On January 24th, I was a typical (and rather clueless) foreigner in Cairo. “Fresh off the boat,” my plans were to study Arabic and find a job. On January 25th, I became part of a revolution. Excited by the unexpected flurry of activity and equipped with a borderline stupid sense of adventure, I decided to be a witness to the events that would unfold (selected photos here). Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of my experience has been the way in which each one of the last thirteen days of protest differed. The movement has morphed at a dizzying pace, as the struggle rages between a defiant citizenry and a dogged regime.

Travel + Leisure came out with a rather cool feature on their site this summer, but it's not nearly as cool as it could be. The feature is called the "Airport Navigator," and it has detailed lists of hotspots to check out inside airport terminals -- restaurants, spas, shopping, and things to do. Once you click through the listings, you can see ratings and leave comments. The LA Times pointed out that the site could definitely use maps of the terminals, because as it stands now, there are no visual clues about how to get around to these recommended spots. But really, duh -- the Airport Navigator should be an iPhone app.

Drawn from the far corners of the Big Apple, four artists share bounty from their compulsions to create.

Can reality TV stomach Margaret Cho’s raunchy realism? The notorious all-American girl lets it all out on "The Cho Show," debuting this month on VH1. Below, a prim list of the top ten things she hates.

A devastating virus brought the whole moment to a tragic, unforgettable end. But the legacy that is Robert Mapplethorpe extends far beyond the censorship, headlines—and S&M. As a new generation views his subversive, formalistic Polaroid portraits in an ongoing exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Nick Haramis catches up with some of the late icon’s equally illustrious subjects, supporters, chroniclers and partners in crime in an oral history submitted to set the record (mostly) straight.

Charles Oliver's first film is a confident greeting card to the world of independent cinema. In Take, the director forgoes narrative conventions to craft a back-and-forth, subdued tale of nauseating grief. Minnie Driver is a woman on her way to a state prison, determined to confront the man who murdered her son, hours before his death by lethal injection. Jeremy Renner plays Saul, the man in white frocks, left in his sterile prison cell with nothing to do but mull over the awkward choices that led him here, and why he ended up on such a path. The film toggles assuredly between different visual styles and temporal shifts, and it benefits strongly from top-tier performances from its two leads.

The city of Rome has recently enacted a ban on eating and drinking near its famous monuments. In a place where gelato is plentiful and wine is as cheap as soda, this new regulation just seems cruel. Violators face charges of up to $80, and several people have already been slapped with hefty fines for savoring food and beer on the iconic Spanish Steps. While the ban seems a bit extreme, this isn't the first time the Italian capital has gone ban-anas.

"I'm not sure what to make of that," Edwin Ushiro says when told that Sarah Jessica Parker has teamed up with Bravo to produce the reality series American Artist. "There's no right or wrong way to make art, so I don't know how that would work." Born in Maui and currently living in Los Angeles, Ushiro has been sketching and illustrating his entire life. In fact, he says his mother traces his first artistic inclinations back to when he was just two years old.

A sensual, subtle tribute to the City of Lights.

Remember when the only thing that could possibly wring the banality out of a grocery shopping trip was the lady with the free sausage samples? Ah, but that all seems so 20th century now, does it not? Just opened in July on Ghirardelli Square is San Francisco's snappy new Marche on the Square -- which seems intent on sophisticatedly re-imagining the "sustenance acquisition" experience for a cagey new generation of hungry urbanistas.