Popcorn Time Quotes

If I had my life to live over... Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over would I change anything. My answer was no, but then I thought about it and changed my mind. If I had my life to live over again I would have waxed less and listened more. Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I'd have cherished every minute of it and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. I would have eaten popcorn in the "good" living room and worried less about the dirt when you lit the fireplace. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would have burnt the pink candle that was sculptured like a rose before it melted while being stored. I would have sat cross-legged on the lawn with my children and never worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television ... and more while watching real life. I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband which I took for granted. I would have eaten less cottage cheese and more ice cream. I would have gone to bed when I was sick, instead of pretending the Earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for a day. I would never have bought ANYTHING just because it was practical/wouldn't show soil/ guaranteed to last a lifetime. When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now, go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more I love yous ... more I'm sorrys ... more I'm listenings ... but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it ... look at it and really see it ... try it on ... live it ... exhaust it ... and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it.

You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.

It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if the community is hungry for more than just knowledge, then maybe it’s about time to open a snack bar.

I rented Ghostbusters, my all-time favorite inspirational movie. I picked up some microwave, popcorn, a KitKat, a bag of bite-sized Reese's peanut butter cups, and a box of instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. Do I know how to have a good time, or what?

But you can't invent things like time,' Violet said. 'You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window waster. But you can't invent more time.

Ordinarily my mom just sunk deeper into her corner of the couch and ignored it. She had succesfully ignored a quarter of a century of entropy and decay, had sat peacefully crunching popcorn and drinking soda while the house fell down around us. If I had to guess the number of books she read during that time, I would place the number at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand.

Every year, Grandma Dickerson, my mom’s mother, made all the traditional sweets for Christmas time, but she made something not exactly “Christmasy” that became my favorite. Popcorn balls. She always prepared all those goodies before we arrived, so I never got to make them with her, and I never found out how she made them.

You want to start some shit, boy? Let’s go outside. (Devyn) Oh, good. I’m just in time for another round of Grand Testosterone Overdose. Ooooh, Alix, Claira…anyone got popcorn? Or maybe I should get Taryn? Then we could insult his manhood and watch him pop a gasket, too. (Zarina)

Because there's no way that anyone would give up on a child in less time than it takes to microwave popcorn.

Come in early, so there'll be time to pop corn,' Mrs. Ray said. If she mentioned popping corn, they always came in early. So she usually mentioned it.

I pick at what's left of the popcorn and think about the summer, the summer that was both awful and wonderful. I thank Adam, as I have thanked him almost every night since August, for showing me that it's possible to lift the corners of our universe. Adam told me about lifting the corners the second time I met him, but I had no idea what he meant. Now I think I do. It's all about changing what's handed to you, about poking around a little, lifting the corners, seeing what's underneath, poking that. Somethings things work out, sometimes they don't, but at least you're exploring. And life is always more interesting that way.

The first time the three of us went to the movies together, he waited until you went to get popcorn, and then he said, "You don't mind, do you?" And I'd been so moved that he'd asked, that he wanted my permission.

The essential difference between the culture of the past and the entertainment of today is that the products of the former sought to transcend mere present time, to endure, to stay alive for future generations, while the products of the latter are made to be consumed instantly and disappear, like cake or popcorn.

These are the end products of the Masterminds of Safety and Ethics, bulked up on cheese that contains no cheese, chips fried in oil that isn’t really oil, overcooked gray disks of what might once upon a time have been meat, a steady diet of Ho-Hos and muffins, butterless popcorn, sugarless soda, flavorless light beer. A docile, uncomprehending herd, led slowly to a dumb, lingering, and joyless slaughter.

What would you say to a loved one if you had only a few seconds to impart a last message? What language does love speak? Some of you speak love with wine and roses. For other, "I love you," is best said by breakfast in bed, carefully set aside sport sections, or night out at the movies, complete with buttered popcorn. Children spell love T-I-M-E. So, I think, do older folks. Teenagers spell it T-R-U-S-T. Sometimes parents spell love N-O. But no matter what the letters, the emotion beneath the wording must be tangible, demonstrable, and sincere.

Is Lisa going to the prom?" I shelved my worries for the moment. "I don't know, Mom. We don't talk about the You-Know-What. We made a pact." "You could go together, if you didn't want to mess with dates and things." "I don't want to mess with the prom at all, Mom." She ignored me, placidly eating popcorn, piece by piece. "Some girls in my high school class did that and had a wonderful time. They weren't lesbians or anything. Not that it would matter if they were." "That's nice, Mom. I'm glad you're so open-minded." I grabbed my Coke and the popcorn bowl and headed for the stairs, because I could go my whole life without ever hearing my mother talk about lesbians again. "Maybe you could take Justin to the prom," she called after me, laughter in her voice. "He is such a hottie." Shoot me now.

but you can't invent things like time,"Violet said. "You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can't invent more time.

By the time Vizzini fell over, dead, I'd finished my popcorn and put the bag down. I wanted some more. It seemed like the beast was always hungry. I wondered, if I was transformed back, would I be fat?

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

I'm just sorry. Sorry that there won't be any more camping trips for kids or rock bands or even new books to read. No more movies or fresh bags of popcorn. It really sucks when you think about it. Of course, there is the possibility that we might be able to win this war, but not for a very long time. Probably longer than you and I will ever exist in this world." "I try not to think about it." "Sometimes it's all I ever think about.

What do you remember about your life? When was the last time you felt joyful? What about devastated? Research shows you’re much more likely to be able to answer the second question than the first. Negative emotions carve deep ruts in our brains and are memorized by our bodies so they can be replayed over and over and over again. Positive emotions like joy and peace and love don’t always have the same impact. Do you want to get to the end of your life and remember only the negative? What parts do you want to remember? What we write down is what we remember. It’s like a time capsule in a way, a lifeline back to the best parts of ourselves. A little popcorn trail of words we can follow so that we never lose sight of the path we’re on. Words help us see ourselves more clearly. They help us remember who we are and what we’re here for. They help others remember us, too.

I recommend popcorn for its convenience and quick preparation time. First, place the bag in the microwave. When all the kernels have popped, remove the popcorn from the microwave carefully, because it will be very hot. Be sure to wear a cooking mitt, an apron, and a spatula to assist in the removal of the popcorn from the microwave. This will not only impress your guest, it will also make it look like you really know what you’re doing. If you find that the popcorn is burned, notice where it is burned. If it’s black at the top, dump out the black part and salvage the rest by pouring it into a bowl. Serve the yellow part to your guest, and then adjust the time when you make a new bag for yourself. Serves: one and a half. (Good enough.)

I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I’m having a hard day.

Life is a great big beautiful three-ring circus. There are those on the floor making their lives among the heads of lions and hoops of fire, and those in the stands, complacent and wowed, their mouths stuffed with popcorn. I know less now than ever about life, but I do know its size. Life is enormous. Much grander than what we’ve taken for ourselves, so far. When the show is over and the tent is packed, the elephants, lions and dancing poodles are caged and mounted on trucks to caravan to the next town. The clown’s makeup has worn, and his bright, red smile has been washed down a sink. All that is left is another performance, another tent and set of lights. We rest in the knowledge: the show must go on. Somewhere, behind our stage curtain, a still, small voice asks why we haven’t yet taken up juggling. My seminars were like this. Only, instead of flipping shiny, black bowling balls or roaring chainsaws through the air, I juggled concepts. The world is intrinsically tied together. All things march through time at different intervals but move ahead in one fashion or another. Though we may never understand it, we are all part of something much larger than ourselves—something anchoring us to the spot we have mentally chosen. We sniff out the rules, through spiritual quests and the sciences. And with every new discovery, we grow more confused. Our inability to connect what seems illogical to unite and to defy logic in our understanding keeps us from enlightenment. The artists and insane tiptoe around such insights, but lack the compassion to hand-feed these concepts to a blind world. The interconnectedness of all things is not simply a pet phrase. It is a big “T” truth that the wise spend their lives attempting to grasp.

The photograph is in my hand. It is the photograph of a man and a woman. They are at an amusement park, in 1959. In twelve seconds time, I drop the photograph to the sand at my feet, walking away. It’s already lying there, twelve seconds into the future. Ten seconds now. The photograph is in my hand. I found it in a derelict bar at the gila flats test base, twenty-seven hours ago. It’s still there, twenty-seven hours into the past, in its frame, in the darkened bar. I’m still there, looking at it. The photograph is in my hand. The woman takes a piece of popcorn between thumb and forefinger. The ferris wheel pauses. Seven seconds now. It’s October, 1985. I’m on Mars. It’s July, 1959. I’m in New Jersey, at the Palisades Amusement Park. Four seconds, three. I’m tired of looking at the photograph now. I open my fingers. It falls to the sand at my feet. I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away. And their light takes so long to reach us… All we ever see of stars are their old photohraphs.

In May, when the grass was so green it hurt to look at it, the air so overpoweringly sweet you had to go in and turn on the television just to dull your senses- that's when Claire knew it was time to look for the asparagus in the pastures. If it rained she wondered if she should check our secret places for morels. In June, when the strawberries ripened, we made hay and the girls rode on top of the wagon. I was ever mindful of the boy who had fallen off and broken his neck. In July, the pink raspberries, all in brambles in the woods and growing up our front porch, turned black and tart. In August, the sour apples were the coming thing. In September there were the crippled-up pears in the old orchard. In October, we picked the pumpkin and popcorn. And all winter, when there was snow, we lived for the wild trip down the slopes on the toboggan.

Lizzie and I arrived in the polluted heat of a London summer. We stood frozen at street corners as a blur of pedestrians burst out of the subways and spilled like ants down the pavements. The crowed bars, the expensive shops, the fashionable clothes - to me it all seemed a population rushing about to no avail...I stared at a huge poster of a woman in her underwear staring down at her own breasts. HELLO BOYS, she said. At the movies we witnessed sickening violence, except that this time we held tubs of popcorn between our legs and the gunfire and screams were broadcast in digital Dolby. We had escaped a skull on a battlefield, only to arrive in London, where office workers led lines of such tedium and plenty that they had to entertain themselves with all the f****** and killing on the big screen. So here then was the prosperous, democratic and civilized Western world. A place of washing machines, reality TV, Armani, frequent-flier miles, mortgages. And this is what the Africans are supposed to hope for, if they're lucky.

All Souls’ Eve, when the spirits of the dead will come back to the living, dressed as ballerinas and Coke bottles and spacemen and Mickey Mice, and the living will give them candy to keep them from turning vicious. I can still taste that festival: the tart air, caramel in the mouth, the hope at the door, the belief in something for nothing all children take for granted. They won’t get homemade popcorn balls any more, though, or apples: rumors of razor blades abound, and the possibility of poison. Even by the time of my own children, we worried about the apples. There’s too much loose malice blowing around. In Mexico they do this festival the right way, with no disguises. Bright candy skulls, family picnics on the graves, a plate set for each individual guest, a candle for the soul. Everyone goes away happy, including the dead. We’ve rejected that easy flow between dimensions: we want the dead unmentionable, we refuse to name them, we refuse to feed them. Our dead as a result are thinner, grayer, harder to hear, and hungrier.

On Saturday Ben and I drove to Johns Island to see Skyfall.” “You did?” Hi asked sharply. “Thanks for the invite, jerks.” Shelton raised his palms. “You were at temple. We’re supposed to just wait around? Plus, you’ve seen that move like five times.” “You still could’ve asked,” Hi grumbled. “I don’t—” “Guys!” I clapped my hands once. “The story, please.” “An hour in, I go for a popcorn refill.” Shelton shuddered. “When I get back, Ben’s sitting in the dark, flaring away, and he’s not even wearing his sunglasses! I almost wet myself. He said he wanted to watch the movie in HD. Man, I don’t remember a single minute from the rest of the film.” “In a theater!?” My temper exploded. “That stupid mother—” “Hiram!” Our heads whipped. Ruth Stolowitski was standing on her front stoop. “Get back in here this instant! You’re not dressed.” Ruth wore a fuzzy pink bathrobe, her free hand vising the garment closed. Her eyes darted, as if worried that cagey perverts were surveilling our remote island, waiting for just this opportunity to get an eyeful.

For example, if every time you eat popcorn, one hour later you fart so hard that it inflates your socks, you can reasonably assume popcorn makes you gassy.

Regardless of the delivery method, your Higher Mind will leave you a trail of popcorn. It's been happening all along, even if you've been unaware, trampling it underfoot. It may only be one kernel at a time, but that's all you really need.

A group of older women walked past, wearing fanny packs and large cameras around their necks. ... "I think I'm going to get one of those." Weylin's voice was thoughtful as he watched the women jaywalk. "One of what?" Ree cocked an eyebrow and smiled at her friend. "I don't know, Wey-mand. I think they might be too much woman for you." Paden flashed a crooked grin. "Har, har. I meant a fanny pack." Looking thoughtful, Weylin ignored thier expressions of disbelief. "A...fanny pack?" Sophie was looking at Weylin as if he had lost his mind, but Ree noticed the corners of her mouth twitching. "Yeah. Think about all the cool things I could carry in one." Completely unperturbed, Weylin stopped at the crosswalk and hit the button on the light post. "I could carry knives and some of those collapsible swords that Roland uses. Oh and snacks!" Unable to control her laughter anymore, Ree leaned over and clutched her sides. "Snacks? Weylin, I think you might need to lie down. You obviously have a fever or something." "You won't be saying that the next time we're out and you get a hankering for a pizza or some popcorn. I could even carry bottled water and little sanitizer wipes." "How big of a fanny pack are you planning on getting? Paden raised an eyebrow. ... "Oh, hell no! I am not eating food you've been carrying near your man-pickle. That is so not going to happen." Everyone in the group sputtered and laughed at Juliette's comment.

Claire put scientifically enhanced popcorn in the microwave oven. "I never feel like I'm putting food in one of these things," she then says, entering with beeps, the time-set into the LED. "It feels more like I'm inserting fuel rods into a core.

Making popcorn is a reminder of the very valuable fact that very similar people who are given the very same opportunity in the very same environment at the very same time will not succeed or mature at the very same time, if they will manage to succeed or mature.

Right now, Marcy and the birthday girl are curled up on the couch under a blanket watching The Little Princess with Shirley Temple for what, the hundredth time? That Marcy; I don’t know how she does it. I made ‘em popcorn then I said I had to go get smokes, be right back. I didn’t need smokes. What I needed was to get the hell out of there, go for a drive, think. And I knew just what I’d be thinking: she was six, just like my Anna—I know because she told us or maybe I remember reading it in the paper after. Her name was Olive Copely. I got that name tattooed on my brain.

Of course that was just one of her many strange little habits and quirks: she put onion flakes on breakfast cereal and poured bearnaise sauce on popcorn, and if you yawned when she was next to you, she would lean forward and stick a finger in your mouth, just to see if she could pull it out again before you closed your mouth. Sometimes she put cornflakes in Jim's shoes, sometimes little bits of boiled egg and anchovies in Jack's pockets, and the looks on their face when they realized seemed to amuse her more and more each time she did it. That's the kind of thing you miss. That she used to do this, that she used to do that. She *was,* she *is.*

The way he took every opportunity to shoot free throws at the kitchen garbage can—and missed every time. The way he was trying to make friends with a crow by setting popcorn out on the fence. The way he’d decided that the most sanitary way for everyone to sneeze was to put their face inside their shirt at the moment of impact.

It seems like as we stand there I’m watching my whole life with Hana, our entire friendship, fall away: sleepover parties with forbidden midnight bowls of popcorn; all the times we rehearsed for Evaluation Day, when Hana would steal a pair of her father’s old glasses, and bang on her desk with a ruler whenever I got an answer wrong, and we always started choking with laughter halfway through; the time she put a fist, hard, in Jillian Dawson’s face because Jillian said my blood was diseased; eating ice cream on the pier and dreaming of being paired and living in identical houses, side by side. All of it is being sucked into nothing, like sand getting swept up by a current.

I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be? You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look. Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know. (pp.174-175)

KING VIDOR: When sound first came in, that’s when popcorn and all the drinks started and necking in the theater started, because you could turn away and do all sort of things and you could still hear. You wouldn’t miss anything, you know. The sound would take care of it. In silent pictures, you had to pay attention the whole time. You had to sit there and try to figure it out.

The way I feel about you, Jacinda...I know you feel it, too." He stares at me so starkly, so hungrily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do," I admit. But I don't understand him. Don't get why he should feel this way about me. Why should he want me so much? What do I offer him? Why did he save me that day in the mountains? And why does he pursue me now? When no girl spiked his interest before? "Good," he says. "Then how about a date?" "A date?" I repeat, like I've never heard the word. "Yeah. A real date. Something official. You. Me. Tonight. We're long overdue." His smile deepens, revealing the deep grooves on the sides of his cheeks. "Dinner. Movie. Popcorn." "Yes." The word slips past. For a moment I forget. Forget that I'm not an ordinary girl. That he's not an ordinary boy. For the first time, I understand Tamra. And the appeal of normal. "Yes." It feels good to say it. To pretend. To drink in the sight of him and forget there's an ulterior reason I need to go out with him. A reason that's going to tear us apart forever. Stupid. Did you think you might have a future with him? Mom's right. Time to grow up. He smiles. Then he's gone. Out the door. For a second, I'm confused. Then he's at my door, opening it, helping me out. Together we walk through the parking lot. Side by side. We move only a few feet before he slips his hand around mine. As we near the front of the building, I see several kids hanging out around the flagpole. Tamra with her usual crowd. Brooklyn at the head. I try to tug my hand free. His fingers tighten on mine. I glance at him, see the resolve in his eyes. His hazel eyes glint brightly in the already too hot morning. "Coward." "Oh." The single sound escapes me. Outrage. Indignation. I stop. Turn and face him. Feel something slip, give way, and crumble loose inside me. Set free, it propels me. Standing on my tiptoes, I circle my hand around his neck and pull his face down to mine. Kiss him. Right there in front of the school. Reckless. Stupid. I stake a claim on him like I've got something to prove, like a drake standing before the pride in a bonding ceremony. But then I forget our audience. Forget everything but the dry heat of our lips. My lungs tighten, contract. I feel my skin shimmer, warm as my lungs catch. Crackling heat works its way up my chest. Not the smartest move I've ever made.

I then ask them to turn these things upside down—to imagine the exact opposite of each one. For example, the new list would include a small tent, no animals, expensive seats, no barkers, one act performing at a time, sophisticated music, and no clowns or popcorn. They then pick the things they want to keep from the traditional circus and the things they want to change. The result is a brand-new type of circus, à la Cirque du Soleil.

As I reflect back on all of the years of our family’s life together, what I remember best is not the mountains of dirty dishes and pots and pans and socks left on the floor and piles of laundry. I reflect instead on precious times shared with Clay, the kids, and those we welcomed into our home—snuggling on the couch together, nursing babies and rocking them to sleep, sharing movies and huge bowls of popcorn, comforting children after a nightmare, and all those heartfelt kisses and cards that said “I love you!

I was ready to get this show on the road, creating a new generation with an updated set of rules and regulations. Not that there was anything wrong with the way either one of us was brought up, but still, the world is changing, so the way you bring up kids had to change, too. Part of my plan was to never one time mention picking cotton. My parents always talked about either real cotton or the idea of it. White people say, 'It beats digging a ditch'; black people say, 'It beats picking cotton.' I'm not going to remind my kids that somebody died in order for me to do everyday things. I don't want Roy III sitting up in the movie theater trying to watch Star Wars or what have you and be thinking about the fact that sitting down eating some popcorn is a right that cost somebody his life. None of that. Or maybe not much of that. We'll have to get the recipe right. Now Celestial promises that she will never say that they have to be twice as good to get half as much. 'Even if it's true,' she said, 'what kind of thing is that to say to a five-year-old?

Although a little noisy at first, in a bizarre twist of fate, electronic music became popular in France in the 1890’s before fizzling out in favor of Swing music – which somehow made an early appearance in the 1900’s. In another alternative timeline, the Beatles never existed and England invented popcorn and hamburgers in the 1840’s. Damn, that’s what almost happened last time again, thought Scrooby tensely, while maneuvering himself onto a stronger looking branch. Details, everything was about the details. Sometimes there was almost too much detail to keep up with.

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

An introversion party is three people sprawled on couches and pillows, reading and occasionally talking. Or a couple cuddling by a fire at camp, savoring the music of crackling wood and crickets. Your introversion party might be a solitary walk where thoughts are exposed to air and become clear. You might find your party in meditation, when time expands and everything seems possible. Your party might come with popcorn as you passionately observe the big screen of the theater or with a steaming cup of Ethiopian blend as you watch people from your table at the coffeehouse, or with a cold beer as you watch the world go by from your porch.

Adolescents need to cocoon. Cocooning is a term coined in the early 1980s by Faith Popcorn, a social trend analyst with a bizarre and compelling name. (That’s neither here nor there, but it can’t go unsaid.) Popcorn describes cocooning as “the impulse to stay inside when the outside gets too tough and scary.” Since its introduction to our lexicon, it has come to be used regularly to describe adolescents and their relationship to their rooms. Tweens and teens cocoon because at a time when most things in their lives are changing—their bodies, brains, emotions, friends, and even their self-concepts—bedrooms are safe havens. There, they can think about any and all things ad nauseam, or push them aside and take a break from the mental turmoil of their busy minds.

To be honest, I don’t know. Theo’s working for my dad now. Dad says he’s a good worker. I don’t want to get in the way of that, either.” Juliet leaned toward Beth. “You are such an only child. Are you afraid that if Theo does something wrong, Mack will yell at him or fire him?” “Well, that could happen.” “Realistically, it absolutely could. And you know what? Theo could go get a job doing something else. Maybe he’s not cut out for the construction business, but maybe he is. Or he’ll knuckle down and work harder. The point is, you can’t be afraid of Theo and Mack arguing. You can’t be afraid that your daddy will be mean to your boyfriend. Men argue all the time. And believe me, siblings argue all the time. We say terrible things to each other and slam out the door and fifteen minutes later we’re sharing a bowl of popcorn in front of Saturday Night Live.

Snacks at sleepovers are a must. Try this one next time your parents forget to stock the snack cupboard. Supplies: brown paper lunch bag stapler measuring cup microwave Ingredients: ¼ cup popcorn kernels 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp chocolate chips 2 tbsp butter or margarine pinch of salt Pour the popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag then fold the top of the bag ¼ of an inch, twice. Secure two staples (trust me, I Googled it!) at the folded part to seal the bag shut. Lay the bag flat in the microwave and cook on HIGH for about 1:45 (one minute and forty-five seconds, people!). Each microwave is different, though, so you may need to adjust the time. Meanwhile, add the brown sugar, chocolate chips, butter/margarine and salt to a microwave-safe measuring cup. Cook on HIGH for about 15 seconds or until the gooey buttery-chocolaty mixture is melted. Mix well with a fork then pour it over the popcorn.

Peter and I are standing in line for popcorn at the movies. Even just this mundane thing feels like the best mundane thing that’s ever happened to me. I check my pocket to make sure I’ve still got my ticket stub. This I’ll want to save. Gazing up at Peter, I whisper, “This is my first date.” I feel like the nerdy girl in the movie who lands the coolest guy in school, and I don’t mind one bit. Not one bit. “How can this be your first date when we’ve gone out plenty of times?” “It’s my first real date. Those other times were just pretend; this is the real thing.” He frowns. “Oh, wait, is this real? I didn’t realize that.” I move to slug him in the shoulder, and he laughs and grabs my hand and links my fingers with his. It feels like my heart is beating right through my hand. It’s the first time we’ve held hands for real, and it feels different from those fake times. Like electric currents, in a good way. The best way.

Unfortunately, my mind was also in part formed by the apocalyptic, death-obsessed culture of the past several decades. Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium—Y2K—when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living in the End Times was exhausting. When you were assured that billions of people were on the brink of imminent death at every minute of the day, it was hard to get the necessary eight hours of sleep, even harder to limit yourself to only one or two alcoholic drinks each day, when your stress level said, I gotta get smashed.

Music centers you,” I whispered to an empty car, staring at his front door. “You listened to your iPod between classes and while you sat on the bleachers before school every morning.” I smiled, letting more tears run down my cheeks and thinking back to him and his black hoodies, looking so dark. “You love popcorn. Almost every kind and flavor but especially with Tabasco sauce,” I said, remembering the times he would come into the theater where I worked. “You hold the door open for women—students, teachers, and even old ladies coming out of Baskin-Robbins. You love movies about natural disasters, but they have to have some comedy in them. Your favorite one is Armageddon.” I swallowed and thought about how little I’d ever seen Jax truly smile. “And while you love computers, it’s not your passion,” I concluded. “You love being outdoors. You love having space.” My whole face hurt, the last words barely audible. “And you deserve someone who makes you happy. I’m just not that person.

Well,that all worked out nicely," Edward said from my hand. "Yup." I sat down and propped the postcard upright against my books. "Thanks." "Whatever for?" "Being real,I guess. I'm pretty sure this paper about your life will get me into NYU.Which,when you think about it, is a pretty great gift from a guy I've never met who's been dead for a hundred years." Edward smiled. It was nice to see. "My pleasure,darling girl. I must say, I like this spark of confidence in you." "About time,huh?" "Yes,well.Have you forgiven the Bainbridge boy?" "For...?" "For hiding you." "He wasn't.I was hiding me." I gave Edward a look before he could gloat. "Yeah,yeah. You've always been very wise. But this isn't really about my forgiving Alex,is it?" He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "I suppose not. So?" "So.I think you were a good guy, Edward. I think you probably would have told everyone exactly how you felt about Marina of you could have.If she hadn't been married, maybe, or if you'd lived longer. I think maybe all the pictures of you did of her were your public delcaration. Whaddya think? Can I write that? Is it the truth?" "Oh,Ella." His face was sad again, just the way he'd cast it in bronze. But it was kinda bittersweet now, not as heartbroken. "I would give my right arm to be able to answer that for you.You know I would." "You don't have a right arm,Mr. Willing. Left,either." I picked up the card again. "Fuhgeddaboudit," I said to it. "I got this one covered." I tucked my Ravaged Man inside Collected Works. It would be there if I wanted it.Who knows. Maybe Edward Willing will come back into fashion someday,and maybe I'll fall for him all over again. In the meantime, I had another guy to deal with.I sat down in front of my computer.It took me thirty seconds to write the e-mail to Alex. Then it took a couple of hours-some staring, some pacing,an endless rehearsal dinner at Ralph's, and a TiVo'd Christmas special produced by Simon Cowell and Nigel Lythgoe with Nonna and popcorn-for me to hit Send.

Rookie Cinnamon Sugar Doughnuts* Parental supervision necessary for frying Makes 8 doughnuts and 8 doughnut holes Ingredients Vegetable oil 1 (8-count) tube of premade, large biscuit dough (found in the refrigerated dough aisle at supermarkets) ½ cup sugar ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon Directions 1. Fill a large saucepan with vegetable oil to a depth of 1 inch. 2. Heat oil over medium heat until it reaches 365°F. You can measure the temperature with a cooking oil thermometer. Or, drop a single kernel of popcorn into the oil as it’s heating. When the kernel pops, you’re ready to fry. 3. While the oil heats, open the biscuit tube and separate the rounds. Use a 1-inch-round cookie cutter to cut a hole in the center of each biscuit. Save the holes. 4. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a large shallow bowl. 5. Add 2 doughnuts to the hot oil at a time. Cook, turning once, until golden brown—about 1 minute per side. 6. Drain on paper towels and immediately toss in the cinnamon sugar to coat. Cool on a wire rack. Repeat with the remaining doughnuts and holes.

Lachlain shifted restlessly. He thought he was finally strong enough for them to leave tomorrow. He was physically ready to resume relations with his wife, and wasn’t eager to do it under this roof. He stood and offered his hand, and with a shy smile she slipped her hand in his. As they crossed in front of the screen, they barely dodged a volley of popcorn. He didn’t know where he was taking her, maybe out into the night fog. He just knew he wanted her, needed her, right then. She was too precious to him, too good to be true. When he was inside her, with his arms tight around her, he felt less like she’d slip away. But they only made it to an empty hall before he pressed her against the wall, cupped her neck, and demanded once again, “You’ll stay with me?” “Always.” Her hips arched up to him. “You love me?” “Always, Emmaline,” he grated against her lips. “Always. So damn much you make me mad with it.” When she moaned softly, he lifted her so she could wrap her legs around his waist. He knew he couldn’t have her here, but the reasons why grew hazy with her breaths in his ear. “I wish we were home,” she whispered. “Together in our bed.” Home. Damn if she hadn’t said home. In our bed. Had anything ever sounded so good? He pressed her harder into the wall, kissing her more deeply, with all the love he had in him, but suddenly they were falling, his balance somehow lost. He clenched her to him and twisted to take the impact on his back. When he opened his eyes, they were tumbling into their bed. Eyebrows raised, jaw slack, he released her and levered himself onto his elbows. “That was . . .” He exhaled a stunned breath. “That was a wild ride, lass. Will you no’ warn me next time?” She nodded solemnly, sitting up to straddle him, pulling her blouse over her head to bare her exquisite breasts for him. “Lachlain,” she leaned down to whisper in his ear, brushing her nipples over his chest, making him shudder and clench her hips. “I’m about to give you a very . . . wild . . . ride.” Yet after everything that had occurred, his need for her was too strong, and he gave himself up to it, tossing her to her back and ripping her clothes from her. He made short work of his own, then covered her. When he pinned her arms over her head and thrust into her, she cried his name and writhed beneath him so sweetly. “I’ll demand that ride tomorrow, love, but first you’re going to see wild from a man who knows.

New Rule: Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It's Oscar time again, which means two things: (1) I've got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We're too liberal; we're out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products--movies---that people all over the world still want to buy. Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska. What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sony Bono? Fred Thompson? And let'snot forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That's right, Dick Cheney. I'm not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they're almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derrick with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be "Two Die in Car Bombing." The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liebral stars that the right is always demonizing--Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy--they're just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren't begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do...nothing. We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: The people on that screen are only pretending to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys. So please don't hat eon us. And please don't ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we're just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.

He was taking another hit from his short-and-squat of Goose when his eyes skipped to the arched doorway of the room. Jane hesitated as she glanced inside, her white coat opening as she leaned to the side, as if she were looking for him. When their eyes met, she smiled a little. And then a lot. His first impulse was to hide his own grin behind his Goose. But then he stopped himself. New world order. Come on, smile, motherfucker, he thought. Jane gave a short wave and played it cool, which was what they usually did when they were together in public. Turning away, she headed over to the bar to make herself something. “Hold up, cop,” V murmured, putting his drink down and bracing his cue against the table. Feeling like he was fifteen, he put his hand-rolled between his teeth and tucked his wife-beater tightly into the waistband of his leathers. A quick smooth of the hair and he was . . . well, as ready as he could be. He approached Jane from behind just as she struck up a convo with Mary—and when his shellan pivoted around to greet him, she seemed a little surprised that he’d come up to her. “Hi, V . . . How are—” Vishous stepped in close, putting them body to body, and then he wrapped his arms around her waist. Holding her with possession, he slowly bent her backward until she gripped his shoulders and her hair fell from her face. As she gasped, he said exactly what he thought: “I missed you.” And on that note, he put his mouth on hers and kissed the ever-living hell out of her, sweeping one hand down to her hip as he slipped his tongue in her mouth, and kept going and going and going . . . He was vaguely aware that the room had fallen stone silent and that everything with a heartbeat was staring at him and his mate. But whatever. This was what he wanted to do, and he was going to do it in front of everyone—and the king’s dog, as it turned out. Because Wrath and Beth came in from the foyer. As Vishous slowly righted his shellan, the catcalls and whistling started up, and someone threw a handful of popcorn like it was confetti. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Hollywood said. And threw more popcorn. Vishous cleared his throat. “I have an announcement to make.” Right. Okay, there were a lot of eyes on the pair of them. But he was so going to suck up his inclination to bow out. Tucking his flustered and blushing Jane into his side, he said loud and clear: “We’re getting mated. Properly. And I expect you all to be there and . . . Yeah, that’s it.” Dead. Quiet. Then Wrath released the handle on George’s harness and started to clap. Loud and slow. “About. Fucking. Time.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

This is why people are so disappointed with the present. We talk so much about how wonderful tomorrow's going to be that even if it's great, it can't help but be a letdown. Tomorrow is like a summer blockbuster for which the studio starts showing trailers the previous November. By the time it comes to your complex, you feel like you've already seen it. All the best lines and biggest explosions. The most provocative coming-out-of-the-water bikini shot. You will already have seen the making-of-the-feature and heard the actors on the press junket talking about what a privilege it was to work with so-and-so and how they all did their own stunts. So because you feel like you've already seen it, by the time it comes, you have no desire to fork over $15 and actually sit through it in a theater. What's happened is that you've already experienced something which hasn't happened yet. In fact, when you think of it, the only reason to go to the movies isn't to see the feature but to get a taste of the future, to see the trailer for the NEXT big blockbuster and to experience THAT before it happens. And this phenomenon isn't limited to the movies, it is the we live today. And it is why I encourage you to ignore the hype of what's to come, and to get some popcorn and gummy bears during the previews, and to thoroughly enjoy the feature. In real time. Not in the black hole of expectation.

Subject of Thought Number of Times Thought Occurred per Year (in descending order) L. 580.0 Family 400.0 Brushing tongue 150.0 Earplugs 100.0 Bill-paying 52.0 Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of 45.0 Sunlight makes you cheerful 40.0 Traffic frustration 38.0 Penguin books, all 35.0 Job, should I quit? 34.0 Friends, don't have any 33.0 Marriage, a possibility? 32.0 Vending machines 31.0 Straws don't unsheath well 28.0 Shine on moving objects 25.0 McCartney more talented than Lennon? 23.0 Friends smarter, more capable than I am 19.0 Paper-towel dispensers 19.0 "What oft was thought, but ne'er" etc. 18.0 People are very dissimilar 16.0 Trees, beauty of 15.0 Sidewalks 15.0 Friends are unworthy of me 15.0 Indentical twins separated at birth, studies of traits 14.0 Intelligence, going fast 14.0 Wheelchair ramps, their insane danger 14.0 Urge to kill 13.0 Escalator invention 12.0 People are very similar 12.0 "Not in my backyard" 11.0 Straws float now 10.0 DJ, would I be happy as one? 9.0 "If you can't get out of it, get into it" 9.0 Pen, felt-tip 9.0 Gasoline, nice smell of 8.0 Pen, ballpoint 8.0 Stereo systems 8.0 Fear of getting mugged again 7.0 Staplers 7.0 "Roaches check in, but they don't check out" 6.0 Dinner roll, image of 6.0 Shoes 6.0 Bags 5.0 Butz, Earl 4.0 Sweeping, brooms 4.0 Whistling, yodel trick 4.0 "You can taste it with your eyes" 4.0 Dry-cleaning fluid, smell of 3.0 Zip-lock tops 2.0 Popcorn 1.0 Birds regurgitate food and feed young with it 0.5 Kant, Immanuel 0.5

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you before, but a few years ago, I started keeping a diary, which I called ‘the life book’. I began with the idea of writing one short entry each day, just a line or two, describing something good. I suppose by ‘good’ I must have meant something that made me happy or brought me pleasure. I went back to look at it the other day, and the early entries are all from that autumn, almost six years ago now. Dry upturned sycamore leaves scuttling like claws along the South Circular Road. The artificial buttered taste of popcorn in the cinema. Pale-yellow sky in the evening, Thomas Street draped in mist. Things like that. I didn’t miss a day through all of September, October, November that year. I could always think of something nice, and sometimes I would even do things for the purpose of putting them in the book, like taking a bath or going for a walk. At the time I felt like I was just absorbing life, and at the end of the day I never had to strain to think of anything good I had seen or heard. It just came to me, and even the words came, because my only aim was to get the image down clearly and simply so that I would later remember how it felt. And reading those entries now, I do remember what I felt, or at least what I saw and heard and noticed. Walking around, even on a bad day, I would see things—I mean just the things that were in front of me. People’s faces, the weather, traffic. The smell of petrol from the garage, the feeling of being rained on, completely ordinary things. And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that—like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me.

I worry about you too,” I said softly as I caressed her head resting against my chest. “You look tired.” Lark didn’t speak for a minute. When she finally looked at me, I saw a lot of different emotions swirling in those bright green eyes. “I feel like shit. I’m tired and dizzy. I can’t eat ninety percent of the food I used to eat. I feel awful, but I’m afraid to complain.” “Why?” “Maddy just had her baby and she was so tough about the whole thing. I’m surprised she didn’t give birth in the middle of the grocery store then go back to picking up things for dinner. Next to her, I’m a weakling. Also, Farah is going to be all brave and awesome too. I don’t want to be the whiner.” “First of all, Maddy’s got that natural breeder look about her. Some chicks are like that and you can’t let the exception be your rule. Besides, you’re having twins. You have more baby cooking to do than she did, so screw comparisons.” “I just don’t want people to think less of me.” “By people, do you mean Aaron?” “We barely met and got married and now I’m getting fat and I’m tired all the time. I don’t want him to lose interest.” “Oh, Lark, you’re so fucking stupid sometimes.” “Yeah, I know,” she said, grinning. “We have that in common.” “So true.” “Mom said that I’m like her and she had a guy like Aaron and she suffocated him and he ditched her. I know Mom sucks, but what if she’s right and I wear down Aaron and he stops loving me?” “Any man who would want Mom must be shit. Aaron isn’t shit.” “I know, but I get scared of messing up everything I have.” Kissing her forehead, I stood up and walked to the bedroom door. “Hey, Mister Clean, get over here.” Laughing, Lark followed me into the hallway where Aaron appeared, clearly loving his new nickname. “Listen up, Yul Brynner,” I said, sending Lark into giggles. “My sister is cooking up two kids that you stuck inside her. She needs more damn love than you’re giving. If you don’t do a better job of babying her, I’m going to have to replace you. Hmm, I just saw this guy Jake that I knew from high school. He’s ripped and works at the gym. The gym, Aaron.” My brother-in-law stared unaffected until I finished then he gazed down at his wife. Lark must have known what was coming because she started giggling. “My sweet muse,” he murmured and she laughed harder, “do you need more love than I’m giving?” Aaron swept Lark into his arms and cradled her like a kid. “Poor thing. I’ll just need to pay more attention.” As he kissed all over her, Lark stopped giggling and began moaning affirmations. “Good thing you obeyed because I think Jake might be gay.” After giving me a wink, Aaron gestured for me to go away. I was the one to obey this time. Leaving them to cuddle and more in the bedroom, I watched television and finished the popcorn. Professor joined me, but Pollack was wary. I think it was because I was always barking at her. In my defense, she started it.

The thing about Zofia and libraries is that she’s always losing library books. She says that she hasn’t lost them, and in fact that they aren’t even overdue, really. It’s just that even one week inside the faery handbag is a lot longer in library-world time. So what is she supposed to do about it? The librarians all hate Zofia. She’s banned from using any of the branches in our area. When I was eight, she got me to go to the library for her and check out a bunch of biographies and science books and some Georgette Heyer novels. My mother was livid when she found out, but it was too late. Zofia had already misplaced most of them.   It’s really hard to write about somebody as if they’re really dead. I still think Zofia must be sitting in her living room, in her house, watching some old horror movie, dropping popcorn into her handbag. She’s waiting for me to come over and play Scrabble.   Nobody is ever going to return those library books now.

Sleepover!” Ashley giggled while Parker pressed a finger to her lips. “Ssh! This is a covert operation! You want to wake everybody up?” Miranda didn’t know whether to laugh or be upset. For the time being, her discussion with Etienne was on hold. “What is going on?” “Etienne told Gage he might stop by here tonight.” Parker’s grin widened. “We’re not interrupting anything, are we?” Etienne frowned at his cousin. Gage returned it with an innocent shrug. “That’s right,” Ashley picked up. “So we figured, why should y’all have all the fun?” “Ashley brought chips,” Roo added, then brandished a greasy paper bag. “I made popcorn.” Leaning toward Gage, Parker mumbled, “She can’t ruin popcorn, can she?” “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Gage mumbled back.

Well, as long as we’re all here,” Miranda began, while Parker let out a prolonged groan. “Uh-oh. I sense drama.” “Impossible,” Roo said offhandedly. “You have no sense.” “This might be a good time to talk about our project?” Miranda continued. “How’s the research going?” “Oh! Me first!” Waving her arm, Ashley gave an excited little squirm. “You know how the museum and those shops on both sides of it are all attached to each other? Well, Parker’s mom said they all used to be just one big building!” The others waited. When Ashley merely sat there beaming at them, Parker drew back in exaggerated surprise. “Wow! That’s really fascinating, Ash!” “No, that’s not the fascinating part.” Ashley looked slightly offended. “I haven’t gotten to that yet.” “Then hurry and get to that part. The suspense is killing us.” “The building used to be a club. Like a private gentlemen’s club. Except upstairs, that’s where they’d meet their mistresses.” Parker smacked a hand to his forehead. “Hookers! Damn! And I took the courthouse!” “Not prostitutes.” Another offended look from Ashley. “Mistresses. It’s not just about sex, you know. There’s a very big difference.” “Is that the sad part?” Parker asked. Ashley continued, undaunted. “I found out there was a murder in one of those upstairs rooms. That when a very rich plantation owner wanted to end the relationship with his mistress, she stabbed him to death. In bed.” Calmly munching her popcorn, Roo gave a supportive thumbs-up. “And the drugstore next door to the museum? People who work there say they’ve heard moaning at night in one of those storage rooms on the second floor.” The boys traded glances. “And this moaning,” Parker said, straight-faced, “did it come before or after the guy was stabbed?

Arguing to hear one's own wonderful voice: I know people who use argument merely to hear their own voices. They are noisemakers. These people seem perfectly secure, but they are enchanted with their words, enthralled with their own wisdom, and they are, to be sure, as boring as popcorn without salt. They have, during the course of their lives, made so much noise and filled the air with so much authoritative banality that they have had no time to form an original thought, nor have they given themselves the opportunity to hear and learn anything from listening to anyone else.

Ashley grabbed my arm and whispered, "Don't look now, Mary Kate, but look who's at the popcorn cart." "Ashley!" I said. "How can I not look and look at the same time—

Tune into good memories Knowing this, you have to be proactive. When negative memories come back to the movie screen of the mind, many people pull up a chair, get some popcorn, and watch it all again. They’ll say: “I can’t believe they hurt me, that was so wrong.” Instead, remember this: That’s not the only movie playing. There’s another channel that is not playing back your defeats, your failures, or your disappointments. This channel features your victories, your accomplishments, and the things you did right. The good-memory channel plays back the times you were promoted, you met the right person, you bought a great house, and your children were healthy and happy. Instead of staying on that negative channel, switch over to your victory channel. You will not move forward into better days if you’re always replaying the negative things that have happened. We’ve all been through loss, disappointments, and bad breaks. So those memories will come to mind most often. The good news is you have the remote control. Just because the memory comes up doesn’t mean you have to dwell on it. Learn to change the channel.

Snacks at sleepovers are a must. Try this one next time your parents forget to stock the snack cupboard. Supplies: brown paper lunch bag stapler measuring cup microwave Ingredients: ¼ cup popcorn kernels 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp chocolate chips 2 tbsp butter or margarine pinch of salt Pour the popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag then fold the top of the bag ¼ of an inch, twice. Secure two staples (trust me, I Googled it!) at the folded part to seal the bag shut. Lay the bag flat in the microwave and cook on HIGH for about 1:45 (one minute and forty-five seconds, people!). Each microwave is different, though, so you may need to adjust the time. Meanwhile, add the brown sugar, chocolate chips, butter/margarine and salt to a microwave-safe measuring cup. Cook on HIGH for about 15 seconds or until the gooey buttery-chocolaty mixture is melted. Mix well with a fork then pour it over the popcorn. Toss like a salad and ENJOY!

For many people, eating popcorn at the cinema constitutes a habit – a regular practice, developed over time, that is hard to give up. To test just how strong a habit eating popcorn in the cinema is, researchers devised a fun experiment in which people entering a cinema were given a bucket of either fresh or stale popcorn. Nobody would claim to like stale popcorn. But the researchers surmised that those who had developed a popcorn-eating habit would be impervious to the taste, whereas those who rarely bought popcorn wouldn’t be so quick to reach for the next handful. Just to make sure that the stale stuff did actually taste worse, they got everyone to rate the taste of the popcorn they’d eaten: the fresh popcorn, unsurprisingly, won hands down.

Time to get your popcorn.

That night, though, Mom was getting things ready for a party at the restaurant, so I had to bum a ride with Jack and Julie. Jack said they didn’t need a chaperon, but it was just talk. He always helped me when it mattered. While we were waiting for Julie, I asked him about the one detail that was bothering me. “I’m supposed to meet her there,” I said. “Do I meet her inside the gym or outside?” “Do you have a date or not?” “More or less.” Jack grinned and shook his head. “Well, it’s not that simple,” I told him. “She can’t go out on dates, so she’s coming with her parents, and I’m supposed to meet her.” Jack broke out laughing. “You’re singing the freshman blues again, Eddie. Everything ends up half-baked.” “So where do I meet her on a half-baked date?” “Inside,” he said. “That way you won’t have to pay for her ticket.” “I don’t want to look like a cheapskate.” “Why hide the truth? Besides, her parents are bringing her, right? You don’t want to meet her father, do you?” “I don’t know.” “Look, he’ll just shake your hand and give you a dirty look. That’s what freshman girls’ fathers always do.” “Really?” “So save the hassle and the money. Wait inside.” I ended up waiting right inside the door. When Wendy and her father came in, she was careful to keep things looking casual. She pretended not to notice me at first, then said, “Oh, hi, Eddie,” and introduced me to her father as a boy in her algebra class. He shook my hand and gave me a dirty look. For a minute I thought the three of us would end up sitting together, but her father decided not to join us in the student rooting section. Wendy and I found an empty bench in the bleachers and were alone for twenty or thirty seconds before two of her friends came along, then three of mine. Then some friends of theirs. And finally Wayne Parks squeezed into a spot on the bench behind us. All through the game he kept leaning forward and making comments like “Where’s the ref keep his Seeing Eye dog during the game?” Even if Wendy and I hadn’t had an audience, we couldn’t have done much talking. During every time-out the Los Cedros Spirit Band, sitting three rows behind us, blasted us off the benches with fight songs. To top things off, Wendy’s father sat across the aisle and stared at us all night. And the Los Cedros Panthers blew a six-point lead in the final minute and lost the game at the buzzer. Before Wendy and I had our coats on, her father showed up beside us, mumbled, “Nice to meet you, Willy,” and led her away. The night could have been worse, I guess. I didn’t break an ankle or choke on my popcorn or rip my pants. But I had a hard time being thankful for those small favors.

With this in mind, I’d started a leadership and mentoring program at the White House, inviting twenty sophomore and junior girls from high schools around Greater D.C. to join us for monthly get-togethers that included informal chats, field trips, and sessions on things like financial literacy and choosing a career. We kept the program largely behind closed doors, rather than thrusting these girls into the media fray. We paired each teen with a female mentor who would foster a personal relationship with her, sharing her resources and her life story. Valerie was a mentor. Cris Comerford, the White House’s first female executive chef, was a mentor. Jill Biden was, too, as were a number of senior women from both the East and the West Wing staffs. The students were nominated by their principals or guidance counselors and would stay with us until they graduated. We had girls from military families, girls from immigrant families, a teen mom, a girl who’d lived in a homeless shelter. They were smart, curious young women, all of them. No different from me. No different from my daughters. I watched over time as the girls formed friendships, finding a rapport with one another and with the adults around them. I spent hours talking with them in a big circle, munching popcorn and trading our thoughts about college applications, body image, and boys. No topic was off-limits. We ended up laughing a lot. More than anything, I hoped this was what they’d carry forward into the future—the ease, the sense of community, the encouragement to speak and be heard. My wish for them was the same one I had for Sasha and Malia—that in learning to feel comfortable at the White House, they’d go on to feel comfortable and confident in any room, sitting at any table, raising their voices inside any group.

As kids, we all worked for the company in one way or another. I got to work behind the candy counter or run the popcorn stand when I was five years old. The business was part of life, and it was always included in the dinner conversation. We heard a lot about the debt it took to open new stores, and I worried about it. I remember confiding to my girlfriend one time—crying—and saying, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do. My daddy owes so much money, and he won’t quit opening stores.’ ” —ALICE WALTON

You have a cat," she said, surprised. It was an odd-looking cat with no hair on its back and strange ears, but with beautiful green eyes focused on Charlotte. As soon as it saw that it had Charlotte's attention, it meowed several times with a soft, creaky voice, as if there was a lot it needed to tell her. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell Frasier. She's absolutely no danger to those birds. She was a stray and badly burned behind Popcorn a few years ago. When she's not talking, she sleeps, mostly." "What's her name?" "Fig," Mac said. "Short for Figaro. Because she talks so much she's downright operatic." "She's lovely." Her tragic beauty made Charlotte want to cry.

He liked singing. Since he was blind and never got to go to school, the only song he knew was the national anthem. That's because we used to sing it during the morning assembly at the orphanage. So we sang the anthem. Until the East Sea runs dry and Mt. Baekdu wears away, God save us and keep our nation... Eunsu could remember all four verses. I remember how, on that cold night, the stars floated in the sky like cold popcorn as we raised our faces to the sky and sang the anthem. When we finished, Eunsu laughed and thought aloud, It's a great country, isn't it? Whenever I sing this song, I feel like we're good people.

After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush.

Long Island is a great idea. The first night I’m there I eat popcorn for dinner and sit on the deck watching the waves reach their foamy hands out to me and invite me in. It’s still summer-warm but hazy, and the moonlight is diffused over the water. The limitlessness of the ocean beyond the horizon exhilarates me. I can’t see what’s just past that line, and if I swam out to it, there would be another line I wouldn’t be able to see past. I just know that what’s ahead of me is the rest of my life, starting with tonight. And then tomorrow.

And it seemed fitting both for Andrei, and hypothetically the creators of the film, that when he got up to leave in the middle of it, he did so as an ode to the film. A statement of departure that said: 'If you made the movie for the reason I think you did, perhaps you wouldn’t be offended that I left the damn place and decided to chase after life. Inspiration is unlimited, but time is not. Thank you. Goodbye!' He left the poet’s book in the seat beside him, took his popcorn and soda, and exited the cinema the way the writers would have wanted.

This was inevitable, and another unmistakable inkling tells me that I knew it well before now. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. It’s Cecelia’s call that stops me from embracing the dark snaking its way into me. Focusing on her, I allow myself the chance to tell her that briefly, she gave me a glimpse of a happiness I hadn’t thought I was capable of. “Cecelia,” I address firmly, my heart lurching into the rhythm she created. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Tobias attempts to cut in, calling my name, but I refuse him. “I’m talking to Cecelia.” “Yes?” she replies, voice shaking with fear. “After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a life we might have had . . . if I didn’t have so many fucking monsters to slay. “Yeah, and I’ll watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.” Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. “We love rainy days, don’t we, baby?” “We do,” she croaks, voice breaking. Tilting my head at Matteo in challenge, I make my declaration clear to Tobias to ready himself. “We don’t fucking negotiate with terrorists.” Taking another step toward Matteo, Cecelia’s voice reaches me in elevated panic. “Dominic.” “What is it, baby?” “S’il te plaît, ne fais rien de stupide. Je t’aime.” Please don’t do anything stupid. I love you. “Je sais.” I know. Her declaration fuels me as I stand between her and the monster I swore to protect her from while her love sets me free. For a brief time, she was my solace—my reprieve. The only dream of a future I allowed myself to have, but she can’t be. Not anymore. Too many monsters. “Dominic,” Tobias orders gruffly. “Stand down, right fucking now. We’re still talking.” I feel the desperation in his order, in him, as he rattles behind me to stop and think it through. But I have, for far too long, and I’m finally ten steps ahead. Sorry brother.

Would it make you smile if I gave you my Netflix login?” He was actually saying this out loud. “So you could watch Time Martians On with popcorn?

I arrived at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol at around 11 a.m. I was supposed to meet my friend Ben at the Vondelpark at 3 p.m., so that we could then go and check in to our hostel together. Now, I guess it’s important to note that neither of us had a cellphone that worked in Europe, because I’m not even sure that shit existed back then. We just made a plan and were supposed to do it, which seems reckless and terrifying in retrospect. These days, I text my wife while I’m in line for popcorn at the theater to make sure the seat-finding process is going okay. The fact that I flew to a different continent and was just supposed to meet my friend at a certain place at a certain time feels like something out of the Middle Ages. It’s like when you hear that NASA sent people to the moon with a scientific calculator; that’s what meeting someone without a cellphone seems like to me now.

When it was time to decide the official food of movie-watching, human beings did not go for Fig Newtons or caramel, foods that are silent, but popcorn, the loudest sound on Earth.

Fortunately, Dallas takes pity on me and gives me a little tutorial, walking me through the first scene of the game, letting me get used to turning and shooting and punching and all that good stuff. He also lets me have all the health bonuses we find. Not to mention the ammo. "Told you I'd always protect you," he says with a grin. I smile back but, honestly, his words make me a little melancholy. And when he looks sideways at me with a crooked smile, I know he realizes it. "Should I apologize?" I shake my head and grab a handful of popcorn. "Just play." He does, and since we're partners against the zombie horde, I can't actually say he beats me. What I can say is that I died four times in the first fifteen minutes, and by minute seventeen Dallas is laughing his ass off. "Do I need to tell you how pathetic you are at this game?" "You really don't," I say as the screen flashes death number five. "Remind me to come rescue you when the zombie apocalypse happens. Without me, you're zombie food.

The media are right now in the process of doing millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of free PR work for whoever is doing this. Such over-the-top, wall-to-wall coverage just sets the bar higher and higher each time for the nut jobs and terrorists to get everybody’s attention. “Which means bigger explosions, more bodies, and more atrocities. They should take their cue from the baseball media, which nipped fan stupidity in the bud when they wisely decided to stop showing people who run onto the field.” “So don’t tell people there’s terrorism? That’s your solution?” said Brooklyn. “How about at least not sensationalizing it so much?” Arturo said. “This is a bloodbath. Stop selling the frickin’ popcorn.

SIMPLE CANNABUTTER This is an easy, quick way to infuse cannabis into butter on your stove top. Be sure to use salted butter since it has a higher smoke point, and don’t leave your saucepan unattended! You can make this cannabutter relatively quickly, and use it in any of the recipes in this book. MAKES ½ CUP ½ cup (1 stick) salted butter* ¼ ounce cannabis buds, finely ground *To make cannamargarine, simply substitute margarine for butter in this recipe. 1. Melt the butter on low heat in a saucepan. Add the ground buds, and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes, stirring frequently. 2. Strain the butter into a glass dish with a tight-fitting lid. Push the back of a spoon against the plant matter, and smash it against the strainer to squeeze out every drop of butter available. When you’re done, discard the plant matter. 3. Use your cannabutter immediately, or refrigerate or freeze until it is time to use. You can easily scale this recipe up for larger batches of cannabutter. 1 pound of butter (4 sticks) can absorb 1 ounce of cannabis, but you may want to simmer for up to 60 minutes. Drizzle this cannabutter over freshly cooked pasta or popcorn for instant satisfaction. Reserve large batches in the fridge or freezer for use in recipes. Note: For medical patients, I would recommend using 2 ounces of cannabis for each pound of butter, effectively making a double-strength cannabutter.

As Nietzsche says about Christians, you can tell from their faces that they don’t enjoy doing what they do. Fiction writers cluster in the unlit corners of the room, silently observing everybody, including the poets, who are usually having a fine time in the center spotlight, making a spectacle of themselves as they eat the popcorn and drink the beer and gossip about other poets.

If radios and microwaves merged, then the ideal pop song would be three minutes, or the length of time a bag of popcorn takes to finish popping. That’s about twice the length of my marriage, though in my defense the reason my marriage was so short was because I was too tall for the relationship.

My bed’s comforter is yellow. It has to be to hide all the melted butter stains. I make love like microwave popcorn—only in half the time!

[David] Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda- a lot more- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. Thus was born the two-quart bucket of popcorn, the sixty-four-ounce Big Gulp, and, in time, the Big Mac and the jumbo fries.

seekers of free video, too. In the past year, a program called Popcorn Time has become the kinder, gentler face of piracy online, taming BitTorrent to make it far more userfriendly and less obviously sketchy. Free incarnations for PCs, phones, and tablets look pretty much like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Instant Video, except with vastly deeper catalogs

If any of you haven't tried going to the movies alone, I suggest you do. It's not like I do it because I'm single; I've gone to the movies alone when I'm in a relationship, too. It's just a nice escape, time to zone out. Plus, nobody talks to you during the film, nobody puts their grubby hands in your popcorn, and nobody judges you for bringing in airplane bottles of vodka to spike your lemonade with.

think. ‘About what?’ I say. She gets all mad and stomps off to the bedroom. Now how in tarnation am I supposed to know she had her hair fixed a different way? I ain’t some faggot hairdresser. If she’d had it shaved off or dyed green, I most likely would have noticed.” Kevin thought this over. “Dahlia’s temperamental, but her hair’s the same.” “She buy a new dress? That can be dangerous.” “Not in a long while. She just kicked me out. Whenever I try to talk to her, her lips get all puckered and there I am on the porch.” “There’s your problem,” Earl said. “No man should be trying to talk to a woman. They’re a whole different breed, all the time wantin’ to know how you feel about things. Buy her a big bottle of cologne at Wal-Mart and tell her you like her hair. Just don’t sound like a faggot, okay? Keep in mind God ain’t married. Now go get that beer.” “You know anything about men?” Dahlia asked her mother-in-law while they took turns dipping into the bowl of popcorn. “I’ve been married to one for over thirty years,” said Eileen. “Far as I can tell, they’re all the same. The only reason they have faces is so we can tell ’em apart. Hardly

Barbara preferred to decorate the tree early instead of waiting for Christmas Eve, saying she wanted to have some time to enjoy the tree prior to the actual holiday. So three days before Christmas, she set Abe and the children to stringing popcorn, while she carefully unwrapped the glass ornaments from Germany that Robert brought down from the attic.

When deployed in rap vernacular, the word villain feels slightly anachronistic, particularly when prefaced by the adjective mother-fuckin’. It’s a little old-timey. But there simply wasn’t a word that better described N.W.A’s public aspirations with such accuracy. I suppose gangsta is the only other word that came close, a modifier so flexible it could even be used to describe how rappers operated their cars. If you lowered the seat and tilted your body toward the vehicle’s passenger side, the posture was referred to as the “gangsta lean.” Spawned in 1972 by forgotten R&B wunderkind William DeVaughn, “gangsta lean” is an amazingly evocative term, particularly to those who did not initially know what it meant. But once you unpacked the definition, it merely outlined a villainous way to drive your jalopy to White Castle, operating from the position that appearing villainous was an important way to appear at all possible times. This was very, very important to the members of N.W.A. It was the only thing they seemed to worry about. Everything they attempted had to possess criminal undertones. I can only assume they spent hours trying to deduce villainous ways to microwave popcorn (and if they’d succeeded, there would absolutely be a song about it, assumedly titled “Pop Goes the Corn Killa” or “45 Seconds to Bitch Snack”).

Family. The word echoed in my mind, and I felt my canines retract. The bloodlust nipped at my heels, begging me to succumb, to let my beast off the chain. Family. The word was like a pulse, reminding me that this wasn’t me. Each beat of my heart was for her, and remembering that she existed brought me back from the edge of madness. Family. This time the word was wrapped in the sound of my sister’s laughter, and with it came the memory. Gabby shook her head, laughing at me as I tried and failed to land a piece of popcorn in her mouth. “You have terrible aim for a superbeing.” She giggled as she threw a handful at me. I kicked my foot out, hitting her softly on the leg. “Hey, I’m the trained killer here!” She burst out laughing. “Please! You cried at the end of The Locket.” “That was a sad movie. It had a sad ending. You just pick terrible movies.

out between us, when we’d given it a try one tentative time, after I, too, learned what it was like for a marriage to implode. Lydia had been empathetic and understanding, and knew how to make great popcorn and buy ice cream and pour shots of tequila, and for sure she had a god-tier movie collection. It could’ve been a rom-com from the eighties: geeky late bloomer grows up and finally gets his chance with the dream girl who was out of his league when they met, because she was nine years his senior. By the time we took our short-lived tumble, the age gap didn’t seem nearly as prominent, but the dynamic still wasn’t quite right, and maybe never could be. There was no shaking free of the worry over what Lydia saw when she looked at me. She would always remember the bruises, the confessions. She would always remember how back then my dad kept insisting he was only trying to knock the fag out of me, and I’d thank him someday. She would always remember why I got into schlocky videos in the first place: I thought if he came through and saw I was watching something with lots of boobs, he’d leave me alone. Only it didn’t work that way. The world is full of carnivores intent on devouring their young, and if one rationale gets invalidated, they find another.

Love is only for the brave,” he said. “Frankly, I recommend you stay away from it. You are too soft to endure love for very long.” I disagreed with him, explaining that I had been in love numerous times in my life, and knew the pain and the ecstasy of the feelings. “That’s not love, that’s romance,” he said. “Love is like a mill,” he explained, “Love grinds you down. It cracks you open and breaks you out of your shell, so you no longer recognize who you are. You become like a fine dust that can be blown away by the wind if you are not careful. Love then mixes you with a dash of spring water and pummels you, kneads you, and then places you on a hot stone by the fire to bake, so that you can become like the corn bread in the sacred feast of the Inti Raymi.” “I’ve experienced that,” I mentioned to Don Manuel. I was thinking of my recent divorce, and how painful that had been. I had felt the heat of the fire and been singed by the flames. “You know little about love,” he said. “You are like a kernel of corn that got too close to the fire and exploded, like a canchita” (popcorn).

There will be—or already has been!—a last time in your life that you brush your teeth, cut your hair, drive a car, mow the lawn, or play hopscotch. There will be a last time you hear the sound of snow falling, watch the moon rise, smell popcorn, feel the warmth of a child falling asleep in your arms, or make love. You will someday eat your last meal, and soon thereafter you will take your last breath.