Sunday we lost another young celebrity.  32 year old actress Brittany Murphy died in her home Sunday morning, yet another tragic death of a young Hollywood star.  Is it me, or has this been a busy year of celebrity deaths?   Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, David Carradine, Bea Arthur, Dom DeLuise, John Hughes, Walter Cronkite, Patrick Swayze.  Wow!  Many who have died this year did so way ahead of their time. Some were fixtures of history, which I can honestly say I remember where I was and what I was doing when I saw them perform.  In any case, it lead me on a chase to see if indeed 2009 is a bit busier than normal.  Form my unscientific account, it has.  Look back on the decade to see who we have lost.

But on the upside, we are about to embark on a brand new decade.  Doesn’t seem like yesterday that we were all a buzz about the end of humanity?  All the computers would fail, chaos will fill the streets, planes would fall out of the sky, blah…blah…blah.  I can remember playing it safe and pulling some cash out of the bank in preparation of Y2K.  Of course, all the doom and gloom never materialized.  I sit and wonder about all the gadgets and progress we have accomplished over the last 10 years.  Cell phones are more than a phone, TV’s are flat, light and vivid and I no longer need to use a foldable map.  Imagine where we will be when we reflect back in the year 2019?

Holiday with Horses

Help!  My in-laws are spoiling the kids and won’t stop when we ask them to!  What can we do?

Dear Storm & Chris,

Christmas is less a week away and there’s a storm brewing in our house.  My wife’s parents insist on spoiling our two kids.  When they were little they’d buy screaming fire engines and drum sets.  Now that my oldest child is almost 10 years old they bought him an X-box video system.

My wife and I are united on this.  We don’t want to introduce video games to our kids at this stage in their lives.  The problem is my in-laws ignore our requests and give the kids whatever they want.  What am I supposed to do?

I look like a total jerk if I seize the gifts from Grandma and Grandpa as they walk through the door.  Any ideas? 

Sincerely,

Save Me From My In-Laws!

Tell us!  What would you do?

Portable North Pole allows you to communicate directly with the Jolly Old Elf, himself!

Create a video message from Santa and send it to a friend or relative.  Just fill out a few questions and the video is sent instantly!

Listen as Chris gets a warning from Santa this morning: 12.18.09.1.Chris Gets a Message From Santa

Lifetime Television has revealed the latest bunch of hopefuls for the seventh season of its Project Runway series, returning on January 14th. It’s an unusually international cast this season, with contestants from the Ivory Coast, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Mexico and China. Also from Woonsocket, Rhode Island and Plano, Texas. Not surprisingly, most of the contestants are young and attractive. Entertainment Weekly’s Popwatch blog is very hopeful that Ping Wu might turn out to be the new season’s “entertaining nutter butter.” In her home video, she models some kooky hand-knit socks that double as washcloths.

The new cast is featured at http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/project-runway/project-runway-designers

Chris’s tree is looking a little sickly….

So we took it to the streets to see if there was anything that would save it.  Listen to all your calls, including the expert opinion of a medical professional and a master gardener!

12.17.09.1.Chris’s Tree is Turning Brown

12.17.09.2.Browning Tree Calls

12.17.09.3.More Browning Tree Calls

12.17.09.5.More Browning Tree Calls and Man Colds

The Truth About ‘Man Colds’

Is the ‘man cold’ myth or reality?

Researchers at England’s University of Glasgow studied nearly 1,700 people and found that men were more likely than women to overrate their common cold symptoms. The researchers theorized that men and women have different thresholds for perceiving and reporting symptoms, rather than actual differences in symptoms.

That is, their cold symptoms were the same. But men and women responded differently to those symptoms.

“For God’s sake, woman. He’s a man. He has a man cold.“

Is there anything that will stop a tree from turning brown?

Chris’s family’s Christmas tree is turning brown at a rapid pace!  What is wrong with it?  And can it be saved?

Tell us! Is there anything you use to stop your  tree from turning brown and losing all its needles?