When Eric Schwartzman went in for a medical exam six months before his wedding, he didn't expect to hear he was infertile. After the examination, the doctor suggested Schwartzman have a sperm-count test. Schwartzman thought nothing of it. Then the results came in. He was diagnosed with azoospermia, a condition in which the man produces virtually no sperm. "Don't plan on having kids naturally," his doctor told him. "You can just adopt."

Schwartzman and his wife were devastated. He offered to call off the wedding, but she refused. Instead, they went to a fertility clinic, where Schwartzman underwent two testicular biopsies to retrieve sperm for in vitro fertilization (IVF). As a backup, his doctor suggested the couple select a sperm donor, and they agreed without really taking the possibility seriously. But when two IVF cycles failed, he and his wife reconsidered.

Schwartzman is now the father of two "half-adopted" children, as he calls them, both conceived through donor insemination. Most of the time, he says, he focuses on day-to-day life--"getting them potty trained" and the like. But he sometimes wonders what effect their unusual beginnings will have on them.

Labels: repro tech, shameless self-promotion

Rock 'n' roll may never die, but that doesn't mean its practitioners won't grow old. So what happens then? Some aging guitar-slingers show up in rehab, others on VH1 reality shows; lately, though, many have ventured East to settle in an unlikely new home: Tennessee. "Nashville," reads a popular T-shirt, "Where Rock Stars Come to Die."

Labels: shameless self-promotion, the arts

Amy Alkon doesn't care if she hurts your feelings. Every week in "Ask the Advice Goddess," a column syndicated in over 100 papers across America, Alkon delivers hilariously hard-nosed counsel to thousands of clueless souls." For a man, it's the size of a woman's heart that counts--until her thighs approach the size of small Volkswagens," she tells one housewife who worries her husband no longer finds her attractive. To a guy who keeps dating the "wrong" girl, Alkon opines: "Mistakes do happen. If you make one, admit it, don't take it to the movies every Saturday night."

Labels: Doublethink, shameless self-promotion