You can see Top Withins from a mile away. At first, it is nothing but a dark blip on the horizon. But as you walk towards it, the place looms ahead, standing alone at the top of a hill. According to local legend the abandoned farmhouse was the spot Emily Brontë envisioned as the place where the Earnshaw family lived in Wuthering Heights. Though, as a bronze plaque affixed to the side explains almost…
Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] What use was aristocracy in twentieth century Britain? And what, specifically, was the use of a landed aristocracy in a rural, agricultural setting? These questions animate Downton Abbey at the most fundamental level. This week brought them into even sharper relief, as issues of taxes and estate…
You wake up a little later than normal. You’re not washing your hair today, after all. It’s one of the few days out of the year you don’t wash you hair. In fact, it’s the only day you’re actually not supposed to. You don’t bother to make your bed, either -- not that you make your bed on any other day because you’re pretty lazy. But, for the same reason you aren’t washing your hair,…
This post brought to you by our commenter Millper. The filler if the void is solely yours. The glass of single malt whiskey hidden in your bottom drawer. The dust-covered gummy bears at the bottom of your purse. The weather-worn grin. The actor that always plays serial killers and villains--you definitely know the one I’m talking about. No, not Peter Sarsgaard. That other guy. The one with the eyes.
Please send your etiquette-based questions to advice@the-toast.net, subject line: “Ms. Proprietypants.” The archives (well, this is only the second installment) can be found here.
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I'm sorry if this is a little gross, but it's a real worry I face when I'm someone's houseguest. I often need to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, when everyone else is sleeping. Is it ruder to (a) flush the…
Today is the birthday of one Alan Alda, a fine human being and a friend of the Toast. There are no iterations of Alan Alda that are not perfect and loveable. Jack's dad on 30 Rock? Maximum Alda. Classic-M*A*S*H* era? Platonic ideal of Alda. Judge for Math-O-Vision? Alda as he was meant to be. Host of Scientific American Frontiers? All the Alda that's fit to print. I will brook no irony, no sly asides, in…
Good day, mythical creature aficionados. I am Miss Lemonade from the Institute of Bisexualia (currently the only faculty). I have devoted my life to the study of these pernicious, beautiful and at once complex creatures. Since the first recorded cave painting of a bisexual at Lasceaux, we have been entranced with these beings. Mayhap you have purchased this fact sheet (for the low price of a farthing!) because you have finally constructed your own delicious kale…
Nicole Froio last wrote for The Toast about violence in the favelas. She saw Interior. Leather Bar at an LGBT film festival in Rio and sat down with Travis Mathews, the film's director afterwards. Why did you and James Franco make this movie? I’ll talk about this but I don’t want to go too deeply into his motivations because I feel like – I don’t want to speak for him. But I can tell…
It is time for you to admit that you have never hated "being that guy," no matter how many sentences you have begun by claiming the contrary. How many times have you paid lip service to the rules of polite social interaction with "I hate to be that guy, but..." "Well, I hate to be that guy, but actually..." while internally rubbing your hands with glee at another opportunity to get to be That Guy,…
Christian Band: DC Talk
Christian Sound: Oh, man. It's hard to explain (or overemphasize) the popularity and cultural impact of DC Talk to someone who wasn't at least tangentially connected to evangelical Christian music in the 1990s. Imagine that the Fugees slowly metastasized into Nirvana over a period of several years, but with Bono.
Shing Yin Khor's last cartoon for The Toast was a thought-provoking exploration of racial identity, as opposed to this one, which is straight-up about trying to get off on a stuffed tribble.
