Some damn good reading

 Jon Huntsman hoisting the hardware at a New Hampshire gun shop.

One of the nice things about finding myself between books is that it gives me a little more time to catch up with magazines and other shorter forms of writing. Here's a quick roundup of what I've read and enjoyed lately:

Republican guy with chance to beat Obama. 
That would be Jon Huntsman, the twice-elected governor of Utah who officially nominated Sarah Palin for vice president in 2008, then served as U.S. ambassador to China. Unlike the rest of the minions scrambling to become the party's nominee in 2012, Huntsman is a rarity: a centrist Republican with legitimate business, political and foreign policy experience. He's fluent in Mandarin Chinese, smart enough to be asked to teach international relations at Penn and, if all the cards fall exactly right, could come out of New Hampshire with enough momentum to surprise Romney, Bachmann and the others.

Chris Jones, writing in Esquire ("Romney doesn't scare Obama. This guy does.") observes:

It's...hard to look at him and not wonder whether he might be coming along right on time. He'll be called a RINO [Republican In Name Only] and a traitor and a nobody in the coming weeks and months, but he'll also be called reasonable and practical and professorial and electable. Even today, so close to the start of everything, his path is clear. He needs to find a broader Republican base, drawing in those right-leaning voters who presently find themselves without a country, fiscal conservatives who don't much care whether two men get hitched or their candidate's wearing a pin in his lapel. His success or failure will be dictated by just how many people like him have been waiting for the storm of paranoid rhetoric to pass, waiting for the return of a party and a candidate who wants to govern rather than rage.

The enduring appeal of baseball.
For anyone who carries a soft spot for baseball -- despite the exorbitant salaries and the watered-down competition that's come with expansion to 28 major league teams -- this love letter by Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated is a satisfying read.

"What keeps the grand game great?" the headline reads. "Everything old is new again..."

In his essay, Posnanski says it's the quality of timelessness that explains the sport's appeal across the decades and our country's changing demographics. "What else but baseball connects us to America of, say, 1891?" he asks.

Here we are, 120 years later, in a very different America, and yes, all the time, we read that baseball can't keep up with the pace of our everyday lives, that television ratings are down, that football long ago took over as the National Pastime. But is that really the surprising part? Or is the surprising part that America still loves and breathes baseball, long after barbershop quartets stopped singing, long after couples stopped waltzing, long after boxers stopped hitting each other with their bare fists.

Why in the heck do so many of us still love baseball?

Sgt. Alan Beaty, Cpl. Patrick Myers, Sgt. Keith Hull, Cpl. Keith Beaty

Our wounded warriors.
A 2008 Rand Corp. study of 1.6 million American veterans who had served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars found that 300,000 suffered from PTSD or major depression. That's nearly one in five. An astounding ratio. And as of 2011, the number of vets from those wars has now surged past the 2 million mark.

So what is anyone doing about it? Meet Alan Beaty, a former U.S. Marine sergeant who lives on the family homestead in Tennessee that was awarded to an ancestor for his service in the Revolutionary War. He's one of those with 100 percent disability and he has turned the spread into an unofficial, unfunded halfway house for fellow vets who've come back from the Middle East with physical and mental disabilities.

There, far away from the scrum of city life, they revive the camaraderie they forged on foreign lands, relive the memories, retell the stories that bond them in ways that civilians find difficult, if not possible, to understand. There, in stints from a few days to several months and even a year or more, they begin to heal.

The place is called "Vetville" and the story of the land and the men who gather there is told in compelling fashion by Mike Sager (yes, in Esquire, again). An excerpt:

Beaty scratches his head, resets his trucker cap. "When they teach you to be a Marine, they teach you to focus, because you can't be emotional in combat. You learn to be able to put things out of your mind. You learn to build walls. We've been trained to just keep functioning, to operate without emotion, without conscience. That's what you need in war. 

"But once you get back to society," Beaty continues, "the walls are still up. It's hard to have an emotional attachment to people. Because in your mind, you've been trained to know that this right here could be your last day on earth. So why allow myself to be connected to this woman? Why allow myself to be connected to my children? Lucky I got an amazing woman therapist now at the VA. It's only in the last few months that I'm learning how to take the walls down."

Politics. Baseball. The casualties of war. Take your pick. It's all good.


Photograph of Jon Huntsman by Peter Yang.
Photograph of U.S. Marines at Vetville by Jonathan Torgovnik.

The American Male at age 30

"At twenty-five, a person is trying to prove himself to the world. At thirty, he knows who he is to some extent, knows his strengths and limitations, has some kind of a game plan and gets it done."
-- Jo Jacob, artist, musician, Lexington, Kentucky


If there's one thing I admire as a journalist, it's a great idea that's well executed. So I tip my hat -- twice -- to Esquire for coming up with a cool original idea and then improving on it.

In 2006, the magazine introduced readers to a gallery of 51 young men, representing a cross-section of America, that it called "A Portrait of the American Man at 25." It made for fascinating reading, crawling inside the minds of these young adults and gleaning as much information from their photos as from their words.

Sure enough, the summer 2011 issue, touted as the "How To Be A Man" issue, arrived last week with an update: "A Portrait of the American Man at 30." The genius of this feature is that the magazine tracked down about 40 of the very same guys it interviewed earlier and, so, was able to offer an apples-to-apples comparison.
 "Some are now married with kids, living in the suburbs," the lead-in reads. "Others are divorced or in jail. Our boys are growing up."

What makes this group of guys so interesting? It's not that I think they are any more or less endowed with intelligence, looks or possibilities. It's that my oldest son is 31 and very much part of the Millennials cohort who were born from 1977 to 1998.

A 30-year-old guy born in 1981 (or 1980, in Nathan's case) has grown up in a world with Reagan and Obama as presidential bookmarks, where the career and financial aspirations enjoyed by their Boomer fathers has been dialed back in the face of a slumping world economy, where social dynamics have been shaped by the greatest diversity our country has ever seen, including growing acceptance of gays.

Their lives have been facilitated and complicated in every conceivable way by personal technology and the phenomenon of anywhere-anytime communication. Their female peers have been raised believing they are entitled to rights, privileges and opportunities that many of their mothers had to fight for -- and those attitudes have contributed to the Rubik's Cube of dating and commitment.

So what do these 30-year-old men have to say?

At the risk of gross generalization, it seems that five years has made all the difference in the maturation process. No, they all haven't settled down. But many of them, if not most, have left behind the party lifestyle and self-centered mindset and embraced new responsibilities -- marriage, parenthood, well-reasoned notions of work and career. It's good to see so many have a great sense of humor and speak with such candor.

I've rambled on far too much already, so let's cut to the chase. I hope the following sampling of quotes will encourage you to pick up the June/July issue (inexplicably, it's not online) and read the article in its entirety -- or just leave a comment. Do their words ring true? What do you (regardless of your gender) remember thinking, doing, aspiring to when you were 30? 25?

"Twenty five was a turning point in my life that put me in a situation that I was unsure of. At thirty, I have taken some chances that have proven to have lot of potential. It's amazing what a little kick in the ass can do to a person." 
-- Ricky Wayne Brule, entrepreneur, St. Francis, Minnesota

"I always thought I wanted kids. But now I'm really torn between what would make me happy -- being a really effective professor/writer or being a good parent. I don't see being both as a realistic option."
-- Kyle Dargan, Washington, D.C.
 
"Decisions have more consequences now than they did when I was twenty-five, so I find myself to be more calculated in my decision-making."
-- Evan deSieves, manager, wind energy company, Portland, Oregon

"Teens? You can have 'em. Early twenties? Couldn't pay me to take those back. Now? This is the time. This is my time. I've never felt more comfortable being a man."
-- Philip Dawkins, playwright, educator, Chicago, Illinois

Ron Paul's radical vision: Constitutional purity

Ron Paul: Ex-surgeon without a heart

He's gone from regional oddball to suddenly celebrated elder statesman. He's a 75-year-old Texas Republican from suburban Houston who's been on the short end of countless 434-to-1 votes in the U.S. House. And in today's wacky, up-is-down political climate, his rigid, reactionary ideas have placed him at the center of the national debate over the size and role of the federal government.

He is Ron Paul and if you're not acquainted with his philosophy, you owe it to yourself to read John H. Richardson's masterful profile in May's Esquire: "The Founding Father."

In stature and personality, Paul seems harmless enough -- a former Air Force flight surgeon who's small and trim and boyish as Tom Sawyer. But he is a bulldog when it comes to this idea of constitutional purity. Where most people acknowledge that politics is the art of compromise, he holds fast to the belief that principles should always trump "incrementalism." In other words, you don't compromise. As Richardson explains:

That's why he's taken more lonely stands than any other politician in American history: against the Iraq war even though he's a Republican, against the Defense of Marriage Act even though he's a conservative Christian, against farm subsidies even though he represents a rural district, against the Texas Medical Center even though he's from Texas — the list goes on and on. He refused to award congressional medals to Rosa Parks, Ronald Reagan, the Pope, and Mother Teresa. After Hurricane Katrina, he voted against sending federal help to Louisiana. 

"Once you say, 'Well, you know, we live in the real world and sometimes you have to give in a little bit,' then you're never yourself, you're never your own person, and they'll badger you to death. So it's much easier for me to follow a set of principles than fussin' and fumin' on knowing exactly when you're supposed to throw in the towel."

Paul is often called the "intellectual godfather" of the tea party movement. Any taxation is theft. Any spending of public dollars is socialism. Any attempt to help those of lesser means is redistribution of wealth.

"The implications are ruthless -- starving old people in the street, literally," Richardson writes. But Paul says that's OK, that the Founding Fathers believed that personal liberty and economic liberty were one in the same, and that Christianity emphasizes the importance of the individual.

Paul is the Christian Scientist of economics, convinced that the "medicine" of government planning is the sin of pride -- if you really trust the Lord, you don't give your children antibiotics and you don't give your grandparents Social Security. He is willing to increase social pain dramatically so the nation can be born again.

Paul's vision is as scary and Draconian as it is pure and unshakable. His libertarian-leaning ways would never fly in Oregon. It's the rest of the country, Red States America, that makes me worry.

Photograph: Brent Humphreys/Redux

The death of empathy

Esquire's back-page feature, "This Way Out," is the first thing I read when the magazine arrives. It's always a snarky take on this or that -- and this month's topic is Recent Obits. The author: A.J. Jacobs.

These are the best two -- tongue-in-cheek but with a devastating point to make about our modern times. The death of civility. The death of a journalistic and social institution. (Keep in mind the names below are fictitious.)

Empathy Dies

The capacity to recognize and feel the suffering experienced by another sentient being, empathy succumbed to a long illness Friday. The cause was Greg Lipsky's comment on a YouTube video that showed a woman cracking her skull after tripping over a garden hose: "LOL, bitch!"

Empathy had been in decline for several days, in the wake of dozens of other comments, including "Hahahahaha" and "Taste the pavement." It was 10,500 years old.

Empathy's death closely followed those of its siblings, sympathy and compassion, according to the last surviving member of their family, sociopathy.

The evening news, purveyor of important information

The evening news, nightly television programs designed to convey the current state of the world, died suddenly Wednesday after a long battle with irrrelevance. It was 63. The cause was a CBS segment about the unlikely bond between a retired salesman and a gray Toulouse goose named Maria in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

In its prime, the evening news united America around an "electronic hearth" and sparked national conversations about such issues as racial unequality, Watergate, and the Vietnam War. In later years, it featured a lot of commercials for medical devices.

The evening news took a turn for he worse when one of its few remaining viewers -- Anne Sapoksy of Glendale -- was taught by her grandson how to open Internet Explorer. It is survived by people loudly shouting their point of view.

Genius.

See more? Here's an index of This Way Out.

Iamge: clipartguide.com

Sunday sunshine

I think all of Portland is celebrating today. A special occasion? Yep, the return of the sun.

In recent days, I think even native Oregonians were getting tired of what seemed to be constant rain. Last Thursday and Friday seemed especially dreary.  Saturday was dry but overcast. So when the warm sunshine finally broke through, it lifted spirits, sent people outdoors and restored a little order to the universe.

Lori and I went up to the roof of our condo and had lunch there while Otto laid down on his side and soaked up the rays. Nice.

It may seem counterintuitive to write about such a pleasant day while I'm here inside at the computer. But it's only for a few minutes. Just long enough to say that...

pozole

-- I'm looking forward to cooking dinner tonight. I'm making pozole -- a Mexican soup made with hominy and chicken (or pork) that goes really well with corn tortillas and beer. I'm using a recipe I found in Esquire offered up by the owner of a cafe in Mount Vernon, Iowa, of all places. (For some reason, neither the article nor the recipe is online.) Anyway, the ingredients include onion, garlic, kale, poblano, jalapeno and chipotle chiles, chicken stock, tomatoes, cremini mushrooms and, on top, chopped cilantro, sliced avacados and crumbled goat cheese.

-- I returned to the scene of the crime of my multitasking faux pas on Saturday. (See my previous post: "Multitasking to a fault") As I walked into the grocery store, my iPhone was already put away and so I shut off my iPod, removed my earbuds and went about my business. Went through the checkout line as if it were pre-1977, the year cell phones* went public.

* According to cellphone.org, cell phones were still a rarity 15 years ago, but now most of the world now communicates by cell phone. "The cellular business was a $3 million market 25 years ago and has grown increasingly to close to a $30 billion per year industry," the website says. (Emphasis added.)

Photograph of sunshine by shaheen
Photograph of pozole by Meutia Chaerani / Indradi Soemardjan http://www.indrani.net

Justice denied

Ray Towler

After my whiny little diatribe against the courts triggered by the partial refund of a parking ticket, along comes a riveting magazine article to put me in my place.

The March issue of Esquire tells the story of Ray Towler, an ordinary guy who's living in Cleveland back in September 1981 when he's hauled into court to stand trial on charges of rape, kidnapping and felonious assault, all relating to an attack on an 11-year-old girl in a local park.

He's got an iron-clad alibi but, you see, he's black. And two sketchy witnesses claim it was him who they saw. Writer-at-large Mike Sager puts us in the courtroom:

"Raymond Daniel Towler is sitting at the defense table. He is a big guy, twenty-four years old, with a full puffy beard and a quick smile; his burnished ebony skin is a shade darker than the rich wood paneling in the courtroom. By most accounts he is a gentle, talented, thoughtful man who studied art in community college. He earns a living working temp jobs and lending his Jimi Hendrix-inspired guitar stylings to various rock bands around town. At the time of his arrest, he was collecting unemployment, thinking about reenlisting in the Army. He was living with his mother and little sister in a modest house on the west side, three miles from the Valley, a place he's been going with relatives and friends his entire life. 

"Ray Towler does not claim to be the best man on the planet. He's really just a regular guy. Though he doesn't drink, he does enjoy the occasional doobie — it is 1981, after all, and he is a musician. He has yet to find a regular civilian job. You could say he's always been a little bit adrift — a black kid in a white school who wanted to be an engineer or an astronaut but who was counseled toward shop classes and the assembly line; a volunteer soldier who was told he could learn how to work on missiles but ended up in the infantry; a veteran with an honorable discharge who served overseas and then came back home to ... the same old shit he was trying to escape.

"One thing he is absolutely sure of: He is no child molester."

Inevitably, Towler is convicted and sent away to prison. He spends nearly 30 years locked up, despite numerous appeals. Finally, in late 2008, a lab comes back with results showing he was almost certainly not the rapist.

Sager does a masterful job telling the story of a wrongful conviction -- a story we've seen too often involving mostly African American men -- and describing Towler's re-entry into a civilian world that has changed in every conceivable way while he's been imprisoned for 28 years, 8 months.

Read the article and you'll be outraged. And, in my case, ashamed to be caught complaining about a parking citation. 

"The Someone You're Not" 

Daniel Woodrell: A revelation

Funny how one thing leads to another...

Last year, I learned about the movie "Winter's Bone" from reading an interview with the leading actress in Esquire. It was a below-the-radar indie film and I'd never heard of the star, Jennifer Lawrence. But, damn, it was one of the best movies of 2010 IMHO for its gritty depiction of the meth culture in the Missouri Ozarks.

Well, I was thumbing through another issue of Esquire last month and, lo and behold, I came across a short article singing the praises of Daniel Woodrell, who wrote the novel on which "Winter's Bone" is based, plus four others. I let it be known that I wouldn't mind receiving any of his books as a birthday present and -- what a coincidence -- Lori came through with a gift of "Tomato Red," a 1999 novel that won the PEN West Award for the Novel (yes, that's the name) and mention as a New York Times Notable Book for that year.

After inhaling the novel's 167 pages, all I can say is "Wow!"  Just as "Winter's Bone" takes the viewer into a seedy subculture of drugs, violence and rural poverty, "Tomato Red" draws in the reader with an irresistible opening paragraph  -- actually a masterful sentence of 278 words -- and never lets up. It's like jumping in an old beater with a local yokel behind the wheel and he stomps on the gas pedal and away you go. (Think of Nicolas Cage in "Raising Arizona.")

Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not saying "Tomato Red" is a downer of a book or that the characters are unlikable. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. Sure, Sammy Barlach, a loser and ex-con passing through the fictitious town of West Table, Mo., is no one you'd probably want to associate with in real life. He is, after all, a Southern redneck with no education, no job and no prospects of things getting brighter. But at least he falls in with others of his ilk -- call them trailer trash, if you will -- who've grown up knowing their life's possibilities are determined (i.e., stunted) by the fact of where they live, in the other-side-of-the-tracks community known as Venus Holler.

Sammy, the narrator, is befriended by the Merridews -- mother Bev, a slightly worn but still attractive prostitute; daughter Jamalee, a smart, feisty dreamer with tomato-red hair, scheming of a way to break out of their sad-sack existence; and younger brother, Jason, a so-called "country queer" who's a hairdresser and just may be the prettiest person, man or woman, in those parts.

Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas line and he writes lovely, lucid sentences that you've never seen or heard -- or even thought possible. He makes verbs out of nouns and piles up words in ways that take your breath away. The voices are absolutely authentic, reflecting regional colloquialisms and the challenged grammar of the rural poor. Most of all, it's life as seen through the prism of people who've always been told they'll never amount to much and who, except for Jamalee, accept their fate with resignation.

I'd love to offer a handful of choice samples, but let me just cite two. The first is Sammy, late at night in Bev's ramshackle house next to the railroad tracks:

"Way past nightfall I flicked the TV on and sat in the squeaky rocker. Some show played, kids who drive Porsches to high school and eat in sit-down restaurants on their own, but there's this emptiness in them, apparently, bigger than the beach. They were folks you'd like to meet sometime and leave in a car trunk at the airport. The show, though, was candy to the eye. I rocked and watched."

The second is Sammy describing Bev as she prepares to call on Abbott Dell, a good ol' boy who runs a towing and repair shop and doubles as the county coroner.

"Bev got out of the Pinto and went toward the office. She slipped some comely wiggle-waddle-wiggle into her walk. Her dress was a size low or so and she got that white fabric slamming from side to side like it was a sack she'd trapped a poodle in."

I can't say enough about Woodrell. After I get through my next book, I'm certain I'll be looking to dive into another one by this talented author. What a revelation.

Photograph by Sam Kerr

The Meaning of Life

I look forward every year to a special issue of Esquire that features "What I've Learned" Q&As with a variety of accomplished people sharing their collective wisdom and advice. In his editor's note to the January 2011 issue, David Granger says he was "overcome with a delicious sense of anticipation" when he saw the list of those interviewed: Albert Brooks, James L. Brooks, Ted Danson, Danny DeVito, Robert Duvall, Jodie Foster, Robert Redford, Robert DeNiro, etc., all asked to pontificate on The Meaning of Life.

But after reading this year's offerings, I've gotta say I'm disappointed.

Disappointed with the lack of variety:
-- 13 men,* 5 women. (OK, it is a men's magazine. I get that.)
-- Five people in their 40s, five in their 60s, five in their 70s, three in their 80s. (They couldn't find anyone in their 30s or 50s?)
-- Nine actors. Two actor/directors. Two screenwriters. Which leaves one "sex expert" (Dr. Ruth); one "artist" (Yoko "Oh, no" Ono); one celebrity chef (Ferran Adria), who comes off as the most pompous ass in the whole group; and one political pair (George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush), who are actually among the most interesting. (13 of the 18 people connected to Hollywood? Give me a break.)

Mostly, I'm disappointed with the shallowness of thought and the self-absorption that come through in too many of the interviews. I'll spare you the details. Thank goodness for one good interview with actress Mary-Louise Parker ("It takes much more skill to write something thoughtful than to just be mean.")

What saved this issue for me was the wisdom of John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach and one of five past interviewees highlighted in memoriam. Excerpts from his February 2000 interview:
You can do more good by being good than any other way.
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation.
If I am through learning, I am through.
Don't let making a living prevent you from making a life.
I had three rules for my players: No profanity. Don't criticize a teammate. Never be late.

* OK. Actually, there were 14 men...if you count the back-page interview with Jesus H. Christ.
"It's just H. It doesn't stand for anything. Ulysses S. Grant was the same way."
"Incidentally, when I'm having a hard time, I say, 'Ulysses S. Grant!' I'm kidding, of course."

Now that is funny.

Gingrich in 2012?

Gingrich in his office, 2001

Although Esquire leans left, one thing I've appreciated over the years is the great job the magazine's writers do in crafting political profiles of key members of the Republican Party. Through deep reporting and bold analysis, I've learned more about John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh and Tim Pawlenty -- and what makes them tick -- than from other sources. Now comes another warts-and-all piece from John H. Richardson about Newt Gingrich.

And who better than a chain-smoking ex-wife-- Marianne, spouse No. 2 of Newt's three -- to provide commentary and insight on the naked ambitions, personal foibles and contradictions of her former husband? Make no mistake, though. This isn't a hatchet job. It's a well-rounded piece, featuring revealing scenes where Gingrich meets with supporters as well as the one-on-one interview in the former House Speaker's office on K Street on Washington's Lobbyist Row.

As much as the GOP talks about family values and the sanctity of marriage, I'd forgotten about  Gingrich's story: That he married his high school geometry teacher as a teenager and divorced her while she was recovering from uterine cancer; that he married Marianne, then divorced her in order to marry his present wife, a congressional aide 23 years younger than him.

At 65, he's risen from the depths -- he quit his job as Speaker and resigned from Congress while having an affair with now-Wife No. 3 -- to become the "philosopher king of the conservative movement" and apparent front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2012, based on early polls and the fact he's raised more money this year than Romney, Pawlenty, Palin and Huckabee combined.

"At a moment of doctrinal crisis in the Republican party, Newt Gingrich is the only major figure in his party who is both insurgent and gray eminence," Richardson writes. "That is why twelve years after his career ended — twelve years after any other man in his position would have disappeared from view — he is ascendant."

Two passages in the piece stood out for me:

He's the first person you've ever met who speaks in bullet points. In fact, he sometimes more resembles a collection of studied gestures than a mere mortal, so much so that he gives the impression that everything about him is calculated, including the impression that everything about him is calculated. Which can make him seem like a Big Thinker but also like a complete phony — an unsettling combination.

The failure of the Republican leadership under George W. Bush created an opening for him, he says. Obama's "radicalism" made that opening wider. Now a lot of Republicans are starting to ask, What Would Newt Do?

Or, he puts it another way: "The underlying thematics are beginning to be universalizable in a way that has taken years of work."

Whatever that means...

And then there's this from a fellow Republican:

"I've known Newt now for thirty years almost," says former [Oklahoma] congressman Mickey Edwards . "But I wouldn't be able to describe what his real principles are. I never felt that he had any sort of a real compass about what he believed except for the pursuit of power."

I'm certain that Sarah Palin cannot and will not be nominated in 2012. I haven't a clue who the Republicans might cough up, but after reading this piece on an astonishing political resurrection I won't be surprised if it's Gingrich who takes on Obama two years from now. Read the piece here.

Photograph: Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images

A film worth seeing

Dark. Foreboding. Menacing.

Those are just a few adjectives that pop to mind in describing "Winter's Bone." If that's not your cup of tea at the movies, then by all means, stay away. But if you appreciate a film that draws you in from the start and keeps you there with superb storytelling, authentic dialogue, regional music, great characters and tight editing, this may be one for you.

Nathan and I saw it last night and, boy, I can see why it won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. This is one of those independent films that puts Hollywood to shame and deserves all the acclaim it receives. It's filmed in Missouri and takes you deep inside a sinister subculture that revolves around meth, violence and a distrust of authorities so entrenched that it engulfs members of an extended family. Ultimately, though, it's a tale of a young woman's perseverance and integrity, of resilience and fierce love for her younger siblings.

Until a few weeks ago, I hadn't heard of the movie or its star, Jennifer Lawrence. But thanks to a blurb in Esquire's June/July issue, I was at least aware of it. When I learned it was in Portland theaters and had made Shawn Levy's "High Five" (he's The Oregonian's film critic), it stoked my curiosity even more. Here's Shawn's synopsis:

"A gripping drama about an Ozark Mountains teen trying to keep a hold on her family home in the wake of her father’s disappearance. The young actress Jennifer Lawrence is remarkably tough, smart and daring in the lead, and John Hawkes is terrifying as the crank-addicted uncle to whom she is forced to turn for help. Director/co-writer Debra Granik (“Down to the Bone”) pares the thing to essentials while leaving room for poetry and the vagaries of an often non-professional acting corps. The film braves an environment and a story that are minefields of cliché and never puts a foot wrong. The result is an engaging tale, a fascinating heroine, and a truly memorable film."

Here is David Katz's take in Esquire on Jennifer Lawrence, whose performance IMHO is worthy of an Oscar nomination.

"The film is a bleak family mystery set in the Ozark Mountains. She plays Ree Dolly, a survival-minded teenager who has to find her meth-head dad in order to save her family home. It's her movie, no question — she's in every single frame — but she almost wasn't in it at all. The producers initially rejected her because she was too attractive. Director Debra Granik (Down to the Bone) was savvy enough to cover up her pretty lead with a wool cap pressed low on her head for much of the movie. But Lawrence's role demanded a lot more than some uglying-up. She handles her character with a balance of rural resignation and girlish fear, and she never loses her grip. It's the kind of place-specific performance Daniel Day-Lewis would spend a year cooking meth in the mountains to get just right."

Here's a trailer:



And now, if I can find the time, I'd love to check out "Inception," Restrepo" and "Cyrus."

Photo by Sebastian Mylnarski

14 ways to make yourself better *

* According to Esquire, which offers some tongue-in-cheek advice in the August issue about how to be smarter, luckier, more charming, more creative -- even better looking.

You can't take this stuff seriously -- "four pages of tips and guidance guaranteed to lead to a taller, funnier, better-breathing you" -- but I suppose there's a kernel of truth in at least a few of these.

My attention was drawn to No. 9 ... Be More Interesting.

The headline: It's all in your conversation.

Some rules:

1. Listen more than you talk.

2. If you notice yourself getting bored with what you're saying, stop talking. Acknowledge the situation. Smile. Move on.

3. Know a few historical anecdotes. Like this one: To enhance creativity, surrealist painter Salvador Dalí recommended afternoon naps lasting less than a second. He would lie in his chair, arms outstretched, holding a metal key in his left hand. As he drifted off to sleep, his grip would relax and the key would fall, clanging onto a plate he'd set beneath it and waking him up.

4. But realize that no one likes the guy who knows something about everything.

5. Let people talk over you. Don't think of it as being rude; think of it as an assist.

6. If someone does interrupt you, wait to be prompted before continuing your story. It's a good sign that someone cared in the first place.

7. Drawn-out pauses are the best time for personal non sequiturs. People would rather listen to you talk about yourself than nothing.

8. With people you don't know, limit stories to the last five minutes of your life — the turnout, the Scotch selection, the homeless man you mistakenly took for a valet.

9. Never mention your blog.

Ha! If I'd been drinking anything, I would have spit it out on No. 9. Too funny.

Photo of Salvador Dali: Shepard Sherbell/Corbis

Madame Secretary

On the cover of Esquire's May issue on women: Christina Hendricks, the curvy redhead from "Mad Men." Inside, photos of half-dressed actresses and models; the usual features on fashion and food, music and movies; an eclectic assortment of "personality profiles," this time including Lady Gaga (gah!) and Paris Hilton (double gah!); and a Q&A interview with Carol Bartz, the unapologetically hard-ass CEO of Yahoo!.

What might sound like fluff is saved, however, by a brilliant piece on Hillary Clinton, crafted by Tom Junod, one of the magazine's stable of very talented writers.

The headline and subhead capture the essence of the piece, as they should:
"Hillary. Happy."
She has lived the most extraordinary American life. Now she lives in extraordinary exile -- from the two men she is most loyal to, from politics, from controversy. And it has freed her.

At the start of what became a seemingly endless 2008 presidential campaign, I was inclined to vote for Hillary. Sure, she was a wooden, painfully scripted speaker but she brought tremendous intellect and insider experience from eight years in the White House and six years in the U.S. Senate.

But when the charismatic and inspiring Barack Obama came along, touting a new approach to national politics (one that would emphasize bipartisanship) and foreign policy (one that would have America re-engage in international diplomacy after the bellicose Bush years), my vote went to the senator from Illinois.

I don't regret changing loyalties and I'm glad Hillary accepted Barack's invitation to serve as secretary of state. (See how well I know them? I'm on a first-name basis...Actually, Junod points out that these two are the only American political celebrities known globally by their first names. Not Bill.)

But, like a lot of Americans, I've wondered what it's really been like for Hillary in her new job, immersed in the world of obtuse dialogue and ceremony, far from the heat and blinding lights of Beltway politics and insipid partisan politics that have infused nastiness and ignorance into national debates about health care, immigration reform and judicial appointments.

Wonder no more. Junod does a brilliant job of taking us through Hillary's history -- as the ambitious "co-president" when Bill was in office, as the humiliated partner in the world's most scrutinized marriage, as the well-respected senator from New York, as the reluctant candidate whose inevitable nomination to the presidency was thwarted by Obama.

And now? She is undeniably one of the president's greatest assets, Junod writes. Polls show that Americans rate Obama more favorably on her foreign policy than domestic policy. And, Junod notes, her global celebrity makes her indispensable to the administration even as it exiles her to endless touring, trying to rebuild fences where Bush-Cheney knocked them down. At age 62, Hillary traveled a quarter of a million miles in her first year as secretary of state, which means she has lived separately from her husband and gained an ironic respite from speculation about her personal life --- because she has no time for a personal life.

There's much to like in this piece, which is clearly sympathetic to Hillary and leaves you wondering what if.

"We will never know if Hillary Clinton would have made a great president," Junod writes. "What we do know, based on the way she's done her job as secretary of state — with her loyalty feeding her capacity for self-sacrifice and self-sacrifice awakening her genius for competence — is that she'd probably make a great president now, having lost her chance forever."

There are several great scenes in this profile, but I choose this one as emblematic of the intellect, loyalty and inner strength that Clinton brings to her job as well as a neat segue to the human qualities -- physical and personal -- that come to light in the piece.

You don't know how she does what she does. You don't know how anyone possibly could. You see her use her hands to push herself up when it's time to stand up from the day's work at the dais; you see her use the banister when she's climbing the steep steps from the runway to the waiting plane. You see her so tired that her face looks almost punctured. You see her emerging from one closed-door conference after another, standing next to one ceremonial man after another, speaking in the same dead diplomatic tongue, staring at him and nodding as he speaks in a language she doesn't understand, and you wonder if the job she has taken is a parodic reiteration of the poses she mastered as a political wife.

You wonder, as you have always wondered, what goes on in her mind while her face sets itself into its unruffled mask. And you wonder, mainly, when she is going to yawn. She never does. Her job seems to dare her to yawn, and yet she never does, while you, you who worry about her as you follow her, you who wonder where she gets her strength from ..."Well, I appreciate your coming on the trips and following us around," Hillary Clinton says when you get the chance to visit her at the State Department. She gives you her hand, and it is small and lightly freckled.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/women/women-issue/hillary-clinton-0510-5#ixzz0oOK4bhC9

Photo of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden by Pete Souza, White House photographer

Photo gallery: Getty Images

Man without a jaw finds his voice

If you're like me, you may be at once repulsed by and drawn to the photograph here.

It's Roger Ebert, half of the famed film critic duo, Siskel & Ebert.

Eight years ago, he underwent surgery for thyroid cancer. A year later, his salivary glands were partially removed. In 2006, the cancer came back in his jaw and he had a section of his lower jaw removed. After he had recuperated and was in his hospital room packing up to leave, his carotid artery burst. He would have bled to death had it happened anywhere else, but doctors worked frantically to patch him up. He underwent a tracheotomy and was left with much of his lower face hanging slack.

So, for more than three years, he has lived with a hole in his throat, unable to eat, drink or speak. Pretty bleak, you would think, for one with so much to say. This is a guy, after all, who along with the late Gene Siskel brought movie reviews -- with their signature "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" ratings -- into our living rooms with humor, insight and passion.

Think again.

In one of the most inspiring profiles I've ever read -- "The Last Words of Roger Ebert" in the March issue of Esquire -- Ebert says (er, writes) that no one should feel sorry for him. Communicating through handwritten notes on blue Post-its and his laptop computer, Ebert, at age 67, has become even more prolific as a writer and blogger. And that's saying something for someone who won the Pulitzer Prize way back in 1975, becoming the first film critic to win journalism's most conveted honor, and has written several books and thousands upon thousands of reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times.

His blog, rogerebert.com, has had 92 million visits and a quick stroll through the site reveals why. He's got more than a dozen categories, ranging from reviews and commentary to the Oscars, festivals and his personal journal, Roger Ebert's Journal. He answers readers questions directly and often responds to the thousands of comments left on his blog.

In a recent entry, he acknowledges that the Esquire profile was both intimate and personal and says it was "inexplicable instinct" that led him to agree to the interview with writer Chris Jones.

"When I turned to it in the magazine, I got a jolt from the full-page photograph of my jaw drooping," Ebert writes. "Not a lovely sight. But then I am not a lovely sight, and in a moment I thought, well, what the hell. It's just as well it's out there. That's how I look, after all."

It's that kind of clear-eyed acknowledgment of the truth, coupled with remarkable wisdom packed throughout, that makes the piece so memorable. Jones writes:

"We have a habit of turning sentimental about celebrities who are struck down -- Muhammad Ali, Christopher Reeve -- transforming them into mystics; still, it's almost impossible to sit beside Roger Ebert, lifting blue Post-it notes from his silk fingertips, and not feel as though he's becoming something more than he was. He has those hands. And his wide and expressive eyes, despite everything, are almost always smiling.

"There is no need to pity me, he writes on a scrap of paper one afternoon after someone parting looks at him a little sadly. Look how happy I am.' "

Later in the piece, there is this:

"I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problem, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."

I'm tempted to call Roger Ebert a hero. But I know we often and too quickly delude ourselves into thinking we know celebrities, or at least those who are in the public eye. Still, I think a good profile reveals something of a person's essential character. Along with a wonderful piece that Tom Junod wrote years ago on Fred Rogers (he of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood"), Chris Jones' profile of Roger Ebert ranks up there as the best I've read.

Photo: Ethan Hill

"The Notorious Blago"

"People Who Matter 2010." That's the promo on Esquire's February issue and, as we all know, that's a pretty subjective way to describe the cast of characters found inside.

No arguing that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are two politicians who matter. As for the rest, you decide: Blake Lively, Jay-Z, Robert Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Brown, Dana White, Rod Blogojevich.

While you're pondering that list -- by the way, Dana White is president of the mixed martial arts Ultimate Fighting Championship -- let me just say that if you read just one of these profiles, let it be "The Notorious Blago."

The disgraced former Illinois governor comes off as a true whack job, delusional and profane as a two-bit thug, as he blames political enemies for his indictment on 16 felony charges that he attempted to sell Obama's Senate seat. He actually believes he's going to beat the rap.

Seriously, you have to read this. Here's a taste:

"It's such a cynical business, and most of the people in the business are full of shit and phonies, but I was real, man — and am real. This guy [Obama], he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the f***? Everything he's saying's on the teleprompter. I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up."

Read more: Rod Blogojevich interview.

Photo by Andrew Hetherington

Barack Obama and positive discipline

This month's Esquire arrived the other day and, as usual, there's some fine material in it.

Forget the profile of cover girl Blake Lively, the "Gossip Girl" who strikes me as yet another one of the many interchangeable Next Big Stars in Hollywood who doesn't become one.

Instead go to the intriguing piece, "Barack Obama: Papa in Chief," and wrap your mind around this theory put out there by writer Tom Junod: To understand Obama, you need to understand the "positive discipline" movement, a philosophy of discipline that rests on the principle that children should never be punished but, rather, should be taught mutual respect through the parent's example.

"Positive discipline does not mean no discipline; it means that discipline is a matter of teaching mutual respect, rather than making your child suffer," Junod writes. "... and so when faced with intransigence, parents have to respond by stating their expectations, repeating the rules, and then giving their children the love and support they need to follow them. Always try to include, rather than isolate; avoid labels; don't negotiate, but don't escalate, either. If your children are not doing well, either take them out of the situation or remove yourself. You — and they — can always try again."

If you imagine Obama as the patient father, never raising his voice, never punishing his opponents, you can begin to see the consistency with which he's dealt with Congressman Joe ("You lie") Wilson of South Carolina, the intransigent Republicans seeking to block health care reform, Sgt. James Crowley (the cop who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home) -- even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ("One could almost hear Obama saying, 'Use your words, Mahmoud. Use your words.' ")

Junod continues:

"The things we liked about him have turned out to be the things that drive us crazy about him. After eight years of the Decider, we elected the Deliberator ... and now we've decided that he's too deliberative, too methodical, too cool, too unemotional, too even-tempered, too undemonstrative, too rational, too conciliatory, too compromising."

Obama's style is so contrary to what we've become to expect from a president that we don't know what to make of him -- or ourselves. We liked it when he said he wanted to change Beltway politics-as-usual, but he frustrated the Left by not asserting himself more strongly in the health care debate and he drove the Right crazy by seeming, in their eyes, way too accommodating with foreign leaders and apologetic for past American actions and attitudes.
Is it him? Or is it us that doesn't get it?

"Most Americans respond to strength and decisiveness in a president the same way they do in a father," Junod writes. "It has been unsettling to have a president whose agenda for change includes changing our very notions of strength and weakness, and whose idea of decisiveness seems to involve mostly making good choices, which is not necessarily leadership. He has been able to lead by inspiration but unable to simply lean on people, and unwilling to try on the world stage. His uncertainty as an authority figure may or may not have encouraged our foreign enemies, but it has certainly emboldened his domestic ones, who seemed confused about whether to call him a tyrant or a weakling until they realized, like schoolboys, that they weren't going to be punished and started calling him whatever they damn well pleased."

If you buy Junod's thesis, then Obama's seeming indecisiveness appears to have a logical context. Consider:

"The biggest difficulty with all nonauthoritative approaches to authority is that, even when they work, they often don't work right away. Spanking a child, threatening a child, taking a child's toys away — they might not be the best thing for a child, but they generally get a child's attention. ... There are no orders in positive parenting, as there are no orders in the Obama administration. There are, instead, reasonable goals and clearly stated expectations. The approach is evolutionary, and on the most important domestic issue of his presidency — health-care reform — so is the Paleolithic progress of the debate."

So, is Obama outfoxing us all by sticking to a philosophy of positive discipline in the face of unruly opponents and an easily spooked, easily manipulated American public? Or is he following this approach to the political graveyard?

Read the piece here and decide for yourself.

Image: President Obama, by Adam Beane. Clay-and-wax-based composite material, 18 inches high. Commissioned for Esquire, December 2009.

Life as an experiment

Imagine taking a cue from Thomas Friedman's book, "The World is Flat," and making arrangements for the ultimate in outsourcing. You hire a personal assistant in India to handle key aspects of your life, including writing emails to your wife.

Imagine if you told people what you really thought. No censoring yourself. No holding back. Just complete honesty, every single time, no matter the consequences.

Wrap your mind around those two concepts and you get the drift of A.J. Jacobs' new book, "The Guinea Pig Diaries." It's a quick and fun read -- the perfect book for summer reading, except you can enjoy it now in the middle of winter -- by one of the editors at Esquire. Each of the nine chapters is based on a piece previously published in the magazine, except that in this compilation Jacobs adds a postscript to each chapter and includes extensive notes that elaborate on many of his observations and theories.

Like the late George Plimpton, who achieved a certain degree of fame by immersing himself in professional sports and writing about it from an amateur's experience -- including getting tackled by a pro football player, getting punched in the face by a boxer -- Jacobs enthusiastically dives into a number of real-life situations, although in his case none involves the risk of physical harm.

He goes to the Academy Awards disguised as a movie star to understand what it's like to be famous, just for a night. He attempts to follow George Washington's 110 rules of "civility and decent behaviour" and spends a lot of time bowing and doffing his tri-cornered hat. He poses as a beautiful woman online (using his nanny's photo, with her permission) and discovers the power of a hot woman in responding to hundreds of men who e-mail her.

But the funniest chapters are the two I mentioned at the start. As the author explains:

To understand the global phenomenon that is outsourcing, I outsourced everything in my life. I hired a team of people in Bangalore, India, to answer my phone, answer my e-mail, argue with my spouse for me. This, by the way, was probably the best month of my life.

To explore the meaning of Truth, I decided to practice something called Radical Honesty. I spent a month without lying. But more than that, I vowed to say whatever popped into my head. No filter between the brain and the mouth. This, by the way, was probably the worst month of my life.

For his first two books, Jacobs read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica ("The Know-It-All") and then attempted to live by the rules of the Bible, following the Ten Commandments as literally as possible ("The Year of Living Biblically").

Is all this just a clever schtick? Of course. But Jacobs has become a modern master of the genre. You could say he's self-absorbed and you'd be right. But he writes with a light touch and his serving as a guinea pig for stunts like Radical Honesty or the ultimate outsourcing means we can laugh along with him even as we contemplate the serious aspects of his experiments.

The Meaning of Life

That's how Esquire bills its annual "What I've Learned" issue, featuring wisdom and advice from a cross-section of mostly well-known people.

It's a fast read and an entertaining format, where the interviewee's direct quotes are presented in short bursts, sometimes a single sentence, sometimes a tight paragraph. You don't know what the exact question was that prompted the answer but sometimes you can guess.

This month the magazine displayed its creativity (and resources) by piecing together interviews with John, Robert and Ted Kennedy -- the first time it's ever been done with someone who's not living. And how did they do this? By sending top editors to the LBJ Library in Texas and the Kennedy Library in Boston and trolling through their resources.

"And then," Editor David Granger explains, "a pack of assistant editors and interns combed through out-of-print books, long-forgotten news accounts, and even back issues of Esquire in search of revealing, surprising and personal reflections in the brothers' own words -- both official and offhand -- to offer a collective portrait, more textured, candid and intimate than just the legacy of their more familiar public pronouncements, many of which are seared into our collective consciousness."

The result is a window into the brothers' privileged lives as well as the humor, vanity and sense of hope that defined them.

The inside spread begins with a black-and-white photo of the three in Hyannis Port, Mass., circa 1948 with all three -- Jack, 31, Bobby, about 22, and Ted, 16 -- smiling broadly at the camera, as if they hadn't a care in the world. And then you read:

I have no firsthand knowledge of the Depression. My family had one of the great fortunes of the world and it was worth more than ever then. We had bigger houses, more servants, we traveled more. About the only thing that I saw directly was when my father hired some extra gardeners just to give them a job so they could eat. I really did not learn about the Depression until I read about it at Harvard. My experience was the war. I can tell you about that. -- JFK, 1960.

[FYI, During the Depression, 1929-39, John would have been ages 12 to 22.]

Some people think that because you have money and position you are immune from the human experience. But I can feel as lonesome and lost as the next man when I turn the key in the door and go into an empty house that is usually full of kids and dogs. -- RFK, late sixties.

My brothers were my dearest friends. They were just human beings -- and wanted to be considered that way -- but they were extraordinary. I cared very deeply about them, loved them. I miss them. No day goes by when I don't. That gap will be with me for the rest of my life. No way to bridge that. -- EMK, 1985.

The January 2010 issue features interviews with 15 people, ranging from Kelsey Grammer, Sting and Ornette Coleman to 50 Cent, Alberto Gonzales and Katie Stam, the reigning Miss America from Seymour, Indiana. Buy it, read it and pass it along. Or...just click here.

Photograph: JFK Presidential Library

Feeling good...with Bill Clinton

"Are we entering a period of irrational exuberance, or are things just getting better?"

That's the question Editor-in-chief David Granger poses in the October issue of Esquire. As he and his staff closed the current issue, the Dow hit 9,000 (after sinking to 6,547 in March of this year), the Cash for Clunkers program provided a boost for the auto industry, Bill Clinton flew out of North Korea with two formerly imprisoned American journalists and a variety of economic indicators gave pundits and economists reason to suggest we'd turned the corner on the recession.

Of course, the recovery will take a long time and Oregon -- always said to be among the first states in and last states out -- probably will feel the pain longer than we'd like. But still...there's a lot to like in the current issue.

Of special interest to me is the Q&A, "Bill Clinton, Then and Now..." I've always thought very highly of Clinton. I was fortunate to see him in person at a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. This was pre-Monica and he was in his prime, deftly answering questions about domestic issues and foreign policy. These weren't sound bites; these were spontaneous, free-flowing, well thought-out answers that reflected his intellect, his command of history, his keen political insights and dazzling public speaking skills.

Anyway, the Esquire interview reveals him once again at his best. He critiques his administration, predicts passage of a health care reform bill, offers a forecast of the 2010 congressional elections and analyzes the decline of the Republican Party, among other things. A couple of excerpts:

"The thing that I think is wrong and dumb about this [Republican attacks on Obama] is that they're in la-la land about this 'Where was Obama born?' and all that kind of stuff, and I think it sounds like an old record with a bad scratch in it.

"Look, as a Democrat, let them have at it. But for America's sake, what they should be doing is saying, 'Why aren't they buying what we're selling?' First of all, nothing lasts forever, no theory of the case lasts forever, time moves on. So their message won't fly because the circumstances of America are different, the demography of America is different, the psychology of America is different... It's so plainly out of whack with what you perceive (as) the reality of the day and the challenges that we face. We've got 9 percent of all eligible homeowners in America having their mortgages rewritten — 9 percent — and you're talking to me about where Obama was born? Give me a break. I mean it's like, what is this?

"As Democrats, we should let them wander around in this wilderness as long as they'd like. We still have a serious responsibility to pass health-care legislation, to pass climate-change legislation, keep working around the edges on this economic crisis, do something that will work on this home-owners thing. We've got to do something that will really get us there. And support the President. Do something that will really get this stuff done and then be willing to be judged by the consequences of what we do."

ESQ: It does seem like the 1990s was the last time that America truly felt good about itself, that there was not a problem that was beyond our reach. So far in the twenty-first century, we have not necessarily felt that our destiny was ours to determine.

"Yeah, well, people believed in possibilities. And almost more than any specific achievement, I thought that was the most important thing. I thought that it was really important to give the American people a sense of what the twenty-first century would be like, what its challenges would be like and what its opportunities would be like, and then to convince them that we could in fact meet them. I think what breaks people is not adversity; what breaks people is thinking that tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday. That's what's numbing — if you think you can't change, you can't be better. And I didn't like that.

"There was an underlying cynicism, like I said, and we had some horrible, horrible incidents. Not just Oklahoma City, but all the survivalists in Michigan, all that. But in the end, you can't love your country and hate your government. You can criticize your country — that's every American's God-given right and 100 percent of us have done it. But I really believe that eventually, we were going to become a country that was not necessarily more liberal but was more communitarian, with the belief that we had to go up or down together, and we would come to realize that our fates are bound up together, and to realize that our government was an important part — not the only, but an important part — of creating a common future that was positive. And that is the kind of majority that we have now."

Photo of Clinton and Obama at Ted Kennedy's funeral service, by Brian Snyder/AFP via Newscom.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Two guys named Todd

One of the things I love most about Esquire magazine is the element of surprise. While I've come to expect an actor, athlete or beautiful woman on the cover (the editors know the formula alright), it's the inside features that often provide the more satisfying read and which resonate more deeply than the cover stories.

For instance, the April issue (sorry, I meant to write about this last month) has two great features on Todd Palin, a famous husband, and Todd Marinovich, a one-time famous football player.

Now, I'm the first to acknowledge that Sarah Palin has been treated as a punching bag, alternately scorned for her tone-deaf politics and satirized for her folksy ways and lack of intellectual depth. But that doesn't mean her husband is automatically a bad guy, maybe even a dude you wouldn't mind having a beer with. Check out Luke Dittrich's article and decide for yourself. Here's the lead-in:

His eighteen-year-old daughter is about to go into labor; his future son-in-law's mother was just busted for dealing OxyContin; his snowmachine still isn't ready for the two-thousand-mile Iron Dog race; little Trig needs to be changed; Willow needs to be picked up from school; his wife won't be home for hours; and now, for some reason, Wasilla PD is banging on the door. But fear not. He can handle this.

By the way, Todd is from Dillingham, where my younger sister lives. She says he's a decent guy.


Todd Marinovich, on the other hand, was raised almost from birth to be a professional football player by a near-maniacal dad, who had played for USC and had visions of greatness for his red-haired son. Todd excelled, for sure, in high school and college -- he also went to USC -- but he flamed out in the National Football League as a consequence of partying too hard.

Here's the intro to Mike Sager's excellent profile:

Twenty years ago, he was guaranteed to be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game of football. Engineered to be. He was drafted ahead of Brett Favre. Today he's a recovering junkie. This month he was arrested again. Scenes from the chaotic life of a boy never designed to be a man.

Splendid writing.