Earlier this summer, the Toms River Patch was full of 'Best Burger' and 'Best Bar.' As a nearly lifelong resident of Toms River, I can tell you that the 'Best' business in town doesn't serve beef or Bud, but you will get a trim in good company at Jerry's Barbershop. In the twelve months of my life I didn't live in Toms River, I visited nearly twelve different barbershops and salons. There were the small, local shops; the chains; the mall salons; and the ethnic ones. In Belmar, and old Italian man gave me a dated side-part while exacerbating my hypochondria by shaving the back on my neck with …

You hear the first notes, and you scream at the top of your lungs. If you don’t have a band that makes you do that, a song that ignites your soul, that makes you explode when that band drops those first notes, you need to find it. You just need to. Seeing your favorite band live, when they play your favorite song of theirs, everyone around you joyously singing and dancing in a tight crowd of a small bar. Time stands still and quickens at the same time. Your heart leaps out of your chest and your eardrums are blown to bits. The requisite ringing in your ears for hours later can’t drown out the…

With a few months training behind us, our hotel room was booked and our bags were practically packed. My wife and I were headed to Buffalo, New York to run Rapid Running's Buffalo Half-Marathon. Then, just nine days before the June 30 race date, the unthinkable occurred: Rapid Running cancelled the race. Well, to be entirely accurate, Rapid Running "indefinitely postponed" its race, a phrase that (for now) has allowed the company to retain the entry fees of approximately 2,000 entrants according to it policies. Reasons for the postponed being kicked around by local Buffalo news outlets and …

I remember peddling as fast as I dared, secure in the knowledge that my father was running alongside me, holding on to the back of my bicycle seat.  I turned my head to talk to him. To my surprise, he was standing back where we had started.  He was smiling, and I realized that he had let go to show me that I could ride without him.   My father was a wise man. As much as he adored me, he was never indulgent.  He had a gift, however, for compromise.  When I was in the eighth grade, I was awarded a four-year scholarship to an all-girls Catholic academy in my hometown. Not only was that a …

Drive around town this month and you're bound to see them. At every major intersection and highway median, they protrude a few feet up from the freshly sprouting grass, a cardboard promise to a slightly better social life. The second cousin, twice-removed from the November campaign signs and step-brother of the realty marker, I'm speaking, of course, about the crop of advertisements for this summer's youth sports camps. Growing up in Toms River, the seasons dictated a child's athletic options. For me, the fall meant soccer at Riverwood Park, the winter was YMCA basketball, and the spring saw …

It is that wonderful time of the year once again, that time when we start to be grateful, grateful for all that we have no matter how meager it may appear to some. And of course there is the old adage: ‘If you have your health, you have everything.’ I tried that line on a homeless person once. Can’t share her reply with you here but it was a substantial response, nothing spared in the translation. Yet, it is true. Think of the people of renown and wealth who have left this life just in the last month – Jobs and Lauder, for two. So be thankful for your life. Be thankful that those you love are…

Some folks create hours-long playlists for a long trip. Me, I dig out George Carlin on audiobook and laugh the entire way to my destination. It’s hard for me to believe it’s been three years since George Carlin’s death. The brilliant, irreverent, mischievous and unabashed comic died June 2008. That’s because every time I listen, watch or read his routines these days, it is as though he’s satirizing current events. The jokes remain fresh, though Carlin’s catalog spans several decades. The barbs thrown at all sorts of systems — whether Carlin is mocking the political system, education system or…

As a young girl, my neighbors were a part of my life: they bought my Girl Scout cookies; I'd run through their yard. Some neighbors, they shoo you away. You never encounter them, except for a brief glance as they walk the dog or dash to the mailbox. They look over at you, with eyes that say: "That kickball better NOT hit my car." Janet Kamand was not like that. She was a neighbor like no other. Shooing away? No such thing. She'd laugh the loudest at your childlike antics. She might even help you, cheer you, as you kicked that ball. Her mailbox, first base. Would her family play in the …

When my uncle built an in-depth genealogy of our family tree, he discovered that George Washington had eaten at the restaurant a great-great-great-great-great (you get the picture) relative owned. We were very surprised at our brief connection to then Gen. Washington and we point this out to visitors staring at the family tree hanging on the wall. And that's what many places that can claim that historic connection do, they make known the fact that someone famous ate there, slept there, stayed there, vacationed there. Summer houses end up on the National Register of Historic Places because of …

To state the obvious, we don’t live in the tropics. But as the unforgiving days of January 2011 take wintery stabs that penetrate even the most thermal of underwear, I still say (sometimes though I question myself) that I wouldn’t want to. Live in the tropics, that is. While an endless summer does seem lovely, albeit sweaty, I count myself among folks who enjoy winter and an onslaught of snow. And as inch after inch pile up, I can hear my fellow Toms River natives out-howl the winter wind, with their groans seeing the snow fall. There’s the shoveling. The cold. The roads. The…snow. But for me…