The Man Who Wound Up Dead on the Burt Reynolds Movie |
Sergeant Forrest Hinderliter of the Gila Bend (Arizona) Police had been up since two in the morning with a dead body and a shaky story. He'd found the body—a black man with a bullet hole in his back—lying on the floor in Apartment 44 of the North Euclid Avenue project at the western edge of town. He'd also found a woman there, and this was her story: She woke up after midnight to find a man on top of her, making love to her. She'd never seen the man before. She told him to get off and get out; she warned him she was expecting another man. A car pulled up outside and flashed its lights. A minute later the other man came through the door. Explanations were inadequate. In the scuffle a gun was drawn, a .38 revolver. A shot went off, the first visitor died. An accident, the woman told Sergeant Hinderliter, the gun had gone off by accident. An accident, the other man, the one who owned the .38, told the sergeant. |
|
| The Secret Weapons of Ukraine |
The air-raid siren sounded again through the defiant city, but William McNulty refused to be bothered by it. After a long morning of meetings in Kyiv with Ukrainian partners in need of medical tourniquets and cold-weather clothing, the man had earned an afternoon nap. The air flowing through the hotel room's open window nipped of brittle autumn, and sunlight was leaking through gray clouds; winter, as the Ukrainians liked to quip, was coming. Fuck it, McNulty thought. The chances of getting hit by a drone strike in a city of three million people seemed low. A U.S. Marine veteran from Chicago who's served in Iraq and done humanitarian work in dozens of conflict and natural-disaster zones, he's grown numb to the frequent sirens that are now a mainstay of life in Ukraine. Since Russia's latest invasion began in February of last year, he's traveled throughout the country, by train and van, to rural villages and the front, delivering supplies to those fighting at democracy's edge. His nonprofit group, Operation White Stork, makes no quibble about supporting Ukraine in the war. He's had his fill of messy wars and ambiguous purposes. He believes this is it, the real deal, the righteous cause that people of action always not-so-secretly crave. In late February 2022, I joined two friends, fellow combat veterans, in Lviv, in western Ukraine. We spent two weeks training a group of civilians in combat basics and self-defense. We wanted to see the volunteer ecosystem that's developed and to meet some of the people who've upended their lives for it. |
|
|
The Nama J2 Juicer Can't Be Beat |
Juicing has become a bad word. A punishment. Juicing before vacation, before your wedding, before a big event. Or worse, after—to undo all the fun you had. It's right up there with "cleanse" on the scary diet-meter, conjuring images of a week with a rotating cast of green concoctions and not a bite of chewable food in sight. But juice, the noun and not the verb, is delicious. We've forgotten that. Fresh orange juice to start your day? Or, even better, a vibrant citrus blend of grapefruit and tangerine? Good freaking morning! What about something bright, like green apple, celery, and lemon? That'll have you smacking your lips in delight. You want to impress guests? Make them a fresh batch of carrot, ginger, and orange juice to go with their bagels. They'll be back. To do any of this, you need a juicer. I'd been on the fence about welcoming one into my home for years. Everything I looked at took up way too much space. Plus, they're all awful to clean, right? Also, would I even use the dang thing??? I couldn't risk another appliance I'd regretfully store in my already overfilled cabinets. Enter the Nama J2 Juicer, a relatively compact, aesthetically pleasing, and easy-to-assemble juicer that cuts down on prep in a serious way. Let me tell you about it. |
|
|
Ray Liotta: An Oral History |
Gary Hecker: There's a restaurant in Venice called 72 Market Street that was there for many years. It was owned by Dudley Moore. Ray and I and a date of his and my then-fiancée, we would go to dinner at 72 Market Street. Ray was not the kind of guy to go up to a group of people and start talking. That's something that I would do, but it was not something that he would do. But we're at dinner and he gets up and leaves the table to go talk to somebody at another table. And it was Irwin Winkler, who would go on to produce Goodfellas. So he went up to Irwin. I may have given him a push and said, "You should go talk to these people." Ray said, "Irwin, can I talk to you outside?" It's really ballsy to go up to Irwin Winkler and say that. I remember Ray was gone for fifteen minutes, which was really a long time. It was all happenstance—getting Ray out and going to 72 Market Street, Irwin Winkler being there, Ray going up to him, which he rarely did. But that helped to grease the wheels for him to get that part. |
|
|
The Case for Situation-Specific Deodorant |
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and the subject of deodorant came up (as it does). She told me she'd just tried a new one that she'd liked, so she put it in permanent rotation in her deodorant wardrobe. "Wait, what do you mean deodorant wardrobe?" I asked. The idea is simple: She has multiple deodorants that she uses based on what she's doing or how she wants to feel. The catchy name surprised me, but the idea didn't. I realized I've been doing the same thing for years. For me, it started with the natural deodorant explosion a few years ago. I'm a fan of natural deodorants. I like the idea that I'm not slathering my pits in harmful chemicals ("harmful" being a subjective word here) and I do find that natural deodorants tend to smell better. But let's get real: I'm a sweaty guy and sometimes I need a little extra sweat protection that a natural deodorant just can't provide. So, I started switching up my deos depending on what my body needed. You probably switch up your cologne depending on where you're going, what you're doing, and who you're going to see, right? The idea of a deodorant wardrobe is the same—except with the added element of functionality. |
|
|
Few Black Americans Play Baseball. MLB Doesn't Seem to Care. |
Once upon a time, there was a fifth-grade boy whose sixth-grade friend, in the absence of the boy's father, marched him to the local community center and signed him up for a youth basketball team. Just a few months later, the same sixth-grade homie marched that fifth grader over to a local park and signed him up for a Little League baseball team. That fifth grader was me. The sixth grader was the homie Stevie. From then until I graduated from Portland Community College, I played on an organized basketball team. (All-league, too.) But beyond that one season, I never again played organized baseball. For one thing, it felt like baseball never needed me, to say nothing of wanting my presence. To keep it a buck, baseball has never been the hurrah game of my republic, has treated Blackness as little more than a symbol. No wonder—according to a report released by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), Major League Baseball has a smaller percentage of Black players now than it has had in any year since TIDES began assessing the demographics. American Black players made up 18 percent of all MLB rosters in 1991; on opening day in 2022, they composed a paltry-ass 7.2 percent. (And 28.5 percent were Hispanic or Latino.) The situation is so flagrant that last year, for the first time since 1950—mind you, just three years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier—there was not a single American-born Black player on the roster of either team in the World Series. |
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment