Esquire articles from February 2005

Esquire archives from February 2005

Calling all aspiring student filmmakers!(Style agenda: a special promotion for Esquire readers)(Advertisement)
February 1, 2005... Esquire is proud to announce the launch of the second annual Celluloid Style[TM] Film Competition. This competition, created to champion the work of today's young and talented independent filmmakers, is open to graduate film students in the...

Maker's Mark Manhattan.(Style agenda: a special promotion for Esquire readers)(Alcoholic beverage)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Ingredients: 1 1/2 oz. Maker's Mark 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth 1 tspn maraschino cherry juice 1 maraschino cherry Fill Maker's Mark cocktail shaker 3/4 full with ice. Add 1-1/2 oz. Maker's Mark, 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth, and maraschino...

Raging Bull.(Style agenda: a special promotion for Esquire readers)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... "One of cinema's most breathtaking films."--Los Angeles Times Voted "Best Film of the Decade" by "Siskel & Ebert," Premiere, USA Today and American Film, this incredibly moving picture won two Oscars[R] (including Best Actor for Robert De...

The National Foundation for Cancer Research.(Style agenda: a special promotion for Esquire readers)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
February 1, 2005... The Cure for Cancer lies in a complex world, and at the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), our support has enabled scientists to make amazing breakthroughs in prevention, better diagnostic techniques and drug treatments for cancer....

The Nokia 6230.(Style agenda: a special promotion for Esquire readers)
February 1, 2005... Now you can have instant replay for your life that you can share instantly with Nokia's latest video phone. Capture, store and send video anytime. Plus, high-speed Internet with Edge technology, Bluetooth, MP3 player and calendar let you...

The sound and the fury.(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... NEGLECTED BY THE ACADEMY but embraced by the people, Bill Murray fronted our third-annual Best & Brightest issue (December), a collection of thirty-nine of the finest minds in the countr3s plus one very cool self-chilling beer can. Inside, Tom...

Man on the run.(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... Tracked down in Australia by contributing editor Chris Jones, former NFL star Ricky Williams gave us a firsthand look at his newly liberated life (The Game). How can a man of any character turn his back on his four children to go in search...

Bonding with bill.(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... In his profile of Murray, writer at large Scott Raab made no secret of his fondness for his subject. It's nice to read an article that doesn't need to flirt with revealing a dark side and instead just aims to reveal a genuine person....

An open letter regarding William F. Buckley Jr.(Editorial)
February 1, 2005... In 2003, Esquire published Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing, a collection of stories that had appeared in the magazine over the last seventy years. One of these was an article by Gore Vidal repeating libels against William F. Buckley Jr....

Funny * joke from a beautiful woman.(Man at His Best)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... As told by NATASSIA MALTHE A city bog moves into a house wag out in the country and introduces himself to his new neighbor. "Hey, neighbor!" the Buy says. The neighbor says, "Welcome. There's gonna be a huge party tonight. There's gonna be...

The seven most remarkable things in culture this month.(The Awards)
February 1, 2005... (1) Most Dramatic Use of the Color Saffron --A preparatory drawing for "The Gates," a work of art paid for and created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, scheduled to be completed this month in New York's Central Park (2) Worst Aphrodisiac...

Grooming advice: (from a guy who can kick our ass).(Grooming)(hair gels)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Your problem: When I use gel, my hairlooks too "styled." RODNEY'S SOLUTION: First off, where did you buy your gel? If it came in a jumbo container from Costco, you may be damaging more than just your image. Cheap gel strips hair and causes...

The perfect nose.(Grooming)
February 1, 2005... ON ABC'S hit castaway drama Lost, Maggie Grace prays the high-maintenance Shannon, who's been known to idly tan on the beach white her fellow survivors salvage wreckage. Obviously this girl knows from luxury. We asked her to weigh in on some...

Bulgari Aqua Pour Homme.(Grooming)
February 1, 2005... "This is my favorite--deep, sensual, oceanic. Reminds me of a well-traveled, distinguished older man. Since I don't have a boyfriend, I think the next best thing would be to dab this on. But it should be used sparingly, none above the neck."...

Burberry Brit for men.(Grooming)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... "Really crisp, like an immaculately tailored white button-down shirt. Lightly spicy but still proper. It's a little uptight, as some might call the British. But I'm an Anglophile, and I love the package." Score: 4

Donald Trump The Fragrance.(Grooming)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... "It reminds me of the man himself--brisk, powerful a bit predictable. There's a lot of testosterone in here. My dad, who owns a retail business, might wear it." Score: 3

Pigs gone wild: in praise of boar, the tastiest nuisance in the food chain.(Food & Drink)
February 1, 2005... WHEN CHEF CHARLIE PALMER moved his family from Manhattan to Sonoma, he was ready for the bump in natural beauty; he just wasn't expecting such nasty neighbors. Luckily, he's allowed to kill them. Palmer's northern-California neighborhood is...

Digital man awards: after obsessing about gadgets for a year, film director Barry Sonnenfeld presents Esquire's first-annual ..(The Digital Man)(Column)
February 1, 2005... A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AGO, I begged Esquire to hire me to write a column about gadgets. I thought I could be a champion for the consumer, forcing manufacturers to make products that are smarter, sleeker, and more intuitive. At the same time, I...

The Dylan dilemma: Conor Oberst is struggling with overhype. But don't hate him for it. Just listen to his two new records.(Music)(Sound Recording Review)
February 1, 2005... Conventional wisdom suggests that at just 24 years old, Bright Eyes frontman and mastermind Conor Oberst is perched on the cusp of greatness. He's been routinely crowned a "timeless talent" and compared to Bob Dylan so often that Dylan himself...

This month's lesson: the shuffle experiment.(Music Lessons with John Mayer)(Column)
February 1, 2005... IF YOU'RE LIKE ME and make great use of your iPod's song-shuffle feature, you've noticed that it takes on an anthropomorphic quality when shuffling. So I decided to find out: Is my iPod an Al-pod? EXPERIMENT I: Leave It Be? I wanted...

The great American loser (don't be one).(Books)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... The Great American Loser (Don't Be One) SCOTT A. SANDAGE'S NEW BOOK, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Harvard, $35), is a story of debtors, bankruptcy laws, credit agencies, and broken men. It details how 19th-century attitudes...

Shameless plugs: new books from Esquire writers.(Books)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Empire Rising (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $25), by Thomas Kelly. An extraordinary thriller about the political gangsters, builders, and bullies who constructed the Empire State Building. Girl Trouble (Rayo, $25), by Christopher McDougall. With...

Big important book of the month.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... TO READ AUSTRALIAN author Elliot Perlman's epic second novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity (Riverhead, $28), is to undergo a two-week therapy session. Woven around the kidnapping of a young child by his mother's ex-lover, the novel is divided into...

Everybody get naked: the thinking man's argument for more onscreen nudity. Tastefully done, of course.(Movies)
February 1, 2005... EVERY SO OFTEN, the four main characters in Closer, Mike Nichols's exquisitely acted adaptation of Patrick Marber's play, take a breather from various acts of deception, manipulation, and emotional brutality to ply their respective trades....

Simon Cowell rates the universe.(Movies)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... WHEN THE FAMOUSLY SNIDE American Idol judge Simon Cowell tells wannabes that they should be flipping burgers rather than seeking million-dollar-recording contracts, he advances the war against mediocrity for all mankind. We recently rang him up...

Chewin' tobacco, suicidal. dentists & Hitler's royalties: Esquire's Answer Fella believes that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who don't ask questions, fearing they'll took stupid. So ask Answer Fella anything. If he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out who does or who has a guess that sounds right.(Answer Fella)
February 1, 2005... Does anyone still chew tobacco? Yup. Though the number of chaw gobblers--we speak not of fancy-pants snuff dippers; we're talkin' 'bout your heavens-to-Betsy pouch-and-pluggers--is declining by 3 to S percent per year, this stiff, leaves...

Office supplies: when it comes to getting ahead at the office, presentation is everything. And we're not talking about your PowerPoint.(The Esquire Catalog)
February 1, 2005... Three Items to Help You Get Ahead Because before you drop the big idea on the boss, you need to look like you belong with the big boys. (1) A Grown-up Bag How you carry your stuff to work says as much about you as what you do when you're...

Monogamy, it's over between us: the deeply private moment when cheating begins.(Chuck Klosterman's America)(sexual relationship)
February 1, 2005... TODAY WE BEGIN WITH A HYPOTHETICAL question, which--on its surface--may seem to have a straightforward, obvious, undeniable answer. However, this question raises a larger point about everything we pretend to understand about relationships, and...

Ten things you don't know about women.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... 1. We love that the 1996 presidential nominees of both parties are now the househusbands of U.S. senators. 2. It doesn't always bother us when you leave the seat up. It's a nice reminder that there's a man in the house. 3. Loud noises...

Time to buy the babies: Baby Bell shares are cheap. Really cheap. And one is so cheap it's a lit rocket.(The Portfolio)(Column)
February 1, 2005... I REMEMBER MY DAD TAKING ME to the Illinois Bell store in Northbrook Court in the late 1970s. It offered two or three models of ugly six-pound phones, like the Standard and the Princess. He explained to me that because AT&T owned the lines, it...

Sex.(queries related to sex)
February 1, 2005... Hey, Stace, from one girl to another, why do guys like catfights so much? Answer my question or I'll kick your ass Now, Bijou, that's not how we do it here at the Esquire Institute for Copulative Studies. Here, we sit calmly and mull over...

Drug of the month: Zantrex-3.(Getting Better)(Product/Service Evaluation)
February 1, 2005... I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THIS ENORMOUSLY POPULAR DIET PILL--with its breathless promises of "extreme energy" and "rapid weight loss"-scared me. And that was before I even read the list of ingredients, which include caffeine, guarana, kola nut,...

The hurried man goes to the doctor: five simple rules for (relatively) painless health care.(Getting Better)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... 1. Doctor, dentist, podiatrist, whatever--always make the first appointment of the day. How backed up can they be at 7:30 A.M.? 2. If the doc gives you a prescription, ask his office to call it in. This means one trip to the pharmacy, not...

On resolvin'.(30 Second Sermon)(Brief Article)(Column)
February 1, 2005... MY FATHER WAS a very heavy drinker. Just couldn't stop. Every December, J. D. Foreman mould say, "First of the year, I'm going to stop drinking and change my life." Year after year, he kept thinking that the New Year's resolution mould...

For many reasons, including the one you're looking at, Scarlett Johansson will be cast in wax one day. But even that face and that figure are not as memorable--or personally devastating--as, Jesus ... that voice.(Hollywood Wax Museum)
February 1, 2005... RIGHT ABOUT NOW, Scarlett Johansson is supposed to be surveying the history of dildos with me. This fantastical happenstance was meant to take place at Hollywood's Erotic Museum, which, because she's a girl of appetites, she's long wanted to...

R. James Woolsey: former CIA director, 63, Annapolis, Maryland.(What I've Learned)(Column)
February 1, 2005... --The basic problem is not terrorism itself, but totalitarianism. --Terrorism is just the weapon. The war is not against terrorism any more than World War II was a war against kamikazeism. --We are dealing with two radical Islamist...

The Ford Super Duty: it's built like a brick house and could probably tow one, too. Who on earth would need a truck this big? This guy.(2005 Esquire Auto Preview)(Product/Service Evaluation)(Column)
February 1, 2005... A decade ago, I drove up to the Honest Diner in East Hampton, where I saw Martha Stewart getting out of a perfect vintage pickup truck. I waited until she went into the diner and I looked in the truck's bed: a little bit of hay and just the...

The Maserati GranSport: if you're going to get pulled over, do it in this, one of Italy's finest luxury machines. Just make sure you have your story straight.(2005 Esquire Auto Preview)(Product/Service Evaluation)
February 1, 2005... This was supported to be like filming my very own car commercial. The slick, expensive thirty-second spot with slick, expensive European car weaving up and over brand-new blacktop, freshly hosed down by production assistants to give it that...

The Lexus RX 400h Hybrid: it's high-powered, high-luxury proof that hybrids aren't just for hippies. But can it survive an early test from a soccer dad with a lead foot?(2005 Esquire Auto Preview)(Product/Service Evaluation)
February 1, 2005... As I write this, there are more than nine thousand people across America who've anted up a grand apiece to secure their spot on the waiting list for the new Lexus RX Hybrid luxury sport-ute. So who gets to be the first one to test-drive the...

The Nissan Skyline GT-R: it is the most feverishly, rumored-about new muscle in America. The world's most innovative automotive designers are hard at work or it inside the world's most advanced design center. But don't tell anyone.(2005 Esquire Auto Preview)(Product/Service Evaluation)
February 1, 2005... On a sunny morning in San Diego, I enter the front portal of a futuristic, low-slung glass-and-concrete building. I am searching for a car. A very special car. It may be here, somewhere inside Nissan's California design center. Or...

The Pontiac Solstice: two seats, five speeds, 170 horses, twenty grand. The convertible Solstice is Bob Lutz's bid to revive Pontiac. And in the process, the very idea of American quality.(2005 Esquire Auto Preview)(Product/Service Evaluation)
February 1, 2005... "Would you like to wear these?" "Oh, no," Bob tells the technician, waving off a pair of racing helmets. "We're not going to go that fast." Bob is Bob Lutz. Vice-chairman of General Motors. He's a seventy-two-year-old, martini-loving,...

Breakthroughs: these six new inventions are change the way you drive.(2005 Encyclopedia Of Automotive Knowledge)
February 1, 2005... A Magic Carpet Ride The invention: Bose Project Sound suspension system How it works: It took them twenty-four years of research, but they finally figured it out. In place of the standard shock-and-spring system we've become accustomed...

4 trends for 2005: or, knowledge to drop when your neighbor's least expecting it.(future of automobile industry)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... BETTER-SMELLING CARS Prolonged exposure to sun wit1 make your car stink. So Volvo, Toyota, and others are now altering plastics and other materials in their interiors and AC systems to make the air you breathe odor and allergy free. We...

Concept cars: handicapped: they're showcases of innovation, palettes for risky design, and by far the coolest automobiles on the planet. Too bad they'll never see the light of day. Or will they?(2005 Encyclopedia of Automobiles Knowledge)
February 1, 2005... The Ford Bronco What is it? More like the Broncos of the sixties than the behemoths of the nineties, the new Bronco concept, which debuted Last gear at the Detroit Auto Show, borrows the skinny build and round headlights of the past. With...

The eight other cars you need to know: these eight cars will be the talk of the next twelve months. Here's the inside track on each.(2005 Encyclopedia of Automotive Knowledge)
February 1, 2005... Saab 9-7X SUV, $38,000 to $45,000 In a world where BMW is rumored to be considering a minivan, you wonder why Saab (under GM management) took so long to rot, out a sport-ute. But if there is such a thing as sport-ute cool, this could be it. GMC...

Mr. President, here's how to make sense of your second term, secure your legacy, and, oh yeah, create a future worth living.(What We Need To Do)(Column)
February 1, 2005... So you say you have no concern for your legacy. That some historian eighty years from now will figure out if you were a good president or not. Fair enough, but let's review so far. [paragraph] Your big-bang strategy to reform the Middle East...

52 true things about the future of American culture.(What We Need To Do)
February 1, 2005... 1. The culture war is over even as the latest battle gets under way. 2. Despite the results of the most recent election, conservatives can't win. 3. Conservatives can't win because what they're defending is not the Judeo-Christian...

What the president doesn't want to hear but let's hope he's listening.(What We Need To Do)(Column)
February 1, 2005... More than most Americans, I watch America from the outside looking in. On any given day, I'm likely to be in a village in Africa or a megacity in Asia, discussing America's latest move in Iraq with a farmer or policy maker or teacher or...

48 hours: we invited Hollywood's hottest young talent to spend a couple days at Esquire's mansion in Beverly Hills, they showed up, they ate, they drank, they wore nice clothes, and--surprise!--a party broke out.(Esquire Style)
February 1, 2005... 1:00 P.M. Above, from left, on JON FOSTER: One-button cotton jacket (part of suit, $2,100), cotton shirt ($630), silk tie ($120), and cotton trousers ($760) by Jil Sander; leather Sneakers ($265) by Calvin Klein Collection, on OLIVER HUDSON:...

Haggling for hot dogs (and other real-life adventures in the neglected art of negotiation): everything is open to negotiation. Everything. For three months, the author treated the world that way. This is what ensued.(A Useful Esquire Service Story)(Column)
February 1, 2005... Buying a hot dog is an essential, unquestionable transaction, the lowest common denominator of American commerce. The sale of a hot dog delivers about the same amount of marginal satisfaction to the buyer, who gets--by my reckoning--about 40...

Dubious [2004] achievements: war, deceit, and scandal, cheap lies, lewd displays, clueless posturing, desperate housewives. Moral values triumphant, what a cast, what a country, what a year! Pile on.
February 1, 2005... WHICH WOULD HAVE SAVED LIZA A LOT OF GRIEF President Bush proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. SCENE ONE: CAR ASKS BOY TO PULL ON ITS EMERGENCY BRAKE Director Kevin Smith told Playboy that he was once asked to...

Ask O'Reilly.(Advice)
February 1, 2005... DEAR BILL, I just broke up with my fiance of two years. Now that I'm single, I just don't know what to do with myself. --DESPONDENT IN DENVER Go get yourself a manicure and a pedicure and pick up 23-year-old men in a bar. Attend...

New urban legends.(This Way Out Comic)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The OLIVE GARDEN'S white pasta sauce is made oF monkey brains. BRITNEY SPEARS is actually a dude. Sipping FRESCA while eating a SLIM JIM will widen your feet. CAMERON DIAZ has two medium intestines. Tootie from THE FACTS OF...