YEARS ago, my clique habituated a Lower East Side restaurant called Hat (translated from El Sombrero for N.Y.C. natives). The enchiladas were O.K.; the main attractions were the cheap margaritas, the salsa jukebox and the nervy, unreasonable mood of the place, largely delivered by the indifferent goth waitress who always wore an enormous black turban. Hat was an oasis of counterculture that soothed feelings of general alienation and dismay by ramping them up a bit, into a pleasingly marginal sense of being beyond the strangling grip of the mainstream. (Today)

A FEW months ago, my daughter Zoe came home from college and showed me a little word game she was playing on her iPhone. (Today)

EVEN on a bike, Mark-Paul Gosselaar can't always ride away from his résumé. (Today)

THE odd thing about attending a wedding at which you know nobody is how identical it is to attending a wedding at which you know everybody. (10/31/2009)

I WAS strolling through a park in Taichung, Taiwan, hand in hand with my missionary companion at the time, Sister Shi. Although she was Chinese and I American, we both were 22-year-old women serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- the Mormons. Our stroll wasn't recreational; we were looking for people to chat up, hoping to persuade them to accept a pamphlet and invite us to their homes for an in-depth discussion of the church. (10/31/2009)