Parenting is difficult under any circumstances, and in my father's view, to raise a morally upright and honest child, you sometimes have to lie to him.
I think, of all the holidays we celebrate, my least favorite is Earth Day. For one thing, I never know what sort of gift is appropriate. A jar of dirt, maybe? And it's not clear to me why Earth even needs a 'day,' since a spin on its axis creates a day. That's like giving a man who owns a shoe store a gift of a pair of shoes.
In my opinion, it has never been proven that food even has calories. When I bite into a hamburger, I see pickle and ketchup and bun and meat, but if there's a calorie in there, it must be hidden.
It's never easy to adapt a book, especially as the author, because it's as if you're chopping off appendages. It really feels painful to decide what has to go.
I am a newspaper columnist and a professional screenwriter, but my real love is the novel for all the room it has for characters to come alive and breathe and face their challenges.
I know it sounds strange, but I'm one of those people who goes to a coffee shop to drink coffee.
Communicating with teenage girls is easy unless you're an adult, and then it's like having someone take a pair of pliers and, one-by-one, yank off your fingernails through your ears.
With my book 'How to Remodel a Man,' I was on Oprah, Fox News, the Early Show, and Good Morning America. Oprah was the best - an hour long segment. TV is so short; you answer a few questions, and then it's over. It feels like a hit-and-run with a camera.
We have enforced a Darwinian process on wolves, turning them into the shy and elusive animals they've become. They didn't have that fear of us 30,000 years ago. We didn't have gunpowder; we had rocks. Wolves would have seen us as lunch, and we were weak and slow and tasty.
There are apparently three factors that lead to longevity: heredity, habits, and what your wife will let you get away with.
During the holidays, I often see my sisters, who still, even after all these years, can't always seem to agree with me. They take silly, indefensible positions, such as denying that my parents loved me more because I was the better child.
Without a dog, no one will listen to your opinions for more than a few minutes without interrupting to tell you their opinions, which you won't find nearly as interesting.
You'd think skiing wouldn't be strenuous - all you have to do, after all, is start at the top and let gravity pull you to the dessert bar in the lodge. But at those elevations, you'll find about as much oxygen as you'll find kindness from your children. It's like spending six hours holding your breath.
About the most exciting thing a baby can do is burp - I've spent hours of my life holding a baby on my shoulder and patting its back, trying to loosen up a burp. Burping was probably invented to give the father something positive to do, since our chests are not equipped to allow us to do much else.
An ice-fishing shanty is basically a tin outhouse on a frozen lake, except that in an outhouse, the hole has a purpose. In ice fishing, the hole is what you stare at for hours, hoping that at some point you'll break the monotony by falling in.
I've tried several diets over the past couple of years - not because I need to lose weight, but because my pants are trying to cut me in two.
Without a dog, I would have tassels on my throw pillows instead of little stubs of yarn that look like small worms. The pillows seem to function just fine without the tassels, so perhaps it isn't a problem.
With a 3D printer, you could build your own car, one part at a time. When you were finished, you'd have an automobile that is extremely lightweight because it is made of plastic, which is good because you'd need to carry it because it is made of plastic.
Your neighbors will be envious of your 3D printer - and if they're not, just print new neighbors. Design them so they'll like to bring you pies, maybe, or want to do your yard work for you.
3D printers give us what we've all been craving: another reason to talk to technical support. When you finally get the thing working, though, you'll be able to print out your grocery list as a cube! When you look up directions online, you can print the map out on a globe!
