Out Of My Shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Me

By Megashaun

I was in the sixth grade, eleven years old, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t cool. I only knew I wasn’t. I liked Ninja Turtles and Batman in a time when everyone else in my class was into MC Hammer, Technotronic, and Public Enemy. I didn’t own any albums. I didn’t try chasing the girls. One of my classmates—a boy—asked me which girl I liked and I said I didn’t like any (which was a lie; I didn’t want that secret getting out and risk being made fun of for it) and he asked me if I was gay.
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Top Five Thrift Store Finds

By Lisa Haviland

Mrs. Lou Reed
Sunglasses from Buffalo Exchange, Brooklyn, NY; 2007

The Commack Flea Market was a teenage thrift-store-junkie’s dream: rows upon rows of inexpensive mini-stores—more like clothing bodegas than actual stores—in a multi-level arena five minutes from my parents’ house. It was in the confines of this Long Island mall-reprieve maze that I learned to dig through the chintz and hone in on second-hand gold.
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Kris Kringle Konfessions

By John Lane

I admit it: I’m old enough to remember (and can now say somewhat unashamedly with the distance of years) when I actually found myself praying—praying—for the complete Welcome Back, Kotter action figures. What did I know? Could I fathom that Travolta would one day be riding the hot rails toward Scientology? Or that Boom-Boom Washington would not pass gracefully into the eighties? Only TV could make a squalid, inner-city school look so attractive, to a Catholic-school kid like me wearing the obligatory monkey-suit every day.
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Reindeer Games

By Less Lee Moore

Fear not: this is no paean to the 2000 movie with Charlize Theron and Ben Affleck woefully miscast as two-timing criminal lovers. This is a tribute to a storied family tradition, one involving bizarre rituals and the relentless search for functioning batteries.
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How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Robot

By Queen Spajina

From sci-fi novels to bartending to chic hotel bars, robots are made to wear many hats and cater to our every whim and desire, ideally without any regard for their own health or welfare.
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