If you're anything like me (and if you aren't, MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE – THINK ABOUT IT), you've definitely spent a lot of your time objectively ranking Henry VIII's wives. This can be done by carefully employing the scientific method that you learned for the science fair in sixth grade. After that you need to square your answer and find the hypotenuse and then employ the quadratic formula. Because this isn't just conjecture,
This post originally appeared on March 4th, 2014. My first day at the clinic, a man commits suicide by jumping off a building across the street. It’s a bright but deceptively cold March morning, the sky an unbroken cornflower blue dome. I don’t see him; I’m trying, futilely, to find a sun-warmed patch of sidewalk for my critically under-socked feet, and my back is turned. Soon, the street fills with first responders, and police officers…
I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to think of this younger generation when I hear about stories like this one: Lawrenceville School Student Body President Maya Peterson’s Instagram post of her dressed in L.L. Bean boots and a Yale University sweatshirt, casually holding a hockey stick, did not go over so well... “You’re the student body president, and you’re mocking and blatantly insulting a large group of the school’s male…
This post was brought to you by Siri Raasch, who once worked for an unusual older woman in Maine.
I have been prepping to be an old lady my entire life. When I was in third grade I had a subscription to Reader’s Digest. I ate Raisin Bran for breakfast. And every Sunday night at eight, after 60 Minutes, I plunked myself in front of the television and waited,
This piece was sponsored for Gwen from Andy, who wishes you many belated birthdays. He'll do better going forward. The Secret Olive Garden You start with a cholera epidemic and end with something truly magical. Watercress Down Carnivores frequently dismiss salad as rabbit food. In this restaurant, it really is. Griddle Women Comfort food from New England accompanied by the surprisingly tasty delicacy of pickled limes. Don’t be alarmed by the scent of burning hair emanating…
I hear your objections already. "But Mallory, I have seventeen mortgages and my job was murdered in the Recession Tornado of Aught-Six." "Mallory, I had to sell my parents in order to pay off my student loans." "Mallory, I'm being chased by jewel thieves." [gesticulates wildly] Pshshshspspshshpsh. Hush. LeVar Burton wants our money, and frankly he deserves it more than we do. Do you remember the episode of Parks and Recreation where Ben asks Pawnee's chief of…
There is nothing in the world a movie hero's girlfriend hates more than heroism. At every turn, she looks for a way to stymie her doughty lover's acts of courage. If she had her way, the movie would end 40 minutes in and they'd just play Apples to Apples until they both died of old age. DIALOGUE FROM EVERY MOVIE EVER LADY: don't go to the big Thing HERO MAN: I have to though LADY:…
Ernest Hemingway, affectionately nicknamed "Big Mama" by his fans, was well known among writers of his generation for his yearly Christmas "back rub gift certificates" and gifts of crocheted socks. Every year Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald rented a lakeside condo together in New Hampshire to work on their trust falls. Hemingway invented capri pants and the concept of "Let's just stay in tonight" even after you've already promised to go to a party.
Grace Bello recently interviewed Melissa Gira Grant for The Toast. This post was brought to you by an anonymous victim of misandry.
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The late cultural critic Ellen Willis was best known as the first pop music critic for The New Yorker. But in her forty-year career as a cultural critic, she covered a wide range of subject matter including feminism, countercultural politics, religion, family, and freedom for publications…
Forrest Barnum last wrote for The Toast about Canadian political novels.
Figure 1: Yowzah
When I was growing up, I didn’t watch a lot of commercial TV; we were a PBS/Star Trek household. One hazily remembered day, an enchanting show came on where an excessively polite, strikingly handsome man in a splendid red suit solved crimes with his deaf, lip-reading dog, Diefenbaker, an inside joke I would not get until…
In a stunning, sublime act of teen dirtbaggery, after an argument with his parents (which we can only pray was about fine ham) this weekend, a San Jose teenager ran away from home by hopping the fence and stowing away in the wheel well of a plane bound for Hawaii. The FBI is calling it a "miracle" and the airline says a teen who hopped the fence at a San Jose airport is…
Throw away whatever pet you currently have and take a look at this. The land of Mongolia produces thirteen-year-old girls who eschew Instagram bullying and writing smut about One Direction in favor of hunting with golden eagles. From the BBC:
The Kazakhs of the Altai mountain range in western Mongolia are the only people that hunt with golden eagles, and today there are around 400 practising falconers. Ashol-Pan, the daughter of a…
It has recently come to my attention that there is a film featuring Katharine Hepburn as an aviatrix who commits an abortion/suicide by flying into the sun, and I am simply furious with each and every one of you for keeping this from me. "That...that can't possibly be right," I hear you stammer weakly. OHO, CAN'T IT. I present to you the plot summary of Christopher Strong: Kate plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, an aviatrix who…
"In the game of chess, you can never let your opponent see your pieces. -Zapp Brannigan
Battle of Serenity Valley "What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?" The already-catastrophic losses among the Independents at Serenity Valley were compounded after Captain Zapp Brannigan shot seventeen of his superiors in the mistaken belief that they were Neutral agents in disguise. Battle of…
