The Drugging of the American Boy |
Imagine you have a six-year-old son. A little boy for whom you are responsible. A little boy you would take a bullet for, a little boy in whom you search for glimpses of yourself, and hope every day that he will turn out just like you, only better. A little boy who would do anything to make you happy. Now imagine that little boy—your little boy—alone in his bed in the night, eyes wide with fear, afraid to move, a frightening and unfamiliar voice echoing in his head, afraid to call for you. Imagine him shivering because he hasn't eaten all day because he isn't hungry. His head is pounding. He doesn't know why any of this is happening. Now imagine that he is suffering like this because of a mistake. Because a doctor examined him for twelve minutes, looked at a questionnaire on which you had checked some boxes, listened to your brief and vague report that he seemed to have trouble sitting still in kindergarten, made a diagnosis for a disorder the boy doesn't have, and wrote a prescription for a powerful drug he doesn't need. If you have a son in America, there is an alarming probability that this has happened or will happen to you. |
|
| The Game That Changed Steph Curry's Life |
Ever wonder what your favorite athlete does when they just aren't playing very well? Do they watch a Will Ferrell comedy? Play Mario Kart with their kids? Suffer a fit of deep, existential angst? We wanted to know, too. Welcome to How I Take a Loss. For our latest edition, we talked to Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry, who, yeah—no introduction needed. Back in November, Curry was out and about with Callaway, hitting balls in a rare midseason break from hoops. (If you're unfamiliar: Steph Curry is a golfer. And a damn good one, too.) To celebrate the extension of his partnership with Callaway Golf, Curry—a guy who has won a couple things!—agreed to talk to Esquire about losing. Here, Curry gets into it all: Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, playing as himself in PGA Tour 2K23, and the loss that made Steph Curry, well, Steph Curry. |
|
|
I'm Never Taking My Oura Ring Off |
I'm a ring girl. Not the boxing kind, but the jewelry kind. You know how some people can't leave the house without their wristwatch, or they have an impressive shoe collection, or really, just any signature element that's part of their look? Well, with me, that's my rings. I own dozens, collected throughout the years, but I have seven in my signature stack that I wear every day. Sometimes, I meet people who ask for a "ring tour"—that is, a brief origin story for each ring. These four are pure silver, I say. These two are white gold, from that little indie jewelry shop that used to be on East 9th Street. And this one is an Oura Ring. Don't worry, if you don't know what an Oura Ring is—you aren't out of the loop yet, but I'll fill you in, because you will be soon. Put simply: It's a ring with sensors on the inside that track your wellness stats (things like calories burned in a day, BPM, body temperature, sleep cycle, and more) and deliver them neatly to an app on your phone. It had all the benefits of Apple Health and a Fitbit in one, with the even greater benefit of being smaller, sleeker, more detailed, and all around cooler. Let me tell you why. |
|
|
Is Channel 5 the Future of News? |
Andrew Callaghan, who is 25 and lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, is the frontman of Channel 5 News, the latest iteration of the lean, immersive documentary operation he founded in 2019 with his two closest friends, which brings in about $100,000 a month from fans on Patreon. Its YouTube subscriber base of 2.2 million rivals those of the Washington Post and USA Today and, in the strange category-collapse of online media, the Indonesian un-boxer-slash-gamer Bobacott and a stunt firearms reviewer called Kentucky Ballistics. In an era of cord-cutting, when most younger audiences never had cords to begin with, Channel 5 also represents an important slice of the future of news—if, that is, news is the word for their work. Working largely out of an RV, Channel 5 has reported on spring breakers in Miami Beach, Nascar fans at Talladega, and dueling pro-choice and anti-abortion activists after the fall of Roe v. Wade, yielding off-beat, ethnographic shorts edited for the online attention span. On-camera, Callaghan's most consistent opening interview question is. "What's on your mind?" The most common setting: a raucous, single-minded crowd. Callaghan comes off as equal parts reporter, comic, and reality-TV producer. "Our average age is like 22 to 27, but I'm trying to bring it down," Callaghan says. |
|
|
What Went Wrong With White Noise |
Adapting a beloved novel is not easy—let alone one as distinctly stylized, tonally bipolar, and relentlessly digressive as Don DeLillo's seminal work of postmodern literature, 1985's White Noise. Jack (or, J.A.K., as he's known at school) Gladney's first-person account of a year at the College on the Hill turned upside down by an airborne toxic event is a grim, farcical meditation on the inescapability of death. It's also about the universal impossibility of suppressing the fear of our mortality—try as we might with the distractions of consumerism, family life, and mass media. Yeah, not exactly the stuff of Marvel movies. So you have to give it up for Noah Baumbach. He took a book many people said was unfilmable, and frankly, filmed the shit out of it. Every frame is interesting, every camera movement and bit of blocking considered. White Noise's background is a rich tapestry, brimming with color, texture, and detail. (See: UFOs on a gas station's TV, shadow puppets on a tent at the refugee camp.) For a director who has heretofore worked exclusively in the realm of low-to-mid-budget interpersonal dramas, Baumbach proves more than proficient at action setpieces. He fjords a station wagon, lets loose a magnificently ominous billowing cloud, makes spectacle out of a traffic jam. The truck-train crash that sets off the airborne toxic event is one of the most visually stunning things I saw in a movie last year. |
|
|
Putting Brad Pitt's Le Domaine Skincare Line to the Test |
You probably already heard that Brad Pitt has come out with a skincare line. A few weeks ago, the Academy Award-winning actor debuted Le Domaine: a tightly edited, genderless luxury skincare brand created in partnership with the French winemaking Perrin family, who are also his partners in the winery Pitt bought a decade ago. Le Domaine has been making headlines, largely because of the Pitt connection, ever since. In the Age of the Celebrity Brand™, Brad Pitt's entry into the skincare game is at the same time expected and head-scratching. Why wouldn't one of the most famous, and handsome, men in the world sling skincare? But Pitt also seems reluctant, cautious even, to become known as a beauty mogul. In interviews, he's expressed plausible deniability that he has more than the most basic skincare routine and has voiced contempt at the term "anti-aging" despite the fact that Le Domaine's claims are around slowing the aging process. At first, the hesitancy of Pitt to truly discuss skincare when being interviewed about his own skincare collection seems a bit performative, but there could be some truth to it. |
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment