The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs

Esquire editor at large AJ Jacobs is starting a new advice column, he announced today in a blog post. But it is not just a regular old advice column. Instead of just getting advice from Mr. Jacobs, the column will include curated advice from his "100,000 Facebook Friends*" with whom he is sharing the byline.

"You will be getting the combined experience of a brigade of Ann Landerses, a stadium full of Dan Savages," Mr. Jacobs wrote. "As for me, I will be the Nate Silver of this experiment, curating and collating and commenting on the mass’s responses. I will print the best, funniest, and oddest answers (providing full credit, of course). And we will determine the best course together."

And Mr. Jacobs has lofty goals for his experiment in social networking.

"My hope is that it will be the greatest advance in Advice Column History since the Friedman sisters took on WASPy surnames, got syndicated and stopped talking to each other," wrote Mr. Jacobs.

And as the author of The Year of Living Biblically, a chronicle of his quest to spend a year following every biblical law, Mr. Jacobs should know from original Jewish names (and siblings who stop speaking to each other).

*Although Mr. Jacobs seems to have gotten "friends" confused with "followers" since technically Facebook has a 5,000 friend limit. Mr. Jacobs is followed by 117,358 people.

Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street, Second Floor, open from Monday to Saturday, 11am-6pm, and until 8pm on Thursdays, more information can be found at www.pratt.edu/exhibitions.

Dansen, Strahan and White.

Between Kellan Lutz offering to get naked on stage and Ted Danson thanking Esquire for a wonderful evening, the 2012 GQ Gentlemen’s Ball was a boozy affair. 

Host Michael Strahan held the night together, laughing perhaps a little too loud but delivering just the right amount of charm one might expect from a 6-foot-5 former defensive lineman morning talk show co-host. He was all gap-toothed smiles when talking about his new gig on Live!,with Kelly Ripa.

“Kelly is so fun, so energetic,” Mr Strahan said of his miniature opposite.

Who’s been your favorite guest so far?

“Definitely Shaq ... seeing a seven-foot guy looking like Prince.” (Mr. O’Neil sang When Doves Cry on the show last week.)

The evening was in honor of a handful of gentlemen who have paid service to their country in some way. Willie Geist, a member of GQ’s advisory panel, nominated Corporal Aaron Mankin, victim of a roadside bomb attack while fighting in Iraq. Celebrity Ambassadors consisted of Adam Levine, Kellan Lutz, Shaun White and Ted Danson.

We stayed decidedly off-topic and asked each of them what his childhood ambition was.

“I wanted to play outfield for the Yanks,” said Mr. Geist, who's now straddling two jobs, the Today show and the “more opinionated” Morning Joe.

“This way, I can stay with my old family and get a new family too,” he told The Observer. How quaint.   

Mr. Danson expressed sporting tendencies, telling us he had wanted to be a basketball player before “stumbling” into acting.  

At least Mr. White—who recently had a very public wipe-out, arrested on charges of public intoxication and vandalism at musician Patrick Carney's wedding in Tennessee last month—fulfilled his dreams of becoming a sportsman with a rather successful snowboarding career, but we suppose if you’re signed at the age of 6, you stand a good chance. Describing himself when he was younger as a “crazy kid out of control,” we’re not sure he’s changed all that much.

Mr. Lutz, ambassador for Saving Innocence, a charity raising awareness of the sex trafficking of children, said that while his ambition was to be a chemical engineer, he fell into acting through lack of attention at home. Being one of six siblings, “I always felt like I didn’t have much attention and created attention in a fantasy world.”

With the paparazzi hot on his heels outside, there’s no need to fantasize now.

Anne Heche and James Tupper joined guests at the IAC building as Ms. Heche told The Observer her childhood ambition was to be a waitress, while Mr. Tupper wanted to be ”truck-driving poet.” An interesting pair.

Mr. Levine, Maroon 5 front man and ambassador for the Teen Impact Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, was also present, with girlfriend Behati Prinsloo, declaring how he was ”most nervous about cursing tonight, ’cos that’s not something gentlemen do.” We’re sure he made Ms. Prinsloo proud.

Currently starring in American Horror Story, he later explained how “the genre scared the shit out of me … to be totally honest, I wasn’t able to get through an episode … all of the horror movies I’ve ever seen have been a huge fucking mistake.”

After raising over $200,000 for charity, Esquire, er, GQ had much to feel good about.

Leonardo DiCaprio (Gatsby), Vanity Fair, December 2012

Headline: "YES, LEO'S BACK! Hollywood's Ultimate Bad Boy Goes Back to the Roaring Twenties--and Aims At Oscar"

Editorial Concept: Leo plays with a baby tiger cub, smokes a cigar by a pool, walks through a hedge maze.

Carey Mulligan (Daisy), Vogue, November 2012

Headline: "SECRETS OF EAST EGG: Carey Mulligan as the Woman Who Stole Gatsby's Heart"

Editorial Concept: Done entirely in character, with special attention to the scene with all Gatsby's shirts on the floor.

Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway), Esquire, November 2012

Headline: "THE TAO OF TOBEY: Hollywood's Hottest Recluse on Fitzgerald, Film, Finding Contentment--and What He's Learned Along the Way"

Editorial Concept: Looking stern on a golf course.

Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan), GQ, October 2012

Headline: "TIE ONE ON! The 12 Neckties You Need Now"

Editorial Concept: Mr. Edgerton models a bunch of ties.

Isla Fisher (Myrtle Wilson), Allure, January 2013

Headline: "IT'S ISLA! Mrs. Borat (That's Right!) On Her Big New Role"

Editorial Concept: Best mascaras for your hair color.

As The New York Times breathlessly recounted early this year, Esquire dabbled in e-ink in 2008, offering a cover that blinked at you from the newsstand. In 2009, it published a splashy "augmented reality" issue in which Jeremy Renner let you decide what he wore in a fashion spread. Last year, it launched and shuttered an ecommerce partnership with J.C. Penney called Clad.

Its latest digital add-on, Adweek reports, is a video "trailer" for the August issue (a gambit previously used to promote Chris Jones's take on the Zanesville Zoo Story), which will be available online and via a QR code on the back of the magazine. A sometimes clunky attempt to merge print and digital media, QR codes are black and white   printed on magazine pages that readers scan with a smart phone camera to "unlock" digital content or, when used in partnership with advertisers, special coupons. Glossy magazines have been testing them out over the past few years and, as Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger endearingly admitted, finding they don't always work.

"People are suspicious of QR codes," Mr. Granger told Adweek. "They think it’s an ad for something. But I think we’ve been doing enough amusing stuff with QR codes that readers will actually trust and use them."

He's also going to keep throwing these trailers up against the wall until they stick—or we get sick of them.

Granger, who's experimented with unusual cover treatments in recent years, hopes that Esquire can continue to make trailers for all of its upcoming issues, depending on what assets they have. "This happened to be a really rich issue, but we are actively making the effort to do trailers as often as we can, at least until we—or our readers—get sick of them," he said.

Mr. Granger's candor is a welcome reminder that we're all in this long, slow, death of print together, guys.

Watch the trailer below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47_8OopgUlo

At Ebony, Mr. Crooks oversaw the 2011 redesign under new Johnson Publishing CEO Desiree Rogers and Ebony editor Amy DuBois Barnett. Before that, he was the art director of Esquire, helping design the magazine's iPad app. The design firm Pentagram had been handling The Atlantic's art direction while the magazine conducted its search.

"Darhil's imagination and passion for ideas-driven work make him the perfect creative force for The Atlantic," editor in chief James Bennet said in a press release. "It's asking a lot to hope for vision, exacting standards, a delight in taking risks, and a collaborative spirit all in one person, and we feel very lucky to have found that."

Jessica Paré and Jon Hamm.

Feel that buzzing, tingling sound in the part of your brain devoted to recapitulations of things you've already seen? Recap season kicked off with the recent return of Community, but now it's in full swing on occasion of last night's season premiere of Mad Men, two hours notable mainly for co-star Jessica Paré singing a French pop song whose history was noted by the Daily Beast later that night. Seventeen months away from literal armchair analysis of Don Draper and Gen-X-ers' sage nods about how the 1960s really were has made the genre enter a high decadent phase. Herewith, five of the top morning-after Mad Men recaps, recapped!

Todd VanDerWerff, The AV Club

Word count: 2676

Broad thematic analysis: "It’s a show, on the one hand, about how people deal  with sweeping social change, even when it’s happening way, way off their radar (as we see in the final scene of tonight’s episode), but it’s also a show about what it means to live through a decade, to get older and have your position and relationships shift and change."

Plot summary: "He wants to sleep. He didn’t want the party, and he’s embarrassed to have been the center of attention. Betty was forbidden from throwing such parties, he says, and he didn’t celebrate birthdays growing up."

What about that song? "...it’s both sexy and just the slightest bit creepy."

Profundity at the end: "Yet here they are, staring in the mirror, on the other side of 40, time nearing its end."

Number of comments, at this writing: 1130

Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture

Word count: 3067

Broad thematic analysis: "Envy, disappointment, and fear of losing what you've got: These feelings have always powered subplots on Mad Men, but they're front and center in 'A Little Kiss,' a classically structured, self-contained, long-form piece."

Plot summary: "By the close of the episode, Megan has broken down in tears and left work early; when Don finds out and follows her home, she removes her robe and begins cleaning the post-party mess in black underwear, giving her husband a tantalizing rear view of the body he can't have because she's decided he doesn't deserve it."

What about that song? "Megan's unselfconscious abandon — and Jessica Paré's slinky-innocent performance, which I suspect will be looked back on as the moment that made her a star — also confronts Don, and other characters, with another harsh fact of life: none of them are getting any younger, or hipper."

Profundity at the end: "Change is on the horizon, a great sociohistorical wave that's about to wash away a lot of what the once-dominant older generation insisted was important. It happens every couple of decades and always will happen; it's part of the cycles of individual and national life that Mad Men, a timeless drama posing as a time-specific one, examines so well."

Number of comments, at this writing: 91

Jeff Jensen, EW.com

Word count: 3526 over five pages--and part two just went up

Broad thematic analysis: "The year: 1966. Our drop point: The week surrounding Memorial Day, a holiday that was originally intended to honor the Union soldiers who fought and died during The Civil War. With a heavy hand, Mad Men’s opening sequence reminded us that 100 years after the end of slavery, the cause of civil rights still had miles to go."

Plot summary: "Later, when Don was ready to leave for the day, he fetched Megan from the creative bullpen, oblivious to the cues she was giving him. She was working. She wanted to keep working."

What about that song? "Beholding Megan in bawdy bloom, the invited guests toggled between amusement, polite support, furrowed eyebrow bafflement and wide-eyed shock."

Profundity at the end: "No: Don gets what Don wants. He wanted her – and he was damn certain she wanted him. A hard kiss, and then they hit the shag."

Number of comments, at this writing: 9.

Maureen Ryan, The Huffington Post

Word count: 3609

Broad thematic analysis: "And why are these characters so unhappy? I've been thinking a lot lately about how Mad Men is, in some ways, a meditation on narcissism (as was The Sopranos before it). All of these characters are trapped inside their own concerns and frequently unable to see beyond their own agendas and desires."

Plot summary: "Joan loves her baby, but she wanted to go back to work because she's good at it, she derives a sense of satisfaction from it and she commands a lot of hard-won respect at the firm, which she helped build."

What about that song? "The naive French-Canadian minx was undeniably sexy during her dance, but the look on his face said that Don would have rather gotten a private dance and not have had his wife displaying her wares for everyone from a slack-jawed Harry to Don's rumpled accountant."

Profundity at the end: "'You don't know her at all,' Don says about Megan. But does he really know her? Time will tell."

Number of comments, at this writing: 157.

Sloane Crosley, Esquire.com

Word count: 2737

Broad thematic analysis: "'A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.' Martin Luther King Jr. said that, and he was not talking about advertising. But it's a piece of wisdom that applies, on a number of levels, to Sunday night's season-five premiere of Mad Men."

Plot summary: "The big client this round is Heinz Baked Beans. There have been technological advances in pitching. During the meeting, Peggy alludes to a camera that can capture slow-motion, and the pitch itself is presented on storyboards shaped like television sets.."

What about that song? "I wasn't sure if she was saying 'bissou' or 'zoobie zoo,' but she's hot and it doesn't matter."

Profundity at the end: "Zoobie-zoo what?! I need a drink."

Number of comments, at this writing: Comments not enabled.

Bradley Cooper (Getty Images)

First Daughter of Mustique Elizabeth Hilfiger shouted "Is BryanBoy here?" The elusive Philippine blogger may not be, a P.R. type informed her. "BRYANBOY," she groaned, exhibiting a classic vocal fry. Nearby, Bradley Cooper discussed football with New York Giant Victor Cruz--"I'm an Eagles man myself," said the Limitless star--between posing for snaps with fans. We were stalking the gravel yard in the center of the Park Avenue Armory before the military-inflected Tommy Hilfiger show began.

Brad Goreski, of Bravo's It's a Brad, Brad World, chatted with The Observer about reality-TV fame. "I don't know if I've opened myself up to a new client base--but I definitely have no secrets!" What was he here for? "I'm looking for clothes for myself!" He said he had some shoots coming up, too, but wouldn't reveal for which outlets. That was to remain secret.

Upon leaving, we spotted GQ editor Jim Nelson. We asked him how his fashion week was progressing, though we were more interested in his publication's recent zoo-story showdown with Esquire, the rival men's rag that published the same feature as GQ on the same day. Perhaps seeing the glint in our eye, he said "I'm not prepared!" and scampered off.

Esquire editor David Granger, standing with a posse of young underlings, was more verbose. After telling us he'd been a supporter of Mr. Hilfiger for years, he feigned confusion as to the twin zoo stories. Why should anyone read his story over GQ's? "Wait--GQ did a story on the Zanesville zoo?  I was in California, and I didn't know!" Then he looked directly into our eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. We smiled and he was gone.

A tragedy better suited to longform magazine journalism could hardly be imagined. (image via Esquire.com)

While the Giants clinched victory down in Indianapolis Sunday night, a contest of editorial mettle was taking place between New York’s top men’s magazines.

Shortly before kick-off, The New York Times reported that Hearst’s Esquire would post a movie-style trailer for a March print story about the Zanesville zoo massacre (remember when that suicidal exotic animal collector released 56 dangerous animals into a small town in Ohio?) along with a preview of the piece by Chris Jones. The latest in a series of editorial widgets (last month’s: a QR code on cover boy Bill Clinton’s crotch!), the trailer was designed to build buzz and boost sales of the print issue. The full story and a longer trailer would be online later, according to The Times.

During halftime, Mr. Jones, an Esquire staff writer, pointed his 10,000-odd Twitter followers to the trailer, which had gone live on Esquire.com.

Mr. Jones’s tweet set off an email chain among editors at rival GQ (including web editor Sean Fennessey, who was at the Super Bowl). The Condé Nast title was sitting on its own 11,000-word piece about the Zanesville zoo, penned by its own staff Chris, Chris Heath, for the March issue.

GQ planned on publishing the story a few days ahead of the magazine’s on-stand date but had built the web version weeks in advance, anticipating Esquire’s drop.

“The conversation was: ‘How fast do we put it up?’” GQ senior editor Devin Gordon told Off the Record.

Because Esquire published only a preview of its story on Sunday night, the editors decided to take the rest of the night to make sure display copy and homepage art were perfect, and hit publish Monday morning. By noon on Monday, Esquire had ditched its big publicity plan, and had published Mr. Jones’s story in full.

“Good old-fashioned hand-forcing,” Mr. Jones tweeted later that day.

“We’ve known about this for weeks,” Mr. Gordon said. “We’ve been calling it ‘The Zoo-Off.’”

But until this week, the zoo-off had been pretty cloak-and-dagger, as far as glossy men’s magazines go. Mr. Jones and Mr. Heath discreetly stalked each other in December, when both writers were in Zanesville, reporting their pieces. Mr. Heath spotted Mr. Jones around town, but GQ editors, judging from Mr. Jones’ forthcoming tweets about his reporting, assumed the Esquire writer didn’t know another reporter was hot on the trail.

In fact, Mr. Jones had known GQ was working on its own Zanesville zoo story almost immediately after he pulled into his town. He scheduled his first interview, with the county sheriff on Monday at 1 p.m. They talked for two hours and Mr. Jones said, half-seriously, that it would be helpful if his source didn’t speak to anyone else. The sheriff responded that he had one more interview scheduled for later that afternoon.

“As long as it’s not GQ,” Mr. Jones joked, and the sheriff’s face dropped.

“You always want the story to be yours but GQ is particularly a rival,” Mr. Jones told Off the Record when we reached him at home in Port Hope, Ontario.

It turned out the Chrises were staying at the same Hampton Inn. Unfamiliar with Mr. Heath’s appearance, Mr. Jones routinely checked the hotel desk to see if he was still there. It was a rainy week and Mr. Jones was fighting off pneumonia, in addition to the paranoia.

“I played all sorts of games in my head,” Mr. Jones said. “How should I write this so its different?”

In the end, Mr. Jones put GQ out of his head and wrote the story straight, like he pitched it.

“It’s one of those stories where you get out of the way,” Mr. Jones explained. “You’re a small town Ohio deputy in the woods, looking for tigers.”

Which is exactly what GQ expected he would do. Mr. Gordon said that in editorial discussions, Mr. Heath predicted Mr. Jones’s visceral, action-movie style but knew that his magazine’s piece would take a different approach, including recreating, through reporting, the menagerie’s late owner, Terry Thompson.

“My wife said it’s more philosophical,” said Mr. Jones of his rival’s piece. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to read his story. I’m super insecure.”

“He’s really good,” Mr. Gordon said of Mr. Jones, “The story is big enough and amazing enough for two good stories to be reported. I am biased, but I think ours is better. I think its scope is incredible.”

Both pieces were written by men named Chris (Heath for GQ and Jones, for Esquire). Both are online in full, although the magazines don't go on sale for weeks. Only one of them has a trailer.