Call Us When He Kills You |
For the last eight years, I've been stalked by a man I do not know. I've never had a conversation with him. I know his name, but I won't say it. I know what he looks like as well as I know the stoops and curbs of my own neighborhood, but I don't know where he comes from, how he lives, or why he chose me. As I write this, he's in jail, but he still sends me pornographic magazines, and he still calls me almost every day. I don't know how it will end, but this is how it began. FALL 1989 Early one Sunday morning, I'm jolted awake by pounding on my front door. I roll into my robe and rush to discover Leslie, my four-hundred-pound, not-quite-right neighbor from down the hall, dressed as usual in a rumpled, food-stained shirt and blue jeans so filthy they've acquired the texture of greasy canvas. There's another guy with him, standing slightly behind, an oddball in a ridiculous getup—dark sunglasses and an aviator cap. "My friend wants to meet you," Leslie pants, and I get a whiff of the chocolate I can see caked in the corner of his cracked lips. "Leslie," I say firmly, employing the language and tone our building's tenants have learned to use during these occasional episodes, "this is not allowed." I start to shut the door, but Leslie's friend sticks his foot in the way. |
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| Even Brad Pitt's Endless Charm Can't Save Bullet Train |
Bullet Train is one of those movies so taken with its own hip facetiousness—think of any of the Tarantino imitations that multiplied in the '90s the way Trump lawsuits do now—that early on you know you're not going to have to expend any mental energy keeping the plot straight or any emotional energy having a stake in what happens. The filmmakers have already told you that nothing matters except hyper-stylization. The director, David Leitch, has a specialty in choreographed fight scenes and there are plenty, augmented with tossed-off brutality, apposite and ironic pop-culture tropes, double crosses, reversals, and, inevitably, a big destruct-o-rama to finish things off. You don't have to worry about being grossed out or upset by the various shootings, beatings, stabbings, stompings, arterial spray, or flashbacks to a scene of mass projectile blood vomiting. (Somebody on the production team apparently really digs this; we see it four times.) I suppose in a way that it's relaxing. The ruckus on screen is going to continue whether we pay attention or not and so you can just sit there, thinking about where you're going to have dinner, and if you'll make it home in time for MeTV's 11:30 p.m. Perry Mason rerun. |
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Better Call Saul's Rhea Seehorn Has a Secret Bar Sitcom |
Cooper's Bar, a new sort of series from AMC, (well, kinda but more on that later), is a sitcom set in a bar and therefore very enticing. Sitcoms, like bars, work best when little happens. Bars, like sitcoms, are steady state affairs with stable casts and a comforting patter of good friends jawing. They are much needed oases of calm because, let's face it, everything happens so much. Sometimes you need a little less. On a more personal level, having burned through Barry, binged on Stranger Things and exhausted Better Call Saul—all shows in which many things happen—I was thirsty just to watch something with a lot of nothing in it. Cooper's Bar has that. Plus it is prestige television adjacent. The show stars and was co-created by Better Call Saul's Rhea Seehorn for whom I, along with half of America, feel an intense quasi-Oedipal longing. But there's even more that draws one to Cooper's Bar, namely the presence of Louis Mustillo. The three best accents of the Eastern Seaboard belong to Philadelphia (wudder); Baltimore (hon) and Buffalo NY. One of the best parts of 65-year-old actor's career is that he has brought those flat A's to Hollywood in shows like Mike & Molly and now, Cooper's. |
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What I've Learned: Gabby Giffords |
I liked to go hunting with my parents. I'm not against guns. I still own guns even today. Safely, of course. I don't think of my assailant. He took so much away from me, and even more away from the families of the six people he murdered. At Jared Lee Loughner's sentencing hearing, my husband [former astronaut and current U. S. senator Mark Kelly] told him, "You have decades upon decades to contemplate what you did. But after today, after this moment, here and now, Gabby and I are done thinking about you." I'd rather spend my energy on channeling that pain into purpose than giving him another ounce of myself. I think of forgiveness as tied to—but distinct from—acceptance. |
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I Tried Everything. Then I Tried Ayahuasca. |
Six months ago, I sat outside, on a wooden deck in the mountains, across from a white dude with a man bun. "Do you actually think this can fix me?" I asked him. The man went by "Kapétt," a name he picked up while studying indigenous culture in a Peruvian forest, though his legal name was John Thomas Caldwell III, and he was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. "I can't promise that," said Kapétt/John III, moving his left leg to cross under his right. "But I've seen people speak with their deceased loved ones. Others who've had their depression instantly cleared. Things you wouldn't believe." |
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Every Ben Affleck Role, Ranked |
He's a leading man, he's a reluctant superhero, he's a tabloid fixture, he's known for trying to carry too many Dunkin' Donuts beverages in one trip. Ben Affleck is a legit American treasure, a square-jawed, cleft-chinned heartthrob who can really act (and write, and direct, and smoke dejectedly). Affleck's done it all in his thirty-year career: taking home a Best Screenplay Oscar in his mid-twenties, going on to direct a Best Picture winner, patting J-Lo's butt in the "Jenny On The Block" video and re-patting for the paparazzi twenty years later. He's grown up before our eyes, from goateed '90s indie-movie boy to the brooding middle-aged cuckold in the just-released Deep Water, and we believe he's worthy of celebration. So we here at Esquire have taken it upon ourselves to rank his best movies. We did it Eurovision-style: everyone assigned points to the top ten objects of their Afflecktion, thereby leaving us with a definitive top 36. Here they are, plus a few quick roundups of the movies that got no love from our voters and can therefore no longer be considered Affleck Canon. |
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