Only once have I purchased something at the Nintendo store, a mug in the shape of Boo, a ghost who plays the part of an intractable foe to the Super Mario Brothers. I had long considered Boo an aspirational figure as he could not be defeated by typical means, forcing
Imagine a slightly different version of the film Titanic, where the centenarian Rose dies after a long, rich existence. During the lifetime that followed the eponymous ship's fatal voyage, Rose has seen it all. So when she gets to that well-appointed ballroom in the afterlife, and Jack is
Whenever I start to run out of contact lenses, I flirt with the idea of wearing my glasses. This rarely lasts for more than a few days as I invariably come to the same conclusions. Glasses Mike, despite his air of erudition, is simply less comfortable than his counterpart. The
Back when Reddit was still a frontier, rather than a mostly-empty liquor cabinet, a new kind of thing started happening. Celebrities, or perhaps more conservatively, people of some note– the Wikipediaed class– were posting under their own names. Even if you didn’t really care about Verne Troyer, you may
And then the serpent came upon me. It was beautiful, and it said unto me: “leave your fiance. Be with me.” And I said “No.” And thus said the serpent: “your answer matters not. It shall be otherwise.” This is basically the plot of 13 Going on 30 from the
Many years ago, I was at a hotel in the 6th Arrondissement with my mother and we were looking for a place to get escargot. She asked the concierge where to go for it, and suddenly he turned pale. “It is illegal.” We were of course baffled because the idea
Slices abound at the pizza shop. There's pepperoni, chicken and broccoli, meatball and even anchovy. What there is not is mushroom. A mushroom slice— the very reason you came to Italian Village in the first place. Nobody ever had to tell you that the guy behind the counter
Every once in a while I’m installing a bidet at a friend’s apartment when suddenly it’s getting late and I need to start thinking about getting to wherever I must for my evening plans. But what am I going to do about my backpack? “Oh why don’
With my left hand, I use the plastic tongs to grab a cookie and put it on my little plate. “Are you right-handed?” says a woman from just out of view. I turn to look. I’ve never seen her before. “I’m sorry, what?” “Well I thought maybe you
I answer the phone– not daring to break eye contact with my opponent. “Can’t talk, I’m fourteen moves deep in a game of 200 IQ psychic chess with the checkout guy at Morton Williams. Whoever loses has to bag my groceries.” The cashier blinks. “I’ll just bag
It was four in the morning and I was seated in the back of a cab, ankle-deep in my doldrums, when I remembered that the music of Elvis Presley existed, and suddenly everything was fine—for at least a little while. There’s a guy named Anthony Caleca who in
Although my mother insists this can’t possibly be true, when I was a kid, whenever I got home from school, I would have a Coca Cola. In my house the soda was always stored in the garage and came out of those big cardboard 24 packs. Garage soda is