here's a link for my column in the huffington post

Click it or ticket.

Be kind. Live big.

My friend Lauren passed away a few hours ago from melanoma. She was 30 years old and the best cancer fighter I’ve ever known.

She was my mentor when I was a wee junior copywriter at H&S and eventually I helped her deal with cancer. But it was more like she helped me; calling every hospitalization, texting me dirty jokes, buying me breakfast. We were friends who understood something most of our others could not: this horrifying world of illness.

And Lauren got it. She really did. She got that life was short. She got what all us cancer kids get: an unfortunate but necessary perspective on life. We are not here for long. Remember that.

I'm shocked a spirit so vibrant and so memorable could be gone. Lauren fought harder than I thought possible. In doing so, she revealed herself. And she revealed the good in others too.

Keep that with you. LIVE LIKE THAT.

Be kind. Live big.

All I Want for Christmas is a...Tooth.

You know how sometimes you're eating a bagel with cream cheese for dinner?

No? You don't eat that either? It's a great dinner.

Anyway, last night I was chowing down on an everything bagel (don't tell my diabetes doc) and I felt a pull.

A tug, if you will.

I screamed: "OMG I THINK MY TOOTH FELL OUT!" Joe rushed behind me to the bathroom, ALL WHILE FAILING TO CONTROL HIS LAUGHTER.

He laughed so hard at me, guys. I would never laugh at him. Sure, I had a chuckle when his computer stopped printing and he acted like someone was trying to assasinate him, but still.

I looked in the bathroom mirror and this horrifying sight befell me:

That's incorrect. It was more like this...


I looked like a meth addict on Intervention. 

So this morning I frantically went to the oral surgeon, who confirmed that the tooth was abscessed and would have landed me in the hospital in a week's time.

Thank GOD for my love of carbohydrates. That bagel saved my life.

After Doctor PullaTooth extracted my fallen incisor, I was sent to a 2nd dentist to make a cast for My New Tooth, coming soon to Kelly's Mouth!

I was so actually so pitied after they read my medical history (love you, cancer) that at the 2nd dentist's office, they gave me their People's Sexiet Man Alive issue. And they are coming in tomorrow to fit me for a fake tooth as I may have lied and said I was meeting my boyfriend's family for the first time on Thanksgiving.

EITHER WAY, I ain't eating ,my Thanksgiving bird like Billy Bob Berg.

I hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving and keep your teeth where they belong: on the sidewalk after an Irish Catholic family brawl.

Toothlessly yours,

BB Berg.


(PS: I'll be featured on the Huffington Post this week. Billy Bob's gone Hollywood, y'all!)

Sandy

Loch Arbour, August 2012

I'm not sure if I'm ready to write about the storm.

The storm that has changed our lives, 

From Before Sandy to After.

I'm not ready to write about the destruction,

About how peculiar it is 

to feel homesick for places that have been destroyed.

I cannot write about that emptiness.

I am thankful that we are safe. That we are alive. 

That the damage sustained was minor.

But this is heartbreak. 

This is our home. Our towns. Our memories.

These are our flooded, sandy streets,

the streets we scorched our bare feet on as we ran home from the beach for lunch.

These are our broken boardwalks, built with the wood that gave us splinters;

these are the boardwalks we hid under when the sun shone too bright.

And this is our ocean, the one that turned on us;

This is our ocean that pulled us and our bathing suit tops under the tide,

and then smiled on us, gliding our boogie boards gleefully to shore.

I do not know a childhood memory that does not involve my home, 

the Jersey Shore.

We will rebuild. We will move on.

We will put faith in nostalgia and each other.

We will. 

We will move on.

Asbury Park, September 2012

Please consider making a donation to The Red Cross. We need your help.