My Father's Fling With Zsa Zsa Gabor |
My father, Lou Junod, had Zsa Zsa Gabor. That is, he slept with her. That is, he had sex with her. I put it this way because that's how it was put to me. I was a salesman just out of college, traveling all over American roads in the cause of selling handbags to stores that would in turn sell them to American women, not unlike my father had done. I was in Houston, Texas, calling upon a buyer my father had called on for years. We went out for dinner, and she began telling me stories about the old man. She didn't tell me anything I didn't know until she broke the news with those exact words: "And of course everybody knows he had Zsa Zsa Gabor." I had heard a lot of stories about my father and celebrities, most of them from his own mouth. In his stories, famous women flirted with him outrageously and helplessly, and famous men sought his company, paid him deference, or took umbrage after being upstaged by him. I neither believed nor disbelieved him, because although he was, by his own reckoning, "a very attractive man," and although I'd been with him several times when he was mistaken for a celebrity, he was still my father and still a salesman. All of his stories inherently doubled as myths, beyond the reach of fact checking. But the story the buyer in Houston told about Zsa Zsa Gabor was different. For one thing, he didn't tell it. For another, it lacked the splendor that transformed most stories about him into myths. See, my father was not just my father; he was married to my mother, and the Zsa Zsa story was my first inkling of what I was to find out—that he was the Don Draper of the handbag business. The buyer must've seen this thought play out on my face because she then tried to take it all back: "I shouldn't have told you. I just thought you knew. It might not even be true. It's just a story…" But with those words, it registered in my mind as the truth. |
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| The 2022 Esquire Gaming Awards |
Welcome, gamers. I stand before you for the first time since The 2021 Esquire Gaming Awards, Sponsored By Arby's, to present The 2022 Esquire Gaming Awards, Sponsored By Wendy's. This year, I'd like to keep my Esquire Gamer Zone keynote speech brief. You know us by now. We've spent the year bunkered down in places we'd rather not tell you about, playing the latest and greatest in video games. We play said titles with the brand-spankin'-newest in gadgets, gears, and accessories, with the goal of sharing the best with you, right here, right now. In 2022, we played as cats, turtles, golfers, Gremlins—yes, those Gremlins—skaters, demons, and trombonists. As always, our adventures changed us forever. Here, you'll read every gritty and embarrassing detail from our escapades, as we tell you what left the most indelible impression on our immortal gamer souls. Now pull yourself together. Wipe your tears. We present to you, The 2022 Esquire Gaming Awards. |
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Murder and Loathing in Las Vegas |
Robert Telles isn't willing to discuss how his DNA ended up under the fingernails of Jeff German. Or why his wife's car was spotted near the sixty-nine-year-old investigative reporter's house on a warm Friday morning in early September, a day before a neighbor discovered German's lifeless body at the side of his Las Vegas home. Or how an outfit matching the one worn by the suspect captured on security-cam footage wound up in Telles's home. Speaking to me at the Clark County Detention Center, a couple miles north of the Vegas Strip, Telles is serious but engaged. Eager to please, even. But he must be careful about what he says. His court-appointed lawyers at the time made that clear. The man charged with premeditated murder in one of the most sensational cases in recent history here—one that drew the attention of virtually every major newspaper and network in the country—is short and lean, with dark eyes framed by black caterpillar brows beneath a gleaming bald head. He's no longer wearing the thick white bandages that were wrapped around his forearms, covering up what officials described as self-inflicted wounds, when he first appeared in court, six days after German's murder. He faced the judge that day with a wry smile before being led back to jail in shackles. |
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Kyle Soller Really is That Guy |
I've been trying to figure out how, exactly, to describe Kyle Soller's performance as Syril Karn, Andor's resident Empire fanboy. Here it goes. It's as if Soller meshed Hermione Granger, Michael Corleone, and the Cowardly Lion into one neat, tidy, batshit package. It's like the actor, 39, watched the full Star Wars box set—which he absolutely did before filming Andor—and thought to himself, Hm! What if Darth Vader was just some powerless, insecure dude who lived with his mom, but was still so pissed that he wanted to destroy the galaxy? I'm not sure how else to say it, but: Kyle Soller is that guy. The guy that's so mystifying, show-stealing, and just-on-the-verge-of-full-breakout that when you mention his name, people light up with a look of surprise-curiosity, and say, "Wow, that guy!" He's that guy. "Syril is really rooted in this normalcy, which is what makes him so kind of strange and potentially terrifying," that guy—Kyle Soller—told me over Zoom last week. "He's really relatable even though his life is so constricted and structured within an inch of its life." |
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The Radical Traditionalism of Steven Spielberg |
The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg's autobiographical coming-of-age film, co-written with Tony Kushner, is engaging, frequently charming, and, in a few instances, so suddenly lyrical that it's downright surprising. The pain of the past never overpowers Spielberg's fondness for what he's showing us. But when it focuses too long on how the director did it, lovely as parts of it are, I find it a lot less compelling than what the man has actually done. When a director has spent the last decade addressing America's recent history as vividly as Spielberg has with Bridge of Spies, The Post, and especially West Side Story, one of his masterpieces; when he's made those stories feel like parts of the unfinished history we are all still living; and when he's done all this using the techniques and conventions that defined the classic Hollywood cinema of the '40s and '50s, making them feel not like resurrected relics but living art, then the reduced scope of this portrait of the artist as a young boychik, warm as it is, can't help but feel like something of a retreat. The once Boy Wonder of American movies, Spielberg is now working at the level of masterful old pros like William Wyler and Fred Zinnemann, directors whose combined mastery of craft and storytelling basically no longer exist in mainstream American filmmaking. |
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Why I Can't Go Home Again |
I should've felt relieved. It was the day after the midterms, and the giant "red wave" predicted by the pundits never materialized. The nationwide rejection of Trump-aligned candidates seemed to signal better days ahead for progressives like myself. In New York, where I currently live, incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul fended off an unlikely threat from Republican challenger Lee Zeldin. However, in my birthplace of North Carolina, where my entire family still lives, sanity proved a less salient selling point. In the Senate race, Trump-endorsed candidate Ted Budd sailed to an easy victory over Cheri Beasley, the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. In the southwestern district where my Mom lives, the Republican state Sen. Chuck Edwards beat Jasmine Beach Ferrara, a Harvard-educated lesbian minister from the liberal haven of Asheville, in a race for Madison Cawthorn's former congressional seat. The results were bleak in the state races, too. Republicans swept the majority of them, capturing nearly a supermajority in the General Assembly. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto power, which he used a record number of times during his first term, now hangs by a thread. The margin is so thin, GOP House Speaker Tim Moore said he believes Republicans can recruit the single Democrat necessary to overcome Cooper's veto and pass priority legislation like the Parents' Bill of Rights as soon as the next session starts in January. The anti-LGBTQ legislation, essentially a copy-cat of Florida's so-called Don't Say Gay bill, passed the North Carolina Senate back in June. My homesick heart ached as I watched the results roll in. |
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