“Genki?,” says Andrew Strenio as he sits in his dorm room, drinking a Coke on a cold day in January. “That means ‘What’s up?’,” he says, surveying the room with fresh eyes, and realizing it hasn’t changed too much since his “trip” to Japan. Andrew, a junior, and ...

Last November, Josh Blaine was traveling down the coast of California, with the vague intention of reaching Mexico, when he stopped in Santa Barbara. Outside the city’s art museum, he caught sight of a man sitting next to a bike and a tennis racquet. Josh approached him and asked ...

“Closing Time” – you know the song. Yes, you do. Even you, snobby hipster scum, know the song. As soon as you hear the midtempo guitar, the chiming piano, the words arise unbidden in your Arcade-Fire-saturated brain. “Closing time, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay ...

Ten years ago this month, in Chicago, Illinois, the Smashing Pumpkins began to record their third album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” A child born in that year is fast approaching the age at which we heard that album for the first time. And what an age. Ready to ...

Right now it’s cold and snowy outside. Walking is a tricky business, with seemingly arbitrary piles of sand appearing everywhere you step and salt crystals so big, you’re as liable to trip on them as you were on the ice in the first place. Conceding that I am ...

Saying that Princeton University is nice-looking is about as controversial as admitting that you think Monet’s Water Lilies are kind of pretty. But if someone blindfolded you, shoved you in the backseat of a van, and drove you down to the parking lots just past Baker Rink before driving ...

Are you sick of me yet? Do you think I am completely boring, snobby, and awful? Did you realize reading the Nass last week that I fit almost every one of Katie McCulloch’s douchebag criteria? Are you frustrated after going out to the street and hearing underclassman girls badmouth ...

MONOLOGUE FOR A NERVOUS GIRL IN A WHITE BIRTHDAY CAKE DRESS AND SHINY LEATHER PUMPS
(A deep breath and then go)
Okay so this one time I was eating dinner with a friend at a food center in Singapore and we were talking about our usual high-falutin’ topics in the ...