Tag: Esquire

Russian Roulette Sunday: 7 Reasons Esq

Men of the world, have you ever been in the company of a woman? Has that woman ever told you she used to be a gymnast? Were you wearing a scarf at the time? If you answered ‘Yes’ to all three, you need to buy the February issue of Esquire.

Of course we wouldn’t just tell you to buy a magazine without good reason. Naturally, nor would we give you just one good reason. That is not how we operate. Except on Sundays. Because on Sundays, anything goes. And on Sundays we really can’t be bothered to think that much. So your one good reason to buy the February issue of Esquire is that we are in it. That’s right, after 15 months of web based reasoning we have moved across to printed press reasoning.

I say ‘we’, in truth I should probably say ‘Jonathan Lee’, because in a rather unfortunate episode of crediting, the name ‘Marc Fearns’ is no where to be seen. When you consider that Marc devised four of the seven reasons this is a cruel and a damning twist of fate. Marc is a fairly stoic character however, and so when I (that’s Jon) sent news of our publication and lack of credit to York, I was expecting him to take it in his stride. This was Marc’s response:

“That’s like getting an enormous, beautifully wrapped box for Christmas only to discover that it contains a brick. And a lemon. I suppose that this is some form of progress though. Well done on getting published. You know those embittered, crazy, dishevelled old men that hang around train stations and regale you with unsolicited and doubtful tales of their own accomplishments? “I devised a text-in format for Richard Bacon…I made my cat walk on foil…I used to write for Esquire…Robert De Niro stole my hat…I once met the Queen of the pigeons.” This is probably how it starts. Can you get them to put a retrospective credit in next month or should I start growing a grey beard and soiling my own trousers now?”

Now, I know exactly what word has sprung to mind. Immature. And I know immature sprung to mind because that is exactly what it did in mine. I have little time for immaturity and over-reaction in my life, so I ignored him. Which, in hindsight, was a bit like poking a big beast with a hot poker. After twenty-four hours without contact, Marc sent me a new email with ‘New Logo’ in it’s subject. Thinking that Marc had obviously mellowed overnight and was now concentrating on the design of the site, I openned the attachment with intrigue. This is what I found:

Now, I know exactly what word has sprung to mind. Petty. And I know petty has sprung to mind because that is exactly what it did in mine. I have little time for pettiness in my life, so I have continued to ignore him. Which only provoked the Yorkshire beast more. We are now in a stand-off John Wayne would have been proud of. Marc keeps firing photoshopped images at me and I keep shielding myself with my ego. Time will only tell whether 7 Reasons comes through this tricky patch, but just in case we don’t, we strongly advise you to pick up Esquire now. It may be the last time you will ever see 7 Reasons name in print. Well, Jonathan Lee’s anyway.

January 9, 2011
7 Reasons You Should Have A Music Festival In Your Garden

It’s Thursday! And to celebrate the day we present you with our third and final piece that was destined for the shelves inside Esquire, but didn’t quite make it.

1. Own Bed. No sleeping on the roughest terrain in history in a sleeping bag that is far too small for you. After the last act, you can just pop upstairs and collapse onto your dry, comfy mattress. And of course you won’t be woken by fifteen drunken idiots tripping over your guy-rope at 4am.

2. Bad Weather. If the British Summer decides to stick with tradition and deposit large amounts of water upon us each weekend, you can just move your festival indoors. No one gets wet, your girlfriend won’t moan that her make-up is running and you won’t spend the rest of the evening warning off blokes who have just noticed she isn’t wearing a bra.

3. Lost Belongings. There is nothing more sickening than waking up in your tent and realising that you lost your wallet and wedding ring last night. If you have your own festival though, there is no need to panic. Your wallet will be in the flower bed and your ring will be in next door’s cat. Your ring never ends up in next door’s cat at Glastonbury. Never. Though sometimes it is in next door’s cow.

4. Toilets. A customary hazard at festivals. You’re going to drink large quantities of lager – even if you don’t like the bloody stuff – and that means ending up in queue for the temple of bacteria that is the portaloo. What’s the point when at home you can use your clean bathroom? A bathroom that smells of your partner’s potpourri and doesn’t have 100 people waiting ahead of you. Unless you accidentally left your front door open, of course.

5. Prices. Let’s be honest, the admission price to stand in a field for three days is excessive. You could have driven to Estonia on a small motorbike for the cost of a burger and chips. And you always end up spending £10 on a novelty blow-up dolphin that has a slow-puncture. All in all, a waste of money. Have your festival at home and you can charge yourself sensible prices. And there’s more chance of having a puncture repair kit to hand too.

6. Better Yourself. Music festivals – despite the name – aren’t just about the music. There are workshops and craft stalls and clowns and people trying to get you to take part in yoga classes. Have a festival at home and you can do all these yourself. You can have a woodwork workshop that will involve you putting up those shelves that you have been meaning to do for six months. You can set up a stall and try to flog all your rubbish from the attic to unsuspecting neighbours. And you can take part in your own yoga class. Which will involve bending down to pick up another beer. And relax.

7. Dreadlocks. Most of the people at your home-festival won’t be pierced and be-dreadlocked. Unless, that is, you have dreadlocks and a piercing. In which case, what are you doing reading this bit? Go to the Fashion & Grooming section at once! In fact, did you steal this magazine?

September 9, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Choose Your Holiday Read Carefully

There’s so much to think about when choosing your holiday read and so much can go wrong. Here are seven reasons that you should do it carefully.

1. The Cover. People say you should never judge a book by its cover. But they do. Which is why everyone who sees your choice of book will automatically form an opinion of you. And it will probably be the wrong opinion. Take Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for example. The Penguin Modern Classic version depicts a glass of milk. If I see someone reading a book that has a cover featuring milk I immediately think, ‘Cows. The reader likes cows’. They probably don’t. In fact, had I asked them, they would have probably shrugged with indifference. But that’s the peril of the book cover. To me, that person will always be a cow lover.

2. Trilogies. These are a big no-no. No one reads more than one book on holiday, so never start on a series that is going to take you a further two holidays to finish. By the time the second holiday comes around you’ll have forgotten what happened in the first book. This means you’ll have to read it again, only for the process to repeat itself on the next holiday. Basically, you’ll spend the rest of your life holidaying with the same book. And you’ll never find out who kills who or what the wizard said to the pixie or why the girl next door is so addicted to sex with vampires.

3. Love. Lots of people meet the love of their lives (or their night) on holiday. The last thing you need – having plucked up the courage and charmed a beautiful lady at the bar – is for her to come back to your suite and see your copy of How To Talk Women Into Bed resting on your pillow. That kind of behaviour is strictly frowned upon by the fairer sex. Apparently.

4. Language. When you take a book abroad, it’s disrespectful to your hosts to read an English translation of a book originally written in their language. In Barcelona, several people were upset to see me reading a translation of Lorca’s Yerma, but that was nothing compared to the reaction of Berliners to my English version of Mein Kampf. Never read a translated work. They were livid.

5. Practicality. The Da Vinci Code is the ideal book to take on holiday. If the weather takes a turn for the worse you can use it as kindling; if you spill your drink on the table, it’s quite absorbent; if you need to hold a door in your villa open, you can fashion a papier-mache doorstop from it; if you find that people are trying to engage you in conversation, you can pretend to read it (they’ll soon leave you alone). There’s almost nothing that this versatile book can’t be used for. Except as reading material, obviously. That would be stupid.

6. The Lord Of The Flies. If you have teenage children, do not take this book on your island-break with you. Okay, so it’s pretty unlikely that they’ll put down their iPods and PSPs for long enough to read it, but if they do, they may descend into savagery before you know it. And savages do not make relaxing holiday companions. As anyone that has vacationed in Ayia Napa will testify.

7. Airports. A copy of Frank Barnaby’s How to Build A Nuclear Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction would be a particularly poor choice of holiday read. It’s sobering, serious and thought-provoking; none of the things that are conducive to the holiday mood as you attempt to relax and get away from it all in your detention cell at Heathrow Airport.

September 8, 2010
7 Reasons August Is Too Early For The Football Season To Start

If you think that’s a slightly odd title – hopefully only for timing reasons – then we certainly understand why. This post was one of three that were originally going to appear in Esquire magazine. Due to space and content issues though, it wasn’t meant to be. We’re delighted to say however, that we can now show you what you would have read on the newsstands. If it makes you feel better, please buy a copy of Esquire, print this page and stick it in. If that wouldn’t make you feel better, just read as you normally would. The two other Esquire pieces will appear over the next two days. Exciting, huh? So here are, 7 Reasons August Is Too Early For The Football Season To Start.

1. Food & Merchandise. In August, the sales of these will just about be non-existent. No one wants a hot-dog or a pie in thirty degree heat. Neither does anyone want to buy a scarf. With clubs fighting for their financial lives at the moment, you’d have thought they’d want to cram December full of fixtures. It’s simple economics.

2. Sir Alex Ferguson. He’s red enough at the best of times. Making him watch football in August is just cruel. Both to him and to viewers of Match Of The Day.

3. Transfer Rumours. With the season starting in August, July will be full of unsubstantiated rumour. Such and such a player was just spotted at the services on the M1. This must mean he’s going off to sign for Manchester United. Yes, or more likely, he’s off visiting his best friend’s wife and needed petrol. And condoms.

4. Too Hot. August is predominantly a hot, sunny month in the UK. Hot, sunny weather affects the way football is played. Either we’ll develop a slower-paced continental game to cope with the conditions or we’ll carry on playing the traditional full-tilt English game and risk killing ginger people. Surely we could just wait for September? That would be the humane thing to do.

5. Rain. As a consequence of being hot and sunny, August is also one of the driest months of the year. At least during the week, when we are at work. At the weekend though, when we have things to do, the rain comes and plans are ruined. Cricket, barbecues, days at the beach. Whatever it is, they are ruined. And quite rightly too. That is what summer is all about. What can’t rain ruin? Football. Logic dictates, therefore, that it’s out of place in August.

6. Weddings. The school holidays run through August, as does the wedding season. And weddings are planned by women who do not care – or possibly even know – that you have something better to do at 3pm on Saturday afternoons in August; something that doesn’t involve dancing around the vol-au-vents. Basically, football ruins what should be the best day of people’s lives because the groom is sulking.

7. The World Cup. It’s just finished. The World Cup Final was on July 11th. And, England won and I still need time to let it sink in/England lost on penalties and I haven’t finished being depressed yet/England went out in the group stage and the sight of a football just makes me angry. (Delete as appropriate). It’s just too soon! I need more time!

September 7, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: 7 Other Magazines We’re Not In This Month

Happy Sunday to you. Now, regular readers will no doubt be aware that we were hoping to make our debut in Esquire Magazine this month. Sadly, we haven’t. However, we are optimistic that we will make our bow in November. The delay got us thinking though. Which other magazines have we failed to make an appearance in this month? As it goes, all of them. Thankfully, in what will come as both a relief to you and our keyboards, we aren’t going to explain why we are not in every single magazine out there. That would take years. And quite frankly none of us have that much time to waste. Instead, we are just going to pick seven. Because seven is the correct number. So, here are seven other magazines we didn’t get in this month. And why. If you’ve spotted a magazine we’re not in, please do let us know in the comments section. And if you find a magazine we are in, we’d appreciate you let us know that too.

1. Beano. The 7 Reasons comic-strip promised so much. Two humorists, two cats* and a psychedelic penguin invade France. Who wouldn’t want to read that? Apart from Beano readers obviously. And the French.

2. Vanity Fair. Well, half the 7 Reasons team brought the vanity, sadly the other half forgot the dodgems. We’ll let you decide whom is who.

3. Wisden Cricketer. Despite Jon scoring a solid fifteen during his parent’s anniversary cricket match last Saturday, he still failed to make the current issue. Which is probably just as well considering it was his girlfriend that finally dismissed him.

4. Men’s Fudge. Notwithstanding the fact that at least 50% of the 7 Reasons team are strong advocates of fudge, this Japanese magazine still overlooked us. Probably because 100% of the 7 Reasons team are 100% interested in women. Two women. One each. No more. None. Let’s move on.

5. White Dwarf. For the uninitiated, this magazine solely deals with anything you might find in Games Workshop, i.e.: models of the wargaming genre. If you do happen to find a white dwarf in Games Workshop, well that’s just…erm…coincidence. He/she still won’t be featured. Or at least I assume they wouldn’t. That’s really the editors choice. And I’m not the editor. Anyway, I digress. We’re not in White Dwarf this week because we prefer making things out of paper.

6. Forbes. It’s their Celebrity 100 issue. The richest 100 celebrities. Given that 7 Reasons brings in approximately $2 in advertising revenue per day, we should be in this issue in circa July 43,676. Unless we have a spike, in which case we might make it into the January issue. That’s the aim anyway.

7. Motor Home. Marc and Jon in a campervan. I know what you’re thinking. And that’s why we’re not in this magazine either.

*One owned. The other, random.

September 5, 2010