What Do Leonardo DiCaprio, Bald Britney, and Nancy Pelosi Have in Common?

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Wendy Williams on The Rock
I love the Rock’s swirliness. If you squint, he’s white. If you open your eyes a lot, he’s black. And if you close one eye, he might be Hispanic. Now, I’ve never met the Rock, but I would love for him to come to my show and curl me. I’m a larger-framed woman, and the idea of a guy who could pick me up … I was a late walker as a baby because I was scared of standing and then falling, and I’ve never liked to be picked up. But I think the Rock would be just the guy to do it.








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Dan Harmon on alpha female Tori Amos
When I was living in an attic in Milwaukee and looking up at the plywood ceiling, I was fantasizing: There’s got to be a way I can get to Los Angeles and write for a living. I had two Tori Amos CDs, Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink. She had a lot of fury and passion in her voice, and she was kind of a mother and a sister, letting me know that there was something inside me that was going to explode forth. She just made a fitting Athena to my ­Odysseus at that point. I certainly ­fantasized about her car breaking down while on tour in ­Milwaukee and my changing the tire and maybe just helping her out, and her singing a song in exchange for changing the tire. I never would have laid a finger on her, but that’s ­probably why I wouldn’t be her type. I would be a beta male, and I would just be intimidated and helping her move a lot.

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Zoe Kazan on Robert Downey Jr.
I used to write Robert Downey Jr. letters while he was in prison—letters I never sent, but nonetheless I wrote them. They might be in a drawer somewhere.













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Liz Meriwether on Keanu Reeves
I watched Speed, and I watched it by myself. I fell in love with Keanu Reeves, but I was also aware of the impossibility of it. I felt this sadness, because I was never going to be able to have him. It’s confusing, because I’ve mostly dated smart people who live in their heads.











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Cat Marnell on Bald Britney
If I could have a dream list of people that I really like, it would be bald Britney; Anita Pallenberg; Keith Richards; Knut, the polar bear who died. But of those, bald Britney was the most important beauty moment of my generation. I was 16 when “… Baby One More Time” came out, and all of a sudden, beauty was this unattainable ideal. You were supposed to be tanned; belly-button rings, abs, hair extensions, midriffs, and none of that existed until that Britney moment. But Britney, I fucking swear, she did it for us. She was so hot, and then she went, “No!” She finally let herself be ugly. It was the most generous thing she could do.

Photo: Peter Sorel/New Line Cinema/Photofest

James Deen on Fairuza Balk
When I first saw The Craft, I really wanted to have sex with Fairuza Balk. The type of girls I’m ­consistently attracted to have dark hair, serious attitude, with a slightly alternative look. I totally wanted to have sex with Balk in American History X, too. But that was also because she was a Nazi and I’m Jewish, and I always want to have sex with Nazis, because Nazis are really hot. I don’t know why.






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Robin Thicke on Molly Ringwald’s Mouth
It must have been that ­lipstick trick in The ­Breakfast Club. That was enough for a pubescent boy. I ended up meeting her at a Dodgers Game, probably when I was 10 years old, and it was one of those ­nervous-kid moments. She was a big star. So I just shook her hand. I don’t think an appropriate opening line for a 10-year-old would have been “I like your mouth.”


Photo: Patrick McMullan

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on former work-crush Martha Stewart
Of all the beautiful women who worked at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia—and there were many—the most beautiful of all was Martha Stewart herself. As fortune would have it, I sat closer to Martha than any of the 500 other employees, with my desk about six feet from her enormous glass office that faced the Hudson River. My proximity was purely ­random, considering that I was a lowly “production associate,” and I had no ­reason ever to speak to her. So I didn’t. In my eight years employed at the company, I interacted with Martha probably no more than three times. The most memorable was shortly after I’d been hired, when, walking through the hallway, Martha inquired, to no one in particular, where the water fountain was located. I knew enough to answer straightaway. “Down the hall and to your right,” I said. She was pleased with my response, and gave me such a warm, enveloping, inviting smile. I’m sure a moment later I’d been erased from her memory.

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Sarah Paulson on Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender is a man. He just looks at you, and you want to take your clothes off. Let me just say this—once he kissed me on the mouth, to say hello, and I almost fainted. The kiss was very platonic on his part. I could smell what he had for breakfast in the morning, you know what I mean? He could eat a pile of shit, and it would smell good on him.






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Kristen Wiig on Billy Idol
I had Billy Idol’s ­picture on the back of my bedroom door, and I took a photo of it, because I wanted to take the picture, develop the picture, and tell people that I saw him. But it didn’t work, because there was always a huge glare, like over his face, and it was very obvious I was taking a picture of a poster. I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone through with the ­elaborate lie, but it just seemed like a good idea at the time.









Photo: Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection

Courtney Love on Michael Beck
I used to love Michael Beck more than horses, or rock bands, or Zeppelin, or the Stones, or the Beatles.













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Seth Rogen on Chris Messina
He’s just adorable.















Photo: Heidi Gutman/MSNBC

W. Kamau Bell on Melissa Harris-Perry
If you go to the black-people meeting, we’re all allowed to and expected to have a crush on Melissa Harris-Perry. Growing up as a black nerd, there really weren’t a lot of safe places, so now to be living in an era where there are places for blerds, as they say, is pretty exciting. And she’s one of the leaders of blerd-dom. And if you say that you’re not in some way enthralled with her, you’re ­probably not going to get into the next black-people meeting, which you’re not going to get into anyway. I hate to break it to you, but then again, I don’t get into the white-people meetings, no matter how many sit-ins we stage.



Photo: Ari Marcopoulos

Kathleen Hanna on her then-future husband Ad-Rock
You know those things where the dog and their person are separated by a hurricane or flood and then they’re reunited? That’s what it felt like when I first met Ad-Rock. We were in Australia, and our bands were touring together, and I’d just come up with all these tricky things to get with him. I borrowed a skateboard and went into a room full of people and said, “Who wants to go skateboarding?” and I only looked at him. At the end of the tour, letters started coming in under my door, like, “It was so nice to meet you.” I kept waiting for one from him. But after the tour, I started getting faxes from Adam at every single club we played at. I had no idea how he found me.

Photo: Florian Schuh/DPA/Corbis

Rufus Wainwright on Mark Ronson’s Nose
I’ve had a long-standing love for Mark Ronson, whom I worked with on my last album. He’s married to his wife, I’m married to my husband, and it was agreed immediately between the four of us that Mark and I are in love, and it’s okay, being that he’s straight and I’m gay. When we made the album, we crushed out wildly. A lot of staring at each other, a lot of primping before meetings and checking of armpits. I do think about his nose. A very typical and gorgeous Jewish-looking nose. I’m a nose person.






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Bob Newhart on Claudia Cardinale
I loved Claudia Cardinale’s comedic timing, the way she dealt with Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther. He was always trying to win her affections. He came out of the bathroom one time, stepped on a violin, and said, “It’s all right, my darling. If you’ve seen one Stradivarius, you’ve seen them all.”

Illustration by Zohar Lazar

The Lonely Island on the men of Game of Thrones

Jorma Taccone: Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, has gotten more attractive sans hand. Weirdly made him more attractive.
Andy Samberg: Pretty much everyone on Game of Thrones. It’s just a sexy cast. Just have a big ol’ Game of Thrones orgy. But you got to watch out for ­Littlefinger in an orgy. You never know when he’s going to sneak in. Hey—whoop! There it is. Littlefinger!
Taccone: He’s plotting. Always plotting.
Samberg: And Tyrion, he knows what he’s doing. Oh, yeah.
Taccone: I’m glad that they didn’t cut off his nose on the show, like they did in the books, because it would have been harder at an orgy. And now he’s stayed attractive. The scar is not that bad.
Samberg: Not that bad? It’s actually kind of sexy. Rugged and cool.
Taccone: They keep it sexy across the board. GoT, always sexy.
Akiva Schaffer: I don’t know anybody’s name. I just know I would have liked fucking whaling on Joffrey. I mean whaling on him sexually.
Samberg: No, whaling on someone is hitting them. Railing on them is pumping them.
Schaffer: Not the way I do it.
Samberg: I can’t speak to that.

Photo: David Jensen/Corbis

Amanda Palmer on avoiding Morrissey
I deliberately passed up the chance to meet ­Morrissey some years ago. We were playing a ­festival in Germany, and the keyboardist offered to introduce me, and I shocked myself by saying no. The key is making sure your crush doesn’t crush you. I didn’t want my icon shattered. With ­Morrissey, you get the feeling that there’s a risk there, even on a good day.








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Rosecrans Baldwin on Jane Campion’s Hair
Jane Campion’s hair is incredible. Like Top of the Lake, you should make time to see it. It’s long, straight, and not quite gray, more like a white that becomes camel, or the color of frost crystals grasping wheat. It is, judging by its length, the hair of mature artistic confidence. (She’s 60.) Hair that Campion probably could charge admission to watch her brush, charge double to let people brush themselves, after a long shampoo. Am I going too far? Rimbaud said, “What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” I don’t know what I’d say if I ever met Jane Campion’s hair, but I could spend pages describing its erotic interest.


Dan Savage’s Instagram infatuation with Addison Graham
I’m one of those men with dicks who, if a shiny object or a squirrel is running by, it’s a distraction. And I don’t know how this person crossed my radar exactly, but I started following him on Instagram. I’ve never met him, but his name is Addison Graham, and he is a stripper in Los Angeles, and in a way, I guess you could say that both my husband and I are addicted. He’s just kind of got a goofy face—and my husband is within earshot, he doesn’t like it when I say this—but I’ve always been attracted to guys with goofy Muppet faces.

Pat Kiernan on Cindy Crawford
I just remember her pressing the button on the soda machine in that Pepsi commercial, and it was very … frustrating.










Photo: Mario Ruiz/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Mike Epps on ’90s-era Halle Berry
Halle Berry from Boomerang—that’s when I loved her. I grew up in the Midwest, and Halle Berry was from the Midwest, and if I knew her then, I would have taken her straight to the hood, with the top down, music blasting, yelling, “Look, everybody! I got Halle Berry in my car with me! This is my girl!” I would have taken Halle Berry to Six Flags, and we’d have gone on some roller coasters, and we would have dressed alike, matching blue-jean outfits on, with the Jordans and the glasses, you know what I mean? Our Cross Colours on. And candy necklaces. You got to bite them off just right. I’d bite on her neck while we on the roller coaster. Slobber all down her neck. And then we would just sit in the house and watch Martin and A Different World.


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Macy Gray on the Jackson 5
My first crush was Michael Jackson, when I was little, and I used to go back and forth with all the brothers. I had a different Jackson crush like every week. They were all cute and they could sing and dance and they were on TV. I liked Jermaine for a really long time, but I was older when that happened.

Dee Snider on Nancy Pelosi
The best-looking politicians are on the extreme right. I guess Nancy Pelosi was something else back when Elvis was kicking ass, you know? She was probably at an Elvis show going, “Wooo!”










Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Photo

Cheryl Strayed on Ray Suarez
I had a mad crush on Ray Suarez when he was the host of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.” In 1999, when he left for his gig on PBS NewsHour, I was excited that I’d finally get to see this man who made my heart thump, but it didn’t work. I still admire him, but my crush is gone. It was dependent entirely on the magic of radio.










What Do Leonardo DiCaprio, Bald Britney, and Nanc […]