Midlife Crisis

The baby boomers have done it again. As children in the '50s, they reigned over a child-centered society of stay-at-home moms and dads determined to give their kids everything they hadn't had. The boomers' adolescence and young adulthood - with its signature slogan, "Don't trust anyone over 30" - made them the insufferable center of the dominant youth culture. Yet when they did turn 30, the age when other generations had begun to take responsibility for children, baby boomers weren't yet married, had many fewer kids, and had them later in life.

A whimsical tale of serial murder in the English countryside, Keeping Mum benefits immensely from the charm and pitch-perfect gravitas of Kristin Scott Thomas. As Gloria Goodfellow, a vicar's unhappy spouse, the actress brings emotional depth to a shallow pond of silliness - a pond, it should be noted, that is rapidly filling with corpses. The sinister agent in this tweedy, picture-postcard affair is one Grace Hawkins (Maggie Smith), a grandmotherly type with a warm smile and efficient manner who enters the Goodfellows' life as their new housekeeper.

Dear Amy: My husband of 20 years is in the middle of a major midlife crisis. He is unsatisfied with his job, our home and his life in general. Things he used to enjoy have been pushed aside. He complains about everything, and has decided that he has been unhappy being married to me for the last 15 years. He has a woman friend who suddenly has become his "right arm," and they have lunch together daily and spend hours on the phone. He claims they are just friends, but he also told me he has fallen in love with her. She is married and supposedly has no intention of leaving her husband, but she knows how my husband feels about her and encourages their relationship.

Strip away the drug-dealing and the kinky European who may or may not be a killer, and what's left at the core of Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper is a movie about a man and his midlife crisis. Willem Dafoe, in a performance that resonates with intelligence and low- flame intensity, is John LeTour, a meditative lost soul who works as a runner for a high-end cocaine distributor. In the 1960s, LeTour was a starry- eyed, dope-smoking brother of the counterculture. In the 1990s, he's adrift - a melancholy insomniac who sits in his empty, ill-lit Manhattan apartment scrawling thoughts in a composition notebook.

When Dad makes a mistake around the house, 10-year-old Benjamin Steinberg of Ardmore either laughs hysterically "or he'll rub my face in it," says his father, Laurence Steinberg. Steinberg, 42, the director of the developmental psychology department at Temple University, understands what's happening psychologically with his pre- adolescent son. He knows that in the next few years, Benjamin will alter his view of his parents and take them off the pedestal. He knows that it's necessary for his son to separate himself and establish his own identity.

DEAR ABBY: My husband, who is 53, talks often about his college days when he smoked marijuana. I tried it once and didn't like it. Over the past several years he has started smoking it again. I have told him I don't approve, but he says he does it only occasionally "to take the edge off. " Many times he has smoked when we're out on bike rides, on road trips or a Sunday drive. It makes me feel like he needs to be high in order to have a good time with me. I tried compromising by asking him not to do it when we are together.

CHARACTER ACTOR extraordinaire Oliver Platt is a dad in real life, plays a dad in "Please Give," which opens tomorrow, and is a dad in his next movie. Does Platt, father of three, mind being cast in this way? "Not when the roles are as well written as these are!" said Platt, who's gotten some of the best reviews of his estimable career for "Please Give," from writer-director Nicole Holofcener. It's an ensemble story about several New Yorkers, but Platt, playing opposite Catherine Keener as half of a cozy, complacent married couple, has one of the plum roles.

BILL'S WORLD From Bill Tammeus, Kansas City Star: Norman Mailer's new CIA epic, "Harlot's Ghost," is being widely panned. Oh, come on. It can't be much worse than the Gates hearings. "What the economy needs is a shot of confidence," says President Bush. What's the economic equivalent of invading Grenada? Midlife crisis: It's not just when you tell your kids things your folks told you but also when they reply with the same smart-aleck words you used as a kid. On Supreme Court nominees, the Senate is supposed to give advice and consent.

The title-character's redemption comes very slowly. But if you have patience, this is a stately, beautifully composed story. It's about a feudal swordsman in ancient India who quits warring and tries to set things right, only to be chased all over an unforgiving desert landscape by a fellow swordsman who wants his head. Badly. "The Warrior" was made in 2001 by first-time British director Asif Kapadia. It is being released now as Miramax winds down and cleans out its closet.

Camden County judge Lee Solomon was recovering yesterday from a fractured skull and other injuries he suffered in a bicycle accident Sunday morning. The 55-year-old Superior Court judge is "progressing nicely, and he's going to need a lot of rest and rehab," said his wife, Dianne Solomon. "He's not going to be back in the courthouse any time soon. " Solomon, of Haddonfield, could be out of Cooper University Hospital's Intensive Care Unit as early as today, she said. Solomon has been a state judge for more than three years, after stints as a Camden County freeholder and prosecutor, a Republican assemblyman, and an assistant U.S. attorney.

Bonnie Offit's medical schooling didn't deal much with the condition known as midlife crisis. After all, she was studying to be a pediatrician; her patients would be a long way from tiring of life's routine. But Offit knows it when she's experiencing it. "This is my midlife crisis, for sure," the 50-year-old Bala Cynwyd mother of two said, laughing, one recent morning as she sat in the frozen-yogurt shop she opened just before Memorial Day weekend in Stone Harbor. It's one of three Bonnie's Toppings stores she has opened in the last year at the Jersey Shore.

DEAR ABBY: My husband, who is 53, talks often about his college days when he smoked marijuana. I tried it once and didn't like it. Over the past several years he has started smoking it again. I have told him I don't approve, but he says he does it only occasionally "to take the edge off. " Many times he has smoked when we're out on bike rides, on road trips or a Sunday drive. It makes me feel like he needs to be high in order to have a good time with me. I tried compromising by asking him not to do it when we are together.

DEAR ABBY: I am 18 and sad all the time. I have never had a boyfriend and have struggled in the past with anxiety and loneliness. It has been a roller-coaster year for me - a tough first year of college, watching all of my friends enter meaningful relationships. All I can do is be ashamed of the fact that I'm struggling while others are thriving. I need help but don't know where to turn. - A Complete Mess in Ohio DEAR COMPLETE MESS: Before I start offering you advice, please let me point out that the first year of college is a huge adjustment for everyone.

NEW YORK - Damon Wayans now has the unique distinction of having both Homey D. Clown and a novel to his credits. The comedian who long ago emerged on the sketch comedy show "In Living Color" and who is perhaps the most recognized face of the Wayans clan, has penned "Red Hats" (Simon & Schuster). The novel's main character is Alma, a bitter widow who finds new life after being taken in by a Red Hat Society group. Wayans dedicated his book to his mother, Elvira, who took up with the Red Hats, a worldwide social organization for women.

CHARACTER ACTOR extraordinaire Oliver Platt is a dad in real life, plays a dad in "Please Give," which opens tomorrow, and is a dad in his next movie. Does Platt, father of three, mind being cast in this way? "Not when the roles are as well written as these are!" said Platt, who's gotten some of the best reviews of his estimable career for "Please Give," from writer-director Nicole Holofcener. It's an ensemble story about several New Yorkers, but Platt, playing opposite Catherine Keener as half of a cozy, complacent married couple, has one of the plum roles.

Camden County judge Lee Solomon was recovering yesterday from a fractured skull and other injuries he suffered in a bicycle accident Sunday morning. The 55-year-old Superior Court judge is "progressing nicely, and he's going to need a lot of rest and rehab," said his wife, Dianne Solomon. "He's not going to be back in the courthouse any time soon. " Solomon, of Haddonfield, could be out of Cooper University Hospital's Intensive Care Unit as early as today, she said. Solomon has been a state judge for more than three years, after stints as a Camden County freeholder and prosecutor, a Republican assemblyman, and an assistant U.S. attorney.

Dear Amy: My husband of 20 years is in the middle of a major midlife crisis. He is unsatisfied with his job, our home and his life in general. Things he used to enjoy have been pushed aside. He complains about everything, and has decided that he has been unhappy being married to me for the last 15 years. He has a woman friend who suddenly has become his "right arm," and they have lunch together daily and spend hours on the phone. He claims they are just friends, but he also told me he has fallen in love with her. She is married and supposedly has no intention of leaving her husband, but she knows how my husband feels about her and encourages their relationship.

A whimsical tale of serial murder in the English countryside, Keeping Mum benefits immensely from the charm and pitch-perfect gravitas of Kristin Scott Thomas. As Gloria Goodfellow, a vicar's unhappy spouse, the actress brings emotional depth to a shallow pond of silliness - a pond, it should be noted, that is rapidly filling with corpses. The sinister agent in this tweedy, picture-postcard affair is one Grace Hawkins (Maggie Smith), a grandmotherly type with a warm smile and efficient manner who enters the Goodfellows' life as their new housekeeper.

It never occurred to me that a bunk bed and a midlife crisis share some commonalities. Panicked by the clarity of his mortality, the adult male may rush out and buy a pricey convertible. That same sort of trophy mentality also appears to apply to diminutive males. In the child world, what appears to give you status with the neighbors is not your car, but your bed. Recently, my sons became the jubilant recipients of the showpiece of the kid bedroom: the bunk bed. When we scouted out bunk beds at furniture stores, 2-year-old Joshua and 4-year-old Kameron flopped around the showroom with such glee I thought they were going through some kind of midchildhood crisis of their own. My sons had been introduced to the wonders of bunk beds by another brotherly pair their same ages, Matthew and Michael.

The title-character's redemption comes very slowly. But if you have patience, this is a stately, beautifully composed story. It's about a feudal swordsman in ancient India who quits warring and tries to set things right, only to be chased all over an unforgiving desert landscape by a fellow swordsman who wants his head. Badly. "The Warrior" was made in 2001 by first-time British director Asif Kapadia. It is being released now as Miramax winds down and cleans out its closet.