Dapper chaps vol 1

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Credits

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jim Nelson

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Linda Bradley

ART DIRECTOR Abbie Thurgood

SENIOR EDITOR Jason Butler

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Frank Harvey

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR PHOTOGRAPHY RESEARCHER Haley Gallant Ashley Lake

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

ON THE COVERS:

Michael Forrester, Photographed by Haley Gallant

Jude Freemin Carissa Castille Elizabeth Lancaster

EDITOR AT LARGE Sarah Gylenhall

WRITERS

Mike McMullen Jason Friedlander Justin Fenner Chris Heath David Bazner Claire Broadley Randy Kennedy Brett McKay Kate Mckay Pete Burrows Paul Jameson Antonio Belcher Jonathan Schulz Ian Landau 2

WELCOME TO DAPPER CHAPS Before you begin your journey into our informative pages of all things dapper, we here at Dapper Chaps Would like to personally welcome you and let you know what we’re all about.

Bradley Samuels

EDITORIAL INTERN

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WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK: Sarkizolerik NY Mag Wikimedia Wholles Mass Pictures Freshly Picked Marketing Summit Ventures Group Vinspi MediaShare Corbis Twenty First Century Retro Fly Trap Gear PC Wallpapers HD

Men, as a whole, have evolved since the dawn of time from a species of.. ah, who cares right? That’s the problem, we do. over the decades it seems that men have sort of deteriorated as a species of cultured people who know how to live their life in, well, taste. Our forefathers, the real generation of gentlemen would be dissapointed to know that we don’t even come close to the cultured people they were. What we strive to do in this magazine, is show you, the viewer, a taste of how the modern gentleman lives. We do out best to cover the fashion, music, art, travel, gadgets, and health that a modern gentleman carries in his repetoire in the hopes that one day, we men can take back our sense of pride in knowing we can be something more than the generation that loves the phrase, “YOLO” and use it willingly. We’d like to take this time now to thank you, the reader, for even making it this far. With your help we can quite possibly change the MANkind for the better. Now go forth reader, and make our forefathers Proud!

About Us


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DEPARTME N TS Letter from the Editor 6 8 Health Corner 10 Ask A Chap 14 Dapper Gear 7 Letter to the Editor

MUSIC

Bruno Mars: The Mars 18 Expedition Wes Anderson’s Music 24 Guru Randall Poster Will Make You Fall in Love With Alpine Yodeling Justin Timberlake: 26 #Hashtag of the Year

ART

Four British Designers 32 That Went From Rags To Riches The Trippy ’60s, Cour­ 36 tesy of a Master The Gentleman’s Guide 38 to the Calling Card 4

Table of Contents

HE A LT H 7 Smells That Will Improve Your Day Dieting Like a Gentleman Should You Be Eating More Salt? The DIY Way to Lessen Allergy Symptoms

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FA S HIO N Fashion Trends For The 54

Urban Gentleman Merino Wool – The Per­ 56 fect Fabric for Your Suit How to: Match a Tie with 58 a Dress Shirt and Suit

THowRToAV E L Fly Like A

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Gentleman Travel in Style – Pull 68 Off a Great Look during Travels Sleep Like a Kaiser – 70 Vienna Hotel Guide

T EC H 3 Ways to Repurpose

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Old Tech for Today A Stylish New Breed 74 of Luxury Diesels Has Arrived Too Tired to Mix Your 76 Own Drinks? Meet Monsieur, the Robot Bartender The Best Apps To Simplify 72 Your Life

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Letter from the Editor

So Very Deeply Madly Sorry By Jim Nelson

I’d like to apologize for this letter before I get started, in case you are offended by it and take it the wrong way other than the way I intended it, which was not to have to apologize for it. If you are a consumer of news, a compulsive Twitter follower, or even an occasional Googler of the words JUSTIN BIEBER APOLOGIZES FOR PEEING IN A MOP BUCKET AND SPRAYING DISINFECTANT ON BILL CLINTON’S FACE, you know that something weird and wild is going on. It’s the dawn of an apology culture a strange, self-feeding loop of screwup and regret that has us all riveted. The apology wave keeps getting bigger by the day, egged on by the bounds and boundlessness of social media, for sure, but also because it’s fun to watch people squirm. Whatever the cause, you’ve got to admit: As a country, we’ve never been sorrier. If you haven’t quite noticed it, you’ll see it all the time now: celebrities, politicians, athletes, desperate D-listers, all making a greater show than ever of begging our collective pardon, with news sites jumping on the bandwagon of humility and shame. (Madonna: Sorry If I Offended Anyone by Using the N-Word: It Was Meant as

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“a Term of Endearment”...Shia LaBeouf Plagiarizes, Then Uses a Skywriter to Say “I Am Sorry”... Howard Stern Apologizes for Calling Lena Dunham a “Talentless Little Fat Chick.”)

confounded and appalled by it, and only later asked myself a simple question: Who the hell is Julianne Hough? (Answer: She is a professional ballroom dancer known for her championship work on Dancing with the Stars. And I just plagiarized that from Wikipedia. My bad!) What’s also clear is, for all the apologizing in the air, most people aren’t getting any better at it. Worse, in fact. Often modern apologies are so quickly dispensed as to require additional remorse tweets. (And while we’re at it, Dennis Rodman wins for Worst Apology of the Year for this: “I’m sorry for what’s going on in North Korea, the certain situations.” You mean the certain situations such as the labor camps?) I’m especially tired of the “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” line, which continues despite serious backlash. To review: Either you’re sorry or you aren’t; there is no such thing as conditional humility. Sorry if that sucks.

think it’s more than that. We’re working out our own issues about sincerity. In a fast and glib age, when we doubt most people’s motivations, it’s satisfying and deeply entertaining to watch and judge and gure out who’s genuine out there. And now you all know my next business venture. A website devoted to judging the sincerity of celebrities. Think about it: 24/7 shame spirals, elaborate sincerity charts, interactive apology games where we thumbs-up or thumbs-down on famous people’s intentions. It’s going to happen, I promise you: I’ll be rich, and I’ll never apologize.

For some celebs, apologies come so fast and so frequently these days that they appear to be in a bug-eyed state of perpetual apology. (LaBeouf, that’d be you.) And maybe that’s how we want our celebrities: slightly bowed, chastened, half-regretting their good fortune and superior fame. But I

Here’s what’s clear: Apologies have become so much more than statements of regret or remorse. They’ve become a form of entertainment. Pretty soon sites will be divided into News, Sports, Weather, and Apologies. Just follow the sorry spate of headlines. Half the time, the “news” in these stories isn’t so much the original transgression as the groveling that comes of it. Which is why you might not have heard anything about the comic Jay Mohr for years until you read how utterly, horribly sorry he is for fat-shaming Alyssa Milano. (He fat-shamed? How dare him! But wait: Fantastic apology!) Often there’s no story at all until the mea culpas start flowing. I didn’t even know that Julianne Hough dressed up in blackface for Halloween until I read about the Twitter outrage and how profoundly ripped up she is about it. Poor dumb girl (sorry), she says she was just trying to model herself after that character in Orange Is the New Blackface. I ate that story up, was

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Health Corner

The Problem with Staying Up All Night

Are your sleep habits putting you at risk for this deadly problem? By Mike McMullen

Whatever it takes—drinking a glass of warm milk or counting sheep—here’s another reason you must do what you can to get your ZZZs. People under the age of 35 with insomnia are eight times more likely to suffer a stroke, a Taiwanese study has shown. The researchers analyzed health records for 21,000 people with insomnia and 64,000 non-insomniac patients in a control group. Along with finding that people ages 18 to 35 had an increased risk of stroke compared to non-sufferers, they were also 54 percent more likely to end up in the hospital as a result of a stroke. The link between the staying up all night and stroke isn’t completely clear, but other findings show that insomnia can alter cardiovascular health through systematic inflammation, impaired glucose tolerance—a precursor to

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pressure, which are all possible reasons for this heightened risk. Still, strokes are most common for people 65 and older. While this research ups younger people’s risk, keep in mind that the likelihood that insomnia will cause stroke is still relatively low. Over the course of four years in the study, only 583 of the insomniacs, or 2.7 percent, had to be admitted to a hospital for stroke. That’s still better than the national average of 1 in 14 stroke victims who are under the age of 45. Sleep disturbance has always been a risk factor for stroke, but don’t jump to conclusions too quickly. “Many people will describe a host of sleep problems as ‘insomnia.’” says W. Christopher Winter, M.D., a Men’s Health sleep expert. Often, patients’ unfamiliarity with what constitutes insomnia can lead to misinterpretation

and unnecessary anxiety, says Winter. In other words, many people tend to generalize their inability to sleep by thinking it’s insomnia, when in reality there are plenty of other sleep-related issues you could be enduring, like sleep apnea, which has more pressing health dangers than stroke risk. It doesn’t mean you can’t try killing two birds with one stone, though. It’s known that regular exercise can lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of stroke at an older age. However, research also suggests that exercise is effective in treating chronic insomnia, working as a mechanism that helps reduce anxiety and raise serotonin levels. A moderate level of exercise in the early afternoon might be just what you need to help tuck you in at night.


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elbourne-born Paul Bar­bera is a pho­ tog­ra­pher, author, cre­ative direc­tor and trav­eler of the world. Cur­rently resid­ing in New York, he works across Man­hat­tan, Mel­bourne and Ams­ter­ dam, and has lived and trav­eled every­where else in between. Paul is best known for his lifestyle pho­tog­ra­phy, which has fea­tured in pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Vogue Liv­ing and Elle Decor, as well as his 2009 book Where They Cre­ate, which doc­ u­ments the cre­ative spaces of artists and design­ ers from around the world. He has also pro­duced adver­tis­ing and edi­to­r­ial for clients includ­ing Ikea and Dedon.

Barbera’s lat­est book, Love Lost, takes a sim­i­lar route to Where They Cre­ate, and is an evergrowing pho­to­graphic archive collated through­out his trav­els. Love Lost doc­u­ments inter­na­tional loca­tions through Barbera’s per­spec­tive, uti­liz­ing the female muse as an anchor for emo­tion and per­cep­tion. The result is pho­tographs which are inti­mate, famil­iar, but still present the viewer with an aspect of out­sider unease.

PAUL BARBERA

This month, we sit down with Paul to talk about his new book, Love Lost.

By Jason Friedlander How did the con­cept for Love Lost come about? I had bro­ken up with a girl. I don’t grieve, I just move on, and my way with deal­ing with it was I found actresses and through dis­ cus­sion and explor­ing their own per­sonal rela­tion­ships with grief we came to a crescendo where they would end up in tears. I felt some­thing so beau­ti­ful about vul­ner­a­bil­ity. So I did a series of

por­traits of women cry­ing and each piece was a trip­tych of a girl giv­ing into the grief, giv­ing into pain, and being hurt. It was 44 por­traits of women all in dif­ fer­ent stages of griev­ing, of kind of a love lost. Love Lost was an exten­sion of that.

Ask A Chap There’s a bit of an air of mys­tery behind each indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tive in the book; maybe even some unease. Which is more important, the sub­ ject or the surrounds? The two have to work together, but I delib­er­ ately try to be super vague about it. It’s a ques­ tion­ing of what the rela­tion­ship is to every­one that’s in it, that I think adds a lot of the mys­tery, and makes it intrigu­ing. When I’m shoot­ing there is a lot more stuff that is explicit just because that’s the nature of what I’m shoot­ing, but it’s actu­ally not what I show every­one. There’s always a lit­tle bit of a veil, you never really get the full pic­ture. It’s always this lit­tle mystery. How long do you spend with each subject? I spend between two hours and half a day. There’s a bit of time where I build up a rap­port. I’m just com­pelled half the time, there’s so much beauty there. None of them are mod­els, they are just girls I meet. I’m still amazed that peo­ple let me into their stu­dios to shoot or are will­ing to get naked. It’s bizarre, totally bizarre.

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The com­merce of self-publishing. It’s always almost been the com­merce of the web. I mean, it didn’t really give you the abil­ity to audit or curate your own space until MySpace. In the last five years the tools of empow­er­ment — Index­hibit, Pin­ter­est, all these sites where you can cre­ate your own voice really clearly and dis­tinctly — have emerged. That medium existed, so why not. Is there a moment you can tell when some­thing small you’ve been work­ing on turns into a big proj­ ect? Or do you plan its scope from the outset? For Love Lost I’d been look­ing to do the next project for two years and it was just end­ less dis­cus­sions, writ­ing and ref­er­enc­ing. Then, how do you con­vince some­one to do some­thing that doesn’t exist, that involves nudity, and the ref­er­ences that are in there? I had a good friend who was per­fect and I started with her, and it went from there. So it is very con­structed. I’m explor­ing my own exis­tence in a way. What are the main dif­fer­ences of approach when work­ing on your own pub­li­ca­tions against the com­ mer­cial work you’ve done? I’ve shot edi­to­ri­al for years, but I’m always at the whim of an edi­tor, I’m at the whim of it being curated, at the whim of it ‘fit­ting into their slot’. But why? I believe in what I do, so why not do it? If it’s good, it’ll just float to the sur­face nat­ur­ ally.

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What is your edit­ing process when decid­ing what makes it to pub­li­ca­tion in the book? It’s tough, it’s really tough. I like that it’s a col­lec­tion of mem­o­ries, and pos­si­ble direc­tions that I take … or maybe it’s not. It’s some­thing that should be inti­mate, that real­ity and depic­tion of life, and this is my pos­si­ble real­ity that I am sharing. When is it available? There will prob­a­bly be 50 or 100 for sale of Vol­ume One. I love the idea from the col­lec­ table point of view that you might have to try hard to find a copy because there’s only going to be maybe, real­is­ti­cally, 350 pro­duced. For now I think there is going to be three vol­umes. So if you want to buy vol­ume two and have the set, you have to start to hunt to find this first col­lec­table book. I hope there’s a lot of ques­tion­ing behind it. What’s next for you? I haven’t posted any­thing online recently, and I can really feel it. I have been shoot­ing lots though. It takes so much energy to tell and col­late the story. I’ll also keep work­ing on the vol­umes and iron­ing out ideas. My end goal for Love Lost is to actu­ally start shoot­ing celebri­ties. Not nec­es­sar­ily naked, but maybe naked, and to be let in and to earn their trust.

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Dappper Gear

Why Watches?

How the Google Watch Is Going to Change, Well, Watches And why you’re actually going to want to G wear one.

oogle announced on Tuesday that it’s going to extend the Android operating system to watches, and we boldly predict that you’re actually going to want to wear one. Android Wear, Google’s new wearable software platform, is making the information you usually get from your phone (weather, directions, texts) available right on your wrist. Below, everything you need to know about how the watches work and which of your favorite fashion houses might be making them soon.

precisely when you need it,” said David Singleton, Android’s director of engineering, in a video that introduced the concept to software developers. (Rest assured, the watches will tell time, too—there’s even an option for a screen that looks like a real chronograph.)

How Will They Work?

What Will They Look Like?

Basically, the Android operating system will now work in a smaller, faster-moving interface. If you already have an Android, the watches can act as a second screen that alerts you to appointments, helps you find directions, and responds to messages.

The prototypes in Google’s promotional videos are minimal blackand-white watches in either round or tank shapes. But we’re guessing they won’t stay that way for long. Google is working with the Fossil Group, which makes watches for Burberry, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, and Diesel, among other brands, and those partnerships will more than likely produce some stylish timepieces. A few electronics manufacturers, like HTC and Samsung, are also in the mix. Motorola announced today that its first Android Wear watch, the Moto360 (seen above), will be available this summer.

“Watches are good at telling time, but imagine having useful, actionable information there

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In a blog post, Sundar Pinchai (Google’s SVP for Android, Chrome, and apps) called watches “the most familiar wearable.” That’s probably why there are already a handful of so-called smart watches: Sony, Samsung, and Kickstarter success story Pebble already have models on the market. It’s widely rumored that Apple is working on a smart watch, too, though a brand representative declined to comment on this story.

“Watches are good at telling time, but imagine having useful, actionable information there precisely when you need it”

By Justin Fenner

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Letter to the Editor

M USIC TO A G ENTL EM A N’S EA RS Today, Our letter to the editor comes from Harry Griffith from Chicago, Illinois and he sent us a letter expression his opinion on how a gentleman should enjoy music. A man is defined by the music he enjoys therefore he must choose his music carefully. Today’s article concerns a gentleman’s choice in music. First of all, what you use to play your music. Is a hi-fi from Retravision going to fit in when put between your humidor and banker’s lamp? Does the cheap plastic exterior match your Chesterfield? Of course it does not. A gentleman, then, must match his musical vehicle with his polished mahogany and leather decor. The answer is, of course, the gramophone. In lieu of this, a more modern turntable may suffice. Now that you have your musical apparatus, it is time to choose some appropriate music. Of course, compact discs and “MP3s” cannot be catered for by the noble gramophone. Vinyl is now the only option. In terms of genre, there are two important questions to ask yourself when

selecting music: •Is it jazz? (swing, latin jazz, bebop et al) •Is it classical? (preferably post-baroque) If the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’, you are looking at the wrong genre. Now that you have your gramophone and vinyls, you can relax, light a cigar, loosen your tie and listen to the soft crackle of gentlemanly music. If the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’, you are looking at the wrong genre. Now that you have your gramophone and vinyls, you can relax, light a cigar, loosen your tie and listen to the soft crackle of gentlemanly music. And finally we address the issue of playing music. A gentleman should be able to display virtuosity on at least one instrument. Preferably four or five. This can come in handy in many situations – be it wooing that young lady at the soiree, or getting yourself out a jam when Professor Moriarty attempts to engage you in mortal combat atop the Reichenbach Falls.And with that, we wish you happy listening.

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Bruno Mars: The Mars Expedition

Music

Chris Heath goes for a ride with pop music's biggest hitmaker

By Chris Heath

In the beginning—two days before Bruno Mars will pick me up after midnight with a bottle of rum in his hand and a roll of over $3,000 tucked in his pocket—we just talk at his house.

supplication to a vagina.

Mars has been living here since last summer. His home is quite simple—"I don't throw lavish parties or nothing like that, I just want a bed and a TV"—but with fancy flourishes. In the driveway is a recent purchase, a gold 1967 Chevy Super Sport Nova. Through a doorway I can see a gleaming metal palm tree. "Brass," he says. "I should have said gold. Shit." No matter. "Isn't that the coolest thing you've ever seen in your life? Doesn't that blow your mind? That's my palm tree." The house sits on a single level near the crest of a hill in Los Angeles with a view of the Valley. "I don't like two stories," he explains. "I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know."

If this still sounds vague in its allusions, when Mars was answering fans’ questions online last October, he clarified exactly which body of water he was referring to. “As in da pussay leche,” he tweeted.

His only visible companion here is his Rottweiler. Mars got Geronimo last April as a puppy. "That was my dream, man. I was, 'Man, I want a dog. I need a dog. A big one.' " And now he has a big dog. "And then they bite and ruin all your furniture and shoes and shit," he says. While Geronimo starts to quietly savage me—taking my left hand, then my wrist, then my forearm in his mouth—Mars and I discuss some songs from his new album, Unorthodox Jukebox. I quickly realize that to get the best out of him, to unlock his most impassioned and pure testimony—and a playfully spiky sense of humor—a little provocation is sometimes required. Okay. If he needs a foil, someone to play the idiot, I can be here for him.

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“Pretty awesome, right?” he says. “The verses to me are what really makes that song:Swimming in your water is something spiritual.”

“I’m a writer, man!” he says when I mention this tweet. “What do you want me to do? It was just a moment. It felt like the right thing to do.” In a fairly direct anatomical way, I say. “You can’t use big words with me. What does anatomical mean?” He is spelling out, I explain, that the song is about what’s between a woman’s legs. “Sure,” he says. “In the most beautiful, passionate, sexy way ever.” Some people, I persist relentlessly, might find an extended metaphor that aligns religion and a vagina to be blasphemous.

We begin with the recently omnipresent “Locked Out of Heaven,” which channels the spirit of early Police into something joyous, idiosyncratic, and utterly contemporary. It is also one of many songs on his new album that are about sex. “It feels good to sing about,” he begins. “It feels...sexy. It puts you in a sexy frame of mind. It feels good to pro-ject. Sex is a great party starter.”

Mars chooses to take this as something of an affront. “It’s like that saying: ‘If you think it’s racist, then you’re racist,’ “ he protests. “If you think it’s blasphemous, then obviously you don’t know that it’s poetry. You can pick apart all of my songs. A bullet through your brain, man? That’s not politically correct.” He is referring here to the lyrics—I would...take a bullet straight through my brain—from “Grenade,” the high point of his first album, in which he offers a gruesome list of harms he would be prepared to face on behalf of a lover who he now realizes would not reciprocate. “You’re not listening to it right if you’re picking it apart like that. You know? I can’t overthink everything I wrote or worry about that kind of stuff. Hopefully people should know. There’s no blasphemy. Or insult to any religion. It’s just fucking poetry, whether you believe me or not.”

A pop song about sex is nothing unusual. It is less common for a chart-topping single to be essentially one long hymn of praise and

Another of Mars’s favorites on the new album, “Gorilla,” builds to a chorus in which Mars declares, You and me, baby, making love

love like gorillas. I bet I can find a few questions he’ll find exasperating on this topic. “It was just painting a picture—some animalistic sex,” he says. “Instead of me singing ‘You and me having animalistic sex’—which is a terrible lyric.” So what, exactly, is “making love like a gorilla”? “What does that sound like to you? Come on, you’re a grown man. You’ve been there. Why are you making me feel like I’m the only one in the room? What is this, 1933? We can’t talk about this? I’ll give you some videotapes.” So your idea of a perfect encounter—as described in the song—is one where your partner is screaming to you, “Give it to me, baby, give it to me, motherfucker,” while the cops who have been attracted by the violent noises the two of you are making are outside trying to get in? “It definitely sounds awesome. Right? Isn’t that what matters? It’s an awesome song! I don’t know how to tell you that more. You want me to take my clothes off and show you what it’s like? Give you examples.” I did spend about four minutes earlier Googling how gorillas actually have sex. “Is it everything I hope it is?” No. “Have you seen them in the dark?” No. But they have rather boring sex. “Oh, don’t nerd out on me. You know what I was talking about!” Also, did you know that gorillas have amazingly small penises compared with their size? “I didn’t know that. You’re kind of ruining my thought of the

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“’You know, when you say ‘locked out of heaven,’ I don’t know if they actually have locks....” “I didn’t know that. You’re kind of ruining my thought of the song. Let me think it’s an awesome song. Next time I write a song, I’ll make sure to do all the proper research.” He imitates me. “’You know, when you say ‘locked out of heaven,’ I don’t know if they actually have locks....” Now he’s in the mood to really start explaining. “You know how hard it is to write a big song?” he says. “That shit is hard, man. It’s so hard to do. Might be one of the hardest things to ever do. I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with ‘It sounds good!’ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events. Fucking ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’is my favorite song— that song’s an event. And that’s what I want to do. I’m sure that shocked the world, that song. ‘Billie Jean’ shocked the world. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ Those songs are events. That guy put everything he got into that, and he meant it.” Just like Mars did, he’s saying, for his latest songs. “It’s that unexplainable high. Why I keep doing it. That feeling that you keep on chasing and chasing. Because it’s nothing, man. It’s taking the air and turning it into something. That’s the feeling.” Bruno Mars, who works with two partners as the songwritingand-production team known by the name the Smeezingtons, is beginning to stake a claim as one of the most gifted songwriters of his generation. Among the highlights so far: the two biggest hits off his first album, “Grenade” and “Just the Way You Are”; the new “When I Was Your Man”; Cee Lo’s “Fuck You”; Lil Wayne’s “Mirror”; the pair of songs that started it all, B.o.B.’s “Nothin’ on You” and Travie McCoy’s “Billionaire”; and, of course, “Locked Out of Heaven.” “That one shocked me. That it turned out the way it did. I haven’t done a song like that. And hopefully every album, I’ll get that feeling. And shock the world! Shock the world!” You want to shock the world? “Hell yeah! I’ve got nothing else to do.”

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time to congeal. After Mars moved to Los Angeles at 17, there were various misfires—a contract with Motown, a spell with Will.i.am’s management—and a few years in the wilderness. One problem was his name. He parodies the kind of response he would get: “Your last name’s Hernandez, maybe you should do this Latin music, this Spanish music.... Enrique’s so hot right now.” He shakes his head. Eventually he sidestepped the issue by adopting the name Mars, perhaps figuring that the best way to avoid being stereotyped by race is to sound as though you come from a different planet altogether. By then, he had formed the Smeezingtons with two friends; his breakthrough finally came when he appeared on two 2010 songs they’d written and produced. These were notionally B.o.B. and Travie McCoy singles, but it was Mars who was instantly recognizable for his joyously pure high voice and, in the videos, for his confident smile under a distinctive gray fedora. What’s the secret to a good song? Mars gives this question some careful consideration. “Shit. For me? Hypnotize me in the very first three seconds, wake my ear plate up, give me something that I haven’t felt before...and then punch me in the fucking face.” When Mars asks me what I actually think of his song “Gorilla,” I mention that its brutality does make me feel a little uncomfortable. It is this comment that leads us somewhere else entirely. Mars stretches out on the sprawling sofa in front of the TV, grabs an acoustic guitar, and starts noodling, picking out the chords to his 2011 hit “The Lazy Song.” (“I hate that song, by the way,” he told me earlier.) In a row on the wall behind the sofa are three paintings of Elvis movie posters, made for the films’ original theatrical runs in Hawaii’s biggest cinema: King Creole, Blue Hawaii, and Girls! Girls! Girls! The paintings used to belong to Mars’s father, who, among many other ventures, once had an Elvis-memorabilia store in Honolulu. Mars always wanted the paintings, but years back, when times got tough, his father had to sellthem: “He needed the dough.” Then, on a recent trip home, Mars found himself in a ‘50s diner, and there they were. Negotiations began. It was King Creole that he wanted most of all—”my favorite Elvis movie”—but he bought the lot. “I was being a jerk,” he says, “so I was, ‘Give me all of them.’ “ Mars was born Peter Hernandez twenty-seven years ago to a Puerto Rican Jewish percussionist from Brooklyn and a singer and dancer from the Philippines who met in Hawaii, and he landed the nickname Bruno as a toddler, supposedly because as an infant he looked like a famous wrestler, Bruno Sammartino; the surname Mars would only come as an adult. The most famous fact in Bruno Mars’s biography is that by the age of 4 he was appearing onstage in his father and uncle’s Hawaiian variety show impersonating Elvis Presley. “I don’t remember much,” he says. “I probably couldn’t even speak that much.” A grin. “But I was fucking great at it.” Against that, school paled. “And then you’re going to school and learning about fucking Christopher Columbus and stuff...” says Mars. It was hard to care. All day he would be thinking how he couldn’t wait to go and perform that night. “It was like turning into Batman. I’d go to school and kids are calling me Peter and we’re playing baseball and kickball and shit, and then—’All right, guys, I’ve got to go!’—you put on a sequined jumpsuit, and all of a sudden you’re Bruno, the world’s youngest Elvis impersonator!”

“You think it’s uncomfortable for you?” he says. “You don’t think I knew the backlashes that might come with that song? You know, like the first line is I got a body full of liquor with a cocaine kicker.” There is that. Why did that line come into your head? “Just because the room was dark, and I felt like...”—he laughs—”... Johnny Cash.” Do you mean you felt like the Johnny Cash who sang “I shot a

man in Reno just to watch him die”? “Yeah! It’s that shit. As a songwriter, you don’t have the luxury of a movie to build characters and have a beginning and show the scene of you guys in the bedroom and it’s a crusty house and it’s dark. So how you do it as a songwriter is to say, ‘I shot the motherfucker in Reno.’ It’s that. To get your point across. I guess I wanted people to know what time it was pretty quick. You know, the sense of danger. ‘I’m not talking about love right now, or heartbreak. I’m talking about something totally different.’ “ Did people around you have any concerns that this lyric was going to dovetail with— He interrupts. He knows where this is going. On September 19, 2010, just as his first solo single, “Just the Way You Are,” was rising toward number one, Mars was arrested in a bathroom at the Hard Rock casino in Las Vegas and subsequently charged with cocaine possession. (The arresting officer claimed that Mars said, “Can I speak to you honestly, sir?” and told him that he had done something foolish but had never used drugs before. Mars took education courses and performed community service in exchange for the case’s dismissal.) “Yeah,” he says. “Really, it’s on me. It’s like: ‘Bruno, you want to deal with this shit? You know when Chris comes over, he’s going to ask you about that shit, right?’ “ But he refuses to censor a song for a reason like that. “If I changed for the masses so that I don’t have to answer this question, then I’m a puppet! Then this isn’t fun for me anymore.” Good answer. But now, of course, Chris is going to ask you about that shit. “Let’s hear it. It’s not my first rodeo.” So, Vegas. What happened that night? “I was young, man! I was in fucking Vegas. I wasn’t thinking.” What did you think when they caught you? “That was the thing—I wasn’t thinking.” But it was a real “oh shit” moment? “Oh yeah, just like any other human, anyone that’s ever been arrested before: ‘Yeah, dummy.’ “ Were you scared? “Oh yeah, of course. I was given a number one record and I’m out doing dumb shit.” And you told them it was the first time you’d ever done anything like that? “I don’t know where that came from. I was really intoxicated. I was really drunk. So a lot of that is a big blur, and I try every day to forget and keep pushing.” But if you did tell them that, might it have been shading the truth a little? He pauses for some time. “I don’t know if I should comment on that or not.”

Whatever wisdom he assimilated back then, his talent still took

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What were the lessons from it? “ ‘I can take this shit away from you, young man.’ That was the lesson. You’ve slaved away for years and years and years. You’ve prepped your whole life. It’s all you know how to do. You’re a kid experiencing life in fucking Sin City, and that was the lesson: It can all be taken away. Put you in a weird place. Embarrass you.” Mars picks me up from my hotel at around one in the morning. As I slide into the backseat next to him, he hands me an unlabeled bottle of rum to swig from. Tomorrow lunchtime he must board a twelve-hour flight to Japan, his first visit there since his stage debut twenty-three years earlier, and he sees little point in sleeping too much beforehand. So tonight is for poker. “There’s few things that take my mind off of music, and I’ve found just sitting down and looking at cards does that,” he says. Commerce Casino, our destination, is, he says, “the biggest card room in the world.” It is also where he would play most often before he became known as Bruno Mars. Usually he would come with his friend Mo, an insurance broker. This was just before the sport became so popular. “I used to pay my rent doing that shit,” he says. What’s your style? “I used to be like a loudmouth. You know the guy, people would want to take his money. If you do get them to lose, they’re out for you, they’re gunning for you. And that’s when they’re weak. And that’s when you jump or pounce on them.” What’s the most common mistake people make? “Buying into my bullshit.” Mars remembers his first casino visit. He was 19, underage, and went to a casino two hours away in the mountains with Jeff Bhasker, now also a well-known pop producer but then in a cover band with Mars. (They were called Sex Panther.) “I remember my first bet, my hand was shaking,” he says, “and a guy called me out on it and embarrassed me.” Mars lost a hundred bucks, a hundred dollars he couldn’t afford and had no business gambling with. “You gotta lose,” he says. “You just have to lose to win, to understand.” We pull into the casino driveway, past some plaster giraffes, and park outside a hallway which leads past a chariot and four horses to the tables. “Here we are!” he says. “Look at this! Class dot-com!” Inside, the floor guys who work here greet him warmly, a face from the old days. When he speaks with anyone, he introduces me as his uncle from Switzerland. Each time he sees me jot down a note, he’ll whisper to me, “You’re going to get me killed in here.” He’ll later tell me that he brought $3,400 here with him tonight. “A grown man should always carry cash, right?” he says. “I don’t know who told me, but someone told me that a long time ago, and the biggest turnoff is when a guy doesn’t have cash on him.” At his allotted table, he slips this cash to be exchanged for chips so discreetly that I don’t even see him do it. (It’s a $600 minimum to buy in on a table like this, but as he told me in the car, “most guys buy in for four grand, so if you buy in for the $600 you’re basically just Nemo.”) I notice that the dealer calls him Peter, though Mars doesn’t realize this and will seem surprised afterward when I point it out. “I didn’t hear that. Really? Wow. That’s like in school. Or when I’m in trouble.”

last hour has been one of slow but steady accumulation, and he leaves the casino with $5,070 in cash. On the way out, we pass the casino shop, Moiselle Menswear, where they sell all kinds of gaudy stuff that might appeal to a temporarily flush cardplayer. Mars tells me about the time he was gambling with his friend Mo, about six months before his career took off, and had won about $600. “I was, ‘Let’s do some dumb shit, let’s go to that pimp store over there,’ “ he says. He’d just cut his hair, and he was finding it weird walking around with less weight on his head than he was used to. That was when he saw the hat—a gray fedora. It was his first fedora, the very hat that helped launch a pop career. “The one you see in every video.” Eventually it began to fall apart. “It’s in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” he says. (He’s bluffing. It’s actually in his mother’s house back in Hawaii.) In the car, Mars holds up a crumpled packet of cigarettes he has pulled out of his pocket. “That sums up our night,” he sighs. He points out

the shapes of the canary palm trees against the early-morning sky and says how much he likes them. He shows me the apartment on Mansfield he rented for $650 a month when he first arrived in town. “It was pretty rough,” he says. For him, Los Angeles took some settling into. “I think it was just a culture shock. Coming from Hawaii, this was a whole ‘nother thing. It’s so much faster than where I’m from. We don’t got billboards in Hawaii. I remember I was freaking out about that for a long time.” He says that he expects to retire back to Hawaii eventually. “On a beach,” he says, “drinking out of a coconut, watching some kids running around in the sand, looking at the ocean...” He laughs. “And then planning a reunion tour, overweight.”

care insouciance—more one of someone who doesn’t quite know what is happening but is still hoping to be everyone’s friend. Do you remember what you were thinking when they took it? “ ‘Fuck!’ “ he says. “Man, there were so many thoughts running through my mind.” Why are you smiling in the photo? “I have no idea,” he says, then laughs before offering the funniest, most poignant answer someone who had just become a pop star could give to this particular question: “It was a picture.”

On a wall in his Hollywood Hills home, Mars has a large blowup of Frank Sinatra’s youthful mug shot, taken when Sinatra was 22, staring with bright-eyed defiance at the police camera. “That was the first art piece I bought,” Mars says. “Look how cool he looks. He got arrested for adultery, I think. Something like that.” I ask Mars what he likes about the image. “He’s wearing a fucking suit,” says Mars, “and his hair’s just slicked back.” He laughs. “The exact opposite of my mug shot.” In his, Mars is wearing a red-checked shirt, open to show the gold chain around his neck, and the camera flash shines back off the sweat on his forehead, and his mouth is open in a strange kind of grin. It doesn’t look like a grin of contempt or even of devil-may-

“There’s few things that take my mind off of music, and I’ve found just sitting down and looking at cards does that.”

Play on this table seems careful. “There’s no gamblers here,” he complains quietly to me after a while. “It’s tight. Not my style at all. Nobody’s drunk.” Sometime in the second hour he loses a big hand for several thousand dollars that he felt sure he would win, but he accepts the loss with equanimity. As the clock passes three o’clock, then four o’clock, he makes new deadlines with himself to get up from the table—three forty-five, four fifteen—but each of them passes by. Though I like it here, he keeps apologizing. “The sicko wouldn’t leave the table....” he says. I don’t think he is so much trying to make his money back—though bit by bit, with some quiet, aggressive play, he does so. It’s more that he is waiting for that one great satisfying hand. But another huge face-off never happens, and he has enough discipline not to push it. Finally, a little after five in the morning, he picks up his chips and cashes out. The

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Music responses you get are boundless. Hearing people’s reactions opens my eyes sometimes and how I look at the work subsequently. I’ve always thought of the music in films as cultural melting pots that combine different time periods and hit on people’s personal experi­ ences. Well, we don’t all respond to all of it the same way. We don’t necessarily travel on the same path to emotion, but I think that that’s the magic of art. Sometimes it connects us to worlds that we don’t have any real connection to. How closely do you collaborate with Wes and other people working on the film? Wes and I began working together as he finished doing Bottle Rocket and I don’t think we’ve stopped working since. In terms of the other collaborators, I work closely with the picture editor and the music editor and the composers and the producers. When it comes to me and Wes, we’ve discussed everything from who to shoot and who to cast. We tend to think about the movies as whole beyond our specific bound domains. What’s the favorite part about your job?

Wes Anderson’s Music Guru Randall Poster Will Make You Fall in Love With Alpine Yodeling

“There’s no prescription for how the audience is meant to respond or what it makes them think about it or what else of their own they bring into their response to the film.”

I’m always working on something, and the magic of that is I get to live in all different times and genres. I just finished a movie called Divergent last week, so I was living in 2040 and this weekend I’m doing some work on the new Todd Haynes movie that’s set in 1952. I’m basically time traveling and exploring all these musical worlds constantly. It’s refreshing.

Photo of Randall Poster Talking about The Grand Budapest Hotel at a conference

By David Bazner

Randall Poster, the music supervisor for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, tells us what it’s like to help find the songs which become as crucial to Wes’s films as the elaborate costumes and set designs. If there’s a common thread to be drawn between his work—he’s worked with Wes since Bottle Rocket—it’s that he curates music to bring us back to times we remember most vividly and forward to moments that have yet to happen. Cue goosebumps. What was your musical research process like for Grand Budapest? This movie posed particular challenges in that it’s set in this sort of fictitious middle-European world. Wes and I scoured all the variety of classical and folk music in the vicinity. Everything from

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gypsy violins and French military marches to German drinking songs to Alpine yodeling. We really cast a very wide net because we were trying to land on the appropriate sound and musical voice of the movie. You’ve been quoted as having said that “When you’ve affected a kid sitting in the dark that’s the ultimate reward.” With that in mind how do you know you’re going to connect with the audience? I think that’s just born out of our own open hearts and minds, to trust the movie moment to have that power over you. There’s no prescription for how the audience is meant to respond or what it makes them think about it or what else of their own they bring into their response to the film. That’s the reward of doing this kind of work, the

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Justin Timberlake: #Hashtag of the Year

Music

off a run of bad play as if it never happened. Which is right around the time that all the spotlights in the arena click on and start to swirl, moving in curlicues as if searching for their starting point guard. “Is this normal?” Timberlake calls out to a couple of workmen nearby. “Naw,” one of them calls back. “They just know you’re here.”

By Amy Wallace

“So I find it ironic that I’m doing an interview with you about Man of the Year when I feel—literally—like a bunch of people just took a shit on my face.” Justin Timberlake has had better Mondays. We’re sitting in the FedExForum in Memphis, his hometown, five rows back from where his NBA team, the Memphis Grizzlies (he’s a minority owner), plays ball. There are 18,119 seats in this arena, and 18,117 of them are empty. Today, this is how he wants it. After sailing through the first nine months of the year like some kind of celebrity superhero—a one-man juggernaut of singing and dancing and hosting and viralvideo-ing—Timberlake has taken some punches in the past few days. “Double whammy,” he says, referring to critics’ excoriation of both Runner Runner, a thriller he made with Ben Affleck that has just had a disastrous opening weekend ($8 million, and that’s rounding up), and The 20/20 Experience: 2 of 2, his second number one album of the year. Specifically, Variety has just run an op-ed titled “Why Justin Timberlake Should Stop Acting.” (Oof.) And Billboard has, in Timberlake’s words, “said, ‘Tell him to leave his second half at home.’ Where did all this vitriol come from? It’s mean. And I’m not cut out for it.” Slouched down in jeans and a T-shirt, the guy sitting next to me looks nothing like the suave showman from the “Suit & Tie” video. He’s fidgety. He keeps tugging at the stubble on his chin. “This face,” he says, circling it with one finger. “This recognizable face that you work so hard to get—not because you want the

Here is just a partial list of highlights from Timberlake’s big 2013:

recognition but because you know you’re made to do it.” This face, he’s saying, comes at a cost. “The movie didn’t do well at the box office, so I should quit? Hold on a second. If I was somebody else, you wouldn’t have said that. I have the number one album this week, and I shouldn’t have released it? Come on, man. You sound like a dickhead.... It just shocked me because, like, you’re trade magazines. None of your opinions count. And by the way, none of you can do it.”

• Played a comeback concert on the eve of the Super Bowl with Jay Z. • Staged Timberweek with Jimmy Fallon—a five-night run of appearances on Late Night, most of them hilarious, some flat-out brilliant. • Released his first album in seven years and toured the world to support it.

When we first sat down, Timberlake seemed vulnerable. Confused, even. Now he’s just pissed. He starts talking about Memphis, the place that he says defines him: “It’s a struggling city with a defeatist attitude. I’m from this town, and I grew up with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, so sometimes I find it funny that I’ve been able to acquire the patience it takes to be kind to people in our business. Because sometimes I just want to fucking kill everybody.”

• Performed at the White House, coaxing the president and first lady into joining him on vocals for a few lines of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” • Hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time—and got an Emmy nomination for it. (“I’m sore,” he tells me, arching his back and grinning. “Really sore. You have to be really flexible to get it done five times.”)

But just as the 32-year-old Justin Timberlake seems bent on morphing into the 1999 version of Marshall Mathers, he takes a deep breath, and I swear it’s like the stale air around us just got a few degrees cooler. His anger was a splinter under the skin. Now that it’s out, he already feels better.

• Reunited with the other members of ‘N Sync at the Video Music Awards. • Released that second album. • Starred in Runner Runner (a decision, by the way, that he doesn’t regret).

“I don’t see myself as someone who’s ever going to be defined by one moment,” he says. “It’s on to the next.” He’s sitting up taller, and his blue eyes have a glint that wasn’t there before. Timberlake’s skills on the golf course and basketball court are well-known, and now he seems to be summoning the elite athlete’s ability to shake

And while the drubbing of those last two is what caused his freak-out, he can take comfort in the fact that his next film is unlikely to make anyone take a shit on anyone else’s face: He’s in the new Coen brothers movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, out this month. That and all of the above on top of a career that, don’t forget, has been going for more than two decades. w

“I’ve been doing this professionally since I was 10, If entertainment years were dog years, man, I’d be like Gandhi. I’d be like 250 years old.”

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His role in Inside Llewyn Davis—a kind of cartoonish folksinger—is small but quirkily funny. Ethan and Joel Coen told me they cast Timberlake because they admired his previous performances—his turn as Napster co-founder Sean Parker in The Social Network is startlingly good—as well as his sketch work. “We really liked ‘Dick in a Box,’ basically, is what it was,” Ethan half joked.

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“I grew up an athlete, I believe in routine.”

“You do a Coens movie,” Timberlake says, “and secretly you’re like, ‘All I want to do is make people laugh in this movie. If I can make people laugh in this movie, then I don’t care. Whatever else happens, happens.’ ” At the Cannes Film Festival, he says, “people were laughing out loud, and it was like that first drink of warm tea—or that first cold drink of beer, or that first hit off a joint. You’re just like, ‘Yeah, everything’s going to be all right.’ ” Musicality may still account for the bulk of Timberlake Inc., but it’s the “making people laugh” part of his career that has endeared him to so many who fall outside his natural fan base. And a huge part of that is his friendship with Jimmy Fallon.

“I’ve made a career out of doing things that I should not be doing. I wasn’t cool about it,”

Fallon and Timberlake met back in 2003, the first time the latter appeared on Saturday Night Live. Since then, they’ve become a sort of YouTube Abbott & Costello, coming together regularly to make skits that comment on everything from hip-hop to self-indulgent Twitter culture. (Go watch “#hashtag,” in which neither man can deliver a full sentence without adding a #coda, and you’ll feel a wave of #shame.) But the satire has a sweetness mixed in. This year, in a bit that aired during Timberweek, they both dressed up as Michael McDonald and sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” as a round—with Michael McDonald himself. “Michael McDonald is one of the greatest singers of all time,” Timberlake says, describing how for years he’d wanted to honor him in a skit called “Michael McDonald’s McDonald’s,” about a singer who “at the end of his career figured, ‘Why can’t people have good food for an affordable price?’ and came up with a chain of restaurants where they could: McDonald’s.” But the skit never quite worked. Instead, this past March, Fallon, Timberlake, and McDonald—all with flowing white hair and beards—sang the children’s classic together. Timberlake looks wistful at the memory. “Those are the moments you hold on to,” he says.

cool about it,” he says. “Because being cool would have meant I passed up on those opportunities. If you do that, it’s because you’re afraid. And what are you afraid of? You know?” I’ve turned in my seat to look at him, and I can tell he’s reflecting on the thirty-minute tirade that began our conversation. First he apologizes. “I’m sorry,” he says, “that we got off on a whole tangent.” But that’s not enough. He also wants to explain the genesis of his rant. “Listen, I’m not cool,” he says. Now it’s my turn to look confused. “Being cool,” he says, “is about keeping your blood pressure steady. So no. Don’t be cool. Be passionate. Be dedicated. Be tenacious. Be uncompromising. Be pissed. Be happy. Be sad.” He pauses. It’s important to take risks, he says. To do sketch comedy when you’re supposed to be staying in your lane as a singer. To do movies when all people want is your next album. “I’ve made a career out of doing things that I should not be doing. I wasn’t

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You’ve got to give it to the guy: Fear, if he ever feels it, doesn’t seem to sway him. Maybe that’s one of the payoffs of surviving child stardom. Before ‘N Sync, before even The Mickey Mouse Club, he was beating back the jitters by simply working harder. It began, or was at least fostered, on the basketball court. “I grew up an athlete,” he says. “I believe in routine.” (Ben Affleck told me that on the set of Runner Runner, “we were shooting this scene where I was supposed to be playing basketball, and Justin came down wearing a suit, and between takes, I look over and this guy’s knocking down shots from half-court! Just, like, wearing his dress shoes and raining fucking threes!”) Discipline is the key ingredient. The night before a performance, Timberlake gets lots of sleep. (“It’s a huge part of whether I can hit my range.”) The day of, he tries to keep talking to a minimum. Then, two hours before the show, the real work

begins. There is stretching involved. And meditation. He spends some time on an inversion table and, in the final minutes before showtime, begins to move, dancing to get his heart rate up. “I want my circulatory system on every level to be firing, right when I walk on that stage,” he tells me. “I want to feel the blood all the way to my fingertips. I want to feel hot.” But there’s one pre-game ritual that sets him apart from the Memphis Grizzlies players he has been known to shoot around with: Seconds before he steps onstage, he takes a shot of tequila. He loves it when I ask what brand. I know he loves it, because his eyebrows jump up, like I’ve just thrown him the softest of softballs and he can’t wait to crush it. “That seems funny,” he says, smiling big, all that anger a far-off memory. Which is about the time that I remember that Justin Timberlake has his own brand of tequila. He directed a TV ad for it this year, which ends with a voice-over he did himself: “Uncommonly smooth.” Well, most of the time.

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G

reat Britain has given the world more than its fair share of creative people. Throughout modern history, fashion designers, artists, painters and inventors have become well-known for their skills, talents and imagination. Many have been honoured with awards; some are world-renowned. What can we learn from successful Brits that have made it big in design? Let’s look at five wellknown icons who led the way in their respective industries; three individuals and one two-person design team.

Four British Designers That Went From Rags To Riches

Alexander McQueen

Art

By Claire Broadley

Lee Alexander McQueen was something of a fashion oddity; a lad from London who dared to be different. He allegedly embroidered a rather rude word into a suit worn by the future King of England when he was just a teen. Yet within 20 years, this daring designer would count Gucci as his major shareholder. At the British Fashion Awards, McQueen claimed the top gong no less than four times. He designed for top houses such as Givenchy, and he received a CBE in 2003. Seven years after his honour, McQueen would die a tragic death. Friends suspect that he committed suicide due to a spiral of depression and drug abuse, possibly fuelled by the trauma of losing his mother nine days earlier. The designer left £50,000 to his pet dogs and £100,000 to animal charities. His final, unfinished collection featured recurring themes of the afterlife.

Rosie Wolfenden and Harriet Vine: Tatty Devine Rosie Wolfenden and Harriet Vine set up their tiny jewelry company, Tatty Devine, in the late 1990s. Originally, the pair used found plastic objects to make fun, handmade items with quirky appeal; their best-known early pieces are the plectrum bracelet and volume control brooch. In time, the design duo purchased laser etching and cutting machines, enabling them to make their own plastic charms for necklaces, bracelets and earrings, and they opened their own workshop to speed up production. The pair piqued the interest of British fashion magazines while selling home-made leather cuffs at London’s famous Spitalfields market. Now, Rosie and Harriet have developed a range with Selfridges, but they stay true to their roots, still making the perspex pieces that they became famous for. Their designs are bigger and more ambitious than ever. In the 2013 New Year Honours, the founders of Tatty Devine were given MBEs (Members of the British Empire).

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Vivienne Westwood The advent of punk marked a sea change in British fashion and the culture of the nation. The freedom to make music inspired Vivienne Swire, a British designer, to use clothing in order to shock and make a statement. She moved to London aged 17; like Tatty Devine, her early creations were sold in a London market. Her move into punk, and the clothing that made her famous, was inspired by Malcolm McLaren who became her muse. Vivienne Westwood may have been famous for her revolutionary approach to design, yet many of the elements she used were inspired by traditional British clothing. She was interested in the use of Scottish tartans and based some of her designs on traditional styles used in the Industrial Revolution. She has been awarded an OBE and DBE and famously neglected to wear underwear when she met the Queen. James Dyson Before James Dyson, nobody knew much about industrial design. But in an era where Apple’s finely-tuned designs make headlines, it’s easy to see how Dyson was the godfather of the move towards attractive, functional devices. Dyson’s design talents came from his schooling at the Royal College of Art, yet he quickly realised he had a knack for solving problems. The original Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner retailed for a fourfigure sum, and the designer only sold it himself in desperation when he could not involve an existing manufacturer; they wanted to continue to sell vacuum bags. Ironically, the Dyson vacuum cleaner caught on precisely because of its bagless design – the one aspect of the device that manufacturers hated. Buyers, in contrast, loved it. The funds generated from the original design allowed Dyson to create additional products and launch his own design awards. Making It As a Designer There are no shortage of success stories in British design. From vacuum cleaners to haute couture, the common thread in all of these stories is a determination to make it big and a big dollop of self-belief. So how can today’s British designers break into the mainstream? It’s unboudtedly easier to get started in business nowadays, since the internet has democratised and demystified the process of setting up on your own. However, competition is fierce as a result. Successful startups watch the pennies in the early days, economising on non-essentials and ploughing money into developing great products. If you fancy forging a career in design: • Familiarise yourself with inbound marketing and social media so you can do as much as possible yourself. Moz and Social Media Examiner are fantastic resources for beginners and pros.

• Connect with other designers online and offline; use sites like Meetups to organise get-togethers and networking events so you can bounce ideas off others. • Instead of creating a website, consider using a design marketplace for faster results and more traffic. Doozey is a great marketplace for British designers; everyone has to be pre-approved so buyers enjoy a very high standard of goods. Perhaps the main ticket to design success is the desire to express themselves via any available outlet, regardless of eventual profits or fame. If you put your best foot forward, create quality work and believe in your own creativity, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be the next big thing in British design.

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The Trippy ’60s, Courtesy of a Master

Art

‘Mad Men’ Enlists the Graphics Guru Milton Glaser

By Randy Kennedy

ing where, three years later, he also helped found New York magazine with Clay Felker. The transom glass above the front door still bears the words “Art is Work,” and Mr. Glaser continues to live by the axiom. In recent years, the firm has been responsible for widely seen work, like the logo for the Brooklyn Brewery, covers for The Nation magazine and the logo and posters for Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” When Mr. Weiner and the “Mad Men” promotional team began thinking last year about their hopes for an ad aesthetic as the show approached its last two years, someone took one of Mr. Glaser’s best-known images, a 1966 Bob Dylan poster inspired by a Duchamp silhouette self-portrait, and cut out the psychedelic flowing hair with which Mr. Glaser had crowned Mr. Dylan. The hair was then pasted upside down, like a Technicolor eruption, and sent to Mr. Glaser as an inspiration. “I was in love with the idea that we could, in a way, rope him into the narrative of the show,” Mr. Weiner said. As often happens with “Mad Men” clients, Mr. Weiner ended up communicating with Mr. Glaser only through intermediaries, and he was meeting him for the first time that morning. Mr. Glaser said that situation suited him just fine.

The graphic designer Milton Glaser, left, in his Manhattan office with Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men,” for which Mr. Glaser has designed ads that will start appeared for the premiere of the newest season

“I don’t like to talk to anybody because I always want to have my way in everything,” he said. To which Mr. Weiner responded: “And I want to talk to everybody because I want my way.” But he added, “Basically, once we decided that it was going to be Milton, I just deferred to him.” Mr. Weiner said he made it known in broadly general terms that he had in mind only something “a little furry” and “kind of Luddite, I guess” and “as strange as it might sound, something with flowers.” Mr. Glaser said his concern was trying to make work that suggested a late-1960s feel without pillaging his own late-1960s feel. “I haven’t been working this way for 30 years or so,” he said. “My anxiety was that people would think, wait a minute, I’m still doing this sort of thing.” The poster and ads he came up with read like a sly reappropriation of In the world of “Mad Men,” whose seventh season begins on April 13 on AMC, one of the central dramatic devices is the client meeting, the scene where the advertising gurus and the people who pay them gather in their glassed-office agora to wrestle over the nature of commerce, persuasion, art and desire. On a recent morning in a townhouse office on East 32nd Street in Manhattan, reality was treading closely, and somewhat strangely, in fiction’s footsteps. The client sitting in the conference room, waiting for his real-life ad man, was the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner. And the ad man was not just another bright, creative type from the art department. It was Milton Glaser, who — probably more than any graphic designer of his generation — forged the sophisticated, exuberant advertising look of the late 1960s, the time “Mad Men” is now traversing, and whose work to publicize the show’s new season will begin appearing next week on buses and billboards around the country. “I can’t believe this is the first time we’re meeting, after all your work,” said Mr. Weiner, shaking Mr. Glaser’s hand. “Hi. I guess I’m the client.” “No higher calling,” said Mr. Glaser, smiling as he took off his coat and hat and welcomed his guest. Over the years of producing and writing the show,

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Mr. Weiner has become something of a student of graphic design and commercial illustration. And he said he had long dreamed of Mr. Glaser’s having a hand in the show’s ads — not only because of his renown as the creator of the ubiquitous I Heart NY logo and other images, but also because he embodied the ethos of the era, as the clean-lined, cleanconscience advertising of the 1950s and early 1960s fractured, along with the culture, into something more chaotic, self-doubting and interesting. “I grew up with a poster by Milton in my house, which my parents bought at MoMA,” said Mr. Weiner, 48, describing a 1966 promotion for WOR-FM radio, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, showing five Beatles-esque performers rendered in a wildly colorful style that evoked both Art Deco and hard-edge painting. Indeed, Mr. Glaser, 84, with his imposing bald pate, goatee and wry professorial air, could easily be a character on the show, a seen-it-all Zen master from the creative department. “I could have walked in the door of that firm,” he said, of the fictional Sterling Cooper & Partners. “I knew those people.” Mr. Glaser still runs his small firm out of the Beaux-Arts townhouse he bought in 1965, the build-

his past, a shaggy explosion of color, flowers and Art Nouveau curves on top of which is the by now familiar back-of-the-head silhouette of Don Draper with his arm extended over a chair and a cigarette in his hand. What first reads as abstraction resolves into a profile of a woman’s face, the spire of the Chrysler Building and a glass into which wine is being poured. “There is a dreamlike quality to it, and believe it or not, it is related to the show, and not because it’s psychedelic,” said Mr. Weiner, dressed appropriately for the period, with a buttoned-up suit vest but also a bright pink patterned tie. “That’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is the material and the immaterial world, and that’s what I loved.” Did the imagery hold any clues to the season, beyond Don Draper’s affection for women and drink? Mr. Weiner, known for being unforthcoming with plot details, said, “This is related to the late ’60s, which is all I will say about it.” He added, “It maintains the idea that this is somehow going on in Don Draper’s mind, which is what the story is always about — and what the back of his head is about, on some level.” Mr. Glaser, who works at a battered, easel-like desk with no computer and a profusion of Tibetan and other Eastern art pinned up on the wall above it, drew the imagery for the ads by hand, something he doesn’t get to do nearly as much as he used to. “It really turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” he said. This was partly because it allowed him to think again about the deeply unsettled time he helped define, when New York was sliding toward near-insolvency, the country was mired in war, disillusionment was profound, and yet there was still a field called advertising whose job was to sell dreams and create desire. Occasionally, he said, it had — and still has — the power to transcend commerce and speak to the human condition. “The search for that thread, the experience that we all feel rooted in, is what we do — that’s the best thing we can do,” Mr. Glaser said, adding with a shrug and a smile, “And if you can’t live with contradiction, get out of town, right?”

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The Gentleman’s Guide to the Calling Card

Art year and could leave a person a bit anxious about what was currently in fashion.

congratulations.

19th Century Calling Card Etiquette

If you couldn’t attend the reception you would send a card and then wait until the couple announced the place of their new residence to send another or make a visit. But in the meantime you were expected to call upon the parents or relatives who had given the reception. When a man’s wedding only included his family and closest friends, he would send his bachelor’s card, enclosed in an envelope to those of his acquaintances with whom he wished to remain friends. Those who received this card were expected to call on the couple within 10 days of them taking possession of their new home. After a wedding, the friends of the bride and groom were expected to send their calling cards to the new couple. In this way, the couple would have all of their friends’ contact information on file and would be able to stay in touch with them.

The giving and receiving of calling cards developed a very elaborate set of rituals and rules that every gentleman tried to master. While one’s modern sensibilities might find these rigid formalities laughable, I’ve got to say there’s a certain appeal to it. Far more dignified than poking someone on Facebook, wouldn’t you say?. Just in case you step through a time warp and land in the 19th century, here’s your calling card etiquette survival guide. • On a first visit to a household, a gentleman gave one card to each lady of the house. • A married man had a medium sized card, while an unmarried man had a smaller card. Men’s cards were always smaller than women’s.

By Brett & Kate McKay To the unrefined or unbred, the visiting card is but a trifling and insignificant bit of paper; but to the cultured disciple of social law, it conveys a subtle and unmistakable intelligence. Its texture, style of engraving, and even the hour of leaving it combine to place the stranger, whose name it bears, in a pleasant or a disagreeable attitude even before his manners, conversation, and face have been able to explain his social position. In the 19th and early 20th century, social interaction was a richly cultivated, well-mannered affair. The tool that facilitated these interactions was the calling card. Calling cards streamlined introductions and helped remind people of new acquaintances and needed visits. The calling card also served as a way to brand your social identity. The way your card looked and felt or the way you handed it to someone communicated your standing and relationship with the receiver. While the calling card had gone the way of top hats and knickers, they’re starting to make a comeback. What follows is a brief history of the calling card and how men today can resurrect this tradition to create some stylish panache in their social interactions. The History of Calling Cards During the 1800’s and early 1900’s the practice of “calling” upon or visiting one’s relatives, friends, and acquaintances was a middle and upper class social ritual governed by countless rules and traditions. Central to visiting etiquette was the use of the calling card. Every gentleman kept a ready supply of calling cards with him to distribute upon his visits. When calling upon a friend, a gentleman gave his card to the servant answering the door. The servant would be holding a silver tray and the card would be placed upon it. If the person the gentleman was calling upon was home, the servant would take the card to them and they would come meet the gentleman. If the person being called upon was not home, the servant would leave the card for when they returned.

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Generally upon a gentleman’s initial visit to a home, he would simply leave a card and then depart. If the new acquaintance wished to formally visit with him, he or she would send a card in return. If no card was sent, or the return card was sent in an envelope, this signaled that the new acquaintance did not wish for a personal visit to occur. This signal (the card in an envelope) could indeed be sent after any visit in which the visited party no longer wished to be called upon by this particular person. It was basically the well-mannered brush off. A calling card was also used when a gentleman was desirous to see someone at a hotel or parlor. He would send up his card while he waited in the reception area or office for his acquaintance or business associate to come and greet him. A man’s calling card was simple and plain in design. About the size of a playing card (they were toted about in a carrying case tucked in one’s breast pocket), they bore a man’s name, and later on, his address as well. The name was written in the center, sometimes with a middle initial and sometimes not. A young man did not preface his name with “Mr.” A military officer included his rank and branch of service. A physician could include his professional title, as in “Dr. Robert Smith,” or “Robert Smith M.D.” But honorary titles such as Prof., Hon., and Esq. were not acceptable. The card sometimes also included the name of the gentleman’s club or fraternal organization a man belonged to. A man might have a set of calling cards that included his address and a set that left that space blank. This latter type of card would be larger and engraved with fancier writing. The blank space would be used for written notes inviting a friend to dinner or the theater or some other social event. An engraved card was considered to have the most distinguished style, followed by a handsomely handwritten one, and if these could not be obtained, a nicely printed card would do. The precise rules governing card giving and the style of the card, from the type of font to whether to include your middle initial or not, changed each

• When calling upon the lady of the house, if she was not home, but her daughter was, the gentleman sent in his card and departed, as it was not usual for a young lady to receive calls from a gentleman unless they were very intimate friends. Special significance was given to the turning down of the card’s corners: • A visit in person (as opposed to being sent by a servant): the right hand upper corner • A congratulatory visit: the left hand upper corner • A condolence visit: the left hand lower corner • Taking leave (if you were going on a long trip): right hand lower corner

For weddings

Cards of Condolence When someone passed away, acquaintances would send a card of condolence, which as mentioned, was indicated by folding down the left hand lower corner of your usual card. This card was delivered in person and the visitor would inquire after the health of the family before departing. When the bereaved once more felt up to receiving visitors, they would send cards to the friends and loved one who had left theirs, indicating their readiness to again visit with company. Resurrecting the Calling Card in the Modern Age When the household servants moved out, and Alex Bell’s new fangled talking machine moved in, the practice and etiquette surrounding the sending and receiving of calling cards suffered a slow death. The only place where calling cards survived was in the U.S. Armed Forces. Officers still carry on the tradition today. But quite happily for the modern day gentleman, they are now making a comeback in civilian life as well. While technology has opened up a legion of ways to communicate these days, something within us still craves the transfer of something tangible, something more civilized and refined. Enter the calling card.

• If there were two of more ladies in the household, the gentleman turned down a corner of the card to indicate that the call was designed for the whole family. Initialing a calling card Gentleman would also inscribe initials upon the card to denote the reason for his visit. The initials stood for the following French words: • p. f. – congratulations (pour féliciter) • p. r. – expressing one’s thanks (pour remercier) • p. c. – mourning expression (pour condoléance) • p. f. N. A. – Happy New Year (pour feliciter Nouvel An) • p. p. c. – meaning to take leave (pour prendre congé) • p. p. – if you want to be introduced to anybody, send your visiting card (pour présenter) Card etiquette regarding certain occasions For congratulations Congratulatory cards were best given in person, but it was acceptable to send a card in lieu of an actual visit. One month after the birth of a child, acquaintances were to call to offer their

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if your calling card comes with an envelope, you can use them as gift cards.

What to include on the card To call upon a friend in the Victorian age, there was only one option-drop by their house. In our modern society, technology has provided a myriad of ways for a new acquaintance to contact you, and your card should reflect this. In addition to your name and phone number, consider including some (but certainly not all-you don’t want it to be cluttered) of the following pieces of information:

• The classroom. It’s often hard to make the leap from being “in-class” friends to “outside of class” friends. Give someone you enjoy chatting with in class your calling card. They’ll probably start posting on your Facebook page and your friendship will take off from there. Or use the card to set up a study group. • Dating. When trying to meet a lady, it’s nerve racking to ask for her number, and if you foist yours upon her, she may not call you. Giving a potential lady friend your calling card is a great third option. First of all, it’s non-threatening. She may be too shy to call you outright. She may rather start off with a casual email. And she may not be sure about what she thinks of you. Giving her your calling card lets her pe­ ruse your blog or Facebook page first. Second, giving her your calling card gives you a chance to give a two minute blurb about the history of the tradition. You’ll immediately be set apart in her mind from the usual cads she meets and she’ll think you a true gentleman. Finally, when she takes home your calling card, it’s something tangible that will remind her of you and make it more likely that she’ll reach out and contact you.

• Blog or website address • Twitter username • Facebook or Myspace name (if it’s different than the one on the card) • Email address • Instant message name If you decide to go for a very traditional man’s design with only perhaps your name on the front, you can then tailor the information you wish to give to each individual you meet by simply writing on the back and making the desired additions. Calling Card Design Ideas

Crane & Co. (Nice, quality cards, priced between the low and high end) The Stationery Studio. (Big selection, many are designed for women but there are many for men too, decently priced) American Stationery (Only one design to choose from, but inexpensive) Dempsey and Carroll (For the traditional gentleman with exquisite taste. Dempsey and Carroll have been in the biz since 1878. Very high quality. Very expensive. Custom made to your specifications.) Piccolo Press (For our friends across the pond. Piccolo press still prints and engraves their cards the old fashioned way.) For the frugal gentleman, or the man who doesn’t mind sacrificing quality for variety, you may wish to consider simply buying a box of business cards from Office Depot, downloading a business card template, and then printing them at home. They’ll be flimsy of course, but you can forever tinker with the font and design, and print new ones off that will especially suit a particular occasion.

Where to Find a Calling Card Here are a few sites that offer calling cards that will appeal to the modern gentleman. Most will send you a sample before you buy, so you won’t be stuck with something you don’t like.

How to Use the Card A calling card can come in handy in any social situation in which you want to exchange information with someone. Remember, you may use the blank back of the cards to write notes and invite someone to meet up with you again. For example, you might write, “Join me for coffee this Saturday, 3:00pm. Starbucks on 51rst and Harvard.” Or use the back to invite someone over for dinner and write down your address for them. Here are some more situations where a calling card would particularly come in handy: • Class reunions. You’re going to run into a ton of people with which you want to exchange informa­ tion. Instead of constantly busting out the pen and paper, just hand them your card. • Networking between jobs. You’re not currently employed, so you don’t have a business card. Or if you do, it has your old employer’s info on it. While you’re looking for work, have a calling card ready to present to potential contacts and leads. • Parties. If you’re planning an informal party or get together, write down your address and the time of the party on the back. When you run into people you’d like to see there, give them one of your cards and invite them over. Sometimes calling cards also come with small envelopes, sized to fit your card. You can therefore always use your calling cards as traditional invitations sent through the mail. Also,

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Health Try this: Try a lavender facial before bed. (Seriously guys, do this.) Fill a bowl with 2 cups of boiling water and add 10 drops of lavender essential oil. Place your head over the bowl with a towel over it to keep the steam in, and inhale for 1 minute.

7 Smells That Will Improve Your Day Get a whiff of these scents to focus better, sleep more, and stress less

Citrus smells can help reduce stress. Brazilian scientists found that people who sniffed sweet orange essential oil before a stressful test reported lower anxiety levels. Try this: Peel a fresh orange or grapefruit at your work desk and keep the peels around for the rest of the day. Or try using a citrus scrub in the shower, like this natural one with essential mandarin orange and lemon oils byEvery Man Jack. Cleaning Supplies

By Emily Mitchell

Smell is a powerful sense—a sniff can transport you to a place of pleasure or absolute disgust. “Personal associations and experiences makes smell objective,” says Sally Augustin, Ph.D, an environmental psychologist. A whiff of perfume your ex wore probably brings up bad memories, while the smell of apple pie reminds you of your grandma’s house on Thanksgiving. But certain smells have been proven to enhance your health no matter who you are. And the good news? With these seven scents, you don’t have to make your place smell like a Bath & Body Works to attain the benefits.

response speed. It also does wonders for your workout: A 2013 study in theJournal of International Society of Sports Nutrition found that when participants drank peppermint-infused water for 10 days, it significantly reduced their perceived physical workload during a treadmill stress test. Peppermint was also found to improve pain threshold.

Jasmine

Peppermint

Rosemary

Lavender

Peppermint has been proven to enhance your cognitive memory, according to the Sense of Smell Institute. When it was administered either through the mouth or nose, the smell of peppermint improved participants’ scores on tasks related to recognition, working memory, and visual-motor

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Lemon/Orange/Grapefruit

Snooze like a baby tonight by incorporating jasmine into your sleep routine. A 2010 study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that when jasmine was administered into the air, respondents had greater sleep efficiency—deeper shuteye and less tossing and turning. Upon waking up, those who slept breathing in jasmine reported Try this: If you hate the taste of peplower levels of anxiety and greater alertpermint, try putting drops of essential peppermint oilon your wrist before your ness in afternoon hours. workout. Or if you’re cool with it, opt Try this: Sip on a cup of jasmine tea for popping in a piece of peppermint while you’re getting ready for bed. Or gum pre-sweat session and let the taste burn a jasmine candle before hitting the and smell boost your gym routine. hay. This herb has been found to improve concentration, speed, and accuracy on mental tasks. It also enhances memory quality, according to 2013 research from Northumbria University.

These scents are far from natural, but as a culture, we have positive associations with them. A 2009 study from Brigham Young University found that clean smells promoted moral, ethical, and charitable behavior. When participants were placed in a room spritzed with Windex, they were significantly more interested in volunteering time and donating money. Researchers concluded that morality and cleanliness go hand-in-hand, and cleanliness shapes our impressions of people and organizations.

Cinnamon A 2009 study found that cinnamon filtered through the air improved people’s increased ratings of alertness, and decreased frustration during a driving simulation. Cinnamon compounds may also help protect against Alzheimer’s, according to a 2013 study in theJournal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Researchers found that the compounds in cinnamon—cinnamaldehyde and epicatechin—help stop build up of tau proteins in the brain, which lead to degenerative memory. Try this: Use a cinnamon scented air freshener to keep you alert in your car. Ingesting cinnamon can also aid with your blood sugar. Try adding it to oatmeal, shake some on to a smoothie, or add a dash to your coffee. Are there any scents you think we missed? Write us a letter explaining what your favorite smells are and why and you may make it into our next issue!

Try this: When was the last time you actually gave your place a scrub down? Here’s how to do it.

Left Top: Peppermint RightTop: Rosemar Bottom Left: Jasmine Bottom Right: Lavender

Similar to jasmine, lavender is best for its relaxation benefits. A 2005 Wesleyan University study found that people who sniffed lavender before bed increased their amount of deep sleep. Try this: Add rosemary to your next Another study found that those who dish and enjoy the aroma as it cooks. smelled the scent fell asleep faster and Try theseRosemary Bar Nuts as a snack. woke up less during the night.

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Health

Y

our diet greatly impacts the man you are or the man you want to become. But watching what you eat doesn’t have to mean counting calories or limiting yourself to salads when you dine out. What it does mean is cutting out most of the crap, and eating foods that will give you more energy, keep you healthy, and help you meet your fitness goals. Here are eight of the most powerful foods you should be trying to eat more of every week. Eggs

Dieting Like A Gentleman A manly way to keep yourself looking good and feeling great and eating healthier

By Robert Rainford

Eggs give you the highest quality protein to help make sure you’re building muscle after your workouts. In fact, egg protein is the highest quality protein available, and commercial protein powders are generally rated by how well they measure up to natural egg protein.

“Mediterranean Diet.” One of the foundations of that diet is olive oil. Not only is olive oil rich in heart healthy fats, it may also have anti-inflammatory properties - which means that you could improve post workout recovery by mixing a little olive oil in with your protein shake.

Quinoa

Almonds

Quinoa was virtually unknown in North America just a decade ago, even though it had been cultivated as a food crop in South America for thousands of years. Quinoa is unique in that it’s a plant based complete protein, so adding it to your diet can help you build muscle.

As with olive oil, almonds prove that not all high fat foods should be avoided. The fats in almonds are beneficial to your body, and almonds are also high in vitamin D, protein, and fiber. Avocados

Olive Oil It seems like hardly a month goes by without yet another study touting the benefits of the

Here’s yet another high fat food that you may have shied away from in the past. but the truth is that the fats and oils in avocados may actually help lower blood cholesterol levels. Avocados are also high in potassium (much higher than bananas), and are an exceptional source of B vitamins.

Having friends join in on the diet makes for an easier trasnition into a healthier lifestyle.

“watching what you eat doesn’t have to mean counting calories or limiting yourself to salads when you dine out.” Blueberries

Greek Yogurt

If you’re trying to add more antioxidants to your diet by popping a daily multivitamin, consider eating blueberries instead. Blueberries are one of the best sources for these antioxidants, and you can eat them as part of any meal, or add a handful to your post-workout smoothie.

Of course, keeping your body in top shape is more than just building muscle. If you’ve ever had digestion problems and you know how important it is to have a “healthy gut.” While the research on this topic is still relatively young, it’s generally agreed that foods rich in probiotic bacteria – such as Greek yogurt – can provide a serious boost to your overall health.

Salmon Our diets have gotten seriously out of balance when it comes to our consumption of Omega fatty acids. Processed foods are generally high in Omega-6 fats, but extremely low in Omega-3 fats. You may already know that fish oil can be a great way to boost your Omega-3 intake. But why supplement with fish oil capsules when you could eat a freshly cooked piece of salmon instead? In addition to being high in healthy fats, salmon is a great source of protein to help you build muscle.

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Don’t worry; you don’t need to eat each of these foods every single day. Replace some of the junk you may still be eating with these foods, and you’ll likely notice a positive difference in your health. For a little extra help, have friends and family try to join in on the diet as well, that way you can motivate each other to live a healthier lifestyle and take the next step to becoming a gentlman.

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Health

Should You Be Eating More Salt? New research questions the CDC's recommendations for daily intake

By Paige Fowler You might have heard that slashing salt in your diet is essential for lowering your blood pressure and improving heart health. After all, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends limiting daily sodium intake to 2,300 milligrams (mg) per day if you're under the age of 50, and 1,500 mg per day if you're over 50. But now, a new finding suggests that the CDC's recommendations may be too low. In an analysis of 25 different studies, University of Copenhagen Hospital researchers found that people whose sodium consumption was closer to the CDC’s guidelines actually had a higher risk of death than those whose intake more closely matched what the average American consumes each day: between 2,645 to 4,945 mg of sodium. (People who downed more than that had a higher risk of mortality, too.)

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What gives? “In 2014, we’re looking at hypertension a little differently than we did in 2004,” says Aryan Aiyer, M.D., a cardiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Heart and Vascular Institute. “The link between sodium and high blood pressure was first investigated many years ago and the recommendations were more an extension of logical thinking—the lower the better—than actual evidence.” Today, research suggests that lower sodium and lower blood pressure may not necessarily be better. “With too little sodium, the body doesn’t retain as much fluid, which puts you at risk for dehydration and low blood pressure,” Dr. Aiyer says. Hypotension can cause issues such as light-headedness, dizziness, loss of consciousness, and more. In fact, researchers are reevaluating blood pressure control entirely. Last year the Joint National Committee revised its guidelines and now recommends treating certain patients at a higher blood

pressure level than it used to suggest starting medications. So does this mean Fiery Doritos Locos Taco Supreme should be back on your daily menu? Keep dreaming. “Salt is so ubiquitous in foods that if you’re a healthy, normal-weight guy who exercises regularly, you certainly don’t have to add it to your diet," Dr. Aiyer says. "But you probably don’t need to worry about how much you’re getting either." However, if you’re older, obese, have high or borderline-high blood pressure and a family history of hypertension or heart disease, then cutting back on your sodium intake can still make a difference, says Dr. Aiyer. Talk to your doctor and get his or her recommendations.


Health

The DIY Way to Lessen Allergy Symptoms Stop your allergy flare-ups this spring

By Emily Mitchell

It’s not just the insane amount of pollen swirling in the air that’s making your allergies awful—it’s also your stress. People with persistent stress experienced more allergy flare-ups, reports a new study from The Ohio State University. Researchers analyzed 179 people for 12 weeks and found that 39 percent of the participants had more than one allergy flare, and this group had higher stress than those without terrible allergy symptoms. For those who suffered worse, 64 percent had more than four flares over two, 14-day periods.

the air.

So is a busy day at work or rough times at home the reason you’re sniffling harder this spring? “Stress doesn’t cause allergies, but it can cause more symptoms,” says study author William Malarkey, MD. Worsened and more frequent sneezing, runny nose, and watery eyes are all symptoms of added stress that allergy sufferers in the study noticed. If you’re suffering right now, you can try these few solutions:

Hop in a hot shower.

Run outside between 2 to 3 p.m. Because pollen is on vacation in the afternoon, says Dr. Tcheurekdjian. “Pollen is released from grass in the morning, and as the day heats up, it rises high enough into the air where you won’t have any contact with it,” he says. “But come evening, it starts to settle again.” After your run, make sure to change clothing as soon as you can. You’ll be sorry later if you leave pollen lingering on your clothes or transfer it to your furniture. Make the most of rainy days Right after it rains, pollen is cleared from the air, so it’s another good time to be outside, Dr. Tcheurekdjian says. Turn on the A.C. A window air conditioning unit works like an air filter, decreasing the amount of pollen indoors, says Dr. Tcheurekdjian. Crank it up if you’re working out indoors or for a few minutes every day to clear

Wash your sheets every week at 140 degrees Fahrenheit If dust mites have you sneezing and sniffling, know their weakness: heat. Washing your bed sheets in hot water will kill them. Humid, moist air will reach your sinuses and slowly clear your nose, offering relief, says William Schaffner, M.D., infectious disease specialist and chair of the department of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University. Cut down on dairy for a few days. It’s been suggested that up to 70 percent of people can’t tolerate dairy because they’re missing the enzyme lactase, says Steven Lamm, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at New York University and the author of No Guts, No Glory. And when you have a hard time with dairy, your immune system can go into overdrive, responding worse to relatively innocuous things like pollen. The study also found that it was not how stressed participants were, but their perceptions of stressful events. “Stress is ubiquitous. It comes down to how resilient you are, ” says Malarkey. He defines resilience as the ability to bounce back from adversity, to stay positive, and to learn from hardship. Malarkey emphasizes practices like daily meditation and maintaining healthy relationships as key ways to reduce stress.

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Fashion Trends For The Urban Gentleman

Fashion pants (if you love to keep warm) and leather satchels (for the few who want to keep their possessions safe). There are different ways to incorporate leather into the urban gentleman wardrobe but make sure it works perfectly for you. • Keep Warm in A Wool Sweater Wool sweaters are perfect for a great day in the office or simply a day outdoors. Whether you are looking for a casual or an official look, wool sweaters are definitely the best choice. You can either choose wool sweaters parted at the middle or any other design that fits your look! They can match perfectly with a t-shirt underneath or a shirt. For a classy look (especially for sweaters with a wide neck) add a bow tie! This is the best definition so far of the urban gentleman look.

A look into how to dress like a modern age gentleman

By Pete Burrows

• Turn Up The Volume With Bright Colored Pants Although bright colored pants tend to bring out a more

Who is the urban gentleman? An urban gentleman is a term commonly used to refer to the modern fashion trends applicable to the men of this day and age. To describe the urban gentleman in a slang setting, most people refer to a man with ‘swagger’. As is the trend, most gentleman today are deviating from the complete official or casual look to a simple mix of both official and casual. Today’s gentlemen still retain the same mannerisms (or improved) as those of vintage era but the fashion trends are slowly changing to suit their day to day needs. What are the urban gentlemen trendsetters in fash­ ion? For fashion advice, most gentlemen today look up to the celebrities for advice. For the best choice of urban gentleman wear, you should consider aspects such as individuality, coordination, fitting, color and trendiness. Well, here are the latest additions to the urban gentlemen wardrobe that you should definitely consider.

vintage look, they are slowly turning out to be an asset for the urban gentleman. As long as you match them perfectly with either a blazer, a bowtie, a shirt, a sweater or anything else outstanding in your wardrobe, you can pull off this great look in a matter of minutes! As for the shoes, you could always try official shoes or rubbers and you will never go wrong! In most cases, bright colors tend to be left for spring or summer, but these pants can work all year round! There is nothing more urban gentleman like the brightly colored pants, that’s why you should be the first to try them out. • Waist Coats- For When Sexy Is Not Good Enough Turn heads around wherever you go with a perfect waist coast. If

• Try Out A Bomber Jacket Perfect for a cold day or night out, the bomber jacket is one among the many trending urban gentleman wear today. It fits perfectly with a shirt for a great official look and also matches with a t-shirt for a casual look. If you suspect it might be chilly outside, try out a bomber jacket and immediately transform to a complete urban gentleman. Remember, the key is to MATCH, MATCH and MATCH! Therefore when shopping for a bomber jacket choose a color that coordinates perfectly with the rest of your wardrobe. Whether dark colors such as black or grey or something bright, make sure you don’t color clash.

possible, go to a tailor and get fitted perfectly to your measurements. Waist coats are in season are definitely here to stay. So there is no reason why you shouldn’t have one in your wardrobe. It’s the perfect look for an urban gentleman, a bridge between the casual outfits and the official. Waist coats can be matched with a shirt or t-shirt underneath, jeans or official trousers, a bow tie or normal tie. Choose whatever suits you best for the upbeat urban gentleman.

• Leather is coming back to town Although a few gentlemen out there may have forgotten about leather, this is one style that never seems to go out of fashion. Perfect for the urban gentleman who can try out a leather jacket (especially for bikers or during cold weather), leather

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Fashion But while their skills conform to the long established standards, they succeed to introduce many innovations to their yarn making process. In recent years these companies have responded to the growing appetite for luxury and high end apparel. Some of these companies like Floreal from Mauritius, are operating an international business. They have become innovators of special finishes and techniques. Floral has built a worldwide reputation for producing garments that can be machine washed and tumble-dried, and they continually invest in developments of new yarns.

Merino Wool – The Perfect Fabric for Your Suit

Some of the finest wool weavers come from Great Britain. One of those is Abraham Moon & Sons from Yorkshire. They have gained reputation for excellence across a wide range of interrelated activities, like dyeing, blending, carding, spinning, weaving and finishing that all takes place in their 175 year old mill in the outskirts of Guiseley. Moon produces a wide range of woven wool fabrics using the unique color blending system, creating richly colored fabrics. They also have their own well, drawing the water of outstanding quality which is important resource for achieving rich colors and fabric softness.

The fabric that was made just for the gentleman in you

By Paul Jameson

M

erino wool is one of the best types of wool. Because of its natural origins it has great characteristics and it is the best choice of fabric for your suits. Anyone interested in fine suits knows that Merino wool comes from the sheep with the same name. The majority of that wool comes from Australia and South Africa. This kind of wool ends up in the collections of great designers and bespoke tailors all around the world. Merino wool characteristics Praised by fashion houses and tailors, Merino wool, with fibers of less than 24 microns in diameter is supremely soft and durable and is one of the softest types of wool available. Because of its softness and natural origin it is the perfect choice for people with sensitive skin. Merino wool is an excellent body temperature regulator. The wool provides warmth without overheating the person wearing it. It draws moisture away from the skin, a process is known as wicking. Merino wool fabrics are moisture repellent allowing the wearer to avoid the feeling of wetness. This type of wool stretches but it keeps its shape, making it ideal during activities and travel. Merino

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wool has a large amount of stretch built into it so it easily gets back into shape even if it gets wet. It is also odor resistant, because of its structure and moisture absorption, it reduces the tendency to build-up odor. The wool mills What happens in between the sheep and the tailor? How it is transformed into the beautiful cloths and fabrics which are then cut and sewn into the finest suits? All of this happens by those that are unfamiliar to us. The weavers, knitters and garment makers. Like any other craft many of their secrets are closely protected, but their end products fall into two categories. Knitted fabrics, whose fibers are more loosely connected, and woven cloths, whose fibers have been intermeshed more tightly and uniformly for a smoother, denser finish. Depending on which is required, the raw fleece must first be processed into an appropriate yarn. This process is made by weaving companies. Their craftsmanship, generally handed down through the generations is universally acclaimed and yarns they produce are always in demand.

Down the road from Moon is Stanley Mills in Bradford. Home of luxury fabrics which are synonym for quality for more than 135 years. Stanley Mills presides over three brands steeped in luxury and heritage; John Foster, Charles Clayton and William Halstead. These brands represent the weavers who produce the finest and smoothest merino worsteds on whom the tailors of Savile Row and their bespoke equivalents around the world build their reputation. Merino wool suits Because of its natural characteristics merino wool is the best choice for suits of active people. It is great for travel since it will wrinkle just a bit but it will regain its

shape by itself after you hang it over night. Because of this, suit made out of merino wool has a nice feel and drape. Besides, merino wool is easy to care since its natural fibers have a protective layer that prevents stains, due to being less prone to static buildup. Merino wool suits are a perfect choice for suits that you can wear all year long. Today merino wool is produced in a ways that was not possible hundred years ago and countries like Australia and South Africa produce fine merino wool in abundance there is no reason why you should not consider merino wool as a fabric of your choice for your suits.

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Fashion

How to: Match a Tie with a Dress Shirt and Suit

pastel and monochromatic color combinations. Men with dark hair and light skin are high contrast and will look best selecting color combinations which have clearly defined lines between them. If you have dark hair and medium to dark colored skin, you can pull off both low and high contrast tie and shirt/suit combinations. Your difficulty in this case will be separating acceptable suit/shirt/tie combinations from great looking suit/shirt/tie combinations. It’s a small distinction, and one best made by taking the clothing in your wardrobe and experimenting with various shades. What about how the colors within a necktie work with one another? Multicolored neckties fall into two categories–ties whose colors complement one another and ties whose colors do not, because the tie designer/manufacturer did not create the tie with a discerning eye. The colors on the computer screen are not always true to real life, so I purposely choose to buy my ties through businesses whose judgment I trust. I can rest assured that 99% of the time my ties’ color combinations will be solid and complementary, even if the colors aren’t quite the same as what I saw online. Cheap ties and novelty neckwear often violate basic color combination rules and should be avoided.

A simplified guide on the fundamentals of dressing in style By Antonio Belcher

When it comes to dressing for more upscale events, women have far more style decisions to make than men; we know we’ll be donning some version of a dress shirt and suit. But when it comes to adding the finishing touch–the tie–some men feel confused as to how to choose a tie that will complement the other elements in their ensemble. The biggest mistake I see men make when trying to match their neckwear to their clothing is that they have bought the wrong tie for the clothing in their wardrobe. Like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, they will either frantically try to match garments together at the last moment or not care at all and reinforce the stereotype that men can’t dress themselves. In order to easily match your ties with your shirts and suits, you need to own neckwear that complements the more expensive clothing already in your closet. Match your tie to your clothing, not your clothing to your tie. The point is don’t buy a tie just because it looks great–buy neckwear that is of the right proportion for your body and is of a color and pattern that works well with your shirts and suits. You want your ties to match your clothing–not look good by themselves. Coordinating your tie, dress shirt, and suit isn’t rocket science. All it requires is a basic understanding of proportion, pattern, and color which can be used to build an interchangeable wardrobe. Start with easy to match shirts and suits–then add a range of flexible neckties that accent and enhance the outfits you put together. Do this and you’ll find yourself wanting to wear a necktie more often as it adds color to your complexion and makes you look better overall. Principles of Matching The Necktie Necktie Proportion Necktie proportion relates to the necktie’s width and length in

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regards to a man’s body build and clothing style. A large man with large suits and a wide front is going to look best when he balances it with a wider than average tie that is long enough to reach his belt buckle. A petite gentleman has the opposite problem and should look for smaller neckties that are not only skinnier width-wise but also shorter in length. These special size ties can be found at many online retailers For those of us who are close to average in size, proportion can become a problem when we purchase from high-end fashion designers or pick-up vintage pieces from thrift shops. Average-sized men should try to wear ties ranging in width from 3 to 3.75 inches. Anything wider or thinner is best reserved for a man whose size calls for it–otherwise you are drifting into the realm of fashion, not style.

Finally, it should be noted that 8% of men are colorblind and have great difficulty matching clothing. If you fall into this category, the best advice I can give is to ensure your wardrobe is interchangeable and to consider working with a trusted clothier, friend, or image consultant who can ensure you’re not wearing color combinations that clash. Necktie Pattern Matching neckties with strong patterns is the hardest neckwear issue for most men. This difficulty is directly reflected in neckwear sales–strongly patterned ties sell infrequently when compared to solid or semisolid ties. I rarely see them worn, and even then they are almost never worn to full effect. However when worn correctly, these rarely used neckwear gems can breathe life into an otherwise dull outfit.

The key to wearing patterned neckwear is to first ensure that the tie’s own colors do not clash (see above as to how to avoid this) and second, that the tie’s patterns do not conflict with any patterns in your shirt or suit. When combining a patterned tie with a shirt and suit ensemble, ensure the pattern is not already present in the clothing. A thin-striped shirt should not be combined with a thin-striped tie; however, that same thin-striped shirt will work well with a polka dot, solid, or even thick regimental striped tie as the patterns are not similar. The reasoning behind all this is that similar patterns placed close to each other can create distorted visual effects such as the illusion of movement. If you’re new to combining necktie patterns, the easiest way to add neckwear with complex patterns is to ensure your suit and shirt are pattern-less. If this isn’t possible, start with ties which utilize small repeating patterns such as dots, foulard, or small images (club or sport ties). Stripes are the next step, keeping in mind the rule of pairing them with shirt and suit combinations that either have no stripes or have ones that are of a different width and size than the tie’s stripes. Paisley and plaid ties are solid options as well; I don’t usually push them though as they are sometimes too eccentric for many men. Their larger patterns, however, make them even easier to match to a shirt and suit than striped ties. The Dress Shirt The dress shirt is the first garment you should ensure matches your tie; next to the jacket, it is the most important clothing accessory in determining what tie color and pattern you can wear. However, unlike the jacket which you may peel off by lunchtime–your shirt stays on all day. Without a jacket, the dress shirt is the only surface upon which the tie sits, and if there is a color clash it will be impossible to hide. So get it right! Starting off, the easiest shirts to match are solids. Whites offer a neutral base and match anything. Light blues are very close, as the

If you find yourself shopping for ties and need a quick way to measure the width, pull out a dollar bill. If the tie is close to Washington’s nose, you’re safe. If it extends out past the portrait frame or is behind his head–consider passing on the necktie. Necktie Color There is not a perfect answer to which color goes best with any given outfit. Two factors that determine the right color for a man include the message he is trying to signal and the color combination that works best with the natural colors of his complexion. For a muted but sophisticated look, consider pairing semi-solid and lightly patterned blue and green ties with cool blue colored clothing. If you’re looking to draw attention to yourself, opt for the stark contrast of a bold red colored tie on a light colored shirt. The red tie is called the “power tie” for a reason; this combination works well for presenters as it captures wandering eyes and points them right to the speaker’s face.

Here we can see this necktie is well within the range of acceptability.

As far as what colors work well with a man’s particular features, you’ll want to mimic your natural contrast levels. Men with light colored hair and fair skin have low contrast and should stick with

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few colors that would clash with them are seldom found in neckwear. Off-white and pastel colored shirts are easy to match as well, although you always want there to be a clear distinction between shirt and tie fabrics. As for striped shirts, again you’ll want to avoid matching similarly sized stripes. If there is any doubt that the shirt stripes are too close in size or width to the tie’s pattern, move on and select another tie. With check fabrics, look to match the casualness of the pattern with a tie that is more playful in tone. Club, foulard, and paisley ties all work, as do solid wool knitted ties with square ends. More advanced pattern matchers can combine various sized checks, but leave this to those with practice as the look can come off as too busy and distract attention from your face.

would advise you to pair it with a dot or foulard tie. Trying to fit in a regimental stripe or even a solid colored necktie is pushing the boundaries of looking sharp vs. looking like a clown. Sport Jackets and Blazers Similar to a suit, blazers call for more formal ties and are traditionally paired with stripe or club ties. Sport jackets, on the other hand, are often more informal, and depending on the tone of the fabric can call for a wool patterned necktie or silk foulard or paisley. Consider matching smooth silk ties with rough weave jackets, while reserving the knitted neckwear for sport jackets that need a more casual feel. In both situations, the wearer should create balance by paying attention to the aforementioned rules of matching. Other Factors to Consider When Matching a Tie • Tie Knot Style and Relation to Collar Style Closely related to proportion, tie knot style is important when you are wearing a dress shirt with a spread collar or a narrow point collar. Each of these extreme angles

Finally, you should always avoid color combinations that are either too jarring for your lack of contrast or too monotone as to washout your complexion. The Suit Dark solid colored suits, especially grey and navy blue, go well with most tie color combinations by default. They are the easiest to match as most tie makers assume their wares will be worn with one; if you have already matched the tie to the shirt, either a grey or navy suit will more often then not complement your ensemble. The exception to this is when you take dark ties with blue tints and try to wear them with dark grey or black suits. Although it can be done, blue tinted ties rarely complement these dark suits, and they should instead be reserved for navy blue, blue, or lighter colored suits where the color combination is more natural. If you’re looking to combine a dark tie with a grey or black suit, look to deep purple or a dark tinted red. If you’re looking to draw attention to yourself while wearing a dark suit, select a bold and rich colored necktie with a small repeating pattern. A solid tie is an option as well, but when it’s woven from a bright hue it can be too bright and come off as informal. Instead, choose a deeper and darker solid color tinted with black–this will still work with the dark suit while drawing the attention you seek. Light colored suits invite darker colored ties for contrast yet can be worn with pastels successfully if the man wearing them has light hair and skin with little contrast. Bright and warm hues such as yellow, red, orange, and pink should be avoided.

calls for a tie knot that fits into the space afforded by the collar. Remember that bigger tie knots require more tie, while smaller knots require less. This sounds intuitive, but problems arise when a large man with a spread collar tries to use a regular size tie when tying a full Windsor knot. His options end up being wearing a tie knot that is dwarfed by the space in his collar or having a proportional knot on a tie that is 2 inches too short. • Necktie Length Most ties targeting Americans are 53 to 58 inches long. On an average-sized man this is long enough to accommodate any tie knot and with a little practice ensure the tie ends at the belt buckle. Larger men should look for ties that are 60 plus inches in length and shorter men should consider having their necktie less than 54 inches in length. Click here to see an offering of extra long neckties. For shorter ties, visit Josh Rogers over at ShortShrifted as he has assembled a great short tie guide. • Wearing a Vest A vest can conceal 75% of a tie, which isn’t necessarily a negative. Wearing a vest may enable a conservative gentlemen the opportunity to wear a more brightly colored tie without overwhelming his outfit. A dark three-piece navy suit and white dress shirt instantly appears more lively when paired with a pink and blue paisley tie.

• Some neckties are more formal than others. For a complete run­ down of necktie and formality levels, read this great guide to neck tie formality from Hendrik Pohl at Tie-Necktie.com. • Wool & Woven Ties Non-silk ties such as wools and wovens are casual pieces of neckwear. Often solid, they do come in a wide range of weaves, fabrics, and styles. These uncommon ties also have a unique matching factor: texture. Typically you want to match rough weaves with smooth fabric jackets. • Pocket squares are the final touch Add them after the tie. Never match pocket squares exactly with your neckwear; instead, try to make it so the pocket square complements the whole outfit. Conclusion Remember that mixing color and patterns is both an art and science. Although I’ve laid out a nice set of guidelines, they are by no means unbreakable laws. Instead, use this article as a guide to help you build confidence, and then experiment on your own. You will find that occasionally a tie and shirt just go well together despite violating the “rules of style.” Now your turn – what tips on matching can you offer?

Striped suits fall under the same rule mentioned previously–do not mix clothing with the same size patterns. Thus if you’re wearing a pin-stripe suit with a thick butcher stripe shirt, I

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How to Fly Like a Gentleman

Travel

Tips to set you on your way to becoming a better traveler

Brett & Kate McKay

You stretch out your legs, take a look out the window to check the view at 31,000 feet, and then place the book you were reading on the empty seat next to you. An attractive, smiling stewardess leans over, lays down a cloth napkin and silverware, and asks which of the three available hot entrees you’d like for your meal. She quickly returns and sets down the dinnerware in front of you. As you dig into your delicious food, you can hear the sounds of music coming from the piano bar at the front of the plane… ….THUNK! With a kick to your seat from the toddler behind you, you awaken from your daydream to find yourself wedged between a large, unbathed man in a tank top and a teenager blasting music on his headphones so loud you can hear every word of the

lyrics of his favorite heavy metal band. The flight attendant hands you a plastic cup of soda, along with a tiny bag of pretzels, and quickly moves on. Air travel. It certainly isn’t the same as it was during its “golden age” several decades ago. It’s even gone downhill from how it was just 15 years ago, when flights weren’t always full, you didn’t have to pay to check a bag, and you could make a mad dash to the gate to finally confess your feelings for a lover right before she got on the plane. (Not as dramatic to confront them in the security line, is it?) Sure, the Golden Age of Air Travel had its own drawbacks. Less flights, not as safe, and, a whole lot more expensive. The drop in ticket prices since the days when Pan Am ruled the skies has been a

boon for the man of modest means who still wants to see the world (or, just his family a few states away for the holidays). On the flip side, the democratization of flight has turned it into something that has to beendured, rather than enjoyed. When you’re being herded through security and made to wait an hour and a half on the tarmac, it’s easy to feel more like a head of cattle than a traveling gentleman. But a gentleman always does what he must do, and regardless of the circumstances, makes things as pleasant and smooth as possible for those around him – friends and strangers alike. Through gestures big and small, he shows a respect for the needs of others and an awareness of how his behavior affects them. He knows his example encourages others to follow suit, and that the more individuals who choose to adopt common-sense manners, the more enjoyable life becomes for all. A small sacrifice in the present ends up benefitting not only other people, but himself as well. This was true of the gentleman when he traveled by stagecoach and by train, and just as true, if not more so today, when he hops aboard a jet. Here’s how to take to the skies like a classic gent. How to Fly Like a Gentleman “To do nothing that can either annoy or offend the sensibilities of others, sums up the principal rules for conduct under all circumstances—whether staying at home or traveling.” Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, 1922 Pre-Boarding Dress sharp. Now, there’s no need to don a three-piece suit, but do kindly leave the pajama pants and crocs at home. No matter how seemingly pedestrian it’s become, taking a trip is still a special thing. Dressing decently and with a little style can get you into that mindset and heighten your experience, as well as add a bit of the old charm back into travel for you, and for your fellow passengers as well. Putting on real pants that button will help your fellow travelers feel more like they’re getting away from it all, and less like they’re visiting a Walmart at midnight. Be civil to the ticket agents and other airline employees. Despite their proximity to those automated kiosks, ticket agents are not machines. Just as you don’t berate a waiter for a poor-tasting dish, don’t take out your understandable frustrations on the ticket and gate agents for flight delays and other snafus they had no hand in or power over. Your own disgruntlements feel supremely important, but understand they’re burdened with dealing with the disgruntlements of hundreds of other folks just like you every single day; it’s not easy. So by all means, be firm in asking them to do all they possibly can to accommodate you when things go awry, but do your best to stay calm and cool, even friendly. It will surely be a sigh of relief to the agent to deal with a rational and perhaps even smiling traveler for once. And when an agent goes above and beyond the call of duty in helping you, be sure to tell them how much you appreciate it. Get through the security check as quickly as possible. Have you ever been standing in a security line that snaked up and down, knowing your flight was going to take off in half an hour, and sweating whether you were going to get to the gate on time? Your blood pressure soars, every minute that passes is excruciating, and when you see folks at the front of the line moving very slowly and not following the clearly-marked instructions, your eyes fairly bulge out of your head.

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Sure, some people are late because of their own dumb choices, but sometimes it’s because of something out of their control, and they just really, really want to catch their flight home to their family. So next time you’re in the security line, just imagine there’s a guy behind you on the verge of an aneurism. Plus, everybody, late or not, truly appreciates moving through the chute as quickly as possible. Have your ID and ticket (or smartphone, nowadays) out and ready when you get to the first checkpoint. Then take off your shoes and remove your laptop from your bag while there are still a few people between you and the conveyer belt. When they say everything out of your pockets, they mean everything. And once it’s your turn, move quickly and efficiently to load up your stuff and walk through the scanner. Don’t clip your nails while waiting in the gate area, and then leave your pile of clippings there. Yes, dear reader, I saw this happen.

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be the guy who tries to squeeze in a few more minutes on the phone after they make that announcement, and makes the flight attendant come by to give him a nudge. Honor the unofficial code of armrest dibs. Who gets which armrest? It’s always a little awkward, isn’t it? No need to wrangle over them and throw elbows. Here’s a sensible code of conduct: Each person gets at least one armrest. In a three-seat row, the middle person gets the armrest on each side of him, while the person in the aisle seat gets the outside one, and the person in the window seat gets the one next to the window; the thinking here is that the person in the aisle seat can lean into the aisle, the person in the window seat can lean into the window, but the man in the middle is stuck. In a row with five seats, the person in the very middle seat gets the two armrests around him, while the passengers to his left each take their left armrest, and the passengers on the right each claim the one on their right. Keep your kid as calm and occupied as possible. Despite being separated on the aforementioned flight, we were fine because we had a Gus-pacification battle plan: lots of books, snacks, trinkets, and, God’s gift to traveling parents: the iPad. Cranky kids top the list of traveler pet peeves, so don’t bring a tyke along and expect him to spend his time browsing theSkyMall catalog. Sure, it’s the crying itself that’s annoying, but equally frustrating is a parent who ignores the meltdown while immersing herself in Fifty Shades of Grey. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to turn off a kid’s waterworks, but fellow passengers will be more understanding if you’re at least making an effort to walk ‘em back from the edge. If you want to win over your seatmates even more, these parents had a pretty

“To do nothing that can either annoy or offend the sensibilities of others, sums up the principal rules for conduct under all circumstances—whether staying at home or traveling.” Boarding Board the plane in an orderly fashion. Whenever boarding is announced, people tend to stampede to the door… and then creep forward in a giant line to get on the plane. Unless you’re flying Southwest, or are very concerned about finding overhead compartment space, there’s no rush. I personally don’t want to be sitting in that flying capsule for any longer than necessary, and tend to wait until the line has died down to get on. Even if you do want to board ASAP, wait until your “group” is called. Try to avoid smacking people with your bag as you make your way down the aisle. Hold your carry-on in a controlled fashion in front of you. You don’t want to knock an old lady unconscious with your Saddleback briefcase. Don’t try to avoid the fee for check-in bags by bringing a carry-on that’s too big. You know this guy – he holds up the line of people trying to get down the aisle of the plane as he struggles against

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all odds to cram a bag that’s never going to fit into the overhead compartment, and then finally has to give it to the flight attendant to check. Saving money by avoiding the checked-bag fee is great, and so is traveling light, but make sure your bag will fit before you haul it onto the plane; most ticket counters have a measuring box that will allow you to verify this before you check in. Help people put their bags into the overhead compartment. If you see someone struggling to put their bag up, offer a helping hand. Once you’ve put your belongings in the overhead compartment, sit down. Don’t stand there in the aisle rummaging through your bag to find your Jujubes. If you need something from your bag that you can’t grab easily, you should sit down, put the bag on your lap, and then return it to the overhead compartment once you’re through. Let separated couples/friends/family sit together. If a couple gets put in different

rows, and you’re a single gent who doesn’t care which seat he’s in, offer to move so they can sit together. It means a lot to folks. On our first flight with Gus, Kate and I were pretty nervous about keeping him pacified, and were ready to team up to do it. So I was really disappointed to find out the airline, contrary to our reservations, had put Kate and Gus in a separate row right behind me — the very last row on the plane. It was one of those prop planes that had two seats on one side, and one seat on the other. The guy across from Kate offered to switch, but the guy sitting next to me refused, saying he didn’t want to sit in the back row because the chairs didn’t recline. At that exact moment, somewhere in the world, a chivalrous kitten was killed. Take Off (and Landing) Return your seat to the upright posi­ tion and turn off your electronic device when the flight attendant asks. Don’t

ingenious idea: hand out goody bags of candy and earplugs to those seated around you! Listen to your movies/music at a reasonable volume. Airlines really cram people together these days. People’s heads are only a few inches apart during flight. So don’t crank up the volume on your headphones, and treat your seatmate to the sound of every single explosion in The Expendables. Initiate conversation only when welcome. It’s fine to chat with your fellow passengers a bit; it’s a little strange that we sit side-byside with people and never acknowledge each other whatsoever. But if your seatmate doesn’t seem interested in engaging with you, don’t continue to prattle on. If you end up next to an unwelcome chatterbox, follow Emily Post’s old advice to steamship passengers in the same scenario: “If you receive them with any degree of enthusiasm, your response may be translated into a willingness to talk. But if you answer in the merest monosyllables, it should be taken to mean that you prefer to be left to your own diversions.” If you really don’t want folks to talk to you, head off the possibility by slipping on some headphones; doesn’t matter if sound is being emitted or not – it’s an unofficial “do not disturb” sign. Give those behind you a heads up when you’re going to recline your seat. The person seated behind you may have drinks or a laptop on their tray table, so don’t surprise them with a rapid recline of your seat. If you can, turn around and let them know your seatback is incoming. That’s easier to do in the aisle seat, and if you find giving the heads up awkward, at least recline very slowly. Don’t get up to use the head when the flight attendants are serving food and drinks.There are plenty of good times to cram yourself into the plane’s tiny loo. During the beverage service is not one of them. Don’t create a game of chicken between you and the bev cart. Disembarking Exit in an orderly fashion. Get up row by row. Once it’s your turn, gather your things as quickly as possible and get going. If you’re seated towards the back of the plane, and worried about making a connection, instead of charging into the aisle and trying to bulldoze your way to the front, ask a flight attendant before landing if there’s an available seat near the front of the plane to which you can be moved. They’ll usually be happy to oblige. Thank the flight attendants and pilots. They just safely hurtled a metal can eight miles above the earth’s surface, without crashing into the Andes and forcing you to become a cannibal. A tip of the hat is in order! Baggage Claim Stand a few feet away from the edge of the baggage claim conveyer belt. It may help you grab your bag 2.5 seconds faster, but standing with one’s shins up against the baggage claim conveyer belt blocks the view of others who are looking for their bag. Stand back a little. No need to bunch up right where the bag comes out, either; pick a different spot, wait 40 seconds, and the bag will come right to you. Polish your monocle, sir. You’ve made it to your destination safe and sound, and got there like a gentleman.

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Travel in Style – Pull Off a Great Look during Travels Knowing is half the battle when it comes to dressing the right way when it comes time to travel

By Paul Jameson

Whether you are an avid traveler or someone who simple avoids long distances, travelling gear and style can become problematic for you. As a man, dressing up and putting your most expensive cologne to work while travelling might not make sense to you at all. However, this is no excuse for you 80s hippie look. Looking dishelved is not what a man should do, especially while he is travelling. Here we bring some of the top styling tips for you, which transform your personality in a jiffy and help you travel in style. • Always wear cool and comfortable clothes. Going for travel (especially long distances) in one of your tightest and skinniest pair of denims would make you look like a wannabe. Wear trousers instead. This would help you remain calm and comfortable without having to go down on the glamour quotient. • Prefer cotton shirts over everything. Make sure that the colors are very light. Plain shorts often don’t go along with a man who wants to travel in style. Therefore, go for checks. They look great during travels and also help you raise your style quotient. • If you wish to wear jeans, make sure it is made of very soft cotton. This would help you in being comfortable in spite of the travelling woes. You can team it all up with wrinkle-free unlined jacket in navy blue. A white shirt or a plain white t-shirt would go well along with this attire. Make sure that all your gear is in neutral colors. • Always keep a pair of good sunglasses with you. They must belong to a good brand and must also provide ample protection from sunlight in the long run. Therefore, style and functionality will come naturally to you. If you are not sure of what to buy, then a good pair of aviators will work fine for all occasions and all dresses. • If you really want to travel in style, then your best compan­ ion must be your travel bag. Unless you are an avid adventurer, you must avoid backpacks. Get trendy travel bags in neutral colors in order to get the right look for yourself. • To travel in style is not such a difficult task, especially when you have a trendy watch to depend upon. Go for good colors and better dials. This, you won’t leave any stones unturned to get the attention of the air hostess and the envy of your fellow travelers.

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Sleep Like a Kaiser – Vienna Hotel Guide

Travel

The top places to sleep in Vienna that will make you want to travel there

By Paul Jameson

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a little cheaper than in Imperial and range from 680 EUR. The hotel has 3 restaurants, 2 bars and is known as the place with the best sushi brunch.

Hotel Imperial

The third representative of the Viennese classical hotel trinity, Ana Sacher Hotel. Prices start from 380 EUR per room or 648 per suite, and you can stay next door to the deposed African dictator, the American billionaire, a British nobleman or a Japanese businessman. Since 1876 Anna Sacher attracts a colorful clientele, and is often the actor in crime novels and films, since the hotel has a special charm, and the cake, of course. Located next to the Opera, so if you’re staying there, ask a room with a view on it.

or all of you that visit Vienna for the first time, you will be surprised by the architectural beauty of this grand city. Vienna hotels are marvels on their own. Some of them are styled like Kaiserin Sissy yesterday left its premises. Some of them provide you with the most exquisite view, but which ever you choose you won’t be disappointed. Built in the 1869 as the private residence of the Duke of Wurttemberg, Imperial is today considered the most luxurious place where you can sleep in Vienna. The building is loved by everyone from Wagner, who has composed here, by the Nazis in the World War II who had a command headquarters in the hotel. During the second half of the 20th century hotel has been thoroughly renovated, what is very much visible. Night in this hotel cost between 300 for a classic room and up to 2700 EUR for royal suite. Grand Hotel Practically across the street from the Imperial lies Grand Hotel. Equally famous hotel, popular among musicians and guests of opera. From a vast lobby to the last room on the seventh floor everything is covered in crystal chandeliers, polished mirrors, and even an elevator has luxurious details. The same is in the rooms. From 380 EUR up, awaits you heated marble floors, bathroom mirror that do not fog, and often a marble phone, right next to the tub. The apartments are

Anna Sacher

Le Meridien Renovation of the old building block into the design hotel, cost the investors, chain Le Meridien, more than 120 million EUR. This art & tech hotel has a fantastic spa (jacuzzi, indoor pool, sauna, wellness and fitness centers) and 294 designer decorated rooms. Boulevard Cafe and Restaurant Shambala are popular among guests from other hotels. Night cost from 200 EUR per room and from 375 EUR per suite. Do & Co. Hotel An architectural marvel at Stephansplatz, hosted by the Haas Haus is one of the most popular new hotels in Vienna. Distinctive in every sense, from the desk on the sixth floor near the Onyx bar

Top Left: Le Meridien// Top Right: Do & Co. Hotel Bottom Left: Coburg Hotel Residenz// Bottom Right: Rathaus Wein & Design Wien

to a position that allows you to watch from your room creases on cathedral bricks. Minimalist but classy, many rooms have everything you would normally need and are priced from 480 EUR, and if you come with, say, a friend for a weekend, the apartment will cost 1250 EUR. The hotel is almost always crowded with guests, and what amazed every guest is bathrooms with glass doors. The Viennese initially objected against the project of Hans Hollein, because of too much glass and odd shapes, but today they are proud of it. Coburg Hotel Residenz Although three best hotels (Grand, Sacher and Imperial) are considered as the most luxurious in Vienna, in the new era all are surpassed by extravagant Residenz Palace within Coburg. Historic building within the old city walls is converted into a luxury hotel with 35 luxury apartments. In Cobugr usually stay people from high politics, the nobles and the honored guests. Along the hotel there is also a great restaurant, Dom Perignon and fabulous tasting bar with exotic wines. Rathaus Wein & Design Wien Although it does not belong in the deluxe hotel category, Wein is special because of the other little things. Each of the 39 rooms in the hotel with a respectable fourstar rating, named after Austrian wine makers. In addition to that, at the entrance awaits you a hugelabel in the otherwise charming and spacious room. The bar is, as expected, filled with wine. This is probably the only hotel in which to select the room first, the only necessity is to check the contents of the mini bar. In any case, rooms are available from 120 EUR and you are still close to the center of Vienna, also the best Austrian wines are disposable for purchase at discount prices.

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Tech

3 Ways to Repurpose Old Tech for Today

cool sitting on your desk. Tyler is working on a way to decode rotary spins so that he can dial on Google Voice right from the phone. Retrofit An LCD Panel Into a Vintage TV Like many Americans who grew up before 1992, my family had a television set that was encased in wood. Unlike today, TVs used to be considered a piece of furniture that not only displayed the 6 o’clock news, but also served as a place to display school pictures, doilies made by your Great Aunt Elizabeth, and ceramic gnomes. Sure, old TVs took up a lot of space in

If it’s broken, why not learn how to fix it?

By Brett Mckay

I’m a sucker for old stuff. Particularly old technology. I love going to antique stores and flea markets to find old TVs, radios, and phones. There’s something about the way things were built and designed back in the old days that gave technology a sense of permanence and style. While I enjoy looking at old technological creations, I enjoy using them even more. Unfortunately, most of the stuff created 50 to 100 years ago is no longer compatible with today’s digital technology. However, hackers and tinkerers who have an appreciation for vintage tech are finding fun and creative ways to repurpose old gadgets so they can be used again in the modern world. Below we share a few ideas on how you can take an old device that’s gathering dust in the attic, and turn it into something that fits into your digital lifestyle and you can use every day. You can find all of my tutorials on my life scoop article. Turn an Old-Time Radio Into an MP3 Player Last year I inherited my grandpa’s old 1940 Philco radio. It looked fantastic and still

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the living room, but they looked awesome. While I love my 53” HD flat screen, I kinda miss the wood-encased TV of my childhood. However, with a little tinkering and ingenuity, it’s possible to enjoy the picture quality of a modern HD screen along with the nostalgic look of an old-time wooden television set. The Teknynja blog shows you how to mod an old 1943 RCA/Victor television set into a cabinet to encase a flat screen LCD panel. Basically he removed the old TV parts from the wooden cabinet and mounted a flat screen in its place. It turned out great! He can even use the empty cabinet space to store his

worked, but it only played AM radio, so it didn’t get much use. I asked my brother-in-law (who’s an electrical engineer) if he could help me mod the radio so it could play the tunes on my iPod. He said “Of course!” and now I have an audio device with both 1940s charm and 21st century usability. I wrote up a tutorial on how others can replicate what we did, and it makes a great weekend project. Turn a Rotary Phone Into a VOIP Handset Remember old rotary phones? Of course you do. And I’m sure you were like me and got a kick out of dialing “0” so you could spin the wheel all the way around and watch it click back into place. However, in a world that requires a touch-tone phone to navigate customer service systems, the humble rotary phone has died a slow and quiet death. But thanks to the hacking ingenuity of a gent named Tyler James, we can once again enjoy the vintage aesthetics of an old rotary phone. James modded a Model 500 rotary phone he picked up at Goodwill for $3.99 into a VOIP handset that he could use to make and take calls over Google Voice. While you can’t dial numbers on the rotary phone, it looks really

cable box and video game system. Now it’s your turn. Do you have any ideas on how to repurpose old technology for today? Share your ideas with us in the comments.

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Tech

A Stylish New Breed of Luxury Diesels Has Arrived

Summit models—gets 30 mpg while generating more torque than the Hemi V8 version of the same car. Starting at $41,300; jeep.com BMW 328D The best compact sport sedan in the world just got better. As of this summer, the ubiquitous 3 Series has a turbodiesel engine that gets 43 mpg—more than European favorites like the diesel-powered Volkswagen Golf and 7 miles more than the gasoline version of the 320i. Starting at $40,600; bmwusa.com

These new cars will make you think twice about the enviroment and your wallet By Jonathan Schulz

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s tough (by U.S. standards, anyway) new fuel-emissions regulations begin to take effect— minimum mileage per gallon will double over the next decade—diesel has come to be seen as a viable stopgap, a bridge on the road to a zeroemissions destination. This year, oil-burning engines that have long been European fixtures are finally chugging across the Atlantic in the kinds of bodies that will make you want to choose a different pump. Audi A8 TDI This leather-decked, LED-lit four-door goes from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds while returning an econobox-like 36 mpg. Or put another way: You'll drive nearly 800 miles between fill-ups. There are even 10-inch monitors mounted on the headrests to entertain backseat passengers. Starting at $83,000; audiusa.com Jeep Grand Cherokee Until now, the easiest place to find a dieselpowered Grand Cherokee was in a European mountain range. But Jeep's new EcoDiesel V6 engine—available in the Limited, Overland, and

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+ Coming Soon: The Diesel Hybrid After years of marrying outstanding off-road capability and sumptuous luxury with less-than-laudable gas mileage, the Range Rover now comes in a hybrid diesel-electric version that builds on its four-wheel-drive reputation (courtesy of a custom-built turbocharged V6) while getting a Ford Fiesta–like 36 miles per gallon. The catch? It's available only in the U.K. (with a months-long wait list). But patience, mudhoppers: It's

rumored to be landing on our shores later this year. Did we miss any? we know that the future has many more than just these three cars that will pave the way for hybrid diesels and we want to know if you know about any more of them. Send us in your thoughts or any that we may have not have mentioned!

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Tech

Too Tired to Mix Your Own Drinks? Meet Monsieur, the Robot Bartender The Future of mixing drinks is now and it has a name

By Ian Landau

Here's a scenario that's not hard to imagine: You've had a long day at work and now that you're finally home you'd like a drink. But going to the liquor cabinet, picking out a bottle, walking to the fridge for a mixer—let alone getting a glass—is just too much effort. You're tired, dammit! Wouldn't it be better if within seconds of walking in the door your favorite drink was waiting for you, and all you had to do was knock it back? Too good to be true, you say? (Or maybe you just don't have a spouse.) Well, thanks to the creators of Monsieur, a new robotic bartender, this fantasy will soon be a reality—at least if the Kickstarter project gets funded. While it'd be great if Monsieur resembled Tom Cruise in Cocktail, it's actually a sleek black wooden box that takes up about as much room as a microwave. All you have to do is load it with your favorite alcohol and mixers, select a drink on the colorful touch-

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screen, and voilá: Monsieur whips it up for you. (You can even use the app to place your order from across the room.) Need help deciding on a cocktail? The gadget's computer brain comes programmed with 12 distinct, albeit hackneyed, themes (like Cigar Bar, Irish Pub, and Tiki Bar) and can make 25 different cocktails within each theme (assuming you've stocked it with the right ingredients). It also has a "Surprise Me" feature for when you're feeling adventurous or can't make up your mind. As an artificially intelligent mixologist, Monsieur attempts to make up for what it lacks in good old bartender wit and chatter with smarts. Sync it with the companion app (on the same Wi-Fi) and it'll send you an alert when ingredients are running low. It can also track your drink consumption (but not calories, at least yet), estimate your blood alcohol level (based on gender and weight), and even

help you book a cab (if you're too sozzled to get behind the wheel) by connecting you to a taxi app like Uber or Taxi Magic. The app can also be configured to offer you a drink when your favorite sports team scores (you pick your team in the app and it monitors scores online) or detect when another phone joins your Wi-Fi network and suggest a drink for your companion. The app even knows if you've come home late and will suggest you have a double to take the edge off.

tries to poison your date (or just mix him or her a really terrible cocktail)? In any event, it'll help you drink your sorrows away—and then automatically order more booze when it's on the verge of running dry. Monsieur is available for pre-order through Kickstarter. It comes in two versions: one that holds four liquors and mixers for $1,499 and another with capacity for up to eight liquors and mixers for $2,699.

It all sounds pretty great—and way more fun to play with than the Roomba, for sure. But still, any sort of artificially intelligent robot that learns your habits and tastes inevitably brings up frightening "what if" scenarios. Like, what if Monsieur begins to think it knows you better than you know yourself and decides you should only drink Hurricanes? Or that you should drink when the Red Sox score and you're a lifelong Yankees fan? What if it gets jealous and

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The Best Apps To Simplify Your Life

By Ian Landau

Check out these apps that are sure to make your life way easier

As of 2014, it feels like there is an app for everything. Even things we didn’t realise we needed help with, it’s there. That is exactly what these apps do, they make life’s simple tasks that much easier and stress free. Here are our favourites: 1.Flipboard Flipboard describes itself as your own personal magazine. Collate your reading and allow Flipboard to find articles and news stories you will be interested in according to your interests. 2.Find my iPhone If you have this app installed you simply have to log onto any other Apple product (laptop, iPad, iPhone) to locate your phone. 3.Free Wifi Finder Probably one of our favourite apps. Never be stuck wandering aimlessly on the street looking for Wifi again- with this app you can see all the free Wifi hotspots in the area. 4.Bump Photo sharing just got a whole lot easier, quicker and more fun. To share a photo with your friend, use this app and bump your phones together (lightly) to transfer images. 5.iRuler Who’s ever has a ruler to hand when they actually needed one? Exactly. iRuler to the rescue. 6.Flashlight It’s pretty self-explanatory. Again, like the ruler, very rarely will a torch be avalible when you need it. The added annoyance being that when you need it, you will most likely be in the dark. This handy app diffuses those issues. 7.Uber The classy way to catch a cab. Just book a car and watch on the map as it drives towards you. Uber allows you to create an account and store your payment details so you will never be caught without cash again. Sleep Cycle Never wake up on the wrong side of the bed again. Sleep Cycle, the intelligent alarm clock, analyzes your sleep and wakes you in the lightest sleep phase. This means you wake up feeling relaxed and refreshed.

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