| |  |  | | | | Beneath the Surface of Bruce Springsteen | | | The first time I meet Bruce Springsteen is backstage at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York, where he is in the homestretch of performing his one-man show, Springsteen on Broadway. It is a few weeks before I am supposed to sit with him for an interview, but his publicist has asked me to come by before this performance so he can, I deduce, check me out. I arrive at 7:00 and am directed to a small couch near the backstage bathroom. Finally, five minutes before curtain, I see, coming down the stairs that lead to his dressing room, a pair of black work boots and black-legged jeans. Springsteen ducks his head beneath a low arch and walks toward me, extending his hand and saying, "I'm Bruce." We shake hands, and then there is silence. He looks at me and I look at him, not sure what to say. At five-foot-ten, he's taller than you think he'll be; somehow, he remains the runty-scrawny kid in the leather jacket, possibly dwarfed in our minds due to the years he spent leaning against Clarence Clemons. That evening, Springsteen is weeks from notching his sixty-ninth birthday. And as we stand there, I find it impossible not to think that the journey he has undertaken in this decade of his life has been nothing short of miraculous. He entered his sixties struggling to survive a crippling depression, and now here he is approaching his seventies in triumph—mostly thanks to the success of this powerful, intimate show, which is not a concert but an epic dramatic monologue, punctuated with his songs. After a year of sold-out shows, he will close it out on December 15, the same night it will debut on Netflix as a film. He at last breaks the awkward silence by giving a small nod and saying to me—but more to himself, just as we all kind of say it to ourselves as we head out the door each day—"Well, I guess I better go to work." And with that he ambles toward stage right. READ MORE | | | | |  |
| | | | | The Best TV Shows of 2018 | | | | From compelling documentary series, revamped versions of classic favorites, or the continued off-the-wall brilliance of Donald Glover's creative reign, this year's television offerings prove that it'll take a lot of work to clear our DVRs—and our streaming queues. Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 'I Started To Ask Myself, Am I Tone Deaf Should I Even Be Doing This?' | | | | Four years after his fine art collection Angels debuted to acclaim, famed Victoria's Secret photographer Russell James is back with a follow-up collector's edition. But the world this Angels project—a stunning ode to the female form, featuring Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Bella Hadid, Cindy Crawford, and dozens more—releases into is far different than the one that welcomed the book in 2014, as the #MeToo movement has been mobilized. "I started to ask myself, am I tone deaf? Should I even be doing a project like this?" James told Esquire's Madison Vain. "But as I talked to some of the girls, they were like, to not do it, for them, felt like the opposite of what the social narrative was. They said, this is about us choosing when we'd like to do it, what kind of project we'd like to do it for." Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | What We Need From Robert Mueller | | | | The Special Counsel needs to draw a series of straight, bright lines, writes Esquire's Charles P. Pierce. No side trips. Stick to the main purpose, which is to demonstrate that the president*'s 2016 campaign was corrupted by foreign influence, and that said influence was a direct result of his thoroughly corrupt business relationships overseas, which themselves were occasioned by the fact that his business dealings in this country were so thoroughly corrupt that no American bank would give him a loan. One, two, three. One unbroken string of corrupt actions leading inevitably to a corrupt presidency*. Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | How Wilco's Jeff Tweedy Writes a Song | | | | "'I assassin down the avenue' from 'I Am Trying to Break Your Heart' doesn't really mean anything," Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy writes in his memoir, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back). "It comes from a writing exercise. A lot of my lyrics originate this way." Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | It's Time for America to Fall Back in Love With MSG | | | | "I grew up, like millions of other Americans who hear something once and then believe it without further interrogation for the rest of their lives, with the idea that MSG—monosodium glutamate—was a chemical put onto Chinese food to give my uncle an optical migraine," writes Esquire's Joanna Rothkopf. "A frequent migraine sufferer myself, I considered it wise to avoid in theory (though basically nothing in practice). But I was ignoring a vast library of research and food writing that would have debunked the offensive misperception and allowed me to enjoy a lifetime's worth of much tastier food." Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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