Search Results for: Vanity Fair

Whitney Houston was destined to become as revered as her godmother, Aretha Franklin, before drugs and a toxic marriage caused her to hit rock bottom. A look at the pop icon’s rise and fall, and her final days, when it looked like Houston was going to make a comeback:

[Clive Davis] enlisted Diane Warren to create songs for a new album. Warren tells me that she put herself in Houston’s mind when she wrote a song about struggle and rebirth, entitled ‘I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.’ As soon as Whitney heard the lyrics—’I thought I’d never make it through, I had no hope to hold on to I was not meant to break’—she told Warren that she’d written her life.

But Warren and David Foster weren’t sure that Whitney had the vocal strength to sing it. In the end, she not only sang it, says Warren, ‘she sang the shit out of it.’ According to Gary Catona, 75 percent of Whitney’s vocal strength had returned by the time of her appearance at the American Music Awards in November 2009. When she came onstage in a white gown, singing the Warren song, the crowd leapt to its feet. ‘The buzz was: Holy shit!’ says Warren. ‘It was one of the best performances I’d ever seen. It was: Whitney is back!’

“The Devils in the Diva.” — Mark Seal, Vanity Fair

More #longreads from Seal

Excerpt from Maraniss’s new biography of the president. A look at Obama’s early twenties in New York, from the perspective of his girlfriend at the time:

Genevieve was out of her mother’s Upper East Side apartment by then. Earlier that spring she had moved and was sharing the top floor of a brownstone at 640 Second Street in Park Slope. The routine with Barack was now back and forth, mostly his place, sometimes hers. When she told him that she loved him, his response was not ‘I love you, too’ but ‘thank you’—as though he appreciated that someone loved him. The relationship still existed in its own little private world. They spent time cooking. Barack loved to make a ginger beef dish that he had picked up from his friend Sohale Siddiqi. He was also big on tuna-fish sandwiches made the way his grandfather had taught him, with finely chopped dill pickles. For a present, Genevieve bought him an early edition of The Joy of Cooking. They read books together and talked about what they had read. For a time they concentrated on black literature, the writers Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara, and Ntozake Shange.

“Young Barack Obama in Love.” — David Maraniss, Vanity Fair

More #longreads from Vanity Fair

An oral history of Friends:

JIM BURROWS (director): Based on the [live] audience for the Friends pilot, I knew how popular that show would be. The kids were all pretty and funny, so beautiful. I said to Les Moonves, who was head of Warner Bros., ‘Give me the plane. I’ll pay for dinner.’ I took the cast to Vegas.

MATT LeBLANC: Who goes to Vegas on a private jet? And Jimmy gave me 500 bucks to gamble.

LISA KUDROW: On the plane he showed us the first episode of Friends. None of it had aired yet.

Jimmy took us to dinner, and he gave us each a little money to gamble with. He said, “I want you to be aware that this is the last time that you all can be out and not be swarmed, because that’s what’s going to happen.” And everyone was like, ‘Really?’

“With Friends Like These.” — Warren Littlefield, Vanity Fair

More #longreads from Vanity Fair

Stanford University, and its president John L. Hennessy, have a tight relationship with Silicon Valley, which has helped the university’s endowment grow to nearly $17 billion. A look at how those relationships are shaping what’s next:

John Hennessy’s experience in Silicon Valley proves that digital disruption is normal, and even desirable. It is commonly believed that traditional companies and services get disrupted because they are inefficient and costly. The publishing industry has suffered in recent years, the argument goes, because reading on screens is more convenient. Why wait in line at a store when there’s Amazon? Why pay for a travel agent when there’s Expedia? The same argument can be applied to online education. An online syllabus could reach many more students, and reduce tuition charges and eliminate room and board. Students in an online university could take any course whenever they wanted, and wouldn’t have to waste time bicycling to class.

“Get Rich U.” — Ken Auletta, The New Yorker

See also: “Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard.” — Nina Munk, Vanity Fair, Aug. 1, 2009

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Texas Monthly, New York Magazine, Deadspin, Vanity Fair, Columbia Journalism Review, The New Yorker #fiction, plus a guest pick from author Aimee Phan.

Survivors and crew members recount the Costa Concordia crash, in which 32 people lost their lives: 

The Concordia’s loss is also a landmark moment in naval history. It is the largest passenger ship ever wrecked. The 4,000 people who fled its slippery decks—nearly twice as many as were aboard the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912—represent the largest maritime evacuation in history. A story of heroism and disgrace, it is also, in the mistakes of its captain and certain officers, a tale of monumental human folly.

‘This was an episode of historic importance for those who study nautical issues,’ says Ilarione Dell’Anna, the Italian Coast Guard admiral who oversaw much of the massive rescue effort that night. ‘The old point of departure was the Titanic. I believe that today the new point of departure will be the Costa Concordia. There has never been anything like this before. We must study this, to see what happened and to see what we can learn.’

“The Costa Concordia Sinking: Inside the Epic Fight for Survival.” — Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair

See also: “Rebecca Coriam: Lost at Sea.” — Jon Ronson, The Guardian, Nov. 11, 2011

More actors, filmmakers and execs are using human growth hormone (H.G.H.) in an attempt to reverse the aging process. But is it really doing what its Beverly Hills evangelists are claiming? 

He has been giving himself H.G.H. injections for more than 20 years. And he does look terrific, with smooth skin and a lean body. And, by the way, H.G.H. needles are extremely thin, like those used by diabetics or acupuncturists. H.G.H. therapy, doctors say, is virtually painless.

There’s just one catch. The vast majority of endocrinologists, when asked about the widespread treatment for H.G.H. deficiency, agree.

It’s baloney.

“Hollywood’s Vial Bodies.” — Ned Zeman, Vanity Fair

See also: “Inside the Bloody World of Illegal Plastic Surgery.” Jordan Ginsberg, This Magazine, Nov. 25, 2010

Featured: Noah Chestnut’s #longreads page. See his story picks from The New Republic, Vanity Fair, Granta, plus more.

Featured: Andrew Hart’s #longreads page. See his story picks from The Seattle Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, plus more.

A former Dartmouth College fraternity member speaks out about rampant hazing and alcohol abuse at the Ivy League school. But reforming the frat culture might be too much for just one whistleblower: 

On January 25th, Andrew Lohse took a major detour from the winning streak he’d been on for most of his life when, breaking with the Dartmouth code of omertà, he detailed some of the choicest bits of his college experience in an op-ed for the student paper The Dartmouth. ‘I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,’ he wrote. He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of ‘pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,’ as well as an ‘intoxicating nihilism’ that dominates campus social life. ‘One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth – one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men – is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,’ he said. ‘Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.’ Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.

“Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses.” — Janet Reitman, Rolling Stone

See also: “Confessions of an Opium Seeker.” — Nick Tosches, Vanity Fair, Sept. 1, 2000