I miss the ritual of taping songs off the radio: looking for a fresh blank tape, not finding one and having to choose which cassette to sacrifice to the cause, Scotch-taping over the holes along the top to render it able to record again, and situating myself in front of the radio, waiting waiting waiting for the DJ to play my favorite songs so I could record them to listen to later.
From before I can remember to the beginning of my high school years, it was my family's tradition to go to Disney World for the week of Thanksgiving. It was the only vacation we took for the better part of my childhood, and we prided ourselves on our special insider knowledge as regular, annual visitors to Disney World. The crown jewel in our treasury of underloved “secret” attractions was Maelstrom: A High Seas Adventure.
The author apologises that these alternate plot lines are almost entirely based on the movie versions of these books, watched feverishly during an 18 hour flight over approx. 16 airplane desserts. The author's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Mary, The Secret Garden
After an adolescence of playing Dickon and Colin off of one another (in exchange for pony rides and handmaid gowns, respectively) Mary and Dickon finally…
Previous installments of Jaya Catches Up can be found here.
This book was everywhere in my elementary school classrooms, and I think the reason I didn’t read it is that I knew I would never say the title correctly. If someone asked me what I was reading I would have announced “The Messed Up Files of Mrs. Franken E. Hossenfeffer” or some
Erica Ruth Kelly's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Some American Idol drinking games are so socially irresponsible they require that players imbibe whenever they hear the word "dream" on the show. You know, as in “This has been my dream since I was a kid,” usually confessed by a 14 year-old who’s been led to believe that a glorified popularity contest is akin to working their asses off in the…
It was with great – perhaps disproportionate – sadness that I learned of the demolition of my hometown’s Taco Bell last spring. It had been years since I’d been there and even longer since I’d done so without regret. It had, in fact, been almost a year since the franchise inside the outdated and increasingly creepy amalgam of stucco and fake clay tiles had even been open at all, but I was still pulling for the old place.
The strangest thing about this project is realizing just how many books I didn’t read as a kid. Books that weren’t even on my radar. What on earth is My Friend Flicka? What the hell did I do as a child? Anyway, The Giver (Indiebound | Amazon) was definitely on my radar. That cover of the old man and the corner of a forest was on the shelves of every elementary school…
