Innehållsförteckning för February 2013 från Esquire

Essential information for this issue and your month " … A ONE-NIGHT STAND YOU'LL REMEMBER YEARS LATER IN THE SHOWER OR ON A TWO-LANE COUNTRY HIGHWAY." "Between takes, he starts showing me the ingredients in different items. Did that for 45 minutes." "IF YOU'RE JUST GONNA SEE ONE IRON-LUNG MOVIE ABOUT A GUY TRYING TO LOSE HIS VIRGINITY THIS YEAR, THIS IS ONE OF THE BETTER ONES." "PUT A NEW MEDAL THERE: FOR VALOR IN THE WAR OF SEX." "WHEN I WAS SIX, I WAS A PUNT RETURNER ON MY DAD'S TEAM. I GOT HURT. I WENT UP AND TOLD HIM, 'DAD, I CAN'T STRAIGHTEN MY NECK.' BUT I MADE SURE I TOLD HIM THAT AFTER I RETURNED A PUNT FOR A TOUCHDOWN." "Beautiful girls come up and say, 'My…

A FEW IDEAS RANDOM ADVICE FOR THE MONTH AHEAD 1. Resist the temptation to watch all 13 episodes of House of Cards in one sitting. 2. Ignore all articles and blog posts with the phrase "First Hundred Days" in the headline. 3. Don't shovel the snow twice. Clear all the snow all the way off the driveway, sidewalk, etc. 4. Read a few pages of Simon Rich's new book, The Last Girlfriend on Earth. 5. If it does not amuse you, try George Saunders's new one. (See page 30.) 6. Begin mulling over the possibilities of a bar tour. (For more, see next month's Esquire.) 7. With a nice piece of colored construction paper, cut out the shape of a heart. It doesn't have to be a perfect heart shape.…

WITH THE NEW CAPABILITIES OF SMARTPHONES, WHO NEEDS AN ACTUAL CAMERA? TURNS OUT YOU MIGHT. It's been years since anyone without a belt clip or cataracts has used his phone as just a phone. And now, thanks to Instagram—and the desire to broadcast every moment in the lives of our nieces and dinners—our phones have also become our primary cameras. With them in our pockets, there's really no need to carry a point-and-shoot. At least that's what manufacturers would like us to think. Smartphones now come with features like burst mode, ISO settings, and exposure adjustments. Which all sound great, but to figure out if they actually are—and if we need them—we asked contributing photographer Jake Stangel (who shot the Post Office story on page 102) to spend a week…

There is a tendency this time of year, totally understandable, to go a little overboard with layering. To bundle and bulk and sweater on up like you're heading to a night game at Lambeau, even when you're just traveling in a (heated) car to a (heated) destination (where, by the way, that inch-thick sweater and industrial-strength coat you're wearing will make a swamp out of your lower back). Like we said, totally understandable, but as you start transitioning from winter to spring, your best bet is to limit yourself to three good layers: a cotton base (to wick moisture from the skin) in the form of a dress shirt or T-shirt; a thin sweater as the middle layer (to trap warmth and facilitate breathing); and a textured blazer or coat…

WHAT IT TAKES, NOW THE PEOPLE WE'LL BE WATCHING. THE EVENTS WE'LL BE FOLLOWING. THE CONVERSATIONS WE'LL BE HAVING. MARTIN O'MALLEY, CHRIS CHRISTIE, AND THE FIRST STEPS OF THE LONGEST, HARDEST RACE IN AMERICA Ten years ago, when Maryland governor Martin O'Malley was the unknown first-term mayor of a city then known mostly for murder, he initiated a series of television ads that featured footage of some of the most grisly images to be found in Baltimore—junkies shooting heroin, boarded- up neighborhoods, gangbangers lurking, a child lying dead in the street. At the end of this montage, which showed a city in its death tremens, a single word appeared on the screen: BELIEVE. It was an outrageous image, and extraordinarily powerful, and its message of civic religion—espousing the faith that…

ENOUGH! ENOUGH OF THE CHILDISH DELIGHT WITH WHICH WE DESTROY OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER OVER WHO WE CHOOSE TO HAVE SEX WITH. HERE'S A MODEST PROPOSAL: IT'S WELL PAST TIME WE GROW UP, STOP THE CARNAGE, AND ENJOY SEX THE WAY GOD INTENDED. TAKE ALL THE MEDALS AWAY, lay bare the fallen warrior's chest. Put a new medal there: For Valor in the War of Sex. Add the general's corpse to the endless pile our hypocrisy and denial generates: Tiger Woods, Larry Craig, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Gary Hart, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, and all the rest. We get it completely backward, of course. We are willing to forgive—Clinton still survives, the "Big Dog," emphasis on dog, too big to kill, and Republicans have forgiven even David Vitter for…

JOHN HAWKES SCOTT RAAB TALKS TO THE ACTOR ABOUT PRIVACY, BOOKS, THE SESSIONS, THE OSCARS, AND KEEPING A LOW NUT Lunchtime, Crosby Street Hotel, downtown Manhattan. THE POP-CULTURE FIELD GUIDE Things you may encounter on your journey ATHABASCA 1. Town in Alberta, Canada. Population: 2,990. 2. Home of Athabasca University. Enrollment: 38,464. 3. FEATURED IN THE LIVES INSIDE THE LINES IN YOUR HAND, SOLO DEBUT OF STARBUCKS-APPROPRIATED "SNOW DAY" SCRIBE MATT POND. Clip, Save, Share, from any page. Download the Netpage app free from the iTunes App Store. JOHN HAWKES: I've been lookin' for you, man. SCOTT RAAB: Been here since Tuesday. JH: There's moss growing on your north side you've been here so long. I'm so sorry. SR: I won't hear of it. WAITRESS: Is tap water okay for…

THERE'S THIS ACTOR, Marty, in his 50s living in L. A. who's never had his big break. One day, his agent calls him. "Marty, you're not gonna believe it. I got you a part. It's on Broadway. It's just one line, but it's a huge play. And you're on tomorrow night." Marty says, "This is great. What's the line?" The agent says, "Hark! I hear the cannons roar." Marty agrees to the part, and he's thrilled. He gets to the airport and starts running the line out loud over and over again all the way to New York. "Hark! I hear the cannons roar. Hark! I hear the cannons roar." All the way to the theater he runs the line. He gets to the theater, goes backstage, waits for his…

We don't have any hard numbers for you, but countless hours of observation lead us to believe that the manhattan is now being ordered more than the martini at good cocktail bars. The tricky part is that the martini worked as the Default American Cocktail because it's so simple. The manhattan, of course, is not so simple: There are four ingredients, not three. And adding a little more or a little less of any of the ingredients changes everything. A good manhattan can be every bit as good as a good martini (as heretical and blasphemous as that may sound to cocktail purists). A bad manhattan will always be much worse. So, standards must be set—standards for the archetypal manhattan and for ways to beneficially adulterate the archetypal form. Here…

He may now have a chance to free himself from his bad habit of straining for comity with crazy people. And more importantly, we may all have a chance to properly marginalize the forces that would rather see a president fail than the country succeed. Barack Obama begins his second term as president of the United States surrounded by an entertaining universe of prefabricated paranoia. Almost ever since his hand left the Bible the first time, when Chief Justice John Roberts bumbled his way through the ceremony like a new maid dusting the fine crystal for the first time, the irreconcilable political Right hummed and buzzed with warnings about what Obama planned to do if he got reelected. It all fed on itself. For example, the longer he went without…

THIS NFL SEASON HAS BEEN DEFINED BY PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT "THE INJURY ISSUE"—PUNDITS, COLUMNISTS, LEAGUE OFFICIALS. THE ONE VOICE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD—UNTIL NOW—BELONGS TO THE PLAYERS. My left knee has been aching this entire week. I don't know why. I didn't get hit directly on it in the last game. My right knee has started the week so sore the side where the nerve got hit. When I wear the brace, my knees feel like total crap. When I start moving around, the muscles and tendons in my leg feel so stressed, sometimes I feel they might rupture. My lower back is so sore, painful and stiff; my right shoulder has lost some mobility for some reason. My right ankle is constantly being twisted; my left feels very weak. It's…

THE POSTAL SERVICE IS NOT A FEDERAL AGENCY. IT DOES NOT COST TAXPAYERS A DOLLAR. IT LOSES MONEY ONLY BECAUSE CONGRESS MANDATES THAT IT DO SO. WHAT IT IS IS A MIRACLE OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN TOUCH. IT'S WHAT BINDS US TOGETHER AS A COUNTRY. THE LETTER IS MAILED FROM GOLD HILL, OREGON. The eleven hundred residents of this lingering gold-rush town, mostly mechanics and carpenters and retail clerks in other places, wake with the sun and end their day with a walk to the aluminum mailbox bolted to a post at the edge of their yard. In between, Carrie Grabenhorst heads out of town on highway 99, follows the Rogue River, and turns right on Sardine Creek Road. She turns left at a large madrone tree and heads…

You're afraid of commitment. And when you visit the bookstore, browsing shelves that look ready to snap under the weight of the latest novel by Franzen or Chabon, you can't help but calculate the weeks, sometimes months it will take you to get through all those pages. Give yourself a break. Reach for a short story. A short story is a red-faced sprint. A short story is a one-night stand you'll remember years later in the shower or on a two-lane country highway. A short story is a precisely cut diamond. A short story is a glimpse—like the flash and buzz of a hummingbird—that stills your breath with its beauty. A short story, because it is short, can forgivably push boundaries, take risks. A short story attends to language in…

Eat Like a Man Making a sauce in the pan you just used to cook whatever the sauce will cover—in this case, a beautiful steak—is all about perception. It looks (and tastes) like it takes more time and training than it actually does. That's because the ingredients do a lot of the work for you—the meat, in a way, becomes part of the sauce. The fundamental technique here is called deglazing, and it's one of those essential principles of cooking that chefs hesitate to give away because it's so easy. Truth is it's simple to master, and it will catapult your confidence as a cook in just a few minutes. The first thing to understand is that it's a blessing to have little bits of meat stick to the pan…

Q. What's with these new lidocaine sprays? Should I try one? Why? You looking to get numb? Okay, man. Come with me. It's none of my business, but may I assume that you're a premature ejaculator and you plan to spray it on your penis? Very well then, the product you need is called Promescent. I am in no way affiliated with it and do not expect to receive any compensation herewith beyond the customary tax-deductible donation to my foundation, CASH. It's simply that my cursory research on the subject of numbing sprays for the treatment of premature or, in the preferred nomenclature, "rapid" ejaculation (though aren't they all in practice rapid?) has led me to conclude that Promescent has a unique crystalline-to-liquid action that allows the lidocaine to penetrate…

DEEP IN her house, Megan Fox and I are discussing human sacrifice. I tell her about an Aztec ritual practiced five hundred years ago in ancient Mexico during the feast of Toxcatl, when the Aztecs picked a perfect youth to live among them as a god. He was a paragon, beautiful and fit and healthy, with ideal proportions. Fox has been telling me about the toll that celebrity has taken on her, how the only way to keep from bending to the outside is to bend within. She's sitting on a sectional sofa in workout clothes and a sweatshirt that hide her body, her knees folded beneath her. The sacrifice's year was filled with constant delight, I tell her. He danced through the streets adorned in luxurious clothes given to…

FOR EVERY WAY A MAN CAN DRESS UP THE SPRING CLOTHES ARRIVING IN STORES NOW, THERE'S AN OPPOSITE AND EQUALLY STYLISH WAY TO DRESS THEM DOWN. HERE, KEVIN BACON AND JAMES PUREFOY, THE OPPOSING STARS OF THE NEW SERIAL-KILLER SERIES THE FOLLOWING, SHOW THE TWO SIDES TO THE LIGHTWEIGHT, LUXURIOUS CLOTHES YOU'RE ABOUT TO START WEARING. TIP 1 The enduring interest in all things deconstructed has found its way to shirts, with lighter cloths and softer collars showing up in both casual and dress shirts. Dress it up with a blazer or let it flow on its own. This page, on Kevin Bacon: Double-breasted polyamide jacket ($1,750) by Giorgio Armani; cotton shirt ($248) by John Varvatos; cotton jeans ($168) by AG Adriano Goldschmied. Opposite, on James Purefoy: Cotton shirt ($855)…