Tag Archives: Gaby Dunn

November 13, 2011 · 7:22 pm

Sunday Scraps 36

1. HAIR: I love this essay on Jezebel by Autumn Whitefield about the social and personal implications of short hair on women. Maybe, as she suggests, the expressed male preference for long hair comes from conditioning, not from some sort of inherently biological attraction.

2. WRITING: Gaby Dunn (100 Interviews) explains some of the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes of trying to make a name and a living from blogging. Apparently, it’s not as easy as she makes it seem.

3. CHALLENGE: Best of luck.

4. ENVOY: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named Ellen DeGeneres as a special envoy for global AIDS awareness. Not sure what a special envoy does, but I love these two ladies, so who cares.

5. INK: New York Times has a gallery of science-related tattoos. I happen to know a gentleman with the chemical structure of seratonin on his arm, and another with an anatomically correct skull of a T-rex. Beautiful and educational.

6. WEDDED BLISS: Fun piece from The Frisky about non-traditional engagements involving Jim Beam and mixed feelings on wearing $1,000 diamonds on your finger.

Related Post: Sunday 35 = Lady boxers, Louis vs. Rick, Magic Johnson and more.

Related Post: Sunday 34 = The Phantom Tollbooth, beluga births, race in Hollywood casting.

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Filed under Art, Body Image, Gender, Hollywood, Media, Politics, Really Good Writing by Other People

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July 6, 2011 · 1:43 pm

From “Ooh La La” to Tears with Gaby Dunn

If you don’t read Gaby Dunn’s blog 100 Interviews, you should. The basic premise is simple and brilliant and I’m jealous I didn’t think of it myself. She made a list of 100 types people she wanted to meet, and then went about meeting them and asking them a lot of questions.

Her two most recent interviews are perhaps my favorite, if only because they demonstrate the ridiculous range of the blog. On one end of the spectrum, she interviewed pornstar James Deen (who we all know I love), and on the other she just posted her interview with Jeff Gonski, who fit the horrible category “Someone Who Lost Someone in 9/11.”

The Deen interview made me giggle and blush a lot: “We go inside and it’s just me and him. Alone. In his house. To cope with my anxiety, I rev my usual defense mechanism; when I find someone attractive, I tease them mercilessly like I’m Helga from ‘Hey Arnold.’ James 1) sees right through me and 2) seems to find it wildly amusing.“

The Gonski interview, on the other hand, I had to stop reading in public because I was starting get choked up. His fiancee literally flipped a coin with a coworker to determine who’d attend the conference at the World Trade Center. She lost: “The nightmare didn’t end there. Usually when someone loses a loved one, they don’t have to watch their death replayed on the nightly news indefinitely. ‘It’s like, why are you showing it over and over again?’ He says. ‘You do realize people are dying? It’s not abstract. It’s real people and now you have to see the moment over and over again.’”

Blech. So… two interviews, two very different reasons not to read them at work, on a train, or anywhere that you mind people seeing you squirm or cry.

Related Post: Looking back, apparently I have a bit of thing for interview pairs. There was this one, about feminism, and then this one, about women during the Arab Spring.

Related Post: The Atlantic‘s idiotic and overreaching take on the state of modern pornography.

Related Post: I have my own conversation with a stranger, and consequently miss a flight. Sigh.

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Filed under Really Good Writing by Other People, Sex

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