The Most Dangerous Thing

Thoughts
Can start wars
Can turn friends to foes
Can make difference dangerous
Silos are made to shelter missiles
Thoughts are the true
WMDs

Dating Daddy: Why Older Women Become Cougars

As I emerge from a several year-long, self-imposed cocoon of isolation and hard work and consider the messy, sweaty, confusing world of relationships, I realize that I have no choice but to become a cougar.

Here’s why.

In a trendy, upscale Brooklyn Japanese restaurant recently, a friend and I sat next to three couples in their seventies or more. As I looked at them I was struck by two simultaneous and disturbing thoughts — first, that they seemed to be the same age my parents were when they died, and second, that if I were to start dating again, the male halves of these couples were representative of the men I might be dating.

The only conclusion I could come to was that dating any one of these men or their peers would be just like dating my father. And that I would not, could not do.

Does Someone Have To Die For Me To Have Fun?

The new TV season just started. Although I’m no longer teaching screen and TV writing, I still feel an obligation to watch all the new shows. To have something to talk about perhaps. To know what I want to watch on those nights when none of my old favorites are on and I just need a TV fix.

One of my guilty pleasures—after Billy the Exterminator and Project Runway and all the other pseudo-reality shows—are detective stories: cop stories, private eye stories, private eye working with cop stories (think Castle, a definite favorite), PBS stories. Perhaps it’s a carryover from the time I auditioned for the role of Nancy Drew when I was a teenager. (I was really a Judy Bolton fan, but I would have gladly killed to play Nancy—a possible mystery plot there.)

The problem with these shows is that someone has to die. That’s what gets the story going. That’s why the cops are called in, the detective is hired, Mrs. Marple and Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes start poking around. Sometimes there is just a mystery in place—a missing jewel, a nasty family reunion—but even then, soon someone is found lying somewhere not breathing and oozing blood over the nicely polished floor, the cobblestone path, the expensive wedding gown.