Here in Spain the results were just published of a similar study. Kids here, compared to the rest of Europe, could barely figure out the basics of household money management.

Good for her. She's got the bod and the style and the stylist. It's nice to see vintage done well. I'm not a fan of her music, but she does have talent, and I like to think she just might keep going forward.

Sigh. I had a dress a lot like that back in the mid-80s, but white with grey and rust print. Too bad I didn't have that bod. (However, the dress was about $5 from the Salvation Army.)

"thoughtful and tender undoing ..." sounds like you've been peeling off your skin after a bad sunburn.

My first teaching job was at a community college (where a couple of relatives also worked), so I have a certain sweet spot for such institutions. Plus, I was a college flunk-out who scrambled back to school in my 20s and took a while to finish, so what can I say? I identify, and I suspect lots of other people do too.…

Placenta! It's what's for Donner.

I just puke at the way the world worships this phoney. The Vatican is about as genuine an institution as a Hollywood studio or the Pentagon: powerful moneymakers/moneymovers who need to get the masses on their side.

Her younger sister died a suicide a few years ago and Letizia broke down sobbing on camera while speaking to the press outside the funeral home. It was a really startling moment, and even super commies I know who despise the royalty kind of went, uh, ok, no comment here. The Spanish royals at least show a lot more…

Actually, I remember her weeping at the protest march the day after the bombings and at the mass for the victims, as she spoke with the victims families. The whole royal family did.

I live here and I've never heard her be public about her supposed abortion, which has only been bandied about by the right-wing press anyway (not that I care one way or another.)

I've had surgery to remove an ovarian cyst and three uterine fibroids, and my GYN made sure that I had several abdominal and vaginal ultrasounds before they even thought about the surgery. Who the hell decides to yank out ovaries in a young woman before making absolutely sure that every diagnostic possibility has been…

Paul Simon started it with his kid in 1972. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Si…

Was about to post this same video. Glad to see that cultural references like this live on.

Melanie had an awful time with the press here in Spain when they first got married. Back then, there weren't that many foreigners in the country (except for the Costa del Sol vacation apartment hoardes) and they made fun of her then limited Spanish and her accent and just about everything. I don't wonder that she felt…

Paul and Joanne had an apartment in Manhattan near where I grew up. I used to see them going down to the local Italian deli some evenings to get (yet) more beer for Paul. They always looked happy to be together.

Antonio belongs to a "cofradia" (one of the groups that marches in the Holy Week processions) in his hometown in Málaga, Spain. He seems to go home to join them practically every year. I'm impressed that his Catholicism isn't just for a pap opp.

She may well be, but...I've seen people in other professions start out with the shock marketing approach, swearing that they'll never really sink so low in their personal lives. They almost always go as bad as their image.

I'm not belittleing people at all. Just a culture of entitlement. And it's odd to call me a dick while you're supposedly defending friendship and love.

Look, you can buy a gift for one of your friends even if all they finished was breakfast. What were're talking about here is a something that was a pleasant tradition that has warped into a giant global "gimmee gimmee" temper tantrum. It's nice to treat your friends and family. It's sick that it's become some type of…

Who apart from maybe parents gives any body a gift for grad school? It just seems the wedding that demands a response.