April 2012
41 posts
A Good Double Bill
When you love something, you have the capacity to bore everyone about why—it doesn’t matter why. Wrestling, like boxing, is a weight-class sport; you get to bump into people your own size. You can bump into them very hard, but the place where you land is reasonably soft. And there are civilized aspects to the sport’s combativeness: I’ve always admired the rule that holds you responsible,...
How Samuel L. Jackson Became His Own Genre
Photo: The New York Times
It wasn’t a bad life with his fellow actors Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman and Wesley Snipes. They went to auditions together, and if one didn’t get a part, he recommended his friends. They went to the unemployment office together, partied together, pooled their money, fed one another, spent Christmases together, appeared in plays together....
My Father's Fashion Tips
There were always secrets. You could not walk into my father’s bathroom and not know there were secrets. Secrets of grooming, secrets of hygiene, secrets of preparation, secrets of the body itself—secrets and knowledge. First of all, he had a bathroom all to himself—his bathroom, Dad’s bathroom. And he made it his, by virtue of what he put in it—his lotions, his sprays, his unguents, his...
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Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
Photo: The New Yorker
John Updike on the Fenway (from “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” in The New Yorker):
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a...
The Real-Life Jay Gatsby
Photo: The New York Times
All I could think of upon hearing this was that vibrating moment when the young Jay Gatz, not yet Gatsby, sees his future arrive in the guise of a yacht dropping anchor on Lake Superior. Alan, too, must have had a moment, one in which my second self, catching sight of his own second self, let go of Mount Vernon and grabbed the hand of the beckoning Edwardian.
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And They're Off: The First Birchbox Man Collection...
Gentlemen, the wait is over. The first Birchbox Man collections will be loaded into the trucks very shortly. If you haven’t signed up yet, fear not, there’s still time to get your name on the list for the first month’s delivery.
Portrait of the Barber as a Young Man
I went to some old Italian guys in Raritan, New Jersey, at a shop called “Razor’s Edge.” No matter what I asked for I always got a flat top or a crew cut. Once I turned 13 or so, my friends and I started cutting each other’s hair or just cutting our own hair. In fact, I didn’t get a haircut at a barber shop again until I started working in one. I was lucky—my first boss,...
Derek Boogaard: A Boy Learns to Brawl
Photo: The New York Times
The Derek Boogaard story in the Times was among the best pieces of journalism this year, sports-related or otherwise. John Branch just missed a Pulitzer. Definitely worth a read.
There is no athlete quite like the hockey enforcer, a man and a role viewed alternately as noble and barbaric, necessary and regrettable. Like so many Canadian boys, Boogaard wanted to reach...
A Toast to America's Fluffmeister
Hard to say which is better—the tie, the lapel, or the hair.
Mr. Clark wasn’t high-minded about his work. “I’ve always dealt with light, frivolous things that didn’t really count; I’m not ashamed of that,” he said during a 1999 interview for the Archive of American Television. “There’s no redeeming cultural value whatsoever to ‘Bloopers,’ but it’s been on for 20 years.” He added:...
Unearthed in the Supply Closet
We were excavating the supply closet last night at Birchbox Man HQ, and stumbled upon the last remaining limited edition man box from November. Previously thought to be extinct! We were tempted to take the contents for ourselves, but as they say, if you love something, set it free, right? For a chance to win it, head over to our Facebook page.
We’d forgotten what a ridiculous lineup this...
The Greatest Prank in Pentagon History
The greatest prank in the history of the Pentagon involves an era-inappropriate hairstyle. How did this Ensign, lost at sea in 1908, manage to blow dry his locks?
WASHINGTON—In a Pentagon hallway hung an austere portrait of a Navy man lost at sea in 1908, with his brass buttons, blue-knit uniform and what looks like meticulously blow-dried hair.
Wait....
The Mozart of contemporary American music?
Photo: The Atlantic
Kanye’s power resides in his wild creativity and expressiveness, his mastery of form, and his deep and uncompromising attachment to a self-made aesthetic that he expresses through means that are entirely of the moment: rap music, digital downloads, fashion, Twitter, blogs, live streaming video. He is the first true genius of the iPhone era„ intent on using his...
I Thought We Had a Deal
We asked BB Man Facebook fans to caption this photo of these stylish old-timers, and oh boy did they come up with some doozies. A hearty congratulations to Jennifer Singleton—you’re the winner of a special grooming product to be chosen at random from the desk of Birchbox Man. Jennifer’s winning caption:
And while we’re on the subject of socks with sandals, here’s some...
Marty Reisman, Ping-Pong Hustler
Photo: Men’s Journal
Leopard print pants for guys: only appropriate at the ping-pong table.
Such is the paradox of life as Marty “The Needle” Reisman, ping-pong hustler. On the one hand, he styles himself as an athletic assassin, a killer ever alert for his next duel. On the other hand, his weapon of choice is a paddle that, stapled to a rubber ball and string, might be handed out at a...
The Year Jordan Made Junior Varsity
The most infamous roster decision in high school basketball history came down 33 years ago on the edge of tobacco country, between the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean, in an old town full of white wooden rocking chairs. The decision took physical form in two handwritten lists on a gymnasium door, simultaneously beautiful for the names they carried and crushing for the names they did not....
That's okay, kid.
From “Frank Sinatra has a Cold” by Gay Talese, Esquire 1966:
A young lady named Jane Hoag, a reporter at Life’s Los Angeles bureau who had attended the same school as Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy, had once been invited to a party at Mrs. Sinatra’s California home at which Frank Sinatra, who maintains very cordial relations with his former wife, acted as host. Early...
Introducing: Birchbox Man
We are extremely pleased to announce the launch of Birchbox Man. Sign up here to receive an invite and fill out your grooming profile. (Find the more detailed full scoop here.)
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Ferdinand Porsche (1935-2012)
photo: Los Angeles Times
“A product that is coherent in form requires no embellishment. It is enhanced by the purity of its form. Good design should be honest.” — Ferdinand Porsche
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