We met at the Westin in Palo Alto on the weekend of our elder siblings’ graduation from Stanford. I don’t swim that often but found myself pretty stoned in the hotel pool on Saturday morning. The night before I’d been hanging out with my sister, Ann, and her friends, who were almost all graduating as well. It was sad and weird,...

A scene from 1973’s The Mack: Pretty Tony and Goldie are embroiled in a high-stakes game of dice. China Doll emerges. She slinks across the room, heads turn and jaws drop. Approaching Goldie, she indicates that she wants to be with him. “I choose you,” she whispers. Pretty Tony, China Doll’s love interest until that point, orders her back to him....

You can read this as fast as you want, but you're still not going to catch up. It's already tomorrow in Australia, or whatever. CROWE’S FEAT It’s unfair to single out Russell Crowe when writing about Australia. It’s like writing about Vegemite, or Christmas on the beach, or any other popular symbol of Down Under: too obvious, and not reflective of...

Last week I met Terry Dieffenbach at Dae Lim’s, a small organic Korean pancakery in Southern New England. In his acryllic-stained New Balances and ragged flannel, it was hard to pick Dieffenbach out from the swarm of college kids sipping cappuccinos with practiced flourish. Terry is best known as the founder of the Bioerotics craze, an attempt to take the ethical...

How do I learn to spit farther? Put a piece of fruit-flavored gum in your mouth, and chew until it gets all juicy. Then, breathe in—deep. Hold your breath as long as you can. Keep on holding it some more. Hold it so long that you feel like you’re gonna explode. Then: RELEASE!!! The juicy gum and your spit should splatter pretty far....

“I DON'T WRITE SONGS ABOUT BEACHES OR LOVE,” says local musician and activist Joey DeFrancesco, “Those things just aren’t a part of my day-to-day reality. I don’t think that’s anyone’s day-to-day reality.” Instead, DeFrancesco writes about workers’ rights and race and class inequality in Providence. In his band Downtown Boys’ song “Rich Boys,” DeFrancesco and his bandmate Victoria Ruiz scream, “Consider...