Our actions are the ground we walk on.

"Our actions are the ground we walk on."

Esquire has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to making its print magazine editions digitally interactive. For the December 2012 issue they implemented a feature using this awesome Netpage magazine app that allows readers to scan any page of the magazine, as well as scan to download supplementary extras, like videos or audio clips. It's really cool! That means anytime I want to excerpt a piece from the story now, I can scan the page instead of the cover for my posts.

I think this works really well for the What I've Learned issue! The theme this year is: warriors. I tweeted Leon Panetta's the other day, the day after he removed the ban preventing women to serve in military combat. I really loved his.

Pictured above is Mandy Patinkin's, the first one I read from the issue. Sean Penn's is the cover story -- and I didn't really care for his. Mandy Patinkin might have been a better cover! I can kind of understand Sean Penn because his new movie Gangster Squad is out this month (I saw it, it was OK), but hasn't he been on the cover a bunch of times already? And like I said, his What I've Learned wasn't that great.

Others worth reading from this issue: James Meredith, Lara Logan, Jake LaMotta, and Lieutenant Brian Murphy.

The complete list of this year's What I've Learned entries are on Esquire.com.

And the future will be what the future will be.

Love love love the What I've Learned section in Esquire. So I loved the "Meaning of Life" issue because it was filled with them. I almost blogged excerpts from each one but that would take too long, take up too much space.

Robert De Niro: "Now is now. Then is then. And the future will be what the future will be. So enjoy the moment while you're in it. Now is a great time."

The other people interviewed for this issue included Yoko Ono, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Aaron Sorkin ('Cuse alum!), Mary-Louise Parker, George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, Ruth Westheimer, Ted Danson, Danny DeVito, Ricky Gervais, Ferran Adria, James L. Brooks, Fred Willard, Albert Brooks, Jodie Foster, Jesus H. Christ (ha), and in memoriam (people who died this year and did interviews in the past), John Wooden, Jimmy Dean, Tony Curtis, David Brown, George Steinbrenner. Read 'em. And then read some more. They're all great.

I don't have to look at how much things cost on the menu when I'm ordering food anymore.

Esquire, June/July 2010

I was wondering where this issue went, though figured it had to be in the suitcase that I took to the Dominican Republic when I went in June. I spent a lot of my time there reading it. Never bothered to really look until I started packing to go back to Syracuse.

Anyway this was a great issue too. The 'How to be a man' issue. Irrelevant to me but still entertaining to read. "The Madness of Men," by Chris Jones is a great story. And the cover story, about Tom Cruise, who I'm pretty indifferent about, was refreshingly nice.

All I seemed to mark though were excerpts from "What I've Learned: Jon Favreau"

"I've always avoided physical confrontation. It was part of growing up in Queens--riding the subway to school every day. You definitely had the caribou mentality: Stick with the herd and avoid the predators."

Just because he's from Queens! Flushing, too!

"When it's my time to go, I hope I feel the same feeling I do when we wrap a movie: It was great. It was hard work. I wouldn't trade it for the world. But I'm glad it's over."

"My grandfather always said he didn't care when he got ripped off for money. He said he was most offended when somebody took his time. I didn't understand that at first. But I do now."

The former still offends me, lol

"I don't envy people who were born into privilege. It's that struggle that makes you who you are."

Because I've accepted that I wasn't born into privilege. Mostly because I know that I have the opportunity to change that.

"You have to create the quiet to be able to listen to the very faint voice of your intuition."

"The definition of friendship changes over time. When you're little, you play next to someone. As you get older, you get to engage, connect and reveal. Later on, it becomes who you collaborate with and achieve goals with. It becomes bringing out the best in each other. Whatever the version, it's all about overcoming loneliness."

"You tend to gravitate to the things you grew up with. So I like Carvel even though it might not be a gourmet ice cream. I just had it with someone from L.A. He said, "This is what you were craving?" Yeah. Because you grew up with it and you love it."

"You don't want Citizen Kane to be your first gig. It must be a terrible burden. When fate parcels it out to you incrementally, it might seem frustrating at the time, but it's a blessing."

"The illusion is that the more you put into yourself, the happier you are. When your life becomes about something bigger than you, ironically, that's when it becomes the most fulfilling."

"I don't have to look at how much things cost on the menu when I'm ordering food anymore. That was a big deal."

Because I CANNOT WAIT to reach this part in my life.

(p. 130)

I still don't even really know who he is, aside from the fact that he directed Iron Man 2. But I appreciated a lot of what he said, so.