Thinking of the perfect comebacktoo latestruck in spades and then there’s this: Jack Black is a line stepper. There’s nothing about Jack Black that I shouldn’t love. That puckish sprite’s thoroughly realized performances in fine motion pictures from Kung Fu Panda to, well, Kung Fu Panda: The Secrets of the Furious Five, along with his mock musical outings with Tenacious D and his work on Mr. Show, should have been enough for me.

I felt I'd finally reached a point in my teaching career where I was more than a few steps ahead of my students. Then, in 2004, I met Merzudin, a sophomore in my English class. The class was small, and the students seemed eager to learn. All of them, that is, except Merzudin.Merzudin stood over 6 feet tall and towered over most sophomores. He'd put his head on the desk and frequently fall asleep. He didn't seem to be paying attention.

Best college town? Best dining hall? Best job prospects? Check, check and check. These are the types of rankings that Dana Bolger, and most prospective female college students, pore over when deciding where to apply to school. But there's one question they probably didn't consider: How the institution would treat them if they experienced sexual assault.If Dana had wanted a resource that consolidated women-specific data like this, she would've been out of luck.

I heard the repeated rap on the steel gate that barricaded our door. Although I was not asleep, it was past midnight, and I wondered who it could be. My mom's bedroom window was closest to the gate, and, since she's a light sleeper, it woke her up."Oi, Rotimi, it's Micky." I heard my best friend whisper in his British accent. He had schooled in England since he was 7. I opened up."Micky J! Ki lo n shele!" I greeted him in our native Yoruba.

When Marcus Butler told his parents of his plan to devote himself to his YouTube channel, he was earning just “tens of pounds.” That was eight years ago, when the excited 18-year-old had just returned from VidCon, the annual online video extravaganza in Los Angeles, where he met vloggers who had bought houses with their earnings. “There was something material that showed there was potential in it,” he says. Having traveled to L.A.

Isaac MizrahiBefore Isaac Mizrahi was a fashion powerhouse, before he was a judge on Project Runway: All Stars, he was a schoolboy in Brooklyn raised by parents he describes as both "religious religious" and "clutchy clutchy." It was in this backdrop that Mizrahi first started to feel out his own identity and explore New York's thriving '70s club scene.

Welcome to The Professionals, an eight-part video series that connects you to the hearts, minds and anything-but-ordinary days of the people who run things, do things and make things GO.

Where do you go for inspiration? And where do you go to avoid it?In the good ol' days before the internet, inspiration - at least in the form of motivational quotes and self-help wisdom - was reassuringly quarantined.

Hundreds of video game consoles illuminate flat screen televisions in the Allied Esports Arena inside the Luxor Hotel & Casino. Past the Las Vegas stadium's seating, perched up above the stage is the suite-level owner's box, where Allied founder Jud Hannigan entertains guests. And there, wrapped behind and alongside the box is a flashing neon-lit tunnel where the players - yes, athletes - high-five VIPs as entrance music ushers them onto the stage.

I played the incoming answering machine message back, again."Eugene, man ... it's Karl. ... I've been stabbed."Then the line went dead. Nothing but the time stamp and that he had called from San Francisco. Karl Umrigar, a 20-something son of a Persian father and a British mother, had a whole passel of problems that while individually bedeviling, were collectively almost impossible to handle.