I was undecided on Sunday's AFC championship game. I could've lived with watching either Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson slinging it around in the Super Bowl. My heart was in the NFC with the Detroit Lions. My heart is a lousy gambler. Anyway, I have to say that watching the MAGA crowd, and especially its He-Man Women Haters auxiliary, lose its shit over the romance of Taylor Swift and Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce has made me into a Chiefs fan, at least for the interminable two-week run-up to the game, which is an annual festival of heavily covered non-news and nonsense. There will be no end of stories about the happy couple which, if we're all really lucky, will have heads exploding in all corners of the wingnut media universe. |
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It's high time you chose your very own signature scent. |
| He's going around town trying to pitch himself as the candidate of the "compassionate middle." Gimme a break. |
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So far, True Detective season 4 hasn't picked a side: it flirted with the idea of blowing up season 1's cosmic-supernatural-creepo happenings into a full-blown story arc but it also maintained a strong basis of true-crime possibilities, by way of Danvers's science and fact-based investigation. Before this week, we saw the ghost of Daddy Cohle, a big-ass polar bear in the middle of Ennis's streets, and a potentially demonic DVD copy of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But it was still unclear whether or not Night Country's otherworldly elements would take a backseat to earthly horrors. A Tsalal scientist erupting in a fit of demonic possession settled that one for us. |
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You need at least one in your arsenal. |
| Apple TV just shared a behind-the-scenes photo of Mark S. in action. |
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The computer has a mouse. A phone or tablet requires your thumb or a stylus. But Apple's new Vision Pro? It just needs you. Controlled by your eyes, voice, and subtle hand movements, it's gonna change the way we interact with content, and each other. After much speculation about the new launch while packed inside Apple Park's first in-house WWDC at the spaceship, Tim Cook finally showed off the long awaited augmented reality device. In short, Vision Pro is far better than everything else in its class (with a price worthy of that slot at $3,499) and it knocks Meta's Oculus off the map. |
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 Everything smelled like cigarette smoke when I was a kid. You could smoke in an airplane. You could smoke in a taxi. You could smoke in Burger King. I smoked my first cigarette when I was nine. It took a lot of practice to learn to inhale and exhale without choking, but I was passionate, and I got very good at it. Self-taught, as they say. Imagine a ten-year-old girl on Rollerblades doing figure eights on a quiet evening road in the suburbs, flicking a butt into the neighbor's flower garden. That was me. I smoked riding my bike at night, no hands, with my eyes closed. That was freedom. I smoked waiting for my mom to pick me up from my piano lesson. That was relaxing. I stole cigarettes from my aunt, who bought Chesterfields by the carton and never noticed if a pack went missing here or there. At some point, I'd heard that smoking stunts your growth. That's why I started. I did not want to grow up. |
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How the Cars in Michael Mann's Ferrari Came to Life |
If you love cars and you dig racing, it's pretty clear from several moments into Ferrari that this Michael Mann epic is one of the greatest car movies ever made. You have a stellar performance from Adam Driver, who plays Enzo Ferrari in midlife, when his company nearly bankrupted. He's dealing with an illegitimate son, a mistress, and his fierce wife, Laura—portrayed brilliantly by Penélope Cruz—who controls half of the company and happens to wield a Beretta. (Cruz's performance is one of this year's biggest Oscar snubs.) The film dives deep into the ruthlessness of racing culture, a beautiful yet deadly sport. For the men that are in it, it's a lifestyle described by Enzo in the film as "a deadly passion…our terrible joy." You can see why director Michael Mann was so fascinated by this story, beyond being a Ferrari fanatic himself. But what also makes Ferrari such a thrilling racing movie, which is now available to stream, is the attention to detail and historical accuracy when it comes to the vehicles. These aren't cars that you can simply bid for on Bring a Trailer or rent from a specialty prop house. Some of these Ferraris no longer exist. The ones that do cost millions. And so, they had to be built. |
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Matt Bomer on Dressing for Joy: 'Part of Me Just Hit the Fuck It Button' |
Matt Bomer says he's not a fashion guy, but you wouldn't know it from talking with him. It's the day after Loewe's fall/winter 2024 fashion show, and the L.A.-based actor is calling me from Paris, where designer Jonathan Anderson's creations walked the runway while Bomer and a cadre of other actors—"half of the leading men in Hollywood, I felt like, were in the front row"—observed the proceedings. "It was a perfect fusion of art and style," Bomer says of the event. This season's collection was heavily influenced by artist Richard Hawkins, whose large-scale work was on display during the show. "The murals came to life with the models and the music," Bomer continues. "All of it just set such a great tone; the energy and excitement to see what Jonathan had up his sleeve was really palpable. It was like being at a Beatles concert." |
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The Western Renaissance Begins With The Bullet Swallower |
What's the case for the western in 2024? Once a backbone of cinema and literature, the genre looks downright dated to contemporary eyes, steeped as it is in harmful American mythologies of racism, colonialism, and toxic masculinity. Westerns endure, but they're long overdue for radical change—and now, change is here. According to author Elizabeth Gonzalez James, westerns are undergoing a renaissance, with those who were sidelined, villainized, or victimized now telling their own stories. A new wave of westerns featuring Black, queer, Asian, and Indigenous characters is striking the genre like a depth charge. "It's not a reimagining of history; it's just history," James tells Esquire. "It's the truth of the people who were there. We're going to keep seeing more of these stories, and I think it's wonderful." |
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How to Build a Face-Saving, Age-Defying Skincare Routine |
If your ideas about skincare come from Reddit, you might think it's a dark rabbit hole of science akin to astrophysics or neurology. If your opinion comes exclusively from the men's personal care aisle of your local big box store, you probably think one multi-use product can do everything (as long as it contains charcoal). But the reality of skincare lies somewhere in between. Thanks to the sheer volume of product options, skincare can be daunting at best and confusing at worst. Maybe that's why many guys have no skincare routine to speak of—they don't want to put in the effort to figure it out. Or maybe they just don't care. Well they, and you, should care. Good skincare is one of the most powerful tools we have against most of the common issues men face on their faces: acne, wrinkles, even sun damage. And in both the short and long term, it could mean the difference between someone saying, "Wow, you look great!" as opposed to, "Oh, have you been getting enough sleep?" |
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What I've Learned: Billie Joe Armstrong |
I was never Mr. Hardcore. When we first started playing together, there was a big trend of who can play the fastest. And it was like, "Well, I don't want to do that." That's not really musical for me. It became almost a bit macho, which is something we were definitely trying to get away from. We didn't want to be a bunch of tough guys. We would rather have bigger hearts than bigger muscles. Whatever the criticisms were, though, I had enough of a chip on my shoulder that I wasn't going to let anybody hold me down. |
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