A. At a conference called "Making Language Arts More Relevant," I sit listening to the keynote speaker talk to us about how high school graduates don’t know how to capitalize the first words of sentences. This woman is the director of human resources at a cybersecurity firm located near the high school where I teach. She is talking to us about what successful job candidates’ reading and writing looks like. We sit at our tables, listening.

When you have children of your own, you realize for the first time what your own parents went through, things you couldn't possibly have understood when you were a child—and really are better off not having understood, because the knowledge would have been debilitating. There's the abyssal terror at having brought a fragile, trusting life into a world of hurtfulness and destruction, for instance. Not far behind that is the problem of packing lunch.

Did you recently send your younglings off to school? Congratulations on another milestone on the road to college debt! But during these first weeks of the new school year, you may have to answer a few uncomfortable questions about the various teachers, administrators, "lunch ladies," or P.E. instructors who did something idiotic or insane, already.

If there is one thing Jimmy Kimmel loves, it's pranking little kids.

It's half-past August, and you know what that means in No Child Left Behind the 7-11 Without Some Book-Learnin' America: it's time for your unruly, ungrateful, and uncomprehending children to put down their childish toys of summers and return to the cold, gleaming socialization boxes in which we warehouse them virtually year-round, for the good of everyone.

It's almost that time of year: 9/11 time. One media outlet would like to commemorate the 10th-anniversary of our national tragedy with a "9/11/back-to-school fashion photo spread," whatever that means.

The backstage drama behind the CW's 90210 reboot is quickly providing its very own season arcs — and all this before the teen soap has even aired! When last we swung by the refurbished Peach Pit, Tori Spelling was bailing on the redo after learning that other original cast members Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty would be receiving more money. Appraised of the issue, Garth quickly called up EW to give her side of the story:

Alumni of America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College were all abuzz last week about this song "Party On Fountain." Composed by Molly Gaebe '07, Mary Campion '07, Pat Wolf '07, Kate Heller '09 and Ted Feldman '09, who are collectively known as New Teen Force, the song is about partying at different places on the Wes campus, like: "Party in the Bayit, Shabbat Shalom!" Sounds hilarious, right? Too bad you can't listen to it!

From the mailbag, a Facebook-loving reader sends this screenshot and writes: "One of these things is not like the others... do you think there's any correlation between #4 and N.Y.U. being back in session?" Yes.

Hey, have you tried to walk down Third Avenue above St. Mark's lately? I say "tried to" because it is almost impossible. The strip is swarmed with seventeen year olds, walking six abreast on the sidewalk and talking very loudly about, usually, Facebook or dialectical materialism. Or, if it's late at night, being comically caricature-of-drunk. Or, if it's early in the day, walking a few steps ahead of their parents who are carrying their boxes, as if this will trick passerby into thinking that they and the older people who look just like them are unrelated strangers. Like the first rubescent leaves in Tompkins Square Park, the NYU hordes are an early harbinger of Fall in the East Village. Unlike the leaves, however, they are so fucking annoying.