Note: Dear readers, after almost a decade, this will be my last Daddy Needs A Drink column for SFR. Instead of writing a goodbye letter, I’ve decided to end the way I started: with a love letter to my child and to a town I’ve lived in for almost a quarter century....

When I’m not traveling with children, I’m pretty easygoing. I don’t get stressed about delayed flights due to inclement weather in Denver, and I’m easily entertained by the new novel by Robert Boswell or salesmen in khaki pants getting their pre-flight drink on in...

“Our question of the day is, ‘What is your passion?’” our soft-spoken server said when she put down our menus. “I always say, ‘My ass,’” my high school friend Rita said when the server moved out of earshot. “Really?” “No, not really.” She smiled. “They don’t invent...

Many people who fly are concerned about what they might hear as they’re traveling from destination to destination. They don’t want their flights ruined by the squalls of a screaming baby or a snoring man whose love handles crawl over the armrests. I was recently on a...

“You need to go, it’s like heaven,” my friend Nell said over the phone. I called her to complain about my allergies, among other whiny subjects. A fellow sufferer, she was sympathetic and, unlike other stuffy heads I know, she offered a temporary solution: the Borrego...

“Dude, I got a line on some liquid Nag Champa. Have to call you back,” my brother Eddie screamed over the phone. I’d wanted to check in with him before I started school after a two-week spring break. “Where are you?” I asked, having no idea what Nag Champa was or why...

I’ve never been one for trampolines. My father drilled it into his four boys that the acrobat’s terra not-so-firma ended up more often in compound fractures than the free feeling of being able to fly. Before we went to a friend’s whose parents were either too drunk or...

1.   My mother would have turned 82 on Feb. 1. She died at 52 on a rented hospital bed in our dining room in Connecticut. 2.   As I write this, friends and family are gathering at the Sky Rink in Chelsea Piers in New York City to remember my college friend Brian who...

My friend Larry was trying to explain. “It’s like I’m Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School,” he said, “only without the money.” We were sitting around our friends’ and former professors’ kitchen table, watching dogs and kids and Legos mix it up on the floor while...

Dani: Saturday, Oct. 20, 2:13 am I’m dancing with my friends in Taylor’s living room, singing along with Stevie Wonder, and delighting in the smell of Topanga Canyon wafting through the windows. Dani: Saturday, 4:07 am We’re huddled together on the futon, trying to...