Stephen King's novella "The Body," the inspiration behind the movie Stand by Me, begins with the line "The most important things are the hardest things to say … words diminish them." Wil Wheaton knows that better than anyone. Wheaton starred in the 1986 film 40 years ago, playing Gordie Lachance, the kid who never had friends again like he did when he was 12. King's story is told in the first person by a middle-aged Gordie, and now that Wheaton himself has reached that threshold (he turned 13 during shooting and is 53 now) he has closed the circle by narrating a new audio version of King's story, which just debuted this week. Those opening lines are on his mind in another way, since Wheaton recently joined 16 other actors in the onstage tribute to filmmaker Rob Reiner at the recent Academy Awards. |
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"Fine, Daddy—I'm a Mets fan from now on." There it was, right in my own kitchen, the ultimate Uno reverse card, the dagger in any sports fan's heart: your kid threatening to switch to your team's rival because you had the audacity to ask him to finish his supper. Not that there's anything wrong with being a Mets fan. (I mean, apart from the obvious.) It's just that in my family, we are Yankees fans. End of. You support the team your family supports. And now one of my three sons, eight-year-old triplets, raised from infancy loyal to the New York Yankees and steeped in their legacy—Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Murderers' Row, DiMaggio and Mantle and Jeter and 27 world championships—was threatening to switch allegiances and pull for the can't-stop-talking-about-'86 Mets. They know how to get to me. |
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It was a brisk summer afternoon in Lakewood, Colorado, August 24, 2016. Mark Pedersen was on the back deck when he noticed the commotion. First he glimpsed flashes of red pulsing across the front of the house through the rear sliding door. Seconds later, firefighters burst inside the main entrance. He knew immediately that something was wrong with Jack, the disabled teen he'd come to think of as a grandson, someone he called "a piece of my heart." In actuality, the two shared no family, though they had shared the home for the past two years. In the basement room he rented from Jack's mother, the sixty-year-old crafted cannabis oil to ease the boy's chronic pain, caused by cerebral palsy and dystonia. Tall and lean with a gentle gaze and gray chinstrap beard that framed his pointed jaw, Pedersen had helped dozens of clients in his years as a legally authorized medical-marijuana caregiver. | |
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Móglaí Bap takes a sip of his beer and then lays an Irish-history lesson on me. He's calling over Zoom from a pub in Belfast alongside Mo Chara and the balaclava-wearing DJ Próvaí—the other two members of the Irish rap group Kneecap. The barkeep hands them all pitch-black brews as we banter about the weather and their music's recent inclusion in Netflix's House of Guinness. Before we get too far, I need them to sort out a few bits of Irish slang for this American. For starters: What's a Fenian? "Fenian was originally a term used for a band of warriors in Irish folklore, and then it was repurposed for revolutions before it was used as a derogatory slur," Móglaí Bap says, skimming through hundreds of years of Irish history with a pint in hand. "It was used to shame us—to make us seem barbaric, like we were these forest people that go around with spears—but now we're trying to put our own stamp on it, and this album is a part of reclaiming that heritage." |
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Kevin Zegers fought like hell for his role on The Madison. At first, he didn't think he was right for the part of cowboy Cade Harris—and neither did creator Taylor Sheridan. "The response was like, 'He's great, but not for this,'" Zegers tells me. But something compelled the actor to get back on the horse and chase the role anyway. "I didn't really want the job," he says, laughing. That's the funniest part to him, looking back. "I just felt like I knew what his purpose was in the story," he says, "and the only way I could prove that was to sort of say, 'Not that I think you're wrong, but I know I can do this.'" It wasn't until Zegers was standing next to Michelle Pfeiffer in the fields of Montana's Madison River Valley that it finally hit him. The role—a helpful stranger who guides Pfeiffer's character through a journey of helplessness and grief—was a perfect fit. "It's not a secret," Zegers admits now, "but yeah, that's just most of my life." |
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From a young age, I was a very sexual person. I knew I wanted to have a lot of sex, and I also figured that to do that, I would need to meet women who felt the same. I never considered making sex my career. Or at least not until one day in Tokyo, when I was with a friend who got a call about a job. He turned it down, then cupped his hand over the phone and asked me, "Do you want to work in porn?" Until that moment, I had no idea he was in the adult industry. Soon I was too. My first jobs were behind-the-scenes work for a porn studio that specialized in scenes of Japanese women with Black men. One day on set, a porn actor's dick couldn't get hard. The director was running out of time. "Do you want to give it a shot?" he asked. I managed to get hard and get the job done. Soon I was performing in porn regularly. |
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 The ground is shifting underfoot in the shoe world. Cool kids are swapping sneakers for loafers. People are getting fed up with waiting for hyped releases only to score an "L" when they drop. No one's saying sneakers are going the way of frock coats or spats, but there is a creeping sense of malaise. That's a pity. Sneakers are easy, comfy, and still an essential part of the modern wardrobe. We should be thrilled about that! And we can be. To help you regain your sneaker mojo, we've rounded up five brands you may not have heard of yet. They hail from around the world, range from fashion-forward to downright classic, and are all entirely worthy of your attention—and maybe a place in your footwear rotation, too. — Jonathan Evans, style director |
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Footwear rotation feeling a bit stale? We can fix that. |
If you've been feeling a little burnt out when it comes to sneakers recently, we get it. Maybe chasing hyped releases from the big guys lost its luster. Maybe you wanted something more capital-P "proper" and, like a bunch of cool kids the world over, decided to step into a pair of loafers instead. Maybe you just got bored with what you were seeing online or at your go-to shops. Whatever your reason for losing your sneaker momentum, you would find sympathetic ears over here at the Esquire offices.
But the fact of the matter remains: Sneakers are essential. Fundamental. Every wardrobe deserves at least one good pair—and probably a few more after that. And while there are plenty of options out there from the household names, we've found that one of the very best ways to escape the sneaker doldrums is to start exploring and acquaint yourself with the upstarts and unsung heroes you may have overlooked in the past. These are the brands taking risks, mixing it up, and making the sneaker world feel downright exciting again. |
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We don't need to tell you twice that quiet luxury is everywhere right now. You see it in the clothes: beautifully made cashmere, clean tailoring, outfits that cost a small fortune and yet have zero logos screaming at you from across the street. The whole point is that the best stuff doesn't need to beg for attention, it just quietly does its job and lets people with taste notice. Naturally, that same phenomenon is true in the fragrance world, too.
And let's be honest, most of us are over the nuclear-option body spray era. Nobody's trying to fog out an elevator just to prove they pay attention to their bodily odors (or at least try to cover them up). The move now is an understated cologne: something clean, subtle, and genuinely appealing—the kind of scent that makes the people around you lean in closer instead of instinctively taking a step back.
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"You want any of this?" The text arrived in 2019 from a close friend, followed by a dozen photos of his grandmother's liquor collection. The cabinet of treasures spanned three decades. Crown Royal from 1959 sat next to 1967 Schenley OFC Canadian and 1962 Johnnie Walker Black Label.
But two bottles on the top shelf toward the back made my heart race: Old Fitzgerald 6-Year bottled-in-bond bourbons from 1970 and 1972, made at the famed Stitzel-Weller Distillery.
Vintage Stitzel-Weller whiskey—exceptional liquid made by Pappy Van Winkle himself, whose cultural mystique has elevated modern bottles bearing his name into unicorns—is the holy grail of bourbon collecting. And I had the chance to buy two. |
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