Seth Meyers Is Perfect for Late Night

An amusing, vanilla guy is what TV audiences want.

My eyes lit up when I read that NBC was replacing Jimmy Fallon with Seth Meyers on the Late Night show. I only started watching Saturday Night Live in earnest (i.e., not only on YouTube) this past year, but immediately got hooked on "Weekend Update" and Seth's twinkle-eyed delivery.

Best & Worst Prom Proposals

Go big, or go stag.

Prom season is upon us. A whiff of cologne carries on the warm spring breeze, and before you know it, photos of friends’ kids and younger siblings, draped in formalwear, are popping up on your newsfeed. Prom is a generally nostalgic tradition, but like everything else in the lives of teenagers in 2013, it's now a more complicated affair than it was during the Sixteen Candles era.

Babysitting College Kids Just Got Easier

New technology lets professors know when students have been bad.

Ask any Penn student holed away in the bowels of the library this week for finals: There’s nothing quite as anxiety-inducing, in student life, as the fear of being unprepared. I still remember it. Listening to neighboring pencils scratch through pop quizzes while I sat there, shaking my knee and gnawing at my fingers like the answer to number four was surely written somewhere under this cuticle.

12 Great Moments at the Penn Relays

Philly’s annual track and field event has it all—from star athletes and fallen heroes to world records and lots of mud.

Today, the first guns will go off for the Penn Relays, which each year draw the country's top high school, college, professional, and masters track and field athletes to Franklin Field. Penn, considered one of the great incubators of the "relay" as a regular track and field event, has built an illustrious tradition through this competition over the decades. Here are some of the most memorable moments over the years. 1895: Just-dedicated Franklin Field hosts the inaugural Penn Relays Carnival. At the time, there were just bleachers, and no locker rooms. Tents were set up on the perimeter of the track, and...

We Can’t Find the Next Adam Lanza

Why we need to stop linking mental illness to gun violence.

This past week, before yesterday’s shameless display of ideological stonewalling cast a cloud of senselessness over the U.S. Senate, the New York Times ran an optimistic headline: “In Gun Debate, No Rift on Better Care for Mentally Ill.”

The Cicadas Are Coming to a Philadelphia Tree Near You

"Brood II" set to emerge in summer 2013.

It doesn't get more blissful than an early taste of summer. The five-day report might predict thunderstorms and mid-50s over the next couple days, but on warm, muggy afternoons like we had this week, who could care? Even momentarily passing that 80-degree mark assured us we were just weeks away from the usual summer delights: the flowers blooming, the Popsicles melting, the Phillies …  showing up.

Which Goosebumps Books Should Inspire the New Movie?

Millennials’ treasured series heads to Hollywood, and takes twentysomethings on a trip down memory lane.

Last week, when I read that a Goosebumps movie was in the works, potentially under the direction of Rob Letterman, of Monsters vs. Aliens and Shark Tale, I practically wormholed through time, back to my third-grade math class. Maybe others remember this. The pandemonium that ensued when a kid brought the newest Goosebumps book to school, fresh from Border’s. Teachers could be in the middle of multiplication tables, but when one of those glossy covers was pulled slyly from under a Lisa Frank binder, stops were pulled. Everyone swarmed the lucky new owner, begging for a spot on the “borrow-when-you're-done” list. I was the first to whip out How I Got My Shrunken Head. It is still the closest I have ever been to rock stardom.

PA Senate Declares “Peeps Are the Best”

Harrisburg pols find common ground in marshmallows.

In case tax season has left you grumpy about the productivity of your tax dollars, buck up! Last Tuesday, at the Pennsylvania State Senate, which has been toiling away at liquor privatization and budgets lately, Senator Lisa Boscola issued a mood-lightening memorandum to her fellow senators: “I intend to introduce a resolution in the near future to recognize the accomplishments of Just Born, Inc., on the 60th anniversary of the Marshmallow Peeps candy.”

These 14 Colleges Nabbed the Best 2013 Commencement Speakers

Will Oprah give every Harvard grad a free car?

I smiled and clapped quietly to myself when Penn announced its 2013 commencement speaker a couple days ago: Vice President Joe Biden. Joe Biden! What a fish to net! Won a big election this year. Amassed enough celebrity to have his financials hacked with the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Paris Hilton. (Biden’s daughter will be graduating from Penn, so this is a totally two-bird sitch for him.) What other universities nailed the commencement speaker game? Here, the 14 most noteworthy college commencement speakers for 2013: