BLOGGING GAMES OF THRONES, S3E1: Paint A Vulgar Picture

Hey gang! Welcome back to Westeros, where the slots are loose, the women are friendly, and--just a stone's throw away, down at the docks in Astapor--somebody is usually stabbing a baby! I'm your host, Zachary Little, and here's where our players are at in this third inning of America's new pastime,  Throne Gaming.

We pick up above the wall, where we last saw an army of abominable skeletor-type motherfuckers descending upon poor Samwise Gangrene. Lucky for him, he somehow managed to escape, and here is reunited with the surviving members of the Night's Watch. They're looking worse for wear, though not necessarily more than usual. Jon Snow's second surrogate father, Old Beardo, immediately berates Samwise for failing to send warning messages back home. Well, if we're being honest, I'm not really sure anybody in Westeros would have given a shit. Undead armies are like Climate Change to Westerosi politicos--they won't believe in it until it literally kills them personally.

Nonetheless, the remaining Watchmen head south, determined to warn the public about the white walkers which are, I'd have to assume, further south than they are this point anyway. Right? So this might not be the soundest plan.

Further North, Jon Snow, now a sorta-double agent among the Wildlings, meets his third surrogate father, Mance Rayder. He's the King Beyond The Wall, but for a king he's pretty casual--when Jon Snow gets all kneely and worshipful Mance is like, "Bro, chill." But Mance would like to know why Jon went rogue, and Jon gives him an only semi-sensical explanation that involves being mad at Beardo for abiding Daughter Fucker's (remember Daughter Fucker?) child sacrifice. Now, the point of that earlier scene was recognizing the necessity of bargaining in real-world political environments, so I guess that means Jon Snow is a libertarian now. Which is good enough for Mance Rayder, so OK.

Back in the civilized world, Tyrion is admiring his Michael K. Williams-style facial scar in a mirror when Queen (Regent) Eyebrow comes a-knocking. We are reminded of three things: 1. Tyrion is displaced and in disfavor now that his father has finally taken over as Hand of the King 2. Tyrion's wound did not come from a legitimate enemy but rather from a Lannister loyalist, and 3. Tyrion and Cercei like to trade quips. Then Bronn shows up, and you know, is a baller.

And then--guess who is alive? Theon? Nope, probably not! But Ron Swanson's grandfather is! Last we saw him, a boat full of fire-kryptonite was blowing up directly in front of his face, so it's pretty crazy that he managed to survive, but there you are, and there he is! Black Jack Sparrow finds him shortly after we do, picking him up from the comically small island on which he has been stranded. Then he tries to talk him out of returning to Stannis--the would-be king is in a bad mood since his bad defeat, and the Red Lady has gone full Yoko--but Jon Swanson is determined to see his bro again. And guess what? It doesn't go very well. After a half-assed attempt at assassinating Redhead Von Shadowpussy, Jon Swanson finds himself dragged to the dungeons. Oh well!

At the end of season 2, we got a couple of scenes that played like do-overs, like the writers felt like they hadn't drilled something home enough and tried again. Dany had a few speeches where she made identical self-discoveries, etcetera. Here we get another mulligan, when Robb Stark, his men, his new wife, and his mom come upon a Stark fort and find everybody inside dead. This sight apparently reminds Robb that his mother freed Jamie Lannister, and he orders her to a cell. Did you actually like, forget, Robb? We got no scenes with Arya and Gendry for this?

Back in King's Landing, Tyrion talks to his dad, who is, it turns out, a major dick. Remember when he and Arya were having all that cat and mouse fun back in Harrenhall? None of that here. Just unabashed dickishness, nothing more. And speaking of unabashed dicks, Joffrey is mortified when his newly betrothed, Margaery, gets out of her litter in the middle of a dirty street to go visit some orphans. At dinner later, he and his mother are baffled to hear that Marge and her brother One Direction do charity work routinely. "Wait, you help poor people? For WHAT? I mean, they can't give you any money, can they?"-Lannisters

Elsewhere, Dany and her dragons visit a slaveport, which appears to be Ser Jorah's idea. He thinks slavery is like, the coolest thing since sliced bread, but it makes Dany uneasy. Still, she's got no other way to gather an army (does she even have this way? Like, where'd she get money?) so she listens to the sales pitch of guy selling eunuch soldiers called "The Unsullied." Their training regimen, it turns out, basically consists of all the censored scenes from the NIN video for "Closer." And it seems to work; as Offer Shlomi points out, you can chop a nipple off these guys and they don't even flinch. Dany could fuck some shit up in a big way with a few thousand of these guys, which might be interesting. As she walks back to the dock, she survives another murder attempt, this time from a little J-horror girl probably sent from whoever is still alive in Qarth. She is saved by Some Guy, who turns out to be a character we should maybe remember from earlier? He introduces himself like, "Yes, mother of dragons, it is I, Some Guy!" and the music swells like Ohhhh! Some Guy has finally appeared! And the episode ends.

So that's that! No Lil Katniss, nor Bonus Jonas, nor Huck Lannister and Lady Brienne on their raft, nor Meltyface, nor Fucking Theon (RIP?). Not a whole lot happening at all, right now, in fact! But that is how the game is played. You gotta take some time to move the pieces into place before the pieces can have sex with and murder each other. As true in chess as it is in life. See you next week!

ASK NICK SULLIVAN: Letters To Esquire's Fashion Director, Answered By Zac Little

Is wearing an undershirt necessary when wearing a dress shirt? I really don’t like seeing the outline of my undershirt under my dress shirt. –Bryan Erskine, Fountain Valley CA

Ah yes, the age-old “upper commando” question. Ruling out the possibility that you’re a chimp who was raised as a human and this discomfort at being civilized is the beginning of a series of revelations about the true nature of your past, I’d advise you to deal with it. A little wife-beater show-through is kind of charming, no? It’s at least more charming than your weird nipples. Who invited your weird nipples to the office, Bryan? That’s right: nobody. So keep the salami slices in the deli paper.


I’m a middle-aged guy going on a cruise, and I need to wear a jacket and tie at dinner each night. What do you recommend? –Steve Volkman, Vancouver WA

First of all: what kind of jerkoff Dixiecrat bullshit cruise is this? You have to wear a jacket and tie at dinner? Not a mustard-stained Acapulco shirt, as God intended? WHERE DO YOU GET OFF, VOLKMAN? (I’m honestly asking. WHERE DO YOU GET OFF AND WALK AROUND FOR 2 HOURS REC AND MEAL TIME?)

If I were you I’d go to dinner in just a jacket and tie, nothing else, in protest of that silly policy. But I’m not you—and THANK GOD for that, you wouldn’t catch me DEAD on a cruise line, especially given recent events. In fact, I suggest you wear a toilet paper jacket with a tie made of insulin bottles. It very well might come in handy.


I’m entering my second year of grad school. Can you get me started on a professional-looking wardrobe within a tight budget that’s both comfortable and a little casual? I’d like to get a few blazers, but beyond that I’m clueless. –Matthew Marant, Lafayette LA 

Well Matthew, it really depends what you’re in grad school for. If it were business, you wouldn’t be asking me. You’d already have some bizarre older male mentor from a previous or current internship—one who took you out to dinner and told you how to order your steak, who showed you how to dress and even bought clothes for you, who brought you to the sauna on Fridays and had angry sex with you in the locker room (but not in a gay way. In a “business insider” way). And if you were in Law school it’d pretty much be the same deal, except you’d go to the sauna on Thursdays.

So, what is it then? How could you, at this stage in the game, still be unclear on what was expected of you in the professional realm? Oh fuck! Matthew, are you majoring in… the humanities?! Dear god. Well, you can skip the blazer and invest heavily in pajamas, then.

I am a 23-year-old student and I will be attending my first engagement party. The dress is “cocktail/casual,” and I’m not sure what that means. –Thomas Evers, Athens, GA 

Well, let’s get a little more specific here. What exactly is your context in this whole engagement milieu? Did you have a brief, torrid affair with an older woman the summer after you graduated college? Is she, now dating a more age-appropriate man, inviting you to her engagement party as some kind of either conciliatory or passive-aggressive gesture? Are you not sure how you feel?

Or, is it a shotgun wedding? I’m saying, did your wildest friend’s sexual misadventures finally catch up to him? Did he knock up the judge’s daughter, say? Are you and your crazy pals trying to have one last hurrah before adulthood and solemnity comes a-knocking, perhaps?

Or is one of your parents engaged? Is this perhaps a second or third marriage for your father, or mother? Are all of your family tensions, long simmering, about to boil over?

To put it another way: is this your first novel, second novel, or an essay collection?

• First novel: Wear a linen suit, dress shirt with no tie, and a colorful pocket square.
• Second novel: Wear a tuxedo t-shirt and jeans. 
• Essay collection: Wear all black, and don’t forget to put a digital recorder in your pocket. The New Yorker fact-checkers are no joke.

I was taught that my leather (belt, shoes, etc.) should match. What’s the score? –Mark Holk, Barnes WI

You are correct sir! The SAME COW law of men’s fashion is one of the oldest, and therefore most prestigious, rules. (The US Senate rules are mostly based on the first edition of Esquire’s Blackbook—the Spring 2013 edition of which is in stores now!) Of course, it’s pretty hard to be sure that your belt and shoes match EXACTLY, but DNA testing is getting cheaper every day.

In THE KING’S SPEECH Colin First wears a necktie through most of the film and leaves about a half inch of the shirt showing. Was this the style of the era or a quirky personal statement? –Michael Monroe, Bellevue WA

Firstly: SPOILER ALERT, dude. Secondly: that was your takeaway from the movie? You didn’t learn about overcoming adversity and rising to meet your destiny? Focus up, Monroe! Thirdly: Colin Firth. That man can wear a sweater, huh? Fourthly: what do you think I am, some kind of fashion historian? Fuck you.

The First Supercut Is The Deepest

So I have been kind of gradually formulating a manifesto? About creating video content? I don't know. I might be on the verge or making some kind of Dogme95 type declaration. Here's where it started:

"I SAW THE BEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION DESTROYED BY SUPERCUTS"

And then:

CLARIFICATION 1: Question From Dangokuken

CLARIFICATION 2: Question from anonymous

"DIGGING DEEPER"

But here's the gist, if you'd rather: The current internet economy favors effort over creativity--a breathtakingly completist supercut of a TV show over an original idea of any kind. And the reward one gets for say, watching 80 hours of a TV show and editing together a three minute web video, is already subject to steeply diminishing returns. A year ago it would have gotten you a job at a pop culture blog; six months ago it would have gotten you millions of pageviews and Tumblr followers; now you can win a contest. But it's still better than NOTHING, in terms of compensation, which is why so many people do it instead of creating something new. And that's bad.

But maybe this is the most visible symptom of a disease that has spread or maybe always existed among content creators. Maybe effort over creativity has always been an issue. I started to think about the way I feel about my own work, which is that I have always been happier figuring things out for myself rather than learning the "right way." I have always resisted learning to mic and light my shots the way I was "supposed to." And even though that has never been the financially sound path, it has always been creatively fulfilling. Most of the time, and maybe this is  only in retrospect, it has helped me create work that is, to my mind (and a few others!), distinctive and at least approaching original. Which is why I am happy with my modest web presence and interesting (and creative in their own right, in many cases) fans and friends (fanfriends? Can that be a thing?). 

And yeah, so this is a dynamic that has ever been thus in terms of entertainment--slick blockbusters make vastly more money than weird, alienating (but deeply original) smaller films. But this is the Internet, a place where all of those former structures were supposed to break down and die. Instead, the norms have just perpetuated and even become more acute. Which is a drag.

But anyway, if you are a content creator frustrated by your lack of e-success, at least know that I, Zac Little, think you are probably doing something right. 

The best creative lesson I can give anybody is this: don't learn anything from anyone. Not even me. Don't even listen to this! Just go fuck around in your basement with a camera for a couple years. Burn your local film school (?) to the ground. (OK: I learned a lot of the basics from a wonderful man named Peter Pijoan at a Public Access TV station in Wolfeboro, NH. You should learn about as much as I did. From him, preferably. But if he is not available, go to film school for ONE YEAR. And then burn that fucker to the ground when you're done.) As Bobcat Goldthwait recently said: "Success is for creeps." At least for now. Maybe we can do something to correct this effort and creativity imbalance. Maybe stop clicking on supercuts of people saying "supercuts" in different movies or whatever. At least as a start. 

Aaron Sorkin's Script For The Social Network Was Smarter Than You Thought

The Social Network was controversial--among nerds, mostly--when it was released, for its, let's say assholish, portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Nolo contendere there, but amid all the bluster and blog posts, I don't think a lot of people noticed that the movie was perfectly aware what it was doing. What I mean to say is: Not only is the negative portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network deliberate, but so is the suggestion that the negative portrayal might be too harsh. Rather than attempt to be objective, The Social Network makes a Rashomon-esque joke about the very idea of objectivity. After all: Mark is not telling his own story. That's more important than many seemed to think. Bear with me for a second here.

The movie opens with that long, weirdly compelling scene in the bar. Jesse Eisenberg and Lisbeth Salander break up. Then The Zuck walks back to his dorm, and we're put in geographical and chronological context for the first (and, significantly, the only!) time--Harvard 2003 or whenever. The story goes on from there for a good long while--including the world's first (and, significantly, the only!) realistic blogging and coding montage. And suddenly we jump ahead to a courtroom. Zuckerberg's Facebook isn't a fledgling idea now, suddenly, it's the billion-dollar enterprise we know and loathe. It's a rather jarring flashforward, right? That's not all it is.

Now, Aaron Sorkin frequently plays around with chronology in his scripts, usually for fairly simple storytelling purpose: President Bartlet takes a bite of a madeline and remembers the last time he took a bite of a madeline, during his campaign. So now we get to see some campaign scenes! And for a few viewings I took the structural complexity of The Social Network at that basic face-value. 20 minutes is as long as Aaron Sorkin can stand going without a courtroom scene, that's all. But after the fourth viewing or so, I picked up on a key moment: There in the courtroom, when everyone else is talking about Mark crashing Harvard's network, Mark instead is referencing his conversation with Erica at the bar--that very first scene of the movie. Here's how it looks in Sorkin's original screenplay:

What we're meant to understand, therefore, is that everything we've seen leading up to this moment is testimony from one or both of Mark's ongoing legal proceedings. The court scene isn't a flashforward, it is the only objective reality of the movie. Everything else we see is just a visualization of what people are saying.

This may seem like just an overcomplicated phrasing of the way you already understood the time-shifting. But what I'm saying is there are two different kinds of capital-T Truths at play in the movie. The Truth of whatever moment you happen to be in (Mark and Eduardo in the dorm, the Winkelvoss twins in England) and then the Overall Truth perspective of the movie (every non-courtroom scene is the depiction of various folks' depositions). And most of the criticism I've read of the movie acknowledges the former and not the latter.

And the confirmation of the film's overall perspective happens in the final scene, when Mark talks to Rashida Jones's character. She tells him that she assumes most testimony is, in so many words, hearsay and bullshit. That is what we have been watching for the last two hours: the unreliable, emotional bullshit being pushed by the Winkelvi, Eduardo and their associated council. It doesn't vindicate Mark so much as admit that we--you, me, Aaron Sorkin, David Fincher, Justin Timberlake--don't know the truth about anything that happened. All we have is the public record, which is no more true than anything else.

That's the same idea behind Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, which I suggest you seek out immediately if you haven't already seen it. But while Rashomon takes the lack of true objectivity as cause for despair, The Social Network seems to revel in it, a little. So what if this is all hearsay and bullshit? It's fun, right?

Top Ten Movies Of The Year

OK, fine! I guess I better get my top ten list out now too, since everybody else already did it. Of course, established critics have had the luxury of seeing the five or six great-looking movies all being released on Christmas weekend, and I haven't. Producers release the big Winter movies as late as possible every year, but this time it feels especially excessive, right? Like, how am I going to find the time to see Les Miserables, This Is Forty, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained before they all drop out of theaters? Especially since they're all going to cancel each other out and bomb? After all, that's what happened last year, the major casualty being David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a damn fine movie that never got its due at the box office or anywhere else due to an over-stuffed December calendar. It was an awards-bating gambit that failed, and yet it's happening all over again in 2012. So I'm taking a bit of a populist stand: The films mentioned above will be eligible for next year's list, since that is when most people will see them. Will they actually make it on? Eh, I'll probably forget. I have the memory of an Academy voter.

My honorable mention votes this year go to Prometheus, which was gorgeous, pulpy, and squirm-inducing beyond belief but also completely and utterly brainless, and also to The Amazing Spider-Man, which crackled with chemistry but seemed chopped to pieces in some kind of 11th hour editing overhaul.

10. Lawless

It's pretty weird that this movie came out in 2012 and not like, 1997. It feels like a throwback, like Kevin Costner must be involved somehow, you know? But it was not unwelcome! Lawless manages to both make you want to study prohibition AND listen to The Velvet Underground, and that obviously makes no sense until you learn that it was scripted by Nick Cave. It also features a weird vocal performance by Tom Hardy, one that is actually successful, as well as Jessica Chastain looking mysterious and getting naked. Need I really say more?

9. Skyfall

You honestly can't complain about this movie being a Christopher Nolan knockoff, because this year, Sam Mendes managed to out-Nolan Nolan. Which is why this movie is on my top ten and Batman isn't. I found this movie far more enjoyable, far more visually awe-inspiring (interesting to see that Nolan's DP Wally Pfister went out of his way to talk shit about The Avengers while Roger Deakins was quietly kicking his ass over here), and also just as emotionally resonant as The Dark Knight Rises. To be fair to Tom Hardy: Javier Bardem's Silva is partly a more entertaining villain because you can see his face and his voice isn't 4x the volume of the rest of the movie. To be fair to Christian Bale: he's aging weirdly, and Daniel Craig isn't. But even allowing for those handicaps, and despite the awkward Heineken tie-ins, Skyfall was a hugely entertaining, epic-feeling movie, and TDKR was just kind of a slog.

8. Looper

My second-favorite Bruce Willis movie this year was directed by my second-favorite new director, Rian Johnson. It's a wonderfully stylish little thing containing both what is probably the coolest decades-compressing montage of all time and what is certainly the most existentially horrific torture scene of all time. It has a fantastically decisive ending and is also fantastically dismissive of the need for overly cohesive time-travel logic. GET OVER IT, NERDS.

7. The Master

This movie and Skyfall are like two sides of a coin. For every way in which Skyfall is watchable and enjoyable, this movie is taxing and frustrating. The common ground is that both films are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Neither rivals The Tree Of Life, but their combined impact certainly rivals that movie. And anyway who says a movie has to be "watchable"? Why can't a movie be an ordeal? OK, well, there are lots of good reasons why a movie shouldn't be an ordeal. But I liked this one anyway.

6. Silver Linings Playbook

For about the first hour, and maybe more, I was pissed at this movie. It's basically just a bunch of people yelling at each other, and it only holds your interest as much as it has to. You're as irritated and bored as you are compelled. And then, I don't know. Something happens. You fall in love with it.

5. Lincoln

This is another one that's just people yelling at each other in rooms, but with zero irritation and 100% rapturous interest from the audience (ok, from me anyway). I actually heard people complain about the star-studded nature of this movie--a familiar face every time the camera turns a corner--but, you know, these people are famous actors for a reason. And letting them yell at each other in a room for a while? With all that rich, old-timey dialog? My god, it's a thing of beauty.

4. Argo

My first favorite new director nailed it AGAIN. Affleck Hat Trick! This movie is unbearably tense and hysterically funny. It's all the more remarkable when you realize that it's funny despite being an historical drama and tense despite mostly being a movie about standing in lines and trying not to draw attention to yourself. Alan Arkin and John Goodman stand shoulder to shoulder with Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader and Bruce Willis this year in proving that our best work is almost never behind us. Is that a little sentimental and cloying? So was some of Argo and Lincoln! And I loved it! Argo fuck yourself, Bret Easton Ellis!

3. The Avengers

A bright, shiny oasis in a sea of superhero grit. This movie was so much fun! And what's crazy is Joss Whedon initially shot this dark frame story, in which Robin Scherbatsky bitterly recounted the tale of how The Avengers almost destroyed New York or whatever (folks who complained about too much 9/11 gladhanding as it was would have had an aneurism). Lucky that he blinked! I loved this movie; even the shaky first half hour beats most of the movies that led to it (looking at you, with your silly dutch angles, Thor! And you, with your nonsensical montages, Captain America! I love both those characters and their portrayals, though). And that epic battle scene at the end was so good that I completely forgive it for being a complete and utter ripoff of Transformers 3 (though for superior. But STILL).

2. The Cabin In The Woods

Far and away the most fun I had at the theater this year, and very nearly my choice for number 1. My friends and I were cackling with glee from the title card onward. Don't look up anything about this movie if you haven't seen it yet. Just see it.

1. Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom is everything Wes Anderson does best, and with one of his strongest casts yet. (The opposite of this movie, along those lines, is probably The Darjeeling LTD. And yet I love that one too. Sorry, haters!) Shoutout to Bruce Willis and Edward Norton and shoutout to Baby Lana Del Rey and Baby Joe Mande. It's wonderfully crafted and as usual, a lovely brightly painted box in the form of a movie. It also really makes you want to go walking in the New England woods. There are things I would change about every movie on this list, except for this one.