Who is LW married to, anyway? Her husband, or her sister? Her rapturous attachment to providing what her sister lacks strikes me as very immature. It almost seems as though she DOES want another kid, or at least the tender attention she gets while she's pregnant, and thinks it's OK as long as she doesn't keep the baby.

And who's to say she won't desperately want to, once the little he or she is born? This is nuts. Do some good for the world: tell the childless couple that if they adopt, you'll babysit for free.

...if there's only ONE other person out there besides me who said Don Cheadle. I read this whole letter thing this morning to see if anybody else loves Don. Playing it with courage is sexier than anything, and if there's been a better example of this in American theaters in the last 20 years than Hotel Rwanda, I missed it.

But Peter O'Toole is out there somewhere, and I don't care how old he is, he's still the guy who asked Julie Christie to lick the toothpaste off his mug in "Don't Look Now."

Anybody seen Eric Dickerson lately, anyway? (He used to be a running back for the LA Rams.) I saw his bare ankles on Joan Rivers once and it made me vibrate like a tuning fork.

I said Julie Christie licked toothpaste off Peter O'Toole's mouth in "Don't Look Now" (the sexiest sex scene in an English-speaking movie) but it was Donald Sutherland's kisser she was lapping. Fie on everybody out there who gets grossed out by the idea of older men being sexy. It's all automatic to you tyros out there, but once a guy has some serious mileage on him, everything means sooo much more.

Don Cheadle's going to be even more delectable when he's 60, believe me! And yeah---I shoulda mentioned Chow Yun Fat. He can dunk his socks in my coffee any time.

Anybody notice that the opinionators on this strip-workout thing have stopped calling it some kind of New Feminism? It never made sense in the first place. This Carmen Electra schtick is all about being better at servicing men, and that's what we're teaching our youth.

But if a workout is a good thing, a dancing workout is better. So, women, bare your torsos, drape your hips, and bellydance! It's sexy, it's graceful, it's ancient, it wasn't invented by men, and it's something you do with women who might become your very best pals. It's not hootchy-kootchy or cute if you do it right—just exuberant and snaky. Plus, if you've ever seen an older, experienced dancer wow a crowd, Shakira looks a little candyfloss and silly. What else? You need a belly to shake. And the clothes totally rule.

I've been in the same position as the letter-writer, only the deceased in question was my own father—a charmer and philanderer who specialized in intimidating (and feeling up) his five daughters while cleaning out the family bank account. During his lifetime, I had intimations that the rest of the world knew his faults but didn't care. "Your dad loves you so much," his friends would blather. How much and in what way, they really didn't want to hear.

I gave a eulogy at his funeral, to a packed church. I told funny stories with a tiny, slight edge of darkness that you'd have to listen hard to detect. But I let everybody know that he was my dad, and that's what I would miss.

One year later (the anniversary of his death was yesterday) I am amazed to report that the stories about what a great guy my dad was ceased the day of the funeral. No one ever mentioned it again. It was as if everybody was tired of keeping up the charade. I'll always wonder if my life would have been better if somebody—a man, since they're the only people my father listened to—had ever had the courage to challenge him about his misuse of power. If anyone ever did, it escaped the notice of my entire family. In this day and age, integrity is no longer the community's business. Some people who weep at funerals cry harder for this.

I want to add that I did attend a funeral during which a daughter spoke honestly about her troubles with her father. It backfired, making her look weak and spiteful. Perhaps everyone is shamed by bad behavior that goes unchallenged. But if everybody's done the best they could, give the man a sendoff that presidents would envy, then kick back and listen to the silence.

...annoying. As someone who is book-smart but not witty, I would like to offer a few observations. I have been consistently disappointed at what passes for wit. More often than not, it consists of making fun of one's inferiors in a way that one's peers feels comfortable at laughing at, since the audience is sure nobody else will get the joke. That way, the select few who "get" the witster get a pat on the head for being mean instead of the more appropriate kick in the shins.

The best jokes are the absurd ones: abundantly innocent, and quite often, stupid. Give me someone who can do a good approximation of what a cat might say to another cat.