Like many other publications, we wanted to create a place for millennials to write important, groundbreaking things about their generation. Here's one report from the front lines.

The first time I saw Milo was at a truck stop in Vancouver. He was angling for the same ride I was, his cut-off shorts hiked up high over one perfect golden thigh, his shaggy, unkempt hair hiding eyes the color of sea glass and broken bottles. Watching him, I knew that everyone around me—from the burnt out, 30-something waitress slinging hash in the run-down diner to the horny long-distance truckers cracked out on Benzedrines in the lot—they were all thinking the same [...]

Angelina Jolie was so amazed. It was only once in a while that she saw something that really made her feel real. It was so hard to feel real sometimes. Pancakes sometimes made her feel real. But pancakes were troublesome. A slippery slope. She wrote that down in her blue Moleskine book. "Pancakes are a slippery slope."

She put her pen down and thoughtfully chewed the silky inside of her left cheek. She stared hard at the photo on her iPod of those beautiful, strong young African women who had just invented this amazing generator that made electricity out of human urine. She shook her head. It was [...]

The publication of The Lifespan of a Fact, which is based on seven years of email exchanges between writer John D'Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal, has prompted a lot of thoughtful discussion (an excerpt from the book ran in this month's Harper's). Unmentioned up till now, however, is that while D'Agata was emailing with Fingal, he also was engaged in a tense exchange with another fact-checker charged with readying one of his essays for publication. It was to be an epic piece of writing: concerned with the depletion of Lake Michigan's resident sturgeon population due to faulty Federal government practices, the essay also included relevant meditations [...]

David Raposa is off this week, but Yakkin' About Baseball will return in its usual format next Friday. In the meantime, I’m offering an exclusive (if admittedly a bit self-promoting) look at a pet project of mine that's snowballed into something of an obsession. For the past seven years, I've been working on a still-untitled book project that has entailed visiting—and eating at—every Major League ballpark. The idea was to provide an overview of the concessions (culinary, ethical, otherwise) of Our American Pastime, but it has become something else entirely.

What was originally intended as a mass-market coffee table book has become something much more ambitious—a cross between a [...]

The apparent leak of Toy, a "lost" 2001 record by David Bowie, has inspired the folks at Flavorpill to consider ten musical works that disappeared due to artistic whim or creative differences. It's a very solid list, but any such elucidation will naturally fail to be fully comprehensive. Here are five other records that might have been, but never were.

Every night millions of us interact with the rich and famous-in our dreams. But why should those celebrity encounters remain off the record? Star columnist Brady Hammock is here to bring you all the dirt about your favorite personalities and how they really act when they think they're safe behind the scrim of your subconscious.

OPRAH TO DREAMER: WATCH THE CASUAL RAPE JOKES

Perhaps you assume there are some limits to Oprah Winfrey's knowledge, power, and reach. Well, if our dream-tipster is right-then you're wrong!

From time to time, we offer free editorial space to common folk with something to say. Today a famous author discusses her reasons for remaining silent for so many years.

I know there's all sorts of excitement about the 50th anniversary of my only book, To Kill a Mockingbird. And I understand that with all of these celebrations there will once again be plenty of attention paid to the fact that I'm a private person who has refused to give an interview for many years. I have, over that time, made peace with the whole thing. You learn to, after a while.

From time to time, The Awl offers its space to everyday citizens with something to say.

In light of a recent gripping narrative I wrote about air travel I have been hearing a lot of complaints about "internet trolling."

"Henry only wrote this to get attention," some people said. "This is a new low, even for Henry," Twitter users complained. "How does this dumb fuck even [...]

In a storage room in the back of a bar in Hermosa Beach, Dustin Mikulski is stretching his hamstrings. He's not a professional dancer—or, that is, he's not anymore. And technically, Breakers hasn't hired him to dance; the terms of his personal appearance agreement call for him to host: hype the crowd, throw out t-shirts, sign autographs for fans. But this isn't his first gig. Dustin knows that, eventually, he's going to have to perform the routine that made him famous.

Loosened up, Dustin takes advantage of the lull by checking his email. He was scheduled to lead a seminar the next morning in his Econ class at UC [...]

There are many reasons why I shouldn't have the information I have about Papa John Schnatter, and only one reason that I do. The reasons why not are plentiful. I am not, for instance, a fan of his pizza, and have been critical of it in the past—I have said, on the record and in many instances to people who didn't even ask what I thought of Papa John's, that I think Papa John's pizza "tastes like being in an airport feels" and "is basically an industrial accident covered with seven pounds of shredded cheese."

These critiques, I am aware, are not necessarily unique. What put me on Schnatter's [...]

Emma Watson looked out of the window of Pembroke Hall onto the intersection of Angell and Prospect and watched the line of vintage jean-jacketed 20-year-olds blowing on their Americanos and clutching copies of To the Lighthouse and Of Grammatology.

It was her first day at Brown University, and she wanted to make a good impression on her classmates. The phone rang. It was Marina from the publicity office at Burberry. “Emma,” she purred. “I see there’s precipitation in Providence today.”

“I’m just wearing a plain old Mackintosh,” Emma stood her ground. “I want to look normal.”

Her roommate, a porcelain-faced graduate of Dalton and third-generation legacy, applied a tiny [...]

Director Christopher Nolan has revealed that his next Batman movie will be called The Dark Knight Rises, and the villain will not, as expected, be The Riddler, but rather The Condiment King, whom actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is expected to take "to a very dark place."

Every night millions of us interact with the rich and famous-in our dreams. But why should those celebrity encounters remain off the record? Star columnist Brady Hammock is here to bring you all the dirt about your favorite personalities and how they really act when they think they're safe behind the scrim of your subconscious.

COZ FOR COMPLAINT?

Persistent Internet rumors notwithstanding, iconic entertainer and part-time culture grump Bill Cosby insists he is not dead. Maybe so. But why was Coz spotted in a recent dream skulking around rapping to a Tribe Called Quest jam in a Kansas City bar?

"Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver transplant soon: 'I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to treatment.'" —"A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House bid," Washington Post

No one at the homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles recognized the man serving them soup on a post-Thanksgiving weekend. Disheveled and dressed down, [...]

Wells Fargo Fraud Specialist: Hello, ma’am.

Me: Hi, how are you?

WFFS: There were some false charges on your card?

Me: Yes, that's right.

WFFS: Okay, I am going to go through the previous week of charges with you to make sure that everything is legitimate. I'll read off the charges and you just tell me yes if the charge was yours or no if it wasn’t.

Me: Okay… Well, I was on vacation the week before, so there are probably some weird charges.

WFFS: I’m showing a $750 dollar charge at a Hotel Tiz… ano in Rome on March 20th.

Me: Yes! Right. It’s a hotel in Rome [...]

"Kutcher's appearance came as reports emerged that he had been rating girls as 'hot tub worthy or not' during a night out in Las Vegas on the weekend of his sixth wedding anniversary."—Daily Mail

“You got that?” Diddy demanded. “You understand?” Ashton could imagine his friend standing at the edge of the pool in Alpine, watching an early-fall breeze raise waves across its surface. One hand would sit elegantly in his pocket, the other would be stroking the flat smooth edge of his white cashmere scarf.

“Yeah,” said Ashton. “I understand.” He felt uncertain but hoped he didn’t sound it.

Ashton put down his iPhone on top [...]

Did you ever notice that from time to time The Awl offers its editorial space to citizens with a point of view? It's true, we totally do. Today we hear from a man with a lot on his mind.

I watched the Republican debate on Fox the other night. It was in Iowa. I've been to Iowa so I can tell you a thing or two about corn. Corn isn't all that different from politics; both of them flourish in cow flop. No wonder presidential campaigns always start in Iowa.

But the debate, if you can call it that, made me realize that there are a lot [...]

"Rimbaud was his passion, but we finally had to tell him—and this broke the heart of every member of the department, because you knew how bad he wanted it—that there was more security in pro football." —Professor Ed Olshan, University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures chair 1985-1993

Okay, so the latest news in the Brett Favre penis portraiture story—and let's be honest, this is a much more uplifting news event than what's about to happen in the midterm elections—is that Favre "admitted to leaving voicemails wooing the stunning ex-model two years ago — but insisted he never texted her pictures of [...]

Every night millions of us interact with the rich and famous-in our dreams. But why should those celebrity encounters remain off the record? Star columnist Brady Hammock is here to bring you all the dirt about your favorite personalities and how they really act when they think they're safe behind the scrim of your subconscious.

"SNOOTY" EMERIL A ROBE-ROBBER?

Has celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse added some unpleasant ingredients to the down-to-earth recipe that made him a star? Our spy thinks so: In a recent dream Emeril turned out to be "a lot snootier than you'd think." Bam!