The language of obsession is often dark. Someone in its throes can be described as a victim of mania or addiction. He can be tarred as a fetishist or compulsive. According to Sigmund Freud, who gave it the diagnostic term “fixation,” obsession is an infantile...

Perhaps there's never been a finer caricature of a drummer than Animal, the beetle-browed, flaming red cave-man of The Muppets. Frank Oz, who performed Animal for a quarter of a century, summed him up in five words: sex, sleep, food, drums, and pain. For all his manic...

In the spring, I wrote about one of our favorite filmmakers, the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, who was known, over the span of a long and brilliant career, for creating fierce, capable, and imaginative protagonists -- who just happened to be girls. Since...

Chasing down a favorite food from your past can be a lot like looking up an old girlfriend: you'd better be prepared for disappointment -- or worse, a bad case of indigestion. Things are rarely as delicious as we remember, since deliciousness is as much a product of...

A young cousin of mine is going to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah in a few weeks. This means that she will be called up before the congregation at her synagogue to read from the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. This is an important rite of passage for Jews, who, at age...

It's been sixteen years since I bought a videocamera to record the exploits of our brand-new baby girl. It was a Sony Handycam, a wonder of miniaturization that recorded onto mini DV cassettes. Even more amazing than its compact size and light weight -- a mere two...

A few days ago, a friend issued me a challenge on Facebook: without thinking too hard about it, list ten books that have influenced you. Once I made my list, I was supposed to challenge ten of my own friends to do the same thing. Thus, the “list of ten influential...

Apple computers have been my constant companions for more than thirty years -- in fact, I'm writing this column on my trusty iMac. I'm not exactly what you would call an “early adopter.” I've never stood in line outside an Apple store -- in fact, I do my utmost to...

I've recently been enjoying the effects of a tiny blue pill. No, not that tiny blue pill -- although I will say that the results have been immediate and prodigious. The pills I'm talking about are oval; ribbed on one side; and available over the counter. Here's the...

There I was, working away on the new novel. It was a Tuesday just like any other Tuesday until, midway through a particularly thorny passage, a dark veil came down across my screen, accompanied by the words, “You need to restart your computer.” This was somewhat...

Twenty years ago today, I was sitting on the balcony of the Morrison-Clark Historic Inn with my brand-new wife, watching Washington D.C.'s L-Street commuters hurtle to work. It was a splendid fall morning. We'd just polished off some delicious smoked salmon and a pot...

I wrote last week of a happy marriage by way of Edward Lear's nonsense poem, “The Owl and the Pussy-cat,” with its Bong-Tree and runcible spoon. I've always been fond of nonsense poems, and the Victorian variety in particular, exemplified by Mr. Lear and his supremely...

In researching my recent column on Altoids, those “curiously strong” mints in the nifty tin containers, I came across pictures of a miniature guitar amp housed in an Altoid tin, and learned that someone was selling kits to make them on Etsy.com. Naturally, I had to...

Twenty years of marriage have taught me a mystifying, yet irrefutable, equation: my wife's car + parking on the street overnight = crushed wreck in the morning. This has now happened to us five times -- five times! Over the years, we've learned our lesson. When we're...