What Happened to Baby Christina?

Twenty-six years ago, Barton McNeil called 911 to report that his three-year-old daughter had died in the night. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [What Really Happened to Baby Christina?]( What Happened to Baby Christina? McNeil traipsed to the bathroom and called out to wake Christina in the bedroom next door. It was time to get up and get dressed. She didn’t stir. McNeil, a prep cook at the nearby Red Lobster restaurant, had less than an hour to drop Christina off at daycare and get to work. He smoked a cigarette on the toilet and called to Christina one more time. Still nothing. So he took a shower, then checked his email again, and finally crept into the bedroom. There she lay, wrapped in the swirl of her flower-patterned sheets, a copy of Go, Dog. Go! beside her. Her eyes were open, her skin clammy and the color of slate. McNeil froze. His stomach churned. Panic took the wind out of his lungs. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [Lululemon's ABC Pants Are a Cult Classic for a Reason]( Lululemon's ABC Pants Are a Cult Classic for a Reason Lululemon loves naming a product. A lot of the time, those monikers—Surge, Fast and Free, License to Train—are pretty obviously playing into the performance aspect of the clothing. But there are also items, like the Fundamental T-Shirt, that derive their names from, well, their fundamental-ness. These are the go-to pieces that form the building blocks of a wardrobe, they tell us. So if you were to see something called "ABC Pants," think, Well, it doesn't get more fundamental than the first three letters of the alphabet, and leave it at that, I wouldn't blame you; the name seems to stick to an established convention. But there's a little more to the "ABC" here. Back in the day when the style was first released, it stood for "anti-ball crushing." Okay. Fun. Now, according to Lululemon, things have changed in the interceding years. The "ABC" these days really does mean "fundamental," or something along those lines. But the fit and tech innovations that made the pants such a hit from the get-go are still there. (Though the question of how real the supposed problem of crushed nether regions was lingers in my mind). Whatever the reason for the genesis of ABC Pants, the result is a smart, performance-minded essential that you can comfortably pull on every day. It's no wonder, then, that they've acquired legions of devoted fans. My bet? You're about to join their ranks. [Read the Full Story]( [Hitting the Links with Carlos Alcaraz]( Hitting the Links with Carlos Alcaraz It’s early March and Carlos Alcaraz is standing at the 17th hole of Shadow Creek, MGM’s Tom Fazio-designed golf course nestled in Las Vegas's northern reaches. The gusts, spurred by a blizzard striking the Sierra Nevadas, are intense. (Apparently we’re in the middle of the area’s worst windstorm in nearly 40 years.) But the landscape itself is glowing. Baked red rocks buttress the green, which is backdropped by a waterfall and preempted by a pond that crimps in the breeze. Yellow flowers gild the vignette. They’re nature’s version of the neon bulbs that frame the slot machines back on the Strip. Alcaraz (officially Carlos Alcaraz Garfia)—the 20-year-old current No. 2 men’s tennis player in the world and, so far, two-time Grand Slam champion (the U.S. Open in 2022, Wimbledon in 2023)—steps up to the tee. [Read the Full Story]( [Percival Everett's New Novel Is Destined to Become a Modern Classic]( Percival Everett's New Novel Is Destined to Become a Modern Classic James centers on a seminal character from American literature—and yet, seen afresh through the gaze of acclaimed writer Percival Everett, it’s as if we’re meeting him for the first time. Everett’s subject is Jim, the enslaved runaway from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Blasted clean of Twain’s characterization, Jim emerges here as a man of great dignity, altruism, and intelligence. The new novel opens in Hannibal, Missouri, where Jim teaches enslaved children to run their speech through a “slave filter” of “correct incorrect grammar,” designed to pacify white people. Then the story settles into Twain’s familiar grooves—on the run together, Jim and Huck raft down the Mississippi River, facing danger, separation, and charlatans aplenty. Along the way, Everett fills in the blank spaces of plot and characterization left by Twain, as Jim imagines verbal sparring matches with dead philosophers, falls in love with reading, and begins to author his own story. “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being,” he writes. And so he does: On the road to freeing himself and his family from slavery, Jim becomes more self-determined than ever. Clever, soulful, and full of righteous rage, his long-silenced voice resounds through this remarkable novel. [Read the Full Story]( [How to Be a Happier Man Now]( How to Be a Happier Man Right Now Esquire has long had a mantra: “man at his best.” And over the decades, as American culture has twisted its way through one radical shift after another, the magazine has enthusiastically embraced its mission of doling out advice on how to achieve that Platonic ideal of manhood—whatever it happened to be at the moment. But delivering such sage instruction to our readers is arguably more challenging than ever. The concept of “man at his best” in 2024 has less to do with gasping to the end of a triathlon or dressing for a fox hunt than it does with (as Texas songwriter Guy Clark once put it) stuff that works. To find that stuff, we turned to our fellow man. That is, we surveyed men who are experts in different areas of life. A lot of their advice is fundamental. Go for a walk and ideas percolate. Sleep well and life might look better the next morning. We can’t offer guarantees, but we feel confident that if you do this stuff, you won’t come away with regrets. [Read the Full Story]( [What I’ve Learned: Dan Aykroyd]( What I’ve Learned: Dan Aykroyd You can never spend enough time with your children. You can never listen to them enough, give them enough focus and attention. Accept their advice and their criticism. You can never do that enough. If they're coming after you and saying, “Dad, you were a little profane today” or “Dad, don’t smoke cannabis in the house” or “You know, Dad, you’re driving a little too fast,” instead of being defensive, I’ve learned to back off the throttle, take the smoke outside. Just listen to them. And cut back on the profanity if I can. 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