vinyl banana…

The moral of the Daedalus and Icarus myth seems uninspiring at best: “Aim too high, you’ll get burned. Too low, you’ll get dragged down. Shoot for that nice, middle-of-the-road averageness.” Then again, maybe it’s supposed to be something about hubris or disobedience; who knows, it’s all Greek to us. Icarus,…

When it comes to dead presidents, it’s not always all about the Benjamins—or even the Grants or the Jacksons. And for once around here, it’s not about Kennedy. Larry L. King’s The Dead Presidents’ Club pits four U.S. presidents—Nixon, Coolidge, Johnson and Truman—against a committee of saints, who are deciding…

Just think about all the reasons you deserve to be polished and pampered and treated like a queen (or king): You unloaded the dishwasher, you listen to your kids shriek daily without killing them, you finished your thesis and even bought a few early Christmas presents. You’ve been good. So…

One of the few things that we remember from all those “self-defense for women” courses is the GTP—grab, twist and pull. And if our male readers protectively cup their testes at the mention of those four words, then we know we’re on the right track. You know what else feels…

“Attention! You thought the trip down the humid, bloody birth canal was hell? You ain’t even felt terror yet! While at boot camp, your sorry, diapered butt will report promptly to the latrine every hour, on the hour. What’s that, recruit? No, I DON’T care if you have to go…

Come midnight, no surprise if you feel a bit “shagged and fagged and fashed,” thinking that bedways is rightways and it’d be bezoomny to not grub some spatchka. O, no, my brothers, ’tis then when you must head you to the sinny to viddy “gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh”—that is…

It’s easy to feed a shark. Take him out for the best Peking duck in town, follow with a trip to a strip joint where you buy him two lap dances and five shots and end with his favorite flavor of gelato and an earnest promise that you’ll have the…

Somewhere along the line, someone decided that many of Agatha Christie’s British novel titles were “inappropriate” for American audiences. Thus, for example, 4.50 From Paddington became What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!, Lord Edgware Dies became Thirteen at Dinner and Murder in the Mews became Dead Man’s Mirror. And though it may…

One of the few reasons to have kids is to have somebody to clean out the garage. There’s nothing we would rather not do on a lazy Saturday than sift through dusty furniture, broken power tools and boxes of god-knows-what that were never unpacked from when we moved two years…

Napoleon Bonaparte has inspired some extraordinary creations: a great palindrome (“Able was I ere I saw Elba”), a great song (ABBA’s “Waterloo”) and a great pastry (uh, the napoleon). On the other hand, the “little corporal” has become in modern society little more than a caricature, his image synonymous with…

Women hesitant to enter the workforce should heed Missy Elliot’s sage advice: “Girls, girls, get that cash/If it’s 9 to 5 or shakin’ ya ass.” Indeed, developing your skills and talents—iron smelting, macramé, hog wrestling—may secure you a lucrative and rewarding career. If your talents extend to playing the shamisen,…

From time to time, we’ve all had B.O. problems: Maybe you were the kid who never showered after gym class or the guy in the dorm who wore the same boxer shorts all finals week. Fortunately for humans, a hot shower can usually remedy any problems of an odiferous nature…

There’s a myth floating around that humans only use 10 percent of our brains. (Personally, I have allocated about 3 percent to daily use while the rest is filled up with 26 years of song lyrics.) Does each of us have a large chunk of unused, untapped gray matter? Scientists…

Funbags just ain’t that fun when they’re size F. Sure, they bounce seductively and create come-hither cleavage. But I’m talking to the ladies who have never passed the “pencil test,” to whom “seductive bouncing” means back pain and whose over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders could double as a pair of hats for conjoined twins…

When you’re driving a toothpaste-green, held-together-with-wire Geo to your minimum-wage job, a rhinestone brooch or fancy “diamond” ring can add a touch of much-needed sparkle to a suicidally drab day. Costume jewelry can be as simple as a bracelet from the dollar store or as exquisite as faux pearls and…

The dating scene can be a real swamp. At every watering hole, endless numbers of snakes and rats lie in wait for their prey, and a girl can only fend off so many orange-toothed nutrias and scaly crocs before she’s ready to call it quits. But, ladies, just remember that…

Depending on how many whiny pleas for videogames and sugary breakfast cereals you cave in to, it can cost up to $15,000 per year to raise a child in the United States. Responsible cats ponder this stuff too; what with the high price of catnip mice, designer litterboxes and hairball…