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Heat, Drink, And Be Merry
by Mike Seely, Seattle Weekly
LeanCuisine, anyone? Bars are microwaving their way to a full booze license, and their skillfully prepared frozen food isn't cheap. But it's legal.

Fine China Breakdown: Blame It On 'Casual Carol'
by Joyce Gemperlein, Washington Post
"Casual Carols," along with "Formerly Formal Frances" (used to be a traditionalist but now marches to her own drummer and keeps the formal dinnerware in the closet) and "Neo-Conservative Conrad/Connies" (they spend money on casual but luxurious dinnerware), are among the market forces that are reshaping the industry.

Dinner-Party Roulete: Who's In The Next Chair?
by ALex Witchel, New York Times
Because like everything else in life, these events have rules. You almost never go because you really want to; you go because you really have to. Weddings, all family extravaganzas, are emotionally fraught by definition. Charity dinners, however worthy, are about stroking egos.

Hoe, Hoe, Hoe
by Garrison Keillor, Salon
Hard work is sweeter than the coffee you drink on break. But you may not know that yet.

We Didn't Need The Past — Or So I Thought
by Meredith Resnick, Newsweek
Once I gave up the fear of losing my daughters, I better understood the family who had let them go.

Thus Ate Zarathustra
by Woody Allen, New Yorker
Diets of the great philosophers.

The (Ongoing) Vitality Of Mythical Numbers
by Jack Shafer, Slate
Does ID theft really cost $48 billion a year?

The Proust Pill
by Pagan Kennedy, Boston Globe
Back in 1998, I decided to write a novel about a memory pill — a drug that would work like Proust's madeleine. While I was busy writing, the science caught up with fiction.

Golden Eggs
by Carlene Hempel, Boston Globe
Drowning in credit-card debt and student loans, young women are selling their eggs for big payoffs. But can they really make the right medical and moral decisions when they're tempted with $15,000?

A Slow-Road Movement?
by Robert Sullivan, New York Times
Call it the Slow Road movement, but not the No Road movement, because another thing that a 50-year-old crumbling Interstate System brings is opportunity, a chance for a giant retrofit.

Sweet Smell Of Snobbery
by Oliver Broudy, Salon
Like wine, luxury chocolate now has connoisseurs who tout its "mouthfeel" and "terroir." Bring back "melts in your mouth, not in your hand"!

A McDonald's Ally In Paris
by John Tagliabue, New York Times
Dennis Hennequin is very much the engineer of the restaurant chain's success in France, and one of his most compelling lessons about doing business here came from a bulldozer incident.

Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin
by Austin Ramzy, Time
China's economic rise means the world has a new second language — and it isn't English.

Self-Checkout? Just You Wait
by Joyce Gemperlein, Washington Post
Pressure? You don't know pressure until you're in the self-checkout line at the grocery store and your cauliflower doesn't scan and freezes the computer and there's a line of shoppers shifting from foot to foot, heaving deep sighs and giving you the evil eye because, obviously, you are keeping them from attending to a matter of life and death, such as catching the "Sopranos" episode they forgot to TiVo.

My History Of Slate
by Michael Kinsley, Slate
The magazine I dreamed of starting was a newsmagazine. On paper, on the Web, painted on the walls of caves — I didn't care. My theory was that Time and Newsweek had bascially abandoned their mission.

Souls Searching
by Boston Globe
Harvard Medical students share stories that brought them joy and pain on their way to becoming doctors.

Strapless Begone!
by Sylvia Rubin, San Francisco Chronicle
It's a mystery even larger than attraction. Why do brides covet strapless gowns with an intensity that defies reason, given that this is one of the more difficult silhouettes to wear well?

And You're So Funny? Write My Script
by Warren St. John, New York Times
It is a thought that has surely raced through the mind of almost every performer who has ever been heckled, booed, mocked or made to feel unappreciated by an audience: "Let's see you do better." Now a Brooklyn entertainer named Ze Frank is doing something about it.

Iceland's Ring Road: The Ultimate Road Trip
by Mark Sundeen, New York Times
Iceland's Highway 1 — the roughly 830-mile Ring Road — is the only route that circles the island, and it feels like someone put the American West in a blender: California's poetic central coast, the Nevada desert's barren expanses, Alaska's glaciers and Yellowstone's geysers. They're all crammed onto this island, and if you don't like one natural phenomenon you're just a few hours from the next.

Behind The Scenes At Disney World
by Steve Hendrix, Washington Post
Let's just get this out of the way: They're chipper even when nobody's looking.

In China, Dreams Of Bright Ideas
by Edward Cody, Washington Post
Instead of millions of Chinese youths assembling somebody else's inventions, the party leadership has concluded, the time is right for China to come up with its own ideas and sell them to everyone else.

The Long Ride
by Andrew Leonard, Salon
With telephone poles whizzing by, the Beatles blaring on the stereo, and my kids strapped in the back seat, I learned to be a father on the road.

A Grand Old Flag And Very Modern Art
by Blake Gopnik, Washington Post
Today, Flag Day, seems a f ine time to look at Old Glory — to just plain look, for a minute without thinking at all about its history or what is represents — and admire its strangeness.

A Meal For My Father From Brazil, WIth Love
by Raquel Pontes de Campos, Seattle Times
Food iwas a language we shared. It declared our bond, telegraphed our moods and was the usual currency on awkward bribes.

Macshush!
by David Segal, Washington Post
Caution be damned. The three women playing the Weird Sisters in the Shakespeare in the Park production of "Macbeth," previews of which begin tomorrow night, are not afraid to utter the scariest word in the history of theater. They do not fear the two modest sylables, the seven measly letters that have inspired heebie-jeebies among actors and directors for 400 years. Listen and learn, you cowering simps. These women will just come right out and say it: "Macbeth."

The Mystique Of Monarchy
by Pico Iyer, Time
Thailand's King Bhumibol offers powerful proof that royalty is still relevant.

A Cup Of Tea Transformed
by Greg Atkinson, Seattle Times
As ice cream, it's as refreshing as a summer breeze.

The Hold-'Em Holdup
by Mattathias Schwartz, New York Times
With the spread of internet gambling, running up debts in the dorm room has become a college pastime. Trying to cover his losses, one sophomore at Lehigh University went so far as to rob a bank.

Extreme Commutes Grow Longer In Air Industry
by Jeff Bailey, New York Times
For pilots and flight attendants, they are finding it harder to get to work nowadays, because planes are so full.

Buck Up, Little Camper
by Emily Bazelon, Slate
Debating whether to send a 6-year-old away for the summer.

Springfield Theory
by Erica Klarreich, Science News
Mathematical references abound on The Simpsons.

In Praise Of Boxer Briefs
by Seth Stevenson, Slate
An underpants manifesto.

Try, Try Again
by Stephen Hunter, Washington Post
See that pile of money on the floor? There's a hundred million there. All you have to do is pick it up. That's right, bend over, pick it up, and it's yours. Are you going to do it? Of course you are. No way you wouldn't. And that's why there'll always be sequels.

Is This Really Feminism?
by Holly Yeager, Financial Times
The real problem, it seems to me, is the notion that we can't all be right if we are making different choices.

When Life Makes You Cry Uncle
by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
I am Bus Uncle, potentially, and so are you. Each of us has a tiny, raging Bus Uncle buried deep within, just waiting to burst free. One tap on the shoulder is all it takes.

Gangs Of New York
by Sarah Bernard & Hugo Lindgren, New York
Their twins due home from intensive care any minute, an anxious couple considers the high cost — physical, marital, and financial — of multiples.

Tales From The Crypt
by James Wolcott, The New Criterion
Wherever literati types gathered to namedrop and galnce over each other's shoulders, unopened sets of The Complete New Yorker seemed to loom in the background, like the slab from 2001.

Life Goes On In A Town Called — What?
by David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post
Yes, this is really Podunk. In other places, the word might be a generic put-down, a concept, a mythical map dot somewhere between Hick Town and Nowheresville. Here in Vermont, though, it's a real somewhere.

That Certain Smile
by Andrew Hudgins, Washington Post
As a child, the one enduring wonder of my world, the wonder that preceded and outlasted the Great Pyramid at Giza, Mount Everest or the Grand Canyon, was my grandmother's teeth. They came out.

Single Minded
by Keith O'Brien, Boston Globe
They're having babies alone, vacationing alone, buying homes alone. And they couldn't be happier, especially in Boston, where record numbers of single people are finding that parties of one are worth toasting.

Hollywood Elementary
by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, New York Times
Each year hundreds of child actors — with their parents — flock to Los Angeles in the hope of becoming stars. Whose dreams are being pursued?

Better Than Flying
by The Economist
Despite the attack on the twin towers, plenty of skyscrapers are rising. They are taller and more daring than ever, but still mostly monuments to magnificence.

It Helps To Know A Lot More Than Basic E-N-G-L-I-S-H
by Tamar Lewin, New York Times
Spelling in English isn't hard enough? Even with all those children struggling to sort out to, too and two, not to mention principal and principle? Even with pneumonia, psychiatry, psalm, pseudonym, psoriasis...? And yet, for the participants at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, it came down to German, Italian and French.

More Than Zero
by Ryan Blitstein, SF Weekly
A trio of twenty-something San Francisans have invented SFZero, a game that bleeds far into reality.

Welcome To Shangri-La. By Order Of The State Council Of The Chinese Government
by Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
In one of the most audacious rebranding exercises in history, a scruffy but spectacularly located Himalayan town has been renamed after the James Hilton's fictional utopia and designated a tourist paradise by order of the Chinese government.

Say What? A Guide To Menu-Speak
by Nancy Leson, Seattle Times
Menu-speak: It's a foreign language: literaly and figuratively.

For Soldiers' Appetites, Reinforcements
by Kim Severson, New York Times
Familiar food has long comforted troops fighting wars in foreign countries. But the modern care package is different because of the complicated logistics of this war, advancements in technology and the diverse and sophisticated palates of today's troops.