What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? |
It was forty-five years ago, when achievements with a bat first brought him to the nation's notice, that Ted Williams began work on his defense. He wanted fame, and wanted it with a pure, hot eagerness that would have been embarrassing in a smaller man. But he could not stand celebrity. This is a bitch of a line to draw in America's dust. Ted was never the kind to quail. In this epic battle, as in the million smaller face-offs that are his history, his instinct called for exertion, for a show of force that would shut those bastards up. That was always his method as he fought opposing pitchers, and fielders who bunched up on him, eight on one half of the field; as he fought off the few fans who booed him and thousands who thought he ought to love them, too; as he fought through, alas, three marriages; as he fought to a bloody standoff a Boston press that covered, with comment, his every sneeze and snort. He meant to dominate, and to an amazing extent, he did. But he came to know, better than most men, the value of his time. So over the years, Ted Williams learned to avoid annoyance. Now in his seventh decade, he had girded his penchants for privacy and ease with a bristle of dos and don'ts that defeat casual intrusion. He is a hard man to meet. |
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Booze, Ja Rule, and 'Sports Pedicures': Inside a Nail Salon for Dudes |
Gentlemen, warmer temperatures are here, and we need to address the state of our feet. The wearing of flip-flops and shower shoes has transcended the pool party and spread into the grocery store, the airport, the restaurant. Places that were once the domain of whole-foot shoes are now places where you have to look at the back part of someone's heel—that special area where even the most fastidious gentleman looks like an ostrich. It is our responsibility to the world to put our best feet forward. But I have good news for you, my dude: it is finally safe for you to get a pedicure. |
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The Golden Age of Gaten Matarazzo |
Is it true? Is it possible? Have the Stranger Things kids really grown up? I'm talking to Gaten Matarazzo, who, in the primordial era of July 2016, was once the babiest of all the baby Stranger Things kids—playing Dustin, the goofy one with the trucker hat—and he's telling me about moving into a new place with his girlfriend. Matarazzo is wearing a technicolored cardigan that's way cooler than anything in my closet, and probably yours, too. He still has that sweet-hearted grin, the one made of butterflies and confetti, and now, the slightest tinge of aged wisdom, the kind that only comes when you've lived a certain amount of life, and been through a certain amount of things. Sure, Matarazzo played Switch Sports until 1 a.m. the night before we met (he's a tennis guy!), but he's highly concerned about bathroom appliances, too. "The lightbulbs in my bathroom haven't been changed in a month and I'm completely fine peeing in the dark," he says. "I'm like, 'I should probably change those!'" |
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54 Documentaries That Will Change Your Life |
Nowadays, it's trendy to call today's era in documentary filmmaking—we're talking about the past few years, when we've seen whole damn events like Tiger King and The Last Dance—the boom times for the genre. That is only partially true. Yes, we love to queue up a Netflix doc as much as you do. Debate what the Tinder Swindler is guilty of doing. Watch Nims scale the 14 highest peaks. We're just asking that you go back a few years, where there are even more gems waiting for you. For example: You have to throw it back to 1996 if you want a sports documentary that'll thrill you as much as MJ did in The Last Dance. That year, When We Were Kings won an Oscar for its portrait of Muhammad Ali. Go forward a couple years and you'll see Sound and Fury, a beautifully filmed look at the deaf community and the way we communicate with each other. Now, whatever era of the genre is your favorite, don't worry—we poured through decades of film to compile the best of them. Here are the best documentary films of all time. |
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How Star Trek Fell Short of Its Ideals About Diversity |
In May 1965, wearing a light pink Chanel jumpsuit, Nichelle Nichols walked into the Desilu offices and transformed Spock into a Black woman. The character of Uhura—a character Nichols would make world-famous in Star Trek—didn't exist yet. Series creator Gene Roddenberry had a vague idea for a new character, but because Uhura hadn't yet been written, Nichols remembered that "they handed me a script and apologized, saying the part I would be playing would be a communications officer." Director Joseph Sargent said the script pages were "probably close" to what her yet-to-be-created character might be like. But, somewhat hilariously, these pages were early dialogue for Mr. Spock. The idea that Spock was a male character wasn't made clear at first, so Nichols innocently wondered, "What's she like?" And at that moment, the souls of Spock and Uhura were joined forever. |
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The Things That Carried Him |
Don Collins stood in the sun and mapped out in his mind a rectangle on the grass, eight feet by three feet. He is forty-nine, wears a handful of pomade in his hair, and no longer needs a tape to take the measure of things. Indiana state law dictates that the lid of the burial vault be two feet below the surface. That meant Collins had to dig down five feet, ultimately lifting out about a hundred cubic feet of earth. He wouldn't need a tape to measure that, either. Since 1969, his father, Don Sr., has owned the Collins Funeral Home, just up Elm Street, just past the little yellow house with the two yellow ribbons tied to the tree out front. As a boy, Don Jr. had lived upstairs with the spirits and the rest of his family, over the chapel. He and his younger brother, Kevin, would later work with their dad in the back room, embalming the bodies of their neighbors at three o'clock in the morning, and he still assists his father in his capacity as coroner. But Don Jr. has had enough of bodies in back rooms. He likes it better outside, in the sticky air, working with the earth. |
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