“I just use Facebook to meet up with friends or to know what’s happening next week,” he said. “My parents and older people abuse Facebook. They put too much out there.” Like a lot of young adults, Marty doesn't have much use for email, though he uses it with his cousins “as a way to tell longer, more involved stories, mostly about how out of it our parents are.”

I'm considered part of Marty's generation, despite our 10-year age difference. But the only common ground we had in that conversation was the Phillies and smoking a cigarette in the parking lot of a bar. When it comes to technology, I might as well be his granddad.

Born in 1978, I’m a millennial in name only. I’m really a Luddite. I don’t get technology, and for a long time I tried to convince myself I didn’t want to get it. My view on the latest cyber advances was lack of interest and occasionally hostility. I imagined that this rejection marked me as an iconoclast or a rugged individualist. A real man listens to Led Zeppelin and doesn’t listen to Led Zeppelin on iTunes -- that sort of thing. Now, thanks to that mulishness and vanity, I feel like a clamshell of a man, outdated and struggling to communicate with the rest of my cohorts’ fancy smartphones. At the age of 33, I've been left behind.

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I'm kinda fond of Hooters. As chain restaurants go, it is a fine establishment with a specific culinary point of view. Food-wise it never tries to be anything it isn’t. The food is deeply fried and tastes like shame, but the bathrooms are always very clean. The domestic beer is served in a frosty cold mug.

The service is spectacular, and I'm not making a dumb joke about boobs here. I've had waitresses scare me up cigarettes after casually mentioning that I'd love a smoke, I've had waitresses offer to watch my computer while I go have a cigarette or make a run to one of the pristine bathrooms, I've even gotten the rare corporate beer buy-back. But mostly, the service is attentive and friendly without being overbearing and obnoxious, which is sort of an amazing feat considering the dress code.

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The story goes like this: A year and a half after my mother and father welcomed my sister into the world, my mother found herself pregnant for the second time. Early in the pregnancy there were complications that put the health of the fetus and my mother at risk. After careful and difficult deliberation my mother and father chose to end the pregnancy. No one was happy about the choice, it was not approached in a cavalier fashion, but my mother and father decided it was the safest course of action, and the one that was in the best interest of the entire family.

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The 59-year-old actor brought his trademark mug -- and a few TV cameras -- to a year-long job teaching 10th-grade English at Northeast High School for an A&E reality show called "Teach" (Oct. 1, 10 p.m. EDT). The school is situated in a sprawling section of Philadelphia known locally as the Great Northeast, which houses both bombed-out buildings and manicured suburban lawns, with a mixture of not just black and white students but Asian and Russian immigrant populations as well. You can say Danza is guilty of naiveté or narcissism, but you can't say he doesn't try; he brings more showmanship to the classroom than the second-stage headliner at Harrah's in Atlantic City. Much of "Teach's" first seven episodes are devoted to Danza's efforts to become more involved in and out of the classroom: He tap-dances, he sings. He even cries. If he were a better actor, I might doubt his sincerity. But I've seen "Who's the Boss." He ain't that good.

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I agreed.

My daughter spit a cigarette butt and bottle cap from between her mud-caked lips, and I decided to ignore the weepy cries of "To infinity and beyond!" as I turned my attention back to the old woman.

"Where were we?" I asked.

I was surprised to discover that she had been keeping tabs on me over the last year as I carted my kids around the neighborhood and spent my mornings with them at the park. Through her silent observation she had come to understand that my wife was the one who worked and I was the one who was at home with the kids.

It was creepy and flattering. She was like a little old Corey Hart wearing her sunglasses at night, except her sunglasses had a special prescription for her cataracts so she had to wear them all the time.

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I have a 4-year-old and an 18-month-old back in Philadelphia, so I quietly mumbled something about no apologies being necessary. I was also pretty hammered. Rocking back and forth with my eyes closed I was willing the elevator to get me to my floor before I got sick or fell over -- all I wanted to do was bite the head off the complimentary Chocolate Frog that the bellman had dropped off earlier and pass out in my big comfy hotel bed. Flump! -- I felt Arnold the Pink Pygmy Puff bounce off my forehead. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the mother's pleading, but all I could focus on was the sound coming from the little girl's mouth, a peal of high-pitched laughter ...

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I woke up this morning to discover my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, peddling a story about America's new favorite model of man: the retrosexual. Normally I ignore almost everything in my local paper, but this, in combination with a recent article in the New York Times about the sequel to "The Official Preppy Handbook," has got my knickers in a bunch.

The retrosexual is a clever play on that other dusty gem of modern trend masculinity, the metrosexual. Unlike metrosexualism, which encouraged men to worry about their appearance and spend copious amounts of money on beauty products and clothes to mask the kinds of insecurities normally pushed on women, the retrosexual trend encourages men to worry about their appearance and spend copious amounts of money on products and clothes to mask more traditional masculine insecurities, like being gay, or a broke loser, or a gay broke loser.

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But perhaps the better, and more interesting, question is: Why do cheaters marry? Consider how many star athletes and celebrity bad boys sleep around on their wives; now consider the scandal and professional fallout that breaks loose upon discovery. Wouldn't it be easier for a man not to get married, at least until he decided his carrot was sufficiently wet? Why put yourself through the strain of a potentially messy extramarital affair? Don't we live in a brave new world where we don't judge others for choosing not to worship at the altar of familial bliss? Wasn't it our grandparents' generation who naively worried about the status of being "an older bachelor"? Look at George Clooney. That guy will never have a sex scandal.

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For the record, I don't cheat, not that my proclamation means anything. I could be cheating as I write this for all you know.

But I don't judge cheaters. I think there are understandable reasons for cheating: love of sex, the desire to feel young, the illusion of new love (Marc Sanford, I'm looking in your direction), and let's not forget fear of death. All this stuff is acceptable in my book. I recognize some of these reasons may be short-sighted and may ultimately end up causing everyone involved big hurt, but they are, at the very least, hopeful. Maybe you are with the wrong person and will find someone who makes you happier. They are concerns with which I can sympathize. Who doesn't want to feel younger or more attractive sometimes?

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How often have you been at a fancy dinner party, or a rocking kegger, and overheard someone lamenting the fact that their friends with children have suddenly been rendered incapable of discussing anything except the contents of the baby's diapers or the adorable thing little Cullen did to the dog? There are Facebook groups for venting frustration with parents who constantly yammer about their offspring and the business of raising them. I understand where these people are coming from. But it is hard for me to understand why they are so annoyed — after all, those people are free.

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I'm not sure Luca Brasi would have ever found an occasion to offer his best wishes for a feminine child. He was a product of his times. Back then, you needed a male heir to inherit your sprawling crime syndicate. The idea of a woman whacking a drug-peddling upstart over a plate of clams never even crossed poor Luca's frontal lobes.

But those days, like Luca Brasi, swim with the fishes. Boys are falling behind in the workforce, in higher education, and at primary academics. According to the Associated Press, even the sprawling crime syndicates of Italy are now enjoying an era of unmatched chromosomal diversity at their highest levels. With the ascension of the double X and the supposed decline of the Y, you might expect the birth of a girl to be heralded with, at least, an equal sort of excitement to the announcement of the birth of a boy. And yet, as 18 million cracks appear on the highest of ceilings, perhaps we should train our gaze a little lower to the first ceiling our daughters encounter: the middling enthusiasm toward the impending arrival of a baby girl.

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Michael Vick can scramble and pass (sort of) but he has committed despicable gruesome acts of violence toward animals. On the other hand, Tony Danza is a triple threat: He can sing, he can dance, and he can act (sort of), and as far as I know he has done nothing that compares with the crimes committed by Vick. What Danza can't do, as far as I know, is teach.

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The only two areas of my life where I feel truly committed and at ease are with my wife and children. So, two years ago, it was with some enthusiasm that I removed myself from the world of adults and settled in for a yearlong turn as a stay-at-home dad.

The decision to stay home was a fairly easy one. My 1-year-old son displayed early warning signs of being part tornado, and our household was beginning to crack like a trailer home under the strain of 175 mph winds. My wife had the degree, the full-time job, the benefits, and most important, desire and ambition. When you compared that to my mishmash of part-time contract work and my unique inability to function around other humans, it was clear who would be the one on the front lines in the constant battle against diaper rash.

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