Tag Archives: GQ

July 29, 2012 · 7:28 pm

Sunday Scraps 68

1. PROTECTION: A love story, told from the point of view of a condom (The New Yorker).

2. GUNS: In the wake of Aurora, comedian Jason Alexander lets loose on our gun policies. Handgun for protection? Okay fine. Rifle for hunting? Okay fine. Assault rifle? Cop killer? What’s wrong with us? (Salon).

3. POLITICS: GQ reporter Jason Zengerle undergoes the extensive vice presidential vetting process just to see what it’s like. What I learned: I will never be vice president.

4. SOCCER: Hope Solo, Olympic golden girl, has a complicated history. She’s brash, blunt, and funny in this Daily Beast profile. I’m sold.

5. ECONOMICS: John Scalzi writes on Whatever about everything he’s built, how he got there, and who helped him along the way. I believe that we all have these stories.

6. TWENTIES: Blogger Emma Koenig just signed a book deal for her comic Tumblr, Fuck I’m in my 20s. Warning: May hit close to home.

Related Post: Sunday 67 – The Wire in Legos, models without make-up, hyphen boy meets hyphen girl

Related Post: Sunday 66 – Nancy Pelosi, dying languages, 5-year-old hairdressers

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December 14, 2011 · 4:42 pm

That Time of Year When Everyone Makes Lists

This time of year makes me want to make lists of bests. Best books I read. Best movies I saw. Best songs I sang in the shower. I suppose I could do worsts too, but that’s just not how I roll.

So here’s the first list of however many I feel like writing. They will be arbitrary in category, arbitrary in length, and arbitrary in order.

Best Things I Read on the Internet in 2011

  • “Dear Sugar #44: How You Get Unstuck” – The Rumpus: ”She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.”
  • “The Shame of College Sports” – The Atlantic (Taylor Branch): This incredible, sprawling essay on the intersections of sport and education, class and race, economics and entertainment, managed to flip my views on the subject of paying college athletes 180 degrees.
  • “My Summer at an Indian Call Center” – Mother Jones (Andrew Marantz): Chock full of fun facts, Marantz’ first person essay has all of the cultural curiosity that Outsourced lacked.
  • “And That’s Why You Should Learn to Pick Your Battles” – The Bloggess: Jenny Lawson is pretty much the most popular blogger in the world (ask Obama!) and this is my favorite thing she’s ever done. I dare you not to pee your pants.
  • “What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?” – Mother Jones (Charlie LeDuff): This trippy journey through the remains of what feels like post-apocalyptic Detroit is enough to give credence to claim of one doctor, that bullets didn’t kill Aiyana Stanley-Jones, “the psychopathology of growing up in Detroit” did.
  • “Here Be Monsters” – GQ (Michael Finkel): Three teenagers took off from the cost of an atoll called Tokelau in a tin boat with a few gallons of vodka and some coconuts. 51 days later, they were rescued.
  • “Why Gay Marriage is Good for Straight America” – The Daily Beast (Andrew Sullivan): Besides the turn of phrase “soul-splintering panic,” which I can’t get out of my head, Andrew Sullivan’s take on growing up gay, emigrating to the United States, and all the hopes and dreams that that entails, is the best case I’ve read yet on why marriage is the name of the game.

Wow… this list is getting long. Let’s call this Part 1, and keep an eye out for Part 2 next week.

Got any good reads from 2011 you want to share?

Related Post: A list of all the reasons this article about millennial women quitting is stupid.

Related Post: My “5 Books” interview with Persephone Magazine.

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September 4, 2011 · 3:12 pm

Sunday Scraps 26

1. REALITY: Has reality TV gone too far with the suicide of Real Housewives star Russell Armstrong? Virginia Heffernan thinks so, and suggests some sort of “this is fiction!” badge adorning “reality” TV.

2. TESTING: I read a lot about standardized testing and I’ve never heard of the Accuplacer. The Washington Monthly explains why this community college placement test flies under the radar and does more damage than the SAT.

3. DADT: First person accounts from WWII to Iraq from military personnel serving under DADT. Way to go, GQ.

4. MATH: Math is hard! Girls like shopping! Who doesn’t love a good powerpoint slideshow explaining why gender arguments about women in computer science and math are B.S.? Not me.

5. K-Y: Hey, look, there are lesbians on TV and they’re just like any other couple! At least, they’re just like any other couple that KY jelly features in their K-Y Intense ads.

6. HEELS: I could write for days about how we choose which beauty standards to adhere to, but Courtney Martin at The Frisky has done a pretty good job of succinctly summarizing why wearing heels might be one of the worst of them.

Related Post: Venn diagrams of viable Republican presidential candidates, why yoga is annoying, and “slut”

Related Post: Chicago from outer space, rape as comedy, dominatrix on NPR

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June 13, 2011 · 3:06 am

Sunday Scraps 14

Due to a long and complicated story involving Alfred Hitchcock, a 38 caliber shotgun, turquoise jewelry and a bad case of emphysema, I missed a plane this morning and was unable to post Sunday Scraps until now. Have no fear, that fascinating story will follow later this week. In the meantime, it is still technically Sunday. Enjoy:
1. WHERE ARE THEY NOW? What if Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte had suffered through the recession with the rest of us? The $400 shoes go out the window. Susannah Breslin wrote a great “what if” piece for HuffPo.

2. SECRETARY: A slide show of “office wives” through the last century.

3. DETROIT: Super cool ride-along piece from GQ about the demolition crews responsible for the knocking down thousands of Detroit’s abandoned houses.

4. ART: The world’s 25 most pointless pieces of graffiti. Featured: plums, continental breakfasts, Rod Stewart, and low-cost airlines.

5. WEIGHT LOSS “MIRACLES”: Ugh. See what really makes people drop 14lb in a week. Hint: It’s not healthy living and a moderate amount of exercise. After a starvation strategy, one contestant gained back 32lb in 5 days as his body tried to find equilibrium.

6. BEST PRANK EVER: Large scale “landscaping” and a bunch of middle schoolers produce a penis you can see from Google Earth.

Related Post: Sunday 13 (Groupon, YA, MDowd, why Chicago is “Always” and New York is “Now”)

Related Post: Sunday 12 (Chelsea, Beyonce, contraception, modern “art”)

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May 24, 2011 · 2:59 pm

Facebooking from the Middle of Nowhere

The Atafu Atoll, Tokelau (image: Earth Observatory, Nasa)

After I finished this excellent GQ piece about the three teenagers who floated, without sustenance, for 51 days in the South Pacific, the very first thing I did was drink a tall, hydrating glass of water and thank my lucky stars. Then, I spent a good 20 minutes on google maps exploring the island from which their nightmare originated. Man do I love the internet.

The Atafu atoll is one of three atolls that make up Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand and one of the most isolated communities on the planet. There are 534 people there, and a ferry that comes once every two weeks. It takes 26 hours to get to the next atoll.

Read Michael Finkel’s full account to hear how 3 teenagers with a milk jug of vodka, a dozen coconuts, and adolescent disregard for personal safety survived on a grand total of a 3,000 calories over 51 days. Survival stories are fun, especially when everyone lives.

But what I found particularly interesting in the article was the two specific call-outs to the internet. “To teenage boys, in Atafu as in every pocket of the planet, rules are made to be broken. And the isolation of Atafu can at times be difficult to bear. There’s now satellite Internet service on the island, which only emphasizes how much fun everyone else is having.”

This is a place that has been inhabited for over 1,000 years, and now, the antics of Lady Gaga and the pull of social media are enough to lure people away. On his facebook, one of the boys described Atafu as “freekin hell.” Was it hell before? Or only hell when you know what else is out there? How long does a community like this last when it gets easier and easier to leave?

The article concludes with the survivors excited to get back to their lives, “to respond to all the ‘Rest in peace’ messages left on their Facebook pages.” So apparently being fifteen is pretty much the same everywhere.

Related Post: Cory Doctorow on Facebook, surveillance and parenting.

Related Post: Things teenage boys like on the internet.

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