Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2014 i Esquire

PAGE 78 JIMMY KIMMEL WANTS EVERYONE TO BE A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLEIt's how he distinguishes himself in the crowded world of late-night TV. But his real genius is making us like him for it. BY TOM CHIARELLA PAGE 120 THE DRUGGING OF THE AMERICAN BOYOne in seven Americanboys will be diagnosed with ADHD before they're eighteen. But is there really a need to give psychotropic drugs to boys just for being boys? BY RYAN D'AGOSTINO The Life List Eighty-four endeavors, opportunities, journeys, and fantastically bad ideas you gotta try. Time is short. Such as … PAGE 90 No. 28: GET LOSTWhen you don't know where you are, that's where you want to be. A painful trip through Chile's Atacama Desert. BY JOHN H. RICHARDSON PAGE 97 No. 52: LIVE YOUR NIGHTMARETake…

NO. 06 THE LEAST DAINTY PUNCH Port Royal Punch: Stir 1 ½ cups loosely packed brown sugar and 1 cup water over a low flame until sugar dissolves. Let cool. Combine with 1 ½ cups fresh-squeezed lime juice in a gallon jug or pitcher. Add one 750-ml bottle Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum, 2 qts water, and a few sprigs mint. Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Serve over ice. Serves 10 well. Poke around the shelves of liquor stores and the back bars of contemporary cocktail ateliers (or whatever they're calling themselves in 2014) and you'll find a surprising number of spirits that are a good deal stronger than the standard 80-proof, or 40 percent abv, alcohol by volume. In part, that's because cocktails are king these days…

What's fascinating about food is not the complicated novelty that defines modern cuisine but the subterranean universality of everyday meals—how different uses of the same basic ingredients provide a regional-history capsule. For example: Start with the great American meat loaf in Chicago, where 19th-century railroad expansion led to the country's largest stockyard and the Industrial Revolution brought the mechanical meat grinder to take advantage of every scrap. Then draw a line to the polpette of Sicily, where the addition of raisins and pine nuts is a thread to the centuries of Arab occupation. And then to Istanbul, where adana kebab (a kebab of ground lamb, tail fat, and red pepper) is Middle Eastern street food rooted in the tribal customs of the Ottoman Empire. Point is: While the big, beautiful…

Amazon has uncovered the golden path. Throughout its existence, it has offered products and services that clearly cost more than it was charging. In fact, the only element of Amazon's financial reporting not considered opaque has been the certainty that it loses money on many of its most popular items. Still, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has pursued his vision, and investors have followed. Or they used to. Early this year, Citigroup, Cantor Fitzgerald, Susquehanna, BofA Merrill Lynch, and Oppenheimer all lowered their price targets, and ten of the analysts have either a hold or a kiss-of-death sell on AMZN. In January, after Amazon announced its fourth-quarter results, which missed Wall Street's targets—never mind its 20 percent growth or that it only barely missed the $26 billion revenue target—traders…

Composition Eau de toilette (what most of us refer to as cologne) contains 12 to 15 percent actual fragrance oil. The rest is odorless alcohol, maybe a little water. The alcohol acts as a solvent and a propellant, dissolving and dispersing the essential oils on your skin, where they react with the air to make you smell nice. Notes Top notes, usually a citrus like bergamot or lemon, are the lightest molecules, typically evaporating within five to ten minutes of application. You don't need to worry about these, since the only person who will smell them is you. Middle notes take about an hour to evaporate and are often floral scents, like jasmine, lavender, and rose. What you really want to concern yourself with are the base notes, like vanilla…

HE IS THE JIMMY WHO MAKES KIDS CRY. WHO STILL CRACKS UP AT THE THOUGHT OF A CRANK CALL. ENJOYS PISSING OFF HIS OWN WRITERS. LOVES HOAXES AND PRANKS AND PUSHES THEM FURTHER THAN MOST PEOPLE DO. BUT NO, SERIOUSLY, HE IS A SUPERNICE GUY. NOT AS NICE AS THAT OTHER NICE JIMMY, BUT NICE. JIMMY TACKLES THE LIFE LIST Busk. That is, play music in front of people for tips. If you don't play an instrument, then find some other way to risk the withering indifference of strangers. (The list starts on page 85.) There's the scheduled pickup in front of the hotel. Jimmy Kimmel is skinny enough now that he's hard to recognize behind the dark glass of his SUV. Noted: Jimmy Kimmel's SUV is full of harmonicas.…

No. 36 Drive cross-country the other way—from Great Falls, Montana, to Austin, Texas. No. 37 Walk somewhere at least fifty miles away. No. 38 Climb Angels Landing in Zion National Park. No. 39 Drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. No. 40 A few years ago, in the teeth of the downturn, I started hondling—partly out of necessity, but mostly just to see what happened. I angled for a better price on everything: cable TV, fruit, newspapers, clothes, books, magazines, liquor—everything. And let me preface this by saying I'm in no way a born hondler. The whole thing made me ashamed, and, perhaps due to that unease, I took a beating early on. The record-store owner: "We don't do that here." The bartender: "You're asking me to essentially steal…

No. 58 Personally, I think it was because of the weather. I mean, it's not like we're looking for excuses or anything—but we had an excuse, didn't we? It was January. It was 10 fucking degrees out. It was, like, 15 degrees in, by which I mean the subway, where we had our gig. We kept waiting for someone to turn on the heat, but nobody did. I daresay there could have been bands accustomed to filling stadiums down there, and they would have gotten the same result. It just happened to be Cousin Billy. Not that we did badly—we didn't. All right, we were supposed to be singing for our supper, which implies a pretty straightforward standard of success. But there are other ways to be successful. For instance,…

IF YOU HAVE A SON, YOU HAVE A ONE-IN-SEVEN CHANCE THAT HE HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD. If you have a son who has been diagnosed, it's more than likely that he has been prescribed a stimulant—the most famous brand names are Ritalin and Adderall; newer ones include Vyvanse and Concerta—to deal with the symptoms of that psychiatric condition. The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies stimulants as Schedule II drugs, defined as having a "high potential for abuse" and "with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence." (According to a University of Michigan study, Adderall is the most abused brand-name drug among high school seniors.) In addition to stimulants like Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse, and Concerta, Schedule II drugs include cocaine, methamphetamine, Demerol, and OxyContin. According to manufacturers of ADHD…

INSIDE: 26 MEN, WOMEN, DRINKS, JOKES, MOVIES, MAD MEN, VACUUMS, MEAT LOAF, NOTIONS, AND A HANDFUL OF BOLD IDEAS THAT DEFINE OUR TIME. OR AT LEASTTHIS MONTH. Breakfast at Cafe Cluny in the West Village with the new host of Late Night. Scott Raab : You're doing test shows at this point? Seth Meyers: Starting Tuesday next week. We're doing a lot of camera tests now, blocking bits, how I walk out, how we get the guests out. SR: Every little thing has to be thought through. SM: The biggest relief going through this process was when I first got the job, I thought I would be in charge of everything, but I'm barely in charge of anything. SR: You're okay with that? SM: I'm a control-freak on the writing,…

There's the obvious way, of course. I can practically construct the exact sequence of shots: Don plummets to his death onto Madison Avenue. The fall is in slow-motion, then a sharp splat, and then the camera lifts to reveal a body on the street illuminated by the flashing lights of high-end boutiques, and it's about the ultimately deadening effect of consumer capitalism, and, Oh, my God, the credits have been telling us what's going to happen from the beginning. But by now, everyone's expecting that. I think there could be worse punishments for the quintessential American corporation man. I'd rather see him wind up on the beach in Sarasota, or somewhere in Florida, anyway. On the Gulf Coast side probably, in that easy America, where the weather's always great and…

A LEOPARD GOES to the doctor and tells him, "Doc, there's something wrong. All I do is see spots. In the morning I see spots, in the afternoon I see spots, in the evening I see spots! I look at my wife, I see spots." The doctor, a little confused, replies, "What's the problem? You're a leopard." The leopard responds, "But Doc, my wife is a zebra!" ABOUT THE JOKESTER: Anna Chlumsky already had had some practice hurling swear-laced insults amid political jargon before taking on the role of Amy Brookheimer, the chief of staff for Julia Louis-Dreyfus's bungling vice-president, Selina Meyer, on HBO's Veep, now in its third season. She played an aide to a ruthless stateswoman in 2009's In the Loop, another political satire from Veep creator Armando…

RUNNING ACCESSORIES (IN DESCENDING ORDER OF STYLISHNESS) Sunglasses running buddy, human running buddy, canine fitness tracking device, shoe fitness tracking device, wrist iPod armband reflective vest water-bottle waist pack running buddy, in car, shouting your speed out the window those teeny shorts toe shoes. No. 25 Can a chunky bracelet get you in shape? only if you help. It all started with the pedometer, attached to the hips of the mall-walking elderly and moms out for a morning lap around the neighborhood. Decades later, fitness trackers are everywhere. And they're much more advanced, slightly more attractive, and better able to benefit you in some way or another. Over the last month, I tested the newest options. Here's a look at the results. Even the most basic trackers do a very…

THE GREAT HEROES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY were men who could work machines. The best of the best took the most elaborate technologies to their extreme and in the process redefined the possibilities of what it means to be human. Astronauts, thrusting beyond gravity, defied our earthbound nature. Fighter pilots transformed the warrior into a perfect physical, intellectual, and emotional specimen in fine-tuned control of a triumph of engineering, divine in its powers of destruction. The astronauts and the fighter pilots are more or less historical figures now. We have rovers on Mars instead. We have drones. The best of the best today are a bunch of guys in some room in Nevada or California, checking their e-mail in between exploring space or blowing up Yemeni weddings. The heroes of…

No. 01 Apologize. So there was this one time that our brother did something that created a rupture in the family—the details aren't important, but he was as thoroughly convinced of his rightness as the rest of us were of his lunacy. So we went to confront him and saw him sitting there, waiting for us in the diner booth, face hard. That face was ready for a proportional response, a full-scale counterattack. Attack and counterattack was just our way, a veritable family tradition, and nobody had ever managed to do anything different. So we sat down, but this time, before we launched our nuclear strike, we instead apologized to the man with the hard face for something that wasn't even at issue, an old offense, maybe even forgotten, but…

IT'S A LONG STORY. AND I'VE ONLY GOT A FEW MINUTES. Six minutes. At an Ottawa comedy club called Yuk Yuk's, I'd be given six minutes to stand up in front of strangers and make them laugh. "Be prepared," Howard, the club's owner, wrote me in an e-mail. "No winging it." It was Amateur Night, but it wasn't Fuck-Around Night. Of the ten comics on the bill, I would be the only virgin. Some of the others would be professionals, field-testing new routines; some of them would be hopefuls like me, but hopefuls who had found their sacks sooner. Everybody else on that stage would know things that I did not know. Six minutes. I didn't even know if that was a little or a lot. I took a few…

NO. 62 WALK AWAY FROM A CONVERSATION YOU'RE NOT ENJOYING, WITHOUT EXPLANATION. No. 64 WILLIE GEIST: We've never been big on the traditional "Have a seat, son. There's something you should know… ." conversations. BILL GEIST: I'm convinced no one really has the awkward "Have a seat, son" talks. They happen only in the movies and on Dr. Phil. I mean, did you really want me to sit down and talk to you about how babies are made? WILLIE: Dear God, no! I learned everything I needed to know about the birds and the bees from the love scenes in Top Gun. I'm glad we finally did get around to the father-son conversation, even if it took a book collaboration to do it. Hearing about your relationship with your own…

Most pointless Web-site hacking Kenny Amoros, Seattle, who wormed his way onto the Nuclear Regulatory Web site and changed the font to Comic Sans. Worst analogy at an airport John Sharappa, Raleigh, who likened having his sunscreen taken away by security to Mandela's imprisonment. Most ingenious excuse for not paying Amazon bill David Lenett, Teaneck, New Jersey: "You sure? My drone was supposed to drop it off yesterday by noon." Most expensive transition to technology Duke Dodds, Cambridge, Massachusetts, who stepped on 1,132 e-cigarettes consecu tively before someone explained things to him. Lamest "Best Moment of Life" Lenny Nagle, Dallas, whose paper airplane landed in Peggy Nichols's pea soup in seventh grade. Most consecutive times using same joke after leaving 3-D movie Ben Bevalacqua,…

NO. 03 A HANDY INSULT. USE AS YOU LIKE. "You're not even a man. You're like an early draft of a man where they sketched out a mangled skeleton but they didn't have time to add details like pigment or self-respect." —Ed Webster (played by Zach Woods), a campaign fundraiser on Veep, which returns to HBO for a third season this month They used to go away. They used to have their moment, and then provide us with a handy little morality tale about the perils of fame. We used to be able to pity them, even as our children worshipped them. Yes, the little girls might scream for you now, oh child star, as you display the precocity of your talents, but just wait until the culture has had…

OTHER THINGS YOU MAY HAVE PICKED UP FROM TV That short attention span Grandma's always complaining about • the idea that any video or photograph can always be digitally enhanced • nearsightedness • the misconception that your cell-phone screen remains lit when you're on a phone call • an undying love for Bill Cosby. NO. 14 WHY DO I ALWAYS WANT TO SMOKE AFTER SEX? IS IT A BRAIN THING OR SOMETHING I LEARNED FROM TV? I thought it was so you could have an intimate experience with something you loved, but if I'm mistaken, I will amend my files. Yes, people on what you narrowly term "TV" do sometimes smoke after sex. I'm sure you've occasionally looked up from smoking and noticed as much. But I don't think that's…

THE RULES Rule No. 179: You may flip off the driver with the braggadocious vanity plate for the smallest of infractions. Rule No. 240: In a fruit cup, the grapefruit dominates. Rule No. 333: Of the various sorts of love triangles, those involving at least one law-enforcement official are the most fraught. Volume 1 is a blast, full of life and energy and ideas and humor and sexy naked bodies—the last thing you'd expect from Lars von Trier, maker of Melancholia (about the end of the world) and Breaking the Waves (about the end of a marriage and a life), a classic European pretentio-depressive who thinks his personal misery is a symbol of the meaninglessness of the universe or the hatefulness of humanity. And there are, in fact, quite a…

It is either a step forward in our ongoing evolution or a sure sign of impending doom that men have been spending more money on shoes than women lately. What's more, it's probably not all on basic black lace-ups. It's on our other shoes—the ones that aren't basic black or brown; the ones with unusual textures or patterns; the ones that can shake up a suit, upgrade khakis or jeans, or provide just the right amount of visual interest to elevate our whole look. The other shoes are perfectly suitable for everyday use but are really best worn as a break from routine, and even if broken out but a few times a year, knowing they're in our closet is half the joy of owning them. Clockwise from top right:…

FOR GENERATIONS, MEN HAVE BEEN saddled with the assumption that we don't care about our health. But more than ever, we are going to the gym, purposefully eating things like chard and bulgur, and finishing entire canisters of dental floss in less than two years. And those of us who aren't just lack proper motivation. (See right.) Whichever type of man any of us might be, one thing remains true: However well we're doing, we could be doing better. With the help of a team of experts,* we mapped out a comprehensive six-week plan to improving your health. You'll eat better, get stronger, and maybe buy a new pair of shoes. It's not easy, but it is doable. For all of us. FIRST, MOTIVATION BECAUSE THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN…

DAY ONE I step between the shafts of the cart, slide on the harness, and pull. The cart doesn't budge. I lean into the harness straps. Nothing happens. It will not budge. I lean harder, planting one foot in the gravel. Still nothing. I fall forward into the harness, throwing my weight toward the earth. The straps cut into my shoulders. This time the cart rolls an inch. So the damn thing moves. It's physically possible. On flat hard dirt with a sprinkling of gravel, a cart filled with four hundred pounds of water and camping gear will creak forward an inch. This is the moment of truth. Years of dreaming and planning, wrestling with doubts, thousands of dollars, time stolen from busy schedules, and it all comes down to…

No. 56 Teeth? What teeth? Oh, right, those: The distinctive smile that people have harped on ever since she first appeared as a secretary on season four of AMC's hit series Mad Men. The teeth that people felt so free to criticize online that her Facebook bio says simply, "This is actually me, so please try not to say mean things. Thanks!" The ones that enough people, three seasons later, still search for to make "Jessica Paré teeth" the first suggested option when you type her name into Google. And the same ones that, mid-brunch—a kale salad, no croutons—on a cool winter day in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, the thirty-three-year-old actress unfurls in a wide smile before asking the question we've all asked after consuming any leafy…

THE GO-TO-HELL SHOE These ones are white, for starters, and they've got tassels and pronounced brogueing, too. What that all adds up to, other than a shoe that looks best with light-colored pants, is a declaration that you will not be cowed or boxed in by convention. THE FORMAL CHINO A contradiction in terms? Maybe. But dark cotton pants cut close throughout the leg, with one-inch cuffs and a trace of a front pleat, are a step above your usual weekend fare while still a notch below wool work trousers. Keep 'em pressed and pair them with a complementary (though nonmatching) jacket. Wear good shoes, too. Cotton trousers ($665), three-button wool-linen-and-silk jacket ($2,905), cotton shirt ($520), and cotton-and-silk tie ($255) by Brunello Cucinelli; leather shoes ($550) by Bally; steel Terrescope…