The Disruptor: Adam Rippon on His Goals After Olympic Figure Skating | Rolling Stone Magazine/RollingStone.com April 2018

I spent the day with the Olympics’ breakout sweetheart star, talking politics, his lack of shame and how he’s trying to translate his sudden popularity into more than just short-sighted decisions. 

Better a late reblog/Tumblr post than never? This kid was a lot, and I mean that mostly in a good way. 

I’m grateful to RS for the time and access, and still trying to figure out what else I might do with the nearly 3 hours and 50 pages worth of transcribed time we had together that are not really all reflected here. 

Chris Pine: The Thinker | Out Magazine Cover Story, June/July 2013

Is Chris Pine too smart for his own good? Or just ours?

Many, many outtakes & extended thoughts were also posted:

Chris on having many flaws, the Avedonian photos taken of him for this shoot, and where he’d like to be at 40; on the (excellent) indie film People Like Us; on Kirk, Spock and Star Trek: Into Darkness; on Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan; on not talking about Tom Clancy’s terrible politics.

Full Q&A with Zachary Quinto about Chris.

Kenneth Branagh gushing about how Chris is, like Paul Newman, a character actor in a leading man’s body.

Zachary and Kenneth both contributing new adjectives to describe those blue, blue eyes.

And more thinky rambling from me about how Chris totally ruined the curve, how to interview smart people, how I almost killed this interview before it began, and some details either Chris or I got wrong and readers who corrected us.

Realized last night I’d never done a proper job of actually adding allllllll the outtakes and rambling I’d done about Chris Pine into my portfolio, so I spent the morning doing a little bookkeeping. (Also I never properly gave a shout out to my old friend Benoit, who asked me to come talk to his Emerson College profile writing students about a couple stories, including this one, which felt fitting to the theme.)

Just in case you need something else to do after watching Wonder Woman this weekend. 

In my much angrier days I read a lot of Larry Kramer, and then had the chance to work with him as an editor and an activist. Of all the things he taught me about how to use my anger to make good in the world the one I remember best is quiet and small, or as quiet and small as a loud man like Larry Kramer ever gets. It’s from the speech he made at New York’s gay community center in March 1987, the speech that helped launch ACT UP, the movement that changed not only AIDS awareness but health care and the concept of patients’ rights worldwide.

He said:

This idea is at the heart as I know it of community organizing, of leadership, of being a person who wants to leave the world a little better than you found it. It’s a quiet and small gesture to make, especially for a man on the cusp of having an immense amount of power.

This is the caption from the above photo, via Getty: US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama picks up a water bottle cap he dropped after speaking during a rally at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, October 28, 2008.

Power is the willingness to accept responsibility. Leadership is the willingness to accept that power, and the responsibility that comes with it. Leadership is picking up little pieces of paper off the floor while the world watches.

I wrote that on October 28, 2008, the day the above photo was taken. 

I don’t know if Obama’s farewell speech tonight was what I needed or wanted to hear, but it was in so many ways exactly the same point he’s been making all along. 

It’s our fight to take up, our power to use. 

#tits out for Debbie Reynolds

i'm not even gonna say rest in peace because it’s bigger than death. i never met the man (i was too nervous the one time i saw him) and i never saw him play live, regrettably. i only know the legends I’ve heard from folks and what i’ve heard and seen from his deep catalog of propellant, fearless, virtuosic work. my assessment is that he learned early on how little value to assign to someone else’s opinion of you.. an infectious sentiment that seemed soaked into his clothes, his hair, his walk, his guitar and his primal scream. he wrote my favorite song of all time, ‘when you were mine’. it’s a simple song with a simple melody that makes you wish you thought of it first, even though you never would have - a flirtatious brand of genius that feels approachable.  he was a straight black man who played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and knee high heeled boots, epic. he made me feel more comfortable with how i identify sexually simply by his display of freedom from and irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender conformity etc. he moved me to be more daring and intuitive with my own work by his demonstration - his denial of the prevailing model...his fight for his intellectual property - ‘slave’ written across the forehead, name changed to a symbol... an all out rebellion against exploitation. A vanguard and genius by every metric I know of who affected many in a way that will outrun oblivion for a long while. I’m proud to be a Prince fan(stan) for life.