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Ann Handley

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Politics & Society

The College Drop-off: Can We Cut the Crying Parents Some Slack?

Goodbye

A story on MSNBC yesterday asked, Has the college sendoff always been so tough? Alongside the piece is a video from the Today show, subtitled, “As NBC’s Kevin Klein reports, when it comes time to say goodbye on campus, it’s the parents who’ve got issues.” I’ve noticed an abundance of these stories lately — including […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Children, Parenting, Politics & Society, Teenagers Tagged With: college drop off, college goodbye, Parenting, Teenagers, Velcro parents

Toy Story 3: ‘Contains Mild Thematic Elements Not Appropriate for Older Viewers’

Toy Story 3 trailer

Dear Motion Picture Association of America: I’m freshly back from the theater after seeing Toy Story 3. One question: A G-rating? What were you thinking? I haven’t been this disturbed since the Turkish prison scenes in Midnight Express. The first two Toy Story movies centered on the happy relationship between a young boy named Andy […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Humor, Media, Pop Culture Tagged With: movie rating, movies, Pixar, Toy Story, Toy Story 3

Today’s Guessing Game: What Is It?

Remember AOL disks? If you owned a mailbox in the late 1990s or early-2000s, you know what I mean, because America Online‘s aggressive direct mail strategy probably distributed CD-ROMs and diskettes into it with irritating frequency. More than a billion disks were mailed between the late 1990s and 2006, when AOL stopped the mass mailing. […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Pop Culture, Technology Tagged With: AOL, AOL marketing, CD ROMS, ink cartridge, Technology, typewriter

Scavenged

We set off on foot, the six of us, under an azure sky as big as the ocean. The breeze off the water smelled of salt and September, and the dune grasses bent toward each other, whispering the news that fall was coming. It was a picture-perfect, precious August day, the kind of day that […]

Filed Under: Family History, Pop Culture, Travel Tagged With: Maine, Ocean Park, scavenge, scavenger hunt, social networks, summer, summer games

Lucky

The Boston outlet of Morton’s, a Chicago-based steakhouse chain, sits across the street from Boston Harbor in a newly developed part of town called the Seaport. Inside, Morton’s has a clubby feel—all hushed tones and white linen and dark paneling. The bad lighting makes it hard to read the prices, which are high, so perhaps […]

Filed Under: Annarchy, Annecdote, Business, Food, Politics & Society, Video Tagged With: Amber Naslund, Boston, Business, David Foster Wallace, Justin Cresswell, lobster, lobster rescue, Maine Lobster Fest, Morton's, Morton's Steak House, on the road

Awkward Family Photos

As I sometimes reveal here, there is something universal about the awkwardness of family. About a week ago, two childhood friends launched a site to document as much. The results — in the vein of LOLCats and Stuff White People Like — are hilarious: The Choker: “This is what happens when your male role model […]

Filed Under: Family History, Humor, Pop Culture Tagged With: awkward family photos, family, Family History, Humor, photos

10 Things I Hate About You, Travel Edition

The flight from Boston to Los Angeles takes six hours, during which there is a kind of caricature of intimacy that develops, at least in Coach. You might not even know the name of the guy sitting at your elbow, but still: You know his choice of reading material; what he drinks with his meal; […]

Filed Under: Business, Pop Culture, Travel Tagged With: air travel, airplanes, friendship, social, Travel

A Journey to ’25 Random Things’

Facebook Random

Three weeks ago, William tagged me in a “25 Random Things About Me” chain letter. I’ve hung around with William a few times, but reading his list feels a lot like a peek at his diary: Here are his hopes, fears, and his profession of love for Twizzlers. I’m tagged again by Tim (“I’m a […]

Filed Under: Business, Media, Pop Culture, Social Media, Technology Tagged With: '25 Things', connectivity, digital life, Facebook, meme, online intimacy, Social Media, social networks, Technology

‘What Happened to Your Nose?’

Ouch!

It’s usually children and foreigners who ask: those who have no sense of propriety or privacy, or those who consider Westerners too uptight about all the wrong things, and, paradoxically, not uptight enough about others. The waiter at the Indian restaurant sympathetically gestures toward his own, toast-colored nose and inquires in heavily accented English, “Oooh… […]

Filed Under: Family History, Politics & Society, Social Media, Teenagers Tagged With: basal cell carcinoma, Brownie Girl Scouts, cancer, daughters, personal history, privacy

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