The apple never falls far from the tree. This is 5-Year Old Daughter and I from a few days ago.

I must have looked at these pictures 1,000 times. I look at them when I’ve got the blues and they make me happy. I look at them when I’m happy and they make me happier. Sometimes, if I’m in a certain mood, I’ll look at them and get choked up. What a pussy!

I hope I can keep it together and not do anything stupid to hurt my girls. Everyone makes occasional dumb choices in life. It’s part of the human condition. I’m not immune. Neither are you. Yeah, I’m talking to you. I just hope that when it’s my turn to stumble, I only cause harm to myself. That I can live with.

When I begin my morning commute, I usually pop in my earbuds to check the news and see if the world imploded overnight. Last week my earbud felt kind of funny so I reached up to adjust it and it popped of the cord and wedged itself into my ear canal. I panicked!

This was at 5:50 a.m. mind you, so I wasn’t exactly at the top of my game when it came to dealing with a medical crisis. I spent the next 1:15 trying to dig the thing out of my head. My big, clumsy, sausage fingers only succeed in pushing it deeper into my ear canal. I got a pen and tried to dig it out but all that got me was an ear full of ink marks.

I did a chant to calm myself down. As soon as I got into the city, I ran to the nearest drug store and bought a pair of Revlon tweezers, walked to an empty aisle and carefully extracted the earbud. Let that be a lesson to you.

It’s passover week and that means the Mitzva Tanks are winding their way through the streets of Manhattan. They’re fantastic! Mitzva Tanks are mobile homes owned by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism. They blast music and hang out the window and wave at stunned onlookers. Their mission is to spread good will to non-observant Jews. And you don’t have to be a Jew to get a free pamphlet!

Many Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism believe the last Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson who died in 1994, was actually the messiah.

I report this with all due respect. I believe ALL religions have their own preposterous claims. I don’t find this any odder than being told that not prescribing to a specific set of beliefs will send me straight to hell, as the Christian and Muslim lunatic fringe would have me believe. Besides, how can you feel anything other than good will towards someone who drives a Mitzva Tank?! They seem so happy! I ran into these guys on my lunch break along Central Park South parading in front of the priciest hotels in the city.

Hang around graphic design long enough and you’ll realize that a good design is something that should be beaten to death. Case in point. I noticed that the Sunday New York Times Magazine had a cover graphic that looked an awful lot like the cover of the new Bruce Springsteen CD. I’m sure the chunky-white paint font look is just a weird coincidence.

This sort of thievery has gone on for ages. Corporate logos have repeatedly used a modified Nike swoosh. It’s not exactly like the swoosh, but it’s born from that. There’s the upward swoosh…