It was even worse than the clips implied — an hour of incompetent exposition, farcical bumbling and maracas-shaking. A distraction for an increasingly insular, self-referential show that’s run out of energy and expertise, and refuses to find it elsewhere. The show has slowly moved away from regional specialties and technique-centered challenges, from focusing on, say,…
Courtesy of Hotel Il Pellicano The hotel lobby gift shop was once a catchall for eminently skippable souvenirs. But lately, travelers to some of the world’s most stylish destinations are coming home with something a cut above the standard souvenir T-shirt. “The age of the $40 Hawaiian shirt while staying in an $800-a-night room is…
My friends and I got tattoos so we could feel dangerous. Not very dangerous, because very dangerous people went to jail, but slightly dangerous, like a thrilling drop of botulism in a jar of jelly. We walked down the narrow white hallway of the only tattoo shop near our Midwestern college and glanced at the…
In ancient Egypt, chamomile was considered a gift from the divine. Offerings of the flower were made to the powerful sun god Ra as a form of worship; King Tut’s sandals were decorated with the bloom’s likeness; and the plant’s oil was used to anoint the dead, including the body of Ramses II. The ancient…
The following has been edited for length and clarity. What caused you to undertake such an ambitious project? I saw black goat-hair tents when I was a teenager traveling in the Middle East and even then, I realized that although I had studied history, I had heard almost nothing about nomads. But in places like…
On his first weekend living in Washington, Tyler Austin Cherry decided to go to Nellie’s Sports Bar, in the U Street Corridor, by himself. Mr. Cherry, who was a rising senior at the University of California, Los Angeles in June 2014, was spending the summer interning at the Center for American Progress in Washington, and…
Lucas Timothy McMahon had just finished seeing “The Cher Show” on Broadway in January 2019 when he was introduced to Elise Marie MacPherson at a friend’s birthday party. He was eager to talk about the performances. “I started doing some re-enactments,” he said. Ms. MacPherson, an actress who goes by Ellie, found them hilarious. Mr.…
Had he not been oblivious to Ms. Adu’s crush, he might not have waited until she left Ridgeway High to tell her that he, too, wanted to be more than study buddies. “I thought she was really attractive,” he said. “I thought someone with her vivacious personality and friends all around her would never date…
Every week my daughter divides the artwork she brings home from elementary school between what she will take to her father’s house and what will stay with me. After unloading her backpack into a big pile on the couch, she sorts through and makes her decisions. It is because of me that she lives in…
The first words Gabrielle Elizabeth Garcia encountered from Joel Cullen Walkowski were: “Let’s not get to know each other better.” They weren’t directed at her, however. This was actually the headline for an essay Mr. Walkowski had written about the conundrum of love and dating that was published on June 8, 2008 in The New…