The Worst Story I Ever Heard |
St. James Davis is crying. It's a loud, whooping wail of a cry. He's sitting in the driveway of his childhood home, a sprawling, L-shaped ranch house in West Covina, California, on a sun-drenched day last September. Standing next to him is his wife of nearly forty years, LaDonna. On the brink of tears herself, LaDonna grabs a cloth and gently cradles his cheek with her right hand. With her left, she carefully dabs at his mouth. St. James keeps his head still as she tends to him. He doesn't say a word as he calms down. He doesn't have to — LaDonna knows what he wants now that the sun is beating down on him. She grabs the beige bucket hat hanging around his neck and eases it onto his head.
LaDonna tends to St. James because he can't tend to himself. St. James, sixty-six, a former high school football star and onetime Nascar driver, is severely disabled and disfigured. There's a two-inch hole in the heel of his swollen left foot, and he is confined to a wheelchair. He has no nose, only a red, raw, exposed septum, surrounded by narrow openings. At the top are three tiny magnets designed to hold in place a crude silicone prosthesis, which is constantly falling off. His right eye is gone, replaced with glass. The skin on his face droops like candle wax because so many bones around his cheeks and eyes were broken. His mouth, which has been completely reconstructed, is stuck in a frown. On his left hand, his index, middle, and ring fingers are stumps. His right hand is much worse. He has a misshapen hunk of flesh for a thumb, which appears as if it were lumped onto his wrist with clay. His index and middle fingers are gone; his ring finger and pinkie are immobile.
But St. James's crying has nothing to do with his physical condition. He's crying because of news he and LaDonna recently received about what really can only be called their boy. At first, St. James and LaDonna were reluctant to speak about all that's happened to them. LaDonna prefers not to talk to outsiders about their life because, she says, they are so often misunderstood.
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Yes, Coop's Original Pillow Really Is That Good |
After a while, you start to believe you're the problem. In this case, "a while" is nearly 38 years. And what I'd started to believe was that it couldn't be the case that every damn pillow on the planet is terrible. The issue had to be me, I thought. To put it euphemistically, I'm an acrobatic sleeper. Though I invariably end up on my side, I toss and turn and reposition myself constantly throughout the night. And one of the biggest reasons I do it is because I just can't seem to get my head and neck to rest at the right angle. One pillow left my head drooping downwards, putting an uncomfortable crick in my neck. Two or more pillows sent my neck craning towards the ceiling, causing the exact same problem, just in reverse. Down wasn't supportive enough. Memory foam slept too hot. It sucked.
And then I got a Coop pillow. The Original, to be specific. I've tested it through restless and restful nights alike. And I'm not kidding when I say it changed everything. This pillow really is that good. I only wish I'd found it sooner.
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Miranda Lambert Goes Her Own Way |
It was 2010, and Miranda Lambert was nervous. It had been five years since her major label debut album, and though she had seen steady success, she had not yet had the breakthrough hit single that would establish her as a serious force in country music.
Country radio (which, to this day, holds more power for its audience than in other genres) didn’t seem quite sure what to do with this fiery young woman who, unlike many of her peers, wrote most of her own tracks. Early on, Lambert was defined by wild-eyed revenge songs like "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" and "Gunpowder and Lead"—"I was pigeonholed,” she says, "like, 'Oh, she'll just burn your house down or shoot you.'" Then the sassy, simmering "White Liar" started making a run, pushing its way into the Top Ten.
"The town was watching," she says over a screen from her house in Nashville. "Like, 'Is she ever gonna have a hit or she just gonna be one of those other kinds of artists?' I was frustrated—at some point, I wanted to move up. I wanted to get the middle slot on tours instead of the opening slot, and ultimately headline, and in country music, radio is that vehicle."
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Forever Trying to Rescue You |
Dear Rob,
I love you, Dad.
Those are the last words you said to me the day before you killed yourself.
They’re also the last words you said to me in the first letter I wrote to you in this magazine, 24 years ago. Back then you were “Robbie” and I was “Daddy,” and I never thought I could possibly love you more than I did. Then again, I never imagined I’d be writing this letter to you now. At least, not consciously. But down deep, I came to fear this day would come. On some level, I felt that, no matter how hard I tried, there was nothing I could do to stop it.
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Creed Bratton Has a Story to Tell |
Creed Bratton is a troubadour. If you’ll listen, he’d like to tell you a story. It’s his, and it’s complicated. There’s so much of it, so much you need to know no matter where he begins. He’s lived three lives, had five names. At least. He’s most well-known, of course, for playing the seedy, scheming octogenarian, with whom he shares a name, on the American version of the television show The Office. He turned a non-speaking background role into a cult-favorite character on one of the most successful comedies of all time, but that’s not the story. So much came before that. Like when he hitched his way, penniless, around the globe, formed a band in Germany, played gigs for oil camps in the Sahara, a brothel full of sheikhs in Beirut, smoked the most potent pot imaginable in Lebanon, chilled with Kirk Douglas in Israel, played some more music, came home, still penniless, formed another band, and then scored two certified gold singles and a gold album–all by the age of 26. Those are just highlights of the highlights, and anyway, that's not the story, either. Not to Creed.
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What I've Learned: Liam Gallagher |
I've been there, bought the T-shirt. If you ever need to have a chat about anything, I’m your man.
One day, I’m in school having a cigarette and minding me own business. I think I was fifteen, sixteen. A couple of lads were looking for a bit of a fight. We got into a fight, and one of ’em hit a hammer over my head. Then a couple of weeks later music started creeping in. It hadn’t before. I’m like, You know what? I like that song, that’s pretty cool. Whoever it was whapped me on the head, I’d like to thank him.
I enjoy getting up early. I like the morning. I like the quiet. You go out at eleven and all the lunatics are out.
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