The first check I cashed from the Internet came in 1997. I’d just moved to New York City. One of my friends from high school was at Columbia, and every summer she’d come back to Seattle and upbraid me for staying, so I stopped staying. She…

I haven’t slept more than three hours a night for the past six days. My wife’s been out of town on business, my son got hand, foot & mouth disease and his blood sugar has been crazy, I’m juggling a ton of work and stressing out about the summer, I’m…

I love just about everything about having kids except for listening to the radio. But my kids are in their tween years, when they want to keep up with the trends and fads that all their friends do, so when we drive to school the dial is usually turned to…

“It’s a movie about the greatest human achievement in the history of mankind, so why did it take them 50 years to make it?” That’s the question posed to me by Bart Sibrel, the Nashville-born filmmaker and writer who is probably most famous for being punched in the face by…

Context: at the Ignatz Awards ceremony at this year’s Small Press Expo, the name of pioneering underground cartoonist Robert Crumb was met with boos from the audience not once but twice, and Comics Culture is having a tough time dealing with it. I was originally going to write this on…

There’s a popular phrase in the right-wing corners of the Web that spend their time railing against “social justice warriors” and other boogeymen of diversity: “virtue signaling.” In short, it means the display of an opinion that’s designed to enhance your standing within a social group. So to the_donald centipedes…

This makes SO much sense. — Sleep might be the most important eight hours of the day. Your muscles relax, your brain calms down and starts processing new memories. Your subconscious releases anxieties and desires into your dreams. Study after study has shown that a good night’s sleep is essential to health and happiness. But if…

Stamping kids’ arms stigmatizes them. Here’s a better idea. — Growing up the child of a single parent, we struggled to make ends meet. I remember serving a detention in the lunchroom of my high school and passing out from hunger in front of my horrified classmates. The lunch ladies were kind enough to feed me some leftovers to get…

The stereotypes aren’t entirely unfounded. — My son Henry was born by C-section, his massive skull too much for traditional methods to push through. As the doctor lifted him out of my wife’s open midsection, my eyes were drawn like a magnet to the vibrant, absurd shock of red hair that…