Pulp Fever: Interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan

With some of these pop pieces, partly what you’re doing is writing your way out of a confused admiration for the subject. But Axl retains his power to disturb, always his greatest weapon. I don’t remember there being much resistance from the Quarterly. Which suggests either a level of confidence for which I’m grateful, or a level of drug abuse that is worrisome. Granted the brakes did screech a little when I called Joel from Bilbao asking if we could put Axl on the cover. His manager had said it was the only way we’d get an interview. (We didn’t do it.) In retrospect that was dumb of him/them, as it would have been killer PR for Axl and that incarnation of the band to grant us an interview, PR that didn’t really materialize further down the road; but Axl is not always focused on the smart thing to do; he asks himself instead, what is the most “Axl” thing to do?

Source: GQ
Published: Nov 3, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,852 words)

Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead

And so began the improbable last chapter in the fall of a major newspaper, as chronicled by O’Shea in The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers. Among other things, the book is a reminder that whenever you think things can’t get worse, they can. They can get much, much worse.

I was there, at the paper, working at the magazine, with a good critic’s seat, up close and on the aisle. As we were living it, we knew this tawdry drama signaled yet another sea change for newspapers, with potentially devastating consequences for our democracy. It was also, thanks to Zell and his cronies, more entertaining than it had any right to be.

Published: Nov 9, 2011
Length: 29 minutes (7,414 words)

Eddie Murphy: The Rolling Stone Interview

What ever happened to your signature laugh, by the way?

I don’t laugh like that anymore, somehow it doesn’t come out. It’s weird to change something that’s as natural as that. But it started out as a real laugh, then it turned into people laughing because they thought my laugh was funny, and then there were a couple of times where I laughed because I knew it would make people laugh. Then it got weird. People came up to me and said, “Do that laugh,” or if you laugh, someone turns around and goes, “Eddie?” I just stopped doing it.

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Nov 10, 2011
Length: 27 minutes (6,767 words)

Gilad Shalit and the Rising Price of an Israeli Life

I have covered Israeli hostage and M.I.A. cases for more than 15 years, including the covert ways in which Israel’s powerful espionage agencies operate to bring soldiers home alive or dead. Over that time, the issue has come to dominate public discourse to a degree that no one could have predicted. Israeli society’s inability to tolerate even a single soldier held in captivity results in popular movements that have tremendous impact on strategic decisions made by the government. The issue has become a generator of history rather than an outcome of it.

Why this is the case is difficult to say, because it requires a plumbing of the Israeli psyche. Certainly, part of it has to do with a Jewish tradition that sanctifies life, and with the necessity for Jews of a proper burial. And part, too, is rooted in the tradition expressed by Maimonides, that there is no greater religious duty than the redemption of prisoners — a powerful idea in a country whose citizens are required to be soldiers. As Noam Shalit emphasized, there is an “unwritten contract” between the government and its soldiers.

Published: Nov 9, 2011
Length: 32 minutes (8,150 words)

A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage

Arbitrage is a risk-free way of making money by exploiting the difference between the price of a given good on two different markets—it’s the proverbial free lunch you were told doesn’t exist. In this equation, the undervalued good in question is hog meat, and McDonald’s exploits the value differential between pork’s cash price on the commodities market and in the Quick-Service Restaurant market. If you ignore the fact that this is, by definition, not arbitrage because the McRib is a value-added product, and that there is risk all over the place, this can lead to some interesting conclusions. (If you don’t want to do something so reckless, then stop here.)

Source: The Awl
Published: Nov 8, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,028 words)

What Do a Bunch of Old Jews Know About Living Forever?

[Not single-page] Still, a man who at 105—he’ll be 106 on December 19—has never had a life-threatening disease, who takes no cholesterol or blood-pressure medications and can give himself a clean shave each morning (not to mention a “serious sponge bath with vigorous rubbing all around”), invites certain questions. Is there something about his habits that predisposed a long and healthy life? (He smoked for years.) Is there something about his attitude? (He thinks maybe.) Is there something about his genes? (He thinks not.) And here he cuts me off. He’s not interested in his longevity.

But scientists are. A boom in centenarians is just around the demographic bend; the National Institute on Aging predicts that their number will grow from the 37,000 counted in 1990 to as many as 4.2 million by 2050. Pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health are throwing money into longevity research. Major medical centers have built programs to satisfy the demand for data and, eventually, drugs. Irving himself agreed to have his blood taken and answer questions for the granddaddy of these studies, the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, which seeks to determine whether people who live healthily into their tenth or eleventh decade have something in common—and if so, whether it can be made available to everyone else.

Published: Nov 6, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,455 words)

What I Lost in Libya

They blindfolded us and stuffed us into a small sedan, three tall people with their hands bound behind them. This is what they mean by a “stress position,” I remember thinking. I don’t know how long that ride lasted—two hours, three?—but it seemed longer. The car’s sound system played a somber remix of Qaddafi’s famous “zenga zenga” speech—in which he pledged to purge Libya “alley by alley”—set to the martial theme of the movie 300. At the point in the speech when the Leader rhetorically demands “Who are you?” the guard who was riding shotgun instructed us, “Say it, say Qaddafi.” “Qaddafi,” I mumbled.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Dec 1, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,333 words)

‘Because of Frazier, We Know How Great Ali Was’

Back then, [Ali] had called Frazier an Uncle Tom, said he was much too ugly to be a champion and called him, on the occasion of their third fight, a gorilla. Frazier, unable to fight back verbally, for words were never among his weapons, remained hurt and bitter long after the fights were over.

When Ali finally apologized, he accepted the fact that he had wounded another, very worthy man. “Joe’s right (to be bitter). I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight.”

Ali’s apology was both magnanimous, and long overdue. What he had said at the time was cruel and unacceptable. He had taken Frazier, the least political of men, and cast him in the most unlikely of roles, that of the great white hope, a role that Frazier in no way deserved.

Source: ESPN
Published: Nov 1, 2001
Length: 8 minutes (2,109 words)

Homegrown Terror

Since 2001, the bureau—often helped along by informants—has been instrumental in stopping at least 40 known terrorist plots, most of them smaller, “lone-wolf” schemes. Although it has faced some criticism for its activities and investigative techniques, the bureau’s post-9/11 record is remarkable, with no subsequent Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil. The person who came closest to breaking that streak, according to federal prosecutors, is Najibullah Zazi.

Source: 5280 Magazine
Published: Nov 1, 2011
Length: 29 minutes (7,316 words)

On the Ropes with Herman Cain

It takes self-regard to name your company the Herminator Experience.

It takes self-regard to go to a fancy dinner in Amsterdam with a group of colleagues from the National Restaurant Association and — well, let Biff Naylor, who was an N.R.A. officer at the time, explain: “We walk in, and the piano player is getting up to take a break. Herman turns to the owner and says, ‘Do you mind if I play the piano and sing some songs?’ And we’re all looking sideways at Herman. What is he doing? So he takes the piano and starts singing some Sinatra or whatever and just lights the place up.”

It takes self-regard to write down speaking tips and sign your name, as a keepsake, on every page.

Of course, that self-regard could also let you assume your attentions are welcomed and cause colleagues to file sexual-harassment complaints. That’s the drawback.

But most of the time it works in your favor.

It has been a weirdly useful self-regard.

Author: T.A. Frank
Published: Nov 6, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,812 words)