“AH, SHIT."
SAYS STEVE BALLMER.
"We wound up having to go with the metal here, didn't we?" The multibillionaire is inspecting every crevice of Intuit Dome, the future home of his beloved Los Angeles Clippers and, in his estimation, a "basketball mecca." Donning a hard hat and safety vest, Ballmer takes me on a tour he's given to the likes of Disney boss Bob Iger, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, and hiphop mogul Jay-Z. "When we're walking through the building together," Ballmer says of the iconic rapper, "nobody notices me." Perhaps, but when I walk through the sprawling project with Ballmer, none of his desires goes unnoticed. Like with Ballmer's frustration over a metal divider; lead designer Bill Hanway reassures him there will be a transparent glass one, just as requested, when the new NBA season tips off this fall.
But that's still months out on this April afternoon as the Clippers owner trudges through an obstacle course of cable drums and stacks of wood, where roughly 1,100 workers are conducting a score of beeps and grinding metal. Ballmer, though, is already in launch mode, surveying the dust-filled rooms with the same meticulous energy he once brought to Microsoft. "This and the team, that's our product," he tells me. "This is what you experience as a customer." In another life, that product might have been Windows 95. Or the Xbox. Ballmer's legacy is inextricably tied to Microsoft, where he joined his old Harvard pal Bill Gates as the company's 30th employee and would eventually spend more than a decade at the helm. "We basically helped democratize computing," he notes.
TEAM SPIRIT
Ballmer congratulates George after a Clippers OT win against the Celtics, 2019; cheering on the team next to Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel (right) in 2015.
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Jenna Ortega's Year of Wonder - The breakout star of Wednesday settles into fame and with a Beetlejuice sequel on the horizon gets ready for more of it
On the eve of Wednesday's cultural domination, "Tim" invited Jenna Ortega to his house for a meeting. I love when this happens in Hollywood conversations: casually, not even pretentiously, legends referred to by first names only, as Ortega does over a clandestine morning coffee. Here is Wednesday on a Sunday at Velvet, a moody cocktail bar at the Corinthia hotel in London.
SETTING THE STAGE
Before they conquered Hollywood, George Segal, Peter Falk, Roy Scheider, and Wayne Rogers were some of the finest-though perhaps not the finest-stage actors in New York. WAYNE LAWSON, who knew them when, revisits a golden era that revolutionized American theater
HOPE AND CHANGE?
As the threat of another Trump presidency looms, AMERICA TURNS ITS EYES TO THE OBAMAS, who remain two of the most important politicians in the world-whether they like it or not
The Natural
Comedy, singing, scandal, attempted murder: Meghann Fahy, the breakout star of The White Lotus and now The Perfect Couple, can do it all
FULL-COURT PRESS
Microsoft made him one of the richest men alive. Now STEVE BALLMER is chasing one of the few prizes money (alone) can't buy: an NBA championship for his team, the Los Angeles Clippers, whose staggeringly expensive state-of-the-art arena opens this summer
THE TWISTED LOVE STORY OF JOSE AND LADDY BETTY
A 95-year-old diamond heiress and her much younger genderfluid spouse became social media stars. Was theirs a feelgood romance for the agesor something far darker?
CONSIDER
NO ONE KNOWS CANDIDATE ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.'S PROBLEMATIC HISTORY BETTER THAN HIS FAMILY. JOE HAGAN TALKS TO THAT RELUCTANT INNER CIRCLE ABOUT KENNEDY'S PAST AND THE STAKES FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE
Paris When It Sizzled
IN 1973, FIVE AMERICAN DESIGNERS AND 36 MODELS DESCENDED ON THE CITY OF LIGHT FOR WHAT WOULD BECOME AN ERA-DEFINING FASHION SHOW-AND WITH THEM WAS PHOTOGRAPHER BILL CUNNINGHAM. HERE, AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT HIS TREASURE TROVE OF LARGELY UNSEEN PHOTOS, PUBLISHED TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME
Playing It STRAIGHT
Dynamic young stars have broken out in queer roles. Should their own sexuality matter?
Another COUNTRY
Searching for James Baldwin in the South of France
