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POWER OR PLEASURE? THE GIVE AND TAKE OF ORAL SEX 


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PICTORIALS: f vw | ROBREINER 


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LOOK AT TON Í JAMIE LEE CURTIS 
3 20 QUESTIONS 

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RITY. TO AMERICA 


When Frederic Miller came 
to America from Germany, he 
wasn't much different from any 
other newcomer. 

Like millions of others, he 
saw in America a golden op- 
portunity—to bring his brewing 
skills to their peak, using 
the finest resources in the world. 

Frederic Miller made the 
most of what America had 
to offer. He made the best beer 
he knew how to make, usin 
the finest grains and hops; the 
purest water. 

And to show America the 
quality and purity of his beer, he 
insisted on putting it in clear 
bottles. 

A lot has changed since 
Frederic Miller's day. But a lot 
hasn't. 

Miller still uses the finest 
ingredients and brewing skills. 
lt contains no additives or 
preservatives. 

And Miller still comes in 
the same clear bottles. 

For the same clear reasons. 


. MADE THE AMERICAN WAY. 


fea, 
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OVER 
100 YEARS AGO 
FREDERIC 
MILLER 
MADE A CLEAR 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 
That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


"Light my Lucky” 
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ШЦ 


PLAYBILL 


DO ANYTHING YOU WANT with us this month, just don't get near an 
open flame. July's гілувоу ће most explosive magazine to hit the 
stands in more than 30 days—is a sparkler. 

The rockets’ red glare you see overhead heralds the arrival of 
Chuck Yeager, breaking the PLAYBOY barrier with American Hero, a 
memoir of the dawn of the space age. An excerpt from Bantam’s 
Yeager: The Autobiography of Chuck Yeager, co-written by Leo Janos, 
American Hero is a look back at the career of one of the world's fast- 
est, most daring pilots—the exemplar of what Tom Wolfe called The 
Right Stuff. Yeager says he's seen women and even a few golden 
trout who clearly had it, but he’s still not sure what The Right Stuff 
is. Whatever it may be, it’s all over American Hero, which boasts the 
right illustration by Herb Davidson. 

The spike is the stuff of great volleyball, and one dude with the 
right spike is Indiana Hov, the Jupiter of beach deities. In Volleyball 
ods, Mike Sager paints Hov as the bronze star ol a sport that's just 
hitting the big time. But Hov wants the big time’s big money now. 
He'll go on strike before he spikes for peanuts. He's getting manaad, 
Will Hov follow V-ball's earlier gods into an endless summer of 
obscurity? In his own words, “No waaaaaay!” 

Is Rob Reiner a meathead? No waaaay! In this month's Playboy 
Interview, the director of This [s Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing dis- 
cusses everything from life as a showbiz kid to penis size to the 
integrity of the National Enquirer with interviewer David Rosenthal. 
Rob and his famous dad, Carl—who also took time to chat with us 
this month—have already drawn more laughs than those two 
famous Martins, Steve and Billy. 

Jamie Lee Curtis can claim two noteworthy parents, Tony Curtis and 
Janet Leigh. Her mom starred in the first slasher film and Jamie Lee's 
career began that way, too; but since Halloween, she’s turned 
screams into sighs with such gore-free delights as Love Leiters, Trad- 
ing Places and Perfect, in which she plays the title role. After you've 
stared at her picture for a while, read Jamie Lee’s perfect 20 answers 
to David Rensin's 20 Questions. 

Is head just a head game? In an oral examination called Who's in 
Charge Here?, Susan Squire studies the dynamics of oral sex. Some 
look down on it, but some say oral sex is just like any other kind of 
sex, only tastier. Squire’s overview may turn your ideas on the sub- 
ject upside down and inside out. 

Look into fantasyland for out July fiction. Howard Waldrop's Heirs 
of the Perisphere is a futuristic fantasia in which a familiar-looking 
mouse and friends set out to find America in the 35th Century. 
Donald E. Westlake’s Breathe Deep, winningly illustrated by David Wil- 
cox, spotlights a Las Vegas loser out for revenge. We won't give away 
the ending, but in this Vegas, the odds do not favor the house. 

The odds have always favored James Bond, but 007 faced 
Grace Jones, until she was cast in his new film adventure, A View to a 
Kill. We call this month’s star pictorial Amazing Grace, and you'll 
know why when you see Helmut Newton's photos of the amazing Miss 
Jones and her boyfriend, Rocky IV’s Dolph Lundgren. 

You say you don't go to the movies? You'll wait months to sec 
Grace in the new Bond movie? You must be a videot. Join the 
crowd. Printed-word apostate Paul Slansky offers an insider's tale of 


the tape in The VCR Ate My Brain, which comes without an FBI WARN- | 


ING but with a fine freeze frame by illustrator cel O'Brien. 

Videoholics and other couch potatoes will appreciate Mark 
O'Donnell's Swimming Taught Scientifically—now they can study 
swimming by mail. See what science can do? Forget about licking the 
backstroke. Lick a stamp and you can learn to swim without ever 
getting chlorine in your eyes. 

Get Sheer Madness in your eyes right away, though. Arny Freytag's 
loving look at legwear leaves little to the imagination and nothing to 
be desired. After that, turn to leggy Playmate Hope Marie Carlton and 
let your imagination run wild. 

You're going to enjoy this month's sparkling PLAYBOY. Just remem- 
ber what we said about open flames. 


YEAGER 


AOS 


ROSENTHAL 


WESTLAKE SOUIRE 


WALDROP 


“u 


SLANSKY O'BRIEN 


in 


O'DONNELL FREYTAG 


PLAYBOY 


What else would you give 
aspecial Daddy for Lei Day? 


Warbucks © 1985 Tribus 
6 Gre ROR s Co., N.Y.C. 12 Years Bae m Ble ec исһ Whisky * 86 Proof. 


PLAYBOY 


vol. 32, no. 7—july, 1985 CONTENTS FOR THE MEN'S ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE 
PLAYBILL . .. 5 
DEAR PLAYBO' PETER: n 
PLAYBOY AFTER HOURS 15 
SPORTS 37 


.. STEPHEN BIRNBAUM 41 
ASA BABER 43 
CYNTHIA HEIMEL 45 
. CRAIG VETTER 47 RESUME SES 


AGAINST THE WIND ... 
THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR . 


51 

. LOSS 

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: ROB REINER—candid com 61 
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?—article 78 
AMAZING GRACE—pictorial 82 


HEIRS OF THE PERISPHERE—fiction . HOWARD WALDROP 88 
AND THE HEAT GOES ON—fashion. . .. HOLLIS WAYNE 91 
BREATHE DEEP—fiction................ SUR AES e DONALD E. WESTLAKE 94 
JUST HAVING FUN—playboy's playmate of the month. . .. . 
PLAYBOY'S PARTY JOKES—humor 
AMERICAN HERO— memoir . .. . 

PLAYBOY BY DESIGN—modern living 
THE SUMMERTIME BREWS—drink . MICHAEL JACKSON 116 
THE VCR ATE MY BRAIN—article. . .. PAUL SLANSKY 120 
VOLLEYBALL GODS = poris os eR creer AREE TEE VE EET MIKE SAGER 122 


SHEER MADNESS—pictorial............... ee 26; 
SWIMMING TAUGHT SCIENTIFICALLY—humor ....... MARK O'DONNELL 139 
AND THREE TO GO!— modern living .................................... .. 140 
20 QUESTIONS: JAMIE LEE CURTIS 

GI JO-pictorial ................ 

PLAYBOY FUNNIES—humor............. > sy 

PLAYBOY ON THE SCENE ............ E ceed por Ue ineo 205 
COVER STORY 


Why do cover girls wear red-white-and-blue suspenders? To keep your 
hopes up. We can't give away everything on the cover, after all. Otherwise, 
you would never turn to this page and learn that our Fourth-of-July cover 
photo— produced by West Coast Photo Editor Marilyn Grabowski and shot by 
Contributing Photographer Stephen Wayda—features Miss October 1983, the 
star-spangled Tracy Vaccaro. Oh, say, have you ever seen anything better? 


PLAYBOY 


fen FUJITSU TEN 
SA CarAudio 


FUJITSU. 
HER 


ite > 


Car audio is our life. There's no way we would 
settle for less than the best Why should you? 


они, Fun Ten Corp. c Amerca бані Pace Gateway Dre. Torta, Call. 90502. In Canada Noresco Canada Ine, Toronto, Otro. Macu by Fated TEN Lit 


To us, it’s a marvel of anatomical 
design, fitting perfectly 
with the I9 bones in your hand. 


To you, it's just a flick of the Bic. 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor and publisher 


NAT LEHRMAN associate publisher 


ARTHUR KRETCHMER editorial director 
TOM STAEBLER art director 
GARY COLE photography director 
С. BARRY GOLSON executive editor 


EDITORIAL 

NONFICTION: JAMES MORGAN articles editor; ROB 
FLEDER senior editor; FICTION: ALICE K. TURNER 
editor; TERESA GROSCH associate editor; PLAYBOY 
GUIDES: MAURY 2. Levy edilor; WEST COAST: 
STEPHEN RANDALL editor; STAFF: GRETCHEN 
EDGREN, WILLIAM J. HELMER, PATRICIA PAPANGELIS 
(administration), DAVID STEVENS senior editors; 
ROBERT E. CARR, WALTER LOWE, JR, JAMES К. PETER- 
SEN, JOHN REZEK senior staff writers; KEVIN COOK, 
BARBARA NELLIS, DAVID NIMMONS, KATE NOLAN, 
SUSAN MARGOLIS-WINTER (new york) associate edi- 
1015; MONA PLUMER assistant editor; MODERN 
LIVING: ED WALKER associate editor; JIM BARKER 
assistant editor; FASHION: HOLLIS WAYNE editor; 
HOLLY BINDERUP assistant editor; CARTOONS: 
MICHELLE URRYedilor; COPY: ARLENE BOURAS editor: 
JOYCE RUBIN assistant editor; NANCY BANKS, CAROLYN 
BROWNE, PHILLIP COOPER, JACKIE JOHNSON, MARCY 
MARCHI, MARY ZION researchers; CONTRIBUTING 
EDITORS: ASA BABER, STEPHEN BIRNBAUM (travel), 
JOHN BLUMENTHAL, E JEAN CARROLL, LAURENCE 
GONZALES, LAWRENCE OROBEL, D. KEITH MANO, ANSON 
MOUNT, DAVID RENSIN, RICHARD RHODES, JOHN SACK, 
TONY SCHWARTZ, DAVID SHEFF, DAVID STANDISH, 
BRUCE WILLIAMSON (movies), GARY WITZENBURG 


ART 
KERIG POPE managing director; CHET SUSKI, LEN 
WILLIS senior directors; BRUCE HANSEN, THEO KOU- 
VATSOS associale directors; KAREN OAEBE, KAREN 
Gurowskv junior directors; JOSEPH PACZEK assist- 
ant director; FRANK LINDNER, DANIEL REED, ANN 
SEIDL ат! assistants; SUSAN HOLMSTROM traffic coor- 
dinator; BARBARA HOFFMAN administrative manager 


PHOTOGRAPHY 

MARILYN GRABOWSKI west coast editor; JEFF COHEN 
senior editor; LINDA KENNEY. JAMES LARSON, JANICE 
MOSES, MICHAEL ANN SULLIVAN associate editors; 
PATTY BEAUDET assistant editor; POMPEO POSAR sen- 
dor staff photographer; DAVID MECEY, KERRY MORRIS 
staff photographers; DAVID CHAN, RICHARD FEGLEY, 
ARNY FREYTAG, RICHARD IZUI, LARRY L- LOGAN, KEN 
MARCUS, STEPHEN WAYDA contributing photogra- 
phers; TRIA HERMSEN, ELYCE KAPOLAS, PATRICIA 
‘TOMLINSON stylists; JAMES WARD color lab supervi- 
‘Sor; ROBERT CHELIUS business manager 


PRODUCTION 
JOHN MASTRO director; MARIA MANDIS manager; 
ELEANORE WAGNER, JODY JURGETO, RICHARD 
QUARTAROLI, RITA JOHNSON assistants 


READER SERVICE 
CYNTHIA LACEY -SIKICH manager 


CIRCULATION 
RICHARD SMITH director; ALVIN WIEMOLD subscrip- 
tion manager 


ADVERTISING 
CHARLES M. STENTIFORD director 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
J P. TIM DOLMAN assistant publisher; MARCIA 
TERRONES rights €? permissions manager; EILEEN 
KENT contracts administrator 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES, INC. 
CHRISTIE HEFNER president 


Armor All* Protectant. It took a polymer chemist 10 years to develop, but it 
only takes you a minute to apply. 

On your tires. Rubber bumpers. Dashboard. Door panels. Rubber molding. 
And even the hoses under your hood 

It penetrates rubber, vinyl, leather and plastic to help guard 
against damaging ozone, oxygen and ultra-violet rays. And keep. 
your cars surfaces looking new. 

Use it every time you wash. Because theres nothing like a car 
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ARMOR ALL. IT'S SCIENCE. BUT IT WORKS LIKE MAGIC. 


С тә M Posi Ses Amo A eres rrt tenon Carman 


Choose a diamond as magnificent as 
the moment its given. 


DeBeers 


You want a diamond engage- 
ment ring that is as irreplaceable 
as this once-in-a-lifetime moment. 
And one you can both be proud of 
forever. And today, that means 
spending about 2 months’ salary. 
Now that may sound like a lot at 


first. But anyone who knows the 
value of quality knows it pays to 
go for the best you can afford. 

So take your time. See a jew- 
eler. Learn about the 465 that de- 
termine a diamonds quality: Cut, 
color, clarity and carat-weight. 
And send for our booklet, "Every- 
thing Youd Love to Know. 


About Diamonds." Just mail 
$1.25 to DIC, Dept. DER-L-PL, 
Box 1344, NY., NY. 10101-1344. 
After all, this is the one thing 
that will symbolize your love 
every day of your lives. 
A diamond is forever. 


Е 


Is 2 months' salary too much to spend 


for something that lasts forever? 


DEAR PLAYBOY 


ADDRESS DEAR PLAYBOY 
PLAYBOY BUILDING 
919 N. MICHIGAN AVE. 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611 


THE ICEMAN COMETH 

I want to congratulate Scott Cohen and 
PLaveoy on April's Wayne Gretzky Inter- 
view. You pick up the sports page today 
and read about recruiting violations on 
college campuses, athletes arrested for 
abusing drugs—and these are the people 
our children look up to? Gretzky is a 
breath of fresh air in the polluted world of 
professional sports. He plays for the love of 
his game, not for the money. People con- 
done the fighting in hockey, but Wayne 
has brought the game into a new world of 
pure skating and stamina. Since he joined 
the N.H.L., Wayne has dominated his 
sport. I don’t think any other player in 
sports can say that. If 1 had a kid growing 
up, I would use Wayne as an example 
demonstrating that dedication and hard 
work do pay off, 


an Meyer 
Brecksville, Ohio 


You never have to tell hockey wizard 
Wayne Gretzky to “shut the puck up!” 
He's as smooth as the ice that made him 
famous, he’s honest, he’s bright. While 
you're counting votes for the Great One as 
world's best athlete, here's mine—add one 
for the Gretzky Interview as PLAYBOY'S best. 

Pat Edmondson 
Burbank, California 


SIGNAL FILE 

My compliments to Daniel Mark 
Epstein for his extremely perceptive essay 
Signals (PLAyBov, April). It captures what 
I have thought for years about the sexual 
moods of women. May 1 suggest that gen- 
tlemen pay particular attention to that 
“luxurious drowsiness toward midnight”? 

Steven Smith 


Los Angeles, California 


If I didn’t want to make love, for what- 
ever reason, Epstein would be the man to 
change my mind. His words convey the 
ridiculousness of women's moods; Epstein 
understands us better than we sometimes 


understand ourselves, which is extremely 
rare in a man. Thank you for a great essay 
on the ambiguities of us women. And 
thanks for an over-30 Playmate in the 
same issue—I was beginning to think we 
had outlived our usefulness. 

Karen J. Curia 


Harrison, New York 


QUALITY BY QUINCY 
What a surprise to be honored by the 
PLAYBOY readers with such a beautiful 
award! Thank you for your kind wishes 
and for making my day a special one 
Quincy Jones 
Los Argeles, California 
The always-gracious Mr. Jones won 
1985's Playboy Music Poll as Best Jazz 
ComposerlSongwriter, for the third time in 
arow. 


EASY TO BE HARD 
Reading Cynthia Heimel’s acerbic “А 

Good Man Is Harder to Find” (Women, 
рїлүвоү, April), I had to feel sorry for her 
Her hostility toward successful men— 
along with her clichéed generalizations 
about them—makes her seem about as 
appealing as a wet rag. She wonders why 
today's man seems arrogant. Possibly it's 
because he has become fed up with the 
sexist double standards of today's liber- 
ated woman—fed up with her insatiable 
desire to have her cake and cat it, too. 

Brian Bentley 

Los Angeles, California 


Just where does Heimel get the idea that 
“it’s easy to get dates” if you are a man? 
My single male friends and I have not 
found this to bc truc, and we are not the 


“arrogant fools" Heimel so enjoys describ- 
ing. We are hard-working, understanding, 
generous and average-to-good-looking, 
but we don't see women “flashing some 
cleavage and offering tuna casserole” to us! 
I am sure that for every woman who 
spends “lonely Saturday nights with only 
a vibrator for company” there are at least 


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PLAYBOY 


12 


two men who spend the weekend courting 
their own right hands. There are "good 
men" out here, ladies, but you've got to 
give all men a fair chance or you'll never 
find out who we are. 
Gregory M. Sayre 
South Bend, Indiana 


1 don't know what Cynthia Heimel 
looks like, but I know she's a beautiful per- 
son. The impression I get from her Women 
cclumn is that of an intelligent, sensitive 
woman. It is interesting that although she 
has written about numerous aspects of 
man-woman relationships, I have not yet 
disagreed with her, even on minor points. 
Tam a man, yet I could almost write the 
same things about women that she writes 
about men. I could tell about many of the 
same frustrations, disappointments and 
joys. Could it be that Heimel really under- 
‘stands our complex social games? It is 
thrilling to know that there is such a 
woman as she. Keep at it, Cynthia. We 
necd your wit and your insight. 

I. Kertesz 
Chandler, Arizona 


MEN TO MEN 
I found Asa Baber's April Men column, 

“Sexist Witch-Hunt," a timely, interesting 
piece. Baber continually amazes me with 
sharp, well-written essays on the state of 
men’s allairs with women, society, ego and 
almost everything else. His poignancy is 
matched only by his cleverness, his wit 
only by his style. Baber continues to be my 
favorite PLAYBOY contributor. When my 
long-awaited magazine finally shows up, 
his column is the first thing I read. 

Jim Neumerski 

Converse, Texas 


As usual, Baber is right on target in 
April's Men column, “Sexist Witch- 
Hunt.” Гуе read his column for several 
months now and am impressed by the 
courage with which he relates truths about 
male-female relationships. The same 
“feminists” who rail against the Miss 
America Pageant as a meat market giggle 
with glee at male strip shows. The same 
women who demanded and got a Playgirl 
magazine still want to close the doors on 
PLAYBOY. Women who bemoan the double 
standard of our male-oriented language 
think nothing of referring to a man as a 
nerd, bastard, hunk, wimp or jock—terms 
for which there are no female equivalents. 
One of Cynthia Heimel’s favorite expres- 
sions, I believe, is “pond scum.” But woe 
to the man who calls his female co-worker 
"honey"—he will soon find a sexual- 
harassment suit dangling over his thought- 
less head. 
R. K. Cardwell 


Jefferson City, Missouri 


SPOT CHECK 
Wonderful cover on your April issue. 
Donna and Natalie Smith have the most 


beautiful eyes. But we are curious about 
the freckle combination in Donna’s cleav- 
age. Is that a Rabbit we detect? 
The Boys at the Pru 
Prudential Insurance. 
Newark, New Jersey 


I found the logo on the April cover! 1 
noticed Donna Smith's chest. She has a 
few freckles, and one is in the shape of 
your Rabbit Head. Keep up the good 
work. 


David A. Piatek 
Buffalo, New York 


SIS BOOM BA 
I want to compliment you on the fine 
Ken Marcus pictorial Playmate Sisters. 1 
have been in love with Cathy St. George 
since I saw her in your centerfold. 
Recently, I had the chance to watch Cathy 
in living, moving color in your Playmate 
Review 2 video. And now here she is 
again—with her beautiful sister Toni. 
Great! April's pLavBoY is a perfect issue. 
Dave Willis 
Falls City, Nebraska 


You have proved beyond a shadow of a 
doubt that lightning can strike twice in the 
same family. First I fall in love with Miss 
March 1983, Alana Soares, and then you 
give me her sister Leilani in Playmate Sis- 
ters. Alana and Leilani are definitely the 
most gorgeous sisters Pve laid eyes on. 

Philip Frey 
Rochester, New York 


Although Donna Smith is certainly one 
of the loveliest women to appear in your 
pages in quite some time, I must admit I 
was captivated by her older sister Natalic. 
Thank heaven for little girls, but thank 
PLAYROY for older sisters 

James R. Hudman 
Lubbock, Texas 


RED SKY AT NIGHT 
Being a New England boater, I have 

ample time in our long off season to devour 
nearly every beating publication on the 
market. Imagine my delight, while scan- 
ning the April praysoy, at finding What I 
Learned at Sea, by Reg Fotterton. My 
congrats to Potterton for one of the most 
entertaining stories on the nautical experi- 
ence I’ve had the pleasure of reading. By 
the way, if that глуво Travel Editor posi- 
tion Reg gave up is still open. . . . 

Pete Drost 

Meriden, Connecticut. 


THE PRIME OF MISS APRIL 

In addition to the more obvious reasons, 
I was pleased to see Cindv Brooks as Miss 
April because she is evidence that women 
do not lose their beauty when they hit 30. 
Should Miss Brooks appear in a retrospec- 
tive pictorial ten or 20 years from now, I’m 


sure I'll feel nostalgic about her. But from 
checking the pictures on her Data Sheet 
and seeing the way her looks have 
improved between the ages of 26 and 33, I 
think ГЇЇ be having some other healthy 
feclings about her, too. 

Robert E. Griffith 

Lexington, Kentucky 


Thank you for presenting a Playmate 
who was born earlier than 1965. In Cindy 
Brooks, you have finally found a girl 
whose favorite film isn't Fast Times at 
Ridgemont High. 

R. Coleman 
Les Vegas, Nevada 


Being a fan of American history, I am 
refreshed to see that Cindy Brooks recog- 
nizes the important political—as well as 
historical—aspects of the Civil War. I'm 
sure that if George Pickett had had the 
classy Miss Brooks on his side on that fate- 
ful July third, the outcome at Cemetery 
Ridge would have been different. 

Thomas J. Korkuch 
Chatham, New Jersey 


We men at Gettysburg College are 
elated to discover that your April 
Playmate, Cindy Brooks, is a native 
Gettysburgian. Your Gettysburg center- 
fold has caused more excitement around 
here than anything else since the Civil 
War, After seeing Miss Brooks, we realize 
that beauty can arise in Gettysburg after 
all. Thanks for a rare treat. 
The Hairy-Chested Fiji Men of 
Phi Gamma Delta 
Gettysburg College 
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 
One score and 13 years ago, her parents 
brought forth on this continent our Miss 
Brooks, conceived in liberty and dedicated to 


the proposition that beauty lasts more than a 
score and a half. 


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an official entry form. Limit one entry per envelope. Entries must 
be received by July 26. 1985. Second Chance Sweepstakes prizes. 
will be awarded in a random drawing from among all Second 
Chance entries received by the D L. Blair Corporation. an in- 
dependent judging organization. whose decisions are final. The 
odds of winning a prize in the Second Chance drawing depend 
upon the number of Second Chance entries received and the 
number of unclaimed prizes. If you wish an additional official 
Porsche sports car symbol with rules. entry details and reprint. 
Ol the list of winning numbers. send a self-addressed, stamped 
envelope to: Lowenbráu Porsche Request, P.O. Box 4343. Blair, 
NE 68009. Limit one request per envelope. Requests must be 
received by July 5. 1985. Residents of the State of Washington 


only need not affix postage to their self-addressed envelopes. 
All prizes will be awarded. We cannot be responsible for lost. 
late or misdirected mail. 

5. ELIGIBILITY This sweepstakes is Open to all residents of the 
U.S. who are of legal drinking age in their state at the time 

ot entry. The Miller Brewing Co.. Philip Morris, Inc.. their dis- 
Iributors, affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and promotion 
agencies, retail alcoholic beverage licensees and employees and 
families of each ARE Non ELIGIBLE. This sweepstakes is void 
in the states of MO. OH. KS and wherever prohibited by law. 
Taxes on prizes are the HA responsibility of prizewinners All 
Federal, State and local laws and regulations apply Grand Prize 
and Second Prize travelers must be of legal drinking age in 

their state of residence and the state of Florida and must agree 
to depart from their home and return to their home on dates 
‘specified by the Miller Brewing Co. No substitution of prizes 
permitted. Prizewinners will be obligated to sign and return an 
Affidavit of Eli llity within ЗО days of notification. In the event 
of non-compliance within this time period. an alternate winner 
will be selected Any prizes returned to the sponsor or to DL. 
Blair as undeliverable will be awarded to alternate winners, Limit 
one prize per family. 

6. WINNERS LIST: For a list of major prize winners send a 
self-addressed. stamped envelope to: Lowenbráu Porsche Winners 
List, PO. Box 4339. Blair, NE 68009 

IF YOU'RE AN INSTANT WINNER. mail your entire game card 
to the address listed in Rule 2 above. 

TO ENTER THE SECOND CHANCE SWEEPSTAKES, mail this 
entire entry form to the address in Rule 4 above 

TO OBTAIN A REPRINT OF THE LIST OF WINNING NUMBERS. 
send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Lowenbrau Porsche 
Request. PO Box 4343. Blair. NE 6 


OFFICIAL ENTRY FORM 
PLEASE HAND PRINT 


Name 
Address 
City State Zip 


Te lephone Number Age 


I state that | am of legal drinking age in my state of residence 
and hold no interest in an alcoholic beverage license. 


Beer Brewed in U.S.A. by Miller Brewing Co., Milw.. WI 


eady 


J 


1 over] 1000 oi 


To find out if you are an Instant Winner, take the PUES ane card to. а participating 
retailer and compare the number on your card with the winning numbers appearing on the 
special Lówenbràu Porsche Sweepstakes displays. Even if you are not an Instant Winner, 
be sure to fill out the Official Entry Form from Lowenbrau displays to be eligible to win 


unclaimed prizes in the Second Chance Sweepstakes. 
GRAND PRIZE: 5 SECOND PRIZES: 
A six day, five night trip for two to the 


А 1986 custom-equipped Porsche 911 and 
1986 Lowenbrau Grand Prix of Miami, 


a trip for two to the 1986 Lówenbráu 4 
Grand Prix of Miami, plus plus $1000 in spending money: 


81,000 in spending 1,00€ IRD 


таал 
if = 3 


acus f eight TENSE 
etched glass beer mugs. 


јр 


Marlboro Red or Longhorn 100's— 
you get a lot to like. 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 


That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


16 mg “tar!” 1.0 mg nicotine av. per cigarette, FTC Report Feb '85 


PLAYBOY AFTER HOURS 


TIMING IS ANYTHING 
According to the Chester County, Penn- 
sylvania, Daily Local News, “Perhaps the 
cruelest tragedy in the death yesterday of 
James E. Dever is that had it happened a 


few minutes later, he might still be alive.” 
. 

We understand the point but not the 
context. San Frandsco mayor Dianne 
Feinstein, rebuking members of her sta- 
dium task force for saying that they pre- 
ferred Rincon Hill as the site of a new 
baseball park, pointed out that “every site 
proposed to date has had some problems 
with it.” She angrily added that these 
“premature ejaculations by committee 


members are frankly not at all helpful.” 
. 


Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer 
is not very popular in Utah. His critical 
remarks about the Brigham Young foot- 
ball team's number-one ranking have 
raised hackles all over the state. So it 
shouldn't come as any surprise that the 
mayors and commissioners of Salt Lake 
County passed a resolution suggesting that 
a Midvale, Utah, sewage lagoon be named 
the Barry Switzer Bowl. 

. 

New hope for the aged: We bet Hous- 
ton's Suburbia-Reporter got a rise out of its 
readers with this headline: 
OFFERS CLASSES FOR SPANKING 
PARENTS.” 


"HOSPITAL 
NEW GRAND- 


IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE 

Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out 
of bed. Jay Shaheri, a waiter at Manhat- 
tan's Jockey Club, sensed trouble when а 
drunken customer threatened to punch out 
his lights after work. So Shaheri, a cau- 
tious man, took a bodyguard to walk him 
to the subway station. Along the way, an 
elderly woman jumped from a I9th-floor 
window and landed on Shaheri, who was 
rushed to the hospital with back injuries. 


"That's the down side. The up side is that 
the late leaper turned out to be a wealthy 
socialite, and Shaheri is suing her estate 
for $20,000,000. He claims she jumped 
“without regard for human safety." 


LET THEM EAT TOFUTTI 


Last month, we reported that the Soviet 
Union was sending aerobic-dance instruc- 
tors to Ethiopia. For those of us who were 
thankful that the United States did not 
engage in such farcical foreign aid, rest 
assured that we are getting our own house 
in order: New York City’s Human 
Resources Administration, in conjunction 
with the sponsors of the New York Mara- 
thon, is sending track coaches to city shel- 
ters in order to provide the homeless with 
a running and fitness program. “This 
shows them that the city is taking an inter- 
est in them," said one municipal worker. 


. 
Before his death at the age of 72, Edwin 
McKenzie, an English tramp known as 


Diogenes, was befriended by painter Rob- 
ert Lankiewicz. “Diogenes and I decided 
that his body should be preserved," says 
Lankiewicz, explaining why he embalmed 
it, sealed it in resin and now wants to dis- 
play it in his home. Plymouth district- 
health officials took exception to the idea, 
and Lankiewicz has been forced to hide 
the body until the legal questions have 
been sorted out. “Then I will bring him 
home to remain with me for the rest of my 
life—something like a large paperweight 
in the library.” 


LEMUR TO BEAVER 


If you were a research physiologist at 
the Toledo Zoo, how would you encourage 
your ruffed lemurs to mate? Right —you'd 
build them a water bed. “People can joke 
all they want,” says zoo physiologist John 
Andy Phillips, “but my job is to get ani 

mals to breed.” And his experiments have 
shown that the monkeylike animals from 
Madagascar are fonder of a nesting box 
that’s equipped, well, sort of like a motel 
room. So he built them a water bed— 
2' x 4', aluminum-coated to protect it 
from the excesses of lemur passion. But 
did he think to include a heater? Magic 
Fingers? Lingerie? Cable TV? A wheezy 
ice machine down the hall? 

. 

North Dakota’s Beulah Beacon pub- 
lished a four-inch classified ad that read, 
“Bachelor with 40 acres of good land 
would like to meet lady with good tractor. 
Matrimony in mind. Please send picture of 
tractor.” 


. 

“REAGAN GOES FOR JUGGLER IN MIDWEST,” 
claimed the headline in the Charleston, 
West Virginia, Gazette. Hey, once a 
trouper, always a trouper. 


FISHY NATURE NOTE 
Reef fish, according to The New York 
Times, often. change from female to male, 


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—SCOTTFIVELSON. 


usually because the school's only male has 
disappeared or died. The job usvally goes 
to the largest female, which begins acting. 
like a male within a few hours—and pro- 
duces sperm within ten days. Other spe- 
cies repeatedly switch from female to male 
and back again, sometimes in a single 
mating. On the ocean floor, where singles 
bars are scarce, experts say reproduction 
is sometimes possible only if one of the 
partners makes the big switch 

How do they do it? No one knows for 
sure. But geneticists say it's much easier 
for a fish or a reptile to change its sexual 
stripes than for a bird or a mammal to do 
so. A school of trout, for example, can be 
made entirely male simply by adding a 
certain hormone to the water. We'll stick 
to beer. 


. 

Posing as a high-priced prostitute, a 22- 
year-old woman robbed several men at 
Atlantic City hotels by slipping them 
knockout drugs. 

The osculatory outlaw's М.О. was to 
lure male gamblers into hotel rooms, 
where, while kissing them, she would pass 
a drug from her mouth to theirs. Police 
still can't figure how the “Kissing Ban- 
dit" as she was dubbed, avoided being 
knocked out, too. 

Before her bussing was busted, her two- 
year mickey-mouth club netted more than 
50 grand in loot. 

АП that and still no tongue. 


D 

Write If You Get Work Department: ^ man 
who said he desperately wanted a job as a 
drummer for David Bowie was arrested for 
mailing a fake bomb to Bowie's record 
company. Enclosed was a note that read, 
“Sorry to intrude in so obnoxious a fash- 
ion, but. . . I wanted to ensure that this 
got to your attention.” George Simpson, 
who included his real address, pleaded 
innocent to a single felony count of mailing 
a facsimile bomb. We think this guy has a 
future in PR. 


. 

No wonder good help is hard to find. For 
the third straight year, the Mississippi leg- 
islature is considering the removal of a law 
that makes it legal to kill servants. “The 
killing of any human being by the act, pro- 
curement or omission of another shall be 
excusable,” reads the law, “when commit- 
ted by accident and misfortune in lawfully 
correcting . . . a servant.” 

The bill to toss out the antebellum law 
was introduced by Representative Credell 
Calhoun, one of 20 blacks in the legisla- 
ture. In 1983 and 1984, the bill failed to 
get out of committee; this year, it finally 
cleared that hurdle and is presumably on 
its way to a general vote. 

. 

We applaud the copy writer responsible 
for a Herman Survivors waterproof-boot 
ad that proudly boasts, "NINE YEARS WITH- 
OUT TAKING A LEAK.” We do suggest, how- 
ever, that he get up from the typewriter 
once in a while and let himself go. 


е 


HOLD EVERYTHING! 


JVC presents the video camera with a VHS tape deck 
built right in. 


It's the biggest advance in movie-making since the the back of the VideoMovie camera. With the adapter, 
talkies. it can be played on any VHS-format VCR 
JVC* presents the VideoMovie—the first video Unlike other camcorder formats, VideoMovie can 
Camera for home use that has its own VHS video deck plug right into your TV set for playback without any 
in one self-contained unit other equipment. We even give you the cable to do It. 
JVC's VideoMovie weighs only a fraction of con- And we're sure you'll find the picture quality absolutely 
ventional home video camera systems. There's no superb. 
bulky “straphanger” deck to lug around. And it's so VideoMovie has instant replay through the eye- 


piece, a fast (f1.2) lens for shooting in low light, a 6X 
power zoom, macro capability, freeze frame, and on 
andon. 

Check out the VideoMovie at your nearest JVC 
dealer. We've put movie-making right in your hands. 


THE GOAL IS PERFECTION. 


compact it fits easily under an airline seat, in a suitcase 
or even a knapsack. 

To make it all possible, JVC had to invent a whole 
new kind of VHS—a special cassette that snaps into 


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18 


THE PRIMAL 
DISK DRIVE 


The home-computer morket may 
be cooling off, but some hockers 
certoinly oren't. Our friends ot 
lui mogozine in Fronce tell us 
thot vintoge porn os shown ot left 
is being put on disk. Also, there 
ore striptease and strip-poker 
progroms that will let you lose. 
either your shirt or hers. In Amer- 
ica, some of this is showing up at 
sex shops ond is odvertised in the 
clossified section of computer. 
mogozines. Siveo, o Poris shop. 
sells by moil order only. We've 
heard thot hord- ond soft-core 
software is being written by а 
porn ring thot colls itself the 
Cleon Crock Bond. This is to let 
the members of the band know 
thot we ore both Apple- ond 
IBM-compotible. And thot we 
oppreciote the sense of humor 
they hove about their name. 


THE FAST LIFE 
OF DANNY 
SULLIVAN 


COMPARE RACING TO SEX. 


Climactic. Sometimes you treat the car as you would a wom- 
an. Push it to the limit. But there's gentleness. too. You 
have to make it last if you're going to make it to the end 


HOW IS A LAP AT MONACO DIFFERENT FROM A LAP AT INDY? 
Monaco is very twisty. It requires 38 gear changes а 
lap—and a lap takes about 80 seconds. There's no mar- 
gin for error. At Indy. you're doing 220 mph down the 
Straightaways. Entering turn one is like turning into a 
closet. You can't see the exit. You let the car run free. 
You're inches away from the wall, sometimes actually 
brushing it. Yet you have time to relax down the straighta- 
we 


nds. 


A lap takes only 40 se 


CAN YOU RELAX AT 220 MPH? 
Yes. Except when you're not going in the direction you 
want to be going in. Then that's really, really quick 


Most artists can’t 
wait to sell their work 
Nor Frank Frazetta, 
who is the ranking 
fantasist of our age 
Cat Girl (shown in the 
poster directly at right) 
is an example. George 
Lucas bid on it. Sylvester 
Stallone tried to buy it 
for his wall. But no go. 
This canvas, along with 
more than 90 percent of 
the artists other work 
will remain in his own col- 
lection, and now they will 
be housed in The Frazetta 
Arı Museum in East 
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania 
Frank and his wife. Ellie, 
had always made a point of 
keeping as many of his paint- 
ings as possible. And over the 
ast years, they have been 
king out and buying others 
back. They also recognized 
that Frazetta—the man who, 
after all, made Conan the 
Barbarian a houschold 
image—was himself such а 
cult artist that the faithful 
needed a place to flock to 
view his achingly voluptuous 
women, his hulking heroes, 


wondrous weirdos, The 
an inspired bit of seli- 
keting, fell upon the artist 
and his wife. The museum 
covers a full block and con- 
tains shops that sell Frazetta 
posters (there are more than 
100 in print), books (Frank 
Frazetta: Book Five is just out 
from Ballantine). T-shiris.and 
so forth. East Stroudsburg is 
less than two hours from New 
York or Philadelphia, which is 
a short way to go for art that's 
out of this world. 


his 
chor 
ma 


Psychem is the smell of co- 
caine—no effect, no psycho- 
tropic action, just the 
smell—overpowering and 
real and entirely legal, A 
pharmaceutical chemist 
cooked it up, presumably, for 
times when you need some 
thing like coke—double-blind 
experiments, placebos, detox 
programs. Or, it occurs to us, 
getting your asshole brother- 
in-law busted at an especially 
nasty border crossing. Or 
fucking with some expen- 
sively trained narc dog's head 


The Seychelles are 
those islands you'll 
notice in the Indian 
Ocean if you turn 
right at Kenya. An 
Air Seychelles ad 
describes many rea- 
sons (O visit—one 
being "the mysterious 
Coco-de-Mer," or 
double coconut. We 
looked at the photo, 
and it didn't really 
seem that mysterious 
to us. Cute, though. 


FAC T 0 I D 


WHITHER CHRONOBIOLOGY? 


The conversation. 


clocks th 


n our office 


arted this way: Since sci- 


entists have hypothesized that our bodies have internal 
regulate what we do—the study is called 
chronobiology —when are they going to release the really 
important findings? Things like the best time to make 
loye? We hurriedly dispatched our 

good news and there’s bad news. 
both males and females peaks during the fall months (so 
much for the notion that sap rises in the spring). The bad 
news is that men and women prefer sexual activity at dif- 
ferent times of the day: he in the morning, she at night— 
usually after an expensive meal, So much for science. 


escarchers; there's. 
rst. sexual desire in 


SUNNY AND CHER 


D. J. Hall paints poolside portroits of women with sunny dispositions. 
Her commissions include Hollywood wives. She makes them lorger ond 
brighter thon life—on large convoses thot go for more thon $15,000. 


MIAMI 
ADVICE 


While Crockett and Tubbs 
have been keeping South 
Florida sale for rock video 
and Giorgio Armani, Dade 
County Feds have uncovered 
what seems to be а business 
guide for Latin- 
drug traffickers. The 12-page 
Spanish how-to booklet, first 
made public by а Wall Street 


merican 


Journal reporter, is packed 


with uscful information and 
advice for the dilettante smug- 
gler, Among the straight dope 
* Housing. Find a house in 
a quiet residential neighbor- 
hood. Swimming pool is op- 
tional. Two-car garage a must 
* Security. Buy a large, well- 


trained dog. Great Di 
the recommended breed. 

* Beepers. The usc of coded 
beeper signals is a major help. 
Emergency codes will tell you 
the following: (1) Suspend 
what you are doing and take 
cover on your own. (2) Help. 
1 am in custody. Will next 
indicate where I am being 
held. (3) Suspend what you 
are doing and call for urgent 
Always carry your 


nes are 


message 
becper. 
* Entertainment. Never 
have extravagant social 
events at your home. An 
occasional barbecue, with 
only family and trusted 
friends in attendance, is finc. 
* Employee relations. Keep 
your employees happy. Do 


not overload them with work, 
but do not let them sit idle. It 
is very dangerous to have 
somebody doing nothing, 

* Emergencies. In the event 
that a quick escape is neces- 
sary, always keep the house 
stocked with the following: ai 
line tickets, traveling mone: 


an escape vchicle, bulletproof 


, tear 


© Try to imitate an American 
in all his habits. Mow the 
lawn. Wash the car. 

And one final caveat, the 
sort that any corporation 
worth its bottom line is built 
around: 

* Never use the company car 
for personal business. 

Any new neighbors on your 
block lately? 


19 


PLAYBOY 


20 


(©1984. Paco Rabanne Parfums. Photograph by Robert Farber 


Hello? 
What are you doing? 
Taking a shower. 
Right now? 
No, right now I'm standing in a 
puddle of water. 
You didn't say goodbye. 
I didn't want to wake you. 
Who could sleep when there's a hunk 
with no clothes оп wandering around. 
at five in the morning, knocking over 
furniture? 
I had to come back and dig out 
my sincere suit. Big meeting this 
morning. I get to say things like 
“bottom line” and “net net” with a 
straight face. What are you doing? 
Lying here, thinking about you. You 
know, I can smell your Paco Rabanne. 
It’s like you were still here. 
I wish I were. 
I couldn't go back to sleep, 
remembering everything. I wanted to 
hear your voice. It has the most 
interesting effect on те... 
Maybe I should run over and read 
you a bedtime story or something. 
Or something. 


Paco Rabanne 
For men 
What is remembered is up to you 


By BRUCE WILLIAMSON 


CHEVY CHASE, in the title role of Fletch (Uni- 
versal), often seems to be up to some pri- 
vate mischief, perhaps a Saturday Night 
Lively spoof of the character he's supposed 
to be playing for real. Secing him ain't nec- 
essarily believing him, yet his throwaway 
comic style may be the freshest element of 
director Michael Ritchie's implausible but 
entertaining movie based on Gregory 
Mcdonald’s award-winning mystery novel 

The action is smoothly paced and the 
trimly tailored adaptation by Andrew 
Bergman suits Chevy's impersonation of a 
smartass investigative reporter, an inso- 
lent, martini-dry jokester who drops onc- 
liners and dons frequent disguises while 
introducing himself to various dupes as 
Igor Stravinsky, Ted Nugent or Harry S. 
Truman. He's in pursuit of a hot story 
about drugs, bigamy, a faked murder and 
high-level corruption, following seemingly 
unrelated clues from Southern California 
to Utah and back again. Tim Matheson, 
Dana Wheeler Nicholson, Joe Don Baker 
and Richard Libertini interrupt his itiner- 
ary one way or another, all helping Fletch 
tighten up any loose parts. ¥¥¥ 

. 


A comedy of errors about anonymous 
mash notes and mistaken identity, Secret 
Admirer (Orion) is an unabashed, updated 
spin-off of Rostand's classic Cyrano de Ber- 
gerac, reworked for today's teenagers. The 
recipient of the passionate missives is 
C. Thomas Howell, a lad who's infatuated 
with a prom queen (Kelly Preston) but 
pays little heed to an unassuming honor 
student (Lori Laughlin), plainly a girl des- 
tined to find her life changed by, among 
other things, contact lenses. David 
Greenwalt, a first-time director as well as 
co-author (with Jim Кош) of Admirers 
screenplay, has managed to crib from a 
classic without insulting the source; the 
result is a conventional but perky youth 
movie with flashes of wit, warmth and real 
romantic upswing—a good cut above the 
usual portrait of raucous teens who seem 
to spend all their energy either making out 
or mooning. ¥¥Y4 

E 

It came with springtime, rather late for 
our deadline, but Desperately Seeking Susan 
(Orion) held too many beguiling sur- 
prises to ignore. Aptly described as 
“a sort of New Wave Holly Golightly,” 
pop singer Madonna makes an impressive 
big-screen debut as Susan, a punkish, 
street-smart New York vixen whose curi- 
ous life is further complicated by a young, 
bored and restless New Jersey housewife 
(Rosanna Arquette) who begins to think 
she’s Susan after a blow on the head brings 
оп amnesia. Aidan Quinn plays one of the 


Chase (with Nicholson, above) brings fiction's popular gumshoe Fletch to screen. 


Fletch goes to 
the movies as Chevy Chase; 
Cyrano gets a teen update. 


men in their lives, while Robert Joy, 
Laurie Metcalf and Mark Blum round out 
the fast company indebted to director 
Susan Seidelman (whose first film was 
Smithereens, a low-budget festival favorite) 
and to several other upcoming women in 
film, among them author Leora Barish 
and coproducers Sarah Pillsbury and 
Midge Sanford. After a somewhat slow 
start, Susan is not only bright, romantic 
and inventive but a sly feminist statement 
full of unexpected humor. ¥¥¥¥% 
. 

"The saccharine title doesn't do it justice, 
but A Test of Love (Universal) is the compel- 
ling true story of a physically handicapped 
but intellectually gifted Australian girl 
saved by a courageous, devoted teacher 
from spending her entire life as a 
semivegetable in an institution. Angela 
Punch McGregor, as the teacher, and 
Tina Arhondis—herself a child with seri- 
ous physical disabilities—as the plucky 
Annie McDonald, give Test of Love plenty 
of emotional wallop and human drama 
when they buck not only the entire medi- 
cal establishment but Annie’s own family 
by taking her case to court. Like every 
other movie of this genre, from The Miracle 
Worker to Mash, it is simultaneously an 
ordeal and an inspiration. УЙУ 

. 

An elevator controlled by a malevolent 
microchip or some such mysterious elec- 
tronic mutation is the source of evil in The 


Lift (Island Alive). Reportedly established 
as a cult favorite in Europe, this Dutch- 
made shocker by writer-director Dick 
Maas is far less silly than it sounds. The 
movie tops every giggle with several gasps 
as the lift's blood-red doors open and snap 
shut on unwary passengers who are suflo- 
cated, decapitated, strangled or merely 
dropped to their deaths. An elevator tech- 
nician (Huub Stapel) and an enterprising 
girl reporter (Willeke van Ammelrooij) 
represent our side in Maas’s man-us.- 
machine horror show. A minor piece, to 
be sure, but visually effective and mined 
with mischievous and cerie surprises—all 
intended to do for unmanned elevators 
what Psycho did for curtained showers. ¥¥ 
. 

There is something disarmingly dumb 
but inoffensive about a black hero named 
Leroy (played by handsome movie new- 
comer ‘Taimak) who eats popcorn with 
chopsticks while watching Bruce Lee 
martial-arts movies. Berry Gordy's The 
Last Dragon (Tri-Star) also features Vanity, 
the singer (and star of a May PLAYBOY pic- 
torial), looking exceptionally luscious as a 
glamorous disco d.j. who has to be rescued 
a lot. Against a loud blast of Motown 
sound, Last Dragon's plot is so stagger- 
ingly simple-minded that the archvillain of 
the piece wants only to get his music video 
on the air. While Taimak and Vanity may 
sound like labels slapped onto “decorator” 
Superstars created for one-time use, these 
two beauties make the comic-strip vio- 
lence watchable if not memorable. ¥¥ 

. 

In Atlanta, an 11-year-old black run- 
away who's considering suicide finds shel- 
ter with a middle-aged white alcoholic 
recluse. The growth of their relationship, 
despite gaps of age, color and culture, is 


21 


A chance to get away. Americans look forward to those moments. 
Moments to unwind. Moments to enjoy the things you appreciate in life. 


© 1985. SEAGRAM DISTILLERS CO. N Y AMERICAN WHISKEY А BLEND 80 PROOF 


And because Seagram’s 7 has always been a part of that enjoyment, 
you've made it America's most popular whiskey for nearly forty years. 


PLAYBOY 


the main business of Marvin & Tige (Castle 
Hill), a movie that wears its heart on its 
sleeve. Such forthright sentimentality is 
made agrecable if not altogether credible 
by low-key, gently blended performances 
in the two title roles by John Cassavetes, as 
Marvin, and precocious newcomer Gibran 
Brown, as Tige, the illiterate waif he 
befriends. It's very nearly a two-man show 
until Billy Dee Williams appears, force- 
fully playing the long-lost parent who may 
or may not win back his son. No wrench- 
ing tearjerker, because director Eric 
Weston exercises reasonable restraint 
throughout, Marvin & Tige has a 
Christmasy spirit that finally brightens 
even the shabby back streets of Atlanta 
with a graceful plea for brotherhood, 
familiar but tastefully framed. ¥¥ 
. 

Four Playmates and our August 1983 
cover girl, Sybil Danning, are prominently 
featured in a scatterbrained comedy called 
Malibu Express (Malibu Bay). Patched 
together with sex, violence and verve by 
writer-producer-director Andy Sidaris, 
this may be the definitive drive-in movie. 
Girl watchers can ogle Sybil along with 
Barbara Edwards (1984 Playmate of the 
Year) and Kimberly McArthur (Miss Jan- 
vary 1982) as a pair of shipboard party 
girls, with Lynda Wiesmeier (Miss July 
1982) and Lorraine Michaels (Miss April 
1981) making impact in more substantial 
roles. There’s also Shelley Taylor Morgan 
(of TV's General Hospital) among a slew of 
other cuties caught up in the whizzing Cal- 
ifornia traffic with some bad guys who sell 
“computer secrets” to the Russians. For 
women in the audience, Darby Hinton (a 
kid actor in the Daniel Boone TV series a 
couple of decades ago) plays Cody Abi- 
lene, a sexy private investigator who's a 
Tom Selleck look-alike but steals Clint 
Eastwood's lines (“Make my day,” etc.), 
drives a De Lorean and seems proud of 
being a great lay but a poor shot. That's as 
much message as you'll get from Malibu 
Express, a cultural artifact slightly less 
meaningful than a commercial for the 
Pepsi generation. So drink deep, but don't 
blame me if you go away empty. VY 

E 


Writer-director David Hare's doleful 
but provocative Wetherby (MGM/UA 
Classics) earns points mainly for the lumi- 
nous presence of Vanessa Redgrave, an 
actress whose quicksilver instincts can 
never be dull. She’s discovered in Wetherby 
(named for a town in Yorkshire) as a sen- 
suous and spinsterish schoolteacher whose 
brief encounter with a strange young man 
at a dinner party leads to sex, violence and 
some rueful flashbacks about a wartime 
romance 30 years earlier. That part of the 
movie piques curiosity, because the hero- 
ine as а young girl is portrayed by Joely 
Richardson (Vanessa’s daughter with 
director Tony Richardson), who in every 
respect resembles an carly pastel sketch of 
her mom. Although Hare is also the 
author of Plenty, a stage hit en route from. 


Hinton, Wiesmeier in Malibu Express. 


Fun with Playmates on 
the Malibu Express; 
Vanessa outclasses Wetherby. 


Broadway and London to a movie version 
with Meryl Streep, he seems to be bogged 
down here, creating a star vehicle that 
scarcely бийде unless Vanessa pulls 
hard. ¥¥ 

. 

Another small triumph for women and 
artistic freedom is Camila (European Clas- 
sics), by 62-year-old writer-director 
Maria-Luisa Bemberg. This lushly pro- 
duced and lyrical romantic tragedy is 
based on the true story of Camila 
O'Gorman, daughter of an aristocratic 
Catholic family from Buenos Aires who 
scandalized society and the Church in 
1847 by running off to live in sin with a 
handsome young priest. Even with a 
holier-than-thou posse on their heels, Susu 
Pecoraro as Camila and Imanol Arias as 
the errant Father Gutierrez make forbid- 
den fruit look tempting. VV 

. 


Julie Hagerty's dithery charm, which 
gave Airplane! a substantial lift and helped 
Lost in America gain altitude, is put to the 
test in Goodbye, New York (Castle Hill). As 
a chic young wife who leaves her faith- 
less ne'er-do-well husband, takes off for 
Paris and winds up on a kibbutz in Israel 
more or less by mistake, Julie has to do an 
awful lot of dithering to divert attention 
from the plot. That she succeeds even part 
of the time is a triumph of mime over mat- 
ter. Her co-star (also the film's writer- 
director), Amos Kollek, may daydream 
that he is Israel's answer to Woody Allen, 
but this won't keep Woody awake nights. Y 


MOVIE SCORE CARD 


capsule close-ups of current films. 
by bruce williamson 


Amadeus Music, Mozart and Oscar's 
best picture of 1984. wu 
Blood Simple A slight case of murder, 
Texasstyle—fearsome and funny. ЖУЗ 
Camilo (Sec review) Unholy lovers on 


the lam down Argentine way. Wa 
The Clinic Taking venereal discase 
lightly with irreverent Aussies. vx 


Creator Peter O” Toole's the madcap sci- 
entist who hopes to clone a wife. ¥¥% 
Desperately Seeking Susan (Scc rcvicw) 
Starbright feminist frippery. WWW% 
Fletch (See review) Chevy on a fairly 
fast track as fictional newsman, ¥¥¥ 
Goodbye, New York (Sce review) On a 
kibbutz in Israel, shalom, Mr. Right. ¥ 
Heartbreakers Two guys making out in a 
lively comic romp through L.A. ¥¥¥ 
King David Skip Gere, read The Book. Y 
Ladyhawke Scenic medieval adventure 
with Hauer, Pfeiffer. E] 
The Last Dragon (See review) From 
Motown, martial arts and Vanity. VV 
The Lift (See review) Dutch-made spook 
show with more ups than downs. — YY 
Lost in America Albert Brooks getting 
good comic mileage coast to coast. ¥¥¥ 
MacArthur's Children Sprawling slice of 
life in postwar Japan. WA 
Malibu Express (See review) Take pop- 
corn and dig groovy gals 'n' guys. ¥¥ 
Marvin & Tige (See review) Man and boy 
beat thc drums for brotherhood. YY 
Mask As a wayward mom devoted 
to her handicapped son, Cher steals 
the show. WA 
My New Partner Philippe Noiret’s a 
greedy French detective teaching his 
side-kick the tricks of the take. vv 
A Passage fo India Mcticulous Lcan 
pickings from Forster's novel. ¥¥¥ 
A Private Function Maggie Smith and 
Michael Palin pignap а porker. ¥¥¥¥2 
Pumping Iron Il: The Women Brace your- 
selves, fellas. Here they come. ¥¥¥ 
The Purple Rose of Cairo Woody Allen’s 
slight but stunning tribute to movie 
magic—with Mia Farrow, of 
course. yyy 
The Return of the Soldier Psychodrama 
smashingly played by Glenda, Julie 
and Ann-Margret vis-à-vis Alan 
Bates. yyy 
Secret Admirer (See review) Cyrano recy- 
cled as a high school crush. WA 
Streetwise Scattle’s lost youth in a tell- 
ing documentary. ww 
A Test of Love (See review) Another Mir- 
acle Worker, down under. WA 
Wetherby (Sec review) Some heavy sled- 
ding, but Vanessa saves it, sort of. WV 


YYYY Don't miss 
YYY Good show 


YY Worth a look 
¥ Forget it 


(please print) 


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City 


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a |_| NX TN Rates apply to U.S., U.S. Poss., APO-FPO addresses only. 
D Start (or renew) my subscription. Canadian rate: 12 issues 527. 


D 12 issues $22. Save $16.00 off the $38.00 
cover poce cum A d 

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off the $76.00 cover price. Р.О. Box 2523, Boulder, С! 
it D Bill me. O Payment enclosed. 


26 


COMING ATTRACTIONS 


By JOHN BLUMENTHAL 


IDOL GOSSIP: Sexy Rebecca De Mornay, who 
played the feisty hooker in Risky Business, 
will team up with Jon Voight and Eric Rob- 
erts in Cannon Films’ Runaway Tram, an 
action drama about a lone woman trapped 
with two escaped convicis on an out-of- 
control train. . . . The Flying Karamazov 
Brothers, noted for their comedic juggling 
act, will play a group of whirling dervishes 
in Fox's The Jewel of the Nile... . HBO 
and Silver Screen are partners in no fewer 
than three feature-film projects now in 
various stages of production. The first of 
these is Sweet Dreams, a biopic based on 
the life of country singer Patsy Cline. Jessica 
Longe will play the lead, with Ed (The Right 
Stuff) Harris co-starring and Karel (The 
French Lieutenant's Woman) Reisz directing. 
Next in the line-up is Volunteers, with Tem 
(Splash) Hanks and SCTV's John Candy 
playing a pair of unlikely Peace Corps vol- 
unteers raising havoc in Thailand. Nicholas 
Meyer will direct. And rounding out the 
agenda is a big-business comedy called 
Head Office, in which Judge (Beverly Hills 
Cop) Reinhold portrays a recently di- 
plomaed M.B.A. leaving the rarefied halls 
ofacademe for the turbulent rat-race of the 
business world. Danny DeVito, Eddie Albert, 
Jone Seymour, Don Novello, Michael (Satur- 
day Night Live) O'Donoghue and Wallace 
Shawn have been set to co-star. 
. 

SADDLESORES: Rumblings from the set of 
Silverado, Lawrence Kasdan's homage to the 
assic Western, seem to indicate that the 
writer-director of The Big Chill has 
another blockbuster up his sleeve. Obses- 
sive secrecy has surrounded the project 
from its inception (Kasdan wants it to be a. 
“surprise”), but insiders have lately begun 
to use such superlatives as important and 
wonderful when describing the flick. Set 
for a late-July release, Silverado reunites 
several members of the Chill cast (Kevin 
Kline, Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Costner, who 
was barely visible as the deceased Alex), 
along with Scott Glenn, Rosanna Arquette, 
Monty Python’s John Cleese, Brian Den- 
nehy, Danny Glover and Oscar winner linda 
Hunt. As for the flick itself, it's а Raiders of 
the Lost Ark-style action adventure with a 
touch of comedy that utilizes the basic 
aspects of the classic oater. Set in the 
1880s and shot in Santa Fe, Silverado is a 
reflection of Kasdan’s own self-proclaimed 
childhood attraction to Westerns. Kasdan 
himself scems confident—during produc- 
tion, he supervised his own making-of- 
Silverado documentary. 

б 

REAL-WORLD JITTERS: St. Elmo's Fire is an 
ensemble film with a basic premise that 
seems to lie somewhere between those of 
The Big Chill and The Breakfast Club. (In 
fact, three of its co-stars— Emilio Estevez, 


Publicists for John Hughes's Weird Science have sworn secrecy oaths, but a persistent rumor 
reports that the director of Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club is altering his teen-reality 
formula to allow Anthony Michael Hall and friends to fabricate a fantasy femme (Kelly LeBrock) 
from Frankenstein films, computer hackery, Popular Mechanics and pLaveoy gatelolds. 


Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson—appeared in 
The Breakfast Club.) It concerns a tight- 
knit group of seven young men and women 
who, having just graduated from college, 
must now face up to the rigors of the real 
world. As in most ensemble movies, how- 
ever, the crux of the plot lies in the charac- 
terizations. Estevez plays a law student 
whose career is thwarted by an infatuation 
with a long-lost love; Nelson and Sheedy 
are roommates and lovers who are unable 
to come to grips with commitment and 
marriage; Reb (Class) Lowe portrays Billy 
Hixx, a saxophone player unable to cope 
with responsibility. His Classmate Andrew 
McCarthy is a budding writer with a job 
writing obits fora newspaper; Demi (Blame 
It on Rio) Moore is recruited into an 
international-banking job and must deal 
with life in the fast lane; and Mare 
Winningham plays a young social worker 
with a crush on Hixx. The title, inciden- 
tally, pertains to flashes of bright lights in 
night skies that sailors, as legend has it, 
regarded as divine signals. 
e 

NO M.S.G., PLEASE: New York's Chinatown 
is the setting for Year of the Dragon, a Dino 
De Laurentiis production noteworthy for the 
fact that it marks Michael Cimino's first 
directorial effort since Heaven's Gale. 
Billed as an “urban thriller,” Dragon 
opens during a Chinese new-year celebra- 
tion on Mott Street, As the fireworks 
crackle, two rival Chinese street gangs 
start slugging it out and, when the smoke 
clears, the corpse of an 85-year-old Chi- 
nese patriarch is found in a nearby coffee 
shop. Sometime later, a duo of Chinese 
gang members opens fire with subma- 
chine guns inside a luxurious Chinatown 


restaurant. Are these two events related? 
Are they acts of terrorism or simply a 
gangland vendetta? The task of solving the 
mystery falls into the lap of the N.Y.P.D.’s 
most decorated captain, Stanley White 
(played by Mickey Rourke). He is joined in 
his investigation of the murders by Tracy 
Tzu, a TV news reporter of Asian descent 
(played by model Ariane, making her film 
debut). Together, the two uncover a sinis- 
ter plot by a seemingly upstanding Chi 
nese businessman to control heroin 
trafficking. Based on a novel by author 
Robert (Prince of the City) Daley, Year of the 
Dragon is set for August release 
. 

1 WANT My Mtv! Oh, oh. Another wacky 
teen has gotten his paws on some sophisti- 
cated technology. In Back to the Future, 
(coproduced by Steven Spielberg), TaxPs 
Christopher Lloyd plays a mad scientist who 
has developed a method of tampering with 
timc. Who should gct his mitts on thc con- 
traption but Marty McFly (played by 
Family Ties’ Michael J. Fox), a high school 
senior who can't live without his MTV. So 
what happens? Marty is transported back 
to the year 1955, to a world without rock 
n’ roll, let alone MTV, and who does he 
happen to meet? ‘Two Fifties teenagers 
who will one day become his parents. The 
implications of this premise are in- 
triguing—what if Marty interferes with 
his parents’ meeting, for instance?—and 
with Spielberg coproducing, we can prob- 
ably rest assured that all possibilities will 
be exploited to the fullest. Interestingly 
enough, Back to the Future will be released 
in mid-July, giving summer moviegoers a 
choice of three teens-and-technology fan- 
tasies, the two others being Weird Science 
and My Science Project. 


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MUSIC 


Eric Clapton used to be God. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were God for a while. Eddie Van 
Halen seems to be God right now. Despite the current popularity of synthesizers, it is un- 
likely that electroric-keyboard players will ever rank as highly as guitarists in the eyes of rock 
theologians. But there are definite comers in the guitar ranks, ard here are two of them (above, 
left and right): Steve Stevens and Mark Knopfler. Rock 'n' roll is here to stay, even eternal. 


DOL HANDS: “When you can't play 

basketball or football, you do what's 
necessary to get laid," says Steve Stevens. 
So you could conclude, as with other gui- 
tarists, that fate and hormones thrust his. 
guitarness upon him, and thereafter he 
had choices: between the guitar and a big 
bar mitzvah, between the guitar and hand- 
ball, between the guitar and the viola 
(much preferred at the High School of 
Performing Arts), between the guitar and 
the security of a regular job. Stevens chose 
the guitar on every occasion and is now 
on the verge of vast fame and wealth as 
Billy Idol’s Keith Richards. He has not, 
however, forgotten his roots as a short vir- 
gin from Queens 

“J designed a guitar for Hamer,” says 
Stevens, who adds about cight inches to 
his height with hair spray. "It's going to 
have a really small body, because most 
kids who play guitar have really small 
bodies. It's also going to have a finger 
board that lights up in sequence and an 
optional three-color fluorescent paint job. 
It's my answer to Robbie the Robot.” 

Generating a nice buzz as the new kid to 
watch for his melodious meld of punk and 
pop, Stevens is one of the reasons—along 
with Idol himself—that Billy Idol's name 
finally became accurate. Even people who 
still find Idol too handsome to deserve 
interesting vocal cords admit that Rebel 
Yell is a relief between bouts of synth-drum 
incessance at the local dance club. Cur- 
rently at work ona new album with Idol, a 
solo project and the sound track to King 
Death (Idol plays a rock-n-roll assassin), 
Stevens manages to balance his virtuosity 


with humility: “I don’t want people think- 
ing, There’s anew hot-shot guitarist, when 
they hear a Billy Idol record. The playing 
always has to be in the context of the 
song." 

But ya gotta show off, too, or people are 
gonna think you're short: “When I was а 
kid, I saw John Fahey play once, and he 
mooned the audience. Afterward, no one 
was talking about his great finger picking. 
It was all “Did you see his ass?” From then 
on, I knew you had to be a performer.” 


IN THE WORKSHOP: If Merk Knopfler 
had stayed with his original calling— 
journalism—he'd be one of those guys 
banging away on a decrepit old manual 
because word processors don't feel like 
real writing. As a guitarist, he goes for 
minimum stuff between his brain and your 
ear, even shunning picks in favor of bare- 
finger-tip plucking. 

Fortunately, he saw what happens to 
journalists after a career covering lies and 
violent death (“They become alcoholic, 
cynical, prejudiced and mercenary”) and 
returned to his guitar with enough will to 
weather several years’ starving before Sul- 
tans of Swing made him a star as a mem- 
ber of Dire Straits and gave the world one 
ofits most distinctive guitar styles—sort of 
organic electric. 

His last record as leader of Dire Straits 
was Alchemy, a double live set in 1984, and 
although he has been recording some 
beautiful sound tracks (Cal and Local 
Hero) and writing hits for Tina Turner 
(Private Dancer), it's been a while since 
the world has heard a Dire Straits album 


of original music. So maybe he could tell 
me what he’s been up to in the studio 
lately? 

“No, I couldn't," says Knopfler. “It’s 
very difficult.” 

So we talk about good and evil for a few 
hours until he allows that he’s mixing the 
new Dire Straits album. It’s called Broth- 
ers in Arms, and Sting sings “I want my 
MTV” on one song that was inspired by a 
delivery boy's rap about video music. 
Weird characters are a staple in Knopfler's 
work. 

“1 realized asa young man that you can 
be someone else in a song—not urite 
about someone else but be someone else,” 
says Knopfler, an admirer of Randy New- 
man and other character writers. “An- 
other song on the album, The Man's Too 
Strong, is the weirdest I ever wrote. The 
character is a war criminal, one of the 
most despicable creatures on earth. But 
he's haunted by his inability to achieve 
joy, to create, like his adversary. He con- 
siders killing the adversary, but it doesn’t 
solve anything. He still has the same prob- 
lems.” 

Well, good thing he doesn’t have to 
remain the character that he likes to be. 

—CHARLES M. YOUNG 


REGGAE UPDATE: The Pablos are com- 
ing! Pablo Moses? Tension (Alligator) is a 
follow-up (at last) to his acclaimed self- 
produced In the Future from 1983. His 
music has been described as "acid reg- 
gae," though it’s mellower than that might 
suggest, even when he’s singing about 
bombing everyting, mon. The other Pablo 
is Augustus Pablo, also Jamaican and а 
performer, but an entreprencur as well, 
founder of several record labels and pro- 
ducer of many groups—a selection of 
which turns up on Rockers All-Star Explosion 
(Alligator), including Pablo himsclf, Jah 
Bull, Sister Frica, Junior Delgado, Delroy 
Williams and Ricky Grant. Of his own 
music, this Pablo says, “We call it the Far 
East sound, because we play in minor 
chords. When you play those chords, it's 
like a story without words, and certain 
mon who go into deep meditation can pen- 
etrate it." A little righteous herb doesn’t 
hurt, either. Together, these albums take 
you along the path Jah’s music has been 
following since Bob Marley's passing. 


REVIEWS 


If The Alan Parsons Project were 
funded by the Pentagon, Vulture Culture 
(Arista) would be a $4300 screwdriver. 
It's much ado about not much, easily for- 
gettable stuff only a band member could 
love or remember. There were two other 
notable instances this month of the inexo- 
rable product imperative, which insists 
that groups and artists release albums at 
certain intervals, whether or not they've. 


31 


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got anything new worth hearing. Hard 
otherwise to explain the Tubes’ Love Bomb 
(Capitol) or Greg Kihn's Citizen Kihn (EMI 
America). Generally speaking, we're fans 
of both, but these albums aren't worth the 
price of admission—unless you make gobs 
of money, in which case there's one bit of 
inspired lunacy on the Tubes’ album, a 
wonderful, goony gene splice of Wooly 
Bully and Theme from a Summer Place that 
they call Theme from a Wooly Place—but 
it’s only 20 seconds long. And Kihn's al- 
bum, while not awful, simply sounds per- 
functory, like a term paper that was due. 
. 

Gorage Sale (Reachout International) is 
an anthology of 19 self-styled garage 
bands from around the country (plus one 
stray from Stockholm), not one of which 
we'd ever heard of. Say the liner notes: 
“It's taken the sad and snoring somnam- 
bulism of corporate Eighties slush rock to 
stir the dormant garage scene back into 
action this time there's an all-out bat- 
tle raging against the plague of drippy, 
funkless geek music assaulting ош 
senses." We can accept that. The 
garagedom answer seems mainly to 
return, via slightly bent routes, to that 
golden yesteryear of 1966. The Seeds, the 
Stems, the Leaves, the Shadows of Knight, 
> & the Mysterians, the Sonics—these arc 
the garagers’ stations of the cross, with a 
Farfisa organ toodling up there on the 
altar. While they mostly play in a 
neolithically primitive style, they've at 
least got passion (zits, too, it sounds like in 
many cases) 


. 

Those expecting Jimmy Page and Paul 
Rodgers' new aggregation, the Firm, to be 
the second coming of Led Zep or a bionic 
Bad Company are in for a letdown. 
Radioactive highlighted by Page's schiz- 
oid riffing—is a nifty enough single, but 
the rest of The Firm (Atlantic) offers little 
more than clichéed lyrics and middle-of- 
the-road fare. Page's legendary guitar is 
mostly conspicuous by its absence or bur- 
ied in the muddy mix; his few solos sound 
as if they were phoned in from overseas. In 
short, Zep without the zip. These guys can 
do better. 


. 

John Palumbo’s Blowing Up Detroit 
(HME) describes love in the New Wave 
lane. You know—ménages à trois, bondage, 
masochism, transvestism, sex with girls 
from outer space. Most of it’s pleasant, if 
forgettable, and some of the lyrics careen 
over into word salad. Like She's the 
Release, which begins, “I’m the fire—she's 
the hole.” Got that? But we really did like 
onc cut, Drifting Back to Motown, a funny 
lament about a guy who can't keep up 
with his New-Wavicr-than-thou girlfriend. 
It's a pick hit single if ever we heard onc. 

. 

Some say Mick Jagger’s first solo effort 
sounds like what you'd expect from the 
Stones if they were better players and а 


tighter band. Fair enough, if you remem- 
ber that the Stones’ rowdy sloppiness has 
its charms. On She's the Boss (Columbia), 
the funk is more in the rhythms than in the 
guitars. This is a clean, streamlined dance 
record that leans as much on Jeff Beck’s 
and Herbie Hancock's riffs as it does on 
Mick’s melodies. The real surprise is 
Jagger's vocals—he hasn't sounded this 
involved with his lyrics since Some Girls, 
though She's the Boss is more like Under My 
Thumb in drag than a feminist manifesto 
Mick comes across as less of a caricature of 
himself than usual. Nothing dazzling, but 
a respectable effort 
. 

Who would have expected the hippest 
aggregation of the month to appear on the 
sound track to Porky’s Revenge (Colum- 
bia)? The album was produced by Dave 
Edmunds, the Welsh fanatic. Along with 
providing some hot performances of his 
own, he has also lured on board Jeff Beck, 
Clarence Clemons, the Crawling King 
Snakes (featuring Edmunds, Phil Collins 
and Robert Plant), the Fabulous Thunder- 
birds, George Harrison, Carl Perkins— 
even Willie Nelson, whose Love Me Tender 
seems woefully out of place here, but what 
the hey? Y'all tap us a new keg an’ brang 
on them guruls with they shirts undone, 
Jim Bob! 


. 

The party suggested by the anthology 
sound track to Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon 
(Motown) is sleeker, more upscale—high- 
rise views, designer dresses aswirl, Perrier- 
Jouet instead of Miller time. These cuts by 
Willie Hutch, DeBarge, Stevie Wonder, 
Smokey Robinson and Syreeta, among 
others, represent state-of-the-art Motown. 
The differences and the similarities be- 
tween what’s here and the classic Mo- 
town hits of the Sixties are intriguing 
One constant is that most of it practically 
drags you off your chair and dares you not 
to dance. 


. 
At first, we thought John Martyn on 
Sopphire (Island) had discovered a new 
drug—one combining the effects, say, of 
Valium and scuba diving. Just a little too 
relaxed, with parts possibly recorded 
under water. Then we noticed that the 
album had been done in Nassau, so it’s 
more likely too many rum and tonics and 
Englishmen left too long out in the sun 
One cut is even called Mad Dog Days—a 
dead giveaway, we'd say. Apparently, 
Martyn wanted to emulate the moody 
meanderings of The Polices super- 
essful Synchronicity. At times, he man- 

8 A bonus: the daffiest rendering of 
Over the Rainbow ever. 

. 

Top ten got ya down, Bunky? No pep in 
the pop on the radio? Drowning in New 
Wave? Videoed out? That's when it's 
time to go back to the source—we mean 


FAST TRACKS 


MY SON, THE ROCKER DEPARTMENT: Music publicist Joan Tarshis was recently on a New York 
subway, perusing a copy of Billboard. So what? Here's the twist: A man got onto the train, 
‘sat down near her and said, “Is my son still on the charts?" When Joan asked him who his 
son was, the man answered, “Peter Wolf; ever heard of him?" When she nodded yes, Mr. 
Wolf confided, “You know, he was very upset when the band broke up.” They've become 
pals, and Peter's solo album did good business. That should make a father proud, 


jUMOR OF THE MONTH: We've heard that 
there is a small but steady ground 
swell to make Louie, Louie the Wash- 
ington state song. We like thinking 
about the possible ramifications of this: 
Can you picture the Walla Walla 
Kiwanis Club’s opening a mecting with 
a rousing chorus of the state song? 
REELING AND ROCKING: Twisted Sister is 
planning to make a film, and it won’t 
be limited to concert footage. “It’s 
going to be a scripted comedy with a 
plot,” says Dee Snider. .. . Jagger and 
at a theater near you—Mick 
sists it’s really going to happen. But, 
he says, “It won’t be like the Tony Curtis 
and Jack Lemmon film Some Like It Hot, 
even though David alway 
into dresses if possible.” . . 
try is doing the sound track for a movie, 
Restless Natives, shot entirely in Scot- 
land. . . . After actor Timothy Hutton 
completes his 20-minute featurette of 
Don Henley's Sunset Grill, he hopes to 
direct full-length movies. . Paul 
McCartney is writing the sound track for 
Gene Hackmar's Twice in a Lifetime. 
NEWSBREAKS: After 15 ycars apart, The 
Rascals will reunite for a summer 
tour... . If you're going to be in the Big 
Apple this summer, don’t forget Lin- 
coln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, 
from July eighth through August 24. 
And speaking of Mozart, you may not 
know that when the sound track from 
Amadeus made the charts, it was the 
first time ever a double classical album 
made the top 100. . . . Wham!, on its 
recent tour, became the first Western 
group ever to play China, The invite 
came from the Youth Federation, an 
organization of 200,000,000. Five ver- 
sions of Careless Whisper in Canton- 


ese and Mandarin versions of that and 
four other Wham! songs are currently 
being recorded by one of China’s top 
artists... . While Bob Dylan admits 
that videos help sell records, he says, 
“If people can sit at home and see the 
person singing, why would they go see 
him in concert? In person, they aren’t 
going to look as good—audiences will 
see the sweat, see them at different 
angles, see a lot of things they don't sec 
on a video. You can’t be so pretty in 
person.”...In an ongoing effort to 
expand awareness of the compact- 
disc system, The Compact Disc Group 
has installed a toll-free number, 
1-800-872-5565, to assist consumers. In 
addition to answering questions and 
referring calls, staffers will poll people 
on a variety of subjects related to buy- 
ing habits. . . . We're recommending 
Sixties Roch: A Listener's Guide, by Rob- 
ert Santelli. (If it isn’t in your bookstore, 
write to the publisher, Contemporary 
Books, 180 North Michigan Avenue, 
Chicago, Illinois 60601.) . . . Here's 
what Pat Benatar has to say about her 
- “Its difficult, because 
looking like a sex kitten and having the 
mentality that goes with it are two dif- 
ferent things. I never had the mentality 
to go with it. In the beginning, I was 
just trying to say that women rockers 
didn't have to be androgynous. They 
could look female and have brains. I 
was trying to break the stereotype. It 
didn’t really work, but I feel better 
about it now. I still don’t want to look 
like a boy." . . . PBS debuts Alive from 
Off Center, featuring videos by top cho- 
rcographers, composers, playwrights 
and video artists, this summer. David 
Byrne will write thc theme music. 

— BARBARA NELLIS 


the blues, of course. Blues in Chicago are 
aliver and weller than ever, and three new 
albums on Alligator provide an excellent 
sampler of state-of-the-art Chicago blues. 
James Cotton provided the timeless harp 
solos on countless Muddy Waters sides 
before going solo in 1966. On High Com- 
pression, he's assembled two different finc 
bands. The James Cotton Chicago Blues 
All-Stars are a traditional nonhorn line-up 
featuring gritty Magic Slim on guitar, 
Pinetop Perkins on piano and Aron Burton 
on bass. The other group, Cotton's regular 
band, is horned and funked up, more slick 
and uptown. The mix is a sampler of 
styles, with the All-Stars’ Sunny Road as 
the standout. Fenton Robinson’s album 
Nightflight is more for slow dancing and 
making out—not that it doesn’t cook. You 
can hear T-Bone Walker and other Texas- 
blues influences in Robinson’s guitar, 
along with a Memphis breeze in the 
horns—all evolved into a style of his own. 
Included here are tasty updates of two 
carly Robinson hits, Crazy, Crazy Lovin’ 
and Schoolboy. But probably the hottest 
blues band in Chicago right now belongs 
to Son Seals, and it’s casy to tell why on 
Bad Axe. Without ever quite leaving the 
blues, Seals packs a bunch of rock 'n’ roll 
and funk into his guitar playing, which, 
like his voice, is more edgy and raw than 
the more mellow Robinson stylc— 
especially on such cuts as Don't Pick Me 
for Your Fool and Just About to Lose Your 
Clown. All three albums are recommended 
for combating those top-ten blues. 
. 

Rosanne Cash, widely known as Johnny 
Cash's daughter, Carlene Carter's step- 
sister and Rodney Crowell’s wife, may 
soon gain fame as Rosanne Cash’s song- 
writer with the material on Rhythm and 
Romance (Warner). In the nearly three 
years since she last recorded, she seems to 
have scrutinized her musical approach 
and, evidently, her marriage, too. All of 
that adds up to the touchingly scrutable 
scenes from a modern romance on such 
songs as Never Gonna Get Hurt, 1 Don't 
Know Why You Don’t Want Me and Second 
to No One. And if your hard heart hasn’t 
yet broken with the strain, listen to her 
song for Dad, My Old Man. Rosanne is in 
full bloom. 


SHORT CUTS 


Jason & The Scorchers / Lost & Found (EMI 
America): Bar band of the month. In 
Nashville, where it hangs out, this passes 
for heavy metal. 

Eric Clapton / Behind the Sun (Warner): 
Have guitar, will play the most lugubrious 
tripe to fill an album. Where, oh, where is 
the Eric of old? 

Terri Gibbs / Old Friends (Warner): Musi- 
cal thoughts for liberated good ol’ gals by 
a practitioner from the I’ve-got-sunshine- 
and-mountains-in-my-hair school that’s 
almost shut down these days. 


NEW 


REGULAR SIZE 
SOFT PACK. 


STERUNG 


| gtn box. 
|| Not available in all areas. 


REACH FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL 


STER 


9 mg. “tar”, 0.8 mg. nicotine av. per cigarette by FTC method, 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 


That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


36 


G monsters at the supermart! A 
mailman delivering death! A tiger in 
the boys’ room! A starving shipwrecked 
surgeon starting to think his feet look just 
scrumptious! 

Maybe Stephen King’s premises sound 
silly, but that thought fades along about 
the second paragraph of each story in Skel- 
eton Crew (Putnam's). In his novels, King 
takes the reader by the hand and leads him 
slowly to the haunted house, then shoves 
him inside and locks the door. In this col- 
lection, which includes a novella, The Mist, 
19 short stories and even two snatches of 
verse, he lands you in a hurry and then 
leans back, chortling, while you shiver on 
his hook. Now and then, he even doffs 
his shockmeister crown and becomes— 
presto!—the king of black comedy. We're 
not about to ruin the surprise, but toward 
the end of Survivor Type—the one about 
the hungry surgeon—he gets off one of the 
funniest lines you'll read’ this year. Laugh 
until you scream, but read it with the 
night light on! 


. 

In his first novel, Angels, poet Denis 
Johnson two years ago charted the course 
of two drifters through a world of bus ter- 
minals and shattered dreams, psychiatric 
wards and petty crime. In Johnson's latest. 
book, the world itself is seemingly adrift. 
Fiskadoro (Knopf) is set in Key West in the 
middle of the 21st Century, some 50 years 
after a nuclear war, and its inhabitants, 
cut off from history and uncertain of the 
future, are fishermen and shamans. They 
listen to Jimi Hendrix on Cubaradio and 
pray to the gods Allah and Bob Marley. 
"They decorate their homes with steering 
wheels and hts and other bits of use- 
less machinery. The genetically aberrant 
mingle with ghosts of the dead. This is fer- 
tile territory for a writer as gifted as John- 
son, and his powers of description are 
equal to the task. But while there is much 
poetic detail to admire in this book, the 
story is aimless and ultimately unsatisfy- 
ing. Johnson is clearly a writer to watch. 
He’s got the chops for big-time fiction. 

. 

Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of 
the Underground Press (Pantheon), by Abe 
Peck, is a definitive description of that dec- 
adc that refuses to dic. Peck was at the cen- 
ter of the Sixties himself, first as a reporter 
for the Seed in Chicago, then as a member 
of the Underground Press Syndicate and a 
writer for Ral in New York City. “I cov- 
ered some of the decade's key events,” he 
writes, “and gave my time, my heart, my 
health to the papers.” In brilliant and per- 
sonal prose, Peck chronicles it all: the 
stodginess of mainstream joumalism as 
the Vietnam war began, the imaginative 
but sometimes irresponsible reporting of 
the undergrounders, the ever-presence of 
Government surveillance and manipula- 


Short-form King: as scary as ever. 


Short stories from the 
horrormaster; Abe Peck 
writes a classic. 


[2 SN: Doss 
Underground Press: required reading. 


tion (Armageddon News, an underground 
paper in the Midwest, was staffed by FBI 
agents), the cumulative impact of civil 
rights issues and assassinations and drugs 
and music and comics and revolutionary 
rhetoric on the generation that flowered 
and then wilted in that era. Peck charts it 
all with a historian's eye and a survivor's 
heart. This is simply the best book about 
the subject, and it is bound to go on Amer- 
ica's required-reading list. 
. 

We admit it—we’re Deadheads from 
way back. You gotta love ‘em. Hard to 
imagine one of the haughty Rolling 
Stones, for instance, saying, as Bob Weir 


does in Pleying in the Band: An Oral and 
Visual Portrait of the Groteful Dead (St. 
Martin's): “We may not be the most pro- 
fessional outfit on the face of the planet, 
but once things get rolling, there is some- 
thing that happens.” Or Jerry Garcia: 
“We were a social configuration of some 
kind before we were a band. Our roots are 
in that strictly good-time thing, basic hi 
pies, without any kind of motive or pur- 
pose. It’s one of the things that's given 
us a sort of community strength.” Like 
Halley’s comet, the Dead go around and 
come around—and on June seventh, they 
marked their 20th anniversary in rock "n* 
roll, which is the occasion of this book, а 
collage of band interviews and more than 
250 pictures assembled by David Gans 
and Peter Simon. Its structured (or not) 
like a rap, with everybody getting in his 
two cents" worth on a given subject if he's 
got somethin' new to say—just as the 
band itself is structured (or not), with 
extreme democracy, not to say anarchy, at 
the core. There are probably more Dead 
books than Dead albums (18 of the latter 
on 25 discs, and counting), but this one's 
especially good at revealing the dynam- 
ics—of both the people and the music 
Weir calls it “misfit power.” This book is 
for anyone who has ever wanted to spend 
some time hanging out and rapping with 
the Grateful Dead; we came away from it 
feeling we knew them better in useful ways 
and understood their music better, too— 
neither of which is generally worth the 
trouble when it comes to rock bands. But 
the Dead are a way of life, a raggedy-assed 
cosmos. So ler's hope Garcia forgoes free- 
basing, so they'll be around another 20 
years. 


. 

Short, but not sweet, is Coptain Maximus 
(Knopf), a collection of short stories and a 
screen treatment by Barry Hannah. Han- 
nah’s fiction, mostly about hard-drinking 
middle-aged males, is strong stuff leavened 
with bits of humor. Too offbeat to be a 
hest seller in any circles but literary ones, 
this slim volume is still well worth a look. 


BOOK BAG 


Out of the Cradle (Workman), by William. 
K. Hartmann, Ron Miller and Pamela 
Lee: A dramatic, beautifully illustrated 
guide to the solar system, with a point to 
make—as man depletes the 


earth's 


triguing introduc- 


tion to the 21st Century. 
The Sweet Нурарег of Life (Howard Uni- 


), by Roy DeCarava and Langston 
Hughes: Originally published in 1955, this 
handsome reprint (photographs and text) 
about family life in Harlem as secn 
through the loving and forgiving eyes of a 
grandmother is nothing short of terrific. 


SPORTS 


D: te efforts on the part of the Anti- 
Warm Beer League and the Society 


for the Prevention of Toenails in Pork Pies, 
it looks as if they're going ahead with 
Wimbledon again. That's good. We need 
this tournament, Wimbledon—ah, the 
grass courts, the strawberries and cream, 
the flowered hats, the ivy-covered 
linesmen—to remind us of what tennis 
was like, at its best, before it died. 

Not that the death of tennis preys on my 
mind like something important—like, oh, I 
don’t know, a cheeseburger, maybe—but 
thoughts of another Wimbledon did start 
me wondering about when it was that ten- 
nis actually died. Recreational tennis died, 
of course, when so many middle-aged pco- 
ple started trying to chase lobs—and died. 

As for spectator tennis, 1 remember that 
it almost died a number of years back 
when there was nobody around but intro- 
spective Australians. Then it suddenly 
gained new life because of something 
called Open Tennis, which said it was OK 
for "amateur" tennis stars to accept 
money above the table. But Open Tennis 
was a good idea that backfired. While it 
removed the amateur sham from the sport, 
it has done nothing since, as far as Í can 
tell, but make billionaires out of rude chil- 
dren, moody defectors and a lot of guys 
with hair that looks like bats have slept in 
it. All in all, then, I am forced to conclude 
that the professional boom that once saved 
tennis has, in fact, killed it for good—with 
a big assist from the silly shirt. 

Uh-huh, the shirt. Show me a man who 
wears one of those shirts with a skimpy lit- 
tle lay-down collar and seroochy little 
short sleeves that tug at the armpits, and 
ГЇЇ show you either a tennis finalist or 
some guy rearranging baskets of ferns in 
the Hamptons. 

I can live with the shirt. Poor taste is the 
backbone of our economy. But what about 
the repetitious results? Who among us 
isn’t glazed over these days when we read 
in the sports pages that four guys named 
Yommick or Igor, all in different parts of 
the world, from Tokyo to Houston, all in 
their silly little shirts, have cach won 
$300,000,000 in some kind of nonevent 
that sounds like a Lucas-Spielberg film, 
Volvo and the Nabisco® And John 
McEnroe’s never even there, probably 
because Tatum O'Neal wanted to stay 
home and watch the music channel. 

My head swims with the thought that, їп 
this one life, I may have seen tennis pro- 
gress from Don Budge and Alice Marble to 


By DAN JENKINS 


GODSAVE WIMBLEDON, 
'THE QUEEN 


Farrah Fawcett becoming John McEnroe's 
mother-in-law. 

But back to money, the $300,000,000 
that Yommick or Igor wins every week. 
Nobody has ever been able to explain to 
me where all of that money comes from or 
why whoever has it wants to give it to a 
bunch of athletes who go to a city largely 
to be arrogant, uncommunicative and 
insulting. They are all those things to the 
promoters who raise money for them, 
the officials who want their pictures made 
with them, the fans who adore them and a 
press that makes them famous. For those 
who haven’t figured out why tennis stars 
are arrogant, uncommunicative and insult- 
ing, I'm happy to offer some theories. 

Theory One: The tennis player is arro- 
gant because he mistakenly believes he 
excels in a rich man’s sport. The blazers 
and ties at the cocktail parties have him 
fooled. If the tennis player had a brain that 
extended beyond his next “exo fee,” he 
would know that yachting, thoroughbred 
racing, buying countries, collapsing banks, 
electing politicians—these are the games 
of the rich. Tennis is a middle-class sport. 

Theory Two: The tennis 
uncommunicative because, 
and I don't really mean to pem but, 
well—he's stupid. 

Theory Three: The tennis player is 
insulting because, in all probability 
whining little shit has never had his 


ass kicked by an outside linebacker. 

ГЇЇ skip over some of the other things 
that have contributed to the death of 
tennis —headbands, short pants on Com- 
mies, new stadiums built in the landing 
patterns of Delta and United—and cut 
straight to the clincher, The clincher is the 
Tennis Interview. 

“Congratulations on 
pionship, Igor. It must be a great feelir 

“Yes, to feel the winning is much better 
than to feel the losingness that comes from 
the loss of not winning.” 

“You had good support out there today.” 

“Yes, I said this to myself and this is 
what I told myself I must do. This was my 
goal.” 

(ou seemed to look at your coach 
before the tough points.” 

“Yes, I must give credit to my coach. 
Also, my dietician, my doctor, my chefand 
my pilot” 

“Was today’s match the toughest you've 
ever had?” 

“Yes, but such things are relative. In 
tennis, much can sometimes depend on 
the line calls and the lateness of the cour- 
tesy cars.” 

“You were down by two sets.” 

“Yes, the press will say that, but in my 
mind, it was a different story, and this is 
only for me to say when I have spoke.” 

“It was your serve that brought you back.” 

“Yes, it was in my mind to hit a high 
percentage of first serves and take away his 
serve by coming back low and to his feet.” 

“Doesn't everybody try to do that?” 

“Yes, but the mental aspect must come 
into play as well as the mind.” 

“In your book, you say the key to good 
tennis is keeping the ball on the other side 
of the net.” 

“Yes, the book is $15.95 and on sale in 
the boutique,” 

“How will you celebrate this victory?” 

“Yes, Vitas and I have an exo in Mon- 
treal. After that, I go to my villa in France, 
then to my chalet in Switzerland. If there 
is time before my exo tour of Japan, I will 
buy six cars and a diamond mine.” 

“Are you going to play at Wimbledon?” 

“Yes, we are discussing this, but so far 
they have not agreed to change the dates to 
accommodate my schedule. It is sad for 
me to say, but some people have no consi 
eration for the competitor.” 

“I have only one more question, Igor.” 

paves yo ои 

“How well do all you silly fuckers 
think you'd play without ball boys?” 


ming the cham- 


37 


TO FIND OUT WHICH RADAR 
THIS DISTINGUISHED 


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A 


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TRAVEL 


A s most travelers and shoppers 
know, the British lease on Hong 
Kong—extorted during the so-called 
Opium Wars of the 19th Gentury— 
expires in 1997. Although new accords 
between Chinese and British negotiators 
are supposed to ensure an orderl 
year-long transition from British to Chi- 
nesc administration, no onc really belicves 
that will be true. The planned stationing 
of Chinese troops on Hong Kong soil sug- 
gests that the erstwhile crown colony's 
freewheeling, free-enterprise atmosphere 
may be at least a little restrained. All of 
which means that travelers who haye never 
experienced its unique appeal—and those 
who have and want to return before Hong 
Kong becomes a Chinese satellite—have 
little more than ten years to do so. 

Why go careening across the Pacific to 
visit Hong Kong? For starters, it’s home to 
about half a dozen of the best hotels on the 
planet—and that’s not just a travel writ- 
er's hyperbole. The work ethic of the huge 
Chinese population (and the low wages 
paid) means an amazing ratio of staff to 
guests. A typical deluxe hotel in Hong 
Kong employs staff members to meet you 
at the airport; colleagues to carry your 
bags from the luggage carrousel to wait- 
ing limousines (everything from deluxe 
Daimlers to knockout Rolls-Royces); a 
pair of porters (usually in pillbox hats) 
who open hotel front doors every time any- 
thing even remotely human approaches; 
endless bellmen, floor boys, room boys, 
bearers, cleaners, fetchers, carriers and 
guys who just stand around waiting for 
some odd idea to strike a guest. When you 
step off an elevator, there’s almost always 
a foot race with thc floor man to your room 
so he can open your door before you do. 
Pick up a telephone and order anything 
from tea to teriyaki, and your order may 
arrive at roughly the same moment as the 
receiver hits the cradle. This sort of service 
is the standard against which you'll meas- 
ure every other hotel stay for the rest of 
your life. 

Which is number one? Well, over on 
Hong Kong Island, the Mandarin and the 
Hong Kong Hilton battle it out for top 
spot, with the Mandarin getting a narrow 
nod. But folks who know Hong Kong best 
now seem to be gravitating toward the 
Kowloon (mainland) side of the harbor, 
especially since a host of new hotels has 
popped up along the landfill called Tsim 
Sha Tsui. Among them are the Holiday 
Inn Harbour View, the Shangri-La, the 


By STEPHEN BIRNBAUM 


HONG KONG SALE: 
EVERYTHINGMUST GO! 


Regal Meridien, The Royal Garden, the 
New World (Hong Kong's best hotel 
Kong and The 
Regent (the very best of this terrific 
group). Most offer incredible views across 
the harbor toward Hong Kong Island and 
its looming опа Peak. Military ves- 
sels, freighters, tankers, ferries and other 
seagoing traffic combine with an endless 
parade of junks and sampans to provide a 
scene as hypnotizing as any in an action 
movie. It’s especially breath-taking at sun- 
set from a room at The Regent—don't 
reserve unless you're guaranteed a room 
facing the harbor. 

Eating Hong Kong’s second-best 
indoor sport, and some of the best chefs in 
the world work here. Chinese cooking is 
available in every subspecialty, from 
Shanghai to Szechwan, dim sum to dragon 
and phoenix, and there are restaurants 
from Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Indone- 

ia. Vietnam and the Philippines. Here is 
the place (if you dare) to try dishes that 
would make Indiana Jones blanch: not 
only monkey's brains eaten directly from 
the skull of a freshly killed simian but bear 
paw, snake, dog, pigeon, frog, sparrow, 
mouse, lizard— many of which arc offi- 
cially banned as food but bring exorbitant 
prices anyway. 

For the less exotically inclined, there is 
the midday meal at Hong Kong City Hall, 
where 2500 lunchers vie for the attention 
of scores of serving persons wheeling dim 


sum carts around a dining room the size of 
Madison Square Garden. Somewhat more 
gaudy are the floating restaurants of Aber- 
deen, on the other side of the island, 
reached via junks and sampans. 

Perhaps the most clegant of Hong 

Kong's classic Chinese restaurants are the 
Man Wah, on the roof of the Mandarin 
hotel, and the new Lai ng Heen, at The 
Regent. There are also first-class Western 
eateries such as Gaddi’s (at the Peninsula 
hotel), Lalique (at The Royal Garden), 
Plume (at The Regent) and The Grill (at 
the Hilton). But for a combination of 
snacks and social scene, there's still 
nowhere else in Hong Kong that matches 
the lobby of the Peninsula. It's a sort of 
parade route for an endless stream of daz- 
zling women from both Orient and Occi- 
dent. If you can't find companionship in 
the lobby of the Pen, you'd better change 
your after-shave, 
Shopping is an essential part of Hong 
re, and everything from pearls to 
is sold here in authentic or imita- 
tion form. There isn't anything the Hong 
Kong Chinese cannot make or copy; ever 
since they mastered duplicating Louis 
Vuitton’s brown vinylized canvas, they've 
heen creating knock-ofls of every Paris 
product—and lots of items Louis never 
dreamed of. Climbing the ladder streets of 
Hong Kong Island, where the alleys are 
filled with name-brand imitations, you 
half expect to trip over a Buick with an LV 
exterior. 

Custom gear is also a Hong Kong spe- 
cialty, and bespoke shirts, suits, sports 
jackets and odd trousers are cranked out 
with remarkable speed and efficiency. 
Remember, however, that Hong Kong tai- 
lors copy a lot better than they create, so 
it's best to take along something you'd love 
to have painstakingly duplicated. 

For pure bargains, nothing beats the 
rowdy market that flourishes in the town 
of Stanley. Famous-brand jeans, signature 
sport shirts, tennis togs, every conceiv- 
able hrand and variety of sport shoc, lug- 
gage (you'll prohahly nced an extra bag to 
tote home all your purchases) and lots more 
are sold in alley shops and street stalls. 

After dark, night markets in Kowloon 
and down by the out-island ferry docks on 
Hong Kong Island pick up the retail slack. 
Here business of every sort is transacted 
unashamedly, and the openness of the com- 
merce can make an unsuspecting observ- 
er gasp. It’s a place to experience 
before it disappears forever. 


41 


C RE 


After all, ЫЎ 
if smoking isn’t a pleasure, 
why bother? 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 
That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


MEN 


[ hey're taking away our role models. 
In movies, books and television 


shows, men arc being trivialized, and the 
message is this: You guys are mostly 
dumb, frivolous, awkward and 
mouselike—and if you don't agree with 
that, you're sexist. 

You've seen Amadeus, right? That's the 
film about the gifted but infantile com- 
poser who giggled like an idiot and then 
died of indigestion. Great vision of 
Mozart? The way you always thought of 
him? Peter Shaffer called his scrcenplay for 
Amadeus “a fantasia based on fact. It is not 
a screen biography af Mozart and was 
never intended to be.” 

"That disclaimer doesn't do it. Most peo- 
ple viewing Amadeus think they're seeing 
the real Mozart, and as they leave the the- 
ater, they have to be wondering how such 
an imbecile could produce such а good 
sound track. 

The Mozart I know about was a man of 
infinite variety and great strength. He was 
a playful man, no question about that. He 
was also vigorous and direct, and his 
music was a concrete and vivid reflection 
of his energy, talent and perception. 

Take one day from Mozart's life. He 
wrote to his wife about his schedule: Hc 
rose at five am, took a long walk, treated 
himself to some cutlets ("che gusto!”), 
played two rounds of billiards, sent for 
black coffee, smoked “a splendid pipe of 
tobacco,” quickly orchestrated the third 
movement of the Clarinet Concerto, 
dined on *a delicious slice of sturgeon” 
and other delicacies, and then, since he 
had “a rather voracious appetite,” sent his 
valet back for seconds. 

This is the same Mozart who was bled 
of two to three quarts of blood during the 
last 12 days of his life, yet had the strength 
to stand up and rehearse his Requiem ten 
hours before he died. 

Not a giggling, bawling jerk, in other 
words, but a man who led a varied and dif- 
ficult life and who met his many chal- 
lenges bravely. 

Why didn’t we see that Mozart? 

The fast answer to that is simple: He 
wouldn’t sell. The handle, the gimmick, 
the trick these days is to make a mockery 
of any male whose life goes beyond the 
narrow range of cop or cowhoy. Amadeus 
is the perfect vehicle for the Eighties—the 
greatest composer of all time wasn't a 
man, he was a mouse. It’s the message this 


By ASA BABER 


RIPPED-OFF 
MOZART 


culture seems to want to hear. 

Meanwhile, of course, Diane Keaton 
and Sally Field and Sissy Spacek have 
been busy playing cinematic superwomen, 
none of whom giggles inanely or loses self- 
control at a moments notice. Women, 
we're being told, have their shit together. 
Men never have. Not even the best and 
most creative of them. 

Men are disappearing nowhere more 
obviously than in contemporary fiction. 
Find a novel that is not a spy or detective 
story and you're likely to find a feminist 
tract. Women form the bulk of today’s 
literary consumers, we're told. Why 
shouldn't they? The standard novel of the 
Seventies and Eighties describes a brave 
but lonely woman who discovers that 
there’s life after men. Or should that read 
“after mice”? 

Example: "He was still handsome . . . 
but the beauty had something desiccated 
about it, like a dried flower. . . . He was a 
slim, proud-looking man, more delicately 
built than his sister. He should have been 
the girl and she the boy." 

That is a description of Julian DeVane, 
the most prominent male in Gail Godwin's 
latest novel, The Finishing School. Julian, 
poor mouse, will go on to kill himself at 
the end of the book, but who's surprised? 
It’s obvious he won't be able to hack it. 
Here’s how he plays the piano: “His eyes 
were almost closed, and he touched the 


keys with a slight restraint; he looked as 
though he had sent himself into some other 
realm and had to be careful not to be swal- 
lowed up by it... . Several times Julian 
hummed aloud, or emitted abrupt, gut- 
tural sounds as he played.” 

Well, at least he doesn’t giggle. 

When the next editor you meet laments 
the fact that men are not buying novels the 
way they used to, you might ask why they 
should. So they can watch themselves 
being annihilated? Or you might ask that 
editor what it’s like to be male and walk 
into a bookstore these days. Usually you're 
greeted with shelves of feminist fiction, 
and then you turn around to face the 
special section on women’s issues. It’s a 
double whammy, and it proves that pub- 
lishing’s matriarchy is alive and well. Men 
sense that and stay away. 

What's going on? It has to do with 
money, among other things. The femi 
audience is the largest, the most c: 
identifiable, the one most clearly on the 
ascendancy. Women now constitute a sig- 
nificant portion of the work force, and 
their search for role models has been given 
top billing. Turn on your TV and you'll 
see what I mean. 

P. J. Bednarski, former television critic 
for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote recently 
about male roles in the TV wasteland: 
“Something has happened to the TV Guy. 
Some things have been surgically removed 
from men: brains and spines and morals 
and scruples. . .. Men are the old Women. 
on TV. Ornamental. Subservient. Dull- 
witted. And most often, very good- 
looking." Bednarski goes on to cite 
examples of dumb guys we're all supposed 
to laugh at: Ted Danson and the late Nich- 
olas Colasanto in Cheers, Tom Poston in 
Newhart, Thom Bray in Riptide, 
Brosnan in Remington Steele, John Ritter 
in Three's a Crowd, John Forsythe in 
Dynasty, Tony Danza in Who's the Boss?— 
the list goes on 

The trivialization of the male today is a 
conscious manipulation of our national 
psyche to create and then please a market. 
The money people doing this have no real 
understanding of who we men are, Nor do 
they seem to care. 


I's time for some new bumper 
stickers. How about MOZART was А 
M NOT A MOUSE? Or FREE TED DANSON? 


Or TAKE BACK THE CULTURE? 
Honk if you agree El 


43 


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GIN 


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SEAGRAM'S. AMERICAS NUMBER ONE CIN. 


WOMEN 


f I here I was, minding my own busi- 
ness, reading my March PLAYBOY, 


when an essay called What Else Do Women 
Want? struck my face. Í read it, my cyes 
growing wilder as I was told that we femi- 
nists were “deranged and flabbergastingly 
disingenuous,” “just another piggy little 
special-interest. group” and ithout 
regard to logic, principle ог justice." 

I shook my head in wonder when I read 
further that we were a powerful political 
lobby that must systematically be stopped 
before we single-mindedly stripped away 
the rights of all free men. 

“The author, John Gordon, seemed to 
have (when all his rhetoric was boiled 
down) these major beel 

A. Women don’t have to get drafted, 
which is not fair. 

B. Women make out better, because 
they usually get to keep the kids and get 
child support, but a father doesn’t have 
the right to demand abortion. 

C. The only reason women make 59 
cents for every dollar men make is that 
they take time off to raise children and 
haven't the seniority to make more. 

D. Women are trying to stop men from 
seeing the truth by pretending there are 
snuff films and that there was a cheering 
crowd of gang rapers in New Bedford— 
both of which are myths. 

To my mind, this piece of writing is a 
petulant mélange of demifacts and high- 
pitched fears; in other words, propaganda. 
Let's just look at a couple of distortions: 

Gordon cites Sandra Day O'Connor as 
a feminist, yet her Supreme Court voting 
record on the legality of abortion makes it 
clear that she is not a feminist. 

According to Joyce Wadler, a Washing- 
ton Post reporter who covered the New 
Bedford rape trial, the “crowd” did exi 
“Just five or six,” Wadler says, “although 
Thate to use the word just when discussing 
gang rape.” 

I could go on, but it seems pointless 
simply to demolish Gordon's “facts.” 
Instead—what the hell—let’s jump to the 
basic issue: What do we feminist broads 
want, anyway? Are we trying to cut off 
men’s balls, or what? 

Let's first address the assumption that 
feminists are a powerful political lobby. 
My response can only be “Huh? Where? 
When? How?" Powerful as we are, we 
couldn't even get the Equal Rights 
Amendment passed. And we all know how 
terribly threatening the E.R.A. is, what 


By CYNTHIA HEIMEL 


DO FEMINISTS 
WEAR WHITE HATS? 


with equal-opportunity bathrooms and all. 
I wish we were powerful. I want us to be 
powerful. But Gordon's conclusion that we 
are and must be stopped is discouraging. 

The subsidiary assumption, that femi- 
nists are promoting their interests at the 
expense of men, is even more upsetting. 

Let's look at а parallel situation, the 
civil rights movement. Was every blow 
gainst racism equally a blow against 
white people? No, it was simply a blow 
against white supremacists. Everybody— 
except the Ku Klux Klan—benefits from 
the civil rights moyement. Similarly, every 
attack against sexism is not an attack 
against men; it is an attack against 
inequity. 

Americans have a strong sense of fair 
play. Unfortunately, sexism is an 
grained trait in both men and women, 
which leads to a stupefying amount of sen- 
sitivity in both sexes. Men don’t under- 
stand why women sock them in the jaw for 
using the word chick. Hey, they've always 
used the word chick, it’s just the way they 
lalk, goddamn it! Women can't figure out 
why men don't understand that the word 
chick is offensively diminutive. And so it 
goes. In times of change, things can get 
very touchy. Try, if you're white, using the 
word nigger. Go ahead. 

Now, about this child-care/custody 
business. Let's try logic: One cannot say 
that women make only 59 cents for every 
dollar men make because they're the ones 


who have to stay home with the kids and 
then go on to say that they don't deserve 
child support and custody of their chil- 
dren. As long as there is inequity in the 
market place, there will be inequity in the 
home. Child-care issues cannot be re- 
solved until women’s earnings, dollar for 
dollar, achieve parity with men’s. 

A big problem with Gordon's essay is 
that he cannot seem to differentiate 
between women and feminists. Not all 
women are feminists, and it's dangerous to 
assume that they are—since it means that 
every act by every woman is a feminist act, 
and every time a woman (such as Sandra 
Day O'Connor) does something irritating, 
you can label her a feminist and say that 
the entire movement is rubbish. 

Which brings me to Andrea Dworkin, 
an alleged feminist who gets a lot of press. 
Dworkin is the most vocal supporter of 
Women Against Pornography, and she, 
along with feminist law professor Cather- 
ine MacKinnon, drafted an Indianapolis 
antiporn statute defining pornography as 
“the sexually explicit subordination of 
women, graphically depicted, whether in 
pictures or words.” 

Tam not crazy about pornography, but 
1 am simply nuts about the First Amend- 
ment. And when I saw the Women Against 
Pornography picketing the Broadway pro- 
duction of Lolita, I knew we were all in 
trouble. This is dangerous and scary. 
What makes it worse is that Dworkin has 
joined forces with Jerry Falwell types. 

Funnily enough, Gordon doesn’t even 
mention Dworkin. She's the only reason 
men should feel threatened by feminism, 
though she is anything but representative 
of modern feminist thought 

So what is modern feminist thought? 

Damned if | know. We are not, and 
never were, a monolithic movement. Femi- 
m is based on the premise that no one 
should be deprived of her or his civil 
rights; but after that, we agree to differ. 
Betty Friedan, in her most recent book, 
talks about getting together with men 
again, Germaine Greer, in her most recent 
book, says that no woman can be fulfilled 
unless she is a mother. I don't always 
agree with my sisters, but I will defend to 
the death their rights (except, perhaps, 
when they link up with Jerry Falwell). 

We are, by and large, a good bunch. 
And we are certainly not the enemy. Ifyou 
want an enemy, cast your eyes toward the 
maniacs who are bombing abortion 
clinics, for God's sake. E 


45 


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AGAINST THE WIND 


I ke lbs cotes cum, Bn c 
years ago, while I was living in a balmy 
little crease in the hills north of San Fran- 
cisco, I went after the dirt around my 
house as if it were going to save whatever 
small scraps of sanity I had left, and 
maybe it did. Not that it probably looked 
sane from the next property. Га still like 
to hear my neighbors’ version of the spring 
day I walked into the middle of my 
unplanted garden plot, dropped my pants 
and sat to test the folk theory that if the 
soil is too cold for your bare ass, it's too 
cold for the seedlings you're getting ready 
to plant. I had a fine garden that vear— 
corn, four kinds of tomatoes, onions, 
сикез, peppers, chard—and by the time 
Pd eaten the last of it, I was feeling pretty 
good about the job Га done and the fun 
Га had making the earth say beans in- 
stead of grass, as Henry Thoreau put it. 

During the winter, while I was waiting 
for the sun to come back so I could do it 
again, the price for local marijuana hit 
$200 per swindler's ounce, and the greedy 
little accountant in my head began sug- 
gesting that if we were smart, we ought to 
make the earth say beans and grass this 
year. So a friend and I built a greenhouse 
out of used lumber and corrugated plastic 
panels; then I double dug two large beds, 
stirred an intense formula of compost and. 
other organic vegetable food into them 
and planted: in one bed, 12 cocky little pot 
seedlings that Га sprouted with the new 
moon; in the other, tomatoes, marigolds 
and the kind of mums that get those big, 
mop-looking heads. “Just like growing 
money,” said the accountant as we 
watched the Cannabis put on muscle and 
begin to stretch out. 

The weeds came up as if this had been 
their property for 10,000 years, which it 
had. There were days when I felt as if I 
were trying to disconnect the San Fran- 
cisco Bell System by pulling out one phone 
at a time, but weeding isn’t bad work. It’s 
not as deep-down satisfying as yanking a 
telephone out by the roots, but it’s in the 
same family of exercise, and after a while, 
I didn't care what excuse got me into the 
pretty light of that quiet little shack 

But you're never doing what you think 
you're doing, and that turns out to be as 
true in the greenhouse as it is in love and 
romance. When you jug all that heat and 
light, passionate things happen, and only 
some of them are what you had in mind. 

Just a little more than two months after 
I planted it, the marijuana hit the seven- 


By CRAIG VETTER 


EARLY 
HARVEST 


foot roof and I topped it to encourage that 
good sumo shape. Then four males 
showed their pollen sacs and I hustled 
them out of the ground and onto the com- 
post heap before they could have their way 
with the females, because the idea behind 
sinsemilla is that if you deny the ladies а 
chance to make seeds, they will, like nuns, 
spend all their energies producing the 
more spiritual oils, which are what get you 
high. When my plants flowered, they con- 
firmed the theory by sending up a sweet 
green musk that stoned every last spider. 
and bug in the place and seemed a perfect 
airborne expression of the six or seven 
luminescent shades of green that ran from. 
the trunk to the upper stories of those 
beautiful trees. The promise in the smell 
drove me crazy, so I pinched a few early 
buds, dried them, then sat down in the 
greenhouse and smoked. They tasted as 
sweet as they smelled, and they got me 
high enough that as I sat there watching 
them grow, I realized for the first time 
exactly what the poet Gerard Manley 
Hopkins meant when he said that what 
you stare at eventually stares back at you. 

Meanwhile, the flowers had grown into 
clumps and bushes big enough to make me 
think of a Mafia funeral; and it was 
becoming clear that if I didn't start eating 
the tomatoes, they were going to strangle, 
then eat, the entire greenhouse. From then 
on, Late seven or ten a day while I tried to 


eyeball what the weight of the pot crop 
was going to be once I'd dried ít. I figured 
about two pounds of perfect, no-seed buds, 
which meant about $4000 after I'd kept 
some and given some to friends. 

What I was forgetting was that every- 
thing you grow is related to everything else 
that grows around it, and the other thing I 
was raising on my property at that time 
was my 17-year-old daughter, who was 
putting certain fragrances of her own into 
the air, which were attracting the kind 
of two-legged pests and vermin that are 
a lot harder to beat back than aphids 
and moles. So I shouldn't have been 
shocked that September morning when I un- 
locked the greenhouse door to find four of 
the eight plants gone and a panel ripped 
off the rear of the place. But I was; and I 
was red-zone mad that what had been one 
of the most pleasantly consuming things 
F'd ever done was now turned into a grim 
kind of sentry duty that had me hoping the 
bastards would try it just once more. They 
did, of course: long-haired teen scum, 
belly-creeping down from the road, 
through the weeds, in the middle of the 
day. | watched, like a sniper, from a 
second-story window, a brick in my hand, 
and when the first of the three got right 
below me and started to jerk at one of the 
panels, I thought, Now. Then I saw myself 
the way you sometimes do when the mon- 
ster is just short of blowing away the last 
grain of decency you own, and I thought, 
You gonna crush this kid’s skull for a cou- 
ple of bags of dope? “Hell, yes,” said the 
monster, but I didn’t, because, somehow, 
making the earth say murder wasn’t what 
Pd had in mind when I laid the seed in. 
Instead, I yelled, “What the fuck you doing 
down there?” Tt was a rhetorical question, 
and the way the trio took off, I think they 
understood that. 

I harvested the last of the four plants 
that day, almost two months ahead of their 
full, juicy maturity, and when І got the 
crop dry, there was just under a pound. I 
sold some, but I smoked most of it myself 
and shared it with my pothead friends; 
and the next season, I left the lock off the 
door and filled the greenhouse with vege- 
tables and flowers. I told myself that I 
could buy good marijuana, but tomatoes 
like the ones coming out of that little shed 
were not for sale at any price. 

The accountant hated that logic, of 
course; but, then, my biggest mistake was 
ever letting him into the garden in 
the first ec 


47 


Where youre going, 
its Michelob. 


The way you work, the way you 
play, you're on your way to 

top. Where you're going, it's 
exceptionally smooth Michelob. 


THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR 


Ham a 29-year-old businessman very hap- 
pily married to a woman of the same age. 
My problem concerns our sexual 
relations—or at least my fantasies about 
our sexual relations. There’s something 
missing from our sex life that I constantly 
fantasize about and would dearly love to 
experience: spanking—that is, my spank- 
ing her. This obsession may sound rather 
absurd, but my particular “perversion” 
doesn’t seem to be quite as rare as I once 
imagined it to be—at least from what I’ve 
read and heard. My wife came from a 
rather conservative family and was sexu- 
ally naive when I married her, but she has 
since, I think, come to enjoy sex and has 
been willing to try new things. My prob- 
lem is, how do I ease spanking into a 
regular part of our sex life? Do women ever 
fantasize about being spanked? This par- 
ticular need of mine has been with me ever 
since 1 was an adolescent but has had no 
outlet for satisfaction other than in 
fantasies—I was simply afraid, as I am 
now, that if I told a woman about this, 
she'd pack up and leave. Mind you, I 
wouldn’t dare hurt her. It’s just that 
whenever I see her gorgeous, slightly 
plump little ass wiggling around the 
house, I have an enormous hard-on and 
fantasize for the next week about taking 
her over my lap, pulling down her jeans 
and panties and paddling her with my 
bare hand or a ping-pong paddle. There 
are variations on this, of course. All this, 
I’m sure, does make me sound like a sadis- 
tic pervert. Maybe I am. But assuming no 
one gets hurt (and I have no intention of 
hurting her beyond mere light spanking), 
what's the harm? Any suggestions?—S. S., 
Chicago, Illinois. 

Don't be so timid. Show your wife this let- 
ter. Say, “Gee, it takes all kinds to fill the free- 
ways, doesn't it, honey?” Then pause and ask 
her if she’s ever had a fantasy about spank- 
ing. (You may be surprised by her answer.) As 
a means to an end, you might simply confess 
to your own fantasy and ask for her coopera- 
tion. A marriage should include the sharing 
of fantasies. That has to cut both ways. 
Maybe you'll wind up on the receiving end. 


W bought a TV set that’s supposed to be 
cable ready. I can get some cable chan- 
nels, but the picture is completely scram- 
bled. I recall that on my old TV, there was 
a horizontal-hold control that could 
straighten out the picture. There's no such 
control on my new one. Are the TV-set 
manufacturers in cahoots with the cable 
operators to force us to pay for a cable 
converter?—B. N., San Diego, California. 
To begin with, the term cable ready is some- 
what overstated, It would be more to the point 
to describe the new, electronically (digitally) 


tuned TV sets as cable compatible, which 
means that they can receive the basic channels 
of a cable system without a converter and also 
permit the use of a remote-control accessory. 
You still have to subscribe to the cable system, 
however. And you still need the converter to 
get the "premium" channels that are scram- 
bled. The horizontal-hold control has nothing 
to do wilh it. The use of microprocessors for 
tuning simply obviates the need for that con- 
trol. The scrambling of the premium channels 
is done generally by either of two techniques. 
One is known as sync suppression, which 
tears up the picture. The other is video inver- 
sion, which makes blacks white, and vice 
versa, and also messes up the color. You could 
fiddle all day and night with a horizontal 
adjustment and get nowhere with such scram- 
bling. Note, too, that getting some kind of 
descrambler on your own is illegal. As things 
stand, you must get that device from the cable 
company, 


Tiii S a ce sisi To aani boy 
incredible it may seem. Three weeks ago, 
my girlfriend abruptly and unexpectedly 
broke up with me. I believed we were hav- 
ing a happy, understanding relationship. 
Her final words were, “І have only one life 
to live. Pd like to experience different 
things." I was crushed. I persistently tried 
to win her back—with roses, chocolates, 
cards and anything else you can imagine. 
It was no use, Anger began to set in, and 1 
was determined to discover the man who 
had swept her off her fect and away from 
me. I rented a car and parked down the 
street from her house on a day I knew she 
would go out. Sure enough, she came out 
and entered her car. She had gotten 
dressed up and was very beautiful. I fol- 


lowed her to an apartment complex not far 
away. The sun had just dipped below the 
horizon as she went up a few steps and 
knocked on a door. I got out of the car and 
watched from behind a tall hedge. To my 
tremendous surprisc, a tall and attractive 
brunette who must have been about 35 or 
40 years old opened the door. They kissed 
each other bricfly on the lips. And as the 
door closed behind them, Ї saw the bru- 
nette grab and squeeze my ex’s buttocks. I 
left quite disgusted and disappointed. I 
have nothing against gays, but I can tell 
you my girlfriend sure wasn't one. She's 
22, and maybe she was lured by the other 
woman. The mystery woman is not only 
gay but about 15 years older than my ex. 
Is this a passing thing? I still love my girl- 
friend very much and would do anything 
to be with her again. Any tips on how Í 
could win her back? Your advice would 
be greatly appreciated.— T. S., Seattle, 
Washington. 

We suppose a sex change is out of the ques- 
tion. Come back as a lesbian and you might 
win your ex's heart. But then, this may just be 
a phase she’s going through. There you'd be, 
empty, uh, handed. She's moved on. Face that 
and get on with your own life. You are m love 
with a memory, with the habits of a good time. 
They say that the only cure for a woman is 
another woman. Find her. 


E have a rather embarrassing problem: 
Whenever I am around women, I get a 
huge hard-on. I try not to think about it, 
but it swells and really hurts. This hap- 
pens up to three times a day, and the 
women I work with really notice. Now no 
one will go out with me, even to lunch, 
because everyone thinks I'm a pervert 
and very horny. Thats not it at all. In 
fact, Lam a normal guy. What can I do to 
control my "bulging muscle"? I am nine 
inches, so it's a problem.—]. L., Butler, 
Pennsylvania. 

Alem. Maybe you should wear looser cloth- 
ing. lt works for us. 


Recently, for some obscure reason, a 
group of us found ourselves discussing the. 
proper manner of urinating while wearing 
Jockey shorts. Much to everyone's sur- 
prise, we were unable to reach an agrec- 
ment and would appreciate your advice 
and hearing whether or not you have any 
survey background on this subject, It 
appears that the categories involved are 
three: (1) those who use the flap built into 
the front of the Jockey shorts; (2) those 
who pull the leg of the Jockey shorts to one 
side; (3) those who pull down the waist- 
band in order to relieve themselves. The 
conversation was quite hilarious; all of us 
involved have been asking our friends and 


49 


PLAYBOY 


we have found that there is a great diver- 
sity of opinion on the matter. We originally 
thought that the purpose of the flap was to 
facilitate such matters and that that would 
be the over-all winner of our informal poll. 
Much to our surprise, the pull-the-leg-to- 
one-side method seems to be most prev- 
alent. We would appreciate hearing your 
comments.— P. S., Shirley, New York. 

It’s always nice to hear what men are con- 
cerned about in Shirley, New York. Seriously, 
though, we know of no formal surveys on this 
matter, but we would lay odds that most men 
do, indeed, pull or adjust their briefs to one 
side to facilitate urinating. You're correct in 
assuming that the flap was built into the 
shorts for this purpose, but we honestly doubt 
that very many men use it. 


WI, fiancée, a divorcee, and I are both 
employed at a local TV station and must 
frequently work different hours and con- 
tend with on-call assignments. She 
recently persuaded me to sell my condo- 
iium and move in with her, as we arc 
serious about getting married. All had 
been going very well until her 15-year-old 
daughter decided to return from the West 
Coast, where she had been staying with 
my fiancée's ex-husband. The girl is ex- 
tremely cunning and provocative to- 
ward me, to say the least, Whenever I’m at 
home and her mother is at work, she'll do 
practically anything she can think of to 
turn me on—walk around in bra and 
panties; come into the bedroom when Pm 
asleep and tickle my feet teasingly—and 
will often sit оп the bed, seeming to 
implore me to make it with her. It's gotten 
to the point where she reacts jealously to 
my relationship with her mom and is no 
doubt striving to compete with her for my 
affections. I would never even consider 
any form of relations with the girl, not only 
because of her age but because I do have 
high personal esteem and, above all, a 
genuine desire to marry my fiancée, for 
whom I have the greatest respect. How do. 
I handle the present situation? I really 
don't want to foul up the relationship 
between my fiancée and her daughter and 
would prefer not to have to confront the 
girl directly. I would rather ignore the sit- 
uation and hope the flame will burn itself 
out eventually.—F. P., Miami, Florida. 

It’s not your job to act as a father, but it is 
your responsibility to act as an adult. If and 
when you marry your fiancée, you are going 
to have to work together on a number of prob- 
lems, including child rearing. Confer with 
your partner to be. You may have to seek 
counseling for your new family, Understand- 
ing, not silence, is the answer. 


Th 1983, 1 was presented with a baby 
granddaughter. This year, my son and his 
wife are expecting another child. I'd like to 
do something for them besides the usual 
setting up of trusts and the like. I remem- 
ber that at a European wedding I 


attended, the father toasted the couple 
with wine of his daughters birth 
year—wine he had laid down for her 
when she was born. What wines of the 
1983 and 1985 Bordeaux vintages would 
be at their peak around 2005-2010? And 
how can I order some?—R. J., Hartford, 
Connecticut. 

The early barrel-tasting reports of the 
1983 vintage are in. While not so spectacu- 
lar as those of 1982, the wines promise to be 
very good, indeed, and should hold well into 
the next century. At this point, you will have 
to buy 1983 futures m Bordeaux; the deal 
is that you pay full price on receipt of order 
and take delivery in 1986. The good side is 
that by 1986, the wines will likely have 
appreciated considerably. If you want to go 
top flight, some suggestions include the usual 
premiers crus: Chäteaux Lafite, Latour, 
Margaux and Mouton. All of them are about 
$480 a case now. For more modest 
drinking—but still very good—you might 
consider Cháteaux Palmer, Léoville-Las- 
Cases and Figeac (all about $240 a case). 
For a still more modest taste, try Chateaux 
Gloria and Angludet (about $120). 


Bam а 35-year-old, six-foor-tall woman 
with a good figure and long blonde hair. I 
think I am attractive. My husband is a 
very practical man, a good provider and a 
loving father. My problem is that he is 
content with a not-so-exciting sex life 
crammed into a couple of minutes at the 
end of the day. I want to expand into act- 
ing out fantasies. I have tried to act out dif- 
ferent roles—a hooker, a stripper and 
others—but he gets very embarrassed. 1 
want to set moods for lovemaking and 
spend more time at it. All this is so threat- 
ening to him that now, if I put on a sexy 
nightgown, I can scc panic in his eyes. I 
have tried to explain to him that I have dif- 
ficulty shifting gears from talking about 
kids, finances, etc., to lovemaking. I need 
more preparation, more fantasies. His 
worst practical statement, which blew 
the entire night, came when the lights were 
low and soft music was playing: He 
announced, “Don’t forget, the garbage 
goes out tomorrow.” 

Sometimes I think 1. would like the 
excitement of an affair, but I want to be 
faithful to my husband. If he pretended to 
be someone else, I would get that excite- 
ment. My dream is to make love to a Paul 
Bunyan type of character, with boots, a 
flannel shirt and low-cut jeans, When my 
husband works in the yard in jeans, I am 
all over him; but being very practical, he 
never quits working and gives in tome. He 
contends that after you have been married 
awhile, you should expect your sex life to 
settle in and be comfortable. I find that 
boring. I think you should be constantly 
looking for ways to spice it up. Most love- 
making takes planning to make it exciting. 
I still love а quickie, too, but a planned 
lovemaking session would be terrific. Am I 


expecting too much? Should I be content 
with having a good man who loves me? I 
am open to any hints.—Mrs. D. R., Allen- 
town, Pennsylvania. 

We don't like to take sides in marital dis- 
agreements, but we unll say that in theory, at 
least, we prefer your approach to sex. Wild, 
imaginative, swealy, reciprocal sex is the 
heart of marriage. What you have at present. 
isa stalemate brought on by conflicting sexual 
attitudes. Counseling could help resolue that 
stalemate, but we have a hunch that your hus- 
band isn’t interested in seeking help— largely 
because he doesn't think there's a problem. If 
that’s the case and your frustration is severe 
enough to warrant it, we thank you might 
benefit by going for help alone and talking 
out your feelings with a trained professional. 
There may be no way to change your hus- 
band; but at the same time, we don't think you 
should have to keep your fantasies and desires 
under wraps. We hope the two of you find a 
middle ground. 


ME, question is about orgasms during 
dreams. My husband discontinued our 
sexual relations about seven years ago. At 
various times of the month, because of an 
inactive sex life, I have erotic dreams, usu- 
ally involving a climax. Often, 1 will 
awaken during it or immediately before 
reaching the full climax and my physical 
position will be that of the woman in the 
mary position—supine and with legs 
apart. I fail to understand how I can reach 
a climax with no stimulation to the geni- 
tals (my hands, blanket and pillows are 
never involved). If the climax is semifin- 
ished, 1 have to turn on my side and rub 
my legs together to reach completion. This 
method, but it 
pressure on the clitoris caused by the leg 
position. Is it possible for the mind to 
bring on an orgasm? I have had a dis- 
charge from viewing erotic movies or pic- 
tures, but there were never the orgasmic 
spasms that are present in these dreams. 
Can you enlighten me?—Mrs. K. S., Min- 
neapolis, Minnesota. 

Women, as well as men, have nocturnal 
orgasms. There's nothing abnormal about 
you; this is just your body's way of letting you 
тош that it's functioning properly. If and 
when your sex life improves, your nighttime 
episodes are likely to occur less frequently or 
even to stop. And we would suggest seeing a 
therapist. Seven years without sex produces 
an itch of a different kind —spiritual as well 
as physical. 


is my usual involves 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, 
food and drink, stereo and sports cars to dating 
problems, taste and etiquette—will be person- 
ally answered if the writer includes a stamped, 
self-addressed envelope. Send all letters to The 
Playboy Advisor, Playboy Building, 919 N. 
Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. 
The most provocative, pertinent queries 
will be presented on these pages each month. 


DEAR PLAYMATES 


Т... question of the month: 


What advice would you give adaugh- 
ter about first-time sex? 


First га discuss birth control. Then rd 
try to find out how strongly she felt about 
the guy and if she really wanted to have 
sex. If both answers were ves, I'd say go 
ahead. I think Га uy to say that sex is 
healthy and 
enjoyable but 
that birth con- 
trol is the main 
thing. l'd hope 
that the gi 
а mamalla, 
considerate and 
sensitive. It's a 
scary timc, and. 
thinking that 
you could get 
into trouble 
might take the 
positive aspects right out of it. But the rest 
of the experience is pretty much going to 
fall into place. I couldn't tell her what 10 
do or how to please a man, because she's 
going to have to figure out the details for 
herself. I'd hope she would enjoy herself. 


D | 
лол Muha 


LORRAI 


IM, advice would be, take your time. So 
many young people rush intosex, and then 
it’s over. They don't really understand 
what has happened. Through experience, 
you discover that sex doesn't have to be 
intercourse. It 
is also talking, 
holding, touch- 
ing and 
l's not 
plain sex 
suggest an 
older man, 
because he'd bc 
more responsi- 
ble and I think 
he'd be a better 
teacher. Whats 
older? About 
30. Sure, there are exceptions, but younger 
men aren't into pleasing their partners yet. 
An older man can show a young woman 
about her own pleasure and do it gently. 
Older guys aren't so nervous, you know. 


OCTOBER 1983 


"FE har is something. E have thought about 
a whole lot. Га tell her to go for an older 
man. А man in his 30s who has been 
around a bit is going to be understanding 
and he's going to be more interested in 
making her feel 
good and com- 
fortable. He'll 
be more likely 
to show affec- 
tion. Younger 
guys are still 
learning how to 
get it them- 
selves and 
might be insen- 
sitive or too 
rough. That 
kind of experi- 
ence could be devastating for a young 
woman. Га make the same suggestion to a 
young man: Don't pressure your 16-year- 
old girlfriend; if you want to learn about 
sex, go with an older woman. I think an 
acceptable age to start is 17. That's when 1 
first fell in love, and I still am. 


^W Ads 
A 
KIMBERLY MC ARTHUR 
JANUARY 1982 


besides the birth-control rap? 
that straight and I knew that 
she really liked the guy, Га try to tell her 
not to be too nervous. I'd tell her all about 
foreplay and encourage her to make it go 


pect to have this conversation with a 16- 
year-old. You 
can't really say 
no to a 16-year- 


old; it would 
just make her 
rebel. Unless 


the guy were a 
complete bum, 
1 dont think 
Id ever come 
right out and 


forbid her to 
him. I 
ht say 


something like, “I'm not crazy about this 
guy and I think you can do a lot better.” 
Still, if she were determined to go ahead 
with it no matter what, I'd wish her a good 
time as she walked out the door. Telling 
her no would just encourage her. 


ASA 


LIZ STEWART 
JULY 1984 


[| think about this a lot, because 1 know 
that one of these days ГЇЇ have a daughter. 
and I know she'll become aware of her sex- 
uality earlier than I did. I never went to 
bed with anyone until I was 18. | assume 
my daughter will be with someone before 
that age, My 
only advice will 
be to make sure 
it's the ri 
guy. And 

tell her, 
hurts you, hit 
him!” But Ст 
not going to tell 
her yes or no. I 
am going to 
encourage her 
to wait for 
someone she 
really cares about. And when she turns 12, 
I'm going to lock her in her room! Seri- 
ously, Га ask her to think about how she'll 
feel about herself in the morning. If she 
thinks she'll have no regrets, that’s fine. 


plate 7 


ROBE SQUEZ 
NOVEMBER 1984 


Wa cell hes nor lo bein а hurry, to make 
sure he felt as strongly about her. Fd tell 
her not to go through with it just because 
some guy 

pushing 

into it. | would 
have already 
explained birth 
control, so Га 
remind her to 
bc careful. I 
don't think age 
is that impor- 
tant in her 
partner. An 
olde man 
might be more 
considerate, but young people have to find 
out these things for themselves. Thats 
what youth is for. Fd advise her to do it 
with a person she cares about 


еу b 


PENNY BAKER 
JANUARY 1984 


was 
her 


Send your questions to Dear Playmates 
Playboy Building, 919 North Michigan Ave- 
nue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. We won't be 
able to answer every question, but we'll try. 


El 


51 


IMPORTED BY B. SPIRITS TD. LOUISVILLE, KY 
CANADIAN WHISKI—A BLEND, 80 PROOF © 1984 


М, 
| 
£ 


N T 
war 


z к 
A Roy 


T 
©. 


` SE tan SE 
ы ioo 


‚мш АТ GARIBALDI LAKE; CANADA 


LIGHT, SMOOTH, MELLOW. 


THE PLAYBOY FORUM 


а continuing dialog on contemporary issues between playboy and its readers 


TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES 

The first time I ever got a job, at a men's 
retail store in a shopping mall, I had to 
take a lie-detector test. It was supposed to 
find out whether or not employees were 
honest, and the store gave the test from 
time to time to find out if anyone had been 
raiding the ull. It was a real piss-off, but 
given what's going on now in the job 
world, that description of constant surveil- 
lance seems an ironic metaphor. 

These days, they don’t just piss you off, 
they check your piss. Out here in Califor- 
nia, and probably elsewhere, many large 
corporations are now requiring job appli- 
cants to undergo a drug-screening urinaly- 
sis. You can refuse, of course, just as you 
can refuse a lie-detector test. But that 
means you don’t get the job. 

(Name withheld by request) 
Santa Monica, California 


PORN AGAIN 

1 feel I must disagree with David Hunt 
(in the March Playboy Forum) on two 
counts. 

First, I dispute his clear-cut distinction 
between pornography and erotica. Al- 
though your publication falls firmly in the 
category of erotica, by Hunt’s own defini- 
tion, it could be considered somewhat 
pornographic—despite your high photo- 
graphic standards. 

Second, pornography must not be sum- 
marily trashed—like prostitution, it does 
have a place in society. With it, the cranks 
can stay indoors and live out their weird or 
sadistic fantasies singlehandedly. Without 
it, they'll be out on the streets looking for 
teal, live candidates. 

Keep pornography off the newsstands 
and in the back rooms, maybe. But please 
don't trash it—I value my wife's, sisters" 
and female friends’ safety. 

A. J. Austin 
High Wycombe, England 


BLUE BIBLE 

The Bible is a very adult book. Nobody 
seems to mention the explicit sex in it— 
from incest to fornication in public to 
adultery. Absalom, for example, took ten 
of his father's concubines and fornicated 
before onlookers. In the New Testament, 
ing occurred among early Jewish 
Christians that hadn’t been heard of even 
among gentiles: a son's lying with his 
father’s wife (fornication on his part, adul- 
tery on hers). 


Gordon Mayfield 
Lebanon, Pennsylvania 


UP THE FIRST 

I notice that every so often, you just 
have to sponsor a little communism in 
your publication. I never see you wave the 
flag. Are you soft on these people? Do you 
really favor that slave system, or could it 
be that you can’t sort out Soviet misinfor- 
mation? 

Your effort to destroy our intelligence 


“The Bible is a very 
adult book.” 


systems by quoting sources such as Frank 
Wilkinson (The Playboy Forum, November 
1984) without identifying his Communist 
connection is a case in point. 
Shape up or 1 shall ship out on you. 
Edward McLeary 
McMillin, Washington 
For shame, Edward; you know and we 
know that you don't subscribe to PLAYBOY, 
probably don't buy it, but do receive a goofy 
right-wing newsletter called The American 
Sentinel, which gave you our address and 
told you to chew us out about Wilkinson. We 
didn't quote him as a source of anything; we 
gave him an H.M.H. First Amendment 
Award for his efforts in behalf of freedom of 
speech and of the press. Isn't it odd thal we 
never seen to find any staunch right-wingers 
who defend that amendment? Get a load of 
how much your buddy from Texas respects it: 


Because of your H.M.H. Award to 
Communist Party stalwart Frank Wil- 
kinson, who spent 1961 in jail, I am 
instructing our employees to remove your 
magazines from our drilling rigs, offices 
and company cars. 
Charlie Jacobs, President 
KTX Management Company 
Corpus Christi, Texas 
For the record, Wilkinson was among those 
jailed for refusing on principle to testify 
before the House Un-American Activities 
Committee, whose witch-hunting excesses 
finally caused Congress to abolish it. 


TRUE TO TRADITION 

Ever since World War Two, the concept 
of patriotism has been drifting rightward. 
Ideas that used to be considered subver- 
sively Nazi or totalitarian are more and 
more considered “all-American.” Even the 
insulting arrogance during the 1984 Olym- 
pics was considered standard American. 

Unfortunately, the left chooses to con- 
demn the past along with the present, 
inadvertently helping to cover up hoi 
much America is drifting away from its 
sense of equality and justice, while the 
New Right is rewriting our past to agree 
with its blueprint for the future 

The Revolution, the New Deal and the 
New Frontier, the Liberty Bell and the Stat- 
ue of Liberty once stood for just the oppo- 
site of what President Reagan claims. And 
the American flag, with its 13 equal and 
interchangeable stripes and equal but 
changing star patterns, once stood for 
progress and equality, not law and order. 
The Ayatollah can return Iran to its tradi- 
tions, but the traditions President Reagan 
claims to be trying to restore here are for- 
eign, not American. 

While founded a little earlier, PLAYBOY 
embodies many of the ideals of the New 
Frontier and, therefore, should place repli- 
cas of American flags and Liberty Bells 
alongside its periodic articles defending 
free speech and civil liberties and opposing 
oppressive CIA-FBI activities 

Richard Kanegis 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 


GUN CONTROL 

I think that the National Rifle Associa- 
tion and its members should have all the 
rifles they want. The fact that bear and 
deer hunters as often as not mistake one 
another for big game could not bother me 
less. Citizens who feel they need the pro- 
tection from burglars that handguns offer 
them should also have the right to bear 
arms. If their children accidentally shoot 
off their fingers, or worse, because 
Mommy and Daddy carelessly failed to 
store their guns safely, that also does not 


53 


PLAYBOY 


concern me. What must be banned from 
manufacture, import, sale and possession, 
however, are cheap, badly made so-called 
Saturday-night specials. These small 
handguns are the first choice of criminals 
precisely because they are so widely avail- 
able on the black marker. These guns 
serve no legitimate purpose. Anyone who 
is interested in guns as a hobbyist or for 
protection will go out and buy a first-class, 
high-quality weapon that he can trust. 
There is absolutely no reason these 
Saturdzy-night specials should be sold, 
because only criminals buy and use them. 
Mathew Wilson 
Boston, Massachusetts 


GUN STAMPS? 

Liberals, as usual, are good at propos- 
ing imaginative solutions to social prob- 
lems, such as combining bans on the 
manufacture, sale and possession of so- 
called Saturday-night specials with the 
registration of high-quality rifles and 
handguns. This is illiberal! 

Cheaply made Saturday-night specials 
are usually owned by people who cannot 
afford expensive weapons, including low- 
life criminals who have no class. But they 
are also owned by decent people who want 
simply to be able to protect themselves 
and whose only crime is that they are too 
poor to go out and buy a $400 Dirty Harry 
Magnum. 

Nancy Reagan can afford a pretty little 
pearl-handled pistol to keep on her bed- 
side table, but people who live in the inner 
city and who are most often the victims of 
violent crime must seule for economy 
models. To ban Saturday-night specials 
would be to discriminate against the poor. 

I already know what will happen if 
cheap handguns are banned: There will be 
Government gun-quality-testing labs, all 
the liberals will lobby Congress to set gun 
standards and we will have a Government 
program to help the poor buy guns. Gun 
stamps will be handed out with welfare 
checks on the first day of every month, and 
it will cost taxpayers billions. 

Frank Frangolis 
Wilmette, Illinois 


FATHER'S STORY 

Not all Right-to-Lifers аге concerned 
only with the unborn's well-being, as I 
think they would have us believe. 

Last September, as 1 began my sopho- 
more year in college, I got a phone call 
that scared the hell out of me. A girl I had 
slept with only once, four or five weeks car- 
lier, told me she was pregnant. The father, 
it appeared, was either me or another 
guy— there being no way to determine 
that until birth, because of the proximity 
of her two “outings.” 

Of course, Ї was informed of birth con- 
trol back in that unenlightened era of my 
life—and since that subject had not been 
acknowledged, I felt it my responsibility to 


bring it up before our roll in the hay. I 
asked her if she was оп the pill. Yes, she 
said. Perfect, I thought. Obviously, that 
was a blatant lie. 

Even as a kid, I was intrigued by the 
thought of someday being a father. But the 
circumstances in my dream were entirely 
different. They included an established 
career, a home, some financial security— 
not to mention a wife whom I would love 
at least as much as any other person. 

Should I be the father, I am faced with 
the intolerable choice of being a half-assed 
daddy or no daddy—and pretending the 
whole thing never happened. 

I certainly have nothing to offer a baby 
right now. Financially, what? Five or ten 
bucks a week for support? That stinks. 

My immediate response upon hearing 
the news was to suggest abortion, to which 
she had been adamantly opposed from the 
outset. Now, if this particular Right-to- 
Lifer were sincerely interested in the 
unborn's well-being, there wouldn't be an 
unborn to mention, would therc? 

(Name and address 
withheld by request) 


SIGN HERE 
I have developed what seems to me a 
foolproof document for use in certain deli- 
cate situations. It served me well during 
my bachelor years and, now a family man, 
1 pass it on in the hope that other readers 
may find it useful. 
S. Bonnette 
Alexandria, Louisiana 


SAFETY FIRST 
GUARANTEE 


тик UNDERSIGNED. 


FEMALE About to copy sexual i 
Am above the Lawful age uf consent am in ту tight mind, aud 


am pot under the intluence uf any Drug or Narcotic, 


Neither docs be have to 


Promises wo iulluence we, Û am in m» fear of him whatsoever 
y him; Duet know whether he 


manic or net and Bars cate, Tun not adecp or Drunk and, 


Du ти expect or want to, 


am entering, ite this Relation with him because E love й and 


1 want it as mach as he ducs, 


iM receive the Satisfaction 
L espect, I'm willing tn Play an Early Rerum engagement. 

FURTHERMORE, 1 AGREE NEVER TO APPEAR AS A 
MANT ШМ OR TO PROSGUTE HIM. UN- 


Signed Before Jumping inte Bed This 


у [ue 


We can only speculate that your good looks 
and charming personality compensated for 
the grammar, spelling and punctuation. 


OVERKILL 

The seat belt was a wonderful idea, it 
was inexpensive, easy to use and could 
save many lives. Our Government has suc- 
ceeded in taking that clever idea and (1) 
making it expensive (those lights and 


buzzers cost money); (2) making it ineffec- 
tive (many people once actually used the 
seat belt that just lays across your lap, but 
few use that awkward contraption that 
reaches across your chest and tangles). All 
the ad campaigns in the world won't make 
a shoulder harness comfortable. 

Timothy R. Higgins 

Attorney at Law 

St. Louis, Missouri 


EXPOSING SIN 

From time to time, I am reminded of the 
genius displayed by some people in their 
efforts to achieve the opposite of what they 
want. Recently, the P.T.A. in one of our 
charming communities between Dallas 
and Fort Worth got together a resolution 
asking that the lyrics to rock-*n'-roll music 
be printed on the covers of record albums. 
The reason, according to Lanette Cosby, 
local P.T.A. president, is that rock lyrics 
are in “poor taste or harmful” and should 
be posted as a kind of consumer warning 
to the teenagers and their parents. Not 
only that, suggested Cosby and the P.T.A., 
but the government should enforce a law 
banning “obscenity” on the airwaves, 
thus also keeping rock music off the air. 

These P.T.A. folks are of the opinion 
that rock lyrics encourage suicide, drug 
abuse, sex and general moral decay. If 
that’s so, which I doubt could be proved, 
then, of course, the very best way to 
spread the dangerous lyrics among adoles- 
to (1) ban them on the radio and 
(2) print them on album covers. 

Once kids know for sure the words their 
guardians don't want them to hear, they’ll 
buy the albums at twice the rate they did 
when the words had to be interpreted 
through howls, bad mixes and falsetto 
screams (assuming the kids have learned 
to read, that is). 

The resolution passed the state P.T.A. 
mecting and was sent to the national P.T.A. 

Should I support this effort? 

Harlan Wicker 
Dallas, Texas 
Let your conscience be your guide. 


GOD, SINATRA AND ACNE 

I get a feeling of déjà vu whenever I hear 
or read that former Interior Secretary 
James Watt, the Reverend Jerry Falwell 
or other righteous reverends claim that 
Michael Jackson, Boy George and rock 
music have a bad influence on our youth. 

I remember the Forties, when thou- 
sands of people, some called bobby-soxers, 
lined up outside theaters to see and hear 
“that skinny, blue-eyed kid from Hobo- 
ken” sing. Some of the religious zealots of 
that time claimed that Francis Albert 
Sinatra was responsible for the increase in 
juvenile delinquency, for making “sex 
maniacs” out of young people and for 
“moral degeneration.” One cleric went as 
far as to blame Sinatra for causing acne. In 
spite of all those pious utterings, Sinatra 
went on to become an actor and a 


FORUM NEWSFRONT 


what's happening in the sexual and social arenas 


TASER TESTING 
LOS ANGELES—A jaywalker who claims 
that he was rendered impotent by a police 
Taser gun has sued the Los Angeles Police 
Department for $20,000. The plaintiff 
states that when he refused to sign the 
ticket charging him with a pedestrian 


violation, one cop grabbed him and 
another zapped him with a Taser, which 
delivers a briefly incapacitating jolt of 
50,000 volts at a very low current level. 
It is considered safer than a bullet or a 
baton. 


SNOW-BLIND 

ASPEN, COLORADO—A 39-year-old 
drunk-driving suspect managed to parlay 
that problem into an even bigger one as he 
was being booked into the Pitkin County 
Jail. The arresting officer looked up from 
his paperwork to see his man sniffing a 
white powder that, sure enough, proved to 
be cocaine. 


SLOGAN OR SLUR? 

LOS ANGELES—Barney's Beanery, а 
popular eatery that has long irritated 
homosexuals with a "Fagols stay out” 
slogan that has become its trademark, 
caved in to West Hollywood's new law 
banning discrimination against gays. The 
slogan appeared in the Thirties in the 
form of a sign since memorialized in print 
and art, and a few years later, it survived 
а lawsuit by gay activists when attorneys 
Jor the restaurant successfully argued 
that it was “part of the tradition and 
decor . . . obviously intended to be hu- 
morous and... not coupled with any 
policy or practice of discrimination.” 
Barney's owner decided that voluntary 
compliance was the better part of valor 
and allowed the lesbian mayor of West 
Hollywood to ceremonially take down the 
sign. 


BAD BREAKS 

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Contrary to general 
belief, almost 1,000,000 burglaries a 
year occur while residents are at home, 
and im about one third of the incidents, a 
household member is robbed, raped or oi 
erwise assaulted. A study by the Justice 
Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics 
also found that a “substantial” percentage 
of burglaries are committed by persons 
related to or known by the victims. The 
bureau’s director called burglary “poten- 
tially a far more serious crime than its 
classification as a property offense indi- 
cates” because of the possibility of serious 
felony crimes’ occurring in connection 
with it. 


INTERNATIONAL OVERDEVELOPMENT 

WASHINGTON, D.C—The International 
Planned Parenthood Federation will lose 
$17,000,000 in Federal funds because it 
finances abortion-related services in for- 
eign countries. The U.S. Agency for 
International Development said the cutoff 
reflected the Reagan Administration pol- 
icy that prohibits Government grants to 
“organizations which perform or actively 
promote abortion as a method of family 
planning in other nations.” I.P.P.F. said 
the funds used for that purpose were 
“minuscule.” 


NO DEAL 

COLUMBIA, SOUTH CaROLINA—Three 
convicted rapists have been sentenced to 
maximum prison terms of 30 years each 
after the supreme court of South Carolina 
refused to let a state circuit judge offer 
them probation on the condition that they 
submit to surgical castration. The high 
court said that that would involve mutila- 
tion, which violates the state constitution's 
prohibition against cruel and unusual 
punishment. 


CAR NUT 
105 ANGELES Campus police at Los 
Angeles Pierce College and at California 
State University, Northridge, are looking 
for a kinky vandal who consistently goes 
for G.M. cars driven by coeds, stealing the 
gas pedal, culting up shoes into small 
pieces, ripping out wiring and generally 
making a mess of the interior. In 14 inci- 
dents reported during a two-month pe- 
riod, one girl's car had been hit six times 
and another's three times. Said the police 
captain at Pierce, "I guess he just doesn’t 
like pretty girls who drive G.M. cars.” 
Said an investigator at CSUN, “The guy 
has to have some kind of foot fetish or 
something." The only mon-G.M. car 

involved so far was a Fiat. 


“GREAT BODILY HARM” 

SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA—A 23-year-old 
man convicted of kidnap, rape and forci- 
ble oral copulation has had extra time 
added to his sentence because he gave his 
victim herpes. That disease, a jury found, 
met the state definition of “great bodily 
harm,” which meant that five years could 
be added to the 25 he was given for the 
other offenses. 


ONE AND ONE 
WASHINGTON, D.C—The U.S. Supreme 
Court took along step toward dismantling 
its landmark 1966 Miranda decision by 
ruling that authorities can use the con- 
fession of a suspect even if his self- 
incriminating statements are made before 
he is informed of his rights. But the Court 
also ruled that the Constitution requires 
states lo provide free psychiatric assistance 
for indigent defendants who intend to 
plead insanity. 


OVERACTING 

AUSTIN, TEXAS—A 17-year-old high 
school senior managed lo freak out his 
drama teacher, fellow students, school offi- 
cials and the Austin police and fire 
departments when he arrived late to class, 
clutching a hand grenade and behaving 
in a paranoid manner, complete with 
whimpering and accusations of persecu- 
tion. Before the emergency services 
arrived, the student snapped out of it and 
said, “I did a pretty good job, don't you 
think?" He explained that he had just 
performed the five-minule improvisation 


required for his final drama exam. Then 
he handed the teacher the notes for his act 
and revealed the grenade to be a dummy. 
The various authorities were less than 
pleased but indicated that they would show 
some leniency under the circumstances. 


PLAYBOY 


supporter and friend of Richard Nixon's 
and a member of President Reagan's 
“kitchen cabinet." АШ this raises three 
major questions in my mind: (1) Aren't 
President Reagan and the Reverend 
Falwell afraid of contracting acne when 
they attend one of those $1000-a-plate din- 
ners with Sinatra? (2) То which future 


President will Boy George be a confidant? 
(3) Did Falwell’s God tell him to seek 
monetary vengeance by suing publisher 
Larry Flynt, while the Devil told rock 
stars to raise money for the starving 
people in Ethiopia? 


Stuart D. Kantor 
Parish, New York 


PORN AND CIVIL RIGHTS: 


It seems that some people can’t get 
enough of a bad thing. In May 1984, 
Indianapolis mayor William H. 
Hudnut III signed into law yet another 
attempt at an end run around the First 
Amendment. Even though his effort 
was struck down last winter, the mayor 
has vowed to fight on. Meanwhile, pro- 
ponents of similar ordinances in New 
York, Los Angeles, Detroit and other 
cities are watching and waiting. 

The Indianapolis law, based on a bill 
that had already been vetoed by Min- 
neapolis mayor Donald Fraser, sought 
to establish a civil rights basis for con- 
trolling sexually explicit materials. Ir 
was supported by a coalition of fringe 
feminists and moral conservatives, who 
argued that pornography constitutes 
“a discriminatory practice based on sex 
because its efect is to deny women 
equal opportunities in society.” The 

i “the sexually 
explicit subordination of women, 
graphically depicted, whether in pic- 
turcs or in words," when a number of 
other conditions were also present. 

Within hours of Hudnut’s signing it, 
the ordinance was challenged in Fed- 
eral court by a coalition of bookstores, 
trade associations, publishers and a 
cable-television station. An injunction 
was issued shortly thereafter, and in 
November, the ordinance was declared 
unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge 
Sarah Evans Barker, who found it to be 
both overbroad and too vague. 

In striking down the law, Judge Bark- 
er was straightforward: “To deny free 
speech, in order to engineer social 
change in the name of accomplishing a 
greater good for one sector of our soci- 
ety, erodes the freedoms of all and as 
such threatens tyranny and injustice.” 

After such a judicial thumping, one 
would expect this novel approach to 
censorship to be mercifully laid to rest. 
Unfortunately, Mayor Hudnut thinks 
otherwise and is appealing the Barker 
decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the Seventh Circuit. 

The irony of the ordinance, says Burt 
Neuborne, legal director for the Ameri- 
can Civil Liberties Union, is striking. 
“It unites radical feminists with the 
Moral Majority. Find me any other 
issues that those two groups would be 
in agreement on, and ГІІ show you an 
outburst of political activity all over the 
country." 


Neuborne agrecs with his adversar- 
ies in one respect: “T don't think any- 
body thinks that violent pornography 
that shows women systematically 
degraded and turned into objects for 
brutality is a good thing. It reflects a 
very troublesome element in American 
life. But you don't cure that by stamp- 
ing out the symptom, and the damage 
to the First Amendment would be terri- 
ble. You would set a precedent for any 
group that felt that it being 
adversely affected by speech to organ- 
ize politically and render the speech 
illegal. Blacks could do it, Jews could 
do it, capitalists could do it." Neuborne 
is quick to point out that the feminists 
behind this approach are “а very, very 
small minority of radical people who 
claim to speak for the feminist commu- 
nity” but are far from representative. 

Isabelle Katz Pinzler, director of the 
A.C.L.U.'s Women's Rights Project, is 
one feminist who is “very troubled" by 
the law. Aside from the First Amend- 
ment objections, she says, she is “very 
distressed by the vision of women that's 
embodied in it." In attempting to pro- 
tect women, Pinzler says, the ordinance 
treats them as children, One section of 
the law would have made it lcgally 
impossible for a woman to sign a con- 
tract to act in pornographic movies, on 
the assumption that such contracts 
must inherently be signed under 
duress, “That whole idea is something 
we have been working very hard to get 
away from,” Pinzler says. "Women can 
enter contracts the way that anybody 
else can, and to say that they can’t den- 
igrates them.” 

Most important, Pinzler calls these 
ordinances a “diversion from the really 
important economic issues. Say there 
wasn't a First Amendment and you 
could enact this law. I don’t think it 
would solve women’s real problem, 
which is sexism in the economy.” 

But one thing the effort clearly does 
do, according to Michael A. Bam- 
berger, lead counsel for the coalition 
that successfully opposed the or 
mance, is cost. He cstimates that 
Hudnut's efforts will cost Indianapolis 
citizens approximately $250,000. 

— ROBERT P. KEARNEY 


FOOD FOR THOUGHT 

We Americans are a fickle and myopic 
bunch. Trendy to the max, we hop onto 
any band wagon that plays our song. 
Today it’s the Ethiopians. We send them 
our money. We send them our food. We 
even scnd them our newsmen to describe 
their slow starvation. But what about 
tomorrow? 

Scientists recognize the fact that the size 
of a population of animals is determined 
by the environment. When the land can’t 
support the population—for whatever 
reason—mortality increases, natality de- 
creases. Mankind, however, is oblivious to 
this law of nature. When a human popula- 
tion becomes too large for the land to sup- 
port, America sends a CARE package 
The result? Mortality decreases, natality 
increases. The 1,000,000 starving persons 
we save today become 4,000,000 starving 
persons a generation from now. 

We Americans don't realize what we are 
doing, and our attention spans aren’t long 
enough for us to sec the results of our mi 
guided altruism. When starvation in Ethi 
opia is no longer newsworthy (and it will 
cease to be, in the not too distant future), 
when the images of emaciated bodies and 
the bloated bellies of little children have 
faded from our minds and all we Ameri- 
cans remember is the glow in our hearts 
we got from sending ten dollars to a relief 
organization, the starvation will continue. 
We just won't hear about it or we'll ignore 
it, or both. 

So what should we do? Turn our backs 
on the Ethiopians? Ignore the cries of hun- 
gry children? Perhaps. 

I mean, why not? We do it all the time. 
There are people in our neighborhoods 
whose needs are as desperate as any 
Ethiopian’s—homeless men, women and 
children who wander the streets searching 
for food and shelter; people who freeze to 
death in the winter because they can’t pay 
their fuel bills; malnourished children; 
elderly persons who desperately need 
medical care. But then, more fashion- 
able to send relief to Ethiopians than itis to 
send relief to the family down the block. 

No. The answer lies not in closing our 
eyes but in opening them. We must realize 
that sending a one-time donation to any 
cause—whether it’s to the Ethiopians or to 
the Ameri Indians—does li to alle- 
viate the pain and often does little more 
than prolong the agony. 

If our morality dictates that we inter- 
vene between man and nature, if we're 
going to keep the Ethiopians alive today 
and then tomorrow, we've got to accept 
the responsibility of teaching them how to 
conserve their natural resources and how 
to feed more people with the resources 
they have. That means making a long- 
term commitment to improving their 
standard of living. Only then will our indi- 
vidual contributions—and our good 
intentions—not be in vain. 

D. Cameron 
Athens, Georgia 


mu 


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SNEAKING SEXISM 

All we hear of these days concerning 
women in our society is their alleged “dep- 
rivation” due to male oppression. I was 
raised in a traditional family in which 
women were highly regarded and treated 
with cordial respect. Never in my life have 
I ever patronized or abused a woman. My 
upbringing prohibits such behavior. Now I 
find that the women’s movement is accus- 
ing me of things I have never done. 

It has always been my conviction that 
women want equal rights only when itis to 
their advantage to have them. Women’s 
ambitions are insatiable and know no 
bounds, not even those of equality, fair- 
ness or justice. Hence, the women’s move- 
ment is not one of cquality, as it claims. 

I am a student of history and have 
learned of a theory known as the pendu- 
lum effect. This theory says that when a 
society embraces a particular set of values, 
it eventually changes to embrace the val- 
ues of its antithesis. With that in mind, I 
am patiently waiting for our society to rec- 
ognize the one-sided deal that the wom- 
en's movement is offering us and that it is 
more often the men who are abused. 

1 wonder if PLAYBOY could provide its 
readers with a list of men's organizations 
that respond to the women's movement. 

Robert McInnes 
Athens, Ohio 

We don't agree that the women's movement 
is any more unfair, unjust or unequal than 
are some of the problems it attempts. to 
address. There ave abuses on both sides of the. 
fence. Among the men's groups dealing with 
these issues, you may be interested in contact- 
ing Men's Rights, Inc., Box 163180, Sacra- 
mento, California 95816; the National 
Congress for Men, Box 147, Mendham, New 
Jersey 07945; or the Coalition Organized for 
Parental Equality (COPE), 68 Deering 
Street, Portland, Maine 04101, which pub- 
lishes a directory of rights, mediation and 
support groups. We must admit, though, that 
this is the first time we've heard anyone com- 
plain about “insatiable” women, 


RACE AND REAGAN 

In his letter in the March Playboy 
Forum, Tony Edward Brown expresses his 
anger at Reagan’s elimination of certain 
social services and at the majority of vot- 
ers for electing Reagan. That seems 
understandable—the economic status of 
blacks in this country continues to be 
deplorable. Reagan's attack on social pro- 
grams while military spending runs ramp- 
ant is a clear indication that his priorities 
are questionable at best. 

But I disagree with Brown's terminol- 
ogy. He says that Reagan’s policies are 
racist and that the people who voted for 
him are supporting "institutionalized eco- 
nomic racism.” Those strong words show 
that Brown is not aware of who his enemy 
really is. He thinks he is fighting a white 
population determined to keep blacks at 


the lower strata of society. The fact is that 
for the majority of white voters race is not, 
and has never been, an issue. 

Most people vote according to their feel- 
ing of how solid their economic status is or 
will be. They live, play, shop and work in 
the suburbs and only read about the inner 
cities in the newspaper. They may be con- 
cerned and wish things were different, but 
race is not a major issue with them. The 
candidate they vote for—Reagan in this 
case—is the one who plays the economic, 
rather than the social-justice, game. Out- 
side the inner cities, one simply does not 
win elections by making race an issue. 
Occasionally, a socially conscious candi- 
date will slip in, but only because eco- 
nomic conditions are either so good that 


“For the majority of white 
volers race is not, and 
has never been, an issue." 


people can afford to be benevolent or so 
bad that they want the other guy out. 

Although a great percentage of the elec- 
torate may be ignorant or selfish, most of 
them are not racists and do not vote in 
order to support racist tendencies. They 
vote for themselves instead. Such is major- 
ity rule. Those who seek change and sym- 
pathetic ears within this system should 
recognize that the term racism doesn’t reg- 
ister with the masses, because they do not 
see themselves that way. The true enemy is 
greed, and it is a much greater obstacle 
than racism has ever been. 


C. Johnson 
Akron, Ohio 


NO FREE ADS 

As founder and president: of the 
National Association of T-Shirt Toters 
(NAT-SHIT), Lam asking the help of your 
readers in ending what may be the most 
widespread exploitation of the American 
consumer since the coat and tie—which, 
of course, I do not wear. Like millions of 
other people, 1 have over the years become 
accustomed to wearing that most durable 
and practical item of haberdashery, the 
T-shirt. It can be washed along with jeans, 
requires no ironing and encourages wear- 
ers to remain fit while allowing them not 
to give a shit if they don’t. T-shirt wearers 
have always been supporters of personal 
liberty and idiosyncrasy. 

Unfortunately, merchants and hustlers 
eventually figured out that the T-shirt- 
clad bodies of the U.S. (and world) popu- 
lace were virtual wastelands of unused 
billboard space. And so came the T-shirts 
for COCA-COLA, ROLLING STONES WORLD TOUR 
and ADIDAS. 

Today, you can hardly walk along the 
beach or through a shopping mall or 


across a campus without commercial bom: 
bardment from somebody's chest. This 
especially insidious on those chests that 
point their messages right at you. A pair of 
tits screams PEPSI GENERATION and I get 
thirsty. 

You get the drift. Now, as a good and 
loyal American, I don’t like to crowd any- 
body’s hype, and I certainly don’t have 
any bad words to say about advertising 
But as NAT-SHIT president, 1 must 
object to the continued use of a scam that 
doesn’t give me a piece of the action. 

I'm talking T-shirt royalties. 

As of this month, NAT-SHIT is asking 
Congress to enact legislation requiring the 
manufacturers of T-shirts with commer- 
cial messages to reimburse each pur- 
chaser/wearer for the duration, frequency 
and audience exposure of the applicable 
message. That may seem a complicated 
procedure and a lot of trouble, but that's 
the nature cf advertising. You could figure 
а royalty system the way radio stations fig- 
ure ad rates, on cost per thousand, 
verified by secret polls that everyone 
knows are a load of shit anyway. 

Purchasers could be reimbursed at 
point of sale on the basis of an industry- 
wide scale or could be paid pro rata at the. 
end of cach year for five years, the average 
wear-out time of a good T-shirt. Wearers 
in large urban arcas would receive more; 
farmers, practically 
nothing. Women 
could get a bonus, 
Creating the first 
national industry in 
which “comparable 
worth" moved be- 
yond mere cquality 
to a form of sexual 
reparation. 

The entire royalty 
system would also 
be controlled by the 
consumer, not the 
manufacturer, if Congress phrased the law 
correctly. Every person in this country 
could become his or her own cottage 
advertising industry, and commercial slo- 
ganecring would no longer be a form of 
unwaged labor. 

This year, T-s| 
me" caps. 


is. Next year, “gim- 


Rod Davis 
Austin, Texas 
That's the kind of entrepreneurial spirit 
that makes America great. It reminds us that 
a few years ago a major cigarette company, 
noticing the great amount of sign space that 
was going to waste on privately owned auto- 
mobiles, started paying oumers to let them 
turn their cars into moving billboards. 


“The Playboy Forum” offers the opportu- 
nity for an extended dialog between readers 
and editors on contemporary issues. Address 
all correspondence to The Playboy Forum, 
Playboy Building, 919 North Michigan Ave- 
nue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. 


57 


VANTAGE v 
PERFORMANCE 


Performance so good you can taste it 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 
That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


8 mg, “tar”, 0.7 mg. nicotine av. per cigarette, FTC Report FEB. '04. 


| inalow tar. 
Wee ш 


For seven years now, 
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When itcomesto finding radar, ESCORT has 
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addup to a reputation we're happy to stand on. 


1978 
® ESCORT is introduced—the first dual band 
Superheterodyne radar detector. 


1979 

® ESCORTS first review, Car and Driver tests 
twelve radar detectors. 

"Only one model, the Escort, truly stood 
out from the rest? 

“If you can Imagine the Turbo Porsche of 
the radar detectors, this Is It...” 

"In no test did any of the other detectors 
even come close” 


1980 

e Car and Driver compares four detectors. 

“...the Escort has gone on to become 
the most coveted plece of high-performance 
road equipment since the turbocharger” 

“ESCORT Overall rating: Still the best; un- 
matched In elther performance or features.” 
© BMWCCA Roundel compares ten detectors. 

“Escort—the winner and still champlon!! 
This design consistently outperformed the 
other products and Is the standard to which 
the other detectors are compared.” 

“If you want the best, this Is It. There Is 
nothing else like It” 


1981 
© BMWCCA Roundel compares seven detectors. 
“The Escort works. It's the best there Is. 
In terms of what all It does, nothing else even 
comes close" 


1982 
® Car and Driver compares ten detectors. 
“The ESCORT, a perennial favorite of these 
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1983 
® Car and Driver compares six detectors. 

*...Ilve with а new Escort for a while and 
you'll realize that It has advanced new 
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“The Escort radar detector Is clearly the 
leader In the field In value, customer service, 
and performance..." 
® BMWCCA Roundel compares eleven detectors. 

"The Escort has been continually updated 
over the years through an evolutionary de- 
velopment program!” 

"The Escort simply keeps getting better" 


1984 
* Rotary Rocket compares seven detectors. 
“While there hasn't been a major facelift 
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countless refinements to keep the Escort at 
the leading edge of technology" 


1985 
@ Car and Driver tests twelve remote mounted 
radar detectors, comparing them to... 

“We wanted to know how the low front 
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best conventional radar detector from our 
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evaluation as a reference” 

The result? The top placing remote unit col- 
lected 274 points under the scoring system. 
And Escort? 


"You may be Interested to know, however, 
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® Road & Track compares ten detectors. 

“Extemally, the Escort has changed hardly 
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Try ESCORT at no risk 
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Tune in “Talktaik; the satellite callin comedy talk show Sunday evenings on public radio stations. Check local listings. 


©1985 Cincinnati Microwave, Inc. 


namo mew. ROB REINER 


a candid conversation with the director and former “meathead” 
about life in hollywood, life with father and life after sitcoms 


They say in Hollywood that Rob Reiner is 
hot. And not for the usual reasons. 

He doesn't have a new TV series. 

à He isn't having an affair with Joan Col- 
ins. 

He hasn't published a kiss-and-tell biogra- 
bhy that he wants to push. 

What Reiner has done is io demonstrate 
that there is life after situation comedy by 
becoming the director of two movie hits in a 
row—the very hip “This Is Spinal Tap" and 
the very commercial “The Sure Thing.” To 
the surprise of many moguls, Reiner has 
dropped ош of rerun heaven to become a big- 
time director and is doing it on his own 
terms—not as Mike "Meathead" Stivic from 
“All in the Family," not as Carl Reiner's son, 
not even as the former husband of actress and 
sitcom queen Penny Marshall. In short, 
Reiner is a Hollywood hid who may be on the 
way to doing something rare for that breed— 
becoming his own man. 

The saga begins circa 1947, with Rob's 
birth in the proverbial vaudeville trunk. 
Poppa Carl was appearing at that time in a 
touring revue. Pretty soon, indelibly warped 
by such backstage baby sitters as Bob Fosse 
and Buddy Hackett, baby Rob, allegedly 


cuter than one might today imagine, was 


“The networks aren't inierested in just mak 
ing money. They're interested in making 
ridiculous amounts of money. If all of a net- 
work's programs were in the bottom 20 of the 
Nielsens, they'd still make enormous amounts.” 


being reared in the Bronx. Across the street, 
unbeknown to him, lived a little girl named 
Penny Marshall. 

Things were hopping in the Reiner house- 
hold: Carl was writing and performing for 
“Your Show of Shows.” He and his 
colleagues—the likes of Mel Brooks, Sid 
Caesar, Howard Morris, Imogene Coca— 
didn’t know it then, but they had pretty much 
invented the golden age of television. The 
gang would often gather at the Reiner apart- 
ment and Fire Island summer house, and 
Rob would listen while the clever grownups 
incessantly tried to make one another laugh. 

Soon, though, the Reiners moved on. First 
to suburban New Rochelle—where Dad 
seemed just like any other commuter, except 
that he worked only 39 weeks a year—and 
then, in 1959, to Beverly Hills. 

Rob spent his vacation afternoons watch- 
ing his father put together “The Dick Van 
Dyke Show.” He began to understand what 
audiences considered funny; the showbiz bug 
bit hard. Encouraged by his mother, Estelle, 
Rob spent a couple of summers working in 
theaters back East. 

Reiner dropped out of UCLA and began to 
spend most of his time around other comedy- 
struck kids. The humor was centered in a 


“Our marriage dissolved over time. But one 
night, we saw an ad on TV for the National 
Enquirer predicting, ‘Penny and Rob will 
split.’ That's the reason we got divorced—we 
didn't want to make the Enquirer look bad.” 


small circle of Beverly Hills High School 
buddies, notably the class cutup, Albert 
Brooks, a scrauny would-be actor named 
Ricky Dreyfuss and another famous TV per- 
sonality's son, Larry (son of Joey) Bishop. 
Dreamers all, constantly fantasizing about 
fame and fortune in comedy. 

The guys, with a few other intrepid souls, 
formed a comedy troupe called The Session. 
Sometimes the gags were very broad (a TV- 
game-show take-off called “Let's Watch a 
Death,” involving the electrocution of a midg- 
et, was a big favorite), sometimes nonexistent. 

With some successful forays into stand-up 
comedy, Rob got noticed. He began appear- 
ing in The Committee, an improv group that, 
in the late Sixties, was as close to the cutting 
edge of music as of comedy. He'd be hanging 
out with the likes of Mama Cass, Harvey 
Brooks, Steve Miller; Janis Joplin would join 
the troupe on its San Francisco stage. 

The critical break came in 1968, when the 
Smothers Brothers hired him as a writer. 
When the show was canceled, Reiner and 
partner Phil Mishkin wrote and performed 
some well-received stage works, while churn- 
ing out gags for everything from a Robert 
Young TV special to an Andy Griffith series 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RON MESAROS 


“I remember going over to the “Van Dyke’ 
show with Dad. I'd crawl behind his desk and 
look around and think, God, look at all this! 
He's creating these TV shows, winning Emmys, 
he's a genius—and I'm inadequate.” 


81 


PLAYBOY 


62 


called "Headmaster." 

Then came the audition for a new series, 
“All in the Family,” created by old family 
friend Norman Lear. Rob gol rejected. 
Twice. On the third try, he passed —and went 
home with the Meathead role. Sally Struthers 
was chosen to play Rob's wife, winning her 
role over a little-known actress from the 
Bronx named Penny Marshall. 

As “All in the Family” zoomed in the rat- 
ings, Rob married the little-known actress 
from the Bronx. For the first five years of their 
marriage, with “All in the Family” and Rob 
picking up Emmy after Emmy, Penny Mar- 
shall Remer looked for steady work. When 
“Laverne & Shirley" aired in 1976, it not 
only made Penny as big a TV star as her hus- 
band, it knocked his program out of the top 
Nielsen slot. For the next three seasons, Rob 
and Penny were a Burns and Allen for the 
Seventies—only on separate channels. 

But from the time Rob finished his eighth 
and final “All in the Family” year, things 
started to come unstuck. He signed a produc- 
tion deal with ABC, but his two mam 
projects—an ambitious comedy series about 
immigrants called “Free Country” and a sat- 
ire program, “The TV Show"—died quickly 
in the midst of a network-management shake- 
up and disputes over censorship; the experi- 
ence left him bitter and frustrated. The 
Reiners’ two-star household had abruptly 
become a one-star enclave; it was hard for 
Rob to adjust to the supporting role. A 
divorce ensued, and Reiner began a deter- 
mined effort to find his own way. 

He wanted to direct, “This Is Spinal Tap,” 
a send-up of everything bad, pretentious and 
just plain silly about the rock scene, was the 
vehicle. The problem was, Hollywood's 
moguls found the concept of an improvised 
pseudo documentary about a nonexistent 
heavy-metal band hard to fathom. Or 
finance. It took four and a half years of 
relentless hustling for the deal to be consum- 
mated. The critics loved the movie and it cre- 
ated a cult following. 

With "The Sure Thing,” a gentle romantic 
comedy, opening strongly last March, Reiner 
proved that “Spinal Tap's” success was no 
fluke. He is currently shooting “The Body," 
based on a Stephen King story, in Ore- 
gon, a project to be followed by his first 
big (820,000,000)-budget film, “Princess 
Bride,” by veteran screenwriter William 
Goldman. 

With Reiners career in high gear, we 
thought it a propitious moment to interview a 
man who is something of a human touchstone 
in American popular culture of the past two 
decades—he was born to it, grew up in it, 
auditioned for it, succeeded at it, married into 
it, rebelled against it and contributed to it. We 
asked writer and former managing editor of 
Rolling Stone David Resenthal to take the 
assignment. His report: 

“Rob Reiner begins each day with a moan. 
Not a primal one, mind you, but a good, 
honest-to-God guttural exhortation directed 
at the world at large. From what I can 
gather, nobody hears this daily cry, as Rob 
lives alone in his spacious Beverly Hills 
home. So much for my expectations about 


comedy. I started out thinking Rob Reiner 
would be a great guy to get drunk with until I 
found out he doesn't drink. Never been drunk 
in his life, he says; the stuff just doesn't agree 
with him. I was skeptical at first but soon 
came to believe him on that count and most 
other things. 

"He's honest, almost compulsively candid. 
You get the feeling he's more than a bit embar- 
rassed talking about himself, but once he's 
started, he's determined to go at it full tilt. He 
doesn't just want this lo be an interview, 
he wants it to be the best interview. It's a drive 
and an attitude that extend throughout his 
entire life—not just ambition (though that's 
clearly there) but a need to achieve it all. 

“То tell you the truth, even if Rob were a 
bald-faced liar, I wouldn't want to be the one 
to call him on it. He's big. At 6'2" and 
more than 200 pounds, he has the look of an 
aging athlete. A thick mustache offsets his 
shiny bald pate, and his blue eyes often seem 
more half-closed than half-open. The most 
animated thing about him is his voice; reso- 
nant even in polite conversation, it hits you 
like a sonic boom when he's riled—not an 
uncommon event. He is gracious to a fault, 


"I don't think “All in 
the Family’ had any 
impact on social change. 
Ii just portrayed 
people realistically.” 


but he does have a temper— 'Stupidity pisses 
me off, injustices piss me off, pigheadedness 
pisses me off,’ he says—that witnesses claim is 
nol a pretty sight. 

“Reiner has a public image as being fast 
on his feet, funny, cynical and quicker than 
thou. But these days, he doesn’t try to accom- 
modale one's expectations of his cleverness. 
Instead, the impression he conveys is that of a 
man of surprising sensitivity and intelli- 
gence, serious and strangely somber. This is, 
after all, someone who grew up around come- 
dians, inherently understanding the pain 
behind their facades. It seems not a bit out of 
character that as a child he idolized not only 
his father but also Emmett Kelly. 

“Reiner's Century City office is a modest 
suite behind an unmarked door. He runs a 
casual operation. Joking with a guy who 
brings fresh bagels and cream cheese each 
morning, he works at a cranberry-colored 
desk. Behind him are mountain views and, 
on the walls, some ‘Spinal Tap’ parapher- 
nalia and a framed Daily Variety ad pictur- 
ing Rob and Carl Reiner congratulating 
themselves on being the first fatherlson team 
to have separate movies (Carl's ‘All of Me,’ 
Rob's ‘Spinal Tap’) on one year’s ten-best 
list. 

"His personal life is quiet these days. He 


either dines with one of a small circle of 
friends (close ones include comedians Albert 
Brooks, Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest) 
or catches a Lakers от Dodgers game. He is 
not much of a partygoer: He gets home early, 
watches some sports or news on his bedroom 
projection TV, then gets set to moan again 
the next day. 

“However, there is always baseball. As the 
slugger on the L.A.-based Coney Island 
Whitefish, he has led his team to two league 
Softball championships in the past three years. 
He assails his ample midriff—‘Food, he 
moans, ‘is my drug'—but it apparently does 
not hamper a determined batting style. 

“It is baseball, not showbiz, that gave 
Reiner his greatest thrill. "I came in my 
pants,’ is the way he describes it. There he 
was, left field in Dodger Stadium, a celebrity 
charity game, and a guy hit one out there, 
deep, off the wall; Rob ran it down, hurled 
and fired home, where it landed, on one 
bounce, in the catcher's mitt, deftly cutting 
down some audacious fool trying to score 
from second on Reiner's arm! People were 
‘screaming, the stadium was rocking in 
delight, everyone was applauding the big guy 
running off the field from left. As he passed 
the pitcher's mound, Don Newcombe, who 
had hurled the fateful ball, nodded his appre- 
ciation to his stalwart teammate. ‘Thanks, 
kid,’ Newcombe told Rob, ‘you saved my shut- 
out." Ecstasy. 

“Rob Reiner has a primal desire to com- 
pete, to equal if not surpass his peers, It seems 
to trace back to his father, the man he once 
wanted to be, the man he has tried profession- 
ally to escape. It seemed like a good time to 
talk, since Rob's career has eerily paralleled 
Carl's, and only now is the break clear. The 
films he's currently making are about as far 
‘from his father’s brand of comedy as one can 
gel. It’s a conscious move; finally, Rob 
Reiner is competing only with himself.” 


PLAYBOY: To start out —— 

REINER: Wait a second. I want you to 
understand something: If we're going to do 
this Interview, under no circumstances will 
I reveal the size of my penis 
PLAYBOY: You leave us no alternative 
REINER: And another thing. You know 
those pictures PLavsoy runs on the first 
page of the Interview? Well, I'd like them 
all to be the same photo. Under the first 
one, the caption should say, “Rob wants 
the quote under this picture to refer to his 
relationship with his father." Under the 
second one, it should say, “Rob wants this 
quote to refer to his sexual attitudes.” And 
under the third one, “Rob wants this quote 
to refer to his interest in the women’s 
movement and the nuclear freeze.” 
PLAYBOY: It may be tricky, but we'll see 
what we can do. If we can regain control 
here. You're someone who personifies 
American TV: Your father starred in Your 
Show of Shows and The Dick Van Dyke 
Show—two milestone programs of the Fif- 
ties and Sixties. You starred in All in the 
Family, while your wife at the time, Penny 


Marshall, was starring in Laverne & 
Shirley —monster shows of the Seventies. 
That makes you something of a living 
scrapbook—or television royalty 

REINER: I guess what's most interesting to 
me is the sort of parallels that exist. My 
father began by doing satire—that’s what 
Your Show of Shows was—and moved on to 
Van Dyke, which was a family-oriented sit- 
com, a program that was considered a 
breakthrough then. I started with satire, 
too—writing for the Smothers Brothers, 
also doing improvisational comedy with 
The Session; both of those were satire. 
And from there, I went on to All in the 
Family, which was a family-oriented sit- 
com, considered a breakthrough show. 
PLAYBOY: As a kid, did you understand 
what vour father did for a living? 

REINER: I knew exactly what he did. He 
made a complete and utter fool of himself 
in front of millions of people and was 
highly paid for it. It was a good job. 
PLAYBOY: Let’s start with the age of com- 
prehension. Your Show of Shows went on in 
1950 and made Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks 
and Sid Caesar huge stars. Do you have 
any strong impressions of it? 

REINER: І was pretty young for a lot of the 
time it was on, but there are a couple of 
things I remember. One had to do with the 
show’s sign-off. At the end of the program, 
the cast would line up for a goodbye. And 
during this, every 
would straighten his ti 


my father 


it was actually a 


signal to us at home, his secret way of say- 
ing hello. The other image I recall most 
clearly is going down to the studio with my 
father and standing outside the doorway of 
the writers’ conference room. I'd stand 
there and see these 12 men, all smoking 
cigars, yelling and screaming at one 
another at the top of their lung: 
PLAYBOY: What they 
about? 
REINER: There was a lot of high-powered 
talent, egos and power in that room. They 
had to get their points across. 
PLAYBOY: We suppose you saw a lot of Mel 
Brooks. Besides Your Show of Shows, he 
and your father also did the 2000-Year- 
Old Man routines together for years. 
REINER: When I was a kid, Mel would be 
with usa lot. We'd summer on Fire Island, 
and he'd go onto the beach and round up 
all the little kids, the real tiny ones, and 
say, “Follow me"; then he'd lead them in 
exercises, I mean, not like knee bends or 
push-ups but these hysterical, bizarre 
movements. He was funny when he did 
that; he was like another kid—a big kid. 
Mel is also serious at times, but he does 
love to perform, loves to work as a stand- 
up, to work a room. You know, in 1979, I 
was in Venice, along with Mel, as part of a 
celebrity group to be on The Merv Griffin 
Show. We're in Saint Mark's Square, sum- 
mertime, and there was a huge group of 
tourists; they're recognizing all the celebri- 
ties. But Mel wasn't getting recognized as 


were screaming 


much as he would like. All of a sudden, he 
jumps up in the middle of Saint Mark's 
Square and starts screamini 
Brooks; don't you know me? 
star! Blaung Saddles! 
stein 


I'm a big 
Young Franken- 
* He just started screaming out all 
his credits! 


There was this other scene once, which 
my father told me about, when he and Mel 
went to France. And Mel had difficulty 
communicating in French. So one day, 
they're in some little town, and Mel gets 
up on some steps and begins to yell, “АП 
right, everyone! The joke is over! From 
now on, everybody goes back to talking 
English!” 

PLAYBOY: Didn't your father and Mel used 
to do a lot of comedy at your house? 
REINER: There was a lot of shtick going on, 
but it was always in party situations. Peo- 
ple begged them to do their 2000-Year-Old 
Man, and you'd be privileged to be there 
when they'd do the routine. There were 
moments in my house that were pure gen- 
ius; when Mel was on a roll, it just didn’t 
get any funnier 

PLAYBOY: And you'd just watch? 

REINER: I was young, but I always wanted 
to hang around and listen. But ГЇЇ tell you, 
one of the biggest thrills in my life came 
when I was about 16. I was sitting at home 
while Mel and my father were working on 
some new 2000-Year-Old Man material to 
do on The Ed Sullivan Show. And I came 
up with a routine! Í couldn't believe how 


ЖЕЛИ SPICED 


AGAN 


PLAYBOY CHAT: CARL RE INE R 


a nice talk about rob's problems with his dad 


PLAYBOY: From talking with Rob, we get 
the impression that as a child, he lived 
completely in awe of you. How did you 
rcact to that? 

CARL REINER: I'll tell you a story. When 
Rob was seven or eight years old, my 
wife saw him combing his hair in the 
mirror. He looked so cute, so hand- 
some. And as he was doing this, he 
announced, “I'm going to be an actor.” 
So he's going on with this and then he 
says, "And I’m going to change my 
name.” My wife said, “Look at that! 
He's not going to trade on. Daddy's 
name.” So she asked him finally, 
“What are you going to change your 
name to?" And he said, Carl." 
PLAYBOY: Rob does seem to feel, though, 
that he didn’t get much support from 
you. For instance, he's very conscious 
of the fact that you didn't think he was 
particularly funny 

CARL REINER: I don't know if he holds it 
against me, but I couldn't defend 
myself against that. This is an example, 
though, of how you shouldn't judge 
your own kids. Parents can be very bad. 
at that. My relationship with Rob was 
not a joking one. Actually, I did know 
that Rob had a good sense of humor, 
because һе laughed at the right things. 
Even as a little kid, he had a strange, 
wonderful combination of being sullen 
and surly, but he could laugh even in 
that mode. He was very shy, though. 
He was very anxious to stay in the 
room when my friends were around, 
but he was afraid to perform for us, 
because we were so high-powered. 
PLAYBOY: Do you think it was reserve 
more than anything else? 

CARL REINER: Well, Rob was a good 
absorber and had a great memory, And 
it was because of this that Rob discov- 
ered Bill Cosby. 

PLAYBOY: How did that happen? 

CARL REINER: When he was about 16, 1 
came home from the Van Dyke show one 
night about one in the morning. Rob 
was awake. I said, "What are you 
doing awake? You have school tomor- 
row." And he said, “1 just saw the 
greatest comedian on The Tonight 
Show, a guy named Bill Cosby." And 
he procceded to get out of his bed and 
do Cosby's whole routine for me, thc 
voices, everything. I just got hysterical. 
So the next day, I went over to the Wil- 
liam Morris office and got a tape of the 
show. I played it for myself and then for 
Sheldon Leonard, who produced Van 


Dyke and later 1 Spy. It was the first 
time we'd even seen Cosby. 

PLAYBOY: There was always the charge 
against Rob that he got work only 
through you in the early days. 

CARL REINER: To be honest, I was sort of 
saddened that I never really helped in 
that way. Because I do hear of people’s 
putting their kids in plays and things 
like that; it’s perfectly normal. But I'd 
never worked with Rob that way. 
PLAYBOY: Rob's first TV writing part- 
ner, Steve Martin, became a huge 
movie star through your films. Do you 
ever feel guilty about that? 

CARL REINER: Remember, at that time, 
Rob, with All in the Family, was better 
known in this country than I had been 
doing Show of Shows. Very carly in his 
carcer, in fact, I became Rob Reincr’s 
father. And I didn’t mind it one bit. I 
felt that Rob was going to prevail, 
because he had worked on his own to 
become who he was. 

Steve was already a big star when we 
started working together. He was, you 
know, a commodity, and I directed 
that commodity. That’s a reality Rob 
had to live with. If I had done anything 
other than be normal and natural, 1 
would have hurt him; if I had catered to 
that fceling, done anything about it, it 
would have been wrong and he would 
have suffered. 


“With “All in the Family,’ Rob was better 
known than I had been doing ‘Your Show 


of Shows.” Very early in his career, 
in fact, I became Rob Reiner's father.” 


PLAYBOY: Rob talked about the way you 
were often “on” when he was a kid, the 
way you liked to perform. In fact, one 
gets the sense that his reserve is per- 
haps a reaction against your outgoing 
personality. 
CARL REINER: That assessment is proba- 
bly right. But we are very similar; we 
have identical senses of humor. Still, 
we're differently talented. 
PLAYBOY: In what ways? 
CARL REINER: We're both actors, we're 
both directors, we both write. But he's 
strong in one area, I’m strong in 
another. For instance, hc has the ability 
to really be a first-rate director. But I 
think I was a better writer. I think I 
was a better stand-up comedian, but 
he’s a better actor. In any event, Im 
a lot older than he is; Гус got more 
experience. 
PLAYBOY: Speaking of which, Rob men- 
tions in his Interview that he remained 
a virgin until he was 20 and was afraid 
of sex, that it was a subject never talked 
about at home. 
CARL REINER: I guess the funny thing is, 
he doesn't remember. Twice, 1 gave 
him lectures—once when we were liv- 
in New York, and then a few years 
later out here. That time, the subject 
came up again because Rob asked me 
about something he'd heard on the 
radio about unmarried sex. We're dri 
ing, and I started talking about all thi 
stuff: how babies are born. And 1 
decide I'd better show him that this is a 
serious subject and there’s no embar- 
rassment. So I stare right at him and 
say, “Now, you've got to look in my 
eyes.” And PII never forget what hap- 
pened. “Dad,” he says. I say, “What?” 
And he answers, “Dad, can’t you keep 
your eyes on the road?” It was a bigger 
trauma for me than for him. 
PLAYBOY: All in all, though, it sounds as 
if you're proud of your son. 
CARL REINER: All three of my kids are 
sensitive, very human people. I mean, 
they've suffered—we all suffer—and 
they’ve struggled, struggled in the right 
direction, struggled with life. 

You know, I got such a big thrill 
today. I just opened up the newspaper, 
and there was a full-page ad for The 
Sure Thing. And it said on top of the 
ad, “Rob Reiner’s new romantic com- 
edy.” It was great, the best, to see that. 
Rob made that picture better than I 
ever could have done. 


exciting it was. The bit was about the deri- 
vation of applause, who invented it. What 
the first man who applauded did was this: 
He saw something he liked, slapped his 
hands on the sides of his face and said, “O 
God, is that good!” But then this other guy 
points out that if the guy is going to do 
that all the time, he'll slap himself dead. 
So this first guy, when nobody was look- 
ing, snapped his head back from between 
his hands—and clapped. Pretty soon, 
other guys modified it, and eventually, 
everyone applauded the way we do now. 
PLAYBOY: Where was your applause in all 
this? 

REINER: Just the fact that they used it was 
enough for me. Here I was, 16, and 1 
thought the stuff they were doing, the 
2000-Year-Old Man, was the hippest thing. 
around. I'd come home from school and 
listen to the record every single day. There 
was a cult of people, including kids, who 
loved it. And you knew you had a bond 
with someone if you could throw out a line 
from the 2000-Year-Old Man and he could 
tell you the next joke; it meant you could 
talk with each other. 

PLAYBOY: What about the rest of the Your 
Show of Shows crew? Neil Simon, for 
instance, was one of the writers there. 
REINER: He didn't make a big impression 
on me, because he was so quiet. My father 
used to talk about how Neil, during thc 
colita Grego. oval ӨБҮҮНҮ Sem N st tch 

as ar cst ler о. o system matches 
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he was saying. Then my father would 
jump up and yell, “He's got something! 
He's got something!" 

PLAYBOY: Another quick take: Sid Caesar. 
Did you see of him as a kid? 

REINER: Sure. The first time I ever went 


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influenced by Sid than by my father—as you operate the graphic equalizer 
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PLAYBOY: 
those people working on Show of Shows 
were Jewish. 

REINER: Everybody. h 
PLAYBOY: Did you think everyone in the 
world was Jewish? 

REINER: Actually, I thought the world was 
divided into Jews and Catholics. Where I 
grew up in the Bronx, the neighborhood 
was half Jewish, half Italian. Since all the 


Italians were Catholics, 1 thought that if tig More Phase tu Sound. 


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PLAYBOY 


New York to California so your father 
could work on The Dinah Shore Show. And 
mot long after, the Van Dyke program 
startcd. Your father wrote the show and 
also appeared in it, playing the irascible 
comedian supposedly based on Sid Caesar. 
REINER: Actually, that character was an 
amalgam of a lot of variety-show stars, sort. 
of Sid, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, all 
rolled up into опе. 

PLAYBOY: In any case, you got to hang out 
with all those TV stars and comedians 
when your father took you to work with 
him—and you were still just a kid. Didn't. 
you get on everybody's nerves? 

RENER: Everybody included me and 
allowed me to be there. I was like every- 
one's kid. I was in awe of those people. 
PLAYBOY: Was the Van Dyke set as boister- 
ous as the Show of Shows set? 

REINER: I remember my father and 
Sheldon Leonard, the producer, fighting а 
lot. They'd throw cigars at each other. But 
all it was, really, was two guys being 
passionate about something. Sheldon 
used to say, “Polite story conferences lead 
to polite scripts.” 

PLAYBOY: But at that age, was hanging out 
on a TV set more fun than being out in the 
sunshine, picking up girls? 

REINER: Well, I grabbed Mary Tyler 
Moore by the ass once. 

PLAYBOY: Really? 

REINER: Yes. I was 14 and she was about 
24. She's such a nice lady and was so 
cute—the cutest. And I was hot for her. 
She always wore these pants—you know, 
she was the first leading lady to wear pants 
on a television show. Well, she's got this 
fabulous body and I looked at her ass and 
it was so great, like the best thing I'd ever 
seen. So I had to touch it. E just had to 
grab it. 

PLAYBOY: How did she react? 

REINER: She was shocked, and she went 
and told my father. 

PLAYBOY: What was his reaction? 

REINER: I think a father is always proud 
when a son does any sexual kind of thing. 
But here, I think propriety won out; my 
father took me aside and said, “Did you 
grab Mary Tyler Moore by the ass?" And 
I said, "Yeah." And he said, “Well, don't 
ever do that again." So I didn't, but, boy, 
I really wanted to. 

PLAYBOY: You were in your late teens before 
you decided you wanted to go into televi- 
sion yourself. You'd been kicked out of 
UCLA for skipping classes and had the 
Vietnam war to contend with, right? 
REINER: Yeah, Pd been called for my physi- 
cal. And I got a note from a psychiatrist. 
that said, “He's crazy and would not do 
well in the Army. This man would not be 
helpful to us in Vietnam." I got a defer- 
ment. It was a rough time. I didn't 
want to go to Canada; I was definitely 
prepared to go to jail. To tell you the 
truth, though, you know what I think was 
maybe the worst thing about the war? It 
made people who were patriotic feel they 
were not patriotic You were told you 


weren't a patriot because you didn't want 
to go and kill people whose country we 
had no business being in in the first place. 
"That, to me, was the biggest crime of all. 
I remember my father was very much 
involved in the moratorium in San Fran- 
cisco. He marched —— 

PLAYBOY: Did you, too? 

REINER: No, I don't know what I was doing. 
Running around, doing some kind of hal- 
lucinating. I did my little stint in Haight- 
Ashbury in 1967. The summer of love. 
Peace, love and togetherness. Janis Joplin. 
PLAYBOY: Were you living there then? 
REINER: I was seeing somebody who was 
living there and spent quite a bit of time 
up there. Plus, I had friends there in The 
Committee, the improvisational group I 
had done some acting with, so I was in San 
Francisco every other weekend. 

PLAYBOY: Did you wear flowers in your hair? 
REINER: No flowers, but psychedelic 
clothes—large bell-bottom jeans, weird 
sunglasses, I didn’t wear peace symbols 
around my neck, but I did wear love 
beads. I had long, long hair, the beard, 
everything. I was a hippie. 

PLAYBOY: Were you an acid freak? 

REINER: No. I did my share of experimenta- 
tion, but I was a real moderate user. But 
there were guys taking 100 trips and shit 
like that. Some of the guys in The Com- 
mittee used to go on stage on acid. One 
time, I got stoned on grass before I went 
on—it was the worst fucking set I ever 
played. I never did it again. 

PLAYBOY: So while all this was going on, 
you started to work in TV? 

REINER: I was about 19 then, and I began 
to get jobs: I was hired to play every TV 
hippie you can imagine on the most ипћір 
shows. I did two Beverly Hillbillies, a 
Gomer Pyle, a That Girl—I played hippies 
in all of them. Then I did one called The 
Mothers-in-Law. 

PLAYBOY: Who was in that? 

REINI ive Arden and Kaye Ballard. And 
Desi Arnaz was thc producer. What hap- 
pened was this: I was playing this 
hippie—what else?—and we were doing a 
run-through before the final taping. I had 
this tiny little scene, and, in the middle of 
the run-through, I came up with a funny 
line and just threw it in. I got a big laugh, 
but Desi didn't like it, because 1 was 
improvising. He got furious. He started 
screaming at me [heavy Spanish accent]: 
“Maybe that’s what they do at The Ses- 
sion, maybe that’s what they do at The 
Committee, maybe that’s what they do on 
The Dick Van Dyke Show, but we don’t do 
that here. I’m paying $10,000 a script and 
I don’t need you to fuck around with the 
lines!” He went nuts. And I thought, Jesus 
Christ, I’ve upset Desi Arnaz! Then he 
says, “You want to talk to me, you come 
outside.” So we walk off the sound stage, 
everybody's standing around, and Pm 
thinking, Oy, oy, oy! and he starts scream- 
ing again. So I said, “Listen, let’s just for- 
get about it. It's only a five-line part; you 
can get someone else.” And he says, “No, 


amigo, no. Don’t worry about it, amigo; 
we'll fix it.” He kept calling me amigo. But 
eventually I said, “No, I think it’s better if 
you get another actor.” So I left, and they 
found another guy to do it. It’s all no big 
deal. But that night, on the Rona Barrett 
news from Hollywood, this comes on: 
“Rob Reiner, actor, hippie-psychedelic 
son of actor Carl Reiner, got into a fight 
with Desi Arnaz on the Mothers-in-Law set 
and—whoops!—the beardcd bad boy 
walked off.” 

PLAYBOY: You must have been very proud 
REINER: Yeah. Rona Barrett was very big at 
the time, and I loved the way she 
described me; I thought it was a giggle. I 
just remember hearing that phrase and lik- 
ing it so much: hippie-psychedelic son. 
Bearded bad boy! 

PLAYBOY: The incident didn’t irreparably 
damage your TV future: Pretty soon after- 
ward, you were working for the Smothers 
Brothers. How did that come about? 
REINER: 1 was with the Committee troupe 
in L.A. when Tommy Smothers came to 
see our show. I think this was 1968, and he 
was producing The Glen Campbell Show 
then. He liked the Committee guys and 
hired me and Carl Gottlieb. So we did 
Campbell and then joined the Smothers 
show when it began again in the fall. It 
was their last season. 

PLAYBOY: That must have been quite a 
step. The Smothers Brothers was the hottest 
show on television then. 

REINER: Along with my divorce later on, it 
was one of the two major upheavals in my 
life. It was the change from being the kid 
in the household to kind of entering the 
adult world. I guess it was the first realiza- 
tion that I wasn't going to be able to lean 
on my folks as I had before. You take these 
big steps and they’re painful, but you wind 
up getting stronger and better. I hope I 
don’t have any more of these upheavals—I 
always worry about whether there'll be 
another one and, if it happens, is it going 
to be horrendous. 

PLAYBOY: Why horrendous? With the 
Smothers Brothers, you’d just gotten a 
great job. 

REINER: Lets put it this way: I was con- 
fused, very confused about where my place 
was in the world, where I fit in. 

PLAYBOY: But the work on the show went 
well, didn’t it? 

REINER: It was a good writing staff. Steve 
Martin and I were partners, and we were 
the youngest ones—that's why they stuck 
us together. We wrote a couple of funny 
sketches, but it was a bitch trying to get. 
them on the air. When you're the young 
guys, people try to slough you off, push 
you aside. It was very frustrating. Also, we 
had censorship problems; Tommy was 
always fighting with the censors, and at 
the last minute, something would be 
thrown out. 

PLAYBOY: So you had to do another sketch 
fast. 

REINER: Real fast. I remember, three in the 
morning, we're sitting with Alan Bly and 


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PLAYBOY 


Mason Williams, the head writers, and 
Bly says, “God, does anybody have any- 
thing we can throw in?” So Steve and I 
say, “Hey, we've got this Hollywood- 
premiere thing." It was a very funny 
sketch, a take-off on a Hollywood opening, 
with all the stars and starlets arriving, all 
the interviews and that stuff. And we act it 
out, and all the writers are laughing hys- 
terically; they love it. 

But Alan would go, “No, I don’t think 
this one works.” So, two, three months 
later, we're in the same fix and Bly says, 
“Does anybody have anything?” Then 
he'd look at Steve and me and say, “You 
guys had that Hollywood-premiere thing. 
It was pretty good. Let's hear that again." 
So we performed it once more, everybody 
laughing. Then they'd go, "Nah." I think 
Alan Bly just liked hearing us do the bit. 
PLAYBOY: It never got on? 

REINER: Never. But one I did for Pat 
Paulsen did. We had him as the owner of a 
novelty firm, the folks that make hot gum, 
the dribble glass and all that stuff. He's 
demonstrating all these things for some cli- 
ents and, of course, they all backfire. At 
one point, though, he sits down and you 
hear this big fart and he goes, “Huh! 
Somebody must have slipped a whoopee 
cushion when I wasn’t locking.” He gets 
up, looks down, and there's nothing there. 
Tt was, to my knowledge, the first fart joke 
done on television. I’m quite proud of that. 
I think I'm also the first American actor to 


ever say the word cocksucker in a movie. It 
was in Where’s Poppa?, which my father 
directed. He made me do it. It's his fault. 
PLAYBOY: Were you upset? 

REINER: No, these are my scatological dis- 
tinctions. 

PLAYBOY: Was it strange for you when 
Steve Martin began making all those pic- 
tures with your father? After all, you and 
Steve had started together as TV writers, 
and all of a sudden his movie career took 
off under the direction of Carl Reiner. Do 
you see any irony in that? 

REINER: It’s interesting. They've made four 
films together, and the first one, The Jerk, 
became one of the largest-grossing come- 
dies of its time. And it was a little weird, 
because here was Steve, a contemporary of 
mine, and my father—Steve was like 
another son, the son my father would have 
liked to haye, the funny son, not the brood- 
ing, introverted child that was me. I think 
I was a little bit jealous, a little bit threat- 
ened. But by the same token, I knew that 1 
could never do the kinds of things that 
Steve did and docs. 

PLAYBOY: Does that depress you? 

REINER: Not really. lt wasn't as if he got 
the job and I didn’t. It was “This is the 
kind of stuff he does.” 

PLAYBOY: Do you see Steve a lot now? 
REINER: Once in a while—usually if my 
father’s with him. 

PLAYBOY: Besides Where's Poppa?, has your 
father ever asked you to be in any of his 


productions? 

REINER: Sure. I did The Roast, which he 
directed, on Broadway, and I had a tiny 
little bit in Enter Laughing. 

PLAYBOY: How tiny was it? 

REINER: | had three lines. That was a big 
disappointment for me. I'd wanted to play 
the supporting lead, the part of David’s 
best friend. I auditioned for it. It was most 
uncomfortable—probably more for my 
father than it was for me. 1 did pretty well 
at the audition, but I didn’t get it. 
PLAYBOY: Wait a minute. This sounds 
absurd: 
REINER: I know. I auditioned for my own 
father! And he turned me down! God, no 
wonder I’m in analysis 

PLAYBOY: Wasn’t that destructive? 

REINER: I guess I wanted his approval so 
badly. 

PLAYBOY: And he let you go through with 
it? 

REINER: And I didn't get the part! 
PLAYBOY: It's mind-boggling. 

REINER: [Laughs, voice rising] I know what 
I did! I put myself in the worst possible 
position and I got rejected. OK? OK? Why 
are you torturing me like this? 

PLAYBOY: At least this is cheaper than anal- 
ysis. How often do you go? 

REINER: How many days are there in the 
week? 

PLAYBOY: Last we looked, seven. 

REINER: Well, if they could make up some 
more days, they’d be putting me on the 


calendar for those days, too. 
PLAYBOY: You had to audition for a friend 
of your father's, too, didn't you? You knew 
Norman Lear when you were a kid, and 
years later, when Lear was casting a new 
comedy series 
REINER: Yes, I auditioned for All in the 
Family—three times. And I didn't get 
the part the first or second time. There 
were two pilots and two sets of Mikes 
and Glorias before I got cast. So, at least, 
I can say that my getting the part of 
Mike Stivic—Meathead—had nothing 
to do with my knowing Norman. If it had, 
he would have cast me the first time out. 
You know, nobody hires anybody else for а 
favor, because it's his ass on the line. 
PLAYBOY: We suppose there were always 
folks who said you got the All in the Family 
part because of your relationship and your 
father's relationship with Lear. 

REINER: Let me start this way: Because of 
my father, doors were definitely open to 
me; no question, But those doors will close 
faster than they will for anybody else, 
because you're under scrutiny. You'd bet- 
ter be able to deliver right away, because 
people are set to knock you down or say 
you're not as good. Certainly, it is much 
more difficult getting there im the first 
place if you're not connected. But you can 
sneak in thc back door, hone your craft, 
fail a little morc casily until you're ready. 
PLAYBOY: Did you feel guilty about your 


REINER: No, because I always felt there was 
pressure on me. People always compared 
me with my father. Even if their expecta- 
tions cf me weren't as great as mine, they 
had some preconceived notions. 

PLAYBOY: When you got the role of Mike 
Stivic, did you feel you had finally had it 
made—on your own? 

REINER: Actually, Га never wanted to do a 
TV series. I didn't want to work for five 
years making a whole career out of playing 
one character. The only thing that 
attracted me to All in the Family was the 
script I had read. I said, "Wow! This is 
unlike anything that's ever been on televi- 
sion, and if I have a chance to be part of it, 
I want to." But I thought the show would 
last 13 weeks and we'd go off the air. I 
didn't think anybody would accept that 
kind of show. And it's interesting, because 
we weren't a hit right away. We came on 
in the spring, and the audience caught 
оп when the original 13 episodes were 
rerun over the summer. 

PLAYBOY: After that first scason, you were 
quoted as saying you were already bored 
with the show. 

REINER: I probably was. But ГЇЇ tell you 
how it progressed: By the second year, we 
were tremendously hot and successful. 
It was wonderful to be part of something 
that was so talked about, that had so much 
impact on the American people. The third 
year, though, was really frightening. I 
thought the excitement was starting to 


wear off; I saw myself stuck for years on 
end doing the same thing. I was very dis- 
heartened. 

PLAYBOY: Was it because of the money? In 
a magazine article at that time, you com- 
plained about your deal. “I can tell you 
one thing,” you were quoted as saying, 
“ГЇЇ never sign a contract again until my 
lawyer's looked over every single word.” 
REINER: I doubt seriously that I said that 
But if I did, I’m sure I was in the middle of 
a renegotiation or I was upset. We're talk- 
ing about something that happened maybe 
12 years ago! I did just fine on the show. I 
made good money. What we did have, 
though, was a terrible residual deal. In 
those days, you made a buy-out, mean- 
ing that after six runs of the show, that 
would be it. All my shows have run a lot 
more than six times. But ГЇЇ tell you, I 
have no remorse, regrets or anger about 
what I earned from the show. None. 
PLAYBOY: How did you finally deal with 
your feelings of being stuck in the series? 
REINER: Well, you're a professional and you 
go to work and do your job. In the fourth 
year of All in the Family, I started to make 
peace. I said to myself, “I'll try to make 
the best of it and get something out of ii." 
And after I did that, the fifih through the 
eighth years were wonderful, because it 
was like going to school. I thought, I'm 
learning what this is all about. 

PLAYBOY: What do you mean? 

REINER: Norman and Carroll O'Connor 


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PLAYBOY 


74 


had set up ground rules that allowed me 
and Sally Struthers and Jean Stapleton to 
have creative input. I was involved in 
helping structure the stories, in rewriting, 
in editing—all the things that made the 
program. If I had just had to do my part as 
an actor, go in every weck and play the 
part, I think I would have been unhappy- 
It was an cgoless show, though, and it 
taught me that actors, writers, directors 
must serve the piece. All in the Family was 
a pure example of that. 

I remember Herb Gardner came to one 
of our run-throughs and watched us as we 
sat around afterward doing notes. And 
everybody spoke up. I'd tell Carroll how 
to do a line, Sally would tell Carroll, Jean 
would tell Carroll, Carroll would tell Jean; 
we'd all talk to one another, help one 
another out, talk with the writers. If there 
was a scene where I felt extraneous, for 
instance, I'd say, “Take me out; put me in 
something else." The attitude was “Let's 
make the best possible show, because if we 
do, it'll make us all look better." And 
Herb Gardner's sitting there through all of 
this, and afierward he says, “1 can't 
believe what I’m seeing here. This is cre- 
ative communism!” 

PLAYBOY: When All in the Family first went 
on, it stirred a tremendous amount of 
controversy. Everybody from the Anti- 
Defamation League to Laura Z. Hobson, 
who wrote Gentlemen's Agreement, at- 
tacked it for celebrating bigotry. Did its 


political impact concern you? 
REINER: In terms of social change or 
import, I don’t think the show had any. If 
it had any impact at all, or anything 
important to say, it was that people could 
be portrayed on television in a realistic 
manner. Its impact was on people, and 
that’s what all theater is about. To me, All 
in the Family was good theater. 

PLAYBOY: How? 

REINER: What a good dramatist can do is 
portray an aspect of life so that the peo- 
ple who watch it have their own experi- 
ences enhanced. They sce something that 
strikes a responsive chord in them that 
makes them say, “I know what that feels 
like; I know what that is." They will get 
more out of their own experiences because 
somebody else has told them what they 
were actually experiencing. 

As to politics, what's interesting is that 
everyone involved in All in the Family was 
a Democrat or even more liberal than that. 
But what we were showing was a bigoted 
person, Archie, and a liberal-minded one, 
Mike, and saying, “These people exist: 
you draw your own conclusions.” The rea- 
son the program was so successful was 
that half the people, or more than half, 
thought Archie was right. Norman Lear’s 
favorite play, in fact, is Major Barbara, by 
George Bernard Shaw. The play is written 
as a polemic, and if you don’t know that 
Shaw was a liberal, you leave the theater 


asking, “Who's right, the warmonger or 
the liberal?” 
PLAYBOY: Do you think the show succeeded 
in what it set out to do? 
REINER: Absolutely. Better than any other 
half-hour show has ever done. I've studied 
all the fucking sitcoms; Гуе seen every 
goddamn one. And while there have been 
some great ones—Mary Tyler Moore, 
M*A*S*H, Cheers, Taxi, Van Dyke—All in 
the Family was the best. 
PLAYBOY: How did you feel about the show 
after you left and its format changed, when 
it became Archie Bunker's Place? 
REINER: I wasn’t interested in it. I watched 
only one episode, and there wasn’t the 
kind of tension we had. It didn’t have the 
natural antagonists. It was much softer. 
PLAYBOY: What about Mike Stivic? Do you 
miss the character? 
REINER: Mike was very similar to me. He 
went through a transition over the years. 
He began very idealistically and, as he 
gained responsibility, with a baby and a 
Job, he began swinging toward the center. 
‘As we all do, he began accepting certain 
realities of life. 
PLAYBOY: He was also a bit of a knee-jerk 
liberal. 
REINER: He was always left of center, and 
as for myself, I'm sort of off the chart 
somewhere. I’m conservative in some 
ways but incredibly radical and anarchis- 
tic in others. 

But Mike was full of shit sometimes. He 


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espoused all these liberal points of view, 
but when push came to shove, especially 
on women's issues, he'd take the party line 
with the chauvinists. 

PLAYBOY: Mike's vast wardrobe was mem- 
orable, wasn't it? 

REINER: Yeah. For eight years, 1 wore the 
same jeans and work shirt and cowboy 
boots every single week. 

PLAYBOY: Did they still fit you by the end of 
the run? 

REINER: I went through a lot of ups and 
downs. I weighed as much as 208 pounds, 
as little as 190. It’s funny, because when 
they show All in the Family in reruns, they 
don't go in order, they just bounce around. 
So one day, I've got lots of hair and I'm 
skinny. The next day, I've got just a little 
hair and I’m fat. The next day, lots of hair 
and fat and the next, a little hair and 
skinny. There was one year, for maybe one 
or two shows, when I looked good. 
PLAYBOY: And those are the tapes you keep 
at home. 

REINER: [Laughs] Exactly. Hair and thin. 
PLAYBOY: Your ex-wife, Penny Marshall, 
told us that after All in the Family ended for 
you and your new TV projects didn’t hit, 
you went into a bit of a tail spin. 

REINER: It was a particularly rough time. I 
was upset, because when you've done a 
show like All in the Family for eight years, 
you get to thinking nothing bad can hap- 
pen to you. You feel invulnerable. I was a 
young man, very successful, making a lot 


of money, had a marriage that was going 
pretty well for a long time. Then I hit a 
couple of failures. It was the same period 
Penny and I were drifting apart. I was 
badly shaken. 

PLAYBOY: Was it just because you found 
yourself out of work for the first time? 
REINER: No, because I could always get 
work. The problem was that I wasn't 
being allowed to do what I wanted to—a 
series I created called Free Country. I was 
about to take a step out on my own and the 
door was slammed. It frightened the shit 
out of me. 

PLAYBOY: Do you still feel bitter about Free 
Country? 

REINER: I think it was one of the most inno- 
vative TV series ever created. It was basi- 
cally a Jewish Roots. I think the networks 
weren't too thrilled about putting on a 
show about Jews. It was weird, because 
the guys we pitched it to at the network 
were all Jews. To be fair to them, though, 
they have a constituency out there they 
have to program for, and shows like Happy 
Days were very big and successful then 
PLAYBOY: But you feel there’s no real qual- 
ity programing? 

REINER: I never believed TV should all be 
quality stuff. Everybody should be allowed 
to have something that he wants to watch. 
The networks always point to Cheers and 
Hill Street Blues as examples of programs 
that are supposedly good—and they are, 
but they're not innovative. I believe there 


should be a place for one or two shows that 
are really intelligent, really sophisticated, 
for that segment of the audience that 
wants them. And I don’t give a fuck what 
the numbers are, what the ratings are— 
they should keep those shows on the air! 
But ГЇЇ tell you something: The net- 
works aren't interested in just making 
money. 
PLAYBOY: What are they interested in? 
REINER: They are interested in making 
ridiculous amounts of money. Unbridled 
greed. Don't forget—if every TV program 
were in the bottom 20 of the Nielsens, 


they'd still make enormous amounts of 


money. 
PLAYBOY: Penny Marshall implied that you 
were disturbed by the fact that her series 
Laveme ES Shirley was a big hit, that she 
was taking home the pay check, not you. 

REINER: Yes, I think so. I think any man 
would be lying if he said it wouldn't be an 
ego blow to see his wife making more 
money than he was or working when he 
was not. The role that Pd played through 
the marriage was that of supporting her, 
taking care of her, because for many years 
I worked far more than she did. All of a 
sudden, I wasn't doing that job. I was at 
an ebb point in my carcer—and life—and 
I looked to her for support. But at that 
time, she was consumeé with her problems 
on Laverne & Shirley—there was always 
some kind of trouble or crisis there. And 1 
was thinking, Wait a minute; /’m not 


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75 


PLAYBOY 


getting anything here. I'm suffering, I’m 
not working and I don't have anybody 


REINER: [t wasn't her fault. This was who 
she was. She needed a lot of attention 
when she wasn't working and she needed 
as much, if not more, when she was. 
I'd always thought that when she started 
working, it would be easier, because she'd 
have her own identity, she'd have her own 
job, she wouldn't feel such a lack of self- 
esteem. But it didn't work out that way. 
PLAYBOY: What happened after that? 
REINER: We got divorced pretty soon after. 
That period afterward, for several years, 
was a 24-hour-a-day horror show. It was 
like being slipped bad acid and going on a 
downward spiral. I cried quite a bit. It was 
a one-two punch. I had no work, no mar- 
risge. There was an air of desperation 
about me for a lot of years after that. I 
never thought I would say, “I like being 
alone." I’m sure that's not going to be my 
state for the rest of my life, but I think it’s 
important I spend some years feeling com- 
fortable on my own. That way, the next 
time I go into a relationship, it will be with 
a little more strength within myself. 
PLAYBOY: Before we get there, let’s back up 
a bit. You were 21, young, carefree. You 
discovered Penny. What was it like then? 
REINER: She faked me out: When I met her, 
I thought she was Jewish. And, you know, 
Jewish guys are supposed to be attracted 
only to shiksas—which I am to a great 
degree. So after I met her, I said to myself, 
“Gee, look at this, I’m actually attracted 
to a Jewish girl—this must be a match 
made in heaven!" Then 1 found out she 
was Italian and it all fell into place. 
PLAYBOY: How did you meet? 

REINER: It was at Barney's Beanery, which 
was and is still a big hangout bar on Santa 
Monica Boulevard. Janis Joplin would be 
there, Jack Nicholson always used to come 
and Harry Dean Stanton was a fixture. I 
was with some friends and she was with 
some friends and we just. 
PLAYBOY: You mean you picked her up? 
REINER: I think she picked me up, actu- 
ally. 

PLAYBOY: Love at first sight? 

REINER: No, it wasn’t. We were friends for a 
couple of years; we hardly even dated at 
first. Before we began living together, I 
was sharing a house with Albert Brooks. 
There were separate entrances, like a 
duplex, and he'd be downstairs and I'd be 
up. And when Penny and I started going 
together, I would take her upstairs and 
we'd make love. We'd finish and the phone 
would ring; it would be Albert calling from 
downstairs. He'd say, “Are you done?" 
We'd say, “Yeah.” And Albert would ask, 
“You want to go get something to eat?” So 
we'd get dressed and go over to the drug- 
store at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel about 
midnight and have dinner. 

PLAYBOY: Was it embarrassing to have to 
be so open about your sex life? 

REINER: No, we were young, we were free. 


This was the age of the sexual revolution 
and all that. It was uncool to be prim or 
shy about any of it, real uncool, even 
though before Penny, I had been pretty 
naive—didn't lose my virginity until I was 
20. We never talked about sex at home. 
PLAYBOY: Then you decided to get married. 
REINER: It seemed like a logical step. I'd 
just turned 24. We'd been living together 
for a year and a half, were getting along 
well, and we thought it was the next thing 
to do. 

PLAYBOY: Where was the ceremony? 
REINER: In my folks’ back yard. There were 
about 100 people and we ordered all the 
food from a Chinese restaurant. It was so 
funny, because the bill came with the 
order- was, like, $1000 to go! But it was 
real nice; we improvised our vows to each 
other and had our friends run the cere- 
mony with a judge around to make it legal. 
I had three best men: Phil Mishkin, who 
was my writing partner then, Rick 
Dreyfuss and Albert Brooks. 

PLAYBOY: У\сгс you a faithful husband? 
REINER: Actually, no. We did experiment. 
You've got to take this in context; this was 
the Sixties generation. But we did experi- 
ment with an open marriage for a short 
stint and it wasn't particularly good. The 
idea of an open marriage seemed good at 
the time, because it meant you could just 
fuck anybody you wanted and there was 
no guilt. 

PLAYBOY: But it didn't work out that way? 
REINER: No, because when you feel strongly 
for somebody, you really don't want to 
fuck other people. You get to a point where 
you don't want to engage in a lot of mean- 
ingless sex. I’m sure a lot of people enjoy 
doing that, but [ don't. I never have. 
PLAYBOY: But you tried it? 

REINER: Oh, sure, I tried it plenty. Ànd the 
actual act itself, while you're doing it, cer- 
tainly feels great. It's just that afterward, 
you know the old joke, you want the 
woman to turn into a pizza. It’s because 
you're not emotionally connected—and 
that feeling is horrible. 

PLAYBOY: About the open-marriage experi- 
mentation — 

REINER: Well, to be honest, it wasn’t really 
a successful open marriage, because we 
never talked to each other about it. 
PLAYBOY: You mean you never told Penny it 
was an open marriage? 

REINER: [Laughs] Right. No, what I really 
mean is that we never told each other if we 
had been with other people. So it was 
more or less that in case we cheated, it was 
like a pact that it wouldn't mean the end of 
our marriage. I never knew anybody she 
was with and I don’t think she knew any- 
body I was with. I can’t speak for Penny, 
but for me, it happened very rarely. | 
mean, it was fewer than what you can 
count on one hand—fewer than five but 
more than one. 

PLAYBOY: Your marriage lasted ten years. 
Why did it end? 

REINER: I know it sounds like a cliché, but 
you know how you talk about two people's 


growing in different directions? Boy, that 
was it for us. 1 still like Penny, she likes me 
and we get along really well. But back 
then, my attitude was probably upsetting 
to her. 
PLAYBOY: How? 
REINER: Well, she was doing Laverne & 
Shirley, and I didn’t like the show. I had a 
much more elitist attitude then than I do 
now. I loved my wife in it—she is a bril- 
liant comedienne and did a wonderful 
job—but I thought the program was not 
very intelligent and all that. 
PLAYBOY: And you'd tell her that? 
REINER: She always wanted to know what I 
thought, and it was hard. It never worked, 
making the separation, telling her what I 
thought of her performance and what I 
thought of the show. If I said anything 
negative about the show, she'd take it as 
“You don’t like me” or “You don’t like 
what I do.” This shit went on all the time. 
But I think Penny had a point. You want 
your spouse to be supportive and on your 
side. She wanted me to just love what 
she was doing. And the fact that I 
didn’t I was at fault in that I wasn’t 
as supportive as I could have been. 
PLAYBOY: Yours wasn’t the only negative 
voice; Laverne €? Shirley never got good 
reviews. 
REINER: Penny and Garry [Marshall, the 
show’s creator and Penny’s brother] were 
always upset because there wasn't a good 
critical response to Laverne & Shirley and 
because they didn’t get nominated for 
awards. 
PLAYBOY: Especially since you and All in 
the Family raked in the Emmys every year. 
REINER: Sure, that was upsetting, You 
know, when we were breaking up, we had 
this fight. We were screaming at each 
other. And at the height of it, Penny told 
me to take my Emmy awards and shove 
them up my ass. 
PLAYBOY: How did you react? 
REINER: All I could think at the time was, I 
wish I were a movie actor, because the 
Oscars don’t have those pointy wings the 
Emmys have. I thought, God, that would 
be awfully painful. 
PLAYBOY: Is that your instinct—when 
someone says something truly nasty to 
you, you reflexively think of a gag? 
REINER: I’ve had moments like that. We 
had very few fights, very few. But one 
time, I remember, she was really mad at 
me and yelled, “You stink!” And I said, 
“Wait a minute here! Let's get this 
straight. I may be wrong, I may be doing 
the wrong thing, but I don't stink!” 
PLAYBOY: You told her, ch? 
REINER: I couldn't let it ride. One time, 
though, she threw cherries at me. It was 
the most physical thing we ever did. 
PLAYBOY: Other than sex, we assume. 
REINER: Yes, occasionally we did that. 
PLAYBOY: Early in the marriage? 
REINER: There's a saying—I don't know if 
is true—that if you take a penny and put 
itin a jar every time you have sex the first 
(continued on page 156) 


GIN& TONIC  — 


Стат: Gin Cana Duy Tonic. 


© 1985 GORDON'S DRY GIN CO LTD. 


WHO'SIN ` 
CHARGE HERE? 


domination, submission, exquisite pleasure =. { 
and fear—oral sex may bethe trickiest i game of ail E 1 


s, 
article By SUSAN SQUIRE, \ j 
Often, during dinner, he pushed my head betweeh his 0 ighs We 
developed a game: He tried to see how long.h€ could continue to kar 
calmiys 1) how'soón I'could make him drop his fork and moan. * 
id — ELIZABETH MC NEILL, “Nine and a Half Weeks”, mon | 


HE poes the pushing. Her wrists are bound to the table leg all the while. 

Hes cast as the master of the game, she as the slave. Yet only she can 

make him drop his fork. Only she can make him moan. Is he in 

charge? Or is she? ED 

Oral sex: Hearts have been stolen by it, relationships broken by it. It i 

can make men soft and women hard. It can serve as a shorthand for i 

self-image and a character tip-off to others. It can be an act of manipu- f i 
i 
4 


lation, adoration or indifference. It is surely never an act of procrea- 
tion, so it lacks the Judaeo-Christian stamp of normalcy. If not 
procreation, its purpose can only be deviant. “The use of the mouth as 

a sexual organ,” wrote Freud, “is considered as a perversion if the y i 
/ lips [or tongue] of one person are brought into contact with the : Y 


ILLUSTRATION BY BILL RIESER 


PLAYBOY 


genitals of another.” Although once upon a 
time in America, spouses could and did go 
through a lifetime of matrimony without 
ever tasting the genitals of their mates, no 
self-respecting adult who made it through 
the frantic fucking of the Sixties and Sev- 
enties would dare avoid what has now 
become a basic element of the sexual rep- 
ertoire. We're all supposed to be willing 
and able to give it and to love getting it, 
but such a supposition is flagrantly sim- 
plistic. Where plays of power are involved 
or merely imagined, nothing is simple. 


He drove into her mouth. It was not 
the caress of her lips the length of him he 
was looking for, but the back of her 
throat. For a long time he probed. . . . 
In her heart she felt her womb, useless 
and scorned, burning her. 

—"Story of O” 


It’s the classic pornographic position, to 
drive into a woman's mouth from above 
her as she lies or kneels, a position 
intended to subjugate the woman and 
empower the man. For many women, it 
can be arousing if played as a game chosen 
by both parties, as an infrequent fillip cho- 
sen to break the routine, like a twice-yearly 
bout of anal sex or mild bondage. But if a 
man insists on it consistently and exclu- 
sively, any psychically healthy woman will 
at the very least feel extremely bored and 
will surely wonder about the psychic 
health of her lover. 

Maureen was in love with Philip, an 
aristocratic Oriental who insisted on be- 
ing the auteur of oral sex. A man with a 
selfadmitted “pornographic mind," he 
wanted his sex life with Maureen to consist 
of certain specific elements. She was to be 
the responsive but passive participant in 
an unvarying ritual: He would undress her 
leisurely, go down on her with skill and 
concentration, and when she had come 
once, twice, three times, he would enter 
her. Depending on your attitude, this rou- 
tine sounds like either tedium incarnate or 
a gorgeous sexual dream. 

In the beginning, it was the latter for the 
normally strong-willed Maureen. “Con- 
trol isn’t important to me,” she says. “I 
like sex too much to think about power." 
But as she became emotionally hooked on 
Philip, she wanted to sample him and give 
to him. Like any woman who enjoys sex 
and is in love, she wanted to know every 
curve and vein and freckle and hair of her 
man, and she wanted this knowledge on 
her own terms and in her own rhythm. But 
Philip would allow her to go down on him 
only in the classic male-supremacy posi- 
tion. She would be on her knees and he 
would be standing, directing her as 
always. If she tried it any other way, 
he would prevent her in that eloquent 
manner that men have: He'd go soft. 
Immensely frustrated and too smart not to 
concede that Philip's denial of her desire 
for him spelled out a sexual and emotional 


half life, Maureen ended the relationship. 

Maureen grew weary with her role as 
the submissive receiver/receptacle, but she 
never felt degraded by it, because she was 
a full and agreeable partner in its enact- 
ment. If a woman is forced without fore- 
knowledge into this position, she may not 
protest but she will almost certainly feel 
like garbage. A woman lacking in self- 
respect may feel that her self-image is jus- 
tified by her being treated like garbage. 
However, that is not the same as finding 
the experience erotic, though some men 
think that female compliance and desire 
are invariably linked. 

Bethany, now 40, still remembers the 
afternoon 12 years ago when her ex- 
husband, Allan, came over, ostensibly to 
discuss their son’s schooling. Since their 
split, Bethany had been through the typi- 
cal emotional kaleidoscope that besets 
divorcing people—loneliness, confusion, 
ambivalence, anger, guilt, despair, loss, 
sclfhatred. When Allan began kissing 
her, she responded from her need for com- 
fort and sustenance. Then he pushed her 
head down and leaned against the back of 
the sofa. She complied “because I thought 
I was supposed to, because I felt insecure 
and because I was terrified of a future 
alone with a kid and three dogs. After- 
ward, I felt like a dirty dishrag. I stood 
over the kitchen sink and cried for an 
hour. If it happened again, I would never 
submit to him. I would shoot the fucker 
instead.” 

Sometimes, for a woman, it’s titillating 
to play at being subjugated. Andrea has 
initiated the play with several lovers and 
found one man to be “‘overly sensitized” to 
the implications of it. “I had given him a 
blow job on my knees. I had chosen the act 
and the position. When it was over, he 
asked me if I felt humiliated by it or if I 
thought it was a subservient position to be 
in. I was surprised by his concern. I'd 
never thought of it that way. I think that’s 
because I grew up Catholic and ignorant 
about sex—sex was so powerful that you 
could not speak its name. Thanks to my 
ignorance, I had no preconceptions about 
what was or wasn’t acceptable. It had 
never occurred to me that a man would 
feel there was something degrading to a 
woman about that position.” 

Although men rarely admit to favoring 
the brutality component of oral sex, those 
who do will often justify it by saying, as 
Tony, 39, puts it, “Women don’t mind 
being raped orally if they can control 
who's doing the raping. Choice is control.” 
“Tony sometimes has erection problems if 
he's with a woman who's “too willing.” 
Although respectably married, he has an 
active underground sex life focused on 
very young girls and games of force. 

He mentions a peak sexual experience 
he had while in his early 20s. "She was 
younger and a virgin. We'd just seen the 
movie Blow-Up—the first time I'd ever 


seen pubic hair in a movie. We were 
parked in my car in front of her house. I 
whipped out my cock and forced her head 
upon it. She struggled and gagged, but 1 
wouldn't let her head up. The orgasm was 
memorable because I was in charge from 
start to finish.” 

But only because his subject of subjuga- 
tion chose not to play her ultimate hole 
card. 


Something in my Mouth he put: 11 
called him Beast and try'd to bit it... . 
— ANONYMOUS, circa 1707 


105 the final irony of force, a woman's 
latent and powerful revenge for powerless- 
ness. The castration factor: It blips along 
the back of a man’s mind every so often 
when he has entrusted his irreplaceable 
organ to a woman's oral ministrations. For 
some, the blip becomes a solid line. Jerry, 
a tender and funny mam, has been vic- 
timized by the ancient fear. At 35, he pur- 
sues neither fellatio nor casual sex, thanks 
to an experience that began as a lark and 
ended up a trauma. For his 21st birthday, 
his friends got him fallingdowndrunk and 
bought him a blow job. Jerry had assumed 
that it would be the “apotheosis” of the 
act and his first opportunity to come in a 
woman’s mouth. 

The hooker was short, with a six-inch 
scar across her throat. Giggling and weav- 
ing, Jerry stumbled after her up some 
stairs and into a room. He fell onto the 
bed. She pulled his pants down, looked at 
him, rolled her eyes and said, "You're 
gonna need some help, honey.” Then she 
started in on him. 

“I saw her head, with that scar, disap- 
pear between my legs. With my drunken- 
ness and the sight of the scar, I was 
hopelessly flaccid. She came up after 
about five minutes and said, ‘Not tonight.” 
The next day, when Pd sobered up, I real- 
ized she could have done anything—she 
could have bitten it off. l'd been at the 
mercy of a woman with a six-inch scar 
across her throat, a woman who had 
offered the information that her boyfriend 
was doing 25 years to life and she was 
hooking to get the money to get him 
paroled. The image of her burying her 
face, with that scar, in my groin has since 
flashed through my mind many times 
when someone’s gone down on me, and 
every time, I’ve gone soft.” 

There are men who are eager receivers 
only if the woman is both clearly enthusi- 
astic and highly skilled, apparently a rare 
combo. Andy, 38, is a lover of bars, 
bourbon—and blow jobs performed by 
hookers. Because he doesn’t want to “scar 
anyone's sexual psyche,” he's difüdent 
about criticizing a womar's technique (to 
the point that he once endured the oral 
lovemaking of a girlfriend who wore 
braces until he finally told her that he 
didn't like fellatio). With a hooker, he’s 

(continued on page 184) 


“Isn't this romantic? We're floating down the Mississippi 
like Huck Finn." 


AMAZING 
GRACE. 


she battles bond, rocks with “rocky #0” hunk : 
dolph lundgren—have you met miss jones? 


As archvillainess May Day in the 
new James Bond film, A View to a 
Kill, singer/actress Grace Jones 
gets to soften up 007, played by 
Roger Maore, before the kill. This 
series of partraits by the provaca- 
tive photographic artist Helmut 
Newtar, о longtime friend, cap- 
tures the sheer power of Grace 


ond of her fiancé, Dolph Lundgren. 


RACE Jones is on the prowl 
again, raising hackles, eyebrows and o lot 


of hell along the way. No one else assaults 
the senses os Grace does. One moment 
aggressively feminine, the next curiously 
masculine, she transcends gender. There's 
a hint of menace, the vague possibility of 
violence in her demeanor. She is alien, the 
embodiment of the unknown. And she 
draws уси to her as a flame draws o child. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY HELMUT NEWTON 


83 


84 


olph Lundgren can afford to 
be soft-spoken. He is o chompion kick 


boxer, solid muscle and bigger thon you 
and any friends you might bring olong. He 
doesn't eot: He “carbs up.” Dolph will be 
Sylvester Stallone’s opponent in Rocky IV. 
One night in Australia, Grace and he met: 
the Sphinx meeting the Colossus of 
Rhodes. The synergy wos sufficiently awe- 
some to make the allionce permanent. 


ow they live together, the 
strong тап and the strong woman, 


the soft-spoken and the outspoken, the 
Swede ond the Jamaican. Their careers 
have come together in a house in a canyon 
above Los Angeles. There theyll make 
their stand: he in acting, she in acting ond 
singing, both already winners on their 
own. Wha knaws what can be accom- 
plished by (concluded on роде 202) 


r “gawrsh,” said guf. “do ya 
I 5 alna ink we're the only D 
left on earth?” 


br als» I 1313 a fiction By HOWARD WALDROP 


THINGS HAD NOT BEEN going well at the fac- 
tory for the past 1500 years or зо. 

A rare thunderstorm, a soaking rain 
and a freak lightning bolt changed all 
that. 

When the lightning hit, an emer- 
gency generator went to work as it had 
been built to do a millennium and a 
half before. It cranked up and ran the 


assembly line for a few minutes before 
freezing up and shedding its brushes 
and armatures in a fine spray. It had 
run just Jong enough to finish up some 
work in the custom-design section. 
The factory completed, hastily certi- 
fied and wrongly programmed the 
three products that had been on the 
assembly line 15 centuries before. Then 


PLAYBOY 


the place went dark again. 
. 

“Gawrsh,” said one of them, “it shore is 
dark in here!” 

“Well, huh-huh, we can always use the 
infrared they gave us." 

“Wak, wak, wak!” said the third. 
“What's the big idea?” 

. 

The custom-order jobs were animato- 
mechanical simulacra. They were designed 
to speak and act like the famous cartoon 
Creations of a multimillionaire artist who 
late in life, in the latter half of the 20th 
Century, had opened a series of gigantic 
amusement parks. 

Once, these giant theme parks had 
employed persons in costumes to act as 
hosts. Then the corporation that had run 
things after the cartoonist's death had seen 
the wisdom of building robots. 

The simulacra would be less expensive 
in the long run, would never be late for 
work, could be programmed to speak 
many languages and would never try to 
pick up the clean-cut boys and girls who 
visited the parks. 

These three had been built to be host 
robots in the third and largest of the parks, 
the one separated by an ocean from the 
two others. 

. 

The tallest of them had started as a car- 
toon dog but had become upright and had 
acquired a set of baggy pants, balloon 
shoes, a sweat shirt, a black vest and white 
gloves. On his head was a miniature car- 
penter's hat; long ears hung from it. He 
had two prominent incisors in his muzzle. 
He stood almost two meters tall and 
answered to the name GUF. 

"The second, a little shorter, was a white 
duck with a bright-orange billand feet and 
a blue-and-white sailor’s tunic and cap. 
He had large eyes with little cuts out of the 
upper right corners of the pupils. He was 
naked from the waist down and was the 
only one of the three without gloves. He 
answered to the name DUN. 

The third and smallest, just over a 
meter, was a rodent. He wore a red-bibbed 
play with two large gold buttons at the 
waistline. He was shirtless and had shoes 
like two pieces of bread dough. His tail 
was long and thin, like a whip. His bare 
arms, legs and chest were black, his face a 
pinkish-tan. His white gloves were espe- 
cially prominent. His most striking feature 
was his ears, which rotated on a track, first 
one way, then the other, so that seen from 
any angle, they could look like featureless 
black circles. 

His name was MIK. His eyes, like those 
of GUF, were large, and the pupils were 
big rcund dots. His nose ended in a perfect 
sphere of polished onyx. 

° 


"Well," said MIK, brushing dust from 
his body, "I guess we'd better, huh-huh, 
get to work.” 


“Uh-hyuk,” said GUF. “Won't be 

many people at thuh Park in weather like 
thiyus." 
‘Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” quacked DUN. 
"Rain! Wak, wak, wak!’ He ran out 
through a huge crack in the factory wall 
through which streamed rain and mist. 

MIK and GUF came behind, GUF 
ambling with his hands in his pockets. 
MIK followed him, ranging in the ultravi- 
olet and infrared, getting the feel of the 
landscape through the rain. “You'd have 
thought, huh-huh, they might have sent а 
truck over or something,” he said. “I guess 
we'll have to walk.” 

"I didn’t notice anyone at thuh 
facktry," said GUF. "Even if it was a day 
off, yuh'd think some of thuh workers 
would give unceasingly of ther time, 
because, after all, thuh means of 
produckshun must be kept in thuh hands 
of thuh workers, uh-hyuk!” 

GUF's specialty was communicating 
with visitors from the large totalitarian 
countries to the west of the Park. He was 
especially well versed in dialectical mate- 
rialism and correct Mao thought. 

As abruptly as it had started, the storm 
ended. Great ragged gouts broke in the 
clouds, revealing fast-moving cirrus, а 
bright-blue sky, the glow ofa warming sun. 

MIK looked around, consulting his pro- 
gramming. “That way, guys!” he said, 
unsure of himself. There were no familiar 
landmarks. All around them was rubble, 
and far away in the other direction was a 
sluggish ocean. 


. 

It was getting dark. The three sat on a 
pile of concrete. 

"Looks like thuh Park is closed," said 
GUF. 

МЇК sat with his hands under his chin. 
“This just isn't right, guys,” he said. "We 
were supposed to report to the program- 
ming hut to get our first day's instructions. 
Now we can't even find the Park!” 

“Well, uh-hyuk,” said GUF, “I seem 
tuh remember we could get ahalt of thuh 
satellite in a 'mergency.” 

“Sure!” said MIK, jumping to his feet 
and pounding his fist into his glove. 
“That's it! Let's see, what frequency was 
that?” 

“Six point five oh four,” said DUN. He 
looked eastward. “Maybe I'll go to the 
ocean.” 

“Better stay here whiles we find 
somethin' out,” said GUF. 

“Well, make it snappy," said DUN. 

MIK tuned in the frequency and broad- 
cast the Park’s call letters. 

. 

“Zzzzzz. What? HOOSAT?” 

“Uh, this is MIK, a simulacrum at the 
Park. We're trying to get hold of one of the 
other Parks for, huh-huh, instructions.” 

“In what language do you wish to com- 
municate?” asked the satellite. 


“Oh, sorry, huh-huh. We speak Japa- 


nese to each other, but we'll switch over to 
Artran if that’s easier for you.” GUF and 
DUN tuned in also. 

“It’s been a very long while since any- 
one spoke with me from down there.” The 
satellite’s well-modulated voice snapped 
and popped. “If you must know,” 
HOOSAT continued, “it’s been a while 
since anyone contacted me from any- 
where. I can't say much for the stability of 
my orbit, either. Once, I was forty thou- 
sand kilometers up, very stable. . . .” 

“Could you put us through to one of the 
other Parks or maybe the studio itself, if 
you can do that? We'd, huh-huh, like to 
find out where to report for work.” 

“ГЇЇ attempt it," said HOOSAT. There 
was a pause and some static. “Predictably, 
there’s no answer at any of the locations.” 

“Where are thuh folks?” asked GUF. 

“I don’t know. We satellites and moni- 
toring stations used to worry about that 
frequently. Something happened to them.” 

“What?” asked all three robots at once. 

“Hard to comprehend,” said HOOSAT. 
“Ten or fifteen centuries ago. Very noisy in 
all spectra, then silence. Most of the 
ground stations ceased functioning within 
a century of that." 

"Then there was a burst of fuzzy static. 

“Hello? HOOSAT?" asked the satellite. 
“It's been along time since anyone. ...” 

“Ivs still us!” said MIK. “The simu- 
lacra from the Park. We——” 

“Oh, that's right. What can I do for 
you?" 

“Tell us where the people went.” 

“T have no idea.” 

“Well, where can we find out?” asked 
MIK. 

“You might try the library." 

“Where’s that?” 

"Let me focus in. I can give you the 
coordinates. Do you have standard naviga- 
tional programming?" 

“Boy, do we!” said MIK. 

“Well, here's what you do. . . .” 

. 

“I'm sure there used to be many books 
here,” said MIK. “It all seems to have 
turned to powder, though, doesn't it?” 

“Doggone wizoo-wazoo waste of time,” 
said DUN. He sat on one of the piles of 
dirt in the large broken-down building of 
which only one massive wall still stood. 
The recent rain had turned the meter-deep 
powder on the floor into a papier-máché 
sludge. 

“I guess there's nothing to do but start 
looking," said MIK. 


. 

“Hey, MIK, looka this!” yelled GUE. 
He came running with a steel box. "T 
found this just over there.” 

The box was plain, unmarked. There 
was a heavy lock to which MIK applied 
various pressures. 

"It's, huh-huh, stuck.” 

“Gimme that!” yelled DUN. He 

(continued on page 152) 


GOES ON 
fashion By KOLS WAYNE 


relax. three cooling looks 
are coming your way 


or TOWN, summer in the city— 
and now that you've tried 
skinny-dipping under an open 
fire hydrant and deep-sixing yourself 
in a vat of gelato, maybe it's time you 
made a smart cool move and updated 
the clothes sticking to your back. 
Summer is the season for unlined and 
unconstructed sports coats in fabrics 
such as cotton and linen. Being more 
absorbent than synthetic blends, nat- 
ural materials keep you cool and 
rumpled-looking. When the tempera- 
ture hits 80, nobody wants to wear a 
tie that’s knotted like a hangman’s 
noose, so loosen up and unbutton 
your collar, too. Hot summer light 
colors include the neutral hues worn 
together, or try mixing beige tones 
with gray or indigo for a dressy hot- 
summer-night look. The heat goes on. 


Right: The dark side of summer—a 
navy-linen shirt jacket, $170, worn 


$100, and linen slacks, $110, all by 
Ron Chereskin; plus a leather belt, 
by Just Jamie, $55; and c watch, 
by Emerich Meerson, about $130. 


The crisp, clean, summery look of 
linen on linen. His unlined window- 
pane-plaid linen. jacket, $265, 
complements double-pleated 
` slacks, $1 dress s 


[s 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY 
KEN CHERNUS 


The silk road to style—o gra: 

Shantung blazer, $450, si 

tissue-linen shirt, $170, апа linen 
slacks, $150, all by Andrew Fezza. For 
contrast, he's added a loosely knot- 
ted plaid cotton tie, by Rob Davis 
for Vicky Davis, $20. His sueded- 
leather belt, by Just Ja: $50. 


BREATHE DEEP 


be wary, chuck. 
this old gambler 
plays for high stakes 


fiction By DONALD E. WESTLAKE 


LACK STITCHING over the left 

pocket of his white-silk shirt 

read cHUCK in cursive script. 
His pale, wiry arms were crossed 
below the name; his large Adam's 
apple moved arrhythmically above. 
Before him on the small lima-bean- 
shaped green table the 200 playing 
cards were fanned out, awaiting 
fresh players. 

It was 3:30 in the morning and 
fewer than half the tables in the 
main casino were staffed. A noisy 
crowd at one crap table gave an 
illusion of liveliness, but only four 
of the seven blackjack dealers on 
duty had any action. Chuck had 
stood here at the ten-dollar-limit 
table for nearly an hour; it was 
looking as though he wouldn't deal 
2 single round before his break. 

“Hey, Chuck." 

At the left extreme of the table 
stood a small old man in a coors 
cap, smiling, hands in raincoat 
pockets. The raincoat hung open, 
showing a white shirt, a sloppily 
knotted dark, thin tie and a bit of 
dark jacket. The old man had 
shaved recently but not well, and 
his gray eyes were red-rimmed and 
merry. The dealer saw not much 
hope here, but he said, “А game, 
sir?" 

“Maybe in a while, Chuck," the 
old man said and grinned as 
though he were thinking of some 
joke. “Did you know I came out of 
the hospital just this morning?” 

The dealer, his foot near the but- 
ton that calls security, looked at the 
old man. He said, “1з that right, 
sir?” 

“Sun City Hospital, right here in 
Las Vegas, Nevada. Fixed me up 
just fine. No more broken bones.” 
That I-know-a-joke grin appeared 

in. 

“Sir, if you’re not interested in 
playing— 

“Oh, I could be, Chuck,” the old 
man said. “1 might Ье.” 

The night was slow, and the deal- 
er's break was due in just a few 
minutes. So he didn't touch his foot 
to the button that calls security. 
“Take your time, sir,” he said. 

“That's all I've got,” the old man 
said, but then he grinned again. “I 
love the big Strip hotels at night.” 

“You do, sir?” 

“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I hate 
Vegas, you (continued on page 178) 


here's our hope for the future 


тне PARTY didn't start until Hope Marie Carlton got there. 
Hope brings it with her, you see. Mostly legs and ramrod 
straight, she strode through the crowd greeting people 
with a laugh and a hug, like a salesman or a politician, 
though she had nothing to sell and wasn't up for any 
office. It’s as though she has trouble finding a reason not to 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD FEGLEY 


98 


be happy and wants to spread the word. 

“Im always out to have fun,” she 
admits. “When people say, “Hope, you 
always look as if you're having a good 
time, I say, “Yeah, I go everywhere with 
myself? > 

When you finally talk privately with 
her, you find she's no Pollyanna, just 
determined not to let anything get her 
down. 

“I mean, it's the way the cards fall, isn't 
it? It's as if Pm in the middle of a game 
right now and I don't know what's going 
to happen next, which is exciting and very 
scary. 

“I ran computers for a while and I 
almost ripped my hair out. I couldn't 
stand it. I'd go crazy sitting there looking 
at that screen and punching in invoices all 
day. One day, I got up, threw that stack of 
papers and said, ‘I’ve had it" I walked out 
and got on my horse and went for a four- 
and-a-half-hour ride, and I was fine. And 
as long as you don't put me back in that 
office, I'll be fine.” 

There's not much chance of that hap- 
pening. Hope, who most of her life has 
called Tampa home, is firmly established 
as a model there and, with several years’ 
experience to her credit, is planning to 
tackle Los Angeles next. After all, she's 
"already the big one-nine. I’m getting 
old," Hope says, only halfjoking. “Гуе 
been working since I was 13. My mother 
used to model in New York when Í was a 
baby, and I started doing little-girl fashion. 
shows and stuff like that. 

“I was an only child and I was spoiled. 
But I was not spoiled rotten. Í got things 
that I wanted, but I was always expected 
to save up half the money for them myself 
first. That teaches you responsibility. 

“When I was in high school, I was 
working, going to school and taking care of 
horses; that's all I did. At one time, I was 
responsible for seven horses. But when 


At a celebration of her 19th birthday in 
Playboy Studio West (top left), Hope's 
infectious good humor—see examples 
opposite—leads our photo staff astray. 
But later, in a preflight briefing on the 
runway and in the air, she’s all business. 
"T've been taking flying lessons now for 
about six months. I’m getting ready to 
solo and I'll have my license within the 
next couple of months. Danger? I don't 
even think about it up there. I think the 
joy and the adrenaline override fear.” 


P 


modeling got serious, I had to give it up. It 
was just taking too much of my time. I 
always bit off more than I could chew. But 
that teaches you; it makes you learn. 
“Besides, I deal with pressure really 
well. I think I’m better under pressure. It 


keeps me going, like having somebody 
light a fire under me.” 

Hope hardly needs such encourage- 
ment. She gets such a charge out of what 
she’s doing that dragging her away from it 
would seem to be the problem. 


“When Pm in front of that camera, I 
become somebody else. It’s like a release, 
and I don’t think of anything else but what 
Pm doing. 1 just go crazy. I love it! 

he only thing that really makes me 
miserable is coming to a standstill 


"T'd like to marry when I'm betueen 24 and 28. 
That gives you time lo get the itch out of your 
britches, be ready for a commitment. Boys have 
never really been a problem for me. Sometimes they're. 
a pain, but I don't think I could live without men 
and I don’t think they could live without me, either.” 101 


PLAYBOY'S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH 


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PLAYBOY'S PARTY JOKES 


les an excellent program,” said the computer 
salesman extolling the new home-computer 


ime. 

“But how can a computer play strip poker?” 
asked the dubious customer. 

“It displays a picture of a girl on the screen,” 
explained the salesman, “and every time she 
loses а hand, she removes another article of 
clothing.” 

“And what happens when there's nothing 
left" 

The clerk leaned forward and whispered, 
“The computer goes down.” 


Washington wags report that capital callgirls 
and military-hardware contractors have a lot in 
common: They both charge $100 per screw. 


А; they drove to work together, one old friend 
turned to the other and described a strange 


dream he'd had the night before. “I was twelve 
years old and it was my birthday,” he began. “I 
asked my mother if she knew what day it was, 
and she said, ‘Yes, and here is twenty dollars to 
go to Disneyland-— ” 

“That's funny," his friend interrupted. “I had 
a strange dream last night, too. А beautiful, 
naked redhead got into bed with me; Eres a gor- 
geous, naked blonde began crawling into bed, 
too. I didn't know what to do.” 

"Why didn't you call me?" his friend asked. 

“I did call you,” he replied, “but your mother 
said you had gone to Disneyland.” 
fe must have been a watchman in an organic- 

er warehouse who said that waste was a 

terrible thing to mind. 


Though at times sex is sin,” mused Miss Grillo, 
As she eyed the guy nude from her pillow, 
“Your equipment's so small 
That it’s no sin at all— 
I would term it a mere peccadillo." 


Word has reached us about a pepe gum young 
lady whose nickname is Federal Express. Wi 

she's headed for a date's apartment, it's N 
lutely, positively guaranteed that she'll be 
there overnight. 


Hearing that hypnotism might cure his impo- 
tence, the young man visited a local practitioner. 
Every week for six months, the hypnotist waved 
his watch and intoned, “You're getting drow- 
зу... it's getting bigger you're getting 
drowsy . . it's getting bigger.” Finally, secing no 
improvement, the frustrated young man quit. 
"I'm worse off than ever," he complained to a 
friend. “Not only am I still unable to get it up, 
but every time I sce a watch commercial, my 


balls fall asleep." 


Late опе afternoon, a man placed a call to his 
home. A strange woman answered. 


" she replied. 

“We don't have a maid.” 

“Your wife hired me today.” 

“OK, is my wife there?” 

“Yes,” answered the maid, “but she’s upstairs 
entertaining her boyfriend.” 

‘The furious husband paused a moment, then 
said, “Would you like to make a quick hundred 
thousand dollars?” 

“Yes, of course,” said the maid. 

“Then go to the hall closet, get my shotgun 
and shoot my tramp wife and the bastard she's 
with.” 

The man heard footsteps going to the hall 
closet, then the sound of the maid’s climbing the 
stairs. A moment later, two loud shots rang out. 

‘The maid returned to the phone and asked, 
“What do you want me to do with the bodies?” 

“Throw them into the swimming pool,” 
ordered the aggrieved husband. 

“What pool?” 

“Uh, is this 555-7749?” 


Our Unabashed Dictionary defines gay cokehead 
as a toot fairy. 


This crazy Army sergeant sneaked me into his 
tank,” giggled the town sexpot to her girlfriend, 
“and then we fucked our brains out all through 
the Fourth-of July parade!” 

“That must have been exciting.” 

“PI say! Pd never been in a tank before!” 


= 


White rummaging through his wife's dresser 
drawers, the farmer discovered three soybeans 
and an envelope containing $24 in cash. 

When asked about the curious items, his wife 


been faithful, either, and was, therefore, inclined 
to forgive and forget a few moments of weakness 
in his wife. "I'm curious, though," he said. 
“Where the twenty-four dollars come 
from?” 

“Oh, that,” his wife replied. 
beans hit eight dollars a 


“Well, when soy- 
shel, I sold out.” 


Heard a funny one lately? Send it on a post- 
card, please, to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY, 
919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 
60611. $50 will be paid to the contributor whose 
card is selected. Jokes cannot be returned. 


“I don't like your room . . . I don’t like your Бей. . . I don't like 
your underwear. Let's see the vest." 


11 


112 


EVER SINCE Tom Wolfe's book was pub- 
lished, the question I'm asked most often 
and which always annoys me is whether ог 
not I think Гуе got The Right Stuff. I 
know that golden trout have the right stuff, 
and Pve seen a few gals here and there 
who I'd bet had it in spades, but those 
words seem meaningless when used to 
describe a pilot’s attributes. The question 
implies that a guy who has the right stuff 
was born that way. I was born with un- 
usually good eyes and coordination. 1 
was mechanically oriented, understood 
machines easily. My nature was to stay 
cool in tight spots. Is that the right stuff? 
All I know is, I worked my tail off to learn 
how to fly, and worked hard at it all the 
way. And in the end, the one big reason 1 
was better than average as a pilot was that 
I flew more than anybody else. 

As a kid, I never dreamed of being an 
aviator. I was a pool hustler from the West 
Virginia hollers. I saw my first airplanc 
close up when a Beechcraft bellied into a 


the real stuff about the right stuff, from the man who knows 


memoir By CHUCK YEAGER and LEO JANOS 


MERICAN HERO 


cornfield on the Mud River. I was 15 and 
stopped by on my bike to see the wreck 
before heading out to the county poor 
farm, where I helped out on Saturday 
afternoons, shaving the old codgers. 
Besides running chores, playing Kelly 
pool in the pool hall or poker under a cov- 
егей bridge at the edge of town and catting 
around with three or four different gals, 
there wasn’t a helluva lot going on in my 
life in the summer of 1941. I had my 
diploma from Hamlin High School tucked 
in a drawer somewhere, and I fished it out, 
together with my birth certificate proving 
I was 18, when an Army Air Corps 
recruiter came to town. I enlisted for a 
two-year hitch. I thought I might enjoy it 
and see some of the world. Dad never 
preached at us, and I can recall him giving 
me only two pieces of advice: Never buy а 
pickup truck that wasn't built by General 
Motors and—on the day I left for the 
Service—*Son, don't gamble." Hc hadn't. 


been pleased with a job I'd had sweeping 


up and racking balls at the pool hall for 
ten bucks a month, while picking up side 
money hustling games. 

I became an airplane mechanic. Grow- 
ing up around truck engines and drilling- 
equipment generators, I was one of the few 
kids in town who could take apart a car 
motor and put it back together again. Dad 
was an expert mechanic, and I just under- 
stood motors—a natural ability, like hav- 
ing exceptional eycs and coordination to 
be a crack shot. Hand a rifle to a hillbilly 
and he'll hit a bull’s-eye every time. So, 
without knowing it or even caring, I had 
the talents needed for flying in combat. 
But after taking my first airplane ride, Pd 
rather have crawled across country than 
go back up. I took off for a spin with a 
maintenance officer flight-testing a ship 1 
serviced and threw up all over the back 
seat, staggering out of that damned thing 
as miserable as I'd ever been. But teenag- 
ers blot out the past when thc present 
scemsappealing. (continued on page 118) 


ILLUSTRATION BY HERB DAVIDSON 


PLACO 
[ЗҮ DESIEN 
a magical mirrored. 


audiolvideo hideaway in 
the suburbs of manhattan 


Playboy by Design, a feature that 

will be the open-sesame to some of 
the most exciting rooms in the world. 
Rather than explore every facet of a home, 
it will be a tip sheet filled with architec- 
tural and furnishing ideas that should 
spark some notions of how you can update 
your own digs. Take the room pictured 
here. Designed by Anthony Antine in 
association with Marc Polo, it’s a van- 
ishing act done with mirrors, and what 
disappears is the five-foot Mitsubishi 
front-projection television screen when 
matching sets ofmirrored bifold doors are 
closed. The companion projector, dis- 
guised as a lacquered cocktail table, sits 
directly across from the screen. Six 
brushed-stainless-steel columns function- 
ally anchor the room’s design: Two house 
a pair of 6'8'-tall Beveridge speakers, a 
third is outfitted as a bar and the remain- 
ing three are for storage. It’s a sexy, sleek 
space that's great for а movie screening or 
a night of quiet reading by the fire. 


(^ LOOKING AT our new baby, 


MU "Nm 


PRODUCED BY PHILIP MAZZURCO 


Above: To save space, the room's audio com- 
ponents were vertically flush-mounted into a 
countertop opposite the Mitsubishi giant-screen 
TV. Among the oudio exotico: a Mork Levinson 
emp ond preamp, a Sequerra tuner ond а 
Eumig cassette deck. Heavy audio metol! 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD IZUI 


116 


eddie cochran didn’t know it, 
but there is a cure 
for the summertime blues 


НЕ 
SUMMERTIME 
BREWS 


IN SUMMER, when the sun is still high, a 
glass of beer naturally comes to mind 
Beer is sociable. It is also decidedly 
American—in a melting pot sort of 
way. It has come to our shores along with 
the rest of us. The hop is the product 
of some promiscuity; its distant rela- 
tions include the grape, Cannabis and 
asparagus—a hedonistic family, indeed. 
Eating hop shoots is believed to purify 
the blood, and the custom dates back to 
Roman times. As a tradition, it is not big 
in the New World, but you never can 
tell. Americans may have to make do 
with asparagus. Served in a light, buttery 
omelet, with a glass of a dry, aromatic, 
pale Belgian import such as Duvel (Devil, 
in Flemish), it makes a sinfully luxurious 
Sunday-brunch dish. 

Another new import in the American 
market, also from Belgium, is Sudden 
Death (more seductively, the label is 
in Flemish: Mort Subite). It’s not an espe- 
cially strong beer, but it ás exotic— 
cherries are macerated in the brew during 
fermentation. No fewer than four rival 
labels of Belgian cherry beer, varietally 
known as kriek, are now being imported 
into the U.S. They may be exotic, but they 
clearly have a following, and they are the 
definitive summertime brews, with their 
pink-champagne color and tart, sharply 
quenching palate. Indeed, in Belgium they 
are customarily served only in summer. 

German imports reflect a nation that 
has special beers for every season and a 
continuous calendar of celebrations at 
which to drink (continued on page 190) 


drink By MICHAEL JACKSON 


ILLUSTRATION EY JOHN O'LEARY 


PLAYBOY 


AMERICAN HERO minua fon tege 112) 


“You're whipping through a desert canyon at 300 
miles an hour, your belly barely scraping the rocks.” 


I saw a notice announcing a “flying ser- 
geant” program. I'd take my chances with 
flying to become a sergeant: Three stripes 
and you were out of pulling K.P. and 
guard duty. I applied. 

The war was only months old when I 
was accepted. There were just a few of us 
enlisted men—the rest were college boys, 
cadets who would become commissioned 
officers when they received their aviator's 
wings. At first, I worried about keeping up. 
with guys who were a little older and a lot 
better educated than I was, but once we 
took off in a trainer, we were all equal. I 
got sick the first few flights but quickly 
overcame it. Because I was well coordi- 
nated, I had less trouble than most han- 
dling a stick and rudder. But it was hard 
work learning to fly and, like everyone 
else, I sweated through my first solo and 
bounced in for a landing in one piece. 

Flying became fun. I knew what I was 
doing in the cockpit and understood the 
airplane. In only a month, I graduated 
from being airsick even while flying level 
to actually enjoying spins and dives. Being 
cocky and competitive, I began bouncing 
other students and staging mock dog- 
fights. I could line up on air or ground tar- 
gets before others in the class even saw 
them. My instructor knew who was best in 
the group, and in the end, I was the one he 
recommended to become a fighter pilot. I 
was thrilled. 

. 

March 1943. You're whipping through a 
desert canyon at 300 miles an hour, your 
belly barely scraping the rocks and sage- 
brush, your hand on the throttle of a P-39 
fighter. It's a crystal-clear morning on the 
desert of western Nevada, and the joy of 
fiying—the sense of speed and exhilara- 
tion 20 feet above the deck—makes you so 
damned happy that you want to shout for 
joy. A hillock rises ahead, and you ease 
back, skim over the top of it, dropping 
down above cottonwoods lining the bank 
of a stream. You feel so lucky, so blessed to 
be a fighter pilot. Nearly 100 of us are test- 
ing our skill and courage by leaving prop 
marks on the dirt roads, stampeding graz- 
ing cattle (a few angry ranchers cven take 
pot shots at us) and raising the shingles off 
ranch houses. Swooping over the desert 
like a horde of metal locusts, we practice 
for strafing runs, the most dangerous mis- 
sions, which will cventually kill many of 
us. Our instructors warn us to get down on 
the deck as low as we can, staying below 
the tree line, where enemy machine guns 
can't target a clear shot. 

That was Tonopah, Nevada, where 30 


18 fledgling pilots began six months of inten- 


sive training to become a combat fighter 
squadron—the 363rd. We lived sur- 
rounded by sand dunes in tar-paper 
shacks belching black smoke from the oil- 
burning stoves that warmed only them- 
selves on cold desert nights. The wind 
never stopped blowing and the chow was 
awful, but none of us complained. We flew 
from dawn to dusk, six flights а day, six 
days a week, dogfighting, buzzing and 
practicing gunnery. We crawled exhausted 
into the sack at ten and straggled to break- 
fast at 4:30 am., taking off on our first fight 
just as dawn broke. I logged 100 hours of 
flying that first month. Hog heaven. 

Once I was а fighter pilot, I couldn't 
imagine being anything else. We were hell- 
raising fighter jocks with plenty of swag- 
ger. When we weren't flying, we zipped on 
our leather flight jackets, which told the 
world who we were, and crowded into Bud 
Anderson's 1939 Ford convertible and 
drove into Tonopah, a wide-open silver- 
mining town. On paydays, we crowded 
around the blackjack tables of the 
Tonopah Club, drank ourselves blind on 
fifths of rotgut rye and bourbon, then stag- 
gered over to the local cat house. Miss 
Taxine, the madam, tried to keep a fresh 
supply of gals, so we wouldn’t get bored 
and become customers of Lucky Strike, a 
cat house in Mina, about 70 miles down 
the road. But we went to Mina anyway, 
wrecked the place, and the sheriff ran us 
out of town. The next morning, a P-39 
strafed Mina’s water tower. 

In late June, we left Nevada to begin 
training in bomber-escort and coastal- 
patrol operations at Santa Rosa, Califor- 
nia. The morning we left from the train 
depot, Taxine and the gals came down 
with sandwiches, doughnuts and hot coffee 
and gave us a heroes’ send-off, For us, the 
war was drawing ever closer. 

Oroville, California, was the next stop 
on our training schedule. My first day in 
town, I went over to the local gymnasium 
to try to arrange a U.S.O. dance—a way 
for our guys to meet the local girls. I 
walked the length of an enormous gym toa 
small office where a very pretty brunette 
was seated behind a desk. Her name was 
Glennis Dickhouse. I asked her if she 
could arrange a dance that evening for 
about 30 guys. She looked so annoyed that 
I thought she might throw me out. 

“You expect me to whip up a dance and 
find 30 girls on three hours’ notice?” 

“No,” I said, "you'll need to come up 
with only 29, because I want to take you.” 

Glennis did it. 

. 


Glennis remembers: 1 really don't know 
why Chuck appealed to me so much, but 
obviously he did. He was very skinny in 
those days, and his grammar was just 
atrocious—because of that West Virginia 
accent, 1 barely understood every third 
word he spoke, I had dated a few soldiers 
but never a fighter pilot. I think that really 
impressed me, even if he was the most jun- 
ior officer in his squadron. But I also 
sensed that he was a very strong and deter- 
mined person—a poor boy who had 
started with nothing and would show the 
world what he was really made of. That 
was the kind of man I hoped to marry. 

We finally got together on his final 
weekend of training in Casper, Wyoming, 
before he shipped out for overseas. The 
entire group, all three squadrons, had a 
big party in a hotel in downtown Casper. 1 
danced with everyone in his squadron. 
"The men were confined to the base after 
the party until they shipped out on Mon- 
day morning. Chuck sneaked out to stay 
with me. When I returned home and went 
to work, one of the girls looked at me 
rather strangely. “What on earth hap- 
pened to you?" she asked. "Look in the 
mirror." My face was a mass of tiny red. 
pimples. I had chicken pox. I had to laugh 
thinking that through Chuck, I had spread 
chicken pox among all those quarantined 
fliers. 

Chuck called me the day he left. As the 
maintenance officer, he stayed behind for а 
few days to help pack and move equip- 
ment. He said he had loaded 500 pounds 
of Christmas candy for children into the 
washing machines they were taking to 
England. Then he left for New York to 
catch up with the squadron. He wrote reg- 
ularly from England, telling me he had 
named his fighter Glamorous Glennis. 

. 

Clarence E. "Bud" Anderson—leading 
ace of the 363rd, with 17 kills—remembers: 
Chuck Yeager is my closest friend. Our 
bonds are firm and deep and were forged 
while we flew together in combat. 

He was a standout pilot and character 
from the day I met him in Tonopah. He 
flew like a demon and was always taking 
the calculated risks that are the essence of 
his personality. We all liked to buzz, but 
Chuck buzzed a few feet lower than the 
rest of us. He was aggressive and competi- 
tive, but awfully skillful, too. In combat, 
he didn’t charge blindly into a gaggle of 
Germans, but with the advantage of hav- 
ing sharp eyes that could see forever, he set 
up his attack to take them by surprise 
when the odds were in his favor. And when 
Yeager attacked, he was ferocious. There 
wasn’t a pilot in the squadron, including a 
few who didn’t like him, who didn’t want 
Yeager close by in a dangerous mission. 

. 

On October 12, 1944, leading the group 
ona bombing escort over Bremen, I scored 
five victories—the first ace in a day. Í take 

(continued on page 166) 


119 


“Oh, darling, Mr. Simmons has just finished 
our soaking tub, and guess what? He’s not going to soak us as 
much as his original bid.” 


Bu 
we 
iM | 


lad 


ARS 


ana mnn? 


article By PAUL SLANSKY 


ATE MY BRAIN 


but, boy, did it open my eyes 


RESIDENT REAGAN was at his ranch, sit- 

ting at a desk outdoors in the mom- 

ing fog. He had just signed a tax-cut 
bill, and he was the soul of amiability as 
he fielded questions from the press. It was 
August, and everyone was delighted to be 
in Santa Barbara instead of Washington. 
The President's dog strolled over. 

Three thousand miles away, in my 
Manhattan apartment, I watched this 
scene on my 17-inch Sony as I unpacked 
my new video-cassette recorder—a JVC 
VIDSTAR—and removed it from its Sty- 
rofoam cocoon. 

For a long time, I’d been telling myself 
that I didn’t need a VCR. I was a movie- 
goer, a rock-’n’-roll fan, a reader of news- 
papers, magazines and books. Except for 
baseball games and the odd assassination, 
I wasn’t much of a TV viewer. I'd never 
seen M*A*S*H or All in the Family. Y 
couldn’t have cared less who shot J.R. I 
felt my blood pressure rise at the mere 
mention of Fred Silverman. What would I 
do with a machine designed to retrieve 
and store that which was created to be 
utterly disposable? 

Still, I wanted one. Friends who owned 
them boasted of watching ten straight 
hours of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, of 
renting such movies as Dr. Strangelove and 
Annie Hall, of fast-forwarding at triple 
speed through (continued on page 144) 


SCULPTURE BY MICHAEL O'BRIEN 


121 


a mere mortal will get spiked every time 


sports 


By MIKE SAGER 


AYOLLEYBALL(50DS 


OU'RE gonna grovel!” 


“Well, ah——” 
“You're finished!” 
E 


“You might as well stick a 
fork in yourself, "cause 
you're done, bud, you are дооосопе!” 

Indiana Ноу is on a rampage. Stomping 
his size 13s, spilling Coors on the pile car- 
pet, rocking the whole wheelbase of a Ford 
Chieftain motor home. Poodle the pro- 
moter is twitching. A tiny nervous pulse at 
the corner of his eye. He’s sitting at the 
dinette, behind a mound of empty cans. 
Hov’s looming over him, shooting at Poo- 
dle with his index finger and thumb, like a 
kid playing guns. Only Hov's not playing 
guns. He's playing life. What he's shooting 
is L for loser, L for anyone who isn't as tall 
and tan and talented as he, anyone who 
doesn’t get laid as much as he, anyone at 
all who can't sky high over a net and whip 
arm snap wrist smack palm, wail a 
12-ounce ball so it blurs and then bounces 
in the sand. 

This is Indiana Hov, Tim Hovland, Mr. 
Southern California. Six feet, five, 200 
pounds. Blond, blue-eyed, perfectly jawed. 
Overwhelming choice for best buns 


on the beach. Twenty-five years old, 
$100,000 a year. Playing volleyball. 

But he’s not playing today. 

“No waaaaaay!” 

Indiana Hov is on strike. 

“No money, no Hov” is what he told 
Poodle, the promoter of two-man pro 
beach volleyball. Then he told him, “Eat 
shit and die.” Put Frick and Frack against 
Larry and Moc in the finals of the world 
championship. Put your mother out there. 
Hov's not touching sand. Not without 
double the purse and player sanction of all 
events. Not until you open the books on 
this pop stand. Say no? Righ-ti-o. You 
don’t need Hov, he don’t need you. 

My beach, my girl, my way, fuck off. 

“Now get the hell out of my motor 
home!” 

Poodle isn’t budging. He's just as stub- 
born as Hov. Last time they tangled, Poo- 
dle earned his nickname. Hov threw him 
into a swimming pool at a motel in Fort 
Lauderdale. Poodle tried to retaliate and 
ended up splat on his back on concrete. 
Someone said it reminded him of a poodle 
attacking a great Dane. Then, as now, on 
this Friday morning in September, the first 
day of the 1984 Jose Cuervo World Cham- 
pionship of Beach Volleyball, Poodle is 
trying to make Hov remember who’s in 
charge. It was his idea to turn two-man 
into a professional sport. He created Hov. 
He created the volleyball gods. Without 
him, they'd still be playing for fun. 

And besides, even without Ноу, even 


without the other top gods, Poodle has 17 


ILLUSTRATION EY KNUKO Y. CRAFT 


teams signed to play in his tournament. 
Seven thousand fans are already in the 
bleachers at the Seaside Lagoon in King 
Harbor, Redondo Beach. And the bikini 
contest hasn't even started yet. 

Poodle doesn't have to listen to Hov. 
Right now, the sponsors are behind him. 
"They have a one-year contract with Poo- 
dle, so they have no choice. They've 
refused to negotiate with the players. 
They're backing Poodle all the way, so Poo- 
die is staying put. It’s not really Hov's mo- 
tor home, anyway. It belongs to A.M.C./ 
Renault, one of the sponsors of the tour. 
Ноу is Renault’s spokesplayer. In Hov's 
mind, though, he's here zn the motor 
home, so it’s his. He commandeered it 
because walking around in the hot sun, 
carrying a picket sign, doesn’t suit the 
defending world champion. 

Problem is, it doesn’t suit the sponsor, 
cither. Two hours ago, Wally the Renault 
rep got so pissed over the players’ strike 
that he threatened to take the keys to 
Hov’s Turbo Fuego. The car—like the 
personal appearances, per diems, flight 
allowances—is part of Hov’s contract. But 
so is playing volleyball. The big boys from 
Renault were supposed to be flying in for 


PLAYBOY 


this one. The motor home, the cases of 
Coors, the $20-an-hour bimbo in the cus- 
tom bikini with Renault’s logo, THE ONES TO 
WATCH, printed across the ass—all of this 
was for the bosses. 

But the players had to go and strike. 
And Wally had to phone the pale, flabby 
bosses in Detroit—on the very weekend 
that the United Auto Workers had closed 
13 General Motors plants—and tell them 
that the players here had walked out, too, 
that the barefoot guys who go to the beach 
for a living were marching around with 
semiliterate signs, shooing away fans, 
playing Solidarity Forever on a boom box. 

Wally didn’t dare tell them what Hov 
had done to Andy Fishburn. Wally had 
guaranteed Hov personally when he sold 
the sponsorship. Hov’s responsible, he 
told them. Hov’s got a degree in public 
relations from USC, he told them. How 
could he tell them now that when 
Fishburn, a former world champion him- 
self, decided to cross the picket line and 
play, Hov had threatened to piss in his 
Gatorade and to fuck his wife, then hocked 
the biggest, greenest lugie that anyone 
had ever seen onto the windshield of 
Fishburn’s car? The fact that Hov had a 
Renault towel wrapped around him when 
he did this didn’t help, either. 

So Wally threatened to take the car. 

And Hov ran to the Fuego, kicked in the 
turbo and roared off, not to return until 
he'd hidden the car in a garage in an alley 
six miles away. 

By the time Hov returned to make peace 
with Wally, to let Wally make peace with 
him, Wally had downed two double 
Dewar's and had started on the Coors. 
Hov took a seat in the motor home, started 
helping with the beers. Things were calm- 
ing down. 

Until Poodle came in, sat down at the 
dinette and said, “Look, Hov, can’t we 
talk about this thing like adults?” 


“Мо waaaaaay!” 


P 

Poodle’s real name is David Wilk. A for- 
mer PR major and student-body president. 
at Cal State Northridge, Wilk, 34, started 
professional two-man volleyball in 1976 
as a promotion for Beach Volleyball maga- 
zine. He and his partner, the magazine’s 
circulation director, advertised a two-day 
event, put up $5000 in prize money, drew 
30,000 fans. Following their success, they 
left the magazine, formed Event Concepts, 
went into volleyball full time. By 1984, 
they had built pro beach volleyball into 13 
tournaments and 500,000 fans in six 
states, [rom Florida to Hawaii, with a total 
purse of $200,000. Such sponsors as 
Cuervo, Renault, Miller High Life, Cop- 
pertone, Honda and Hobie were climbing 
all over one another to give money, to 
take part. 

By 1985, Event Concepts and Poodle 


124 Wilk were gone. Poodle the promoter was 


hanging up on long-distance calls from a 
national magazine. But the tour is still on, 
handled now by Group Dynamics, Inc., of 
Santa Monica and Tokyo, a proven inter- 
national PR concern. The tour has been 
expanded to 15 dates with the addition of 
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Wild- 
wood, New Jersey. The total purse has 
been raised to close to $300,000. Depend- 
ing upon whom you ask, the reason for 
Poodle’s ouster was the players’ strike, the 
work of an ambitious lawyer or a sudden 
change of allegiance by the sponsors, after 
the 1984 season, from Poodle to the players. 

In any case, the strike was the begin- 
ning of the end for Poodle, the beginning of 
a new beginning for the tour. Although 
Renault is now out, Bollé eyewear and 
G.M.C. will come aboard, and the other 
top sponsors are hanging in, looking for- 
ward to bigger exposure from a more 
experienced firm. Group Dynamics has 
handled Virginia Slims Tennis and Paul 
Masson Marathons and Volvo All- 
American Tennis. The owner of the firm, 
Jack Butefish, was a founding owner of the 
Quebec Nordiques and of the Interna- 
tional Track Association. His firm has 
handled accounts for Union Oil, Philip 
Morris and Seagram’s. 

It was only a matter of time before Poo- 
dle had to fall. Like a smalltime agent who 
found himself a superstar in a honky-tonk, 
he had created a monster. At first, the 
gods were happy: Someone was providing 
a crowd and a little money. Beat a pitcher 
of beer all to hell. But as the young years of 
the tour passed, the gods started realizing 
that they could demand as well as accept. 
They started realizing that two-man pro 
beach volleyball was more than just a 
game. It was the symbol of a lifestyle, the 
California lifestyle, the American Dream 
of the Eighties. 

Hold a tournament and here they come, 
straight from the Pepsi commercial, dis- 
posable income on parade. Two together 
on roller skates and two more riding skate 
boards, joggers in Norma Kamali and 
heavyhanders in Speedos, BMX bicycle 
tricksters and Fuji 12-speeders with sheep- 
skin saddles, each more beautiful, more 
tan, more blond or bunned or legged than 
the next. This is Southern California, 
Oneida of our times, capital of the king- 
dom of I. A place where headphones don’t 
disturb conversations and cars never get 
dirty. A place where people don’t care 
“How ya doin?" but always notice, “Ya 
lookin’ great!” 

String up six volleyball nets and offer 
some money, and you can have it all pack- 
aged to go. Zoom the horizon—a power- 
boat race. Pan the middle distance—a 
regatta of sloops. Cut close to the 
crowd—a guy from Playgirl interviewing 
potential centerfolds. A crew from Honda 
making commercials about scooters. А 
radio jock playing Trivial Pursuit, giving 


away Coke visors and Frisbees as prizes. A 
Coppertone-sample girl rubbing some 
Number 2 on a pectoral. The bimbo from 
Renault doing her crotch-to-camera-lens 
back bend, telling everyone within earshot 
that she also writes prose, poetry and 
songs. A guy with a ring in his left nipple 
guzzling beer. A giant balloon bottle of 
Cuervo Gold swaying in the breeze atop 
the refreshment stand. Cut, cut, cut to the 
California lifestyle, all of it under a sky as 
blue as tinted contacts, on a beach as 
rocky-fine as cocaine, next to an ocean 
as stirring as a Jacuzzi. 

All of it because Poodle Wilk and his 
partner knew a product when they saw 
one. "It couldn't lose," Wilk had said 
back in September in Redondo, at the 
Cuervo world championship, a time when 
he was happy to talk to reporters. “It’s 
free admission. It's at your favorite beach. 
You've got great-looking athletes, great- 
looking girls who come out to see the ath- 
letes and guys who come out to see the 
girls. It’s a day in the sun; you go for a 
swim, you drink a beer. It's the same thing 
these people would be doing anyway, but 
they've got a giant party going on all 
around them. And besides, you have some 
great volleyball, some amazing athletes.” 

"The athletes, of course, never have 
ordered things this way. To them, the mar- 
ketability hinges on the game. To them, 
beach volleyball is a test of strength and 
skill. A contest like tennis or golf, played 
by talented athletes. In high school, Hov 
was named first-team all—Los Angeles in 
football, basketball and volleyball. He was 
Southern California’s Athlete of the Year 
as a senior, beating out football 49er 
Ronnie Lott. Hov could have been quar- 
terback at Nebraska, strong forward at 
Houston. He could have been on the 1984 
gold-medal U.S. Olympic volleyball team. 
In fact, he was on the team for a while. But 
the coach wouldn't let the guys play on the 
beach. He imposed a curfew. Then he took 
some of the team to Utah in the dead of 
winter for Eastern-bloc training tech- 
niques. Hov was training in Ohio at that 
time, but for three weeks, the boys from 
California climbed rock faces, slept in 
igloos, went without food. They got cold. 
This period was the end of Olympic hopes 
for Hov and several others. The newspa- 
pers called it a “personality conflict.” 

During the winter, Hov and some of the 
others play indoor volleyball in Italy. Last 
year, Hov was M.V.P. of that league. 
Playing as an amateur, on a team spon- 
sored by a sportswear manufacturer, he 
made 40 grand, plus free car, meals, room, 
athletic-club membership. Hov's partner, 
Mike Dodd, also played in the Italian 
league for a year. Although Dodd, like the 
rest, grew up playing volleyball on the 
beaches, his first choice of sport was bas- 
ketball. He played college ball at San 

(continued on page 138) 


125 


Phil!" 


> 


these moods. 


e you in. 


“I kind of lik 


Ыз d 


MADNESS 


why stockings give a woman a leg up on the competition 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
BY ARNY FREYTAG 


Remember the joke in which, ofter 
a difficult and frustrating seduc- 
fion, he soys, “If I'd known you 
were o virgin, | would have taken 
more time,” and she replies, “If I'd 
known you had more time, | would 
have removed my panty hose”? 
Therein lies just one of the reasons 
we've olwoys preferred stockings 
(end the lacy garter belts often 
ottoched to them). Worn with or 
without underpants, they provide 


easy access ot love's crucial junc- 
tures. Everyone knows that wed- 
dings, for instance, ore deeply felt 
ceremonies for all involved. Yet, 
with stockings and sons under- 
pants, the bride at left odds new 
meaning to the term deeply felt. As 
for the groom, would he feel the 
same if he were feeling ponty 
hose? Stockings and garter belts 
also provide a classy touch to lody 
floshers (obove ond right) ond 
moke elevator quickies infinitely 
more manogeable than tights do. 
If you should try one, remember: 
Furs are optional, but foxes ore not. 


T€ 


£ 
A 
7 
5 
f 
H 

51 

a 


The faint whisper of silk stockings rubbing against eoch other when a woman walks past is a sound relished by the truly romantic mon, be- 
cause he realizes thot o woman who wears them is os romantic as he is. After all, stockings and garter belts are primordial props in male 


fantasy, ond a woman wha acknowledges that knows how to work her way into your imaginatian. The seemingly absent-minded lady 
above, for instance, is certain thet the bellhop will never forget her. Ten to ane, he won't ask for a tip, either. The view clone is priceless. 


Some women's legs fit their stockings so perfectly that the stockings can stay up without help. But in most cases, unsupported stockings oren't guaran- 
teed to do so unless worn as they ore by the inverted lady at left. Part of every young girl's first lesson in the hosiery arts includes learning where to 
attach her garters (not on the inner thigh, as the young miss with her rubber ducky, above, hos just discovered). Lesson two? Removing them, of course. 133 


Apart from their seductive connotations, stockings, particularly silk ones, have often been ossociated with opulence 
and elegance. Take the two ladies above, for instance. One can tell right away that they're upper-crust suburbanites 
‚out on the prowl for a bit of dangerous living. Note the subtle bid for attention in the top photo. And to what do 
such ladies resort when they can't find suitable companions? Garter fights, the high-class version of food fights. One 
must be extremely attentive to c women who wears stockings. Of course, if she displays her accouterments in a man- 
ner similar to that of the lady on the opposite page, paying attention will be effortless. Still, you can't toke her for 
granted. There are sharks out there who like stockinged legs as much as you do, as you'll see when you turn the page. 


PLAYBOY 


138 


ЗОШ ЕҮВАЦ (5005 


(continued from раве 124) 


"Some days he sees his broker. Some days he plays 
lennis. Some days he goes to lunch." 


Diego State, was drafted in the eighth 
round by the N.B.A. Clippers. Also on the 
tour are Karch Kiraly, M.V.P. of the gold- 
medal U.S. Olympic volleyball team, and 
Steve Timmons, another Olympic stand- 
out. Steve Obradovich, known as O.B., 
the Beast, played wide receiver on USC's 
1977 Rose Bowl team. He tried out for the 
Dolphins. 

These are athletes of some standing. 
Volleyball is a great sport. No one’s argu- 
ing that. But the hook of the sport is the 
lifestyle. That’s what the sponsors are 
banking on. That’s what Group Dynamics 
is banking on. And that’s where the gods’ 
talents really lie. Hov and Dodd and O.B. 
and the rest are Southern California, high 
priests of the way Madison Avenue tells us 
we should live—cars and women, beach 
and beer, board surfers and orange pop. 
Hov has no books in his condo in Manhat- 
tan Beach. He has two magazines. Both 
have his picture on the cover. He reads the 
sports pages and the financial pages and 
throws the rest of the paper away. He 
doesn’t own a watch. He doesn’t wear 
shoes. Some days he gets out of bed and 
tides his bike. Some days he sees his bro- 
ker. Some days he plays tennis. Some days 
he goes to lunch. Some days he practices 
volleyball. Some days he does two of those 
things. All of Tim Hovland’s time is 
Miller Time. He'd be a great commercial. 

The lifestyle, of course, is not new. The 
Beach Boys and Annette Funicello were 
telling America about it years ago. But it's 
only lately that it’s scuffed its thongs 
across the continent and become an aspi- 
ration. Just the thing America needs for 
the Eighties—a remake of Happy Days, set 
at the beach. 

The root of the lifestyle is a four-by-four, 
ten feet high and stuck in the sand. 
ball posts began appearing on the be 
of Southern California in the Thirü 
California interpretation of a Depression- 
era pool hall. But the lifestyle as we know 
it really blossomed in the happy vacuum 
of the latc Fifties, сапу Sixties. They had 
volleyball gods back then, too, amateur 
ancestors of the modern, professional kind. 
They lived in vans or under piers or at 
home with the folks if allowed. They made 
a little money picking up returnables on 
the beaches or slinging hash in the diners. 
They were the classic beach bums, later 
the classic beach hippies, They drove their 
cars onto the beach. They roasted wienies, 
played cards, necked. The surf pounded, 
the girls squealed, bongos were heard on 
the breeze. 

But mostly what they did, along the 


Coast from Sorrento to Long Beach, was 
play two-man volleyball. They played it 
from dawn until dark, honing the art of the 
dig, the pass, the spike, eating sand for 
nothing more than the thrill. There was an 
occasional trophy, a first-prize pitcher of 
beer from the Sorrento Grill, a dinner 
from the Wharf. 

Guys such as Ronnie Von Hagen, 62 
open-tournament wins, never won a nickel 
for greatness. Von Hagen didn’t drink, 
smoke or chase women. His parents gave 
him vitamins for Christmas. He lived todo 
nothing but play volleyball. Yet, a half 
mile from the beach, nobody knew his 
name. He couldn't have cared less. Von 
Hagen and the rest played to keep center 
court for the next game, to feel the hard 
throb of being best. 

These days, the volleyball gods sweat 
only for money, for the hard throb of being 
paid, being recognized, being loved. Top 
players are watching the stock market and 
investing in real estate. They're negotiat- 
ing personal-appearance fecs with spon- 
sors who want to beefcake up their images. 
Like the old-timers, they don’t have jobs. 
But they aren't living on returnable 
RCs, "They're living on purses and interest 
and per diems. Hov is no Moondoggie. 
His condo isn't made of palm fronds. 

His world view may be. He bets his 
dick, “no small wager,” that “70 percent 
of the people out on the beach know me. 
Maybe even 70 percent of the whole South 
Bay know me. When I started wearing 
striped trunks, everybody on the beach 
bought striped trunks. Í switched to plaid 
and now everybody's got plaid. Town the 
beach, me and Mike and Karch and those 
guys. We own the beach. We're like gods, 
fuckin’ gods, fuckin’ goooooods!” 

But hear Hov's declaration and you 
detect a little grit in the ego. This is why he 
and the rest of the major gods struck the 
Cuervo world championship, why they 
tried, and eventually succeeded in, ousting 
Poodle. As Hov and the rest know well, 
they may be recognized in their litle 
world; they may be making money and 
setting trends in swimwear. But their lives 
aren't like Jimmy Connors’. They have 
their flights to tournaments paid for, but 
they always go coach. They get some free 
meals now and then, but usually from a 
local diner, The Kettle. A few of the local 
bouncers know them, but they still have to 
stand in line in L.A. Hov and Dodd rate 
free cars, but none of the rest do. Of the 70 
to 100 top professionals, only a dozen do 
nothing but play volleyball, The other 
ones have jobs. Not that the gods care that 


the other ones work. More to the point, it 
makes them look bad. How much credibil- 
ity is there in beating a waiter and a house 
painter in the world finals? 

What they want is to see volleyball 
become a real professional sport. They 
want management that can get them Life 
magazine, ABC Sports, millions of dollars, 
instead of Volleyball magazine, a German 
documentary, thousands of dollars 

"There is a chance, as years pass, that the 
gods will get what they're after. One day 
soon, perhaps with the help of Group 
Dynamics, ABC will find the beach and 
America will discover that many of the 
best players in the country weren't even on 
the Olympic team, that they were down 
the Coast an hour or so from L.A., playing 
two-man for money. And when that hap- 
pens, when more than just the cultists 
know their names, gods like Indiana Hov 
will know that they sat out a world cham- 
pionship for good reason. 

For now, though, Hov and the rest will 
have to wait and see. They'll have to be 
content with excelling at the lifestyle. For 
now, says O.B., the Beast, they'll have to 
be content with “getting to know an astro- 
nomical amount of people and everybody 
knowing who you are . . . keeping your 
name in the papers . . . having all these 
people watching me with my shirt off, 
jumping high and hitting hard, entertain- 
ing them, showing them how this game 
should be played. . . . 

"We might not have the illustrious 
careers of tennis players," says O.B., the 
oldest god at 30. “We don't get to travel 
around in Rolls-Royces; we don't get 
rental cars or penthouse suites. We're 
still kind of rough and vagabonds. . . . 

“But still, basically, without volleyball, 
I'm just another good-looking guy.” 

. 


“T'I bet your neck is pretty sensitive. 
Like, if I did this, you'd get goose 
bumps.” 

Indiana Hov feathers a finger down the 
girl’s neck. She arches her shoulder and 
purrs, then pulls away. 

“I know who you are,” she says. 

Hoy smiles ultrabright. Scrapes a toe. 
“Yeah. I'm Tim Hovland.” 

“You're the one on those commercials 


“I'm a volleyball player. A profes- 
sional.” 

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. My little sister 
has your picture in her room. She’s in love 
with you. .. . Those other guys—they’re 
players, too, right?” 

‘The girl is pointing to 12 large humans 
who line a wall in the bar, loom there like 
the skyline of Century City. They are 
here on Wednesday night, two days be- 
fore the Cuervo championship, following 
an important meeting to affirm their com- 
mitment to the strike. The meeting start- 
ed an hour late, lasted 30 minutes and 


(continued on page 192) 


SCIENTIFICALLY 


SWIMMING 
TAUGHT 


humor By MARK O'DONNELL 


last one into the living room's a votten egg 


DEAR FRIEND: 
Please do not throw this letter away as 
you probably have so many others before 
this. We seck no unfair profit, only what is 
natural for a valuable service competently 
offered. We of the School of Swimming 
Taught Scientifically remind you, espe- 
cially you shut-ins and pathologically shy 
types, that we can get you out of your piles 
of old newspapers and faded religious 
etchings and into the turbulent bounding 
main—without costly traveling expenses, 
without fear of drowning, without water. 
Yes, if you have five minutes and an 


ordinary chair, we can teach you to swim 
by mail. No instructor will intimidate you, 
no horizon daunt you. You teach yourself 
with any one of our ten scientific pam- 
phlets and foldout lifelike watery-blue 
floor patterns. Choose from the back- 
stroke, the trudgen crawl, treading water, 
the Catherine wheel, swimming like a dog, 
swimming like a cat that didn’t want to be 
thrown in, swimming with clothes on, 
swimming with hands and feet tied, the 
Monte Cristo sack tick and the successful 
English Channel crossing. As a bonus if 
you order all ten, we will include free in- 


ILLUSTRATION BY JERRY MC DONALD. 


struction in artificial artificial respiration. 
You probably believe yourself to be 
open-minded. How can you presume to 
judge us without trying our methods? Why 
throw this letter away when you could 
open-mindedly send us a check or money 
order? Do you suppose we have enjoyed 
the meager response to our previous mail- 
ings? Why should you live your life in fear, 
either of us or of the oceans that cover 
most of our earth? Complete the enclosed 
blank and return it with your offering. 
Don’t delay. Summer is short and 
sois life. E 


139 


ock away your daughters! Bar 
L the doors! Harley-Davidson is 

about to give birth to a wild 

three-wheeled child, and the 
streets will never be the same again. Its 
new offspring is named the Trihawk 
and, yes, Virginia, it is a motorcycle— 
at least as far as the Feds are con- 
cerned. But climb into the cockpit as 
though you are getting aboard a For- 
mula I machine, turn the key, listen to 
the torquey burble of the faur-cylinder 
engine through twin tailpipes as you 
wind it up through five gears, and then 
try to tell us that you're not driving one 
fun car. We're talking serious pleasure. 
Major action on three wheels. Troll 
with a Trihawk and your only problem 
will be where to stuff all the crumpets 
you've collected. 

Actually, Trihawks have been a Cali- 
fornia cult vehicle for several years. 
The original parents, Bob McKee of 
Can-AM and Indy fame and meat-patty 
mogul Lou Richards, combined brains 
and bucks to put their three-wheel 
show on the road in 1982. But last year 
they sold out their West Coast company 
to Harley, and that Milwaukee firm 
immediately applied frugal Midwest- 
ern business ethics to the $14,888 price 


AND THREE TO GO! 


tag, cutting it to a basic $9975. Add 
$400 for a soft top and side curtains. 
Plus $489 for an AM/FM radio, $600 
for leather seats and interior and $225 
for a stainless-steel roll bar and other 
goodies and, as Everett Dirksen once 
said, pretty soon you're talking about 
real money. Still, $12,000 fully loaded 
isn't too much to pay for a machine 
that'll one-up four-wheel yuppie- 
mobiles going for twice the price. 
Enough of history. Gentlemen, start 
your Trihawk’s Citroën air-cooled 
1299-c.c. four-cylinder engine and 
move on out. In half a block, two 
Trihawk truisms become apparent. 
Truism number one: You will immedi- 
ately forget that there's only one wheel 
behind you. Truism number two: The 
irrational fear that you are going to tip 
over at the first turn vanishes after the 
first turn. In fact, the faster you go, the 
more the Trihawk seems to hunker 
down, its wide front suspension gob- 
bling up bumps like a real car would. 
Car and Driver Magazine, in fact, listed 
it as “best” in road holding. In other 
words, a Trihawk ain't no gocart. It's a 
real screamer. And the voice you hear 
may be your own, yelling with delight. 
Three cheers for three-wheelers! 


harley-davidson's 

hot little flyi 

wedge, the trihawk, is 
loose in the streets. 
run for your wallets! 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRUCE AYRES: 


Right: The Trihawk may technically be a 
matorcycle, but its cockpit and VDO 
gauges outclass many four-wheel com- 
petitors. Leather seats and a sparty 
leather-wrapped steering wheel are 
optional. The glave box locks and there's a 
compartment behind the seats for stor- 
age. Tap speed? About 100 mph. Zero to 
60? About ten secands. Not bad for a 
frant-wheel-drive flying wedge that also 
gets about 40 miles per gallon on the 
highway. All for a $9975 base price. Nice. 


2O QUESTIONS: JAMIE LEE CURTIS 


the beautiful screamer says no to the fast life, 
yes to marriage, and confesses she's laid tile 


р“ her days as the queen of the 
screams and the tantalizing glimpses of 
skin to which audiences were treated in 
“Trading Places” and “Love Letters,” there 
is more to Jamie Lee Curtis than an unforget- 
table figure and a banshee wail. She is an 
actress on the move—and she can be seen 
moving this month with co-star John Travolta. 
in “Perfect.” We asked Contributing Editor 
David Rensin if he would mind spending a 
few hours with Curtis in the Lower Manhai- 
tan apartment she shares with her husband, 
Christopher Guest. Said Rensin quickly: “No 
problem." 


ib 


PLAYBOY: After two engagements that 
didn't work out, you recently devastated 
American males by marrying Saturday 
Night Live's and This Is Spinal Tap's Chris- 
topher Guest. Had you seen him in the 
film before you met? Was it the hollow- 
chested English-rock-star look that at- 
tracted you? 

curtis: Yes, I saw the movie first. Actually, 
Pve been reluctant to talk about this, 
because I don't want to take advantage of 
something that was really great and spc- 
cial. [Pauses] 1 was single, working on a 
film, not going cut to partics much any- 
more. I was reading Rolling Stone and 
there was this picture of three guys: 
Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and 
Christopher. They had their arms around 
one another—nice and normal. And I 
went, “Who's this?" Chris had a smirk 
and looked great. I flipped the page and 
there they were as David, Derek and Nigel, 
from Spinal Tap. 1 did a double take. 

I went to see the movie and came away 
thinking Chris was very, very talented and 
that Pd like to meet him. I didn't know 
how to go about it, but one day, ina fit of 
self-confidence, I called hisagent. Irambled 
on about how Pd never done anything 
like this but would like to meet Chris. 
He took my number and said he'd give 
him the message. But nothing happened. 

“Three months later, a girlfriend and I 
were having dinner and there he was 
across the room. We smiled and said a lit- 
tle “Hi,” but then I turned to my girl- 
friend and went, “God!” like a child. He 
was with a girl and a guy and I didn't 
know the situation. So I stayed away. He 
called the next day. We had dinner a cou- 
ple of nights later. 


PLAYBOY: What were you thinking a few 
months later when the minister finally said, 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY HERB RITTS 


“You may kiss the bride”? 

CURTIS: Í was worried that my nose was 
running from crying so much. I was seri- 
ously wondering if anyone had a Kleenex 
or if it would be terribly uncouth to wipe 
my nose on my sleeve. Our minister had 
warned me to take tissues. She was right. I 
lost it during the vows. As a little girl, I 
had dreamed of saying all the words. So 
when “to have and to hold” came up, I 
just went. Then I laughed and so did 
everybody else. It broke the tension. We 
have an audio tape of the ceremony. We've 
since listened to it together. It’s a very 
strange experience. 


5 


илүвоу: When did you stop being a girl? 
CURTIS: I still am. Pm a girl rather than a 
woman. Woman to me means hair spray 
and perfume. I look forward to being one, 
but I want to be my own kind of woman. 1 
don’t want to have to respond to society's 
expectations about scx, relationships, how 
I dress. I want to be a wise old woman. 
Not smart, wise. That leaves you fuid. 


4. 


PLAYBOY: Do girls just want to have fun? 
curtis: Ever hear the song Boys Just Want 
to Have Sex? Well, girls also want to have 


babies. 
5. 


PLAYBOY: In carlier interviews, you insisted 
you wouldn't take your clothes off on cam- 
era. What happened? 

curtis: [Deadpan] 1 lied. [Laughs] The 
realities changed my mind. Love Letters, 
for instance, was a movie about an obses- 
sive love affair. You had to see it. 

In Trading Places, 1 was nude for seven 
seconds, I timed it. But there are some 
reviews that claim I was naked for the 
whole movie. If Ophelia had turned her 
back and shielded herself, it would have 
been false modesty. She was a prostitute. 
Any hesitancy would have been wrong. 
But it was a terrific movie and all I can tell 
you is that the nudity helped a lot. 

Had I not done the work that involved 
nudity, I don’t think I'd be working right 
now. It has given me a career and let me 
hold on to my self-esteem. Now the nudity 
thing has become a pain in the ass. But I 
can live with it. It’s a big deal only if I 
make it one. 


6. 


FLAYDOY: Once, you were stigmatized as the 
queen of the screams for your work in hor- 


ror films. What makes you scream now? 
curtis: Being asked about those films. 1 
say I don’t want to do them and it’s like 
being forced to hate them. I’m trying not 
to. I had a really good time. 


e 


PLAYBOY: What's the most important thing 
you have to do to be taken seriously as an 
actress? 

CURTIS: To stop thinking that some people 
may not consider me as seriously as I do. 
If someone thinks of me only for my 
body—well, that’s all he’s going to think 
of and there’s no way I can make him 
change his mind. 


8. 


PLAYBOY: In Perfect, you walk around in 
gym clothes. When can we expect the 
Jamie Lee Curtis exercise book? 

CURTIS: You can't. Гуе tumed it down 
many times. І wouldn't do it for all the 
moncy in the world. 


9. 


PLAYBOY: What did you discover about 
John Travolta that you hadn't cxpected to 
discover? 

curtis: There’s something that happens to 
people when they become very, very 
famous. It’s a look in their eyes—you can 
never look into them. They’re not looking 
at you, they’re looking at themselves. But 
when he walked in and said, “Hi, I'm 
John," it was like [claps hands], boom, it 
was OK. I know about the problems and 
pressures he's had. They're not unlike 
those my dad had at 27. 


10. 


vLAYPOY: Compare Tony Curtis and John 
Travolta. 

curtis: They're both amazingly handsome 
men. Both enjoy their stardom. We need 
the reclusive stars, but we also need those 
who say, “I don’t know how this happened, 
but Pm not going to hide behind it.” 


11. 


pravnov: What does the press have wrong 
about Hollywood? 

curtis: That it’s shallow, hollow, that 
everything is a facade and everyone is just 
out to make a buck. There are those peo- 
ple, but there are also those who love mak- 
ing movies. Hollywood is filled with 
talented people waiting for their chance. 


You know, (concluded on page 201) 


PLAYBOY 


14 


VCR ATE MY BRAIN 


(continued from page 121) 


“I knew from sad experience how the VCR mocked 
even the most conscientious collector.” 


John Houseman's Smith Barney commer- 
cials. I came to see the VCR as an elec- 
tronic Robin Hood, taking power from the 
big, bad TV networks and giving it to the 
lowly viewers. Having defined it as an 
instrument of cultural revolution, I felt 
obligated to get one. 

I plugged in the machine and hooked it 
up to the television as the President leaned 
back in his chair, laughing, and demon- 
strated to the assembled reporters that he 
didn't tuck his pants into his boots. I stud- 
ied the VCR instruction. booklet, then 
called the phone company and set the 
quartz timer clock to the exact second. I 
peeled the shrink wrap off the cassette, slid 
the tape into the machine and started to 
record just as Mrs. Reagan, smiling insin- 
cerely, joined the gathering. A journalist 
asked the President his dog’s name. 

A few minutes later, I stopped recording 
and rewound the tape. Did it work? I 
pressed the playback key. There on my TV 
screen was Mrs. Reagan again, smiling 
insincerely. A journalist asked the Presi- 
dent his dog’s name. “Lassie,” he said, 
beaming, and then he stopped beaming 
and said, “Mil Millie's her name.” 

The leader of the free world had just for- 
gotten his own dog’s name. I rewound the 
tape and watched him forget it again. And 
again. Yes, the machine worked. 

. 

In the beginning, there was somcthing 
vaguely naughty about using the VCR. 
Did NBC idiotically broadcast SCTV, the 
best show in the history of television, in 
the wee hours of Saturday morning? I 
watched it on Sunday afternoons. Was I 
usually out during the evening news? Dan 
Rather’s intense glare illuminated my TV 
screen at midnight. My enjoyment of 
“time shifting”—the networks’ name for 
watching things at the wrong times—was 
enhanced by this illicit thrill 1 could 
speed things up, slow them down or stop 
them entirely if I felt like taking a break. I 
was giddy with power. This was how TV 
was meant to be experienced, and all pre- 
vious interaction with the medium seemed 
obsolete. 

Before long, I was watching a lot of tele- 
vision, turning on the set automatically as 
soon as I got home. There was something 
oddly comforting about resuming an activ- 
ity Га written off as moronic when I was 
14, and my resistance continued to crum- 
ble. I came to admire Johnny Carson’s 
ability to get laughs out of failed material. 
I found Larry Hagman's portrayal of J. R. 
Ewing a work of comic genius, and missing 
an episode of Dallas soon became unthink- 
able. In time, I found a warm spot in my 


heart for Jane Pauley. 

The VCR was reconnecting me with the 
mainstream roots I'd renounced in the 
Sixties, easing my sense of alienation, wel- 
coming me back into the fold. I began 
keeping its remote-control unit within 
arm's reach as I moved around my apart- 
ment, a compulsion that did not go unno- 
ticed by friends. 


. 

A few months later, À Clockwork 
Orange—my favorite movic—tumed up 
on Cinemax the day after my building was 
wired for cable. I taped it, of course, and 
after taping Mean Streets and. Sullivan's 
Travels a few days later, I decided to build 
a modest film library. I'd heard horror 
stories about seemingly normal people 
who bought VCRs and abandoned their 
former lives, focusing all their energies on 
increasingly indiscriminate frenzies of tap- 
ing. I wasn’t worried. With the price of 
blank tapes hovering between $11 and $14 
apiece, that fate seemed unlikely for me. 

Once I started collecting, though, it 
seemed arbitrary to limit myself to movies. 
One night, I was watching The Honey- 
mooners and thought, There are only 39 of 
these; why not tape them? A few weeks 
later, I started on The Twilight Zone and 
made a mental note to get all the Monty 
Python’s Flying Circuses next time they 
were shown. When MTV was added to 
my cable system, I thought I also ought to 
be taping rock videos. I knew someone at 
the station who sent me advance copies 
of the minute-by-minute play lists telling 
me when to tune in for the songs I wanted. 
Within a month, Га recorded 300 of them. 

And all the while, the price of blank 
tapes kept dropping. One day I found a 
store that sold TDK T-120s for $8.99, and 
1 heard myself ask for a box of ten. 

. 


With 60 hours’ worth of recording tape 
at hand, I set aside one cassette to gather 
up those random video moments that 
defied easy categorizing. One day, for 
instance, I turned on the local news and 
found Pia Zadora telling the weatherman 
how much she loved being rich. “I enjoy a 
kind of lush lifestyle," Pia said, her pear- 
shaped face filling the screen as I started 
recording. “I mean, I drive around in a 
limousine and I stay at the best hotels. But 
that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not seri- 
ous about my work. I’man achiever. I love 
to work. I love to create. It’s my thing.” 

A week later, I caught John Belushi's 
last TV appearance, inside a bloated body 
bag being carried out of Hollywood's 
Chateau Marmont. Another evening, I 


tuned in just in time to capture Supreme 
Court Justice Byron White getting socked 
three times in the head in Utah by a large 
bearded man who shouted, “That busing 
and pornography just doesn’t go!” One 
morning över breakfast, I taped footage of 
aman in Alabama setting himself on fire 
while a news crew stood by and faithfully 
recorded the event. 

And one night, a visibly excited Presi- 
dent Reagan shared the stage of a Vegas 
Up with America rally with several lounge 
singers. “Wait till I go home,” gushed the 
President of the United States, "and tell 
Nancy I played Las Vegas with Wayne 
Newton and Bob Goulet!” 

With stuff like that regularly turning up 
unannounced, | began kecping a tape 
loaded in the machine at all times. And 1 
noticed feelings of vague unease whenever 
my supply of blanks dipped below three. 

. 


I gradually realized that I was experi- 
encing two kinds of ti eal Time, with 
all of its well-known imperfections, and 
Video Time, a new, improved time in 
which everything lasts only as long as you 
want it to. As the weeks went by, keeping 
them separate became increasingly diffi- 
cult. I watched the world series live on TV 
and caught myself trying to speed up the 
commercials, which seemed interminable 
at their normal 30-second length. Waiting 
in a bank line, I felt a sudden urge to fast- 
forward myself up to the teller's window. I 
was merging with my VCR 

Where I had once prided myself on 
never reading TV Guide , 1 was now rush- 
ing to the newsstand every Monday morn- 
ing to pick up the following week’s issue. 
That was another VCR-induced time 
warp, leaving me desperate to know every 
detail of not only this week's TV schedule 
but also next week's. I would go through 
the program listings with a yellow mark- 
ing pen, highlighting the things I wanted 
to tape. Was Albert Brooks going to be on 
The Tonight Show ? Were there any W. C. 
Fields movies coming up? Was anybody 
interviewing Richard Nixon? To avoid 
even the slightest possibility of forgetting 
to record something. 1 began typing up. 
weekly THINGS TO TAPE lists. 

It alarmed me when I found myself 
thinking about the new TV Guide as early 
as Saturday evening—a full week before 
its listings took effect. 

. 

One Monday morning, I got a wonder- 
ful surprise: WNEW-TV was about to 
rerun Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a 
true television classic. This was my first 
commitment to taping something five 
nights a week, and it required enormous 
discipline. I knew from sad experience 
how the VCR mocked even the most con- 
scientious collector. At various times, I'd 
forgotten to set the er; Га set it but 
neglected to switch it on; I'd provided 90 

(continued on page 160) 


"I'm glad that turns you on, stranger, Бш that ain't my finger.” 


145 


100s Box: 8 mg. “tar”, 0.7 mg. nicotine 
av. per cigarette by FTC Method. 


lonilord, U.S.A., 1985 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 
That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


PLAYMATE UPDATE 


GI JO 


jo collins, 1965's 
playmate of the year, relives 
a mission of mercy 


that, with the purchase of a lifetime sub- 
scription in the U.S., the first issuc is per- 
sonally delivered by a Playmate. It is our 
most fervent hope that this policy can be 
extended to include из... . Any one of 
the current Playmates of the Month would 
be welcomed with open arms. but if we 
have any choice in the matter, we have 
unanimously decided that we would prefer 
the 1965 Playmate of the Ycar—Miss Jo 
Collins 

If we are not important enough . . . to 
send a Playmate for, please just forget 
about us and we will quietly fade back into 
the jungle. 


WENTY YEARS aco, Vietnam was a distant 
T domino, a reddening spot on the map that 

some of us couldn't find if we tried. While 
Gemini VIT orbited the earth, Doctor Zhivago 
opened down the block and the American Foot- 
ball League was challenging the N.F.L. to 
something called a Super Bowl, Hugh Hefner 
opencd his mail and found the following letter, 
dated November 1965: 


This is written from the depths of the 
hearts of 180 officers and men of Company 
B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd 
Airborne Brigade (Separate) stationed at 
Bien Hoa, Republic of Vietnam. We were 
the first American Army troop unit com- 
mitted to action here in Vietnam, and we 
have gone many miles—somc in sorrow 
and some in joy, but mostly in hard, bonc- 
weary inches. . . . We are proud to be here 
and have found the answer to the question 
“Ask what you can do for your country." 
And yet we cannot stand alonc— which 
brings me to the reason for sending you 
this request. 

The loneliness here is a terrible thing— 
and we long to sce a real, living, breath- 
ing American girl. Therefore, we have 
enclosed with this letter a moncy order for 
a lifetime subscription to PLAYROY magazine 
for B Company. It is our understanding 


The leter came from Second Licutenant 
John Price. Price and his buddies in Bravo 
Company had each kicked in a dollar to pay for 
their subscription, with an eye on the deal we 
offered potential subscribers. A few years 
before, we had published a special Christmas 
gift offer in which we promised to send a 
Playmate to deliver the first issue of a $150 life- 
time subscription to anyone who lived in a city 
where there was a Playboy Club. (Lifetime sub- 
scriptions are now $250, but personal delivery 
is out. It got to be expensive, as you will see.) 
Moved by the lieutenant’s request. Hef 
consulted with the Defense Department and re- 
ceived clearance for Project Playmate in Janu- 


Don't try this yourself or we'll sue: Longing for the comforts of home, the troops set up ersotz Ployboy Clubs throughout South Vietnam. In peacetime, 
this would give our lowyers fits, but we've olwoys bent the rules for Gls in wartime. At Bien Hoa, GI Jo (the one with long hair below left) signed some- 
thing for everyone. “For yeors after my trip.” she soys, “people would come up to me with pictures I'd signed over there. There's fan mail even 
todoy.” She visited the wounded in field hospitals (below center) ond toured Company B's base camp in a newly decorated Bunny Bus (bottom cen- 
ter), even received a green bere! from a Special Forces officer at Black Virgin Mountain (below right). Reflecting on the styles she wore in service to 
PLAYBOY, Jo said, “Those bulletproof vests they make you wear do nothing for a girl's figure.” Above, the centerfold that started it all. No vest. 


PLAYBOY 


агу 1966. He called Jo, and the rest is a side 
light to history. When the men of the 173rd 
Airborne got together in May in Washington, 
D.C., to mark the 20th anniversary of their 
deployment, remembering Project Playmate 
was a highlight 

Price, now 43, left the Army in 1970 as a cap- 
tain after a second tour of duty. He works in the 
diamond business in Huntington Beach, Cali- 
fornia. He doesn’t dwell on the years he spent 
in combat or the year and a half he spent State- 
side recovering from “having my left arm 
nearly blown off” not long after he wrote his 
leiter to Hef. Some things he remembers 
fondly, however. One of those is a visit from 
1965's Playmate of the Year. 

“I think of it as a shining spot in the war,” he 
says of Jo’s good-will tour. “We were constantly 
in combat, taking a lot of casualties, and her 
visit was the flip side of the coin for us.” 

What was welcome relief for Price was an 
eye-opening assignment for Jo, now an execu- 
tive recruiter for direct marketing with Chi- 
cago's Judy Thor Associates. 

“That trip was the most wonderful, exciting 
experience of my life,” she says, “but it was 
frightening. 1 didn't even have time to think 
about it when PLavgov called. There was only 
time to get my passport and get on a flight to 
San Francisco, What I was doing—the danger 
of it—didn't make an impression until we 
landed in Vietnam. There were mortar shells 
being fired at us. But the whole thing didn't 
really hit me until I visited the field hospitals." 

"There were an awful lot of guys in there 
who were badly shot up, and she was only 20,” 
says Price. “But she did very well—like a light 
in the darkness.” 

Jo and her entourage also toured non- 
regulation “Playboy Clubs” from Bien Hoa to 
the Cambodian border. Jo rode in the Playboy 
Special, a brigade helicopter named in honor 
of her visit. She signed hundreds of autographs 
and was dubbed an honorary sky soldier 
by Brigadicr Gencral Ellis W. Williamson. 

Still, mortar rounds in the distance kept Jo 


In Chicago not lang aga, John Price and Ja Collins closed ranks for the first time in almost 20 
years (below left) in front of o picture of ће rayso lifetime-subscriptian presentation they 
launched os o lieutenant ond o Playmate of the Year. Return with us naw ta 1966: At Bien 
Ноо'з “Playbay Club” (below right), Jo and company are oll smiles os she finishes an outo- 
graph session. She's shaking out her left wrist because her right hand is cramping into a claw. 


After a long day's hike, Jo found, she could always hitch a ride back to bose with her knights in shining armor (above right). And while Playmates 
of the Year always pass muster, that didn't keep one Green Beret from giving her a long inspection (above left) before pronouncing her fit 
Project Playmate begon in Saigan (below left) with countless interviews and о dozen roses from Lieutenant Cloncey Johnson ond Pfc. Marvin 
Hudson, representing B Company. Jahnsan and Hudson were last-minute substitutes for lieutenant Price, wha had been wounded in action a week 
before. When Jo plonted her first Vietnam kiss on Hudson, the tough Pfc. blushed deeply enough ta hide the lipstick on his cheek. Then came 
a visit ta Price ond his wordmates at the 93rd MASH unit (below right). “Most af them were badly hurt,” said Ja, “but no one. camploined.” 


GI Jo spent her second doy flying into bottle zones in the Playboy Special (top left). Her 
carriage wos flanked by gunships and her escorts were MPs. There weren't any tunes on 
the rodia (top right), but the moment she touched dawn, there were autographs to sign 
(above right). On her final day in Vietnam, she was joined by o stitched-up Lieutenant Price 
(above left). He intraduced her to all the men of Bravo Company, who had returned еп 
masse from potrals when General Williamson granted them leave to meet her. Below, Ja 
checks out the decor in the Bien Haa PX. Who's that beauty in the wet white blouse? 


from forgetting where she was. Her first ride in 
the Playboy Special set the project’s tone. 

“It seemed as though we'd hardly arrived, 
and there we were over hostile country, being 
given our first taste of what they call contour 
flying,” she reported. "That's when you skim 
the treetops to prevent enemy snipers from get- 
ting a clear shot at you and then, suddenly, 
shoot straight up, at about 100 miles per hour, 
to 3500 feet, so you can check the area for Viet 
Cong troop movements from outside their fi 
ing range.” Only when the next day's activities 
ended did she realize how close to battle she 
had been. "We were all standing outside the 
Officers’ Club in Bien Hoa when I heard 
the sound of shots coming from fairly close by 
Then, right before our chopper lifted off, a 
series of flares went off and lit up everything for 
miles. I kept thinking how great it would have 
been if all those boys had been back home 
watching a Fourth-of-July celebration, instead 
of there in the jungle fighting for their lives. 

Some of them lost the fight. “At one of the 
field hospitals,” Jo said, “there was a man who 
had just been brought in off the helicopter 
He'd been blown up. They asked me to se 
him, and I went in. He said, ‘I'm so glad you're 
here, sweetheart,’ and with that he died.” 

Twenty years later, she shakes her head. “I 
will never forget that—never.” 

In May, when the 173rd Airborne held its 


reunion, Jo Collins was an honor 
Shortly before the reunion, she and Price 
met in our Chicago offices to celebrate on a 
smaller scale. “I told her we were going to 
have to do this every 20 years,” laughs Pric 


Jo's reaction: He's a delight. Listen, his arm 
was shattered and they wanted to send him 
back to the States, but he wouldn't leave Saigon 

il I arrived. It gives me such a good feeling, 
seeing him again." 

It's been a long time since the new 
1966, when Playmate of the Year Jo Collins 
took off from San Francisco on the most mcmo- 
rable, heart-rending few days of her life. Today, 
one of those men in Gemini VII runs Eastern 
Air Lines. Doctor Zhivago turns up on the after- 
noon movie, crushed in the ratings by the 
Super Bowl. Jo doesn't brood over her Vietnam 
experience any more than Price does, but 
sometimes she leafs through her mementos 

“Гуе got more flags," she says, "and tro- 
phies, too. There were articles in newspapers 
all over the world, so my scrapbook is pretty 
heavy. It’s gone through a lot—water damage 
from moving, this and that—but once in a 
while, I'll go through the pictures. And I'll 
think, My gosh, it’s hard to believe I was there.” 

Price has two Purple Hearts and one badly 
scarred arm to remind him that he was there. 
He also has memories of a Playmate who flew 
8000 miles to deliver a lifetime subscription to 
him and his buddies. That's not a fair ex 
change; but for a bunch of lonely soldiers, Proj- 
ect Playmate was at least a happy 

“Before our reunion, the last tim 
had met was a lifetime ago,” Price 

“on the other side of the world iv s good just 
rcaching out and touching agai 

Way to go, GI Jo. This month, we salute 
you, John Price and all the men 


who served in a dark, trying time. y 


More autagraphs (top left). When Jo returned to the States, she could crush rocks in her 
bore hand. Top right, Jo and her party decopter for a briefing on the progress of Project 
Playmate. A stop at Black Virgin Mountoin brought instruction in mortar firing (obove 
right), while a visit to Lay Ninth (above left) meant a soft drink ond another workout for 
Jo's trusty pen. Below, a lost look at the Playboy Special as it whisks our intrepid 
Playmote off to the front. The Speciol hos been moth-balled, but its most famous passenger 
remembers that chopper—with o smile and just the slightest lurch in her stomach. 


PLAYHBO!Y 


152 


HEIHSUNHEBEHIBUHEHE 


(continued from page 90) 


“The landscape was rocky amd empty, the wind blew 
fiercely and it had begun to snow.” 


grabbed it. Soon he was muttering under 
his beak. “Doggone razzle-frazzin' dad- 
gum thing!” He pulled and pushed, his 
face and bill turning redder and redder. 
He gripped the box with both his feet and 
hands. “Doggone dad-gum!” he yelled. 

Suddenly he grew teeth, his brow 
slammed down, his shoulders tensed and 
he went into a blurred fury of movement. 
“Wak, wak, wak, wak, wak!” he screamed. 

The box broke open and flew into three 
parts. So did the book inside. 

DUN was still tearing in his fury. 

“Wait! Look out, DUN!” yelled MIK. 
“Wait! 

“Gawrsh!” said GUF, running after the 
pages blowing in the breeze. “Help me, 
MIK!’ 

DUN stood atop the rubble, parts of the 
box and the book gripped in each hand. 
He simulated hard brcathing, the redness 
draining from his face. 

“It's open,” he said quietly. 

. 


“Well, from what we've got left,” said 
MIK, “this is called The Book of the Time 
Capsule, and it says they buried a cylinder 
a very, very long time ago. They printed 
wp five thousand copies of this book 
and sent it to places all around the world 
where they thought it would be safe. They 
printed this book on acid-free paper and 
stuff like that so it wouldn’t fall apart. 

“And they thought what they put in the 
time capsule itself could explain to later 
gencrations what people were like in their 
day. So I figure maybe it could explain 
something to us, too.” 

“Well, let's go,” said DUN. 

"Well, huh-huh,” said MIK. “I 
checked with HOOSAT and gave him the 
coordinates and, huh-huh, it's quite a little 
ways away.” 

“How far?” asked DUN, his brow bee- 
tling. 

*Oh, huh-huh, about eighteen thou- 
sand kilometers. Just about halfway 
around the world.” 

“Oh, my aching feet!" said DUN. 

“That's not literally true,” said GUF. 
He turned to MIK. “Yuh think we should 
go that far?” 

“Well, I'm not sure what we'll find. 
Those pages were lost when DUN opened 
the box. ...” 

“I'm sorry,” said DUN in a contrite, 
small voice. 

“But the people of that time were sure 
that everything could be explained by 
what was in the capsule." 

“Апа yuh think it's still there?" asked 
GUF. 

MIK put a determined look on his face. 


“I figure the only thing for us to do is set 
our caps, start out and whistle a little 
tune," he said. 

“Yuh don't have a cap, MIK," said 
GUF. 

“Well, I can still whistle! Let's go, fel- 
las," he said. “It’s this way!” 

He puckered his lips and blew a work 
song. DUN quacked a tune about boats 
and water. GUF hummed The East Is Red. 

They set off in this way across what had 
been the bottom of the Sea of Japan. 

E 

They were having troubles. Three weeks 
before, they had come to the cnd of all the 
songs with which each had been pro- 
grammed and had had to start repeat- 
ing themselves. 

Their lubricants were beginning to fail; 
their hastily wired circuitry was оуег- 
worked. GUF had a troublesome extensor 
in his ankle that sometimes hung up. But 
he went along chcerfully, sometimes hop- 
ping and quickstepping to catch up with 
the others when the foot refused to flex. 

"The major problem was the cold. There 
was a vast difference between the climate 
they had been built for and the one they 
found themselves in. The landscape was 
rocky and empty, the wind blew fiercely 
and it had begun to snow. 

The terrain was difficult and the maps 
HOOSAT had given them were outdated. 
Something drastic had changed the course 
of rivers, the land, the shore line of the 
ocean itself. They detoured frequently. 

The cold worked hardest on DUN. He 
was poorly insulated, and they had to slow 
their pace to his. He would do anything to 
avoid a snowdrift and so expended even 
more energy. 

They stopped in the middle of a raging 
blizzard. 

“Uh, MIK?" said GUF. “I don't think 
DUN can go much farther in this weather. 
An’ my leg is givin’ me lots o° problems. 
Yuh think maybe we could find someplace 
to hole up fer a spell?” 

MIK looked at the bleakness and the 
whipping snow around them. “I guess 
you're right. Warmer weather would do us 
all some good. We'd conserve both heat 
and energy. Let's find a good place." 

“Hey, DUN,” said GUF. “Let's find a 
hideyhole!” 

“Oh, goody gumdrops!” said DUN. 
“Dm so cold.” 

They eventually found a decp rock shel- 
ter with a low fault crevice at the back. 
MIK had them gather up what sparse veg- 
etation there was and take it into the shel- 
ter. MIK talked to HOOSAT, then 
wriggled his way through the brush they 
had piled to the other two. 


Inside, they could barely hear the wind 
and snow. It was only slightly warmer 
than outside, but it felt wonderful and 
safe. 

“I told HOOSAT to wake us up when it 
got warmer,” said MIK. “Then we'll get 
on to that time capsule and find out all 
about people.” 

“G'night, MIK,” said СОЕ 

“Good night, DUN,” said MIK. 

“Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs 
bite. Wak, wak, wak,” said DUN. 

"They shut themselves off. 


Б 

МІК woke up. It was dark in the rock 
shelter, but it was also much warmer. 

The brush was all crumbled away. A 
meter of rock and dust covered the cave 
floor, the dust stirring in the warm wind. 

“Hey, fellas!” said MIK. “Hey, wake 
up. Spring is here!” 

They stirred themselves. 

“Let's go thank HOOSAT and get our 
bearings and be on our way,” said MIK. 

They stepped outside. 

The stars were in the wrong places. 

“Uh-oh!” said СОЕ. 

“Would you look at that?" said DUN. 

“I think we overslept,” said MIK. 
"Let's see what HOOSAT has to say.” 

“Huh? HOOSAT?” 

“Hello. This is DUN and MIK and 
GUF." 

HOOSAT's voice now sounded like а 
badger whistling through its teeth. 

“Glad to see ya up,” said the satellite. 

“We asked you to wake us up as soon as 
it got warmer!” said MIK. 

“Tt just got warmer.” 

“It did?" asked СОЕ. 

“Shoulda seen it,” said HOOSAT. “Ice 
everywhere. Big ol” glaciers. You still 
aimin’ to dig up that capsule thing?" 
Yes," said MIK, "we are." 

“Well, you got an easy trip from now on. 
No more mountains in the way." 

“What about people?” asked MIK. 

* ain't heard from any. My friend the 
military satellite said he thought he saw 
some fires, little teeny ones, but his eyes 
weren’t what they used to be. He’s gone 
now, too.” 

“Thuh fires mighta been built by peo- 
ple?" asked GUF. 

“It’s sorta likely. Weather ain't been 
much for lightning," said HOOSAT. 
“Hey, bub, you still got all those coordi- 
nates ] give you?” 

“I think so," said MIK. 

“Wall, I better give you new ones off 
these new constellations. Hold still; my 
aim ain’t so good anymore.” He dumped a 
bunch of numbers into MIK’s head. “I 
won't be talkin’ to you much longer." 

“Why not?” they all asked. 

“Well, you know... my orbit. I feel 
better now than 1 have in centuries. Real 
spry. Must be the ionization. Started a 
couple o' weeks ago. Sure has been nice 
talkin’ to you young fellers after so long a 
time. Sure am glad I remembered to wake 

(continued on page 180) 


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ROB REINER 


(continued from page 76) 
two years of your marriage and then, after 
that, you takc a penny out cach time you 
have sex, you won't empty the jar if you're 
married 20 years. 

PLAYBOY: How many pennies did you have 
left? 

REINER: I know there's one big Penny I 
don't have anymore. 

PLAYBOY: Was there a single moment when 
you realized that the marriage was over? 
REINER: No, it really just dissolved over 
time. But Pll tell you a weird, freaky story. 
Penny and I had been in New York doing a 
TV movie; we'd been building this house 
out here, and it was taking about two 
years. And we kept wondering when we 
were going to move in—it never got done. 
So, just before we came back, the decora- 
tor told us, “I guarantee that when you get 
back from New York, i'll be ready and 
you can move right in.” And sure enough, 
when we got back, we walked into the 
house and it looked just incredible. 

Well, it was night, we were exhausted, 
so we just went upstairs to the bedroom, 
didn’teven unpack, and just flopped down 
on the bed. So I turned on the TV—and I 
swear to God this is the absolute truth— 
the first image that popped onto the screen 
was an ad for the National Enquirer and it 
said, “National Enquirer predicts Penny 
and Rob will split.” 

PLAYBOY: You knew which Penny and Rob 
it was talking about? 

REINER: I did. In fact, that’s the reason we 
got divorced—we didn’t want to make the 
National Enquirer look bad. We wanted to 
preserve the integrity of the publication. 
PLAYBOY: Competition with your wife 
wasn’t the only problem you faced along 
those lines. Wasn't it also tough living up 
to your father? A few years ago, your 
father told an interviewer, “Rob wanted to 
grow up to be me.” Was he being serious? 
REINER: My father was somebody in the 
public eye, somebody who was brilliantly 
funny; all his friends were brilliantly 
funny. It was something I felt J had to do 
And I can do it; I have done it. But I have 
also found it uncomfortable to feel that Pm 
being funny just to be competitive or to be 
accepted. 

PLAYBOY: So there’s guilt after comedy? 
REINER: No, but I just don’t feel a sense of 
satisfaction from it, as my father does. For 
instance, my father loves to perform; he 
gets tremendous pleasure out of it. I like to 
perform, too, but I'm not driven with a 
need as great as his to be on stage, to be 
the center of attention. When I was a kid, 
he used to embarrass me sometimes; we'd 
be walking down the street in New York 
and he'd start singing at the top of his 
lungs: “Ius a lovely day today, so what- 
ever you've got to do . . .' ” ог“ ‘Beyond 
the blue horizon. . . .' " Of course, every- 
body would look. And I'd be hiding my 
face, going, “C’mon, Dad, please!” 

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like anybody else, but my natural state is 
not jumping up in front of people and per- 
forming. I think a lot of what J did with 
my acting career was, in a way, to show 
people—show my father—“Look, I can 
do this, too; I'm good at this.” It's only 
lately that I don't feel that need as greatly 
as I did. 

I'm just beginning to feel comfortable 
enough with myself to say that if I feel like 
doing shtick, ГИ do it, and if I don’t, I 
won't. People have certain expectations of 
me because of All in the Family and This Is 
Spinal Tap, but I'm a much more serious 
person than people think—much more 
serious than my father. You know, when I 
was growing up, my father was—and is— 
the sweetest, kindest man, well liked, with 
a wonderful sense of humor. And all 1 ever 
heard was “Your dad's the greatest! He's 
the most wonderful, terrific man around!” 
I just thought, Jesus, there's no way I'm 
going to be able to be like him. I was in 
awe of him; he was like a god to me. I 
remember when I went over to the Van 
Dyke show with him, he'd go down to the 
set, and I’d crawl into his office and sit 
behind his desk. And I used to look 
around and think, God, look at all this! 
He's creating these TV shows, he's win- 
ning Emmys, he’s a genius—and I’m 
inadequate. There I was, thinking I 
should be able to write for the Van Dyke 
show—and at 13, that was probably fairly 
ambitious, but that's what I thought. I 
couldn't, and it was very frustrating. I was 


jealous of him. 
PLAYBOY: Did you try to emulate him, to be 
as outgoing as he was? 

REINER: Sure, but I was shy, incredibly shy. 
That’s always been my nature. When I 
was a kid, Í was very introspective. So I 
was probably reacting against my father’s 
personality. I know it was difficult for me 
to feel that I had a place in the house, 
because my father is so demonstrative, so 
much larger than life. I couldn't figure out 
how I fit in there. When you're little, you 
really can't compete. I don't think he quite 
understood how I was as a person. He 
never thought I had a sense of humor, 
never thought I was funny. When 1 was 
eight or nine and we were spending the 
summer on Fire Island, Norman Lear was 
there. Norman remembers me playing 
jacks with him one day and making up 
jokes and doing shtick. I made him laugh. 
But when he went and told my father, 
“You know, Rob is really a funny kid,” my 
father answered, “Get out of here! That 
kid? That sullen, brooding kid is not 
funny. No way.” Later, I did a summer 
production of my father’s own play Enter 
Laughing. The audience loved it, but I 
knew he hated it. He was applying rules to 
me that he wouldn’t have applied to just 
another 18-year-old boy. 
PLAYBOY: When did your father change his 
mind? 

REINER: When I was 19. I'd directed a pro- 
duction of Sartre's No Exit at a lit- 
tle playhouse in Beverly Hills, the 


“Be sure she’s home by midnight. That’s when 
her husband gets off work!” 


Roxbury—Rick Dreyfuss was in it, in fact. 
And ГИ never forget it, because my father 
came backstage, looked me straight in the 
eye and said, “That was good. No 
bullshit.” It was the first time Га gotten 
that sort of yalidation from him. 

PLAYBOY: Do you think that children 
threaten their parents? 

REINER: No question about it. I’m sure a lot 
of that was operating. And it continues to 
operate. 

PLAYBOY: You mean he wants you to do 
well—but not that well? 

REINER: It's mixed. He's tremendously 
proud of me and loves me very much, but 
I'm sure there’s always the fear of being 
superseded, of being replaced. I'm sure it 
goes on with all fathers and sons. There’s a 
battle that goes on inside you, which is 
this: You don’t want to hurt your father; 
you don’t want to surpass him, because it 
may hurt him. At the same time, though, 
you don’t want that to stop you from 
achieving in your career. It’s a rough knot. 
] know my desire to achieve will always 
win out, and I think that deep down 
inside, he would hope that would be the 
case. Deep down, I think all fathers want 
their sons to be successful. 

PLAYBOY: Hypothetical question: Let’s say 
you and your father had both been nomi- 
nated for Oscars this year for best 
director—you for This Is Spinal Tap, he for 
All of Me. Who would you like to see win? 
REINER: Me. Between interview sessions, 
you spoke with my father; what did he say 
when you asked him that? 

PLAYBOY: He said he'd want you to win. 
REINER: He said me? 

PLAYBOY: Yes. 

REINER: All right, Pop! Isn't that nice? . . . 
Maybe he’s lying. Seriously, if he won, Га 
be real thrilled; I wouldn't feel bad. Га 
feel better if Z won, but I'll tell you, that's 
a rough onc. Part of me would feel bad if 
he didn’t get it, but if I am totally honest 
with myself, I'd rather be the one to win. 
You know, we do love cach other dearly; 
the best hug Гуе ever had in the whole 
world was from him. When he hugs you, 
you feel hugged—it’s a wonderful feeling. 
He's terrific, but we're very different. 
PLAYBOY: Although you're in the same 
business, you scem to be declaring your 
independence. 

REINER: Um starting to do work that 
reflects who I am. Most of what Гуе done 
until now have been things that came from 
what I learned at my father’s knee. Spinal 
Tap, for instance, is satire; and my father 
was one of the great satirists of all time. 
With The Sure Thing, though, 1 was 
attracted by the idea of a young man’s 
starting to make the connection between 
love and sex—a concept expressive of 
me—and the fil a romantic-comedy 
setting that is not so much unlike things 
my father would do. With my next film, 
The Body, I'm making a movie my father 
would never begin to make. He'll appreci- 


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VIDEO MAGAZINE 


ate it, I think—1 hope he loves it—but I 
don’t think it’s a choice he would ever 
make. It’s scary, because I don’t know if 
I'm going to get accepted this way 
PLAYBOY: How did Spinal Tap come 
about? 

REINER: The script was kicking around for 
quite some time, and it was frustrating 
beyond belief. I got very disheartened. It 
took four and a half years from the time we 
began working on it until the time it got on 
screen. We had this little 20-minute prod- 
uct reel that was a demonsuation of the 
kind of satire we wanted to do. We had a 
screening at Columbia once, and there was 
no laughter at all. The lights went up and 
they said, “Well, that’s interesting; we'll 
think about it.” It was like death. I finally 
sold it to AVCO/Embassy, but then Nor- 
man Lear, of all people, and a partner 
bought the studios, and I thought he'd 
dump the project. Instead, he was the one 
who ended up spearheading Spinal Tap. 
PLAYBOY: So Lear came through for you 
again, as he did for The Sure Thing. 
REINER: Actually, Norman didn’t like the 
script for The Sure Thing very much at all; 
he told me that in no uncertain terms. He 
just didn’t think it was funny. It was real 
tough for me, because this is a man I 
respect so much—the one man besides my 
father I can absolutely say I love. It 
like taking a woman home, saying, “This 
is the woman I'm going to marry,” and 
your father says, “Well, she’s a tramp, but 
if you want to marry her, be my guest.” 
Norman’s attitude finally was, “If you 
think this is good and think you can make 
something out of it, go do it.” 

PLAYBOY: It seemed like a high-risk film, 
though: a teenage romantic comedy that 
isn't gross. 

REINER: Well, I don't like Porky's or Police 
Academy or those kinds of films. And they 
used to make me angry, because I thought 
they were taking food out of my mouth: If 
everyone goes to see Porky's, there's no 
room for anything else. But what I’ve 
learned is that there's room for other kinds 
of movies 

PLAYBOY: Isn't The Sure Thing a reaction 
against teenage exploitation movies? 
REINER: It may turn out that way, but it 
wasn’t our intention. We just wanted to 
make a good movie that treated young 
people with some respect and showed that 
they had feclings that were as deep as any- 
one else’s. At first, though, I was worried, 
because we didn’t have car crashes, we 
didn’t have nudity, we didn’t have food 
fights. Basically, what we have here is a 
simple love story about two characters 
who are on scrcen practically all the timc. 
And I thought, God, will an audience sit 
still for this? But I think maybe audiences 
were starved for something like this. 
PLAYBOY: Your next film is by Stephen 
King, right? 

REINER: The Body is based on a short story 
of his, but it doesn’t have horror, murders 
or anything like that. It’s the story of a 12- 
year-old boy, misunderstood by his father, 


who starts to like himself and think he’s 
valid. That’s what's beginning to happen 
to me now. It's a hard process. You find 
out your parents are human, and at first 
you're angry, because you don't want 
them to be. You want them to be perfect, 
godlike. But you learn to forgive them; and 
once you do, then you can go about the 
business of living your life 

PLAYBOY: You say you're feeling better 
about things today, but Richard Dreyfuss 
told us that the day after the Hollywood 
screening of The Sure Thing, which was a 
triumph, you sounded miserable. 

REINER: It’s truc enough. I can't sit still for 
a minute and think, Ooooh! I did good! 
You know how a woman puts on a make- 
up base? Well, I have a base of depression 
that's always there. 1 don't allow myself to 
feel great too much of the time—which to 
me is horribly tragic 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever wake up and just feel 
happy? 
REINER: No. In fact, when people say 
“Have a nice дау” to me, I feel a lot of 
pressure; I don’t know how the fuck to do 
it. I have moments when I seem joyful, but 
they always catch me by surprise. I 
remember driving through Coldwater 
Canyon one time, and all of a sudden, this 
unbridled joy just started bubbling up in 
me. I don’t know where it came from— 
and it lasted six seconds. To be honest, I 
think Гхе been happy 18 seconds in my 
whole life, and they've been spread out. 
Where there's hope, though, is that I feel 
there's a happy person trying to creep out 
of this depression. 

PLAYBOY: Professionally, you're soaring. 
What would make you feel better person- 
ally? 

REINER: To be able to have a good relation- 
ship with a woman and have a family. But 
I would have to feel good about myself 
first. Marriage is very attractive to me. 
I've never thought, Oh, boy! Single! I get 
to fuck a lot of women! That's never been 
appealing to me. Now, though, I’m like a 
pendulum: I go through stages when I run 
around a lot, get tired of it, then want 
somethi with real emotional content. 
And when I’m not able to make that work, 
1 go back to running around. I think what 
it boils down to is that I’m not ready yet 
for another long, long-term relationship. 
PLAYBOY: It sounds as if you’re still afraid 
of something 

REINER: The only things I’m afraid of are 
my own feelings, my own emotions—that 
I won't be able to control them or under- 
stand them. That would be the root of it. 
PLAYBOY: Speaking of which: We probably 
shouldn’t ask, but why won’t you discuss 
your penis size, Rob? 

REINER: How crass of you! No! No! 
PLAYBOY: This is the big interview: You’re 
supposed to come clean about everything, 
REINER: Listen: If you had a penis that was 
only an eighth of an inch long, you 
wouldn't want to talk about it, either. 


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160 


VCR ATE MY BRAIN 


(continued from page 144) 


“The things I cherished most were those moments of 


video surrealism that I'd snatched out of the air." 


minutes’ worth of blank tape for a two- 
hour show. I'd left outdated programs оп 
the timer. I'd pushed the pause button to 
avoid taping commercials and failed to 
unpause it when the show resumed 
Despite those potential pitfalls. I managed 
to tape 109 of the first 110 Mary Hartman 
episodes. I left an empty half hour on the 
tape where the missing show—number 92, 
the victim of a sudden cable outage on my 
block—would go if I ever got another 
crack at it. 

Then, with no warning, the show disap- 
peared from the schedule, replaced by a 
talk show called Thicke of the Night 
Collectus interruptus! I called the station, 
angrily demanding, then politely request- 
ing and, finally, abjectly pleading that 
they broadcast the 20 episodes that would 
complete the story line through Mary’s 
breakdown on The David Susskind Show. 
No way, I was told. 1 checked the TV 
Guide to see if any Connecticut station was 
still running the series, thinking that 
maybe I ought to take a VCR and go stay 
in a hotel in New Haven for a month, but 
none was. 

Finally, I accepted defeat. The fact that 
I had yet to watch even one of the 2400 
minutes of Mary Hartman Yd recorded 
was small consolation. 

. 

It occurred to me one evening to figure 
out exactly how much material I had on 
tape that I'd never seen. I counted more 
than 50 television programs and 100 mov- 
ies, including such greats as Vertigo, Mr. 
Smith Goes to Washington and Sunset Boule- 
vard. This is ridiculous, I thought; instead 
of actually watching something, I’m mak- 
ing a list of things I haven't watched; but I 
didn't dwell on that for long, because 
I suddenly remembered two old shows I 
wanted to start collecting, neither of which 
was then being syndicated in New York, 
which annoyed me quite a bit—what were 
they waiting for, Armageddon?—and, hey, 
was my phone broken or something, it 
seemed like years since anyone had called, 
and why was I getting all these magazines 
I never had any time to read, and, shit, Га 
forgotten to put a tape in the machine and 
I was missing Bedtime for Bonzo. 

. 

Aficr two years, video tapes had 
marched their way across 11 shelves that 
had formerly held books and were midway 
through the take-over of a 12th. By then, I 
had 418 movies, ranging from the sublime 
(Citizen Kane, Badlands, Lolita) to the 
ridiculous (Endless Love, Mommie Dearest, 
Hardly Working). 1 had—in addition to the 
109 Mary Hartmans—all 39 Honeymoon- 
ers, all 45 Monty Pythons, 126 episodes of 


The Twilight Zone, 78 hours of SCTV, 60 
hours of Dallas and a 13-hour PBS special 
about Vietnam that I'd heard was excel- 
lent, though I hadn't actually seen any of 
it. I had 623 rock videos, of which at least 
12 or 15 were probably not bad. 

I had 1200 hours—50 days—of video 
tape, every minute of it painstakingly 
indexed. For all of it, though, the things I 
cherished were those unexpected and 
unheralded moments of video surrealism 
that Pd snatched out of the air: Barbara 
Walters asking Katharine Hepburn “what 
kind of tree" she'd be if she were a 
tree. Tom Snyder chatting with Charlie 
Manson, John DeLorean burbling to the 
cops who were about to bust him that 
the cocaine he was holding was “better 
than gold.” (The VCR had made it possi- 
ble to have the worst moment in a total 
stranger's actual life in your personal 
video file.) 

News reports on homeless people were 
followed by people in clown costumes 
reviewing movies, Gruesome crimes were 
recycled within months as TV movies or 
"docudramas." Nancy Reagan hopped 
into Mr. T's lap and kissed his huge head, 
and the President came before the cameras. 
singing the praises of James Bond. As I 
taped, the boundarics between reality and 
fantasy were being destroyed on the 
nation's TV screens, the touchstones of 
sanity picked off one by one, like the space 
rocks in Asteroids. 

The First Lady appeared as herself on 
an episode of Diff rent Strokes. The Speaker 
of the House draped himself over a bar- 
stool or two on Cheers. A former President 
and his Secretary of State—Gerald Ford 
and Henry Kissinger—served themselves 
up as video wallpaper for the stars of 
Dynasty. “Hello, Alexis, good to see you,” 
growled Kissinger to Joan Collins, who 
never stopped shaking his hand as she 
cooed, "Henry, hello! I haven't seen you 
since Portofino," and then added lewdly, 
"It was fun!” (In the episode's closing 
credits, he was listed as Dr. Henry 
Kissinger.) 

The entire culture was happening on 
television, an ongoing stream of electronic 
bits and pieces whose absurdity was 
obscured by their volume. The VCR made 
it possible to isolate these moments and, 
examined individually, their bizarrencss 
was hard to miss. Somebody should be 
collecting these lunatic epiphanies, I 
thought, acknowledging that the job was 
mine as | invented it. It was as if I 
expected to wake up onc morning in a Uto- 
pian America and be called on to provide 
vidco-taped proof that life here used to be 
really insane. I realized that what I was 


searching for was a single piece of incon- 
trovertible evidence, and I knew my VCR 
was the only place to look. 

Tt dawned on me that I had a serious 
video habit, and I briefly considered going 
cold turkey. Instead, 1 rented a second 

chine. 


. 
The new VCR, an RCA VJP900, cost 
$50 a month. It was a top-of-the-line 
model, and its up-to-the-millisecond fea- 
tures included a wireless remote control, a 
three-week timer and a scan that let me 
view tape forward and backward at up to 
12 times normal speed. Not only did it 
double my recording capacity but it freed 
me from having to save an entire program 
for a fabulous four-minute chunk. Now I 
could dub the part I wanted onto a master 
cassette and reuse the original. Even with 
the price of tapes dropping below six dol- 
lars, this would save me a lot of money. 

The second machine empowered me to 
make copies of tapes to trade with other 
collectors— I'd met several at my local 
video store or, rather, at the one of the 
eight local video stores that I patronized. 
It also opened up the possibilities of cre- 
ative editing. I started a list of tapes I 
could compile: 

Take My Kid, Please. Excerpts from 
prime-time soaps in which parents of 
young children are shown interacting with 
their toddlers during the opening seconds 
of a scene and then handing them over to 
the nearest servant 

Details at Eleven. Breathless promos 
hyping upcoming local news shows: 
“Soviet troops cross the Polish border, and 
a report on a Long Island boy who makes. 
hats out of ice cream.” “The Pope is dead, 
but the Red Sox are still alive.” “Bad but- 
ter in the Bronx." 

That Was No Lady. Samples of perform- 
ances by actresses playing prostitutes in 
TV movies and miniscries. 

Adolf, We Hardly Knew Ye. Samples of 
performances by actors plaving Hitler in 
TV movies and miniseries. 

Neatness Counts. The closing moments 
of Tom Brokaw’s daily newscasts, during 
which the anchor man straightens his 
script and fastens i a paper clip. 

The Buss Stops Here. Game-show host 
Richard Dawson kissing his contestants. 

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and 
Wave. President Reagan and his wife wav- 
ing at the cameras as they get on and off 
airplanes and helicopters. 

In fact, I started none of those collec- 
tions, preferring to preserve things as hap- 
hazardly as I found them. I was a 
pop-culture prospector scanning for video 
gold, taping as much as 14 hours of televi- 
sion a day and then speeding through it in 
search of 20-second-long nuggets like 
Ringo Starr in Princess Daisy—having his 
toenails painted in a hot tub and trilling, 
"If only Mum could see me now'”—or Pia 
Zadora bouncing onto The Merv Griffin 
Show with a dog wearing a black scarf 
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Pia) or the broadcast of a three-year-old 
video-dating tape made by Christopher 
Wilder, who was in the midst of a murder 
spree that had claimed several female vic- 
tims. "I want to date," Wilder had said. 
“I want to socially meet and enjoy the 
company of a number of women." 
. 

When I started collecting, l'd used a 
ballpoint pen to write out the identifying 
labels Í stuck on each tape. After a year, 
Td found that black felt-tip was easier to 
read, and I'd relabeled all of them. 

Now I took an aesthetic dislike to the 
way the five-and-a-halfinch-long strips 
looked on the sides of the seven-and-a- 
half-inch-long cassettes, and I decided to 
replace them with the more understated 
three-and-a-half-inch-long ones. “I redid 
my labels,” I told my girlfriend when she 
asked what I'd done the previous evening. 

“That's the third time,” she said; and 
before too much longer, she wasn't my 
girlfriend anymore. 

. 

“Man,” said my cable repairman one 
afternoon, eying the wires connecting the 
switchers, splitters and power booster to 
the TV, the two VCRs and the cable box, 


“every time 1 come here, you get in this 
deeper and deeper.” 
. 

"The more I fixated on this video blend- 
ing of reality and fantasy, the more 1 
returned to the first image I'd recorded: 
President Reagan. Í had dozens of hours of 
him on tape. I had him in the Vatican nod- 
ding off during a meeting with the Pope. I 
had him in Brazil toasting his hosts, “the 
people of Bolivia." I had him in the Oval 
Office arm-wrestling with a bodybuilder 
while his aides in the next room were bricf- 
ing reporters on the U.S. pull-out from 
Lebanon. 1 had him filling sandbags in 
Louisiana, riding a stagecoach in Mon- 
tana, hoisting a beer (but not drinking it). 
in a Boston pub. I had him playing with a 
computer, driving a tractor, blowing out 
birthday candles, picking out valentine 
cards, swinging a hockey stick, tossing a 
baseball, calling a tax increase a “revenue 
enhancement” and a nuclear warhead a 
“peacekeeper.” I had him with Jerry 
Lewis and Merv Griffin and Michael Jack- 
son and Spider-Man, with Barbara Wal- 
ters and Claudette Colbert and Tammy 
Wynette and Kate Smith, with dogs and 
horses and turkeys and pigs. I had him 


doing everything but actually working at 
the job of running the country. If 1 ever 
found that single piece of yideo tape that 
would confirm the merging of truth and 
fiction in America, it seemed likely to star 
Ronald Reagan. 

To me, “President Reagan” was the 
ultimate television creation—a character 
who was also the product, selling himself 
to a target audience that had spent the 
past quarter century getting used to peo- 
ple with two or three large emotions and 
no small ones. His moods were always 
broadly telegraphed. When he was 
Friendly, his eyes crinkled and his head 
bobbed like a toy dog in the rear window 
of a car. When he was Happy, he threw his 
head back, mouth agape in laughter. 
When he was Angry, his lips compressed; 
when he was Sad, his voice cracked; 
and when he was Busy, he wore glasses. 
"There were no subtleties, no rough edges. 
He was unlike any human Fd ever 
known. 

For all its dedication to artifice, televi- 
sion has been unmatched for revealing the 
truth about those who appear on it. The 
only rule for playing the ТУ game is that 
you have to be willing to risk baring your 
soul. But Reagan was cheatin, 
of opening himself up to the au 
hid behind his role, playing a part that 
existed only on camera—and he was get- 
ting away with it. When the press called 
attention to things that contradicted the 
electronic image, the public ignored or 
reinterpreted them. His loose grasp of the 
facts was secn as an endearing idiosyn- 
crasy. His distaste for detail somehow 
became charming. His oft-repeated one- 
liners were hailed as wit. People liked this 
“President Reagan” character, and they 
didn’t want his series canceled. 

With hundreds of episodes of The Prest- 
dent Reagan Show in my collection, I was 
still missing the one that answered the 
question he himself had raised with his 
autobiography: "Where's the rest of me?” 
I wanted to sec the Wizard behind his 
video curtain. I wanted to watch the Presi- 
dent of the United States without his 
knowing he was being watched. 

б 

My search continued. Scanning through 
Good Morning America one afternoon, 1 
found David Hartman's jail-cell interview 
with Margie Velma Barfield, who was 
scheduled to bc executed that week in 
North Carolina after confessing to feeding 
four people—including her boyfriend and 
her mother—rat poison. “What's the 
plan?" Hartman inquired s itously. 
"Are you afraid of this coming Friday? . . . 
Have you ever said, “I just can't believe 
what І did?" Barfield seemed subdued. 
They both looked like potatoes. 

Back in the studio, Joan Lunden was 
wearing a dress I'd definitely seen her in 
before. How many outfits does she have, I 
wondered, and how often does she repeat 
them? Is there a regular rotation? That 


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164 


information, I realized, was available to 
me if I chose to make it minc. All I had to 
do was save a [ew seconds of cach day's 
show, then go back after a month or two 
and check out her wardrobe. The VCR, I 
thought, is the key to otherwise unobtain- 
able knowledge. Of course, I could gather 
that particular data by just watching the 
show and taking notes, but the VCR ena- 
bled me to sleep till noon and still do it. It 
occurred to me that no sane person could 
have had these thoughts. 

A few days later, in the early-morning 
darkness outside the prison, a woman who 
had essed Barfield’s execution by 
lethal injection reported that “during the 
procedure itself, there was no movement, 
no jerking, nothing to that effect.” Barfield 
wore pink pajamas, we were told, and her 
last meal was Cheez Doodles and Coca- 
Cola. Oh, yes, and right alter she was 
killed, her body was rushed to a waiting 
ambulance, where a donor-transplant 
team tried to restart her heart in order to 
save her kidneys. 


. 

I was taping scveral hours of news a 
day. One night, I caught John Bangs of 
American Cyanamid defending the 
cies of U.S. corporations in South Africa. 
"Leadership of the American companies," 
he explained, “has gone a long way toward 
helping oppose the bad aspects of apart- 
heid." Bangs did not elaborate on the 
good aspects of apartheid. 

Another night, I taped an update on 
Richard Nixon's shingles. And the night 
after that, News 4 New York had an “exclu- 
sive” interview with one Irene Wein- 
choski, a 60ish redhead who had gotten 
subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz’s auto- 
graph after serving him lunch at the Mark 

Twain Diner in Union, New Jersey. 

“What did he have to eat?” the NBC. 
reporter asked. 

“A turkey sandwich on whole-wheat 
toast, with lettuce and tomato,” sai 
Weinchoski, “and a glass of orange juice." 

“What was it that made you want that 
man’s autograph?” the reporter asked. 

“Just that I saw him on TV,” the wait- 
ress said. “That was the only reason.” 

I thought of driving to New Jersey to 
get Irene's autograph ‘cause I saw her 
on TV. 


` 

And then it was over. A friend sent me a 
cassette with a note saying, “I think you've 
been looking for this." The tape, my friend 
explained, had been pirated by somcone 
with a back-yard satellite dish that ena- 
bled him to pick up live network feeds that 
were not broadcast to the general public. 
It had been recorded during the quarter 
hour preceding Super Bowl XIX, and it 
was labeled Let Reagan Be Reagan. 1 
loaded it into the VCR. 

President Reagan was in the White 
House, standing in front of a painting. He 
was staring to his right at a TV monitor 
tuned to the pregame activities at the 
Super Bowl in Stanford. Two men hover- 


ing on his left had their hands in his jacket 
pockets as they hooked up his mike. 
"Hey," Reagan said, “looks like they're 
gettin’ read 

The President—who earlier in the day 
had been sworn in for a second term—was 
topping off his Inauguration with a guest 
shot on The Game, flipping the coin to 
determine whether Miami or San Fran- 
cisco would receive the opening kick. 
They'd gotten him down here early, 
though, so he stood on mark and 
waited silently, eying the coin in his right 
hand. “Let me see how this works,” he 
said nervously. ping it to the floor. “It 
is heads,” he intoned grandly, testing his 
delivery. He flipped it again. “It is tails.” 
Now he was ready for anything. Someone 
in the room showed him which camera 
would be on when ABC cut to the White 
House for the coin toss. "Play to that one," 
Reagan said, nodding. “All right.” He re- 
sumed his cxpressionless stare at the TV. 

Suddenly, he perked up a bit. “I have 
to tell ya, Frank Sinatra had a rec- 
ommendation—instead of tossin” the 
coin—what woulda been a lot better,” 
he said, making up in body language what 
he lacked in syntax. *You'd have had me 
outdoors throwin’ out the ball—I would 
have thrown it—a little artwork, of maybe 
a ball going across a map; and out there, 
one of them catching a ball as if it's gone 
all the way across the United States. How 
*bout that?” His attention again returned 
to the TV. He looked very uneasy, as if he 
were terrified of blowing his lines, and he 
held on to the coin with both hands. Some- 
onc handed him a page with his script on it 
and he looked it over, moving his lips as he 
memorized. America the Beautiful came 
over the TV, and the President started 
humming along: “Hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm- 
hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm. Then he stopped. 
Three minutes had passed since he had 
entered the room 

Something on the screen amused him, 
and he laughed quietl mself, “Heh- 
heh-heh,” and then, “Hee-hee-hee.” When 
the smile left over from those laughs faded, 
he seemed unsure of what to do with his 
mouth, and his expression was alternately 
simian and reptilian until he remembered 
how it was supposed to go. Then an 
announcer in the stadium introduced 
the Super Bowl Children's Choir to sing 
The Star-Spangled Banner. "Heccecy," the 
President said, as if the playing of the 
national anthem before a sporting event 
were an unexpected delight. Someone 
asked him what the temperature in Stan- 
ford was. “I don’t know,” he said, adding, 
“I do know that the half-time ceremony is 
an entirely Air Force military-personnel 
entertainment group." He'd been stand- 
ing there for seven minutes, not budging 
from his mark, waiting to go on. 

Again he stared at the set, as if he might 
miss his cue if he took his eyes off the 
screen. When the sportscaster promised 
viewers a very unusual coin toss after the 
next block of commercials, the President 


made a stupid face and twisted his arm. 
strangely to emphasize the unusual nature 
of the event. Finally, the referee was intro- 
ducing him. He checked that coin one last. 
time—yes, it was there—checked the 
monitor and he was on! Instantly, thc 
whole thing came to life. The smile lit up! 
The eyes twinkled! The head bobbed! The 
camera was on! “It’s a distinct pleasure 
and a privilege for me to be a participant,” 
he purred, “although I wish I could be a 
participant closer at hand. But who makes 
the call?” 

On the field, the Dolphins’ captain 
called heads, and former football great 
Hugh McElhenny instructed the President 
to toss the coin. He did, and it took a 
funny bounce and landed a few feet behind 
him. After several seconds, he announced, 
“It is tails.” ABC cut to the crowd reaction 
at the game, and the President deflated as 
soon as he noticed that he wasn’t on. He 
was reminded that he had an encore com- 
ing up, though, so he idled instead of 
shutting down completely. McElhenny 
thanked him for his services. “Well, thank 
you,” the President said, on again. “It was 
a privilege, and all I can say is something 
that used to be alittle prayer of mine when 
I played football myself; ‘May everyone do 
their best, may there be no injuries, may 
the best team win and no one haye 
regrets.’ ” He had been on national televi- 
sion for 42 seconds. 

His mike was turned off, so the tense 
small talk he exchanged with his son 
Michael while the room emptied out went 
unrecorded for posterity. Then the Presi- 
dent looked around forlornly, offered a lit- 
tle wave to the few remaining audience 
members and was led out of the room. 

I played it through six times, repeating 
bits of dialog, slowing down sequences, 
freezing individual frames until I knew 
every nuance by heart. It was unlike any- 
thing else in my collection—an early Andy 
Warhol movie with a six-foot mannequin 
instead of a skyscraper, a video black hole 
sucking the viewer into 15 real-time min- 
utes with a 74-year-old man whose philos- 
ophy is "I entertain, therefore I am.” 
When he wasn't playing to an audience, he 
didn't seem to exist at all. 

. 

In America, in 1985, it had come to this. 
A people that spent an average ol seven 
hours a day watching television had cho- 
sen a television character as their Presi- 
dent, Technology had made it possible for 
an average citizen with above-average 
determination and a few thousand dollars 
to spy on the actor who played the role and 
to do so from the comfort of his or her own 
home. And I had in my library a profound 
historical document—a tape of the most 
powerful human on the planet standing in 
one spot for ten minutes, waiting to go on 
TV and flip a coin. I had set myself the 
thankless task of proving that fantasy and 
reality had become indistinguishable, and 
I had succeeded. 

Yes, the machine worked. 


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(continued from page 118) 
credit for being plenty lucky. We picked up 
our two boxes of B-24s over Holland and I 
positioned two squadrons to escort them, 
then took off with my own squadron to 
range about 100 miles ahead. We were 
over Steinhuder lake when I spotted 
specks about 50 miles ahead. Combat 
vision, we call it. You focus cut to infinity 
and back, searching a section of sky each 
time. To be able to sce at such distances is 
a gift that's hard to explain, and only one 
other man and | could do it. The other 
guys, who had excellent eyesight on the 
ground, took it on faith that the two of us 
actually saw something far out there. I 
didn't even radio to the others but just 
kept us heading toward the German fight- 
ers from out of the sun. We were at 28,000 
fect and closing fast. Soon I was able to 
count 22 individual specks. I figured they 
were Me-109s sitting up there, waiting for 
our bombers. And I was right. 

"They were just circling and waiting and 
didn't sec us coming at them out of thc 
sun. Wc closed to about 1000 yards, and if 
their leader saw us, he probably thought 
we were additional 109s, because he made 
no effort to scramble out of our way. In the 
lead, I was the only one yet in firing range, 
and I came in behind their tail-end Char- 
lie and was about to begin hammering him 
when he suddenly broke left and ran into 
his wingman. They both bailed out. It was 
almost comic: 1 scored two quick victories 
without firing a shot. But apparently the 
big shortage in Germany was not of air- 
planes but of pilots, and the Germans were 
probably under orders to jump for it in 
tight spots. By now, all the airplanes in 
that sky had dropped their wing 
were spinning and diving in a wild, wide- 
open dogfight. I blew up a 109 from 600 
yards—my third victory—when 1 turned 
around and saw another angling in be- 
hind me. I pulled back on my throttleso hard 
that I nearly stalled, rolled up and over, 

me in behind and under him, kicking 
ight rudder and simultaneously firing. Í 
was directly underneath the guy, less than 
50 feet away, and I opened up that 109 as 
if it were a can of Spam. That made four. 
A moment later, I waxed a guy's fanny in 
a steep dive: I pulled up at about 1000 
feet; he augered straight into the ground. 

On rainy nights in the flight leader's 
Nissen hut, we'd listen to Glenn Miller 
records and toast grilled-checse sand- 
wiches on the coke stove. If we'd had a 
good day at work, we heated a poker red- 
hot and branded another swastika on the 
front door. Each swastika represented a 
dogfight victory, and by the end of my 
tour, that door displayed 50. During the 
last week in November, I became a double 
ace with 11 kills by shooting down four 
German planes during a historic dogfight 

. 

Glennis remembers: Being a military 

pilot's wife seemed exciting, especially 


XP WS 


dE - 5 


-— DN 


\ 


; AS S 
ME. cem cU 


"And if you look to your right, we see the home of 
Voltaire . . . and next door... .” 


PLAYBOY 


with a husband like Chuck, who loved 
action, whether it was flying or hunting or 
fishing. So I was primed to say “Yes!” if 
and when he ever proposed. He arrived at 
my door in California, straight from the 
war in Europe, and told me to pack. 

“I'm taking you home to meet my folks.” 

“What for?" I asked. 

“What do you think?” he replied. 

О 


I reported to Wright Field in July 1945, 
a few weeks before the atomic bomb ended 
the war. I was assigned as an assistant 
maintenance officer to the fighter-test sec- 
tion of the flight-test division—the hub 
over the next decade for the testing of a 
radically new generation of powerful air- 
planes that would take us to the edge of 
space and change aviation forever. Two 
weeks after arriving at Wright, I was flying 
the first operational American jet fighter. 

I had no idea what the future might 
hold. It was like having Aladdin's lamp 
with unlimited rubs. I could fly as much as 
I wanted, building flying experience on 
dozens of different kinds of fighters. The 
first chance I got, I flew to Hamlin and 
buzzed Glennis, who was living with my 
folks because we couldn’t find any housing 
at Wright. I called her that night and said, 
“J miss you, hon, but I’m in hog heaven." 

I had a small office between hangars 
seven and eight, where all the fighters 
were kept, and got to know some of the test 
pilots. It never occurred to me that I could 
be one of them—I lacked the education. 
All of them were college grads, mostly 
with engineering degrees. There were 
about 25 fighter test pilots, and they 
weren't shy about their status. They were 
the stars of the show. I thought, Well, fair 
enough. If they’re fighter test pilots, they 
must be hotter than a whore's pillow. 

So, every time I took off in a P-51 on a 
test hop, I climbed to 15,000 feet and cir- 
cled over Wright, waiting for one of those 


guys to take off. As soon as a test pilot 
climbed to altitude, I dove at him. I went 
through the entire stable of test pilots and 
waxed every fanny. A few of them fought 
back halfheartedly, but none of them had 
any combat experience, and when they 
saw that I was merciless, they just quit. 
And they weren’t amused at being shown 
up by an assistant maintenance officer. 

I flew six to eight hours a day; I flew 
everything they had, including most of the 
captured German and Japanese fighters. I 
checked out in 25 different airplanes. I 
never did understand how a pilot could 
walk by a parked airplane and not want to 
crawl into the cockpit and fly off. 1 would 
touch ground just long enough to climb 
our of one airplane and service-check 
another. I even flew the first prototype jet 
fighter, the Bell P-59, which had been 
secretly tested on the California desert in 
1942. 

Everything about airplanes interested 
me: how they flew, why they flew, what 
each could or couldn't do and why. As 
much as I flew, I was always learning 
something new—whether it was a switch 
on the instrument panel I hadn’t noticed 
or handling characteristics of the aircraft 
in weather conditions I hadn't experi- 
enced. In order to have an eager curiosity 
about an airplanc's systems, you've got to 
love engines and valves and all those 
mechanical gadgets that make most peo- 
ple yawn. It was a terrific advantage when 
something went wrong at 20,000 feet. 

The jet age arrived for me the day I was 
seated in the cockpit of the Lockheed P-80 
Shooting Star—the first operational 
American jet fighter. I felt like I was flying 
for the first time. I greased that thing in on. 
landing, as happy as a squirrel hunter who 
had bagged a mountain lion. 

But I came within an inch of being 
bounced out of test-pilot school and out of 


“By golly, Pam, before I met you, I didn’t know 
how happy happy hour could be.” 


. 1 took off with my instructor 
one day in a two-seat prop trainer to run a 
power-speed test at 5000 feet. Suddenly, 
the master rod blew apart in the engine 
and the ship began to vibrate as if it 
would fall apart. I cut back on the power 
and began looking down to sce where I 
could make an emergency landing. We 
were over Ohio farmland with plenty of 
plowed fields. I didn’t want to bail out 
unless it was absolutely necessary. My 
instructor, a Lieutenant Hatfield, hadn't 
done much flying, and I looked back at 
him in the mirror and saw that his teeth 
were sticking to his lips. I said, “No sweat. 
Lock your shoulder harness and make sure 
your belt is tight, because I'm gonna try 
and make it into one of these fields.” 

"There was a farm with fields on either 
side, and [ started to set mysell up on one 
of them. But I was sinking too fast coming 
in on a dead stick to make one field and. 
was really too high to use all of the other, 
so we came in between the two, directly in 
the path of the farmhouse, a chicken 
house, a smokehouse and a well. Wheels 
up, we hit the ground, slithering along, 
and went through the chicken house in a 
clatter of boards and a cloud of feathers. 
As the airplane skidded to a stop, the right 
wing hit the smokehouse, turning us side- 
ways, and the tail hit the front end of the 
farmhouse porch, flipping us around. We 
came to rest right alongside the farmwife’s 
kitchen window. She was at the sink, look- 
ing out, and I was looking her right in the 
eye. Dust and feathers were raining down. 
Topened the canopy and managed a small 
smile. “Morning, ma'am," I said. “Can I 
use your telephone?" 

Because there had been a loss of civilian 
property, a board of inquiry was held. One 
of the witnesses was a councilman in a 
nearby village who claimed that before 1 
crash-landed, 1 had buzzed down Main 
Street. Lieutenant Hatfield, who was my 
passenger, supported my denial, but those 
four majors on the board seemed hostile in 
their questioning, and I was scared to 
death. I could easily be court-martialed. 
The barograph aboard my airplane was 
my best defense. It clearly showed my alti- 
tude at the time of the engine problem and 
what we were doing before I hit. Without 


I had figured that our lives would settle. 
down as soon as I got test-pilot school 
behind me. Little did I know. A few 
months after I graduated, I was selected to 
be the principal pilot to fly the X-1 and to 
try to break the sound barrier. 

. 

Twice during quick trips out to Muroc 
Air Base in the Mojave Desert to pick up 
airplanes and ferry them back to Wright, 1 
saw the X-1 being shackled beneath a 
B-29 bomber prior to taking offon a fight. 
1t was a small ship, painted bright orange 


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and shaped like a .50-caliber machine-gun 
bullet. Somebody told me it was rocket- 
propelled with 6000 pounds of thrust, 
designed to fly at twice the speed of sound. 
"That was beyond my understanding, and 1 
let it go at that. 

The pilot was a civilian named 
Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin. He was a 
sharp-looking guy, rumored to be making 
a fortune from Bell in these risky flights. 1 
heard he was real hot, and he had to be to 
walk away from a few of those X-1 tests. In 
those days, civilians did all of the research 
flying, so they could be paid risk bonuses; 
nobody wanted to ask an Air Corps pilot 
to risk his neck on a military pay check 

I was busy doing air shows and flight- 
test work; being the most junior test pilot 
in the shop, I was lucky to be asked to 
make coffee, but 1 did manage to get a few 
interesting jobs. In May 1947, I attended a 
meeting of all the fighter test pilots, 
requesting volunteers to fly the X-1. My 
friends and fellow test pilots Bob Hoover 
and Jack Ridley raised their hands along 
with me and five others. 

Hoover and I were renegades who were 
gone a lot of the time and definitely 
weren't part of the clique, so all we heard 
was that the X-1 research program was in 
some sort of trouble and that the Air 
Corps was planning to take it over from 
Bell and Slick Goodlin. I said, "Sure, put 
my name down,” knowing there were at 


least a dozen others with more seniority in 
the section; then I flew off to Cleveland to 
do an air show. Colonel Albert G. Boyd 
was also there, and I flew back on his 
wing. He was head of the flight-test divi- 
sion and a tough, demanding disciplinar- 
ian. When he landed, I remarked on the 
radio, “Not bad for an old man." 

Colonel Boyd wasn't amused. “Who 
said that?” he barked. There was absolute 
silence, though I figured my drawl had 
given me away. Colonel Boyd had just 
bought a new car, and he was the kind 
who kept meticulous records about its per 
formance. So a couple of us decided to put 
some pebbles in his hubeaps. We watched 
from a window: He backed up, stopped, 
got out, looking puzzled, got back in, 
drove a little more, stopped, got out. We 
laughed until we almost wet our pants. 

But a few days later, he sent for me, and 
I thought, Oh, God, here we go! It was 
either the pebbles or my remark when he 
landed that had caught up with me. Colo- 
nel Boyd never looked sterner, and when I 
saluted in front of his desk, he kept me 
standing at attention for nearly half an 
hour while we talked. I left in a state of 

1 
but he sure moved around the edges. He 
asked me why I had volunteered, and I 
told him it seemed like an interesting pro- 
gram, something else to fly. He said, 
“Yeager, this is the airplane to fly. The first 


shock. He didn't exactly offer me thc 


Johnson, to take a test flight а 


pilot who goes faster than sound will be in 
the history books. It will be the most his- 
toric ride since the Wright brothers’. And 
that’s why the X-1 was built.” He told me 
there were all kinds of incredible planes on 
the drawing boards, including an aircraft 
that could fly six times faster than the 
speed of sound and a supersonic bomber 
powered by an atomic reactor. The Air 
Corps was developing a project that would 
put military pilots into space—but all 
these plans were stuck on a dime until the 
X-1 punched through the sound ba 
haven't any doubt it will be done, 
nel Boyd told me, “and that an Air Corps 
pilot will be the one to do it." 

He told me why the Air Corps was tak- 
ing over the program. Slick Goodlin had 
contracted with Bell to take the X-1 up to 
0.8 Mach, which he had done. Then he 
had renegotiated his contract and 
demanded $150,000 to go beyond Mach 
one. Point eight Mach was phase one of 
the program. Phase two was to take it on 
out to 1.1 Mach—supersonic. Slick had 
completed 20 powered flights but felt that 
things were getting too thrilling and tried 
to renegotiate his bonus by asking that it 
be paid over five years to beat taxes. Bell 
had brought in their chief test pilot, Tex 
d verify the 
danger involved. He had flown around 
075 Mach reported that Slick 
deserved every dime he asked for. But the 


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lat plan idea, and until the 
matter was resolved, Slick refused to fly. 
‘The Air Corps had lost patience with all 
the delays апа decided to take over the 
-1 project. 
I asked the old man if he thought there 
was a sound barrier. “Hell, no,” he said, 
“or 1 wouldn't he sending out one of my 
pilots. But I want you to know the hı 
ards. There are some very good aviation 
people who think that at the speed of 
sound, air loads may go to infinite. Do you 
know what that means?" 

“Yes, sir," I said. “That would be it.” 

He nodded. *Nobody will know for sure 
what happens at Mach one until some- 
body gets there.” 


. 

Before his death in 1976, Major General 
Albert G. Boyd remembered: I asked my 
deputy, Colonel Fred Ascani, to sit down 
with me and review all of the 125 pilots in 
the flight-test division and sce what kind of 
list we could compile. 

І wanted a pilot capable of doing 
extremely precise, scientific flying. Above 
all, 1 wanted a pilot who was rock solid in 
stability. Yeager came up number one. 

. 

Major General Fred Ascani remembers: 
Wall, we all wanted to be somebody, but 
some got to be somebody more than others. 
In those days, Chuck wasn't quite a 
nobedy, but he wasn't a somebody, cither, 


and I knew him mostly by reputation, 
which was as an extremely proficient pilot 
who flew with an uncanny, instinctive feel 
for the airplane. He's the only pilot Гуе 
ever flown with who gives the impression 
that he’s part of the cockpit hardware—so 
in tune with the machine that instead of 
being flesh and blood, he could be an 
autopilot. He made an airplane talk. 
. 

Glennis remembers: When 1 moved out to 
Muroc, I was practically the only wife 
there. Shortly after we settled in, Chuck 
drove me to the base to show me the X-1 
He purposely hadn't told me that he had 
named the plane Glamorous Glennis, but 
there it was, written below the cockpit, 
just like he'd done on his Mustang in 
England. This was an important research 
airplane and I was very surprised. And 
proud. He said, "You're my good-luck 
charm, hon. Any airplane I name after 
you always brings me home.” [ really 
think that’s why the Air Corps allowed my 
name to stay on the X-1. Chuck didn't ask 
permission to do it, and they weren't 
delighted that he had—the official pic- 
tures of the ship had my name airbrushed 
out—but none of the brass wanted to 
interfere with his good-luck charm and 
perhaps jinx the mission. So Chuck got his 
way and I had a namesake that one da 
would be displayed in the Smithsonian 


near another famous airplane, the first onc 
flown by the Wright brothers. 
. 

Shivering, 1 hanged my gloved hands 
together and strapped on my oxygen mask 
inside the coldest airplane ever flown. I 
was cold-soaked from the hundreds of gal- 
lons of liquid-oxygen fuel stored in the 
compartment directly behind at minus 296 
degrees Fahrenheit. No heater. no de- 
froster—I'd just have to grit my teeth 
for the next 15 minutes until I landed and 
felt that hot desert sun. But that cold saps 
your strength: It's like trying to work and 
concentrate inside a frozen-food locker. 

"That cold will take you on the ride of 
your life. You watched the X-l get its 
seven-A м. {ceding in a cloud of vapor, saw 
the frost form under its orange belly. That 
was cerie; you're carrying 600 gallons of 
LOX and water alcohol that can blow 
up at the flick of a 
switch and scatter you 
over several counties, 
But if all goes well, 
the beast will chug- 
alug a ton of fuel 


a minute. 

Anyone with 
brain cells would 
have to wonder 


what in hell hc 
was doing in 
such a situation: 


(үнө 


E De Care j 


uU EUR 
анаи MEXICO. 


PLAYBOY 


172 


strapped inside a live bomb that was 
about to be dropped from a bomb bay. 
The butterflies are fluttering, but you feed 
off fear as if it were a high-energy candy 
bar. It keeps you alert and focused. 

You can’t watch yourself fly. But you 
know when you're in sync with the 
machine, so plugged into its instruments 
and controls that your mind and your 
hand become the heart of its operating sys- 
tem. You can make that airplane talk and, 
like a good horse, the machine knows 
when it's in competent hands. You know 
what you can get away with. And you can 
be wrong only once. You smile reading 
newspaper stories about a pilot in a dis- 
abled plane who maneuvered to miss a 
schoolyard before he hit the ground. 
That's crap. In an emergency situation, a 
pilot thinks about only one thing— 
survival. You don't say anything on the 
radio, and you aren't even aware that a 
schoolyard exists. That's exactly how it is. 

There are at least a dozen ways the X-1 
can kill you, so your concentration is total 
during the preflight-check procedures. You 
load up nitrogen-gas pressures in the 
manifolds—your life’s blood, because the 
nitrogen gas runs all the internal systems 
as well as the flaps and the landing gear. 
Then you bleed off the liquid-oxygen man- 
ifold and shut it down. All's in order. 

Half an hour ago, we taxied out to take- 
off in the mother ship. Because of the pos- 
sibility of our crashing with so much 
volatile fuel, they closed down the base 
until we were safely off the ground. That's 
the only acknowledgment from the base 
commander that we even exist. There’s no 
interest in our flights, because practically 
nobody at Muroc gives us any chance for 
success. Those bastards call our flights 
Slick Goodlin’s Revenge. The word is that 
he knew when to get out in onc piece by 
quitting over money. 

One minute to drop. Ridley, my flight 


engineer, flashes the word from the co- 
pilot’s seat in the mother ship. We're at 
25,000 feet as the B-29 noses over and 
starts its shallow dive. Major Robert Ca 
denas, the driver, starts counting back- 
ward from ten. 

C-r-r-ack. The bomb-shackle release 
jolts you up from your seat, and as you sail 
out of the dark bomb bay, the sun explodes 
in brightness. 

The moment of truth: Ifyou are going to 
be blown up, this is likely to be the time. 
You light up the first chamber. 

Whoosh. Slammed back in your seat, a 
tremendous kick in the butt. Nose up and 
hold on. Barely a sound; you can hear your 
breathing in the oxygen mask—you're 
outracing the noise behind you—and for 
the first time in а powered airplane, you 
can hear the air beating against the wind- 
shield as the distant dot that is Hoover's 
high-chasc P-80 grows ever bigger. You 
pass him like he's standing still, and he 
reports seeing diamond-shaped shock 
waves leaping out of your fiery exhaust. 

ing faster than you can even think 
only one of four rocket cham- 
bers, you turn off one and light another. 
We're streaking up at 0.7 Mach; this 
beast’s power is awesome. You've never 
known such a fecling of speed while point- 
ing up in the sky. At 45,000 feet, where 
morning resembles the beginning of dusk, 
you turn on the last of the four chambers. 
God, what a ride! And you still have 
nearly half your fuel left. 

. 

Pancho's was a dude ranch as well as a 
watering hole and barbecue. One night we 
walked over to the corral and had them 
saddle up a couple of horses. It was a 
pretty night, and we rode for about an 
hour. We decided to race back. Unf 
nately, there was no moon, otherwise 1 
would have seen that the gate we had gone 
out of was now closed. I saw the gate only 


“Ask her if she can bring a horny friend for me!” 


when I was practically on top of it. I was 
slightly in the lead, and I tried to veer and 
miss it, but it was too late. We hit the gate 
and I tumbled through the air. The horse 
got cut and I was knocked silly. The next 
thing I remember was Glennis kneeling 
over me, asking me if I was OK. I was 
woozy, and she helped me stand up. It 
took a lot for me to straighten up; I felt like 
Thad a spear in my side. 


y. “You broke 
a rib,” she said. She was all for driving 
straight to the base hospital. 

I said, "No, the flight surgeon will 
ground me.” 

“Well, you can't fly with broken ribs,” 
she argued. 

“IfI can't, I won't; if I can, I will." 

Monday morning, I struggled out of 
bed. My shoulder was sore, and I ached 
generally from bumps and bruises, but my 
ribs near to Killed me. Glennis drove me 
over to Rosamond, where a local doctor 
confirmed that I had two cracked ribs and 
taped me up. Hc told me to take it easy. 
The tape job really helped. The pain was 
at least manageable, and I was able to 
drive myself to the base that afternoon. 

I was really low. I felt we were on top of 
these flights now, and I wanted to get 
them over with. And as much as I was 
hurting, I could only imagine what the old 
man would say if I were grounded for fall- 
ing off a horse. So I sat down with Jack 
Ridley. I said, “If this were the first flight, 
1 wouldn't even think about trying it with 
these busted sumbitches. But, hell, I know 
every move I've got to make, and most of 
the major switches are right on the 
control-wheel column.” 

He said, “True, but how in hell are you 
gonna be able to lock the cockpit door? 
“That takes some lifting and shoving." So 
we walked into the hangar to see what we 
were up against. 

We looked at the door. Jack said, “Let's 
sce if we can get a stick or something that 
you can use in your left hand to raise the 
handle up on the door to lock it. Get it up. 
at least far enough where you can get both 
hands on it and get a grip on i 

We looked around and found a broom 


Jack sawed off a ten-inch piece of broom- 


stick, and it fit right into the door handle. 
"Then I crawled into the X-I and we 
it out. By using that broomstick to raise 
the door handle, I found I could manage 
to lock it. We tried it two or three times, 
and it worked. Finally, though, Ridley 
said, “Jesus, son, how are you gonna get 
down the ladder?” 

I said, “One rung at a time. Either that 
or you can piggyback me,” 

Jack respected my judgment. “As long 
as you really think you can hack it,” he 
said. We left that piece of broomstick in 
the X-1 cockpit. 


. 
Glennis drove me to the base at six AM 
It was October 14, 1947—the ninth test 

flight of the X-1. The moment we picked 

up speed, I fired all four rocket chambers 


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PLAYBOY 


174 


in rapid sequence. We climbed at 0.88 
Mach and began to buffet, so I flipped the 
stabilizer switch and changed the setting 
two degrees. We smoothed right out, and 
at 36,000 feet, I turned off two rocket 
chambers. At 40,000 feet, we were still 
climbing at a speed of 0.92 Mach. Leveling 
off at 42,000 feet, I had 30 percent of my 
fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three 
and immediately reached 0.96 Mach. I 
noticed that the faster I got, the smoother 
the ride. 

Suddenly, the Mach needle began to 
fluctuate. It went up to 0.965 Mach, then 
tipped right off the scale. I thought I was 
seeing things. We were flying supersonic! 
And it was as smooth as a baby's bottom: 
Grandma could bc sitting up there sipping 
lemonade. I kept the specd off the scale for 
about 20 seconds, then raised the nose to 
slow down. 

I was thunderstruck. From 0.965 Mach 
to supersonic was one unexpected dip! 
And in the blink of an сус. After all the. 
anxiety about breaking it, the sound bar- 
rier had turned out to be a perfectly paved 
speedway. I radioed Jack in the B-29. 
"Hey, Ridley, that Machmeter is acting 
screwy. It just went off the scale on me.” 

“Fluctuated off?" 

“Yeah, at point nine six five.” 

‘Son, you is imagining things.” 

“Must be. I’m wearing my cars and 
nothing else fell off, neither.” 

The guys in the National Advisory 
Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) track- 
ing van interrupted to report that they 
heard what sounded like a distant rumble 
of thunder: my sonic boom—the first one 
by an airplane ever heard on earth! The 
X-1 was supposedly capable of reaching 
nearly twice the speed of sound, but the 
Machmeter aboard registered to only 1.0 
Mach, which showed how much confi- 
dence the Air Corps had; I estimated I 
had reached 1.05 Mach. (Later data 
showed it was 1.06 Mach—700 miles per 
hour.) 

And that was it. I sat up there fecling 
kind of numb but elated. After all the 
anticipation of achieving this moment, it 
really was a letdown. [t had taken a 
damned instrument meter to tell me what 
Fd done. There should have been a bump. 
on the road, somcthing to let vou know 
you had just punched a nice clean hole 
through that sonic barrier. The unknown 
was a poke through Jell-O. 

. 


Major General Fred. Ascani remembers: 
Colonel Boyd came into my office. “Well, 
they did it,” he said, and from the grin on 
his face I didn't have to wonder what he 
was talking about. Coincidentally, only a 
few days before Chuck's historic flight, 
President "Truman had declared the Army 
Air Corps to hc a separate branch of the 
Service. We were now officially the U.S. 
Air Force. What better way to celebrate 
than to crow about this flight? In fact, wc 
had planned to go after cvery aviation 
record on the books as soon as the speed of 


sound was achieved and really give the 
Navy a run for its money. So we were 
shocked when orders came down from 
the highest levels in Washington to clamp 
the security lid on this flight. And it stayed 
clamped more than eight months. 

The public was kept in the dark, but 
official Washington knew all about it, and 
everybody wanted to meet the intrep- 
id hero who had broken the awesome 
sound barrier. I recall General Hoyt Van- 
denberg’s getting the word back to us at 
Wright to “keep that damned hillbilly 
Yeager out of Washington.” The general 
was very Ivy League. But he was whistling 
in the dark. About a week after he made 
the flight, we flew Chuck back to Wright 
and had a top-secret ceremony in the 
commanding gencral's office, where he 
received the Distinguished Flying Cross. I 
remember his whispering afterward, “1 
needed that like a hole in the head.” 

He played his new fame perfectly and 
knocked Washington on its ear. Very mod- 
est, very matter-of-fact, an casygoing, lika- 
ble country boy with more bravery than 
Prince Valiant. The Secretary of Defense 
and the Senators who met him were in 
awe. They shook their heads in wonder, 
patted him on the back and asked him to 
autograph the pictures he had taken with 
them. Chuck wasn’t play acting; he was 
just being himself. But he was also astute 
and knew the impact he was making. He 
had big balls and he knew it. But he 
played the hillbilly to the hil: “Aw, 
shucks, I just happened to be at the right 
place at the right time. It was no big deal. 
Just another job.” 


. 
Glennis remembers: 1 saw that flight 
what I could see of it, which was mostly 
the white contrails from Chuck’s engine 
exhaust streaking up in the sky. I didn’t 
hear the sonic boom when he flew at Mach 
one, because it was about 40 miles away, 
so I had no idea that anything special had 
happened. I recall he drove up in the fire 
chiefs truck, got out and flopped into our 
car. “Tm beat,” he said. “Let's go home.” 
1 tumed on the ignition and was about to 
drive off when Dick Frost and Bob Hoover 
came running oyer and began clapping 
him on the back and making a big fuss. 
And that’s how I found out that Chuck 
had broken the sound barrier. 

. 

Dick Frost, Bell. project engineer on the 
X-1, remembers: 1 didn't leam that Chuck 
had broken his ribs until a long time later, 
but it was so typical of him to be matter- 
of-fact, He was going to go home with 
Glennis, but we said, “No way." I remem- 
ber grabbing him and jumping up and 
down, We were one happy bunch. We went 
over to the operations office, where I 
called Larry Bell at the plant to tell him 
the news. Chuck and Ridley called Colo- 
nel Boyd. Then we went over to the ofli- 
cers’ club to cat and drink a toast. We 
planned a big party that night out at 
Pancho's. Meanwhile, Colonel Boyd's 


office called back and informed us that the 
tightest possible security lid had been 
clamped on the flight. It was not to be dis- 
cussed with or disclosed to anyone. Well, 
Muroc was a small base, and here we 
were, rowdy and celebrating in the officers" 
club—the word was definitely out. But 
orders were orders, so we decided against 
holding a party at Pancho's. Instead, 
about 4:30, we drove to Chuck's house. 

He fixed us a pitcher of martinis. 
Around six, we decided to go on to my 
house and continue partying. It really was 
bizarre being forced to celebrate in secret 
the most historic flight of the age. 

Chuck had an old motorcycle that 
Pancho had given him—a beat-up old 
thing without headlights. He cranked up 
the motorcycle and led the way. We were 
so damned excited and happy about what 
we had accomplished that we sat around 
cackling like geese, insulting the hell out of 
onc another, and by eight or nine o'clock, 
we were definitely pickled. 

No one was in any condition to drive 
and certainly not to drive a damned 
motorcycle. Hoover and 1 urged Chuck to 
leave his bike at my house and drive back 
to his place with us. He said, “Aw, shit, 1 
can manage. No sweat.” Needless to say, 
he prevailed. It was decided that I would 
provide his headlights. He said, “Yeah, 
well, ГІ keep right in front of you all." 

He got on the bike and cranked it up. It 
sounded louder than the X-I, and right 
then I should have known we were in trou- 
ble. He roared away. Hoover and 1 fol- 
lowed in my Chevy coupe. By the time we 
got on the road, Yeager was way ahead, 
blazing off in the dark. Now, this is a road 
out in the boonies, not much traffic, noth- 
ing but desert on either side, so on a moon- 
less night, the darkness is total. Only 
somebody with Yeager’s incredible eye- 
sight would have dared to drive it without 
headlights. And he didn’t just drive it. 
‘That son of a bitch was racing it. He was 
nowhere in sight 

But just as we approached a right-angle 
turn in the road, Hoover and | saw a big 
cloud of dust. You never saw two guys 
sober up faster than we did. There was 
Chuck stretched out on the road, under- 
neath that motorcycle. He had skidded on 
sand making his turn. We ran to him, cer- 
tain that he was dead. And it was sheer 
terror, because he was the man of the 
hour, who had just broken thc sound bar- 
rier, and Hoover and | could be held 
accountable for the death of an American 
hero. 

So we pulled that bike off him and saw 
that he was not only still alive but giggling 
like a loon. He wasn't even scratched. 

Chuck got to his feet, still laughing. But 
he put up his hands in surrender. He said, 
“OK, OK, you guys are right. ГЇЇ take it 
easy. I'm sober now." And he started to 
get back on that bike 

“Bullshit,” I said. “No way. Get your 
ass in my car." He shook his head. Off he 
went. Hoover and I ran back to my car 


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PLAYBOY 


and took off after him. But there he was, 
still going balls out in the pitch-dark. We 
had a brief glimpse of him crouched low 
over the handle bars, and then he just 
zoomed out of sight. By the time we pulled 
up at his house, he was in the kitchen, fix- 
ing us one more pitcher for the road. 
. 

I lived balls out, flew the same way. I 
had my own standards, and as far as I was 
concerned, there was no room for test 
pilots who couldn't measure up to the 
machines they flew. We dealt with a high- 
powered team of scientists and engineers 
from NACA, the forerunner of NASA, but, 
whatever its initials, I rated it about as 
high as my shoelaces. Its pilots were prob- 
ably good engineers who could fly pre- 
cisely, but they were sorry fighter pilots. 
"Today it is a new breed. I'll take my hat off 
to any of the NASA pilots flying shuttle. 

Neil Armstrong may have been the first. 
astronaut on the moon, but he was the last 
guy at Edwards to take any advice from а 
military pilot. Neil was NACA's backup 
pilot on the X-15. One day his civilian 
boss, Paul Bikle, called me to say that 
NACA was scheduling an X-15 flight and 
planned to use Smith's Ranch Lake as an 
emergency landing site. Smith's Ranch 
Lake was about 250 miles away, and I told 
him that I had flown over it recently and it 
was soaked from the winter rains. He said, 
“Well, my pilots were over there today and 
they said it’s not wet.” 

I laughed. “Well, then, be my guest.” 
But Paul had doubts of his own or he 
wouldn’t have called. He asked me if I 
would fly Neil up there and attempt a 
landing. “No way,” I said. 

“Would you do it in a NACA airplane?” 
he asked. 

“Hell, no. I wouldn’t do it in any air- 
plane, because it just won't work.” 

He then asked, “Would you go up there 
if Neil flew?” 

“OK,” I said. “I'll ride in the back.” 

I tried my damnedest to talk Armstrong 
out of going. He said, "Well, we won't 
land. ГЇЇ just test the surface by shooting a 
touch and go”—meaning he'd set down 
the wheels, then immediately hit the throt- 
tle and climb back up into the sky. 

I told him he was crazy. “You're carry- 
ing a passenger and a lot of fuel, and that 
airplane isn't overpowered anyway. The 
moment you touch down on that soggy 
lake bed, we'll be up to our asses in mud. 
The drag will build up so high, you won't 
be able to get off the ground again." 

He said, *No sweat, Chuck. ГЇЇ just 
touch and go." 

And that's exactly what Armstrong did. 
He touched, but we sure as hell didn't go. 
The wheels sank into the muck and we sat 
there, engine screaming, wide-open, the 
airplane shaking like a moth stuck on fly- 
paper. I said from the back, "Neil, why 
don't you turn off the sumbitch? It ain't 
doin’ nothin’ for you.” 

He turned off the engine and we sat 


176 there in silence. I would've given a lot to 


sec that guy's face. Very soon it would be 
dark and the temperature would drop to 
below freezing. We were wearing only thin 
flying suits and the nearest highway was 
30 miles away. "Any ideas?" I asked him. 
Neil shook his head. 

Bcforc dark, NACA sent out a DC-3 to 
search for us. I got on the horn with the 
pilot and told him to give us time to walk 
over to the edge of the lake bed, about a 
mile away. I told him to touch down but 
not to stop. “Open the door and keep on 
moving while we jump aboard." He did а 
good job, and when we got back to 
Edwards, Bikle was sull there. I don't 
know what he said in private to Arm- 
strong, but when he saw me, he burst out 
laughing. 


. 

The Air Force had hoped to put the first 
men into space, but the Eisenhower 
Administration had chosen NASA—a 
civilian agency that, ironically, selected all 
military pilots for its first group of astro- 
nauts. The Air Force wasn't interested in 
going to the moon. We had had plans on 
the boards since 1947 for orbiting military 
space stations manned with our own astro- 
nauts. We knew damned well that the Rus- 
sians had similar plans, and we aimed to 
beat them to it. In 1961, I was appointed 
to head the new Air Force Acrospace 
Research Pilot School at Edwards to 
train military astronauts. 

NASA's Mercury astronauts had been 
chosen before our school geared up. But 
over the next six years, the space agency 
recruited 38 of our graduates to its corps of 
astronauts. Some of our guys turned the 
NASA people down flat. They came back 
from their interviews in Houston and told 
me, “Were overqualified for their pro- 
gram. All we get to do is take a ride, like 
one of those damned chimps they sent up. 
We don't want to get involved, because 
everything is controlled from the ground 
and there is nothing to fly.” 

I said, *Hell, I don't blame you. I 
wouldn't want to have to sweep off mon- 
keyshit before I sat down in that capsule." 

But as time went on, NASA made its 
program damned attractive to recruits. It 
was in a tough spot, needing outstanding 
pilots who were little more than Spam in 
the can, throwing the right switches on 
instructions from the ground. Even then, 
they had trouble landing precisely and it 
sometimes took half the Navy to locate a 
capsule bobbing in the Pacific, miles from 
where it should have been. Also, NASA 
had many more astronauts than available 
rides, and a lot cf guys never flew ог had to 
wait for years to get their opportunity. So 
the agency sold its program like one of 
those fly-by-night land developers selling 
tracts in the desert. For signing up, a guy 
got a free expensive house, donated by a 
Realtor in Houston, and a cut of a lucra- 
tive contract with Time-Life. The glamor, 
splash and money made it attractive to 
some pilots. The guys came back from 
their interviews and told me, “All the talk 


in Houston is about how much money we 
are going to make.” 

My attitude was that they shouldn't get 
a dime for being selected for the program, 
especially when the risks involved weren't 
half as great as some of the research flying 
done at Edwards over the years. 

Risk was what our life was all about, 
and take my word for it, I was always 
afraid of death. Facing death takes many 
different kinds of courage. There's battle- 
field courage where a guy, hopelessly 
trapped, suddenly decides to take as many 
of the enemy as he can with him before he 
himself is killed. Many Congressional 
Medals of Honor were awarded posthu- 
mously for that kind of heroics. Then there 
is a more calculated kind of courage that 
comes when you are strapped inside а 
bullet-shaped rocket airplane to fy at 
speeds at which many experts think the 
ship will disintegrate. Does that kind of 
courage merit the Medal of Honor? I was 
awarded that medal the year after I 
retired, and the nicest part about winning 
it was that I received it standing up. 

. 

The Right Stuff? I don't deny that I was 
damned good. If there is such a thing as 
"the best," I was at least one of the title. 
contenders. But what really strikes me as I 
look back over all those years is how lucky 
I was—how lucky, for example, to have 
been born in 1923 and not 1963, so that I 
came of age just as aviation itself was 
entering the modern era. Being in my early 
20s right after the war was the key to 
everything that happened in my life, plac- 
ing me smack in the golden age of aviation 
research and development, allowing me to 
participate in the historic leap from prop 
engines to jets and from jets to rockets and 
outer space. For Christopher Columbus to 
make his mark on history, he had to be 
born at a time when the world was 
believed to be flat. For me to make mine, 
people had to think that the sound barrier 
was a brick wall in the sky. Reaching my 
21st birthday in the age of the Concorde 
would have done me no good at all. 

Not that flying today isn’t fascinating, 
but technology has removed much of the 
stress and danger that made being a test 
pilot similar to being a matador. Still, life 
is as unpredictable as flying in combat. 
If the day comes when a flight surgeon 
tells me I can’t fly anymore in high- 
performance jets, I can always sneak out 
back and fly ultralights. 

Not long ago, the Piper Cub people 
asked me to fly one of their airplanes non- 
stop from Seattle to Atlanta to try to estab- 
lish a new distance speed record. I did it 
and shaved a couple of hours off the old 
record. So nobody needs to remind me of 
how lucky I am. 

I haven't yet done everything, but by 
the time I’m finished, I won't have missed 
much. If I auger in tomorrow, it won't be 
with a frown on my face. 


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PLAYBOY 


178 


BREATHE DEEP 


(continued from page 95) 


“T know where I belong, but I just keep coming out 
to the Strip. It’s a fatal attraction.” 


know, but I love the hotels at night. I come 
in, I breathe deep, I'm a young man again. 
All the old words come back, run around 
inside my mind like squirrels. You know 
what I mean, Chuck?” 


“Excitement,” suggested the dealer, 
flat-voiced. 

“Oh, sure. Oh, yes. By day, you know, I 
hang around downtown. You know those 
places. Big sign out front: PENNY SLOTS. FREE 


ДЬ N 


7 


“State of the art, sir—no matter where it hits, it 
destroys the entire world.” 


BREAKFAST. Penny slots.” The old man 
made a laugh sound in his throat—heh- 
heh—that turned into something like a 
cough 

“Sir,” said the dealer, "I want to give 
you some friendly advice.” He'd seen past 
the imperfectly shaved cheeks now, the 
frayed raincoat, the charity-service neck- 
Че. This was an old bum, a derelict, onc of 
the many ancient, alcoholic, homeless, 
friendless, familyless husks the dry wind 
blows across the desert into the stone-and- 
neon baffle of Las Vegas. “You don’t 
belong here, sir,” he explained. “I’m 
doing you a favor. Security can get kind of 
rough, to discourage you from coming 
back.” 

“Oh, I know about that, Chuck!” the 
old man said, and this time he laughed 
outright. “I belong downtown, with those 
penny slots. Start all over again, Chuck! 
Build a stake on those slot machines down 
there, penny by penny, penny by penny, 
come back!” 

“Sir, I'm telling you for your own 
good.” 

“Chuck, listen.” Hands in raincoat 
pockets, the old man leaned closer over the 
table. “I want to tell you a quick story,” 
he said, “and then I'll go. Then we'll go. 
OK?" 

"The dealer's eyes moved left and right. 
His shift boss was down by the active 
tables. His relief dealer was almost duc. 
“Keep it short," he said. 

“Oh, I will!’ His hands almost came 
out of the raincoat pockets, then didn’t. 
“Chuck,” he said, “I know where I belong, 
but I just keep coming out to the Strip. late 
at night. It’s a fatal attraction. You know 
what that is, Chuck?" 

"I think so," the dealer said. He 
thought about showgirls. 

“But what makes it, Chuck? Look 
around. No windows, no clocks, no day or 
night in here. But it’s only at night 1 like 
these places. That’s when they make me 
feel . . . good. Now, why's that?” 

“1 wouldn't know, sir.” 

The old man said, “Well, I was in here 
one time, and a couple of security fellows 
took me out back by the loading dock to 
discourage me a little. There were all these. 
tall grecn-metal cans there, like if you have 
bottled gas delivered to your house out in 
the country, and I bumped into them and 
fell off the loading dock and all these big 
green-metal cans rolled off and landed on 
me. And that’s why I was in the hospi- 
tal.” 

The dealer looked at him. “But here you 
arc back again.” 

“It’s the old fatal attraction, Chuck." 

“You'd better get over it.” 

“Oh, I'm going to.” Once again, the old 
man’s hands almost came out of his rain- 
coat pockets but didn’t. “But I thought Га 
tell somebody first about those green cans. 


Because, Chuck, here's the funny part. 
They had them in the hospital, too." 

“Ys that right?” 

“That's right. “What's that?’ I asked the 
nurse. ‘Oxygen,’ she said. ‘Any time you 
see а tall can like that, if it’s green, you 
know it's oxygen. That's a safety measure 
on account of oxygen’s so dangerous. You 
get that stuff near any kind of fire and the 
whole thing’ll burn like fury.’ Did you 
know that, Chuck? About green meaning 
oxygen?” 

“No, I didn’t.” 

“Well, what I kept thinking was: Why 
does a big Strip hotel need about fifty cans 
of oxygen? And then I remembered the big 
hotel fire on the Strip a couple years ago. 
Remember that one?” 

“I do,” the dealer said. 

“It said in the papers there was a fire- 
ball crossed six hundred feet of main 
casino in seventeen seconds. That's fast, 
Chuck." 

“I suppose it is.” 

“In there, in the hospital," the old man 
said, “I had this thought: What if, late at 
night, here in the casino, with no windows 
and no clocks, air conditioning out of vents 
all over, what if . . . Chuck, what if they 
add oxygen to the air? The very air we 
breathe, Chuck, this air all around us.” 
The old man looked around. “Here in this 
spider's parlor.” 

“I wouldn't know anything about that,” 
the dealer said, which was the absolute 
truth. 

“Well, I wouldn’t know, either, Chuck. 
But what if it's true? Spice up the air at 
night with extra oxygen, make the gam- 
blers feel a little happier, a little more 
awake?" 

"Pm going to have to call security 
now,” the dealer said. 

“Oh, Pm almost donc, Chuck. You sec, 
those penny slots downtown, they won't 
lead me back anywhere. I threw myself 
away, and lm not coming back at all. | 
would have checked out of thi. еп life 
two or three years ago, Chuck, if it hadn't 
been for this fatal attraction. Come out to 
the Strip late at night. Breathe deep. Get а 
little high on that extra oxygen, begin to 
hope again, get roughed up by security." 

""They don't do that with the oxygen." 

“They don't? Well, Chuck, you may be 
right." The old man took his hands from 
his raincoat pockets. In his right hand, he 
held a can of lighter fluid; in his left, a 
kitchen match. "Let's see," he said and 
squirted a trail of lighter fluid onto the 
green felt of the table. 

The dealer, wide-eyed, stomped down 
hard on the button. “Stop that!” he said. 

The old man kept squirting lighter fluid, 
making dark puddles in the felt. “Security 
coming, Chuck?” he asked. 

“Yes!” 

“Good. Га like them to travel with us,” 
the old man said and scraped the match 
along the edge of the table. 


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PLAYBOY 


180 


HEIHBIUENHEIPEHIBUHEHE 


(continued from page 152) 


“T got a feeling we're being followed,’ said DUN, 
squatting down behind a rock.” 


you up. I wish y'all a lotta luck. Boy, this 
air has a punch like a mule. Be careful. 
Goodbye.” 

Across thc unfamiliar stars overhead, a 
point of light blazed, streaked in a long 
arc, then died on the night. 

“Well,” said MIK, "we're on our 
own.” 

“Gawrsh, I feel all sad,” said GUF. 


. 

The trip was uneventful for the next few 
months. They walked across the long land 
bridge down a valley between stumps of 
mountains with the white tecth of glaciers 
still on them. They crossed a low range 
and entered flat land, without topsoil, 
from which dry river courses ran to the 
south. Then there was a land where things 
were flowering after the long winter. New 
streams sprang up. 

They saw fire once and detoured but 
found only a burnt patch of forest. Once, 
way off in the distance, they saw a speck of 
light but didn’t go to investigate, thinking 
it only another prairie fire. 

Within 200 kilometers of their goal, the 
land changed again to a flat, sandy waste 
littered with huge rocks. Little vegetation 
grew. There were few insccts and animals, 
mostly lizards, which DUN chased every 
chance he got. The warmth seemed to be 
doing him good. 

GUF's leg worsened. The foot first 
stuck, then flopped and windmilled. GUF 
kept humming songs and raggedly march- 
ing along with the other two. 

DUN stopped, turned and watched 
behind them. 

“What's wrong?" asked MIK. 

“I got a feeling we're being followed,” 
said DUN, squatting down behind a rock. 

All three watched for a few minutes, 
ranging up and down the spectrum. 

“DUN, I think mebbe yer seein’ things, 
uh-hyuk,” said GUF. 

They continued on, DUN stopping 
occasionally to watch their trail. 

When they passed one of the last trees, 
MIK had them all take limbs from it. 
“Might come in handy for pushing and 
digging,” he said. 

. 

They stood on a plain of sand and rough 
dirt. There were huge piles of rubble all 
around. Far off was another ocean and to 
the north, a long, curving patch of green. 

“We'll go to the ocean, DUN,” said 
MIK, “after we get through here. 

He was walking around in a smaller and 
smaller circle. Then he stopped. “Well, 
huh-huh, here we are,” he said. “Latitude 
lorty degrees, forty-four minutes, thirty- 
four seconds, point oh cight nine North. 
Longitude seventy-three degrees, fifty 


minutes, forty-three seconds, point eight 
four two West, by the way they used to fig- 
ure it. The capsule is straight down, 
twenty-eight meters below the original 
surface. We've got a long way to go, 
because there's no telling how much soil 
has drifted over that. It's in a concrete 
tube, and we'll have to dig to the very bot- 
tom to get at the capsule. Let’s get work- 
ing." 

ites early morning when they started. 
Just after noon, they found the top of the 
tube with its bronze tablet. 

“Here's where the hard work starts,” 
said MIK. 

. 

It took almost a week of continuous 
effort. Slowly the tube was exposed as the 
hole around it grew larger. Since GUF 
could work better standing still, they had 
him dig all the time, while DUN and MIK 
both dug and pushed rock and dirt clear of 
the crater. 

They found some long, flat iron rods 
part way down and threw away the worn 
tree limbs and used the metal to better 
effect. 

On one of his trips to push dirt out of the 
hole, DUN came back looking puzzled. 

“I'm sure 1 saw something moving out 
there,” he said. “When I looked, it went 
away." 

"There yuh go again," said GUF. 
“Неге, DUN, help me lift this rock.” 

It was hard work. Their motors were 
taxed. It rained once, and for а while there 
was a dust storm. 


e. 
“Thuh way I see it,” said GUF, looking 

at their handiwork, “is that yuh treat it 

like a great ol” big tree made o? rock.” 

They stood at the bottom of a vast cra- 
ter. Up from its center stood the concrete 
tube. 

"We've reached twenty-six meters,” 
said MIK. “The capsule itself should bein 
the last two point three eight one six 
meters. So we should chop it off,” he 
quickly calculated, “about here!” He drew 
a line all around the tube with a piece of 
chalky rock. 

They began to smash at the concrete 
with rocks and pieces of iron and steel. 


. 

“TIMBER!” yelled DUN. 

The column above the line lurched and 
with a crash shattered itself against the 
side of the crater wall. 

“Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” 

“Come help me, GUF,” said MIK. 

Inside the jagged top of the remaining 
shaft, an eyebolt stood out of the core. 

They climbed up on the edge, reached 
in and raised the gleaming Cupraloy time 


capsule from its resting place. 

On its side was a message to the finders, 
and just below the cycbolt at the top was a 
line and the words cuT HERE. 

“Well,” said MIK, shaking GUF's and 
DUN's hands, “we did it, by gum!” 

He looked at it a moment. 

“How’re we gonna open it?” asked 
GUF. “That metal shore looks tough!” 

“I think maybe we can abrade it around 
the cutting line with sandstone and, 
well . .. go get me a real big, sharp piece 
of iron, DUN.” 

When DUN brought it, MIK handed 
the iron to GUF and put his long tail over 
a big rock. 

“Go ahead, GUF,” he said. “Won’t hurt 
me a bit.” 

GUF slammed the piece of iron down. 

“Uh-hyuk!” he said. “Clean as a whis- 
tle!” 

MIK took his severed tail, sat down 
cross-legged near the eyebolt, poured sand 
on the cutting line and began to rub it 
across the line with his tail. 

It took a full day, turning the capsule 
every few hours. 

They pulled off the cyebolt end. A 
dusty, waxy mess was revealed. 

“That'll be what's left of the waterproof 
mastic,” said MIK. “Help me, you two.” 
They lifted the capsule. “Twist!” he said. 

The metal groaned. “Now, pull!” 

A long, thin inner core, two meters by a 
third of a meter, slid out. 

“OK,” said MIK, putting down the 
capsule shell and wiping away mastic. 
“This inner shell is threaded in two parts. 
Turn that way; ГІЇ turn this.” 

They did. Inside was a shiny sealed 
glass tube through which they could dimly 
see shapes and colors. 

“Wow!” said GUF. “Looka that!” 

“Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” said DUN. 

“That's Pyrex,” said MIK. “When we 
break that, we'll be through.” 

“Plldo it,” said DUN, picking up a rock. 

“Careful!” said GUF. 

The rock shattered the glass, There was 
a loud noise as the partial vacuum disap- 
peared. 

“Oh, boy!” said DUN, 

“Lers do this carefully,” said MIK. 
“It’s all supposed to be in some kind of 
order.” 

The first things they found were the 
messages from four famous humans and 
another whole copy of The Book of the Time 
Capsule. GUE picked that up. 

There was another book, with a black 
cover and a gold cross on it. Then they 
came to a section marked ARTICLES OF COM. 
MON USE. The first small packet was labeled 
CONTRIBUTING TO CONVENIENCE, COMFORT, 
HEALTH AND SAFETY. MIK opened it. 

Inside were an alarm clock, bifocals, a 
camera, a pencil, a nail file, a padlock and 
keys, a toothbrush, tooth powder, a safety 
pin, a knife, a fork and a slide rule. 

The next packet was labeled PERTAINING 
TO THE GROOMING AND VANITY OF WOMEN. 
Inside were an Elizabeth Arden Cyclamen 


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Color Harmony Box, a rhinestone clip and 
a woman's hat, style of autumn 1938, 
designed by Lilly Daché. 

“Golly-wow!” said DUN and put the 
hat on over his. 

The next packet was marked FOR THE 
PLEASURE, USE AND EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 

First out was a small spring-driven toy 
car, then a small doll and a set of alphabet 
blocks. Then MIK reached in and pulled 
out а small cup. 

He stared at it a long time. On the side 
of the cup was a decal with the name of the 
man who had created them and a picture 
of MIK, waving his hand in greeting. 

“Gawrsh, MIK,” said GUF, “it’s you!” 

A tossed rock threw up a shower of dirt 
next to his foot. 

"They all looked up. 

Around the crater edge stood men, 
women and children dressed in ragged 
skins. They had sharp sticks, rocks and 
ugly clubs. 

"Oh, boy," said DUN. “People!” He 
started toward them. 

“Hello!” he said. “We've been trying to 
find you for a long time. Do you know the 
way to the Park? We want to learn all 
about you.” 

He was speaking to them in Japanese. 

The mob hefted its weapons. DUN 
switched to another language 

“I said, we come in peace. Do you know 
the way to the Park?” he asked in Swed- 
ish. 

They started down the crater, rocks fly- 
ing before them. 

“What’s the matter with you?” yelled 
DUN. “Wak, wak, wak?’ He raised his 
fists. 

“Wait!” said MIK in English. “We're 
friends! 

Some of the crowd veered off toward 
him 

“Uh-oh!” said GUF. He took off, clank- 
ing up the most sparsely defended side of 
the depression. 

Then the ragged people yelled and 
charged. 

They got the duck first. 

He stood, fists out, jumping up and 
down on one foot, hopping mad. Several 
grabbed him, one by the beak. They 
smashed at him with clubs, pounded him 
with rocks. He injured three of them seri- 
ously before they smashed him into à 
white-blue-and-orange pile. 

"Couldn't we, huh-huh, talk this over?” 
asked MIK. They stuck a sharp stick into 
his ear mechanism, jamming it. One of his 
gloved hands was mashed. He fought back 
with the other and kicked his feet. He hurt 
them, but he was small A boulder 
trapped his legs; then they danced on 
him. 

GUF made it out of the crater. He had 
picked the side with the most kids and 
they drew back, thinking he was attacking 
them. When they saw he was trying to 
escape, they gave gleeful chase, bouncing 
sticks and rocks off his hobbling form. 

“Whoa!” he yelled as more people ran 


to intercept him and he skidded to a stop. 
He ran up a long, slanting pile of rubble. 
More humans poured out of the crater to 
get him. 

He reached the end of the long, high 
mound above the crater rim. His attackers 
paused, throwing sticks and rocks, yelling 
at him. 

“Halp!” GUF yelled. “Haaaaaaaaaalp!” 

An arrow sailed into the chest of his 
nearest attacker. 

GUF turned. Other humans, dressed in 
cloth, stood in a line around the far side of 
the crater. They had bows and arrows, 
metal-tipped spears and carried iron 
knives in their belts. 

As GUF watched, the archers sent 
another flight of arrows into the people 
who had attacked the robots. 

The skin-dressed band of humans 
screamed and fled up out of the crater, 
down from the mounds, leaving their 
wounded and the scattered contents of the 
time capsule behind them 

. 


It took a while, but soon the human in 
command of the metal-using people and 
GUF made themselves understood to each 
other. The language was a very changed 
English/Spanish mixture. 

“We're sorry we didn't know you were 
here sooner,” the man said to GUF. “We 
rarely get out this far, and we heard you 
were here only this morning. Those oth- 
ers,” he said with a grimace, “who fol- 
lowed you here from the Wastes won't 
bother you anymore.” 

He pointed to the patch of green to the 
north. “Our lands and village are there. 
We found this place twenty years ago. It's 
a good land, but others raid it as often as 
they сап.” 

GUF looked down into the crater with 
its toppled column and debris, Cigarettes 
and tobacco drifted from the glass cylin- 
der. The microfilm, with all its books and 
knowledge, was tangled all over the rocks. 
Samples of aluminum, hypernic and 
ferrovanadium gleamed in the dust. Razor 
blades, an airplane gear and glass wool 
were strewn up the sides of the slope. 

The message from Grover Whalen 
opening the World's Fair and knowledge of 
how to build the microfilm reader were 
lost. The newsreel, with its pictures of 
Howard Hughes, Jesse Owens and Babe 
Ruth, bombings in China and a Miami 
Beach fashion show, was ripped and torn. 
The golf ball was in the hands of one of the 
fleeing children. Poker chips lay side by 
side with tungsten wire, combs, lipstick. 
GUF tried to guess what some of the items 
were. 

“They destroyed one of your party,” 
said the commander. “I think the other 
onc is still alive.” 

“ГИ tend to 'em," said GUF. 

“We'll take you back to our village,” 
said the man. "There are lots of things 
we'd like to know about you." 

“That goes double fer us," said СОЕ. 
“Those other folks pretty much tore up 


what we came to find." 

GUF picked up the small cup from the 
ground. He walked to where they had 
MIK propped up against a rock. 

“Hello, GUF,” he said. “Huh-huh, I'm 
not in such good shape." His glove hung 
uselessly on his left arm. His ears were 
bent and his nose was chipped. He gave off 
a noisy whir when he moved. 

“Oh, hyuk-hyuk,” said GUF. “We'll go 
back with these nice people, and yuh'll 
rest up and be right as rain, I guarantee." 

“DUN didn’t make it, did he, GUF?” 

GUF was quiet a moment. "Nope, 
MIK, he didn’t. I’m shore sorry it turned 
out this way. I’m gonna miss thuh ol’ hot- 
head.” 

“Ме, too,” said MIK. “Are we gonna 
take him with us?” 

“Shore thing,” said GUF. He waved to 
the nearby men 

. 

The town was in a green valley watered 
by two streams full of fish. There were 
small fields of beans, tomatoes and corn in 
town, and cattle and sheep grazed on the 
hillsides, watched over by guards. There 
were а coppersmith's shop, a council hut 
and many houses of wood and stone. 

GUF was walking up the hill to the 
house MIK was in. 

"They had been there a little more than 
two weeks, talking with the people of the 
village, telling them what they knew. GUF 
usually played with the children when he 
and MIK didn’t have to be around the 
grown folks. But from the day after they 
had buried DUN up on the hill, MIK had 
been getting worse. His legs had quit alto- 
gether, and he could now see only in the 
infrared. 

“Hello, GUF,” said MIK. 

“How yuh doin’, pardner?" 

“Not so good,” said MIK. “Are they 
making any progress on the flume?” 

"Two days before, MIK had told them 
how to get water more efficiently from one 
of the streams up to the middle of the 
village. 

“We've almost got it now,” said GUF. 
“Pm sure they'll be up and thank yuh 
when they're finished." 

"They don't need to do that," said 
MIK. 

“I know, but these are real nice folks, 
MIK. And they've had it pretty bad, what 
with one thing and another. They like 
talkin’ to yuh.” 

GUF noticed that some of the women 
and children sat outside the hut, waiting to 
see MIK. 

“I won't stay very long,” said GUF. “I 
gotta get back and organize the cadres into 
work teams and instructional teams and so 
forth, like they asked me to help with.” 

"Sure thing, СОЕ,” said MIK. 
ML» 

There was a great whirring noise from 
MIK and the smell of burning silicon. 

GUE looked away. “They just don't 
have thuh stuff here," he said, "that I 
could use to fix yuh. Maybe I could find 


somethin’ at thuh crater. 

"Don't bother,” said MIK. “I 
doubt... .” 

GUF looked at the village. “Oh,” he 
said, reaching into the bag someone had 
made him. “I been meaning to give yuh 
this fer moren a week and keep 
fergettin’.” He handed MIK the cup from 
the time capsule with his picture on the 
side. 

“Гуе been thinking about this since we 
found it,” said MIK. He turned it in his 
good hand, barely able to see its outline. 
“I wonder what else we lost at the crater." 

“Lots o' stuff,” said GUF, "but we got 
t0 keep this." 

“This was supposed to last a long time,” 
said MIK, "and tell people what other 
people were like for future ages? Then the 
people who put this there must really have 
liked the man who thought us up!" 

“That's fer shore,” said GUF. 


“And me, too, I wonder?” 


“You probably most ofall,” said GUF. 

MIK smiled. The smile froze. His eyes 
went white and a thin line of condensation 
rose up from the ear tracks. The hand 
gripped the cup tightly. 

Outside, the people began to sing a real 
sad song 

. 

It was а bright, sunny morning. GUF 
put flowers on MIK's and DUN's graves 
at the top of the hill. He patted the earth, 
stood up uncertainly. 

He had replaced his frozen foot with a 
wood-wheeled cart with which he could 
skate along almost as easily as walking. 

He stood up and thought of MIK. Не 
sat his carpenter's cap forward on his head 
and whistled a little tune. 

He picked up his wooden toolbox and 
started off down the hill to build thc kids a 
swing set 


"You're trying to take something that's 
warm and beautiful and cheapen it—are you sure you. 
don't have more money? ?" 


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LELAYBOY By 


WHO'S IN CHARGE? 


(continued from page 80) 
confident that there will be no scraping of 
tecth, no need to be polite and no obliga- 
tion to reciprocate, 

With other women, Andy would rather 
be the giver but not the orchestrater. He 
likes a woman to direct him; then 
he knows she’s getting what she wants and 
he doesn’t have to worry about his own 
performance. “I love it when a woman 
puts my head between her legs, and I love 
it when she comes. It doesn’t give me a 
feeling of power, though. It’s more a feel- 
ing of being useful.” 

Some men find cunnilingus both a wel- 
come refuge from and a handy compensa- 
tion for erection worries, since only your 
tongue needs to be in working order. 
Larry, 40, has been unfaithful on and off 
throughout 14 years of marriage. Guilt 
about his affairs has triggered spells of 
impotence with both his wife and his other 
women. “I never know when I'm going to 
turn into a eunuch,” he says, “so I learned 
early on to give good head—partly out of 
guilt for not being able to perform, partly 
from the pleasure of having a woman on 
the tip of my tongue. But mostly from 
machismo: If my sword isn't gonna work, 
something's got to.” 

“There are men who subscribe to neither 
the castration nor the compensation factor 
but still are wary of fellatio because of the 
con factor. These men tend to have been 
around the block a bit. From experience, 
they rebel against the subliminal message 
that swept through their adolescent minds: 
If a girl goes down on you, she'll do any- 
thing for you. Neil, 45, would rather give 
than receive for two reasons: “1 find it 
more erotic to explore a woman's body 
than to have her explore mine. And I don’t 
want to be conned. I think women put 
men on a little bit. Women know that men 
love the fantasy of male dominance played 
out, and so they go along with it by 
them head. Hookers use that. That's why 
they have so much contempt for men— 
because men are so easily conned. 

Max, 55 and on his third marriage, says 
he “highly values" fellatio—but although 
he’s physically potent when he gets head, 
it makes him feel impotent: “I always want 
it more than she does, and the person who 
cares least always has the most power.” 
Repeatedly, he’s found himself compro- 
mised by the con factor. “At the beginning 
ofa relationship, a woman conquers me by 
going down on me and acting like she loves 
it,” he says. “Once she's got me, her basic 
anger about having to please men comes 
out. A woman gives you your sexuality; 
she makes you feel potent, so you marry 

her; and then she sabotages you and 
makes you impotent. Because I’m the one 
who thrusts, I suppose I have the power 
when it comes to intercourse, but I’ve 
never enslaved anyone by it as I’ve been 
enslaved by oral sex.” Max chooses to be a 
giver, because "it means 1 haven't given 


"I'd like to trade up. Will you be part of my home- 


entertainment system? 


PLAYBOY 


anyone control of my cock.” 

His reaction may seem excessive, but 
з not unfounded. From the first time a 
girl feels а guy's erection during a slow 
dance in high school, she suspects that 
therein lies not just his power but hers. She 
guesses that the way to a man's heart is 
likely to be south of his stomach, and soon 
she realizes that it behooves her to know 
what to do down there, even if she'd rather 
be elsewhere. Give a guy a great blow job, 
so the story goes, and he'll always call 
back. 

The reverse of this, according to Robert, 
is give a girl great head and she'll drop the 
phone. Women aren't the only ones capa- 
ble of using oral sex to manipulate a situa- 
tion in their favor. Robert, an engaging 
raconteur who's quick-tongued in general, 
is a master at this. One night he was at а 
woman's apartment, beginning to make 
love to her, vhen her phone rang. It was 
another man she'd been seeing. “It was a 
demeaning position for mc to be in, sitting 
around waiting for her while she talked to 
another guy. She was trying to control me 
by letting me cool my heels. I wanted to 
put her in her place and even the score, 
remind her that she was to be available to 
me on my time. As she talked on the 
phone, I pushed up her skirt and started 
eating her. She got off the phone pretty 
damn fast." 


Fuck's only what you do. Animals 
fuck. But cunt's a lot more than that. It's 
thee, dost see. . . . Cunt! Eh, that's the 
beauty of thee, lass. 

—p. H. LAWRENCE, "Lady 
Chatterley's Lover” 


And the beast, some women fear. For if 
cunt is, literally, female essence and if 
there’s anything unsavory about it, then 
by definition the woman is unsavory as 
well. An old-fashioned thought, OK, but 
one that lingers in the female conscious- 
ness. À woman is always worried about 
what men are thinking of her, and few 
things are more worrisome than what a 
man is thinking when his mouth is 
between her legs. 

А woman may dream of the man who 
will want her so much and be so accepting 
of her that he'll beg to taste and suck her 
with all the lights on when she has her 
period. "This man will kiss her all the way 
down her body, and when he reaches her 
“two-leaved Book," as the 18th Century 
called it, he will take her tampon string 
firmly between his teeth and slowly pull 
the thing out. 

But it's only a dream. Women are 
ambivalent about living out their sexual 
fantasies. If this dream man materializes, 
she'll be hesitant and confused. Shell 
shrink from the physical and correspond- 
ing psychological exposure implied by her 
fantasy. She'll make excuses and muddle 


around doubting his motives. She'll think, 
Why would anyone want to go down there 
that much? As Helen Lawrenson put it in 
her good-natured autobiographical essay 
“How Now, Fellatio!,” the first time some- 
one performed cunnilingus on her, back in 
the Twenties, she thought he had “gone 
mad, like what’s-his-name—Nebuchad- 
nezzar?—who got down on the ground 
and ate grass." 

Unless a woman knows a man very well 
and feels secure in his affection for her, 
she'll be at least fleetingly suspicious of 
him when he goes down on her, especially 
the first time. She may assume from expe- 
rience that he’s doing it not so much out of 
desire for her as for the trade-off —do unto 
me as I do unto you. Women do tend to 
maintain hidden sexual agendas and to be 
generally more circuitous in their dealings 
with the opposite sex, so they expect from 
men what they’re used to in themselves: 
What's said and what's meant, or what's 
fantasized and what's wanted, can be dif- 
ferent things. 

Men have been indoctrinated by mod- 
ern times into thinking that the only sure 
way to satisfy a woman is through oral sex. 
ed to the propa- 
ganda that they feel guilty if they don't do 
so during the first encounter. But most 
women can tell whether or not obligation 
lurks behind the licks. Women are para- 
noid observers of signs and portents when 
it comes to cunnilingus. Some habitually 


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notice the state of a man's erection. If he's 
really hard when he begins and is less so 
when he comes up, it will be duly noted, 
and she'll assume onc of two things with- 
out asking for clarification: Either she 
smells or tastes bad or he doesn’t like to do 
it. She may go on to feel embarrassed 
about the former or to hate him for the 
latter. Obviously, she'd be better off not 
looking. 

Hilary doesn't enjoy cunnilingus, 
because she's worried about taking too 
long and it makes her feel resentful and 
powerless that someone else has his finger 
on the stop watch. Her sense of time pres- 
sure often gets expressed through hostility 
and bitterness toward the man, sometimes 
justifiably, sometimes not. The expecta- 
tion of frustration keeps her locked in a 
negative cycle: She's afraid to let go, 
because she's sure that he'll decide that 
her time's up just as she comes close to 
orgasm. 

If a woman begins with the assumption 
that she's not going to be well cared for, it 
doesn’t matter how skilled or enthusiastic 
a man is about giving head. He just can't 
win. With some women, men are damned 
if they do and damned if they don't. If 
such a woman likes getting head but you 
don't do it long enough or in the right 
place or without enough enthusiasm, she 
thinks you're selfish. If she doesn't like it 
but won't say so, you'll do it for too long 
and then she'll be turned off by the time 
you want to enter her or have her return 
the favor. If she does like it and you do it 
right and for long enough—well, even 
then, there are no guarantees, because 
some women feel endangered by sexual 
abandon ard the loss of control implied by 
it. Such a woman may focus on the man's 
pleasure instead—not because she's sub- 
missive but because she’s protecting her- 
self by holding back. 

Jessie, 34, is confident of her skill as a 
giver of head, a confidence that has been 
reinforced by many lovers. Getting head is 
liflerent matter. "When I feel a man 
grow in my mouth, I feel power. Giving 
head puts me on a completely equal basis 
with a man. It’s the only sex act that 
doesn't make me feel like a receptacle, 
because I’m directing arousal. I can 
make him change size; I can make him 
come or make him wait. I look at his cock 
as a feast. But I discourage a man from 
going down on me. My mind won't click 
off. I can’t reach that complete concentra- 
tion and involvement that [ experience 
when I’m giv Why not? “I suppose 
because I don’t like to give up that control. 
It makes me too vulnerable.” 

Occasionally, a man can seize oral con- 
trol ofa reluctant woman and be rewarded 
for his action. Fred, 28, met a woman on a 
business trip. She was about 20 years older 
than he was and had just separated from 
her husband. She was of a generation that 
produced virgins for wedding nights, and 
she had never known a man other than her 
husband. No one had ever gone down on 


her. “J wanted to be the first one,” says 
Fred. “She was embarrassed about it and 
tried to push me away, but I held her legs 
open and told her to relax. I wanted to 
make her like it, to break down that bar- 
rier, especially because it seemed like one 
of those no-no, yes-yes situations. The 
third time I did it to her, a few weeks later, 
she came. She seemed awed, as if I knew 
her better than she knew herself. That def- 
initely felt like power. It was the power of 
experience— being a professor of sexual 
matters." 

There's onc configuration that, because 
of its equality of action, seems to have no 
place in S/M pornography such as Story of 
О, and that's the pretzeled scene known as 
soixante-neuf, or 69. The vocabulary for it 
may be limited, but not the opinions of it. 
It’s like New York City—people either 
love it or hate it. Some say it's the most 
mutual, intimate and engrossing sex act 
possible; others find it nerve-rackingly 
competitive, distracting and uncomfort- 
able. People who have had simultaneous 
orgasm in it say that the experience is dev- 
astating in intensity. It’s not a position 
new lovers are likely to curl into without 
some prior acquaintance. 

In ongoing relationships, there does 
seem to be a pattern: The less emotional 
the interchange between the partners, the 


LUKE EAKTHWALKER 


less likely it is that 69—by definition not a 
one-sided act—figures prominently in 
their sex life. The pro-69ers tend to be the 
ones least likely to relate power to sex and 
the ones most likely to prefer intercourse to 
either cunnilingus or fellatio alone. “If a 
man's between my legs and I'm way up 
here,” says Anne, “it feels so detached. I 
want a literal physical connection. With 
men I love, my favorites arc either 69 or 
fucking and Frenching at the same time. 
But I have to be in love to want to be that 
connected." 


And this is sex, this is it... and he 
feels the feeling coming doum right 
down there, groubmg up and he presses 
his face down, with the mouth, such a 
mouth he's got . . . and he's done me, 
done me. . . . 

— ILL ROBINSON, “Perdido” 


Well, yes. We'd probably have a lot 
more fun if we forgot about power. "Isn't 
it supposed to be mindless?” says Danny, 
31, under his usual fagade of self 


containment. “I want someone to be lost 
in space when I go down on her. I want to 
be lost in space when she goes down on 
me. Isn't that the whole point? To lose 
control?” 


PLAYBOY 


SUMMERTIME BREWS uoo 


“Beer is the natural drink at a cookout, and in these 
eclectic times, it should match the food.” 


them: Springtime brings bock beers; sum- 
mer welcomes in Weizen, or wheat, beers; 
and in autumn there are Oktoberfest 
beers. Bock beers are strong and sustain- 
ing, Weizen beers fruity and refreshing, 
Oktoberfest beers malty and nourishing. 
Such specialty brews were a part of Ameri- 
can tradition, too, before Prohibition, and 
they are now making a comeback. 
German-American brewers in Wisconsin 
have long produced bock beers in spring 
In the West, the Anchor Brewing Com- 
pany of San Francisco has gone one better 


' by producing its own Weizen beer, strictly 


as a summer specialty. If beer is the 
Yuppie drink, then Weizen is the most 
upwardly mobile style. Look for those tall, 
vase-shaped glasses of Weizen beer, gar- 
nished with a slice of lemon 

The British refresh themselves with 
draughts of Bass or some other English 
ale. In the rare event of a hot summer, the 
ale may be compounded with equal pro- 
portions of lemonade or ginger beer to pro- 
duce a shandy. Fill a punch bow! with 
large chunks of ice and gently pour on 
equal quantities of an English ale and gin- 


ger beer. You might even care to add a 
dash of sweet lime juice and, perhaps, dust 
your beer punch with nutmeg. Add some 
fresh fruit, such as Michigan cherries, for 
decoration 

The hop and the juniper have long been 
partners in crime. Many a Dutchman has 
been known to brighten his summer by 
using his Heineken or Grolsch, Brand’s or 
Gulpener to chase down a shot of Bols or 
De Kuyper gin. With such imported light 
beers as Amstel now being challenged by 
Nordik Wolf and Rolland (St. Pauli Girl's 
boyfriend), perhaps aquavit and schnapps 
will be looking for chasers, too. 

The most sophisticated summertime 
brew is surely Guinness, lightly chilled, 
served half and half with champagne. Pour 
these two noble ingredients simultane- 
ously into a pitcher—very gently, 
indeed—and serve them at an outdoor 
party on a hot summer's day. The tangy 
kiss of stout is arousing; its smoothness, 
soothing. Marry those to the frisson of 
champagne and you have an intoxicating 
combination. Black velvet is the perfect 
name for it. There is a less extravagant 


version, too: black satin. This combines 
stout and cider, a bittersweet accompani- 
ment to roast suckling pig. 

Beer is the natural drink at a cookout, 
and in these eclectic gastronomic times, it 
should match the food. There are some 
natural combinations—pale beers with 
fish or chicken; dark ones with spicy foods; 
ales with red meats—but there is also the 
question of provenance. 

For example, if the cheese is from Wis- 
consin, shouldn't the beer be, too? Miller, 
the Wisconsin brewery that popularized 
light beer, developed America’s arch 
typal summertime brew, Now Miller has a 
new, draught-fresh beer called Plank Road 
on the drawing board. If you are going to 
have a Creole shrimp boil, try to find Dixie 
beer from New Orleans. If it's going to be 
ribs over a mesquite barbecue, how about 
something from Texas: Pearl, Lone Star or 
the rare Shiner beer? Those most Ameri- 
can of beers are light and cooling and 
won't overpower food 

То hunt down beers from corners of the 
Union may seem a frivolous pursuit, but so 
is partying. That is the joy of summer: 
long, lazy days without four walls to trap 
the soul, without having to dress up or 
work too hard at anything, cven at enter- 
taining. No patently crafted, elaborate 
dinners with condescending little wines, 
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One beer is not enough. Was it cver? 
Offer a selection, but in modest servings 
six ounces, in a large wineglass or highball 
glass, is plenty. The idea is to taste, not to 
chugalug. Nor will beer stay cold in larger 
vessels, especially if it has been only 
lightly chilled. Most beers taste best at 45 
to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, though some 
specialties should be warmer or colder. 
Half a dozen beers is about right— 
perhaps three from the U.S., each from a 
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A Belgian cherry kriek: Mort Subite, 
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An amber beer, ideally Dos Equis, from 
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A Texas beer, or an American dark such 
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German beer such as Kaiserdom 
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WITH STEAK 

Bass, Whitbread or Sam Smith’s Pale 
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Keep your beer indoors and out of 
direct sunlight until you are ready to serve 
it. Exposure to sunlight can quickly make 
beer taste skunky—a known cause of the 
summertime blues. 


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AYOLLEYBALL(S0DS 


(continued from page 138) 


“Notch and tell. That's the name of this game, and 
the girls play it as well as the guys.” 


concluded with a resolution to go to the 
bar. 

Outside Orville & Wilbur's, valets park 
the cars, and inside, it is crowded, as 
always, with ferns and brass and repro- 
antique signs and people with tans. A live 
band plays oldies. Three guys in the bath- 
room are offering free toots if you'll buy. 
"They'll take a personal check or offer a 
ride to a moneymatic. Two men in ties dis- 
cuss Johnny Carson. Two girls in dresses 
discuss at-home bikini wax. 

‘The players have been here 15 minutes. 
Already they’re landscaped with girls. The 
girls posc just so: chin raised, one foot bal- 
ancing on the heel of an open-toed pump, 
one hand resting on a hip. They smile, 
widen their eyes, giggle. They throw their 
hair back a lot. The players stand with 
their arms crossed. The talk is about 
MTV, automobiles, cable TV, tennis, 
movies, going to the beach, getting wasted 
and, of course, volleyball. Whenever one 
of the girls looks away from the player 
she’s talking to, checks to see how her 
friends are doing with the other players, 
the player she’s talking to looks down, 
checks to see how the girl's tits are doing. 

An important concept: Here in Manhat- 
tan Beach, you call them girls. Fifteen 
miles down the Coast from L.A., in the 
heart of the heart of the lifestyle, there are 
no women, and there are none in this bar, 


except, perhaps, for the older lady in a 
pants suit who looks like someone's 
mother visiting from back East. Here, а 
place that residents gleefully call the her- 
pes capital of the world, “I’m active!” isa 
grecting and Alan Alda might as well be 
the Ayatollah. Men are men. Girls are vol- 
ley dollies, fringe bennies or, more univer- 
sally, trim. 

Girls are measured in numbers. Guys 
don't fuck, they notch. They build num- 
bers. A few years ago, Hov tried to count. 
Lost track at 300. Numbers like that 
require a strange sort of selectivity: This 
onc has a good face, so she’s notchable. 
This one isn’t so pretty but has great tits, 
so she’s notchable. This one does laundry; 
this one likes to cook. This one looks bad 
in a bathing suit but good in clothes, so 
she’s a wintertime notch. 

Notch and tell. That’s the name of this 
game, and the girls play it as well as the 
guys. Singles bar at the mailbox, in the 
parking lot, on the sit-up board. Any time, 
day or night. Sniff. You hear so many sto- 
ries, you start to believe that some percent- 
age must be true. While the gentlemen on 
the East Coast are whining and dining, 
these guys with the blow-dried hair are 
notching. They’re notching in the toilet. 
Notching with a few friends watching from 
the closet. They're bringing home a notch, 


“Your father taught me everything I know 
about sex, dear. Which is why I suggest you go 
read a book on the subject.” 


notching, passing the notch to a room- 
mate. The roommate notches and then 
passes her to a third. The third guy takes 
her away for the weekend. This may hap- 
pen more than once with the same girl. 
That's what they say, anyway. 

Spend a few weeks out here and you 
begin to realize that people aren't going to 
restaurants or record stores to eat or buy 
records. They're going in search of notch. 
They're not running and biking and lifting 
for health. They're doing those things so 
their calves will look good when they angle 
their fcet on the hecls of their pumps. 
So their biceps will strain at the sleeves of. 
their T-shirts. So the numbers on the 
Manhattan Beach notch exchange will be 
forever bullish. 

Hov hunts notch on the theory of space 
invasion. Say anything just to enter the 
bubble of a girl's awareness—just to get 
her to focus on the product. The product 
has been on the cover of U.S. News & 
World Report. It’s been July on a calendar. 
Ifshe doesn’t buy, one of the next ten or 15 
wil 

Tell her her neck is probably sensitive. 
Ask her if she really needs to eat that 
whole plate of Nachos herself. Offer to 
help her lose some calories. Guess her bra 
size. Ask if she'd like a drink: “May I buy 
you a cocktail?” And if she counters with a 
smirk and a line of her own, something 
like, “I have a daughter your age,” riposte 
quickly with, “I'll buy her а cocktail, 
too.” 

They have some kind of style, these vol- 
leyball gods. Standing there against the 
wall of the bar, on this Wednesday night 
before the most important tournament of 
the season, they are an awesome group. 

There is Sinjin Smith, world champion 
in 1979, 1980 and 1982. Great name. Lives 
at his mom's house, in a separate addition 
in the back. Trophy shelves run the cir- 
cumference of the little room, the center- 
pieces of which are the 1979 N.C.A.A. 
volleyball-championship trophy—he was 
M.V.P.—and a king-size bed. On the 
back of his door is a Levi's-jeans advertise- 
ment, poster size, featuring Sinjin Smith. 

Sinjin is managed by the high-powered 
Nina Blanchard and Ford agencies. He 
has modeled in GQ, Vogue and PLAYBOY, 
has done television commercials for 
Woolite, Alberto VO-5, Coppertone and 
Arrow Shirts. He appeared in an episode 
of Magnum, P.I. as Tom Selleck's two- 
man-volleyball partner. Sinjin’s body 
washed ashore shortly after the first sta- 
tion break. Two years ago, Sinjin was the 
billboard boy for the Milk Advisory 
Board. There he was, two stories tall, all 
over California, bare-chested in tennis 
shorts, with a woman draped over his 
shoulder. The message: MILK—IT DOES A 
BODY GOOD. 

Jon Stevenson wears his hair like Prince 
Valiant. Has the most devoted groupies of 
anyone on the tour—an entire family in 
Clearwater, Florida. When Stevenson 
comes to town, the family puts him up at 


Break away to refreshing taste. 


Come up fo Kool. 


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fen 
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av. per cigarette, FTC Report Feb. “85. 


PLAYBOY 


194 


their home, feeds him, gives him a van to 
drive. The family has a son who wants to 
be just like him. The father is always say- 
ing to Stevenson, in that Florida drawl 
that all the players mock, “Why don't you 
take Jeffrey here down to the schoolyard 
and do some one-sets with him, give him a 
few pointers? Just as a favor now, hear?” 

Stevenson and the other players can't 
stand the family. They invite young Jeffrey 
to parties that don’t take place. They feed 
the mother’s home-cooked dinners to the 
dog under the table. But they always go 
back. 

Missing from the group tonight is Andy 
Fishburn, the one whom Hov will later 
assault with lugies. Fishburn thinks the 
strike is stupid, that they’ve come pretty 
far in eight years, that the rest of the play- 
ers don’t understand business. 

Fishburn understands business. He is a 
project manager for Barclay Hollander 
Corporation, the real-estate-development 
firm that drained Marina del Rey and 
introduced condominiums to Southern 
California. 

Fish played his college volleyball at 
Stanford and Yale. He looks like Robert 
Redford. Once, he went to Magic Moun- 
tain with his wife. Six women asked if he 
was the actor. He does resemble him, only 
Fish is prettier—upturned nose, no moles. 
Fish has some Hollywood in him, though. 
His grandfather directed the original ver- 
sion of Ben Hur. His grandmother played 
Maid Marian in the original Robin Hood. 

Also absent are Gary Hooper, who 
works in his fathers insurance and 
brokerage firm, and Dane Selznick. 
Selznick owns two surfboards, drives a 
chocolate-brown Eldorado, models and 
acts in movies and commercials. He 
played the medic for a team of girl football 
players in Oklahoma City Dolls. 

As always, О.В. is here. He is a former 
world champion, and the players respect 
him. Hc is the personality on the tour, the 
John McEnroe of two-man pro volleyball. 
Wherever they go, the local press writes a 
story about him, even though he hasn’t 
won a tournament since 1981. When О.В. 
makes a bad play, he bites the net. When 
he doesn’t like a ref’s call, he pulls down 
his trunks. In the finals of the 1983 world 
championship, he and his partner had 
game point on Hov and Dodd, but for 
some reason, O.B. felt the need to hit an 
easy set with his head instead of his palm. 
The crowd cheered. They won the point 
but lost the game. But people remember 
that head. Just as they remember the time 
he stopped a match, called over a waitress 
and ordered one of those tropical drinks 
with an umbrella garnish. 

Dodd is talking to Karch. Both of them 
have new flattop hair styles. Karch is 
probably the best player on the tour, but 
in general, the Olympic players are not as 
good on the beach. The two-man game 


requires more all-round skills than the six- 
man indoor version. In six-man, players 
are specialized. There are spikers, setters, 
blockers. They play on a fast floor. On the 
beach, two players have to have all the 
skills, have to cover the same size court on 
a slower surface. 

Also present are a few of the lesser gods. 
Under any other circumstance, they’d be 
rated L for loser. Earlier this season, at a 
tourney at Santa Cruz, two of the losers 
had made reservations a year in advance 
for an ocean-front room at the Dream Inn. 
Hov and Dodd had made no reservations. 
They landed in a motel two miles away. So 
they drove to the Dream Inn and liberated 
the room from the losers—just told them 
to leave. They vanished. 

Tonight, this Wednesday before the 
Cuervo world championship, and for the 
course of the planning of the upcoming 
strike and the eventual switch to Group 
Dynamics, the losers are included. The 
cool guys are clapping them on their 
backs. Someone has to make the picket 
signs and write the press releases and find 
a Xerox machine. In exchange, the gods 
have allowed an invasion of the nerds. 

“The losers are loving it. As Hov and the 
rest of the gods engage in their various 
space invasions, one of the losers, 5'8", 
brown hair, adenoid problem, gets up his 
new courage of association and ap- 
proaches two beautiful girls. 

"How you doing, girls?” 

No answer. 

“May I buy you girls a cocktail?" 

“No.” 

“Гуе already got a drink.” 

“Well, then how about some dinner?” 

“No.” 

“Thank you, no.” 

“Pm a professional volleyball player. 
What do you girls do?” 

“We work.” 

“Downtown.” 

“Oh... . Well. . . . Would either of you 
girls care to fuck?" 


. 

Mornings at Manhattan Beach belong 
to mothers, tan but not so beautiful any- 
more. They wear shorts over their scant 
bikinis. Their towheaded children play 
naked on blankets by the volleyball net. It 
is Thursday, the day before the Cuervo 
world championship. There's a group of 
six women rotating games on one court, 
four more on another, two alone on 
another, waiting for their game to begin. 
"The group of six plays twice a weck. The 
same six, more or less, have been coming 
here for five years for two-woman volley- 
ball, housewives getting together for the 
South Bay version of mah-jongg, bowling 
or tennis. 

Above the courts, people play body 
mania on a concrete boardwalk called the 
Strand. They jog, bike, skate. They have 
deltoids. It's not like back East. There's no 


such thing as “You have to know me to 
love me.” On the beach, you can’t wear a 
bulky sweater to hide your flab. The ten 
extra pounds are harder to ignore. Here, 
there are no fat people. Here, in a town 
two miles square, there are, by informal 
count, ten places to pump iron and only 
one bookstore. The marquee at the Man- 
hattan Beach Health Club advises, THERE'S 
A PROBLEM WHEN PEOPLE THINK YOU'RE OVER 40 
AND YOU REALLY ARE. The weekly tabloid is 
called Easy Reader. 

ОК the Strand, a cramped line of man- 
sions and then a sharp rise in the land. 
The slopes are stippled with cracker-box 
houses, peopled with stewardesses who 
live in efficiencies for $600 or $700 a 
month, salesmen who live in illegal con- 
verted garages. Lots of stucco, balconies, 
windows, weathered wood. Take a look 
inside. Just the necessities—tubes, tunes, 
beds. A heap of running gear in the corner. 
Beer and Gatorade and lunch meat in the 
refrigerator. Cars are parked everywhere 
on the narrow streets, on the sidewalks, on 
the postage-stamp lawns. Except for a 
handful of vintage Americans and quite a 
few jeeps with surfboard racks, most are 
lifestylemobiles: Hondas, Porsches, Zs, 
BMers. The cars head north in the morn- 
ings and south in the evenings, back and 
forth from livelihood to life. 

There is some industry around Manhat- 
tan Beach. TRW and Hughes are nearby, 
as are several refineries and a pottery fac- 
tory. But mostly, during the day, the feel is 
deserted village. Echo of waves, hum of 
neon, tinkle of bicycle bell. Nice. 

Soon, at lunchtime, the beach will fill 
with car pools of men breaking for two- 
man volleyball. The students will come 
after that, planting their surfboards in the 
sand, playing a few games before the 
waves come up, and then the men will 
return again about five. Most of the day, 
the eight courts here off Marine Avenue 
will be busy, as will thousands of courts 
up and down the Coast. 

But at the moment, on this Thursday 
morning, the beach belongs to the moth- 
ers. They've stopped playing volleyball to 
sing Happy Birthday, give out cookies to 
the kids. 

Nearby, Hov and O.B. are sitting in the 
sand. Hov is bouncing a volleyball on his 
knee. O.B. is running sand through his 
hand. They've already decided to strike, 
but they’re here to practice, because they 
figure the minute Poodle hears that they've 
decided not to play, he'll cave to their 
demands. Turn the books, the money, the 
whole pro circuit over to them. 

The gods are used to getting their way. 
They surround themselves with people 
who will give it to them. Hov’s father, who 
lives 15 minutes north, cooks him break- 
fast. His mother does his laundry. O.B.’s 
wife does those things for him. Hi: 
lets him work a flexible schedule in their 


The year was 1969 

Not everyone was into protest and 
1а Huelga, bra-burning and radical chic. 

The fashion underground was 
talking about a new perfume which had 
quietly surfaced in Paris. 

It was fresh but not virginal. Bold 


© 1909. Pace Rabanne Perfor 


Underground classic 


but never aggressive. It had what the 
French call “presence” 

Today, 16 years later, it is still very 
much with us. 

It flourishes in spite of minimal 
fanfare and an advertising budget that 
wouldn't keep Colette in stickpins. 


Not even rhinestone stickpi 
Its a classic, durable as the films of 
Von Stroheim, the cut of a Poiret gown, 
the chic of a Sargent countess. 
And classics don't need 


million-dollar hype. Just women DJ 


of impeccable taste. PARIS 


PLAYBOY 


196 


restaurant so it won't interfere with his 
volleyball. Both Hov and O.B. get stock 
tips from fans. Two days ago, Hov bought 
Phillips Petroleum on a tip. This morning, 
it is up five points. Another fan has taken 
Mike Dodd under wing. Dodd’s got a 
condo among his numerous investments in 
Manhattan Beach, a fortune in a town 
where an old house is usually demolished 
before a new one can be built. 

Right now, though, the problem is get- 
ting up some games, and no one can help 
them with that. There are two college 
guys—amateur players, losers—sitting 
five feet away. Hov and O.B. would rather 
sit than play with them. Another god is 
bound to show soon. 

“Jesus,” says Hov, looking over at the 
birthday party. “These women really 
breed.” 

“Mother cows,” says О.В. 

“They play every Wednesday.” 

“Today's Thursday.” 

“Oh” 

“Where is everybody? Nobody comes to 
the beach anymore.” 

“Yeah, everybody's working, I guess.” 

“I shoulda worked today,” says O.B. 

“Stop bitching. Taking a day off is the 
best thing in life for you. Only thing better 
is not working at all.” 

"I just can't believe there's nobody 
here. Ín the old days, I'd go up to Sorrento. 
at 9:30 in the morning. Von Hagen and all 
those guys would be there. They'd play all 
day long. Play every game. Ten, 12 games. 
Play until dark. . . 2" 

“So they were stupid.” 

“They’d play with anybody. Hacks, 
girls, anybody. Just kept touching the ball. 
Thats why Von Hagen and those guys 
were so good.” 

“Fuck. None of those guys would be any 
good today. They wouldn’t make shit for 
dollars. We'd eat 'em and swallow. .. .” 

As Hov and О.В. talk, a third loser joins 
the two others. Fifteen minutes later, there 
comes a fourth. They start a game. 

Hov and O.B. sit. 

"Then Hov says, "You hungry?" 

“T could eat.” 

“We can always come by later and see if 
there's some games.” 

“Fuck, there's nobody to play with any- 
more, anyway.” 

. 

“Would you pose in the nude?” 

“Nope.” 

“Not even for money?” 

“Nope.” 

“For a quarter of a million?” 

“Nope.” 

“Do you have a lot of money or some- 
thing?” 

“Yep.” 

By Sunday, the last day of the 1984 
Cuervo world championship, the guy from 
Playgirl has enlisted the aid of the bimbo 
from Renault, She’s had quite a lot to 
drink, is deviating from the written ques- 


tions for potential Playgirl centerfolds. Her 
license plate, by the way, says FLASHHH. It's 
framed by a plate guard that says CHAINS 
REQUIRED. WHIPS OPTIONAL. She has a two- 
year-old daughter at home with a sitter. 
Her husband sells cars. You can look, but 
you can’t touch. That seems fine to the 
correspondent from Playgirl. He's appar- 
ently taken her up because he doesn’t 
want potential centerfolds to think he’s a 
fag. The two are bounding from hunk to 
hunk on the outskirts of center court. 
Somehow, amazingly, the bimbo keeps her 
balance, even on spike-heeled sandals in 
sand. At the moment, though, she's knecl- 
ing on the edge of a blanket at Andy Fish- 
burn's feet. Fish, the god who crossed the 
picket line, is not interested in being a cen- 
terfold. Last night, his wife had their first 
baby. Right now, he's waiting to play and. 
win the finals of the world championship. 

All around them, there's an event going 
on. The bikinis, the beer, the nipple rings 
and the regatta of sloops in the distance, 
the balloon bottle of Cuervo Gold sagging 
a bit after three days of boogie max. No 
one seems to care that the gods didn't 
play. No one seems to care that none of the 
semifinalists were seeded. They gave a 
tournament without the gods and people 
still came. 

In droves. Thirty thousand pcople over 
three days. All the gods could do was 
stand outside the fence at Seaside Lagoon 
with picket signs that said, WHERE'S THE 
MONEY? and FUCK EVENT CONCEPTS. Occa- 
sionally, one of the gods would observe 
how small the crowd was this year. Occa- 
sionally, Hov would come out of the motor 
home to pick a fight, shoot a few Ls at the 
losers who had crossed the line to play. He 
kept saying the same thing: “Every time I 
see you at the beach from now on, I'm 
going to bc all over you. You're going 
down, bro. Doowwwnnn! Every time I sec 
you, you're dead. Decaaaaaaad! You're a 
fucking scab for life." 

Hov's father, C.O., came by to sit with 
Ноу in the motor home. C.O., a semire- 
tired school-supply salesman, was getting 
disgusted with Indiana Hov, with the 
strike, with Hov's rampage. “If you're 
going to drink, drink, and if you’re going 
to talk, talk, but you can’t do both at the 
same time," C.O. advised him several 
times. Hov's brother, a personal-injury 
attorney, also advised him to cool it. He 
figured Renault had grounds for breach оГ 
contract. 

To this, Ноу зай In onc car and cut 
the other. Docsn't register a twinkle.” 
Then he opened another beer. 

Meanwhile, the other gods milled 
around the entrance to Seaside Lagoon, 
telling some fans that “the best players in 
the world are not participating in the tour- 
nament today,” flipping the bird to other 
fans who said, “What are you striking for, 


and free beer?” A repre- 
sentative of the Abused, Battered Chil- 
dren’s Foundation of Marina del Rey 
stopped by to pitch the players. He was 
offering five grand a player—minimum— 
for participation in his own event, the 
Abused, Battered Children’s Pro Celebrity 
Volleyball Tour. 

Some fans did leave when they saw that 
the gods were on strike. First, though, they 
asked the players questions and stood real 
close, patting their backs, basking in soli- 
darity with the movement, in familiarity 
with the gods. Other fans hung around 
outside the fence with the players. These 
were mostly adolescent girls. The players 
said things to them like, “Hey, honey, 
want to suck some cock?” and “Come take 
a look at my Trousersaurus rex.” To this 
the girls giggled and rubbed more 
Coppertone on their backs. 

At one point, a fan with a bunch of cam- 
eras came by. He wanted to take their pic- 
ture. The players told him to fuck off. He 
said, “But this is a gathering of the best 
players in the world in one place.” 

“You're damn right, bro,” said one of 
the players. “Let him take the picture.” 

Conservatively, 14,000 of the spectators 
were on hand for the naming of Miss Jose 
Cuervo. The 1984 Penthouse Pet of the 
Year was the chief judge. More than a few 
of the fans commented that she was fat 
She had a pimple on her thigh that could 
be seen three rows back. But the contest- 
ants weren't bad. Even the players laid 
down their signs and sneaked inside to 
watch Sylvia Adams (who said, in 
response to her question, that she would 
take a good-looking man and two cases of 
Cuervo Gold if she were stranded on a 
desert island), Beverly Bunn, Marissa 
Mendoza and Strawberry Frehoff compete 
for the $1000 in prize money. Strawberry 
wore a leopard bathing suit. Her aspira- 
tion, she said, was to get into real estate. 
She had the second-largest tits in the 
group, but the one with the largest had a 
bit too much stomach. Strawberry won the 
prize. 

By today, Sunday, the number of gods 
has dwindled. The teeny-bopper trim is 
absent—something about two of them and 
a god in a shower at a party last night. The 
boom box and Solidarity Forever are gone, 
too. The picket signs have becn stuck, 
unattended, into the Cyclone fence. Wally 
the Renault rep is home with his wife. Hov 
and Dodd are here, as are Karch and 
Sinjin and O.B. Hoy still hasn't picked up. 
a picket sign, but he has hoisted quite a 
few Coors. Between Hov and the bimbo, 
four or five cases have probably been 
drunk. That doesn’t include last night. 
Hov went to Orville & Wilbur's, then left 
and went to a massage parlor to visit a 
Japanese friend, then came back to Man- 
hattan Beach and hit two other bars, then 
returned to Orville & Wilbur’s. Just about 


“First Fswitched to rum. 
Then I graduated to the flavor of 
Myerss Original Dark’ 


"If you've grown to appreciate the finer 
things in life, you'll welcome the difference 
in Myerss Original Dark, the world's finest 
Jamaican rum. 

The flavor is deep, rich and adventurous... 
pleasingly dry. Because Myerss takes the 

A time to make it that way... following the same 
А < high standards they set in 1879. And what 
` Myerss flavor does for the juice of the orange 
is nothing short of wondrous. 

You'll see, once you graduate to the flavor 
of Original Dark, there's just no turning back” 

IN JAMAICA... MYERS'S MAKES RUM. 
FROM THE MYERS'S COLLECTION 
OF JAMAICAN RUMS. 


MYERS'S RUM. 80 PROOF. IMPORTED AND BOTTLED BY THE FRED L MYERS & SON CO., BALTIMORE, MD. 


PLAYBOY 


198 


closing time, he hooked a notch. Her face 
wasn't too great; her tits weren't too great. 
She probably didn’t look too great in a 
bathing suit and she certainly didn't look 
great in her sun dress. But she bought the 
product. She was notchable. 

Ноу really started going at the Coors 
yesterday afternoon, after Poodle the pro- 
moter, feeling that he had broken the 
strike and assured his continued position 
as king of the gods, had set the record 
straight on who was an L for loser. 

It began after some of the players had 
realized that Poodle wasn’t going to cave 
to their demands, that the 1984 Jose 
Cuervo World Championship of Beach 
Volleyball was going to be played without 
them, that someone else was going to win 
the $22,000 purse. When this had sunk in, 
a group of the volleyball gods went to Poo- 
dle and begged him to start the tourna- 
ment over again, to let them play. Hov 
even Came out of the motor home to hear 
the verdict. 

“Мо waaaaaay!” is what Poodle said. 

After he said that, Poodle had leaned 
back, fluffed his curly hair, screwed his 
small, dark eyes into the big blue ones 
belonging to Indiana Hov, Mr. Southern 
California. He let Hov twitch a moment, 


then said, “Be happy for yourselves. You 
stood up for your principles. Don’t regret 
it. 1 stood up for what I believed in, too. 
I'm going to do what I gotta do, too. This 
strike will serve a useful purpose. Maybe 
after this we'll see we need each other, that 
we have to work together, that we can’t 
screw each other.” 

To this, Hov had said, “Money talks, 
bullshit walks.” Then he walked away. 
Poodle had won. Or at least it appeared 
that way. Hov wouldn’t be world cham- 
pion twice in a row, at least not this time. 
His sponsor was mad at him, might even 
file suit. And worse, Hov had heard 
through the grapevine that Dodd, his part- 
ner, had called the Olympic coach to dis- 
cuss getting back onto the national team. 
Hoy knew now that the strike was dead, 
that the players would be back out on the 
sand next week for the last tourney of the 
season, the Miller Tournament of Cham- 
pions in San Diego. He knew now also that 
ABC and Life and the rest were still a 
dream away. It appeared, as he walked 
away from Poodle, head lowered, thongs 
scuffing, that tears were welling in his eyes, 
though that could have been just a reac- 
tion to the bright sun after all that time 
spent in the motor home. 


CUT 


“ Dear Friend: You may 
already have won a million dollars! If 
you believe that, you'll believe anything, so here's 


what we want you to do... . 


Then, all of a sudden, Hov stopped and 
bellowed: 

“I got it. 1 got it. I goooooot it!” 

The players gathered. 

“We can put on our own tournament!” 

“Yeah. Like an exhibition,” said Dodd, 
warming, “Like ‘Come on out and sce the 
best players in the world practicing! ” 

“Yeah.” 

“All right!” 

“We'll show them some real volley- 
ball!” 

“I don't know about this, bro,” said 
O.B. “This could really piss off the spon- 
sors.” 

“Fuck them!” 

“Yeah,” said O.B. “But what if nobody 
comes?” 

“You don't think the fans would come 
see us?" 

“Who the fuck will know to come?" said 
Jon Stevenson. “Poodle and those guys 
advertise for weeks before the tourna- 
ments. They spend all this money on radio 
and newspaper ads and stuff.” 

“So what?” said Hov. 

“What, you think the fans are gonna get 
our vibes and know to come?” said Steven- 
son. 

And so there convened another council 
of the gods, and so Indiana Hov’s last- 
ditch solution was put to a vote and 
defeated unanimously. Even Hov voted 
against it. Then he went back to the motor 
home. 

And now it is Sunday, and the finals of 
the world championship are about to be 
played without him. Hov is once again in 
the motor home, Only this time, he’s 
alone. 

“I don't know,” Hov is saying between 
drags on another Coors. “At this point, Pd 
say Event Concepts has pulled it off. The 
people are going to show up because of the 
beach party. It’s nothing compared to nor- 
mal, the caliber isn’t near the same, but 
the people are here. . 

“I worked very hard to get where I am. 
1 find when I work hard, then I usually 
win. There has been an occasion when 
something has gonc wrong, when somc- 
body has played better. But that's rare. 
And once I lose to someone, I guarantee 1 
won't lose again. 

* Never again. 

“No waaaaaay!" 

Outside the motor home, on the beach, 
a tall man wearing a gold chain is kicking 
around in the sand, scoping the beer, the 
buns, the games. He has a folder under 
one arm that says GROUP DYNAMICS, INC. His 
name is Jack Butefish. He's making notes 
on a little pad. One thing he's written is 
DISCONTENT. Another is RECOGNITION/CASH. 
A third is Hov. The last he’s circled three 
times. 

He knows a god when he sees one. 


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JAMIE LEE CURTIS 


(continued from page 143) 


“When I became intimate with men, I heard if you 
don’t make love six times a day, something is wrong.” 


Perfect is about what the press can and 
cannot do and about how much it can hurt 
people. My character has been burned by 
the press one time too many. Then she 
gets burned by Travolta’s character, He 
puts down a couple of girls for heing pro- 
miscuous and for wanting plastic surgery 
to improve their looks. 


12. 


ълувоу: OK, defend plastic surgery. 
curtis: Oh, in a second. If it makes you 
feel better about. yourself, do it. It's not 
immoral. If someone says her husband 
wouldn't like it, the hell with her husband. 
Don't expect too much, though; it will 
straighten your nose, but it won't give you 
happiness. I live with my body every day, 
and every day I see changes. Some I like, 
some I don't. Í like lines around my eyes. 1 
don't like fat. The breasts drop. It hap- 
pens to everybody. So if it’s going to take 
getting my eyes pulled up, PI do it. Any 
woman who wants to do it should, and ГЇЇ 
stand up for her and punch her husband. 


13. 


PLAYBOY: What's the second-best thing 
about your body? 
curis: What's the first? [Pauses] My eyes 
аге. My toes are pretty great, too. Cute. 
Like little hands. 


14. 


PLAYBOY: How do women make friends? 
curtis: Many are made at school, where 
there's a lot of bonding because of the hor- 
monal changes. You end up in little groups, 
going, "Is this happening to you, too?" 
Plus, you're shielding yourself from boys. 
Then you discover boys and end up spend- 
ing so much time with your lover that your 
friendships with girls change drastically. 
I'm going through that now. 


15. 


PLAYBOY: What's the best advice a woman 
has ever given you? 

CURTIS: My mother told me to be true to 
who I am. Dealing with everyone's expec- 
tations of who I was supposed to be was my 
biggest burden. For example, when I first 
became intimate with men, I heard that if 
you don’t make love six times a day, some- 
thing is wrong with you. Now I’m trying to 
throw all those expectations—external 
and internal—out. 


16. 


PLAyBOY: How do you pack? What do you 
always take with you? 
curtis: I'm an amazing packer. I've even 


got pictures of me packing for a European 
tour I did to promote Trading Places. 
Pretty funny. I always overpack if some- 
one else is going to carry my bags. If I have 
to carry them, I underpack. I carry only 
basic things, and always in black. When 
black gets dirty, I just clean it with a lint 
brush. I always take tennis shoes, because 
I wear them with dresses and I have a ter- 
rible back anyway. Гуе learned how to 
pack cashmere in tissue paper so it doesn't 
wrinkle, That's a good tip. I’m just very 
organized and I have everything in plastic 
bags—underwear in one, something else 
in another. Now I’m thinking about read- 
ing this one day and wondering who cares 
put my underwear in a plastic bag. I 
also unpack wherever I stop, even if it's 
just for a day. Everything goes into draw- 
ers. I’m usually very neat—though I tend 
to litter horribly around my airplane seat. 


17. 


PLAYBOY: What are your home-improve- 
ment skills and what have you done with 
them? 

curtis: Гуе laid tile. Гуе refinished furni- 
ture. I'm handy with a hammer and nails. 
Stripping wallpaper is a nightmare. Once 
you start, you do not finish until you're 


finished. But 1 like to do things myself. Ifa 
jar needs opening, I don't like to ask some- 
‘one else to do it. ГЇЇ do everything in my 
power to get it open before I turn to Chris 
and go, “Honey?” 


18. 


PLAYBOY: Your personal corporation is 
called Kid Curtis. What are some of the 
names you considered and rejected? 

Invisible Ink. Flat Feet. Or was it 


CURTI; 


19. 


PLAYBOY: What kind of role would you like 
to play that you suspect you will never be 
offered? 

curtis: Royalty. I was brought up in Bev- 
erly Hills and was privy to a certain brand 
of royalty. I say rovalty because it best 
covers someone with real clout, upbring- 
ing and class—a thoroughbred. I don’t 
think I'd be the spot-on choice for the role, 
though, because I don’t dress like royalty 
or hang out with them. But I have insights. 
Not to name-drop—like “I know Julio” — 
but Гуе had dinner with the Khashoggis. 
Their sense of reality is different from ours. 


20. 


the most ridiculous 
2 


PLAYBOY: What i 
notion of the Eighties? 
CURTIS: That sleeves on jackets are sup- 
posed to be pushed up above your elbows. 
T don't get it. The greatest invention of the 
Eighties, however, is Tenax. We're a 
mousse generation. The stuf is like drugs. 
I'm trying to quit right now. 


“Well, have you done any commercial voice-overs 
besides Phone-an-Orgasm?" 


201 


PLAYBOY 


202 


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AMAZING GRACE 


(continued from page 86) 
the power of Dolph and the grace of 
Grace? Neither one started out to be in 
show business. Dolph, born in Stockholm, 
has a degree in chemical engineering and 
knows six languages well enough to get by. 
While still attending school, he became 
European kick-boxing champion in 1980 
and 1981 and Australian champion in 
1982 before drifting first into modeling and 
then into acting. 

Grace was born in Jamaica and spent 
her childhood there, attending parochial 
school, chafing under a rather strict 
upbringing and using track as a release for 
her pent-up energies. Her ambition then 
was to be a Spanish professor. (She, too, is 
fluent in several languages.) 

It was not until her family moved to 
Upstate New York that Grace began to 
explode into something entirely different. 
She began her career on the stage in sum- 
mer stock, then hit the runway as a model. 
"There, her approach often tested the limits 
of conservative advertisers. 

“Му image was always too strong for 
them. And that’s when I went to Europe. 
There I found a completely different atti- 
tude. Europeans want you to be strong.” 

With that license, Grace quickly 
evolved, experimenting with various per- 
sonae, combining her singing and acting 
talents in stage performances that stunned 
audiences with bizarre images and fright- 
encd them with the newness of it all. It 
was hard at times to see just where she was 
coming from. The conflicting sexual iden- 
tities, for instance, the seeming antipathy 
toward men: 

"Pm anti-male ego, les say, not 
antimale. Гуе always been drawn to sensi- 
tive men—men who have an ego but not to 
the extreme that the woman becomes a 
silent partner. I have found many times 
that if I do become a silent partner, it eats 
me up inside. Sometimes it’s smarter to 
play dumb. But I’m silent for only so long, 
and then it comes out anyway.” 

Grace’s latest creation, the role of vil- 
lainess May Day in the James Bond adven- 
ture film A View to a Kill, will give us yet 
another image of her. 

“ get to be more frilly, I think, as May 
Day. She dresses elegantly, takes time for 
make-up and manicures, all those things.” 

But don’t expect a radical change in 
Grace because of a movie role. There are 
still plenty of icons that need busting and 
shirts that need unstuffing. 

“I like conflicts. I love competition. 1 
like discovering things for myself. It’s a 
childlike characteristic, actually. But that 
gives you a certain amount of power, and 
people are intimidated by that. They are 
even afraid to approach me. Once they do, 
they see it’s OK. I’m not going to chew 
their heads off or become violent if they 
say the wrong thing. It's a role. I’m acting, 
but they take it all so seriously." 


“My God—where did you learn to kiss?” 


Remind your father he didnt 


raise a cheap-skate. 


Crown Royal about $14. 
A Cheap Roa not included. 


© 1983 SEAGRAM DISTILLERS СО. N Y. BLENDED CANADIAN WHISKY. šD PROOF 


PLAYBOY 


WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN 


SUMMER 


MIDDAY AT THE OASIS 


accessory company, Tracy Design, in Santa Barbara, 
California, manufactures mighty slippery fairings and 
luggage. While it may or may not be true that if 
you've seen one fairing you've seen them all, the same can't 
be said for Nelson’s latest creation, The Tracy Oasis, which 


Т тасу Nelson travels in the fast lane. His motorcycle- 


he describes modestly as “the ultimate beach chair." Incor- 
porated into its aluminum frame are JBL speakers coupled 
to a booster hooked to your personal stereo stored in a 
sealed cabinet. Another compartment stashes a six-pack 
and a freeze pack. And when your day at The Oasis is done, 
the chair can be folded and rolled home. Roll on, Tracy! 


HABITAT 
SERIOUS HANG-UPS 


line your walls with the thinnest, most advanced 
technology this side of Arthur C. Clarke's famed 
monolith. If you answered A, B or C, take off, turkey. Skinny 
tech is here, and soon everyone will be wondering what fat 


о make a room look bigger, you should (A) paint it 
| pink, (B) dump your furniture, (C) wear glasses or (D) 


tech was all about. See the baby monolith below? It's а 
receiver and cassette deck about two and a half inches 
thick that hangs on the wall. The TV/radio and the phone 
machine are similar space savers. So slim down your elec- 
tronic environment and start using your living space for (A) a 
dance hall, (B) conventions, (C) living or (D) all of the above. 


RICHARD IZUI. 


Right: It's the perfect kitchen p 

Trade pint-sized and por- RUNS HEE 
table bladeand white AM/FM TETEE vir 
unit (the Model 7-7150), with a 
five-inch screen, that sticks lil 
Spider-Man to the unde 
a cabinet, thus saving you count- 
er space, and then slides out of 
its swiveling mount when you 
want to tote it to the beach, 
by General Electric, $199.95. 


[FM з 72, 25,209,101, 100 m 


LOIN 


LL e s! 


EET MU 


Below: Phone-Mate’s new 
MiniMate 5050 phone/an- 
swering machine can be 
mounted on a wall, as well 
as placed on a tabletop, and 
offers beeperless message 
retrieval, plus a function 
that allows you to leave in- 
house messages for guests, 
girlfriends or other mem- 
bers of the family, $159.95. 


Above: Look! Up on the wall! It’s nota bird or a plane but 
Technics’ SA-R100 stereo receiver with cassette deck—an 
integrated three-piece stereo system that's 43 inches long 
and only about two and a half inches thick. The amplifier 
section puts out 30 watts per channel, and the cassette 
deck features Dolby B and C noise reduction and autore- 
verse. The AM/FM quartz synthesized tuner offers 16 sta- 
Чоп presets, and the wireless remote (right) lets you make 
adjustments from your easy chair. The price: $740 for the 
receiver, $260 for the pair of SB-R100 speakers shown. 


POTPOURRI 


DIRTY TRICKS 
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing The Great ` WELL HUNG 
Libido, the world's only X-rated magician, and н авал нЕ 


с the floating in the world: those who are 
phallus; learn how to remove a bra without - EIT Ато 
touching the treasures beneath—yes, these and who aren't. o onc olihe 
other erotic illusions can be yours for only $39.95 former, then How to Hang a 


his magic bag of very dirty tricks 


(write to The Great Libido's Magic Pack, P.O = Spoon, Joe Martin's $5.95 sofi- 
Box 240534, Memphis, 38124). No, that's not cover published by Turnbull 
The Great Libido pictured below. It’s just his S ТУО OU Nel ER EDU 
assistant, and he’s not about to make her disappear. Y z 2 die made scope c atiy 
— шаша MA SY, 7 from angle of dangle to com- 
| š petitive spooning and will also 
instruct you on how to care 
for your utensils. And if you're 
| not into spoon hanging, well, 


here's your chance to get with 
the “in” crowd— impress 
friends, neighbors and any- 
body else dumb enough to 
watch with your new-found 
ability to hang heavy-duty 
tableware on your head. 
(Spoon hanging, for all you 

| X cultural dropouts, is the 
science of hanging a spoon ог 
spoons from your features 
without adhesives, nails or 

3 psychokinesis.) Honey, what 
| ; say we do a liule spooning 
| 8 à tonight? Your face or mine? 


HEAD FOR THE HILLS 


At last, a 90-minute personal video tour through 
22 of the most exclusive shops in Beverly Hills— 
without the hassles of parking and haggling with 
pretentious clerks. Of course Cartier and Gucci 
are on A Shopping Spree in Beverly Hills, along 
with such specialty shops as a Swiss chocolatier 
and a toy emporium. Video Systems, Inc., P.O. 
Box 22920, Denver, Colorado 80222, is the place 
to order from: $39.95 in either VHS or Beta 
Next stops: Aspen and Paris. 


FLOAT AND FLAUNT IT—ROYALLY 


Traveling on the River Thames is always pleasant, but making your 
journey aboard the luxurious Captain Webb—a 12-passenger barge 
that replicates the floating palaces of years past from which British 
royalty waved to their landlocked subjects—is definitely a watery 
groove. A 16-day guided journey, with trips to Southwark, Hever 
Castle, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells, among other storied stops, 
will set you back a princely $2490 per person, double occupancy 
Salen Lindblad Cruising, 133 East 55th Street, New York 10022, has 
all the info. And, yes, the beds on board are queen-sized 


ND OF THE TRAIL 


You think we're going to make a joke 
about getting a kick out of this table, 


right? Wrong— you're going to get a boot 
out of it. Two boc ct, and the 


a solid-hemlock top. J.M.'s Taxidermy 
Company, 1570 West Bosque Loop, 
Bosque Farms, New Mexico 87068, is into 
"pscudohomosapiel taxidermy,” and the 
boot table is J.M.`s kickoll All for $120 
(deduct $10 if you supply boots and j 
Your shit-kickers 

should look so good. 


ALL HOT AND BOTHERED 


Know what a horny man's favorite break- 
fast is? A roll with some honey! Yuck, 
yuck, yuck. Yes, trivia mania has cracked 
the adult-game market in the form of 
Adultrivia, 2400 bawdy questions and 
answers color-coded into six categories— 
Jokes and Limericks, Mythollancous, Hot 
‘Times in History, Sex in Art and Litera- 
irc, The Famous Uncovered and The 
Facts of Life. Send $22.50 to Adultrivia, 
P.O. Box 72685, Roselle, Illinois 60172. 


Saturday night will never be the same 


WE HEARD IT 
THROUGH THE 
GRAPEVINE 


There’s more to the romance 
and history of wine than just 
sniffing and swallowing, as 
you'll discover if you visit 

New York's Cooper-Hewitt 
Museum on East 91st Street 
from Junc 4 through October 
‘That's when Wine: Cele- 

n and Gerenjony—an 
exhibition featuring more than 
350 objects that document the 
impact of vino on the history 
of design —vill take place. 
Exhibits include Greek drink- 
ing vessels, the Bacchus wall 
bracket here and much more. 
No, the Gooper- Hewitt docsn't 
offer a happy hour. 


FLAMING SUCCESS 


Anybody can flick a Bic, but if 
it’s heavy-duty fire you're seck- 
ing for your smokes, consider 
Sculptures on Fire—a series of 
six solid-brass lighters, in both 
pocket and table models, with 
a miniature sculpture by artist 
Robert W. Addison on cach 
one. Styles include a racer 
(shown), a stallion, an eagle, a 
bass, Western saddle and a sea 
spirit—and the price for such 
craftsmanship also ought to 
spark your interest: $49.95 for 
a pocket lighter and $189 for a 
table model, sent to Vasilia 
Lid., John Hancock Genter, 
Chicago 60611. A tasteful 
melding of brass and class. 
Snap them up. 


PUTTING THE BYTE 
ON YOUR BITE 


y you hit the beach last 
nd three people 
reported sighting a beached 
whale? Put your money where 
your mouth is 
The Original Boston Computer 
Diet, a unique way to lose 
weight via computer, 
from Scarborough 


plays the role of a persor 
weight-loss counselor. A sing 
(plus instruction booklet) 
that fits the Apple H family 
or the IBM PC, XT or 
PCjunior costs $79.95; a 
disk for the Commodore 
64 is $49.95. Computer. 
and department stores all 
carry the dict, so try a byte 


209 


Merry Panksters 


Pole watchers, take note. We are look- 
ing at LADY PANK (loosely trans- 
lated: Lady Punk), the first Polish 
rock band to tour the U.S. The 
Panksters even plan to shoot a 
video while here. Judg- 

ing from this photo, 

they like to ride 

the wild surfski. 


There’s No 
Doubting Thomas 


It was either be a photog- 
rapher or be a model for 
18-year-old PAULA THOMAS. 
Now this English muffin 

is a model actress in the 
new Bond film, A View to a 
Kill. We tip our hat to her. 


nw, 


210 1 


Uptown Sinclair 


You've seen her in Thief of Hearts and 
Weekend Pass, on Matt Houston and Find- 
er of Lost Loves. Now the truth can be 
told: She likes her Teddies bare. AN- 
NETTE SINCLAIR is shameless in her 
concern for the plight of the diminutive, 
the defenseless, the stuffed. We hope 
she keeps up the good work 


Lorre’s Glories 


Her first name really is LOLITA and she 
takes her last name from her favorite 
actor, Peter LORRE. Her parents are 
from Germany and Latvia, but she is 
from just outside Cleveland. Here she's 
making two important points: first, that 
her acting debut is in Michael Winner's 
latest thriller, Scream for Help, and, 
second, that she has reason to hold 
her head high. 


The Woman in Flesh Color 


KELLY LE BROCK is the kind of woman who stops hearts, traffic and rational trains of 
thought. But apparently, she can't stop working. Next up for her is a role in John Hughes's 
Weird Science, with Anthony Michael Hall. Here she demonstrates her own brand of science— 
why all higher forms of life are vertebrates. Notice how there can be а positive side to curvature 
of the spine. Notice, too, how life in the fast lane of Hollywood glamor can support itself on one 
arm. How can that be? This Kelly girl's keeping some good things under wraps. 


Pro Bono 


PAUL HEWSON (U2's Bono to you) 
should be having a good time these days. 
The band from Dublin sells more T-shirts 
and merchandise than bands that sell twice 
as many records, and four of U2's five 
albums are in Billboard's Top 200. He's 


waving; he's found work. 


212 


CLOWNS INGRID 


RON HOWARD REVEALS WHICH ACTRESSES HE'D LIKE 
TO DIRECT IN NUDE SCENES, DENIES THOSE PERSIST- 
ENT RUMORS ABOUT DRUG DEALING ON THE USC 
CAMPUS AND DESCRIBES HIS DAD'S ILLUSTRATED 
SEX-ED GUIDE IN A LIVELY “20 QUESTIONS” 


"TWO BY FOUR"—WE ASKED FREE-LANCE AUTOMO- 
TIVE JOURNALISTS BROCK YATES, WILLIAM NEELY, 
WILLIAM JEANES AND GARY WITZENBURG TO TEST- 
DRIVE THE BEST OF THE NEW TWO-SEATERS. HERE- 
WITH, THEIR ROADWORTHY REPORTS 


"GOOD ENOUGH TO DREAM"—HE WROTE ABOUT 
BASEBALL FOR YEARS, BUT HE NEVER REALLY KNEW 
THE GAME UNTIL HE BOUGHT HIS OWN BOYS OF SUM- 
MER, A MINOR-LEAGUE TEAM. THE STORY OF ONE 
UNFORGETTABLE SEASON—BY ROGER KAHN 


"SEXUAL FANTASIES"—EVERYBODY HAS THEM, BUT 
RESEARCH SHOWS THAT EACH OF US FEARS HIS (OR 
HERS) ARE FREAKY. A COMPLETE REPORT FROM THE 
WILD SIDE OF IMAGINATION—BY DAVID BLACK 


"SHE'LL BE COMIN DOWN THE MOUNTAIN"—JUDY 
NORTON-TAYLOR HAS TRAVELED A FAR PIECE FROM 
THE WALTONS. SEE HOW MARY ELLEN GREW! 


"CLOWNS"—THE TEN-YEAR-OLD BOY WAS THE ONLY 
PERSON WHO COULD SEE THE SINISTER FIGURES. OR 
WAS HE? AN EERIE TALE BY GARDNER DOZOIS, JACK 
DANN AND SUSAN CASPAR 


"GREAT BRITON"—INGRID BOULTING, WHOSE DAD'S A 
FAMED U.K. FILM MAKER, HAS MOVIES IN HER GENES. 
FOR US, SHE STARS IN A PHOTOPLAY 


PLUS: "HOT TOPS"—IF PHILIP JOHNSON CAN PUT A 
CHIPPENDALE PEDIMENT ATOP AT&T'S HEADQUAR- 
TERS, OUR IDEAS SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE; 
“ON THE ROAD WITH STEVEN WRIGHT," WHEREIN OUR 
WEST COAST EDITOR STEPHEN RANDALL GETS TIGHT 
WITH THE HOTTEST, AND SLOWEST-TALKING. YOUNG 
COMEDIAN IN THE BUSINESS; "THE PLAYBOY ENDUR- 
ANCE RACE"; A TOP-SECRET PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: 
AND, NATURALLY, MUCH MORE 


4 a d 
”/г f š 
A A^ А 
M < E 
> 
i ` ; 
H a, ^ 


You've got What it takes. 


saiem ЗЕЕ 


KING: 17 mg. “tar”, 1.3 mg, nicotine, 100's. 17 mg, "tar", 
14 ma. nicotine, av. per cigarette by FIC method. 


Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined 
That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 


Mon, 


Sharing the work, sharing the fun. 
That's what friendship is all about. 
And naturally, you had Smirnoff* Vodka; 
on board for a time like this. 
Because nothing makes your favorite 
drinks like Smirnoff. 

Crisp, clear, incomparably smooth Smirnoff. 

Friends are worth it. 


REMEMBER SPECIAL OCCASIONS 
HES 

SMIRMOFF® VODKA 80 & 100 Pi 
[DIVISION OF 


GIFT OF SMIRNOFE ANYWHERE IN THE CON 
Е LAWA САЦ 1-900-3675692 

D FROM GRAIN. G 1985 STE. PIERRE SMIRNOFF FLS 
HARTFORD, CI— MADE IN USA