184 G2 RECOMMENDS: TOP-SHELF SHIRTS AND TIES 87 CULTURE CLASH Ths WWF a ileal eo 110 DOUBTING THOMAS. w sfice pe 24 CONTRIBUTORS JOMAIL CALL 37 FRONTLIMES Weather for . 1 45 FAHRENHENT T rt Tih abe SG ELEMENTS OF STYLE 1! 63. THE STYLE GUY Ane ay ELOMN a'an TTSHELFLIFE AB EUY FOOD How fy dm weison 85 MIXOLDGY 1. TEMmY SULLIVAN 93 MUSIC. Dy om Be Eee wet LOT M¥ TWENTY GRAND [ove oe 114 PERSONAL BEST rat's toerofien pre Sar 125 OR, SOUTH 7 198 FASHION DIRECTORIES. 200 THE @@ LIST 1:BY ANDREW CORSELLO. PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEN IRISH | TONY THE IRONY SLAYER ‘ony Robbins is more than the richest; swankest motivational speaker in the world. He'sa force of muscular hope, a die-hard believer and a crusher of All That Is Knowing ‘ony the Giant appears to us when we need him most, in the dead space of twilight. {is always the same. Three, four ia the morning, something wakes us, some itch or echo. We fise, are drawn numbly through the dark as if through thick fluid, An underwater light enters shrough the windows of || the den, leaving on our surfaces a vague sense of some sad, unspoken thing, some dream or design unbegun. How many of us? How many ac this very moment in this ity, this, state, this country, standing dumb in our boxers and night- ‘gowns in the mournful light? At this hour, so very far away from the world of things that happen, we feel a need to con- firm the neamess ofthe species. Where's the clicker? “Mutely we surf Scores. Videos. “Toons. Rockford. Until sid- denly he thete, alone on a soundstage. The Giant. The Emo- tion King. Anthony Robbins, self-made centillionaire, self-styled peak-performance coach. Books and audiotapes sold—multiple tens of millions. Tony, they cali him. Master of the late-nigh, long-form infomercial, anulwiched berween the Thighmaster and the SaladShooter. The capo ai tutti capi of self-empowermenc ina culture reeming with setf-help capi. Checke hiew out—he's some kind of procorype human! Is he only six foot seven? He looks bigger: the broad-stroke, solids-only fashion sense; the commando shoulders; the V of latissimi and the inverted V of legs converging at the cinch of the belt to form a bold X. Such uncompromising inten- sity of stance—the hands, big as catcher’s mitts, braced against the hips; the straight downward chrust of the legs; the feet set a yard apart—somichow giving him the alarming, gleam and hum ofa high-tension tower. Sail ie the face thar truly stardes us from sleep. Impossi- bly handsome, sure, with a jaw for breaking bricks. Bur also, at first, absurd, comically heroic—the face of soap star Jack. ‘Wagner cubed, or spiked with equine genes. Yet after a minute of so, the face becomes less farcical and more of. plain, a huge, flac open space, sphinxlike and wondrous— and so very, very dean. He speaks. ee “If you were to be the best you could be, how would e show up? What would your standards be? How would you live? How would you love? Whac would be the voies, nor of - your fear, not of your past, but of your passion? What aceetiy would your voice say ifyou looked in the misror and youl were already that person? Say itout loud.” God, the soeth on chat guy! Al ren rows Of “ert A match for both the voice and the words. The three work gether with cruel industrial precision, splintering the ch iness of words into wafery bits; like oak stumps s through a wood chipper. That poor, helpless adverb an for instance—he just murdered it! Just pecled back his bi lips to bare the incisorsbefore sinking them into the sibilant taillend of the evand then the meaty middle of the word, the ct: “ch-gepsssss-ACTHMy.” Lord, it was terrible, terrible. 18 FEBRUARY 2000. GQ145( four in the morning, but we're wide awake now, because | there's a twenty-third-century mesomorph on the tube salad-shooting parts of speech all over a soundstage, and we ate unable to avert our gize from the gore of i He continues, “Pain can be your best friend, because you can carn pain, into drive.. So true. “You gotta get hungry! You gorca stop sedating yourself with food or alcohol or television. Rightagain, dammis, “Too many people «ry to be “appropriate." They never want 10 look too excited about anything. Bull! This culture doesn't celebrate nearly enough. Know why? We dont move anymore! We live in a box. We have a box for breakfast, We drive ina box to our box office. Wessit in front of a box and, type. Have a box lunch. Drive home and sit in front of the “EV box. Maybe drink a cylinder Fuckin’ a, Tony! ““We are either dkiven or inspired. Pain or pleasure, Some- thing's gar co move you. Most people live in a place I eall no- man-land, where they're not really happy, buc where chey/re not unhappy enough to do anything about i.” | | | Ie3 about then shat che creeping suspicion overtakes cach | ofus. Does this guy know Ven wasching? e's noc what Tony says that unneerves, His words alone— printed on a page, for inscance-—don' bring any news of the world, Pain as inosivator? We knew that. TV as opiate? Knew i, No-man’-land? Knew that, oo, if we hadn't named it, No, jg’ the one-two of how Tony speaks (the cyborg physique, the oraculat roar, the use of certainty as 2 means of locomorion) and when (the most psychically dilating hour of the day). Fact is, Tony’s not only aware of, bur counting om the di tinct unsoundness of mind that draws us at four in the morn- ing to,the glass teats of our TVs. For he knows what kind of i ~ iy people we are: underachieving and quietly desperate, possi- bly; candy-assed and lazy, most definizely—bur also the kind iho during the day present ourselves as knowers, sophist: cates, unflappables. More important, he knows that our tlic angst isa kind of immuno-rejection of the age in which we live—an age in which a self pleased ironic self-awareness is the currency of cool, and snarky disbelief is che power toot of perception, Tony so loathes this stare of mind and has sol- diered so tizelessly against ie thar he is now our cultures mast formidable rebel against the dominion of irony. And thi why he comes to us in the barren hours, when the materials used for making masks are unavailable and all things are re- vealed for what they are. For he knows that itis then, ifever, that we are open enough to allow the sense that Tony knows Tin watebing! vo mosph into something more dangerous... Tony kanes el TONY” UTELLTONY, “Tiked what you were saying tp the about turning shows inva macs.” Tie not talking to my cube, Pm talking to Tony. He’s huge and sweaty, sweaty all aves. Except for his hais, which is inex- plicably dry, and as stout and perfectly setas baleen, Hes just relinquished the stage after a three-hour “set,” entitled “Re~ sults 2090,” hefare some 15,000 a¢ the Rose Garden in Port- land, Oregon, where the Trail Blazers play. The man puts out, in the same lung-ripping, soul-scraping way Bruce Springsteen puts out. Most Americans recoil from motiva- tional speakers, as well they should. With their canned earnestness and instant escalation to high-pitched emotion, they often carry the same stink as used-car salesmen, Usu- ally we surf right on by; registering “scam!” and a slightly embarrassed contempt for che desperate ones they prey upon, Bur che Americans in this crowd are hungey for what ‘Tony Robbins is dishing: three hours of eclectic philosophy and hard-nosed strategy, replere with workbooks and charts, on how to lead (nos just manage) the things that“Tony delivers in an ever erescendoing call-and-response ora- tory that often gives the proceedings a tcotering, Pentecostal Kind of energy. And, yes, he repeatedly throws a right jab into space and thwacks his left fst against the enormous war drum of his right pectoral (amplified through his Madonna-style headgear microphone, the gesture rattles your sternum like a thunderclap) while howling things like “QUADRUPLE THE INTENSITY? Yer instead of laagh- ing athim, they do ie. l’s incredible. ‘All the more so because, as rowdy as Tony gets, his is neither the WWF nor the Jimmy Swaggart dynamic; blood frenzy and religious ecstasy don't interest his listeners, because they aren? He thwacks ‘of whom pays $7,000 to attend) in Hawaii. “Tony, asweat, takes my hand. That Robocop-like upper- body chassis gives his handshake the suhbery-hard insistence of acar bumper. “Yes,” he agrees solemnly, about che eternal truths of the should: and musts. So whet abouc the imperative must driving Tony's person ality? How did the son of a parking-lot artendizat manage to tum his whole life into an exclamation point? Could a regu lar Joe get that kind of confidence. .r00? ‘Tony doesn’t hesitate. He never does, “When was 17, Lactended a seminar by {motivational speaker] Jim Rohn, fcwas $35 for the night, and I was working asa janicor mak- particularly credulous people. They're pre- his chest ing $40 aweek. Buc it was worth it, cause I dominantly M.B.A.’s and the people who While howling came out saying, God, I want to impact the work for them, looking co plant their feecas things like world. [want to be...president of the United firmly as they can in the real world, rather Je States So Lsnid, OK; todo thar you gotta be than escape it. “I hare ‘positive thinking,’ ” Qua “PS senntot To do that you gorea be a congressman. Tony snaps. “People going, ‘Vm happy. Pm the intensity!” ‘fo do thar you gatta bea state assemblyman. happy, I'm happy’ and ‘There are no weeds in Instead of Andsoon, until Thad to ask: How do I start to- iny garden, no weeds, no weeds.’ There are weeds! Go pull “em out!” No, ‘Tony's people are, more ot less, just as Tony wanes them 10 be-less interested in the act of following, in joining a cult of person: 5 than in purchasing Tony's services and goods for the sake of theiz own personal and financial “self-realization.” Its an individualist thing To Tony, however, three hours of peak-performance coaching ina mass venuc isa trifle, more promotional than, practical. Take the wee clay of 15,000 selves and mold a Impossible. le pains him to accomplish so lire, He mach prefers, say, the seven-day, twelve-hours-a-day seminar he conducts at his Fijian resort, or the nine-day, ewelve-hours-a-day “Life Mastery” affair he pats on for groups of 1,500 people (each meaningful something in three measly hours laughing at him, they ib it, day? Answer: I run for stadent-body president!” Eyen as a goobery teen, it seems, Tony was frighteningly upbest, an X ray of a human liv- ing unashamed in the world—nothing cool, nothing mysterious, nothing redolent of secree “OK, I was five foot oue my sophomore ye: —of high school in Glendora, California: Tony bypassed college—‘the kind of guy who announced the first day of school that he wanted to date the head cheerleader. Soon enough, the'eap- id said, Hey, you te going after my woman. J said, ‘Ob yeab? I didn't know she was yout wornan.’ So he took me outside. Ir was bad. Lwas puny and slow, I was screaming ‘Screw you!’ the whole time. He poared chocolate ili all aver my head. Then he kicked my ass down ahill, Buc I was still screaming at him, so he tain ofthe football ream came up to me FESRUARY 2000 GQ1A7ro \ came down the hill and kicked dhe helt out of me again.” So..2 “So? So by the time I ran for student-body president-— against one of this guy's buddies on the football ream—the cheerleaders sponsored me. Why? Because Iwas Mr. Sofu- tion Tran a real campaign. I went to every group and said, “What do you really want from this school? I said, I won't bullshie you. Pf talk ro the principal and then come back and tell you whether what you want can be done.’ And 1 won. [ewas a seminal moment. ft made me believe that if you're real and you tel che eruth, you'll reach people.” Byage 17—the year his mother kicked him our of the house—Tony had already mapped his remaining time on the planet in ten-year chunks. The idea was to become the world’s best one-on-one practidioner of what's known as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) in his twenties, chen to expand his practice to groups of people during his thirties, eo ‘whole orgsni- zations” during bis Forties and to governmentin his fifties, (After that, Tony, who's now 39 and married to 2 woman ten years hissenios, says, ‘wants zo explore “a more religious path.”) The social science of NLP, which underlies all of Tony's work, involves the derailed measu- ing, o¢ “roodeling,” of the ways highly compe- tent individuals comprehend wharever itis hey do so well; NLP therapy involves transplanting these successful mind-sets into those who lack them, (Thus Prever ui, Tony's monthly maga cine featuring his interviews with bute kickers fromall walks of life.) Throughout his early and mid-twenties, Tony became a kind of one-man NLP road show, challenging traditional psychi- atrists to offer up their most difficule patients and then publicly miracle-healing these “uncurables” for arge audiences, The case that made his name was a multipie- personality disorder whol been in psychotherapy for seven years—and whom Tony cured in an hour. Ridiculous but true, and well documented, He and the patient simply worked to describe and define—to model—the stare of her normal, “home base” personaliey. What tended to characterize itenvironmentally, physiologically, emotionally? Whore did it tend co occut? What sort of physical postare accompanied this correct state? How did she tend ro walk, sit, smile, ete.2 “Then he talked her into the practice of fighting her affliction in reverse—by creating, in allies mundane physical and emo- tional detail, the locus of her normal self Once shed mastered hac visualization, it seemed, her desired personalcy slipped as easily a5 warm Jell-O into its awaiting mold. A disbelieving ABCTV crew tracked the patient fora year, inchiding follow- up sessions with Tony; she never relapsed, and still hasnt. ‘As for his decade-at-a-time life plan, Tony's way ahead of, schedule. Today he motivates live—for civic groups, busi- nesses, professional sports ceams, audicoriums fall of strangers—at least 150times a year. ‘The speaking fees average $125,000. The flashier «pes, the rock stars and Hollywood moguls, often get his services gratis, because “were an enter- “So Teresa. he you! their i | | | | | | 1 | t | | 148GQ FEBRUARY 2000 Mother inspires you? ? An said, “Tony, to see a person die with a smile on thought, Whoa! number one on. my list.” D tainment culture, and to the extent that I can touch foelebri- tics) ives, Tan touch the culture.” The books and tapes— he’ sold 5 million and 30 milion, respectively—bring in $15 imillion mote a year. In addition vo having the eat of everyone from Ande Agassi to Pamela Anderson Lee to the man whose job he was eyeing back in his teen years, Bill Clinton, Tony also has the “major players,” as he insinuatingly calls hem— the financiers who “move entire economies” and pay up to 51 million ayear each for the privilege of dialing Tony to pick his brain. Then there's GHS Inc., Tony's new publicly traded Net company (he’ the chairman and majority sharcholder), whose paper vale now exceeds $480 milion, ‘And then, of course, there ate the infomercials. DO YOU THINK Tony doesn’t hear the snicker- ing? Do you think he's somehow unaware that most people in this country know him as the overjoyed saber-roothed rube wedged between Dionne Warwick's seers and the latest offering, from K-Tel “Look, I've got five best-selling books, bur since nobody reads, I reach, what, 3 million people in a culture of 250 million thar way?” he says. “Thus my silly infomercials, 7 know they'te insulting, Buc realized longago, hac people wore gonna make judgments on me ‘no marcer what I did. And since this was the dis- tribution channel..." The Intemet’s now the chainal. In the future, Tony says, the infomer: als will be fewerand farther besween. ‘Throughout all his media, ‘Tony wants you to know that in this world there is Good, there js Excellent and there is Outstanding. He makes this point in his lectures, books and tapes, and in person. And he decsntt case if this is something some overly self-serious first-grade teacher of yours once scrawled on a chalkboard. “People come to me with stories that break my heart,” Tony tells the crowd in Portland, “‘I'm really a good man. How come my wife left me?’ ‘'m.a good dad. How come my son's on > cocaine?” I know the answer, bur T can’t say it, “cause it would sound harsh: Because you're good. Becusise those are the rewards of good.” Dude, harsht “Tony, working up a fall Darwinian lather, continues. “But achievers like you don't settle for govd, co you? No! You go way up here to this level we call excellence! How many of you here are like that? Say “aye!” AIEETHTLEcccee! “And what are the rewards for being excellent?” Ubbbhbhbhhbhh, “Good!” Tony barks the word contemptuously, meaning merely good. It freaks them. “Oh yes! And this really pisses you off, docsntt it ‘fare siot poor. fam not just good. Tam EXCELLENT! One of the BEST! So how come | get such measly rewards?” Sonofabicch just shredded that adjective, “EXCELLENT!” Lasked » What at juices she face.’ I ot(T the three syllables erupting like shrapnel chrough the Brst | fourteen rows of the audience. | “And to think that this excellence is just a quarter-inch be- Jow that final level where all the rewatds are..the ousstand- sig Yes, i¢s true: All the disproportionate rewards are for the ‘outstanding. It’s tosally unfair—and T LOVE id Why? Be- cause it inspires the entire culeure.” Though this bromide’s about as subtle asa brick to the head, ifs exactly che kind of rough truth this crowd is pining for, and they leap to their feet in approval. Indeed, Tony's learned in recent years to stip his message to the bare esen tials, In the’ 80s, he used to chant “Cool moss! Cool moss!” as his fans walked barcfoot over glowing coals, then thetori- cally ask, “Ifyou can make yourselves walk through fire, what can't you dol?” Tony fire-walks no more. “That,” he says dismissively, “was a gimmick,” the kind of melodrama, that ran the risk of eurning Tony into’a clown, a Susan Pow- ter. Instead, Tony now uses highly generalized meeaphors from the all-American worlds of sports and encertain- ‘ment—he’s big on tales from the lives of Michad Jordan and ‘Oprah Winfeey—when demonsteating for his audiences what mental stee! is, He is by far the most general, the most | emotionally based—and, consequently, the most sticcess- fal—in-the empowerment business. Know this: Ie is precisely the brazen, gleeful willingness swith which Tony embraces the vocabulary of easiest access that makes him great. Tony revels in the cliché—unabash- edly tunsheathing the likes of * Youve gotta give a thomsand percent!” and “Emotion is created by motion!” as if eack swere a dagger thachad never bofore left its scabbard. "Avone point, Tony asks me which of my shoudds I'm tarn- inginto:muts “Mc? Uh... suppose I've got to start witing books.” “What's the first one abou?” “Lsuppose I should be able co tell you thar, too, but L care” ‘Unamnsed; Tony jabsa finger my way. "You should be writing books. You should be writing the first one. You should knoiy what its about.” He emits a dis- missive little pf! "You're shoulding all over yourself, pal” Isa kicleass thing fo say, isn ie? Telling a guy that he and ‘everything he does smells like should. Great stuff. Tony em- ploys the line onstage, o0. The crowds eat it up. They've all been stinking of should for yeacs (save ony, who hasn'@), and they know i. Like snany of Tony’ stawegies, the dowd bine a6.) fitst appears merely cacchy, a pun. Buc it more chan thar, and when Tony uses it (on a.ctowd, on a person), it feels more like a hypodermic than a punch line, For by pairing underachieve- ment with offal, Tony is talking direcly'to his bstenees shane, tapping it. He knows that for most Americans, especially the professional doers who make up his audiencas, the flehy feel. ing of shame is less often about “inner character flaws* chan about starus—abour not kicking enough ass and making enough bread. In reminding us how dirty we feel when we tundermotivate and underachieve, Tony draws attention to the exemplary model of his own esseitial..cleanves. The strange. | purity aot only of his physical aspect but also of his zeal—the | \ / unsullied X ray-ness of his psyche. Here isa man—see hitm!— who lives without feas, who wastes no mental K on the neu- roses with whieh the rest oF us mortals smother ove potential, avhose every bodily cell has been magnesially, purposefully, aligned. (in my life, Eve met only 2 handful of people so con- sumed by an idea of mission shar they seemed to be using 100 peroent of theit brains; Tony is the only one of these who isn't a scientist.) So go ahead and laugh at him. Mock im. Call him a lovest-common-denoniinaror thinker Poise out that the shoud line has been a trope of Alcoholics Anonymous and other such groups for decades: Tony knows how wellvorn his: expressions are. He doesnt care By engaging in the extraordinary act of himneelf Tony aims to put his listeners in a rockin’ and somewhat silly state of amin, “Who wants 0 act like a child, today?” he bellows at the begitining of “Results 2000°—with such virile charisma, such musical muscularity, that his words have the smash- through feeling of firse things, and dooris opened. “Yo what? To the drudgery of self-improvement, that's what. To the chore of listening to one of Tony's oné-a-day, thirry-day audiotape series, with their commonsensical but time-consuming entreaties to make lists, keep journals, prac tice edifying postures and modes of speech, ete., ete, As charismatic as he is, Tony nevet defines sclf-betterment as the magical stuff of epiphany. Over and oves, he says it straight out: Achieving a desired “state” —of self-tegard, of self-fulfilling confidenceis an acquited skill, like a second language. Talent can work in your favor, but commitinencis by far the most itnportant ingredient. Tony's job iso psych you up for the grinding, repetitive labor thatyou already know-—and have known for along time-—needsto be done. NO, TONY DOESN'T CARE if you've heard irall bolore. And at ‘some level he acrually hopes you have, and that i irks you just a fitde, because hie knows fall well that the impulse custenely dominating this most youth- and cool-obsessed of culeures is acertait clever, knowing, winking irony. As the young Jedi Jedediah Purely and his batrered band of rebels have been earnestly arguing, ours isa specific brand of iroay—the kind that never gives the appearance of having co wait behind the velvet ropes, the kind that rolls its cyes with come-hither non- chalance at everything under the sun before quipping “Seen ie, done it,” the kind thar comprchends the whole of life as a gamie whose only object is to figure out the angle, the con. (Which is why the people of the media, arguably the mast - irony-immersed in the country, have typically portrayed “Tonyras a cheese ioon, a benign huckster or both.) Ofcourse. i's nox without value, this brand of frony: Te cheaply purchases delicious selfapprwval, k provides 2 “tale” for those who dont have the time and energy to perfortn the intellectual shox required co understind things on thei own terms, Fe prcempts all forms of rejection. It puts.a person per- petually atthe crest of the wave: It lights a big bag of poop on the doorstep of the world, rings the bell and runs. Is fim Butin theend, isa steroidogenic way to tne. Yes, a person can produce an immediace wowing effect to which the rest of the world pays homage (“That dude is ice!”)—but he does cowtinuny Oy nAGE Ds FEBRUARY 2000 GQrasMATT HALE Matt Hale as we dwindle down a final day on the porch where I have heen treated ro music and malice in vaingloti- ous narraw stices. He weighs the question for only a moment before exasperation gets the better of him. “Well, nothing's in it for you personally, but maybe itl save the 500 miltion other white people on the planet. Such selfishness,” he winces. “As long as we keep on this individualis- tic path, we'll evencually be picked off ~eerncal.” Another thought intrudes, and it rakes TONY ROBBINS CONTINGRD FROM PAGE M9 50 at the expense of stowly curning his in- nards into a toxie steve. I's a lonely exis- tence, to0. For, by definition, the iconist paines himself into a place where he cart ‘aust no one and no thing, He cannot take anything, seriously, or at face value, for he is steeped in the deconstructionist’s no- tion chac everything a person feels, says ot docs is revsived, unoriginal. Ne isa serial disheliever And then-—abways at four in the morn- ing-his eyes open, and something pierces him, shat intimation of horror that passes through a body when stepping face fist into a cobweb in the dark. He's finally come face-to-face with the terrible noth- ingness of is own sophistication. He par: ics. The air about him scems chins rebreathed, His presence in the real world suddenly feels as negligible asa ghost’s, and ic scares the living should out of him. Seeking solace, he reaches for the dicken... ‘What comforts ata time like this, when a life has ost es vital mineral content The simple wraths that inthe blanching light of day get pooh-poobed as elichés. The Word of Tony. My goal,” Tony says, “is ta have you havea visceral experience. Notan intellee- tual experience by itself. T could sit here and have an intellectual debate with you and philosophize, and I could sound asin telligent as I needed to sound in order to impress you. Bue a long time ago T said, “You know what I'm really interested i Results’ So gave thac crap up.” Tony knows what the four-o'-clock watcher craves: a person of visceral ces- tainties shoveling the hard, Lempy truths we've all known at some level since we were children. This Tony understands, 19669 FEBRUARY 2000 hold of Mace Hale in an odd but nor dis- agreeable way. He smiles fuindy as he says. “Tn an interesting way, though... [don't know exactly how to put i. But to takea faralisic view of things: If che white race doesn’t get its act together, and the white race falls, then nature will have its way. ‘The greater will survive. And the weaker ‘will perish.” ‘To which he offers an almost beatific shrug. Fora moment, che struggle is over, the demons within are at rest, and itis just Macc Hale and his master, 2 lite whise and this Tony provides. “People,” he likes to say, “always come to me when they con a roll and they want to own even moe of the world—or when they're at the nadir” Indeed, o nadir dwellers, i's not just the man’s bare-naked English bac his ‘very name that comes asa fiery awaken- “Tony Robbins” —so plain, every- rman, ustricky. And although Tony works a¢ what might ar first seem an unseemly fever pitch, his emotion is never unearned, ever merely sencimental—because is never pretty or polite. Lony Robbins docs not place too much stock in "manner for he does not believe in anything that carries the potential for obfuscation. ‘Thus his alarming habit of reminding everyone he comes in contact with just how absurdly well connected and loaded he is, He repeatedly boasts co his audi- ‘ences about hobnobbing with the likes of Clinton, Gorbachev, Air Jordan, and about his rocket helicopter, kis Learjes, Ais Fijian resore. “Not to impress you,” he says time and again, “but to impress upon you. ‘One night: in the lobby of the Four Sea- sons Hovel in New York, he is approached by a gray-haiced, comato-faced man, half in the bag, who announces that he at- tended a Tony Robbins seminar some ight years back. “And Hooked around that room,” he says boisterously, “and T shaid co myshelf, “welve-hundred people at twelve-hundeed bucksh a pop? This uy mushe be fuckin’ loaded? “OF coutse,” says Tony, leaning in and speaking in a patient voice, to better irm~ press upon this drunken seranger what he has to say, “the nuenbers are much bigger now." supplicanc to nature's prejadices, prone be- neath her gray sledgehammer, conceateo beextruded right through the sil and into the eternal black. Surrender he must. Weak, strong, colored, cotorless—we're all in the sameline, and when the time comes, for Matt Hale co draw the black bean, someone may mark the occasion by bray- ing into a microphone, ona porch in the very middle of nowhere, "Phe loss is one ‘white man.” s Robert Draper isa GQ writernat large. Not « subtle man, no, Nor does he have auch interest in the interestingnes, pers, of other people's interesting problems. A “fascinating case study”? Tony don't cate He’ only interested in caking the problems of people and summarily shaving them off. For at the end of the day, Tony himselfiis ceuly the most spectacularly shave you wil ever meet, both physically and metaphorically, Shaved the way a cigarette boat or an B-14 is shaved, with 2 pleasing, cleanness of shape that ingeniously cleaves the resisting clement in question—water, ether or, in Tony's case ennui. PERHAPS THE MOST important theme ‘Tony returns to again and again in his talks is whae might be termaed die culture ~ of blunt By ebis he means the habit, culi- vvared in no simall pa by the posse of self blp gurus who have sprung up ia che past fiftecn years, of secing af human actions through the lens of therapy. In this world ‘view, no one is ever bad or evil. Just vie~ Aimized, “sick.” He speaks with disguise of ‘the Menendez brothers ("Are they guilty?” ARE THEY GUILTY@?) and Lorena Bobbier (“Donte get me wong. Ifhe hare hee, Lane him punished, Ewan him 19 have pain, But she's reponsiblet). Tony in evitably couples such ran with another ‘heme—his distinctly American belief that history, both individually ar clleciively, shoulda'c and doesn't weigh as much as we tend to think it dots. “Theie is 96 past!” he's fond of yelling, sourly spletiag out dhe p-word like a profanity. “Phereis onty now!” Unlike many self-help gurus who project seductive, coddling persone that turn the selves of theit followers tata lective, hypochondriacal mush {Werner Erhard, for example), Tony biuatly ex CONTINUED ON-YAGE BYTONY ROBBINS CONTINUED FROM PAGE I96 horts his audiences co “sep up!"*—to cut the self pity that masks cowardice. Each of chese messages is simple, yes, but their desiga is nor. For in linking them, Tony knowingly takes direct aim at the ironist’s implicit assumption that there js no such thing as am original self. The iro- nist, after all, believes the self is nothing but an accumulation of influences, and thar the best we can hope for isto make clear-—through a barrage of clever refer- ences in everyday conversation—that swe've wise to it. Tony's angey setort, one part Jefferson and (wo parts Nietzsche, is ‘hart there's not only suck a thing as an i dividual —chere’ nothing else. Vhere’s that wet clay ofthe self, the will to mold ig and thar’s ali she wrote, Bad personal history? Serotonin deficit? Mere pins to be whacked aside with the bowling ball of har Tony prosaically calls “an outstand= ing state of mind.” BELIZE CONTENUED FROM PAGE DS shot and the roadside bar where Harrison Ford and the crew hung out, acold-heer joint thar had seen becter days. Bel- mopan, the nation’s capital, was built on the safer high ground of the mountains after Belize City was leveled by a husri- cane in 1961. A ruin of concrete architec- ture now, Belmopan never reached the insagined glory ofits designers and is uni- vetsaly cogarded as boring beyond belief ‘The first-class bus—meat sandwich, peach necrarand cookie served by che bus stewardess—stopped for only a few min- ares, thaukfully, and we weaved on through ciny villages and into the begin- ings of che subtropical jungle. San Ignacio, the main town ia the Be- lizean quarter of what archaeologists call Mesoamerica, was filled with Rastas and Mennonites and backpackers. In the nearby Chiquibul Forest Reserve, en route to the Mayan ruin at Caracol (Spanish for “snail,” a reference co the ssinding route into the site) the coad nar- rowed and grew ragged. Phillip, che guide Thad hized for the day. pulled the four- wheel-drive over next to the Mopan River: We had been warned by a eruck driver traveling in the opposite dicection thac a flash Flood was on its ways ina heavy rain the river can rise dozens of feet in 2 marcer of minutes and the only bridge out would be impassable. Phitlip, In this light, Tony's bhuc-collar delivery is exactly what's called for. “Sports events and rock concerts, those are my models,” says Tony, who always takes the stage pumping his fisto the thunderingly inane Tina Turner anthem "[Simply) the Best.” “The media always grabs on to the fact shat I get people at my seminars chanting, jumping, ineanting. Quise honesdy, if read that shit, I'd chink, God, what a bunch of losers. Burin this culeare, [games and concerts} are the places where people have the most visceral experiences of their lives, and people tend to remember things they associate a lot of emotion to.” vs rug, isnt i And true, too, that you really can'targue with an ironist on his ‘own terms. No, you must take the C-4 of blunt language, shove it up his dandy ass and bow! jubilantly as you press the deto- nace burton. Tony has no choice but to incessantly, hyprotically, employ such half Mayan and an expert on the area, de: cided we should go for it, and we sped across the thin cement bridge and onto the wet, muddy jangle path, the screech and holler of monkeys echoing in the “The mysteries of the Mayan ate mani fold: monumental aechicectute, advanced mathematics and astrology, 2 taste for hu- rman sacrifice. Stranger stills the simple fact chat the civilization was complecely forgotten, the vast cities overgrown by the jungle. The site at Caracol wasn't found until the 1930s, by logece scarch- ing for mahogany, and excavations are stil is early stages. Phillip ted ove to 2 gi- ant cave where he had caken a British band—A Flock of Seagulls, he hought— to shoot a video, and he discovered a shatd of pottery he claimed dared from the Late Classic Period (A.0. 700 to 996). AAs we were touring the altars and plazas and combs, Phillip stopped to show me a tela engraved with hieroglyphics. We were alone at the site, and he fovingty subbed dirt from the face of the stone and explained that it had been dedicaced to Lord K’an I in che seventh century. 1 touched the relic, a seeming tactile inti- macy with a distant world, and discov. ered icwas a hollow plastic re-creation. Phillip lowered his head in embarrass- ment, flat-out busted, and suggested we cudgeling, sexvalized words as “Power!"s “Juice!” (verb); “Anchos!” (verb); and “Tool!” He knows it. Knows he's gotra wrest the curt and flinty words from his gut and go for the jole Forin the end, itis the Power and the Tool dha make ony the Gizat, the Emo- tion King, Ieis the Anchoring and the Juicing that make him big enough, strong enough, bold cnough, preposterous and amusing enough, to strike his giant hand through our enveloping cocoons of dishe- fief and tip the realest pact of us-—the cmorion—right out into the open ait, so that we, too, can see the organ, rich and red as an eggplant, with its roots tarrered and bleeding, and know that ic is ral and that it exists, and in glorious harmony swith Tony, howl, FUCKIN’ A, DUD! BELIEVE * Andr 10 Corelle isa GQ senior writen Iurty in case there was a flish flood and the bridge back became impassable, aa event that, it turned out, dide’e happen. “Atthe farend of the ruins, che old royal family’s Caana, or “sky palace,” towered ‘over the jungle city. I seated the staies, che same stairs where human lives had been offered to appease the gods. From the top ‘of the soaring stonc-built compound, E saw the high canopy shaded blue in the ist, low clouds clinging co treeraps. No other sign of civilization was visible on the ancient horizon, [WOKE WITH THE DAWN on Goff’s ‘Caye, as rested. as a child, Chased into the cabana by a late-night rain, Lad shaced cushions from the boat with Ginger. But Ginger and che Professor never hooked up, Lam here to report, never even shoughe about it, Charlie scrambled the eggs U had bought, conceding that the botinties of the sea can he erobellished, and then we set sail for Rendezvous Cave, an oven smaller isle ro dhe south, Using 2 discarded fishing leador he had found on the beach ae Goff’s, Charlie dropped baited hook off the stern, and fifieen min- utes later the fine was hit hard and Bird rected in a fifteen-pound barracuda, which glistened silver in the sum. In the water off Rendezvous, in the sway of lettuce coral and schools of blue FEBRUARY 2000 GQ397