Unlikely Words » esquire

Chris Rock on Howard Stern

aaron cohen — Fri, 06 May 2011 01:57:01 +0000

Howard Stern's a bad motherfucker, man. Whenever I talk to Howard, I always point out — and I've been trying to point this out to my wife — I know some of it you don't like, but if I had to be on six hours a day, it would be just as nasty and foul and not sophisticated. The fact that you're going to see me do an hour every four years? Reduce Howard Stern to an hour every four years, you'd have the most brilliant comedian who ever lived. It's not even close.

Via Jonah Keri

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Esquire’s 70 greatest sentences

aaron cohen — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:06:08 +0000

I love lists like this. An interesting piece of internet history: This piece is from 2003, which is why it was posted all on one page. If it was posted yesterday, it'd be on 70 different slides to increase page views. I like the old way better.

And too much testosterone is what causes men to commit unspeakable crimes like murder and rape and The Rock and Bad Boys. --Jeanne Marie Laskas, 'Michael Bay,' 2001

When a writer does well, the rest of the country is doing fine. --John Steinbeck, 'A Primer on the 30's,' 1960

Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but do not, under any circumstances, put Pop Rocks in your ass. --Stacey Grenrock Woods, Sex column, 2003

via ★Tim Carmody

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Roger Ebert Interview With Lee Marvin

aaron cohen — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:24:44 +0000

In the Esquire article about Roger Ebert a few weeks back, Ebert mentioned his interview interview with Lee Marvin as one of his favorites, and now they've republished it online. ###Possibly related posts:Roger Ebert Profile in Esquire Roger Ebert Computer Voice Roger Ebert Gives Bill O’Reilly Two Thumbs Down ### Possibly related posts:

Roger Ebert Profile in Esquire

aaron cohen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:30:21 +0000

If you are a reader of Roger Ebert's Journal then you won't learn a lot from this Esquire profile, but it's still a good read. Sad, in parts, but also uplifting. I'd like to find online copies of the Esquire profiles (Paul Newman, Groucho Marx, Hugh Hefner's daughter) from the 60s mentioned here.

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More on Jay-Z

aaron cohen — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:10:48 +0000

I'd noticed that some of the sentences in the Jay-Z article I linked earlier were wack, but you have to see them all collected by Slate to see how crazy the article is. Also, the article is written by Lisa Taddeo who wrote the crazy made up story of Heath Ledger's last day. I missed that.
See also, Zach Barron.

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Jay-Z’s Duality

aaron cohen — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:00:22 +0000

Esquire says Jay-Z's realy talent lies in his ability to authentically relate to whomever needs relating to.

This coexisting as two things at once — luxury yet cheap, exclusive yet accessible, edgy yet mainstream — is Jay-Z in a nutshell: the gangster from the hood and the CEO in the boardroom. It is how Jay-Z has transformed himself from just another rapper with a gat to a celebrity-mogul-angel who hums advice into the loving ears of sitting governors and presidents...A big part of being authentic is being open and large enough to keep your tailbone at the dinner table and your eyes on the television in the next room, unapologetic and charming in your duality. 'Yes, I'm watching the game, but God I love your lamb!'

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The Lost Art of Letter Writing

aaron cohen — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:53:45 +0000

Via Esquire, a letter Jackie Kennedy wrote to LBJ 3 days after the Kennedy assassination. If you needed an example of the lost art of letter writing, this would be it. Jackie O is charming and devastated. This isn't your 3 sentence thank you note for a wedding gift.

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Kids Today

aaron cohen — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:16:16 +0000

Via this Esquire weekly links collection from a couple weeks ago, these two remarkable finds:

shesjack is 16.

And I don't think Lyric is much older.

Youth today, huh?

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Chuck Klosterman Blog Part 3

aaron cohen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:36:17 +0000

Chuck Klosterman has a new book coming out today, Eating the Dinosaur. Here are a couple interviews, from the Wall St Journal and the Washington Post. As a bonus, here's a review he did about a baseball book.

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Mad Men Season 3 Preview Roundup

aaron cohen — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:07:27 +0000

Mad Men Season 3 starts on Sunday and I am...excited. Here's a round up of some of what's been said about the show in the last couple weeks.

-Like cocktails? Here's a Mad Men Cocktail Guide.

-Lots here from Vanity Fair, including a word on their obsession with set design:

A scene-setting anecdote everyone in the Mad Men orbit tells is how Weiner came onto the set one day and focused on some pieces of fruit he said were too large and shiny and perfectly formed; produce in the early 60s—period produce—wasn’t pumped up. Get smaller, dumpier fruit, he ordered. (Depending on who was telling me the story, from cast members to network executives, the offending produce morphed from apples to oranges to bananas, but Amy Wells, the set decorator, said definitively: it was apples.)

-HuffPo's take.

-The New Yorker on advertising Mad Men:

The theme of season three is change. “We wanted our key art to be more high-concept,” Schupack explained, unveiling the new poster, which hits this week: Draper is sitting in his office, looking nonchalant, as water rises up to his knees.

-From Esquire, Christina Hendricks and some other female players.

-Story about the real life person Don Draper is based on.

In the 1960s, Draper Daniels was something of a legendary character in American advertising. As the creative head of Leo Burnett in Chicago in the 1950s, he had fathered the Marlboro Man campaign, among others, and become known as one of the top idea men in the business. He was also a bit of a maverick.

-Playboy is getting Madmenized for the next couple weeks.

-Interview and podcast with Jon Hamm.

-Talking with the Mad Men costume designer:

Bryant mixes original creations with vintage pieces for the principal cast's wardrobe, which is designed from scratch, starting with sketches. Her use of kaleidoscope colors, sparkling jewelry, brilliant prints and florals can be deliciously distracting.

-New York Magazine got into the act with a profile of Christina Hendricks

Which is kind of the point of Mad Men. Bad is sexy. And then just very, very bad. The show lures you in with a glittering surface, but just below is a hothouse of homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and a more general and crushing sense of isolation.

and Pete Campbell whom everyone hates except Matt Weiner apparently:

“I went to an all-boys school, and Pete’s like the kids I went to school with. He could have been Holden Caulfield’s roommate, who borrowed his coat and didn’t bring it back.”

and a handy Guide to the First Two Seasons.

-Finally here's the Wall St Journal on the story, which seems to be getting a lot of play this year, of the writing staff that is mostly female:

The story centers on Don Draper and his shadowy past, but a key part of the series, the writers say, is its complicated female characters. “It’s less skewed than it appears,” says consulting producer Maria Jacquemetton.

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Woody Allen and Larry David

aaron cohen — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:38:34 +0000

I had no idea Larry David was in the new Woody Allen movie. That just seems so weird. I wonder if Woody didn't feel like acting this time around so he had Larry stand in? Are there any other performers like this that seem almost exactly the same? To a certain extent Al Pacino and Andy Garcia are like this. Except Garcia hasn't done anything notable in years and Pacino's have only been notable for their awfulness.
Whatever Works comes out June 19

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Incarnations of Burned Children by David Foster Wallace

aaron cohen — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:29:30 +0000

This short story from David Foster Wallace is perfect for those of you who'd like to read more of DFW's work, but never will because it's too long. It clocks in at just around 1100 words, half of which seem to be, but aren't, in the last sentence.

And here's a bonus Stephen King story called Rest Stop that I haven't gotten to yet.

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What Went Wrong By Tim O’ Brien

aaron cohen — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:14:40 +0000

What Went Wrong is a new short story by Tim O'Brien, the sequel to July '69, and appears in his new book, July, July.

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Lil Wayne and Rock and Roll

aaron cohen — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:31:01 +0000

In the end, it doesn't matter if Lil Wayne can rock or not what matters is that you remember it's ALL his fault.

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Jonathan Papelbon Profile

aaron cohen — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:31:32 +0000

He's great, I just don't know how long he'll last, and there's whispers he's hurting already this year. ###Possibly related posts:Jerry Remy Profile Jonathan Safran Foer’s Book About Meat Jack Dorsey profile ### Possibly related posts:

Chuck Klosterman Blog Part 2

aaron cohen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:29:30 +0000

Continuing the series of maintaining blogs for some of the authors I enjoy (Michael Lewis and Part 1 of Chuck Klosterman) because they won't maintain them themselves, here's another round of Chuck Klosterman on the internet.

Chuck Klosterman's favorable and effusive review of Benji Hughes' A Love Extreme:

Even after nearly three decades of MTV, we still tend to see musicians with our ears, which (I can only assume) is what the musicians would want.

Last week, Klosterman was on The BS Report with Bill Simmons (who calls Klosterman 'Close-terman' can we figure out if that's how it's supposed to be pronounced?) for 2 sessions. In the first they discussed the merits of pro sports (Simmons) vs college sports (Klosterman) and the second where they discussed newspapers, popularity and tenure.

Klosterman echoed David Carr's thoughts that newspapers should have been charging on the web since the beginning and colluding to do so now is one way to save them. He also pointed out Simmons' hypocrisy in criticizing sports columnists who have been where they are for ages. Simmons suggested that a lot of the best younger writers were leaving newspapers to go to the tubes, while Klosterman suggested that these guys might not be the best because internet is a popularity contest, judged by how much attention you can draw to yourself as opposed to how good you are.

Most interesting to me was a point Klosterman made a couple times that popularity begets popularity and the bigger websites are only going to keep getting bigger (though, wee Unlikely Words will soldier on!).

Lastly, spoke at the Highline Ballroom last night with all-girl Mötley Crüe cover band, Girls Girls Girls. I'll assume the evening went well and post a review if I see one.

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Chuck Klosterman Blog

aaron cohen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:35:38 +0000

Since my favorite authors refuse to have blogs of their own, I will do it for them. Here's an article by Chuck Klosterman about Obama's brother-in-law Craig Robinson a college basketball coach in Oregon. The famous campaign story of Michele making (NBA alumni) Craig let Obama play basketball with him and his friends is retold and analyzed from a different light.

Here's Klosterman on The B.S. Report podcast. Haven't listened yet, but I imagine it will be good.

And you know what else? Someone needs to come up with an Alltop channel that features all the articles by all the good authors who refuse to have blogs. I'm thinking Michael Lewis, Michael Pollan, Klosterman, maybe Susan Orlean if it's about origami or orchids, maybe Krakauer, Gladwell because he never updates his site. There's others. Who am I missing?

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Esquire – Not So Green?

aaron cohen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:36:09 +0000

Or, more likely, clumsy HTML. If you go to Esquire.com, at the bottom right of the page, next to the Hearst Men's Network, is a link to "Being Green". However, if you click on the link, you get a "404 - Object not found!" error, which is awesome and ironic in the same way that www.sarahpalin.com used to say something about intentionally blank" (not anymore, alas, the Election Time Capsule link rot has begun).

After some Googling, I found the "Being Green" website and it's linked here for your reference. Seems they do have a commitment to the environment after all.

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Another Esquire Link

aaron cohen — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:08:47 +0000

Esquire seems to be cycling through a bottomless pit of "What I've Learned" features. Despite that they seem to be written to be SEO linkbait, I like short articles with small paraghraphs. I liked this one with Chuck Klosterman.

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Harold T. P. Hayes – Editor of Esquire

aaron cohen — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:17:17 +0000

I'm not sure where or when I got the link to this (I'm just starting to clean out some old links), but it's a gracious and fascinating profile of Harold T. P. Hayes, editor of Esquire. Published in January 2007 - in Vanity Fair, no less - this article is fitting now as Esquire rounds out its 75th anniversary. The article is heavy on the stories from the 60s and includes Hayes' successful battle for power with Clay Felker, the mastermind behind New York Magazine. Check it out.

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