The hate-read you’ve been waiting for! (Maybe!) First of all, why the hell did you click on this story? Were you expecting the laughably pretentious thoughts of a tone-deaf mansplainer? Or a full-throated defense of people (read: white people) being…

We all love the Disney classic, but have you ever paid attention to the ending? Earlier this year, my wife and I introduced our kids—Sasha, now 10, and Sandy, now 6—to Mary Poppins. We figured they’d love it. The songs, the color, the accents, the…

Eric Khoo’s directorial debut is, well, somewhat different from the all-Asian Hollywood hit. Long before I saw Crazy Rich Asians this past weekend, when it opened in Taiwan, I was reading everything I could about it. I read the novel first; not only…

An argument in favor of anonymous dining Not long ago, Sarah Firshein put forward a controversial thesis: In an essay for Eater entitled “The Perks of Being a Regular,” she claimed that it’s “secretly liberating to go to the same restaurant over and…

A tragicomedy, without much tragedy or comedy, in two real-life acts. ACT ONE The scene: Mid-April in brownstone Brooklyn. The sun is glowing through the newly flowering trees, and everyone in the neighborhood is enjoying the new warmth. At the…

Why do we get so worked up over the closing of beloved restaurants we don’t even go to anymore? Pó closed the other day. For 24 years, it sat on Cornelia Street, serving saltimbocca, pappardelle, and zuppa di pesce to a couple of generations of…

An investigation into hunger, desire, and the limits we impose on ourselves. A few months ago, I was in my local specialty grocery store when I noticed, all the way in the back, an ice cream brand I’d never heard of before. McConnell’s, out of Santa…

A metaphor for our troubled times. Not long after September 11, 2001, there appeared a tantalizing urban legend. A man, some said, had been standing at or near the top of one of the Twin Towers when the planes hit, and as the buildings began to…

Surprise! The system makes it really hard to be financially responsible. Over the past 15 or so years, I’ve mostly been a freelance writer. At times, I’ve had a ton of assignments, each one following from the last, and at others they’ve merely…

A quickie guide to making the place you work infinitely more bearable Once upon a time, I had an office. An actual office. With a door that closed, space to pace back and forth, and file cabinets full of documents left by my predecessor. I could eat…

About two and a half years ago, early in the fall of 2014, I took a new job in a city a few hours from New York. It was an ambitious one, at the head of an organization larger than I’d ever dealt with before, but I was confident I could tackle the…