When I was 10, my friend’s mother, who was a script supervisor for the sitcom Designing Women, asked me to audition for a part on the show. The role was that of a Vietnamese boat child named Li Sing, who Suzanne Sugarbaker (Delta Burke) agrees to foster for a few weeks. The casting director was having trouble finding enough Asian child actors to audition for the role.

Literary theory and criticism is a specialized field of study. If you’re talking to people who haven’t studied it or who have just a passing acquaintance with it, you may encounter some generalizations about what it is and its value. Here are a few of the most common misunderstandings about literary theory.

Our Gang, Julia Lee's new book on the history of the much-loved Our Gang comedies of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, has a provocative subtitle: A Racial History of the Little Rascals. Let’s face it, if you're old enough to have been a fan of the black-and-white shorts — which, like many things from that era, had their last real resurgence in the ‘90s, thanks to LaserDisc reissues — you've probably found yourself at one time or other wondering how American audiences during the more or less Klan-friendly 1920s and ‘30s respond to the racially mixed cast of kids making slapstick “mischief” together.

The Little Rascals was a staple of children’s television beginning in the 1950s. Many kids of that era thought Farina, Stymie, Darla, Alfalfa, and Buckwheat - and the other Rascals - were playmates created just for them.

Sometimes readers of poetry wish for a poetry decoder ring. Some useful ornament to slip on a finger to help one figure out what bards mean in their mysterious verse, from Ezra Pound to William Blake to Nobel-winning poet Tomas Transtromer.

In the casino restaurant where I work, the rush arrives at 10pm. The nearby show releases, sending 30 guests into my section all at once.

How else do you beat the heat of a Las Vegas summer than by finding the nearest swimming pool to lounge by?

IMAGINE this: Before a job interview, you wait five hours in a room with your competition, but instead of business attire, you’re in bikinis and swimsuits, and prep with self-tanning lotion rather than hypothetical interview questions. When your turn comes to stand before the hiring panel, they ask you to walk, turn around, strike a pose for the camera. If you’re lucky, they might also ask about your past work experience. In the span of one minute, your interview is over. Exit stage right.

The version of Las Vegas that pop culture broadcasts to the world is, for the most part, confined to a narrow slice of the city, a couple of miles of Las Vegas Boulevard known as the Strip. Sometimes the view stretches to include downtown Las Vegas, home to the oldest casinos. This doesn’t reflect what it’s like to live here – we have schools, and grocery stores, and jobs, and we don’t all live in hotels. Both versions of the city are real and inseparable. The reality supports the image, and vice versa.

You and your friends sit down at a fancy Strip restaurant or at a bar in a casino, and the server turns out to be your professor.

New title for five UNLV students and faculty: Fulbright scholar

With Memorial Day over, summer has unofficially started, which in Las Vegas is defined as sitting in a cabana at a casino or lounging by the pool in the backyard or finding refuge in the coldest spot in the house.