The Urbane Urbanite

I was on the phone with my father recently and we almost came to blows over something he said to me. We were talking about family stuff and out of no where he asks... Have you had a drink today?

I've never known quite what to do with Kelis. Since she hit the scene with her debut album Kaleidoscope in 1999, I've tried desperately to put her in a box, all-the-while, jamming to her music.

A few weeks ago, the recipients of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for excellence in writing and journalism were announced. I clicked on the link to read one of the acclaimed stories and was blown away by “ Fatal Distraction ” an in-depth, haunting feature about parents who accidentally kill their children by leaving them in the backseat of their cars, causing them to die of hyperthermia. The jaw-dropping piece was published in The Washington Post Magazine on March 8, 2009 and written by Gene Weingarten, already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his story "Pearls Before Breakfast," but most known for his weekly humor column "Below the Beltway." The day after the story ran, Weingarten held an online chat forum to tackle some tough questions from his readers and discuss the inspiration behind the story and how he almost killed his own daughter over 25 years ago. But I had a few more questions the online chat didn’t cover that he was more than willing to answer.

Mother’s Day is this weekend. People everywhere are making last minute dinner reservations, ordering bouquets of flowers and scouring shelves of picked-through cards looking for the words that tell mom they care enough to send the very best. Wanda Rivera, however, will be going about her business as if it’s any other day. “The last time I celebrated Mother’s Day was the last one I had with my mom,” says the 40-year-old planning assistant from Newark, NJ. “For me, celebrating Mother’s Day was about celebrating her. Now that she’s no longer with us, it’s just not the same.” Rivera lost her mother in 2008 from a heart attack. Before her mother passed away, they would celebrate the day spending quality time together. “It was different every year,” recalls Rivera, who has two children of her own. “If the weather was nice, I’d take her out for the day. Or we’d go over to her place to cook, eat and talk. I loved doing things to make her happy on Mother’s Day. It was all about her.” S...

Last week, I tweeted this picture of my Mother and me at the nursing home visiting Granny. One of my followers retweeted the picture and said: “Wow, Shydel, you’re Mother is a MILF!” Lawd! After I threw up in my mouth, the comment got me to thinking: My Mom needs love too.

I don't know about you, but on a warm spring day there's nothing I enjoy more than pulling out the ol' bike, throwing on my helmet and riding through the hood. Whether I stay local or cruise through Manhattan, the thrill is just the same: The adrenaline races through my veins as my foot presses down on the pedal; the sharpness of the wind whips against my helmet as I zip through the streets; the unspoken camaraderie in the form of a head nod between myself and my biker bredrin strokes my ego as I pass them by. Nope. Nothing tops it!