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41

V O L . 1 6 0

N O . 2S E P T. 2 0 1 3

BY CHRIS JONES • PAGE 182

Scott Raab on the challenge of

protecting the new World Trade Center.

PAG E 14 0

A GUIDE TO CHILLING

THE F**K OUT

“AT THE MOMENT, HE’S IN SOME

MIDDLE GROUND BETWEEN BEING A

RECOGNIZABLE THOR AND A

HARDWORKING MERE MORTAL.”

ON THE DECK WITH

CHRIS HEMSWORTH BY TOM CHIARELLA

“NEW YORK CITY

IS A SMALLER

WORLD NOW THAN

EVER, AND AN

“UNFOCUS YOUR EYES.”

150

FOUR GREAT WRITERS

SHADOW FOUR GREAT

CHEFS, THEN TEACH YOU

EVERYTHING THEY

LEARNED. PAGE 192

“NEVERTHELESS,

I HAD NEVER

CRACKED AN EGG.”

{ continued on page 44 }

ESQUIRE STYLE

166

“FEAR NOT PLAID.”

The sport-coat renaissance is upon us.

“THE KEY TO NOT

LOOKING LIKE

A SECRET-

SERVICE AGENT

IS . . .”

The new rules for dark suits.

172

“THIS IS AN ACT

OF AGGRESSION

ON A GLOBAL SCALE.

SOMEBODY

CALL THE U. N.”

How to embrace new patterns, textures,

and colors.

A THREE-PART MANIFESTO

158

PAGE 127

ALEXBY JOHN H. RICHARDSON

“HE HAS THE REASSURING AUTHORITY

OF FATHER KNOWS BESTUPDATED FOR THE

APOCALYPSE.” CONSERVATIVE

JUGGERNAUT

JONESPAGE 202

“Paper money wore soft, like a pair of blue jeans, because it was

made from blue jeans.”

The New Hundred- Dollar Bill and the Making

of American Money

EVEN SOFTER

TARGET.”

ON THE COVER: CHRIS HEMSWORTH PHOTOGRAPHED EXCLUSIVELY FOR ESQUIRE BY MATTHIAS VRIENS-MCGRATH. SUIT, SHIRT, AND TIE BY

GUCCI. PRODUCED BY FRANK ROLLER FOR GLAM PR. GROOMING BY DIANA SCHMIDTKE FOR THE WALL GROUP. PROP STYLING BY NICK FAIELLA.

ban

an

are

pu

blic.c

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1 8

88

BR

ST

YL

E

V O L . 1 6 0

N O . 2S E P T. 2 0 1 3

{ continued from page 41 }

ESQ&A

“IT WAS GOING

TO TAKE ME SIX

MONTHS AND

AS MANY BOTTLES

OF VALIUM

TO READ IT.”

BOOKS, PAGE 90

MAN AT HIS BEST

BEFORE WE BEGIN, PAGE 62

“IT’S SATURDAY AND I DON’T CARE HOW I LOOK, AND I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK

OF HOW I LOOK, AND I DON’T CARE IF I EVER HAVE SEX AGAIN.”

“HE IS, FROM

FIRST TO LAST, VERY

SHAKY, WITH A

FLAT-FOOT FLOOGIE

OF A WALK.”

TELEVISION, PAGE 76

“DESPITE WHAT OBAMA’S CRITICS CLAIM,

THE SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM IS NOT THE

RESULT OF SOME OVERZEALOUS, POWER-

MAD EXECUTIVE BRANCH. PEOPLE WANT IT.”

A LIVING

EMBODIMENT

OF WHO WE

ARE NOW

COMING NEXT

MONTH IN ESQUIRE’S

80TH ANNIVERSARY

ISSUE

PAG E 2 1 6

69

“CALLING A FOUR-DOOR SEDAN

A COUPE BECAUSE IT LOOKS AMAZING

IS LIKE NAMING A HAM SANDWICH

FRANK BECAUSE YOU DRESSED IT UP IN

YOUR BEST FRIEND’S SHIRT.”

A THOUSAND WORDS

PAGE 122

BY STEPHEN MARCHE

“YOU DO NOT CARE

ABOUT 3-D.”

TECH, PAGE 86

“I don’t think of the joke

and then say it. I say

it and then realize what

I’ve said.”

SEX, PAGE 104

“GONORRHEA DOES THIS ALL THE TIME,

WHICH IS HOW IT

STAYS RELEVANT IN AN

INCREASINGLY

UNCERTAIN MICROBIAL

LANDSCAPE.”

SCOTT RAAB INTERVIEWS

ANDY “DICK IN A BOX” SAMBERG

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“We’re seeing the housing market reconnect

to actual values—and actual needs—which in turn

is about to unleash massive forces.”

THE PORTFOLIOBY KEN KURSON

PAGE 96

STYLE, PAGE 120

LYLE LOVETT NEVER WANTS YOU

TO THINK LIKE THIS

WOODYALLEN

INTERVIEWED

BY CAL FUSSMAN

PAGE 190

“HE’S LORNE ‘SNL’ MICHAELS,

AND I’M ANDY ‘DICK

IN A BOX’ SAMBERG.”

“REGGIE BUSH BREAKS A

FINGER IN EVERY GAME. AND

HE’S ALWAYS LIMPING.“ K AT I E AS E LTO N ’S FA N TASY F O OT B A L L P R E V I E W

“HE’S AN AMAZING

GUY TO WATCH—

EVEN THOUGH HE’S

A REDSKIN.”

NFL PREVIEW, PAGE 84

134

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CHRONOMAT 44FLYING FISH

49

BEGINB E F O R E W E

S E P T

2 0 1 3

In the March issue, we asked

11 men’s style experts to assess

the sartorial shift of the previ-

ous decade. Six months later,

that shift continues at an even

greater pace, which we ad-

dress in detail starting on page

157. But first, a few words from

our impeccably dressed style

department on the progress

they’ve observed since just

last season:

> NICK SULLIVAN, fashion

director: The one thing that

struck us was this very strong

division between a modern,

contemporary vibe and this

funky-but-chilled-out clas-

sic vibe. That’s why we did

two portfolios this month

(“Just Another Day in Kick-

Ass City,” page 158; “The Dark

Suit Rises,” page 172).

> RICHARD DORMENT, se-

nior editor: It’s sort of frag-

mented. There are so many

different things going on, but

that’s symptomatic of the

overall idea that men are not

only investing more in them-

selves, both in time and mon-

ey, but also being more open

to trying new things.

> NIC SCREWS, senior as-

sociate market editor: One

of the main things is the em-

phasis on darkness. That’s the

biggest thing that came out of

this season’s shift.

> WENDELL BROWN, senior

fashion editor: Like blacks.

Blacks are kind of back. They

hadn’t really been in the mar-

ket, because there’s been so

much emphasis on color. Now

there are more formal colors.

The looks are still tailored,

but the sensibility is kind of

relaxed. It’s not stiff. It’s still

very approachable.

> SULLIVAN: The darker

mood really defines both the

modern, more formal and the

classic, more casual takes. For

now, everyone’s able to enjoy

dressing up without feeling

dressed up.

> DORMENT: The whole thing

with The Way We Dress Now

is this mix between casual and

dressy. Like with shoes. You

want shoes that can sort of do

both. The black oxford is heavy

and serious. Most of us need

more versatility. So shoes with

a little funky patination, or that

are made from a cool leather,

or that have some sort of dis-

tinctive style have taken hold.

> BROWN: Blazers are still

big. They’re not replacing

suits. But they coexist. You’re

not an either/or anymore.

> SULLIVAN: If you’re going

for that separates look, you

start with the jacket. Every-

thing else goes along with it,

clashes with it. It has to ele-

vate everything.

HOW WE DRESS NOW:AN UPDATE

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C O N T I N U E D

50 E S Q U I R E � S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3

BEFORE WE BEGI N

C O N T E X T - F R E E H I G H L I G H T S F R O M L E T T E R S W E W O N ’ T B E R U N N I N G

“I’d like to read 1,000,000 pages in five years!” “What have you got against nipples?” “I told you I could not help you until I moved into a nice brand-new

house in a nice place like Moreland Hills, which has a supermarket across the street and many shops only 2,000 feet away.” “My neck hurts from reading

in bed and my wife won’t switch sides.” “I guess he likes the enema better.”

> DORMENT: The greater the con-

trast in texture between your bottom

half and your top half, the better

your look. So texture in stand-alone

blazers is really important. It’s how

people who design differentiate what

they’re doing, through textures and

cuts and, for more adventurous

souls, patterns.

> SULLIVAN: But really, the sport

coat as an idea . . . the last time it was

was in the late ’80s.

> DORMENT: When you look at pants,

the men of America are all stocked up

on jeans. They’ve got it. They under-

stand it. What’s next is this new breed

of chino that fits like jeans but is a lot

more versatile.

> BROWN: Colored khakis have totally

caught up to jeans, because they finally

got the fit right and they’re in every

effing shade you could ever imagine.

> SCREWS: Fitted, fitted, fitted. Ev-

eryone wants that word.

> SULLIVAN: The whole emphasis on

fit is here to stay. The slim-cut shirt

has been a big revolution in America.

That’s not so much a trend thing as an

education thing.

> SCREWS: Dockers totally figured

it out with the Alpha Khaki. Gap’s

also doing a perfect job of that. And

it’s making it affordable.

> BROWN: There’s something nice

about feeling like you’re in jeans but

kind of telling the world you take

yourself a little more seriously, or that

you want to dress up a little bit more.

> DORMENT: We’ve all coalesced

around the sense of what the length

should be and whether or not you

should have a saggy ass and things

like that. Ten years ago, no one

thought about it.

> SCREWS: Men have just about mas-

tered the basics, and they’re getting

comfortable adding their own per-

sonal elements. But it’s in all these

small, interesting ways.

> SULLIVAN: You can do anything,

yeah. And it’s all relevant, providing

the fit is nice, the texture is nice, and

what you put with it is good. The rea-

son a lot of guys like this moment now

is because they have the option to per-

sonalize things.

Vaportini, an at-home kit that lets you vaporize and inhale your favorite liquor. Chef’s- Choice’s new Sportsman waffle maker, a waffle iron that forms a deer-head crest in your

breakfast. Balla Powder, a talc somehow specialized for a man’s undercarriage. Minabea’s SLS cuff, a metal wrist cuff made of crashed Mercedes-Benz cars. The new

Chillsner, basically an iced straw for your beer.

THINGS WE WON’T BE COVERING THIS MONTH

C O N T I N U E D

LETTERS OF THE MONTHIn the June/July issue, we ran a letter from a reader who

was disappointed to find out that his second (and last) child would be another girl. Editor-in-chief David Granger, father

of two daughters, offered some advice. As did many of you.

I’m a longtime subscriber who can throw

a tight spiral, peg second base from home

plate on my knees, and tie a double Wind-

sor. I also happen to be a girl. Like you, my

dad had two girls. Unlike you, he didn’t as-

sume that eliminated the possibility of play-

ing sports, fixing cars, getting dirty, or any-

thing else. When I became a catcher at 12,

he spent hours tossing pitches and huck-

ing balls into my mask so that I wouldn’t be

scared. At 16, I asked for a football for Christ-

mas. He taught me how to dig postholes,

pour cement, change a tire, play guitar, re-

place a car battery, and bait a hook. He also

taught me about confidence, compassion,

integrity, work ethic—and when to let an

asshole know he’s being an asshole. These

are lessons every child, boy or girl, needs to

learn. Don’t let your girls miss out because

you lack imagination.

KAS E Y CO R D E L L

Denver, Colo.

I am a daughter of a man who was in your po-

sition 35 years ago. And while I cannot speak

for his thoughts on what you would have con-

sidered his impending doom, I can speak for

what I experienced. I learned to play catch at

age six and gave my sister a black eye in the

process. We watched football as often as pos-

sible—and still do, although now with PBRs.

My dad taught me to snow ski, camp, drive

a stick shift, shoot guns, fly-fish, change the

oil in my car, sail, and build a wood table. We

ski and fish together on our days off, and we

drink and cuss when Peyton Manning misses

a pass. Stop being miserable and be a good

father. Your daughters will succeed beyond

your wildest expectations.

JE SS I Y BA D E R

Frisco, Colo.

As a father of two grown daughters, I look

back on high-pitched screams at pool parties,

on ballet rehearsals and shopping trips, and

on thousands of Barbie pieces that I would

invariably step on in the middle of the night.

But I also remember the time they asked me

to take them surfing. I remember when my

older daughter asked me to fly to England

to hike the South Downs Way, and when my

younger daughter and I hiked the Camino

de Santiago across France and Spain. So to

that dad who will miss being an expert on

how to tie a tie: Push the limits and let your

daughters lead the way. You might be play-

ing catch-up instead of catch.

LA R RY SH AW

Topanga, Calif.

Letters to the editor may be e-mailed to edi-

[email protected]. Include your full name and

address. Letters may be edited for length and

clarity.

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BEFORE WE BEGI N

A N O T E F R O M

D A V I D G R A N G E R

PH

OT

OG

RA

PH

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Y T

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HI N

AD

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D

minded me where the paranoia comes from:

If 9/11 could happen, then everything is

possible. If everything is possible, then we

are required to act on our worries to fore-

stall the next possible catastrophe. We’ve all

bought into a variant of the worldview ex-

pressed in Dick Cheney’s famous calculation:

If there is a 1 percent chance that we will be

attacked, then we must treat it as a certainty.

If there is any chance that the most outland-

ish rumor could happen—if, say, someone

with an Alex Jones–sized megaphone were

to equate the infamous government-funded

Tuskegee syphilis study from the 1930s with

the recent attempt to fluoridate the drink-

ing water of Portland, Oregon—then many

assume it’s almost certain.

We are a panicked people, willing to be-

lieve the worst of everyone and everything.

If President Obama is pushing for immigra-

tion reform, it must be because he wants to

dilute the white vote and assure the Demo-

crats’ chances in future national elections—

not because immigration is the lifeblood of

our country and always has been.

For decades, we’ve been entertained and

titillated by the possibility that big broth-

er actually is pulling the levers of our lives.

But now, in the actual world, some of what

we imagined in the dark is being revealed

to us as reality. We are being tracked and

our communications are being monitored.

In our name, people who have been neither

tried nor convicted are targeted for death or

thrown into prison without hope of release.

As Rosemary screams when she wakes up in

the arms of the devil, “This is really happen-

ing!” We’re scared.

And nobody but the paranoid is to be

trusted.

SPECIAL FACULTY NOTE: Tyler Cabot, who

has been at Esquire for ten years—as both

articles editor and curator of the fiction we

run—is taking a little vacation. He’s been ac-

cepted as a Nieman Journalism Fellow at

Harvard. As proud as we are and as certain

that he will return with fresh ways to make

Esquire better, we’re also gonna miss him.

It used to be a tenet of life in America that

anything was possible. It was always said

as an expression of our national optimism.

We still believe that anything is possible,

but lately it’s warped and become an expres-

sion of our profound anxiety and paranoia.

But let me back up for a second.

This morning, early, I read the final draft of

John H. Richardson’s profile of Alex Jones, a

man I’d previously known only through the

vicious tweets of his many detractors. Jones

is the premier vendor of conspiracy theories

in the country, to the tune of a million visitors

to his sites some days. His ravings about the

Boston Marathon bombing being a govern-

ment plot and the U. S. secretly siding with

Al Qaeda are both insane and influential—

they, as much as the words of any commen-

tator in the country, help shape the discus-

sions of our national affairs.

Shortly thereafter, I read Stephen Marche’s

Thousand Words column, about the state of

anxiety in which we live—how our country

and its popular culture live under a cloud of

the awful things that might happen. I learned

that the American Psychiatric Association

has redefined paranoia. You can now offi-

cially be paranoid and right.

And just a few minutes ago, I read the

ninth installment of Scott Raab’s epic series

on the rebuilding at Ground Zero. And it re-


AmericanDread

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THIS MONTH IN NETPAGE

Feeling stressed? You look like you could use a drink, a nap, and a couple hugs. But we have the next best thing, or, actually, maybe the first best thing: meditation sessions. To complement this month’s special coverage of mindfulness (starting on page 127), Andy Puddicombe, cofounder of Headspace, designed three at-home meditation sessions exclusively for Esquire readers. You can access them by scanning page 132 with your Netpage app, which, if you aren’t familiar with it already, is a way of turning every page of this magazine into a shareable, saveable, interactive experience. Or go to esquire.com/meditation. But the Netpage way really is more fun.


August 23

In case you missed Olivia Wilde and New Girl’s Jake Johnson in the sad and fun-

ny Drinking Buddies last month on iTunes, the movie makes its theatrical debut.

September 2

Labor Day!

September 3

Hesitation Marks, the first Nine Inch Nails album in

five years, is released.

September 5

The NFL season kicks off. Baltimore versus Denver,

8:30 P.M. EST.

September 8

But this year, Carrie Underwood sings that silly

NBC Sunday Night Football song instead of Faith Hill.

September 8

Boardwalk Empire returns.

September 24

Tight-pantsed southern rockers Kings of Leon release a new album,

Mechanical Bull.

September 27

Ben Affleck plays a gam-bling kingpin and Justin

Timberlake a math genius (?!) in the new action-

thriller Runner Runner.

September 30

And in case Runner Runner doesn’t satisfy your

jonesing for J. T., The 20/20 Experience: 2 of 2

comes out.

Notable occurrences

that, interested or

not, you should at least

be aware of.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CULTURE

BEFORE WE BEGI N

A D V O C A T E O F T H E M O N T H

I am a woman in my late 20s, and since high school, Esquire has been the only magazine I’ve read. Just today, at the dentist office and a restaurant, I was

asked four separate times why I read Esquire. What fun to expound on the joys of such an engaging magazine.

—Lauren Ross, Columbus, Ohio

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NEXT MONTH MARKS ESQUIRE’S 80TH ANNIVERSARY. A BRIEF

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OCTOBER 1933:

Editor Arnold Gingrich introduces the first issue of Es-

quire, with stories by Ernest Heming-

way, John Dos Passos, Dashiell Hammett, and

former heavyweight champ Gene Tunney.

1957

Esquire, Inc. launches Gentle-men’s Quarterly.

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Norman Mailer’s “Su-perman Comes to the

Supermart” is pub-lished. After Gingrich

changes the title from “Superman Comes to

the Supermarket,” Mail-er refuses to write for the magazine for two

years until he receives a public apology.

SEPTEMBER 2013:

You begin anticipating a special 80th anniversary issue of your favorite

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THE NEW FRAGRANCE FOR MEN

BEFORE WE BEGI N


THE 2013

NFL FANTASY PREVIEW

O N E M O R E F O O T B A L L P R E V I E W

The Legends Football League’s underdressed women test the

durability of breast implants in the playoffs and Legends

Cup. A pretty team wins.

There are occasional exceptions. —Editors

I don’t expect to agree with all of your sartorial recommendations, but your en-

dorsement of Coach’s color-block baseball glove and dip-dyed bat is an uncon-

scionable misstep (Style, August). I’m a peace-loving guy, but I’d be tempted to

beat up anyone who showed up at a summer pickup game sporting a ridiculous

blue glove or a bright-red bat.

DAV I D ME A DV I N

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Like Katie Aselton? Don’t know what The League is? Scan here to watch a clip from the show.

It’s hard to think about the return of actual foot-

ball without also thinking of the return of fanta-

sy football. So to complement this month’s NFL

preview, courtesy of Alyssa Milano (page 84), we

asked actress and fantasy aficionado Katie Aselton

for some advice. In the last three years playing in

her work league, she’s won once and never come

in last. That league happens to be made up of the

cast and crew of FX’s juvenile and fantastic series

The League (returning September 3 at 10:30 P.M.

EST and PST), which, as far as we’re concerned,

makes her an expert. Although she did recommend

taking a defense in the fifth round, so maybe that

trust is slightly misplaced. Still, her suggestions:

In our September 2006

issue, writer-at-large Tom

Junod told the story of

Sal and Mabel Mangano,

owners of St. Rita’s nurs-

ing home in New Orleans

(“The Loved Ones”). A year

after Katrina, the Manga-

nos were the only peo-

ple being officially blamed

for anything related to the

storm. They were evis-

cerated by the media and

prosecuted by the state for

allegedly ignoring an order

to evacuate, resulting in

the death of 35 St. Rita’s

residents. Their lawyer,

Jim Cobb, whom Junod

profiled extensively in his

story, has a new book,

Flood of Lies (Pelican Pub-

lishing, $25), which picks

up where Junod’s feature

ends. Cobb tells the story

not only of the trial but also

of his own family’s strug-

gles as they attempted to

rebuild after Katrina.

THE UPDATE

COLORFUL BASEBALL EQUIPMENT ISN’T ALWAYS SILLY

THE VISUAL ARGUMENT:

> IN THE FIRST ROUND

Everyone always says running back, but with [the

move toward] running back by committee, I think

you should grab a quarterback. Lock in someone

great, like Aaron Rodgers. They’re going to make

fun of you initially, but when Rodgers is putting

up 40 points a game halfway through the season,

it’ll be your turn to laugh.

> IN THE FOLLOWING ROUNDS

Next, I’d go running back. Two running backs, a

wide receiver, and then maybe a good defense.

> THE MOST OVERRATED PLAYER

Tom Brady. He gets most of his attention because

he’s so beautiful. And because he wears Uggs. I

don’t think he’s the player he used to be.

> THE SECOND-MOST OVERRATED PLAYER

Reggie Bush breaks a finger in every game. And

he’s always limping. He’s the whiniest player

in the league. Every year people draft him and

then they’re like, “I don’t understand why he’s

not playing.” Well, it’s ’cause he’s kind of a wimp.

Don’t tell him I said that.

> ROOKIES TO WATCH OUT FOR

I’ve heard good things about Giovani Bernard

in Cincinnati. Also, Jeff Schaffer, the head of the

show, really likes Le’Veon Bell in Pittsburgh. He’s

always either really right or really wrong about

these things.

> OUTSIDE FACTORS TO CONSIDER

I don’t let my moral compass guide me in fantasy.

Or what I have of a moral compass. I love that the

Saints paid their players to knock people down

and hurt them. I’m not asking these people to

raise my children.

> THE TROPHY

Make sure your league has a trophy. It gives you

something to strive for. You also need a trophy

for losers. Because when you win and get a tro-

phy, only the winner is happy. But when you give

a trophy to the loser, everyone, or at least every-

one else, is happy.

—AS TOLD TO ALEXANDRA ENGLER

V I E W T H E F I L M A T J O H N VA R VA T O S . C O M

Willie Nelson, Lukas Nelson & Micah Nelson

Photographed by Danny Clinch, Des Moines IA 2013

Willie Nelson


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S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3

69

SCOTT RAAB: I’m a little wor-

ried because the last time I was

here, I was with Philip Seymour

Hoffman and within six months

he was in rehab.1

ANDY SAMBERG: Oh, no. Was

it you?

SR: I can’t rule it out.

AS: Oy yoy yoy.2

SR: Were you ever bar

mitzvahed?

AS: No. My father says he re-

grets me not doing it. When I

was younger, it was a choice be-

tween getting bar mitzvahed or

playing soccer. And he was the

coach of the soccer team.

SR: I don’t understand the

choice.

AS: Saturdays.

SR: You have a bris?3

AS: I remember it fondly.

SR: Any tattoos?

AS: No.

SR: Planning any tattoos?

AS: No plans.

SR: Have you set a date for the

wedding?

AS: Yes, but I will not tell

anyone.

SR: How deeply involved are

you in the planning?

AS: Involved enough—I’m con-

cerned with the food and the

happiness of the guests.

SR: You’re not devil-may-care

about this.

AS: I think you gotta embrace it

a little bit.

SR: People talk about your

“puppyish appeal.” But it’s

not puppyish.

C O N T I N U E D

Lunch, Cafe Cluny, Greenwich Village, New York.

SCOTT TALKS TO THE COMEDI-AN ACTOR ABOUT HIS HAIR, HIS CHIN, PATTON OSWALT, MEL BROOKS, AND HAPPINESS

ANDYSAMBERG


S C O T T R A A B

1 A voluntary ten- day stay.2 Not to be mistaken for

“ay-yi-yi.” 3 Jewish ceremony for the circumcision of infant

boys that occurs on the eighth day of life.FOOTNOTES!

ILLUMINATION TO ENHANCE YOUR READING EXPERIENCE

A N D Y S A M B E R G C O N T I N U E D


C O N T I N U E D

AS: Mike Schur [Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer and executive pro-

ducer] told me that when he

saw Celeste and Jesse Forev-er,7 it made him think of me for

this show. He said, “I had always

found things you did on SNL

funny, but after I saw Celeste and Jesse I thought maybe you

can act a little bit, too.”

SR: I’m not even sure how to de-

scribe what it is you do.

AS: So much of my identity has

been the songs.

SR: My boy’s 14. “Dick in a Box”

is his Citizen Kane.

AS: That’s fantastic.

SR: God forbid anything ends

today, you’ll always have “Dick

in a Box.” It’s funny every time.

AS: I had that conversation

once with Lorne Michaels. He

says the thing you’re known for

will be in quotes in the middle

of your name. He’s Lorne “SNL”

Michaels, and I’m Andy “Dick in

a Box” Samberg. If that’s how it

goes down, that will be A-okay.

SR: You don’t strike me as a

high-expectations guy.

AS: No.

SR: You’re a having-fun guy.

AS: When I got to audition for

SNL, I thought that was going

to be the high point of my life—

that I got to just see the studio.

SR: I can understand that.

AS: What else is bigger than be-ing on that show?

SR: Nothing if you’re hoping

to be funny in front of a large

audience.

AS: Even in the “interim years,”

there’s still, like, Ben Stiller

and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and

all these people who are among

the biggest stars in the world

of comedy.

SR: Charles Rocket, Tim Kazur-

insky. I’m kidding.

AS: Gilbert Gottfried’s there.

SR: You ever see him work?

AS: He’s incredible.

SR: And I’m amazed the times

I’ve seen him, half the people

in the room were having a shit-

ty time. What were they expect-

ing, exactly?

AS: There’s so many comics who

have had these rebirths because

of the roasts on Comedy Cen-

tral. And he’s one of them. All of

a sudden everyone is thinking,

Oh, right. He’s incredible. And

he’s been doing it so long, and

he hasn’t blinked.

SR: You don’t consider yourself

a stand-up, right?

AS: I did stand-up for about sev-

en years. I stopped as soon as

I got SNL. No one ever talks

about it because they want

me to be the guy who did the

videos.

SR: Straight from Lonely Island

to America’s sweetheart.

AS: The Lonely Island—the fact

that we got hired together and

made the videos is the reason

that we were successful on the

show, but I believe I got the job

because I did stand-up. I was

able to go and do the audition

cold and have confidence. So

much of stand-up is convincing

people—without anything but

your energy and your body lan-

guage—that you’re confident

and comfortable. Once they’re

relaxed, the jokes are funnier.

That’s what makes Chappelle

so brilliant. He gets up there,

sometimes he won’t even tell

jokes for long stretches of time,

but you’re happy to be there

with him. There’s no urgency.

SR: Do you miss being a

stand-up?

AS: I never did the road. I

never define myself as a

stand-up, because I feel like

it’s insulting to stand-ups

who have done the road. I did

stand-up on television, but it

was never my lifestyle.

AS: That’s something I have no

idea about.

SR: Nor should you.

AS: I think it’s from when I first

got hired at SNL and had long

hair.

SR: Your hair has been on a

journey.

AS: Seth Meyers4 said it looked

like my hair was trying to eat my

head.

SR: It looked like a hippie mullet.

AS: When I was in high school, I

was the kid in the ’90s who was

obsessed with the ’70s. I bought

a bunch of old reggae and soul-

funk records. I was the kid with

the record player. I was into

Floyd and Zeppelin. Kids called

me “Dazed and Confused.” Then

I cut it to how it was when I got

hired on SNL. It was that length

until about two years ago.

SR: The cleft has gone on a jour-

ney, too.

AS: Has it changed?

SR: It’s not centered.

AS: It’s not centered?

SR: I’m not trying to make you

self-conscious.

AS: I’ve never noticed.

SR: I could be wrong, and obvi-

ously you’ve never had the cleft

moved.

AS: I’m not a cleft mover. But

the cleft move is a deft move.

SR: It worked for Kirk Douglas.

AS: Did he move his?

SR: I’m almost ashamed to

bring it up, but I was shocked by

the pastiness of your thighs.

AS: What?

SR: On Brooklyn Nine-Nine. You

stand up from your desk and

you’re not wearing pants. I’m

going, Wow, Samberg’s got a

thick pair of pasty thighs on him.

AS: Well, I played a lot of soccer

growing up, so I got the thick

thighs.

SR: The pilot is really good. I’m

not blowing smoke here.

AS: We haven’t started shooting

the rest of the season yet. But

the pilot was really fun. The vibe

on set was loose. Andre Braugh-

er5 is one of the best actors you

can get.

SR: He changes the tempera-

ture in the room.

AS: As soon as he walked on

set, Mike Schur and Dan Goor,6

the creators of the show, looked

at each other and said, “Oh, it’s

going to work.” He’s like this

rock statue, and I’m a poodle

yipping in circles around him.

SR: But you can act.

Samberg and Joe Lo Truglio as de-

tectives on Brook-lyn Nine-Nine.

Use Netpage to watch a clip from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

—THAT ’S MY BOY, 2012

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL THINGS I’VE DONE ALWAYS HAPPEN WHEN I’M NOT TRYING TO BE SUCCESSFUL. IT’S ALWAYS WHEN YOU THINK, WOULDN’T THIS BE FUNNY? ”

‘‘

4 Head writer on Saturday Night Live; will take over as host of Late Night in 2014

when Jimmy Fallon leaves to host The Tonight Show.5 Best known for his role

on Homicide: Life on the Street.6 Cocreator and executive

producer, respectively, of Parks and Recreation.7 A comedic drama co-

written by and costarring Rashida Jones as Samberg’s ex-wife.

uggaustralia.com

FOR GAME

CHANGERS

A N D Y S A M B E R G C O N T I N U E D


stand-ups that ever lived.

SR: It must be hard to make the

transition when you’ve achieved

that level of mastery.

AS: The most successful

things I’ve done always happen

when I’m not trying to be suc-

cessful. It’s always when you

think, Wouldn’t this be funny? Wouldn’t this be fun? Wouldn’t that be interesting to try? Some

of the strangest digital shorts

that we made for SNL ended

up being things people loved.

The ones we thought had all the

hallmark things in a hit com-

pletely bombed. It’s because

people can smell it.

SR: People say that you made

short films a thing on the show.

But, no, right out of the gate

Albert Brooks did shorts.

AS: And then Christopher

Guest. And Harry Shearer. He

did some of the best things that

have ever aired on the show.

I saw “Synchronized Swim-

ming”9 when I was a child and

memorized it. And the Ed-

die Murphy thing where he

pretends to be a white guy

and walks around? It’s one of

the funniest things ever. Like

there’s this whole white-per-

son secret underbelly. There’s a

scene with Murphy on the bus

and when the last minority gets

off the bus, all this music starts

playing, and everyone starts

drinking champagne, and a

waiter comes around with hors

d’oeuvres and shit. It’s such a

pure idea for a short film. Every-

thing we’ve done with the short

films on the show owes a debt

to those. It’s all right there.

SR: Are you aware of being fa-mous famous?

AS: I know I am famous enough

that when I go outside, I get rec-

ognized a lot. But I’ve shot a

movie with Adam Sandler. And

walked around with him. I’d say

I’m like a long way from that.

Me, Akiva, and Jorma10 went

to the A’s stadium a couple of

years ago. We got the whole ce-

lebrity sneak-in-the-back kind

of treatment. We were like, “Oh

this is so great. We’re coming

back to our hometown. They’ll

put us on the Jumbotron proba-

bly.” They snuck us through the

back and it was basically empty.

And they did not put us on the

Jumbotron.

SR: Why not?

AS: The Bay Area does not give

a fuck.

SR: That’s probably a good

thing.

AS: It’s good for your ego. It

keeps you in check. You go

home and your friends are like,

“Hey, what have you been up

to?” And you’re like, “Well, I

was on SNL.” “Oh, cool. I think I

heard about that.”

SR: They’re not overcompen-

sating?

AS: No. Berkeley’s great, man. I

love going home. But it’s good

to get out and see the other

side.

SR: The other side is really im-

portant. Just for self-definition. AS: Young people always ask

you for advice and I always say

to get out of your comfort zone.

Leave where you’re from. Get

out and experience more of the

world. SR: Do those young people

seem to think there’s a shortcut

or a trick? I’m running into a lot

of that. They seem to think that

somehow there’s a trick.

AS: I think it’s still that “10,000

hours” thing.

SR: I hate Malcolm Gladwell, but

I think you’re absolutely right.

AS: Do you know the soccer

player Lionel Messi?11 He was

basically born and groomed to

be a winner, and it worked.

LeBron, too. Serena.

SR: They didn’t skip the 10,000

hours.

AS: Seth Rogen has been doing

it since he was a kid. I think he’s

younger than me, but he’s been

doing it for an adult’s entire life

already. Eddie Murphy start-

ed doing stand-up in his teens.

Sandler, too. Those guys were

talented and decided early. By

the time you hear about them,

SR: Does making the leap to

films from SNL intrude on your

consciousness? You’ve had

Hot Rod,8 but your career is still

a work in progress. There’s a

range of post-SNL success. Bill

Murray on one end, countless

other alums on the other end.

Will Ferrell somewhere in the

middle. Are you conscious of

this kind of stuff?

AS: I used to think about it

more, but look at Martin Short.

I just read an article about how

he’s never really been the star

of a hit movie. He never real-

ly had a TV show that took off

in a big-ratings kind of way. But

then Jiminy Glick is one of the

funniest characters in come-

dy history. There’s never been

a time where I thought, Martin Short’s not funny. Everyone re-

spects him. And there’s a ton of

comedians like that, who didn’t

necessarily have the biggest

thing in the world but are con-

sidered in the same category

as the people who did. And a

lot of people who have the big-

gest thing in the world, that’s

kind of it. You do the biggest

thing in the world once, and

that’s it. Where do you go

from there?

SR: That’s not a career. It’s a

peak and a sharp fall.

AS: Chris Rock has talked about

the moment he realized he had

a career. “I’m doing this. I’m do-

ing that. I’m trying this. Some

of it’s going to work, some of

it’s not. But the consistent thing

is me.” I’m at a really nice place

where I feel like I’m able to work.

If everything fell apart, I’ve done

enough work where I could still

do stand-up at least.

SR: I don’t know if Chris Rock

has found the same kind of

home in movies that he’s built in

stand-up.

AS: Chris Rock is so good at

stand-up that no matter what

else he does, he’ll be remem-

bered as a stand-up first, be-

cause he’s one of the best

DATE OF BIRTH: August 18, 1978

WHICH MAKES HIM: 35

HOMETOWN: Berkeley, California

SNL DEBUT: October 1, 2005, as a featured player, with Steve

Carell hosting

HIS FIRST BIT: A Weekend Update “Impression-Off” with Bill

Hader, in which Samberg just says he’s the person he’s im-

personating followed by Wazzup! (i.e., “I’m Julia Roberts. The

Pretty Woman. Wazzup!”)

SELF-DESCRIBED WEAKEST COMEDY SKILL: His impressions

FIANCÉE: Joanna Newsom

WHO HAPPENS TO BE: An indie-pop harpist and

singer-songwriter

NUMBER OF LONELY ISLAND RECORDS: Three—Incredibad

(2009), Turtleneck & Chain (2011), and The Wack Album

(2013)

FELLOW LONELY ISLAND MEMBERS: Jorma Taccone and

Akiva Schaffer

THEIR SIDE GIGS: Schaffer directed Samberg in his movie

debut, Hot Rod, and the 2012 Ben Stiller movie The Watch. Taccone and his bare ass have appeared on HBO’s Girls.THE LONELY ISLAND’S CHART SUCCESS: The singles “I’m on

a Boat,” “Jizz in My Pants,” and “I Just Had Sex” were each

certified platinum.

T H E E S Q U I R E D O S S I E R

ANDY SAMBERG


—SNL DIGITAL SHORT “DICK

IN A BOX,” 2006

—SNL DIGITAL SHORT

“LAZY SUNDAY,” 2005

—CELESTE AND JESSE

FOREVER, 2012

—SNL DIGITAL SHORT “JIZZ

IN MY PANTS,” 2008

[continued on page 212]

8 Samberg plays a stuntman in the film, which is direct-ed by Lonely Island member

Akiva Schaffer. 9 Shearer and Martin Short play men attempting to

bring male synchronized swimming to the Olympics.10 Jorma Taccone, the third

member of Lonely Island; best known for playing art-ist Booth Jonathan on Girls.

11 Argentine player whom Diego Maradona described as his “successor.”

ASIA MIDDLE EAST EUROPE AFRICA NORTH AMERICA SOUTH AMERICA

© 2013 Hilton Worldwide conradhotels.com


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A F E W N E W

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MAGGIE LAWSON

Terry Gannon on Back in the Game (ABC) As a mother who uses Little League baseball to connect with her son and estranged father.

AMANDA SETTON

Lauren Slotsky on The

Crazy Ones (CBS) As an employee at an ad agency run by Robin Williams.

THE DISABLED DAD

T H E N E W A R C H E T Y P E

ou can’t laugh at Stevie Wonder.

You can laugh only at Stevie Won-

der jokes.

But Stevie Wonder jokes are funny only

if Stevie Wonder is in on them.

This exercise in the tautology of disabil-

ity comedy is worth keeping in mind when

you watch The Michael J. Fox Show. It stars

Michael J. Fox, returning to television after

a retirement occasioned by his Parkinson’s

disease, as Mike Henry, a television news

anchor returning to television after a retire-

ment occasioned by his Parkinson’s disease.

He does not spare us his symptoms—he is,

from first to last, very shaky, with a flat-foot

floogie of a walk and a way of mugging at

the camera that makes him

THE FALL TV PREVIEWTHE STATE OF THE TV DAD AND OTHER SURPRISINGLY HOPEFUL ASSESSMENTS

T H E B I G G E S T S U R P R I S E

THE NETWORKS

JUST MIGHT

BE GOOD AGAIN

or the last few years, you were smart

to avoid new broadcast TV shows un-

til at least November. By then, the bla-

tantly ridiculous (How to Be a Gentleman)

had been canceled. The disappointingly me-

diocre (The Mindy Project) had had time to

shake off the burden of expectation and turn

into something surprisingly watchable. And

inexplicably supported drivel—like 2 Broke

Girls or The Neighbors—well, it was still

around, but at least you knew to avoid it.

This year looks to be different. If there’s

anything you can say about the new shows

on NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox as a whole, it’s

that they’re all . . . not bad. In fact, some are

downright good, like The Blacklist, NBC’s

pleasantly convoluted cop procedural that

finds a notorious criminal (James Spader)

leading a rookie FBI agent (Megan Boone)

through as many hoops as it takes to catch

their shared enemies. That Boone plays the

agent not as a dim and nervous newbie but

as a perceptive and occasionally pissed force

of her own keeps the weight of the series

from falling fully on Spader. And her histo-

ry, which she learns about as we do, is teased

out at a pace rewarding enough to keep you

both interested and satisfied. Other bright

spots this season include Andy Samberg’s

Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Sleepy Hollow, the

ludicrous but somehow charming drama

about a Revolutionary War soldier who

wakes up in present-day New York. While

the rest may not be as immediately impres-

sive, every show—with the exception of

Sean Saves the World, which should replace

its planned second episode with a formal

apology to those of us who watched the first

one—contains something entirely new for

broadcast TV: promise. Even if you don’t like

it, for once you can see how other people

might. —PETER MARTIN


T V P R E V I E W C O N T I N U E D

C O N T I N U E D

CHLOE BENNET

Skye on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC) As a woman kidnapped after uncovering a bureaucracy that investigates superhumans.

MELISSA FUMERO

Amy Santiago on Brooklyn

Nine-Nine (Fox) As the hy-percompetitive detective partner of Andy Samberg.

ELLA RAE PECK

Molly on Welcome to the

Family (NBC) As a young woman impregnated by her boyfriend.

Three hapless brothers are stationed in the same

Army unit (Enlisted, Fox).

A lawyer spends every Friday night at home

for 13 years (Super Fun Night, ABC).

A headless man might

be one of the Four Horse-men of the

Apocalypse (Sleepy Hol-

low, Fox).

Dracula becomes infatuated with the reincarnation of his deceased wife

(Dracula, NBC).

Andy Sam - berg plays an

NYPD detective (Brooklyn Nine-

Nine, Fox).

A woman is recruited by a government agency of superhero investiga-tors due to the accuracy of her occult conspiracy

theories (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC).

An advertising executive recruits Kelly Clarkson to sing a sexual song about McDonald’s (The Crazy

Ones, CBS).

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look eerily like Charlie Sheen coming off a

bender. If an “abled” actor were playing the

Michael J. Fox character, we’d question his

taste and implore him to turn it down a lit-

tle bit. But Michael J. Fox is playing the Mi-

chael J. Fox character, and he is, from first

to last, in on the joke. Indeed, everybody is

in on the joke on The Michael J. Fox Show—

that’s the joke. It is, in the way of all televi-

sion comedy these days, from New Girl to

Good Luck Charlie, relentlessly self-aware,

with jokes about Fox’s shakes and jokes

about Fox’s height and cheap jokes wrung

out of what must be an ever-present temp-

tation to indulge in cheap sentiment. The

two funniest characters on the pilot are the

news director, who is aware that he is lur-

ing Michael J. Fox back to television in or-

der to indulge in cheap sentiment, and Matt

Lauer, who is so aware of his reputation as

an asshole and a player that he plays him-

self as someone unaware of his reputation

as an asshole and a player.

The Michael J. Fox Show is very fast and

pretty funny, and for evidence that it is fun-

nier than it could possibly be if it featured a

nonhandicapped actor in the handicapped

role, consider the fate of NBC’s other foray

into disability comedy, Growing Up Fish-

er, formerly The Family Guide. On The Mi-

chael J. Fox Show, Mike Henry’s preter-

naturally smart and self-aware adolescent

daughter goes for a cheap A in her English

class by making a video of her father so in-

dulgent of cheap sentiment that it serves

as yet another of the show’s inoculations

against cheap sentiment. Well, extend that

video to 22 minutes and you get Growing

Up Fisher. On it the reliable character ac-

tor J. K. Simmons takes an able turn as a

lovable dad who is also, well, blind, but

since he has to use all his ability to play a

blind man instead of a funny one, he vio-

lates the Stevie Wonder Rule: He’s not in

on the joke, so the jokes aren’t allowed to

be funny; they’re to show only that A Blind

Man Really Can See.

Scheduled to premiere early next year,

Growing Up Fisher might not ever make it

to the screen. The show’s been retitled and

recast. But even if it doesn’t, we can expect

to see more of what it and The Michael J.

Fox Show offer—gimp dads. That’s because

in modern television, from NBC to Nick-

elodeon, all dads are gimps in some way:

lovable because of their incompetence, in-

Police officers part-ner with androids in order to protect the

public more effi-ciently (Almost Human, Fox).

A rogue FBI agent takes a prominent sur-geon’s family hostage

and orders her to assassinate the presi-dent (Hostages, CBS).

A young woman is in-stitutionalized during a depressive episode following the death of

her genie boyfriend (Once Upon a Time in

Wonderland, ABC).

A gas-sta-tion employ-ee robs his

employer the night he and his cowork-

ers win the lot-tery (Lucky 7,

ABC).

T H E S P E C T R U M O F FA L L T V P R E M I S E S

deed competent because of their incompe-

tence, challenged in the rituals of father-

hood by the very fact that they are fathers.

They can be buffoons, boors, prigs, pos-

ers, charlatans, stuffed shirts, and well-

meaning barbarians; what they can nev-

er be, what they are not allowed to be, are

authority figures. It’s not that Ward Cleav-

er has gone away, exactly; it’s that Ward

Cleaver has lost any semblance of control,

so if TV shows him smoking his pipe in his

easy chair, it also has to show him dream-

ing of being a ballerina. Or, as it happens,

suffering from the shakes. Michael J. Fox,

on The Michael J. Fox Show, is far from an

authority figure; but he is also not entire-

ly the butt of jokes—his kids love him, and,

as the show is at pains to point out, he still

gets laid. But he still gets laid not in spite of

his disability but rather because of it . . . and

that’s the new ratio of incompetence to au-

thority that obtains in sitcom land. I like

The Michael J. Fox Show. I’ve never thought

Michael J. Fox is particularly funny, but

what the show demonstrates is that he’s

conducive to funny, a rare talent that has

made him a star. But it also demonstrates

something to fathers all across the land, no

matter how abled we might be:

We are all Stevie Wonder now.

The question is whether we get the joke.

—TOM JUNOD

T H E N E W E S T P R E M I S E

PARENTS COHABI-

TATING WITH THEIR

ADULT CHILDREN

hen it’s done well, you get a

couple like Jane Kaczmarek

and Kurt Fuller on Us & Them.

They don’t live with their son but direct-

ly above him. Close enough. They’re weir-

dos—a dad who insists that the only flavor he

tastes is honey; a mom who sneaks into her

son’s apartment late one night, midintimacy

and desperate for honey—but weirdos you

can understand. They could exist, unlike the

fathers on Fox’s Dads, one of whom greets

everyone with a kiss on the lips, or Beau

Bridges on The Millers, who every morning

puts metal in the microwave. As viewers, we

don’t need verisimilitude, but we also don’t

need cartoons. —P. M.

P L A U S I B I L I T Y

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KE

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OD

OF

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ON

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With 2x thepoints ontickets and dinner, date night’s off to a great start.


1. How great is Allison Janney?

Great. (7) Pretty damn great. (8)

2. Which is funny? “I think your digestive

system has seen worse than ice. I’ve watched you lick cocaine crumbs out of a shag carpet.” (4)

“In case you’ve forgot-ten, I got pregnant with you when I was a teenager. And please, don’t take this the wrong way. It ruined my life.” (4)

“What does this taste like to you?” “Uh, mushrooms?” “The correct answer was ‘ass.’ ” (4)

3. Could Allison Janney and Anna Faris plausibly be mother and daughter?

Yes (5) No (0) I don’t care. (6)

4. Which of the following is a promising dynamic? (Choose all that apply.)

Estranged mother/daughter (4)

Absentee father/single mother (4)

Abusive executive chef/abused sous chef (4)

Chuck Lorre/Charlie Sheen (–8)

5. How do you prefer your addicts?

High-functioning (4) Cartoonishly messed

up (2) In recovery (10)

6. The oeuvre of show co-

creator Chuck Lorre: Yay or nay?

Not familiar (0) I’d watch The Big Bang

Theory on an airplane but not Two and a Half Men. (2)

7. Whom would you be more likely to root for: a man’s compellingly flawed employee/mistress or his haughty, controlling wife?

His wife. (0) Whoever seems more

compatible with him. (6) Whoever is hotter. (5)

8. Are you a fan of Anna Faris?

Cute in The House Bun-ny. (4) It’s pronounced Ah-na. (10)

9. How do you cope with adversity?

Self-help audiobooks (6) Repression (3)

10. Do you have any thoughts on the mass migration of movie actors to television?

It seems to be indica-tive of both the decline of the Hollywood studio sys-tem and the rise in quali-ty of television program-ming. (2)

Not really. (6)

11. Who is the superior Corddry?

Rob (2) There’s more than

one Corddry? (0)

12. Yeah, Nate. He plays

Gabriel on Mom. Huh. (2)

13. Which would you con-sider bad parenting?

Teaching your son how to steal money from pros-titutes in Grand Theft Au-to. (5)

Letting your son play Grand Theft Auto. (2)

14. What is appropriate to share at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting?

The story of your de-scent to rock bottom and subsequent fledgling at-tempts at redemption. (4)

Stand-up material (6) A nip (-2)

15. How susceptible are you to the charms of bespecta-cled boys?

Not particularly (1)

16. Which is your favor-ite televised parent/child relationship?

Marie and Ray Barone on Everybody Loves Ray-mond. (6)

Jay Pritchett and Claire Dunphy on Modern Fam-ily. (5)

Livia and Tony on The So-pranos. (0)

17. Your own mother: Everything okay there?

Yeah, why? (0) We’re still working

through some things. (3)

18. I’m sorry to hear that. It’s been a journey. (3)

Choose all that apply and add up the assigned points to see if you’ll be checking out this new fall TV show.

WILL YOU BE WATCHING MOM?

MORE THAN 20 POINTS: You will be watching Mom, and possibly Dads.

LESS THAN 20 POINTS: You will not be watching Mom.

A N S W E R K E Y

MEGAN BOONE

Elizabeth Keen on The

Blacklist (NBC) As the cho-sen FBI liaison of James Spader’s crime lord.

BRENDA SONG

Veronica on Dads (Fox) A video-game-company underling.

SOPHIE LOWE

Alice on Once Upon a

Time in Wonderland (ABC) As the storybook protagonist.N

EW

F

AC

ES

Anna Faris

Nate Corddry

Allison Janney

HIDDEN

COMPETENCE

T H E B E S T H E R O

he toughest thing to swallow about

the otherwise entertaining Fox com-

edy Brooklyn Nine-Nine is that Andy

Samberg’s doofus character, Jake Peralta,

is an effective cop. Unlike Leslie Nielsen’s

Frank Drebin, Peralta doesn’t solve crimes

by accident, tripping a bad guy when he

bends over to pick up a quarter. You’re ex-

pected to believe that this lovable clown is

actually the biggest asset on the force. Still,

you get over it. On The Crazy Ones, Robin

Williams plays the head of a struggling fa-

ther/daughter ad agency. Supposedly past

his prime, he hides his ability behind a bar-

rage of idiotic impressions and voices that,

while not always funny, at least make him

someone you can understand. You may not

like him, but you feel for him. —P. M.

T H E M O S T T I R E D C L I C H É

OVERT RACISM

lame the success of 2 Broke Girls,

whose jive-talking cashier is every

bad comic’s version of “black people

do this” and whose Asian owner might as

well be unable to pronounce vanilla. Some-

how, vast generalizations are cool again. This

year, Dads jumps right on board, subjecting

Brenda Song (and us) to every geisha and

Hello Kitty joke the writers can think of. This

isn’t even low-hanging fruit anymore. It’s

fruit that’s already fallen off the tree and rot-

ted. Please stop trying to feed it to us. —P. M.

T V P R E V I E W C O N T I N U E D

T H E Q U I ZESQ.

THE EXPLOSIVE FRAGRANCE

NORDSTROM, BLOOMINGDALE’S, SAKS FIFTH AVENUE AND NEIMAN MARCUS


THE

RULES

No. 413

YOU UNDERMINE A BIT OF YOUR OWN AUTHORITY WHEN YOU AD-DRESS SOMEONE WHILE EATING A MINI MUFFIN.

No. 527

NO JOKE YOU THOUGHT OF IN THE RESTAURANT BATHROOM IS WORTH BRING-ING BACK TO THE TABLE.

No. 528

ESPECIALLY IF IT’S A WITTY TAKE ON HOW “EMPLOY-EES MUST WASH HANDS.”

No. 575

UNLESS YOU ARE RELATED, A CAN-DIDATE MUST BE RUNNING FOR STATE OFFICE OR HIGHER TO DESERVE A BUM-PER STICKER ON YOUR CAR.

No. 601

WHILE IT MAY SEEM CONVE-NIENT, THE DRAW-BACKS OF BEING BIG ENOUGH TO REST A PLATE OF FOOD ON YOUR-SELF WHILE YOU EAT OUTWEIGH THE BENEFITS.

No. 611

TO ENTER A SUBURBAN DRUG DEN IN MOVIES, YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO PASS A KNITTING GRANDMA.

No. 612

AND MAYBE A NURSING MOTHER.

No. 633

LEAVE THE HAR-MONY TO THE PROFESSIONAL SINGERS.

SPENCER GRAMMER

Holly on Ironside (NBC) Kelsey Grammer’s daughter plays a New York City detective.

ATHENA KARKANIS

Dani on Low Winter Sun (AMC) As a Muslim detective working at a corrupt precinct in Detroit.

ADELAIDE KANE

Mary, Queen of Scots, on

Reign (CW) Portrays Mary’s predecapitation rise to power.

champs: Somewhere between

not happening and no way.

On the new scariest player

in the NFL, now that Ray

Lewis is retired: Jason Pierre-

Paul. I love him!

On this year’s big games:

I’m excited to take my son,

Milo, to the Giants versus Char-

gers game in December. And I’m

always excited for the Giants ver-

sus Eagles games. I love rivalries.

On Chip Kelly, the

former Oregon coach

who’s making his debut with the

Eagles: He’s a great coach. But

for the sake of my husband’s

blood pressure, I hope it takes

him a few years to turn the

Eagles around.

On Tim Tebow’s playing

for the Patriots: He’s

First, some qualifications: Two

years ago, Milano launched her

own line of female-focused NFL

apparel, Touch. Her father-in-

law has worked the chain gang

for the Giants for 35 years. Plus,

her TV father, Tony Micelli on

Who’s the Boss? was a retired

baseball player. And she’s cur-

rently hosting the new season

of Project Runway All Stars,

which has nothing to do with

anything except for the fact that

it premieres around the same

time as this year’s football season.

On this year’s favorite: I

would like to think it’s the

Giants, but the Broncos will be

very tough to beat.

On this year’s least favor-

ite: The Jaguars.

On the Ravens’ odds to

repeat as Super Bowl

clearly a great athlete. Maybe

Belichick will use him for the

running game to not risk Brady

getting hurt?

On the likelihood of

Tebow actually playing

at QB: No clue, but I am sure he

can help give some depth at tight

end. It all depends on Rob

Gronkowski’s injury status.

Speaking of Gronkow-

ski and his injuries: He’s

like the Terminator. He just

keeps coming back.

On RG3 after his knee

surgery: I hope he will be

at 100 percent. He’s an amazing

guy to watch—even though he’s

a Redskin.

On who is more likely to

break the record—Calvin

Johnson for receiving or Adrian

Peterson for rushing: I would

love to see Peterson win the rush-

ing record. He came so close last

year after battling injuries. He’s

fun to watch.

On Manti Te’o’s chances of

avoiding ridicule in his

first season: Ha. The guy cer-

tainly knows how to make an en-

trance. I am sure they will leave

this poor little rookie alone. [NFL

opponents] are sweet like that.

On Barkevious Mingo’s

status as the man with the

best name in the NFL: It’s a good

one. But what about Guy Whim-

per? Or Richie Incognito?

On Plaxico Burress’s new

line of socks: I wasn’t

aware he had a new line of socks.

Are they bulletproof? ≥

NE

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CE

S

THE 2013 NFL PREVIEW

B Y A LY S S A M I L A N O

PREDICTIONS FROM OUR NEW FAVORITE FOOTBALL FAN

86

By now you know most of

the acronyms and misleading

specs that go into selling you

a TV. But what you might not

know is which of them are ac-

tually important. Or how much

you’ll actually need to spend

to get a good set. If that’s the

case, we’re here to help. For

the really nerdy stuff, we even

consulted Gary Merson, editor

of hdguru.com and one of the

few people who gets excited

about things like pixel density

and refresh rate. With his in-

put, we put together this guide

to navigating your shopping

experience the best way we

know how.

PLASMA VERSUS LCD

Among plasma, LCD, and

LED LCD, your best bet really

seems to be plasma (unless

you’re looking for something

smaller than 42 inches).

Although LCD options are still

slightly thinner and lighter,

the only time you’ll notice is

when you’re taking the TV out

of the box. With a plasma, you

know black levels are generally

good. What’s supposed to

look dark looks dark—not gray,

green, or slightly purple. And

you can watch a plasma from

nearly any angle. With some

LCDs, when you lay your head

down on the couch, a portion

of the picture disappears. (This

isn’t true for good LCDs, but

it’s worth checking before you

buy a cheaper model.)

PLASMA VERSUS LCD, PART 2

If you watch TV in a room full

of windows with no curtains,

get an LCD. Plasmas have got-

ten much better with bright-

ness, but only the highest-end

sets truly compete with LCDs.

REFRESH RATE

The number of times per

second a screen refreshes its

image, measured in hertz. Very

important in LCD sets. (Plasmas

don’t suffer from motion blur,

so don’t worry about it.) Stan-

dard is 60 Hz, 120 Hz is nice,

and 240 Hz is probably overkill,

but it’s your money. Just look

for the words refresh rate. Not

scenes per second (SPS) or

TruMotion. Refresh rate.

THINGS YOU SHOULD

KNOW BY NOW

Cheap HDMI cables are just

as good as expensive ones.

Seriously. Spend five dollars,

max. And ignore the contrast

ratio. Instead, cup your hands

over a dark section of the

screen to block out external

light, then peer through the

opening. The less light you

see, the better your picture

will be, in general.

A WORD ON 3-D

Active glasses are expensive

and heavy and use batteries

but provide full resolution. Pas-

sive glasses are inexpensive,

but since each eye sees only

half the image, you’re getting

only half the resolution.

ANOTHER WORD ON 3-D

You do not care about 3-D but

for one reason: The worst 3-D

TV is among the best 2-D TVs.

HOW TO BUY A TVWHAT TO LOOK FOR, WHAT TO DISMISS, AND WHEN TO LISTEN TO THE GUY AT BEST BUYB Y P E T E R M A R T I N

SMART FEATURES

You also do not care about

smart features. Hulu Plus, Net-

flix, and HBO Go? All available

on a $100 Roku 3 or Apple TV.

UHD

Ultra HD, also known as 4K TV,

provides four times the num-

ber of pixels of full HD. This

would be wonderful if anything

were broadcast in it. Or if you

ever planned on sitting close

enough to your screen to really

tell the difference. Skip it.

BUDGET

You can get a good 42- to 50-

inch TV for $700. You can get a

great TV for $1,200 to $1,500.

More than $2,000 is for when

you want an unusual size—

more than 65 inches—and/or

beautiful design.

INPUTS

Good TVs have at least four

HDMI inputs. If you need

fewer—say you want to hook up

only a cable box and a DVD or

a Blu-ray player—this can be an

easy way to save some money.

TIERS

Companies like Samsung,

Sony, Panasonic, LG, and Sharp

have been around for a while.

On the off-chance you need

them, they have huge repair

networks and easy-to-find

parts. Others, not so much.

SPEAKERS

In general, the thinner and

prettier your TV, the worse your

speakers will be. There’s just no

room. Either get a sound bar

or learn to appreciate movies

without bass. ≥

SA

MS

UN

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85

00

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S P

LA

SM

AS

AR

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.9 I

NC

HE

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EE

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A C T U A L

D E P T H

T E C H S C H O O L

E S Q.

D I G I TA L M AT H !

WHAT SIZE TV SHOULD YOU BUY?

Add 1 inch per foot you nor-mally sit from

the TV.

5 inches per hour of

TV you watch on a normal

night.

5 inches, and maybe

try talking to your family a little more.

2 inches for every foot-

ball game you watch

on an average weekend.

1 inch for every item in the room you

want people to notice before

your TV.

10 inches if you also have sta-dium seating, a popcorn ma-

chine, or macular degeneration.

Start with 27 INCHES. (Anything smaller should be a computer monitor.)

>

+ + +– –

Ingenieur Chronograph Silberpfeil. Ref. 3785: Not

everyone gets the chance to sit in the driving seat of a Silver Arrow,

but anyone who does will confirm that it’s like being transported to

another age. It has a wooden steering wheel, analogue instruments

and bodywork made of gleaming aluminium – hence the name of the

racing car that became a legend between the 1930s and 50s. Opti-

cally, the Chronograph Silver Arrow conforms to the same classic

image. The black rubber strap with its brown calfskin inlay is reminis-

cent of the leather straps once used to secure the body work, while

the dial features the same circular graining as the Silver Arrow’s

dashboard. When we come to the technology, however, the watch is

at the cutting edge. The IWC-manufactured 89361 calibre with its ef-

ficient double-pawl winding powers not only the hour, minute and

seconds hands on the dial, but also a totalizer at 12 o’clock, the date

display and a small hacking seconds. What’s more, it comes with an

impressive 68-hour power reserve. Used with the central seconds

hand, the tachymeter scale on the bezel enables the wearer to

calculate his speed over a measured distance of 1,000 metres.

Interestingly, the original Silver Arrow had just three displays: a rev

counter and indi cators for the oil and water temperature. Because re-

gardless of the era, the one thing that counts when you get into a

racing car is achieving the best time. IWC. ENGINEERED FOR MEN.

ENGINEERED FOR MEN WHO BELIEVE

IN TIME MACHINES.


STEPHEN KING LOSES HIS BLOODWHO’D HAVE THOUGHT THE SEQUEL TO THE SHINING WOULD BE SO TENDER?B Y C H R I S J O N E S

It’s been seven years since Daniel

Woodrell introduced us to Ree Dolly,

the fierce and hardened female force

who electrified his novel Winter’s Bone. In that time, Winter’s Bone was

made into a lauded movie, which

ar, Jennifer Lawrence,

a lauded actress. Now comes

The Maid’s Version (Little, Brown,

$25), a slim novel set in the Missouri

Ozarks before meth and clan warfare

created the noir landscape that suf-

focated Ree and her family. It might

be read as a prequel: The dirt-poor

drunks and evangelizing preachers

and proud housekeepers who wan-

der West Table in 1929, stunned by a

mysterious fire that kills 42, are the

soil and roots from which the rest

of Woodrell’s work has grown. Of

one broken woman, Woodrell writes:

“She was kind, made that effort, she

hoped, less and less but still, she

tried, on and on.” You can see Ree

in those words and where she came

from. And you can see Woodrell—

his people, all.

To read an excerpt from Doctor Sleep, scan here with Netpage.

n the first few pages of Doctor Sleep (Scribner, $30), Ste-

phen King’s sequel to 1977’s The Shining, the fear takes no

time rushing back. Here’s eight-year-old Danny Torrance—

just that name can give an entire generation of sleepless

children goosebumps—listening to his mother still chok-

ing on the injuries she’d received at the hands of her hus-

band, Jack, that terrible winter at the Overlook Hotel. Danny has

to pee, and when he creeps into the bathroom in the night, he sees

Mrs. Massey, the woman from room 217, sitting on the toilet, leav-

ing stains in her bloated wake.

That’s page 3. I’d started reading Doctor Sleep in bed, and I de-

cided to close it right then, hoping to delay the inevitable night-

mares. I read The Shining when I was a kid, and it scared

the ever-loving shit out of me, a fear that remains surpris-

ingly close to the surface. (My wife remembers having to

put the physical book in the hallway outside her childhood

bedroom door before she could fall asleep after reading it.)

Seeing Mrs. Massey turned me into a trembling child again.

Doctor Sleep is 528 pages long. It was going to take me six

months and as many bottles of Valium to read it.

But here’s the true shock about Doctor Sleep: It’s not very

scary. It’s closer to tense, like the later volumes of Harry

Potter. (King even makes mention of Quidditch, a little fist

bump between master storytellers.) We see Danny grow-

ing up, fighting the alcoholism that nearly consumes him,

and eventually becoming a hospice worker with a talent for

helping people die peacefully. He is Doctor Sleep. Then a

teenage girl named Abra Stone forces her way into his uni-

verse, a girl with a gift like his, only much more powerful.

A nomadic tribe of wicked immortals, the True Knot, tor-

tures and kills special children like her, sustained by the

steam that pours off them when they suffer. Now they are

coming for Abra, and Dan must help save her.

In his author’s note, King concedes his dilemma in fol-

lowing up a book as terrifying as The Shining: “Nothing can

live up to the memory of a good scare, and I mean noth-

ing, especially if administered to one who is young and im-

pressionable.” Thirty-six years have passed since he last

wrote about these characters. He was an angry alcoholic

then. Today King is a 65-year-old grandfather. We’ve all

changed as much in the meantime.

So Doctor Sleep reads more like a love story than a ghost sto-

ry, as beautiful as a book that’s littered with dead children can be.

After reading those first three pages, I never would have guessed

the adjective I’d find bobbing around in all that blood after 528 of

them: tender. Doctor Sleep, in some ways, reads like a tearful AA

confession, like a letter from a father who wants to apologize for

the curses of genetics, for the well-intentioned failures of family.

It’s as though Danny Torrance is Stephen King, or vice versa, a man

who has been followed all these years by his mistakes and terrible

visions and wants finally to be free of them, made innocent. “Death

was no less a miracle than birth,” King writes. It beats even fear at

making us young again. ≥

M A N A T H I S B E S T

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92 E S Q U I R E Pardon us, but Nicole Beharie has another joke for you. Scan here with Netpage to watch her tell it.

*Esquire cannot guarantee that this

joke will be funny to everyone.

A S T O L D B Y

NICOLE BEHARIEA BLACKSMITH IS TRAINING his new apprentice. Getting to know the boy’s skills, the blacksmith asks, “Have you ever shoed a horse?”

The apprentice replies, “No, but I did once tell a donkey to fk off.”

ABOUT THE JOKESTER: Nicole Be-

harie is in no danger of being type-

cast. Before she played Mrs. Jackie

Robinson in 42, she sexually frus-

trated Michael Fassbender nearly to

sincerity in Shame. And before that,

she was on Broadway in a 19th-cen-

tury farce in the role of a pregnant

teenage farm girl. Now the 28-year-

old Juilliard grad is playing a mod-

ern-day cop chasing after the Head-

less Horseman alongside Ichabod

Crane on the new Fox show Sleepy Hollow. And while the prestigious

school prepped her for these wide-

ranging roles, it failed to equip her

with the gun-toting skills that this

new part requires: “It was just jar-

ring shooting for the first time. It

hurt. I was like, ‘I thought I’d be cool-

er than this.’ ” Considering the other

skills she’s mastered over the course

of her career, we’re pretty sure she’ll

get the hang of it. —MATT GOULET

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he thing that has united financial bubbles over the

years is that nobody needs the commodity at the

heart of them. Tulips, Internet stocks, even gold.

Gold is deflating quickly right now not because the

jewelry industry or the speaker-wire industry or

the hip-hop-teeth industry sud-

denly needs less of it. It’s collapsing because the

people who bid it up in the hopes that someone

else would bid it further are losing confidence.

What happens when the bubble being inflated

is not a useless commodity but instead something

Americans want, need, and are willing to pay for

even in the worst of times? That’s what we’re find-

ing out now. Stock prices for home builders in the

United States went up 1,100 percent from 2000 to

2005. You’d think we were talking about a highly

speculative field. People who couldn’t afford one

home bought a second as an investment property.

And people who could afford a home borrowed 90

percent—even 100 percent or 110 percent—of the

“value” of those homes. You have to put value in quotation marks, be-

cause the only relationship between those numbers and reality was

that there were other suckers willing to pay those crazy numbers.

The housing market collapse that began in 2007 (and shaved 85

percent of the peak value of home-builder stocks by 2009) is, as far

as I can tell, the first time in history that a basic need became subject

to speculative frenzy. I will get angry e-mails from market histori-

ans who want to talk about the Famous Salt Frenzy or the Vitamin C

Panic of 18-whatever or even the Japanese corporate real

estate bubble economy of the late ’80s. But I would argue

that while the underlying assets in those market frenzies

were valuable compared with, say, tulips, their real value

was as a proxy for what else they could be traded for, not

for what the actual salt or vitamins did for their investors.

That’s why the housing bubble was different. Even peo-

ple who lost much of their investment stayed in their

homes, underwater, for years—in many cases to this day.

This was a speculative investment that was also an invest-

ment in a basic human need. But that’s also why the col-

lapse of the bubble offers unique opportunities. We’re see-

ing the housing market reconnect to actual values—and

actual needs—which in turn is about to unleash massive

forces that will drive the shares of home builders higher.

There are three reasons for this: 1) a vast pent-up de-

mand—for example, there were only 451,000 single-fam-

ily housing sales in April compared with a normal range

of 750,000 to 800,000, according to Goldman Sachs; 2) an

extreme supply shortage (only 4.1 months of new home

inventory as the summer began); and 3) a pendulum shift

by the banks from reckless lending to miserly, and recently

back to rational.

Now Goldman, a firm that did as much to inflate the

bubble as anyone, has released a report on the home build-

ers that is so in line with my thinking it’s as though it were

plucked from my heart. I don’t believe home building is a

sector that can be invested in across the board like a SPDR—espe-

cially now, as the effects of the speculative frenzy are still settling.

You’ve got to do some stock picking here, because a builder that

owns land purchased at the peak in a failing city faces very differ-

ent prospects from a builder who snatched up key parcels cheap-

ly in a fast-growing market. The bottom line: The

best-rated builders ought to grow about 24 per-

cent over the next 12 months, according to Gold-

man, while the dogs will actually fall 3 percent.

Goldman concludes that the most advantageous

markets are Charlotte, North Carolina; and Jack-

sonville and Orlando, Florida; the worst are New

York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The builders

with strength in the good markets have the best

shot at a run. My favorite stock in the group is Toll

Brothers (TOL), which has been taking share from

rivals. Goldman’s other two picks are Ryland (RYL),

which shows strength in Charlotte and is trading

at a deep discount to its expected multiple, and

Meritage (MTH); the ones it hates are Hovnanian

(HOV) and Pulte Group (PHM), which actually get rare sell ratings.

The story is easily told—high demand for a must-have product,

low supply, and still small price. It’s a can’t miss. But that’s the think-

ing that started the bubble, right? The big risk, of course, is the econ-

omy. Interest rates are finally rising. A big jump, though unlikely, is

not out of the question. There’s never a foolproof story. But if you

pick well, the story here smells better than tulips: The top home

builders today give you the best shot at a winner. ≥


T H E

B Y K E N K U R S O N

THIS WAS A SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT THAT WAS ALSO AN INVESTMENT IN HUMAN NEEDS. THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT UNIQUE.

Sorry, but another interruption: Scan here with Netpage for a special public-service announcement!

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M O N T B L A N C . C O M


lcohol affects sleep onset, duration and ar-

chitecture,” as the Lexicon of Psychiatry,

Neurology, and the Neurosciences puts it, “in-

creasing slow wave sleep”—the deep, wake-

up-groggy kind—and “reducing the amount

of rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep”—the

kind that . . . well, we don’t know exactly what it does, but we’d

die without it. What’s more, “as the night progresses blood alco-

hol levels fall,” leading to “heightened arousal . . . and recurrent

awakenings associated with tachycardia, sweating, headaches,

and intense dreams or nightmares.” There’s still more, but if all

that isn’t enough to make you lay off the sauce at bedtime, you’re

beyond telling. Like we are.

See, against all that unpleasant stuff, there’s this: It’s late.

You’re in bed, comfortable. The room is dark, save the little cone

of light touching the book in your hands—something by Carl

Hiaasen or Charles McCarry. Every few minutes, you pick up

the glass on the table beside you, take a

deep whiff of the mellow nectar within,

and then let a teaspoonful or so trick-

le down your throat, savoring the little

glow it spreads throughout your body.

Everything you worry about, all your

plans and schemes, everyone you’ve got

to get around, put up with, make allow-

ances for, is outside that bright little

cone. For its part in keeping them out

there, we love a nightcap.

We’re not suggesting you ignore all

those doctors. That would be dumb.

We’re not advocating having a big

hooker of Scotch before turning in

or drinking until you pass out. Man-

aged properly, a nightcap is less about

the alcohol than it is about the ritu-

al, about having something rich and

soothing to sip while you shrug off

the weight of the day. An adult bed-

time story. What you want is just an

ounce of booze or a little more than

that of port or other fortified wine, no more. Not enough to mess

up your sleep beyond an extra toss or turn or two. If you’ve been

out drinking, you don’t need that nightcap—indeed, it would be

a bad idea all around. If you’re already sleepy, you can skip it. It’s

not an every-night thing. But when conditions are right, there’s

nothing more pleasant.

Not every spirit works well as a nightcap. Cordials and liqueurs

might be traditional, but their heavy sweetness works better ear-

lier in the evening. (That said, a nip of green Chartreuse makes

a good occasional nightcap—just a nip, though: It’s 110 proof.)

Bourbons and ryes, while wonderful, tend to be mood-breaking-

ly tangy, as does tequila, even when well aged. Vodka lacks com-

fort; gin—just no. Scotch whisky can be perfect if it’s one of the

expressions low on the peat, smoke, and sherry-cask tarryness

and high on the sweet barley notes and mellowness. Nor do we

want super-high-end luxury spirits: The focus of the nightcap

isn’t on the spirit; it’s on the ritual. And we’d rather save those rare

drams for when we can concentrate

on them fully. You may feel different-

ly about these choices, of course; it’s

your cone of light and you know best

what you want inside it. We do, how-

ever, have a few suggestions.

Most fortified wines—ports, sherries,

Madeiras, and such—are too sweet for

nightcap work, with the exception of a

fino sherry, which is far too dry. Some,

however, are perfect. We like well-aged

tawny ports, with their

SCARY MOVIE RIGOROUS EXERCISE BIG DINNER YARD WORK CHARLIE ROSE


C O N T I N U E D

R E A L LY BA D I D E A S B E FO R E B E D

21 3 4

D A V I D W O N D R I C H

M H

A

B

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ONE MORE DRINKAN ENDORSEMENT OF THE NIGHTCAP

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D R I N K I N G C O N T I N U E D

B Y T H E E D I T O R S

Until recently, we hadn’t cared much for reposado—tequila that has been aged in oak bar-rels from 2 to 12 months. It seems too middle-of-the-road: like blanco (no barrel aging) without the bite, añejo (aged for longer than a year) without the flavor. But after a recent tasting directed by Esquire’s drinks cor-respondent and favorite drink-ing partner, David Wondrich, we’re coming around.

> It’s hard to love a reposado. If

you find yourself in love, what

you have is a very, very good

tequila.

> Reposados should get more

love outside Mexico. But peo-

ple tend to polarize when it

comes to booze: lightest/dark-

est, sweetest/most bitter, and

so on.

> Reposado is the briniest of

the tequila categories. In te-

quila, brine is a good thing.

> So are olives and vanilla. But

not too much of any of those,

and not at the same time.

> A blanco tequila should have

a snap. It’s immature and an-

gry. All young spirits are:

Scotch off the still could be

mistaken for tequila. A reposa-

do shouldn’t be so snappy; it

should be more integrated,

more rounded. A blanco slaps

you across your face. A re-

posado gives you a shove.

> Throughout Spanish Amer-

ica, they put their spirits—

rums, piscos, etc.—in big

wood tanks and age them for a

few months. What they’re do-

ing is calming them down: re-posado means “rested.” You let

it chill, so all those rambunc-

tious things you get in a blan-

co are tamed. Which is why it’s

interesting.

> Margaritas. Obviously.

> Shots. If you’re gonna shoot

tequila, this is what you shoot.

> A few notes on the tequilas

we tasted. [a] Don Julio ($50):

most intense, but also stealthy.

It tastes young at first, but if

you let it rest, becomes briny

and rich. [b] Casamigos

($50): most vanilla, most ac-

cessible, least blancolike. Al-

most an añejo level of flavor.

[c] El Tesoro ($55): spicy. Our

favorite blanco, because it’s

so crazy vegetal. The reposa-

do version pulls out the fruit:

roasted mango, pineapple in-

tense. [d] Partida ($58): light-

est, most balanced. Strikes

a balance between El Tesoro

and Don Julio.

> Reposado can show you how

bad tequila can be and how

great tequila can be. It can’t

hide behind youth or old age.

> All reposados are better after

a few minutes of resting—ei-

ther because they get time to

open up or because you do.

a

b

c

T A S T I N GN O T E S

E S Q.

light, balanced sweetness and nutty mellowness. Take the [1] Tay-

lor Fladgate 20-Year-Old Tawny ($55): Lightly aromatic, with

dark fig notes, it’s rich on the palate but not thick or overtly sweet.

Moving into spirits, we’ve got to begin with cognac, the original

sipping spirit. For nightcap use, you’ll need to trade up to an XO

grade; anything less is likely to be far too young and lively. Once you

do shell out, though, a cognac such as the [2] Delamain Pale &

Dry XO ($95) makes the rewards obvious. It’s as smooth and even

delicate as you could hope for, but with a finish that keeps chang-

ing in your mouth, evolving: now juicy grapes, now baked apples,

now nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon—if you didn’t have to brush your

teeth, you’d be tasting it all night.

A little bit beefier is the [3] Powers John’s Lane 12-year-old

pure pot still Irish whiskey ($65). For those who know John Pow-

ers as a bar whiskey, this is the same stuff grown older, richer, and

stronger. (It’s a respectable 92 proof.) It’s got the same light-musky

graininess, but it’s thicker, even oilier on the tongue. When you’re

drinking it at the end of the night, you’ll want to add a little splash

of water—nothing more than a teaspoon or two—to calm it down.

Finally, there’s the [4] Plantation Vintage 2000 Trinidad

rum ($35). While the other three are all subtlety and elegance,

this one’s more bewitchment and intensity, a dark whirlpool of

tar and burnt sugar and roasted tropical fruit that would be too

much if it weren’t so smooth. While the others persuade you to

sleep, this one lures you into it.

d

PRECOUNTING THE SHEEP STARTING ANOTHER MODEL AIRPLANE ENEMIES-LIST MAINTENANCE “HONEY, WE NEED TO TALK.” ≥

1. The tasting should be blind. So have someone pour for you—an Esquire assistant editor if one happens to be around. Four neat pours from four good bottles. And make sure the assistant keeps track of what’s in each glass.2. Drink.3. Ponder. 4. No spitting. It’s only four modest pours of tequila, after all.5. End the tasting at the first utterance of the word asparagusy.

LESSON NO. 37

CONDUCTING A TEQUILA TASTING AT HOME

THINGS WE THINK WE KNOW ABOUT

REPOSADOSA FEW WORDS ON TEQUILA’S MOST UNDERRATED CATEGORY

www.lifeisbeautifulfestival.com

DowntownLas Vegas

26o 27October

Music

Alabama shakes • childish gambino • Zedd • STS9 • Purity Ring • Big GiganticPortugal. The Man • Danny Brown • Dawes • Andrew McMahon • cults • earl sweatshirtThe Joy Formidable • Charli XCX • Living Colour • Allen Stone • Capital Cities • HaimYoungblood Hawke • Twenty One Pilots • ZZ Ward • Poolside • Family of the YearRobert DeLong • Wallpaper. • Five Knives • Cayucas • Nico Vega • Cosmic SuckerpunchKnocked Up Kids • Moondog matinee • Shalvoy Music • Most Thieves • Rusty Maples • Kid Meets Cougar • Same Sex Mary Beau Hodges Band • DJ88 • The Dirty Hooks • American Cream • Sabriel • Crazy Chief • DJ Supra • HaleAmanOA crowd of small adventures • Jordan Kate Mitchell • DJ ZO • Joey pero and his band • Albi Loves Chicken Tenders

Beck • Imagine Dragons • Pretty LightsEmpire of the Sun • Passion Pit • Jurassic 5

Food

Bruce & Eric Bromberg • Scott Conant • Jonathan Waxman • Hubert Keller • Cat Cora • Michael Mina • Chris CosentinoRick Moonen • Kim Canteenwalla • Jet Tila • Donald Link • Tom Colicchio • Michael Symon • Aaron Sanchez • Paul BartolottaCharlie Palmer • Mary Sue Milliken • Susan Feniger • David Myers • Nancy Silverton • Akira Back • Todd English • Kerry SimonAndré Rochat • Carla Pellegrino • Richard Camarota • SVEN Mede • Marcel Vigneron • Mike Minor • Megan RomanoFrank Goriceta • Elias Cairo • Josh Graves • Carlos Guia • Joseph Leibowitz • Jason Tuley • Hiew Gun KhongSean Kinoshita • Rebecca Wilcomb • Ben Hammond • Grant MacPherson • Michael Kornick • Natalie Young • Dan CoughlinMassimiliano Campanari • Carlos Buscaglia • Vinod Ahuja • Tony Abou-Ganim • Manuel Hinojosa • Drew LevinsonAndrew Pollard • Eric Swanson • Kent Bearden • Thomas Burke • Michael Shetler • Kevin Vanegas • Jack Kramer • Mike Tadich

Promotion

Cirque du Soleil

The Beatles Love • Michael Jackson One • Mystére • “o” • Zarkana • Kà • Zumanity • CRISS ANGEL Believe

104 E S Q U I R E

nisms available online. There’s

one called Intensity that goes

for about $150 and might

not hurt too much when she

throws it at you.

How worried should I be about this new “superstrain” of gonorrhea?Eh, it’s pretty strong, but I

wouldn’t call it “super.” I’ve

certainly had better.

H041, which is what they’re

calling the new strain until a

name is selected (text your

votes, everyone!), is simply the

clap’s latest attempt to out-

smart the antibiotics used to

treat it. Gonorrhea does this all

the time, which is how it stays

relevant in an increasingly un-

certain microbial landscape.

So far, it’s managed only one

Be prepared for more bibs,

more vomit, about the same

amount of diapers, and a lot

more crying. At least that’s

what I gather from the mommy

blogs. Now, since you didn’t

ask how sex will be different

for her, I’ll assume you want to

know how it will be different

for you. That’s good—I’d hate

to have to try to summarize the

varied and endless psycho-

logical, social, and sexual af-

fronts that your wife will expe-

rience through this black deed.

You, on the other hand, might

feel something like a mildly an-

noying bump. That’s because

some degree of tearing usually

occurs with a vaginal birth,

and “if the woman had a lot of

stitches that were put into that

area, the man might feel knots

or scar tissue,” says Dr. Brad

Douglas, OB-GYN at St. Mary’s

Hospital in Richmond. This can

usually be remedied quickly

and painlessly (for you) with

a steroid injection. The other

thing you might feel is the feel-

ing of not feeling anything.

Many experts in the field

(thanks, guys, next round’s

on me!) report that a wom-

an’s body is a “whole new land-

scape” after giving birth, which

I’m going to guess is more like

a shifting sand dune than an

active volcano. Kegels—pelvic-

floor exercises, which you may

Google at your leisure—can

help tighten her back up, so

long as she does about 200 a

day without fail. You might also

want to invest in one of the in-

sertable biofeedback mecha-

Got a sex question of your own? E-mail it to us at [email protected].

case in Japan in 2009, but un-

fortunately, there’s still no new

drug to treat it. That’s because

activity in what Dr. Robert Kirk-

caldy of the Centers for Dis-

ease Control refers to as “the

antibiotic pipeline” has slowed

over the past decade. So un-

til we can find this pipeline

and reach in there and get the

drugs out of it, I advise all my

readers to stick to the mellow-

er strains, use condoms (ev-

erywhere), and, when solicit-

ing sex overseas, always check

references.

Some celebrity couples seem to think an open relationship makes a couple stronger. What do you think?I don’t get paid to think—at

least that’s what Kurt and Gold-

ie keep telling me—but if I did,

I’d think that open relation-

ships are a bit like e-cigarettes:

Good in theory, but they’ll

make you look stupid at par-

ties. Only the most level-head-

ed, secure, forthright, and hon-

orable celebrities should even

attempt open relationships,

because they’re the only ones

who can afford to pay every-

one off when things don’t work

out, which they won’t, because

they never do. (Come on, you

knew that.) Still, if you think

you can manipulate your wife

into agreeing you should sleep

with other people, and you

feel certain you can get drunk

enough to ignore whatever

she chooses to do, then by all

means, open your relationship

to the public. Just make sure

everything is up to code and

the exits are clearly marked.

Will a chain lock really

keep out an intruder?

Depends on how badly he wants to kill you.

Why is melted cheese

so much better than

unmelted cheese?

I don’t know, but it’s the same thing with heroin.

How many days

after milk expires can

I still drink it?

Sixty. Then you may have to strain it.

. . . A N D

O T H E R

T O P I C S

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How do people with

tattooed wedding

rings show they are

divorced?

Full amputation, ac-cording to Levitical law.

Do homeless people

cut their fingernails?

Yes, but they don’t do much with nail art.

HOW DIFFERENT IS SEX GOING TO BE AFTERMY WIFE HAS HER BABY?

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What goes tothe gym with you but still stays fat?

TO BE ONE OF A KIND

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107

THE ESSENTIAL:

THE DOCKERS ALPHA COLLECTIONIt’s been three years, give or take, since the good people of Dock-

ers took a long look in our collective closet, shook their heads, and

decided the men of America deserved better pants. The Alpha Khaki,

a chino with a slightly tapered leg, a slightly rough feel (almost denim-

like), and a dizzying array of color options, quickly made Dockers the

brand of choice for men who wanted the ease of wearing khakis with-

out the baggy, saggy, Dad-playing-putt-putt fits. Now the khaki pio-

neer is capitalizing on that success by offering improved fits and feels

in a full collection of shirts, jackets, and sweaters. In addition to the

trim patterned button-downs, cotton piqué blazers, and chunky car-

digans that make up the new line’s top half, there are two new fits for

the bottom half: one with a little extra room in the seat and thighs (for

stockier guys) and one with a skinny silhouette (for scrawnier), both

walking the line between casual and dressy and setting the stage for a

better-fitting fall for all of us. Cotton khakis ($98) and cotton shirt ($68) by Dockers Alpha Collection; leather boots ($550) by John Varvatos.

S E P T.

2 0 1 3

Use Netpage to buy select items from this section.

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THE REL AUNCH

THE NEW GANT All-American style studied

abroad in Europe and came

home. That’s one way to look

at the relaunch of this classic

American brand. “We’re mind-

ful of our American East Coast

heritage, but we also wanted to

bring a European touch, a fresh-

ness in terms of color and sil-

houette,” says Gant creative di-

rector Christopher Bastin. “Plus,

a huge bonus is that we don’t

take ourselves too seriously.”

That explains the leather-cuffed

wool peacoats with shawl col-

lars, the slim knit sweaters

styled halfway between Yale

and the Sorbonne, and Bas-

tin’s other surprising twists on

fall staples. Wool-blend sweater ($225), cotton shirt ($135), and cotton trousers ($165) by Gant.

A patriotic American can buy pretty much anything these days stamped M A D E I N T H E U. S . A .

Boots. Ties. Pickles. But a fine watch manufactured right here, among the amber waves of grain?

That’s a tougher score, mostly because the timekeeping industry’s expertise, manufacturing, stan-

dard-setting organizations, and legacy are all but trapped in Switzerland by the Alps.

Enter Tom Kartsotis, the founder of Fossil watches (and a lifelong fan of all things ticking), who

purchased the rights to use the name Shinola, a famous but defunct shoe-polish brand (and the

source of the World War II–era idiom “You don’t know shit from Shinola”), in 2011, with the idea

of creating a line of handcrafted, high-quality American-made accessories for the masses. Leath-

er goods. Bicycles. And, yes, watches. His plan was simple: He would partner with Ronda AG, a

Swiss watchmaker who’s produced movements for brands like Victorinox, to bring the best of Swiss

watchmaking to the U. S. The four dozen parts of Shinola’s Argonite 1069 quartz movement, the

factory-floor equipment, the experts to train the American workers who’d be assembling the com-

pleted watches—all would come from Switzerland.

What Kartsotis needed was a place to make it all come together, a city with both a workforce

familiar with manufacturing and plenty of cheap real estate. The answer was obvious: Detroit.

Its legions of former autoworkers would make for an ideal work-

force, and finding raw space for the factory would not be a problem.

Shinola released the first batch of its signature model, the Run-

well, earlier this year—a piece with large numerals set against

stark white, black, and colored faces; vintage-style hands; bev-

eled stainless-steel cases; and Horween-leather bands—and it

sold out online in eight days. Retailers like Barneys and Saks

Fifth Avenue have picked up the line for fall, and the company

contines to hire and keep up with rising demand. Its watches,

meanwhile, just keep ticking away. Stainless-steel Runwell watch

($550) by Shinola.The watchmakers inside the 30,000-square-foot factory.

TO

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The fallback: solid color. The upgrade: solid color

with raised pattern. Shirt ($507) by Etro; suit ($1,995) by John Varvatos; tie ($230)

by Brunello Cucinelli; pocket square

($125) by Isaia.

THE MONK SITUATION It all started innocent-ly enough: Men bored with wing tips and fanciful toe caps turned to ye olde monk-strap loafers for a versatile means of jazzing up jeans or de-squaring suits. But sin-gle-monk-strap loafers gave way to two straps and then three straps, and now there’s no end in sight. There is nothing wrong with such shoes, but word to the wise: the more buckles, the less versatile the shoe. And for the man who likes to keep his options open, every buck-le counts. From left: By Tod’s ($1,545); O’Keeffe ($620); Grenson ($380); Tim Little ($575).

HOW A LIFELONG WATCH LOVER HEADED TO A STRUGGLING CITY TO BUILD AN ALL-AMERICAN WATCH UNDER THE NAME OF A DEFUNCT SHOE-POLISH BRAND

THE

FACE OF

THIS

WATCH

SAYS

DETROIT

TIME CHECK

T H E S H I R T U P G R A D EPA R T

1

COMMENT

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#MAKEOURMARK

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THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO . . .

FOR IDEAL FALL-WEEKEND FOOT-

WEAR, LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THESE MIDANKLE

SUEDE BOOTS

CHUKK A BOOTS

INTRODUCING . . .

Bloomingdale’s has Britain

on the brain. The retail giant’s

new Brit Style collection of-

fers 250-plus exclusive items

from more than 50 UK-based

brands, including Union Jack–

lined Barbour jackets, a jet-

black Hardy Amies peak-lapel

tuxedo, and color-block top-

coats from Bespoken, as well as

clothes and accessories from

four labels (Farrell, Mar-

wood, Wolsey, and Flying

Horse Jeans) heretofore un-

available stateside. Blooming-

dale’s chalks up the timing to

the 50th anniversary of the

Beatles’ arrival in the U. S., and

one can point to the strong Sa-

vile Row influences in the fall

collections as another cata-

lyst, but really, it’s the best of

Britain for the American man.

Who needs a reason? Wool coat

($1,525) by Crombie; cotton shirt

($125) by Ben Sherman; wool

flannel trousers ($285) by Kent

& Curwen; all available exclu-

sively at Bloomingdale’s. Leath-

er shoes ($385) by Grenson.

BLOOMINGDALE’S

BRIT

STYLE

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The fallback: plain cotton weave.

The upgrade: textured cotton weave.

Shirt ($435) by Ermene-gildo Zegna; suit ($558)

by Banana Republic; tie ($135) by Thomas Pink; pocket square

($175) by Dunhill.

T H E S H I R T U P G R A D E

[1] By Brunello Cucinelli ($920). [2] By John Lobb ($1,075).

[3] By John Lobb ($1,075). [4] By Tod’s ($725).

PA R T

2

Clip, Save, Share, from any page.

E

SQ

. S T Y L E T I P N

O.

Why, yes, those are cuffs on this man’s pants.

(Beefy, too.) In a world of straight-hem trousers, a good two-inch cuff

goes a long way in standing out.

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Clip, Save, Share.

RED WITHOUT APOLOGIES

T H I S M O N T H I N C O L O R

1. The jacket: First thing to know about red: The brighter the shade,

the more casual the item of clothing, and when you’re talking about

performance outerwear (nylon anoraks, cotton trench coats, and

the like), you can turn up the volume all the way. Nylon jacket ($155)

by Banana Republic; cotton sweater ($55) by Gap; cotton oxford

shirt ($135) by Gant Rugger; cotton jeans ($178) by 7 for All Man-

kind; suede boots ($200) by Ted Baker London.

2. The pants: Save your faded Nantucket reds for summer and

look for pants in a brighter, richer red for fall. Pair them with dark

or neutral shirts and shoes and brace yourself for compliments.

Cotton chinos ($68) by Dockers; two-button wool jacket ($228) by

Massimo Dutti; cotton oxford shirt ($60) by Nautica; suede monk-

straps ($535) by Church’s.

3. The whole shebang: Expand your suit collection beyond blue,

black, and gray with something closer in style and sensibility to

your favorite bottle of vino. Corduroy in particular does interest-

ing things with red dye, and the depth and the flavor of this suit

make a huge impact. Two-button cotton corduroy suit ($1,895) by

Marc Jacobs; cotton shirt ($590) by Brunello Cucinelli; silk tie ($65)

by Tommy Hilfiger; leather shoes ($950) by Esquivel.

1

2 3

ONCE A GO-TO FOR REPP TIES

AND CRICKET SWEATERS FOR

THE DOWNTON ABBEY CROWD,

THIS ENGLISH BRAND IS BACK

FROM THE DEAD AND MAKING

ITS WAY TO OUR SHORES WITH

UPDATED TAKES ON ENGLISH

CLASSICS. THE CHARCOAL DB

SUIT, LEFT, IS TRICKED OUT WITH

A SUBTLE GREEN WINDOWPANE

PATTERN, AND A PAIR OF SEL-

VAGE JEANS IS DETAILED WITH

STITCHING INSPIRED BY THE

LINES ON A CRICKET BALL.

DOUBLE-BREASTED WOOL-AND-CASHMERE SUIT ($1,495) AND COTTON SHIRT ($195).

A N D ( R E ) I N T R O D U C I N G . . .

KENT & CURWENB

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The fallback: thin stripes. The upgrade: thick

stripes. (Bonus points for unexpected colors.) Shirt ($299) and suit

($2,175) by Canali; tie ($154) by Etro; pock-

et square ($165) by Brunello Cucinelli.

ESQTONECorvette Red

ESQTONEBottle O’ Red

T H E S H I R T U P G R A D E

PA R T

3

ESQTONE

Reaaally Red

TH E E S Q U I R E C O LLE C TI O N Esquire has teamed with style site Trunk Club on the next iteration of the Esquire Collection series. To learn more about seven exclusive fall essentials from the likes of Billy Reid, Bespoken, L.B.M. 1911, and more, turn to page 56.

Ask NickSullivan

Justin, there are several

ways to fold a pocket square,

but a lot depends on the ma-

terial from which it’s made.

Both cotton and linen work

a lot like origami, and once

folded into one of any num-

ber of possible shapes, the

cloth holds a sharp crease

that tends to stay put [Fig.

1a, by J. Press, $45]. Not so

with silk, which really looks

best billowing nonchalantly

from the mouth of the pock-

et [Fig. 1b, by Brioni, $100].

Master the techniques and

you’ll probably find one that

you favor over all the others.

Just don’t faff about it for too

long or worry how it looks

all the time. Life’s too short.

I’VE GOT A PAIR OF CORDS

THAT ARE A FEW YEARS OLD,

AND THE RIBS ARE SO THIN

THAT I’VE BEEN TOLD THEY

LOOK LIKE VELVET. IF I DECIDE

TO REPLACE THEM, WHAT’S

THE OPTIMAL THICKNESS

WHEN IT COMES TO THE RIBS?

GRANT ATKINSTEMPE, ARIZ.

Corduroy comes in several

different thicknesses, which

are determined by the width

of each individual cord, also

known as a wale. (Wale is a

very old word deriving from

the Anglo Saxon word for the

raised ridges in a plowed field.

Which is all suitably agricul-

tural, given the rustic origins

of corduroy as the “poor man’s

velvet,” worn by huntsmen.)

Anyway, the number of wales

to the inch can vary from 16 in

a needle cord [Fig. 2] to 8 in a

WHAT ARE SOME DIFFERENT WAYS TO FOLD A POCKET SQUARE? I LIKE THE LOOK OF THEM, BUT I NEVER REALLY KNOW IF I’M FOLDING THEM RIGHT. JUSTIN STEWART

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.

T H E E SQ U I R E FAS H I O N D I R ECTO R

W I L L N OW TA K E YOU R Q U E ST I O N S

wide-wale corduroy [Fig. 3].

Generally, the finer the cord

[Fig. 4, by Paul Stuart, $297],

the slimmer the look.

I HAVE RECENTLY NOTICED

MORE MEN WEARING TIE

CLIPS IN MY OFFICE. ARE

THESE NOW IN STYLE?

MATT REILLY NEW YORK, N. Y.

Matt: I am prepared to

accept that this particular ac-

cessory is popular elsewhere

(not here) as an easy (read:

lazy) shorthand for the mod-

ern narcissist who wants to

tell everyone in the room he’s

got style down. The thing is,

though, that there is some-

thing a little too neat and

uniform about a tie clip. For

example, when I wear a tie,

I tend to deliberately yank it

off-kilter, and I rarely tuck

the thin end into the keeper,

because achieving neckwear

perfection is never my goal.

If you want to achieve a look

that is yours and yours alone,

a tie clip seems to me a colos-

sal waste of time.

NAVY SUIT: BLACK BELT AND

BLACK SHOES OR BROWN

BELT AND BROWN SHOES?

THANKS.

CRAIG CHENEYLOUISVILLE, KY.

Some shy away from pair-

ing navy suits with black

shoes, etc. [Fig. 5, right:

Shoes ($720) and belt ($225)

by Church’s], but there’s ab-

solutely nothing wrong with

it. The only thing you need

to make sure of when pairing

navy with brown shoes is

that the brown isn’t too

light. A good shade of cognac

and all points darker [Fig. 5,

left: Shoes ($385) by Gren-

son; belt ($75) by Cole Haan]

will suffice.

OVER THE YEARS, IT’S BE-

COME A STAPLE FOR PILOTS

IN THE AIR FORCE TO SPORT

MUSTACHES WHEN DEPLOYED.

WHILE I WANT TO HONOR THIS

TRADITION, MY FACE IS FAR

NARROWER, AND I WANT TO

DO IT WITH A MORE MODERN

FLAIR. ANY SUGGESTIONS?

KARL JOHNSON LOCATION WITHHELD

In 2008, a pilot in the Royal

Air Force was working with

the U. S. Air Force in Afghani-

stan. His American command-

ing officer insisted he trim his

somewhat bushy ’stache to

bring it in line with the more

modest caterpillars permitted

on his American peers. After

something of a standoff, the

pilot consulted the Queen’s

Regulations—under “Growth

of Hair and Beards”—and his

’stache stayed. Bottom line:

Stand your ground and wear

the kind of mustache you want

to wear. With your physiogno-

my, a large moustache would

not be wise. I would let it

grow and then trim until you

find a shape that pleases you. I

would not suggest you twizzle

the ends Poirot-style, as that

is more suited to a hipster bar

than a modern Air Force jet.

GOT A QUESTION

FOR NICK SULLIVAN?

E-MAIL HIM AT

[email protected].

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fig. 2

fig. 3

fig. 1b

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fig. 1a

SKINNY, SL IM & STANDARD

I NTRODUC ING

© 2013 LEVI STRAUSS & CO. SINCE 1853.

Zac in Standard fi t

My take on how to dress is this: Wear what you want to wear. Do

what you want to do. Be who you are. Pick out your own clothes. Be

a man. And if that’s too much to ask, as it almost always is for me,

think of someone you consider to be a man and pretend to be like

him. I pretend to be like my dad.

My father never wavered in the mornings as he stared into his

closet. He plunged his arm inside with confidence and came out

with just the right suit or shirt or slacks. My first lessons in getting

dressed, in figuring out that it somehow matters what you decide to

wear on a given day, came from watching him, from watching how

intently he studied his image in the mirror and meticulously tied

the full-Windsor knot he preferred, how carefully he folded down

the collar of his neatly pressed shirt, and how, when he had fin-

ished, he would sweetly press his freshly shaved face against mine.

“See?” he’d say. “Smooth,” telling me, in effect, that’s how you do it.

How my dad dressed for work was important. He (and my mom)

worked for 40 years for the Humble Oil and Refining Company, the

Texas-based company that merged with Standard Oil of New Jersey

and became Exxon in the ’70s. Humble was a conservative place. It

wouldn’t have served him to have pushed the fashion envelope at

work, even in the ’70s—to have worn a psychedelic tie or scarf, or

too wide of a lapel, much less bell-bottoms or a white

belt or white shoes or a leisure suit. It wouldn’t have

served him to do anything to call attention to him-

self for any reason other than his exemplary work.

He knew that. Dad often told me, “My job is to help

my boss do his job and make him look good.”

That was my dad’s objective. Everything about the

way he conducted himself was to communicate sup-

port for his superiors and respect for his coworkers.

The way he dressed was his starting point in that

communication. So now, when I stare into my clos-

et, I think, How I dress depends on what I want to say.

You’re saying something with your appearance

whether you mean to or not, so you may as well mean

to. For example, on a weekend morning, you might

actually mean to say, “It’s Saturday and I don’t care how I look, and

I don’t care what you think of how I look, and I don’t care if I ever

have sex again.”

You might really mean that. But you’d better think about what

you’re saying, because everyone else is. The idea that we humans

are good-natured, politically correct, nonjudgmental beings is pure

fantasy. We are, at the very least, judgmental.

My next lessons in how to dress came from classmates in parochi-

al school. The time-honored, behavior-modifying method of ridi-

culing and instilling a sense of shame were not spared at Trinity Lu-

theran School in Klein, Texas. “A sweater,” a boy said in a loud voice

in front of the whole class as I walked into my second-grade class-

room on an early October day and heard everyone laughing. In my

defense, my desk was by the always-open window, and it was get-

ting cooler, and it was a new sweater I was eager to wear—an off-

white cable-knit V-neck. I loved that sweater. I didn’t wear it again

until it was freezing, three months later.

In my early 20s, Searcy Bond, who owned a hamburger joint I used

to play at on Sunday nights, once asked me if I’d lost a bet. I asked

him what he meant, and he pointed at my shirt and suggested that

I’d been forced to wear it as payment for a wager gone wrong. Why

would anyone wear a shirt like that if they didn’t have

to was his implication. But that’s how you learn. Rid-

icule and shame don’t get much of a chance in these

sensitive times, which makes learning about how to

dress that much more difficult.

Fashion is communication, plain and simple. I don’t

mean to sound as though I’m telling you something

you don’t already know, because any self-respecting

man with even a little common sense knows exact-

ly what he’s saying and to whom he’s saying it as he

gets dressed in the morning. We all wear uniforms of

sorts that allow us to be accepted. There’s no shame

in that. That we have the gumption to clean up and,

as we stare into our closet, care about how we’ll look

shows we’re trying to put our best foot forward.

ON WEARING WHAT YOU WANT TO WEAR, SAYING WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF A LITTLE GUMPTION

LYLE LOVETT

H O W I D R E S S N O W

TO

P: P

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GR

AP

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Y M

IS

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EA

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This fall, Lovett is joining with Hamilton Shirts to update

the company’s classic west-ern shirt. Lyle Lovett Western

($265) by Hamilton Shirts. FO

R S

TO

RE

IN

FO

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AT

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122 E S Q U I R E � S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3 Clip, Save, Share, from any page. Download free from the iTunes App Store or Google Play.

PARANOID MUCH?

THE EMPIRE OF

ANXIETYWhen Michelle is taking Sasha and Malia to tennis

on Saturday afternoons, Barack heads to the office,

claiming he has work to do, and secretly watches

Homeland. That’s what the president told Damian

Lewis at a White House state dinner, anyway, and I think it

must be something more than flattery. Has there ever been a

show more in tune with its times, more absolutely plugged into

the zeitgeist, than Homeland?

It’s the definitive show about

the empire of anxiety America

has created for itself.

Homeland’s third season be-

gins this month, with ex-marine

and terrorist sympathizer Nich-

olas Brody hiding out in Canada

and CIA agent Carrie Mathison

trying to clear his name. The plot

details are much less interesting

than the psychological portraits

of the two leads: the devoted

agent struggling with madness

and the ex-marine with a com-

pletely broken identity. The show spins fascination out of twin

fears—the fear of terrorism and the fear of those who are prose-

cuting the war against terrorism, yet it’s something more than a

psychological thriller. It’s a show about how terrifying it is that

psychology matters, that all that’s keeping the world from the

next disaster is fragile, damaged people. Unfortunately, the anx-

ieties of U. S. antiterror officials aren’t just material for television

shows. America’s actual drone policies are based explicitly on

how worried its agents are. Killing anywhere in the world is le-

gal so long as “an informed, high-level official of the U. S. govern-

ment has determined that the tar-

geted individual poses an imminent

threat of violent attack against the

United States.” “Imminent threat”

can mean anything, of course. The

NSA surveillance program is operat-

ing under this same limitless anxiety.

All information must be available,

because who knows what is being

plotted out there, somewhere, any-

where? Despite what Obama’s crit-

ics claim, the surveillance program

IL

LU

ST

RA

TIO

N B

Y J

AM

ES

V

IC

TO

RE

At a White House dinner, the actor Damian Lewis asked Obama if he wouldn’t mind keeping him posted on any upcoming foreign-policy activities. “I’ll be sure to do that,” said the president.

You are being watched. So now there’s Surv, an app in development that uses crowdsourcing to tell you exactly which cameras (all of them) are watching you when (all the time).

PROMOTION

BY IN

VITAT

ION

ON

LY

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More than 500 dapper and elegant guests gathered for a live viewing of the spectacular race at Churchill Downs. Attendees enjoyed Maker’s Mark Mint Juleps and a Moët and Chandon champagne lounge and photo booth, along with Southern-inspired cuisine prepared by Chef Daniel Humm. This fine fare was accompanied by a cigar lounge courtesy of Nat Sherman, and an incredible lineup of bluegrass music, bringing a little bit of Kentucky to New York City.

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2

4 5

1 3

6

7 8 9

1 Announcing the Kentucky Derby race is about to begin 2 Guests cheering on their favorite horse 3 Maker’s Mark Bourbon Mint Juleps, a Derby must-have 4 Moët & Chandon Champagne bar 5 Guests enjoying Nat Sherman Cigars 6 Chef Andrew Zimmern (right) with guests 7 Benjamin Bennet, Frank Giordano, Ben Schott, Sarrah Candee, Kristen DeLuca, Brian Canlis 8 Eleven Madison Park’s Chef Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, Event Hosts 9 Brooklyn’s The Defibulators bluegrass music kept guests moving throughout the event

Photo Credit: Michael Harlan Turkell

is not the result of some overzealous, power-

mad executive branch. People want it. Even af-

ter the Edward Snowden leaks, 48 percent of

Americans approved of it. Anxiety has become

a far more powerful force than the desire for privacy—more pow-

erful than America’s founding principles of individual rights and

due process. Anxiety justifies anything. Anxiety overrules law

itself. It is truly imperial.

Even the crudest cost-benefit analysis shows how irratio-

nal the anxieties are. In 2012, only ten American civilians died

worldwide from international terrorism. Between September

11 and the death of Osama bin Laden, the United States spent

$1.28 trillion prosecuting the war on terror. You are 3,468 times

as likely to die from a car accident as from an attack, 2,663 times

as likely to die from a fall, 356 times as likely to die from drown-

ing. You are 416 times as likely to die from an injury at work as

at the hands of a terrorist. For an ultimately negligible increase

in public safety, ancient values have been abandoned and huge

quantities of blood and treasure have been expended. In a hun-

dred years, historians of this period will be amazed at the lu-

dicrous outpouring of resources to prevent a few thousand

murders while all around the world the poor and hungry die.

The psychological mechanism

is obvious, a classic case of a pho-

bia, creating a specific fear to hide

from a general, more all-encom-

passing sense of dread. Terror-

ism has the great narrative ad-

vantage of having good guys and

bad guys involved in dramatic

scenes. The real crises are much

more boring and present no Zero

Dark Thirty–style solutions. The

coming storm is no longer a meta-

phor. Next summer, a hurricane will

come and destroy part of New York

City. Or, if not next year, the year af-

ter. And then there will be an even

worse hurricane a few years after that. And what will the world

be like when New York City is destroyed? And what are we sup-

posed to do about it? Nobody knows.

Instead of confronting the many crushing anxieties our mo-

ment is faced with, a secretive army pores over the phone rec-

ords of the whole world looking for an angry example of Stone

Age cave dwellers who might attempt an impotent assault on one

of our cities. Those enemies really exist, of course. In the latest

edition of the controversial DSM-5 (released this past spring),

the Bible for shrinks, its authors changed the definition of so-

cial-anxiety disorder in a small but crucial way. Phobias used to

require that their sufferers know their anxiety to be excessive

or unreasonable. That condition has been removed: “Instead,

the anxiety must be out of proportion to the actual danger or

threat in the situation, after taking cultural contextual factors into

account.” American psychiatry has accepted this old piece of

wisdom: You can be paranoid and right at the same time.

Homeland is not merely about a few mentally disturbed CIA

agents; it’s about the insanity that underpins the war on terror in

its entirety—people driven beyond all sensible limits by a loom-

ing sense of dread they can’t control. Obama must recognize

himself in the show: Ultimately, he is the high-level official who

determines what constitutes an “imminent threat,” the worrier-

in-chief. As season three begins,

I imagine him popping a Nicor-

ette, which he’s been known to

chew, and mouthing the words

that he himself speaks over the

opening credits. It’s almost too

perfect: the man who has over-

seen the creation of a surveillance

state watching the show about

how insane it all is. What could

be crazier than that? ≥

Ste

ph

en

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e w

rite

s r

eg

ula

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on

Th

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).

DSM-5, the encyclopedia of psychiatric disorders. The most

vexing questions its authors faced: How do we define paranoia in

an era when everyone has reason to be paranoid?


THE CHANCES YOU WILL DIELAST YEAR, TEN AMERICANS WERE KILLED BY INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

SO

UR

CES

: C

ENT

ERS

FO

R D

ISEA

SE

CO

NT

RO

L A

ND

PR

EVEN

TIO

N;

STA

TE

DEP

AR

TM

ENT.

You are

356times as likely to die

FROM DROWNING.

You are

1,595times as likely

TO BE MURDERED.

You are

2,626times as likely to die

IN AN ALCOHOL-RELATED ACCIDENT.

You are


IN A GUN ACCIDENT.

You are


FROM AN INJURY AT WORK.

You are


IN A CAR ACCIDENT.

You are


FROM A DRUG OVERDOSE.

You are


FROM A FALL.

You are


IN A FIRE.

The blackout following Hurricane Sandy was not an anomaly. It is the first of many to come—blackouts that will be even worse.

Our communities are defined by the secrets we are willing to keep and the secrets we are not willing to keep. This is a man without a country.

Shop at baume-et-mercier.com

Everyone is so damn mindful these days. Doing yoga and meditation, having “alone time.” Sounds like glorified napping.

Until you discover that a few minutes of meditation a day can lower blood pressure, promote stress-relieving

neuroplasticity, combat autoimmune diseases, reduce anxiety, and even make you a nicer person. No joke. And you

don’t have to go to an ashram or join a cult or anything like that. In fact, there’s this app you can get. . . .

A CALL TO ACTION, BY A MEDICAL DOCTOR (FROM HARVARD!), P. 130 // SCOTT RAAB

FINDS INNER PEACE, P. 132 // FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS, P. 134 // HOW TO DO IT

AT HOME, P. 130 // AND PROOF THAT IT WORKS, STARTING ON THE NEXT PAGE.

FIND THESE

RELAXING

STORIES INSIDE:

* B Y WAY O F “ M I N D F U L N E S S ,” W H I C H A C T UA L LY J U S T M E A N S “ M E D I TAT I O N .”

A

USEFUL

GUIDE

TO

T H E

*

127

TRY

THIS AT

HOME!

> Sit with your hands resting in your lap or on your knees, keeping your back straight.> Your neck should be re-laxed, with your chin slightly tucked in.> Unfocus your eyes, gazing into the middle distance.> Take five deep breaths, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.> On the last exhalation, allow your eyes to close.> Slowly settle into your body. Observe your posture and no-tice the sensations where your body touches the chair and your feet meet the ground.> Feel the weight of your arms and hands resting on your legs.> Acknowledge your senses: Notice anything you can smell, hear, or taste; sensations of heat, cold, or wind.> Turn your mind inward. Scan your body from head to toe, observing any tension or discomfort.> Scan again, this time notic-ing which parts of the body feel relaxed. Spend twenty seconds on each scan.

YOU SHOULD BE medi-

tating every day.

Stress evokes the

flight-or-fight re-

sponse. It increases your energy

metabolism, heart rate, blood

pressure, and rate of breath-

ing. It triggers the secretion

of adrenaline and noradrena-

line, but because you’re not run-

ning or fighting—because, in

fact, you are probably sitting at

a desk or lying in bed not sleep-

ing—your body can’t use those

hormones appropriately. And

unused adrenaline puts you at

an increased risk for a number

of diseases and conditions—

anxiety, depression, insomnia,

heart attacks, strokes, bowel

disorders, infertility. These lead

many people to take exces-

sive medications. But in fact, by

some estimates, at least 60 per-

cent and as many as 90 percent

of doctor visits are for problems

that start with stress.

Now, we have within us a re-

sponse opposite to the stress

response. It’s called the relax-

ation response, a physiologic,

genetic set of changes that

counteract stress. There are

scores of ways to bring forth

the relaxation response. One is

meditation. Another is repeti-

tive prayer. Yoga. Tai chi. They

all seem to work the same way;

mainly, they change the genes’

activity, turning off genes that

cause problems with stress.

Two steps bring forth the re-

laxation response. The first is a

repetition. That repetition can

be a word, a sound, a prayer,

a phrase, or even a repetitive

movement. The second is see-

ing through other thoughts

when they come to mind and re-

turning to the repetition. Med-

itation breaks the chain of ev-

eryday thinking. Whether a

mantra, a thought, a prayer, or a

few minutes of ritualized quiet,

these practices decrease heart

rate, blood pressure, and rate

of breath and create specific

brain waves, and are wonderful

in terms of dealing with stress

and its ravages. To the extent

that any ache or pain is being

caused by stress, the relaxation

response takes care of it. Liter-

ally millions of patients are now

evoking it regularly. And people

feel better.

A CALL TO ACTIONBY DR. HERBERT BENSON

PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE , HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, AND DIRECTOR

EMERITUS, BENSON-HENRY INSTITUTE FOR MIND BODY MEDICINE

M E D I TAT I O N I S E M P I R I C A L LY G O O D F O R YO U

CHEAPER HEALTH CARE: In a 2011 study pub-lished in the American Journal of Hyperten-sion, patients experienced a 28% cumulative decrease in physician fees after an average of five years of practicing transcendental meditation.

STRONGER IMMUNE SYSTEM: In a Universi-ty of Wisconsin study, 25 people took an eight-week mindfulness course. Researchers then injected them and 16 control participants with a flu vaccine. The mindful group generated more antibodies in response to the virus.

T H E E S Q U I R E G U I D E T O M I N D F U L N E S S

IMPROVED SLEEP: Mindfulness training can decrease the time it takes to fall asleep and improve sleep time and efficiency to a degree comparable to taking three milligrams (the max-imum dose) of Lunesta, a sleep drug, according to a recent University of Minnesota study.

Clip, Save, Share, from any page. 128 E S Q U I R E � S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3

Don’t know how to meditate?

Neither did we! So we asked

Andy Puddicombe, the co-

founder of meditation-for-the-

masses company Headspace

and the voice on its mobile

app (see “The Mindfulness

Project,” page 132), to write

this basic script. (Learn more

at getsomeheadspace.com.)

“This is a daily practice that’s

simple enough for anyone to

incorporate into their every-

day existence, but substantial

enough to change their ex-

perience of life,” says Puddi-

combe. Ask a friend to read it

to you slowly, setting a timer

for ten minutes. It would help

if this friend had a soothing

voice, preferably with a Brit-

ish accent.

THE MINDFULNESS

PROJECT

TRY

THIS AT

HOME!

> Then turn your awareness to your thoughts. Notice the ones that arise without attempting to alter them.> Consider why you’re sitting today. You may realize you’re hoping to stop your thoughts—remind yourself it’s impossible to do this.> Next, observe the rising and falling sensation your breath-ing creates in the body. Notice where the sensations occur, whether they’re in your stom-ach, chest, or shoulders.> Focus on the quality of each breath, noticing whether the breaths are deep or shallow, long or short, fast or slow.> It’s normal for thoughts to bubble up at this moment, so simply guide your attention back to the breath when you realize your mind has started to wander.> Silently count your breaths as they pass: one as you in-hale, two as you exhale, three on the next inhalation, and four on the exhalation, until you reach ten. > Then start again at one.> Let go of any focus on the breath now. Spend thirty sec-onds just sitting. You may be inundated with thoughts or feel calm and focused—just let your mind be as it is.> Become aware of the physi-cal feelings—the chair beneath you, your feet on the floor, your arms and hands in your lap. Notice anything you can hear, smell, taste, or feel.> Slowly open your eyes.> Form a clear idea about what you’re going to do next, like brushing your teeth or e-mail-ing your boss. It’s easy to jump up off the seat and lose the calm you’ve just created. Carry this awareness with you to the next activity.

I’VE BEEN AWARE for a long time that my

default version of mindfulness—relent-

less hypervigilance spiked liberally with

dread—isn’t the optimal recipe for living

a balanced life. A dash of OCD, a touch of bipolar

disorder, a sprinkling of sociopathy, a heavy dust-

ing of addiction: Mix constantly and serve piping

hot. Feeds exactly one raging asshole.

Medication, self- and prescribed, can help—at

least a little, for at least a little while. Same with talk

therapy. Movement, in the guise of exercise or not,

is fine and free medicine. Sex. A sandwich. Sex and

a sandwich. Whatever it takes, whatever the trade-

off, simply to hush, if only for a few minutes, the

howling life of the mind.

Meditation? Never really tried it. I did go to a meet-

ing of folks interested in transcendental meditation

in 1984, in Iowa City. The presenter brought a tall

stack of studies proving TM’s beneficence. It was

a sales pitch, nothing more. I didn’t buy it then. I’m

not buying it now. I reject grandiose claims to life-

altering shazam of any sort. We humans live and

grow and die in tiny, hard-won increments. At best.

You might suspect, then—correctly—that I didn’t

start the My Headspace ten-day program expect-

ing to whiff satori. Offered as a beginner’s guide

to practicing step-by-step no-religiosity-attached

meditation—and as a portal to Headspace.com and

a wide range of programs, products, and services—

it’s available as a free app and costs nothing more

than ten minutes a day.

I have ten minutes a day. You do, too. According

to the NSA, everyone reading these words wastes,

on average, ten minutes per hour on the interwebs

searching for artisanal C4 and browsing the same

old jihadi sites. You’re not too busy to get quiet, to

breathe, to—in the words of Andy Puddicombe,

Headspace cofounder—“step back and allow calm

and ease to arise.”

I know, I know. Sounds a little . . . gooey. For the

full effect, you ought to see and hear it delivered by

Puddicombe, a former Tibetan monk and circus-

arts major whose shaved head and boyish grin fair-

ly glow, at least on my iPhone screen, with a sweet

serenity unfueled by any visible body fat. But his

fundamental message—“meditation is a skill, and

takes practice”—is inarguable, and I found on day

one that the breathing exercises alone buoyed and

refreshed what passeth for my spirit. By day three,

I was hungry for ten minutes spent letting go of the

noise between my ears, and more aware that some-

where, not so distant, lay some pool of clarity. Not

so deep, maybe, but nothing to sneeze at.

I’m still making a daily effort to meditate, with-

out signing up officially. I’m not telling you that any-

thing like magic is happening. Work still feels like

work, the Plato’s Cave of marital concord remains

fitfully lit, and I’m apparently going to stay my own

worst enemy. I’m okay with all of that. And more re-

laxed. A bit. I think.

A M O R O S E A N D S K E P T I C A L M A N T R I E S T O F I N D P E A C E , T E N M I N U T E S AT A T I M E

BY S C O T T R A A B

GOOD GENES: A Massachusetts General Hospital study found that relaxed response practice—meditation, deep breathing, yoga—inhibits the expression of genes that activate inflammatory response and pathways linked to cancer. —JESSIE KISSINGER


HEALTHIER HEART: In a Maharishi University study of black patients with heart disease, those who meditated had a 48% lower risk during the study period for mortality, myocardial infarction, and stroke, and 24% lower risk for cardiovascular mortality, revascularizations, and hospitalizations.

LOWER BLOOD PRESSURE: Researchers from the University of Kentucky found that regu-lar practice of transcendental meditation can reduce systolic blood pressure by about 4.7 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 3.2.

M E D I TAT I O N I S E M P I R I C A L LY G O O D F O R YO U

Scan here with Netpage to experience three meditation sessions created

by Headspace exclusively for Esquire. Or visit esquire.com/meditation.130 E S Q U I R E � S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3

Continued

MAKE A CLEAR STATEMENT. DRINK RESPONSIBLY. Alc. 40% by Vol. (80 proof). Tequila imported by Brown-Forman, Louisville, KY ©2013

GREAT STYLE BEGINS WITH GREAT TASTE

IS MEDITATION WHAT

I THINK IT IS? Yes and no,

probably. It does entail qui-

et time with yourself, focus

on breathing, and stillness,

both mentally and physical-

ly. But there’s no belief system,

no chanting, and no dogma.

You can wear whatever you

want and do it wherever you’re

comfortable. But not while

driving, because you have

to close your eyes.

WHY DO I NEED TO

MEDITATE? Because if

you’re like most people, you

are overworked and stressed

out. “People wake up in the

morning and go full charge

until they sleep at night. Their

automatic nervous system is

going all day, which leads to

what’s called ‘sympathetic

overload,’ ” says Dr. George

Kessler, an osteopath, attend-

ing physician at New York-Pres-

byterian Hospital, and clinical

instructor at Weill Cornell

Medical College. “Testosterone

goes down. Cholesterol

goes up. The thyroid is affect-

ed.” Kessler routinely recom-

mends daily meditation for

high blood pressure.

HOW, EXACTLY, DOES IT

LOWER STRESS? “For one

thing, meditation lengthens

telomeres, the ends of chromo-

somes that contain genes,” says

Kessler. “So when you have a

genetic illness, to have the dis-

ease, you have to express that

gene. For certain illnesses, the

longer the telomeres are, the

less likely you are to express

it. For people who have high

blood pressure, up to 80 per-

cent of what we call central hy-

pertension can be regulated

and controlled by meditation.

Anxiety attacks, panic attacks,

autoimmune diseases like lu-

pus, asthma—all can be helped

by meditation. It’s not a matter

of mind over matter. It’s a mat-

ter of the mind does matter.

The body listens to the mind.”

DOES IT TAKE LONG? Ten

minutes a day. But you have to

do it every day.

DO THE BENEFITS EXTEND

BEYOND THOSE TEN MIN-

UTES? “Meditation can put a

stamp on your brain that re-

mains active when you’re not

meditating,” says Dr. David Perl-

mutter, a neurologist and the

coauthor of Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of En-lightenment. “That is, there are

physical, functional, metabol-

ic changes that happen in the

brain not only during the pro-

cess of meditation, but remain

residual after the process has

been completed.”

SUCH AS? Brain cells used or

affected in a certain way can

affect the cells around them,

forming what are called neu-

ral networks. “It’s not just how

does one nerve cell work but

how does it get along and com-

municate with its neighbors?”

says Perlmutter. “The changes

we’ve seen on the brain scans

of the individuals who meditate

are observable manifestations

of that process of forming new

networks—of nerve cells join-

ing to other nerve cells, which

is by definition neuroplasticity.

The more you watch bad things

on television, or read the eve-

ning news about all the horri-

ble things that are happening

around you, the more your brain

becomes a conduit for nega-

tivity. The corollary is also true.

The more you decide to look at

things in a positive way, the eas-

ier it will be to stay positive.”

DO REGULAR PEOPLE DO

IT, OR JUST MONKS AND

WOMEN? Jack Dorsey, co-

founder of Twitter and Square,

meditates. Jack Dorsey is a bil-

lionaire. In fact, a lot of suc-

cessful men meditate. Marc Be-

nioff, CEO of Salesforce.com,

has written about it. At least

three editors at Esquire proba-

bly meditated today. “Medita-

tion allows me to focus. It re-

moves the clutter that interferes

with the actual thought pro-

cess,” says Roger Berkowitz,

CEO of Legal Sea Foods, which

has thirty-two restaurants, four

thousand employees, and reve-

nues of more than $200 million.

“Before, I could wrestle with a

problem for a long time. After I

started meditating, I could zero

in on the solution almost in-

stantaneously. So meditation

doesn’t make me smarter, but it

helps me connect the dots fast-

er. You see the problem clearly,

and you see a solution clearly.”

I HAVE A LOT ON MY MIND.

WHAT IF I CAN’T CONCEN-

TRATE? Don’t worry about

it. You cannot mess this up.

Thoughts will enter your mind

(see “Thoughts I Hope Don’t

Creep into My Head While I’m

Trying to Meditate,” right), and

that’s okay. Meditation is the

least stressful activity a man can

engage in, and much cheaper

than blood-pressure medication.

FREQUENTLY

ASKED QUESTIONS

A N D C A L M LY C R A F T E D A N S W E R S

THOUGHTS I HOPE

DON’T CREEP INTO MY

HEAD WHILE I’M

TRYING TO MEDITATE

BY A. J. JACOBS

I’m meditating. Meditating.

Got to calm the ol’ mon-

key mind. My mind is not

going to act like a mon-

key. No more masturbat-

ing and tossing feces for

this mind. Who was the

first person to put human

clothes on monkeys? That

guy must have been a ge-

nius. The Louis C. K. of his

day. Meditating, medi-

tating. I wonder if Fletch

holds up. Breathe from the

diaphragm. You never hear

about diaphragms any-

more. It’s all condoms and

morning-after pills. May-

be that’s just because I’m

old and married. When

am I going to stop think-

ing about vaginas when I

hear the word diaphragm?

And 69. When will I see the

number 69 on a Verizon bill

and not think of oral sex?

Maybe when I’m sixty-

nine. Remember when

Downton Abbey used the

word underbutler? Wonder

what Cher is tweeting now.

Breathe. Maybe Google

Glass will have a medita-

tion app. You can get Zen

points or something. Man,

I’m bored. How often do

they clean these medita-

tion pillows? Lotus position

kind of hurts. And position.

When will I hear position

and not think missionary?

Do dogs ever do it non-

doggie-style? That would

be a good New Yorker car-

toon—a conservative dog

who wants to do it mission-

ary style. I shouldn’t have

had that chicken tikka ma-

sala. I bet Cleopatra was

a butterface. Breathe in.

Breathe out. The ol’ in-and-

out. Dammit. ≥


Clip, Save, Share, from any page. 132 E S Q U I R E � S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3


hen the first BMW M5 launched

in the 1980s—a 152-mph top

speed, styling like an anvil on

wheels, sold in America only

in black—fast four-doors barely existed.

That car did its job by brute force, with an

engine derived from BMW’s M1 supercar

and a five-speed gearbox and more power

than a lot of Italian sex mobiles with un-

pronounceable names. It ripped the lid

off what everyone thought a fast sedan

should be.

That sort of wake-up moment no lon-

ger happens, because honest-to-God fast

has become an everyman commodity. To-

day, for example, you can buy a $24,495

Ford hatchback that will run rings around


early M5’s, and it looks outlandish and ob-

vious and comes in ridiculous colors be-

cause that stuff is in vogue. And yet there

are still adult cars like the 2014 BMW M6

Gran Coupe, which is good, because one of

the best parts of being an adult is occasion-

ally letting your inner hooligan run things.

This is a direct heir to the original M5 in

everything but name: violently fast, a lit-

tle unexpected, looks like nothing you’ve

ever seen. The industry calls the BMW a

“four-door coupe,” words that help sell

cars but otherwise mean squat. (Coupes

have two doors by definition; calling a

four-door sedan a coupe because it looks

amazing is like naming a ham sandwich

Frank because you dressed it up in your

best friend’s shirt.) All you really need to

know is that the M6 Gran Coupe is gut-

achingly gorgeous, which is why it exists.

It shares the twin-turbo, 560-hp V-8 un-

der its hood with BMW’s current

Battery-powered electric. At $32,600, it’s not cheap, and that’s with Chrysler losing

a claimed $10,000 on each one. But worth it for the maniacal laughter alone: No oth-

er EV puts such a giddy, tire-smoking emphasis on fun rather than efficiency. Avail-

able only in California for now. If you’re not there, it’s almost worth the move. —S. S.

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M6 coupe (which,

confusingly, is basically a

two-door version of the M5

sedan), but in the best German

tradition, the rest of the car borrows

bits from the brand’s other luxury sedans

to keep costs sane. Which means you get

obscene amounts of thrust, the high-speed

crush of a Gulfstream full of pillows, and a

cockpit focused on the driver. If you drive

like an adult, you will never want for pow-

er and you’ll feel like you run the damn

world. If you’re demented enough to turn

off the standard electronic stability con-

trol, the car will respond in kind, never

settling down, lighting up its rear wheels

at 90 mph. Which, if you can handle it, is

also pretty great.

Like a lot of things worth having, this

isn’t for everyone. If you just want the

sex-drizzled sheet metal, you can go for

BMW’s less expensive 650i Gran Coupe,

which drives nicely but eliminates the bat-

shit engine. If you just want that mind-

warping motor, there’s the more afford-

able and subtler M5 four-door. If you want

to feel like you just married a supermod-

el with a doctorate in applied physics and

a James Beard Award, this is your bogey.

At $113,925, the M6 Gran Coupe is expen-

sive, but given its talents, it’s a relative bar-

gain. If you can afford it, pull the trigger.

If you can’t, consider selling your house.

Or your children if you don’t have a house.

This thing is glory, beauty, fun, evil. And

unstoppable. —SAM SMITH

ENGINE: 411-HP V-8

MPG: 11/16

PRICE: $44,915

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T H E S P E C S

The SVT Raptor is not the kind of pickup you buy to move thirty sheets of dry-

wall from Home Depot. Contractors won’t appreciate its five-and-a-half-foot bed,

980-pound maximum payload, or 6,000-pound towing capacity, which puts it in the

same league as a V-6-powered Toyota Tacoma.

But what lesser trucks won’t allow you to do is elicit the tormented moan of thirty-

five-inch off-road tires peeling off a slab of asphalt as the 411 hp and 434 lb-ft of pure

Dee-troit torque courses through the drivetrain.

Inside, the console is wide enough to house a dorm fridge, and your front passen-

ger might as well be in the car next to you. All modern trucks have the interior com-

fort and convenience features that used to be limited to luxury cars, but only one has

the badass looks of this street brawler.

With Fox racing shocks, cast-aluminum suspension components, and more than

eleven inches of suspension travel up front, the Raptor comes ready for punishment.

You can feel every inch of that boingy suspension when you dive into a corner, with

the body lurching over its wheels like a circus bear on a fitness ball. With the massive

off-road tires, you won’t carve through corners; you’ll eliminate them entirely by just

rolling over curbs. This is a truck that goads you on to do things you’d never do in any

other vehicle this side of a Humvee. You’ll want to park it on top of things rather than

next to them.

There are way better muscle cars and way better pickup trucks, but there’s nothing

currently on the road that combines the best attributes of both.

The 2014 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor is big, loud, obnoxious, and uniquely American,

like the solo in “Free Bird.” All it’s missing is the screaming chicken on the hood.

—CRAIG FITZGERALD

When you stare at an Aston

Vanquish, one of two things will

happen: You will gawp and think,

Jesus, that isn’t a car; it’s lust per-sonified and roaring and I have nev-er seen anything like it and I want it now. Or you will think, perhaps with

a bit of reservation, That is nice, but it also looks like every other As-ton, humph. If you are the first per-

son, then you are sane. (Congratu-

lations.) If you are the second, then

you know a bit about the car in-

dustry, but you are jaded and have

lost your mind. It’s true that Aston

Martin has made all of its cars ac-

cording to the same basic propor-

tions and styling language for the

past two decades. And it’s true that

the Vanquish, while new for 2014,

has a 565-hp V-12 whose basic

design is more than ten years old.

To hell with all of that. A pretty,

heartbreakingly expensive car is

a joy forever. This costs $282,820.

It is not for those who follow the

whims of fashion; it just is. And it

is spectacular. —S. S.


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ercedes first introduced the original Geländewagen, or cross-coun-

try vehicle, for military sales in 1979. Much of it survives unchanged in

the 2014 Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG, meaning Mercedes, that great pur-

veyor of the highest tech, is now selling a car old enough to rent its own car. Ah,

and the most insane bits of all: the archaic styling, the modern 536-hp V-8, and

the $135,205 price tag.

It’s the preservation of so much old that makes the G63 so charming. The steer-

ing is heavy, the cabin impossibly cramped. The buttons and switchgear are in

themselves a timeline of Mercedes-Benz interiors, installed where they can fit—

even if that leaves symbols cockeyed. Nowadays, you’ll rarely find so upright a

seating position and near-vertical windshield, which offers a commanding view.

That 5.5-liter V-8, borrowed from truly sporty AMG models, like the E63, pro-

pels the G63 with terrifying force. Handling is sure-footed and surprisingly de-

cent in the suburbs, where G63’s will live. But compromises abound. Twenty-inch

wheels make for an often-harsh ride; highway noise is ample.

Make no mistake though: Driving the G63 is a drug. While the gas pedal enables

physics-shearing acceleration, mashing it delivers a brutal, roaring boom from

the exhaust pipes mounted on each side of the truck. An epiphany arrives: “Holy

crap. I am Thor, God of Thunder.”

Even an impoverished octogenarian monk would drive the G63 with vulgar ar-

rogance. From a leather throne, you’ll be surveying the other motorists in mere

cars below, and passing anyone, any time, for any reason. You may find yourself

making U-turns wherever it pleases you or remarking that turn signals are for los-

ers. You may see a lot of your local traffic cops.

This isn’t how cars were in the good ol’ days, when boys were men and men were

James Coburn. It’s a million times better. Two days a week. —JUSTIN BERKOWITZ

The 108 square feet of

hand-cured and varnished

veneer inside the Bentley Flying

Spur.

Porsche’s optional leather-

covered AC- vent slats.

The built-in vacuum cleaner

in the new top-model Honda

Odyssey minivan.

The new Benz SL’s “Magic Vision

Control,” which

sprays windshield-washer fluid from

ports in the wipers to avoid

“overspray.”

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AND IF THE POLITICIANS HAVE THEIR WAY, THE SECURITY OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER WILL BE SERIOUSLY COMPROMISED. THE FOREMOST WRITER ON THE REBUILDING OF GROUND ZERO ASKS THE QUESTION: WHO WILL PROTECT THE BUILDINGS IN THE CROSSHAIRS?

P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O E W O O L H E A D

Clip, Save, Share. 141

II walked the World Trade Center memorial plaza not long ago as a

tourist—one of the eight million or so who’ve come since the plaza

opened on 9/11/11. It was noon on a Monday of tropical humidity and

fat rain; street vendors were hawking umbrellas along with the usu-

al schlock, and the smokers huddling under each building facade en

route to Ground Zero stank like wet mutts.

You’re not supposed to call it Ground Zero anymore. The phrase

is fine in reference to Hiroshima, its place of origin, but it bums

folks out here in downtown Manhattan. Not everyone, but the

real estate agents for sure, and plenty of the neighborhood resi-

dents and some of the bridge-and-tunnel commuters toiling here.

Whatever you call those sixteen acres, though, 9/11 remains fresh,

a daily memory. In Glen Ridge, the north-Jersey town I call home,

the tablet sitting in a square of shrubbery by the stairs to the N. Y. C.

train, chiseled with the names of the seven locals who never came

home that evening, is flanked by three American flags, suddenly

planted just after Osama bin Laden was bagged and buried at sea,

the one and only clear-cut battle won so far in a war of fog that

lifts and falls and lifts and falls again, a winding sheet forever ris-

ing from Ground Zero.

Likewise the Freedom Tower, which was officially branded 1 World

Trade Center in 2009 by the Port Authority of New York and New

Jersey, the supragovernmental agency running the major bridges

and tunnels and airports that connect the world to New York City.

The PA owns the World Trade Center, always has. Created in 1921

to forge an economic peace between two states bonded by mutual

dependency and hostility, it’s the embodiment of a quaint idea: You

can separate politics from power by appointing nonpoliticians from

each state to serve the region’s common good. It sort of worked, at

least until the PA entered the real estate business in the sixties, when

it seized these sixteen acres and built the Twin Towers—which had

zero to do with bridges, tunnels, or airports, and which took de-

cades to fill with paying tenants. Having learned nothing from the

past, the PA now boasts the planet’s priciest office tower—$4 billion

for 2.6 million square feet—standing where the Twins were truck-

bombed eight years before they were vaporized, a fact that prompt-

ed the PA to declare, in 2006, that in light of such a tragic history,

the PA would not site its own headquarters in its own crown jewel,

aka the Freedom Tower.

Despite the reverse-marketing mojo, The Wall Street Journal ran

a story the week before I visited the memorial about how tough it is

to get people to stop calling it the Freedom Tower. Whatever the im-

petus for this absurd attempt at rebranding—“It’s an office building

and not a memorial and not a monument,” moaned one of the real

estate mavens working with the Port to sign tenants—its utter fail-

ure is a rich tribute to George Pataki, who clocked twelve years as

governor of New York and vanished into the ether the very day he

left office, devoid of legacy beyond the name he bestowed upon the

skyscraper he’d hoped would prove his presidential timber. Pataki

came up with the Freedom Tower moniker in 2003, while he was

pledging that the building would be ready by 2006. If you’re a gam-

bler, the PA is now saying it’ll open the joint in early 2015.

Still, speaking as a tourist, not a guy who’s spent the past eight

years writing about the rebuilding, the

whole place looks fabulous. Seriously. The

memorial alone is eight acres, the beating

heart and open soul of the new trade center,

two vast pools, each bordered by parapets

with the names of the murdered cut from

their bronze, two wounds carved within the

1 World Trade

Center stretches to

the sky over New

York. In an uncertain

world, one thing’s for

sure: It’s not a ques-

tion of if but when.


enough to support the Twins,

and to create a concrete bath-

tub big enough to brace them

against the river’s push and keep

them dry. Bad enough, too, that

the Port Authority Trans-Hud-

son commuter railroad threads

through Ground Zero around the

clock and every day of the week.

Pataki’s plan—devised by an ar-

chitect who’d never built a build-

ing taller than four stories—put

the Freedom Tower at a spot clos-

er to the Hudson, at a point where

the train tracks converged, and a

mere twenty-five feet from West

Street, a six-lane highway. This

created quite the engineering

challenge: Crews had to repair

and reinforce the bathtub—three

feet thick—and engineers had to

devise a way to plant the footings

of the new tower around and be-

tween the tracks without shut-

ting down service. Preparing the

site took nine months. Meanwhile, on July 4,

2004, weeks before the Republican Nation-

al Convention in, yes, New York City, Gover-

nor Pataki held a ceremony at Ground Zero,

costarring with a twenty-ton block of gran-

ite etched with standard words of honor and

tribute to those who died here.

“Today we lay the cornerstone for a new

symbol of this city and this country, and of

our resolve to triumph in the face of terror,”

he said. “Today we build the Freedom Tower.”

You might think it odd, even worrisome,

The rebuilding of Ground

Zero has been an ugly fight

over every last detail. Every-

thing about the project—

from whether to rebuild at

all to the type of memorial to

the type of vegetation to be

planted—has been public-

ly adjudicated and, this be-

ing New York, at high vol-

ume. Except, that is, the

matter that has made this

city and this site a mag-

net for all the world and all

the world’s terrorists, too: its

openness, its welcoming na-

ture, its vulnerability to fu-

ture attack. And, of course,

the efforts to keep this new

global beacon secure. All of

that has been talked about

in secret. And those secret

talks resulted in, among oth-

er things, a thorough rede-

sign—from Daniel Libeskind’s

early design (top, scuttled in

2005 by the NYPD) to David

Childs’s more fortified—and

relocated—design.


F

footprints of the fallen Twins, two voids of

water falling thirty feet with a steady, whis-

pered roar that drowns out all other New

York City noise.

Across the plaza from the north pool,

fenced off, the Freedom Tower soars 1,776

feet—the number a smack-dab symbol that

made Pataki swoon. Fashioned as a mod-

ern obelisk, beveled on each corner, turn-

ing as it climbs, a spare and simple marker

and an object presence in a skyline ripped

empty of everything but loss: To see it—up

there—bent me backward, and I fumbled

with my phone to snap a photo. In doing

so, I stood my briefcase on a parapet, and

a guard stepped out of nowhere and asked

me to remove it.

I think he called me “sir”; I know that

I apologized and moved a few steps back

from the tower and set my briefcase on

the gray paving stones, and then I spot-

ted Robert Coll’s name among the others

on the panel where I’d stopped. He lived

just around the corner with his wife and

two small children and worked in the South

Tower, on the eighty-fourth floor, and died

right here on 9/11 at the age of thirty-five.

We didn’t know the family beyond a liter-

al nodding acquaintance, and not long af-

ter 9/11, his widow and the kids were gone,

and that was that.

But that is never only that, particularly not

in New York City. All around, under their

umbrellas, pushing strollers, hobbling on

canes, speaking tongues I’ve never heard,

hundreds of pilgrims from every pinprick

on the globe have joined here for an hour or

two. Last time I came here, a few weeks be-

fore its opening, the young architect who

designed it, Michael Arad, said he wanted

it to be an “urban park”—not only a memo-

rial but a place of community.

“It’s going to really be powerful once peo-

ple are a part of it,” he said. “Once people

come here, it’ll make this place alive again.”

Absolutely right. For all the scarred solem-

nity—the hush of water arcing forever down-

ward in the space where the Twin Towers

stood and fell; the found poetry and mortal

pain of three thousand names carved from

glowing bronze; the new tower, looming; the

weeping, sunless sky—for all of this, the city’s

pulse is throbbing here again. After so long—

years of pissant politicians mouthing bald-

faced lies, of siphoned dreams and wasted

dollars—New York City is a smaller world

now than ever, and an even softer target. In-

cluding right here.

First time I visited Ground Zero—June

2005—it was barren slab-on-grade seventy

feet below street level, Pataki’s pit. The gov-

ernor, ignoring the recommendation of his

appointed experts, had picked a rebuilding

“master plan” that placed the Freedom Tow-

er precisely at the worst possible location

on these sixteen acres. Bad enough that the

whole site sits only a few hundred feet from

the Hudson River—which is why the build-

ers of the old trade center were forced to dig

down seventy feet to reach bedrock strong

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I

T

that no one seemed to sense that it might

prove unwise to erect this colossal new sym-

bol of U. S. resolve and triumph a few yards

from a major thoroughfare abutting the same

site that had been hit by terrorists twice be-

fore. But the NYPD sure as shit took notice,

and tried reaching out to the Port Authori-

ty in August 2004.

In a letter sent to the PA, the then-NYPD

deputy commissioner for counterterrorism

outlined his objections to the Freedom Tow-

er’s proximity to West Street and asked for

a sit-down. In response, the Port Author-

ity . . . well, the PA, harrowed by the loss of

more than eighty of its own employees on

9/11—including its executive director and

thirty-seven members of its police force—nev-

er did respond to the NYPD. In early 2005,

when the media first caught wind of the mat-

ter, a Port spokesman claimed that the PA nev-

er received any such letter from the NYPD. Or

maybe it had, but it was somehow lost.

This wasn’t humdrum bureaucratic bull-

shit; this was the PA—and Pataki—telling

the city to drop dead. You’ll get these sixteen

acres when they pry them from our cold dead

hands—which, more or less, was precisely the

NYPD’s point. Stonewalled by the Port, the

NYPD met with the real estate developer who

held the lease on the World Trade Center, and

brought along consultants with no territorial

axes to grind. Their consensus was that an-

other attempted attack on the WTC over a

ten-year time span was a certainty.

George Pataki had no choice but to re-de-

clare victory. Yes, the Freedom Tower could

not safely be built as planned. Yes, a redesign

would cost the rebuilding effort many months

and millions of dollars. Yes, it was a huge em-

barrassment, not to mention an indictment of

the PA’s incompetence and dishonesty. And

yes, Pataki pledged on May 4, 2005, he was

looking ahead to “another magnificent design

that will once again inspire the nation and

serve as a fitting tribute to freedom.”

One swampy Friday morning in June 2006,

I watched as a crane operator yanked the cor-

nerstone onto a flatbed truck. There a crew

blanketed it with a dollar-store tarp, and away

it went, gone from Ground Zero forever. No

ceremony, no cameras, no PA press release—

and George Pataki was nowhere to be found.

The Freedom Tower as built is, per NYPD

recommendations, about one hundred feet

from West Street, and the concrete poured

WHAT MAY COME NEXT IS ANYBODY’S GUESS— BUT EVERY SO-CALLED TERRORISM EXPERT I’VE TALKED TO AGREES THAT, SOONER OR LATER,

to fortify its core is the strongest ever mixed.

But the most critical, fundamental part of

protecting the World Trade Center from ter-

rorist attack has little to do with engineer-

ing or architects. The 1993 truck-bomb blast

didn’t topple the North Tower—and had the

airlines heeded their security consultants

and anted up for stronger flight-deck door

locks back in the seventies, when their craft

were often hijacked, a 9/11 scenario could

never have unfolded. It’s too late to defend

Ground Zero against past attacks.

What may come next is anybody’s guess—

but every so-called terrorism expert I’ve

talked to agrees that, sooner or later, Ground

Zero will be targeted again.

“They’ve attacked it twice,” Peter Bergen

said in 2008. “And it seems a target in perpe-

tuity. Somebody will try something, even if

it’s some halfhearted attempt by somebody

merely inspired by Al Qaeda.”

Bergen’s known best as a CNN national-

security analyst, but his résumé also includes

stints at NYU’s Center on Law and Security

and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Govern-

ment. When I spoke with him about the re-

building of Ground Zero, I asked if he himself

would feel confident about its future safety.

“I wouldn’t work there at all,” he said. “But

that’s just my personal feeling.”

Personal indeed. Standing only a few yards

north of the Freedom Tower is a building

known as 7 World Trade Center, a fifty-two-

floor gem of an office tower—designed by

the same architect responsible for the Free-

dom Tower, David Childs—offering 1.7 mil-

lion square feet of office space. It opened

in May 2006, and each square foot is filled

with people who somehow don’t share Ber-

gen’s feeling, or don’t live their lives in fear.

That’s New York City, kids. Full of folks who

calculate their odds from dawn to dawn—

taxi? subway? local or express?—and whose

vigilance starts on the sidewalks. People still

arrive here every day with no money, no En-

glish, and no doubt that they’ll find a way to

survive and succeed. If eight years spent cov-

ering and pondering Ground Zero has taught

me anything worth calling wisdom, it boils

down to this: Our national response to 9/11

has been disastrous.

Think first about how useful 9/11 has been

to the politicians who trade in fear and pi-

ety, whose power at the federal level of our

government has grown vast enough to in-

clude torture, indefinite detention, secret

surveillance of the citizenry en masse ap-

proved by a secret court, and the program of

inflicting death by drone despite the collat-

eral damage, human and political.

I’m not suggesting any conspiracy to

bring down the World Trade Center beyond

that enacted by Al Qaeda. I’m not talking

about any black helicopters or Hollywood

fantasy. I’m referring to the damage done

to America not by terrorists but by our own

response to one horrific attack—which, by

the way, was but another version of what

people around the world have gone and still

go through. Gutting the values and princi-

ples that we like to think define us as an ex-

ceptional nation—you know, that whole Bill

of Rights deal—isn’t the response of a coun-

try confident in its freedom. It’s the cow-

ardice of a nation too fractured by fear to

face the truth about the human condition:

We’re always vulnerable—all of us, togeth-

er and alone.

It takes courage to accept that vulnerabil-

ity and not let it rule our lives, private and

public. That’s exactly what the rebuilt World

Trade Center demonstrates already, already

filled with people courageous enough to em-

brace life and liberty as a matter of fact, not

foofaraw. In short: Americans.

It’s just this plain and simple: Safety at

Ground Zero will primarily depend upon the

agency responsible for its day-to-day securi-

ty to plan and execute strategies of preven-

tion and response. That ain’t rocket science

or brain surgery; at the World Trade Center,

it’s far more challenging a task than either of

those things. That’s why it’s vital to review

the post-9/11 dustups between the Port Au-

GROUND ZERO WILL BE TARGETED AGAIN.

145


Nprecinct staffed by six hundred city police of-

ficers—making it the city’s largest precinct—

each trained in counterterrorism. The NYPD

would also design the overall scheme for se-

curing the WTC, and it would control access

to the site. The PAPD would be in charge

of security at the Freedom Tower and the

years-late PATH station, which, like the

Freedom Tower, will cost almost $4 billion,

nearly twice its initial price, by the time it fi-

nally opens, in 2015 or 2016.

It took months to hammer out the deal,

and doing so helped clear the logjam at

Ground Zero, where the rebuilding has long

been held hostage by the peculiarity of the

site’s relationship to the city. Like the Vati-

can, it is an entity both separate from New

York City and a literal, integral part of it. The

deal was announced in July 2008, after it

was approved by the Port Authority Board of

Commissioners, and signed the next month.

So it was quite a shock, more than four years

later, when Chris Christie, New Jersey’s bat-

tering-ram governor, vowed to a cheering

crowd that “never—not ever on my watch—

will there be any other police force who will

patrol the new World Trade Center other

than the Port Authority police.”

Somewhat less surprising—all right, much

less surprising—Christie, running for his

second term, was speaking to an audience

of Port Authority police at an event held to

announce that the PAPD union was official-

ly endorsing none other than Chris Christie.

That’s not New York City, kids. That’s New

Jersey.

thority and the NYPD—and to revisit the role

politicians have played, and will continue to

play, in deciding who guards Ground Zero.

Start here: In 2008, the Port Authority and

New York City negotiated an agreement to

give the NYPD primary control of Ground

Zero security instead of the Port Authori-

ty police, whose jurisdiction it had always

been. This arrangement made sense for rea-

sons obvious to anyone familiar with the city.

The PAPD is big—the forty-first-largest

police force in the U. S.—and its seventeen

hundred officers are paid far more than their

NYPD counterparts while working short-

er shifts. They police the airports, the bus

terminal, the bridges, and the seaports, and

over the course of decades they have earned

an ignoble reputation, to put it kindly. A Re-

publican candidate for New York City mayor

put it far more harshly this past May, when

he responded to a question about airport se-

curity by referring to the PAPD as “nothing

more than mall cops,” which immediately

triggered plenty of angry posturing by politi-

cians—nearly all of whom invoked the mem-

ory of the thirty-seven PAPD officers slain on

9/11—and speculation about whether the na-

tion’s mall cops were sufficiently organized

to sue for defamation.

The NYPD has about fifty thousand em-

ployees—more than the FBI—including up-

wards of thirty-four thousand uniformed

officers. It has focused on counterterror-

ism relentlessly and globally, with person-

nel stationed in Germany, France, and Israel.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly assured 60

Minutes that his department could, if neces-

sary, blow an airplane out of the sky, which

prompted New York’s mayor, Mike Bloom-

berg, when asked about Kelly’s comment, to

say the NYPD “has lots of capabilities that you

don’t know about and you won’t know about.”

This means of fighting terror—creating an

urban army complete with an intel arm that

has already abused its power by conducting

surveillance of citizens guilty of nothing more

than practicing Islam—surely raises profound

and urgent questions about what should and

must be done to balance liberty and securi-

ty and to cement civilian control of a military

force camouflaged as a police department.

Still, if you’re shuffling papers in your cubi-

cle at Ground Zero, such issues pale beside

the one question of paramount importance:

Who’ll do a better job protecting your ass?

That 2008 security deal reached by the

city and the PA answered that question. The

NYPD would create a World Trade Center

GUTTING THE VALUES THAT WE LIKE TO THINK DEFINE US AS AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION—YOU KNOW, THE WHOLE BILL OF RIGHTS DEAL—


ISN’T THE

RESPONSE OF

A COUNTRY

CONFIDENT IN

ITS FREEDOM.

Nature abhors a vacuum; politicians love

’em. Chris Christie took charge of New Jer-

sey from a rumpled suit containing a cipher

named Jon Corzine; Christie’s tag-team part-

ner in reweaponizing the Port Authority, New

York governor Andrew Cuomo, inherited his

big chair from David Paterson, a blind nonen-

tity who happened to be serving as lieuten-

ant governor when his boss, Eliot Spitzer, fled

Albany due to excessive whoremongering.

To men like Cuomo and Christie—insanely

ambitious politicians whose eyes are forever

on the next prize—the PA, including Ground

Zero, is little more than a means to a discrete

end: the acquisition of more power. This was

no less true of George Pataki, too, but he was

an amiable dunce. Both Cuomo and Christie

are far more calculating, and both struggle

to keep their meanness under wraps. Cuo-

mo cost himself a chance to become gover-

nor in 2002 when he made sport of Pataki’s

post-9/11 leadership by referring to him as

the guy who stood behind Rudy Giuliani and

“held the leader’s coat.” Christie isn’t nearly

that nice; I once saw him take loud umbrage at

and great delight in lambasting a high school

lad at a town-hall meeting for the sin of ask-

ing Christie to explain why the governor sent

his own children to private schools.

The traditional exercise of Port Authori-

ty power calls for each governor to appoint

six commissioners to its board. New Jer-

sey’s governor appoints the board chair, New

York’s names the executive director. All of

the above are almost always hacks and/or

cronies of one governor or the other. Board

meetings and minutes are public, but voting

is apparently discussed and arranged in ad-

vance and invariably unanimous. This sys-

tem works out swell for the politicians, PA

board members, and Ground Zero contrac-

tors. One New Jersey commissioner, who

just so happens to chair its World Trade Cen-

ter Redevelopment Subcommittee, also just

so happens to run an engineering firm that

just so happened to be in talks about getting

bought by one of those Ground Zero contrac-

tors, even as the board was awarding hun-

dreds of millions of dollars of work to said

contractor, which may help explain why said

New Jersey commissioner so frequently re-

cuses himself as the PA board unanimous-

ly approves contracts that smell like buck-

naked, balls-dangling conflicts of interest.

Which helps explain why the Port is slow-

ly—very, very slowly—building the most ex-

pensive train station in the history of the

world to service a projected 50,000 riders

per day, a number dwarfed by Penn Sta-

tion’s 600,000 daily riders—not to mention

the 750,000 who pass through Grand Cen-

tral. The new PATH station is so much more


Ithan a mere train station: It is the tribute paid

to New Jersey, the price of doing business,

the envelope packed with cash passed hand

to hand. Not everyone can run for governor,

but that needn’t mean that friends of friends

can’t wet their beaks.

Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo are

more than friends—they’re partners in the

business of what’s-in-it-for-me, and they

faced two obstacles at Ground Zero: New

York mayor Mike Bloomberg and the PA’s ex-

ecutive director, Chris Ward—who just hap-

pened to be the same two guys who nailed

down the Trade Center security deal in 2008.

Bloomberg’s other sins were numerous.

His NYPD spied on New Jerseyans. He’s

heading the 9/11 Museum, a crucial, cost-

ly part of the memorial. He ran the anniver-

sary ceremony on 9/11/11—when the plaza

opened—and forbade the politicians from

speechifying at the ceremony. Worst of all,

Bloomberg won and wielded power free of

political ideology or debt. He’s a billionaire

who bought his office, including an illegal

third term, and he seems to love not play-

ing nice with politicians he has no reason

to fear and doesn’t respect.

Bloomberg is doomed to obsolescence by

term limits, but all that meant to Christie and

Cuomo—two angry and impatient men—was

an exposed jugular waiting to be slit. Using

the PA as a straight edge and its cost as a

cover, they killed construction work at the

museum, which was scheduled to open on

9/11/12—when Michael Bloomberg would

still have held office and been able to take

public credit for it. The museum’s now due to

open in 2014—after Bloomberg departs. No

doubt Cuomo and Christie will host the cer-

emony, speak lovingly of the 9/11 dead and

our nation’s core values, and wallow in glory.

The crimes Chris Ward committed as the

PA’s executive director were manifold. He

was not a hack or crony, but he had expe-

rience working at the PA, and at City Hall,

and in the construction business. He holds a

graduate degree in theological studies from

Harvard. He is bright. He is articulate. He is

both pragmatic and visionary, and he is de-

void of political ambition. Naturally, Chris-

tie and Cuomo loathed him.

Ward was appointed to lead the PA by Da-

vid Paterson after Eliot Spitzer and his penis

resigned in 2008, when the rebuilding was

at its ugliest. The first thing he did was start

telling the truth—about budgets and time-

tables and the differences between a con-

struction job, which is what the World Trade

Center rebuilding was supposed to be, and

a cow that could be milked for endless cash

and political capital, which is what it had

long since become.

David Paterson had no political future or

Ground Zero legacy to worry over, so he gave

Ward power to operate as a CEO—to cut the

deals and red tape as necessary to plan and

execute the build-out of a new World Trade

Center. Ward negotiated with Freedom Tow-

er tenants-to-be, worked with the PATH sta-

tion’s architect to cut costs, showed up at

community-board meetings and union ral-

lies to explain and answer for the PA’s de-

cisions, and—most important of all—Ward

pledged that the PA would finish the memo-

rial plaza by the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

By the time he made good on that promise,

though, Chris Ward was a dead executive di-

rector walking, and everyone knew it, Ward

included. Bloomberg himself had asked Cuo-

mo to keep Ward on the job, which was the

kiss of death. Once Cuomo took office in

2011, he cut the lines between Ward and

the governor’s office. No meetings, phone

calls, e-mails, or dead mackerel wrapped in

newspaper and tied with twine. No replies

to any of Ward’s attempts to communicate.

Asked by the media about Ward’s freeze-out,

Cuomo’s people simply put out a terse deni-

al that the governor planned to dump Ward

“at this time.” Not long after the tenth anni-

versary of 9/11, Chris Ward announced his

resignation, a week after an announcement

that governors Christie and Cuomo were or-

dering a $2-plus-million ass-covering audit

of the Port Authority. This past June, the PA

ordered yet another audit—to investigate the

billing practices of a consulting firm hired

by the PA to perform the previous PA audit.

Meanwhile, the 2008 security deal be-

tween the Port Authority and the NYPD—

struck by Ray Kelly and Chris Ward and

signed by both men—sleeps with the fish-

es, wrapped around Pataki’s cornerstone.

In fifty or a hundred years, who’ll know? Hell,

the old WTC broke ground in 1966 and never

made it to forty. I’ve come to love this place,

nastiness included. Without all of that—the

political warfare, the money-grubbing, the

perversions of honor and betrayals of trust—

well, I’m unsure what you’d have here, but it

damn well wouldn’t be New York City, the

version of America I cling to and love best,

where all the forces of hope, harmony, and a

hot knish are still somehow in play, and flesh

still comes in every color and costume, right

here and right now—which just happens to

be the only time and place we ever truly have.

Right now, right here, you’ve got hundreds

of pilgrims on line, waiting to get into the me-

morial. We’re on a public street, a New York

City street, a shuffling bunch of bull’s-eyes

to anyone who may have bought a rifle and

shells upstate and driven to Ground Zero

for a little headline hunting. Which is why

the NYPD has a force of two-hundred-plus

right here right now, keeping an eye on the

place around the clock.

It’s anybody’s guess what’ll happen when

Mike Bloomberg leaves office, or when Ray

Kelly follows him out the door. Nobody knows

how the battle over official Ground Zero juris-

diction will play out—nobody’s paying much

attention, what with A-Rod’s PED woes and

all the excitement of Eliot Spitzer and Antho-

ny Weiner, the dynamic duo of dick, running

for office again. But that’s New York, too. The

city that never sleeps also has a serious atten-

tion-deficit disorder.

Meanwhile, what better place to be? This

plaza, swept by rain and gouged by history.

This town of endless tumult and tumbling

dice. America: half preening oaf, half huck-

ster, always at the table, all in. We’re shoot-

ing craps down here, everyone’s invited—and

the only losers are the fools who think they

have anything to fear, or to lose. ≥

MEANWHILE, THE 2008 SECURITY DEAL BETWEEN THE PORT AUTHORITY AND THE NYPD—STRUCK BY RAY KELLY AND CHRIS WARD—

SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES,

WRAPPED AROUND

PATAKI’S CORNERSTONE.

150150 E S Q U I R E � M O N T H 2 1

IN A LAND FAR, FAR AWAY, CHRIS HEMSWORTH—

BOX-OFFICE STAR, MATINEE IDOL, SUPERHERO INCARNATE, LEGITIMATE ACTOR—IS SITTING ON THE

DECK, NO SHOES, EATING CHEESE AND FRUIT SERVED TO HIM BY HIS HOT WIFE, DRINKING A BEER, LISTENING TO

THE BREEZE, WONDERING IF MAYBE HE COULD AFFORD THIS PLACE. FUCKER.

BY TOM CHIARELLA

SEPTEMBER/PAGE 150

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHIAS VRIENS-MCGRATH


white across the black surface of the Pa-cific, standing in what surfers call a soul arch, upright and sure, pulling a sloping weave between the kooks and the groms alike, who look up at him with reverence, hair snapping behind him like

a flag. Improbably, he takes the board all the way to the beach, gliding

to a stop, where he steps off, unclips his leash, and jogs up on the sand

to shake hands.

You been at this all day?

“It’s Saturday!” he shouts, taking a last look at the roaring surf. “What

else would I want to do?”

NAH. IT NEVER HAPPENED. Hemsworth doesn’t

surf on this Saturday. He doesn’t even leave the house. Never puts on

shoes, not once in seven hours, even though he talks about surfing a

lot and I hint that it would be great to do something besides sit on the

deck. Instead he lounges above a deafening Pacific surf, drinks one

single beer, picks at the plate of cheese, figs, and shelled pistachios his

beautiful wife set out for him. Inside, then out, several times. Through

it all—baby tending, furniture arranging, beer fetching, the ordering

of pizza, hours of this and that—no shoes.

He is standing against the glassed-in railing, watching the sun drop

into the ocean, and I ask, Do you worry?

“Worry?”

His surprise at the question is genuine. Broadly speaking, Chris

Hemsworth—most widely known as Thor, superhero star of fran-

chise movies but soon to be more fully appreciated as the leading man

in Ron Howard’s Formula One movie, Rush—does not worry. Every-

at the beach. Chris Hemsworth is a black speck on the horizon, surfing well past the point break, a mile, maybe two, off the coast. He can be seen clearly through the best binoculars. He’s out there looking for a good set of waves in between the choppy- chop, tearing into some monster shoulders, working his cut-backs just before the waves close out. Once he notes the time, sees the distant glint of the binocular lenses staring out at him, he starts in to shore. From that distance, he works a serpentine path, the rails of his board cutting a shimmering trail of blue-

thing about him sends a low-frequency, all-good signal to the world.

This may be a matter of being Australian, being an Avenger, being fa-

ther of a one-year-old. On the other hand, if he’s missed something,

if he should be worried, he wants to know.

“About what?”

A glance at his bare feet. Splinters? Broken glass?

This makes him laugh, deep-throated and musical. The guy laughs

like he’s gulping water—the sound seems to come from the ocean. You

can see why they made him Thor: because Chris Hemsworth laughs

like a god. A god who laughs a lot. And the answer, when it comes to

worry and Hemsworth?

“No. Far from it.”

It’s a cool day, there by the water. A plane drags a heavy banner

through the sky. Something about fish sandwiches and sea views,

$14. Seabirds descend into the distant waves. It’s windy, and Hems-

worth, arms pinioned against the railing, is wearing only a thread-

bare T-shirt and jeans.

His wife, Elsa Pataky, the Spanish actress and featured player in the

latest installments of The Fast and the Furious, leans out the sliding-

glass door, asks if we’re hungry.

Hemsworth turns and smiles,

a man legitimately happy right

where he is. He pulls his hair

into a ponytail, lets it go. He’s

not fidgety, just unencumbered

by the day. “Right,” he says. “I

could eat a little.”

This leads to the aforemen-

tioned Manchego, dried fruit,

and nuts on the ocean deck. The

house, on the beach in Malibu,

is a rental. Or a loaner. Whatev-

er. Hemsworth says only that it belongs to friends. “We couldn’t af-

ford this,” he says, which seems hard to believe, though the guy nev-

er seems to prevaricate, let alone lie. Just then he looks around as if

he’d never seen the place before, or at least considered it. “I don’t

think so, anyway.” He and Pataky lived the last two years in London

while he filmed Rush and finished Thor: The Dark World. “We have an

apartment in Santa Monica,” he says. “But mostly that’s turned into a

storage space for suitcases outfitted for different parts of the world.”

There is the matter of his accent, which is neither the abstractly Brit-

ish, delicately commanding growl of Thor nor that of the American

kid with the letterman’s jacket he played in The Cabin in the Woods. It’s

Australian, mushy and rich, with the long vowel utterances. When he

says “while” it sounds almost like “whale.” He ends a lot of sentences

with “right?” And he’s not beyond calling you mate every now and

then. The effect makes him seem far younger than his thirty years. It

raises the volume on his affability. The kid can absorb almost any ob-

servation, any snipe from an outsider, without taking it personally.

Tell him that Thor, frankly, is a self-serious twat—worse in the com-

ics than in the movie, but still—and he laughs joyously. He doesn’t care

what any one person thinks about Thor. It’s the sum total that matters.

“You talk to the comic-book fans, people who’ve been there since

the beginning—you know, since the sixties—and you realize the reli-

gious significance of this thing,” he says. “And there is a kind of work

that follows. You do your research. You listen and learn what you can.

But then you let go. Eventually you’re down to it. You gotta make this

guy your own. The challenge in the first installment was this fish-out-

of-water quality, this naivete about everything that makes up earth.

That was a familiar dynamic to me. A Crocodile Dundee thing, real-

ly. A stranger arrives at your shore. He’s in foreign territory, out of

SH

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.

TWENTY YEARS AGO, HE WAS LIVING IN AN

ABORIGINAL VILLAGE.

FIVE YEARS AGO,

HE WAS ON A SOAP.

TODAY HE IS THOR.

> He was born August 11, 1983, in Melbourne, Australia.

> For part of his child-hood, he lived in a small Aboriginal com-munity in the North-ern Territory, where his parents worked on cattle stations. The nearest town was four hours away. Hemsworth worked on his parents’ farm and later took con-struction jobs.

> He spent three years on the Austra-lian soap opera Home and Away, a show that also helped launch the careers of Naomi Watts and Heath Ledger.

> While on the show, his character, Kim Hyde, suffered from a drug addiction and managed to live through a car crash, a helicopter crash, and a fire. Hems-worth won a Logie (an Australian Emmy) for his performance.

> He appeared on the Australian ver-sion of Dancing with the Stars in 2006 and made it halfway through the competi-tion. He was the sixth of ten contestants to be eliminated.

> He has trained in muay Thai, an an-cient Thai martial art.

> For his role as Thor, he built twenty pounds of muscle—so much that his cos-tume no longer fit.

> A prop version of Thor’s hammer—the weapon he used in the film—is now at his parents’ home in Melbourne.

> To get his hammer swing right, Hems-worth practiced chopping wood and studied Mike Tyson.

THINGS ABOUT

CHRISHEMSWORTHTHAT ARE TRUE

155

as an absence of expectation. Life on a beach in Malibu, where beau-

ty is an everyday construct, where fame is cultivated, generally seems

foreign to the rest of us—unimaginable because all of that is so far

outside our day-to-day self-conception. But you look at Chris Hems-

worth and you think, Things simply happen to celebrities just as they

do to the rest of us—new job, big promotion, a happy marriage, a

baby—just faster and with more volume. Same events, same rituals,

but bigger. Not more important, mind you. Just bigger.

Twenty years ago, he was living in an aboriginal village, he and his

brothers the only white kids in sight. Ten years ago, he was surfing and

looking for acting work in Melbourne. Five years ago, he had just fin-

ished punching a clock on an Australian soap opera. But fame quickens

everything. Suddenly, Hemsworth already looks like someone with

a career’s worth of success: his face on billboards around the globe,

his body thickened and slimmed at the whim of others, his gorgeous

wife serving him cheese, a baby that wants him hungrily. As he looks

over the Pacific Ocean from a Malibu deck, his shoes are off. He’s in a

land most people, even most actors, don’t know the name of. He might

name it, but he’d be guessing again. Schwartzaldahelm. No shoes in

Schwartzaldahelm, no shoes at all. And you can’t let it bother you.

Hemsworth doesn’t.

It’s Saturday, on the PCH, which means Chris Hemsworth is willing

to open up the engines a little to let the speed nestle into his belly as he

downshifts and passes a Mercedes in a little drift move he learned while

filming his last movie. At every light, he’s wired to the tree; at every dog-

leg, he’s into the turn megadeep. He’s driving a stepped-down Cama-

ro, fresh from the airport rental. But he is killing it still. Driving until he

forgets the week behind him, driving to remember the moment he’s in.

Pretty soon, he’s all the way to Santa Barbara, where he hairpins round

a gas station and starts back, throttling deeper in the guts of the roar so

he can do it again. He is absorbed. “It’s Saturday!” he says. “What’s bet-

ter than a long, fast drive by the ocean? Doing it twice!”

YEAH, THAT NEVER HAPPENED EITHER.

I ask him, Do you even like driving?

Hemsworth purses his lips. “I grew up in a culture of motorbikes,”

he says. “So I like racing just fine. Quite a lot, actually. That was when

I was a boy in Australia. And I never really made the jump to cars

after that.” At this very moment, there’s a car outside—American

muscle, airport-rented, made for driving, brought here special so

Hems worth could drive, under the presumption that he might want

WHAT CHRIS HEMSWORTH DID BEFORE HE WAS THIRTY Clockwise, from top left: Cash, which you may have missed; on his way to a bad weekend with Kristen Connolly in The Cabin in the Woods; Thor in The Avengers; as seventies-era Formula One driver James Hunt in Ron Howard’s forthcoming Rush; with Kristen Stewart in Snow White & the Huntsman (he’s the huntsman); and in a dreary Red Dawn remake last year.


his element, with his own set of tools. Very

powerful in one world, stripped of that pow-

er in the next.”

And the second Thor, does it maintain that

mind-set of naivete and discovery?

Hemsworth raises an eyebrow. “Well, it’s

set in a lot of places. Let’s see. It’s on earth

and Asgard again. But in other realms, too,”

he says. “He’s got some new battles, good vil-

lains. So it’s a different dynamic set in . . .” He

raises his fingers and throws up air quotes.

“Earth and other realms.” Just self-serious

enough to make him smile. “Like, there’s this

other place. Let me think. I can’t remember

the name. What was it?”

It doesn’t matter.

“No, give me a second.”

Really, no worries.

“I don’t know. Schwartzaldahelm, maybe.”

Schwartzaldahelm?

Hemsworth laughs. “It’s like that. I don’t remember.” He says it

again. “Schwartzaldahelm.” He may have just made it up. Or it’s close.

In any case, the thought of it—Schwartzaldahelm, either the place or

the word—makes him laugh.

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, you have to remind yourself who

he is. This guy. Hemsworth. He could be any young guy a million

crunches into a lifetime of ab work. But make no mistake: He’s got a

mug. It’s a good face, but not a famous face. Not yet. At the moment,

he’s in some middle ground between being a recognizable Thor and a

hardworking mere mortal. He’s big but not overly large, light-haired

though not exactly blond, likes sunglasses but is not afraid to show

his eyes. Hemsworth. First seen by most moviegoers as Captain Kirk’s

father in the opening minutes of the 2009 J. J. Abrams Star Trek re-

boot. But his features were rounder then, his hair in a short military

coif. “I got to crash one spaceship into another,” he says, “which is un-

deniably fun. At one point, I was trying to react to the moment of im-

pact, kind of throwing my hands in the air, expecting to be sent spin-

ning forward. J. J. came up to me and said, ‘That’s great. Now let’s try

it with a little less flight and a little more fucked.’ So that’s what you

see in that moment, me doing my best ‘fucked.’ Now, that’s acting right

there.” With that, he throws back a handful of pistachios.

It’s possible he’s not all that familiar because you just plain skipped

Thor, or don’t give a shit about Thor, or because the movies he’s starred

in so far have been aimed at audiences largely presumed to equate

raw handsomeness with talent—teenagers and men who post to chat

boards from their seats in theaters. It may be that his ascent has been

too swift, and you haven’t been paying attention to your summer mov-

ies. He’s likely to come to your full attention in Rush as the seventies-

era Formula One driver James Hunt, who battled the ineffable Niki

Lauda for the Grand Prix championship in 1976. And he’s still got

three more Thors in him—one in the title role, two as the only Norse

member of the Avengers.

“Thor is large,” he says. “For that I had to add some muscle, which

hasn’t been all that hard so far. I like training just fine, thanks. But to

play a Formula One driver, I had to drop quite a bit of that. You know,

slim it down. First time I looked at a Formula One car in person, I just

stared at the cockpit, figuring I’d never get in there. The drivers wear

the whole car like a tight-fitting suit. So I just started training different-

ly, shedding all that Thor. I’ve come to see size as just a kind of prop.”

Hemsworth. Nothing moves fast for him. It is not a calm so much


to show a little of what he learned filming Rush.

Does he want to take a drive?

He shrugs. “We might do that,” he says, as if regarding the dis-

tant possibility of rain. But it’s clear he doesn’t. “Maybe later, right?”

The afternoon trips along. The baby naps. A friend, visiting from

Australia, steps out of the haze of jet lag to say hello. Pataky sits at the

table and tells tales about The Fast and the Furious. Just now she’s on

the cover of Women’s Health, turned at her hips, with

the words G R E AT B U T T ! and a giant red arrow pointing

to that very butt. She signs one for me, slides it across

the table, and asks, “What do you think?”

The autograph? The butt? The cover shot? Who

wants to answer that? Hemsworth, his hands folded

behind his head, seems to understand. “It’s great,” he

says, gracious and aware. “It’s a great butt, honey.” She

is pleased to hear it, particularly from him.

“Good,” she says. “Very good answer.”

A handful of pistachios again.

He’s at an age, this one, having done his service to a

movie franchise or two, having some initial grasp on

his look as a grown man, at which he might be able to

pick his own projects, to do what he likes, to start to

show himself as a serious actor. Rush certainly repre-

sents a step in that direction, as does the Michael Mann

thriller he has lined up behind it. There’s a kind of ac-

tor who tells you his dream project would be a thinky

art construct about the loss of innocence. Not Hems-

worth—not necessarily, anyway. He seems more inter-

ested in studying his component role in a movie than

in the film’s place in the firmament of cinema history.

“I remember being in high school, every week I had

a different idea about what I wanted to do. One week

it was Ah, I’m gonna be a doctor. The next it was I’m

bound to be a professional sports player—you know, Aus-

sie football and that stuff. Then I’d want to be a police

officer. A lawyer. They were all elevated ideas to me,

of me, in some way. Exaggerated conditions of what I

wanted to be. Or of where I wanted to be. I can remem-

ber watching Lord of the Rings and being truly regret-

ful that I wasn’t a being in that world.”

You mean that you weren’t in the film?

“No, I mean that I didn’t live there. In Middle-earth.”

WHEN IT GETS DARK OUTSIDE, pizza is or-

dered. This is Hemsworth’s Saturday. Same as it ever

was, you can tell. Probably very much like the Satur-

days he spent crashed on friends’ couches upon arriv-

ing in the States. Probably something like the Saturdays he spent with

Pataky in London. Probably like last Saturday.

Between Saturdays, he’s been shooting for weeks and training. For

Cyber, the Michael Mann movie, he’s getting tutored in keyboard

speed typing and talking like someone from Chicago. He’s lining up

time for the second Avengers, time to beef up yet again for the role of

the wing-headed demigod. No matter. It’s his job. And it’s clear: He

works. Time passes. He’s becoming visible, an actor to deal with. He

does not change, however. He’s not about to drive a car simply be-

cause I brought a car.

He orders the pies, fetches some beer, and places one in front of ev-

ery person at the kitchen table. Pataky doesn’t touch hers. She stands

and picks up, wipes the counters. The Australian friend, a former box-

er, walks us through his six-fight professional career. “It wasn’t long,”

he says, “and I wasn’t good enough.”

Hemsworth holds up a beer. “I don’t know about that,” he says. “He

was tougher than he lets on. A lot tougher than I ever was.”

Pataky’s mother, visiting to help with the baby, steps into the kitch-

en and Elsa speaks to her in Spanish. Hemsworth doesn’t speak Span-

ish. Or Italian. Or Romanian, like his wife. “I can’t learn,” he says, and

it seems like this marks him as a young guy, the unwillingness to learn

for the sake of his wife. “I have tried,” he says, “but it’s a

long record of failure.” In this, he is Australian, which is

to say willing to acknowledge his shortcomings while

remaining unapologetic for them. Confident about what

he can do. What he can’t do does not interest him.

“It’s hard to live in more than one language unless

you grow up that way,” Pataky says. “The part I don’t

like is being the only person in the room who is groping

for words, like . . . What was it last week? There was the

word about the gardens? I just didn’t know it.”

“Gazebo,” Hemsworth says.

“Gazebo!” the boxer intones.

“Yes, gazebo,” Pataky says. “This is the frustration.

Gazebo.”

“The frustration is she knows more than I do,” Hems-

worth says. “But I know a gazebo, so I look pretty good.

It’s all backwards.”

AFTER PIZZA, HEMSWORTH heads to the

garage, to show off some new boxing gear. “I could

pound on you all day if you were wearing this stuff,” he

says, “and it wouldn’t feel like a beating to you.” Seems

doubtful, truly, when he’s standing right in front of you.

Hemsworth has some pipes.

He opens the garage door to the night, revealing the

Camaro I’ve brought there for his driving pleasure.

Does he want to take a spin?

“We could do that,” he says, nodding, circling the car

while rubbing his chin. “But I’d need some shoes.” He

says this as if he doesn’t have any.

Why all this hesitation?

“I don’t really like driving,” he says. “It’s just not what

I do naturally.”

Hemsworth. He doesn’t drive. Doesn’t wear shoes.

What does come naturally?

“Surfing,” he says without a moment’s hesitation.

“I’d nearly always rather be surfing.”

Well, give me a look.

He shakes his head sadly. “There’s nothing doing out

there right now. Besides, it’s night.”

No, show me your board. Let me see your setup.

Hemsworth pricks up his ears. “Oh, absolutely,” he says. And he

turns toward the well-lit maw of his garage to show off his board and

the new boxing gear. He even runs a little, in those same bare feet,

over the sharp and nasty gravel.

It’s Saturday, so Hemsworth boxes. In his garage. With his best friend

from high school. Music—Pantera—throbbing through speakers. The

guy is suited up in a bright yellow foam suit and helmet, calling out the

shots—jab, jab, hook, uppercut. Hemsworth hits hard enough to hurt the

trainer, even with the protective gear. Every now and then he throws in

a side kick for good measure. He could do this all day. It’s Saturday, so

he might lift afterwards. Then spar with his wife. Maybe surf a little at

dusk. He can do whatever he wants. ≥

Chris Pine, 33, played Kirk in Star Trek

(2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness. Looks

a little like Chris Hemsworth.

Chris Evans, 32, played Captain America in The

Avengers. Looks a little like Chris

Hemsworth.

Chris Evert, 58, won 21 grand-slam titles.

Looks a little like Chris Hemsworth.

Liam Hemsworth, 23, starred in The

Hunger Games. Looks a little like

Chris Hemsworth.

PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT

CHRISHEMSWORTH


Now is the time to take the next step and

elevate the stakes just a little bit higher. To

try on a jacket or shirt, or a pair of pants

or shoes, that we’d previously consid-

ered off-limits—double-breasted, mole-

skin, monk-strap—and give it an honest

shot. To switch up our daily routine and

swap cords or flannels for our usual chi-

nos (or vice versa), or tailored separates for

our usual suits (or vice versa), or appeal-

ing patterns for our usual solids (or vice

versa). To keep up with the ever-expand-

ing wonders of our time (made-to-mea-

sure services out the waz; innovation, ex-

perimentation, and exploration unbound)

and make use of them as needed. And to

make one extra choice a day, one deliber-

ate and determined choice, that will set us

apart from others.

We could stock up on blazers. We are

living in a golden age of stand-alone sport

coats (page 166), with a variety of options

and opportunities unimaginable just a

few years ago.

We could forsake complication in fa-

vor of simplicity. For the man who finds

comfort in blacks, grays, or darkest navys,

there is a new kind of dark suit (page 172)

that is textured and varied and anything

but a downer.

Or we could carry on resetting our re-

spective lines in the sand. Unexpected

colors, big patterns, and textured cloths

await the confident (and curious) this

fall, and with a little guidance (page 158),

an all-of-the-above approach to getting

dressed will take you far.

Day by day. Choice by choice. That

is how great style is developed and ex-

pressed, and that is how we take the next

step. Your journey begins now, and there’s

no telling how far you’ll go.

157

The average American man is better dressed today than at any point in recent memory. This is a bold statement, and we can’t really

prove it, but everywhere we look, we’re all sharper fits and smarter choices and easy, well-earned con-fidence. We finally grew up and started dressing like the men we always wanted to be, and for the first time in a long time, we’re wearing clothes the way they’re meant to be worn. With appreciation. And respect. And a pleasing, surprising sensation that can some-times feel like fun. Here’s the thing, though. (Yes, there is a thing. There is always a thing.) We can all do a little better. We’ve spent the last three, four, five years adjusting our comfort zones and invest-ing in clothes of quality and character, and now is not the time to let that momentum sputter and stall.

P R E S E N T S

J U S T A N O T H E R D AY I N K I C K - A S S C I T Y

You feel like playing it safe with everyday clothes? Us neither.

Page 158

T H E G O L D E N A G E O F S P O R T C O AT S

So many good options, so many big opportunities.

How not to waste them.Page 166

T H E D A R K S U I T R I S E S

And there ain’t nothin’ gloomy or sober or downbeat about it.

Page 172

THE

NEXT STEP A CELEBRATION, AND EXHORTATION, IN THREE PART S


ANY MAN CAN TAKE SMALL STEPS TOWARD A MORE DISTINCTIVE PERSONAL

STYLE. BUT IF YOU WANT TO TAKE A GIANT LEAP, THERE IS NO END TO THE SURPRISING

COLORS, PATTERNS, AND TEXTURES ARRIVING IN STORES RIGHT NOW.

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y T O M O B R E J C

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN

ESQ. STYLE

THE NEXT

STEP

Wool-cashmere-and-silk coat ($3,795), two-button cashmere jack-

et ($3,795), and cotton shirt ($435) by Ermenegildo Zegna; cashmere

tie ($60) by Massimo Dutti; cotton trousers ($495) by Marc Jacobs;

leather shoes ($700) by Church’s; wool scarf ($245) by Tod’s;

leather-and-cashmere gloves ($268) by John Varvatos.

WHY IS THIS MAN WEARING

SO MANY LAYERS? COULD BE

BECAUSE HE’S FACING ONE OF

FALL’S KINDA HOT/KINDA COLD

DAYS. OR COULD BE THAT HE

KNOWS THAT EACH ITEM MAKES

A BOLD STATEMENT. PROBABLY

A LITTLE BIT OF BOTH.

633E S Q S T Y L E

TIP NO.

Three-button wool-silk-and-cashmere

jacket ($2,785), cashmere vest

($1,495), and cot-ton jeans ($550) by Brunello Cucinelli;

cotton shirt ($690) by Bottega Veneta;

wool pocket square ($125) by Isaia.

ESQ. STYLE

THE NEXT

STEP

161

Double-breasted wool jacket ($599) and wool trousers ($279) by Tommy Hilfiger; cotton shirt ($395) by Isaia; wool-and-silk tie ($15) by the Tie Bar; leather monk-straps ($1,120) by Santoni; cotton socks ($35) by Bresciani; steel Series 800 watch ($1,695) by Movado.

IT TAKES NEITHER COUR-

AGE NOR COJONES

TO WEAR ONE OF THE

SMALLER-SCALE

PATTERNS MAKING THE

ROUNDS THESE DAYS,

BUT TO PULL OFF A BIG

GRAPHIC PRINT LIKE THIS

PRINCE OF WALES CHECK

FROM TOMMY HILFIGER?

AND TO WEAR IT WITH

DOUBLE-MONK-STRAP

LOAFERS? THIS IS AN ACT

OF AGGRESSION ON A

GLOBAL SCALE. SOME-

BODY CALL THE U. N.

582E S Q S T Y L E

TIP NO.


Double-breasted wool-silk-and-camel-hair coat ($2,700), double-breasted wool jacket ($1,630), and wool trousers ($450) by Canali; wool turtleneck sweater ($148) by Ted Baker London; steel Navitimer 1461 watch ($11,005) by Breitling.

AN

Y M

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TY

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TIP N

O.

Double-breasted cashmere coat

($2,895), two-but-ton wool-and-alpaca jacket ($1,395), cot-ton shirt ($125), and cotton jeans ($185)

by Polo Ralph Lauren; lizard belt ($1,405) by

Brunello Cucinelli.

ESQ. STYLE

THE NEXT

STEP

163

Two-button wool-silk-and-cashmere jacket ($595) and

cotton corduroy trou-sers ($145) by Boss;

cotton rugby shirt ($175), Gant by

Michael Bastian.

THINK OF TEXTURE AS

TRACTION FOR THE EYE: THE

GREATER THE VARIETY OF

CLOTHS ON YOUR PERSON

(COTTON CORDUROY RUBBING

WALES WITH CASHMERE, WOOL-

AND-SILK BLENDS BRUSHING

UP AGAINST COTTON TWILLS),

THE MORE LIKELY YOU’LL HOLD

SOMEONE’S ATTENTION.

312E S Q S T Y L E

TIP NO.

ESQ. STYLE

THE NEXT

STEP

165

Double-breasted wool-and-silk coat ($3,825), two-button wool-and-cashmere jacket ($3,195), cashmere turtleneck sweater ($900), and cotton trousers ($595) by Isaia; leather shoes ($690) by Santoni.

FOR STORE INFORMATION SEE PAGE 212. GROOMING BY CARMEL BIANCO FOR RAY BROWN.


The Golden Age of Sport Coats

T H E

N E X T S T E P

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

This page: Two-button wool jacket ($825) by L.B.M. 1911. Op-

posite, clockwise from top left: Two-button wool-and-silk jacket

($3,295) and cotton pocket square ($125) by Isaia. Double-

breasted wool-blend jacket ($1,450) by Boglioli; leather

gloves ($195) by Thomas Pink. Two-button wool jacket ($995)

by Thomas Pink; glasses ($240) by Gucci. Two-

button wool-cotton- and-cashmere

jacket ($2,345) by Ravazzolo.

167

O R B L A Z E RS. O R JAC K E T S. O R W H AT E V E R YO U WA N T TO CA L L T H E STA N D -A LO N E

TA I LO R E D E S S E N T I A L S T H AT H AV E B E C O M E T H E M OST V E R SAT I L E P L AY E R S I N A

M A N’S C LOS E T. W I T H I N F I N I T E VA R I E T I E S B E YO N D YO U R BAS I C N AV Y B LU E , W I T H

O P T I O N S AT E V E RY P R I C E A N D F O R E V E RY S E N S I B I L I T Y, T H E R E I S N O E N D TO

WHAT YOU CAN FIND IN STORES THIS FALL. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFFREY WESTBROOK

T H E

N E X T S T E P

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E


1. Three-button hemp-and-cashmere jacket ($1,395) by Boss; nubuck gloves ($128) by Coach. 2. Three-button wool jacket ($498) by Brooks Brothers; wool pocket square ($165) by Brunello Cucinelli. 3. Two-button wool jack-et ($920) by CH Carolina Herrera; sunglasses ($550) by Oliver Peoples. 4. Two-button wool-and-cashmere jacket ($675) by Theory. 5. One-button wool-and-cashmere jacket ($1,200), Black Sail by Nautica; wool scarf ($120) by Oliver Spencer. 6. Three-button cashmere-and-silk jacket ($6,495) by Kiton.

21

3

4

5

6

TEN YEARS AGO, back when a man had his suits on one end of his

closet and his business-casual gear on the other, he probably had one

good sport coat that he wore only when he didn’t know what else to

wear. It was a backup, a just-in-case, a navy-blue afterthought with

wobbly gold buttons. That began to change when our approach to

style began to change—when we started to think and care more about

how we dressed; when we began mixing casual with formal, expen-

sive with inexpensive, and jeans and chinos with everything—and

before long, a good sport coat wasn’t just something we threw on:

It was the layer that set the tone for, and in many ways defined, the

rest of what we were wearing, and with our new appreciation for

sport coats came a demand for variety. We discovered new brands

(mostly from Italy) that excelled in the art of the unlined blazer. We

embraced new patterns, textures, and colors. And we recognized

that even in the relatively safe confines of our beloved navy blue (see

right), there is plenty of room to experiment.

T H E R E A R E

S O M A N Y O P T I O N S

B E YO N D B A S I C

N A V Y

B L U E

169

1

1

2

3

2

43

6 7

1. Two-button wool-and-silk jacket ($328) by Massimo Dutti. 2. Two-button wool jacket ($575) by Ted Baker London; modal-and-cashmere pocket square ($108) by Etro. 3. Two-button wool-and-cashmere jacket ($1,525) by Etro.

1. Two-button wool jacket ($750) by the Men’s Store Bloomingdale’s; sunglasses ($395) by Tod’s. 2. Two-button cotton-velvet jacket ($349) by Tommy Hilfiger; silk pocket square ($100) by Brioni. 3. Two-but-ton polyester-and-viscose jacket ($245) by Hugh & Crye. 4. Two-but-ton wool jacket ($398) by Banana Republic; cashmere scarf ($168) by Paul Stuart. 5. Two-button wool-polyester-and-cashmere jacket ($995) by Belvest; sunglasses ($470) by Oliver Peoples. 6. Three-button wool jacket ($607) by Oli-ver Spencer; leather gloves ($545) by Giorgio Armani. 7. Three-button wool jacket ($568) by J. Crew; wool scarf ($267) by Paul Stuart.

5

The two-button sport coat

with a deep-V closure has

long been the go-to configu-

ration for most guys, but the

virtues of the three-button va-

riety are many. It’s decided-

ly not the go-to, for starters,

giving it some built-in distinc-

tion, and its higher closure

puts the emphasis on the jack-

et’s cloth (like this bold check)

rather than on the underlying

shirt and necktie. Button the

top two buttons for the full ef-

fect, or button the middle for

a milder one, but never, ever

button the bottom one. You

are not in the NBA, no mat-

ter how many fantasy leagues

you’ve been in.

In Praise

of the Third

Button

Three-button wool jacket

($2,245) by Prada.

T H E

F O R M I D A B L E

L A P E L

T H E E XT R A

1 0 P E RC E N T

T E X T U R E I S W H AT S E PA R AT E S

T H E S P O RT C OAT

F RO M T H E SU I T C OAT.

T H E M O R E O F I T,

T H E B E T T E R.


1. Two-button wool jacket ($1,487) by Phineas Cole. 2. Two-button cashmere jacket ($3,900) by Pal Zileri; silk pocket square ($30) by Boss. 3. Three-button

cashmere jacket ($6,800) by Cesare Attolini. 4. Two-button wool-and-polyester jacket ($495) by DKNY; leather gloves ($410) by Ermenegildo Zegna. 5. Two-button

wool-cashmere-and-silk jacket ($3,755) by Brunello Cucinelli; sunglasses ($95) by Warby Parker. 6. Two-button wool-and-cashmere jacket ($1,664) by Windsor Custom.

7. Two-button cotton jacket ($185) by Perry Ellis; sunglasses ($190) by Versace. 8. Two-button cash-mere jacket ($5,150) by Brioni; wool pocket square ($125) by Isaia.

7

2

5

3

8

4

1

Single-breasted is easy. There’s

more to choose from, and a sec-

ond thought is typically not re-

quired. Double-breasted, on the

other hand, requires commit-

ment, not simply because you

have to button a DB sport coat

whenever you’re standing but be-

cause there are multiple varieties

to choose from. The six-on-two at

near right is a classic, carrying all

the attendant connotations; the

two-on-one at far right looks that

much more casual, especially

when made from a silk blend.

6

Go Ahead

and Make It

a Double

F E A R N O T

P L A I D .

E S P E C I A L LY W H E N

YO U PA I R I T W I T H A

C L E A N W H I T E S H I R T

A N D A S I M P L E PA I R

O F PA N T S .

Double- breasted wool- nylon-and-silk

jacket ($705) by Paul Smith.

Double-breasted wool-and-

polyester jacket ($595) by Gant.

171

T H E

N E X T S T E P

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

Two-button wool-and-cashmere jacket ($2,695) by Ermenegildo Zegna; glasses ($340) by Oliver Peoples.

FOR STORE INFORMATION SEE PAGE 212.


THE DARK SUIT RISES

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

J O H A N

SA N D B E RG

WHEN BOLD

COLORS AND LOUD

CLASHES DON’T

SUIT THE MOOD OR

THE MEETING, LOOK

TO THE AWESOME

POWER AND UNEXPECTED

SURPRISES OF

THE NEW WAVE OF

DARK SUITING

173

This page, on Thomas

Wirthensohn, documen-tary filmmaker: Cotton

trench coat ($3,950) by Louis Vuitton; three-

button cashmere-and-silk suit ($8,562), cotton shirt

($870), and cashmere-wool-and-silk tie ($280)by Kiton; leather shoes

($900) by Santoni. Opposite: Two-button

wool-and-cashmere suit ($2,950), cotton

shirt ($730), and silk tie ($215) by Louis Vuitton; steel Ballon Bleu watch

($5,900) by Cartier.

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

THE NEXT

STEP


Two-button wool suit ($1,295) and cotton

shirt ($395) by Calvin Klein Collection;

cashmere-wool-and- silk tie ($230) by

Brunello Cucinelli.

FORGET THE FLAT,

SOULLESS SURFACES

THAT TYPIFY MOST

DRESSY SUIT CLOTHS

AND LOOK FOR WEAVES

WITH UNCOMMON

TEXTURES. THE SUBTLE

HORIZONTAL GRAIN

OF THIS TWO-PIECE

ADDS DIMENSION

AND DEPTH TO THE

SUIT AND DEMANDS

A CLOSER LOOK.

452TIP NO.

175

On Townsend Ambrecht, actor and filmmaker: Wool-and-cashmere coat ($2,445) and cotton shirt ($545) by Dolce & Gabbana; silk tie ($150) by Burberry London.

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

THE NEXT

STEP

LOOK CLOSE.

CUH-LOOOSER. SEE

THAT SLIGHT SHEEN?

THAT’S WHAT YOU

GET WITH A WOOL-

AND-SILK WOVEN

SUIT. IT’S ALL BUT

UNDETECTABLE FROM

A DISTANCE, YET

AT ARM’S LENGTH

IT DELIVERS

A QUIET PUNCH.

517TIP NO.

177

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

THE NEXT

STEP

This page, on Ambrecht: Two-button wool suit ($3,270), cotton shirt

($410), silk tie ($175), and silk pocket square ($130) by Dunhill; leather shoes ($720) by Santoni; steel

Star Retrograde auto-matic watch ($4,865) by

Montblanc. Opposite, on Shawn Joswick, denim

designer and consultant: Double-breasted wool-

and-silk suit ($4,595) by Giorgio Armani; cotton

shirt ($99) by Banana Republic; silk tie ($135)

by John Varvatos; leather shoes ($410) by Dunhill.

THE KEY TO WEARING

A DARK SUIT AND NOT

LOOKING LIKE A

SECRET-SERVICE (OR

CAA CIRCA ’88) AGENT

IS A TRIMMER, SHORTER

CUT TO THE JACKET.

THANKS TO A SHARPER

FIT IN THE SHOULDERS

AND TORSO, AND A

HEM THAT BOTTOMS

OUT JUST BELOW THE

WAISTLINE, SUCH A

JACKET ENSURES A

CLEAN, STREAMLINED,

CONTEMPORARY

SILHOUETTE.

614TIP NO.

179

This page, on Wirthensohn: Two-

button wool suit ($2,465) and cotton

shirt ($415) by Prada. Opposite, on James

Jean, wardrobe stylist: Two-button wool-and-

mohair suit ($2,440) by Salvatore Ferraga-

mo; cotton shirt ($565) by Ermenegildo Zeg-

na; cotton-and-silk tie ($135) by Thomas

Pink; steel Captain chronograph ($8,300)

by Zenith.

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

THE NEXT

STEP

On Joswick: Two- button wool suit

($3,000) and cot-ton shirt ($590) by

Dior Homme; silk tie ($125) by Boss;

leather shoes ($1,100) by Brioni.

E S Q U I R E

S T Y L E

THE NEXT

STEP

181

Double-breasted wool suit ($1,895) and cashmere turtleneck sweater ($595) by Burberry London.

FOR STORE INFORMATION SEE PAGE 212. CASTING BY ANDREA NINA RAMOS FOR URBAN PRODUCTIONS. GROOMING BY NICOLAS ELDIN FOR ARTLIST. PROP STYLING BY CHRIS STONE.


IF YOU’RE GONNA

LAYER BLACK ON

BLACK—AND IF YOU

HEED THE FOLLOWING,

THAT’S A-OKAY

WITH US—MAKE

SURE THERE’S SOME

CONTRAST IN THE

TEXTURES. DIFFERENT

WEAVES OF WOOL

AND COTTON HOLD

BLACK DYE DIFFERENTLY,

SO BY MIXING A

CASHMERE SWEATER

WITH A WOOL JACKET,

YOU’RE BOUND TO

HAVE A SUBTLE,

APPEALING CONTRAST

BETWEEN BLACKS.

712TIP NO.

THE PLATE: A FINISHED CHROME-

COATED PRINTING PLATE FOR THE

NEW HUNDRED, THIRTY-TWO

TO A SHEET, READY FOR INKING.

UNLESS YOU’RE MORE OF A PLAYER THAN WE THINK YOU ARE, THAT NEW HUNDRED-DOLLAR

BILL COMING THIS FALL WON’T WIND UP IN YOUR POCKET VERY OFTEN. BUT IT MAY BE AMERICA’S MOST

POPULAR EXPORT, THE MOST COVETED BILL IN THE WORLD. AND THE STORY OF THE NEW

HUNDRED—STILL MADE BY HAND WITH ANCIENT TOOLS—IS THE STORY OF AMERICAN MONEY ITSELF.

O U R N E W H U N D R E D - D O L L A R B I L L , L I K E E V E RY

other single piece of American folding mon-

ey, is born in this rotary boiler. It’s a perfect

sphere, an angry kettle fifteen feet across,

spinning high off the ground between two

stained concrete towers. Most people swear

out loud when they see it for the first time.

A network of gears, each tooth the size of a

fist, churns away in the darkness behind it.

The towers and the gears allow the boiler to

spin like a planet, like Saturn, rust-colored

with wide rings of black grease. It is hot in its

shadow, the steam coming off it like breath,

and every surface within twenty yards is ei-

ther dripping or damp. The boiler feels al-

most monstrous, a relic of a spitting indus-

trial age, corrosive and mean, and it feels that

way especially when it finally stops spin-

ning and its oval maw clangs open, vomit-

ing tons of boiling cotton that hits the floor

with a heavy slap. There it is, the earliest, no-

bullshit incarnation of cash: piles of raw cel-

lulose cooked to its fibrous essence, as brown

as it is white, and scalding. American money

is born in a flame.

The boiler is housed in an ancient redbrick

mill, built in 1863, tumbling toward the shore

of the Housatonic River in tiny Dalton, Mas-

sachusetts. The mill is named for a local hero,

Captain Byron Weston, but is owned and op-

erated by Crane & Co., makers of fine pa-

per. Today the company is under the stew-

ardship of fifty-three-year-old Doug Crane,

the seventh generation of his family to man-

age the business. (The Crane ledgers, which

begin with Colonel Thomas Crane in 1770,

include the sale of “13 reams of money pa-

per” to a Boston silversmith named Paul Re-

vere.) Winthrop Crane, Doug’s great-great-

grandfather, won the first contract to supply

the U. S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing

with paper in 1879, when the mill was only

sixteen years old. Crane paper has been the

money in American pockets since.

In the beginning, Crane & Co. made pa-

per from discarded rags collected by stooped

men pushing carts. American currency is still

made with rags—until the last decade or so,

mostly from the trims and off-cuts of den-

im manufacturers, including Levi’s. Paper

money wore soft, like a pair of blue jeans, be-

cause it was made from blue jeans. But re-

cently, Americans decided they liked jeans

that stretched, so jeans companies began

adding spandex to their fabric. Money with

spandex in it wouldn’t be money anymore,

which means much of Crane’s time is now spent on a global search

for waste cotton that wasn’t used to make elastic pants.

Today, in a big, windowed room around the corner from the ket-

tle, there are maybe fifty rectangular bales of cotton waiting to

be boiled, each weighing about five hundred pounds. They’ll be

dumped into the boiler by a forklift. This par-

ticular cotton was never woven into cloth. It’s

the shorter, coarser fibers left over from the cot-

ton’s combing, still flecked with seeds and traces

of earth from Georgia or Egypt—it’s impossi-

ble to tell. The better cotton has gone to places

like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to be made into

six-dollar T-shirts; the cotton that otherwise

would be thrown to the wind has come here to

be made into hundred-dollar bills.

American money also contains linen, which

is made from flax. It’s finer and lighter than cot-

ton; a same-sized bale weighs only 360 pounds.

There are fewer bales of it here, because the

Crane family recipe calls for 75 percent cotton

and 25 percent linen. The linen improves the

paper’s tensile strength, like rebar does in con-

crete. It also gives American money a very par-

ticular feel.

Most other currencies in the world are made

either entirely from cotton or, increasingly, from

polymers—plastic—first introduced in Australian banknotes in 1988.

The three bodies that oversee the production of American curren-

cy—the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Secret

Service—explored using polymers for the new hundred-dollar bill,

largely for security reasons. By total value, the U. S. hundred is the

most heavily counterfeited single denomination in the world. It is

also the closest thing to a global currency, with about 60 percent of

them somewhere other than here, making the Benjamin both the

most legal and threatened of tenders. But to the great relief of the

Crane family and the sweating men who work in this mill, the U. S.

government decided to stick with the cotton-linen blend that fin-

gertips across the globe instinctively recognize.

In the late 1980s, a new counterfeit hundred,

the most perfect counterfeit yet made, began ap-

pearing in circulation. It looked identical to the

real thing, betrayed visually, at least, under only

the most rigorous forensic testing. (Some minor

flaws were visible after enormous copies of the

bills were made, but these were probably pur-

poseful. Its makers didn’t want to be suckered

by their own handiwork.) Although the coun-

terfeit came to America mostly on boats from

gangs in China, it was eventually traced to North

Korea, where it was believed to have been man-

ufactured by the North Korean government on

its own presses. Since then, new generations of

the same counterfeit have appeared, including

a big-head version, mimicking the redesigned

hundred that entered circulation in 1996. This

family of bogus notes has been given its own ti-

tle, one that befits its almost mythical stature:

the North Korean supernote.

Some stories about the supernote sound more

like legend than fact—like its being laundered by a bank in Macao

called the Banco Delta Asia, or several thousand of them somehow

appearing overnight in Lima, threatening to tip over the entire Peru-

vian economy. But there remains one truth in the supernote’s history

that has never been forgotten: It was first detected at the Central Bank

of the Philippines by a teller, given pause only by the same nebulous

flaw that betrays the majority of counterfeits. It just didn’t feel right.


1. THE WATERMARK:

A smaller, far less detailed

portrait of Ben Franklin is

visible when it is held

up to light. The linen con-

tent in U. S. money makes

its watermarks fuzzy; in

contrast, the watermarks

in all-cotton currency look

razor-sharp.

2. THE VIGNETTE:

Independence Hall, part of

the Franklin narrative, is fea-

tured on the reverse side

of the current hundred as

well as on the new bill. But

the engraving on the new

note—dating from 1929—

depicts the building’s back

rather than its front.

3. THE RIBBON:

The new plastic security rib-

bon looks as though it were

threaded into the paper. (It’s

visible only on the note’s

face.) In fact, the sheet of

paper is somehow made

around the ribbon—through

a secret process—with a

trio of narrow paper bridges

helping to keep it in place.

Visible within the ribbon are

three-dimensional images

of two icons.

4. THE MICROPRINTING:

New microtext has been

added to the traditional

engraving of Franklin near

his collar. The engraving it-

self, done by Thomas Hip-

schen in 1992, is the same

as the one used on the cur-

rent hundred; it’s based on

an original portrait painted

by Joseph Siffred Duplessis

around 1785. Bureau engrav-

ers are forbidden from sign-

ing their work in any way.

5. THE QUILL:

Along with the color-shifting

ink well, the quill pen drawn

by Brian Thompson unifies

the composition and sharp-

ens the emphasis on Frank-

lin’s story in the new design.

6. THE COLOR-SHIFT-

ING INK:

The 100 in the lower right

corner turns from copper to

green—just as a bell in the

adjacent inkwell appears

and disappears—when the

bill is tilted in the light. The

ink contains microscop-

ic metallic flakes that re-

flect different wavelengths

of light.

THE ARTIST: BRIAN THOMPSON

DESIGNED THE HUNDRED,

DRAWING MANY OF ITS NEW

IMAGES BY HAND AT HIS DESK.

2

It just didn’t feel right because it wasn’t printed on paper made by

Crane & Co. in Dalton, Massachusetts. It wasn’t boiled in this kettle.

B R I A N T H O M P S O N ’S O F F I C E L O O K S L I K E A N Y OT H E R S TA N D A R D - I S S U E

government cubicle, in a bunker of a room inside the Bureau of En-

graving and Printing in Washington, D. C. On

the door to the room, there’s a small poster of

an M. C. Escher lithograph: two hands holding

pens, each drawing the other’s cuff. There’s also

a sign: O L D W O R L D C R A F T S M A N S H I P. B E C AU S E

W E C A R E . Apart from the sign, there are only

hints that something beautiful happens here. In

Thompson’s cubicle, a drawing table has been

pushed against one of the half walls. Two met-

al trays of pencils are sitting on it, grays and col-

ors, kept as sharp as knives. There’s one long

banner on the wall, a series of Escher draw-

ings that blend seamlessly into one another, a

flock of birds turning into a school of fish and

back into birds again. And then there’s a poster

of Thompson’s own latest work of art, framed

in pride of place above his table: the new hun-

dred-dollar bill.

Thompson is forty-three years old, African-

American, with a closely trimmed mustache.

He’s dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt. He

was nineteen when he began working at the bureau, a talented high

school art student with no formal training in currency design. The

bureau is a union shop; most craft employees here arrive as appren-

tices, working under journeymen until they become journeymen

themselves. Thompson’s father was a cylinder maker, fabricating

the big rollers that draw the currency paper through the presses,

and one day he saw there was an opening for an “art job.” It turned

out the banknote designers were looking for an apprentice. Thomp-

son put in his portfolio, and they liked what they saw. They asked

for seven years of Thompson’s life, and in exchange they would

teach him the trade. Twenty-four years later, he has his own note.

There’s a pile of loose papers in the corner of his cubicle. He digs

through it until he finds what he’s looking for.

“There it is,” he says, and he brings a single

glossy white sheet under the light on his table.

It was one of his first assignments, dated July

12, 1989, hand-lettering the alphabet in what he

calls banknote roman, the principal font on all

American money. He had to learn, by hand and

by feel, its spacing, its body weight, the propor-

tions of every shadow and serif. “These are the

fundamental principles,” he says. By 1992, he

had worked his way up to painting things like

streetscapes and bald eagles, but only in shades

of gray, from the bird’s white head to the black-

est tips of its feathers. This is how Thompson

learned to draw vignettes—the illustrations of

buildings on the backs of bills—with depth and

tone even in the absence of color. But bald eagles

were only momentary diversions from the hand-

lettering he had to continue to do every day for

years. “Letters get you to focus on the details,”

Thompson says. “That was the basis of my whole

education: Every single detail says something. It means something.”

He digs through the pile of papers again. He pulls out a simple

pencil drawing of a feather, a quill digging into a curling scroll. As

a physical object, the new hundred is born again and again in that

boiler in Dalton, Massachusetts. As an idea, it was born on this

table, with these pencils, on this single piece of paper, with this

drawing of a quill.

185

THE ENGRAVER: WILLIAM

FLEISHELL PAINSTAKINGLY

REVISED THE VIGNETTE OF

INDEPENDENCE HALL.

1

3

4

6

5

Thompson likes money that tells a story—something that, despite

the constraints of a note’s size and technological necessities, could

pass for narrative, for art. He’s constantly looking at the cash of oth-

er countries for inspiration (current favorites include the Danish

krone and the Botswana pula), but he cites two principal influences:

Georgia O’Keeffe, whose paintings of landscapes and flowers taught

him how to combine balance with flow, and Escher, whose intri-

cate, mathematical drawings showed Thompson the importance

of precision and the power of illusion. “He would have been an

incredible banknote designer,” Thompson says. “He would have

freaked people out.”

On the back of the new hundred-dollar bill is one of Thompson’s fa-

vorite magic tricks. There is an oversized 100 bordered in white and

blue, printed in orange. This new feature is primarily to help the vi-

sually impaired—like the large purple 5 on the five-dollar bill—but it’s

also a secondary defense against counterfeiters. While the 100 looks

entirely orange, closer examination reveals that it contains alternating

lines of orange and green. Through some quirk of the optic nerve, our

eyes pick up mostly the orange. It dominates, and casual counterfeit-

ers might overlook or be unable to replicate the disappearing green.

What Thompson hopes you’ll see instead is the story he’s try-

ing to tell.

S H O RT LY A F T E R R O SA G U M ATAOTAO R I O S WAS SWO R N I N A S T R E A S U R E R

of the United States in July 2009, she returned to her corner office in

the Treasury Building and was met by a man with a book with lined

white paper. She had been practicing for this moment for months.

“I have awful penmanship,” Rios says today. “My third-grade

teacher is probably in disbelief that I’m signing money.” That ner-

vous morning, it took her thirty tries to get it right. On the day af-

ter Thanksgiving—it takes several weeks for a new signature to be

incorporated into the design—she, her husband, and her children

joined the then-secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and

his family at the bureau. They stood next to the chugging presses

and watched their names appear for the first time on a sheet of fresh

twenty-dollar bills. She pressed her thumb against her name on

one of the notes. “The ink was still wet,” she says. “It was surreal.”

Not only was it her name on money; it was also her husband’s name

and her children’s name: Gumataotao, the first Chamorro name

to appear on U. S. currency. “It was very emotional,” she says, “the

loveliest experience.” Her name and Geithner’s will also be the first

to grace the new hundred-dollar bill. The recently appointed sec-

retary of the Treasury, Jack Lew—who had to change his illegible

loopy autograph for public consumption—will have to wait for the

presses to catch up. His evolving signature made its nationwide de-

but on the letter asking for the resignation of the acting commis-

sioner of the IRS instead.

Rios now chairs the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering

Committee, which helps coordinate a process made complicated

by a similarly messy bureaucratic past. Most currencies are issued

by central banks—the Bank of England issues the British pound, the

Bank of Canada the Canadian dollar. The Federal Reserve fulfills

the same role in the U. S., but because of a long-standing American

aversion to central banks, it wasn’t created until 1913, a delayed re-

sponse to the bank panic of 1907. By then, the Treasury Department,

through its Bureau of Engraving and Printing, founded in 1862, had

been printing paper money for decades. Today, the issuing author-

ity and the manufacturer remain oddly distinct enterprises. That

American money still bears the signature of the treasurer rather

than, say, the chairman of the Federal Reserve is an accident of his-

tory that has never been corrected.

Further confusing matters was the establishment of the Secret

Service in 1865. Long before it was given its mission of protecting

important people, the Secret Service protect-

ed American money, as it still does. It sits on

the committee, often making recommenda-

tions in the face of new threats.

A man named Edward Lowery is the spe-

cial agent in charge of the Secret Service’s

Criminal Investigative Division. He looks

and sounds exactly like a special agent, put-

together and deep-voiced. Asked about the

North Korean supernote, he won’t say a

word, refusing to acknowledge that it even

exists. But he will acknowledge that the Se-

cret Service shut down more than three hun-

dred counterfeiting plants around the world in 2012, and for the

agency, each one was a kind of school.

For instance, the five-dollar bill, like the dollar bill, is protected

against counterfeiters mostly by its low value. But then the Secret

Service discovered that counterfeiters were bleaching five-dollar

bills of their ink to get their hands on clean paper, which they were

then using to make counterfeit hundreds. (Unlike the dollar bill,

the five-dollar bill has a security thread in it, which makes it a bet-

ter large-denomination dupe.) The Secret Service reported this

discovery to the committee, which asked Crane & Co. to add new

watermarks to the five-dollar bill, overfortifying one of its smaller

denominations in order to protect its largest one. If you hold up a

new five to the light, you’ll see a large watermarked 5 on the right-

hand side and a column of three small 5’s on the left. This is a good

bill. If you hold up your hundred-dollar bill and see those water-

marked 5’s, that’s a fire starter.

In the case of the new hundred, the members of the committee

recommended several dramatic changes to beef up its defenses,

each of which had to be approved by the secretary of the Treasury.

Together they decided on the individual components of the bill, its

parts. They trusted Brian Thompson with the sum of it.


FLEISHELL BENT TO

HIS GRUELING TASK,

ENGRAVING A POR-

TRAIT OF FREDER-

ICK DOUGLASS; IT

WILL TAKE MONTHS.

RIGHT: THOMPSON’S

DESK, WITH HIS

ORIGINAL DRAWING

OF A QUILL FOR THE

NEW HUNDRED

AND SOME OF HIS

TOOLS. BELOW: THE

COTTON BOILER AT

CRANE & CO.

AT I T S E S S E N C E , T H E N E W H U N D R E D - D O L L A R B I L L I S A T I N Y, C O M P L E X

machine fueled by light. Transmitted light reveals the Franklin water-

mark and the thin, embedded security thread. Ultraviolet and in-

frared lights reveal features used by banks and vending machines.

Reflected light trips some mysterious trigger that tells most photo-

copiers not to print—try it sometime—and highlights the raised

printing and color-shifting ink. Light also reveals the most strik-

ing component of the new bill: the bright-blue security ribbon that

dominates its face.

The Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering Committee told

Thompson only that it had to go somewhere—where, exactly, was

essentially up to him—and it represented perhaps his greatest design

challenge. (In the end, after forty different drafts

of the design, he settled on a vertical stripe, just

right of center; pushing it toward the edges would

have violated Georgia O’Keeffe’s principles of bal-

ance.) While the ribbon really is a spectacular sliver

of technology, it also slashes through Thompson’s

careful design like graffiti.

“Most people think it’s fake,” Treasurer Rios

says. “They wonder why it’s on there, whether it’s

a mistake.” The ribbon is not a mistake. It is the new

note’s first defense, its moat, and it will prove im-

possible for even North Korean counterfeiters to

replicate. (“We can’t say that,” Special Agent Low-

ery says, “but it will be very, very difficult.”) Only

one company in the world owns the technology

and fully understands how it works: a venera-

ble family-owned paper concern in tiny Dalton,

Massachusetts.

Doug Crane can remember the first time he

saw the ribbon, maybe fifteen years ago. It was in-

vented by a small Georgia company by the name

of Visual Physics, which gave a hint about its

product, or at least the idea behind it: the mi-

croscopic interplay of light and the human eye.

Crane has advanced degrees in paper science and

biomedical engineering, and he is fiercely pro-

tective of his family’s legacy. After Visual Phys-

ics paid a visit, Crane & Co. bought the company and every scrap of

its intellectual property, effectively trapping its ribbon in this red-

brick mill. “Literally nobody else can make it,” he says.

The ribbon takes advantage of our primal, extraordinary ability

to detect even the slightest movement in a sea of stillness. Looking

at the ribbon on the new American hundred—or, more accurate-

ly, into it—you’ll see three-dimensional images of two icons float-

ing within that bottomless blue: several 100’s and several cracked

Liberty Bells. If you tip the bill left to right, the digits and bells will

somehow move up and down; tip the bill up and down and they will

move left to right.

“It meets the test we have for public security features,” says

Michael Lambert, an associate director at the Fed-

eral Reserve. “It’s really easy for people to use, but

it’s really hard for counterfeiters to replicate.”

Even the printers at the bureau marvel at it, as

much as it has driven them to distraction. The new

hundred was supposed to come out in 2011, but the

entire manufacturing process had to be fine-tuned

to accommodate the ribbon, which was partially

responsible for causing an unacceptable number of

sheets to crease. Today it’s visible only on the face

of the bill, and even though it’s plastic, it is only

one-third the thickness of the note itself. “That is

unreal,” says Dave Smeltzer, who manages the bu-

reau’s offset-printing division. “In and out in less

187

than five thousandths of an inch.” It looks as

though it’s been threaded through the paper

somehow, like a basket’s weave, but that’s not

how it’s done. “No, we make it all at once,”

Crane says. “The sheet of paper gets made

around the ribbon. And that’s all I can real-

ly tell you about that.” That part of a second

mill—where the boiled cotton and linen be-

come paper that somehow swallows great

lengths of blue plastic ribbon at appropriate

intervals—is protected from view by enor-

mous red curtains. What goes on behind them

is secret.

The ribbon itself is a collection of micro-

scopic lenses, like the pixels on your TV, but

much, much smaller. (Asked what the lenses

are made of, Crane says, “Stuff. They’re made of stuff.”) On a single

note, the quarter-inch-wide ribbon contains 875,000 of those lenses.

When they catch the light, they magnify the icons—the 100’s and the

Liberty Bells—that have been printed on the ribbon beneath them.

That printing is among the smallest accomplished in the history of

the world. If, instead of symbols, Crane wanted to magnify text, the

font would be small enough to print the entire Bible on the surface

of a single dime—twice.

The hope is that every time you receive a new hundred-dollar

bill, you’ll see the movement in the ribbon and be stopped by it, if

only for a fraction of a second. Counterfeiters rely on our inatten-

tion. Their edge is that we’ve come to see Benjamin Franklin and

are blind to everything else. Now that blue ribbon is the new Ben-

jamin Franklin. It will be responsible for triggering whatever part

of our brain thinks That’s money.

Brian Thompson, however, wanted the new hundred to be more

than an instrument of light; he wanted light to be an element of his

design. There is no record of why each bill bears the particular face

it does, originally put on money so that even the illiterate could rec-

ognize its value. Why Benjamin Franklin was specifically honored

on the hundred has been lost to time. But Thompson decided this

new note should tell at least part of Franklin’s story: namely, that

he was one of the drafters and signers of the Declaration of Inde-

pendence. Hence the new quill, which has survived every version

of the design from Thompson’s first pencil drawing, even though

the accompanying scroll did not. Hence the addition of the inkwell


at the base of the quill and the date, July 4, 1776, and the inclusion

of script from the Declaration itself. (The words have been cut and

pasted in random sequence so that counterfeiters can’t just copy

the document and include it in their own work.) And hence, most

of all, the hundred-dollar bill as a source of light—specifically the

100 on the note’s bottom-left corner.

If you look closely at the bill, if you look at where its shadows fall,

at the gleam on the inkwell, at the illumination of Franklin’s great

noble head, that bottom-left 100 is the bulb from which a single

beam stretches across the rest of the darkened stage. That beam

lifts us square into Franklin’s gaze, over the visual speed bump of

the security ribbon, and on up the quill, pointed purposefully and

dramatically to the 100 in the top-right corner. Light draws our eyes

across the entire face of the new hundred-dollar bill, just as it has

carried us through time. Light is what brings us from there to here.

W I L L I A M F L E I S H E L L , A F I F T Y-T WO -Y E A R- O L D E N G R AV E R , OW N S T H E F I R ST

set of hands responsible for turning Thompson’s vision into a phys-

ical reality. His principal instrument is called a burin, or graver. Bu-

rins are passed down within the bureau; some here are more than a

century old. It’s a simple, ancient tool with a wooden handle topped

by a small knob that fits into the palm of his right hand. It has a blade

shaped like a diamond; he runs it over a stone to sharpen it. Today

Fleishell is working on a portrait of Frederick Douglass, the aboli-

tionist. Most significant American public figures—presidents, Su-

preme Court justices—are the subjects of official engraved portraits.

The Douglass portrait will probably be used to make prints to sell

in the gift shop. It will also be placed in the bureau’s vault, in case

one day the committee decides that Douglass is worthy of money.

Fleishell has silver hair, a cherubic face, and the demeanor of

someone who is very particular and has arranged his universe ex-

actly the way he likes it. He began working here in 1988 and served

the portraitist’s ten-year apprenticeship—ten years to master the

engraver’s three means of expression: lines, dots, and dashes. De-

spite his having worked here for twenty-five years, his studio is spare.

“North light,” Fleishell says, pointing to the angled skylight above

him. “What more could I ask for?”

He’s already transferred the portrait of Douglass onto a shining

steel plate, in the way a tattoo artist might use a stencil; now he’s do-

ing the actual engraving. Fleishell looks through a loupe and angles

the burin into the steel, pushing out the smallest sliver, carving a

miniature ditch. His burin makes no sound. The change in the por-

THE INKED-UP

NICKEL PLATES

ON AN INTAGLIO

PRINTER (LEFT);

AFTER THIS, IT’S

MONEY (CENTER),

AWAITING

SERIAL NUMBERS

AND SEALS

(RIGHT). OPPOSITE:

WRAPPED

HUNDREDS—$10,000

IN A STRAP—ON A

SORTING CAROU-

SEL AND, BELOW,

SIXTEEN BUNDLES,

OR FOUR BRICKS,

WORTH $1.6

MILLION.


trait is almost imperceptible. But slowly, Douglass will come more

and more to life. Fleishell has already completed Douglass’s intense

eyes—most engravers start with the eyes, because they are the hard-

est part—and his mouth, because teeth are the second-hardest part.

Now Fleishell is working on Douglass’s hair, each strand requiring

another push of the burin. This single portrait will take him hun-

dreds of hours of work, four or five months of careful labor.

The engravings on the new hundred-dollar bill are, in fact, old en-

gravings. The Franklin portrait is the same one used on the current

hundred, created by Thomas Hipschen in 1992; when Hipschen was

deep into his work, Beethoven poured out under his door. The vi-

gnette of Independence Hall on the back of

the bill was made by Joachim Benzing in 1929.

Benzing also engraved some of the more

cryptic symbolism on the back of the one-

dollar bill. A section of the Treasury’s annual

appropriations bill has ensured his work on

the Great Seal will be timeless, or at least as

timeless as the dollar bill itself: It hasn’t been

redesigned because the bureau is prohibited

by Congress from doing so. A former Arizona

congressman named Jim Kolbe led that ef-

fort beginning in 1986—not out of any sense

of nostalgia or tradition, but because he was,

and remains, a vocal advocate of the dollar

coin. (Arizona also happens to be home to the

copper mines that would supply the neces-

sary metal.) Despite the failure of three different dollar coins—to-

day more than a billion sit in Federal Reserve vaults—he hoped to kill

the dollar bill through mandatory neglect. Why redesign something

that should soon be made extinct? New legislation, the COINS Act,

sponsored in part by Arizona senator John McCain, was introduced

again this June. If it’s passed, the dollar bill will be eliminated with-

in four years. And yet Benzing’s art will survive, more than eighty

years after it was made, on the back of the new hundred instead.

Fleishell digitally touched up Benzing’s engraving, making the

windows crisper and changing the look of the sky. The use of comput-

ers rather than burins is a sensitive topic within the bureau. Hipschen

left not long after the introduction of digital

engraving, believing that it flattened the job,

made it common. Experienced engravers can

spot the differences in one another’s handi-

work as easily as painters can separate a Pi-

casso from a Monet, and that built-in signa-

ture makes the art more beautiful and harder

for counterfeiters to replicate. But comput-

ers enable the work to be done much more

quickly—a portrait might take weeks rath-

er than months—and mistakes to be erased

more easily. Fleishell engraved the portrait

of Abraham Lincoln on the five-dollar bill

by hand, but he understands that computers

will likely take his burin’s place. He still sees

something almost

189

[continued on page 210]

W H A T I ’ V E L E A R N E D


WRITER AND DIRECTOR, 77, NEW YORK CITY

Scan here with Netpage to hear audio from this interview.

> My two teenage girls think of me as ancient. But I’m up before them and wake them to go to school.

> What people who don’t write don’t understand is that they think you make up the line consciously—but you don’t. It proceeds from

your unconscious. So it’s the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don’t think of the

joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I’ve said. And I laugh at it, because I’m hearing it for the first time myself.

> Without fear, you’d never survive.

> My dad didn’t even teach me how to shave—I learned that from a cabdriver. But the biggest lesson he imparted is that if you don’t have

your health, you have nothing. No matter how great things are going for you, if you have a toothache, if you have a sore throat, if you’re

nauseated, or, God forbid, you have some serious thing wrong with you—everything is ruined.

> A corned-beef sandwich would be sensational, or one of those big, fat frankfurters, you know, with the mustard. But I don’t eat any

of that stuff. I haven’t had a frankfurter in, I would say, forty-five years. I don’t eat enjoyable foods. I eat for my health.

> Marshall McLuhan predicted books would become art objects at some point. He was right.

> My mother taught me a value—rigid discipline. My father didn’t earn enough, and my mother took care of the money and the family,

and she had no time for lightness. She always saw the glass a third full. She taught me to work and not to waste time.

> I never see a frame of anything I’ve done after I’ve done it. I don’t even remember what’s in the films. And if I’m on the treadmill and

I’m surfing the channels and suddenly Manhattan or some other picture comes on, I go right past it. If I saw Manhattan again, I would

only see the worst. I would say: “Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I could have done this. I should have done that.” So I spare myself.

> In the shower, with the hot water coming down, you’ve left the real world behind, and very frequently things open up for you. It’s the

change of venue, the unblocking the attempt to force the ideas that’s crippling you when you’re trying to write.

> If you’re born with a gift, to behave like it’s an achievement is not right.

> I love Mel Brooks. And I’ve had wonderful times working with him. But I don’t see any similarities between Mel and myself except, you

know, we’re both short Jews. That’s where it ends. His style of humor is completely different. But Bob Hope? I’m practically a plagiarist.

> We took a tour of the Acropolis late in the morning, and I looked down upon the theater and felt a connection. I mean, this is where

Oedipus debuted. It’s amazing for someone who’s spent his life in show business or worked in dramatic art to look down at the theater

where, thousands of years ago, guys like Mike Nichols and Stephen Sondheim and David Mamet were in togas, thinking, Gee, I can’t get

this line to work. You know, I’ve been working on it all night. And that actor, he doesn’t know how to deliver it. Sophocles and Euripides

and Aristophanes. The costumes are late, and we gotta go on!

> It’s been said about marriage “You have to know how to fight.” And I think there’s some wisdom to that. People who live together get

into arguments. When you’re younger, those arguments tend to escalate, or there’s not any wisdom that overrides the argument to keep

in perspective. It tends to get out of hand. When you’re older, you realize, “Well, this argument will pass. We don’t agree, but this is not

the end of the world.” Experience comes into play.

> Back when I started, when I opened Take the Money and Run, the guys at United Artists accumulated the nation’s criticisms into a

pile this big and I read them all. Texas, Oklahoma, California, New England . . . That’s when I realized that it’s ridiculous. I mean, the

guy in Tulsa thinks the picture’s a masterpiece, and the guy in Vermont thinks it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever seen. Each guy writes

intelligently. The whole thing was so pointless. So I abandoned ever, ever reading any criticisms again. Thanks to my mother, I haven’t

wasted any time dwelling on whether I’m brilliant or a fool. It’s completely unprofitable to think about it.

> You can only do so much, and then you’re at the mercy of fortune.

> Me sitting down for dinner with Ingmar Bergman felt like a house painter sitting down with Picasso.

> It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we

don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventu-

ally be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The

earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There’ll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a

distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself.

> A guy will say, “Well, I make my luck.” And the same guy walks down the street and a piano that’s been hoisted drops on his head. The

truth of the matter is your life is very much out of your control. ≥

I N T E R V I E W E D B Y C A L F U S S M A N , J U N E 4 , 2 0 1 3 / P H O T O G R A P H B Y M A R K M A N N

Allen was photographed on June 3 at his office in Manhattan. His forty-eighth picture as a director, Blue Jasmine, is now in theaters.

193

RECIPES AS TOLD TO:

THE BEST WAY TO COOK IS AT SOMEONE’S KNEE. YOU STAND,

YOU WATCH, YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY WHEN THEY NEED TO

GET SOMETHING OFF THE STOVE. STAND THERE LONG ENOUGH

AND YOU START TO PICK UP NOT ONLY LITTLE TIPS, LIKE HOW

TO CHOP A PEPPER, BUT ALSO LARGER TRUTHS, LIKE WHY WE

COOK AT ALL. HERE, FOUR WRITERS WITH VARYING LEVELS

OF EXPERIENCE SHADOW FOUR GREAT CHEFS, EACH AT THE

TOP OF HIS GAME. IT WAS LIKE A ONE-DAY CULINARY SCHOOL

TAUGHT BY A MASTER. FEEL FREE TO STAND AND WATCH.

EAT LIKE A MAN

THE

I L L U S T R AT I O N S BY M I K E Y B U R T O N

A TOP CHEF MASTERS CONTESTANT ATTEMPTS TO TEACH

A WRITER WHO CAN BARELY MAKE A BOWL OF CEREAL

HOW TO CREATE FOOD THAT EXPRESSES LOVE AND TASTES

DELICIOUS. IN FOUR HOURS. NO PROBLEM.

WRITER:

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MELISSA GOLDEN

CHEF: BRYAN VOLTAGGIO / LOCATION: RANGE,

VOLTAGGIO'S RESTAURANT IN WASHINGTON, D.�C. / DATE: JUNE 18, 2013

CHEF WISDOM

1

Once in a while, make the tartar sauce

yourself.

2

Clarified butter is butter from which the milk sol-ids have been removed.

It has a high smoke point, meaning you can

get it hot enough for frying without setting off your smoke alarm.

3

Cooking is not art. Cooking is generosity.

LESSON NO. 1


It took a bit for Bryan Voltaggio, the famous young chef

with a pig tattooed on his arm, to decide I really was

the tragic miracle I’d said I was. We were in the kitch-

en of his fourth and newest restaurant, Range, in Wash-

ington, D. C., pasta and cherry tomatoes and garlic simmering on the

stove. A few minutes before, when I was cutting those same cher-

ry tomatoes in half, I told him he was witnessing my first time put-

ting a knife to a vegetable. Not long after, he wondered aloud wheth-

er he was being set up as part of some elaborate prank. That’s when

I mentioned I’d never cracked an egg. “How is that possible?” Vol-

taggio said. “How are you alive?”

I agreed that it was ridiculous for a thirty-nine-year-old man never

to have cracked an egg, that it says something terrible about me as

well as modern society that I can survive and in fact grow quite fat

without acquiring even the most basic cooking skills, but neverthe-

less, I had never cracked an egg. Before entering Voltaggio’s kitchen,

I had possibly prepared the least food of any fully functioning North

American adult: one plate of pasta—dried noodles and jarred sauce—

just after I’d graduated from Meal Plan University and one serving of

Hamburger Helper, with which I’d attempted to court the very good

cook who somehow still became my wife. Other than those two bare-

ly digestible meals, whenever I have eaten, someone else has made

my food for me, either because they love me or because I paid them.

Only after Voltaggio watched me nervously crack that first egg did he

finally believe me. “Nobody’s that good an actor,” he said.

Voltaggio comes from a family of cooks and chefs—he finished sec-

ond to his brother, Michael, on the sixth season of Top Chef—and to

watch him work in a kitchen is to watch witchcraft, years of experience

and observation and fever poured into a cauldron. In some ways, that af-

ternoon at Range confirmed my guiding philosophy: We should do only

those things at which we are good. Why would I cook when Bryan Vol-

taggio cooks? If cooking makes him happy, and eating his food makes

me happy, why would I upset that happy order of things? It had never

made sense to me, and today it would remain nonsensical but for the

fact that after we finished making our pasta, Voltaggio and I made the

crab-cake sandwich that changed my life.

We didn’t just make that sandwich. We

made every last component of that sand-

wich from its most basic ingredients. We

made the soft, hot rolls, washing them with

SERVES: 6 TO 8

INGREDIENTS

7 Tbsp mayonnaise, prefera-

bly Duke’s

1 Tbsp Old Bay

2 ½ tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 ½ tsp Dijon mustard

3 ¾ tsp lemon juice

2 eggs

4 scallions, minced

6 drops Tabasco sauce

½ tsp fine sea salt

2 lbs jumbo lump crabmeat,

egg and sprinkling them with salt; we made the crab cakes, giant lumps

of fresh crab combined with not much else and carefully levered into

a pan of clarified butter; we even made the tartar sauce, from Voltag-

gio’s original recipe, that went on top of the crab cakes like a blanket.

Now, here I must confess: While making that tartar sauce, I was con-

sumed by the cynicism of my former self. It took me maybe an hour of

work, not including the time I would need at home to find each of its

fourteen ingredients. It required making grape-seed oil shimmer in

the pan but not smoke—canola oil would smell like rotting fish, Vol-

taggio said, the sort of wisdom that seems impossible for me to own—

and sweating diced celery, fennel, and onions, but not browning them.

Alternatively, I could go out and buy a jar of tartar sauce in about six

seconds. But then I finished Voltaggio’s recipe, and I tasted it, and I un-

derstood. It wasn’t some small fraction better than factory-born tartar

sauce. It was better by orders of magnitude, turning something inci-

dental into something essential. I can’t recall eating any single tartar

sauce in my life except for that one. Then we put it on the sandwich,

and then we ate the sandwich, and holy sweet Mary mother of ba-

by Jesus, it was the best sandwich I have ever eaten. It was the sand-

wich I had been dreaming about my whole life put suddenly where

it belonged, in my open, groaning mouth.

What Voltaggio taught me, more than anything else, is that there is

no particular magic in that trick. He refuses to call food art, or cook-

ing artistry. That makes it sound more precious and inaccessible than

it is. All good cooking requires, at its foundation, is generosity. Every

decent meal I have eaten I have enjoyed because someone else had a

big enough heart to make it.

I always thought of my refusal to cook as a selfless act: I was sparing

the world my barbarism. In reality, learning how to make delicious

whole food requires a capacity for goodness that I wish I didn’t have

to work so hard to possess. Yes, at some level, that crab-cake sand-

wich was just a sandwich, just caloric energy presented in a photoge-

nic shape. But it was also this beautiful expression of care, this tender,

charitable agreement that Bryan Voltaggio had made to teach me how

to do some tiny fraction of what he does and to help me feel as though

I could do more of it. I will make those crab-cake sandwiches again

and again, partly because I couldn’t live with the idea of never eating

another one, but mostly because it will allow me to give something

meaningful, my time and my effort, my attention and my education,

to the people who remind me not only how I am alive but also why.

T H E

R E C I P E

picked of shell fragments

1 cup cracker meal for

breading

1 cup clarified butter*

8 buns, toasted and buttered

IN A MEDIUM BOWL, combine the

mayonnaise, Old Bay, Worces-

tershire, mustard, lemon juice,

eggs, scallions, Tabasco, and

sea salt. Using a wire whisk,

mix the ingredients togeth-

er to incorporate evenly. Add

the crabmeat by thirds and

fold gently with a spatula to be

sure the crab does not get bro-

ken up.

Evenly coat the bottom of a

baking dish with a generous

dusting of the cracker meal,

about ½ cup. Use an ice-cream

scoop or a similar tool to di-

vide crabmeat mixture into six

or eight individual cakes. Place

each crab cake in the crack-

er meal and dust with the re-

maining cracker meal, coating

all sides.

In a large frying pan, slow-

ly heat the clarified butter. Use

a candy thermometer to get it

to 325 degrees, or stick the end

of a chopstick into the butter—

when it gives off a steady stream

of bubbles, you’re at 325.

Using a slotted metal or oth-

er high-heat-resistant spatu-

la and working one at a time,

place each cake into the but-

ter, leaving a half inch between

them so the crab cakes brown

evenly. Cook crab cakes on

both sides in the clarified but-

ter, about 6 full minutes per

side, until golden brown. (If

you need to cook in multiple

batches, set your oven at the

lowest temperature and insert

a cooling rack over a baking

sheet, to rest the crab cakes

on.) Let cakes sit for a minute,

and then transfer them to the

buns. Top with tartar sauce.

(See Voltaggio’s recipe at Es-

quire.com/crabcake.)

*Slowly melt three sticks of but-ter in a pan. When it starts bub-bling, remove from heat. Using a spoon, remove white milk sol-ids from the surface and dis-card. Pour the golden yellow layer of clarified butter into a container—this is what you will cook with. Discard the solids remaining on the bottom.

MARYLAND CRAB-CAKE SANDWICH

CHEF:

Voltaggio (opposite, left) thought the writer was joking about having never cracked an egg in his life.


gotten from his egg supplier that were stippled with yolk-yellow

fat he didn’t trim. “The fat is what gives the stock its taste and col-

or,” he said, and indeed, almost as soon as he put the hens in a pot

with vegetables and water and set the pot to the flame, the yellow

fat leached into the water and pooled atop its surface like beads of

custard. “That’s the color commercial-stock makers try to get by

adding turmeric and other coloring agents.”

Hopkins was not teaching me to cook, much less allowing me to

cook. He was simply making lunch. But at every step of the way, he

was showing me where I’d gone wrong—where I’d lost flavor and

he built it. Flavor, he said, was not inherent in a recipe; it was in-

herent in the kitchen, in the accumulation of decisions made along

the way, in the quality of the ingredients and the care you take with

them. And that was the lesson: He was always cooking, he was nev-

er cooking. He hardly ever stirred; he tasted and smelled and lis-

tened. “Chefs stir because they want to feel like they’re

doing something. But I tell my chefs that observing is do-

ing something. That’s why I don’t listen to music when

I cook. You hear that?” he said, indicating the pan of on-

ions sizzling with an insistent pneumatic hiss and cara-

Hopkins (left) hardly ever stirred. He tasted, he smelled, he listened.

MAYBE YOU KNOW HOW TO COOK A LITTLE. MAYBE YOU’VE BECOME PRETTY GOOD. THEN

A MAN WHO HAS DEVOTED HIS LIFE TO COOKING SHOWS YOU HOW TO START OVER.

I did everything right. I cut up some bacon and put it in

a pan. I removed the bacon when it was crisp, then put

chopped onions in the fat. I added the lady peas and corn

I had bought at a farm stand, then some cherry toma-

toes, and got the whole thing bubbling. Some pasta, a dollop of fresh

pesto—I expected my wife and daughter to greet it with applause,

or at least the ravening hunger that is the home cook’s true reward.

I didn’t get either. The dish was gray and soggy, stranded some-

where between a minestrone soup and a vegetable pasta. You couldn’t

taste the peas. My daughter provided the most damning criticism at

a child’s disposal: She asked for spaghetti with butter and cheese.

It hit me that while I may be a pretty good home cook, I am not a

home chef. I don’t know how to “build flavors,” as they say on the

cooking shows. And so it was that two days after my pasta failure, I

went to see Linton Hopkins.

Hopkins is the chef and owner of Atlanta’s Restaurant

Eugene. On the morning I drove to see him, I turned on

the radio and there he was, talking not just about Mas-

tering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, but al-

so about The Iliad, by Homer. He is as stocky as a butch-

er and as bald as a monk, with a gap between his teeth

and eyes that brighten like a baby’s when he talks about

food. When I arrived at his restaurant, he was standing

in the kitchen, shaking a container of lady peas. There

was a pale slab of smoked bacon on the steel counter,

sweating in the warmth of the kitchen. With a small

sharp knife, he cut off a piece and put it in a small pot,

along with some water, some peas—he didn’t measure—

and some salt. Then he turned on the flame, bringing

the peas to a boil, then down to a simmer. And then he

kept on simmering them until he spooned a few out of

the pot and squeezed one like a bug between his thumb

and his forefinger. “You want to cook peas until you can

smear them between your fingers. You added your to-

matoes before you cooked the peas—well, the acid in the

tomatoes stopped the peas from cooking. That’s why you

couldn’t taste the peas.”

He asked what I’d used for stock. I told him: a card-

board box. He said, “We all have to do that sometimes.

But what a difference it will make if you make your own.”

He cut a couple chickens in half, old laying hens he’d

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GREGORY MILLER

WRITER:

CHEF: LINTON HOPKINS / LOCATION: RESTAURANT EUGENE, HOPKINS’S RESTAURANT IN ATLANTA / DATE: JUNE 5, 2013

LESSON NO. 2

197

SERVES: 4 TO 6

INGREDIENTS

2 cups lady peas, rinsed

one 2-inch-square piece

smoked slab bacon

4 cups water

4 Tbsp duck fat or chicken fat

(available at butcher shops,

good grocery stores, and dar-

tagnan.com)

1 cup Vidalia onion, diced

CHEF:

T H E

R E C I P E

(about half an onion)

½ cup green bell pepper,

diced (about half a pepper)

½ cup celery, diced

(about one center stalk—

not one of the big outer

ones)

1 fresh bay leaf

3 Tbsp minced garlic

5 whole San Marzano

tomatoes from a can, cen-

ter membrane removed and

crushed by hand

2 cups Carolina gold rice

4 cups chicken stock,

preferably homemade

4 Tbsp chopped flat-leaf

parsley

kosher salt and freshly

cracked black pepper

PLACE PEAS, BACON, water, and

2 Tbsp salt in a small pan and

bring to a boil. Reduce to a sim-

mer and cook until peas are soft

but still intact, 15 to 20 minutes.

Turn off heat and set aside.

In a large pan with high sides

and a lid, melt duck or chicken

fat over low heat, then add on-

ions, stirring to coat them.

Cook until very soft, 10 to 15

minutes. Add bell pepper, cel-

ery, and bay leaf, and cook

until vegetables are well soft-

ened. Spread vegetable mix

uniformly across the base of

the pan and sprinkle the gar-

lic over top, letting the heat ris-

ing through the vegetables melt

the garlic.

Add tomatoes, bring up heat

gently, and stir until steam rises.

(You don’t want the vegetables

browned, just lightly colored.)

Add rice, stir to coat, and add

stock, making sure rice is coat-

ed. Bring to a simmer, add 1 tsp

salt, and taste broth, adjusting

with more salt until the broth

tastes rich. Drain peas and add

to top of simmering liquid in a

uniform layer, cover, and cook

until rice is done, about 15 min-

utes at a steady, low simmer.

Turn off heat, spread parsley

across top, and let sit for anoth-

er 10 minutes to let rice soften

some more and to allow flavors

to come together. Crack black

pepper on top and serve.

PERLOO

melizing as thick as jam. “That’s my mu-

sic. I hear that sound and I don’t have to

look at it. I know it’s right.”

And so: Don’t break eggs against an edge

but rather on a flat surface. Don’t slice but-

ter; shave it. Don’t chop onions; section

them. Add salt at every stage and you won’t

have to add so much at the end. When you

add garlic to cooking onions, don’t let it

touch the pan; let the garlic steam atop the

onions until you can smell it. Don’t toast bread crumbs from the crust

of the bread—it’s already been toasted. And although “the world is a

better place when you make your own mayonnaise,” the mayonnaise

is better “the farther away it is from a machine.”

None of this seemed intimidating until I ate Hopkins’s chicken

fillets and perloo, which tasted not like the product of an accumu-

lation of decisions but rather the most mysterious alchemy, all the

flavor of the chicken fat finding its way

into the unstirred rice that crusted at the

bottom of the pan, all the smell of the pig

smoke finding its way into the peas that

sat for more than two hours in the water

aggressively salted with mild Diamond

Crystal. Lunch was so good it made me

slightly dizzy when I ate it, and the next

night, I tried applying what I’d learned

to my pasta dish. I cooked the peas sep-

arately, with squiggles of supermarket bacon, and made my own

stock with pale supermarket birds. I also banged around the kitch-

en for hours, filling the sink with a Thanksgiving’s worth of pots

and pans, and when I emerged from the tumult and served the dish

to my family, two things were clear:

First, we could finally taste the peas.

And second, I was a beginner again.


CHEF WISDOM

1

Don’t break eggs against the edge of the

bowl. Use a hard, flat surface, like the coun-

ter. No fragments.

2

When cooking, season with a little salt at ev-

ery stage, tasting along the way, and you won’t

have to add so much at the end.

3

The world is a better place when you make your own mayonnaise.

AND WHO YOU ARE NOT IS WOLFGANG PUCK. ONCE YOU’RE AWARE

OF THAT, YOU’LL DISCOVER THE WAY YOU LIKE TO COOK.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF MINTON

WRITER:

CHEF: WOLFGANG PUCK / LOCATION: SPAGO, PUCK’S RESTAURANT IN BEVERLY HILLS / DATE: JUNE 11, 2013

CHEF WISDOM

1

When you’re buying fish, always ask if they

have anything special in the back. The stuff in the case is what they’re try-

ing to move.

2

If you don’t really want to cook, a pressure

cooker can be a wonderful thing.

3

Cooking fish skin-side down requires a very,

very hot cooking surface. You want crispy, not soggy.

LESSON NO. 3

So I hit the road later than planned and the traffic is

brutal and it takes nearly three hours instead of ninety

minutes to drive home from Long Beach, California,

where I’ve spent the past month on and off, engaged

in one of those blurry extended projects.

It’s a little past dinnertime when I arrive. My son, Miles, is in situ

in the rec room with his boyz when I arrive. Big Z is six six, 340.

There’s a permanent dent in our ten-foot sofa where he sleeps. Smit-

ty is known for his sweet jumper. I can always tell when he’s in the

house because there’s a trail of crumbs from the kitchen. I linger a

few moments against the doorpost of their clubhouse. When he was

little, I used to tell Miles that Daddy had to leave sometimes to bring

home the meat. Eyes riveted to his screen, my now-eighteen-year-

old manages a grunt hello. “What’s for dinner?” he asks.

Two hours later—four rib eyes, three pounds of wedge fries from

the deli counter, and three heads of romaine—I have brought home

the actual meat and cooked it on the grill. The dishes are done. The

garbage is out. I’m plowing through the stack of e-mails when I come

to one from my editor.

A cooking lesson? Oh, joy!

By nine in the morning, we’re in Wolfgang Puck’s Escalade, taking

surface streets through Little Tokyo. Within sight of the towers of

downtown Los Angeles, we seem to have been removed to another

part of the planet. Iron bars and barbed wire dominate the landscape;

few of the signs are in English. I have my son with me. He’s sitting in

the back with two empty child seats belonging to Puck’s young sons.

We are headed to Puck’s regular wholesale fish market. The fun-

ny thing is this: My son doesn’t eat fish. “I guess I can try it if Wolf-

gang Puck cooks it for me,” he’d earlier decided, ever the mensch.

The fish market is cold, wet, and fishy, with guys scurrying around

in rubber boots. Puck is shown a 450-pound toro, forty-nine dollars

a pound. He borrows a knife and cuts thin slices. I know this is sup-

posed to be a delicacy, and if it was a little later than ten in the morn-

ing, I would be gushing about the fresh taste and texture. But the place

is really fishy smelling, and the lobsters he’s buying are struggling in

the box, and my son has plastered on his face this horrible rictus of a

smile that reminds me of all the dead fish faces surrounding us (and,

in turn, of Tony Soprano’s fish-market dream sequence) . . . so it was

just kind of nauseating.

By noon, we’re at Puck’s landmark restaurant, Spago, in Beverly

Hills. In the kitchen proper, more than a dozen people in white coats

are performing their carefully choreographed rituals. Eventually,

Puck reappears in his own white coat. He clears a spot on the end of

the line, near an appliance called a circulator—a metal vat of preci-

sion-temperature swirling water—which he will use but assures me I

won’t need at home. (A pot of warm water on the stove will do, he says.)

A piece of Pacific king salmon is laid before him, a pinkish eight-

ounce rectangle with skin on one side. Puck sprinkles pepper and a

little salt. Without looking up, he calls for basil, a little thyme, and a

plastic bag—amid a chorus of “Yes, chef,”

the ingredients appear.

He sets the circulator to 140 degrees

Fahrenheit, then places the fish and herbs

into a plastic bag and applies olive oil lib-

erally. At the last moment, he spots a box

of chanterelle mushrooms and adds sever-

al to the bag—for a woody taste. The bag is

whisked away and sealed in a vacuum seal-

er (Puck says I can use a Ziploc at home,

no problem) and placed into the water in

the circulator.

Ten minutes later, the fish is warm, pli-

able, and aromatic. He sprays the skin with

cooking oil and grills it, skin down, for no more than a few minutes.

One of the line guys throws together an arugula salad with a light

vinaigrette.

Delicious.

Though I’m not really sure my son will ever request it.

Puck seemed to hear me when he prescribed this easy dish and

one other involving a pressure cooker, which he gave to me as a gift.

For that, and for his time, I am grateful. But now I must faithfully re-

port that, according to Esquire’s test chefs, a pot of tepid water and a

Ziploc baggie will not work for this recipe—in fact, had I done it that

way, I might have made us sick. You need the expensive equipment.

It’s wonderful so many derive so much pleasure from incorporat-

ing fresh, healthy, and vogue ingredients into new recipes. I get it:

People need art. People need hobbies. People need to take the time to

celebrate and savor and practice their use

of the myriad descriptive adjectives nec-

essary anymore to the proper enjoyment

of our body’s sustaining fuel.

But when I’m at home feeding myself

and my kid, for me, at least, it’s more about

survivalism: What can I make quickly in-

to a meal?

Maybe next year, when my son is at col-

lege and I’m “all alone,” as he reminds me,

I’ll have more time on my hands to dick

around with my food before I eat it.

Wait a minute.

Women love salmon, don’t they?

199

T H E

R E C I P E

pinch freshly ground

black pepper

½ cup canola or safflower oil

PREHEAT AN OUTDOOR or counter-

top grill/griddle.

Rub the salmon fillets on

both sides with olive oil and

thyme, and season them with

salt and pepper. Grill fillets

skin-side down for about 8

minutes, then cover for 3 min-

utes more. (If grilling indoors,

you can cover with a metal

bowl or pot.) Fillets should be

medium-rare. Set aside.

Drain arugula and pat thor-

oughly dry with a clean kitch-

en towel or paper towels. In a

small bowl, combine the mus-

tard, tarragon, vinegar, salt,

and pepper. Whisk togeth-

er until well blended. While

whisking continuously, slow-

ly pour in the oil to form a thick

emulsion.

Put the arugula and toma-

toes in a large salad bowl. Add

desired amount of vinaigrette,

season to taste with salt and

pepper, and toss the salad un-

til the leaves are evenly coat-

ed. Mound on individual plates

and top each with a salmon

fillet. Serve immediately.

SERVES: 4

INGREDIENTS

4 wild Alaskan salmon fillets,

about 4 oz each

extra-virgin olive oil

4 tsp chopped fresh thyme

coarse kosher salt

freshly ground black

pepper

ARUGULA SALAD

4 cups baby arugula leaves,

rinsed of sand and soaked in

water mixed with ice cubes

for 1 hour

2 large tomatoes, seeded and

cut into eighths

coarse kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

VINAIGRETTE

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp fresh tarragon,

minced

1 tsp sherry vinegar

⅛ tsp salt

SALMON FOR THE SINGLE DAD

CHEF:

Puck (left) was shopping for a forty-nine-dollar-per-pound toro for a gala. The writer (above, behind dead crab) just needed to feed his teenaged son.

dish—orange-chicken tacos, avocado salad, charred-tomato salsa—

as a series of isolated yet interdependent steps. “You don’t have to

make things more complicated. You don’t have to cook too much food

or food that requires every bit of your energy. You just have to make

good elemental food. You present it that way and it works on a kitch-

en table in an apartment or on a huge buffet line.” There is no dif-

ference, he is saying, between us—me, a guy who cooks at home for

a few people at a time, and him, with his clientele of hungry hordes.

Oil the grill, not the tomatoes. This keeps them from getting greasy

and overmoist. Little lessons spill out of him. “Simplicity matters

more to me because it gives me the time to enjoy what I do. So I cook

more, I guess,” he says. “But I cook better food.” Still, at first the les-

son plan he has devised for me doesn’t sound like enough work. Not

enough that I’ll learn from it. The salsa is simply six piles of veg-

etables, roasted and pureed. But immediately, he starts breaking

it into steps, and in each step lies wisdom. Grill the onions first, to

flavor the grill. Roast the tomatoes with the skin to the heat—keeps

them from steaming, getting mushy. Time the roasting of the other

vegetables around the tomatoes’ roasting. When the tomatoes have

blackened on the skin side, flip them over until the open side starts

to show some black. Ghione wants me to work quicker, to be more

systematic in turning the vegetables toward the heat.

“Being fast doesn’t have anything to do with being a chef. It has to

do with the changes you’re bringing about in the food,” he says. “Uni-

formity keeps it simple. You don’t want to be problem-solving when

you cook. You want to make something reliable and good. You need to

work fast to keep things even. Don’t doze your way through a dish.”

I admit to him that I don’t ever eat roasted tomatoes—too soupy,

too lacking in texture. “But the taste is remarkable,” he says. “The

charred skin is key. That’s a flavor you want—and texture is elimi-

nated, because we’ll puree it in the end.”

The other kitchens surge toward the lunch buffet. Questions fly

at Ghione. He answers without looking up. He is focused on this

spot, where he and I work. Work the avocado in the cup of its skin.

Mash it in there. You won’t have to fool around with another bowl.

His buffet chef checks in just as we finish the salsa, which we’ve

blended in a food processor. Ghione’s mind is on what he’s about

to eat. The three of us eat it on chips while it’s still hot, right out of

the food processor. They are two men at the front end of a massive

parade of food, pausing to marvel at what six vegetables, roasted

and blended just so, have become.

“We should serve this,” the buffet chef says, jabbing at the salsa

with a chip in his fingers. “Jeez, that’s good. We should serve it warm,

like this.” We’ve made only the one bowl, a small pleasure in a vast

space. This can be done again and again.

The chef wants me to use one pan. One bowl. One spoon.

He wants me to do my work in a single corner of one

table in one of nine kitchens tucked into the labyrinth

of tunnels beneath the new Horseshoe Casino in Cin-

cinnati, three of which are devoted to the scale and service of the

sprawling casino buffet, which serves German, Asian, Italian, Amer-

ican, and Mexican food, plus a separate salad bar, soup-and-bread

station, and dessert spread. Ovens are wired to the chef’s comput-

er; walk-in freezers are matched by walk-in ovens. Pallets of may-

onnaise sit on the polished concrete loading dock.

But the chef, Pete Ghione, asks that I ignore all that. I came here

to learn what I could from a chef who cooks for thousands of peo-

ple a day, and his first lesson is: Cooking is a small job. Finite work.

One simple task connected to the next. Right now, he wants me to

pick up a Roma tomato, core it, and cut it lengthwise. That is my job.

Casinos always toy with scale. I once stood in a tunnel beneath

the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, where I got to shake hands with

both Siegfried and Roy. Just as my brother and I were about to get

our photo taken with them, the four of us were forced to make way

for a kitchen worker pushing a spotless cart of beautifully chopped

iceberg lettuce. Three cubic yards of it. Somehow astounding. We

all stared silently at the scale of the thing. “Zhat is for buffet,” Roy

whispered to me, as if that explained things. Or excused them. His

breath smelled like parsley.

When you’re sitting at that blackjack table in the middle of four

million square feet of slots and showgirls and hospitality suites, the

whole universe is you and your three hundred bucks. Distance, size,

and perspective are fun-house-mirrored. That

may be why Ghione is teaching me three compact,

quiet, reliable recipes in the middle of the hub-

bub. One corner of one counter. He describes each

PETE GHIONE, WHO RUNS A COLOSSAL DAILY BUFFET, COOKS ONE STEP AT A TIME. SOMETIMES, ALL THE

FORGETTABLE LITTLE STEPS ADD UP TO A MEAL YOU’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER. OR, YOU KNOW, SALSA.


Ghione’s salsa is a master class in creating flavor.

WRITER:

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID LA SPINA

CHEF: PETE GHIONE / LOCATION: HORSESHOE CASINO, CINCINNATI / DATE: JUNE 15, 2013

LESSON NO. 4

SERVES: 4

INGREDIENTS

canola oil and sea salt

201

CHEF:

T H E

R E C I P E

10 Roma tomatoes, cut in half

lengthwise

6 scallions, stem ends

removed

1 white onion, peeled and

sliced ½-inch thick

2 poblano chile peppers

2 red jalapeño chile peppers

VERY LIGHTLY OIL and salt vegeta-

bles and chile peppers. Work-

ing on a hot grill seasoned with

canola oil, char each ingredient

until caramelized and tender—

the skin will pucker and slight-

ly blacken—starting skin-side

down for the tomatoes. Peel the

skin and remove stems from the

chile peppers once they have

cooled to the touch. Place all

charred vegetables in a blender

or food processor.

ADD TO VEGETABLE mix in blender:

10 cilantro sprigs

2 cloves garlic, peeled and

sliced thin

juice of two limes

½ tsp ground cumin

PUREE FOR ABOUT 20 seconds

and adjust flavor with salt.

Serve warm or at room

temperature. ≥

CHARRED-TOMATO SALSA


CHEF WISDOM

1

Oil the grill more than the vegetables. This

keeps them from getting greasy and overmoist.

2

Always grill the onions first. To flavor the grill.

3

Working fast is not about showing off. It’s about keeping things even so that there are

no surprises.


now, Alex Jones can’t relax. Two weeks after he en-

raged the entire country by naming the U. S. govern-

ment as Suspect No. 1 in the bloody slaughter at the

Boston Marathon, the radio host and avatar of mod-

ern American paranoia is on vacation with his family

in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He goes to museums with

his kids, takes in the Romanesque baths, laments the

decay of the grand old hotels that drew high rollers

like Al Capone and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hikes

up hillsides steamy with the mist from the natural

hot springs that bubble right out of the rocks. But

everywhere he looks there are fresh assaults on the

American way of life, on liberty itself, and the raging

radio voice that transforms him from a gentle fami-

ly man into a ranting prophet keeps taking demon-

ic possession of his soul. I know they’re going to try

to use whatever crisis unfolds, all the different spe-

cial interests, to sell thousands of robots at millions

of dollars apiece in big cities and small towns. They’re

going to sell armored vehicles and surveillance and

data mining. They’re going to use it to try to take free-

dom and offer this lie that the government’s there to protect you and

CAN protect you, but A, it can’t protect you, and B, it doesn’t WANT

to protect you. It’s just a complete fraud! Look at Katrina! Look at

Hurricane Sandy! FEMA put up signs saying, “Closed this week for

bad weather!” IT’S ALL A JOKE!

At a time when 44 percent of Republicans believe that “an armed

revolution in order to protect liberties might be necessary” and

54 percent of all Americans think the federal government has too

much power, when an entire class of freshman congressmen is

throwing any monkey wrench it can find into the democratic pro-

cess, this is the voice that made Jones famous and rich and aston-

ishingly influential in the conservative movement. His suspicion

of the Boston bombing was quickly echoed by New Hampshire

state representative Stella Tremblay, who wondered if the man

who lost both his legs wasn’t faking it. His fears of the government

buying up bullets got support from Lou Dobbs and Brian Kilmeade

on Fox, leading to congressional hearings spearheaded by Repub-

lican congressmen Jason Chaffetz and Jim Jordan, and Fox reg-

ular Andrew Napolitano echoed his accusations of government

involvement in 9/11. His theories about Benghazi were down-

right moderate compared with those of Congressman Darrell Issa,

who accused the Obama administration of deliberately withhold-

ing military support during a terrorist attack. Ron and Rand Paul

appear on his show, and Rand has accused Obama, in words that

could have come out of Jones’s mouth, of being part of the “anti-

American globalist plot against our Constitution.” The Drudge

Report has linked to 244 of his stories in the last two years alone,

he’s friends with celebrities like Charlie Sheen and Jesse Ventura,

his Web sites get up to a million visitors a day. Last year he earned

nearly $7 million, plowing all of it right back into his business.

All of this drives the Left into a fury. Here are typical com-

ments from a liberal Web site:

Mr. Jones should be strapped to the floor of a padded cell and

pumped full of Thorazine.

I guarantee he doesn’t believe his own spiel. He’s a carny. What wor-

ries me is the number of rubes on the midway who buy what he sells.

JONES IN HIS AUSTIN RADIO STUDIO, FROM WHICH HE PROJECTS

HIS VOICE TO AN AUDIENCE OF MILLIONS OVER MORE THAN A

HUNDRED STATIONS. WITH HIS INFOWARS.COM AND PRISONPLANET.

COM, JONES HAS A LARGER ONLINE AUDIENCE THAN RUSH

LIMBAUGH AND GLENN BECK COMBINED.

205

Actually, I do think Jones is crazy. This has been going on for

years before he got any kind of public attention.

It is all about website hits. Mr. Jones makes his money $.01 at a time.

None of this is true. However extreme and paranoid and down-

right cartoonish his unending stream of alarm can be, Jones be-

lieves every word he says and can prove it with a personal stash

of food big enough to last three years. And if they bothered to look

without prejudice, these righteous leftists would see that Jones

covers issues like the drug war, the growing security state, and

Monsanto’s genetic modification of food exactly the way they do,

just as many of his themes were echoed by the Occupy movement.

Their personal attacks just evade the far more troubling question of

why so many people on all sides of the political spectrum now be-

lieve such radical ideas—why the coal-mine canaries who scream

about poison gas whenever hard times come have suddenly ap-

peared everywhere, flocking left and right and straight into the

halls of Congress. At a time when America seems to be minting a

thousand new Alex Joneses every day, the bigger question is: What

changed? Have these people gone crazy, or do they actually see

something the rest of us don’t? How do you make an Alex Jones?

In person, he is amiable and easygoing. Average in height, with

a bulldog chest and rounded face that is slowly absorbing his

fine-cut features, he seems eternally weary and beleaguered in

a way that’s almost old-fashioned, as if he’s bearing a great bur-

den for the sake of others. He has a bad limp that he attributes

to his years as a street-fighting teenager. He will talk endless-

ly about his ideas but seems genuinely embarrassed by talking

about himself. He addresses everyone as “brother.” He’s patient

with his children and humane to his employees.

Today, in Hot Springs, he’s visibly exhausted. Dressed in blue

jeans and a western shirt with the pocket darned, he limps up and

down the main drag and vents a bewildering variety of conspir-

acy theories about everything from the Kennedy assassination

to the moon landings to Timothy McVeigh’s Murrah Building

bombing—he thinks they were all staged—with frequent asides

about the trip he took with his kids this morning through the

labyrinthine tunnels of a science-museum exhibit called “Un-

derground Arkansas.” “It was like some nightmare,” he tells me,

“and I’m not even claustrophobic.” Then his radio voice begins

to creep in. By the fifteenth tube I climbed through with my kids,

it was just exhausting—a torture device!

To my surprise, Jones often sounds quite liberal. The opposi-

tion to gay marriage disgusts him, for example. “Quite frankly,

I’m sick of it. Absolutely, people should be able to get married.”

Same with abortion. “I get a woman’s right, I get all those

real arguments.”

And the death penalty. “I believe in the death penalty, but it

has to be abolished because you can’t trust a corrupt government

to implement it. Like Texas will put people on death row and

when it comes out they’re innocent, they try to keep them there.”

Even undocumented migrants. “They’re here to give corpo-

rations subsidized low wages—because they can’t live on the low

wages they get, so they give them the welfare, and that’s designed

to give the big corporations an unfair trading advantage. They’re

using poverty as a tool of control.”

Indeed, his suspicion of big business verges on Marxism. “The

big corporations talk free market, but they’re the ones that are

actually pushing regulations to shut down competition—it’s just

such a screw job.”

It comes as no surprise that he’s a fan of the Wachowski broth-

ers, the filmmakers who made The Matrix and V for Vendetta,

tales of the relentless malcontents who squirm through the tun-

nels of our endlessly networked world.

“Those guys are patriots,” he says. “And I admire that Wachow-

ski brother who had a different identity and became—”

“Lana.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” he says. “How can you embrace

one liberty and not embrace them all?”

These are the qualities that explain his popularity with young

listeners who’d shoot holes in the radio at the braying sneers of

Rush Limbaugh—like this young man coming down the sidewalk

with a picture of a cat licking its balls on his T-shirt. At the sight

of Jones, he stops in his tracks and breaks into a smile. “What

are you doing in Hot Springs, man?”

Jones smiles back. “Hey, brother, how you doing?”

After the usual small talk, the man in the cat shirt has an urgent

question. “What do you think about Bitcoin, man?”

“I’ve said I’m all for diversity in currencies,” Jones answers in

his weary way, the world on his shoulders. “Private gold, silver,

digital, paper, city currencies, county currencies, organizational

currencies. I believe we need competition to the Federal Reserve.”

“Absolutely,” the man says.

“The government is planning its own global SDR digital curren-

cy,” Jones continues. “Unless they control Bitcoin, they’re going

to destroy it. And when it’s destroyed, they’ll say I supported it.”

“They always do that,” the man agrees.

In no hurry, Jones lingers, talking about Hot Springs. When he

was a kid, his dad brought him here six or seven times. They would

camp by the clearest deepwater lake in America and wind up the

week at the best hotel in town. Now look at the place. Look at what

globalism has done to America. Listen to that giant sucking sound.

“You should come to our new restaurant,” the man says.

Hobbling on, Jones returns to his obsessions. He still insists that

the Boston bombing was a “false flag” operation, but a false flag

doesn’t mean it’s always the government at work, he says. It might

be corporate interests, it could be other governments, it could even

be actual terrorists who are purposely left alone so the government

can take advantage of the public’s fear to launch a war. There’s a

pattern to these things. If there’s a bombing drill happening at the

same time, if they quickly catch “suspects” who have connections

to Western intelligence agencies, if the suspects were on terrorism

lists but “slipped through” the government’s nets, that bombing

was 95 percent likely to have been staged. This is the government

that lied about WMD, this is the government that lied about Syria us-

ing chemical weapons, this is a government USING Al Qaeda to take

over Libya and now Syria, that publicly brags “We need Al Qaeda.”

He’s referring to a pre-9/11 paper from the neocon Project for

the New American Century that said the public wouldn’t accept

higher levels of security “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing

event—like a new Pearl Harbor,” which of course is different from

actually calling for a new Pearl Harbor. But in his fever-dream ver-

sion of America, inference is evidence and everything bad is true.


EXAMPLE, DISGUSTS HIM. “I’M SICK OF IT. ABSOLUTELY, PEOPLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET MARRIED.”


He continues venting. And yet they’re going to sit there and hy-

perventilate and make this big production out of Boston and say

“Oh my God, it’s the Muslim extremists, we’ve got to give our rights

up”—and then it turns out the older brother was sponsored into

Georgia, he was allowed to travel back and forth under an assumed

name. First the FBI said, “We never heard of him,” then it turns

out they did know him. These guys are classic intelligence cutouts,

like Mohammed Atta of 9/11 fame, trained on a U. S. military base.

On he goes, leaping from slippery rock to slippery rock—big

banks laundering drug money, rigging the stock market with

global interest-rate fixing and insider trading, the long history

of neocon support for the Afghani mujahideen who became Al

Qaeda. Every time, he weaves bits of truth into a blanket state-

ment about the world. The public is so naive, man.

He winces. “My leg is just throbbing.”

“You want to sit down?”

“No, I need to walk it off.”

There is something oddly comforting about being with Jones. In

a world where so many of us suffer from an “inability to constel-

late,” the modern affliction where stars no longer arrange them-

selves into the outlines of gods, he has the reassuring authority

of Father Knows Best updated for the apocalypse. But when he’s

talking in italics, it must be said, the dude is freakin’ exhausting:

the beige Volkswagen Ted Bundy drove, the name of the guy who

bombed the Reichstag, the connections between Malthus and Mar-

garet Sanger, on and on until you feel like you’re being smothered

with a pile of mimeographed pamphlets. Now it’s a quote from for-

mer secretary of state Madeleine Albright. The way he puts it, she

was asked on NBC or ABC if the death of five hundred thousand

Iraqi children was a good price to pay for security in the Middle

East, and she said yes.

“I’ll have to check the quote,” I say, mentioning the documen-

tary where he claimed that Kissinger said Obama would cre-

ate the New World Order, but what Kissinger actually said on-

screen was that Obama was so popular overseas, he’d reset our

foreign policy.

“Henry Kissinger has written papers about what he means by

a New World Order.”

“But that’s not what he said.”

“He said Barack Obama will bring a New World Order.”

“No, he didn’t. He said Barack Obama would be good for our

foreign policy because he’s so popular. He didn’t use the phrase

‘New World Order.’ ”

“He did say New World Order.”

“Even if he did, he didn’t mean it the way you do. Why would

he admit to some sort of tyrannical plot to conquer the world?”

They say it all the time, he insists. “They brag that Europe is

run by private central-bank technocrats. They have written—

no exaggeration—it’s got to be five hundred articles in the last

two or three years, in the Financial Times of London and every-

where else, describing the end of international sovereignty and

these boards and combines running things. This is not my opin-

ion! Hundreds of books have been written by them!

“But they don’t say, ‘We want to do this so we can dominate

the world and have bigger mai tais or whatever it is they sup-

posedly want.

“No, they say they’re ‘meeting in secret’ and then it leaks to some

of the British newspapers. Couple years ago, ‘Richest People in the

World Meet in Secret to Discuss Overpopulation at Rockefeller Uni-

versity in New York.’ And they SAY this! It’s like the world govern-

ment’s already there! They’re just mopping up a few sectors! And

then it’s David Rockefeller there, as the grand architect of it all.”

I can’t help laughing. Not David Rockefeller, too.

He sighs. “Fine. None of it’s going on. I apologize, none of it’s real.”

But when I check the Albright quote, it turns out she did say

yes when asked if the death of five hundred thousand Iraqi

children was worth it. She was sandbagged by a 60 Minutes

reporter and she was talking about Clinton’s economic sanc-

HOW DO YOU MAKE AN ALEX JONES? CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE:

ON THE STEPS OF THE U. S. CAPITOL IN 1982, ON A FAMILY

TRIP TO WASHINGTON, AGED EIGHT; SIXTH GRADE, ROCKWALL,

TEXAS; DISNEY WORLD WITH HIS PARENTS AT TEN; AS A BABY WITH

HIS PARENTS, WHITE ROCK LAKE, TEXAS.

207

As much as Jones likes to talk, the one thing he doesn’t like to

talk about is his childhood. He squirms, he groans, he gets visi-

bly embarrassed. But he’s too polite not to give it a shot.

“My parents weren’t big TV watchers, and my mom and my

dad liked reading history books. So I went to the library a lot, and

I read a lot of history. And when you read history—”

He’s at his fan’s restaurant now, drinking a glass of homemade

ginger ale while the owner watches. “Damn, it’s strong.”

“But good?”

Instead of answering, Jones asks how they make it. The man

explains and Jones takes it in, a sounding board for humanity.

But eventually he goes away and Jones must return to his un-

comfortable task.

“So when you read history, the truth is condensed for you—

the subterfuge, the manipulations, the setups.”

Already he’s back to his beloved themes. Days go by before he

dribbles out the story, but one thing that comes through loud and

clear is that Jones was primed for his worldview by virtue of place.

Born into an old Texas family that fought in all the wars of inde-

pendence and raised by a father who blended the long-haired

anti war government-hating sentiments of his college years in the

1960s with the more traditional government-hating sentiments

of southern populism, Jones learned his hatred of the East Coast

elites in his sandbox. The lessons his father passed on included,

for example, a warning not to check the organ-donor box on his

driver’s license or risk having his organs harvested. By fourteen,

Jones was reading everything from science fiction to Hemingway

to Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, the classic left-wing nov-

el about a CIA agent who creates a puppet government in Viet-

nam by staging a terror attack. He loved Byron’s Childe Harold’s

Pilgrimage, the poem that introduced the Byronic hero (brilliant,

alienated, irresistible to women) to the world. But his most influ-

ential read was None Dare Call It Conspiracy, a book he found on

his father’s shelf when he was about twelve or thirteen. Written

hero says he discovered that the local DARE cops were actually

dealing drugs on the side. “I would be at the pool, twelve years

old, watching the guy sell drugs to some housewife, and I’d see

some of the very same people coming to school and they’d have

drug dogs and they’d say we may start drug-testing you, we’re

gonna search the lockers.” Of course he couldn’t help shooting

off his mouth—You’re gonna sit here and lecture us when you’re

a drug dealer?—and of course the cops responded by arresting

him over and over. “I would be at a bonfire and the cops would

show up and be like, ‘All right, you’re publicly intoxicated,’ and

I hadn’t even drank a beer yet. It was just boom, arrest me, ar-

rest me.” Finally some good ol’ boy called his dad and told him,

“Look, they’re gonna kill your son. You need to move outta town.”

It’s hard to say how much of this is true. Like the blues sing-

er who went to the crossroads to trade his soul for guitar chops,

Jones has the performer’s tendency to sincere exaggeration. But

it’s certain that the Jones family moved to Austin, where the lib-

eral culture meant fewer bullies and more art programs. Instead

of fighting, Jones began to paint.

Before long, he was a hardcore Ron Paul libertarian with a zesty

tang of the famous Austin weirdness, the final ingredient that makes

Jones his unique crossover self, the Mao and Muhammad of the

emerging political style called “fusion paranoia.” After a brief stint

at Austin Community College, he dropped out and started thinking

of ways to make an honest living. Artist? Park ranger? He always

had a knack for imitating the voices on the TV—maybe he could do

voice-overs? He began listening to talk-radio hosts like Rush Lim-

baugh, who were just beginning their spectacular rise to power.

Then he picked up a book by Carroll Quigley, a pivotal figure in

the conspiracy world who was once professor to—insert theramin

music here—Bill Clinton himself. He raced on to Heinz Höhne’s

The Order of the Death’s Head, an exposé of the secret plots and

subterfuge practiced by Hitler’s SS. That connected with the

things he’d been learning about Defense Department black ops

tions, which were an effort to pressure Saddam Hussein and

placate Republicans while avoiding a hot war—but either way,

the children died.

Another fan comes up. “Hey Alex, how you doing?

“Hey brother! How you doing?”

“Doin’ okay!”

“Well, good to meet you!” Jones says. Smiling, he points at the

man’s T-shirt. “That’s a Target shirt. I’ve got that same shirt.”

The fan moves on, and Jones is already onto Sirhan Sirhan

when another stranger says hello, handing over a business card.

“We’re right next to the Subway,” he says. “And we have the

best burgers in Arkansas.” They start talking about the Murrah

Building bombing, which is when this particular stranger—who

describes himself as having “liberal inclinations”—became a fan.

Another man stops. “What’s up, man?”

The first man says, “This is Alex Jones!”

The fancy people fly to Europe for their vacations now, leav-

ing Hot Springs as tattered as so much of the heartland. But Al-

ex Jones is here. His fans stand around starstruck—and grateful.

by the PR man for the John Birch Society, it claims that a conspir-

acy of international bankers financed the communist revolution

in Russia as part of a long-term plan to control the world through

big government, false flags, gun control, social-welfare programs,

and central banking. The world was like one of those children’s

paintings that seems like one thing to the zombified people who

buy the official story, but reveals the hidden truth to those who look

more closely. Published in 1972, the book sold five million copies.

For a fertile and suspicious imagination, None Dare Call It Con-

spiracy was rocket fuel, and it’s little surprise that Jones grew in-

to a defiant and embattled teenager. Beset by “bullies with mus-

taches” but eternally unwilling to back down, Jones got into fight

after fight and fought back with gusto. The way he tells the story,

worried that he sounds “like I’m trying to say I was James Dean

or something,” he put one bigger kid in a hospital with a cracked

skull, nailed another guy in the trachea, and earned his limp when

he drove the wrong girl home and five guys jumped up and down

on his leg. “I was probably in the hospital five or six times,” he says.

The story only gets more Jones-esque from there, as our young


IN THE PAST THREE YEARS, HIS STAFF HAS GROWN FROM FIFTEEN TO FIFTY. “IT’S BIG, MAN,” HE SAYS. “I ALMOST DON'T WANT THEM TO

KNOW, ’CAUSE THEY WILL KILL MY ASS.”


like Oper ation Northwoods, a fiendish plan to justify an inva-

sion of Cuba by sinking a boatload of Cuban refugees—and never

mind that Northwoods was never put into action or that Quig-

ley repudiated the theories attributed to him. The stars lined

up and Jones had glimpsed the outlines of gods. Soon he felt an

overwhelming urge to get on the radio and spread this hidden

knowledge to the world.

Now it’s time to go, but the restaurant owner refuses to give

him a check.

“I’m going to pay you guys,” Jones insists.

No way, the owner responds. “Believe it or not, you’ve done

more for me than you could ever know.”

Jones seems almost embarrassed. “Oh, you’re too nice, man.”

But what he would like, the owner adds shyly, is a photo with the

great Alex Jones. And he knows just where he wants to take the

shot—in front of the giant poster of Willie Nelson in a gas mask.

That night, as we wait for his wife at the hotel bar, another fan

approaches. He has a thick Arkansas accent and a story about a

buddy who led an Army platoon in Iraq. “He said he almost got

court-martialed for telling the guys, ‘We’re going door-to-door

looking for guns, looking for bullets, fighting for stuff we would

shoot some son of a bitch for doing back home.’ ”

So Alex has fans at Fort Hood?

“Oh yeah, they’re all listeners.”

By this time, Jones has filled in the story of his rise, how he

for a job in media?’ ”

So what attracted her to him?

“I liked Alex ’cause he was so real, you know? He didn’t play

games. Like one day he called me kind of flirting—”

Jones squirms. “This is really weird.”

“—and he goes, ‘You know, I think about you all the time.’ And

he was just so sincere and so real—he was like, a man. There was

nothing boyish about him, nothing youthful, really. He was him-

self completely.”

I know exactly what she means. The enervating ambivalence

of the soft modern man is absent in Jones. Then she fills in help-

ful details Jones left out. “His mother’s family, the Ayres family,

took care of William Travis’s son when he went to fight the Ala-

mo. He comes from rebels.”

“More than that,” Jones can’t help adding. “I had family at

San Jacinto, I had family at Gonzales, I had family at Wash ington-

on-the-Brazos.”

Then he stops himself again. “It’s creepy to get this much at-

tention. I’m like, how pathetic have we gotten that I’m some of

the best resistance there is? ’Cause I don’t have some high view

of myself. It just shows how low the bar has gotten, how much of

a coma America is in.”

Kelly looks at him with an amused expression. “He’s actually

a pretty jolly person,” she says.

By this time, Jones trusts me enough to let me meet his three

kids—a media first. One day we climb the misty hillside above the

bathhouses with his ten-year-old son, and Jones relaxes enough

came on the radio just after the FBI slaughtered American ci-

vilians at Ruby Ridge and Waco, powerful experiences of rup-

ture for him and many thousands of other Americans. Then

came April 19, 1995, a date imprinted on his brain: the Oklaho-

ma City bombing. Refusing to believe a fellow patriot did it, he

interviewed people who said they’d seen Timothy McVeigh

planting explosives with a military escort and cops who myste-

riously died after telling him the government did it. Just like the

Reichstag! And there was a bombing drill that morning! When

his radical views finally got him fired from the Austin station,

he set up his own ISDN line at home and spent every penny he

had getting his videos out.

The pivotal moment in his career was 9/11. Within days of the

attacks, with a prescience born of his obsession with history’s dark

patterns, he was already warning that the attacks on the World

Trade Center would be used to justify a war on Iraq. Just hours

after the planes hit the buildings, while most of America was dry-

ing tears and putting out flags, he was saying it might have been a

setup—and unlike most media figures who calculate exactly how

much they can get away with, Jones was willing to risk everything

for his beliefs. Within a week, he lost thirty stations. By two weeks

he was down sixty. His producers begged him to back off, but he

never let up, relentlessly attacking the Bush administration for

many of the same reasons liberals did. “Bush ordered torture and

then wrote a book bragging about it, and Governor Ridge said, ‘Ye-

ah, I was ordered to put out orange alerts every time we needed

a political distraction’—I mean, Ari Fleischer admitted that they

would issue fake terror alerts.”

Gradually, as the Iraq war fell into blood, chaos, he rebuilt his au-

dience. When YouTube debuted in 2005, unleashing him through

the miracle of free bandwidth, his show began a steady expan-

sion to its current 160 stations. His movies get ten million views

in a single week, and his Web sites get as many as a million visi-

tors a day. In the last three years, his staff has grown from fifteen

people to fifty. “It’s big, man,” he says. “I almost don’t want them

to know, ’cause they will come kill my ass.”

Finally his wife, Kelly, comes down, wearing cowboy boots with

pink flowers and a ruffled shirt that blurs the distance between

sexy and wholesome. She’s the classic sweet southern wife you’d

meet at a bake sale, kind of heavy on the makeup in the Texas style,

warm and welcoming and often reaching out a hand to touch her

husband’s arm as she tries to explain him. But she’s also a Jew

who grew up in Europe with a diplomat for a father, speaks four

languages, became a vegetarian at sixteen, and joined the animal-

rights movement as a PETA activist. “I’m the lady who threw the

raccoon at Anna Wintour,” she says.

“She was on the cover of USA Today in Japan naked,” Jones adds.

“I had a big banner.”

“Alex told me you met on the set of a show,” I say.

She smiles. “He pursued me with great fervor.”

“That’s not how he told the story.”

“You came over and sat on my lap,” Jones says.

“I don’t know about that,” she teases. “I remember standing at

the bulletin board looking at stuff and he goes, ‘Are you looking

“...THE STATE LOVES YOU AND THE STATE IS YOUR GOD, AND THE STATE IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FOREVER. WORSHIP THEM!”

THEN, WITHOUT MISSING A BEAT, HE CUTS TO A COMMERCIAL.

209

to drop the lectures and laugh at the many conspiracy theories

that center on him. “There are people that really believe that I am

really Bill Hicks and staged my own death. And then there’s peo-

ple that believe I’m part of a reptilian conspiracy by an ancient

alien race called the Dracos—but now there’s a camp that I’m a

good Draco, that’s why I fight the New World Order from an old-

er star system. I’m twelve trillion years old, according to them.”

Every minute, he keeps an eye on his son. “Rex, tie your shoes,

honey—stop and tie your shoes.”

At the top of the hill, you can see seventy miles in any direc-

tion. It’s lovely and peaceful. Then we hike back down, talking

of Armageddon.

“Rex, tie your shoes,” Jones says again.

At the bottom, Rex says, “Thank you for letting me go on the

hike, Father.”

Another day, Jones invites me along on a family dinner. The

meal begins with grace, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it.

“Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of conscious-

ness and we hope that you will help us to have discernment to

do good in the world and to help others, and

that we will all love each other and help be

a light in the world. And please protect my

children and my family and everyone we

know, Amen.”

Without missing a beat, Jones goes back to

Clinton killing Glass-Steagall and unleash-

ing the banks. “That’s why you can’t trust

this power structure.”

Obama’s been trying to pass regulations

on Wall Street, I say, and the Republicans

have fought it to the bitter end after the

banks almost crashed the economy—and

you’re disempowering Obama with your

rhetoric.

“I get that the establishment right wing

wants the wars, wants the torture,” Jones

says. “I get all that. But they’ve so leveraged

us into a Ponzi scheme, we can’t get out of

it. The banks are ‘too big to fail.’ That’s what

the bullets and all the preparation for mar-

tial law is, for when the whole thing goes un-

der like Argentina.”

So instead of attacking Obama, I tell him,

you should be saying, “Let’s get those reg-

ulations in.”

The kids sit politely through all this. But

when the pizza comes, Rex pipes up.

“No country can claim that they created

pizza.”

Really? Not the Italians?

“The Romans had something like bread,

but France did a lot of the toppings.”

Sounding exactly like his father, Rex

launches into a lecture that ranges from Star

Wars to The Hobbit to something that stops

sperm from swimming. “Edison invented

basically everything that’s useful,” he says.

Jones interrupts with an admonishment—sperm is not an ap-

propriate subject for the dinner table, son.

“Sorry, sir,” Rex says, jumping on to Jules Verne and Charles

Dickens until his father tells him to stop dominating the con-

versation—a phrase I hear him use at least three times over the

next two days, always gently and leavened with a bit of loving

praise. He wants Kelly to tell me a story about a time someone

was listening in on her phone calls while her father was in the

hospital, and after she hung up, the phone rang and a voice said,

“I hope he dies.”

“I do kinda remember that,” Kelly says.

“You kind of remember it?”

“Yes, I remember it.”

Frustrated, Jones reminds her. “I’m at Bilderberg, five years

ago. Your dad’s in the hospital. You called back crying and you

go, ‘Oh my God, they’re listening!’ You don’t remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember that. I just don’t want to freak everybody

out.” She gives a meaningful look in the direction of the kids.

A SENSE OF EMBATTLEMENT IS CENTRAL TO

THE JONES WORLDVIEW AND HAS BEEN SINCE

HE WAS A KID BEING BULLIED IN SCHOOL. AND

SO AFTER 9/11, WHEN JONES IMMEDIATELY

BLAMED THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT FOR THE

ATTACKS AND PROMPTLY LOST 70 PERCENT OF

HIS SPONSORS AND STATIONS, HE DIDN’T BACK

DOWN AND INSTEAD BUILT A NEW AUDIENCE,

WITH NEW SPONSORS AND NEW STATIONS.


transcendent in

this quiet testament to patience and care.

“This place is Valhalla for me,” he says.

Fleishell and the other engravers whose work

is in our wallets—most of the other modern

portraits are Hipschen’s—are perhaps the

least famous American artists with the most

widely viewed art. “They don’t know who I

am, but that’s okay,” he says. “That’s still my

work. I did that.”

All that work is upstairs, silent and sunlit;

the rest is done downstairs, in the heat and the

noise. Steve Olszowy, twenty-one years on the

job, reproduces the engravings on stunning

printing plates, thirty-two Benjamins a sheet.

They will be wrapped around the rollers that

Brian Thompson’s father used to make; they

should be hanging on a wall instead. They are

the art that no one sees. The plates are first

made of thin black plastic—as with Crane’s

papermaking, the way in which the engrav-

ings are translated into plastic is kept secret—

sprayed with silver nitrate, and dunked into

tanks filled with electrified liquid nickel sulfa-

mate, a bright green. “You don’t want to drink

that,” Olszowy says. Plate makers talk about

“growing” plates. Over the course of about sev-

enteen hours, the nickel will slowly grow, ion

by ion, into a mirror image of the plastic plate,

which is then removed. The nickel plates are

then rinsed and ground and punched with

mounting holes, and then dipped into a bath

of hexavalent chrome, “probably the nasti-

est stuff the bureau’s got.” Little plastic balls

float on the surface of the baths, each of which

bubbles away like a cauldron; the balls knock

down the fumes. The chrome coats and binds

to the nickel, giving it strength. The plates

wear down inside the presses, however, mean-

ing the bureau has to make about seven hun-

dred of them each year. “They’re pretty, aren’t

they?” Olszowy says, holding one up.

Dave Smeltzer, the offset printer, twenty-

eight years on the job, comes next. He pushes

sixteen-thousand-sheet loads of Crane & Co.

paper into his Super Simultan II, a beast of a

machine. Those same sheets come out the oth-

er end with their carefully blended founda-

tion inks in several shades of blue, and Brian

Thompson’s quill and magical 100 in orange.

After drying for seventy-two hours, they’re

taken to the intaglio printers, who literally op-

erate in parallel, just a few feet away. These

masters of raised inks are managed by Bob

Smith, twenty-four years on the job, with

a thick mustache and a Bronx accent to ri-

val it. He and his men have mounted Steve

Olszowy’s plates onto their cylinders, and now

they coat the plates with thick waves of ink.

That ink is made by a Swiss company called

SICPA, which once made a “special fat used

in the milking of cows” but now supplies

much of the world’s security inks. Countries

buy the rights to a particular “shift”—a par-

ticular color change. On the new hundred, it’s

The Benjamin[continued from page 189]

Jones catches on. “Actually none of that’s

true. I was just joking, kids.”

But his five-year-old daughter says, “That

wasn’t very scary.”

And Rex says, “Pop, I’ve heard you tell that

story a million billion times.”

Soon the pizza is gone and it’s time to go.

“Thank you for dinner, Daddy,” Rex says.

Walking out, watching Jones keep his

hawk eye on the derelict walking toward

us on the sidewalk, I realize that the reas-

suring authority that makes Jones seem so

manly to his wife must be an even greater

comfort to his kids. In this lunatic world so

full of danger, a passionate and concerned

father is here to explain everything. That’s

when it strikes me: This is how you make

an Alex Jones.

On my last day, I watch Jones do his show

from the Al Capone Suite of the Arlington

Hotel. A headline from Florida gets him start-

ed: F L O R I D I A N S E N C O U R A G E D T O R E P O R T

NEIGHBORS WHO HATE THE GOVERNMENT.

As he gets going, seated in a desk chair be-

fore his computer, he starts to rub his hands

on his thighs in the automatic way of a dog

pacing the limits of his chain, a circular mo-

tion endlessly repeated. Nazis and citizens

reporting neighbors, that’s the worship of

the state. All of it is for the children. Injecting

black men with syphilis and watching them

die over fifty years was for the children. The

UN injecting millions of people in Africa and

Latin America and Asia with tetanus shots

that make them have abortions at the begin-

ning of the second trimester and miscarriag-

es and also tend to kill the women—it’s a gift

of the state. It’s the loving sacrament of ev-

erything good, and the state loves you and

the state is your god, and the state is going

to take care of you and your family forever.

Worship them!

Without missing a beat, he cuts to a com-

mercial. “We’ll be right back! Stay with us,

you slave individuals!”

During the breaks he’s completely normal,

going over technical problems with his crew

like any professional. So how much of this is

a performance?

None of it, he insists. “When I’m tired, I

tend to rant.”

But doesn’t his audience expect it?

“I’ll be honest, it’s a crutch. And it’s a

crutch that worked. It’s kind of like when

I was going through that Arkansas under-

ground exhibit, and it went on and on and

by the tenth tube I went through, barely big

enough for a person, I almost pissed, like

why isn’t there a sign saying that bigger guys

shouldn’t go in this?”

He doesn’t want this embattled feeling,

he says. He doesn’t want the media atten-

tion either. But he wants to beat them at

their own game and it becomes “a defiance

thing,” like when he was a teenager. He just

Alex Jones

green to copper rather than the current green

to black, a more noticeable change. Color-

shifting ink contains microscopic metallic

flakes that reflect different wavelengths of

light, which means the ink can change col-

or. On the new hundred, there’s a bell inside

the inkwell that appears and disappears de-

pending on how the light strikes it. Even the

ink is a mirror of many facets.

The color-shifting and black inks fill every

crevice of the plates, which are then wiped

clean of the excess. The intaglio printers take

the dried sheets from the offset boys and put

them into their own machines, which squeeze

together the paper and plates with enough

pressure to strip a careless man of his skin.

The backs of the notes are printed first. Before

the fronts can be printed, the sheets are hand-

jogged and -cracked by the pressmen to make

sure the paper doesn’t stick together. This is

physical labor. Now come the iconic fronts,

rolling past. Now there’s Benjamin Franklin,

his face like a fingerprint, and the note’s bor-

ders and Rosa Gumataotao Rios’s signature,

still wet to the touch. Now it’s money.

The sheets are taken to a drying vault by

the pile. It looks like a warehouse for cheap

plastic shower curtains, but in fact there’s

something like a billion dollars in it, steam-

ing away, watched over by Ronald Perkins,

twenty-seven years on the job. There’s a smell

in the vault that’s heavy but not unpleasant,

cotton and chemicals. “That’s the smell of

money,” Perkins says.

Once the sheets have dried, Perkins and his

team run them through computer inspection.

Notes that are even slightly flawed get kicked

off the line. To demonstrate, Perkins marks a

single note on a single sheet with a red mark-

er, just a dot. Seconds later, at the other end

of the belt, there it sits, ready to be destroyed.

The sheets are cut in half and wheeled on

hand jacks over to Carson Green, twenty-

six years on the job. He’s African-American,

with a beard and a raspy voice. His press ap-

plies the finishing touches—the serial num-

bers and seals, black and green—and then the

sheets are trimmed and cut from 16’s to 8’s to

single notes. The last knives must be impos-

sibly sharp. They plunge down into stacks

one hundred notes thick, cutting through

them as though they were wedges of cake.

“We don’t mess around with that,” Green says

as he watches the blades drop, nearly three

decades in and still mesmerized. “That is so

cool,” he says to no one in particular. “Anoth-

er perfect cut.” At last, each tidy pile of notes

is machine-counted and bound with a band

of glossy paper: $10,000 in a strap. There are

ten straps in a bundle. There are four bundles

in a brick, or $400,000, about nine pounds of

money, now wrapped in clear plastic. Four

bricks make a cash pack, $1.6 million, and

forty cash packs make a skid, $64 million of

American money in a square-shouldered pile

on a pallet at the end of the line.

This load is destined for the Federal Re-

serve Bank in New York City—but it might

have gone to branches in Minneapolis or Kan-

sas City—from where it will be shipped to fi-

nancial institutions and central banks across

the country and around the world. On October

8, these bills will join the 8.9 billion U. S. hun-

dreds already in circulation—8.9 billion pieces,

not dollars—this $64-million skid some tiny

fraction of the more than 2.5 billion new hun-

dreds printed this fiscal year alone by people

named Crane and Thompson and Gumatao-

tao Rios, Lowery and Lambert, Fleishell and

Hipschen and Benzing, Olszowy and Smelt-

zer and Smith, Perkins and Green.

Their work is in demand in Russia, in Saudi

Arabia, in California and Delaware, more in

demand, more desired than ever before, to be

locked in safes and stuffed under mattresses

and thrown onto felt tables. There has never

been more American money, and there have

never been more people who want it. Differ-

ent people, the people who talk about the end

of cash, futurists and credit-card companies,

people who believe in invisible things, some-

times forget how the rest of us think, and in

particular they forget how we think in times

of crisis, when we seek comfort and security

and trust. There were spikes in demand big

enough to chart, like tremors, after Septem-

ber 11 and especially after September 2008,

when the global financial markets woke up

and realized how little cash they had. Lies

turn true objects sacred, and in them we seek

shelter. That’s when art wins. When darkness

falls, we want straps and bundles and bricks.

We want Benjamin Franklin. We want light

we can hold in our hands. ≥

can’t stop fighting.

On his next segment, inspiration strikes

him. Telling the story of his trip through the

tunnels of “Underground Arkansas,” he puts

his finger on the reason it disturbed him so

much. “I came out sweating and had this rev-

elation—this is what I feel like in the New

World Order! People want to know what

powers the show, that’s it! You’re crawling

through the darkness and by the tenth tun-

nel I’m thinking about CIA torture camps and

cages smaller than bodies!”

Two hours later, he sits back and sighs.

“I’m really relaxed from those baths, man.

My larger intellect is not operating at full

capacity. All there is is the primitive brain.”

Pouring out in a fever, I say.

“Did you like the tunnels?”

Yes, definitely. It was beautiful the way he

brought it all around, mixing the personal

and the political and constellating the uni-

verse just like art or poetry or a movie by the

Wachowski brothers. This is what he does

best, when he pulls it off. He gathers up pieces

of the broken world and glues them back to-

gether with some wild exaggeration that re-

veals the hidden patterns.

But alas, this just leaves him with anoth-

er, harder question—the question that finally

connects him to all the rest of us. “Having this

job and always having to read about all this

stuff, you just get sick of it—it’s kind of like,

more tunnels? When do these damn things

end? Am I going the right way?” ≥

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The Golden Age of Sport Coats, pp. 166–167: Jack-ets: L.B.M. 1911, 212-228-3626. Isaia, saks.com. Boglioli, barneys.com. Thomas Pink, thomaspink.com. Ravazzolo, 212-486-8920. Isaia pocket square, marios.com. Thom-as Pink gloves, thomaspink.com. Gucci glasses, gucci.com. P. 168: Jackets: Boss, hugoboss.com. Brooks Broth-ers, brooksbrothers.com. CH Carolina Herrera, 212-744-2076. Theory, theory.com. Black Sail by Nautica, saks.com. Kiton, kiton.it. Coach gloves, coach.com. Brunello Cucinel-li pocket square, 212-813-0900. Oliver Peoples sunglass-es, oliverpeoples.com. Oliver Spencer scarf, oliverspencer.co.uk. P. 169: Jackets: The Men’s Store Bloomingdale’s, 800-232-1854. Tommy Hilfiger, 212-223-1824. Hugh & Crye, hughandcrye.com. Banana Republic, bananarepublic.com. Belvest, 212-317-0460. Oliver Spencer, oliverspen-cer.co.uk. J. Crew, jcrew.com. Prada, prada.com. Massi-mo Dutti, massimodutti.com. Ted Baker London, ted-baker-london.com. Etro, etro.com. Tod’s sunglasses, tods.com. Brioni pocket square, brioni.com. Paul Stu-art scarves, paulstuart.com. Oliver Peoples sunglasses, oliverpeoples.com. Giorgio Armani gloves, armani.com. Etro pocket square, etro.com. P. 170: Jackets: Phineas Cole, paulstuart.com. Pal Zileri, 212-751-8585. Cesare At-tolini, cesareattolini.com. DKNY, dkny.com. Brunello Cu-cinelli, 212-813-0900. Windsor Custom, windsorcustom-nyc.com. Perry Ellis, perryellis.com. Brioni, brioni.com. Gant, gant.com. Paul Smith, 646-613-3060. Boss pocket square, hugoboss.com. Ermenegildo Zegna gloves, ze-gna.com. Warby Parker sunglasses, warbyparker.com. Versace sunglasses, sunglasshut.com. Isaia pocket square, marios.com. P. 171: Ermenegildo Zegna jacket, zegna.com. Oliver Peoples glasses, oliverpeoples.com.

The Dark Suit Rises, p. 172: Louis Vuitton suit, shirt, and tie, louisvuitton.com. Cartier watch, cartier.com. P. 173: Louis Vuitton trench coat, louisvuitton.com. Kiton suit, shirt, and tie, kiton.it. Santoni shoes, santonishoes.com. P. 174: Calvin Klein Collection suit and shirt, 212-292-9027. Brunello Cucinelli tie, 212-813-0900. P. 175: Dolce & Gabbana coat and shirt, dolcegabbana.it. Burberry Lon-don tie, burberry.com. P. 176: Giorgio Armani suit, armani.com. Banana Republic shirt, bananarepublic.com. John Varvatos tie, johnvarvatos.com. Dunhill shoes, 212-753-9292. P. 177: Dunhill suit, shirt, tie, and pocket square, 212-753-9292. Santoni shoes, santonishoes.com. Mont-blanc watch, montblanc.com. P. 178: Salvatore Ferraga-mo suit, ferragamo.com. Ermenegildo Zegna shirt, zegna.com. Thomas Pink tie, thomaspink.com. Zenith chrono-graph, zenith-watches.com. P. 179: Prada suit and shirt, prada.com. P. 180: Dior Homme suit and shirt, diorhomme. com. Boss tie, hugoboss.com. Brioni shoes, brioni.com. P. 181: Burberry London suit and sweater, burberry.com.

Store InformationFor the items featured in Esquire, please consult the Web

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Credits

(ISSN 0194-9535) is published monthly (ex-cept a combined June/July issue) by Hearst Commu-nications, Inc., 300 West 57th St., NY, NY 10019 USA. Steven R. Swartz, President and Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice-Chairman; Cath erine A. Bostron, Secre-tary; Ronald J. Doerfler, Senior Vice-President, Finance and Administration. Hearst Magazines Division: David Carey, President; John P. Loughlin, Executive Vice-Pres ident and General Manager; John A. Rohan, Jr., Senior Vice-President, Finance. © 2013 by Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Esquire, Man at His Best, Dubious Achievement Awards, The Sound and the Fury, and are registered trade-marks of Hearst Communications, Inc. Periodicals post-age paid at N. Y., N. Y., and additional entry post of fices. Canada Post Inter national Publi cations mail product (Canadian distribution) sales agree ment no. 40012499. Editorial and Advertising Offices: 300 West 57th St., NY, NY 10019-3797. Send returns (Canada) to Bleuchip In-ternational, P. O. Box 25542, London, Ontario N6C 6B2. Sub scription prices: United States and possessions, $7.97 a year; Canada and all other countries, $19.97 a year. Sub scription services: Esquire will, upon receipt of a complete subscription order, undertake fulfillment of that order so as to provide the first copy for delivery by the Postal Service or alternate carrier within four to six weeks. From time to time, we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings, please send your current mailing label or an exact copy to Mail Preference Service, P. O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593. For customer service, changes of address, and subscription orders, log on to service. esquire.com or write to Customer Service Depart ment, Esquire, P. O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593. Esquire is not responsible for un solicited manuscripts or art. None will be returned unless accompanied by return postage and envelope. Canada BN NBR 10231 0943 RT. Post master: Please send address changes to Esquire, P. O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593. Printed in the USA.

Photos & IllustrationsContents, p. 44: Griffin III: Getty. BWB, p. 49: Figures 1, 3: Rob McIver Photo/hespokestyle.com; 2, 4: Michel An-dre/urbanvisualist.com; 5: Jonathan Daniel Pryce/garcon-jon.com; 6: the Styleograph/thestyleograph.com; 7, 8: J. T. Tran/Street Fashion Style/thesfstyle.com; 9: Omarov Agui-lar/messthisdress.com; p. 56: Clothing: Jeffrey Westbrook/Studio D; Affleck: Steve Granitz/WireImage; Timberlake: Gregg DeGuire/WireImage; p. 58: Gingrich: David Gahr/Getty; Hemingway: Earl Theisen/Getty; Salinger: Anthony DiGesu/San Diego Historical Society/Hilton Archive Col-lection/Getty; Mailer: Ulf Andersen/Getty; Coppola: Mary Evans/Zoetrope Pictures/Ronald Grant/Everett Collec-tion; Bush: Diana Walker/Time Life Pictures/Getty; p. 62: Lingerie Football League: Paul Kane/Getty; Aselton: Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic; baseball player: Paul Spinelli/MLB Photos/Getty. MAHB, p. 69: F. Scott Schaffer; p. 70: That’s

My Boy: Pictorial Press LTF/Alamy; p. 74: Celeste and Jesse

Forever: AF Archive/Alamy; p. 76: Lawson: Jim Spellman/WireImage; Setton: Eugene Gologursky/WireImage; p. 78: Fumero: Richie Buxo/Splash News/Corbis; Bennet: Angela Weiss/Stringer/Getty; p. 82: Lowe: Marianna Massey/Get-ty; Song: Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic; p. 84: Collage: Jona-than Newton/The Washington Post/Getty; Joel Auerbach/Getty; Stephen Brashear/Getty; Gregory Shamus/Getty; Jim Davis/The Boston Globe/Getty; Rick Stewart/Getty; Damian Strohmeyer/Sports Illustrated/Getty; Grammer: Joe Scar-nici/Getty; Kane: Jesse Grant/Tyler Shields/Getty; p. 90: Doctor Sleep: J Muckle/Studio D; p. 92: Styling by Con-stanze Lyndsay Han; hair by Kylee Heath, makeup by Jamie Greenberg, both for the Wall Group; prop styling by Nick Faiella; sweater by Chaser; bra by Marlies Dekkers; shorts by Hanro; shoes by Brian Atwood; p. 96: Dimitri Vervitsi-otis/Getty; p. 100: The Prize: Everett Collection; bottles: Aaron Graubart/Studio D; p. 102: Aaron Graubart/Studio D. Style, pp. 107–108, 112, 114: Grooming by Marcos Diaz/Ion Studio; pp. 108, 112, 114: Shirt upgrades: Jeffrey West-brook/Studio D; p. 112: Chukka boots: Jeffrey Westbrook/Studio D; p. 114: Ensembles: Jeffrey Westbrook/Studio D; p. 116: Pocket squares, pants, shoes: Deb Wenof; The Grad-

uate: Embassy/Laurence; Fantastic Mr. Fox: 20th Century Fox Licensing/Merchandising/Everett Collection. A Thou-sand Words, p. 122: Drone: General Atomics/Getty; se-curity camera: Andy Cross/The Denver Post/Getty; p. 124: Blackout: Allison Joyce/Getty; Snowden: The Guardian/Get-ty. Chilling the F**k Out, p. 127: Albert Bierstadt/Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Art Library; p. 128: Albert Bierstadt/White House/Bridgeman Art Library; p. 130: Albert Bier-stadt/Private Collection/Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Art Library; p. 132: Asher Brown Durand/Walters Art Muse-um/Bridgeman Art Library. Target in Perpetuity, p. 142: Freedom Tower rendering courtesy Silverstein Properties. Hemsworth, p. 155: Cash: AF Archive/Alamy; The Cabin

in the Woods: Diyah Pera/Lionsgate/Everett Collection; The

Avengers: Zade Rosenthal/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pic-tures/Everett Collection; Red Dawn: Ron Philipps/Open Road Films/Everett Collection; Snow White and the Hunts-

man, Rush: Pictorial Press LTD/Alamy; p. 156: Pine: Dave J. Hogan/Getty; Evans: Jim Spellman/WireImage; Evert: Gary Gershoff/WireImage; Hemsworth: Fred Duval/FilmMagic.


Andy Samberg[continued from page 74] they’ve already

put in those 10,000 hours. It seems effort-

less, but it’s all work. It’s all effort.

SR: I don’t think people want to hear how

much work lies between them and what

they want.

AS: The key is loving what you do, so it

doesn’t feel like work for those first 10,000.

SR: Ever Google yourself?

AS: Sometimes. When I do, it is when I’m in

the midst of doing a ton of press and I want

to see how it went. That’s when you come

across the one person who decided to write

a ten-page article about how much you suck.

SR: You read comments?

AS: When I first got on SNL and I read real-

ly negative comments on me online, I went

to check my IMDb page to make sure that I

was still on the cast of SNL. Then I checked

Ferrell’s page, Jack Black’s page, Sandler’s

page—and all of them had pages and pages

of people talking about how shitty they were,

and how not funny they were, and how they

wish they would just go away, and all this

really mean shit. And I was like, Oh, I’m on

the right track.

SR: You don’t seem burdened by any of your

success. You remind me of Patton Oswalt.

AS: What I get from him is he’s a genuine

fan of the world. He’s fascinated by a million

things and he studies them all. And he knows

how to regurgitate them in a way that is real-

ly funny. And even when he goes “negative,”

you don’t feel like he’s a negative person. You

feel like there’s a lot of joy inside of him.

SR: You seem just as joyful.

AS: I think there’s a fairly consistent trait in

comics, which is that they’re all happy to be

there. No matter how successful they are, you

still get the sense from them that they feel

lucky to be there. Even Jerry Seinfeld, who

doesn’t need any more money for the rest of

his life. Have you seen Seinfeld’s Comedians

in Cars Getting Coffee? Did you see the Mel

Brooks and Carl Reiner one? I was moved to

tears watching it. And not from anything sen-

timental. It made me so happy. Reiner invites

Seinfeld to come hang out with him and Mel

Brooks. And when the cameras first show up,

Mel Brooks is a little aloof. Like, What is this?

He’s very nice to him, but I think he’s still try-

ing to figure out what it is. Seinfeld even at

a point goes, “You know what this is?” And

he says, “No, I don’t really know what we’re

doing or what this is.” But as the night pro-

gresses, he gets comfortable. He sees that it’s

something that’s safe for him. And by the end

of it, he’s on. He’s like, Oh, there’s cameras! I’m

getting laughs! He’s not in the spotlight all the

time, but he’s arguably still as funny as he ev-

er was before. By the time Seinfeld’s leaving,

he’s doing bits in the driveway.

SR: There’s something beautiful about that.

AS: It’s the best. It never leaves you.

SR: God forbid it should ever leave you.

AS: Comedians who are still friends at that

age and still hang out and make each other

laugh? It gives me such hope. ≥

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As part of our celebration, we are undertaking a landmark project to reflect the history of modern America—

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