Esquire articles from December 2004

Esquire archives from December 2004

The sound and the fury.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... SPORTING ONLY a strategically placed tripod and camera, Gisele Bundchen welcomed readers to our first ever Photo Issue (October). Inside, seven visionary photographers offered defining images of this country ("America Untitled, 2004"), Andrew...

Loyal reader of the month.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... I have been reading Esquire for forty-five years. The October cover supersedes my last favorite cover, with Lee Marvin (March 1970), which is still in my family's possession. Keep up the good work. GUS P. MATHEWS JR. Sewickley, Pa.

Lunatics running the asylum?(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Getting an up-close look at the everyday folks who wield tremendous electoral clout ("The 7 People Who Will Elect the President") was a frightening experience for some readers. Before I read this piece, I already had a fairly good idea that...

Mayer to the rescue.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... John Mayer's stock as a cultural advisor soared with his endorsement of a certain recent album (Man at His Best, September). I am a father of two young girls. With school being out and my recent status as an underemployed professional, I...

Raab on roth.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Scott Raab created a stir with his review of Philip Roth's new book, The Plot Against America, a fictional look at what the country would be like had a pro-Hitler Charles Lindbergh become president (Man at His Best, October). If, according...

A tiff over tex-mex.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... In an excerpt from Francine Maroukian's new book, Chef's Secrets: Insider Techniques from Today's Culinary Masters, chef W. Park Kerr described the appropriate technique for building a burrito (Man at His Best, October). One southwestern reader...

German ingenuity.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... In his October column, Chuck Klosterman called for America to develop superhumans to keep pace with eastern Europe. Not everyone saw the humor. Truly scary to hear about (in total, two!) unnaturally developing children in Germany and...

Briefcase beef.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... I enjoy your magazine tremendously--well laid-out, great features--but one thing that consistently amazes me is the high-level reader you are trying to appeal to. I am sure there are plenty of people out there who would spend, say, $2,500 on an...

Problem solvers.(Editor's Letter)(Editorial)
December 1, 2004... THIS IS THE THIRD YEAR we've devoted a large chunk of our December issue to the Best and Brightest (page 186), a celebration of Americans committed to positive change, whose work will bear fruit over the next few years. We did things a little...

Funny * joke from a beautiful woman.(Man at His Best)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... as told by KRISTIN KREUK Why should all hurricanes be named j after women? When they arrive, they're wet and wild, and when they leave, they take your house and car. You can relax those pecs now, buddy, Although Kreuk has spent...

The awards: the seven most remarkable things in culture this month.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... (1) Luckiest Insects--From Heidi Klum's Body of Knowledge, a lavishly illustrated memoir by the foxiest German of all time 2 Toughest Terms "There will be no masturbating (jacking off) after this contract is signed. Violation is a...

Frankenbrau.(Food & Drink)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... THE EUROPEANS, timid souls, are famously resistant to genetically modified foodI stuffs. (And get they'll eat KFC....) Recently, a posse of biotech companies put their heads together to find a wag to desensitize the public and i came up with...

Charcuterie.(The Lexicon)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Charcuterie \shar-ku-tuh-ree\ n: (1) THE GENERAL French term for sliced and preserved meats. (2) A hot trend in American restaurants. The typical charcuterie platter may include cured meats, terrines (ground meats baked in molds), pates...

And how about some chili to go with that brew?(Food & Drink)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... CHILI VERDE, true to its name, relies on green and poblano chiles spiked with jalapenos for flavor and heat. So please resist the urge to sling in chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, or any of those other "secret" ingredients you add to your regular...

The Guru: sound sartorial advice from Bill Hancock.(Style)
December 1, 2004... >> Is there any way to wear a tie and shorts at the same time without looking like Angus Young of AC/DC? I am 28. At your age? The only time I tried it was between the ages of 8 and 11, when my parents signed me up at Lady Phyllis Loveday's...

Esquire style secret of the month: the Savile Row ford.(Style)(Savile Row fold)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Need to stop your suit trousers from falling off their hangers? Try the Savile Row fold, perfected over generations by the staff at London's finest custom-tailoring emporiums. Start with the trousers upside down and straddling the hanger you...

The new American beauty: the Oven Stuffer.(Women)
December 1, 2004... Everybody now is beautiful or in the process of becoming so. Beauty, which previously provided an American alternative to aristocracy, is being made available to anyone who wants it enough. The model as paragon is passe. With the almost...

A Writer We Love.(Brief Article)(Interview)
December 1, 2004... HELEN WALSH is demure and sweet--and unabashedly depraved. The 27-year-old Liverpudlian amassed material for her well-received first novel., Brass (Canon-gate U. S., $14), by working the red-light district of Barcelona as a "fixer," guiding...

The Meaning of Life.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Advertisements for Ourself Finally, at long last, by popular demand, we've published What I've Learned: The Book. The Meaning of Life: Wit, Wisdom, and Wonder from 65 Extraordinary People (Hearst Books, $20) is quite simply the most...

Big Important Book of the Month.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... MARK HELPRIN'S SHORT STORIES should not be consumed in one sitting. Otherwise, you may drown in melancholy. Cracking open The Pacific and Other Stories (Penguin Press, $26), the first collection in nearly a decade from the industrious novelist...

How the mighty have fallen: Depp is J. M. Barrie. Neeson is Alfred Kinsey. Spacey is Bobby Darin. The season of the ego-stroking, Oscar-eating biopic is upon us.(Movies)
December 1, 2004... ZOMBIES ARE BACK IN FASHION, it seems. First there was Dawn of the Dead, then Shaun of the Dead, and now, just in time for Oscar season, here comes Yawn of the Dead, in which various moldering encyclopedia entries--Kinsey, Alfred; Barrie, J.M.;...

Q+A: Laura Linney.(Movies)(Brief Article)(Interview)
December 1, 2004... DON'T LET LAURA LINNEY'S innocent smite fool you. The actress is not afraid to play dirty, in Dylan Kidd's P.S., she beds a younger man, played by Topher Grace, just because he reminds her of an ex; in the biopic Kinsey, she prays the...

The one band you must see next year: it's not hard to find the Polyphonic Spree irresistible. See it once and you'll be back again.(Music)
December 1, 2004... EVER SINCE MARILYN MANSON'S saggy alabaster ass flapped out of its thong on the MTV Video Music Awards a few years ago, rock's had nowhere to go but up in the shock department. A good rock show delivers a jolt, that exhilarating sense of...

This month's lesson: an open letter to D'Angelo.(Music Lessons with John Mayer)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... DEAR D'ANGELO, My name is John Mayer. You might know me from that "Your Body Is a Wonderland" song or perhaps our mutual friend, Roots drummer ?uestLove, mentioned me to you. I'm writing to ask you to put out a follow-up to one of the few...

The rules.(Music)
December 1, 2004... RULE NO. 41: It's better to get wet than to be seen in a plastic poncho. RULE NO. 113: There is no reason a couplet should share one e-mail account. RULE NO. 421: Wacky phone messages work only on rap CDs. RULE NO. 621: Of all professional...

The best value in music: you can lose your job. And your friends. But your box sets will never leave you.(Music)
December 1, 2004... JUST AFTER NONCONSENSUAL surgery and internment in a modern concentration camp, my third-most-recurring nightmare involves watching cops bust down my front door. They find nothing but my cold corpse, an overflowing ashtray, and a ceiling-high...

Corpses, gender inequality, Bobwhites & Blackjack.(Answer Fella)
December 1, 2004... ESQUIRE'S ANSWER FELLA believes that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who don't ask questions, fearing they'll look stupid. So ask Answer Fella anything. If he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out who does, or who has a...

13 peak performance: this winter, getting the most out of your day means having exactly the right equipment, on the mountain and off.(The Esquire Catalog)
December 1, 2004... (1) CUTTING EDGES For high performance, you don't get better than these sticks and Fischer. Superlight and superdurable by way of titanium alloys and tuned so precisely that they'll turn on a dime, they put pro-slalom technology under the feet...

Rock is dead: bring on lifestyle music.(Chuck Klosterman's America)
December 1, 2004... WHAT, EXACTLY, is your lifestyle? This should be an easy question. In fact, it's the kind of question we all should be uniquely qualified to answer with 100 percent accuracy. If your lifestyle is simply "the style in which you live your...

Advancement: the musical.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... [Editor's note: The author is the cofounder of Advancement Theory, described by Chuck KLosterman in his July column as "a cultural, condition in which an Advanced individual--i.e., a true genius--creates a piece of art that 99 percent of the...

The most dangerous fighter in the world: he's already the most amazing story in professional sports. And he's not even a star get.(Sports)
December 1, 2004... KASSIM OUMA STEPS BEHIND a shoulder-height towel bin to piss in a cup for the Nevada Athletic Commission. The other fighters on tonight's card cool in utility tents behind the outdoor bleachers at Caesars Palace, but Kassim, lithe and lit with...

Shameful days in the dark.(Sports)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... >> My thumbs are sore. Sore from taking the hapless Chicago Bulls from cellar dweller to Eastern Conference champions. Doing what Jerry Reinsdorf could never do after Michael Jordan. It was a long road, complete with two orders of Thai takeout,...

Ten things you don't know about women.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... 1. All women can easily locate the telephone number of any ex-boyfriend. 2. We understand "futures and options" better than you do. 3. Even when we're blindfolded, even when you're wearing sunglasses, even in the pitch black of night,...

Welcome home, Futureman.(The Digital Life)
December 1, 2004... Okay, okay, your house probably doesn't look Like the one below--or have one of those neat hovercars parked outside. But that's not the point. The point is that a few gears ago, the "wired" house was strictly the domicile of the dweeb. Now,...

My castle: Esquire s gadget guy builds his ultimate bathroom.(The Digital Life)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... I JUST RENOVATED yet another house we're moving into in the Hamptons. Besides the screening room, the only room that mattered to me was the master bathroom. (My dad read the entire serialization of In Cold Blood sitting on the toilet.) I almost...

Sex.
December 1, 2004... My girlfriend says she wants to have a threesome with me and some guy from work. Am I not satisfying her? Does she like this other guy? I feel confused, vulnerable, and inadequate. Yes, and I feel a constant, nagging sense of...

The restless man.(Real Adventures For Regular Guys)
December 1, 2004... THIS MONTH: Skiing the backcountry WHERE: Northeast Oregon's Wallowa range DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Can you dodge trees? How about after an eighteen-hundred-foot climb? COST OF FOUR-DAY WEEKEND: $515 DEGREE OF FUN: Imagine having...

The best & brightest: the alumni: strategists + dreamers + builders + healers + corporate leaders + seers + world-beaters + public servants + thinkers + writers + actors + artists + inventors + stargazers + watchdogs + citizens.
December 1, 2004... First appearing in these pages in December 2002, the Best and the Brightest continue on their paths of inspiration and accomplishment. Here's what some past honorees have been up to in the last year, and it's nothing short of creating the...

Drug of the month: methylsulfonylmethane (MSM).(Getting Better)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Anyone over twenty recognizes the creaky feeling that comes from joint pain. Most of the time, you reach for the gallon drum of Aleve. Popping an anti-inflammatory makes sense, since joint pain is often caused by swelling. But something better...

Barefootin'.(Getting Better)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... CONSIDER YOUR FEET. Leathery, gnarly, speckled with sock lint: Do they Look Like they know what they're doing? Nike thinks so. Nike Free ($85; nike.com) is designed to simulate the action of running barefoot. Here's the theory: Over the...

Is organic food bullshit?(Ask Dr. Oz: free advice from a medical professional)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The answer is no. But I understand where you're coming from. On one hand, going organic is definitely not the most cost-effective and healthy change you can make to your diet. You can get around most problems associated with conventionally...

Boy wonder: Todd Oldham: super-designer Todd Oldham teams up with La-Z-Boy to create an ultra-hip line of user-friendly furniture and accessories.(Promotion)(Advertisement)
December 1, 2004... Todd Oldham 'Atta Boy With the help of Todd Oldham, La Z-Boy gets a tongue-in-chic 21st Century makeover "Imagine if the experience of furniture shopping was joyful?" asks designer Todd Oldham with a mock gasp. "This is one stop...

Happy? Add up vodka tonics, movies, and Pop Tarts ... then subtract sleeping with your girlfriend's best friend.(Fiction)(Short Story)
December 1, 2004... ON THE SUNDAY MORNING when I decided to get good and happy, I was gripped at dawn by an intense desire to attend Mass. I couldn't have pointed to the nearest church, and yet suddenly I missed the swinging incense, the mandatory kneel, the low...

The runaway: that's one of Ricky Williams's $2 million legs being pulled inside the tent. And that's his tent, his home, actually, at a campground in Australia. Everybody was looking for him in the months after he bolted the NFL last summer and before he abruptly returned to America this fall. But it turns out he was never that hard to find.(The Game)(Interview)
December 1, 2004... Ricky Williams is sitting in the sunshine on the land that might soon be his, and he's smiling, happy with imagination. He can see the papaya trees that he will plant, heavy with fruit, and the sugarcane that will grow fast as bamboo, and the...

Master: no publicist. No agent. No entourage, unless you count the teamsters. After thirty years of stardom, Bill Murphy stands alone.(Interview)
December 1, 2004... THERE ARE WORSE SPOTS TO WAIT FOR BILL MURRAY THAN THE VINCE LOMBARDI REST AREA ON THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE. SURE, THE PLACE SMELLS LIKE PISS AND FEELS LIKE A PEEP-SHOW BOOTH, BUT IT'S GOT THE JERSEY-REST-STOP GRAND SLAM: A TCBY, A NATHAN'S...

Hip to be square.
December 1, 2004... The collegiate formula of winter's best clothes puts bookish looks back in the curriculum, reinventing Ivy League staples such as tweed, corduroy, and the old-school tie. It's further proof that it's never too late to bone up on the classics....

The 3 best + brightest.
December 1, 2004... Now that we've got the presidential election out of the way, now that our congressional leadership is more or less settled for the next few years, it's time to focus on the people and ideas that will really shape our future. For the next forty...

The next shape: he set out in search of the future of American design and architecture. Here, his notecards from the edge.(Architecture)
December 1, 2004... 1 HERE'S THE THING: I really needed a teakettle. I had been boiling water in a saucepan or heating cups of water in the microwave since my wife left three years ago. A teakettle, I felt, said something about the texture of my life: If tea is...

The rise of the real.(Art + Culture)
December 1, 2004... "The most dangerous delusion is that there is only one reality. What there are, in fact, are many different versions of reality, some of which are contradictory, but all of which are the results of communication and not reflections of eternal,...

The new man: Se-Jin Lee and Lee Sweeney know how to stop muscular dystrophy. That's great, you say, but what does it have to do with me? Well, their work can also curtail the destructive power of cancer and obesity and, yes, even old are. Interested?(Science)
December 1, 2004... BIOENGINEERING YOU REMEMBER THE MICE. They were pretty big news when pictures of them went around the world, what was it, seven years ago? Mighty mice, they were called. And indeed, they didn't look like the fruits of sober scientific...

The living machines: these innovators steal their solutions to earth's problems from Mother Nature.(Science)
December 1, 2004... NATURAL MACHINES Energy from the Tides Talk about an untapped boon for mankind. Consider the gravitational pull of the moon, which twice daily piles unfathomable tons of seawater up into a bulge and then lets it go again, stretching and...

The next way to give: Pierre Omidyaris the modest man who founded eBay and now has $10 billion with which to change the world. The thing is, he wants you to tell him how he should give his money away.(Society)(Interview)
December 1, 2004... PHILANTHROPY PIERRE OMIDYAR sits in front of me in a blue shirt and khaki pants, looking like nobody special. "I think we're on to something," he says. "It's about changing the way we think about our roles in communities and changing the...

The Iraq generation: for the next wave of American leaders, the war in Iraq is the defining experience. These five exceptional men are still being shaped by that war, even as they write its history.(Society)
December 1, 2004... IRAQ GENERATION [Colby Buzzell] The son of a military man, he operates a .50-caliber heavy machine gun in a Stryker brigade in the urban war of Mosul. He wasn't sure that we were getting a clear picture of what was going on on the ground,...

The five most regretted tattoos of 2004.(This Way Out)
December 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]