Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: imgur

* This photo album of grooms seeing their brides for the first time will make you reach for the tissues. (imgur)

* Jerry Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin: just two comedians in a car getting coffee. (Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee)

* Alan Turing, the codebreaker and father of modern computing, will get a posthumous 100th birthday gift: A special edition of Monopoly, a game he loved, honoring him. (CNet)

* “I’d say the majority of players are siding with me, that all people have a right to live and love and be happy. That’s really amazing. I’m very happy to see the tides changing in the positive.”—Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo on how other NFL players are joining him in his support of marriage equality. (NYTimes)

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: Getty Images

* "For the first time in my career I'm not sure what to say."—Andy Roddick retires from tennis after his fourth-round U.S. Open loss to Juan Martin del Potro. (Sports Illustrated)

* Recently, never-before-published photographs of Al Capone were discovered in the deepest of basement storage rooms of Chicago's Tribune Tower. The paper has assembled a few of them online, and they are spectacular. (Chicago Tribune)

* Curious drinkers have filed Freedom of Information Requests for the White House's beer recipe, but if you're really thirsty for presidential beer, try this one brewed for George Washington. (Lapham's Quarterly)

* "Some bromances are meant to last a lifetime. But for others, one night is enough." GQ tackles the thorny issue of 24-hour friendships between men. (GQ)

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: Candice Milon/Vlamboyant

* Artist Candace Millon photographs classic outfits from film history—and without their famous stars filling them out, they're a lot less instantly recognizable. How many can you figure out? (Vlamboyant)

* Maybe you're a fan of The BFG or you count yourself as more of a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory loyalist. Either way, these mugs featuring Roald Dahl quotes and illustrations are too good to pass up. (MSMugs)

* The Wall Street Journal goes in search of the perfect shave. (WSJ)

"As the video on the Jumbotron panned across the kids’ faces, all of whom looked to be between 8 and 12 years old, and as [United States Tennis Association president Jon] Vegosen talked of tennis as "the sport of opportunity," I couldn't help but shed every fiber of cynicism from my body."—Rembert Browne, who grew up in Atlanta occasionally dreaming of tennis stardom, makes his first trip to the U.S. Open. (Grantland)

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: Getty Images

* A week later, we are still mourning the death of writer David Rakoff. Revisit the stories he wrote for us about Elizabeth Bishop and pet ownership. It's also worth reading this lovely remembrance by comedian Dave Hill and watching Rakoff perform for This American Life. (O Magazine; Huffington Post; Open Culture)

* Four guys go fishing for albacore off the coast of Santa Cruz. They catch some tuna, but the real action must be seen to be believed. (Vimeo)

* Ernest Hemingway was a lousy spy. (Foreign Policy)

* Over at the Classical, Tom Breihan has written a terrific essay that is partly about the pro-wrestling's reigning giant, The Big Show, but mostly about what it is like to be really, really tall. (The Classical)

* Explore Tombstone, Arizona's Boot Hill cemetery, wild resting place for gunslingers and cowboys. (NPR)

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.




* Yes, we know, this Call Me Maybe horse has been beaten past death, but still, Batman Maybe is pretty brilliant. (YouTube, via Coudal)

* There will be tears: A photographer captures a tender moment between a man and his dog in Lake Superior. (Huffington Post)


* “Maybe they just dropped something in my drink, I can’t say, but anything they wanted to do was fine with me.”—Bob Dylan, on his 1987 collaboration with the Grateful Dead. Open Culture's got audio of their rehearsal. (Open Culture)

Of the many inspiring stories to come out of the Olympics, how many of them have to do with a champion's excellent manners? Usain Bolt, world's fastest man, was being interviewed after winning the gold medal in the 100 meter dash, when US sprinter Sanya Richards-Ross's own gold medal ceremony began. He stopped his interview (in a very low-key way) to listen to the national anthem, and to let Richards-Ross have her moment over on that other side of the screen.

In a world that rewards competitiveness, how lovely it is to see an athlete take a moment to honor a fellow athlete's accomplishments. If only we could all feel this way about each others' successes -- writers, businesspeople, politicians, artists, even parents -- after all, we're all in this whatever-we-are-in together, and it never hurts to take a moment for someone else's moment.

(And you have to love how, when told he is a legend, Bolt chuckles, saying, "Yeah, people say that." Do they give gold medals in class and humility, too?)

Read More:
An Olympics torch bearer gets a new leg
The beautiful losers of the Olympics

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: Getty Images

* One of the best parts about the Olympics is how gleeful the athletes are to be there—how excited about the spectacle and how honored they are to represent their countries. There are examples of it everywhere, but we especially like how the entire American men's basketball team lined up to hug Michelle Obama after their win against France on Sunday. (BuzzFeed)

* Charlie Brown is going to Japan! (USA Today)

* Kiese Laymon documents what it's like to be "born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi" in this powerful essay, "How to Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Rememberance." (Cold Drank, via Gawker)

* Prolific and celebrated writer Gore Vidal passed away this week at 86. Flavorwire has collected his best zingers, including: "Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn." (Flavorwire)

I grew up in Alaska and, thankfully, had one of those mothers who never ever threw anything out, which is why I'm still the proud owner of the 1969 edition of Out of Alaska's Kitchens, complied by local housewives (all referred to as Mrs. My Husband's First and Last Name) who came up with such dishes as "The Glacier Sandwich" and "Eskimo Duck Soup."

My thoughts drifted back to that cookbook last week, when I saw NPR's piece on the history of community-based cookbooks. The writer, Jessica Stoller-Conrad, pointed to The Woman's Suffrage Cookbook and 1904 Bluegrass Cookbook from Kentucky. Like me, she recognized their outdated references belonged to a time when women didn't have a lot of personal or professional choices. But she also felt the books were social outlets that "were so much more than just a catalog of recipes—they were fundraisers, political pamphlets, and historical accounts of the communities they served."

They were memoirs too, I suddenly realized. Every gravy stain and little handwritten comment ("add extra salt!" or "need more clam juice") tells a story. My cookbook, however, is wonderfully blank. My mother did not cook. She was a social worker in the 1970s. She did not have the time, interest or energy. Her lack of comment was a comment: There's a big world beyond the kitchen, honey. The silence of stains on each page may just have resulted in my being a working mother too (though I do love cooking, especially when it's something like "Mooseburger Meatloaf.").

Now that we live in the age of round-the-clock blogging, any lack of commentary (of any kind) seems harder and harder to find. I see these kinds of tell-all-say-nothing moments occasionally when a friend restrains herself from making a political point over dinner or someone shows you a photo but fails to tell the story behind it. I wish there were more of them. These omissions aren't nothing. They're windows into our choices: to cook or not cook, to explain or not explain, to show and see if anybody is ready to understand instead of just lecture and opine.

Read More:
Tune out the World, Find Your Voice
Do You Trust Yourself?

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: Getty Images

* I don't slam doors in people's faces and I'm not a bigot. I'm just an old hippie. You know, peace and love."—Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson and passed away earlier this week. (L.A. Times)

* A pair of cargo pants inspired Steve Carell's aha! moment—and his aha! moment is sure to inspire you to laugh out loud. (O Magazine)

* Ever wonder what it's like to sing the national anthem at a sporting event? Drew Magary tells the terrifying story of his own (successful) attempt. (Deadspin)

* At 62, Bruce Springsteen continues to be one of the world's best entertainers. Here's part of why he does it: "For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsiblity, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in. Music, when it's really great, pries that sh*t back open and lets people back in, it lets light in, and air in, and energy in, and sends people home with that and sends me back to the hotel with it." For the rest, read David Remnick's outstanding profile of the singer. (The New Yorker)