Inhaltsverzeichnis für February 2014 in Esquire

Weird Men A celebration of the particular mix of quirkiness and charm that makes some men enjoyably weird. Not strange. Not funky, kooky, or creepy. Weird. PAGE 73 LIBERATION THROUGH PECULIARITY A manifesto. BY MIKE WHITE PAGE 74 WEIRD MEN: THE LIST The nonconformists, oddballs, and misfits we admire, including Christopher Walken, Nick Cave, Woody Harrelson, and so many more. PAGE 76 THE MULTIPLICITY OF MICHAEL KEATON Whether it was the villain, the super-hero, or the glib guy, Michael Keaton hated getting trapped in any type of role. And it probably cost him a fortune. BY TOM CHIARELLA PAGE 84 THE BIG LIFE OF A LITTLE MAN Danny DeVito is a colossus. BY SCOTT RAAB ON THE COVER: DANNY DEVITO PHOTOGRAPHED EXCLUSIVELY FOR ESQUIRE BY NIGEL PARRY. TYPE BY JAMES…

NO. 03 OTHER HUGE AND FACELESS THINGS The NSA • "The American People" • Apple • Francis Bacon portraits • Americans for Prosperity • Siri • Fannie Mae • Freddie Mac • Anonymous • the Cloud • winter storm Hercules, et al. NO. 04 Until it became too obvious, Kenny Chesney would have roadies smuggle him through the audience in a road case. This way he could start the show from the crowd and then fly onto the stage. Dan Reynolds is playing many of the same arenas right now, only he could probably escort himself to the third row undetected, share a beer or three with the guy sitting next to him, and start the show from there. Dan Reynolds is the frontman for Imagine Dragons, and as hard…

The modern cocktail revolution has spawned scads of finicky new bars in just about every city in the country and almost as many microdistilleries making millet whiskey and chamomile gin and God knows what (and charging $40 a bottle for it, if you're lucky). It also has inspired bartenders, distillers, lifestyle journalists, bloggers, and just about anyone else who can type with one hand and drink with the other to write books about those bars, the cocktails being served, that chamomile gin and the young entrepreneurs behind it, or some combination thereof. Most new drink books are like the elegantly designed new bar where the tattooed young gent behind the stick will make you an Embury's Last Fandango but borks a simple dirty martini. There are, however, a few that…

AN OLDER COUPLE IS DRIVING down I-80 when the wife gets a call from their daughter, who is frantic. "Mom, there's a car driving the wrong way on I-80 near your house!" The wife turns to her husband behind the wheel and tells him, "Did you hear that? A lunatic is driving down the wrong side of the road!" The husband says, "One lunatic? There are hundreds of them." *Esquire cannot guarantee that this joke will be funny to everyone. ABOUT THE JOKESTER: We're being deprived of Beth Behrs's singing and dancing, and we didn't even know it. The 28-year-old is a self-declared musical-theater nerd whose part on CBS's 2 Broke Girls as the sweet, naive broke girl alongside Kat Dennings's acerbic, tough broke girl involves more dick jokes than…

Used to be you were a boxers guy or a briefs guy or, what the hell, a boxer briefs guy. Used to be you were a Jockey or a Fruit of the Loom or, hey, moneybags, a Calvin Klein guy. Used to be you made that decision early on in life, and that's pretty much the way it stayed, even as your lifestyle and body shifted and changed and demanded new things. Yet underwear is important. It has consequences. It can influence the contours of our silhouette and waistline. It can alter the way we smell. It can make things easier or harder in the bathroom. And now there are dozens of brands, with new technologies and new designs, that can help solve problems an otherwise well-informed and deliberate man…

In a rented apartment in north San Antonio, several producers from a television sports-documentary crew are sprawled on the itchy fabric of the leased furnishings, laptops on thighs. A squawk box sits on the elbow of the sofa, enabling this daily conference with production units in Austin and New York; episode six is being plotted on the bulletin board with colorful index cards. Three more games are left on the schedule. Then the state championships begin. Rivalries are becoming heated. Story arcs are drawing together—and falling apart. And not everyone has signed the damn releases. It is mid-October, and time is growing short. There's an edge of frustration in some of the assembled voices—after a blistering south-Texas summer, the weather has turned. Now it gets dark by five; the filming…

DANNY DEVITO LIVES high on a hill, on a street that could be called nondescript if there were such a street anywhere in Beverly Hills. I guess you could say it's an unpretentious street, in the context of a neighborhood where streaming caravans of tourists still pay forty dollars a head to be driven around to gawk at the tall shrubs and locked gates blocking any street view of the homes of the stars. Every few minutes, another one crawls by. One guide's talking about some motorcycle that once belonged to Elvis Presley—there's no motorcycle visible—and another points out the house where Brad and Jennifer lived when they were still together. Could be. I wouldn't bet on it. I'm early. Even with Google Maps, I tend to get lost. So…

COMPOSER, 63, LOS ANGELES INTERVIEWED BY CAL FUSSMAN, DECEMBER 4, 2013 > Some girl in elementary school asked me, "Why do you have a head like a lightbulb?" And I'm like, Oh, fuck! I do, don't I? > The teacher would say: "Read what it says on the board," and I'd go, "What's a board?" Then everybody would laugh and the teacher would go, "All right, smart man. Go to the corner." I'd stand in the corner and wonder: How do people know the right things to say when they ask you a question like that? I knew people had some information I didn't have. One day someone saw me doing homework and told my parents, "Maybe you should get his eyes tested." I remember coming out of the optometrist…

FeB Befuddlement over the motto of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia—Hot. Cool. Yours—was clarified. Russians explained it as President Vladimir Putin's answers to the basic questions: his perfect woman, his perfect man, his perfect wife. On the heels of the monster box-office success of The Lego Movie, Warner Bros. green-lit what it hopes to be another animated inert-object blockbuster franchise, Pick-Up Sticks: Out of the Can. In February, Lolo Jones was interviewed on the Today show every day for three weeks, a new morning-show record. She was never interviewed again. MaR The National Security Agency declined to comment on reports in March that a rogue unit of playful analysts conducted a clandestine "reminders" program, texting unwary Frenchmen of impending dental appointments and auto-registration renewals. A spokesperson for the…

ADDITIONALLY … … A FEW WEIRD WOMEN To balance out all these weird men, a few women we find as strange as we do captivating: HELENA BONHAM CARTER. An Oscar-nominated actress who looks like a down-on-her-luck tarot-card reader. AUBREY PLAZA. Because you can tell her darkness is all shtick. Mostly, at least. AMY SEDARIS. She made Chelsea Handler feel uncomfortable. That takes a special personality. DORA THE EXPLORER. Seems a little young to be traveling with just a monkey. TILDA SWINTON. She's different-looking—thanks to the pallor, height, and haircut—something she immediately makes you forget. … SPEAKING OF COMICS This month's "The Year in Review" (page 120) features original jokes from some of our favorite comics. Which is as good a reason as any to highlight a new book from another…

Romantic Commodity Pricing Throughout the Year There should be plenty, but none are springing to mind, so I'm going to give her cash again. I hope that's all right. You, however, should get her some expensive lingerie. While not staggeringly original, expensive lingerie has a long and cherished association with this holiday, and I wholeheartedly endorse it. Items should be made from quality fabric (silk is a clear winner) and cost upwards of what you consider way too much for that shit. (La Perla, Cosabella, and probably some other "la" brands are esteemed, but without a few crates delivered to me by press time, I couldn't say conclusively.) If you're really unsure, go to the store and ask the lady—a scenario some of my readers might remember from the '90s.…

Every now and then a story collection catches fire. Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Junot Díaz's Drown, George Saunders's Tenth of December. The debut story collection from the young writer Molly Antopol, The UnAmericans (W. W. Norton, $25), is poised to be this year's sensation. The layered riches and historical sweep of its stories make them feel grand, like novels writ small. The name of the book is the first clue. The wave of titles—on television, in film, music, and literature—featuring the words America or American still hasn't crested. September 11 didn't create the movement, but it exaggerated it, and in these politically divided, religiously confused, environmentally damaged, culturally diverse times, we seem to be struggling more than ever with national identity. Antopol revises this self-absorbed trend, and that's…

NO. 24 WHY CHINA HATES BITCOIN More than any single milestone, China's announcement that it will not allow its banks to process bitcoin proves to me bitcoin's value. China is the number-one currency manipulator in the world. Cryptocurrency threatens all fiat currency—and cheaters have more at risk. IT'S TIME TO GET OUT OF BIG-BANK STOCKS. JP MORGAN'S RECORD PAYMENT TO THE FEDS WILL COME OUT OF THE HIDES OF ITS SHAREHOLDERS. NO. 25 When the Justice Department announced a $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co. over its sales of residential-mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) in November, it held JPMorgan accountable for "the mortgage meltdown," "a financial storm that devastated millions of Americans," "an international financial crisis," and putting "our economy on the path to destruction." In case anyone missed the…

Your skin feels dry. A little itchy. With less moisture in the air, your skin dries out and can be uncomfortable. Dr. Jessica Krant, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, suggests using a moisturizing cream with two main ingredients: a humectant, like hyaluronic acid, to pull what little moisture is in the air into your skin, and a barrier, like petrolatum or shea butter, to keep it there. Vaseline Men Body & Face lotion ($8; amazon.com) absorbs quickly and smells like a man should: subtle. Your skin is flaky. Exfoliating, especially in winter, strips your skin of natural oils. Instead use a moisturizing soap, like [1] Unionmade's hydrating body bar ($20) or [2] Baxter's Invigorating body wash ($15; both at baxterofcalifornia.com). Krant also suggests you skip…

I'm weird, you're weird, your mama's weird. For me it was never about trying to cultivate a personality of weird. But I guess if you're in the weird eye of the hurricane, you don't notice. I want to feel authentic, and in order to be authentic, I'm perceived as weird. There was a period of my career as a writer, and just as a person, when I wanted to subvert stuff more, to shout, "See how humankind is! How this is all bullshit?" But after a while, as you get older, you start to feel like that's not that deep. It's not that deep to say, "Humans are base," or "Society has hypocrisy." What's really deep is when you have a wisdom that helps you find the way out of…

How do you like your eggs, Bob Dylan, How do you like your eggs? You're walking on broken legs, Bob Dylan, But you still make us beg, Bob Dylan. So how do you like your eggs?* You can't look at him. If you work at one of the arenas where he plays, you're not allowed to look at him when he makes his way from the bus to the stage. If you play at one of the arenas where he plays—if, like Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, you're a fellow musician, sharing a bill—then you have a decision to make, occasioned by the privilege and problem of proximity. You'll be standing around and suddenly there he'll be, and you have to figure out if you're allowed—if you allow yourself—to behold Bob Dylan.…

EVERY MAN IS SUSPECTED TO BE "ON THE SPECTRUM," WHAT CAN "NORMAL" POSSIBLY MEAN? AN INQUIRY IN TWO PARTS ONE: ONE MAN'S JOURNEY TOWARD A DEFINITION TWO: AN ORIGINAL SURVEY IN WHICH WE PINPOINT THE ACTIVITIES AND ATTITUDES THAT ARE THE LEAST UNUSUAL IN 1976, the year of Rocky Balboa and Travis Bickle, Frampton Comes Alive! and Ramones, and the transformation of a just-folks peanut farmer into the most powerful man in the world, two social scientists named Deborah S. David and Robert Brannon set out to identify the major benchmarks of American manhood in the twentieth century. Their findings, first published in their book, The Forty-Nine Percent Majority: The Male Sex Role, distilled neatly into four swift exhortations that a father could pass down to his son as easily…

Over breakfast at the Crosby Street Hotel in downtown Manhattan, Scott Raab talks to the director about 12 Years a Slave, "struggle," living in Amsterdam, other directors, and confrontation. McQueen just ordered a cappuccino and a croissant with blackberry jam. Scott Raab: I've read some pretty volatile interviews of yours. Steve McQueen: When you're passionate about something, it can be sort of misunderstood. But I like to have a debate; I like arguing, not because I'm disagreeing with someone, but because they might be right and I'll learn something. SR: To engage. SM: That's the word. The word is beautiful. To engage. And sometimes that can be misconstrued as confrontation. But I'm communicational, not confrontational. Too many people are scared to look stupid. And when they're scared to…

THE RULES No. 87: Reconsider any itinerary that involves a shuttle bus. No. 99: The most withering slight is "weak tea." No. 143: A single ketchup packet is laughably insufficient for any application. No. 264: In a movie scene that shows an interior car shot focusing out the driver's-side window, there is a 100 percent chance that car is about to be involved in an accident. In these, the waning weeks before Jimmy Fallon—Jimmy Fallon!—takes over The Tonight Show, he had a moment. It wasn't one of his supremely viral moments, another one of his TV-made-for-the-Internet bits, of which he is the undisputed champion. He wasn't doing one of his spot-on impersonations—I might actually love his version of Neil Young more than I love Neil Young, and I love Neil…

Eat Like A Man NO. 21 THE BEER TO DRINK WITH THIS PICTURE The Trappists at Scourmont Abbey in Belgium make two things: beer and cheese, a combination so relevant that if the monks moved to Brooklyn, they'd get a book deal. Honor their life's work by cracking open a Chimay Bleue. Just enough hoppiness to balance the richness of the sandwich. ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT TO COMPLETE THIS PROJECT SLOW COOKER When it comes to slow cookers, simple is best. The only requirements are an oval shape for maximum cooking surface and a removable ceramic liner for storing leftovers and easy cleanup. A good basic one: Hamilton Beach 5-quart slow cooker ($25; hamiltonbeach.com). POT ROAST Working in the insert of your slow cooker, whisk 1 Tbsp cornstarch and ¼ cup tomato…

NO. 26 Olympic Effect on National Interests • Hockey • Snowboarding • Figure skating • Curling • Biathlon INSIGHT FROM NOTABLE OLYMPIANS LOLO JONES Bobsledder > As brakeman, once I'm in, I'm not really doing anything until the finish line. My job is to soak everything up—a bump, a wall. I'm like the shocks of a car. > Every bobsled run has to have a labyrinth—three turns, back to back to back—and an omega, a big upside-down U. > If either of the two U. S. teams piloted by African Americans wins, they would be the first African Americans ever to medal as bobsled pilots. > There's no talking in the bobsled. APOLO OHNO Former short-track speed skater, current commentator > Skate blades are 17 to 18 inches long and…

STEPHEN MARCHE WOULD LIKE TO ASK A QUESTION … A FEW YEARS AGO, a team of researchers led by a professor from UC Berkeley set out to test what they called the masculine overcompensation thesis, the theory that when men sense threats to their manhood, they respond by exaggerating their gender traits. The researchers used several approaches, from laboratory experiments to large-scale cross-sectional surveys, but they all confirmed that when men faced the implication that they were somehow not men, they tended to increase their support of war, homophobia, male dominance, "purchasing an SUV," and other stereotypical male bullshit. Women do not respond this way. If you tell women they're more masculine, they don't suddenly rush out to buy pink Priuses. The conclusion of the study is, to me, indisputable,…

1| Monday. I am asked to interview Michael Keaton. They tell me he lives in Montana. 2| I tell my brother, who texts back: 220, 221, whtvr it takes. 3| A call from my editor: "They said maybe you should go pheasant hunting. He's making a movie called Birdman. Stay tuned. It might be soon." 4| Tuesday. Editor receives the following e-mail from Keaton's publicist, forwards it to me: Hi can you call me. Let's get Tom to Montana to meet with MK by Friday latest. Michael says to put him at the Murray Hotel because it's a better place for them to do things, and MK will have to go into town at some point during Tom's visit to do things he has to do. They are also going…

EVERY MODEL LIKES TO TELL YOU how hard she had it as a kid—how she was gawky, or too tall, or had a tough time making friends. And it's hard to sympathize, like hearing a hedge funder complain about how cold his gold toilet gets in the winter. But when that model was taunted by cruel Russian schoolchildren? It's a little easier to feel her pain. A little. "Because I had freckles, the other kids would say that a bird pooped on my face," says Anne V. (The V, by the way, is for Vyalitsyna, which she is kind enough not to ask anyone to pronounce or remember.) "I was tall and had no boobs. No boys liked me." The twenty-seven-year-old is still freckly and tall, but public opinion on…

Matthew Rhys The breakout: FX's cold war spy drama, The Americans, back for a second season this month. Rhys, as a KGB operative in America, dons all manner of an eighties wardrobe, with one turtleneck making him feel like "a penis in a foreskin." The background: A native of Wales, or what he calls "a mini version of Ireland without the literature, music, or history," Rhys made his mark in the U. S. with a supporting role on Brothers & Sisters before landing his first TV lead on The Americans. This page: Shirt ($285) by Boss; silk knit tie ($160) by CH Carolina Herrera. Opposite, on Kid Cudi: Shirt ($410) by Bottega Veneta; cashmere tie ($90) by Massimo Dutti. Matt Czuchry The breakout: The latest season of The Good Wife,…