Bed Bugs: Is No One Safe?

At first they were shiny little red dots. It looked like my stomach had baby acne. The itching only lasted for a couple of days and was nowhere near as severe as mosquito bites. I’ve gone through a couple boxes of Benadryl to decrease the inflammation. I’ve also been using it as a light sleep aid because I’ll lie awake all night in fear if I don’t. I’ve also sunk a TimeWarner bill’s worth of cash into hydrocortisone, which I use as a moisturizer when I get out of the shower.

Source: The Awl
Published: Feb 18, 2010
Length: 5 minutes (1,341 words)

The End of the ’00s: The Guantanamo Gift Shop, by Spencer Ackerman

When I visited Guantanamo Bay in the summer of 2005—the middle of this wretched, spiritually-draining decade—the last thing I expected to find was the summit, the epitome, the apotheosis of the Bush era’s epic union of consumerism and brutality. Yes: Guantanamo Bay has a gift shop. I bought this adorable plush iguana there. I’ll explain.

Source: The Awl
Published: Dec 22, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,913 words)

The Shadow Editors: When Did Perez Hilton Become More Famous Than Paris Hilton And Why Were We Not Informed?

“That is a good point. They were eager, historically, to cover Paris, but they are exceedingly less eager to cover Perez. In part, I think because he has a platform via which to castigate, undermine and rebut? I think publications dislike both Hiltons equally. But they were never afraid of Paris, because she had no editorial product of her own.”

Author: Tom Scocca
Source: The Awl
Published: Sep 23, 2009
Length: 9 minutes (2,470 words)

A Friendly Chat: Greg Karais, Yukon Enthusiast and Publisher of Four Profitable Magazines with Wily Business Models–and a 20-Hour Workweek

“Yukon, North of Ordinary was based as an in-flight magazine. So what we did, the first two years, we put a lot of locals in the magazine, to build loyalty with the locals. And there is also a huge loyalty to Air North, because they broke Canadian Air, or Air Canada’s prices. Air Canada used to have outrageous prices, and with Air North, the fares got a lot cheaper. So there’s a lot of loyalty to them. So we put a lot of people in the magazine, so people would go, oh I know that person. It literally feels like everybody in the Yukon knows someone that’s been in the magazine.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Jul 28, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,890 words)

A Friendly Chat: Michael K, Web Entrepreneur, Blogger, Pottymouth

Michael K runs and writes the website Dlisted, which gives a rundown on the day’s celebrity comings and goings with crude humor that often verges on the vulgar (though he disputes this point). “I think the boundaries change each day. Some days I’m like, okay you’re not going to make fun of children, and some days its like, you’re not going to make fun of Michelle Williams because of the whole Heath Ledger thing. But then here are some stories you have to do whether or not you can make them funny. But there are some stories that if I can’t find any humor in it, I don’t touch it.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Jul 17, 2009
Length: 8 minutes (2,158 words)

Michael Anthony Steele: Kids Screenwriter, Novelizationist, Ad Man

“It’s different for each age group. For example, one of the original Barney writers, Steve White, had a good piece of advice for writing for preschool kids and kids in general. He said, you can use all the vaudeville pratfalls and the oldest joke in the book on these kids because they’ve never seen it before, it’s brand new to them and it’s really funny to them. Stuff that we’d think was corny, and oh my gosh, that’s such an old joke or that’s such a bad joke, kids love it.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Jul 7, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,994 words)

A Friendly Chat: Stephen J. Cannell, Novelist, Co-Creator of ’21 Jump Street’ And ‘The A-Team’

Stephen J. Cannell is the creator of 40 television shows, including 21 Jump Street, The Rockford Files, The A-Team, and The Commish. “The hardest work of writing a book or a screenplay is plotting it, and I think that’s why so many writers choose not to do it. Because you sit there and you scratch your head and think, what am I going to do next? What’s the complication at the top of act two, how do I make the story more devastating than it appeared at the beginning, what are my adversaries doing, what’s their move, how do I keep them in motion instead of standing still, waiting to be caught.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Jun 24, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,825 words)

A Friendly Chat: Damian Mason, Farmer, Corporate Comedian, Bill Clinton Impersonator

“Years ago I was a lighting fixture salesperson, and when I was 25 years old, I wasn’t enjoying my job that much. I quit my job because I won a Halloween contest dressed up as Bill Clinton in San Diego. I quit my job and became a professional Bill Clinton impersonator. My company used me at trade shows and meetings. I’d dress up as Bill Clinton, make some yuks, have some laughs, take some pictures. I started doing shows on the side, companies, groups, anyone that had 300 bucks I’d do a show for them.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Jun 15, 2009
Length: 10 minutes (2,726 words)

Rich People Things

My ill-starred tenure at New York magazine was, among other things, a crash course in the staggering unselfawareness of Manhattan class privilege. Sure, there was the magazine’s adoring, casual fascination with the “money culture”-a term deployed in editorial meetings without the faintest whiff of disapproval or critical distance. But more than that, there was the sashaying mood of preppy smugness that permeated nearly every interaction among the magazine’s editorial directorate—as when one majordomo tried to make awkward small talk with me by asking what it was like attending an urban public high school, or when another scion of the power elite would blithely take the credit for other people’s work and comically strategize to be seated prominently at the National Magazine Awards luncheon.

Source: The Awl
Published: Apr 21, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,848 words)