The Scout Who Found Patrick Mahomes |
When Brett Veach followed Andy Reid to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2013, he accepted a position as the team's "pro and college personnel analyst," a vague, undefined front‑office role that doubled as a blank canvas, a dream job for an upwardly mobile football scout. Veach worked under general manager John Dorsey, an archetypal football grunt with a general's baritone voice and a habit of wearing the same gray sweatshirt, and Chris Ballard, a handsome, well‑coiffed director of pro personnel with a bright future. Veach did a little of everything—college scouting, pro personnel work; the job description was basically Let's see what you got—but above all else, he watched tape of football players. Mahomes had just finished his sophomore season—just two years removed from Whitehouse High. He'd thrown for 4,653 yards as a sophomore and put up big numbers in the Red Raiders' Air Raid offense, as most Texas Tech quarterbacks did, but owing to his quiet college recruitment and the fact he wasn't eligible for the draft for another year, he wasn't exactly on NFL radars. "Who is this guy?" Veach thought. To Veach, the question became an obsession. One day that spring, as he later recalled, he was grinding Mahomes tape on a quiet weekend inside the Chiefs' offices when Andy Reid happened by. Reid was curious about what Veach was up to. Veach had a simple answer: He was watching the next quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. |
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| The day my grandmother in Beijing died, I went out to dinner in New York. The meal was meant to be in her memory, but really, it spoke to the paucity of mine. My partner asked for stories as we drove from Brooklyn into Flushing, a neighborhood that hummed with the slow pedestrian choreography of its predominant Chinese diaspora. Staring out at a mass of gray-haired grannies, each indistinguishable from a distance, I found I had no stories of the woman who'd raised me. I knew neither her age nor city of birth; nor could I recount a single shared conversation. She had me until I was four, a stretch of time unimprinted on conscious memory. Empty of anecdotes and tears, I believed myself empty, too, of grief for a woman I'd seen three times in the previous thirty years. |
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I Spent Years Trying to Save My Hair Before Finally Getting a Transplant |
I haven't been nice to my hair. Between desperately trying to give myself blonde streaks in high school and applying excessive amounts of Dep gel, I totally understand why it didn't want to stick around. I know genetics played some part in it, but I can't imagine Staten Island hairstyle trends helped the situation much. Either way, by the time I was approaching 30, my hair was starting to abandon me. The first time I realized the severity of the situation was at a gay club in New York, where a friend's boyfriend thought he was paying me a compliment by telling me he liked my lighter-colored locks. In reality, he was seeing my scalp through my thinning hair. My hair loss had finally reached a point where brushing to cover up my thinning areas wasn't doing the trick. Although genetics plays a large part male pattern baldness, I started playing the blame game with myself. It's my fault because I wear hats too tight, or because I don't use conditioner, or I use the wrong kind of brush. I know—not necessarily useful. Regardless, I needed to take action. I was under the impression that Rogaine wasn't an option for me because it's more for hair loss on your crown and my issue was a receding hairline. I didn't want to start on Propecia because I was worried about the potential sexual side effects. My brother told me about Nutrafol, a natural supplement he was taking to prevent his own hair from thinning. It may work for some guys. It didn't for me. |
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The Rise of Literary Friendships |
For all the excitement and drama contained in novels, few of them can compare to a great literary feud. Ernest Hemingway infamously trashed F. Scott Fitzgerald after the latter died: "I never had any respect for him ever, except for his lovely, golden, wasted talent." Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer not only threw punches, but Mailer head-butted Vidal backstage of The Dick Cavett Show. Mario Vargas Llosa also threw punches—his landing on Gabriel García Márquez, who had advised Vargas Llosa's wife to divorce him. Richard Ford shot a hole through one of Alice Hoffman's novels and mailed it to her over a scathing review she gave to The Sportswriter. And don't forget Wallace Stevens and Hemingway throwing down in Key West, or William Faulkner telling a creative writing class that Hemingway "has no courage, has never crawled out on a limb." Hemingway was a reliable enemy to many prominent writers. But in recent years, the bitterness churning through the literary world appears to have waned. While competition remains an inextricable part of a literary career—awards and end-of-year lists continue to pit authors against one another—it's become more common to see writers rooting for each other. On social media, writers are just as likely to hype their peers as they are to self-promote: linking where to buy books, posting photos of readings, and sharing passages from galleys. Where once was envy is now admiration. |
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Karl Ove Knausgaard: The Man, The Myth, The Legend |
Knausgaard published his first novel, Out of the World, at 27. "It was like hitting gold, because it was a moment of writing and being selfless," he told me. "That was the clue. You just disappear into your writing, and I knew then, 'This is good.' Because it was just to write and it wasn't about thinking or anything. It was almost the opposite of thinking—just following the text, following whatever comes up." Something Knausgaard seems to believe above all things, when it comes to writing, is that "you have to get inside the text… if it feels separate, if you see it from the outside, you collide with it. It doesn't work." When he starts a novel, his way of getting into it is "to know almost nothing." He continued, "I've never done meditation, never been into religion in any way, but it's a feeling that you're connected, somehow, to the writing." |
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Stanley Tucci Is the Man With the Pan |
Over the past few years, Tucci has established himself as a new staple in culinary entertainment. He's got a hit travel show, which is paused and off-limits in solidarity with the SAG-AFTA strike. But, he's now published two cookbooks, one food-focused memoir, and most weeks you'll find him on Instagram posting pasta, fritti, and cocktails. He's a full-blown food-fluencer. His latest venture closes the loop: a full cookware line with GreenPan, sold exclusively at Williams-Sonoma, which on first glance and after one night of cooking, I'm really, really impressed with. Recently, we sat down to talk about the brand new cookware line, cooking with his family, and his life as a dinner party host. |
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