Opinion & Columns

Our own Deborah Paul was in L.A. for the 2012 Oscars, red carpet and all.

You can buy chairs at the drugstore. Granted, the selection consists of remote-controlled lift chairs for the old or infirm, but still. They are chairs, they cost $799, and you can buy them at the drugstore. On my last visit, I was tempted to try one just to see how far it would launch me, but I was afraid someone I knew might see. So I moved on to the “walking sticks”—canes, for crying out loud—and blood-pressure cuffs. Those devices I expect to see at the drugstore, but chairs? That blows me away.

I don’t believe the world will end this month, as the Mayan calendar dubiously predicts. But Robert Vicino is banking on Armageddon—or some other life-extinction scenario, be it nuclear war, meteorite, solar storms, bacon shortage. The California businessman hawks subterranean bunkers (“Doomsday Profit”), one of which resides in Indiana. The Cold War–esque lairs by Vicino’s Vivos Group come complete with flat-screen TVs and stainless-steel appliances for the low, low price of $50,000 a space.

Slashing taxes sounds like a great idea. Until it isn’t.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been wearing clothes. I feel about them the same way I feel about many items and persons of long association—a grudging acceptance of their necessity with the scantest appreciation for their virtues.

I find the first stage of a remodel much like surgery, in that once you agree, there is no time to second-guess.

Grandmas enjoy a more casual relationship with their grandkids than they used to, one that I’ve been fortunate to develop myself.

Last summer, when family troubles landed me down in the dumps, I decided I should have a little joy in my life. I got an urge, not unlike the longing a woman gets when it’s time for another child: that stirring deep inside that is at first un-recognizable but slowly gels into actual thought, and, finally, action. I wanted—no, needed—another cat to take the place of my beloved Scooter, who died, cancer-ridden, deaf, and blind, at the age of 21.

On October 22, cycling’s governing body formally stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles due to alleged involvement in a doping scandal, and on November 1, the International Olympic Committee opened an investigation into the cyclist’s bronze-medal-winning performance in 2000.

“Their disappearance is inevitable. And nobody is coming along to snap my money back into existence, either.”