Esquire January 2013

A NOTE FROM DAVID GRANGER Getting Started Even though you are probably receiving this issue toward the end of 2012, this is officially the first issue of 2013, the year in which Esquire will turn 80 years old. When I mentioned this to Tom Chiarella a few months ago, he wrote me that 80 is the length of a good, full life for a man. You make it to 80, you don't feel as though you've been cheated. I don't imagine many of us will go willingly into that good night, even if it's well after 80, but the idea spoke to me. Philip Roth will turn 80 this year. Willie Nelson [1], too. Larry King [2]. Cormac McCarthy, Yoko [3], and Carol Burnett, for that matter. Each of them…

THE WRITER TALKS TO SCOTT RAAB ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK, FEAR, MOBY-DICK, OPIUM, BOOZE, AND THE WEATHER Nick Tosches has written two of the essential biographies for men: Dino, about Dean Martin, and The Devil and Sonny Liston. A poet and novelist, he is one of America's greatest living writers. This interview takes place in the early afternoon at Circa Tabac, a smoking lounge in downtown Manhattan. SCOTT RAAB: I've enjoyed your work for 40 years, but I've always wondered, Are you a nice guy? NICK TOSCHES: At times, I'm the nicest guy in the world. But I really don't give a fuck, so that gets interpreted in a lot of different ways. SR: On the page, you take no prisoners. NT: There have been acts of mercy that people…

THE ASSESSMENT There was a time when I kind of had Judd Apatow figured as a sort of inventive soothsayer for a generation of vaguely crass, amusingly good-hearted, foulmouthed schleps, aimless but cinched to one another around the problems that come with being natively smart but unaccomplished, a little fat but decent in nature, or very horny but dinged up by too much porn. The result, great movies: Superbad, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, and more. Apatow-written, or Apatow-produced, or Apatow-launched. The best of them feature dopey boy protagonists, who cipher their dilemmas in boys-only circles meshed together by codes of adolescence. They survive said struggles by breaking away to stand on their own, if only a little. And I always liked the men Apatow revealed inside these boys,…

THIS YEAR, DON'T MAKE IT SO EASY TO DISAPPOINT YOURSELF 1. In e-mails, use capital letters at the start of sentences, except when in a real hurry. 2. Try not to check your smartphone for at least ten minutes after sex. 3. Don't be overtly racist. 4. If you're going to sit naked on the couch, put a towel down. 5. Stop being bitter about Lena Dunham and check out the new season of Girls. 6. Remove any BitTorrent sites from your bookmarks. 7. If you are a billionaire giv-ing away money, carefully consider who needs it more: starving children or large opera companies. 8. Eat nuts occasionally. 9. Chew your food two times more per mouthful. 10. When spitting on the street, try to do it in a storm…

A TRAVELING SALESMAN STOPS at the nearest farmhouse and asks if he can spend the night. The farmer says okay, and tells him he can go upstairs and sleep in the same room as his daughter. The salesman goes upstairs, and as he enters the daughter's room notices another salesman in bed with her. "Sorry," he says. "I must be in the wrong joke." ABOUT THE JOKESTER: To us, Hayden Panettiere will always be Claire Bennet, the indestructible cheerleader on Heroes. So it's a little jarring to see her on ABC's Nashville as a fame-hungry country star (or, as she puts it, "the cold bitch of the century") gunning for the spotlight occupied by a veteran performer played by Connie Britton (who will always be Tami Taylor from Friday Night…

Asurprising number of the world's great internationally popular spirits have a secret country cousin back home—a similar spirit that's rougher, more rustic, and less ingratiating. Sometimes those cousins also get their chance on the world stage: In the 1980s, single-malt Scotch began making it out of the Highland mists to share the limelight with its often easier-drinking blended version. Today, it's mezcal and rye whiskey that are standing next to tequila and bourbon. Who knows what the next one will be: artisanal cachaças from Brazil, samogon from Russia, rhum agricole from the Caribbean? If we're lucky, it'll be Armagnac from France. Like cognac, Armagnac is an artisanal grape brandy that's generally aged in oak, often for a very long time. Yet last year, while about 177 million bottles of cognac…