 Macaulay Culkin Is Not Like You He is taking off his pants while standing up, trying not to fall over. He's got his ankle kind of balanced on the opposite knee, and he sometimes loses his balance for a second, the way you and I do when we take off our pants while standing up. He has to hop on one foot. Sometimes he lets out a little whoop when he teeters on one foot, the way you and I might, especially if six people were watching us take off our pants and we lost our balance.
So there he is in his underwear. Macaulay Culkin.
I don't know, they were like baggy briefs, I guess. Tan.
He goes by Mack. "Hi, I'm Mack," he had said four minutes earlier, before I saw him in his underwear.   Big Boi Still Wants to Be The Slickest Though it's better known for its provocatively titled hit single, its pair of harrowing narrative raps, and its sprawling, horn-filled climax, the emotional core of OutKast's 1998 masterpiece Aquemini is a gentle song that comes squarely in its middle, and does not even feature the duo's more famous member. Big Boi's sunny, autobiographical "West Savannah" traces his life from birth—to a 15-year-old mother—to a modestly lucrative adolescence: "They wanna be me and my family, too," he raps, preening, "Because the money that I make be putting cable off in every room." It's easy to imagine the experiences Big Boi describes in this song, which is named after his Georgia hometown, being rendered in starker terms. But "West Savannah" is brimming with joy, its small-time drug deals going off without a hitch, the creases in his jeans permanently crisp, the Sade tapes in his car deck never jamming.
 The Analogue Pocket Has Me Falling In Love With the Game Boy All Over Again Chances are, you haven't touched your GameBoy since you were 12 years old. I know I haven't. Retro handheld games are having something of a moment right now; RetroDodo.com, hardware modders, Youtubers like WULFF DEN, and podcasts like Into the Aether have been breathing new life into ancient portable consoles. But I hadn't yet felt the need to stop playing Red Dead Online and dig up my old cartridges. That is, until my Analogue Pocket showed up in the mail. What's the Analogue Pocket? It's like if the Game Boy was made in 2021. A ginormous, smartphone-quality LCD screen. Super-powered FPGA specs. Sleek, premium casing that would make Jony Ive proud. And the ability to play every handheld game ever. Well, not exactly. But close enough  The Best Movies of 2021 It's a minor miracle that, as we get set to turn the calendar to 2022, the country's cinematic state of affairs is as stable as it presently is. Credit for that resilience goes in large part to the insatiable appetite of American cinephiles, as well as the abundance of terrific features that, over the past twelve months, have graced screens both big and small. No matter where they premiered (or were seen), offerings from illustrious auteurs and promising newcomers were everywhere, led by the latest from Joel Coen, Joachim Trier, Roy Andersson, Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose dramas comprise our top five. Rather than restrict ourselves to a select few triumphs, however, we here at Esquire continue to believe that more is always merrier, and that especially this year, it's only right to celebrate the numerous diverse domestic and international works that chilled, thrilled, amused, excited and inspired us. We're confident you won't find a more eclectic and electric group of gems than those we've chosen as the Best Movies of 2021.
 The Rise of Elevated Stupidity Stupidity is saying two plus two equals five. Elevated Stupidity is doing the same thing, except you invoke Pythagoras, decry cancel culture when someone corrects you, then get a seven-figure book deal and a speaking tour out of it. Elevated Stupidity has permeated all facets of life—reality TV, social media, Congress, your group chat, and your softball team. Elevated Stupidity stems from the idea that being good at arguing is the same thing as being correct. That rhetorical skill—or at least a degree of big debate-club energy sufficient to wear out one's opponent—is the equivalent of intelligence. If being a good arguer is the same as being smart or correct, then do you know who is the smartest, correct-est person in history? Every Scientologist.  Michael Corleone, Role Model Every year, in the doldrums between Christmas and the new year, I need to look at The Godfather again. It is not just that it is one of my favorite films or that I rate it among the best ever made in America. The appeal is more primitive. For at that time of year when momentum and deadlines falter, I turn to The Godfather for reassurance and the unalloyed bliss of having fantasies restocked. As a matter of fact, I would rather watch it alone—after the family has gone to sleep—so that I may more expansively dig in and take on the listless but lethal authority with which the central character rises to his destined place in the family and the world. I want to be like Michael.
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Sunday, December 19, 2021
The Adult Life of Macaulay Culkin
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