If Josh Hutcherson were your boyfriend, he would entertain your friends for hours, mixing cocktails like a wise bartender during Prohibition and listening intently to their tales of workplace microaggressions and bad scones.

If Mary-Louise Parker were your girlfriend, you’d laze in bed together on Sunday mornings, with just thin, jersey-cotton sheets as the only barrier between your bodies and the air, and she would read Wallace Stevens aloud to you. You’d debate the pros and cons of austerity in poetry until she said, “Honey, we’re saying the same thing,” and then kissed you through a smile.

If Mary-Louise Parker were your girlfriend, she would normally keep her

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Red lipstick is one of the few makeup looks that has always remained current, no matter the era.

If Jenny Lewis were your girlfriend, one day you’d come home to find her painting a giant rainbow on your living room wall and you wouldn’t even be mad. “It’s beautiful,” you would say, setting down the gluten-free pizza you brought home. “No, you are,” she would reply, stroking your cheek with a wet paintbrush.

If Jenny Lewis were your girlfriend, your bangs would never need to be trimmed.

If Jenny Lewis were your girlfriend,

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In no particular order:

My God
This woman is the goddess Diana reborn in human form; I would sell all that I own in order to serve as her silent handmaiden

You’d really enjoy your visits to the Asian Actor Club.

Hugh. George. Matthew. Johnny. Ryan. Bradley. Channing. Pierce. Ben. Brad. He kept these names always at the forefront of his mind, naming each one at the pace of his breath and his feet. For as long as he could remember, he had been running.

The names feed the machine.

It was 1,000 degrees exactly outside and I was a sweaty mess in high heels by the time I arrived at the private club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where Duran Duran was doing interviews. I had wanted to talk to the band since I started my professional career, but dripping sweat and swelling out of my shoes was not exactly how I had envisioned my first interaction with them.

Hannibal is a television series based upon the popular novels of Thomas Harris. Each episode lasts for under an hour, with the shortest lasting 41 minutes, and the longest 44. There were 3 seasons comprising 39 total episodes, many named after a food item or meal component (usually, but not exclusively, containing meat.)

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JOHANNAH: So shall we get into it?

JOE: Cards on the table: this was my first time reading this book. I think I tried, several times, as a younger person, and never made it past the falconry bit.

FELIX: What have you got against falconry?

JOE: Only, in my youth, a dreadfully short attention span.

If Tilda Swinton were your girlfriend, you’d be mostly vegan, although Tilda says labels are for the uncreative. You’d marvel at her silo full of legumes, and the only meat you’d eat would be the brown trout that the twins catch on the banks of the firth. You’d feel guilty about that time at your parents’ house when Tilda ate—and loved—pork rinds, since you didn’t realize that she didn’t know they were meat. But, as Tilda says,…

Previously by Jasmine Guillory: If Lupita Nyong'o Were Your Girlfriend If Nigella Lawson were your girlfriend, all of your books will be food-stained. If Nigella Lawson were your girlfriend, whenever you said you were too full to eat any more, she would playfully poke your belly and say “But darling! You look like you’re losing weight! You need to keep your strength up!” She’d wink, you’ll sigh, and eat another lemon curd-laden…

Our resident linguist's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Let's talk about shipping. No, not the transportation of goods over the water, but that feeling when you want a couple fictional characters to smush their faces against each other and never let go. The word ship itself has an interesting enough grammar, not to mention its variants…

When I learned about the goat who refused to leave a Tim Hortons in Martensville, Saskatchewan, I cried real tears. At the time, I was sitting in a café. It wasn’t a Tim Hortons café, unfortunately, because I decided to go to grad school in America. It’s a decision I question every day of my life. Because: aren’t we all the goat who just can’t seem to quit Tim Hortons?

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“It is of the utmost importance that a black child see on that screen someone who looks like him. Our children have been suffering from the lack of identifiable images as long as our children as been born.”— James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier

“Toni Morrison said that as soon as a character of color is introduced in a story imagination stops…I mean, I’m a black woman from Central Falls, Rhode

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