New Years is one of those funny holidays. You can celebrate it several times during the year if you like. You can celebrate the Jewish New Year in the autumn, and the Chinese New Year in the winter. And of course, you can celebrate the New Year along with Dick Clark. When I was a boy, it was Guy Lombardo. He always said that when he died he would take New Years with him. He didn’t, and in the course of history New Years will come and go whether any of us are here to see them or not. But why are there so many New Years? The reason we have so many New Years Days is because we don’t all use the...

Well, today is Christmas Eve. And this day always brings images of Mary and Joseph coming into the little town of Bethlehem looking for some place to lay their heads and for Mary to give birth to the child who would grow up to change the world forever, or at least as long as there are people here. It’s a beautiful story; it really is. I hope it’s true, or at least most of it. Of course there are a lot of historical problems with the story. And this all stems from the simple fact that the only sources we have for this story come from two of the gospels, Luke and Matthew. Mark and John...

Since it is going to be Thanksgiving, I thought I would leave a blog appropriate to the occasion. As you who have read my previous articles know, my family had several people on the Mayflower. Most of them lived to attend that first Thanksgiving. They are: Thomas Rogers, John Bundy, Anna Churchman, Walter Deane, John Gilbert, John Howland, John Rogers, John Stong, Samuell Williams, Sarah Williams, and Thomas Williams. Two of them, Thomas Rogers, and Thomas Williams even signed that famous document, The Mayflower Compact along with Miles Standish and John Alden on November 11, 1620. They weren’t...

As you all know, I love language. That’s why I belong to the Grammar Police. And loving language as I do, I love…well words. And, as sick as it sounds, I spend some time pouring over dictionaries just to look at the origin of words. No, I’m not insane. And yes, I DO have a life. It just so happens to be a life that includes looking at the origins of words, okay? So, anyway, the origin of most words makes perfect sense. Take for example, the charming little word “redundant”. We all know what it means. It means to repeat yourself. This is from your Department of Redundancy...

It hadn’t been an exceptionally long war. We had only been involved a little over a year. Since April of 1917, our forces had been fighting in the trenches in France, and now on November 11, 1918, the guns stopped and the killing was over. Still, in that short amount of time, we lost nearly 117,000 brave Americans. They told us it was the war to end all wars and the country was mighty happy to see it end. Our American sons had fought to make the world safe for democracy. But, as in most wars, democracy had nothing to do with it. It seems to be a peculiar disease among mortal humankind...

I was thinking about how much time I spend watching television the other night. And I thought how weird the extra-terrestrials would think it that our race of somewhat sentient beings sits in front of a box that makes pictures hour after hour. And then I thought to myself, “Myself,” I thought, “I guess we just like stories.” We like to watch stories. We like to hear stories. We like to tell stories. As soon as we get together with our friends and loved ones, we start telling stories. Anyone who has been married or even part of a family knows that you will hear the same stories over and...

Bullies are in the news a lot these days.  We’ve seen two people end their own lives in as many weeks as a result of cyber bullying.  As a teacher, I can tell you that bullies are a big problem in school.  This is nothing new.  Bullies have always been a problem.  And it’s easy to blame the bully, or even the person being bullied.  If only he or she had stood up for himself or herself.  That’s really easy to say.  But really what is a person supposed to do? I was the victim of bullying as a kid.  I was bullied because I was fat.  I was bullied because I was a liberal living in a...

I feel motivated to help people start things out right. I guess it’s the teacher in me. So today you will learn all you need to know about starting out to learn the guitar the Big Daddy way. If I were a famous guitar player, I could publish a book through Hal Leonard and get semi-rich. But I’m not, and I feel compelled to pass this useful bit of knowledge on anyway. Playing guitar for nearly forty years should count for something and I have learned a few useful tidbits of information that might make learning the guitar more pleasant and successful. So many people start up and...

A couple of years ago I managed to score a couple of tickets to see the Irish comedian Graham Norton at the Coronet Theater in Hollywood. If you’ve never seen Graham Norton, you owe it to yourself to try and watch one of his shows. He had a chat show on BBC 4. BBC 4 is the commercial channel in the United Kingdom. That’s the channel that shows all the reality TV shows and the imports from America. It used to be aired here on BBC America, but now you can catch it on the LOGO channel. The LOGO channel is the channel that is aimed primarily for those with alternative lifestyles....

Isn’t it interesting how many famous people die unknown and poor, even people who were once famous? Of course, I suppose the world is full of non-famous, poor people, but still, you’d think that once you were rich and famous, you’d stay that way. The poor part I can understand. I mean, everyone makes bad money decisions and money is kind of hard to get and keep. Do you ever look at your W-2 in January and wonder what the hell you did with all that money and why don’t you have it anymore? I look at think, and mine shit, I waste a lot of money. Sometimes I’ll...