As the kids get older, I’m actually able to have a few snippets of adult conversation at parties, instead of constantly patrolling the kids to make sure that they aren’t falling down stairs or knocking over glass figurines. The cocktail chatter:

1. Justin Timberlake’s Special Treat In a Box. And how NBC put the uncensored version on YouTube, when it couldn’t make it past the censors on TV.

2. Who watched Saddam get hung on You Tube? Not me.

3. James Brown. My dad recalled being at a wedding for a well-known political philosopher who played “I Feel Good” when the rabbi told him to kiss the bride and then the newly married couple danced down the aisle together. Gotta love Hot Tub.

4. My mom whispered to me, “thank God, you have boys.” When Steve came back from his high school reunion this fall, he was rather shocked to see the high school cheerleaders doing a pole dance for the crowd. I guess he shouldn’t have been so shocked, because even middle school girls are bumping and grinding. Nice quote:

There is no reason adulthood should be a low plateau we all clamber onto around age 10. And it’s a cramped vision of girlhood that enshrines sexual allure as the best or only form of power and esteem. It’s as if there were now Three Ages of Woman: first Mary-Kate, then Britney, then Courtney. Boys don’t seem to have such constricted horizons. They wouldn’t stand for it — much less waggle their butts and roll around for applause on the floor of a school auditorium.