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Meat Head, part two

Happy Halloween. Below is the Meat Head that my mother made as a centerpiece for a Halloween party that they attended.

Need I say that it was a huge hit? The skull was from Home Depot, the meat is liverwurst slices, the blood is raspberry jam, and the eyes are green olives. All atop of festive bed of lettuce!

My folks tell me that as the partygoers got drunker, someone had to post a sign next to Meat Head saying "Do Not Eat."

Bring it to a Christmas party!

Click onto the image to make it bigger.

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A Call From Lou

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Readers will recognize Lou from my book - he was my producer at MTV2 and is also a bit of a sugar fiend. His phone calls are always entertaining. Here, the full transcript:

Okay, so my current obsession is Baskin-Robbins Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream - first of all, because there’s lots of chunks of cookie dough, which is always a plus. There’s not random pieces like, ‘look there’s one up ahead’ – they’re all over the place.

And the vanilla ice cream, while probably extremely artificial, is so appealingly, blindingly, Clorox bleach white, it’s like a dream. It’s like eating delicious frozen butter cream. It’s just the right amount of artificial vanilla flavor. And then! There are these glorious blobs of beige and black cookie dough breaking up this pure white, it’s like a, a, a country snowfall, there’s like this pure white and then bits of dirty gravel. But you like it. You want it!

So you have this light, whipped, delicious white ice cream and then you have the cookie dough, these chunks of salty, sweet, gritty blobs of joy. Think about it: the very smooth, satiny vanilla and the salty sweet chocolate-y gritty dough. You know you want it. And then the more you eat - obviously out of the container because it tastes best out of the container - the more the snow melts, and it becomes this delicious thick, cold soup with chunky surprises, and you keep digging into the mountain like a treasure hunt to find more, but you don't have to dig far because the chunks are everywhere. There’s so much joy in that half gallon!

It says on the container that there’s only 11 grams of fat per serving, and I don’t know what happening to me that I suddenly think 11 grams in a serving is okay. Not to mention that I probably eat 18 servings. And I don’t know how many servings there are in a half gallon - my eye is trained to only see the fat grams per serving and blur everything else so I have no idea about number of servings, sugar, saturated, all of that. And you know what, I don’t want to know.
My belief is that there would be four servings in a half gallon, but it’s probably in the double digits. Anyway Ben and Jerry’s has more fat grams, like Chubby Hubby has 23, I think. It depends on the flavor.

And the only reason I got the ice cream is because I worked out really hard today at the gym so I wanted to ruin whatever progress I made by going to CVS to get a Reese’s Whipps, it’s a new candy bar that’s like a Three Musketeers except the nougat is peanut butter. I love Three Musketeers bars, too. They should make a bunch of different kinds of Three Musketeers, like maybe raspberry dark chocolate or a banana flavor. What other flavor would be good whipped? No, not caramel. I don’t like caramel. They have mint now but that's vile - like whipped nougatty mouthwash. Bleech.
Anyway, I was walking home with my Reese’s Whipp in my pocket, and in the distance, I see the welcoming florescent white and pink colors of the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins combo store that’s open 24-7. So I went in there thinking – this is so ridiculous - but the last time I went in, they didn’t have any cookie dough ice cream so if I go in and they don't have it, it's not meant to be and if they do, then it is. I have no idea what that logic means.

So I go in - Whipp in my pocket - just to check inventory. I thought, ‘they probably don’t even have the cookie dough.’
And they had it, so I felt it was a sign that I should buy it. And the lid of the container was even ripped, you would never have bought, it, but I bought it anyway. I had to. It was five dollars for a half gallon, and my Korean deli charges five dollars for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

Why I needed that half gallon in my house, I don’t know.
I thought, ‘Lou, when you get home, don’t do what you did last time, which is eat almost all of it. When you get home, enjoy the Whipp, put the ice cream in the freezer, and enjoy it another night. Eat the Whipp, then have an apple, and then 32 ounces of water or something.
So I came in, took my shoes off, and immediately opened the ice cream and began eating it. Like, I didn’t even hesitate. It was like I never even had that thought. Later I thought, ‘water, apple – what?’

So I ate probably three quarters of the container. I think my eyes were dilated at this point. And so that I wouldn’t eat the rest, I sprayed Caldrea Green Tea Patchouli Countertop Cleanser on it, which happened to be sitting on my counter.

And then, a half hour later, I ate the Whipp.
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The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007

0618902813

....edited by Dave Eggers, with an introduction by Sufjan Stevens is out, and I am included therein, in the chapter entitled "Best American Six-Word Memoirs." This sprung from a project by the online magazine Smith, in which they asked hundreds of writers to encapsulate their life stories in six words.
Famously, Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a complete life story in six words and wrote: "For sale: baby shoes, never used."
My six-word memoir - and those of many others - will also be included in "Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs By Writers Famous and Obscure," which is out in February of next year.

Here are some:

Ex-wife and contractor now have house.

-- Drew Peck

Found true love, married someone else.

-- Bjorn Stromberg

Fears commitment, debt. Attracts spouse, house.

-- Beth Grundvig

Savior complex makes for many disappointments.

-- Alanna Schubach

...and mine...

ABCs MTV SATs THC IRA NPR

-- Jancee Dunn

Of course, it took me days to construct, while I assumed that every other writer tossed one off in two minutes.

There is also a brief chapter on "Best American First Sentences of Novels Published in 2006."

Among them:

Monica Ali, Alentejo Blue

At first he thought it was a scarecrow.

Olga Grushin, The Dream Life of Sukhanov

"Stop here," said Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov from the backseat, addressing the pair of suede gloves on the steering wheel.

Roberto Bolano, Last Evenings On Earth

The way in which my friendship with Sensini developed was somewhat unusual.

Charles D'Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum

At home I'd get up early, when the sisters were still asleep, and head to the ancient Chinese man's store.

NPR's "The Bryant Park Project"

I had a great time on the show yesterday. I was called in to analyze a painful interview that host Luke Burbank had conducted with Sigur Ros, an Icelandic band whose members are extremely quiet when they're off the stage. I've been in Luke's seat many a time, so I did what I could.


Here is the link...

NPR appearance

I'm going to be on NPR's "The Bryant Park Project" tomorrow, Tuesday October 16, at 7:30 a.m.

Halloween part two

Meatcake01_2

A reader read my Halloween 'Meat Head' post and sent another suggestion: a Meat Cake, complete with mashed potato frosting!

For instructions, click here...

Last one, I swear

Sunshinefamily_2

I have been laughing at all of your comments about the J.C. Penney catalog and am comforted to know I wasn't the only one leafing through it in the 70s. Apparently I unleashed a flood of memories - ladybug flowermats, International Male underpants, and fuzzy toilet seat covers.

I must add one more. Behold the Sunshine Family House, which I received for Christmas in 1976. It was a pop-up vinyl abode that housed the free-livin' Sunshine Family - groovy Steve, granny-dress-and-sandals-wearing Stephie, and tiny, illegitimate Baby Sweets. For an extra $3.87, you could also buy Family Activity Craft Packs, including a River Trip Pack and a Camping Pack, complete with frying pans for riverside suppers. Too bad for Baby Sweets that the River Trip was one-way, after Steve couldn't pay the bills with free love and had to sell the pop up house. It won't be so bad, Stephie thinks, living in the woods. At least we all have each other. Maybe another baby will bring us closer.

Halloween

Some readers of my book will remember that my family has a macabre streak, and we like to periodically visit the family cemetery plot that my father bought long ago in more flush times.

My whole family - with the exception of me - loves Halloween. My parents are attending a Halloween party and need a centerpiece idea, and I found one in the excellent Make Magazine. It's a Meat Head! Developed by Chef Andy (hours of fun at his website www.chefandy.com) it uses a plastic skill and red jello to adhere cold cuts to the meat head. Ingenious!

The directions are here....




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Meet the Author

  • Jancee Dunn grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. She was a writer at Rolling Stone from 1989-2003, where she wrote twenty cover stories for the magazine. She has written for many different publications, among them the New York Times, Vogue,GQ (where she wrote a monthly sex advice column for five years) and O: The Oprah Magazine, where she writes a monthly ethics column entitled "Now What Do I Do?" From 2001-2002 she was an entertainment correspondent for Good Morning America. Prior to that she was a veejay for MTV2 from 1996 until 2001. Her memoir "But Enough About Me," about her life as chronically nervous celebrity interviewer, came out in 2006. Her novel "Don't You Forget About Me" is out in July 2008. She and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York.

Keep Up With Jancee

What Do I Do Now?


  • Each month in O, the Oprah Magazine, I ask a panel of ethics experts to answer readers' ethical dilemmas both big and small.

    You Can Help Me Out by Suggesting Your Own

Contact Jancee Dunn

  • Editorial inquiries for
    Jancee Dunn:
    David McCormick
    McCormick & Williams Literary Agents
    37 W. 20th Street
    New York, NY 10011
    mccormickwilliams.com

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