Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2013 i Esquire

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…

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 WOODY FRAGRANCE SMELLS LIKE NATURE. LIKE HARD WORK. THE WAY A MAN SHOULD SMELL. Orget careful combinations of spice and bergamot, leather and primrose. When a man wants to smell like a man (who wants to smell like a cologne), there is one family of scents that he should turn to: wood. It's big, hearty, and dominant. Plus, it's what our ancestors wore. Granted, the smell most likely rubbed off on them after a day spent hunting in the forest or swinging an ax in preparation for winter, but the result is basically the same, just without the sweat. So save the light, citrusy colognes for spring and summer and the spicy musks for the fall holidays. This winter, you'll want to smell like wood. And not just because…

Smithiness: That's how Paul Smith once summed up the difference between his clothes and everyone else's, and he defined the word for us thusly: "Everything is beautifully made, but there's something about it that makes you smile or makes you feel important or makes you feel like you've got a secret." Smithiness is the striped lining of a suit jacket, or the ballsy pattern on a collared shirt, or any of the colors or details that make his new collaboration with John Lobb so compelling. The shoes are based on three iconic styles from the legendary English boot maker—a wing-tip oxford, a suede derby, and a casual loafer—which Smith treats as his canvas, burnishing the leather wing tips in deep greens and grays and dyeing the suede in bright blues…

BROTHER BET ME $500 she wouldn't make it past December. I accepted and won—Grandma died January third. I took four days off work and went home to help my mother with funeral arrangements, but mostly I ate snacks and watched shitty movies. After American Ninja 2 I got up from the couch and kicked a bag of microwave popcorn. Unpopped kernels went everywhere. I did a cartwheel into the kitchen and looked at food in the refrigerator and thought about my grandmother's dentures. They were yellowed and ugly and shifted in her mouth, and I wondered why the dentist didn't make them pretty and white. Realism, I guessed, the truthful treatment of material. Here's some more: V. C. Andrews romance novels are popular, the dentist hurts, and Q-tips get yellow.…

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, 74, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA > Italians are romantics, and my mother taught me the value of beauty and the appreciation for life. She really wanted me to be a concert pianist. That's always been with me, because every time I sit down and play Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, and Schubert, I think of her. > I sat down with the president yesterday, and we were talking about the election. I told him, "What the American people voted for was the fact that they trust your judgment. They don't always agree with you, but they trust the fact that you're a straight shooter and that you really do want to do what's in the interest of the country." Look, I've seen the president in the Situation Room and policy meetings…

REPORTER, 41, WASHINGTON, D. C. > I'm always gonna be crazy about dishes in the sink. Crazy! Because it's a sign of disrespect. It says that you think someone else is going to clean up after you, that you're not prepared to do it yourself. At least scrape them and stack them, right? Shit. Are you kidding me? > My father taught me a lot. But I think the lesson that really stuck out was: Don't settle for less than what you can be. If I was gonna be a lawyer, he'd say, "Lawyers get told what to do by judges. Be a judge." > There was a time in the world when we honestly thought if people just know that this is happening, no one will stand for it.…

SERGEANT SPENCER J. Pellecer 26, WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA; EIGHT YEARS OF SERVICE > On my first deployment to Al Anbar, Iraq, in early 2005, I was nineteen years old and scared to death. The worst part about our engagements was simply that you never knew when it was your time to die. We would saddle up on the vehicles and cross over from friendly lines to "Indian territory" and patrol as ordered. All that held us together was trust and faith in our vehicle crews, confidence in our training, immediate action drills, and the ability to gain fire superiority when engaged. But still, the question always loomed, Will today be my day? > I don't recall who said it, but I remember hearing it at a machine-gun course when I…

> Our actions are the ground we walk on. > The thing I learned the most from my father is Don't wait for tomorrow. Don't say you're gonna do something "when the kids grow up." Don't say, "I'm going to go to Israel once you guys are out of school." Because he got pancreatic cancer at fifty-two, and he never did any of it. The gift he gave me was a residue of his death. Don't ever wait to satisfy an idea or a hope or a dream. > If you're sick, watch funny movies. > We were watching the black-and-white TV in the den on the South Side of Chicago, right near Lake Michigan. And toward the end of this movie, there were steps that went up to the…

EMBATTLED MASCOT, 62, CLEVELAND > I'm actually a junior. Bill Veeck hired my pop in 1946, when he bought the club. Truly great man, Mr. Veeck. He signed Larry Doby the following season and broke the color line in the American League. Brought in Satchel Paige in '48 and won the World Series. Mr. Veeck loved the game, loved his players, loved the fans. And beer. Taught me a lot. > For my father, it was a moonlighting job to help pay the bills. He was a construction laborer until his knees gave out. For me, it's a legacy. Never wanted to do anything else. The media and fans refer to the team as the Tribe—that feels good. It feels right. > Chief Wahoo is a stage name, more or…

THERE ARE A LOT OF UNRELIABLE THINGS IN THIS WORLD—WIFI SERVICE ON AMTRAK, METH ADDICTS, TOUR DE FRANCE WINNERS. BUT THE MOST UNRELIABLE OF THEM ALL? THE HUMAN MEMORY. IT'S A DISASTER. It's bad enough that we forget the vast majority of our lives. Study after study has shown that when we do recall an event, our memory of it is almost always self-serving, warped—or totally fabricated. This hit home for me recently when I called my mom to ask her how old I was when she took me to Epcot Center—a trip of which I have fond memories. "We never went to Epcot Center," she replied. I'd patched together my so-called recollections from wishful thinking and TV clips of Disney World. And then there are the chunks of our…

Mars Rover, 5, Gale Crater > Strangest thing: smells like cinnamon. > Lonely? We don't really know yet, do we? > You're looking at me like I'm serious. Of course it's friggin' lonely. I'm on Mars. Not to be a dick, but come on. > Having the whole place to yourself is overrated. > Thank God I still get Homeland. > I'm five, sure. But it's a "dog years" kind of deal. > Don't get me started on "my" Twitter account. "Come for the sand, stay for the science." "A scoopful of Mars helps the science go down." It's like NASA brought in a first-grade teacher for this. It's embarrassing. > Yes, if you must know, the constant "Do this," "Go there," "Stop! What's that?" is a pain. I thought…

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…

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…

EAT LIKE A MAN Tortilla española is the national dish of Spain, and making it is an inherited skill: You learn the inversion technique at the knee of another cook, standing by and admiring the economy and fluidity of the motion until the moment comes when you man the pan yourself. I got my tortilla española education from the wife of a winemaker I was visiting in Spain, a sweet woman who explained her secret behind making a good tortilla into a great one: Once the potatoes and onions are cooked, she mixes them with the beaten eggs and lets the mixture sit for at least an hour. The warm potatoes exude starch into the egg mixture, and the potatoes absorb the egg, giving the tortilla its amazing creamy texture.…

EIGHTEEN MEN WHO TOOK SOME RISKS, BROKE SOME RULES, AND SHOWED THE WAY TOWARD BRIGHTER, BOLDER, BETTER STYLE FOR THE YEAR AHEAD CHRIS BOSH THIRD WHEEL Not Wade. Not James. Bosh. And when he arrived at the All-Star Game in February in a DB charcoal blazer, white shirt, and black trousers, carrying a Louis Vuitton Damier-print bag, he showed just how much you can do without color. TOM HARDY MASKED MAN In July, it rained at the London premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. (Obviously.) And the man who broke bad as Bane proved that not only can you wear a trench coat all year round, but you can look like this while doing it. Plus, he's wearing driving gloves. Necessary in the middle of summer? Probably not. Sharp-looking? Sharp-looking.…

Say what you will, but Sean Penn is a man you'd want on your side. Why? He knows how to fight. He's fighting his own renegade war to save Haiti. He's fought battles over money and creativity in Hollywood for decades. He fights for any idea he believes in. Will he ever stop? My son had a skateboard accident where he almost died. He had emergency brain surgery. This was before he turned eighteen—he's nineteen now. And when he was recovering, seeing the morphine go into him and give him relief created kind of a love affair for me with morphine and that usage of it. It had already been eight months of divorce and shit, and raising a kid that's going through the divorce himself, and then this fucking…

MAVERICK, 79, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI > What any human being can do in life depends upon the foundation laid between birth and age five. > The biggest untold story in American history is what happened to the Native Americans east of the Mississippi River. > My great-grandfather was the last ruler of the Choctaw Nation, and from birth I was taught that my role was to restore the power and the glory to my bloodline. > My momma was slick as greased lightning. She knew how to get anybody and everybody to do whatever she wanted 'em to do. I've always bragged about getting my principles from my father, but it was my momma who showed me how. > When I was growing up, we saw ourselves as Native Americans. I…

> Every day is great—it's a day extra. > Fighting is all I ever knew. I started out at seven, fighting in the street, fighting to give a few bucks to my father to help pay the rent. You fight to get what you want. > I told the producer that I wanted to play myself in the movie. Raging Bull. The producer said, "Jake, you're not the type." Good thing there's a Robert De Niro. > Most people aren't good or bad. They're naive. > I was able to convince my body that I could take it and nobody could hurt me. I might've gotten cut, stitches over my eyes. Broken nose. Broken hands. But I never really got hurt. > I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times,…

FIGHTER, 25, LOS ANGELES > I've been broke as fuck, but I've never owed anyone shit. > Happiness is the absence of wants. > My father would say, "Ronnie, you're going to be someone special. Whatever it is that you want to do, you're going to be the best in the world at it." He said it to me when I was at that age where your dad is right about everything. So I just assumed that he was. > People have been fighting each other for millennia. It's part of human nature. The confusing thing is we now live in a society where it's not illegal to be an asshole, but it's illegal to slap one. > I love fighting. It's preserving something that's real, that I think is…

> It was the most ordinary of Sunday mornings. That's a word you don't want to use in police language—every cop will tell you that. Don't ever come in and say, "Gee, it's quiet." Then dispatch said there'd been a report of possible shots fired at the Sikh temple. Listening on the radio to where everybody else was coming from, I knew I was going to arrive first. > There's a very long driveway that goes in off the main avenue to the temple. My thought was Shut off your lights and siren just before you get there. Pull in quiet. Park sideways, give yourself some cover just in case. We have AR-15's in the squad car. But there was a malfunction with the switch that releases the AR-15. That's…

NOVELIST, 76, LOLO, MONTANA > There's no such thing as bad food in south Louisiana. It's on a level with heroin. > My father used to say, "If everybody agrees on it, it's wrong." Or, as Dave Robicheaux, the protagonist in some of my books, says, "Did you ever see a mob rush across town to do a good deed?" > The boos always come from the cheap seats. > I was teaching back in the sixties. I remember a lot of kids had this in-your-face attitude, as though it were a testimony to liberation from convention. Well, there's a reason for convention. We use signals to people to indicate emotions that we can't verbally state or express. There's a reason you take off your hat when you walk into…

TIP NO. 1 ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CASHMERE. SLIM DOUBLE-BREASTED CUT, NIPPED AT THE WAIST AND SLIM IN THE SLEEVE: IF THERE IS A HIGHER FORM OF ELEGANCE IN OUTERWEAR, WE DO NOT KNOW IT. On Devon Scott, creative director: Double-breasted cashmere coat ($7,995) by Ralph Lauren Purple Label; cashmere turtleneck sweater ($225) by Kenneth Cole; wool flannel trousers ($395) by Polo Ralph Lauren; leather boots ($338) by Cole Haan; leather-and-cashmere gloves ($278) by John Varvatos. On Nick Poe, artist: Nylon-and-cotton parka ($2,195) by Burberry London; cashmere turtleneck sweater ($695) by Ralph Lauren Black Label; wool-and-cashmere trousers ($550) by John Varvatos; leather boots ($248) by the Frye Company; suede-and-cashmere gloves ($550) by Burberry Prorsum. TIP NO. 2 Good rule of thumb: Your coat should always match the style and sensibility of…

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,…

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…

I JUST SAW THE SESSIONS, AND I DON'T GET HOW BEING A "SEXUALSURROGATE" IS LEGAL. THERAPY OR NOT, ISN'T IT STILL PROSTITUTION? Good work, Junior Crime Stopper. Your badge is in the mail. Sexual surrogacy is in fact illegal, or would be if the cops were suddenly to bust in. Its particulars are overseen by the International Professional Surrogates Association, a self-overseeing agency that hooks up therapists and surrogates in California, where most acts take place. Naturally, sex surrogates and the therapists who pimp them maintain that everyone's intention is purely therapeutic: "We have a program," says surrogate Linda Poelzl. "In the first session, you do this, in the second, you do that. We have a session where we talk about safe sex and condoms and gloves and barriers and…

WE LOVE OURSELVES. AND FINALLY WE'RE HONEST ABOUT IT. Television is inherently an act of narcissism. It both feeds and fuels what Freud described as the core of the narcissistic personality—"the delusion of being watched." Television's narcissism is currently shifting ground. This month, The Carrie Diaries relaunches the Sex and the City franchise while Girls starts up its second season. The contrast is stark: In the old narcissism, we have dumb, beautiful moneyed people trying to become more beautiful and more moneyed. In the new narcissism, we have smart, unattractive poor people trying to confront their pervasive, intense self-obsession. All of the best shows on television, the most urgent, most relevant pop culture of the moment—Louie, Community, the upcoming season of Arrested Development—reflect us as we are: narcissists in search…

When you fight—for a cause, for an idea, for a victory as declared by the referee, for money, for integrity, for a country—you come out of it a little wiser, a little tougher. Win or lose, you emerge knowing more about what to expect from the world—and how to change it. So this year, in our annual effort to learn the meaning of life and be smarter, we turn to warriors. Marines, a rock 'n' roll veteran, a boxer, a cop, leaders, activists, lone wolves, people who don't take any shit. Each of them is a person you would want in your corner. Each of them has something to say.…

ACTOR, FORMER GOVERNOR, 65, LOS ANGELES > You can't learn charisma. > The power of influence is one of the most unique powers that you can have. It's not the power of controlling people. It's developing a certain skill of communicating what you want to accomplish so that people will follow you. > Be a public servant. Not a party servant. > I didn't get it at first. I'll be back. What the fuck is I'll? I will be back sounded much stronger in my mind. So I argued with Jim Cameron. And he said, "Look, Arnold, I don't tell you how to act. Please don't tell me how to write." After I saw it in the movie, I was so thankful to Cameron. That was a good lesson to…

SINGER, 67, LOS ANGELES > I've tried to have a regular haircut, but it just pops back up again, so this is the way it's going to be. > The lesson me mum taught me was "Eat all the food on your plate or your brothers are going to take it." She was always mindful of food, because the rationing continued even after the war years. I was the youngest. So it was: Make sure the little sparrow got his food. > You want to know what it was like back then? There's a great picture in the book of me and my pals Kevin and Clive proudly displaying our harmonica. Our harmonica. Our one-shilling harmonica. It was the only one we had. We shared it! We cherished it! "Can…

SUPERMODEL AND HUMANITARIAN, 33, NEW YORK > You cannot blame nature. > A friend of mine is a painter, and he writes on many of his paintings. One of the things he writes is "Truth always happens." That's my definition of the truth. We all have our own truths. There are so many truths. But the real truth always happens. > Surrender is a very important word. Not to force things. Perfect example: During the tsunami, when I was drowning and I was under a layer of debris, and I started to swallow the black water, and I couldn't breathe, I said, "Okay. If I have to go, I have to go." And I let go. In that moment, I felt very much a part of the water—my cells and…

Drifter, 52 > I have seen things I wish I hadn't seen. But they existed anyway. So seeing them doesn't make me sad. It makes me realistic. > Tribalism is the defining human condition. We'll never get rid of it. All we can do is recognize it, regret it, and manage it. > A pool cue is the best weapon in a bar fight. And bars generally provide them for you, all lined up in racks, which is considerate. > I'm not afraid of death. Death's afraid of me. Those are the kind of things we say for courage. Eventually we believe them, which makes them true, in a way. > Fighting is a mental process, not physical. The second you realize where the thing is heading, start swinging. Never…

VIGILANTE, 65, NEW YORK > Loving your life is an important thing, but I think it's also important to try to make the world a better place. > If someone tries to enforce their will on you and you have a gun, they have a problem. > I went to boarding school in Switzerland. The Swiss seem to behave more. They go by the rules and it works. > If a person is hunting an animal out in the woods and the animal turns around and attacks him, is there something to be upset about? > We tend to accept anything we're raised with. > There were four people being killed on the streets every day in New York City at that time. And for everyone who was killed, how…

There's a gold rush going on right now. Man is breaking the earth, looking for natural gas—just as we always have. It's a mad scene, with hucksters on every side of the issue. And that's just on the surface. You won't believe what's happening underground. Crude oil looks like poison. Messy poison. On a drill site, it covers everything like a hemorrhage. It coats, smothers, smudges. The image of a gusher, where oil ejaculates from the earth through the latticed construction of a derrick, is an American cultural essential. You're covered in poison. You're letting the earth be covered in it, too. Because you're rich. Blood, poison, money. Oil shows itself. Natural gas hides from sight. It is invisible, and its capture through the controversial process of high-pressure, high-volume horizontal…