The Icing Is Off the Cupcake Craze
Cupcake haters, your day has come! The icing is coming off America's cupcake craze. Wring your hands in delirious pleasure and laugh, oh, laugh.
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New Jersey state investigators have revealed that 29 bars and restaurants, including 13 TGI Fridays, stand "accused of putting cheap booze in premium brand liquor bottles and selling it to patrons who thought they were buying the good stuff." Oof.
Cupcake haters, your day has come! The icing is coming off America's cupcake craze. Wring your hands in delirious pleasure and laugh, oh, laugh.
On the lighter side of news today is a great story in The Wall Street Journal by E.S. Browning about how retirees are partying it up in Florida.
We know how we feel about terrorism, deeds that are to be hated, doers of which are evil. And we know the messages that come inevitably following such acts: Don't give them what they want. Those messages have come.
Something terrible has happened in Boston, this is clear from television and from the Internet, from photos on Twitter, from the news reporters on the ground, and from the images of those left bloody and wounded by what's currently being reported as two explosions located near the finish line near Copley Place.
Last year, the biggest honor in all of American letters went without an honor. Now, as the publishing world awaits the big announcement from the Pulitzer board, one juror looks back — and we look at the contenders.
An ode to the best sandwich in the land, on its special day. It's grilled, it's cheese.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey reveals some disconcerting, if not terribly surprising, facts about how women feel and are treated in the workplace—things that many people already know, and many have worked to change.
Following up on last week's adult spring book preview, here's the list of Y.A. novels I can't wait to read (or have already devoured) this spring.
When you ask someone if they have a "cab story," chances are, if you're in an urban, taxi-taking environment, the answer will be yes, and will be followed by any number of harrowing tales. But those are not the only stories.
If Twitter is the new résumé, will any of us ever have a job? Or will we just stop wanting to tweet?
What is the gift you can give to someone who has everything, including insomnia? The gift of sleep, of course. But it won't be cheap.
Beth Reekles has a three-book deal with Random House, is working toward her physics degree, and is 17 years old. What have you done lately?
There is a change in the venerable Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will take place May 28 to 30 near Washington, D.C. Spelling is not enough. There's a vocabulary portion of the competition, now, too.
The desire comes around at a certain time of year, when it's just starting to get nice, when the office workers of America and beyond have been cooped up for too long, too long, in the too-hot or too-cold confines of their offices. Working outside! Can we work outside today?
Blair Koenig is the 30-year-old Brooklynite behind the four-year-old blog STFU Parents, which is now also a book. I talked to Koenig about what it's like to see her Internet baby grow up into print.
The most powerful state of emptiness in the written word is the humble space. Let us pause and honor it for a moment, as this particular moment provides us with yet another reminder of why we need the space so.
Mad Men is back, and the season premiere did not disappoint. As for the women, as Don and Roger flail, Peggy and Megan — and maybe even Betty — have changed, with professional successes for the former, and at least a hint of happiness for the latter.
Winter. She's gone, right? She's left us be, and in her stead, here is intelligent, gentle, nurturing, witty, beauteous, sun-on-your-face, breezes-in-your-hair, delightful Spring.
There's some very exciting news for Y.A. readers and nostalgists today. Via a new imprint, Lizzie Skurnick Books, an array of long-forgotten reads from the '30s to the '80s will be back.
Will women ever stop giving unasked-for advice to other women about when to get married? And why do we insist on engaging in this cycle? A reflection on the end of the sad "Princeton Mom" meme.
As we ping-pong temperature-wise on the East Coast between winter and spring, spring books are arriving, regardless of the weather. Here are a few we can't wait to dive into.
Pens, wonderful pens, are still making a statement in this age of the Internet and the iPhone. Inspired by the CEO and president of Montblanc, we investigate possible pen-types, and what those pens might declare about their owners.
Linguist, lexicographer, and self-professed word nerd Ben Zimmer takes in an admirable amount of information daily, across all forms of media, new and old. It's not just about words.
A long, long, long time ago (like, last year) I wrote an obituary for the word artisanal. It seemed high time to declare it dead and get on with our lives. And yet, it has become clear in the months that have followed that artisanal is not dead. Artisanal may, instead, be undead.
Drinking in the office is really not all it's cracked up to be. Drinking in the office sort of sucks, and not only because none of your coworkers are Roger Sterling and Don Draper.
Maureen Johnson, the Y.A. novelist whose latest book, The Madness Underneath, was released in February, provides regular dispatches to 75,000-plus followers via her "main thing online," Twitter.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and today marks the kickoff of a new program focused on Laurie Halse Anderson's classic Y.A. novel Speak, which tells the story of a high school girl coping in the aftermath of being raped.
The 212 area code is under attack! Those three little numbers may not be the perfect piece of Manhattan ownership you thought they were.
A lengthy piece at Slate today by Matthew J.X. Malady delves into the question of why we humans insist on taking such pleasure in hating words so vociferously. But maybe we just hate words because it's fun.
Is it a day of unrelenting pain, or 24 hours of pure delight? Are the naysayers missing the point, or are the pranksters to be condemned? We discuss, in another round of Cocktail Crossfire.
It may be the chorus most heard in these modern times: technology and the way we use it has killed etiquette entirely. (Thank you?). Fortunately, the good people at the New York Times have set to work debunking this theory. Etiquette is everywhere. Is it still etiquette, though?
This Sunday is Easter, which brings up all sorts of important religious, metaphysical, emotional, whimsical, rhetorical, and candy-based questions to mind. For the purposes of this piece, we will focus on questions of Peeps.
Many of us are desk-eating experts, eating at our desks not once or twice or thrice a week, but every single day. Some of us even prefer it that way. But how do you desk-lunch better? Like so.
The new, new state of retirement, Dawn Wotapka writes in the Wall Street Journal, sounds more like a dream vacation, or heaven-on-earth, than it does the old-world retirement communities, with boring food and more boring aesthetics.
Updates to dictionaries take place regularly enough that it seems like someone is always grumbling over this word or that phrase being included in the most esteemed place we think of words existing. But sometimes the lexicographers themselves are surprised by what they find.
Suddenly, it seems like gay characters are everywhere in young-adult literature. How well is Y.A. doing at reflecting the current state of teen culture with regard to LGBT issues, and how far need we still go?
Time's new covers are great, but that we need them, regardless of the progress that's been made, means gay marriage hasn't, in fact, quite "won" yet. It won't have won until marriage is legal for same-sex couples throughout the U.S., and recognized federally, too. It won't have won until "gay marriage" is no different than any marriage.
In the New York Times today, Leslie Kaufman takes on the new proliferation of books about bullying in the Y.A. and children's markets. There are more, yes, but they are also different.
Remember the old aphorism that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? It's not so pleasant when it happens to you! Or at least that seems to be the thinking of a lot of New York City chefs who've found themselves "ripped off," cuisine-wise.
Right now, people around the country and beyond are heading to their computers and looking up the word marriage. What does the definition of the word tell us about the current state of our view of marriage equality?
It's been a while since we had a good, old-fashioned, Brooklyn-hippie-yuppie mocking grocery shopping story, but here we go again, thanks to the New York Daily News, taking all the Park Slope Food Coop tropes we've ever known and making them larger than life.
In The New York Times' telling, the City Council speaker and mayoral hopeful who happens to be openly gay, is "temperamental and surprisingly volatile." The piece have some saying, "This story would never have been written if Christine Quinn was a man."
Whether you have a story to tell or not, one of the many versions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic now available in many forms is probably worth putting on your re-read list in honor of its 70 years on this planet.
If there is one consistent adult behavior over the years, it's freaking out about what horrifying, disabling, possibly forever damaging things teens are doing now. Such is the case with the "new teen body obsession": thigh gap. And the reactions might be getting worse.
If you've ever faced the frustration of not being able to fill your bottle of H20 to the top because you have to tilt it to align it with the stream, there is a new fountain for you.
You probably haven't thought much about staplers—or possibly even used one—unless you read The New York Times this weekend.
Saturday is a big day. OK, the expression, is turning 174.
Outrage changes an apostrophe edict, and a group of Londoners are copy-editing the streets.
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