Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i Esquire

FRANK SINATRA HAS A COLD Talese drew his full outline for the story on two pieces of cardboard in 1966. Shazam this page or go to classic.esquire.com/sinatra to read the original story as published in the April 1966 issue. In honor of the one hundredth anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s birth on December 12, Taschen is publishing a beautiful limitededition version of “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” with photographs by Phil Stern and notes by Gay Talese, including this outline.…

THE BEST COATS IF YOU GET COLD FEATURING MARC KUSHNER THE MAN: The architect who is defining and developing the future of buildings with his firm, HWKN; Web site, Architizer.com; and book, The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings. For a conversation with him, head to esquire.com/marc-kushner. THE CLOTHES: In winter, clothes need to work or you’ll freeze (not a great look). But a good coat is not just about heat. This one, from pufferwear-master Moncler and classics reinventer AMI, is as warm as, well, not quite hell and looks damn, uh, cool. It elevates as it shelters. As do our ten favorites that follow, each in its own way. PHOTOGRAPH BY AARON RICHTER No. 01 THE NEW GO-TO It is all you need. It’s handsome enough to serve over…

Along time ago, in the tony suburb of Brentwood, California, a chubby, bespectacled kid of middle-school age busied himself in his bedroom. It was a large space by any standard, with big windows and exposed beams, packed to the high ceiling with the matériel of his many complementary interests, everything in its designated place. There were orderly shelves of books about magic and movie makeup, a collection of soundtrack albums, stacks of magazines with titles like Famous Monsters, Super-8 Filmaker, and Cinemagic. Figurines, board games, Aurora models, Star Wars paraphernalia. One side of his closet was his magic zone; there he kept all of his tricks—his favorites were Zombie-ball, Strat-OSphere, and Spooky the Spirit Silk, any kind of sleight of hand. The other side of the closet was his specialeffects…

Sometimes reporting fails us. Sometimes reporting—journalism—is the search for an essential truth that remains infinitely elusive. Journalism can come up short because of a lack of evidence, or because of the hostility of those who know, or because secrets are buried, or because even those involved aren’t certain what really happened or why. And still we need to know. Especially when an atrocity happens—and even more so when the same atrocity happens again and again. It is simply not enough that these tragedies remain “unfathomable.” Nothing fills me with more despair than the parade of mass shootings that have only accelerated in frequency since Columbine in the spring of 1999. Since then, this magazine has made attempts to respond to them and understand their causes, and I have to say…

A MAN WALKS INTO a lawyer’s office and says, “Excuse me, what’s your rate?” The lawyer says, “Fifty dollars for three questions.” The man is shocked. “Isn’t that a little steep?” “Yes,” says the lawyer. “What’s your third question?” Shazam this photo to see Karla tell you this joke herself. ABOUT THE JOKESTER: You may have missed it, but Karla Souza has already been on the cover of Esquire. Well, the Mexican edition of Esquire. The 29-year-old is a star in her native country, having appeared in the two highest-grossing Mexican films in history, 2013’s We Are the Nobles and Instructions Not Included. So how did she capitalize on her record-breaking movie career? By scrapping it. “I felt it was time for a new challenge, to start from zero,” she…

THE VAGUELY RECOGNIZABLE WOMAN MATCH EACH WOMAN BELOW TO HER NAME AND PROJECT LINDA CARDELLINI, caught between Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell in Daddy’s Home (12/25) FELICITY JONES, the female lead in next year’s adaptation of Dan Brown thriller Inferno and Rogue One, a Star Wars story ALICIA VIKANDER, star of transgender-artist drama The Danish Girl (11/27) DAISY RIDLEY, actress in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (12/18) ANSWER KEY: CARDELLINI, 2; JONES, 3; VIKANDER, 4; RIDLEY, 1 INTERCHANGEABLE MOVIE TAGLINE MAD LIBS In an attempt to relive their glory days, number between two and four sisters/bros prepare for a last epic night of act of debauchery before symbols of adulthood change their lives forever. e.g., The Night Before (11/20): In an attempt to relive their glory days, three bros prepare…

In a distant epoch not even ten years ago, if one received a gift in the mail, he felt as if he had time. In many cases, he had days—weeks!—before the giver felt curious: Why haven’t I heard? Or Why haven’t I been thanked? Alas, we live in the age of instant gratitude—thanks to our myriad messaging systems (text, voice, video, self-destructing video) and the rise of package tracking, which lets the user know the exact minute the box arrived and their beneficiary’s thanklessness began. This age coincides with another: that of not knowing everyone’s address. Between the two, a mailed note might, sure, be illogical. But the twilight of a product doesn’t excuse the end of caring. So go sit alone. Write down why you’re thankful, how you’re going…

NATURAL vs. STYLED That was the debate in a year of transition. Bruce became Caitlyn. The presidential race saw a new crew of wispy-haired poll leaders. And then there was men’s grooming. On that front, we witnessed a change, too: The tapered-and-slicked began to retreat in favor of naturalism. Or so it seemed. Because the underpinnings of both poles (and let me be clear—each has its place, even for one man; see our award for Most Improved, next page) are the same. The naturalists craft their overgrown beards so that they appear exactingly carefree; the stylists’ best new facial oil comes completely from olives. Yet such is the equalizing beauty of a time of transition: It costs, in effort and cash, as much to look like you tried as it…

TTHERE WERE TWO CHURCHES, one white and one black, with a parking lot and a playground between them. He parked in the parking lot and wondered which of the churches it belonged to. It was an important distinction for him, the difference between refuge and risk. But it was not as important as the playground— a small, fenced square, deep in the shadow of a shade tree. It had a swing set and one of those plastic climbing cubes, orange, yellow, pink, and blue. He’d loved those cubes when he was a child, because he could never master the swings, he wasn’t strong enough for the monkey bars, and all he had to do on a climbing cube was climb. He hated the monkey bars, he hated the swings, and…

THE GREAT Blue Whale, the liberal billionaire, feared to be mythical, certainly rare enough to qualify for EPA protection, has a floor of offices in downtown San Francisco in the same old building where Sam Spade searched for the Maltese Falcon. This is where the supplicants come: senators, governors, presidential candidates and their harried fundraisers. Like actors in a Shakespearean comedy, they humiliate themselves with bowing and scraping, flattery and cajoling and outright begging and their obvious desperation to keep up with the Republicans—the Republicans, damn them, who don’t have to work nearly as hard or as grudgingly at the care and feeding of billionaires. And after all their pilgrimages, the liberal fundraisers discover that liberal billionaires are cheap. They prefer the moral glory of curing malaria in Africa to…

SCOTT RAAB: As a Boston sports fan and a man of science, do you find it disturbing that the Patriots have to cheat in order to win a Super Bowl? ERNEST MONIZ: As the judge ruled, there was no convincing evidence of that. And I was there at that game. I was on the sidelines, even, and I saw no evidence of any doctoring of the footballs. SR: That’s the only question I have. . . . EM: Okay, excellent. SR: No, it’s actually not the only question. EM: I could tell you about my first-pitch delivery [at Fenway Park on April 22, 2014]. SR: How did it feel? EM: The important thing is that I did a full Luis Tiant delivery. SR: With the hesitation? EM: One-hundred-eightydegree rotation, a…

We have always associated champagne with two emotions: delight and regret. The delight, of course, comes the moment it appears, dancing in the glass. That delight, however, turns into bitter, pinching regret the next morning, there being no hangover quite so feral as a champagne hangover. The challenge, then, is to maximize the delight without inviting the regret. For us, the solution is the magnum. A large bottle holding 1.5 liters, or two ordinary bottles, the magnum is big enough to be impressive without edging over into mayhem. Nonetheless, produce a chilled magnum of something nice and plant it on the coffee table in front of your friends and it changes the dynamic almost as much as if you had produced the other kind of Magnum, the Dirty-Harry-do-you-feel-lucky-punk one (In…

SQUINT. Two main muscles form an authentic-looking smile. The zygomaticus major pulls up the ends of the lips. Everyone can do that. The trick is to try to control the orbicularis oculi, which raises the cheeks and creates crow’s-feet around the eyes in a real smile. Squinting mimics that. WIDER. A really wide smile can lead to crow’s-feet without the orbicularis oculi. SYMMETRICALLY. In a genuine smile, the lips top off at the same height. OR MANUFACTURE JOY. Use one of three methods: Think about something else, like a good memory with the person. Or focus on the gift, what you do like about it—its color, shape. Or, if especially concerned, smile beforehand for a minute, which science shows will make you feel real happiness. The action can create the…

HE COULD NEVER SETTLE on one place to part his hair. He pronounced the p in the word receipt. He always stared at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to say something profound. He didn’t have a car and yet he hummed nervously while she drove. He didn’t drive at all. “You’re humming again,” she’d say and he’d look up from the passenger seat, genuinely surprised. “Was I?” He licked his fork like a lollipop after eating pie. He’d once killed two people. IT WASN’T THAT HE HAD terrible taste in music, but his sense of it had screeched to a halt sometime around 1982. “You know, there has been some new music recorded since Steely Dan,” she used to tease him. Reading the paper over breakfast every morning…

1. OAKLEY CAVEATS ($160; oakley.com) “These aviators are amazing. I wear them with everything and everywhere—after a workout, out with my sister in L. A.” —Lindsey Vonn, Olympic skier 2. CUERO & MOR TOTE L MODEL 2 ($475; cueroandmor.com) “Talk about a workhorse. This trendproof, sleek, sophisticated bag works day in and day out—and it even fits my gym clothes.” —Jade Frampton, ELLE senior market editor 3. GLOSSIER MASK DUO SET ($38; glossier.com) “A set of twelve single-serving pods of two best-selling face masks—perfect if you’re into masking and long baths, which I totally am.” —Emily Weiss, founder of beauty site Into the Gloss 4. NORMA KAMALI OLIVE OIL ($58; thewellnesscafe.com) “There’s no end to the applications for this, from the foodie/fashion icon. Plus, its majestic flask upgrades my whole…

HONORING *FORMAL ATTIRE REQUESTED at the Clocktower restaurant at the New York Edition hotel Bjarke Ingels ALSO KNOWN AS: THE GUY BUILDING THE FUTURE “After five years in America, we have finally made it to the heart of American culture,” says the 41-year-old founder of BIG, a cutting-edge architecture firm based in Copenhagen that opened a branch office in New York in 2011 and won a few very big U. S. commissions in 2015. “We’re doing the headquarters of Google on the West Coast and Fox/News Corp on the East Coast [at 2 World Trade Center].” A former protégé of Rem Koolhaas and a man for whom nothing seems impossible— not even the “floating glass” trick he taught Jerrod Carmichael, far right—Ingels dreams up buildings that look less like they…

A HANDFUL OF CHOICES Assholes, corporate pg 150 Attorney, right to a (good) pg 160 Change, climate pg 150 Greatness, American pg 150 Guys, rich pg 162 Immigrants, educated pg 153 Nowhere, bridges to pg 152 Somewhere, tunnels to pg 152 Stuckness, inequality and pg 154 Weed pg 160 What, if not Obamacare then pg 161 *This would be the think tank based in Washington, D. C., that has been a bullshitfree zone of critical inquiry, original research, and public-policy solutions for one hundred years. Home to three hundred experts and thinkers on nearly every topic of national and global import, Brookings is nonpartisan, nonprofit, and all ideas, all the time. But first, a very important question: You see Hamilton yet? Highly recommended. Raves. Of course, it makes no sense…

OLD LADY WHO USUALLY WEARS THICK GLASSES BUT LOST THEM TRYING TO PUT ON LIPSTICK Scheduled for the holidays. Only the director, the cinematographer, and the rest of the crew have any idea how far away from her mouth the lipstick will stray! Directed by that guy who knows that other guy. I SHOT THIS OFF THE GIANT VIDEO SCREEN AT THE WEIRD AL YANKOVIC CONCERT WHILE HE WAS CHANGING COSTUMES! “Go out of your way to see this on Oculus Rift!” —Rotten Tomatoes THE MAKING OF “YAWNING ANIMALS WITH HUMAN VOICES” This Vine will do for “Yawning Animals with Human Voices” what Hearts of Darkness did for Apocalypse Now. With nearly four seconds of director’s commentary that’s unlikely to make any human yawn! MEN WITH WIGS ACTING LIKE WOMEN,…