Chick lit. Those two words instantly conjure up a whole host of associations with bright pink covers, desperately single heroines and love interests whose square jaws and rippling muscles are the most interesting things about them. I could talk for days about the problems with how this genre is characterized, ...
Dear Thanksgiving,I’ve never known exactly what to make of you. My family never had big get-togethers, and my being vegetarian tends to limit my turkey consumption. Plus, I’m guilty of framing you in my head as a pre-Christmas of sorts. But in recent years, I’ve started trying to give you more ...
Dear Everything Going On,A few days ago, I realized something. For the first time in my life, I felt worried for the world. In my 19 years, I’ve lived through a lot of ugly things; we are a generation who has been around for 9/11, the Iraq war, the Boston Marathon Bombings, the Sandy Hook shooting, ...
Running back has been by far the most difficult position to predict this season with an unusually large number of high profile backs suffering season-ending injuries. In their place, players like Thomas Rawls (30/209/1),Spencer Ware (11/96/2) and Darren McFadden (29/129) demonstrated an ability to ...
In America today, almost one percent of people are imprisoned. Look around you in your next lecture. Don’t see anyone behind bars? Then it’s you. You’re in jail. What did you do? I bet you pirated TV shows, you sick bastard.With five percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has almost 25 ...
Webster’s Word of the Day: fulsomeadjective \FULL-sum\1: aesthetically, morally or generally offensiveI spent my summer in a wormhole. Actually, it was an endless time of serving diners variations of sad looking chicken, watching guests enjoy the “original” yet egregiously cliché event photo ...
The Golden State Warriors have been off to a blistering start this year at 14-0 having just defeated the Chicago Bulls at home 106-94. Their 14-0 start marks the best start to a season by a defending champion since the Boston Celtics went 14-0 in the 1957-1958 season. With their win on Sunday night ...
Particularly when faced with poor poll numbers, politicians will say and do anything to get elected. The aftermath of the recent attacks in France is an excellent case study in this. Instead of discourse on attacks across the globe, from Beirut (this writer’s hometown) to Paris and what they mean, ...
Authors have been fascinated with the end of the world since the beginning of the world, and recently there's been a veritable epidemic of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. The world has ended by way of zombies, epidemics, nuclear accidents, corporate takeovers and anything that even vaguely ...
Someone asked me this week if NYSD was just Rebecca and me talking about our personal lives and whether that is considered an "advice" column. To this, my response was…obviously. Yes, Rebecca and I do primarily talk about ourselves, but what better way to get advice? A large part of advice ...
“What makes YOU feel sexy?”“What do YOU love most about your body?”I am tired of these questions. Part of me wants to say that nothing makes me feel sexy, and that I don’t really mind. Or that I don’t love my body, and maybe never will, because loving my body seems like it would require ...
This week marked a new era of incompetence in quarterback play in the National Football League. While many teams … some teams … really just the Patriots, have seen exceptional quarterbacking all season long, the majority have been mired in mediocrity. Here are some names you might not expect.
The first thing that struck me about my college campus in Beijing was the mix of concrete and lush gardens, which somehow looked out-of-place in the urban atmosphere. The flatness, too, was unfamiliar -- no hikes up the hill to class. Students on motorbikes zoomed through the winding streets. Some ...
Those who read my column regularly will know I usually make an attempt toward humor. This week, I chose to take a more somber tone. This in part is how I deal with empathizing with loss, but it is also comes from a sense of respect. The atrocities that occurred in Paris, in Beirut and in Kenya have ...
I’ve been feeling terrified about my future as a human being in “the real world” (enough to postpone graduation? Maybe). But I’d like to discuss my missing bathing suit.
Growing up as an Indian-American child who loved television, I rarely saw anyone who looked like me on the small screen. At the time, I never thought of it as an issue, and relating to the mostly African-American or Caucasian characters in the shows I watched was not an extremely difficult ...
It seemed like just another international friendly match in which France and Germany were writing yet another chapter in their sporting rivalry. The horrors that struck 83 minutes into the game, however, changed all of that.From inside the Stade de France, located just outside Paris, the blasts could ...
Dear Everywhere-Buddy,You are that person that I see everywhere. You’re the one who’s always holding the door for me when I walk out of my dorm, the one who I pass at least once on any given day, the one who seems to always eat in the same dining hall as I do on the same day at the same time. ...
Trigger warning: This column contains graphic descriptions of violence.This summer, I saw a woman get shot. Everyone said it was a man. I maintain it was a woman. I saw her and a man struggling, and I saw her collapse to the floor, followed by three motorcycles that piled on top of her minuscule body ...
Simply put, “Parks and Recreation” (2009 - 2015) is the best television show available on Netflix right now. Nicknamed "Parks and Rec" by its adoring fans, this sitcom centers on the local parks department of the fictional Pawneee, Indiana. Amy Poehler stars as Leslie Knope, deputy ...
