Name Nerd Duana Names: Man vs. Infant – You Win! Dear Duana, My childhood best friend alerted me to your column and we mutually decided I should write in. I was joking that I HAD to find a name by the time her new baby is born in September. Not for the purpose of being arbitrarily competitive with a baby By Duana • Feb 24, 2021 03:51 pm
Maple Leaf Are You There, Judy? Thanks! I’ve made a point of reading Judy Blume books to my kid. That wouldn’t have even been worthy of writing down 20 years ago, but now that there’s been an explosion of kid and YA- lit, these books are somehow not seen as essential extracurricular texts, never By Duana • Feb 19, 2021 03:26 pm
TV Updates Why Claudia Conway is on American Idol Obviously the TikTok generation, and those who become stars there, know the unwritten rules and customs better than any of us ‘olds’; in ten years time, they’ll have created an entirely new media landscape to befuddle us, based on self-generating everything, especially your image. Self-generation is why Claudia Conway By Duana • Feb 17, 2021 03:15 pm
Top Reads Charisma Carpenter Outlines On-Set Abuse By Joss Whedon Charisma Carpenter is a great name. In the late 1990s, in what was then called stuff akin to ‘the teen TV boom’, there were many sudden household names, generally the stars of the show or movie (with a subset of three named stars like Chad Michael Murray, Rachael Leigh Cook, By Duana • Feb 11, 2021 03:38 pm
TV Updates SAG Awards TV Noms – Discuss Once again we’re splitting discussion of these nominations into TV and Film, and so the actual nominations process, which used to be “televised”, deserves a mention – solely inasmuch as Daveed Diggs’ panic at not being able to add Lily Collins to the IG Live was so real it gave By Duana • Feb 04, 2021 01:08 pm
TV Updates The Golden Globes TV Nominations Are Embarrassing Look, the most generous-to-neutral observation that I can make about these nominations is that there are an awful lot of nominees whose names start with C. The category for Best Actress in a Drama includes Colman, Comer, and Corrin. You know who it doesn’t have? Coel. Yeah, I know By Duana • Feb 03, 2021 11:09 am
Name Nerd George Clooney on “weird-ass names” I am mad at Lainey. It’s kind of amazing how much I say that, here or on the podcast, on a site literally called LaineyGossip – maybe the only thing more amazing is that I do it because we both know that when we say it, it means we’re By Duana • Feb 01, 2021 03:47 pm
Amazingness Amanda Gorman Arrives, On Her Terms My favourite true but not-cool-to-say observation about the inauguration last week was that it was kind of boring, in the most blissfully relieving way – and the exception that proved the rule was the instantaneous and universal reaction to poet laureate Amanda Gorman; everyone fell in love with her at exactly By Duana • Jan 27, 2021 03:33 pm
Baby and Bump Obsession Duana Names: The Ks have it – per Gigi & Zayn …& Kamala? Look, it’s not that I *didn’t* like Gigi and Zayn before, I just didn’t think about them that much. But I guess now I am gonna have to officially add them to my ‘actively enjoyable’ column. I never said I wasn’t fickle, did I? I paid By Duana • Jan 22, 2021 12:57 pm
Show Your Work Podcast Show Your Work: Awkwafina vs. Nora? Lainey correctly pointed out (though I think I shot her down) that this is our first episode in 2021 – and I really like how things are going. We’ve talked a lot about the work we see, who’s doing it, who isn’t, and who should – but now, maybe By Duana • Jan 21, 2021 02:54 pm
Name Nerd Duana Names: Blanket Statements Benefit Balkan Baby Hi Duana! We're trying to settle on a Slavic or international name for our baby girl, but struggling to find a name that feels "right." We want a name that isn't super popular, but also one that both our Balkan families and English-speakers can By Duana • Jan 13, 2021 04:02 pm
Name Nerd Duana Names: What’s in a “Baby/Baybi” Name? …Are we okay?! Of course we’re not. Is anything we’re going to discuss going to affect anything, or is it just distraction? I mean, I would have gone with the latter, if not for you guys. This is what we do, we listen to each other, take care By Duana • Jan 08, 2021 02:27 pm
Child Stars We’re Missing the (Worst) Sia Story Sia has had an incredible amount of negative press lately – first about the trailer for her upcoming Music, which was (correctly) criticized for its ableist casting of neurotypical Maddie Ziegler as a teenager with autism, and for Sia’s clapback tantrums on Twitter where she said the role/production would By Duana • Jan 06, 2021 03:11 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Whitney Houston Is… ! When I wrote back in April (April! It feels like three years ago, and even though that is desperately clichéd, it doesn’t make it any less true) that Stella Meghie had been tapped to direct the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, I also wrote, “ It’ll By Duana • Dec 16, 2020 04:06 pm
Name Nerd Duana Names: A Few Friday Updates! Man, do I ever love a well-named baby. First of all, aunt-of-the-year from Name. Needed. Now keeps her title by providing this timely and super-sweet update: Hi Duana! Your article was so helpful! Truly...you have no idea. The two first names you mentioned- Atlas and Hugo- were on their By Duana • Dec 11, 2020 03:11 pm
Show Your Work Podcast Show Your Work: Mariah’s Meaning and The Bloody Truth At long last (and after many emails from you guys keeping us on it) we waited for December, and unofficially rang in the holiday season and finally had our book club about The Meaning Of Mariah Carey. Problem is, there may not be a whole lot of meaning… not that By Duana • Dec 10, 2020 01:19 pm
