Esquire的November 2014目录

PAGE 124 THE SEXIEST WOMAN ALIVE … is Penélope Cruz. But first, the bullfights. BY CHRIS JONES PAGE 118 WHAT I'VE LEARNED: TONY BENNETT "I'm eighty-eight—I have an awful lot to learn." INTERVIEWED BY CAL FUSSMAN PAGE 162 ESQUIRE STYLE Four up-and-coming directors show off the best new topcoats for winter—and how to wear them. PAGE 136 OUR LIVES ARE HELL What has gone wrong? A candid conversation with 90 members of Congress. BY MARK WARREN PAGE 143 HOW TO FIX IT We convened four legendary congressional leaders—the Commission to Fix Congress—and charged them to come up with a plan. BY RICHARD DORMENT PAGE 150 IF NOT HILLARY, WHO? The problem for Democrats. BY CHARLES P. PIERCE PAGE 156 AIKEN FOR CONGRESS "The minute I sing, I'm a punchline.…

Even if you like to drink cocktails, you can live a long, happy life without knowing how to mix them. That's why God gave us bartenders after all. But if you want to mix your own drinks, it's better to learn how to do it well than to cowboy it and hope things turn out okay. It helps that the techniques are easy: What makes top bartenders great isn't that they're better at mixing drinks but that they're better at mixing people—at managing crowds and so forth. But you don't have to worry about that, and after making a few drinks using these techniques, you won't have to worry about mixing drinks, either. Twist It isn't mere garnish. For manhattans, martinis, and their ilk, it's an integral part of the…

Suddenly, H20 is gold When Roman Polanski sliced Jack Nicholson's nose by the reservoir in Chinatown, a lightbulb went off in my tenish head: All the water that's ever been made on, in, or above the earth—or will be made—exists right now. It is a closed system. And unlike deposits of oil or gold or diamonds or uranium, there won't be any big discoveries of previously unknown supplies of it. With water, it's all been found. The problem is where it is, in what form, and who controls it. In 2008, Goldman Sachs published a monumental study that called water the next century's petroleum. If anything, that understated the case. We're seeing that now, as fights for water rights shape the very geography of the Middle East and, increasingly, how…

THE WOODSMAN NATURAL HABITATS: Woodshops, the woods, wood-paneled dive bars, Cabela's PREP TIME: 17 minutes PHILOSOPHY: Invest in good supplies, but don't waste your resources on unnecessary items. 1. John Varvatos Artisan Acqua cologne ($84 for 4.2 oz; johnvarvatos.com) Artisan Acqua is equal parts woody and fresh, and comes in a bottle that belongs in your woodshop. John Varvatos is known for making masculine, earthy scents, yet his latest release has just enough floral and citrus notes to lighten you up when you're preparing for an affair more formal than the Timbersports lumberjack competition. 2. Maestro's Classic Mark of a Man Blend Beard Butter ($20; maestrosclassic.com) Beard Butter provides control and also soothes the skin, so itchiness won't deter a woodsman from growing his best beard. The black-pepper-and-bergamot scent is…

SINGER, PAINTER, LEGEND, 88, NEW YORK CITY INTERVIEWED BY CAL FUSSMAN, AUGUST 21, 2014 > I've been very fortunate. I'm doing what I love and I'm getting away with it, you know? > Fame comes and goes. Longevity is the thing to aim for. > If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place. > Music teaches my painting and painting teaches my music. > I was sketching in a slit trench, hiding out, waiting for the Germans. All of a sudden, I heard a whistle. I knew immediately that it was coming right at us. The noise that it made was unbelievable. It overcame me. So I ran as fast as I could from that trench. I was twenty-five feet away when the shell…

It's a scorcher in the nation's capital, and the AC is on the fritz. Somewhere in this sprawling redbrick office complex not far from the White House, someone is working on getting the cool air up and running, but in the meantime suit jackets come off, revealing freshly pressed dress shirts that billow liberally. Deeply lined brows are wiped with linen handkerchiefs. Someone who's read too much Robert Caro might interpret this scene as the power move of a latter-day LBJ—cut the air, make 'em sweat till they give in—but that is not what is going on here. Six men have gathered in this room because, like nine out of ten of their fellow Americans, they don't like what's happening in the United States Congress right now. What makes these…

Four break-through movie directors slip into the latest generation of ballsy, bold coats and show how any man can add a little drama to his wardrobe this winter Jumbo-sized peak lapels, standing upright (opposite) or jauntily askew (here), keep you warm and keep things interesting. James Marsh AGE: 51 BREAKOUT FILM: The Theory of Everything, based on the memoir of Stephen Hawking's ex-wife, Jane, and spanning Hawking's postgraduate work at Cambridge and the success of A Brief History of Time ALTHOUGH … Marsh won an Oscar for his 2008 documentary, Man on Wire, about the 1974 walk of high-wire artist Philippe Petit between the Twin Towers. SUBJECTS MARSH MAKES COMPELLING IN THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING: Debilitating illness, theoretical physics HOW HE MANAGED THAT: "We take viewers on the journey that…

Taylor Swift Raab meets the singer-songwriter for breakfast in downtown Manhattan a few days before her massive-hit single "Shake It Off" is released. She's coming from a promotional photo shoot for it, and after breakfast she'll head to L. A. to rehearse for the Video Music Awards later this afternoon. Her publicity manager and two bodyguards are seated at a table nearby. For Swift: scrambled eggs, no coffee. SCOTT RAAB: It's 8:30 A.M. and you've already been working for two hours? TAYLOR SWIFT: We were at the Empire State Buildingbecause we're shooting for the livestream on Monday. There will be a wide helicopter camera shot on the Empire State Building, and I will be up on the top platform waving. It's so exciting to unveil who you've been for the…

I said, "Waiter, I asked for a-ROMATIC duck." ABOUT THE JOKESTER: grew up running track in Zimbabwe. Now the 36-year-old actress and playwright runs from (and occasionally at) zombies as Michonne on AMC's The Walking Dead (now in its fifth season). Playing the "walker" slayer, she has inspired a devoted fan base—at least four Walking Dead enthusiasts have gotten Michonne tattoos, which Gurira charitably describes as "great likenesses." Good thing she approves, because if her badass alter ego is any indication, this is not a woman to mess with. Even Michonne's katana—which Gurira calls "pretty girl"—gets a little edgy around her. "She definitely fears me," Gurira says. "But I make sure to treat her like a lady." Advice we recommend you apply to sword and swordswoman. —R. J. VOGT Esquire…

Music streaming and MP3's help us consume a steady flow of muzzled, pixelated music, and Apple made it all possible, but even Steve Jobs preferred to listen to vinyl. That's because the audio from vinyl records hasn't been compressed and stripped of layers of musical data so that thousands of albums can fit into a tiny box. Just as you switch out your iPhone for a DSLR when you want good photos, you can swap out a low-res music-storage device for a hi-res one, like the [1] Astell & Kern AK100 II ($900; aloaudio.com; the Walkman NWZ-A17, $310, is a cheaper option). Almost twice as heavy and twice as thick as an iPhone 5S, the AK100 II converts code into sound at a rate previously unfathomable for a pocket-sized machine.…

THE DREAM OF WILD REBELLION RISES and falls like clockwork. In every generation, the youthful cries for personal freedom coalesce, at one moment or another, at one place or another, into a collective howl of hope and defiance, and a desperate dream of overturning the old order is born. Today that revolutionary impulse survives mostly on screens or in the pages of books. The escape from or destruction of an overly regulated, overly controlled society is, in a sense, the adolescent story proper, and recently it has been everywhere in the massively popular genre known as YA: It's in the destruction of the Ministry of Magic by a ragtag bunch of kids in Harry Potter; in the flight from "the Sameness" in The Giver; and most clearly in girl-on-fire Katniss…

THE MATADOR A STORYY ABOUT MADRID, THE PLAZA DE TOROS, BULLFIGHTS, AND Some of them had forgotten, or maybe had never known, that a sword would be behind the red cape, and they began streaming out of Madrid's Plaza de Toros midway through the first fight. It pitted a young matador, one of the novilleros—novices—against a white bull that warm Sunday night, and the blood ran dark out of its back and shoulders. Black bulls can mask the gore flooding out of them until it drips off their bellies and onto the bullring's sand floor, but that white bull was more frank in its stains and its suffering. That white bull made it impossible for the spectators, especially the many tourists, to pretend that they were watching anything but a…

IT IS STILL THE POLO-SHIRT-AND-BLUE-JEANS STAGE IN what eventually will become the election of the forty-fifth president of the United States. It is still polo shirts and blue jeans and state fairs, and that's why Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland, and the former mayor of Baltimore, and perhaps the second-most-obvious Democratic candidate for president in 2016, has been working a hall at the Maryland State Fair like a friendly young county agent come to look over the crops. O'Malley has the green polo shirt with an official state logo and the blue jeans, and he's expressing great interest in what has been produced by Maryland's livestock—the shaved lamb at the buffet gets great reviews—and what has been grown in Maryland's fields. Across the wide midway, the carnival rides grind…

AN INVESTIGATIVE SURVEY PLEASE INDICATE THE ANSWER THAT BEST MATCHES YOUR OPINION ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS. 1. Openly gay athletes in pro sports are a positive advancement in the evolution of culture and sports. Agree, it sends the right message of inclusion. Disagree, it's a distraction for the team. 2. The only question that should be asked of any player is: Can he play? Agree, that's the bottom line. Disagree, there are always other considerations. 3. Locker-room showering details, as were recently discussed in the media, have no place in serious sports journalism. Agree, keep them in Hot Jocks 3, where they belong. Disagree, they're an integral part of a team's culture. 4. Athletes, coaches, and team management should refuse to engage in media coverage that emphasizes labels…

Books Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin By David Ritz The first time I heard Aretha Franklin, I was 15 years old. "Respect" was the song. This was in 1967, in Cleveland, where the hippest AM radio came out of Windsor, Ontario, by way of Detroit—CKLW: 50,000 clear-channel watts of light and love. Soul music. I had been listening, but I'd never heard anything like her voice. Nobody had: There was nothing like it. "Respect" was Otis Redding's song until Aretha took it and owned it. I didn't know jack shit about its roots—didn't know Berry Gordy from Bear Bryant—but I had a soul, and I felt the furious, purifying joy wrought by her immortal voice. That nectar did not come easy. David Ritz's new biography of Franklin, Respect (Little,…

I'm surprised that you're only now hearing of poppers, because they really are your father's designer drug. Oh, yes, your dad was legendary on them. Poppers belong to a class of chemicals called alkyl nitrites, which are renowned for angina and meat preservation. They are sold legally in the U. S. as video-head cleaners, for those dirty video heads you've been meaning to clean, and shipped in discreet packaging that doesn't have Rush, Ram, Blue Boy, or any other brand name written on it. Effects of the drug include relaxation of the blood vessels and anus, elevated heart rate, and, according to alkyl-nitrites expert Ronald W. Wood, "dilation of your peripheral vasculature." (And if you've ever had your peripheral vasculature dilated, you know what he means.) Wood also speaks of…

But first, about this here beaut: Most of us, we buy and wear certain watches for a reason, and most of those reasons are more complicated than "I like it." It could be practical—I do this, therefore I need this. It could be emotional—I want to look and feel a certain way. And since this is the real world and we're not all living in a Kanye West song, money often matters, too—I really want that, but I'll be happy, for now, with this. We all have our reasons, so while you might not strictly need a watch that's water-resistant to 3,900 meters/36 football fields, which is what you're getting with Rolex's latest Deepsea chronometer, you still might buy and wear it for other reasons. The option to dive…

The CECIL HARLEM, NEW YORK THE BEST NEW RESTAURANT IN AMERICA Eat out in America, particularly in high-end restaurants, and you tend to see the same people, eating the same dishes, and you start to take them for granted. Then you find a place like the Cecil and you wake up. Yes, its food was the most thrillingly unique we tasted this year, primed and loaded with the flavors of the African diaspora—that trail of taste that moved from West Africa to India, the Caribbean to America to China, and then back again. But more remarkably, the Cecil has made a community restaurant in one of the most polarized places on earth. Very rich, very white grandees with $3 million condos go there, and so do middle-class blacks who have…

I didn't get elected to Congress to not get things done—most people here want to get things done. I didn't get elected to Congress to make meaningless speeches on C-SPAN and tell lies about people. I didn't get elected to Congress to scare the hell out of the country and drive the sides further apart. I didn't get elected to Congress because I love politics—I hate politics, to be perfectly honest, and if I didn't before I got here, I do now… ." The man is very angry, about the way his life is going, about Washington, about some things he has found himself saying that he wishes he could take back—he got carried away, total herd mentality, just so juvenile. People in public life should take stuff back more…

On the campaign trail, everybody asks him to sing, but he won't. He can't. "The minute I sing, I'm a punchline," he says. "I'm Lance Bass running for Congress. People like me. But I need them to take me seriously." THE AIRCONDITIONING IS BROKEN AT the Moore County medium-dollar fundraiser. The few Democrats in a population of self-proclaimed "half-backs" (they moved from the North down to Florida to retire, but it was too hot, so they moved halfway back) have gathered at a private home in the planned golf community of Pinehurst, North Carolina, to eat brisket and homemade rugelach and meet their newly elected Democratic nominee for Congress. "We're working on it!" the host shouts, patting his forehead with a paper towel as he weaves through the forty or…