Princes and paupers and princesses and pauperesses…

If this is “reality”….

Pick your poison.

The truth? Could we handle the truth?

Being a college student is easy. Getting in is the hard part.

When you’re watching a movie about a con, there’s always a nervousness and unease in the back of your mind that maybe you’re getting conned too.

The moon is lots of things. A target of conquest, something scary, and even a symbol of isolation.

Like war, prison is the setting for a LOT of movies.

There’s perhaps no real life subject so ready-made for the screen as war.

It’s kinda like soccer. But with ice skates. And it’s actually fun to watch.

There are movies that sound like they’re about submarines, but then you watch them and find out they’re not.

As one of the only three real sports – the other two being bull fighting and mountaineering of course, at least according to Ernest Hemingway (or Ken Purdy or Barnaby Conrad, depending on whom you believe) – motor sports attracts some dynamic and colorful characters.

I assume that just about everyone who grew up in the 1980’s is familiar with the video for the A-ha song “Take on Me.”

A lot of movies owe a conceptual debt to Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, and its most famous line “Hell is other people.” Nothing can get under your skin like someone who makes it impossible for you to ignore your own flaws and shortcomings.

War is hell, and there are plenty of movies showing that to us. Platoon, Paths of Glory, Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, The Longest Day, Apocalypse Now are all great movies. The drama inherent in war makes it a prime subject for movies, of course, and the scope of battle lends itself particularly well to the visual medium. But what happens when the war is over, and the soldiers return home? What about movies that deal with the “after”?

There are a few movies out there that are widely liked, but which I simply can’t stand. Pretty Woman is one of those movies. While part of my dislike for Pretty Woman is simply a consequence of me generally not being a fan of fairy tales, there’s something else about it that always bothered me.

Some people like to watch movies the same way they eat sausages; ignorant to the process that led up to it, and the things that went into it. I understand that point of view, but don’t always share it.

I was a child during the 1970’s, so I saw and heard firsthand – often by AM car radio – to the music of the decade. At home, my father listened to Bob Dylan and my mother listened to Elton John and Donna Summer. (Yes, they got divorced pretty soon after they married…)

I’ve always struggled to understand the appeal of the high school reunion. For the ruling elite (namely the jocks and cheerleaders back when I was in school), a common direction for their lives to go after graduation is down, so why attend an event that serves as a reminder of how far they’ve fallen?

Parenting can be tough. No matter how well you think you’re prepared, or how well-adjusted your children are, you’ll always have doubts. Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much?