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With his movies Reservoir Dogs 
and Pulp Fiction, Quentin Taran- 
tino single-handedly renewed the 
concept of the Hollywood auteur. 
With Tarantino set to return to 
cinemas with Kill Bill, we sent 
Michael Fleming to speak with 
the ornery director in this month's 
Playboy Interview. "He said if he 
ever paid an actor $20 million, 
he'd get his money's worth," 
Fleming reports. "He'd strap a 
camera to his face and throw him 
off the Empire State Building. 
And if the guy wasn't willing to do 
that kind of stuff he'd dock his 
pey. It also turns out he has as 
encyclopedic a knowledge of the 
Playboy Interview as he does of 
the Hong Kong action genre." 


In God and Satan in Bentonville, 
Dan Baum visits Wal-Mart's сот- 
pany town in Arkansas. "Wal- 
Mart's identity is fully wrapped up 
with Bentonville," says Baum 
"The place is hilariously incon- 
venient to get to and from. The 
company cloaks itself in a Dis- 
neyfied version of rural values 
thrift, piety, community—and cre- 
ates a cult around itself that lets it 
get away with paying people very 
little. I've never seen a company 
as concerned with keeping the 
goodwill of its employees as Wal- 
Mart is. It markets itself to its own 
employees as much as it mar- 
| € itself to customers." 


For most actors, having just one role that stays forever lodged in the popular consciousness would be enough. Bill Murray 
could have hung it up after Caddyshack: His gopher-hunting groundskeeper will be quoted through the eons. But he's 
gone on to star in some of the most memorable comedic roles of the past 25 years, in movies such as Stripes, Ghost- 
busters, Groundhog Day and Rushmore. In anticipation of Murray's latest movie, Lost in Translation, Contributing Editor 
Warren Kalbacker caught up with the kingpin of comedy for 200. "He doesn't give you one-liners," says Kalbacker. “1 
don't know if intellectual is the right word to use, but I felt | was in the presence of a real thinker. If he'd never done com: 
есу, | never would have suspected him of being а comedic actor. That's not to say he wasn't funny—but it wasn't shtick.” 


Daryl Hannah swam into our 
dreams as the mermaid in 
Splash. Now she's back on the 
big screen as a leggy villain in 
Kill Bill. Photographer Tony Du- 
ran shot her in Los Angeles for 
our cover pictorial. “1 view this 
as my biggest celebrity shoot 
ever," says Duran, whose own. 
fame as a glamour lensman 
rose after a series of shoots with 
J.Lo, including a pair of album 
covers. "When | started taking 
pictures of celebrities, the first 
one | wanted to shoot was Daryl 
Hannah. She's always intrigued 
me. A movie like Blade Runner 
creates visuals you always 
remember. There's something 
really cool about her." 


This month's fiction, Dent /з- 
land, is by Pete Dexter, the win- 
ner of the 1988 National Book 
Award for his novel Paris Trout. 
Dexter has also seen five of his. 
screenplays made into major 
movies. "Dent Island is based 
on something that really hap- 
pened,” he says, "though it's 
not dead accurate, of course," 
The story also draws from some 
sources quite close to home. 
"The part about rewriting a 
kid's school paper? І did that. 
Giving my kid a $20 bill to eat a. 
pea? That's true too." Dexter's 
novel Train was just published 
by Doubleday. 


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ОМ ТНЕ ВОТТЕЕ. 


PLAYBOY 


vol. 50, no. 11—november 2003 


icontents| еп ties 
feotures 
64 GOD AND SATAN IN BENTONVILLE 
Headquartered in small-town Arkansas, Wal-Mart shrouds itself in a cult of the 
rural. But beneath the aw-shucks facade, the world’s biggest corporation is chang- 
ing America the same way it changed its company town: one underpaid but smiling 
employee at а lime. BY DAN BAUM 
76 THE HEDGEHOG AT 50 
With more than 1,800 flicks under his ample belt, Ron Jeremy is the world's most 
famous—and well-endowed—adult star. And he just hit the half-century mark. 
Celebrate with him as we take you into his Hollywood home, his standing-room-only 
bedroom and his straight-to-video world. BY ERIC HEDEGAARD 
82 PLAYBOY'S YEAR IN VIDEO GAMES 
Warm up your gamer thumbs by flipping through our definitive 2003 wrap-up. 
We've gol the year's 10 best titles, the history of sex іп video games and the 411 оп 
celebrity players who could kick your ass. 
88 THE STRAIGHT DOPE 
There are more urban legends about drugs than there are about psychos on deserted 
highways. Did the CIA spread crack through inner cities? Did Nixon get dosed with 
LSD? Did Keith Richards get a full blood replacement to kick the big H? Find out 
here. BY STEPHAN TALTY 
112 THIS ONE TIME, AT ROCK CAMP... 
Its Fantasy Fulfillment 101. Our reporter hung out with the grown-up campers who 
paid $6,000 to sing, strum and strut with the aging stars of bands such as Night 
Ranger, Grand Funk Railroad and the Ramones. Warning: This may be the one 
rock-and-roll story that doesn't involve sex and drugs. BY DAVID PEISNER 
125 CENTERFOLDS ON SEX: PENNELOPE JIMENEZ 
Pennelope likes it doggy style. We're panting already. 
126 20Q BILL MURRAY 
The most popular Saturday Night Live alum talks seriously about his roles in such 
comedy classics as Groundhog Day and Rushmore. His new movie, Lost in Transla- 
tion, was filmed in Japan and gave him plenty of new material—which he shares 
exclusively with you. Plus, a true story that begins, “A priest walked into а convent 
and made a pass al a nun..." BY WARREN KALBACKER 
fiction 
108 DENT ISLAND 
When a Harvard schoolteacher moves to a tourist town with just one electrician, the 
locals drive her loco. BY PETE DEXTER 
interview 
59 QUENTIN TARANTINO 


After a six-year hiatus from filmmaking, the auteur behind Pulp Fiction returns 
with Kill Bill. In an Oscar-worthy Playboy Interview, the Hollywood hood explains 
why he expects this movie to KO all box office records with a one-two punch, what 
it’s like to drop ecstasy at the Great Wall of China and how it feels to become a rock 
star in your 30s. BY MICHAEL FLEMING 


cover story 


Daryl Hannah made waves playing a mermaid 
іп 1984's Splash. Now she's storming theaters 
in Kill Bill, in which she plays a one-eyed 
assassin. For photographer Tony Duran she 
takes off her tail, eye patch—ond clothes. Our 
Rabbit steals the seat with the best view. 


| contents continued | | contents continued | 


vol. 50, no. 11—november 2003 


PLAYBOY 


pictorials 


70 


94 


128 


WORLD-CLASS BEAUTIES 
Forget Buckingham Palace and the 
Eiffel Tower. The most beautiful 
sights overseas are the models in 
our 18 foreign editions. 


PLAYMATE: DIVINI RAE 

This Alaskan beauty once started a 
magazine in Australia. Now she 
gives us а peek at her outback. 


DARYL HANNAH 

Kill Bill's best supporting actress 
takes off her support bra and 
makes a splash! 


notes and news 


15 
16 


163 


WORLD OF PLAYBOY 


FIREWORKS AND 
FISTICUFFS 

Thora Birch, Crispin Glover and 
Bill Maher celebrate July 4, and a 
boxing match between. [eff Lacy 
and Richard Grant. 


THE PLAYBOY FORUM 
Banned art and a пеш generation 
of radar guns. 


PLAYMATE NEWS 

Shauna Sand and Lorenzo Lamas 
don't kiss but still make up, A.J. 
McLean gels high on Playmates. 


departments 


PLAYBILL 
DEAR PLAYBOY 
AFTER HOURS 
PLAYBOY TV 


40 PLAYBOY.COM 

43 MANTRACK 

47 THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR 

106 PARTY JOKES 

162 WHERE AND HOW TO BUY 

167 ОМ THE SCENE 

168 GRAPEVINE 

170 POTPOURRI 
fashion 

118 | CLOTHES TO THE EDGE 
Professional snowboarders model 
winter clothes that make big air 
debonair. BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS 
reviews 

31 MOVIES 
Eastwood and his stellar cast make 
Mystic River flow, Halle Berry in 
the scary Gothika, and а dwarf 
who stands above the rest. 

33 MUSIC 
Peaches is mmm mmm good, Sting 
loses his sting, and Dave Matthews 
still matters. 

34 DVD 
Replay The Matrix Reloaded, 
don't fuhgeddabout The Italian 
Job, and have a peek at Amanda 
Peet's perky paris. 

36 BOOKS 


Frederick Forsyth's Avenger thrills, 
get drunk in James Lee Burke's 
(fictional New Orleans, and a short 
review about infinity. 


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RIGHT AFTER THE FILM. 


HUGH M. HEFNER 


editor-in-chief 


JAMES KAMINSKY editorial director 
STEVEN RUSSELL deputy editor 
TOM STAEBLER art director 
GARY COLE photography director 
LISA CINDOLO GRACE managing editor 
ROBERT LOVE editor at large 
JOHN REZEK associate managing editor 
STEPHEN RANDALL executive editor 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH assistant managing editor 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO editor; FORUM: JAMES R PETERSEN senior staff writer; 
CHIP ROWE associate editor; MODERN LIVING: DAVID STEVENS editor; JASON BUHRMESTER associale 
TAFF: BARBARA NELLIS senior editor; ALISON PRATO 
associate editor; ROBERT в. DESALVO, PATTY LAMBERTI, TIM MOHR assistant editors; HEATHER НАЕВЕ 
CAROL KUBALEK, EMILY LITTLE, KENNY LULL editorial assistants; CARTOONS: MICHELLE URRY editor; 
JENNIFER THIELE assislant; COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; STEVE GORDON associate copy chief; 
CAMILLE CAUTI senior copy editor; PETER BORTEN, JOAN NCLAUGHLIN copy editors; RESI 
DAVID COHEN research director: BRENDAN BARR Senior researcher; LUCAS ZALESKI associate senior 
researcher; MATT EL ZWEIG, RON MOTTA researchers; MARK DURAN research librarian; BRADLEY LINCOLN 
assistant; EDITORIAL PRODUCTION: BONNIE SHELDEN manager; VALERY SOROKIN associate; 
READER SERVICE: MIKE OSTROWSKI correspondent; CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: 
KEVIN BUCKLEY; JOSEPH DE ACETIS (FASHION), GRETCHEN EDGREN, LAWRENCE GROBEL. KEN GROSS, WARREN 
KALBACKER, ARTHUR KRETCHMER, JOE MORGENSTERN, DAVID RENSIN, DAVID SHEFF, JOHN D THOMAS 


editor; DAN HENLEY administrative assistant; S 


HEIDI PARKER west coast editor 


ART 
SCOTT ANDERSON, BRUCE HANSEN, CHET SUSKI, LEN WILLIS, ROB WILSON senior art directors; 
PAUL CHAN senior art assistant; JOANNA METZGER art assistant; 
SALINA LEE senior art administrator 


CORTEZ WELLS arl services coordinator; 


PHOTO! PHY 
NARILYN GRABOWSKI west coast editor; им LARSON managing editor; KEVIN KUSTER, STEPHANIE MORRIS 
senior editors; PATTY BEAUDETFRANCIS associate editor; RENAY LARSON assistant editor; ARNY FREYTAG. 
STEPHEN АУРА senior contributing photographers; GEORGE GEORGIOU staff photographer; 
RICHARD IZUL, MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN. GEN NISHINO, POMPEO POSAR, DAVID RAMS contributing 
photographers; su were studio manager—los angeles; ELIZABETH GEORGIOU manager, 
photo library; KEVIN CRAIG manager, photo lab; MELISSA etas photo researcher; 
PENNY EKKERT production coordinator 


DIANE SILBERSTEIN publisher 


ADVERTISING 
JEFF KIMNELeaslern advertising director; NEW YORK: HELEN BIANCULL direct response 
advertising director; sve JAFFE beauty manager; JOHN LUMPKIN senior account executive; 
RON STERN liquor manager; MICHAEL BELLINGHAM account execulive; MARIE FIRNENO advertising 


operations director; KARA SARISKY advertising coordinator; CHICAGO: JOE HOFFER midwest 
sales manager; WADE BAXTER senior account executive; CALIFORNIA: DENISE SCHIPPER 


west coast manager; COREY SPIEGEL senior account executive 


MARKETING 
LISA NATALE associate publisher/markeling 
SUE IGOE event marketing director; JULIA LIGHT marketing services director; 
DONNA TAVOSO creative services director 


PRODUCTION 
MARIA MANDIS director; JODY JURGETO production manager; CINDY VONTARELLI. DEBBIE TILLO! 
associate managers; JOE CANE. CHAR KROWCZYK assistant managers; 


BILL BENWAY, SIMMIE WILLIAMS Prepress 


CIRCULATION 
LARRY A. DJERF newsstand sales director; PHYLLIS ROTUNNO subscription circulation director 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
MARCIA TERRONES rights & permissions director 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
CHRISTIE HEFNER chairman, chief executive officer 
JAMES f RADTKE senior vice president and general manager 


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PLAYBOY 


HEF SIGHTINGS, MANSION FROLICS AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES 


A BOWL FULL OF JAZZ 

This June marked the 25th anniversary of the Playboy 
Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, and the stars— 
from Dave Brubeck (right) to Boz Scaggs (below)— 
came out to shine. We added a little blues, a Latin 
beat. a dash of gospel and Bill Cosby at the micro- 
phone to satisfy every taste. 


HEF'S SUPER BUNNIES 

Playboy has announced plans to produce an 
animated television show featuring Hef and his 
Centerfolds as superhero crime fighters. The 
series is being developed by the celebrated 
Stan Lee, who created Spider-Man, X-Men, Dare- 
devil and The Incredible Hulk. 


m BUNNIE i > 


A KNOCKOUT PUNCH 

Clowning around during ESPN2's televised Fight 
Night at the Mansion, James Caan and Hef 
showed off their pugilistic powers before the real 
fights began. Caan’s latest NBC series Las Vegas 
has him as head of security at a casino where he 


ON THE TOWN 
When Hef and his party 
posse come out to play, 
wherever they are is the 
cool place to be: at the new | 
L.A. nightclub Bliss, with 
Corey Feldman and his wife 
Susie (above); longtime 
friend Kenny Rogers and 
his wife Wanda with Hef at 
the Bench Warmer Trading 
Cards party at White Lotus 
(above right); and Internet 
icon Cindy Margolis and 
birthday girl Playmate Devin | 
DeVasquez on ancther night 
of Bliss (right). 


GRETA CHATS 

UP THE MAN 
Fox News's Greta 
Van Susteren sits 
down with Hef at 
the Mansion for 
her show On the 
Record to talk 
about his plans 
for PLavBov's 50th 
anniversary issue 
and celebration 
Its a tough job, but 
someone has to 
do it. Right, Greta? 


—— Julie McCullough with Carmelo Anthony. (15) 


Every day means fireworks at Hef's, but on the 
Fourth of July he kicked it up with live jazz and 
a slew of revelers. A few days later ESPN2 
brought Fight Night to the Mansion, with a 
broadcast seen around the world. (1) Hef's 
sparklers started an awesome fireworks show. 
(2) Verne Troyer and his fiancée Genevieve. (3) 
Steve Valentine and his wife Shari, (4) Thora 
Birch and Charlie Matthau. (5) The Bluecat 
Express band. (6) Alana Stewart and Steve 
Bing. (7) Hef's brother Keith and a patriotic 
pup. (8) Crispin Glover, Devin DeVasquez and 
Bill Maher. (9) Super welterweight Nurhan 
Suleymanoglu beating Jose Medina. (10) 
Heather Carolin, Ray Crockett and Divini Rae. 
(11) Julius Erving and Marketa Janska. (12) 
USBA super middleweight champ Jeff Lacy 
‚ beat Richard Grant in the main event. (13) 
' Giradie Mercer, Michael Jenkins and Joe Theis- 

man with Centerfolds. (14) Dalene Kurtis and 


Undefeated Mary Jo Sanders. (16) British cruis- 
erweight David Haye. (17) Playmate Bunnies. 


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SEXY SURVIVORS 
When Heidi and Jenna (Soul Sister 
Survivors, August) stripped for choco- 
late and peanut butter during an 
immunity challenge, I hoped that 
PLAYBOY would be their next stop. 
The photos are beautiful, but I have 
to admit I was a little disappointed. 
Heidi and Jenna are covering up too 
much. Your photos of another sur- 
vivor, Jerri Manthey, are better. She 
bared all. 
Mike Curtis 
West Orange, New Jersey 


1 turned 30 in August. Jenna and Heidi 
were the perfect gift. 

Ken Giangiordano 

Riverside, New Jersey 


I have to say you scored by getting 

them to pose together—but to be hon- 
est, Heidi is the gorgeous one. 

Ron Serafin 

Houston, Texas 


This is an awesome pictorial. Jenna 
and Heidi rule. 

Mike Vallier 

Pleasant Hill, Oregon 


Double yaur pleasure: Heidi (left) and Jenna. 


Just so you know, not everyone 
watched Survivor (although afier see- 
ing Jenna and Heidi in your maga- 
zine, it appears I made a ake). It 
would be helpful if you identified 
who is who in the photos. On the 
other hand, now you have an excuse 
to run another picture. 
Scott Beuse 
Santa Cruz, California 


Pos 


We found it very easy to tell the two girls 
apart. Jenna, it turns ош, is ticklish 
between the third and fourth ribs on her 
left side. Heidi isn't. 


ROCK LITE 
I think it’s great that Carnie Wilson 
(August) found a cure for her obesity. 
and that it saved her life. Further, it's 
great that this talented young woman 
looks and feels better about herself. 
But it would have been best if she'd 
kept it to herself. 
Kevin Blair 
Westbrook, Connecticut 


Not only is Carnie Wilson drop-dead 

gorgeous, but her photos are impec- 

cably done. Kudos to Carnie and to 
Stephen Wayda. 

Sam Sampson 

Colorado Springs, Colorado 


COOL CARTOONISTS 
The cartoons by Juan Alvarez and Jorge 
G (July) are outstanding. They keep toa 
theme but spin off variations each time. 
I never thought I'd be searching for 
their latest work before feasting on the 
Centerfold. Keep them coming. 

James Bononi 
North Hollywood, California 


I love Bobby London's work (August). 

I'd love to have a draving of Dirty 
Duck on my desk. 

Alexander Theroux 

West Barnstable, Massachusetts 


A DOCTOR IN OUR HOUSE 
As a female reader of your magazine 1 
send praise for your recognition of the 
natural beauty of Playmate Colleen 
Marie (August). 1 wouldn't even mind 
if my boyfriend put her Centerfold on 
the wall. 
Laura Gasbarra 
Lakewood, Colorado 


Wow. Colleen Marie is a knockout, 
with a beautiful backside. 

Francisco De La Rosa 

Walla Walla, Washington 


CONGRESS IS IN SESSION 

Who would argue with Charles Rangel 
(20 Questions, August)? Reinstating the 
draft is the right thing to do. The mili 
tary supplements a one-parent hou: 
hold with extra strength, direction 
and respect for others. The deaths in 
Iraq are terrible, but they are nothing 
compared with the deaths in our city 
neighborhoods. 


Russ Pollman 
Fullerton, California 


been superpower when 

China's billions become better edu- 
cated than we are. 

Joseph Henry 

Waynesburg, Pennsylvania 


Who is Charles Rangel kidding? The 


only reason he's seriously considering 


Congressman Rangel wants you 


getting out of politics is because liberal 
Democrats have been steadily losing 
ground and don't call the shots any- 
more. Sorry, Charlie. 
Mike Celentano 
Bremen, Maine 


LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE MARINES 

Tam a member ofthe U.S. Marines, and 
my tank battalion was deployed in Iraq. 
We were one of the first tanks to enter 
Baghdad, with the mission to scize соп- 
trol of Saddam Hussein's palace. Unfor- 
tunately, during our very first mission, 
we quickly became engulfed in rocket- 
propelled grenades and small-arms fire 
when our tank's hydraulic system had 
mechanical difficulties. Our only option, 
aside from aborting the plan, was to 
retrieve hydraulic fluid from outside the 
tank. So І did. Afterward, I realized we 
had no funnel with which to add the 
fuel to the reservoir. Fortunately, my 
commander had an issue of PLAYBOY 
stored inside the tank. It occurred to me 
to use the ad pages (not the magazine— 
my commander wouldn't lt me) 
as a makeshift funnel. We did, and it 
worked. It's important to note that no 
Centerfolds were injured during this 


18 


Jim Beam? Black is the 


HIGHEST 
RATED 
WHISKEY 


The Beverage Testing Institute, world 
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overall nose, depth of flavor and finish. 
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Rating | Whiskey 


Jim Beam’ Black 
Maker’s Mark* 

Wild Turkey” 101° 
Gentleman Jack” 
Crown Royal” 

Jack Daniel's* 


parlar 


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operation. Our success would not have 
been possible without you. 

Cpl. Adam Dolce 

Williamsville, New York 


BEHIND BARS 
I read Jailbait by Mark Boal (August) 
with interest and dismay—with dis- 
may because I think it is an extreme 
abuse of power to use the kinds of tac- 
tics described in the article, even 
though 1 believe that drugs are a can- 
cer on our society. Did the people in 
charge seek counseling for these kids? 
By their own admission, this was done 
for shock value, and the lives of these 
young people were ruined 
Freddie Hinton 
Oxford, Alabama 


You make Altoona sound like a slum 

filled with impoverished drug dealers. 

"This city has a lot of wonderful people 
who live well and don't do drugs. 

Erin Miller 

Altoona, Pennsylvania 


Many aspects of the Altoona sting were 
wrong, but the worst was the punish- 
ment of the football player who per- 
formed the illegal favor for the hot girl 
in school. The price he paid was too 
high. In a town where opportunities 
are scarce, his dreams of a college 
career were crushed—and he didn't 
even do the drugs. 
Michael Sullivan 
Costa Mesa, California 


Why didn't anyone go afier the dealers? 
Instead of getting to the root of the 
problem, the police and the school 
administrators ruined several lives over 
a $20 bag of pot. Local law enforcement 
officials and the feds need to realize that 
busting kids is a waste of time and 
resources. Find the dealers. 
Neil Pierson 
Spokane, Washington 


Boal's article perfectly illustrates why 
the war on drugs works better as a 
public relations campaign than as a 
means of deterring anyone from sell- 
ing or using drugs. The politicians 
benefit, undercover cop Jessica Miller 
benefits, the school shows it’s tough on 
drugs, and then a whole new crop of 
dealers and users arrives to fill the 
shoes of the teens busted in the sting 
Its a pointless cycle that drains our 
human and financial resources. 
Jim Powers 
New York, New York 


I was born and raised in Altoona, and I 
teach English at Altoona High School. 1 
must be missing something, because I 
don't see Altoona as a “rusting indus- 
trial city.” Two of the students in the 


article were in my cla: 
undercover narc. Was Boal aware that 
the students involved in the sting were 
having trouble in school? As far as 
describing Altoona High as a poorly 
achieving school, did Boal know that as 
a result of stellar test scores on the state 
exams, it received $90,000 for the acad- 
emic excellence of its 2002 junior class? I 
have nothing against exposing the 
facts, but bashing people who are trying 
to make things better is just wrong. 
Heather Tippett-Wertz 
Altoona, Pennsylvania 
Mark Boal responds: Tippett-Wertz says she 
is sorry I don't view a factory toun with a 
young-adult unemployment rate of nearly 
20 percent with a rosier attitude. She 
charges me wilh saying that Altoona High 
is poorly performing, which is a gross mis- 
reading; I called the school “prestigious.” I 
welcome Tippett-Wertz's defense of her 


The ultimate sting. 


School, but I wish she had shared it sooner. 
When I was in Altoona and asked to inter- 
view teachers, she was “unavailable.” 


GREAT SPORTS MOMENTS 
The guys in the Beverly Hills restaurant 
overlooked Roger Clemens throwing a 
broken bat at Mike Piazza (The Greatest 
Damn. Sports Moments, August). It should 
have been number one. 

Fred Overpack 


Brockton, Massachusetts 


SENATORIAL MISCONDUCT 

1 don't know what Senator Lauch Fair- 
cloth looks like, but your photo of him 
(Keeping the Faith, September) looks a 
lot like John Glenn, 


James Williams 

Akron, Ohio 

You're right—that was Glenn. We mixed up 
our IDs. Our apologies to Senator Glenn 


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Тагуп. 
Manning 


It takes more than one 
spotlight to satisfy this star 
minem may have bad-mouthed a 
former flame played by Taryn 
Manning in 8 Mile, but the real Slim 
Shady liked her band, Boomkat, so 
much that he put one of its songs on 
the soundtrack. "I felt he was a kin- 
dred spirit," says Taryn, who sings for 
the soulful trip-hop duo, while her 
brother Kellin arranges the music. 
"People call me a triple threat be- 
cause | act, dance and sing. My dad 
was a singer and a keyboard player, 
and people used to call him the funki- 
est white man on the planet." Taryn 


"| never had an on-set ` 
ance, but | would have 
with Eminem. Brittany 


Murphy got him first." 


turned heads as Britney Spears's pal 
in Crossroads and can next be seen 
playing a mountain woman in Cold 
Mountain. Making movies and pro- 
moting an album, Boomkatalog One, 
doesn't leave much time for dating, 
but Taryn says she prefers guys out- 
side showbiz. “With actors, | feel like 
I'm fighting for the mirror,” she says. 
“1 never had an on-set romance, but | 
would have with Eminem. Brittany 
Murphy got him first." Taryn confesses 
that being fired from a movie inspired 
her to start writing music. “That just 
fueled me," she says. "My definition 
of success is to have fans who are 
really into our lyrics—maybe they put 
Boomkat on to get through а diffi- 
cult time. | want people to know that 
singing is truly my calling." 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVIS FACTOR. 


“A FUN AND FURIOUS 
CON-ARTIST THRILLER!” 


- OWEN GLEIBERMAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY 


E EAS RACHEL CARGA o HOFFMAN 


| “A VERY SMART THRILLER!” 


à CONFIDENCE Ü cs ee o 


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DUSTIN HOFFMAN 
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afterhours ] 


...we challenge you to 
watch the Indy 360. That's 
360 minutes—or three mov- 
jes—of Spielberg-Lucas-Ford 
action, now out on DVD as 
the Adventures of Indiana 
Jones boxed set. Classics 
from the cinematically 
challenged 19805, they 
will go nicely with that bull- 
whip you've always wanted. 


„you officially have 12 months till the big 
presidential election. Twelve months to decide 
whether you're better off now than you were 
four years ago. Twelve months to endure re- 
ductive sound bites and endless mudslinging 
ads. And 12 months to teach Grandma how 
to use a butterfly ballot. 


fou and some 
are making 
a pilgrimage to 
Los Angeles for the 
Southern California 
Linux Expo. Or 
the L.A. Jewish 


Family Health Fair. 
Whatever—it's 
surely not to go to 
the AdultCon 5 
pornfest (Novem- 
ber 23). That's 
your story, and 
you're sticking to it. 


... you're going to try a turducken—the 
Frankenstein fowl that John Madden molested 
on Monday Night Football—for Thanksgiving. 
It's a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. 

If you're not up for the prep (you must bone 
three birds, and that's no euphemism), order 
yours from turducken.com.. 


...your mind is heading 
south—of the border, that is. 
For our spooky holiday, kids 
dress up and beg for candy. 
For Mexico's, the whole fam- 
ily packs a picnic basket and 
spends a day and a night 
chilling with dead relatives 
at the cemetery. Now that's 
scary. The Mexican Day of 
the Dead is November 2. 


й 


STRIP PUB 


AMATEUR ENGLISH DANCERS HEAD DOWN TO 
THE LOCAL ALEHOUSE TO CATCH A DRAFT 


Bump and grind has replaced bangers and mash as the best rea- 
son to visit a pub while in London. It seems that enterprising 
young British women have hit on a novel way to raise quick cash: 
They just duck into the corner tavern and give surprised Bass 
swillers an impromptu striptease. The bare-busking trend, known 
as jugging, has simple rules: Hipster chicks turned dancers strip 
onstage (the trend has advanced to the point that pubs are pre- 
pared for the girls) for about three songs, played by DJs, then pass 
around a pint glass for tips. Patrons typically drop a £1 coin ora 
£5 note (about $8) per tip, so the lark can pay off. Some girls grab 
the cash and head out for a night of clubbing, while others per- 
form more regularly and report making up to $500 for hitting a 
few pubs in an evening. Hardly any are experienced strippers; in 
fact, a recent London TV show profiled two bank employees who 
have popped over to a nearby pub during their lunch hour to 
make cash withdrawals from wide-eyed male co-workers. Jugging 
provides a female-friendly, mostly silicone-free environment. The 
best neighborhood to find strip pubs is Shoreditch, the area east 
of Liverpool Street Station, where a number of establishments, 
such as the White Horse on Shoreditch High Street or the more 
upscale Browns on Hackney Road, are within a few minutes’ 
walk. One big advantage of strip pubs is the no-door-charge pol- 
icy. And unlike at many American strip clubs, the women get 
totally nude, the drinks are cheap, and the vibe is intimate. All of 
which more than makes up for the warm beer. 


RABBIT HOLE 


HARE-LINE CRACK DETECTED 
Just because this building in 
Deptford, New Jersey has seen 


2 


better days doesn't mean that 
it can't dream of ornamental 
glory. It's no mansion, but even 
targets of vandalism some- 
times get a lucky break. After 
all, it's not easy to get your 
picture in PLAYBOY. 


25 


26 


[ afterhours 


WIDE WORLD OF TRICKS 


YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO PRO TO CHEAT AT SPORTS 


Big-leaguers aren't the only athletes fiddling with their gear. 
Thanks to old tricks and new technology, a weekend sportsman can 
augment his game with readily available illegal equipment. 
BASEBALL: When Sammy Sosa popped his cork in June, many 
fans logged on to eBay in search of their own illegal lumber. 
Joaquin Cheney, a San Diego chef, unabashedly sells corked bats 
for $55 apiece as a side business. “You'd be crazy to play with any- 
thing else. I certainly don't," he says. Do-it-yourselfers can drill a 
hole about an inch in diameter eight inches into the barrel and 
then pack it with cork or Super Balls. 
BOWLING: In 1973 PBA bowler of the year Don McCune became 
kingpin by soaking his ball in a solvent called methyl ethyl ketone, 
which softens the hard polyester, allowing for more hook—a prac- 
tice the PBA banned the following year. Illegal solvents are a gam- 
ble: A heayily soaked ball can lose chunks on impact. Another 
hard-to-detect trick is “plugging,” drilling a hole in a strategic spot 
„= апа filling it with lead 
to create a bias that will 
improve your hook 
GOLF: Though non- 
conforming clubs and 
balls are illegal only 
in USGA events or if 
you are establishing an 
official handicap, your 
weekend foursome may 
look askance at tricks 
such as freezing a dub 
for a better feel or 
adding lead tape to the 
head to alter its bal- 
ance. The hottest sly 
move—and the hardest 
to spot—is applying a 
crystalline coating to a 
wedge's face: The gritty 
surface supposedly puts 
backspin on the ball, en- 
abling hackers to stick it 
on the green like Tiger. 


package deal 


AEG ON TEMPS 


LUBRICATED CONDOMS 


ARTS ENDOWMENT 
A DESIGN CONTEST FOR CONDOMS IS A WRAPPER'S DELIGHT 


Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood and Fat Albert were a few of the 
stars on hand—or rather, in pocket—for Planned Parenthood of 
Western Pennsylvania's Stiff Competition, а condom-package design 
contest. Entries lifted film phrases (“One word—plastics”) and titles 
such as Grease. The winner? Marilyn’s “Some Like It On.” 


loyee of the mo 


HOT DISH 


FOOD SERVICE REP SARA ALVARADO 
DELIVERS MORE THAN A MOUTHFUL 


PLAYBOY: what do 
you do? 


SARA: I'm a customer 
service rep for a Chica- 
go food broker. It's 
your typical office. 
People always bring in 
food. But І have tunnel 
vision when it comes to 
work. | feel if I'm not 
working I'm ripping off 
the company. 


PLAYBOY: Are you 
the office equivalent of 
а hot lunch? 


SARA: 1 try to down: 

play it. I'm not a big 
girl, but 1 have large breasts that stand out if | wear anything 
sexy or tight. | try to be conservative. But when | go out it's 
different—I've got cleavage showing. It's like I live a double 
life. If еуег run into a co-worker, one of us is going to have 
a heart attack. And when they see these pictures, they'll be 
like, "Aha! | knew she wasn't just a customer service rep." 


PLAYBOY: Ever considered an office romance? 


SARA; There are elevators іп our building—it would be 
pretty exciting and fun. Like, Ooh, maybe we'll get caught. 


frere ol the Month candidates: Send pictures to reo Photography Depart- 

Attn: Employee of the Month, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Вито 
Gost Mos be ect 18years old. Must send photocopies ої adver s icense 
‘and another valid D (not a credit card, one of which must include a current photo, 


IT WATCHES YOUR BACK’ 


"d 


[ afterhours 


| 


| ticket masters — — AS 


| tip sheet — — 


FAST AND FRIVOLOUS 


DON'T DO THE CRIME IF YOU CAN'T DO THE 
BIZARRE TRAFFIC SCHOOL 


Each year, California requires more than 1 million unlucky leadfoots 
to squirm through eight-hour traffic classes—at about $30 а pop—to 
keep their insurance rates from skyrocketing. Since this is the same 
state that brought us drive-through funerals, maybe we shouldn't be 
surprised to find that dozens of niche-themed private schools have 
sprung up to woo this lucrative market. A few standouts: 


The Improv Comedy Traffic School: Saturday courses are 
taught by B-list comics at the world-famous Improv Comedy 
Club. It has no two-drink minimum, but it does offer practical 
advice (keep a camera handy in case of an accident), info with a 
hint of humor (stop does not stand for “slightly tap on pedal”) 
and lots of traffic-themed 
jokes: If a cop asks if you 
have drugs in the car, 
don't respond, * 

What do you need? 
my wheel— please! 
Finally a Gay Traffic 
School: The school is de- 
signed to provide "a fun, 
comfortable envi 
for gays and lesbians." A 
few instructors even teach 
in drag. "And some stu- 
dents are lucky enough to 
meet new friends," says FGTS operator Joey Randall. But when it 
comes to the rules of the road, this school plays it straight. 
Hosanna Driving and Traffic School: This God-fearing school is 
open to believers and heathens alike. However, the owner and the 
phone receptionists may greet you with a chirpy "Praise the 
Lord!” School officials say Hosanna is all about schooling, not con- 
verting, and they brake for prayer only occasionally during traflic 
re-education. Thank you, Lord, and pass the radar detector. 


STICK FIGURES 


FEMALE POLE-VAULTERS JUMP 
INTO A SEXY CALENDAR 


Who doesn't love female pole-vaulters? 
They have good grips, they like to strip 
down to gain every last inch, and when 
you ask them to jump, 
they ask, "How high?" 


The Vaultgirls 2004 
calendar features the 
best women in the 
sport in revealing 


Starkey, a 2000 

Olympic trials final- 

ist, at left). The 

calendar's lofty 
purpose is to raise money for training 
for the 2004 Olympics—another 


reason we're carrying a torch for them. 
28 


WE'RE PUTTING WORDS 
IN YOUR MOUTH 


NOW YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO 
SEARCH FOR SOMETHING TO SAY 


Chunky soup curse: The 
spooky tendency of NFL play- 
ers who appear in Campbell's 
Chunky soup commercials 
to wind up on the injured 
list soon thereafter. Victims include. 
Terrell Davis, Kurt Warner, Jerome 
Bettis and Donovan McNabb. Maybe 
the slogan should be "The soup that 
eats like a hospital meal." 


Lollipoparazzi: Celebrity photogra- 
phers who specialize in hounding child actors. 


Bullwords: Some 350 words, including incentivize, 
synergy, envisioner, paradigm and repurposing, that 
Deloitte Consulting has compiled as examples of 
indecipherable corporate babble. 


Rudder: The clitoris. "She went wild. | kept my 
hands on her rudder all night long." 


Blondenfreude: A play on the German word Schaden. 
freude (taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others), 
this term sprang into being in an ar- 
ticle about Martha Stewart to de- 
scribe "the glee feit when a rich, 
powerful and fair-haired business- 
woman stumbles." Now it's being 
applied to everyone from Hillary 
Clinton to Courtney Love. 


Malpractice: What surgical staffers are urged to 
write instead of "Do not cut me" on an arm or leg not. 
scheduled to be operated on, to avoid wrong-side 
surgeries. Doctors have found—through sobering ex- 
perience—that if the first two words cf the old-school 
label are obscured, they're screwed. And so are you. 


Marinate: To drink at home. 


Backscatter: New scanner technology being consid- 
ered for use in American 
airports. The downside 
for passengers is that 
the machine "scatters" 
X-rays to produce nude 
images (albeit rudimen- 
tary ones that fail to re- 
produce such features 
as nipples and hair). 
The upside for the 
Transportation Security 
Administration is that it 
will have no problem 
recruiting guards. 


A 
D 
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ж 


Where Do Babes 
Come From? 


In a recent survey, men were asked which 
region of the country produces the sexiest 
women. Their responses: 


6% 
MOUNTAIN 
STATES 


14% 
WEST 
COAST 


8% 
SS OTHER/ 
I'M GAY 


Mutton for Punishment 


On their annual hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, 
Muslims sacrifice a total of 670,000 sheep, 
leaving in their wake 10,000 tons of carcasses. 


i Chemical Microderm- Laser 
Faci ng peels abrasions | hair 
Facts removals 
Trends in cos- "e 
metic surgery 
attributable to 


the current reces- 
Sion (according 
to the American 
Society of Plastic 
Surgeons): 


Bye-Bye, Birdie 
Number of balls lost by 
golfers in the U.S. last 
year: 2.56 billion 
Number of lost balls found 
and recycled: 1.9 billion 
Number of new golf balls 
purchased: 600 million 


TESI 
ck 


Flipped Lid 


To have his 
favorite hat flown 
and chauffeured 
from London to 
Modena, Italy, 
where U2 was 
playing a show, 
Bono paid 


Octopussy's Revenge 


Spore Loser 


Before anthrax-bearing mail tainted 
the American Media building (for- 
mer home of The National Enquirer 
and other tabloids) in Boca Raton, 
Florida, its estimated value was 
$12 million to $15 million. 
It recently sold for $40,000. 


Hee-Haw 


2 4% of American teen- 


agers say they 
would absolutely 

not get romantically involved with 

anyone with an unpleasant laugh. 

Epic Dermis 

The average person's 

skin weighs 

5 pounds. 

Its surface area is 

18 square feet. 

Numbers for 

Anna Nicole Smith 

may vary. 


Office 
Hours 


1 1% of American 


men admit 


The male blanket octopus is about 1 inch long. 
The female runs about 6 feet and weighs 
10,000 times as much as her hubby. 


they hide in the bath- 
room to get away from 
their wives and families. 


Not surprisingly, he dies when they have sex. 


Botox 


Last Players Picked in 
the 2003 NFL Draft 


258. Antwoine Sanders (S, Utah)—Baltimore Ravens 
259. Elton Patterson (DE, Central Florida)—Cincinnati Bengals 
260. Travis Anglin (WR, Memphis)—Detroit Lions 

261. Bryan Anderson (OG, Pittsburgh)—Chicago Bears 

262. Ryan Hoag (WR, Gustavus Adolphus)—Oakland Raiders 


2002 Anheuser Busch, ie. Michel Beer, SL Louis, МО 
WIWWMKCHELOS сом 


Penn realizes he'd like one 
more degree of separation. 


MYSTIC RIVER 


Murder and revenge in working-class Boston 


] 
A 
= 
T Along with leaves changing color, the return of serious fare 
to the multiplex із a sure sign that fall has arrived. Certainly 
no one is going to make a video game out of Mystic River. 
The drama, directed by Clint Eastwood, is based on the 
best-seller about three childhood friends in Boston who drift 
apart after one is abducted by pedophiles. Twenty-five 
years later another brutal crime reunites them. Tim Robbins. 
plays the guy haunted by his molestation, Kevin Bacon is a 
cop who feels guilty about abandoning his old neighbor- 
hood, and Sean Penn is an ex-con whose daughter's murder 
sparks retribution like something out of Dostoyevsky by 
way of Dashiell Hammett. Picture Eastwood directing a 


high-voltage cast through this 
scenario and we're talking one “(|i т. 
dark, testosterone-driven set, Clint doesn't 
right? “Actually, there was по fool around.You 
swagger, no macho crap,” says 

Robbins. “Ive been on sets like shoot, then you 
that, but these guys are adults £O home. 

with nothing to prove. Clint 

doesn't fool around. He gives you old-school Hollywood, 
where you work with a crew that's been together for years, 
shoot a certain number of hours, then go home and have a 
life. It was like being invited to Thanksgiving dinner with this 
efficient family. The only bad thing was that it lasted just 
seven weeks." We suspect we'll be thinking about the mov- 
ie at least that long. (October 10) —Stephen Rebello 


The Whole Ten Yards 
t) You don't remem- 


ber all the loose ends at the conclusion of 2000's comedy hit 
The Whole Nine Yards? Oh, you don't remember any of it? Suf- 
fice it to say that smooth hit man Willis and wussy dentist 
Perry team up again, this time to take on Hungarian mobsters. 


Our call: We wouldn't walk 10 
feet to see this. Next thing you 
know, they'll crank out a lame 
sequel to Analyze This. They 
did? We must have been busy 
that weekend. 


Kill Bill 

(Uma 1 п, ба с г 
Quentin Tarantino is back, with ап homage to the furious fists 
and lightning swords of classic kung fu flicks. In this first half of 
a two-parter, Thurman plays a female assassin hell-bent on pay- 
ing back Carradine for icing her hubby on their wedding day. 


Our call: Can retro martial arts 
wow audiences in the age of 
Crouching Tiger? We think so, 
grasshopper, and the campy 
B-movie action should deliver 
more thrills than Jackie Brown. 


Runaway Jury 


lackman, Du: ffman) 
Cusack plays a jury foreman scheming for а big payoff to sway 
his fellow jurors in a case against a gun manufacturer. The very 
watchable Weisz is his even shiftier girlfriend, who is working 
on the outside to bamboozle attorneys Hackman and Hoffman. 


Our call: Movies based on John 
Grisham legal thrillers seem 
very 19905, but given the cal- 
iber cf Runaway's cast, we 
think someone is trying to sway 
us...and the Academy. 


Goth ika 
| y Jr.) Berry powers 


this supernatural и, psychologist who 
wakes up imprisoned in her own loony bin. To beat a murder 
rap, she also has to tangle with an extremely unfriendly ghost. 
Despite all that, she still makes time for a naked shower scene. 


Our call: Halle-lujah! Factor 
in Downey as a fellow head- 
shrinker and Cruz as another 
easy-on-the-eyes nutcase, and 
this thriller might tingle more 
than just our spines. 


32 


reviews [ movies 


OR LO 


Do you like scary 


There's no shortage of horror films 
out there, but these days we're more 
likely to be scared silly by a lowbud- 
get film such as the zombie chiller 
28 Days Later than by a major studio 
release. (Did anyone really think a 
Freddy vs. Jason smackdown would 
elicit more gasps than giggles?) Main- 
stream Hollywood's fright flicks don't 
jolt us anymore, and the fiend most to 
blame is—cue spooky music—greed. 
Once Scream (itself an indie release) 
proved profitable, horror films not only 
spawned faster than vampires, they 
also turned slick and safe. Corporate 
types don't crank out mind-bending 
horror films; outlaws do. Sitting in the 
dark and watching a terrifying film 
makes us feel as though we've been 
hijacked by a sicko so unhinged that 
the rules no longer apply. Like when 
the heroine gets hacked to death 
45 minutes into Psycho. Or when the 
undead suck flesh from human bones 
in Night of the Living Dead. Or when a 
demonically possessed 12-year-old 
masturbates with a crucifix in The 
Exorcist. Rock and roll! 

Indie horrormeisters seem to have 
figured out that scaring jaded audi- 
ences requires better tricks than a 
screeching cat hurled at the camera. 
So an indie hit like The Others makes 
millions shiver by finding new ways 
to remind them how spooky an old 
house can be, while in the self-refer- 
ential bomb Wrong Turn, the premise. 
of teens being chased by hillbilly can- 
nibals feels played out. Half-heard 
sounds in 28 Days Later scare us wit- 
less, while the pushy soundtrack of 


art house 


crc 
SES 
movies? Good luck 


Texas Chain Saw Massacre induces 
yawns. What's the fix? Director Wes 
Craven, who resuscitated the genre 
with A Nightmare on Elm Street and, 
later, Scream (genuinely scary movies 
only diminished by sequels), says, “To 
be fresh, a horror movie has to get un- 
der people's skin in unexpected ways, 
with things that make them profoundly 
uneasy, whether it's terrorists, sleeper 
cells or things being done with cloning 


and genetics. Horror movies have to 
show us something that hasn't been 
shown before so that the audience is 
completely taken aback. You see, it's 
not just that people want to be 
scared; people are scared." Hey, stu- 
dio bigwig, what's that shadow sliding 
down your hall? We think it's a 20- 
year-old film student with a digital 
camera and a twisted imagination. 
And maybe an ax.—Stephen Rebello 


The Station Agent 
Diminutive Peter Dinklage 
makes a big impression 
in this Sundance favorite 
about a short-tempered 
dwarf who inherits an 
abandoned railroad de- 
pot and befriends an 
eccentric artist (Patricia 
Clarkson) and a big-heart- 
ed coffee vendor. A funny 
tribute to friendship, it 
also suggests that rural 
New Jersey is much weird- 
er than anyone realizes. 
—Andrew Johnston 


BAD BOYS II Will Smith has charisma to 
burn, and Martin Lawrence can be very 
funny, but director Michael Bay's overpro- 
duced, overlong sequel to the wisecracking 
cops-and-robbers hit of 1995 is a e 
everyone's time. 


АЦ р - Joaquin Phoenix 
runs a black акар me U.S. Army base in. 
West Germany circa 1989. Then a new top | 
sergeant (Scott Glenn) tries to shape things 
up. A black comedy ought to have some 
humor, however dark. YY 


GIGLI Jennifer Lopez is sexy, but we knew 
that. This movie serves no other purpose 
than to remind us, while pairing her with 
Ben Affleck in a poorly conceived star vehi- 
cle about an incompetent hit man and the 
woman hired to keep an eye on him. УУ 


‘AD Ol = Angelina Jolie in a wet 
suit is impressive, but surely someone | 
could have found a decent story to go with | 
that sight. At least no one can call this 
sequel a letdown from the original. YA 


LE DIVORCE With Naomi Watts and Kate 
Hudson as American sisters in Paris, this 
sophisticated comedy about a culture clash 
between families has no shortage of eye 
appeal. But it also has a meandering quali- 
ty that dulls the edges. v 

IRATE B Johnny 
бі Lais сега like a К star, тау 
make pirates fashionable again. Geoffrey 
Rush, Orlando Bloom and beautiful Keira 
Knightley join in the action-packed fun. № 
only it didn't go on so long.... wy 


SEABISCUIT Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges 
and Chris Cooper are ideally cast in this 
meticulous re-creation of the famous horse's 
rise to fame in the midst of the Depression. 
Director Gary Ross hammers home the sym- 
bolism more than he needs to, but it's still 
a great ride. Ууу 


PTO 777 Brittany Murphy is а 
Dubhe brained rich girl who loses all her 
money and winds up working as a nanny 
for a precocious, seemingly emotionless 
youngster (Dakota Fanning). Obviously, 
they have much to learn from each other— 


a bit too obviously. WwW 
Don't mi Worth a look 
Good show Forget it 


reviews [ music 


—— a: of nth 
[ DAVID MATTHEWS * SOME DEVIL ] 


The jam-tune superstar flies solo—sort of 


№5 easy—and certainly the hip thing— 
to dismiss the Dave Matthews Band as 
a dippy jam group whose summer 
megatours boast more frat boys in ONE 
TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR! 
Tshirts than cutting-edge tunes. Still, 
it's hard to deny that the Virginian (by 
way of South Africa) is a superb musi- 
cian with a knack for rocking out on 
folkish melodies. On sabbatical from 
his longtime bandmates on this first 
solo effort, Matthews surprises by not 
letting his distinctive trill hog the spot 
light and instead teaming up with the 
45-member Seattlemusic orchestra. 
Still, a heavy dose of strings creates a 
less funky vibe than most DMB albums. 
Cultists will dig that Phish’s Trey Anas- 
tasio cameos on guitar and piano, and 
they probably won't mind a few cliché- 
riddled lyrics. But will the guys in the 
band want to play these songs next 
summer? (RCA) ¥¥¥  —Alison Prato 


PEACHES + Fatherfucker | 
Peaches's second album maintains the 
perfect balance of playfulness, aggres- 
sion and crotch-grabbing sexuality that 
made the provocative electro queen's 
debut a cult hit. Her lascivious laptop-punk 
sneer is so winning that Iggy Pop's singing 
on "Kick It" actually lessens her raw 
power. The lyrics could have come from | 
2 Live Crew, but with 

her sexy growl deliv- 
ering them, Peaches. 
gives parental advi- 
sories a good name. 
Eat this peach. 
(XL/Beggars Group) 
УУУ; — —Tim Mohr 


CHRIS KNIGHT * The Jealous Kind 
Possessed of the best western Kentucky 
twang since bluegrass master Bill Mon- 
roes, Knight can break your heart with his 
singing. But the songwriting here is even 
stronger. On his third CD he tells stories 
of characters so down on their luck they'll 
never get back to even. At times more 
rock than country, Knight's music sets a | 
melancholy tone that 
perfectly matches 
the outlaw despera- 
tion of his songs. 
Nashville needs > 
more music like this. 
(Dualtone) ¥¥¥ 
—Leopold Froehlich 


HANDSOME FAMILY 
Singing Bones 
Brett and Rennie Sparks are a husband- 
and-wife team whose sixth CD could be 
called eccentric country. They don't sing 
about tears in your beer; they lament Wal- 
Mart ghosts and the apocalypse, accom- 
panied by dulcimers and musical saws. 
Our only complaint is that Rennie's beau- 
tiful voice is heard 
on only one song. 
Critics say the Hand- 
some Family is de- 
pressing. Not if you 
like good music. 
(Carrot Top) ¥¥¥ 
—Fatty Lamberti 


я‏ ہےر ے 


STING » Sacred Love 

It's rare that an artist makes a graceful 
transition from club rocker to international 
pop star to crooner statesman. (Try to 
imagine the Hives looking serene in a 
Jaguar commercial.) Sting pulls it off. The 
key is evolution by diversification, as he 
shows here by teaming up with Mary J. 
Blige and sitar player Anoushka Shankar. 
When the tantric-sex 
poster boy nods to 
the Police on "Dead 
Man's Rope,” it 
shows just how com- 
fortable he is with his 
legacy. (A&Mllnter- 
scope) xy% —А.Р 


[ PARTY TILL YOU BACH ] 


Andrew W.K., the wild child of this 
past summer's Warped Tour, has 
released a new album, The Wolf. 
But did you know that when he's 
not creating music that makes your 
eardrums bleed, he's likely jam- 
ming to 18th century hepcat 
Johann Sebastian Bach? In fact, it 
appears as though he's hooked. 


PLaysor: Why is Bach your favorite 
composer? 

ANOREW: 1 love Bach. His music is so 
beautifully put together and delicate 
and melodic. You can remember his 
melodies very easily, even whistle 
them after you've heard them a couple 
of times. And some really 
cool things are going 
on in that music. 
The upper register 
can be playing one 
thing and the lower 
register something 
altogether differ- 
ent. 1 call it 
dueling 
melodies 
that have a 


together. 


PLAYBOY: Did 
you see the. 
documentary 
Thirty-Two 
Short Films 
About Glenn 
Gould, a study 
of the pianist? 
ANDREW: Yes. 
Gould was obsessed with Bach, and 
his passion for the music was great. 
He called Bach's music the best thing 
any human being has ever created, 
and he devoted his life to playing it. It 
always moves and excites me that 
music can have that kind of power 
Over someone's life, especially another 
musician's life. 


PLAYBOY: Bach wrote religious music. 
Are you religious, or does the music 
make you feel religious? 

ANDREW: | think there are times when 
we're directly connected to that divine 
stuff—not God or a specific religious 
denomination but a higher level of 
consciousness. | think Bach had some 
of that. He was a genius. He was 
given an insight into that higher l 
through his music. Even today, his 
audience can hear it in everything 
he wrote. —Anaheed Alani 


ESI 


34 


reviews [ dvds 


nearly all-powerful Neo (Keanu 
Reeves) and dozens of Agent 
Smiths (Hugo Weaving) is a 
hoot, even if, unlike last time, 
we sense that it carries little 
consequence. The intense free- 
way chase is ripe for frame-by- 
frame inspection (just as the 
goofy Zion disco scene is fod 
der for the fast-forward but- 
ton). Plus, we can rewatch the 


twist ending until all the pseu- 
dophilosophy makes some 
damn sense. Extras: A fine 
behind-the-scenes documen- 
tary and a breakdown of the 
chase scene, but the second 
disc feels relarded with Matrix 
mania. ¥¥¥ —Gregory P. Fagan 


THE MATRIX RELOADED ] 


Boot up a second dose of Neo classicism 


In hindsight we realize that nothing could have lived up to the stratospheric expecta- 
tions for the second installment in the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy. But with 
The Matrix Revolutions hitting theaters soon, we have a great excuse to obsess 
again over Reloaded's better moments (and mythology). The battle royal between the 


THE ITALIAN JOB (2003) This caper re- 
make does justice to the 1969 original. 
Director F. Gary Gray and star Mark Wahl- 
berg bookend the film by revving up two. 
intricate heists, the second of which 
mimics the original's Mini Cooper get- 
away scene. Gray also gets colorful 
work from Charlize Theron as a co-con- 
spirator and Ed Norton as a backstabber. 
Extras: The fea _ ES 

turette on Minis 
reminds us that 
this film is a prod- 
uct-placement 
epiphany (though 
an entertaining 
опе). ¥¥¥ —GF 


SEX АТ 24 FRAMES PER SECOND 
(2003) If you think Sharon Stone or Bo 
Derek invented the kind of sensuality that 
burns holes in the silver screen, you 
could use a tutorial. Luckily, this docu- 
mentary on the evolution of cinematic sex 
makes its points with dozens of big stars 
in uninhibited moments. From Tarzan's 
mate swimming naked to Diane Lane's 
carnal perfor- 
mance in 2002's 
Unfaithful, it's a 
lesson you won't 
mind studying 
over and over 
again. yyy 
—Craig Stephens 


28 DAYS LATER (2003) A bike messen- 
ger awakes from a coma to find that 
something worse than mad cow disease 
has hit England: Everyone is dead, 
except for a few survivors and the zom- 
bies, who are mad as hell (and surpris- 
ingly fast). Director Danny Boyle's low- 
budget digital approach makes every 
scene immediate and skin-crawlingly 
scary. Extras: 
director's com- 
mentary, a doc- 
umentary, three 
alternate endings 
and six deleted 
scenes. ¥¥¥% 
Buzz McClain 


3 


CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE 
(2003) The titular trio of hot detectives is 
back, this time trying to keep evil angel 
Demi Moore (Bruce was right!) from get 
ting a ring with encrypted top-secret infor- 
mation. Or something like that. Anyway, її 
involves lots of costume changes. Extras: 
Available in the theatrical release as well 
as an unrated version in which director 
McG has restored 
the sex and vio- 
lence that were 
cut for a PG-13 
rating. Even bet- 
ter is McG's play- 
by-play commen- 
tary. yy —В.М. 


[ FILM SCHOOL ] 


This month's lesson: back to 
school with 1980s teen comedies 


Hormones and angst: We owe a lot to 
Animal House. The surprise hit of 1978 
woke Hollywood to the blockbuster po- 
tential of the teen audience, a demo- 
graphic previously served with low-budget 
exploitation and horror flicks. Drive-ins 
were giving way to hang-outfriendly multi- 
plexes, and high school kids were gaining 
economic independence. Teens wanted 
comedies in which youth was served and 
authority figures were humiliated. Porky's 
added ricocheting hormones to that mix 
with big success in 1982 (and the Amer- 
ican Pie phenomenon proves that horny 
humor endures). That same year, director 
Amy Heckerling elevated the form with 
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, working 
from a Cameron Crowe script that spoke 
directly to teens rather than down to 
them. The true maestro, however, was 


Enjoy being cool while you can, Judd, 


John Hughes. Beginning with Sixteen. 
Candles in 1984, Hughes mined the rich 
ore of adolescent angst with uncanny per- 
ception and served as director or produc- 
er in an oeuvre that includes The Break- 
fast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of 
Wonderful, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and 
Weird Science. Additional study: Losin’ 
It (1982), Valley Girl (1983), Risky Busi- 
ness (1983), Making the Grade (1984), 
Better Off Dead (1985). GE 


We've seen movie hit men employ many. 
tactics to snare their prey, but none 
seems as foolproof as the one used by 
Amanda Peet's bubbly assassinin-train- 
ing in The Whole Nine Yards. Who needs 
elaborate disguises when you have a Julia 
Roberts-wattage = E 
smile and the gump- 
tion to bare your м H 
breasts in a linger- | 

ing, funny scene 
near the comedy's 
eng? At least her 
quarry dies happy. 
Our advice: Peet, 
and repeat. 


Triple-distilled, 
Filty-seven quality check 
Filtered water as pure 
os from any spring 
Every reason to drink 
Ihe award-winning 
Smirnoff” neat 


Triple ош | | 


VODKA 


35 


36 


reviews [ books 


An idealistic young man who has paid his 
own way to be part of a humanitarian relief 
effort is murdered in a cesspool in Serbia. 
His grandfather, a wealthy Canadian, wants 
revenge and hires a private specialist to. 
identify, capture and return for prosecution 
the ethnic-cleansing thug who did the deed. 
In this Forsyth suspense thriller, the agent's 
code name is Avenger, and one contacts 
him through coded messages in the classi- 
fied section of a specialty aviation maga- 
zine. How he tracks down, outwits and 
grabs the villain makes for a fascinating 
and intricate tale that plays itself out on 
several continents. One particularly inter- 
esting subplot involves the CIA's attempt to 
nail Osama bin Laden by protecting the Ser- 
bian bad guy. Forsyth never wastes the 
reader's time and provides just the right 
emount of technological and tactical infor- 
mation to keep his plot plausible and fast- 
moving. Avenger will remind Forsyth fans of 
The Day of the Jackal, which is high praise. 
(St. Martin's) ¥¥¥/ —John Rezek 


| AVENGER ж FREDERICK FORSYTH | 


A master of suspense invents a master of reprisal 


GIRLS * Nic Kelman 
This erotic novel explores what many 
men secretly (and not so secretly) 
desire: to nail younger women. Various 
vignettes—a rich businessman getting 
drunk with a college girl and ending up 
ІП her dorm room, a tourist declining 
drugs in Amsterdam but accepting the 
company of a teenage prostitute—are 
interspersed with risqué quotes from 
the Odyssey and the Iliad, along with 
passages about random topics such as 
mammals that die during intercourse 
and the origins of derogatory terms for 
female genitalia. If the book has a weak- 
ness, it is the author's practice of ad- 
dressing the reader 
directly. Of course, 
some of these char- 
acters are just so 
peculiar you'd rather 
put a restraining or- 
der on them than be 
like them. (Little, 
Brown) ¥¥% — —PL. 


LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS 
James Lee Burke 

Master mystery writer Burke just can't 
leave his angstridden, reformed-alco- 
holic cop Dave Robicheaux alone. This 
lime he is dealing with the aftermath of 


EVERYTHING AND MORE 

David Foster Wallace 

Remember when teachers tried to con- 
vince you that math was fun? Wallace has 
proved it to be true in this odd work of non- 
fiction exploring the concept of infinity. In a 
world where everything ends, we're sup- 
posed to believe that numbers don't. Is this 
true? More important, is this book snooze- 
worthy? It isn't. Wallace uses illustrations, 
analogies to the Clinton definition of sex 
and words like defuzzify to demonstrate 


his wife's murder while he solves a 


various mathematical concepts. For you 
rocket scientists, he provides extra infor- 
mation in footnotes. For the rest of us, he 
thoughtfully provides tips on when to skip 


series of crimes. The players include a 
blues singer who never made it out of 
Angola prison, an IRA guy stalking a 
priest and a beautiful drunk who may or 


ahead. Read it in spurts to 
let the information sink in. 
Now, if Wallace would just 
apply his talents to the 
other things we can't stand 
to study—like instruction 
manuals. (Atlas/Norton) 
wy — Patty Lamberti 


may not have been 
molested. Burke writes 
about New Orleans and 
the Louisiana bayous 
with deep affection and 
keeps his story fresh 
(Simon & Schuster) 
УМ —Barbara Nellis 


THE BLUES 
Peter Guralnick, Robert Santelli, et al. 
This volume—piggybacking Martin Scor- 
sese's PBS documentary series—is part hist 
ory, part celebration. It leads blues fanatics 
and novices alike on a photo-packed journey 
(including the Leadbelly image, left) from 
the banks of the Niger River to juke joints 
in the Mississippi Delta to the heyday of bands 
such as the Allman 
Brothers. Maybe 
it takes a deluxe 
package like this 
to show how much 
influence a raw art 
form has had on 
American culture. 
(Amistad) ¥¥¥ 
—Brooke Handler 


Celebrate two fabulous years with an exclusive, unforgettable 
weekend of live concerts, private parties and decadent dining 
at the hottest hotelin Las Vegas. 


“November 14-16 


A h 1-866- ; 8773) - Just West of the Strip ЕР 
4321 West Flamingo BSA ТИЕ TY PEEN 89103 - www.palms.com (л кові слано, Mirror 


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38 


"Чаубоу v 


DO-IT-YOURSELF 
SKIN FLICKS: 
ADVICE FROM THE PROS 


Making a homemade porn 
tape can be a sticky situation 
Even if your girl has the mak- 
ings of a video sex goddess, 
winging it will result in a 
movie that’s more like The 
Blair Witch Project than Debbie 
Does Dallas. We consulted 
Playboy TV's Naughty Ama- 
teur Home Videos hosts Inari 
Vachs and Julia Ann (right), 
who clued us in on how to 
light the room, how to work 
the angles and, most impor- 
tant, how to avoid being the 
subject of a sex-video scandal. 


Lights! 
The first rule of becoming an 
amateur porn star? Grow a 
mustache. The second? Bad 
lighting will ruin the mood 
faster than a drop-in from 
Grandma. “Finding that bal- 
ance between stark white and pitch black 
is crucial,” Julia Ann says. “Don't do can- 
dlelight, which looks nice to the naked 
eye but looks grainy on film.” Instead, go 
to Home Depot, buy a silver work light, 
clamp it to your bed, and get humping. 
If you can't wait that long, play around 
with a house lamp. “If you tilt the shade 
just right, it creates a nice filter,” Inari 
says. Whatever you do, don't rely on the 
camera's spotlight. Video camera lights 
can block out people when you get too 
close or cause them to fade away when 
you pull back. Finally, don't worry if it's 
not perfect. Says Julia Ann, “The whole 
point of amateur videos is that they're 
supposed to simulate real life.” 


Camera! 

Instead of borrowing someone's equip- 
ment, making it likely that the footage 
will wind up on the In- 
ternet, buy your own 

Look for a camera with 
a remote and a zoom 
lens. Though it may be 
tempting, especially if 
you've persuaded a girl 
who's way out of your 
league to come home 
with you, don’t tape her 
without her knowledge. You could end 
up witha black eye or, worse, in jail. (Do 
you actually think she won't scan the 
room for that little red light?) 


NOTORIOUS, ÇEL 
The 


while boating? 


b. Janine and Vince Neil 
c. Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly 


a. The Bangles 
b. The Go-Go's 
c. The Spice Girls 


a. Nelly 
b. Rob Lowe 
c. Kabe Bryant 


a. Mantel Williams 
b. Maury Povich 


c. Jerry Springer 


The first rule of 


being a porn star? 
Grow a mustache. 


EBRITY S 


а. Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee 


Action! 
“To spice things up," Inari says, "you 
and your girl can even play it like you 
don't know the camera 
is there, making it more 
voyeuristic." When it's 
time for the obligatory 
money shot, our experts 
suggest a special effect 
to make the moment ap- 
pear more impressive. 
*Facial cleanser!" says 
Inari. "It looks real, and 
it's recommended by dermatologists.” 
Watch Naughty Amateur Home Videos every 
Thursday at 10 вм. ET and PT, or check out 


playboytv.com. 


Iz 


1. Which celebrity couple's sex tape showed them smoking a joint 


2. Which all-girl group was featured in a racy backstage home videa? 


3. Who was busted on tape with two girls, ane underage? 


4. Which talk show host was caught on tope with porn star Kendra Jade? 


э (р) “q (є) “q (z) “о (1) :ssamsuy 


у > 
A Va w 


"The three priorities in my life 
are my horse, my rope and my Copenhagen: 
But not necessarily in that order. 


ж» 
14 | 
| жш p - Ty Murray, 
L Retired 7-Time World Champion 
All-Around Cowboy 


) 

| 

; | 

Nr Та An un 

і 1 | Y! 
| "n 


A mi: 


The bold taste of Copenhagen. As authentic 


as the people who enjoy it. Whether it's Fine Cut, 
Long Cut or Pouches, Fresh Cope? satisfies. 


пһаҙел ' 


LONG 


FOR BOD AND COUNTRY 


Not so long ago, the women of country 
music were big-haired coal miners’ 
daughters with gingham shirts, 10-gallon 
hats and tears in their beers. Today's 
country crooners are more Hollywood 
than hoedown: We sure wouldn't kick 
them out of bed for keeping their boots 
on. But who's the hottest? Tough call. 
With the help of Kenny Chesney (who. 
has shared the stage with a number of 
Nashville knockouts), we narrowed our 
list to 10 gals. Read his take, then vote 
for your sexy songbird at playboy.com/ 
countrywomen. We'll announce the win- 
ner before the Country Music Awards on 
November 5 and ask the champ to pose— 
boots optional. 

1. FAITH HILL 

"Faith is sexy onstage and on television, 
but she's even sexier in her kitchen, 
wearing no makeup. That's hot." 

2. SHANIA TWAIN 

"She's got that I-don't-give-a-damn atti- 
tude. 1 love that about her." 

3. LEANN RIMES 

“1 love her eyes and her new maturity. 


40 She's so grown-up for her age.” 


4. MARTIE MAGUIRE (Dixie Chicks) 

“The small of her back makes me weak in 
the knees. She has a great lower back.” 
5. DEANA CARTER 

“Ilove the way she attacks life. When we 
tour together, she smiles at me every 
night onstage. I melt.” 


CYBER GIRL OF 
THE MONTH 


Birth date 
Watch aut, Katie 


Jackie Bean. 
5, 1982 
I've always wanted to ga 

into broadcast journalism." If 1 had 

more time: "I'd start a reggae band. 

I'm learning to play the guitar” А | 

life: "І wake up ot ane FM 

and watch Passions, 
around town with my friends. At 
night, | waitress.” | have a girlie 

"Angelina Jolie, She's 

beoutiful ond intellig I'm infatu. 

ated with her lifestyle." Craziest 
place I’ve hod sex: "On top of my 
cor. | almost fell off the roof!" 


Name 
Octabe 
Couric 


day in the 
then | run 


crush on 


Haters call them Skank Hill, Mutt 
Puppet and LeAnn Whines, but 
what the hell do they knaw? We 
just want to see them naked. Vote 
for your favarite in our online poll. 


6. JESSICA ANDREWS 
“I love that she's a Tennessee girl. 
She's coming into her own.” 
7. ALLISON MOORER 
I'ma sucker for her red hair.” 
8. MINDY McCREADY 
‘She lives her life the way she wants 
to, and that's hot—not to mention 
that she can outdrink me.” 
9. MARTINA McBRIDE 
"I love the way Martina just wraps her- 
self around a song. 
TO. TERRI CLARK 
She can pick you up, flip you over and 
make you speak Spanish the hard way. 
Don't ask me what that means." 


P | 
ү í 


Jamie Ireland is a 
freelance writer in 
the areas of sex, 
fimess, romance, 
and travel 


we 


Advertisement 


| the inside story on 


Learning “The Ropes”. 


his month 1 got a letter from а 

reader in Texas about a “little 
secret” that has made her sex life 
with her husband absolutely explosive. 
(Those Texans know their stuff, let 
me tell you.) 


Tina writes: 


Dear Jamie, 
Last month my husband returned 
„Лот a business trip in Europe, and he 
was hotter and hornier than ever before, 
with more passion than he has had for 
years. It was incredible. He flat wore 
me out! And the best part of all—he 
was having multiple orgasms. 1 know 
what you're thinking... men don't 
have multiples, but trust me he was, 
and his newfound pow! pow! power! 
stimulated me into the most intense 
orgasms I've ever had. So, before we 
knew it, we were both basking in the 
glow of the best sex of our lives! 

We tried tantric stuff in the past, 
and the results were so-so. But this 
was something new and exciting, 
completely out of the ordinary. I asked 
my husband what had created such 
a dramatic change in our lovemaking 
and he told me he'd finally learned 
“the ropes." 

On the last night of his business trip 
my husband spent an evening dining 
out with « Swedish nutritionist and 
his wife of 20 years. The couple was 
obviously still quite enamored with 
each other, so my husband asked their 
secret. The nutritionist told him their 
sex life was more passionate than ever. 
Then he pulled a small bottle from his 


Hot Spot 
Great Sex! 


by Jamie Ireland 


satchel and gave it to my husband. The 
bottle contained a natural supplement 
that the nutritionist told my husband 
would teach him “the ropes” of good sex. 
My husband takes the supplement every 

day. The supply from the nutritionist 
is about to run out and we desperately 
want to know how we can find more. 
Do you know anything about “the 
ropes,” and can you tell us how we 
can find it in the States? 

Sincerely, 

Tina С, Ft. Worth, Texas 


їла, you and the rest of our readers 

are in luck, because it just so happens 
Тао know about “the ropes” and the 
supplement your husband's Swedish 
friend likely shared. 

The physical contractions and fluid 
release during male orgasm can be 
multiplied and intensified by a product 
called Ogóplex Pure Extract”. It's a 
daily supplement specially formulated 
to trigger better orgasmic experiences 
in men. The best part, from a woman's 
perspective, is that the motion and 
experience a man can achieve with 


Individual results may vary 


Ogóplex Pure Extract can help 
stimulate our own orgasms, bringing 
a whole new meaning to the term. 
simultaneous climax! 

The term used by the Swedish. 
nutritionist is actually fairly common 
slang for the effect your husband 
experienced. The enhanced contractions 
and heightened orgasmic release are 
often referred to as ropes because of 
the rope-like effect of release during 
climax. In other words, as some people 
have said, "it just keeps coming and 
coming and coming." 

As far as finding it in the States, 

I know of just one importer—Bóland 
Naturals. If you are interested, you 
can contact them at 1-866-ogoplex or 
ogoplex.com. Ogóplex is all-natural 
and safe to take. All the people I've 
spoken with have said taking the 
once-daily tablet has led to the roping 
effect Tina described in her letter. 

Aren't you glad you asked? 


dre 


TË bestoffense is a good defense. Drink responsibly. ~ 
r illed and Bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lem Motlow, Proprietor 


hey... iiS personal 


Wheel TU 


Think sotellite radia is the hottest thing in mobile entertainment? 
Subscribe to satellite ТУ and stap thase onnoying sing-along back- 
seat drivers ance and far all (or until sameane cames out with satel- 
lite korcoke, thot is). КУН Industries’ TracVision A5 system pulls in 
the signals of TV satellites ond relays movies, news, sports events 
опа business reports ta the small monitor mounted somewhere in 
the backseot, behind your heod. The TracVision A5 con alsa handle 
multiple video screens 
and receivers, sa yaur 
possengers con choose 
amang satellite TV, on 
onboard DVD player, 

о digital video recorder 
end a console game. 
Bet you wish you were 
back there having fun 
too. An ontenno, 
mounting hordwore, 

а receiver ond a 
remate cantral cost 
$3,495. Installation 
ond o subscription to 
DirecTV or the Dish 
Network are extra 


7 зю 
Sweat It Is 


The temazkal, or 
Mexican sweat 
bath, dotes to the 
Aztecs, who used 
the small struc- 
ture for purifica- 
| tion purposes. 
BoinUltra has 
braught the con- 
cept inta the 21st 
| century with this 
| in-home thero- 
—|— peutic spoce, 
similar to a dry 
sauna but with 
two additional 
features: light 
and aromather- 
ару. You can 
shower in the 
Temazkol (the sect in the center of the unit is removable) and 
activate the misting function with the touch of a buttan—handy 
features when the interior temperature tops aut at 149 degrees 
Fahrenheit. Luminotherapy helps you beat the winter blues, 
claims BainUltra, and оготоїнегару uses the essences of 
plonts, flawers and resins "ta establish harmony between the 
body and the mind.” Save that line for your date. Price: $7,400. 


Let's Get 
Potted 
and Stewed 


If you like com- 
plicated recipes 
that leave yaur 
kitchen with two 
haurs of cleanup 
clutter, you prob- 
ably won't wont 
ta add Tom 
Valenti's Soups, 
Stews and One- 
Pat Meols to your 
caokboak collec- 
tion. Valenti, who 
co-awns two hot 
New York City 
restaurants, 
Ouest and 
"Cesca, loves 
heariy fore and 
hates daing the 
dishes. His 
recipes for extra- 
smoky New Eng- 
lend clam chowder, Partuguese-style braised park stew 
and Florentine pat roast with red wine, mushrooms and 
tomatoes will leave yau more time ta entertain or stay 
aut on the town with practically no mess ta deal with 
later. Price: $30, published by Simon & Schuster. 


Clothesline: 
Lenny Clarke 


The stor af the new ABC 
sitcom It’s All Relative 
says Не loves Versace. “I 
just can't afford him. I 
have really expensive 
toste. Unfortunately, so 
does my wife, so she's 
the one who gets to 
dress up. | have a Colvin 
Klein tux that I stole off a 
department store dummy 
ot о party one night. No- 
body said anything, and 
the monnequin didn't 
complain, so I figured it 
was akay. The топ- 
nequin is in someone's 
darm room right now. 1 
had this greot Pierre 
Cardin sweatshirt. Й was 
so damn comfortable and soft, | wish 1 still had it. Sometimes 
І spend a lot of money for on article of clothing, but it's 
worth it. Other times, І да to the big-fat-sweaty-guy wore- 
house outlet for my clothes.” 


The Perfect Time... 


To shop for a hause: After a heavy rain in the winter or sum- 
mer. With marigages available at the lowest rates in decades, 
пом is a great time to buy a hause. But avoid looking in the 
spring or fall, when prices tend to peak and real estate agents 
are busiest. It’s alsa best to check out a house after a storm, 
which may reveal water problems in the basement or attic. Be 
sure to check crawl spaces and other places you wouldn't 
ordinarily think to look. € To dine at o popular upscale restau- 
ront: Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Sure, you—and every- 
one else—want ta 

go aut on the week- 

end, but that's when 

the kitchen is in a 

frenzy. "Friday and 

Saturday evenings 

are turn-and-burn 

nights," says execu- 

tive chef Anthony 

Bourdain, author of 

Kitchen Confidentiol. 

By midweek, your 

chef will be rested 

and can pay closer 

attention ta what's 

cooking and the way 

it's served. Small 

items prepared in 

advance, such as 

sliced garlic and 

chopped tomatoes, 

will be fresher. 


WHERE AND HOW TD BUY DN PAGE 162 


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Шіге Playboy Advisor 


Why do porn films always include an 
annoying close-up of the guy's face as he 
strains and groans before orgasm?—R.C., 
Dallas, Texas 

Because porn is fantasy. Sex scenes are 
filmed as a series of starts and stops, not т 
ene glorious fuckfest. The finale is typically 
done the same way: The action stops, every- 
one gets into position, and the actor strokes 
himself to climax. No cameraman in his right 
mind would pan to the actor's face and miss 
the money shot, so the director will later have 
the actor fake his come face for the two- 
second transition. A few years ago, Joani 
Blank made a video, Faces of Ecstasy, in 
which she recorded the faces of a dozen men 
and women as they climaxed; carlier this 
year, she recruited 23 more people for a 
sequel. One challenge was getting the subjects 
lo keep their eyes open as they came. “105 so 
much hotter that way," Blank says, which 
suggests that readers of this column should. 
give й а try. It may also be fun to use that 
digital camera to take photos of each other 
making the faces you think you make at cli- 
max and, later, the ones that actually appear. 


Is it better to lift weights before or after 
your cardio workout? My buddy says to 
do cardio first because otherwise you 
burn lactic acid instead of fat when you 
lift. What do you think?—F.C., Spokane, 
Washington 

Af your goal is to burn fat, it makes no dif- 
ference. The key to eliminating flab is a car- 
dio workout designed for endurance, not 
speed. Lifting strengthens the muscles you'll 
need to endure the longer workouts. 


My fiancée has been married before, 
but I have not. She complained that her 
first husband devoted too much time to 
interests she didn't share or that weren't. 
couples-oriented. I've been a blues-metal 
bass player for years; she says not only 
does this activity leave her on the side- 
lines, but there's too great a chance ГІЇ 
meet women at gigs and cheat on her. 
Now that I've left the band, she's upped 
the ante, raising а fuss whenever I leave 
a disc in the CD player by a band she 
doesn't like. She used to tell me that my 
musical ability turned her on. Is there 
more to this than issues of musical taste 
and male neglect? I'm beginning to think 
I'm engaged to a control freak.—J.R., 
Chicago, Illinois 

Beginning to think? Your first mistake 
was quitting the band. Will they take you 
back? It seems harsh to break off an engage- 
ment over music—or a subscription to 
PLAYBOY or whatever your manly appetites 
may be—but we always tell guys to proceed 
with caution, because this stuff is a warning 
shot over the bow. There will always be some- 
thing else she doesn't like—you just may not 


hear about it until after the rings are 
exchanged. If you two have any hope of a 
successful marriage, your fiancée needs to 
realize that she can't change you and 
shouldn't try. In other words, she has to love. 
the entire album, not just the singles. 
Frankly, working this out in counseling may 
be a challenge; il sounds like she still has is- 
sues from her first marriage. If you marry 
her now, you'll also get her ex-husband. 


What do you think about guys who 
wear thongs?—J-H., Dallas, Texas 
We try not to. 


A friend who has spent time in prison 
told me that other inmates used to make 
wine using just a plastic bag, oranges 
and sugar Is that possible?—K.M., 
Fountain Valley, California 

Anything is possible when you have time 
on your hands. We won't give prison censors 
any more to do by reprinting a recipe here, 
but those in the free world can find them 
online. Here's the basic idea: Prunes (hence 
the name pruno), raisins, oranges and/or 
other fruits are squeezed and sealed inside a 
plastic bag filled with water. The bag is heat- 
ed under a tap, then hidden. After 48 hours, 
the inmate adds sugar, which can come from 
cubes or packets as well as from ketchup, 
frosting, jelly, yams, flavored gelatin, honey, 
hard candies—you name it. (The sugar is 
broken down into alcohol by yeast floating 
naturally in the air, or by adding bread.) The 
mixture is heated. regularly over the next 
three to five days. Most batches of pruno are 
best consumed while holding y 
though many wardens prohibit inmates from. 
taking [ruit to their cells, California prison 
officials still seize the equivalent of 2 million 
pruno cocktails each year 


Te TRAY O o O 


Recently, a reader asked if it's possible to 
find a woman who is wild in bed but not 
wild in general—a situation that makes 
someone fun to sleep with but a night- 
mare to date. Many women (and men) 
suffer from borderline personality disor- 
der. I read up on the topic and discov- 
ered that women who have BPD are often 
sexually aggressive or display impulsive 
behavior such as substance abuse, exces- 
sive spending, reckless driving, suicide 
attempts, etc. People with the disorder. 
have a crippling fear of abandonment, 
which may have resulted from being 
abused as children. The first hint a guy 
gets is usually when his new girlfriend 
loves him beyond description one minute 
and hates him more than anyone she 
knows the next. Whatever the perceived 
trouble may be, it's his fault. There's 
even a book on BPD called / Hate You, 
Don't Leave Me. Unfortunately, the disor- 
der is difficult to treat, but sometimes 
drugs and intense therapy can help. 1 
loved a woman who had BPD, and she al- 
most destroyed me.—A.S., Los Angeles, 
California 

"Thanks for writing. BPD affects an esti- 
mated two percent of the population, and 75 
percent of its victims are women. А relation- 
ship with a BPD sufferer usually begins as 
an intense, impulsive, romantic affair before 
disintegrating into an anxious and some- 
times frightening drama (many people com- 
pare their relationships with BPD sufferers 
to walking on eggshells). Some people who 
accept a diagnosis of BPD avoid relation- 
ships, resigning themselves to going it alone. 


How do you get earbud headphones to 
stay in your ear? Гує tried them every 
which way, and they always fall out unless. 
1 stand still or walk as if 1 had a stiff 
neck.—B.S., Advance, North Carolina 

You need in-ear speakers, which fit more 
snugly. The 8140 StudioPhonic Hearos 
Gold 20 Series from DAP World requires 
that you wet the tip of the plug, pull up on 
your ear lo open your ear canal, and insert 
the de to create a seal. The plugs won't 
fall out (you have to twist them to break the 
seal), but they aren't as easy on the head 
flaps as the $50 Sony Fontopia, which has a 
soft silicon tip that molds itself to the shape of 
your ear canal. 


My experience asa giver of quality blow 
jobs had been limited to circumcised 
penises, But last month I started hook- 
ing up with a guy who is uncut. Sud- 
denly, my techniques feel insufficient 
Are certain areas more sensitive? Should 
1 push the skin to the base and continue 
as before?—C.T, Athens, Georgia 

As with any blow job for a new partner, 
the first and best strategy is to ask what he 


47 


PLAYBOY 


likes. You'll need to adjust your technique 
primarily because the head of his cock will 
be more sensitive. His foreskin will also be 
sensitive, which gives you more real estate 
to work with. Here's one brick: Slip his 
foreskin over the head, then slide the tip of 
your tongue inside and run it in a circle 
around the head. 


What do you know about online ser- 
vices that let you download movies to 
your computer for 24 hours? Are they 
any good?—PL., Fort Wayne, Indiana 

We still prefer to rent DVDs, but the idea 
has potential, especially if you feel guilty 
about your collection of bootlegs. The chief 
obstacle is limited selection, along with the 
hassle of watching a film on your computer 
(you can connect й to a TY, but we haven't 
had the energy). It costs $3 to $5 to down- 
load movies at movielink.com (created by 
five Hollywood studios) or cinemanow.com 
(created by Blockbuster, Lion's Gate and 
Microsoft). Reserve at least 500 megabytes 
of hard-drive space for each download, 
which will take 45 to 90 minutes on a DSL 
or cable modem. The quality is equivalent to 
that of VHS. CinemaNow charges $9.95 a 
month for unlimited access to 500 bargain- 
bin flicks and 300 adult titles. About 20 per- 
cent of the movies are available for down- 
load; the rest are streaming video. Movielink 
has 350 titles, 100 of which are recent DVD 
releases. You have 30 days to start watching 
a download, then 24 hours to get through й 
before the file deletes itself. 


lam a 31-year-old man who suffers from 
premature ejaculation. When I was in 
my early 20s, my first erection would last 
about five minutes after insertion, and 
the second would last well over 15. The 
third, fourth and fifth (if it was a good 
night) would go closer to an hour. For 
the past few years, I've been a minute 
man, if that. I do better with hand jobs 
and blow jobs (maybe two minutes), but 
once I'm inside her vagina, it's a three- 
stroke affair. If it's doggy style or anal 
sex, forget it. My refractory period is 
maybe five minutes, but my second and 
third erections still last only a minute or 
two, even if I've been drinking. What 
causes this, and what can I do to fix it?— 
J-N., Syracuse. New York 

Premature ejaculation isn't measured by 
time or strokes. It is defined clinically as 
“persistent or recurrent ejaculation with 
minimal sexual contact before, on or shortly 
after penetration and before the person 
wishes it.” Theories abound about how guys 
train themselves as young men to be quick 
while masturbating, making out in bach- 
seats or visiting hookers. Most therapists 
attribute PE to performance or relationship 
anxiety, and it's the kind of stress that feeds 
on itself. The guy becomes so focused on 
holding back that sex becomes mechanical. 
Rather than enjoying the moment, he's 
thinking 10 seconds ahead. In rare cases PE 


48 can be a symptom of illnesses such as dia- 


betes or multiple sclerosis, so there is added 
concern when it appears later in life after 
years or decades of control. 

The most common treatments are the pe- 
nile squeeze (the woman squeezes her part- 
ner's erection as he nears climax to help him 
focus) and the start-stop technique champi- 
опей by Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan in РЕ: 
How to Overcome Premature Ejaculation 
(the woman gives the man ahand job until he 
is near climax; when his arousal wanes a bit, 
she repeats the exercise). A less desirable an- 
tidote is using “climax control” condoms such 
as Trojan's Extended Pleasure or Durex's 
Ferformax, each of which is coated on the in- 
side with benzocaine, a mild anesthetic. 

Some scientists believe thal PE may be a 
physical condition rather than a strictly psy- 
chological one. Last year, researchers al the 
University of Cincinnati isolated the cluster 
of cells that works as an ejaculation genera- 
tor in the lower spinal cord of male rats. 
They're now looking for the chemicals that 
travel from these cells and for ways to restrict 
them, which could lead to medications that 
delay orgasm. One study in the Netherlands 
suggests that some may already exist: Prema- 
ture ejaculators who took certain antid 
pressants, such as Prozac, regained their 
control within two weeks. 


I work in а bank where casual attire is 
accepted (button-down shirts and two- to 
three-button pullovers). I wear a crew- 
neck Tshirt underneath for comfort and 
to protect my shirts. One of my co-work- 
ers says I should be wearing V-neck tees. 
Who's right?—].K., Versailles, Kentucky 
Your co-worker is right, especially since 
you work at a bank. If you were selling 
televisions or shoes, the open-collar, my- 
underwear-is-showing look might pass 


You've noted how much professional 
porn stars make, but how about the am- 
ateurs I see on the Interne?—B.B., 
Huntington, West Virginia 

Most stay-at-home performers who charge 
for access net less than $1,000 a month. 
Those who host live sex cams or sell custom 
videos earn more. 


For the past year, the Advisor has been 
extolling the virtues of anal sex. My 
husband makes all the subtle moves 
you have noted in an attempt to gain 
entry to places where he does not be- 
long. I have told him that I am not and 
will not be a tushy girl, but he figures if 
he gets me worked up enough, he can 
slide it in before I know what's happen- 
ing. He is also convinced that once I try 
anal sex, J will be sure to love it. I enjoy 
doggy style and a good ass massage, 
both of which my husband has misin- 
terpreted as a willingness to go further. 
No amount of discussion is going to 
change my mind. I view anal sex in the 
same light as I do heroin and crack: 
Just because there are people out there 
who enjoy it doesn’t mean I have to be 


one of them. Can you please advise me 
how to discourage my husband in a 
manner he will understand?—K.B., 
Atlanta, Georgia 

You're looking for sympathy? Keep look- 
ing. You have the right to say no. Your hus- 
band has the right to ask. He's dumb lo keep 
asking, because it only steels your resolve. 
But your letter doesn't make any mention of 
why you're averse to this particular form of 
pleasure, so it’s hard to address any concerns 
or misconceptions you have. We don't advo- 
cate anal for anyone who doesn't enjoy it, but 
how can you make that judgment? As we've 
said many times, anyone interested in experi- 
menting should start slow, with tongue or fin- 
gers and lots of lube. If your husband tries to 
slide his erection in while you're distracted, 
he won't gel near you again, front or back, 
for a long while. (He'd be smarter to ash if he 
could caress your anus with a well-lubed 
pinkie while going down on you, with a 
promise of no penetration without your ok 
Can those ass massages extend beyond you 
crack?) Bottom line: If you want your hus- 
band to stop asking, a simple no is sufficient, 
but a better option might be to tell him that 
you'd be happy to explore his tushy. The plea- 
sure he receives may make you more com- 
fortable with the idea and make him more 
sensitive to the fact that anal penetration is 
not something a person jumps into. 


| am а 29-year-old professional woman 
who exclusively dated a 26-year-old 
man for three months. We stopped see- 
ing each other because he refused to 
make a formal commitment. His rea- 
soning: I wasn't exhibiting loyalty or 
hfulness because I didn't stop see- 
ing my friends at clubs after he'd ex- 
pressed his disapproval of this behav- 
ior. He had stopped going out with his 
friends and felt that 1 should do the 
same. Should I have been more consid- 
erate?—PA., Miami, Florida 

Here's what you need to do: For the next 
week, you are not going to wear panties. It 
will be unprofessional and very naughty, 
and you're overdue. Next, if you happen to 
see your ex at the country club, you are going 
to inform him that you already have a father 
and you don't need another. According to our 
etiquette book, “Fuck off and good-bye” is the 
proper send-off, Finally, you're going to con- 
tinue your quest for a normal guy—one who 
likes to hang out with you, your friends and 
his friends—and whose passion leaves you 


fumbling for words. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, food 
and drink, stereo and sports cars to dating 
dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be per- 
sonally answered if the writer includes а self- 
addressed, stamped envelope. The most inter- 
esting, pertinent questions will be presented 
in these pages cach month. Write the Playboy 
Advisor, PLAYBOY, 650 North Lake Shore 
Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611, or send e-mail 
by visiting playboyodvisorcom. 


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stir the senses 


THE PL YBOY FORUM 


ven the Bandit wouldn't have 
seen it coming. In less than a 
third of a second, the latest police 
laser speed guns take several hundred 
readings from the license plate or head- 
light of an approaching vehicle and calculate 
its speed. At 500 feet, the gun's beam is just 18 
inches in diameter, compared with the 150-foot 
swath of radar that dashboard detectors can ` 
more easily pick up. According to field tests orga- 
nized by Carl Fors of Speed Measurement Laboratories, 
your detector may sense the light beam at 1,000 feet, but 
by then it's already too late. At 500 feet, you'll hear 
nothing. Some guns have digital cameras that snap a 
photo of your car and its license plate, then add a 
speed-time-date stamp for the judge. This allows the 
officer to skip court. (As long as you trust the technology, 
italso prevents arbitrary tickets.) The most 
advanced guns shoot 
through snow, rain 
and windshields, 
which lets the of- 
ficer sit inside 
the cruiser. They 
also indicate when 
the gun is being 
jammed or if а ve- 
hide has a detector. 
Leadfoots, beware. 


The Falcon K band radar gun 
(left) is among the most popular hand- 
helds in the U.S. Big-city officers are 
increasingly equipped with loser 

guns such as the Pro Loser III (right) 
because they let them isolate vehicles 
from the pack on a busy highwoy. 


To fire this laser 
gun, the cop peers 
through the heods- 
up display, aims a 

red dot ot the front 
license plate and 

presses the trigger. 


The next big 
thing will be zonal 
radar, which allows 
officers to see the 
speed of every ve- 
hicle оп a stretch 
ої highway, much 
ав an air traffic 
cantroller views the 
skies. The mop is 
projected onto the 
cop's windshield or 
sent to a laptop. 
Unlike radar, laser 
guns must be held 
stationary. But pro- 
totypes may let 
traopers take in- 
stant speed read- 
ings while in mo- 
tion. We will also 
see systems that 
read and check 
possing plotes for 
scofflaws. 


51 


52 


erhaps there is a corporation somewhere that 

appreciates art inspired by and containing bits 

of its trademarks. But Carrie McLaren hasn't 
| 1 


discovered it. Concerned that companies are 
using intellectual property laws to stifle free 
speech, the editor of Stay Free magazine organized an exhib- 
it called legal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age 


Disney won big 
when the.U:S. 
Supreme Court 
upheld a 20-year 
extension on 
copyrights, pre- 
venting Mickey 
from entering the 
public domain, 
In 2001 Bill 
Barminski took a 
little air out of the 
celebrated rodent 
with this. gas mask. The most fdmous Disney 
parody was created іп 1967 by Wally, Wood. His 
Disneyland Memorial Orgy, which you can sa- 
vor online, made Walt's lawyers hyperventilate. 


(the headline above uses an alphabet, created from prod- 
uct packaging, by Heidi Cody). The exhibit, which in- 
cludes music and videos, runs October 3 to November 2 at 
the Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia. It can also be seen on 
line atillegal-art.org. These days, prudent pop, collage and 
hip-hop artists consult with lawyers before sharing their 
work. Even the threat of a lawsuit can keep art out of view. 


Biggie, Eazy-E and Tupac 

surely never anticipated that they W> 
would be immortalized as Pez dis- 

pensérs (the Fallen Rappers series, 

above). The artist, Packard Jennings, wrote the 
president of Pez Candy to suggest the com- 
pany start production. It respectfully declined: 


When it comes to 
parodies, Canada’s 
copyright laws аге; 
more restrictiye than 
those in the U.S. That's 
why a lawyer advised 
artist Didna Thorney- 
croft not fo display 
these pencil drawings 
from her series Foul 
Play, Thorneycroft 
says they/reflect how 
society ignores the 
violence that is often 
part of child's play. 


“Oh honey, ! didn't realize your toe was so blg!” 


The Family Circus, created by Bil Keane іп 1960, appears in more 
than 1,500 newspapers, making it the most widely syndicated comic. 
Since at least the early 19805 satirists have mocked the panel's sappy 
disposition by inserting edgier captions. The Dysfunctional Family Cir- 
сиз became an underground hit. A popular interactive online version 
shut down in 1999 after Keane grew impatient with its virulent humor 
and asked King Features lawyers to send а cease-and-desist letter. 


Mattel is known for its rigorous 
defense of all things Barbie. In 
1999 it sued photographer Tom 
Forsythe for trademark and copy- 
right infringement for this and 
similar images in his series Food 
Chain Barbie. Forsythe won in fed- 
eral court; the case is on appeal. 


Starbucks went wild when it 
spotted this political art; it sued 
artist Kieron Dwyer, who sold 

comics, shirts and stickers that. 


the enterprise, allowing Dwyer 
fo post the image online. 


When the Chicago Athenaeum Museum hung The Last Pancake 
Breakfast in 2001, Dick Detzner expected to heor protests from corpo- 
rations about his use of their carefully managed mascots. Instead, sub- 
urban Catholics raised a fuss. Other paintings in Detzner's Corporate 
Sacrilegé series depict Jesus onu Wheaties box, Ronald McDonald cru- 
cified on the Golden Arches and an angel at the last moment prevent- 
ing the Green Giant from sacrificing his pint-size companion Sprout. 


53 


54 


R E 


E R 


RADIO FREE AMERICA 
As a Clear Channel radio pro- 
grammer, 1 have read a lot of 
trash about the company. But 
nothing has set my blood boil- 
ing more than your article “The 
Death of Radio" (The Playboy 
Forum, August). The list of 150 
songs that circulated among 
programmers after September 
11 was not a corporate mandate 
to stop playing that particular 
music. It was a list compiled and 
traded by those who thought 
some sensitivity was in order. 
Some programmers removed 
all or some of the songs from 
their playlists based on the de- 
mographics of their listeners or 
the time of day the song might 
play. Our job is to get people to 
like our stations. The only thing 
we are required to do is not put. 
the station's license in jeopardy, 
which is true of any broadcaster. 

Further, the concert division 
of Clear Channel does not tell 
the radio division to play or not 
play a song. And whats wrong 
with sponsoring Glenn Beck's 
Rally for America? Beck works 
for Clear Channel and is heard 
on many of its stations. 

Your sidebar lists songs that 
you claim Clear Channel sta- 
tions wouldn't play because 
they referred to the war in 
Iraq. According to. BDS and 
Mediabase, which track music 
airplay, those songs are barely 
played on any stations any- 
where. There is no conspiracy 
at Clear Channel. 

Steve King 
Operations manager 
KROQ/KOHT 
Tucson, Arizona 


FOR THE RECORD 


“Т heard that a fellow's car wouldn't start the 
other day, and he blamed the Patriot Act." 

—Altomey General John Ashcrofl, addressing ed- 
йот, publishers and TV. executives al a conference 
on journalism and homeland security, He asked for 
the media's help in “portraying accurately the USA 
Patriot Act,” the post-September 11 legislation that 
many critics feel has damaged civil libert 
instance, Ashcroft said of roving wiretaps. 
something new, this isn’t something different, this 
isn't some vast incursion into the freedoms of the 
American people. This is a time-tested, law-enforce- 
ment-honored and court-sanctioned technique which 
is now being extended into the arena of terror.” 


- For 
“This isn't. 


Turner, Dr. Demento, Dick 
“Haynes at the Reins” Haynes, 
Harry Newman, Jay Lawrence 
and Sammy Jackson 

We hoped fans who visited 
our board would support inde- 
pendent radio stations that 
played their requests. That 
didn't happen. Instead, fans 
spent a lot of time bickering 
among themselves. Just when 
we were about to give up, DJs 
from independent stations be- 
gan e-mailing us with thanks. 
"They were using our boards to 
learn more about the bands 
they were playing. There are 
good radio stations out there. 


Support them! 


Gayle Noble 
Boulder Creek, California 


BUDGET-DEFICIT BLUES 
Contrary to what Ted Fishman 
believes, our current economic 
situation is not George W. 
Bush's fault ("Class "09: You're 
Screwed,” The Playboy Forum, 
August). Clinton-era prosperity 
was due to the economic poli- 
cies of the Reagan era. And 
don't forget that the market 
began to take a downturn while 
Slick Willy was still in the Oval 
Office. I agree that the tax sys- 
tem is unfair. That's why we 
need a flat rate of 10 percent 
with no deductions. Finally, 
Social Security is fundamen- 
tally flaved—it's a communist 
idea in a capitalist economy. 

Michacl Schena 
Baton Rougc, Louisiana 


Fishman boasts of projected 
surpluses when the Democrats 
were in power. Sensible people 


1 grew up in Oklahoma in the 1960s, 
when the only choices offered to listen- 
ers were Lawrence Welk and the Beat- 
les. Until the advent of public radio, 
about the only access I had to classical 
and jazz was by mail order. Greedy 
people have always controlled com- 
mercial radio. It’s gotten worse lately, 
but the seeds were sown years ago. To 
all the rockers complaining about not 
being able to hear their favorite music: 
Welcome to the club. 

Jim Briscoe 


Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 


Thank you for your article on Clear 
Channel. Last year 1 launched the 
hanted Woods (elvinsystems.com 
/invision/index.php), an online discus- 
sion board that serves as a gathering 
place for street teams, the modern 
equivalent of fan clubs. We don't like the 
pay-for-play philosophy some corpora- 
tions have adopted. Instead, through 
activism on behalf of our favorite bands, 
we hope to bring to the web some of the 
magic of artists such as the Real Don 
Steele, Sawyer Brown, B. Mitch Reed, 
Jeff Gonzer, Steven Clean, Mary “Taco” 


would prefer to have that mon- 
ey themselves. After all, taxes create 
surpluses. And to blame Bush for the 
thousands of jobs lost after terrorists 
attacked our nation is ridiculous. Yes, 
we should question our leaders, but 
PLAYBOY seems interested in publishing 
only articles that are the equivalent ofa 
caveman snarling, “Democrats good! 
Republicans bad!” 


Bryan Scofield 
Tampa, Florida 


Even though I haven't reached the 
middle class, I never objected to tax 


Re TES 


коно м 
Р.О 


hikes under Bill Clinton because I al- 
ways had a job that allowed me to con- 
tribute. My taxes were repaid when the 
government helped care for my grand- 
mother as she was dying of leukemia. 
Yet last year, while I was unemployed 
for six months, I still had to pay taxes. 
Where was my tax cut, Mr. Bush? 
Wylie Нпаг 
Iowa City, lowa 


According to the numbers I’ve seen, 
the projected budget deficit for this 
year is $416 billion, excluding Social 
Security. That's a loss of at least $1 bil- 
lion a day. In just over two years in of- 
fice, Bush has done more damage to 
the United States than all the presi- 
dents before him. Our country is being 
looted, and we stand here waving our 
flags. We arc a nation in deep denial. 
Marc Perkel 
San Francisco, California 


We can thank Bush for the reduction 
in capital-gains tax rates from 20 per- 
cent to 15 percent and an exemption 
on the double taxation of corporate 
dividends. The stock and bond mar- 
kets will once again replenish govern- 
ment revenue, not just in Washington 
but also on the state and local levels. By 
the vay, did Fishman reimburse the 
U.S. Treasury for his tax refund in the 
name of a debt-free future? 
Casey Carlton 
Staten Island, New York. 


Fishman's mindless liberal spin is the 
same thing that comes out of Paul 
Begala's mouth on Crossfire. Here are a 
few facts he chose to ignore: (1) The 
late-1990s boom was a smaller version 
of the late-1920s boom. Both had more 
to do with investors losing their minds 
than with the president. (2) The latest. 
investment binge would not have hap- 
pened without the bipartisan financial 
deregulation efforts of the 1980s. (3) 
Clinton's projected surplus was no more 
accurate than Enron's projected earn- 
ings. (4) Republicans say deficits are bad 
if a Democrat i 
a Republican is president. Democrats 
say deficits are bad if a Republican is 
president but okay if a Democrat is 
president. (5) When you compare the 
economy during Clinton's first term 
with that during Bush's current term, 
they are nearly identical, so in theory a 
Bush second term could turn out to 
be as good economically as Clinton's. 


president but okay if 


(6) The only way to fix Social Security is 
to take "golden parachute" retirement 
away from Congress and to make its 
members as dependent on Social Secu- 
rity as everyone else is. If that hap- 
pened, they would fix the problem. 
Quit trying to BS your readers. One 
can make plenty of valid arguments 
against a second Bush term. Instead of 
blaming him for every problem, spend 
more time persuading people that the 
Democrats can do better. I'm waiting 
for John McCain to form a third party 
and run for president with retired gen- 
eral Wesley Clark on his ticket. 
Ben VanWagner 
Hot Springs, Arkansas 


Fishman conveniently ignores the influ- 
ence on the economy of September 11 
and the crash of technology stocks. Does 
he actually believe that Bush can press a 
red button to have a great economy or a 
blue button to create a recession? Maybe 
he pushes the red, white and blue patri- 
otic Republican button to piss off girly- 
man liberals. 1 don't care what it costs 
me as long as 1 don't have to experience 
another September 11. I'm sure all the 
soldiers overseas loved reading Fish- 
man's article. Way to boost their morale. 
Craig Peate 

Lincoln, Nebraska 


Most of what a sitting president does 
doesn't come to fruition until after he 
leaves office. Fishman credits Clinton 
for initiatives that started before he be- 
gan his first term. Maybe if Clinton had 


N S 


spent as much money chasing Osama 
bin Laden as he did pursuing Bill Gates, 
September 11 wouldr't have happened. 
Bush didn't "steal" anybody's future. 
Each person is responsible for making 
his or her own way in this world. 
D.M. Copp 
Acworth, Georgia 


Fishman eloquently explains why this 
s the most corrupt administration 
ever. Thanks for calling crooks crooks. 
Peter Martin 

Salisbury, Connecticut 


Fishman needs a time line. The econ- 
omy began to sink in March 2000. I 
had a 15 percent loss in my 401(k) at 
the end of the second quarter and 
another 18 percent loss after the 
third. I lost a third of my net worth 
while Bush was sull a candidate. Then 
I lost my job. Things are bad enough 
for people like me who are just getting 
back to work after a two-year layoff. 
Ler's not play politics when this is sim- 
ply a matter of the cconomy's natural 
expansion and contraction. 
Matthew Gentry 
Sterling Heights, Michigan 


We would like to hear your point of view. 
Send questions, opinions and quirky stuff 
10 The Playboy Forum, PLAYBOY, 730 
Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, 
e-mail forum@playboy.com, or fax us al 
212-957-2900. Include a daytime phone 
number and your city and 
state or province. 


FORUM FYI 


55 


56 


N E W 


ЕВ 


O” "Ме JT 


What's happening in the sexual and social arenas 


PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY— Gallup recent- 
ly polled 1,005 U.S. adults to gauge the 
moral temper of the nation. Who 
would most respondents place in the 


equivalent of a stockade? Most said 
that adultery (93 percent), homo- 
sexuality (52 percent) and abortion 
(53 percent) are morally unacceptable 
{although 80 percent felt abortion 
should be legal in some circum- 
stances). At the same time, most re- 
spondents were tolerant of gambling 
(63 percent said it’s okay), divorce 
(66 percent), medical testing on ani- 
mals (63 percent), sex without mar- 
гіаре (58 percent) and having a baby 
out of wedlock (51 percent). 


FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA—Three 
police officers posted photos of them- 
selves having sex with their wives on a 
private website. Although their faces 
were digitally distorted and the site 
made no mention of their jobs, the 
county sheriff fired the men. Two of 
the officers sued. A judge threw out 
the case because, he said, the First 
Amendment does not protect the dis- 
play of group sex acts online. 


TORONTO— Canada's justice minister 
wants to lower the penalty for pos- 
sessing small amounts of marijuana. 


Teens holding up to 15 grams (about 
20 joints’ worth) would be fined the 
equivalent of U.S. $70; adults $100. 
At the same time, anyone caught 
i gle plant would face up 
il and a fine of $3,500. 
A Toronto Star columnist noted, “The 
government is effectively telling tok- 
ers, ‘Don't grow your own. Buy it on 
the corner instead." " 


NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS —Stu- 
dents at all-female Smith College 
voted to change every she and her in 
the student constitution to student. 
Advocates of the measure said they 
wanted to be supportive of class- 
mates who may later have sex- 
change operations. 


SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO—In his eulogy 
for an 80-year-old man who hadn't 
attended mass in about a year, a Ro- 
man Catholic priest allegedly shocked. 
mourners by declaring that God 
“vomited people like Ben out of his 
mouth to hell." Nine family members 
sued. The archdiocese denies the 
charge, saying that the priest had on- 
ly been quoting a Bible verse that 
states, "Because you are lukewarm, 1 
vill vomit you out of my mouth.” 


ASBURY PARK, NEW JERSEY—During a 
kindergarten commencement cere- 
mony, a vice principal told parents to 
take a good look at the assembled stu- 
dents because “a third will not gradu- 
ate from high school or will not make 
it to high school because they will be 
too busy drugging, drinking or get- 
ting pregnant.” He later apologized. 


LAND O' LAKES, FLORIDA—For the past 
decade, children age 11 and older 
have attended a weeklong, clothing- 
free summer camp run by the Ameri- 
can Association for Nude Recreation. 
When U.S. Representative Mark Foley 
read about the camp in The New York 
Times, the Florida Republican called 
for an investigation. “What's wrong 


with your kids going to Boy Scouts, 
Camp Fire Girls or sports camps?" 
he asked parents who send their 
children to the camp. An AANR 
spokesman replied, "Kids are natural 
nudists. It's so cute to see naked 
babies and toddlers. But as we 
mature, somchow that is no longer 
seen asa wholesome, healthy thing." 


ST. CLAIR SHORES, MICHIGAN—A girl 
allegedly performed oral sex on a 14- 
year-old classmate while they were in 
science class. After the school sus- 
pended both students, the boy's par- 
ents sued, arguing that their son had 
been victimized and had "no legal 


duty" to stop the girl. 


GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA—A police offi- 
cer responded to a noise complaint 
at a bachelorette party. Assuming he 
Was a stripper in costume, the women 
laughed as he issued them a ticket. 
After checking for outstanding war- 
rants on the bride-to-be, the officer 
discovered she had not paid an $11 
summons issued two years earlier for 


possessing an open container of alco- 
hol. Even as the officer handcuffed 
the woman and led her away for a 
trip to the lockup, her friends con- 
tinued to ask him, "Are you going to 
start stripping?" 


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ролувої текие: QUENTIN TARANTINO 


A candid conversation with Hollywood's punk auteur about doing drugs, getting 
laid, the secrets of Pulp Fiction and how Kill Bill ended up as a two-parter 


At first Quentin Tarantino wanted Kill Bill 
to be а small homage to samurai films. a 
modest vehicle for his Pulp Fiction star Uma 
Thurman. She would play the Bride, a 
sword-wielding assassin who rises from her 
deathbed to carve up hundreds of villains 
standing between her and the mysterions Bill. 

Just as т a Tarantino movie, though, 
strange twists were in store. Somewhere be- 
tween original concept and final production, 
Kill Bill, Tarantino's first feature in more 
than five years, became an epic. After nine 
months of shooting, a budget that surpassed 
$50 million (compared with the $8 million 
he spent on Pulp Fiction) and three hours of 
final footage, the decision was made to slice 
Bill into two freestanding mavies that will 
hit theaters in quick succession. It's a risky, 
groundbreaking, in-your-face move, and 
that's exactly how the boy wonder of art- 
house violence likes i1. 

Tarantino forever will be known for Pulp 
Fiction. That gloriously bloody follow-up to 
Reservoir Dogs had far-reaching impact, 
way beyond winning Tarantino the Palme 
d'Or at Cannes and an Oscar for best screen- 
play and beyond making Tarantino the indie- 
film equivalent of a rock star who spawns a 
legion of imitators. 

Pulp Fiction instantly turned John Travolta 
(от а has-been into а $20 million-a-picture 
superstar. More significantly, й transformed 


“The first time 1 went to the Great Wall of 
China it was like an all-night rave. They 
had rock bands, fireworks. We were smoking 
pot aud doing E. It's a great way to see the 
wall for the first time." 


Miramax from an art-house haven into a та- 
jor studio. Tarantino's impact on Miramax 
has been so profound that studio chief Harvey 
Weinstein has likened it to Mickey Mouse's on 
Disney. Weinstein gives Tarantino more artis- 
tic freedom than just about any other Holly- 
wood director. Who else but Tarantino could 
have gotten the notoriously tough Weinstein 
to say yes to casting the long-forgotten David 
Carradine as Bill in Kill Bill? 

Born in Tennessee and raised in Tor- 
rance, California, Tarantino dropped out 
of school in the ninth grade. After jobs that 
included working as an usher in а porn 
theater, he got the equivalent of a film de- 
gree working behind the counter of a video- 
rental store in Manhattan Beach, California. 
He watched thousands of movies belonging to 
every imaginable genre before finding his 
own voice writing the films True Romance, 
From Dusk Till Dawn and Natural Born 
Killers and directing Reservoir Dogs and 
Pulp Fiction. 

Still, it has been six years since Tarantino 
followed Pulp Fiction with his critically and 
commercially disappointing Elmore Leonard 
novel adaptation, Jackie Brown. In the in- 
terim he's annoyed critics by starring in 
numerous films and a Broadway play, and 
he has become renowned for a series of high- 
profile celebrity brawls. It was clearly time to 
get back to work. 


“How much do | want to whip this guy's ass? 
Не was a big black guy, and they ve used to 
white guys backing down. I don't back down, 
especially to big black guys. That gives me a 
psychological advantage." 


Kill Bill is based on Tarantino's first origi- 
nal screenplay since Pulp Fiction. He met 
with Variety columnist Michael Fleming on 
several nights in Hollywood, once coming 
from a screening of his favorite film, The 
Good, Ше Bad and the Ugly, another time 
from the editing room where he was putting 
the finishing touches on a Kill Bill fight scene 
so huge il cost nearly as much as the entire 
budget for Pulp Fiction. Despite a bad-boy im- 
age, Tarantino was charming and disarming, 
no matier who interrupted him. He was even 
polite to a woman who tried to engage him in 
a long-winded discussion of numerology. 


PLAYBOY: It has been six years since Jackie 
Broum. Why so long? The rumors were 
that you had writer's block and anxiety 
because you were doing your first origi- 
nal work since Pulp Fiction. 

TARANTINO: I didn't have writer's block at 
all. I did so much writing in those six 
years, I'm hooked up for a while now. I 
wrote a big war film, and it was like a 
gigantic novel. I ended up writing about 
three war films in the course of writing 
one, Inglorious Bastards, 1 had no anxiety 
about writing Kill Bill, but I was precious 
about it. It wasn't like 1 was afraid to let 
the world see it. І just wanted it to be 
really good. It took me a year to write 
one big fight sequence in Kill Bill. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVIO ROSE 


“When I started going on the film festival 
circuit, I was getting laid all the time. I went 
crazy for a little bit. There was a lot of mak- 
ing up for lost time. What handsome guys 
did in their 20s, I did in my 305." 


59 


PLAYBOY 


PLAYBOY: Orson Welles and Peter Bog- 
danovich also made groundbreaking 
films early on. They failed to measure up. 
afierward and seemed shackled by peo- 
ple's expectations. Is that perilous? 
TARANTINO: I love being shackled with ex- 
pectations. I've never had a problem with 
that. I'm not trying to re-create the phe- 
nomenon of Pulp Fiction, but I intend to 
keep breaking ground. There is nothing 
about the success and recognition Pulp 
Fiction got that is bad or negative in any 
way. Blade Runner didn't get appreciated 
until 10 years later. That's how 1 thought 
my life was going to go. 1 didn't think I'd 
get such cause and effect—tam!/—during 
the theatrical release of the movie. 
PLAYBOY: What ground are you breaking 
with Kill Bill? 
TARANTINO: I don't think that 
way. People will view itand filter 
it back to me. I've been having 
this conversation for some time, 
because as far as some people 
were concerned, Reservoir Dogs 
was as good as it was going to 
get. This poor, silly boy is trying 
to follow up Reservoir Dogs? If 
somebody had asked what 
ground was being broken in 
Pulp Fiction, ГА have said none. 
It's just what I wanted to see in 
a movie, what I thought would 
be cool. I'm not surprised when 
people are surprised. They 
haven't seen all the movies I 
have, and they're not prepared 
for all the jerking around of the 
senses. They're not as bored 
with movies as I am. I need to 
do those things to make the ex- 
perience worthwhile. 
PLAYBOY: This film was sup- 
posed to be a small movie be- 
fore your big World War 11 
film. Now Kill Bill is so big it has 
been split into wo movies that 
cost six times what Pulp Fiction 
did. How did that happen? 
TARANTINO: When Uma's hus- 
band, Ethan Hawke, read it the 
first time, he said, “Quentin, if 
this is the epic you're doing 
before you do your epic, I'm 
afraid to see your epic.” It's become a 
full-on epic exploitation movie. Hope- 
fully, it’s the movie that every exploi 
tion-movie lover has always wished for. 
It doesn't have the pretentiousness of a 
big movie epic. This is made for black 
theaters, for exploitation cinema that 
covers the entire globe. 
PLAYBOY: Isn't it awkward, splitting a sin- 
gle movie into two parts? 
TARANTINO: There were no obstacles. I've 
always designed movies to be malleable. 
For instance, I've always designed differ- 
ent versions for Asia and for America 
and Europe. I don't make movies for 
America; I make movies for the world. 
In the last month of shooting, when 


60 Harvey Weinstein came to the set and 


brought up the idea of splitting the 
movie into two parts, within an hour I 
had figured out how it would work. We 
shot two opening sequences, all kinds of 
stuff. This is my tribute to grind-house 
cinema, and something was bothering 
me about releasing a three-hour grind: 
house movie. It seemed pretentious, like 
an art film meditation on a grind-house 
movie. Two 90-minute movies coming 
out fairly rapidly, one after another— 
that's not pretentious, that's ambitio: 
PLAYBOY: the abundance of blooi 
Kill Bill limit your audience? 

TARANTINO: I like that it's violent as hell, 
but it's also fun as hell. It doesn't take 
place in this universe but in the movie 
universe these movies takc place in. This 


A 


You'll read about someone taking a 
swipe at you, making fun of your 


looks. Who needs that shit? 


is a movie that knows it’s a movie. You 
may like the movie, you may not like the 
movie. But if you're a movie lover and 
have good knowledge, you can't help but 
smile at this thing, because it's just so 
movie-mad obsessed. It makes its own 
universe out of all these different genres. 

Harvey Weinstein was worried at one 
point that women would be turned off by 
the violence. 1 said, “Don't worry. 
They're going to love the movie. They'll 
be very empowered by it.” I think 13- 
year-old girls will love Kill Bill. 1 want 
young girls to be able to see it. They're 
going to love Uma's character, the Bride. 
They have my permission to buy a ticket 
for another movie and sneak into Kill 
Bill. That's money I'm okay not making. 


When I was a kid, I used to go into 
theaters when they didn’t have the name 
son the ticket. I'm a theater- 
ner from way back. 

PLAYBOY: You conceived Kill Bill with Uma 
‘Thurman on the set of Pulp Fiction. Then 
she and Ethan Hawke conceived a child. 
You had to decide whether to wait or to 
replace her. Your long layoff must have 
left you tempted to find someone else. 
TARANTINO: I definitely thought about it 
for two to three weeks. It was a decision 
1 had to make. 

PLAYBOY: Did she talk you out of it? This 
is her meatiest role since Pulp Fiction. 
TARANTINO: Uma was so invested, so in 
love with this movie, it would have bro- 
ken her heart if Pd gone with anybody 
else. At the same time, she didn't 
want to ruin my life. She was 
having her baby, and this was 
mine. She was going to let me 
decide. And I decided. It need- 
ed to be her. If you're Sergio 
Leone and you've got Eastwood 
in A Fistful of Dollars and he gets 
sick, you wait for him. If you're 
Josef von Sternberg doing 
Morocco and Marlene Dietrich 
breaks her leg, you wait. 
PLAYBOY: Warren Beatty signed 
on to play Bill. He was replaced 
by David Carradine, which 
keeps alive your tradition of re- 
cycling forgotten actors such as 
John "Travolta, Pam Grier and 
Robert Forster. Why didn't 
Warren make the film? 
TARANTINO: He wanted to. 
Then, as it got a little closer, 
things changed. He thought it 
was a bit more of a commitment. 
than I'd let on. Bill doesn't 
show up until almost the end, 
but Warren would have had to 
go through the three months of 
kung fu training that everyone 
else went through. He wasn't 
prepared for two months in 
L.A. and a month in China. 
PLAYBOY: So he would have had 
to leave his family. 

TARANTINO: Just like everybody 
else. Vivica Fox left her family, 
and she worked only a week and a half. 
She spent three months in training, in- 
cluding a month in Beijing, and her scene 
was shot here six months later. She didn't 
like it, but when that week and a half 
came, she kicked ass like you wouldn't 
believe. I needed that commitment. 
PLAYBOY: Who thought of Carradine? 
TARANTINO: Warren di thought of 
Carradine after reading his autobiogra- 
phy but never told anybody. Warren 
suggested him out of the blue, and 1 
laughed. The minute he said that, that 
kind of became the deal. 

PLAYBOY: David Carradine has a reputa- 
tion for being somewhat eccentric. 
TARANTINO: I'm a huge fan of his. Along 
with a few actors such as Jack Nicholson 


and Christopher Walken, David is one of 
the great mad geniuses of the acting 
community. There is also the aspect of 
having Gordon Liu, representing Hong 
Kong, Sonny Chiba, representing Japan, 
and David Carradine, star of Kung Fu, 
representing America—a literal round- 
up of the three countries that made mar- 
tial arts the genre that it is. 
PLAYBOY: What is it like for a young guy 
to be transformed overnight from a film 
geck into a rock star, as you were when 
Pulp Fiction came out? 
TARANTINO: Let's make it clear that we're 
using the rock star thing because you 
brought it up. 
PLAYBOY: Did your sudden fame change 
the way women regard you? Do rock star 
directors have groupies? 
TARANTINO: Even before Pulp Fiction Y 
started discovering how cool it is to be a 
director. When I started going on the film 
festival circuit, I was getting laid all the 
time. I'd never been out of the country 
before, and not only was I getting laid, 1 
was getting laid by foreign chicks. When I 
wasn't getting laid I'd find myself making 
out with some Italian girl who was the 
spitting image of Michelle Pfeiffer. 
PLAYBOY: Were these women you would 
dream about when you were a mini- 
mum-wage guy? 
TARANTINO: No, it wasn't quite Revenge of 
the Nerds. Y always really liked beautiful 
women and interesting women. 1 never 
walked around thinking I was this geek 
who could never get anybody. I never felt 
any girl was unattainable, as long as she 
got to know me. But when you spend 
most of your time renting videos at the 
Video Archives, it's hard to meet girls un- 
less you're in a situation where they're 
around. The entire time I was at the vidco 
store, my only dates were with customers. 
Other than that, I'd hang out with my 
dateless friends and go to movies 

"The minute I started working at places 
where 1 had more natural contact with 
women, it becamea whole different story. 
I felt like Elvis when I was meeting girls 
on the festival circuit. I went crazy for a 
little bit—a lot of making out. I love kiss- 
ing. I'ma good kisser. 
PLAYBOY: What about foot massages, the 
kind you popularized in Pulp Fiction? 
TARANTINO: Гує been known to give a 
good foot massage. But with Reservoir Dogs 
and Pulp Fiction it just went off the hook. 
There was alot of making up for lost ime. 
What handsome guys did in their 20s, 1 
did in my 30s. When you become fa- 
mous, its cool. I can go by myself into a 
bar Гуе never been in before, and in no 
time ГИ have a couple girls around me, 
if not more. 1 usually go home with a 
couple phone numbers, and I'm not ask- 
ing for them. If I go into а strip club now 
and play my cards right, І can take one of 
the strippers home. If I go to get a lap 
dance when it's close to the end of the 
night, when they're getting ready to close 
up, and the girl knows who Гат, she'll 


QUENTIN'S MAGIC TOUCH 


Sometimes Tarantino saves a career, sometimes he doesn't 


Ё JOHN TRAVOLTA/Pulp Fiction 
Я. Before QT: The ultimate fallen idol couldn't 
get orrested in eorly-1990s Hollywood—even 
[в] though those talking-boby flicks were o cap- 
ті itol offense. After QT: In опе masterstroke, 
Ë Torontino gave Vinnie B. an Oscar-nominot- 
ГЕ ed, $20 million comebock. But now he's 
foding again. Is more GT help on the woy? 


= SAMUEL 1. JACKSON/Pulp Fiction 
Е Before QT: Jockson spent yeors doing bits 
Е in everything from The Exorcist IIl to Good- 
E fellos. After QT: As o deodly cool, Bible- 

Ë spouting hit man he won on Oscar nomino- 
Е tion and instont stordom. Now he's rich ond 
E famous enough to woste his brillionce on 

Е crop like XXX ond turgid Stor Wars sequels. 


Е UMA THURMAN/Pulp Fiction 

E Before QT: When Quentin met Uma, she 

Е wos best known for artsy duds like Even 

Е Cowgirls Get the Blues. Pulp's hypo to the 
heort sent her to the A-list. After QT: Toronti- 

Е no wrote Kill Bill for Umo, then stuck with her 

Е during baby deloys. Will it karote-kick her 


BE into high geor or send her back to Cultville? 


3 BRIDGET FONDA/Jackie Brown 

Е Before QT: Fonda hod made more thon 30 
movies without o reol hit. Torantino shrewd- 
ly cost her os o drugged-out, TV-oddicted 

ГЕ surfer bunny. Fonda scored, but the movie 
didn't. After QT: She wos even better os the 
scary wife in A Simple Plan, which flopped, 
os did Monkeybone. Curse, опуопе? 


DAVID CARRADINE/Kill Bill 
Before QT: Some count Torontino's costing 
of the spooky dude from the old Kung Fu ТУ 
show os his biggest gomble yet, especially 
since he seemed to have disoppeored for 
yeors. After QT: Sure, Torontino's faith in 
Carrodine could blow up in his foce like a 
trick cigar, but our dough's on the thin man. 


CHRIS PENN/Reservoir Dogs 

Before QT: Sean's little brother worked 
with such big-timers as Coppolo (Rumble 
Fish) ond Eastwood (Pale Rider) but never 
caught fire. Torontino exploited his mopey 
surliness as o mob boss's son. After QT: 
Beethoven's 2nd? Corky Romano? Clearly, 
Torontino's mogic doesn't olwoys work. 


PAM GRIER/Jackie Brown 

Before QT: Bloxploitotion's gunslinger god- 
dess scorched the psyche of 1970s fan Toran- 
tino. But director worship of o 40-something 
cult stor doth not o hit moke. After QT: She's 
been stuck trifling with Snoop Dogg in Bones 
‘and Eddie Murphy in Pluto Nash when she 
ought to be making those fools her bilches. 


QUENTIN TARANTINO/Kill Bill 
Before QT: No one's worked horder to turn 
Quentin Tarantino into o movie star thon 
Quentin Torontino. He's stuck himself in 
everything he's directed thus for ond hos 
even manoged to get o few of his director 
buddies to follow suit. After QT: As on oc- 
tor he's a greot director. | —STEPHEN REBELLO 


61 


PLAYBOY 


probably ask if want to go out for coffee. 
PLAYBOY: What was the biggest surprise 
about the women’ 
TARANTINO: One thing I wasn't expect- 
ing—1 really gota kick out of it—was get- 
ting really sexy fan mail. 

PLAYBOY: Do you mean nude pictures? 
TARANTINO: | never really got nude pic- 
tures. 1 would get girls who have really 
big crushes on me writing about that, 
whether they're 12 or 13 or 25. Falso got 
sex letters, and those were pretty cool. 
The girls had done some thinking about 
my sexuality. Some of the pictures and 
letters were brilliant. 

PLAYBOY: Highlights, please. 

TARANTINO: One girl sent me a can of 
tennis balls, with a picture and a note 
that said, “Now you've got the balls, give 
me a call. 
PLAYBOY: Did you call? 

TARANTINO: Í did, but she was in St. 
Louis, and I wasn't going to travel. 1 fol- 
lowed up on a few of the letters. One 
girl, ГИ never forget her. I don't think I 
called her; I was afraid she was a little 
too young. In her picture, she could 
have been 20, or she could have been 
15. She was а young black girl. I was do- 
ing From Dusk Till Dawn with George 
Clooney. After І read the letter, 1 went 
banging on his trailer. I went in and read 
it to him, and he was like, "Whoa!" 
PLAYBOY: Hc gets good letters too. 
TARANTINO: We had a good time reading 
each other our sex mail. This one was so 
imaginative. First she's telling me what 
movies she'd like to watch with me, talk- 
ing like a cool film-geek kind of girl, and 
then she starts getting into dirty stuff. 
She mentions kissing for hours. Then 
she writes, ^I want to dress you in а 
French maid outfit, and while I sit in a 
chair in a garter belt and panties, smok- 
ing а cigarette, ГІЇ make you pick up 
every piece of lint off the carpet. And I'm 
not going to be casy about it! You're go- 
ing to have to get right down on your 
hands and knees, and I want that carpet 
completely clean as I smoke cigarettes." 
PLAYBOY: You spent four months in China 
shooting Kill Bill. How does a guy enter- 
tain himself in a communist country? 
TARANTINO: The nightlife in China is off 
the hook. If you've ever seen Sixth Street 
in Austin, Texas, that street with all the 
bars, well, they've got five streets like 
that in Beijing, and the bars are open all 
night. We worked six-day weeks in China 
and did a lot of partying on our day off. 
When we finished shooting, we would go 
out. We were up all night on Saturdays, 
and we would sleep all day on Sunday. 
China is the ecstasy capital of the world 
right now. They have E there that's be- 
yond acid. It's wild. We had a good 
goddamn time in China. 

PLAYBOY: You did ecstasy? 

TARANTINO: Yes. The first time 1 went to 
the Great Wall of China it was like an all- 


night rave. They had rock bands, fire- 


62 works, We were smoking pot and doing 


E. It was great. Me and a bunch of the 
crew partied like rock stars all night. It's 
a great way to see the wall the first time. 
PLAYBOY: You write about bad guys who 
navigate through the worst trouble imag- 
inable. What's the worst situation you've 
had to get out of? Was it the time you 
spent in jail? 

TARANTINO: I went to the county jail three 
different times, all for traffic stuff. I was in 
my 20s and broke, barely making $8,000 
a year. If I got caught for traffic stuff, 1 
had to do the days because I couldn't pay. 
When your car's outlawed and you have 
no insurance, if you get a ticket you can't 
fix it. You just do the days and try not to 
get caught again for a while. 

PLAYBOY: You pummeled a producer of 
Natural Born Killers at a Hollywood 
restaurant and scrapped in a New York 
City bar with a guy who objected to the 
way you refer to blacks in your movies. 
Do you have too quick a temper? 
TARANTINO: I don't think I have a quick 
temper. 1 can get into a discussion, and 
that argument can get heated. I'm not 
going to take it to a violent place, be- 
cause I know there is no limit to where I 


"Boom! I punched him. The 
bouncers grabbed me, and. 
then the guy tried to bite me 
in ту breast. He took а big 
bite out of me, right by my 
nipple. What an asshole." 


could go with that. Depending on how 
thick the shit gets, I'll go all the way if 1 
need to. 1 don’t want to. Life will be a lot 
easier if 1 don't. I can get really mad at 
somebody, but I'm never afraid that ГЇЇ 
hit them or step over that line. But the 
minute they do, I'm all there. 

PLAYBOY: When was the last time you got. 
into a physical altercation? 

TARANTINO: Well, for a while it was hap- 
pening a lot. There was a third incident. 
that nobody knew about, with a cabdriv- 
ег I was with a girl, and he was really 
rude. I got into an argument with him. 
We were yelling at each other, and he 
said something about her. I went around 
the side of the cab and beat him up. 
Bouncers from a club pulled me off him, 
and he drove away. Those two other 
things had just happened, and I remem- 
ber thinking, Is this worth $30,000, the 
amount ГІЇ have to pay when this guy 
figures out who 1 am? How much do I 
want to whip this guy's ass? He was a big 
black guy, and they're used to white guys 
backing down. I don't back down, espe- 
cially to big black guys. That gives me a 
psychological advantage. When І don't 
back down, they have to stop and think, 


Why didn't he back down? He came out 
of the car and said, "Come on, mother- 
fucker!" Right then the $30,000 went 
out of my head, and all I was thinking 
was, I'm going to get my money's worth. 
PLAYBOY: Did you? 
TARANTINO: 1 did. Boom! 1 punched him. 
The bouncers grabbed me, and then the 
guy tried to bite me in my breast. He 
took a big bite out of me, right by my 
nipple. What a fucking asshole! 
PLAYBOY: Talk about a plot twist. You 
probably never expected to get milked. 
TARANTINO: The only reason he didn't 
really fuck me up was he was too greedy. 
He took too big a bite. Had he taken a 
small bite, I might not have a nipple 
now. He barely broke the skin because 
he had too much flesh in his mouth. 
PLAYBOY: Did it cost you $30,000? 
TARANTINO: No, I did something smart. I 
said to myself, I'm not going to call my 
publicist; Гт not telling anybody. 1 
didn't want to release it into the atmos- 
phere, figuring I had about five days be- 
fore he figured out who I was. It wasn't 
till two months later that I told friends 
Td gotten into this fight. 
PLAYBOY: Fighting lends to your mystique. 
Why are people so intrigued by you? 
TARANTINO: Iwo things. They are dig- 
ging on my movies. Maybe I turned 
them on to movies they'd never seen be- 
fore. Then there's my personal Ameri- 
can-dream story that maybe they saw me 
tell on The Tonight Show or read in inter- 
views. I'm open, and what you see is 
what you get. That is something that 
made me sick of the media for a bit, be- 
cause it seemed like they were making 
fun of me for being me. That sounds like 
some poor-baby thing, but once you're 
an adult, people don't make fun of you 
anymore— not to your face. 
PLAYBOY: You become a caricature. 
TARANTINO: You'll read about someone 
taking a swipe, making fun of your 
looks—my hair, my jaw or the way I talk. 
I've gotten over it, but it hurt my feel- 
ings. 1 wasn't expecting that. Who needs 
that shit? I didn't want to go through 
that shit in high school; that’s why I 
dropped out. You think, They're always 
complaining about everybody being so 
guarded. I'm not guarded, and I'm pay- 
ing for it. I'm over it now, though. 
PLAYBOY: For both Reservoir Dogs and 
Pulp Fiction you were accused of borrow- 
ing elements from obscure Hong Kong 
films. Tell us the influences that went into 
Pulp Fiction. The scene in which Bruce 
Willis and Ving Rhames are brawling, 
fall into a pawnshop and end up cap- 
tured by redneck homosexual rapists, 
where did that come from? 
TARANTINO: 1 don't know exactly how 
those things happen. I'm about not get- 
ting too analytical beforehand and just 
letting stories take the turns they tak: 
PLAYBOY: You could compare that pawn- 
shop scene to John Boorman's Deliverance, 
(continued on page 140) 


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©7003 Уйдан Persia Vodka, 100% Erain Nest Sprit, {80 pref), Kl Domos Spin USA, Wester, СТ. 


RUSSIAN VODKA 


64 


GOD AND SATAN IN 


BENTONVILLE 


BY DAN BAUM 


Wal-Mart, America's largest corporation, smites its com- 
petitors, casts out mom and pop and enforces Christian 
values—all from its birthplace in a small Arkansas town. 
Our reporter roams the epicenter of retail's Evil Empire 


It is a little past midnight in 

Bentonville, Arkansas, and Alice. 
is on her knees on a cold linoleum 
floor, feverishly moving bottles of 
Woolite from a stack of cartons to a 
perforated steel shelf. The air is redo- 
lent of cotton candy and popcorn, and 
even in the dead of night Wal-Mart's 
flagship store is as busy as a carnival 
midway. Here on Walton Boulevard, 
out by the interstate, the 178,000- 
square-foot store is crowded with 
families, pale as cheese in the fluores- 
cent light, buying, buying, buying: 
tools, towels, sweatsuits, barbecue 
grills, baseball bats, pork butts, copies 
of Seabiscuit, toothpaste, auto parts, 


T YOU, MR. SAM 


frozen broccoli. Alice, which is the 
name | will give to this dignified woman 
in her middle years, raises her fore- 
arm to wipe her damp bangs from ner 
forehead. Her royal-blue uniform vest is 
clean and crisp, and a big button above 
her name tag announces GREAT JOB: I'M 
А SHAREHOLDER! 

"Not much, but some," she says 
when asked how many Wal-Mart 
shares she owns. She explains, as she 
starts on a fresh carton of Woolite, that 
employees can buy company shares 
straight from their paychecks without 
paying a commission, "it makes you 
feel like you're working for yourself," 
she says. Alice earns $8.35 an hour, so 
not much is left for buying stock after 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY BENJAMIN KRAIN 


rent and groceries, but still, “It's this or 
the chicken plant,” she says brightly, 
referring to the foul-smelling poultry- 
processing factories sprinkled through- 
out northwestern Arkansas. "I'd never 
Owned stock before working here. 
Thank you, Mr. Sam!” 

Mr. Sam is Sam Walton, the vision- 
ary who founded Wal-Mart here in 
Bentonville 41 years ago. His picture 
hangs in stores and company offices 
all over the rapidly globalizing Wal- 
Mart empire; his ghost hovers over 
everything the company does. The 
miracles Mr. Sam wrought are myriad: 
With breathtaking speed, his chain of 
rurally based discount stores has sur- 
passed such avatars of production as 


General Motors and ExxonMobil to 
become the world's largest corpora- 
tion. Not through scientific break- 
throughs or industrial wizardry but 
merely by selling quotidian goods at 
low prices, Wal-Mart has become the 
biggest civilian employer on the plan- 
et, with more people on its payroll 
than GM, ExxonMobil, Ford and Gen- 
eral Electric combined. Its sales last 
year nearly surpassed the gross na- 
tional product of Russia. 

Mr. Sam's empire not only is the 
country's biggest marketer of just 
about every item it sells, from gro- 
ceries to eyeglasses to clothing to jew- 
elry, it also consumes more energy 


Wal-Mart carries only 500 book titles 
(a typical Barnes & Noble carries 
roughly 60,000), but it moves 64 million 
books a year, so publishing executives 
have been forced to take into account 
the kinds of books that do well there. 
Most recently the chain has focused 
its attention on magazines ($450 mil- 
lion in annual sales), demanding spe- 
cial placement for women’s titles with 
racy cover lines and banishing some 
men's titles altogether (it has never 
carried this magazine, of course). 

To an outsider, Wal-Mart would ap- 
pear to be a tough place to work. It 
holds many store employees to a 28- 
hour workweek, so it doesn't have to 


with such ease and speed? 

One of Wal-Mart's many idiosyn- 
crasies is that it bases itself not in New 
York City, Chicago or some other cen- 
ter of commerce but here in Benton- 
ville, population 19,730, one of the 
least accessible places in the United 
States. Everybody who does business 
with Wal-Mart—which seems to be 
everybody—sooner or later has to 
make the pilgrimage, which generally 
involves at least one plane change and 
a night in a strip-mall motel. Serendip- 
ity does not explain the headquarter- 
ing of the world's largest corporation 
in the middle of nowhere. It is deliber- 
ate. As Wal-Mart representatives nev- 


SERENDIPITY ALONE DOES NOT EXPLAIN IT 

This location, in one of the least accessible places in the United 
States, is deliberate. As Wal-Mart never tires of saying, Bentonville 
mirrors, nurtures and expresses the company's “heartland values." 


and develops more real estate than 
any other corporation. It issues credit 
cards and cashes payroll checks and is 
lining up its legal ducks to move into 
full-fledged banking. (The Walton fami- 
ly already owns the Arvest Bank of 
Arkansas.) Wal-Mart is starting to put 
gas stations in its parking lots. There's 
talk of a Wal-Mart airline. 

Behind the familiar smiley-face but- 
tons and the folksy slogan "Every day 
low prices," a different picture emerges 
of this behemoth. In its Darwinian 
march to dominance, Wal-Mart has 
amassed unforeseen social and cultur- 
al power. Not only has it all but wiped 
out its competition wherever it has 
opened, it has helped empty the cen- 
ters of hundreds of small towns and 
thrives at the expense of mom-and- 
pop stores. With its enormous clout in 
music sales (more than 100 million 
albums sold annually), Wal-Mart has 
Offered a Corleone-style deal to labels 
and recording artists: Re-edit your 
lyrics to our liking or we won't sell your 
music in our stores. Movies? Wal-Mart 
sells nearly one of every four DVDs 
and videotapes Americans buy, so if it 
chooses to put a movie on its shelves, 
more people are guaranteed to buy it. 


pay them the benefits that by law go to 
its full-time workers. More than three 
dozen employee lawsuits allege that it 
insists on unpaid overtime. Its full-cov- 
erage health insurance is so expensive 
that only about a third of its employ- 
ees buy in. It does not extend benefits 
to same-sex or unmarried partners of 
employees. (In July, however, Wal-Mart 
became the ninth of the top 10 Fortune 
500 companies to extend its anti- 
discrimination policies to gay and les- 
bian workers.) It is the target of a class- 
action lawsuit brought by women—led 
by a former Miss Americe—who charge 
sex discrimination in wages and pro- 
motions. Working at Wal-Mart is the 
epitome of a McJob. 

So it's all the more miraculous that 
the stores are staffed with cheerful, 
grateful people like Alice—1.4 million 
employees last year, set to expand by 
800,000 in the next few years. Where 
else are you likely to find a middle- 
aged woman on her knees, working a 
teenager's job for a barely livable 
wage yet chirping high praise for her 
multibillion-dollar company and its 
long-dead founder? Who are these 
people? What is the nature of this cul- 
ture that is transforming our world 


er tire of saying, Bentonville mirrors, 
nurtures and expresses the compa- 
ny's "heartland values." Bentonville— 
conservative, devoutly Christian and 
lily-white—is the world as Wal-Mart 
sees it. If Wal-Mart is our destiny, Ben- 
tonville is our destination. For a 
glimpse of the future, head for the 
spot on the map where Arkansas State 
Road 72 meets Arkansas 112. 


RETAIL AS RELIGION 
Northwestern Arkansas appears to be 
undergoing some kind of theological 
schism. There's a church every quarter 
mile along the highway to Bentonville. 
Why can't the First Baptists pray with 
the First Landmark Baptists or the 
Calvary Baptists or the Cornerstone 
Baptists? Locals call this area the "buck- 
le on the Bible Belt" and the "most reli- 
gious place on earth,” and they may be 
tight. Some churches on State 72 are as 
grand as Monticello; others are single- 
wides. Many warn from their marquees 
of dire consequences if ! don't stop in. 
But because it's Saturday and they're 
all shut tight, | instead head toward 
Bentonville’s everyday holy ground: the 
old downtown five-and-dime where 
the Wal-Mart story began. 


Sam Walton, 
though born poor 
in Bible Belt Ok- 
Tahoma, was not 
particularly re- 
ligious. He en- 
ded up in Benton- 
ville because his 
wife refused to 
live in any town 
with a popula- 
tion over 10,000 
and because a 
dime store on 
the town square 
was for sale 
Downtown Bentonville today looks 
much the way it does in photos from 
1950. Walton's five-and-dime is now 
the hagiographic Wal-Mart museum, 
but a concrete Confederate soldier 
still watches over the square, and it 
appears that not much has been built 
since Eisenhower was president. 
There's a "real country store" for 
tourists, a few lawyers' offices, a Sta- 
tionery store and a real estate apprais- 
er. The Station Café serves "freedom 
toast" for breakfast, and a banner 
stretches across the courthouse: MAIN 
STREET BENTONVILLE: PRESERVING THE PAST, EN- 
HANCING THE PRESENT, ENSURING THE FUTURE. 

The most striking thing about pre- 
sent-day Bentonville is the invisibility 
ої minorities. The town, it's hard not to 
notice, is whiter than a 1950s sitcom. 
Even when use the old reporter's trick 
of asking where the black barbecue 
joint is, nobody can tell me. How 
about the black funeral home? Nope. 
The black Baptist church? Nope. With 


м mı 


DO? WALTON, THE FOUNDER, WO 


a certain sense 
of despair and 
apprehension, | 
stake out the 
one place | fig- 
ure I'll find mi- 
norities: the jail. 
(it's not an il- 
logical suppo- 
Sition: Ten per- 
cent of all black 
men between 
the ages of 25 
and 29 are in 
jail, according 
to the U.S. Jus- 
tice Department.) But when a deputy 
sheriff ushers through a line of prison- 
ers in leg irons and black-and-white 
prison stripes right out of O Brother, 
Where Art Thou?, every one is white. 
You wouldn't see a more Caucasian 
lineup in a Stockholm lockup. 

Nobody here much likes being 
asked where the black folks went. 
"Gee...," they say, stumped, as though 
nobody had ever asked the question 
Then the cloud lifts: "But we have 
plenty of Mexicans!" several people 
tell me. This isn't strictly true; hun- 
dreds—maybe thousands—of Mexi- 
cans and Central Americans live in 
nearby Rogers and Springdale and 
work in the chicken plants. | find hard- 
ly any living in Bentonville itself. 

Bentonville is Wal-Mart's company 
town, and it shares with the corporation 
a proprietor's sense of privacy about 
its affairs. | find out quickly enough 
that it is impossible to talk to vendors, 
the companies that sell to Wal-Mart, 
on the record. And even local govern- 
ment agencies seem a bit cowed 
when І mention Wal-Mart. | stop at the 
state welfare agency, which in most 
places is delighted to find anyone tak- 
ing an interest in the needs of the local 
poor. But at the soaring modern offices 
of the Arkansas Department of Human 


— 


CORNING, NEW YORK 
Heart of glass 
10,842 
This little town, 


won't melt in the oven, is 
the third-largest tourist 
attraction in New York, trailing only Manhat- 
tan and Niagara Falls. Founded in 1868, the 
Corning empire got its start with a particular- 
y БН idea: the еы; 


HERSHEY, PENNSYLVANIA 
Welcome to Candyland 
12,771 
Milton Hershey 
squeezed out his first 
chocolate Kisses here in 
_ 1907. Warning to vacation- 

ers looking for Mr. Goodbar: The roads to 
Hershey can get crowded these days—the 
eponymous park is the most visited corporate 
attraction in the United States. 


MOLINE, ILLINOIS 
Children of the corn 
43,768 
John Deere's jolly 
green farm implements 
have been ravaging the 
back 40 since 1848. Intro- 
duced in 1923, Deere's two-cylinder Model D 
enjoyed a 30-year production run, during which 
it ds up more dirt than The National Enquirer. 


SMITHFIELD, VIRGINIA 
Hog butcher to the world 
6,324 
This town's days of 
swine and roses began 
with the opening of the 
Smithfield Packaging plant 
in 1936. This past March the world’s largest 
pork producer sponsored a record-setting 
200-pound ham biscuit. Oprah wept. 
bes arrived in 1978 and now 
` employs more people— 
4,354—than live in the town. The company is 


one of the world's largest purveyors of polos, 
chinos and other Spanish-sounding duds. 


DODGEVILLE, 
Ain't no half-preppin* 
4,220 


A dinky sailing-garb 
business called Lands’ End 


Fruit of the 
Loom, Random 
House Chil- 
dren's Books 
and hundreds 
of others. Lined 


Services in 
Bentonville, 
administrator 
Preston Haley 
appears so 
nervous to be 


asked about up in identical 
anything as cubicles, many 
unpleasant as with their wares 
poverty in displayed in 
Wal-Mart's mock-ups of 
backyard—his Wal-Mart 
Adam's apple shelves, ven- 


dors await 
their audience with the Wal-Mart 
buyer corps. 

This blossoming of new money 
helps explain the area's vast assort- 
ment of churches. What locals some- 
times call the Amen Corner—the junc- 
tion of 26th Street and New Hope Road 
in nearby Rogers—has four churches 
staring at one another, each as grand 
as the Supreme Court building. The 
congregations keep splintering over 
how plain or fancy their worship should 
be. “These big show-and-tell churches 
are the vendors'," someone from a 
smaller church tells me. “They're the 
country clubs of years gone by." 

The service at the gigantic, neo- 
classical First Baptist, off the town 
square—among the most resplendent 
of Bentonville churches—resembles a 
motivational seminar at, say, the Los 
Angeles Convention Center. The sanc- 
tuary is vast, balconied and semicircu- 
lar, and sitting in back I can barely see 
Rev. Phillip Smith, a youngish man with 
Trent Lott hair, without the help of the 
two enormous projection TV screens 
that loom overhead, beaming his image 
to the faithful. This is New Bentonville: 

(continued on page 86) 


bouncing off 2 
the tightly buttoned collar of his lilac 
dress shirt—that his Southern polite- 
ness fails him. "I can't say anything to 
you at all!” he cries, showing me to the 
door. The agency representative in Lit- 
tle Rock, Arkansas's capital, is no more 
helpful. “We really aren't interested in 
commenting,” she tells me. 

“What do you mean?” | ask. "You're 
a public agency, and I'm asking about 
the work you do with taxpayer money." 

"We're not interested in comment- 
ing," she says again and ends the call. 


* 


On Sunday morning nobody is out and 
about between 9 and 11 A.M. I Visit as 
many churches as possible during the 
two hours they're all open for busi- 
ness but cover just a fraction. Traffic is 
no problem, yet | feel as though there 
are twice the 38 churches listed in the 
yellow pages. Some are tucked into 
old stores in strip malls; others stand 
in converted houses in residential 
neighborhoods. 

It'S often said that Sunday morning 
from 11 to noon is the most segregat- 
ed hour in America, and that means by 
class as well as by race. In Bentonville, 


х WAL-TO-WAL NUMBERS х 


Pet food, clothing, CDs, groceries—Wal-Mart dominates every market it enters 


as in many parts of the South, the 
churches part along class lines. Many 
of the enormous, opulent churches 
started appearing in Bentonville— 
along with Porsche Carreras, Lincoln 
Navigators and million-dollar man- 
sions—after Walton died in 1992. 
"When Sam was alive, you never saw а 
foreign car or an ostentatious Ameri- 
can car," says Kent Marts, a down-to- 
earth local who manages to display 
not a trace of Wal-Mart boosterism. 
Marts has given 17 of his 40 years to 
The Benton County Daily Record and is 
now its editor in chief. "He wouldn't 
have stood for his own people show- 
ing off that way, and he wouldn't have 
the vendors here in town." 

After Walton died, Wal-Mart execu- 
tives felt freer to flaunt their wealth. 
And vendors, tired of the endless trips 
to Bentonville as well as the Super 8 
and Quality Inn accommodations, 
started to set up satellite offices right 
under the late patriarch's nose. As І 
drive up and down Walton Boulevard, 
1 count them: Catalina sportswear, 


“Ж Wal-Mart serves an average of 
1 customers a day— 

of the population of the 
United States. or slightly less than 
that of New York state. 


A Wal-Mart generates an average 
of miles of register tape 
each day—enough to reach from. 
Manhattan to Las Vegas. 


“Ж Dn November 29, 2002 (ће 
Friday after Thanksgiving) Wal- 
Mart's total sales were š 

E —more than the an- 


Ж In 2003 Wal-Mart expects to 
see an increase in revenue of 

Thats more than 
twice the annual sales of such 
mom-and-pop outfits as Nike, 
Toys R Us and Gillette. 


Ж Wal-Mart stores рош 
ol 


energy in 2001, nearly twice the. 
amount of juice generated each 
year by Hoover Dam. 


“Ж Wal-Mart's 2002 revenue was 

Š №, an amount 
equal to that of IBM, Hewlett- 
Packard, ADI Time Warner, Dell 
and Microsoft combined. 


Ж Major-magazine newsstand 


% ef that total. 


Ж Wal-Mart sold 

books last year, or of 
the 1 books sold in 
the United States. The relatively 
low percentage belies the chain's 
influence: A typical Barnes & 
Noble stocks at least 
titles, while most Wal-Mart stores 
carry just E 
Ж Video sales in the US. to 


I in 2002. 


Marts share of that revenue was 
la, but the percentage of units it 


moved was higher—about 24% of 
the 83 movies sold 
nationwide—because of Wal- 
Mart's cut-rate pricing, 

A Wal-Mart sold 102 

of the .5 м! CDs 
and musical albums that Americans. 
bought in 2002. 


Ж Wal-Mart began selling gro- 
ceries in 1988 and is now the. 
largest grocer іп the U.S., with 
1 revenue of more than 

7 LION and a market 
share approaching 


69 


“Tm headed for the barn. Interested?” 


We've stamped your 
passport to PLAYBOY girls 
from around the globe 


ravel the world and you'll notice two high- ( 
lights: the women, who never cease to 
amaze us, and the language barrier, which 
somehow makes even the mundane seem 4 
sexy. In Rome we got a kick out of this laundromat ! 
sign: LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND o 
THE DAY HAVING FUN. In Paris we took a cue from a 
hotel note that read, "Leave your values at the front 
desk." As for the girls, PLAYBOY has been involved in 
global warming since 1972, when we launched our 
first foreign edition, in Germany. Today we have 18 
foreign titles, and since you may not have access to 
newsstands in faraway lands, we decided to show 
off our favorite models from recent issues. See? 


We're one step closer to world peace. 


im 


ТШ 


Tolan 
Romania 


Corina Tolan (left) is 
an ambitious beauty 
queen with an arsenal 
of pageants on her 
résumé, including Miss 
Europe, Miss Seaside, 
Queen of the Year, 
Miss Romania World 
and the Elite Model 
Look of the Year. 
When it came to put- 
ting her on our Ro- 
manian cover, it was 
no cortest. 


Tanja 
Kewitsch 
Germany 


Rhythmic gymnast 

Tanja Kewitsch (right) 

doesn't need a team 

of judges to tell her 

she's a perfect 10 

Now that Tanja has 
demonstrated her 

flexibility, she hopes Й 
to become а TV host 

We suggest that she 

start as a nude com- | 
mentator during the i 
2004 Olympic games 

in Athens. 


SEE MORE OF THESE NUDE “= > 
INTERNATIONAL BEAUTIES "аши 
ATCYBERPLAYBOYCOM. — 


When she posed for 
PLAYBOY, Moscow- 
born Ksenia Linkova 
(left) put her Russian 
dressing on the side. 
^| hate liars and wak- 
ing up early. I love to 
strip, and | live to 
make a family," she 
says. Our advice to 
her significant other? 
You'd better take her 
up on that—or at 
least start practicing. 


Nike 
Zalokar 


The smart money says 
Nike Zalokar wasn't 
named after a sneak- 
er brand, but when it 
came to peeling off 
her clothes for the 
cover of our Sloven- 
ian edition, she just 
did it. (Sorry, we 
couldn't resist.) Nike 
says she has o hot 
temper and loves to 
travel, and she named 
her horse Playboy. 
Giddyup! 


HE'S THE MOST FAMOUS 
PORN STAR IN HISTORY, 

A SUPERHERO TO REGULAR 
GUYS. BUT THIS GETTING- 
OLD STUFF HASN'T BEEN 
EASY ON RON JEREMY 


By ERIK HEDEGAARD 


1. HIS LUCK IS OUR LUCK 

Ron Jeremy, who turned 50 this year, isn't performing in all that many porn mov- 
ies these days, and you may be wondering how the most famous porn star ever, 
bar none, the ladies included, with 1,800-plus skin flicks to his name, is doing. 
He's doing good. Much of his time is spent on the road in places such as Tampa, 
Chicago and Kansas City, where clubs hire him to perform this comedy routine 
he's developed (strictly cornball stuff: *Hey, lady, do you like birds? You'll like 
this—it's just а swallow!"). Otherwise he can be found in Los Angeles, where he 
rises early, often before eight A.M. after going to bed late, often after three A.M., 
for days on end, until you think he may keel over. Inside his condo in a deluxe 
doorman building on a street just east of Sunset, he slips into a pair of Adidas 
sweats (one of three pairs in constant rotation), never mind the shirt, scratches 
his famously hairy, zeppelin-size chest, maybe greets his pet Russian box turtle, 
Cherry, maybe urges a visitor to kiss Cherry on Cherry's turtle lips, then pads 
around, yawning and trying not to stumble over the various mementos of his life, 
which are strewn everywhere and signify quite an illustrious past. There are Ron 
Jeremy posters, Ron Jeremy porn tapes, Ron Jeremy porn-organization hall-of- 
fame awards, copies of the recent Ron Jeremy documentary (Porn Star: The Leg- 
end of Ron Jeremy), copies of his music video, “Freak of the Week” (which spent 
27 weeks on the Billboard charts), and about a billion dollars' worth of Ron 
Jeremy-branded merchandise, which has included rolling papers, cigars, watch- 
es, clocks and bibs for babies. As it happens, no one is a more avid fan of Ron 
Jeremy's career than Ron Jeremy. A hero to all the average guys in the country, 
he is the same hero to himself, as if he still can't believe that he, a hirsute Jewish 
doofus from Bayside, Queens, offspring of a physicist and a cryptographer, has 
made it so big in the world of porn, all on the strength of his oversize, never-fail 
penis, which measures 9.75 inches erect, with not a little help from his oversize, 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID ROSE 


Portrait of the artist as a young harn (from left): Ron in high school; in Boston in the 1980s; in the 1981 film A Girl's Best Friend; circa 1998. Below: Fonz with chest rug. 


never-fail personality, which measures off the scale in terms 
of friendliness, volubility and self-promotion. Of course, 
he'd rather have made it as a legitimate screen actor, his 
original ambition. Súll, he has a million “utterly fantastic” 
stories about his first 24 years in the trade, and if you've got 
the time, he'll tell them all in detail, prefacing each with the 
same pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming tagline: “True story!” 

“True story!” he says. “Fifteen years ago Robin Williams, 
Stephen Stills, Sam Kinison and [ are in a cab. You're going 
to think I'm full of it. I wouldn't blame you. But it was all of 
us, hanging out with this cabdriver, and all he wants is my 
autograph—nobody else's, right? So Robin's going, ‘Oh, this 
is amazing!’ And Sam's laughing. And Stephen Stills, I swear 
to god, says to the cabbie, “There area lot of lonely guys out 
there who really need Ron Jeremy to pull through.’ I coulda 
died right then and there.” 

Just then the phone rings, cutting off Ron before he can 
launch into another of his true stories, such as the one about 
the time Nancy Sinatra said to him, “You know, you're very 

good at what you do,” or 

the time Tony Curtis said 

to him, “I've enjoyed 

years and years of watch- 
ing you make movies.” 
It's a girl on the line, 
and she's apparently 
upset with Ron about 
some other girl of their 
acquaintance. Soon 

he's shouting, "I'm 

telling you, you're 

dreaming! I’m telling 
you now, the Lord as 
my witness, on my 
mother's grave, 1 
didn't call her at five 
in the morning! І 
gave her a little hug 
good-bye but not 
even a lass! I mean, 
isthis a problem?" 
He hangs up. sighs 
and puts on а plus-size Hawaiian-print 
shirt. At 245 pounds he’s a goodly porker, but under all that 
weight is a lot of surprisingly firm muscle, and to prove it, 
he'll make you touch it. That's the way it is with Ron: Almost 
everything needs proof. It's not enough that he tells you he's 
got a girl half his age in his bedroom; you've got to go in 
there and see for yourself. 
She is a petite brunette named Jennifer, and she is 


indeed 25. Wrapped up in bedsheets she says, “I've been 
seeing Ron for three months now, and all the people I've 
told so far are like, ‘Oh my god, you're sleeping with Ron 
Jeremy?’ Well, it is big, but you get used to it.” She props 
her head up onan elbow and says, cheerfully, “I’ve come to 
realize that size matters completely. I don’t know if I can go 
back to a small guy now." 

These are some of the things Ron is up to these days. He's 
doing good. But his life is not without complications, and 
these complications mostly have to do with two women, one 
a former porn star named Dalny Marga, the other a rather 
quiet veterinarian's assistant named Natalie. Ron thinks he 
may love Natalie. Ron thinks he may want Natalie to have 
his kids. Natalie, though, isn't sure about any of this, espe- 
cially not if Ron is going to keep on living the life he's living. 


The Hedgehog, as he is famously known, drives a dusty 
piece-of-crap Saturn sedan filled with junk, including a few 
french fries that appear to be about as old as he is. He 
sports the same jet-black push-broom mustache he's had 
since entering the business in 1979, only now the гапу 
thing is gray, or would be if he didn't vigilantly apply Just 
for Men dye gel to it. He says that despite appearances, he 
has tons of money stashed away, so don't worry about him. 
He is currently under contract for "a few grand a month" 
to Metro Studios, where his main obligation is to be the 
impresario on the box cover of such X-rated videos as Ron 
Jeremy on the Loose: Sunset Strip, Ron Jeremy on the Loose: 
Venice Beach and Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Viva Ron Vegas. Не 
may appear in sex scenes in those movies, but it’s not Ron 
having sex that sells. It’s Ron acting as general porn clown 
prince that really moves the goods. “I don’t fool myself,” he 
says. “My value is in the fact that I'm recognizable.” Over 
the years he’s succeeded in this while sleeping with almost 
every porn actress worth sleeping with, including Traci 
Lords (“Terrific—and always sober!"), Christy Canyon 
(“Phenomenal, and I love natural double-Ds!”) and Tabitha 
Stevens ("1 did one of her first anal scenes”). During his 
peak years, in the so-called golden age of porn of the pre- 
video 1980s, he earned upwards of $1,000 a day for his 
labors and gave like no porn man had ever given before— 
six pop shots in a single day being his heroic record. His 
fans loved him then, and at porn conventions today he still 
gets more well-wishers than Jenna Jameson. 

“Here is Ron Jeremy,” one of them recently said. "He's 
fucking his way merrily through life, never gets sick, always 
happy, no hardships, have dick will travel, a mustache and a 
smile. His life is one long romp. No wife, no worries, noth- 
ing to keep him down, the ultimate free bird. Who has ever 


"я MEA 
SIX 
Everybody knows Ron Jerem 


Fame, 


NCHES ОЕ 


the clown prince of porn. You want proof? Take a look at these 


SEPARATION 


what's your name? Top row. from left: With my good friends Jessica Biel, Samuel L. Jackson, Carmen Electra, Ice-T and Willem Dafoe. Second row. 


From a night out al the Whisky A Go-Go with Nancy Sinatra, and with Kid Rock, Mini-Me, Courtney Love and the Rock. Third row: | want you to meet Tommy 
Lee, Sheryl Crow, Matt LeBlanc, Sting and Herbie Hancock. Bottom row: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Keith Richards, David Spade and Matt Damon. 


had it better? The point is, nothing will happen to America 
as long as Ron Jeremy lives in it. His luck will be our luck. I 
was in the same hotel as Ron once, and 1 felt as safe and se- 
cure as a baby in the womb. I wasin the safest place on earth. 
I was in the proximity of Ron's luck. So don't worry about 
the terrorists. Let them worry about us." 

Absolutely right. Yet no man's luck works against time, 
and Ron has begun to notice the grinding of the years 
"Turning 50 was very depressing, and I still haven't quite 
gotten over it,” he says. “I feel good. I can still outrun, out- 
jump, outkick and outswim half the kids half my age. But 
I'm fat. I love the buffet too much. My cholesterol is not 
bad, but unfortunately my blood pressure is up, which is 
really a shame. Anyway, the thought that I'm 50 is killing 
me. I mean, I have to go get a colonoscopy.” He is silent for 
a moment. Then he says, “I'll tell you the honest-to-god 
truth. I can still get a good whopping monster boner, but it 
takes a little more effort than it used to. Before, it was like, 
you know, ГА snap my fingers and it's hard. Now it takes a 
little more effort.” 

For the most part, though, he says he’s still the same Ron 
he's always been—damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead, 
and let that jizz y—which is all anybody really wants in a 
porn star anyway, for better or for worse. 


Ron rarely spends an evening in his condo, curled up with a 
good book or maybe watching Seinfeld reruns on TV. His 
general philosophy seems to be, If you aren't on Sunset 
Boulevard, how can you get to Sunset Boulevard? Four or 
five nights a week, out he goes, often as the soberest man in 
town, since he doesn't do drugs and hardly ever drinks. Usu- 
ally on his arm is Natalie, 26, with whom he's lived for the 
past three years. “We don't like 
to say it's love, because that gets 
a little corny," he says. "We say 
it's R and R, which stands for 
‘roommates with romance” 
Natalie is not around at the mo- 
ment, so tonight he’s got a date 
with Dalny Marga. “There's 
never going to be another 
Dalny Marga, I swear,” Ron 
likes to say. She is 35, has been 
out of the business for three 
years and now wants back in. 
She and Ron are old friends, 
having done many sex scenes 
together back in the day, and 


“Lunch next Thursday? Maybe, 
but let me check my book." He 
won't leave home without il. 


she comes to him tonight dolled up porn-star perfect in a 
sheer white diaphanous pantsuit, with skyscraper heels on 
her feet and a voice that's pure spun sugar and morning dew. 

Basically they spend the evening driving frantically from 
one West Hollywood party or event to another in Ron's 
shabby Saturn. At one point Dalny asks Ron if Natalie knows 
about her. "I never lie,” he says. “But she wouldn't even 
care. We're open, you know?" Dalny says, “She wouldn't like 
it if меге with you—trust me.” And Ron doesn't say any- 
thing. Then, after a Heidi Fleiss book signing, he getsa call 
on his cell phone from one of his agents, who wants a $1,500 
commission Ron owes him for some work. 


Afterward, Dalny says sweetly, “Tell him I've got his com- 
mission for him. ГІЇ take care of it for you." 

Blinking, Ron says, "Oh, Dalny, no need for that. I never 
ask for that kind of favor. You know that. Have I ever?" 

“No, but it would be my little gift to you. ГЇ be your com- 
mission. We'll really go flying." She is silent for a while, then 
says, "Ron, I want to go back to the old times again, when we 
worked together. That was so fun, wasn’t it? 1 wish we could 
do that again." 

Ron doesn't say anything. He's chewing on his right 
thumb tip, gnawing at the skin until it's peeled back. Maybe 
he's thinking about what Dalny said, maybe he's thinking of 


Bad Girls II (1983) 


"| play a sheriff—it was shot at the same 
ranch where they shot The Dukes of Hazzard. 
It has car chases, a nice story line, lots of 
dialogue. There's a shot where a car goes off 
a cliff. We didn't buy stock footage—we shot 
it. That's something you don't see anymore." 


High Heels 'n Hot Wheels (2000) 


"I co-wrote this movie with the owner ofa real 
automobile dealership. Goldstein and | did 
that scene from Rush Hour—t'm trying to put 
on rap music and he's trying to put on sym- 
phonic music, and we fight over the radio. 
There's alot of self-deprecating humor." 


Shrinkwrapped (2000) 


"The girl is ruining my credibility in the movie 
within the movie, and the director is getting 
pissed at me because I'm supplying bad tal- 
ent. | was using emotion memory from when 
1 was a real director and producer of porn to 
portray the producer in this movie." 


San Fernando Jones & the Temple of Poon (2001) 


"Porn in many ways is the ultimate test of 
Stanislavski acting. To be good at porn, an 
actor has to totally remove himself from the 
audience. You shut out the cameraman, the 
gaffer, the best boy, the makeup artist—well, 
you could look at her, maybe.” 


Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Viva Ron Vegas (2003) 


“Рай one is on the Sunset Strip, part two is. 
the beaches. Number three is called Viva Ron 
Vegas. Part fouris in San Francisco. We do a 
tour and show actual sights. We go through 
crowds of people, sign loads of autographs. 
It gets my personality into it." 


something else. It's hard to tell, so engrossed 
does he seem in his thumb tip. 

Then they go to the local Déja Vu strip 
dub. They drop by Musso & Frank's restau- 
rant, where after eating his own food Ron 
eyeballs everyone else's (“Don't you want 
those shrimps?"). They listen to music at the 
Cat Club on Sunset, and as usual Slim Jim 
Phantom from the Stray Cats is on drums. 
Everywhere they go, Ron's luck holds: He is 
asked to pay for nothing, and everyone is glad 
to scc him. The regular jocs high-five him, 
the regular janes whisper and giggle. He gets 
offers to do porn movies. He takes down 
numbers and hands out his own (or one of his 
own—he has three). He is happy and a real 
man-about-town, 
with Dalny always 


Somewhere new, WHEN HE WAS 
Back in the car, 
Dalny wants to INTRODUCED TO 
know why the guys 
who asked Ron to 
be in their рога LISA MARIE 
video didn't ask 
perico PRESLEY, SHE 
Ron stares at her. 
“Well, they didn't 
know you were in LOOKED HIM 
the business.” 
“Oh, they don't?” UP AND DOWN 
Dalny nearly yells. 
“What do I look 
like, the Flying AND SAID, 
Nun?” 
Chuckling, Ron “WHATEVER.” 


says, “Isn't she 
adorable? She’s al- 
so one of the best performers in the business. 
Does one of the best anals. Great anal. Dalny 
was a specialist at doing things other girls 
couldn't. She was queen of the double anals.” 

“Thank you!” Dalny says, happily. 

Finally, after midnight, they wind up at the 
Hustler store on Sunset, drinking coffee with 
some friends. Ron is soliloquizing in his usu- 
al way. Of all his celebrity encounters, he say: 
fewer than a handful have gone sour. When 
he was introduced to Lisa Marie Presley, she 
looked him up and down and said, “Whatever.” 
Rosanna Arquette didn't even acknowledge 
he was in the room. And when he proffered 
his hand to sitcom star Katey Sagal, she 
looked at it and then looked away. “That was 
the worst of them,” he goes on. “I wanted to 
just throw a drink in her face, But all that is 
counterbalanced by the celebrities who have 
come up to me and (continued on page 144) 


м 
A 


“What do you have in mind, tiger...?” 


ru A З TERR LT 


WE SPENT 12 MONTHS ON THE COUCH RESEARCHING WHAT YOU SHOULD BE PLAYING. 
50 PUT DOWN THE CONTROLLER AND PAY ATTENTION 


ШӨЗРУФЛӨХ 


Тһе games that ruined our eyesight and social life this year 


(A EE Р52, Xbox, GameCube, PC) 
It's not football season 
till Hank is crooning 
about Monday night 
and we have the new 
Madden game. As їп 
| previous seasons, the 


(Sierra, Xbox, PC) 
This incredible sequel 
gives us the chance to 
Teprise the role of sci- 
entist Gordon Freeman 
and stop the alien 
takeover we acciden- 


The sultry singer talks 
breasts, gamer-gasms and 
how she wrote the theme 


tally unleashed during 


rooms strewn with debris to E.T. supersoldiers who cut 
through doors to get to you, this is the best first-person 
shooter on the planet. At least this planet. 


for SpyHunter 2 


_ gameplay and graphics 
are amazing, and new 
options let control 

freaks micromanage everything from adjusting defensive 
coverage on the fly to setting hot dog prices. First order 
of business: Ban 'N Sync from the Super Bowl. 


PLAYBOY How familiar were you 
with SpyHunter before this? 
CARLTON 1 knew SpyHunter was a 
famous game, but my brother 
was the one who told me I had 


(EA, PS2. Xbox, GameCube) 
A bombastic opening 
cinematic of Pearl 
Harbor sets the mood 
for the first game ina 
two-part series cen- 
tered on a pair of sol- 
dier brothers separated 
during battles in the 
Pacific. The game's 
five campaigns include enough fierce fighting in Thai- 
land and Singapore to prove that SS guards weren't the 
only good fodder during World War И. 


to do the theme. He's a big 
gamer. I'm more of a Pac-Man 
chick—and proud of it. 1 like the 
old Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. 
PLAYBOY Was it difficult finding 
inspiration to write the theme 
song for a video game? 

CARLTON It was liberating, because 
there were no expectations for a 
Vanessa sound. I got а chance to 
experiment 

a little. 
PLAYBOY Do 


И (Rockstar PS2, Xbox) 
While other racing 
1 games drive in circles 
looking for a balance 
" between realism and 
гам action, this racer 
beats them to the fin- 


physics, sharp visuals 

and plenty of slick. 
cars. The story line about illegal street racing keeps 
things exciting as you wager pink slips with a buddy in 
online mode and risk losing your sweet ride. 


ul Cal ll Namco, PS2. Xbox GameCube) 

We expected this 
‘Sequel to our favorite 
Si X weapons-based fight- 

ing game to deliver the 
punch, and it didn't 
disappoint. Features 
include 10 brutal play 
modes, a special char- 
acter designed by 
comic legend Todd McFarlane and one special guest 
character per system. Finally, a chance to slug Legend 
of Zelda's Link in his smarmy face. 


you play 
games with 
your 
celebrity " 
friends? 
CARLTON 1 try 
not to know 
celebrities 
personally. 
Most stars 
under 30 
should pick 
upa book 


5 г (Actyision, Xbox) 
In this sequel, war is 
almost literally hell. 
Gunning down Himm- 
ler's genetic mutants 
and robot dogs in the 
single-player mode is 
tough, but the frantic 
online multiplayer 
battles make us want 
a living-room foxhole. Whether you're blasting Nazis in 
eight-on-eight team fights or 16-player free-for-alls, 
it's easily the best Xbox Live game to date. 


Я (Activision, PS2, Xbox, GameCube) 
All the thrills of work- 
ing your way up from 
local shredder to 
world-touring pro— 
minus the groin- 
bruising staircase 
crashes. We especial- 
lyenjoyed the new 
controls that let play- 
ers jump off and carry the board. But the reinvented 
story line and multiple online modes are what give. 
this old franchise new legs. 


instead. I'm 
telling you, 
video games 
are con- 
tributing to 
the epi- 
demic of 
dumbass 
celebrities. 
PLAYBOY What 
classic game 
would you 


aX (Nintendo/Sega, GameCube) 

(В We suspect this sci-fi 
racing game was 
created especially to 

Э silence those who 
doubted GameCube's 
graphics muscle. Pick 

ÎÎ one of 30 pilots and 
blast through 20 
sprawling courses 
loaded with giant jumps and turbo boosts. If the super- 
sonic speeds and stomach-churning tracks don't win 
the checkered flag, we'll gargle with 40-weight oil. 


ar (Eidos, Xbox, PC) 
The most intriguing 
sci-fi thriller since 
The X-Files returns 
with more conspira- 
cies and plenty of 
globe-hopping action 
in Germany and 
Antarctica. Set 15 
years after the first 
game, Invisible War answers leftover questions while 
raising enough new ones to leave us pacing like David 
Duchovny in the unemployment line. 


like to see 

updated? 

CARLTON Pac-Man, all the way. 

That would be a gamer's orgasm. 
PLAYBOY SpyHunter may be made 
into a movie starring the Rock. 
Any chance we'll see you in a 
video-game-based blockbuster? 
CARLTON 1 wanna be in one! I love 
Lara Croft. My boobs aren't big 
enough, though. I want to be the 
first small-breasted game chick 
character. —John Gaudiosi 


$ (Microsoft, PC) 

It sounds like a poli- 
sci-class snoozer, but 
this military-strategy 
game delivers more 
excitement and in- 
trigue than a violent 
regime change. Build 
one of 18 historic civi- 
> lizations with troops 
and arms (ranging from muskets to nukes, depending 
on the time period) until you're strong enough to invade 
and crush a neighbor. We've got dibs on France. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEORGE GEORGIOU / ILLUSTRATION BY ANDRE SIBAYAN 


YER] 


PIS TERR 11 video games 


Today's gamer culture is soaked in more 
sex than a brothel mop. Here's how it got 
that way. 


s Strip Poker (Apple 11) High- 
rollin’ high schoolers line up to play the 
odds and to score a glimpse of mono- 
chrome, low-definition muff. The game 
ships with two opponents, but its cre- 
ators, banking on an audience of wall- 
flowers, offer bonus discs with extra girls. 
— Beat "Em € Еш Em (Atari 2600) 
er condoned by Atari, mail-order 
company Mystique cranked out a series 
of adult games. In this Kaboom! parody, 
players control a pair of naked women 
who use their mouths to catch drops of 
semen launched by a roofiop masturba- 
tor. Skillful players can win an extra turn 
with a score of—yep—69 points. 
1987 Leisure Suit Larry: In the Land of 
the Lounge Lizards (PC, Macintosh) Guide 
a middle-aged lothario through bars and 
clubs in a quest to get laid. Oddly fun, 
considering it's the digital equivalent of 
blue balls. Six sequels later the game 
features celeb cameos by Drew Bar- 
ingmore and Jamie Lec Coitus 
trip Fighter И (TurboGrafx- 
16) This spoof of arcade smash Street 
Fighter П pits babes against each 
other in loser-takes-it-all-off smack- 


Tes timi soms by them- 
selves doesn't mean they can't be 
part of nationwide trends. Here are 
| the popular game themes binding 
them together this year. 


World War 11 ended 58 years ago, 
but the battles rage on in the 
biggest current trend. As Chris Cross, game design director for 
the WWII-themed Medal of Honor series, explains, “The origi- 
nal Medal of Honor was released very close to the movie Saving 
Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg came to us after filming and 
asked for a World War II first-person shooter. A lot of me-too 
movies came out after Saving Private Ryan, and the video game 
market is no different.” Battle-ready reinforcements include 
Call of Duty (Activision, PC), Pilot Down (Dreamcatcher, Xbox) and 
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (EA, GameCube, PS2, Xbox), the first 
me in the series to 
LOWRIDER focus on action in the 
Pacific theater. 


Developers have been 
clamoring to make an 
Eminem-based game. 
Legend of Zelda: The 
Quest for the Real Slim 
Shady hasn't yet hit 
the shelves, but a 
posse of games with 
obvious hip-hop in- 
fluences is already 


Great momeats 
in joystick history 


downs. Defeat an opponent and a nude 
photo of a winking actual girl pops on 
the screen to make players feel even 
more socially inept. 


1996—Tomb Raider (PC, PSOne, Sat- 
urn) Lara Croft debuts, introducing a 
legion of teens to virtual titillation. De 
spite Croft's oversize guns, horny hack- 
ers decide the game is a tease and rush 
to render the leading lady topless 


2001—Grand Theft Auto Ш (PC, PS2) 
Parental groups do a double take when 
players discover the blockbuster game's 
hidden treat: Park your stolen car, 
honk the horn and a hooker climbs in. 
Pull up somewhere secluded and she'll 
polish your gearshift 
2002—BMX XXX (GameCube, PS2, 
Xbox) Skanky strip- 
pers perform bike 
stunts amid screwing 
poodles and foul- 
mouthed prostitutes 
in a tasteless game 
that causes series star 
Dave Mirra to sue the 
creators, claiming the 
game soiled his im: 
age. Never mind that 
most biker babes are ^ 
best left clothed. 

—Scott Steinberg. 


act 


Б. 


available. Lowrider (Jaleco, PS2) lets players trick out a vehicle, 
design a hood ornament and make the back end bounce 
against other cars іп a quirky dancing game. Use your killer 
crossover to earn a playa's impressive crib and chromed-out car 
in NBA Ballers (Midway, PS2, Xbox. GameCube), or play street 
ball in NFL Street (EA Sports, PS2, Xbox, GameCube), a seven- 
on-seven football game with a licensed hip-hop soundtrack 


The least expected trend to surface this year: Bible-based action 
games. Developed by mainstream game companies, these titles 
put biblical characters into a contemporary gaming con- 
text, complete with scant- 

ily dad angels and bulle- АРОСАЕГУРТТСА 
riddled action. “Christian 
music bands have recently 
surged in popularity," 
says Justin Kubiak, prod- 
uct manager for Konami, 
"and with the gaming 
industry reaching a sim- 
ilar audience I'd expect 
the same could happen 
with Bible-themed video 
games." This season, pious 
gamers can test their faith 
with Apocalyptica (Konami, 
PC, Xbox), an action-adventure game in which players gun 
down demons to save humanity from Neo-Satan. Both Four 
Horsemen of the Apocalypse (3DO, PS2, Xbox, 
Psychotoxic (CDV, PC) depict battles with the biblical baddies pesti- 
lence, war, famine and death. Sounds like the game designers 
have been pilfering from the same prayer book SNS. 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 162 


Has u celebrity kicked your ass online? 


Somewhere among exer- 
cise fads, rehab and oddball 
cults, Hollywood hipsters 
are finding time to get 
addicted to video games 
just like the rest of us. 
Here's how they're staying 
in the game. 


Freddie Prinze Jr. is one 
of the top-ranked Mech- 
Assault players on Xbox Live. 
Catherine Bell enjoys kick- 
ing ass at Tekken Tag on 
PS2. Erika Christensen has 
an Xbox installed in her 
car. Snoop Dogg has sever- 
al PS2s in his home, on his 
tour bus and installed in 
his cars, and he requests 
them in his dressing rooms. 
Elijah Wood and Sean Astin 
played Tony Hawk’s Pro 
Skater on the Lord of the 
Rings set. Incubus and 
Phantom Planet host 
‘Tuesday night four-on-four 
Halo tournaments against 
each other, complete with 
Chinese food. Adam Sandler gave PS2 games as gifts to guests at his wedding. 
The Dixie Chicks have a Y. 
PS2 on their tour bus. ӯ 

John Mayer has Halo run- 
ning during his concerts 
and jams to the game's 
theme song. Nelly plays 
Madden NFL 2004 and 
NBA Street Vol. 2. Wilmer 
Valderrama, from That 
7705 Show, installed an 
Xbox in the back of his 
classic Lincoln Mercury 
and a PS2 inside his SUV. 
He plans to set up Xboxes 
in his dressing room and. 
in the dressing rooms of 
Danny Masterson and Ashton Kutcher so they can play against one another. Co- 
star Mila Kunis prefers Nintendo GameCube, specifically Mario Kart. Justin 
Timberlake 
has two Xbox 
rooms in his 
house, which 
are connected 
with network 
cables for mul- 
tiplayer Halo 
battles. Chloe 


Jessica Biel gets her game on at the 
PlayStation 2 anniversary party. 


sports games, 
which we find 
very hot. 


2 ше 
Tiger Woods. 


ou're at your desk when an instant mes- 
sage pops up: “Don't forget tonight: 
Bucs vs. Raiders, eight PM." This isn'ta 
reminder for Monday Night Football—it's 
a message from your Xbox confirming your 
next NFL Fever match. With both the Xbox 
and PS2 claiming more than 500,000 online 
players and 50 Net-capable games before 
year's end, there may never again be an actual person 
around to feel the burn of your victory dance. Here's a look 
at the latest features worth getting blisters over. 


Communicating with your squad mates is the key to dodging 
bullets in Sony's Socom series. This year's sequel, Socom I: U.S 
Navy Seals, comes equipped with better ways to let others know 
you're under fire. А ncw chat display makes it easier to track 
which member of your team is talking, and a whisper feature 
lets you chat with a single player instead of the entire squad. 
While others play, use the new spectator option to study tactics 
as recon for kicking their asses later. 


While racing games such as GT Online and Gran Turismo 4 
offer online play, Project Gotham Racing 2 for the Xbox is the 
first to let drivers save their best lap 

times per track and upload a “ghost 

car” for others to download, study 

and race against. Similarly, Micro 

softs Amped 2 snowboarding game 

challenges riders to pull off the sickest 

tricks. As а reward, the high score 

hovers above the jump for other rid- 

ersto beat. In Tony Hauk's Underground, 

skaters can e-mail photos of them- 

selves and have their faces put on game characters (PS2 ver- 
sion only); they can also create their own custom levels and 
parks and swap them online (Xbox and PS2 versions). 


Games such as ESPN NFL Football, Madden NFL and NBA Live 
now offer online rankings, tournaments and downloadable 
roster updates. Microsoft's newly launched XSN Sports line 
lets NFL Fever players form and manage their own leagues 
and tournaments from the XSN website. The site updates 
scores, stats and standings every 15 minutes and can send out 
an e-mail or instant message reminder so you can cancel your 
date in time for the big game. —Marc Saltzman 


PLAYBOY 


86 


BENTONVILLE (ла ron pages) 


The Wal-Mart formula? Pay less and charge less. 
Make up for tiny profit margins by getting huge. 


‘The congregation, sleek and coiffed, in 
golf shirts and pastel dresses, listens qui- 
euy as if watching a movie and stands 
primly to join hymns when called. 

At the Freewill Baptist Church, built 
into the front of an old single-story 
house on Southeast J Street, I finally 
find black culture, though every face is 
white. These folks, I'm told, are Old 
Bentonville, the people who enjoyed 
Mr. Sam when he was alive but who 
now feel pushed around and looked 
down upon by the unshackled vendor- 
and-executive brigade. They are 
stomping their feet, swaying as they 
sing and shouting down the preacher 
with hearty cries of “Yes, Lord!” A wom- 
an who must be 80, with a shriveled face, 
cottony white hair and an incongruously 
terrific figure, belts out—a cappella—a 
rousing rendition of “God Shall Wipe 
Away All Tears From Their Eyes.” 

Bart Bauer moved here from Michi- 
gan three years ago to develop real 
estate—he tells me he won't build 
anything that sells for less than 
$135,000—and business is booming. 
“I've got to be the luckiest guy in the 
world,” he crows. He's already built 200 
houses, some as expensive as $400,000, 
and expects to build about 2,000 before 
he's done. The result can be seen in cnd- 
less plains of huge spanking-new houses 
that. look as if they don't weigh very 
much, each covering its entire yard. 
From a short distance the area looks less 
like a neighborhood than a kind of mon- 
ster-home sales lot where you'd buy a 
house to be delivered elsewhere. And 
just when you think such opulence will 
go on forever, you cross an invisible line, 
and suddenly you're looking at double- 
wides and clapboard houses with sag- 
ging porches and dead refrigerators in 
front yards—Old Bentonville. 

"People from New York City or Chica- 
go don't want to come and live in Ben- 
tonville, Arkansas,” says Marts of the 
Daily Record. “They expect Deliverance. 
So the people here demand a lot of 
money. It's changed the town. About five 
years ago my own kids started asking, 
“How come we don't go skiing every 
winter? How come we don't go to Disney 
World every year?'" 


THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL. 


To young Sam Walton, retailing was 
more than a job: It was a calling —di 
ing people's desires, buying wisely, pric- 
ing with precision and displaying prod- 
ucts with flair—as high and noble as 


any. When he opened his Bentonville 
five-and-dime, Sears, JCPenney and 
Montgomery Ward stood astride the re- 
tail world as giants. Their stores, sensi- 
bly, were set down where people were 
concentrated, in the cities and suburbs. 
That's where Walton longed to be. 
Nobody will ever know if Walton 
latched on to the ideal of small-town 
America to make the best of a bad situ- 
ation, out of a genuine love for the 
down-home life, as a marketing ploy or 
through some combination thereof. At 
the time, Korvettes, Kresge and a few 
other chains were toying with something 
new, called discounting buying up sec. 
onds, irregulars and discontinued prod- 
ucts and selling them cheaply—and Wal- 
ton began thinking about enlivening his 
exile by building a business on the basis 
of low prices. In 1962 he opened the 
first store, Wal-Mart Discount City— 
“We sell Юг less"—on a broad avenue 
outside Bentonville that had plenty of 
parking spaces. In its first year its earn- 
ings were triple those of Walton's down- 
town Ben Franklin five-and-dime. 
Walton elevated his apparent geo- 
graphical disadvantage to a sacred mis- 
sion. He talked of the “right” of his rural 
brethren to enjoy the same low prices 
and wide selection as city people. He 
proclaimed his mission to bringa “high- 
er quality of life” to rural America. He 
promised to expand in the countryside 
his giant urban competitors overlooked. 
This commitment to a rural strategy 
is the moment from which all Wal-Mart 
history flows. Going rural gave Walton 
three hard-nosed advantages: It let him 
buy cheaper land than was available in 
urban centers. He could get away with 
paying as little as 60 cents an hour— 
about half the 1962 federal minimum 
wage—because of a legal loophole and 
because work was scarce in rural Amer- 
ica, where family farms had been disap- 
pearing for decades. And he remained 
invisible to his urban competitors. By 
the time the oil-shock inflation and re- 
cession of the early 1970s hit, Wal-Mart 
had 104 stores hidden from competi- 
tors’ sight along the byways of the South 
and Midwest and was positioned to 
make a killing, In 1974, when city stores 
were cutting one another’s throats, Wal- 
Mart sales rose 41 percent because its 
everyday low prices were what inflation- 
harried Americans wanted. From there, 
Mr. Sam never looked back. 
A company map at Wal-Mart head- 
quarters looks, at first glance, like an ar- 


ray of missile sites. Small rings of stores 
are spread across the vast empty center 
of the country, even in places such as the 
Wyoming-Nebraska border, where you 
wouldn't expect 300 customers. And big 
rings of stores surround cities at a range 
of roughly 10 to 40 miles—in outer 
rather than inner suburbs, usually. Wal- 
Mart has few stores in big cities and, a 
representative is careful to point out, 
none in the five boroughs of New York. 

Eighty years ago Henry Ford—the ex- 
emplar of early 20th century business i 
novation—famously paid his assembly- 
line workers enough to afford the 
expensive products they made. It was an 
upward-reaching spiral that helped 
transform America. Higher wages drove 
demand for higher-priced goods. As the 
21st century begins, we are seeing a re- 
versal of this trend. The formula with 
which Wal-Mart is conquering the world 
calis for a spiral toward the bottom: Pay 
people less and charge them less, keep 
the whole operation at the nickel-and- 
dime level, and make up for üny profit 
margins by becoming gigantic. 

For the company and its sharehold- 
ers, the strategy has paid off. Wal-Mart's 
stock has split 11 times since the compa- 
ny went public in 1970 and has appreci- 
ated almost 16 percent annually for the 
past five years. For a part-time employ- 
ee like Alice, the equation looks like this: 
Twenty-eight hours with no overtime 
means she brings home $233.80 a week 
before taxes, and she's still able to rent a 
two-bedroom apartment ncar her work. 
If she wants to buy a house, though, 
which in Bentonville starts at about 
$75,000, she has to come up with almost 
$4,000 cash and more than $400 a 
month. "You need two incomes, really, 
to get into this market," says Roger 
Wingert, a local real estate agent. "It's 
sad. A lot of people don't make it." So 
Alice's best bet is to try to buy a share or 
two of company stock out of her tiny 
paycheck—and do as much of her buy- 
ing as possible at the company store, be- 
cause that's where the prices are lowest. 

Being part of the biggest and fastest- 
growing company that ever existed 
counts for something, though. Wal- 
Mart's tiny-profit-margin strategy re- 
quires it to grow obsessively: The big- 
ger it gets, the cheaper it can buy 
products, and the lower it can set its 
prices, the bigger it gets. The company 
churns out breathlessly expansive news 
to its employees: more sales targets 
reached, more stores opened, more 
countries entered. Americans like a 
winner, and Wal-Mart kicks ass at 
everything it does. It's the ultimate ris- 
ing tide, and being a small boat upon it 
doubtless feels a lot better than tearing 
feathers off dead chickens. 

(continued on page 152) 


“Are you trying to tell me you just came to pillage?” 


GEORGE WASHINGTON GREW РОТ. ELVIS-WAS A NARC: 
PURE STUFF OR BOGUS PRODUCT? WE GET TO THE 
BOTTOM OF THE WILDEST DRUG LEGENDS OF ALL TIME 

/ BY STEPHAN TALTY 


е 


YOU DON'T HAVE ТО ВЕ А DEA AGENT to know that drug lore is more pervasive in our 
culture than Cheers reruns. But pinning down the truth about the ways chemical and organic enhance- 


ments have influenced music, movies and even history is no easy task (maybe because of that whole "highly 
illegal" thing). So we're left with a stash of legends that get passed around more than a roach clip at a Phish 
concert. Did Keith Richards swap his junkie blood for a clean, fresh supply? Did Coca-Cola really contain 
cocaine? Wonder no longer. We've collected America's most mind-altering hag) myths and tested them for 
purity. So turn on, tune in, and watch out for the oversize purple bats. DLY. 


WHIRLED HISTORY 
TAKE A TRIP BACK TO THE 


STONED AGE 


WORD ON THE STREET: Legalization advocates 
insist that when our first president wasn't 
fathering a nation, he was cultivating huge 
crops of hemp on his Virginia plantation. In a 
1794 note to his gardener, Washington in- 
structed, "Make the most of the Indian hemp 
seed, and sow it everywhere." While the plants 
were commonly used to make rope and paper 
(including the first draft of the Declaration of 
Independence), some amateur historians sus- 
pect that Washington cured the hemp into a 
smokable form to dull his chronic dental pain. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: We cannot tell a lie. Though 


caine. So when he whipped up his sugary 
brown "nerve tonic" in 1886, he loaded it 
with a potent extract of coca leaves. How 
would the original formula measure up to 
modern standards? A six-ounce serving of 
Coca-Cola contained 8.45 milligrams of 
blow—chug four bottles and you'd be ready 
to wrestle your mule. "Keith Richards could 
definitely get off on it” says Mark Pender- 
grast, author of For God, Country and Coca- 
Colo. "But he'd have to go to the bathroom a 
lot." Coke's punch was an open secret: For 
years official sign language for the soda was 
the motion of jabbing a needle in your arm. 

STRAIGHT DOPE: The enduring Coke legend is 
the real thing. But a wave of hysteria about 
cocaine addiction swept America shortly 
after the turn of the century, and by 1929 
Coke was-sigh--coke-free. 


there is no evidence that Washington ever 
rolled a fatty, he did grow barnfuls of hemp. 
Reports that he tried to amend the Constitu- 
tion to make the pursuit of jam bands an in- 
alienable right, however, seem unfounded. 


WORD ON THE STREET: Almost everyone who's 
ever had a Coke and a smile has heard that 
the original formula for the world's most fa- 
mous soft drink contained ample doses of a 
certain addictive secret ingredient. Coca- 
Cola's inventor, Dr. John Pemberton, became 
a morphine addict during the Civil War and 
was desperate for a cure, He turned to a new 
(and perfectly legal) miracle drug called co- 


If you had wooden teeth ond a wig infested with baby spiders, you'd take the edge off too. 


COLLAGE BY SCOTT ANDERSON 


STAR FREAKERS 


ROBERT MITCHUM SMOKED 
POT BEFORE SCENES TO GET 
THAT SLEEPY-EYED LOOK. 

WORD ON THE STREET: Mitchum was first in- 
troduced to marijuana—which he called "the 
poor man's whiskey"—as a teenage hobo. 
Once he hit Hollywood he continued to 
smoke and got busted for it in a 1948 police 
raid. (He went to a prison farm for two 
months.) During the filming of The Night of 
the Hunter the producer reported that an un- 


Bad spot for a Cocaholics Anonymous meeting. 


repentant Mitchum “was on drugs, drunk and 
what have you, and there were times when 
we couldn't get him in front of the camera.” 
After filming was canceled one day because 
of his condition, Mitchum retaliated by piss- 
ing in the front seat of the producer's car. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Accounts of Mitchum's herbal 
motivation technique are no bunk. 


CARY GRANT WAS AN AVID 
LSD USER. 

WORD ON THE STREET: Despite his elegant de- 
meanor, the star of Topper and North by 
Northwest dropped prodigious amounts of 
acid at the height of his career. "I have been 
born again,” said Grant about discovering 
LSD in the early 1950s, according to the 
1991 biography Evenings With Cary Grant: 
Recollections in His Own Words and by Those 
Who Knew Him Best. The actor rode the 
magic carpet hard: In one hallucination he 
morphed into an enormous penis that rock- 
eted toward space. Grant not only tripped 
more than 100 times and credited acid with 
helping him forgive his parents and control 
his drinking, he also turned a young Timothy 
Leary on to LSD. "Cary changed my views,” 
said Leary. “He converted me.” 

STRAIGHT DOPE: Far out—Grant was indeed a 
pioneering psychonaut. 


WORD ON THE STREET: Richards has never 
been coy about his longtime love of heroin. 
But during the Stones' 1973 European tour 
he could barely make it onto the stage. "The 
tours were extremely grueling in those days," 
says bicgrapher Victor Bockris. "But a real 
heroin cure takes two to three months at 
least, and they didn't have that kind of time.” 
So Keef slipped off to a secret clinic to have 
his entire blood supply replaced with clean, 
grade-A hemoglobin. Voilà! 

STRAIGHT DOPE: Richards was brought to a 
Swiss clinic but not for a complete transfu- 
sion. He underwent “hemiodialysis,” whereby 
blood is pumped through a membrane, fil- 
tering out toxic substances. Why has the 
transfusion story proven so durable? Bockris 
points to Keith's encouragement of his 1970s 
image as an "elegantly wasted vampire. But 


“Judy, Judy, Judy! No, se 


| | HALLUCINATION | 


this is one of the myths he's actually tried to 
correct.” Another one he wants rectified: 
that he actually died in 1981. 


NIXON WITH LSD. 

WORD ON THE STREET: Jefferson Airplane 
singer Slick attended the same finishing 
school as Nixon's daughter, so in 1970 she 
snagged an invite to a White House tea. She 
stashed LSD in her coat pocket, planning to 
spike capitalist pig Nixon's Earl Grey. Whee! 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Stick did attempt to pull off 
the greatest practical joke in White House 
history, and failed. She was almost through 
the door when the Secret Service blocked 
her way. They didn't want her "bodyguard"— 
hippie activist Abbie Hoffman—anywhere 
near Tricky Dick. "We got hysterical thinking 


»usly, keep still. I'm seeing three of you." 


about how the White House would react to 
his saying ‘The walls are melting; Slick re- 
called in a 1992 Life story. “So they were 
right. | wos a security risk.” 


F ЇЕ FO 

WORD ON THE STREET: Somehow, somewhere, 
one very stoned individual discovered that if 
you start playing Floyd's 1973 masterpiece 
and the 1939 movie classic at the same time, 
they become "synchronized." "Brain Dam- 
age" subs for the Scarecrow’s "If | Only Had 
a Brain," and the lyrics "far away across the 
field" are heard as Dorothy skips through a 
meadow (a scene long subject to speculation 
about poppy-like flora). DJs touted the theo- 
ry, leading to midnight movies packed with 
sweet-smelling devotees in the late 19905. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Pay no attention to the bull- 
shit behind the curtain. Dark Side producer 
Alan Parsons scoffs, explaining that Floyd 
members never discussed Oz in the studio 
and that VCRs didn't exist when the album 
was recorded. Watch Oz/Dark Side straight 
just once—and you'll realize that for every 
strained coincidence there are a hundred 
nonparallel moments. But crank up AC/DC's 
High Voltage along with Mary Poppins and 
you will learn the meaning of life. 


WORD ON THE STREET: On December 21, 1970, 
Elvis left a letter for President Nixon at the 
White House gate, offering to "be of any ser- 
vice" against "the drug culture, the hippie 
elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc." Later 
that day he was granted an audience with 
Nixon, a moment immortalized іп a famous 
Oval Office photo. Elvis was awarded a DEA 
badge to add to his collection. Most fans 
agree that Elvis soon became addicted to pre- 
scription drugs and fried peanut butter sand- 
wiches, contributing to his death in 1977. But 
was he a government informant? And is it 
possible he faked his death to escape retribu- 
tion and continue his drug-busting mission? 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Though the letter and the 
Nixon summit are documented facts, "un- 
dercover Elvis” is only slightly less ludicrous 
than his being abducted by rockabilly-fan 
aliens. Even a superpatriot rock star wouldn't 
fake his own death sitting on a toilet. 


WORD ON THE STREET: Jimmy Carter, a big 
Nelson fan, invited the cannabis-loving 
country outlaw to visit 1600 Pennsylvania 
Avenue. Apparently unable to resist the op- 
portunity, Willie sparked a spliff on the roof. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: By his own account, the Red- 
Headed Stranger did indeed get familiar with 
some green at the White House. When Bill 
Clinton, another Southern governor turned 
president, showed up at a Nelson concert, 
Willie slyly asked Clinton if he'd been up 
there toking too. Nelson on the presidential 
reaction: "Не jumped back about three feet." 


THE ARMY TESTED LSD ON 
SOLDIERS. 

WORD ON THE STREET: Looking to develop 
*psychochemical" weapons, the U.S. Army's 
Chemical Corps experimented with hallu- 
cinogens at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 
Maryland. Between 1955 and 1975, thou- 
sands ої 6.1. guinea pigs unknowingly re- 
ceived hits, More powerful than LSD was a 
"superhallucinogen" called BZ, which in- 
duced “maniacal” behavior and delusions. 
“He was taking a shower in his uniform and 
smoking a cigar,” said one enlisted man of a 
BZ test subject. BZ was placed in grenades 
and missile warheads and was used unsuc- 
cessfully in Vietnam in an effort to flush out 
Viet Cong hideouts, according to Acid Dreams: 


Are jelly doughnuts a contralled substance? 


| 


Another great thing abaut pot: It’s tax-free. 


The Complete Social History of LSD, by Mar- 
tin Lee and Bruce Shlain. 

STRAIGHT DOPE: Talk about shock and awe: 
Army experimentation with LSD is a fact. Sir! 


THE CIA BROUGHT CRACK TO 
THE INNER CITY. 

WORD ON THE STREET: Son Jose Mercury News 
reporter Gary Webb blew America’s mind in 
1996 when he reported that the CIA had 
acted as a middleman between drug cartels 
connected to CIA-backed Contra rebels and 
gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods. Deal- 
ers were given a pass to introduce the drug to 
ГАЗ South Central neighborhood to help fi- 
nance the CIA's war in Nicaragua, thus kicking 
off the 1980s crack-and-crime epidemic. The 
Mercury News later called the story “over- 
simplified,” and 14 months after that Webb 
resigned. But many still believe the charges. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Is even the CIA sinister 
enough to pull this off? Unlikely...we hope. 
What's more certain is that J. Edgar Hoover 
started the banana daiquiri craze of 1956. 


WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS 
KILLED HIS WIFE WHILE HIGH. 


WORD ON THE STREET: On September 6, 1951, | 


the junkie beat writer of Noked Lunch and 
his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, were 
partying hard in a Mexico City apartment. 
After doing hits of speed, Burroughs told 
guests that he and Vollmer were going to 
perform their William Tell act. She placed a 
glass on her head; he aimed, fired and shot 
her in the face, killing her instantly. 

STRAIGHT DOPE: Unlike Burroughs's aim, this 
story is all too true. "The death of Joan 


Ж 
ж 


brought me in contact with the invader, the 
ugly spirit," Burroughs remarked later. It 
didn't do much for Vollmer, either. 


DOCK ELLIS PITCHED A 
NO-HITTER ON ACID. 

WORD ON THE STREET: The Pittsburgh Pirates 
ace was chilling out in Los Angeles on June 
12, 1970. Thinking it was an off day, he tock 
150 with his girlfriend. An hour later she | 
looked at the sports section and shouted, "It 
says here you're pitching today!" Ellis 
jumped on a flight to San Diego to play the 
Padres and walked onto the mound, tripping 
wildly. Surprise: He pitched brilliantly. He 
saw a “blazing, comet-like tail” on fastballs; 
he dived out of the way of weak hits. "I can 
remember only bits and pieces of the game,” 
says Ellis. "The ball was small sometimes, the 
ball was large sometimes. Sometimes | saw 
the catcher, sometimes | didn't." Ellis walked 
eight batters but won 2-0 without giving up 
a hit. His dealer got the save. 

STRAIGHT DOPE: This great moment in sports 
history is...safe! Every word is true, says Ellis. 


TIMOTHY LEARY DROPPED LSD 
ON HIS DEATHBED. 

WORD ON THE STREET: What, you think the in- 
famous acid guru ordered a tuna salad sand- 
wich for his last meal? Cancer victim Learys 
1996 deathbed scene was a magical mystery 
tour, with friends and relatives (including 
goddaughter Winona Ryder) giving the for- 
mer Harvard psychologist a mock funeral- 
while he watched! Given his pro-LSD stance, 
news that he passed away while riding the 
magic carpet elicited little surprise. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Contrary to rumor, Leary, 
who did dull his pain with morphine, did not 
turn on while dropping out. Ailing Brave New 
World author Aldous Huxley, however, was 
injected with LSD while his wife read from 
the Tibetan Book of the Dead. "I know how 
this one ends,” said Huxley, who then died. 


“If aur stash runs law, we'll just smoke Scarecrow!” 


The moon rises over Studio 54: One small sniff for man, one giant snort for disco-kind. 


STUDIO 54'S LOGO FLAUNTED 
ITS DRUG-DEN STATUS. 

WORD ON THE STREET: If you ever made it past 
the velvet rope at the infamous 1970s Man- 
hattan disco to party with Mick and Bianca, 
you would have witnessed an amazing sight: 
Truman Capote's fat ass trying to do the hus- 
tle—and a huge sculpture of a quarter-moon 
snorting crystals from a coke spoon. The de- 
fiant Man on the Moon now hangs in the 
Studio 54 club at Las Vegass MGM Grand. 
STRAIGHT DOPE: Like they say, if you can re- 
member Studio 54, you probably weren't 
there. Luckily, we have a picture to prove it. 


SMUGGLER'S BLUES 
HALF THE FUN IS JUST 
GETTING THE DRUGS HERE 


SMUGGLERS USE DEAD BABIES 
TO HIDE COCAINE. 

WORD ON THE STREET: A customs agent spotted 
a sick infant in the arms of a woman exiting а 
Bogotá-Miami flight. It turns out the baby 
was dead, and a brick of coke was stashed 
where its internal organs should have been. 
Reports of this ghoulish ploy go back to the 


STRAIGHT DOPE: Buchanan's conclusion? "It is 
fiction,” she wrote. "I have laid the dead 
baby to rest so often that | can now see its 
poor little pasty face in my mind's eye." The 
dead-baby mule is an urban legend, dreamed 
up by antidrug warriors or coach-class pas- 
sengers who detest crying infants. 


PABLO ESCOBAR EXECUTED 
UNDERLINGS—BEHIND BARS. 
WORD ON THE STREET: While holed up in the 
luxurious La Catedral prison (built especially 
for him) in 1992, the notorious Colombian 
drug lord was still fighting an expensive war 
against his rivals. So when two allies, Ger- 
ardo Moncada and Fernando Galeano, let 
$20 million in cash turn moldy, they were 
ordered to visit the prison. “Moncada and 
Galeano were killed by being hung upside 
down and burned,” read a DEA cable on the 
incident. "The informant says this is Esco- 
bar's way of killing people." The bodies were 
buried on-site; days later the brothers of 
both victims were also whacked. 

STRAIGHT DOPE: Even after his death, Esco- 
bar's legend lives on in Colombia, as does 
this frighteningly true tale 


1970s; it was reported as fact in a 1985 
Washington Post story. The tale became so 
rampant that Miomi Herald crime reporter 
Edna Buchanan decided to check it out. 


Pufnstuf: And this is before our drugs kick in. 


Й convinced that the lyrics “frolicked in the 


WORD ON THE STREET: When the song about a 
friendly dragon and his human pal recorded 
by mellow folkies Peter, Paul and Mary be- 
came a hit in 1963, nascent hippies were 


autumn mist" and "little Jackie Paper" were 
references to reefer. Not to mention Puff 
himself. The song is based on a poem written 
by Cornell University student Leonard Lipton, 
who professes shock at the rumors: “The 
song is about loss of innocence and having 
to face an adult world. | can tell you that at 


Cornell in 1959 no one smoked grass.” 
STRAIGHT DOPE: A red-eyed Puff is a fairy 
tale. Though Lipton has royalties to protect, 
we're willing to give him the benefit of the 
doubt, given the song's prc-drug culture vin- 
tage. But it's still a great reason to hate folk 
music created by privileged college kids. 


WORD ON THE STREET: The classic children's 
tale of a girl's trip through the looking glass 
is packed with so much surreal imagery— 
talking rabbits, toking caterpillars—that 
many people assume author Lewis Carroll's 
inspiration came from a hash pipe. The fact 
that opium and laudanum use was wide- 
spread in Victorian England doesn't help. 

STRAIGHT DOPE: It turns out Carroll may have 
been just a mad—but sober—Englishman. 
Biographers have found no evidence that the 
author ever used opium. Still, the original 
title, Alice's Adventures in Cleveland, sug- 
gests that something altered Carroll's vision. 


WORD ON THE STREET: Fans of the hippie-era 
Sid and Marty Krofft series say that only a 
preschooler (and the FCC) could miss the 
puppetpalooza's stoner clues. The plot in- 
volves a witch's jones to steal a bonglike 
talking flute. The psychedelic set is littered 
with mushrooms. H.R. is assumed to stand 
for “hand-rolled.” And the theme song con- 
tains the lyrics "Н.В. Pufnstuf, where you go 
when things get rough / H.R. Pufnstuf, you 
can't do a little ‘cause you can't do enough.” 
STRAIGHT DOPE: The Kroffts have denied ilic- 
it inspiration, but in 1995 Sid was asked, “Be 
honest. Did you guys take a lot of drugs in 
the 1960s?" He replied, "The question should 
be, ‘Do we take drugs іп the 19905?" They 
can dodge the issue, but watching even one 
Pufnstuf episode will give you a contact high. 


“Do you want to try the turkey, or should we stick with the stuffing?" 


83 


VINI INSPIRATION 


Miss November followed her star to success 


ow could a girl as gorgeous as Divini Rae have escaped our attention until 
now? Maybe the fact that she spent much of her life in a remote Alaskan 
fishing village has something to do with it. "The only way to reach my vil- 
lage is by plane or boat in the summer,” Divini says. “I felt a little cut off 
Most other kids had TVs, but we could pick up only two channels there 
anyway.” Despite the long Alaskan winters, Divini grew up with a disposi- 
tion as sunny as her name: *My mom told me that the first thing she 
thought when 1 was born was that I was like a divine ray of sunshine.” 


Growing up in a home with no running water or electricity, Divini became 
an avid reader and graduated early from high school. She then studied 
psychology and journalism at an Oregon college before a vacation to Syd- 
ney, Australia led to modeling and voice-over work. She lived in Sydney 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


1 grew up in а small Alaska town, sa | went rock climbing and camping all the time,” says Divini. “My parents were fishermen, and my 
earliest memory is of being aut on the boat, netting fish with my dad. He used ta send me to school on a sled pulled by huskies. | lave 
going back to Alaska lo see my family, but 1 couldn't live there again. The winters are too intense." 


"feel comfortable in my skin,” says Divini. "I've. 
never been inhibited or reserved. | was raised to 
believe you have sex only after marriage and 
only your husband sees you nude, but | used to 
loy aut nude when it was warm to get same col- 
ог. Thot would shock my mam. | told her PLAYBOY 
helps a womon recognize her sexuality and em- 
brace й in а beautiful woy. It's cute, becouse 
now she supports me ond is cool about it." 


on and off for five years before moving to Los Angeles. "Now when I go back 
to Australia, I affect an accent a little,” she confesses. “That way they don't 
ask me, How long are you here on vacation?” Divini also dabbled in acting 
down under, starring on the I V drama Above the Law and hosting a show on 
which she interviewed sports celebrities. She even launched her own month- 
ly magazine, SWAY (Sydney Will Amaze You), documenting the city's abundant 
nightlife. “Hef granted me an interview, and that issue is now a collector's 
item," she says. "I headed a talented group of people at the magazine—it 
was my baby” Now the entrepreneur is busy putting together a sexy calen- 
dar of Playmate friends to be sold on her website, divinirae.com. “Since I ap- 
peared in the Girls of Australia layout in the December 2000 ғілувоу, Гуе 


Й 


met lots of down-to-earth, beautiful women," she says. “I've never done a calendar before. It will be hot!" 
Miss November's enthusiasm for what lies around the corner is infectious. This is one brainy beauty whose 
hands are never idle. “It's rare that I relax," she says. "I have so much energy that I do sit-ups to feel pro- 
ductive while I watch Will & Grace.” She's just as focused about the type of guy she likes to hang out with. 

"m into the person and not his look: ys. “1 know that is a cliché, but I'm attracted to charisma and 
sophistication —someone who is articulate, likes to read, bas a silly sense of humor and is easygoing. 1 like 
men to be men, and I want to be treated like a lady-—open doors for me, speak respectfully. I'm classy and 

into the bad-boy thing or celebrity egos. Just gentlemen with manners for me." 


в 
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PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


МАМЕ: 722 Е 

вит: Ho warst: oY HIPS uo 

HEIGHT: омуш МЕІСНТ: O Re 1 -- 

BIRTH DATE: _ Z 3⁄ У BIRTHPLACE: M OA ИН s. 
банд f thh in Lio US, Continue А2 _ 


avertions: 2 Й 


publihing aad bet ше 96 d mokar semada 

aa E HEE s ASAI, пава. 

E UE < Jik mag 522. 

PLACES I'VE CALLED номе, Manaka, pon. Могла л, _ 
5 LA. 


ITEMS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: X ا‎ Ef wate = all Lines, 


Le: 


FIVE PEOPLE I'D LIKE TO INTERVIEW: 4 Хай» MAAR y a 2. 
Selinger, eden лао, [hane Samer J 0  -- 
пері = F 2 


18 4ens Wd — 7, тиф у af 
TADA 


SEE BEHIND.THE.SCENES. 
VIDEO OF DIVINIS PICTORIAL 
AT CYBER.PLAYBOYCI 


PLAYBOY'S PARTY JOKES 


А husband suspected that his wife was having 
an affair, so he hired a famous Chinese pri- 
vate detective. A few days later, the husband 
received this note: 

“Dear Sir, 

You leave house. He come house. I watch. 
He leave house. She leave house. 1 follow. He 
and she go into hotel. 1 climb tree and look in 
window. He kiss she. She kiss he. He undress 
she. She undress he. He play with she. She 
play with he. 1 різу with me. Fall out of tree 
and no see. No fee." 


As their wedding day approached, a man's 
fiancée asked him to come over and proofread 
the wedding invitations. When he walked into 
the house, her beautiful younger sister was 
standing there. She whispered in his ear, “I've 
been in love with you for years. Before you 
marry my sister, please make love to me just 
once. ГІЇ be upstairs waiting for you." 

Stunned, the man walked outside. The fi- 
ancée's father was standing by the man's car. 
The father shook his hand and said, “My 
daughters and I put you to a test, and you 
passed. We couldn't ask for a better man to 
marry into the family.” 

Moral of the story: Always keep your con- 
doms in the car. 


After his death, Osama bin Laden went to 
paradise. He was greeted by George Washing- 
ton, who slapped him across the face and 
elled, “How dare you attack the nation I 
elped conceive!” 

Patrick Henry punched Bin Laden in the 
nose and shouted, "You wanted to end Ameri- 
ca's liberty, but you failed." 

James Madison appeared, kicked him in the 
balls, and said, “This is why I allowed the gov- 
ernment to provide for the common defense.” 

Bin Laden was subjected to similar beatings 
from John Randolph, James Monroe, Thomas 
Jefferson and 66 other early Americans. As he 
writhed in pain on the ground, an angel ap- 
peared. Bin Laden said, “This is not what I 
was promised.” 

‘The angel replied, “I told you there would 
be 72 Virginians waiting for you. What did you 
think I said?” 


A naval ship was nearing its home port when 
the captain noticed a sailor on the flight deck 
gesturing wildly with semaphore flags. In the 
pier's parking lot, an attractive young woman 
Was standing on top of a station wagon, wav- 
ing flags back at the sailor. Concerned about 
security, the captain asked a signalman, “What 
messages are those two people sending to 
each other?” 

The signalman reported, “Captain, he is 
sending the letters FF and she is flashing the 
letters ER” 

‘The captain ordered the sailor to the bridge. 
When he arrived, the captain shouted, “Who is 
that woman on the pier, and why are you ex- 
changing the signals FF and EF?” 

The sailor replied, “Sir, that's my girlfriend, 
and she wants to eat first.” 


Tuis MONTH'S MOST FREQUENT SUBMISSION 
A young woman bought a new book, titled 
What Do Women Really Want? 

Her boyfriend picked it up and started 
thumbing through the pages. The woman 
asked, "What in the world are you doing?" 

He replied, “I just want to see if they have 
my name spelled right." 


Two shrinks met in the hallway outside their 
offices. One said, "Good morning." 

The other wondered, What exactly does he 
mean by that? 


аа 


Where does a bee put his stinger at night? 
In his honey. 


А woman went to a bank to apply for a loan. 
“I need the money to divorce my husband,” 
she said. 

“We wouldn't give money for a divorce,” 
the banker said. “We provide loans only for 
things like automobiles, businesses and home 
improvement.” 

“Well,” the woman said, “this is a home 
improvement.” 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, РІЛУВОУ, 730 
Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, or by 
e-mail to jokes@playboy.com. $100 will be paid to 
the contributor whose submission 15 selected. Sorry, 
jokes cannot be returned. 


“And last but not least, I want to thank the entertainment committee.” 


107 


108 


All the local loons 
and misfits come 
out to play 


Fiction by PETE DEXTER 


D ent Island lies in northern Puget 
Sound—36 miles long and half that 
wide, shaped about like a stomach 
except at Fort Beaver, the belt line, where її 
cinches in almost to nothing, and at the ends, 
where it tapers. It's a $7, 40-minute ferry 
ride from the mainland over the coldest 
water you will ever cross, and visitors are 
encouraged. Every spring, in fact, the island 
tourist commission buys advertisements in 
West Coast travel magazines that say, "Dent 
Island—come fall in love all over again." 
And they do come, every year, like indoor 
ants. All summer long, twin lines of them on 
bicycles, with wraparound sunglasses and 
yellow helmets, moving up and down State 
Road 535, the island's only artery. A few are 
inevitably maimed—there are always the 
Winnebago accidents, when one driver is 
blinded by the sun coming off another's 
windshield and takes out a section of bicy- 
clists about the length ofa guard rail—but 
mostly they survive and return. And the pic- 
nics, the places you see picnics. The British 
Columbians in particular will eat anywhere. 
Californians, on the other hand, are more 
apt to drop into the picturesque town of 
Austin for lunch, hoping to see Barbra 
Streisand, who is supposed to have а hide- 
away somewhere near the ferry landing, or 
to buy antiques at bargain prices. It does not 
occur to them, even after spending $80 on 
lunch, that the locals are not easy pickings. 
You cannot avoid these people; they are 
everywhere and often in need of medical assis- 


ILLUSTRATION BY BEN NETTLES 


PLAYBOY 


110 


tance. In rutting season they are at- 
tacked by deer. At the RV park they are 
attacked by yellow jackets. And still they 
come back. One stumbled out in front of 
me on Low Moan Road last year, grab- 
bing at my door like it was the last heli- 
copter out of Saigon, and a little later, as 
we stood looking down the long gully to 
the spot where his Land Rover had come 
то rest, he told me that somehow he had 
to make time in his life for himself, too. 

In extreme cases, they threaten to 
move in. 

As it happens, the house I live in 
now—at least most of it—was built by 
visitors, a middle-aged couple, whose 
other property was on the waterfront 
of Lake Washington, probably the 
dearest real estate between New York 
City and Tokyo. 

The lady ofthe house began the pro- 
ject as a weekend retreat, a place to get 
avay, I suppose, from other people 
with just as much money as she had. A 
place where she could hear herself 
think. A few months into construction, 
though, she had a change of heart and 
decided to go bigger. She had visions об 
the sort of house where friends would 
wear white gloves to afternoon teas. 
But not a complete change of heart. 
She went back and forth on it, back and 
forth—weekend retreat опе day, coun- 
try manor the nexi—and drove the 
builder out of his nut, of course, and 
then her husband. If he wasn't already. 

She was in the kitchen the first time 
we came through vith the real estate 
agent, baking gingersnaps, holding it 
together for the sake of appearances. 
She had an apron on, and new jeans 
and cowgirl boots she'd bought to at- 
tend the county fair. Horrific thighs. 
Out the window, her husband, Don, 
was splitting firewood at the edge of 
the meadow below the house. Don was 
going to miss the island, she said. He 
loved the outdoors, the feel of slam- 
ming home the old ax. 

She spoke these words affectionately, 
but you could see things between them 
were headed south. We were over 
there four times before we bought the 
house and never saw him closer to her 
than a hundred yards. Twice driving 
past, we spotted him just sitting in the 
meadow in his new pickup, reading the 
newspaper. 

By the time we showed up, of course, 
the lady of the house had made a deci- 
sion that afternoon teas and white 
gloves were not negotiable, and then 
she found out—probably during the 
five months she and Don waited 
around for the fucking electrician to 
show up—that there are no white 
gloves on this island except the ones 
that belong to the mimes. There's a 
nest of them over in Austin, so many 
that once in a while in the winter you 


see them miming for each other. The 
competition for wintertime attention 
around here just breaks your heart. 
Besides mimes, there is a theater 
group in town, and colonies of painters, 
musicians and glassblowers scattered 
near town, in the hills. There is an 
ex-movie star—nothing on the scale of 
Barbra Streisand, of course, but a face 
you'd know if you saw it—who keeps to 
himself, and an annual writers work- 
shop for lesbians. More greasy jeans 
than a pack of Hell's Angels. Four years 
ago a troop of touring monks was hired 
by the island arts council to visit Austin 
for а day and conduct а seminar 
on conga drumming, and 26 people 
showed up with their own conga 
drums. This in a town of 720 people. 
All to say that Dent Island does not 
lack culture. It is also true that many 
kinds of people live and work here— 
stockbrokers, fishermen, lawyers, Boe- 
ing engineers, one fucking electri- 
cian—and not all of them are cultured 
or even appreciate culture, and some 
of them will not even drive through 


Ms. Conners bore а 
pleasing resemblance to 
Jane Russell-and you 
didn't have to worry 
about putting out your 
eye on some implant. 


Austin with their families because of all 
the culture that hangs around in the 
sireet there. These are the same peo- 
ple, by the way, you will notice not wav- 
ing back when you are out on your bike 
in your yellow helmet looking for 
Barbra Streisand's cottage. 


"The island has two school districts— 
more because of its size than its popu- 
lation—and in June a few years ago the 
southern, more rural district, which 
includes the towns of Austin, Tyree and 
Eagleton, hired a 31-ycar-old woman 
named Anita Louise Conners to devel- 
op an advanced-placement curricu- 
lum. The old-timers said Ms. Conners 
bore a pleasing resemblance to the 
actress Jane Russell—from the day 
when you didn’t have to worry about 
putting out your eye on some implant 
a doctor had installed—and perhaps in 
that spirit, the school board, many of 
whose members had lived through the 
Great Depression, gave her an unusual, 
12-month contract, which caused some 


bruised feelings over at the high school 
as well as a dustup in the local paper. 
For most of a month it was civil war on 
the op-ed page, tit lovers against the 
teachers’ union. 

While the argument was going on, Ms. 
Conners set up courses in gender stud- 
ies, African American and feminist litera- 
ture, creative writing and Shakespeare. 

But wait, there's something else. Ms. 
Conners was from Harvard. And when 
the regulars down at Uncle Moses's 
Bed & Breakfast—who are the island’s 
native sons and offer the truest glimpse 
inside the place—when the news 
reached Uncle Moses's B&B that the 
new teacher who was causing all the 
stir was from Harvard, it might as well 
have been Barbra Streisand herself, 
riding up the street on Trigger. Just 
fuck the daisi 

Uncle Moses's B&B, I ought to ex- 
plain, is not now and never has been a 
bed-and-breakfast. It is a bar named 
(how would the tourist commission 
put this?) in celebration. of our visitors, 
and "Just fuck the daisies" is a local 
expression with roots in a 30-year-old 
incident at Dent Harbor Golf and 
Country Club that the board of direc- 
tors, in issuing a one-month suspen- 
Sion to past president Dick Springer, 
labeled "an egregious violation of com- 
mon courtesy and the dress code." 
To this day, in polite company, the 
denizens of Uncle Moses's use the 
euphemism "an egregious violation of 
common courtesy and the dress code" 
when they mean something so perfect, 
or so perfectly fucked-up, that it сап- 
not accurately be described except in 
terms of having sex with flowers. 

Not to say there is anything wrong 
with Harvard, per se, any more than 
there is anything wrong with daisies. It. 
is just that there is, as the Dent Harbor 
Golf and Country Club board of direc- 
tors noted in its letter of suspension, a 
time and a place for everything. 

My own reaction to the news of Ms. 
Conners's educational credentials was 
more like this: How can you be from a 
place like Harvard anyway? What 
about the other places? I went to the 
University of South Dakota—and I 
was there longer than most of the fac- 
ulty—but it's not where I'm from. I 
am from the one-bathroom tract hous- 
es in Georgia and suburban Chicago 
that my stepfather bought as he raised 
his family on a teacher's salary. 1 am 
from my seat next to my sister's at the 
kitchen table, from meat patties, 
baked potatoes and frozen green beans. 
Lam from Philadelphia and the news- 
paper business. 

Where I am not from, of course, is 
Harvard. My sister went there, though, 
and my brother Tom, who for all I 

(continued on page 158) 


“I love how people look like us from up here!” 


) ) ROCK N' ROLL FANTASY CAMP WANTS TO 
MAKE YOUR AIR-GUITAR DREAMS COME TRUE 
FOR ONLY $6,000—GROUPIES NOT INCLUDED { { 


have convinced myself that the final night of Rock 
n' Roll Fantasy Camp is no big deal, no different 
from putting on a skit with my cabin mates when | 
was nine. But this isn't the stage at Camp Winna- 
woka; it's the Bottom Line, a world-famous club in 
Manhattan. And this isn't a marshmallow on a stick 
in my hand; it's a bass guitar, on which І am expected 
shortly to accompany camp counselor Roger Daltrey. 
Yes, that Roger Daltrey. Probably best not to dwell on the fact 
that I'd never picked up a bass before three days ago. 
“Hellooo, New York City!” the emcee howls, raising an ex- 
pectant cheer from the standing-room-only crowd. "Are you 
ready?" For those about to rock, we beg your forgiveness. 


STRATOCASTERS AND FANNY PACKS 
Rock n' Roll Fantasy Camp is the brainchild of concert pro- 
moter David Fishof. Decades ago, baseball fantasy camps 
proved that rich, paunchy sports fans would pay top doliar to 
play catch with rich, paunchy ex-athletes. Fishof applied the 
idea to music, creating a place where people could "eat, sleep 
and live rock and roll." The first RRFC, held in 1997 in Miami, 
lost money, but Fishof revived the camp in Los Angeles last 
year, and now he's brought it to New York City. 

While financial riches have so far proved elusive, the rock- 
camp concept has found its way onto pop culture's ultimate 
barometer: The Simpsons. During Homer's stint at camp, his 
counselors are a who's who of rock royalty, including Mick Jag- 
ger, Tom Petty and Elvis Costello. Fishof's roll call is somewhat 
less awe-inspiring: From the website touting RRFC 2003, I 
learn that this year's musical director is Mark Rivera, a Brook- 


Iynite who blows sax in Billy Joel's band. Among the 20 or so 
hands-on counselors are aging classic rockers such as Moun- 
tain guitarist Leslie West, Bad Company drummer Simon 
Kirke and Jack Blades, bassist-singer from hair-metal heroes 
Night Ranger. While those names don't mean much to anyone 
who didn't spend the 1970s and 19805 obsessing over liner 
notes, some bigger guns are also scheduled to appear, includ- 
ing Grand Funk Railroad frontman Mark Farner, Ramones 
drummer Marky Ramone, Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley and one 
bona fide superstar: Daltrey, the Who's golden-voiced god. 
Legend hes it that bluesman Robert Johnson bought his tal- 
ents from the devil at the price of his soul. In 2003, music glo- 
ту still isn't a bargain. To put an average joe in touch with his 
inner rock star, RRFC charges $5,995 for five days—not in- 
cluding travel or lodging. As I sit іп а cab, zigzagging through 
Manhattan toward the camp's headquarters in the Hudson 
Hotel, I prepare for two distinct possibilities: the fulfillment of 
a teenage fantasy, or utter humiliation that could take years to 


7 в Ss ka Же! 


145%: 


YOU ARE НЕКЕ 


forget. Certainly I'm feeling skeptical about the prospect of an 
authentic experience being delivered at any price. Rock and 
capitalism have a long, contentious relationship, and lately 
rock has been getting its ass kicked. In an age when the 
Clash's punk anthem "London Calling" sells Jaguars, rock 
seems to have outlived its mission statement of rebellion. 

The Hudson is one of those boutique jobs too trendy for 
obvious signage, so | sneak a peek at the front-desk stationery. 
just to make sure I'm in the right place. I'm told registration is 
on the third floor. When the elevator opens I'm besieged. 

“Hey, how was your trip? What's your name?" yelps a caf- 
feinated middle-aged woman in a Rock n' Roll Fantasy Camp 
T-shirt. "Let's get you a name tag." She hands me a tote bag 
and turns me over to impressively busty, bottle-blonde twins 
armed with a camera. I'm ordered to stand against the wall 
and smile. | do. A photo is taken for a laminated badge. 

I'm then ushered into an eggshell-colored conference room 

iere other attendees are already auditioning. In back, Rivera 


sits behind a long table, jotting notes that will help him divide 
the 78 registered campers into nine bands. In front, Blades, 
Famer, Peter Frampton keyboardist Bobby Mayo and Billy Joel 
drummer Liberty DeVitto set up to accompany the auditions. 
Campers perch on metal chairs, honing their chops, suitably 
intimidated by this firing-squad-style arrangernent. 

Any hopes that camp might deliver a Dionysian cocktail of 
Sex, drugs and rock and roll are quashed as | survey my fellow 
campers. The dominant demographic here is male and bald- 
ing, with a heavy concentration of lawyers, salesmen and guys 
from New Jersey. Some are more enthusiastic than others. 
Craig Langweiler is a 48-year-old stockbroker from suburban 
Philadelphia who bears a striking resemblance to Paul Shaffer. 
Langweiler stands front and center, clapping along through 
most of the auditions. At one point he even joins in on har- 
monica. If there's a guy Fishof had in mind when he conceived 
Rock n' Roll Fantasy Camp, Langweiler is that guy. 

“To play harp with Mark Rivera and Liberty DeVitto is about 


ROGER DALTREY 


as good as it gets," Langweiler tells me. “1 guess playing with 
Billy Joel would be like sex. This is the foreplay." ; OUR WRITER 

Not everyone here fits the same mold, though. | spot a few c 
pimply teenagers and about a dozen women. Shana Golden, 30 
(by her reckoning), is a Vegas showgirl who won a contest to 
attend the camp. She's sitting in the corner, strumming a white 
Stratocaster, with sheet music spread in front of her. "It's all 
because of Roger Daltrey," she says. "I heard about the camp 
on the radio. If his name wasn't mentioned, | just would've 
gone, ‘Oh, that's cute.’ But I said, ‘Oh my god, | have to іту." 

The thing most campers here do have in common is that they 
can play. As I listen to accountants rip through the guitar solo in 
“Mississippi Queen" and orthopedists pound out the beat to 
"Won't Get Fooled Again,” I'm reminded that | can't. My musi- 
cal history is a chronicle of abandoned piano lessons, ditched 
school band concerts and a guitar that's been gathering dust in 
my closet for several years. They call my number, and someone 
hands me a top-of-the-line Gretsch hollow-body guitar courtesy 
of the house. It doesn't help; І butcher “All Along the Watch- 
tower." After the last sour note peters out, Rivera says, "Great 
job! It's gonna be a fun week.” He actually sounds sincere. 

1 head to my room and inspect the registration materials more 
closely. Each day's schedule looks the same: breakfast, band 


practice, lunch, band practice, dinner, “celebrity” jam session. Paddling canoes and 
Planned activities run from nine a.m. to 11 P.N., with little crafting lanyards are, 
downtime. Oddly І don't find the sheet that lists sessions such like, so lame. Today's 
as Advanced Hotel-Suite Destruction, How to Use Your Coke youth campers want 


Habit as a Tax Write-Off and Management of Nubile Groupies. H to rock! 
DIRTY DEEDS, NOT DIRT CHEAP 


My audition debacle weighs on me early next morning as | ROCK 'N' ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS - 
trudge into a gray rehearsal space to meet my freshly selected 
bandmates. I'm resigned to being the worst musician in the en- EU шкы Dz what mold they 
tire camp, destined to spend four days slapping a tambourine lo or do not fit.” Activities: Ju use these young 
against my hip à la Linda McCartney. So it's a , ыны ан rater neha 
Ш EE seven campers nearly as CD cevers aud uses, aud develop aeHi-defsnss skills de 
° fe third-grad les. : Bona fido 

The first guy | meet is Andy Oringer, a 45- ет m SiecterKimney King Cobra end DI Pam the 
year-old attorney from Long Island. He's one Funkstress. Jamboree: Rock 'n' Roll Camp Showcase, 
featuring camper bands such as Mother May I and Pom 

Pom Meltdown. Last summer Carrie Brownstein of 


"Ihopothismusio Ёш 
we play doesn't 
PAUL GREEN SCHOOL OF 


go the way of ROCK MUSIC + PHILADELPHIA 

2 за Мане: “The best way to learn anything is by deing it.” 

Perry Como. Activities: Its like an aiter-schocl chess olub minus the 

chess, plus Zeppelin but minus Tool, because given the 

—counselor Mark Farner chance “the kids would play nothing but frickin’ Tool," 

of Grand Funk Railroad laments director Green. Students ages eight to 18 are 

immersed in 1970s classic rock (because that's what 

Green likes) and perform in clubs, complete with lights 

of two drummers in our group and our most experienced rocker, and fog machines. Counselor: Napoleon Murphy Brock 
having played a law firm party. Of our five guitarists, not one (a Frank Zappa band alumnus). Jamboree: Green fre- 
has ever been onstage. Our only real talent is Ryan Bruch, a quently puts camper bands suoh as Decapitator and 
gengly 16-year-old keyboardist from Roanoke, Virginia. a сп келе a насаа ше 

Ricky Byrd, а mop-coiffed former guitarist for Joan Jett and 


the Blackhearts, is the counselor responsible for whipping us JOYFUL NOISE * ATLANTA 


into shape. He hands us each an autographed photo and a copy Motto: "Where Christians rock.” Activities: It takes 
of his solo CD, then asks, "Does anyone sing or play bass?" more than the Good Book to reach today’s sin-crazed 
Silence. (ЙІ youth. Campers, ages eight to 17, learn to write uplift- 
Despite never having attempted either, | offer to do both. An- ing lyrics, promote bands and get as funky as the Ten 
other guitarist, Lori Interrant, 42, a frizzy-haired data-entry Commandments will allow, The day-and-weekend camp 
clerk from Queens, New York who enrolled in the camp after isn't just about Christian rock. "Bu! Korn isn't really 
ие the lottery, volunteers to sing. Our lineup is cemented. decem SA sare seal lia ire 
iat do you wanna play?” Byrd asks, to a chorus of non- rock but ^j ive"), Jamboree: Campers have the op- 
committal murmurs. "Okay, let's try ‘All Right Now’ by Free." ic Minim their favorite Christian rockers 
| guffaw, concerned | won't be able to keep up on bass. punks perform and minister in a finale that's sure to 
“Don't worry,” Byrd says. “It’s just like playing guitar, but eas- blow the steeple off the joint. —Michee! Мааха 


ler. It's got two less strings.” 


WHERE ELSE BUT AT 
ROCK FANTASY 
CAMP WOULD YOU 
FIND YOURSELF 
HANGING WITH 
ROGER DALTREY 
(OPPOSITE PAGE) 


“But I can't really play 
guitar, either. 

“Even better.” 

Later І catch а van ride 
to lunch with Langweiler, 
the harmonica-playing 
stockbroker. His enthusiasm 
comes from experience: In 
the 1970s he played music 
semiprofessionally. 

"But | decided | needed to 
make a living and become a 
family man," he says. Lang- 
weiler wanted to attend last year's L.A. camp but was too con- 
sumed with a divorce. Now he's a free man. "The whole thing 
for me is to do what | always wanted to do," he says. “The Who, 
Grand Funk—l used to play all that stuff. That was my teenage 
years. To bring back those memories is really great." He passes 
around a wallet photo of himself onstage with Kenny Loggins. 

Mayo, the Frampton sideman, nods. "Yeah, | know Kenny. 
Kenny's great. He rocks." Everyone in the van agrees with this 
assessment of the lite-FM mainstay responsible for "Whenever 
| Call You Friend” and "Celebrate Me Home." 

Meals are served in a loft space overlooking tne Hudson River. 
As we load up our plates with kosher cold cuts and pasta salad, 
Fishof rises to make announcements. He appears somber. 

“Shhh! We've got some bad news,” he says. "Ace Frehley fell 
down the stairs this morning and is in the hospital, so he won't 
be able to make it today as scheduled." Groans of disappoint- 
ment. "But we have a special surprise for you," he continues, 
his voice rising. "This guy's sold millions of albums and toured 
the world. He's here to talk about it all.” A man sporting black 
jeans, a sleeveless Special Forces T-shirt and the mother of all 
mullets walks to the stage. "Please give a big Rock n' Roll Fan- 
tasy Camp welcome to Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad!" 

Farner delivers a rambling speech that's equal parts George 
W. Bush and Grandpa Simpson: "I'm proud to be an American. 
When people try to terrorize this country, it just draws us 
together. We will kick your ass." Somehow this segues into an 
assessment of today's pop music: "The music you don't like, 
that you think is just noise—maybe your kids like it—remem- 
ber, that's somebody else's favorite music. But | hope this 
music we play, classic rock, doesn't go the way of Perry Como. 
Because there's something alive in rock. And that's rebellion." 

This theme—"Rock and roll ain't like it was in my day"—is a 
popular one here. For the vast majority of campers, the day the 
music died falls somewhere between Jimi Hendrix's overdose 
and the advent of MTV. One senses that if, say, Bono were to 
drop by he'd be slightly suspect for still trying to create new, rel- 
evant music. He's no Mark Farner, that's for sure. 


I'm starting to realize that all counselors aren't created equal. 
Full-timers such as Byrd, Blades and DeVitto do most of the 
g hands-on instruction. Others, such as Simon Kirke and Leslie 
з West, make sporadic appearances during which they're treated 
# like honored guests. None is treated with the awe reserved for 
i Daltrey, though. He's a scarce commodity, and brushes with 
„ him take on almost mythic significance. 

f As Blades, who sold millions of records with Night Ranger, 
4 puts it, "How many times do I get a chance to play Who songs 
8 with Roger Daltrey? It's a fantasy-camp experience for me, too.” 
i Later | corner Fishof. Не is a fleshy former sports agent who took 
his first whacks at promotion in the 1980s organizing tours—the 
% Monkees, Ringo Starr—that capitalized on baby-boomer nostalgia. 
І "| want to do a lot more camps, but I'm also in negotiations. 
to do a reality TV series," he 

explains. "Like American Idol, 
§ but I want to create а rock 
| band." To this end, he has 
9 promoted this camp with the 
$ subtlety of a carnival barker. 

VH1 Classic's cameras are 
@ omnipresent, and a steady 
¿ stream of reporters is ush- 
1 ered through the events. 

а Golden, the Stratocaster- 
, slinging showgirl, sees all the 
% media attention as ап oppor- 

tunity to promote the band 
< she plays in back in Vegas. 
f "We couldn't pay a PR per- 
4 son for this kind of publicity," 
9 she says. "For me, talking to 
* the press is the most natur- 
al high in the world." 

The next day, Friday, Byrd adds a new song to our repertoire. 
"We've got ‘All Right Now’ in the bag," he says, displaying a 
> confidence not universally shared. “We just need to add one 
A song today and another tomorrow and we'll be ready for Sun- 
š day." He suggests “Summertime Blues.” “That way," he says, 
+ "maybe we can get Daltrey to come up and sing with you guys.” 
1 Вуга shows us an arrangement that gives the 1950s chest- 
4 nut a grungy, snarling edge. I'm charged with playing a simple 
f bass line and sharing the singing chores with Lori. We jam for 
Î two solid hours, then take а break. When the band—which af- 
fer a mercifully brief flirtation with the moniker Rockin’ Byrds, is 
iow called Byrdman of Alcohol—reconvenes, we're short a gui- 
4 tarist. Ten minutes later, he wanders in. 

“That's it, you're out of the band,” Andy shouts, standing up 
from his drum kit. “You're not showing the kind of commitment 
Byrdman of Alcohol demands. Pack your things.” 

Everyone chuckles, but in the practice spaces of the eight 
F other bands, such events are no laughing matter. Personality 
i conflicts are common, and in some cases artistic differences 
prove terminal. Golden's band, the Liberators, seems to have al- 
ready written a few chapters of its Behind the Music saga. One 
member threatens to quit because he doesn't like a song they're 
playing; another is demanding more guitar solos. “Right now 
e're under a lot of pressure,” she says. “The singer’s terrible. 
Can't sing a note. | think it'll all come together in the end, but 
it's hard when everybody's unprofessional.” 


i IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL 

f It's Friday night, and I'm antsy for our Behind the Music 
2 episode to slide into its inevitable dark chapter. You know, the 
* part where a camper can't resist sharing a needle with his idol, 
фа limo winds up at the bottom of the hotel pool and, for heav- 
з en's sake, someone oils up those twins. 

I For now, everyone seems content to hang in the hotel bar's 
i courtyard, bum cigarettes and listen to Mayo tell an anecdote 
' about Peter Frampton splitting his pants. Soon I realize that the 


CAMPER SHANA GOLDEN IS 
READY FOR GLORY. 


1 


night is not going to devolve into the pagan bacchanalia of The ¿ “Wild Thing.” | beg off singing this one. Nobody argues. 

Song Remains the Same. Hell, this isn't even the sweet, gauzy 6 Тһе medley comes together quickly. Granted, it helps that 

nostalgia of Almost Famous. Screw these squares. I'm going to g these songs are meant to be played with all the grace of a drunk 

cut loose. Next trip to the bar І order an imported beer. on a weeklong bender, but nonetheless something worthwhile 
| wake up Saturday morning with my head pounding like 8 lies buried beneath our slag heap of missed cues and wobbly 

John Bonham's bass drum. | drag myself into rehearsal to find š rhythms. It sounds like we're having fun. 


that Byrd has flown the coop to help out another band. "Does anyone know if Ricky's coming back?" Lori asks as we 
After some awkward moments | suggest we take a shot at 8i pack up our gear. Nobody does. 
"Summertime Blues." It's our first time playing without profes- "| think we're okay," says Andy. "I'm not sure we need him 


sional help, and it sounds like a mess. But it's our mess. “All 8 playing with us." 
Right Now" sounds equally rough, but the bigger problem is Ё We're granted free time on Saturday night. | exit the hotel into 
that we're supposed to play three songs onstage tomorrow , a cacophony of car horns and jackhammers that awakens me to a 
night, and we know only two. We need something easy. We set- 8 fact I'd nearly forgotten: I'm in New York City. The distance be- 
tle on а medley of the garage-rock classics "Louie Louie" and є tween the camp's eamest universe and the hard-boiled streets of 
Manhatten is immeasurable. Fishof has engineered an insular 
world, a place where cynicism simply doesn't exist. The "star" 
DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB і counselors are notably lacking in the world-weary bitterness 
Their 15 seconds of rock fame are up. Now what? common among the once famous, and his staff is beyond nice. 
Not all washed-up rock stars settle for becoming fantasy- Я Case in point: Crystal and Jocelyn Potter, the pneumatic twins. 
camp counselors. Some | ed ¡exciting postía me саса 4 Though they're ostensibly part of the administrative team, their real 
in gardening and...misste defense? purpose seems to be keeping morale high. How better to make a 
B middle-aged insurance agent feel like ы 
КІМ WILDE a rock star than to surround him with 
Old gig: British singer of the New Wave classic Š girls who otherwise wouldn't glance 
“Кій іп Атегіса,” Сһігру, сигуу аі Ыопое, зпе y his way if his head were on fire? 
was the Kylie Minogue of 1981, and her global hit On Sunday morning most of the talk 
is on at least 49 compilation CDs. i is about what people did with their 
ALO | free night. Bruch, my band's 16-year- 
offered gardening tips to green-thumbed Brits on old keyboardist, went to see Phantom 
CUCA š or ihe Opera on Broadway with his 
Detox Camp, a reality show on which four celebs rit May then carere sre 
sought good health through twice-daily enemas. H any: LES uy 
З б 5 and went to bed early. Rock and roll! 
Career trajectory: V Did we mention that they “Think we're ready for tonight?” 


7 
Were coffee enemas } Andy asks me, as he fiddles with his | 


drumsticks at our final practice. 
non % "Мої remotely,” | say. 
Old gig: Teen idol. Clean-cut crooner Sherma: We spend the morning running 
was like David Cassidy with less hair. Starting in ТІМЕН а" graphic here is 
1969 he scored several sugar-coated hits that E ua male cmd balding, 
moistened the groins of pubescent girls. в with "Summertime Blues," follow 2 |. 
A СТАНА НЫП ИАН with “All Right Now" and close with _ with а heavy con- 
medical technician in Los Angeles, 5пегтап, 60, * the garage rock medley. Practice $ “етене of guys 
has delivered five babies and created a foundation y wrapping up when Byrd reappears- 
that helps EMTs volunteer at public events. We play our set for him, and he 
eee ce sia š seems enthused. Then he informs 
than saving a life,” Sherman says. Except maybe us that he's enlisted Derek St. Holmes, a former vocalist with Ted 
never singing “Bubble Gum and Braces" again. # Nugent's band, to sing lead on “All Right Now." "That's a tough 
В Song to sing, and so much of it depends on the vocals,” Byrd says. 
MIKE SCORE I'm hoping ego deflation doesn't actually make a noise. Still, 
РЕТТІ! nobody else seems bothered by this coup, so I keep my mouth 
rock band dominated MTV in 1982 with the video shut. Back at the hotel | lie on the bed for an hour, going over 


for “1 Ran (So Far Away)." It prominently displayed № the bass parts in my head. | spend another hour fretting over 
Score's asymmetric 'do, dubbed the Waterfall. which of my shirts looks coolest with my bass. 
NOAA y When | arrive, the Bottom Line is packed to capacity—400 
Florida with his third wife. He recently went 18 people, many of whom paid $25 for a chance to see...me? 
years without a haircut and has a ponytail. Three beers and a scotch soothe my nerves, and | begin to un- 
coa û derstand why so many rock stars end up in rehab. 
manship into his sailing vessels as he did his hair, Around nine-thirty, we're told to get ready. We crowd near the 
he may just stay aficat. в bottom of a staircase backstage, clutching our instruments. 
Crammed into a tight space, with nowhere to go but forward, 
JEFF "SKUNK" BAXTER Ë I'm reminded of the numbing fear | felt prior to jumping out of 
Perera TUL LION y an airplane. Only this time | don't have a parachute. 
ponytail, beret and walrus mustache, Baxter looked St. Holmes wanders up. Tanned, toned and clad in a tight 


MARS EE EA Ed š black T-shirt, he looks like а bouncer at a strip club. But for a 
Crunch. His solo on Steely Dan's “Rikki Don't Lose 30-year rock veteran he seems slightly frazzled. 
ii © “Does anyone have a lyric sheet for ‘All Right Now?” he asks. 
sion work with Julio Iglesias and Chery! Ladd. в Nobody does. “That's okay. МІ be fine without it." 

New cig: Missile-defense expert. The 54-year-old Fishof introduces us, and the eight of us climb the stairs. The 
A 8 lights make me squint; we struggle to find room on the stage, 
Bee eo ses Coe ende چ‎ оы і which is much smaller than our rehearsal space. | set my beer 
Career trajectory: @ Four words: high-level se- on an amp and plug in. Byrd calls us in close. 


curity access. (concluded on page 162) 


TUE SALT, 4 
JONT REET 
THE SANI 


УМ PAUK, HONEY. THE 
LADY NEXT PoR HAY SHE 
10 STARE! 


Z 
VA ское 117 


CLOTHES TO THE EDGE 


You don't need amplitude to look like a chairman of the boards 


| FASHION BY 1 WPHOTOGRAPHY BY 
STYLING BY 


Board sports are all about indi- 
viduality. Taking a break from 
the air, our ravishing rider 
_ 15 in a jacket ($240), pants 
_ ($180) and boots ($144), all by 
Special Blend, and a shirt by 
ж» Electric | (623). Like ae 
Both com of. 

cool m: loth 


PLAYBOY 
FASHION 
> 


- 


THAT PAGE: Big-ai 


specialist Jason Borgstede won the 2003 Mount Bachelor Grand Prix, as well as top honors at several past 
X Games. Here he's in a sweatshirt ($50) and gloves ($57) by Grenade, a button-down shirt (535) and T-shirt (516) by Jack's 
Garage, and pants (5200), headband (520) and boots (5250), all by Special Blend. His goggles are by Scott (550). THIS PAGE: The 
guys, from left: Jamie is in a corduroy jacket ($120), corduroy pants (580) and T-shirt ($20), ай by LRG, a twill shirt by Gant ($100), 
shoes by Savier ($75) and a cap by Special Blend ($20). His sunglasses are by Electric (585). Jimmy wears a hoodie (562), T-shirt 
(522) and cargo pants ($50), all by Zoo York. His hat is by Dakine (525), and his glasses are by Smith ($80). Jason's shirt ($48), 
cords ($45) and beanie ($20) are all by Rusty, his fleece vest is by Columbia Sportswear ($35), and his glasses are by Scott 
(545). Todd is in an orange nylon vest ($286) and cords ($168) by Armani Jeans, a flannel shirt (545) and cap ($16) by Quiksilver, 
a Henley by Lithium ($50), sneakers by iPath (572) and glasses by Spy ($115). 


THIS PAGE: From lefi, Jimmy is in a sweater by Triple 5 Soul ($76), a T-shirt by Dub Weathergear ($21), jeans ($50) and belt 
($22) by Savier, sneakers by K-Swiss ($60), a beanie by Southshore Soldiers ($10) and glasses by Smith ($85). Jason wears 
a jacket ($180), sweater with scarf ($80), and jeans ($88), all by LRG, and glasses by Electric ($85). At his feet is a bag by Clive 
($55). Jamie is in а sweater ($85) and Tshirt ($25) by Lithium, jeans Бу Savier ($50) and a beanie (520) and glasses (560) by 
Electric. Todd is in a sweater ($58) and pants ($68) by Ecko Ui led, a beanie by DC ($19) and glasses by Spy ($115). His 
МРЗ player is an iPod by Apple (5400), and the bags are by Triple 5 Soul ($86). THAT PAGE: Jason, left, із in a jacket ($135) and 
vest ($70) by Tommy Hilfiger, a T-shirt by Jack's Garage ($16), pants by Avirex ($65) and a hat by Grenade ($16). Jamie is in 
a jersey ($50) and pants (565) by Avirex, a beanie by Volcom ($20), goggles by Electric (585) and a watch by Vestal (599). 


¿Y 


> 


J N 


nm à 
۵ 


“If it weren't for the casual sex I have with you and Gwen, I wouldn't have 
any meaningful relationships at all!" 


THE BIGO 

When I have an orgasm, it’s very intense. I lose control of 
my body and almost black out. But it takes someone who 
knows what he's doing. He has to know my body. When 1 
spend a lot of time with a man, he learns what I like and 
don't like. It's always best when you don't have to say any- 
thing. I feel bad when I have to бау, “No, do it this way.” T 
feel like I'm saying, “I don't like the way 1 have sex with 
you.” I don't want him 10 think he doesn't know what he's 
doing. He obviously does if he has me in bed with him. 


ENJOYING THE VIEW 


VARIATIONS ON 
A THEME 


Bill Murray 


РЕАУВОУ 


200 


No SNL alum gets more props or makes better 
movies. So he's got that going for him 


1 


PLAYBOY: Brad Pitt, Clint Eastwood and 
other celebrities who won't be рисһтеп 
at home appear in foreign ads. Did you 
consult them for Lost in Translation, in 
which you portray an American star en- 
ticed to do Japanese commercials? 
MURRAY: No, but 1 remember being in 
Japan 10 years ago for a golf tourna- 
ment. 1 turned over a Kirin beer coast- 
er, and there was Harrison Ford's pic- 
ture. He's a guy who would never be 
caught dead doing a commercial here. 
He had a bottle in his hand and the 
most uncomfortable look on his face, 
like, “I can't believe I'm shilling.” When 
Sofia Coppola, the director of Lost in 
Translation, sent me the script, she in- 
cluded a photo and said, “This is what 1 
have in mind." It was Brad Pitt in an ad 
for espresso in a can, and he had the 
same grimace: “I can’t believe I'm sell- 
ing this can of coffee.” That influenced 
me when I had to do my own shtick. 


2 


PLAYBOY: You spend much of the film 
with Scarlett Johansson. Is this the feel- 
good movie of the year for the 50- 
something man who fantasizes about a 
younger girl who's infatuated with him? 
MURRAY: I don't know if it's a feel-good 
movie. I don't think we'll get our own 
TV network, but 1 do think this film 
has an objective point of view about 
what it's like to be away from your pri- 
mary relationship. A man who's 8,000 
miles from home meets a woman who's 
8,000 miles from home, and they're 
both dissatisfied, in a country where 
neither speaks the language How do 
you spend a week with the only other 
person you can communicate with and 
not reach the precipice of closeness? 
That's where the movie takes place— 
on the precipice of closeness. 


3 


PLAYBOY: Did you discover some serene 
art such as flower arranging during 
your sojourn in Japan? 


Interview by Warren Kalbacker 


MURRAY: 1 got а bonsai tree. I kept it 
alive as long as I was there and left i 
good hands. Mostly I savored humor- 
ous things about the Japanese. The for- 
mal bowing is just sort of a shtick. They 
bow when they meet, and they bow re- 
peatedly. I couldn't resist the Abbott 
and Costello thing, bowing and hitting 
heads with people. They got a huge 
kick out of it. I learned certain things 
are taboo for them but okay for us, like 
putting your feet on the table or rub- 
bing your stomach with your napkin. 


4 


PLAYBOY: Did you play much golf in 
Japan? We hear they're fanatics about 
divot replacement. 

MURRAY: I didn't notice that they were 
fanatics about divot replacement. I'ma 
fanatic about divot replacement. They 
have little girl caddies called ducks, as 
in quack, quack ducks, because they 
wear these hard-billed hats in case they 
get hit by golf balls. When you meet 
your caddy on the first tee, she’s this 
beautiful geisha kind of duck. They 
don't carry the clubs. They pull the 
carts in complete makeup, but it's 95 
degrees in Fukuoka, down in the 
south. So around the 12th hole, the 
makeup starts to melt, and what you 
thought was a 26-year-old girl becomes 
someone in her 60s. At the end of a 
round they don’t even want to make 
eye contact, because their makeup is 
completely gone. 


5 


PLAYBOY: How did you become such а 
stickler about golf rules and etiquette? 
MURRAY: I was a greenskeeper as well as 
a caddy, so I know how much work it 
takes to make a course perfect. 1 got in 
the habit of walking into the bunker 
with a rake so I could hit the shot and 
then start raking. I've made the mis- 
take of seeing a footprint and spasmod- 
ically raking it before hitting a shot. 
That's a violation of the rules, so I 
would assess myself a penalty. Same 


thing on the greens. Rather than look- 
ing at the read of my own putt, ГА re- 
pair other people's ball marks. It drives 
me nuts. It’s like littering in a national 
park. I found a used diaper once in 
Olympic National Park. I thought that 
was the all-time low. That was before I 
had kids. Now I can understand it. 
They probably abandoned their kid a 


few hundred yards later. 


6 


PLAYBOY: All golfers have been tempted 
to move a ball to a better lie. Have you 
ever given in? 

MURRAY: No. 1 like playing Бу the rules. 
I think the rules are sometimes unfair, 
but it’s challenging to play by them. If 
you ask someone his handicap and he 
says nine, okay, which nine is it? There 
are very few actual nine handicaps. It's 
either the nine that's really a 15 be- 
cause he can't bear saying his handicap 
is in double digits, or he's a two who 
lies. You see people roll their balls over 
in the fairway. These guys are players 
and commentators in the sports world, 
and you think, Christ, how can this guy 
do that? It's like plagiarism. 


7 


РІАУВОУ: Your antics at the Pebble 
Beach celebrity tournament—hitting 
trick balls, unorthodox attire—are well 
known. If Bing Crosby had seen such 
behavior at his tournament, would he 
have been shocked? 

MURRAY: Bing Crosby had more fun 
playing golf than anybody. He was a 
great golfer. He was a two handicap. 
Everything I've ever done on a golf 
course, he did. I hit a spinning golf ball 
a couple years ago— "Holy christ! This 
guy, how dare he?" I've seen footage of 
Crosby doing the same thing, hitting 
trick golf balls. That tournament 30 or 
40 years ago was the greatest party go- 
ing. Those guys used to play drunk. 
Seriously. It started as a party and a 
chance to fill Monterey hotel rooms in 
the winter. (continued on page 138) 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY © MICHAEL O'NEILL 


127 


Kill Bill director Quentin Torantino (obove) wrote the port of 
а one-eyed killer for Doryl. "The patch is fun but hard to 
adjust fo.” Daryl says. "And it messes you up again when 
you toke il off of the end. That's when | couldn't see ot all.” 


ome actresses are content to play 
the same type of character in every 
film they make. Daryl Hannah, on 
the other hand, has portrayed a 
mermaid, a clone, a cavewoman 
and a 50-foot housewife, just to 
pluck a few roles from her eclectic résumé. That 
diversity, coupled with periodic tabloid cameos, 
has led to a hazy public perception of just who 
resides inside that bombshell exterior. So as Daryl 
hits the big screen in yet another eccentric role, 
playing a one-eyed martial arts assassin in Quentin 
Tarantino's hotly anticipated Kill Bill, we were more 
than happy to let her get a few things off her chest. 

“уе played moms, a hairdresser and a normal 
girlfriend, too,” she laughs. "I think that as soon as 
you become a public figure, the tabloids make a 
cartoon character out of you, and they try to keep 
on drawing. It's funny, because it's so distant from 
what my real life is. lt might be eccentric to be an 
actress and lead a perfectly normal lile, so in that 
sense Га say l am eccentric." 

Though Daryl's breakthrough role as an uninhib- 
ited mermaid in Splash made her an international 
star, she professes surprise at the 1984 romantic 
comedy's enduring appeal. "So many kids come 
up to me and say they were narned after me in 
Splash, so | meet a lot of Hannahs and Madisons,” 
she says. "There's nothing better than making a 
film that inspires kids' imaginations." 

Her favorite roles, however, have had a darker 
edge, including Pris, the lissome replicant who 
wraps her thighs around Harrison Ford's neck in 
the sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Recently Daryl 
slipped back into Pris's spiky wig and body paint 
for Entertainment Weekly's cult-movie issue. "We 
did the shoot in a theater, and | had to park far away 
and walk there in the costume," she says. "Some 
people yelled, ‘Hey, Pris!’ That was kind of cool. | 
felt totally badass. There are elements of her in 
some characters that I've been playing recently, so 
it was nice to put her on again." 

She had no such elaborate costume to hide in 
while playing a stripper in the 2000 indie film Daric- 
ing at the Blue Iguana, so Daryl prepped by actually 
working at a strip club for a few months. “I'd never 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY DURAN 


Daryl Hannah swings into action 


and puts the thrill in Kill Bill 


even been to a strip club before.” she says. 
had boyfriends who'd go to strip clubs when 
we'd get into fights, so the whole thing was 
scary and intimidating to me. A girl there 
became my mentor and led me through that 
world. I had to learn how to dance for the cus- 
tomers, so | wore disguises. | would divide my 
tips among the girls who were working so | 
wasn't taking money away from them." 

One might think Daryl wouldn't be so fear- 
less after a period in which her personal lite 
became frequent tabloid fodder. A rocky rela- 
tionship with Jackson Browne included widely 
publicized allegations of domestic abuse, and 
her romance with John Kennedy Jr. had packs 
of paparazzi dissecting their every public ges- 
ture (it even spawned a made-for-TV movie in 
which a little-known actress portrays Daryl). 
She does admit to being skittish about dating 
these days. "Most of the guys l've gone out 
with I've known from the past or met through a 
friend,” she says. “I've never really gone out 
with strangers. Right now I'm working really 
hard, so my focus is in that area. Until 1 fix in 
me what is drawn to damaged people, | think 
I'll just be very cautious. But | love boys and 
making out with boys.” 

If those boys are very, very lucky, they might 
be invited to visit Daryl at her primary resi- 
dence nestled in the Rockies. “My favorite 
thing is to be naked, which is why | always live 
in remote areas," she says. “| have a lot of land 
and several meadows filled with flowers. My 
ideal is to wake up in the morning and run 
around the meadow naked. 1 think it's a good 
idea to live in harmony with nature. I've been a 
vegetarian since | was 11 and have lived off the 
grid for six years now. People don't realize how 
easy it is to do. My house runs on solar panels, 
and | have organic vegetable gardens. I've had 
the same car for 15 years, and its engine runs 
on used vegetable oil from fast-food restau- 
rants. It burns cleaner than any fuel on the mar- 
ket. smells better and gives better mileage. I'm 
not trying to judge anyone; | just think it's im- 
portant to walk the walk as well. This probably 
all sounds kind of tree-huggy, but the truth is 
that it's better for the planet, you, your kids and 
everything you love. 

No doubt her Kill Bill character would sneer 
at such romantic notions. “I play a one-eyed 
Semurai assassin," Daryl says. "All the charac- 
ters in my assassination squad are named аї- 
ter snakes, and I'm called California Mountain 
Snake. I'm pissed off and tough." To hone her 
fighting skills so that she could take on protag- 
onist Uma Thurman in the ultimate blonde- 
bombshell showdown, Daryl trained for six 
months with master martial arts choreographer 
Woo-ping Yuen and kung fu superstar Sonny 
Chiba. Tarantino wrote the part specifically for 
Daryl. "I's a dream when someone writes 
something for you, because I'm a total mess 
when it comes to meetings or auditions," she 
Says. "Quentin is completely unbound, like a 
giant ball of youthful energy. He's like a child. 
with that excitement—he makes jokes, he says 
"Wow!" It's so much fun to work with someone 
like that. I've never felt in tune with my chrono- 
logical age either. That's why І still don't feel 
like a grown-up." 


"| have a lor of 
land and several 
meadows with 
flowers. My ideal 
is ro wake up in 
rhe morning and 
run around rhe 
meadow naked.” 


«хи 
“5... ы 


M i 


“Most of rhe guys I've 
gone our with I've 
known already or mer 
through a friend. I’ve 
never really gone our 
with strangers. Bur | love 
boys and making our 
with boys.” 


PLAY 


138 


Bill Murray 
(continued from page 127) 


Crosby died playing golf in Spain. He 
made all that happen. 


8 


PLAYBOY: Would you venture to predict 
when women will be invited to join the 
Augusta National Golf Club? 

MURRAY: Women can play as guests at 
Augusta, and 1 think that's what it's go- 
ing to be for a while. Most male golfers 
feel like, "Hey, when I get into Augusta, 
I'm going to see what I can do about get- 
ting another woman in there, but why 
aren't I in there?" [laughs] Most women 
don't give a hoot about it. When there's 
a woman member of Augusta, she'll be a 
billionaire. All those guys are billion- 
aires. Should we get Martha Stewart in 
there? Would that make everybody feel 
better? I think it's a bullshit issue. 


9 


PLAYBOY: You're part owner of several 
minor-league baseball teams. Did you 
scout Japan for talent? 

MURRAY: No, but I watched a lot of base- 
ball, and those guys pitch a lot of 


innings. The same guy pitches every 
third game. And their fans are not fair- 
weather fans. There's a party out in the 
stands at all times. 


10 


PLAYBOY: How do you try to entertain 
your teams' fans? 

MURRAY: In St. Paul we pick two people 
from the crowd every night—one from 
St. Paul and one from Minneapolis—and 
we have them fight in big sumo-wrestling 
outfits. During one game the managers of 
both teams got kicked out, and we asked 
them to put on the suits during the sev- 
enth inning and fight. It lasted forever. 
The umpires didn't make them start the 
game. They just acted like they were tak- 
ing a break, like they didn't see what was 
going on. We also have а hot tub over the 
left-field bleachers, and you can rent the 
tub for you and your friends. 


11 


PLAYBOY: Have you worked out any con- 
flict you may have had about being born 
100 late to be a member of the Rat Pack? 
MURRAY: We all have to deal with that in 
our own way, but we were our own Satur- 
day Night Live rat pack. We definitely had 


“I said I like it when a girl moans duri 
complaining are not one and ti 


ng sex. Moaning and 
same." 


our own great time, and we were really 
fierce when we were together. When we 
were together, you didn't fuck with us. 


12 


PLAYBOY: Can you put SNL in the context 
of American culture for us? 
MURRAY: I think that's People's job. 


13 


PLAYBOY: Does SNL have an alumni asso- 
ciation, complete with a newsletter to 
keep everyone up-to-date? 

MURRAY: No, but the 25th-anniversary 
show felt like an alumni association. For 
the first time I was able to get out of the 
way of “Who's funny?" and “Who's not 
funny?" and enjoy it. I was able to laugh 
at people I never found particularly 
funny, because I was pulling for them. 
The old guys were in the first sketch, 
and we rocked. Then I drank wine for 
the next two hours. Other people still 
had to work, and I'm like, “Woo, woo,” 
walking the aisles, watching everyone 
doing their thing and struggling. That 
was the real luxury. 


14 


PLAYBOY: You're also a Second City veter- 
an. Why does Chicago produce a dispro- 
portionate number of comics? 

MURRAY: A lot of it has to do with the Sec- 
ond City training. The Chicago style, its 
system of educating actors, was informa- 
tive because there's a standard there and 
no schmuck baiting. You get to play and 
have fun, but ultimately you have to be 
able to deliver the goods. People ask me 
how they can make it. I always say, "Go to 
a place where there's a great show with a 
lot of good actors, and watch that show 
for wecks. Every night is different. Watch 
how they mess with rhythm, and see how 
they accelerate, decelerate, how they em- 
phasize." In Chicago there have always 
been a lot of people to watch. 


15 


PLAYBOY: Would you go oeuvre to oeuvre 
against Adam Sandler, starting with 
Meatballs and The Waterboy? 

MURRAY: Гує never seen The Waterboy. 
You've got to let someone's early movies 
slide a little bit. He's a sentimental slob to 
me. He's like a schmaltzmobile, but I 
think he's anice person. There was some 
interesting stuff in the movie about the 
devil, Little Nicky. It wasn't a box-office 
success, but I thought he made some 
really aggressive choices in it, some real- 
ly odd, queer moves that I liked a lot. 
That's the only thing I can say about it. 
If we start comparing movies, some- 
body's going to cry. 


16 
PLAYBOY: You were raised in the Roman 
Catholic Church. A nun we know ditched 
her habit years ago and slipped into fish- 
net stockings. Don’t you think the hierar- 
chy might have seen trouble coming? 


MURRAY: I have a sister who is a nun. She 
used to have a lot of priests hitting on her 
all the time. It's not like that's pedophilia. 
Its not a law; it's just a vow. It's a fact that 
the clergy has been a haven for people 
who aren't comfortable with their sexual- 
ity. That's not to say all their works in the 
collar are criminal. I'm not shocked, be- 
cause in every community there's always 
some whisper about someone. A Jesuit 
priest shocked me 25 years ago when he 
said, "The question is, are we even neces- 
sary anymore?" 1 thought, Wow, that's 
pessimistic. But he saw what was coming: 
the decreased influence of the church 
Anglicization of the church was the 
wrong idea. Call me а snob, but 1 felt 
there was real power in the Latin words. 
The English translation is anemic. 


17 


PLAYBOY: You studied philosophy at the 
Sorbonne after you'd achieved success. 
Were you pursuing a Jerry Lewis strate- 
gy of French adulation, or were you gen- 
uinely interested in Descartes? 

like Descartes. Basically, after 
Ghostbusters, 1 didn't wish to compete for 
love on that level in the U.S. You're sort 
of radioactive when you have a hit movie. 
When you walk down the street, people 
scream because they saw you last night. It 
always made me uncomfortable, because 
I like what I do, but I'm happy just to get 
the laughs in the theater. Then I had to 
think about how I was going to proceed, 
rather than just continue without any re- 
flection. There were things 1 wanted to 
see in France. I love the language and 
the customs. There's something sort of 
grounding about Paris. The weather is so 
bad, it's gray every day. I love it 


18 


PLAYBOY: An orthodontist we know com- 
mented on Sigourney Weaver's under- 
bite. You've acted with her in films and 
onstage. Does she bring a certain maxil- 
lary energy to her performances? 
MURRAY: Yeah, she's got some serious 
choppers there. She's a Yalie, and I think 
that had an effect on her lower jaw. I met 
this young kid a couple of weeks ago 
who was a huge Ghostbusters fan. He's 
now a high school graduate, and he said, 
"What was that with Sigourney Weaver? 
Mere there sparks there?" I thought that 
was such a great thing for a kid to say. 


19 


PLAYBOY: In Groundhog Day you star as а 
TV weatherman condemned to repeat 
the same day over and over. Now the 
term Groundhog Day is almost synony- 
mous with being trapped in the same 
routine. What gives? 

MURRAY: Danny Rubin wrote one of the 
greatest screenplays ever. His idea was to 
take a cultural event and write about 
what it is to be a human being, strug- 


fort to reach your potential. I've got this 
Sisyphean struggle: “How am I going to 
get through it with a sense of humor? 
How am I going to get through it all?” 
The fact that the movie is entertaining as 
well makes it a true piece of art 


20 


PLAYBOY: In Rushmore you play a million- 
aire with working-class roots who be- 
friends a prep school student from a sim- 
ilar background. Did your private school 
education inform your performance? 

MURRAY: Yeah. I had that experience. I 
went to a school where there was a lot of 
money, and 1 didn't have a lot of money. 


I had to believe that money didn't mean 
so much. I've managed to make it on an 
economic level now, but I'm much more 
proud of knowing how to treat people 
and not take too much out of the world 
for my needs. People tend to light up 
when they see me because Гуе made 
movies that make people laugh. There's 
an obligation to acknowledge that. 1 be- 
lieve that touch of joy is enough to get 
you through the day. Life can be so lone- 
ly, and you want to feel like you're not 
alone. That's why people join up, if only 
for a moment. Hey, we're not alone. 


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PLAYBOY 


140 


TARANTINO 


(continued from page 62) 
if only for the homosexual rape 
TARANTINO: Roger Avary came up with 
the idea. He'd written a whole script for 
a movic. I didn't want to do the whole 
thing, only one section that fit into Pulp 
Fiction. I bought that script the way 
you'd buy a book to make into a movie, 
just to adapt the part that I liked. That 
was the scene when the boxer throws the 
fight and gets chased down by the other. 
guy and they end up in a pawnshop with 
two guys who are serial killers. 

PLAYBOY: Did the “Wake the gimp” se- 
quence come from Avary? 

TARANTINO: The gimp and the whole 
anal-rape torture sequence were his 
ideas. 1 wanted to do it because it was a 
flip reworking of something that was a 
big deal in Deliverance. This crazy, anal- 
sex rape was so out of nowhere that 1 
thought it was funny. I thought, Wow, 
he's made anal rape really funny. 
PLAYBOY: Finally. 

TARANTINO: We were worried about get- 
ting an X rating. Right around that time, 
American Me came out, and it had three 
anal rapes. It helped our cause. 
PLAYBOY: Ned Beatty has been perma- 
nently linked with being raped in Deliv- 
erance. Was it tough to get Rhames to 
play the mob boss who gets sodomized 
by rednecks? 

TARANTINO: It was a stumbling point for 
almost all the black male actors 1 talked 
то. It's very hard to talk a black man into 
doing anything where he's being raped. 
It wasn't even a matter of how much to 
show but rather, if the audience sees 
that, will they ever not see that? But I'd 


written it with Ving in mind. I'd always 
heard his voice saying that dialogue. The 
words trickle off Ving's tongue because I 
wrote it for his cadence. He came in, did 
his audition, and he was just magnifi- 
cent. Then came the time to have the 
conversation. I was thinking, Please, let 
him not have as much of a problem as 
everybody else, because he's just so good. 
Ving sensed this and said, "Let me ask 
you, how explicit is this shit gonna get?” 
I said, "It's not going to be that bad, but 
you're going to know what's going on. 
Do you have a problem with that?" He 
says, "Not only do I not have a problem, 
you have to understand that because of 
the way I am, I don't get offered many 
vulnerable characters. This man might 
end up being the most vulnerable moth- 
erfucker I will ever play.” 

PLAYBOY: So he was game. 

TARANTINO: Ving was a man of his word, 
but there was one sequence with Duane 
Whitaker, who plays Maynard, one of 
the guys who's fucking him in the movie. 
1 wanted this wild, “yee haw!" kind of 
anal-rape thing. Ving says, "Okay, so 
we're going to see his butt, right? Well, 
what's going to be down there to protect 
that?" I say, “You won't see anything." 
And he says, "I'm not talking about what 
you're going to show. I don't care if its 
on camera, in focus or not. I don't want 
dick touching anus. What are you going 
to put down there?" It's Duane, Ving 
and me, and this prop guy brings in this 
turquoise velvet bag that you put dia- 
monds in. We burst out laughing, and 
Ving says, "Duane, you just put your 
dick in this little bag and ГІЇ be okay." 
PLAYBOY: You've said of Jackie Brown that 
you most identified with Sam Jackson's 


"Yes. They're darling together, but it'll never last. 
She's a confirmed comparison shopper." 


badass gun-runner character, Ordell 
Robbie. Is there a bit of badass in you? 
TARANTINO: People misunderstood what I 
said about Ordell. I'm a method writer. I 
become one or two characters when I'm 
writing. When I was doing Kill Bill, 1 was 
the Bride. People noticed that when 1 was 
writing, 1 was getting much more femi- 
nine in my outlook. All of a sudden I was 
buying things for my apartment or house. 
I'd see something cool in a shop in Green- 
wich Village, and Га buy it. An item could 
jump off a shelf at me, through a window. 
Га have to buy it, take it home and try it 
out. Га buy flowers for the house and 
start arranging them. 1 don't normally 
wear jewelry, and suddenly I'm wearing 
jewelry. My friends said, “You're getting 
in touch with your feminine side. You're 
nesting, adorning yourself.” 

In the case of Jackie Brown, the charac- 
ter І assimilated was Ordell. I walked 
around like Ordell that whole year. I'd 
leave the house as Ordell. When I 
stopped writing, I had to let go and let 
Sam Jackson take over. 

PLAYBOY: You clashed with Oliver Stone 
at his peak when he vastly changed your 
script for Natural Born Killers. Why did 
you hate the film so much? 

TARANTINO: I'd never really seen the 
movie from beginning to end. 1 watched 
it only in bits and pieces, out of defi- 
ance at first. Then I actually went to the 
movies to see it. 

PLAYBOY: And you walked out? 
TARANTINO: Yes. I just hated that whole 
Rodney Dangerfield sequence so much. 
It was so unfunny, so disgusting. It did 
the number one thing I would never do: 
It came up with a little peanut psycho- 
logical origin for why these people were 
the way they were. I rejected that in 
every way, and then that awful scene 
gives you alittle pop psychology analysis. 
PLAYBOY: It was modeled like a sitcom, 
with a laugh track, and it made clear that 
Dangerfield’s character had molested 
his daughter. 

TARANTINO: 1 had my name taken off the 
script just so people wouldn't think I had 
written that. 

PLAYBOY: You sparred with Spike Lee 
over your liberal use of the word nigger 
in your films. Did that feud also go by 
the wayside? 

TARANTINO: It didn't go by the wayside 
per se. Spike and 1 bumped into each 
other once after all that crap was over, 
and 1 was all set to kick his ass. 

PLAYBOY: Why? 

TARANTINO: Because he'd been talking all 
this shit instead of talking to me about it. 
My biggest problem with Spike was the 
completely self-serving aspect of his ar- 
gument. He attacked me to keep his 
“Jesse Jackson of cinema" status. Basical- 
ly, for a little bit of time before I came 
along, you had to get Spike Lee's bene- 
diction and approval if you were white 
and dealing with black stuff in a movie. 
Fuck that. This destroyed that, and he's 


never had that position again. I wasn't 
looking for his approval, and so he was 
taking me on to keep his status. 1 hated 
it, because a celebrity feud is one of the 
most tasteless, trite, trivial things some- 
body in my position can engage in, to be 
drawn into something so beneath you. 
PLAYBOY: Do you think some of his argu- 
ments had merit? 

TARANTINO: It’s funny, because he talks in 
these grandiose terms, but as much of a 
loudmouth as he can be, the press doesn't 
really listen to what he says. They print 
his tone. If you boiled down what he was 
saying, it wasn't that I didn't have the 
right to say “nigger” as many times as І 
did. It was why do I have the right to say 
“nigger” 37 times, but he doesn't have 
the right to say "kike" 37 times? That is 
really what he was saying. 

PLAYBOY: He did get flack for using two 
stereotypical Jewish characters in Мо" 
Better Blues. 

TARANTINO: The words nigger and kike 
are not the same word. Kike is not com- 
mon parlance among Jews. The other 
word has maybe 12 different meanings, 
depending on the context it's spoken in, 
who is saying it and the way he's saying 
it. So to equate nigger with kike does not 
take into account the way the English 
language works today. And I am work- 
ing with the English language. 

Тат not just а film director who shoots 
movies. I'm an artist, and good, bad or 
indifferent, I'm coming from that place. 
All my choices, the way 1 live my life, are 
about that. He came back with, “Quentin 
isn't any more ofan artist than Michael 
Jackson is, and when Michael said ‘Jew 
me' in a song, they made him change it." 
It was almost worth the whole damn 
thing to hear him say that. 

PLAYBOY: Rate yourself from one to 10 оп 
your level of skill as a writer, as a director 
and as an actor. 

TARANTINO: Wow, you're nailing me down 
here. Look, I don't want to rate myself. 
with numbers. If I say 10, I'm being а 
jerk, and if I don't say 10, I'm being a 
liar [laughs]. ГІЇ answer the question, just 
not by your scale. As far as acting is con- 
cerned, 1 think I could be a great actor. 
If 1 got a chance to do more characters 
and get more time into it, I could be a 
really good character actor. People have 
been really tough on me. 

PLAYBOY: Why? 

TARANTINO: Probably because they didn't 
realize how serious I was about it, and 
film critics didn't want it. One critic told 
me exactly as much. I was this great 
white hope, a young auteur, and they 
didn't want me to divide my focus. They 
wanted me sitting in a room, coming up 
with the next thing they can watch. "Why 
aren't you saving cinema from itself?” 
PLAYBOY: George Clooney and your 
Reservoir Dogs cast mates Tim Roth and 
Steve Buscemi directed films and were 
roundly applauded for stretching. 
Double standard? 


TARANTINO: Thank you for noticing, be- 
cause it hasn't been lost on me. I actually 
confronted Roger Ebert after he named 
this movie I did years ago, Somebody io 
Loue, as some kind of booby prize on his 
show. It was released way after the fact, 
and I'm in it for two seconds. Buscemi 
directs Trees Lounge and gets the door 
prize for directing and stretching his tal- 
ents. The booby prize went to me for 
daring to act in a movie. Why is it okay 
for him to stretch his talent and not me? 
PLAYBOY: You started acting as an Elvis 
impersonator on The Golden Girls. What 
was it like, being near Bea Arthur with 
stars in your eyes? 

TARANTINO: The job lasted two days, and 
what was fantastic was how much money 
I made. That was when I had no money 
whatsoever. All of a sudden I made $700 
in alump sum. You get it again when it’s 
repeated, They liked that bit so much 
they put itin a “Best of the Golden Girls” 
episode. I got paid $700 for that. And 
then the show was in tremendous repeat 
mode, on NBC and in syndication. I had 
two episodes in repeat rotation and end- 
ed up making $2,500. Just when I was 
flat broke, a check would come in for 
$150, then $75, then $95. I got a check 
the other day for 85 cents. 

PLAYBOY: How was your Elvis? 
TARANTINO: I was the best of the bunch. 
The others were all the Vegas Elvis. I was 
the Sun Records Elvis, the hillbilly cat. 
PLAYBOY: This was your first big acting 
job after quitting school. How did you 
negotiate that exit? 

TARANTINO: My mom and 1 have differ- 
ent recollections. 1 had ditched school 
for about three weeks, so I was in this 
weird phase when I couldn't go back be- 
cause I'd get busted. I went back, and I 
got busted. Me and my mom were argu- 
ing, and in the heat of it I said, “Well, I 
want to quit anyway." She said, "You're 
not going to quit." I thought that was 
that. A week later, she was putting on 
makeup in the bathroom, getting ready 
for work. She said, "About your quitting 
school, I've thought about it, and I'm go- 
ing to let you quit. But you have to go 
out and get a job." I was gob-smacked. I 
thought, Doesn't she realize I was bluff- 
ing? So I quit. 

PLAYBOY: You dated Mira Sorvino, a Har- 
vard grad, and you didn't go near col- 
lege. Do you ever regret dropping out? 
TARANTINO: No, there's a slight pride in 
quitting junior high and achieving 
what I have. It makes me look a little 
bit smarter. When I tell somebody that, 
they're genuinely impressed. I'm not 
very enamored with the American pub- 
lic school system. 1 hated school so 
much, I dropped out in ninth grade. I 
never went to high school. There's a 
cool cachet about it now. My only re- 
gret—and it's not even а big regret—is 
that I hated school so much I thought 
that's what it was going to be like for- 
ever. I didn't realize college would be 


night in Seattle, July 2003 


GRAND PRIZE 


WINNERS 
Robert 


Mcintosh 
& Friends 


Richard McIntosh (right) 
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different. So if I had to do it all over 1 
probably would stay in school so I could 
have my college experience. I'm sure 1 
would have had a ball. 

PLAYBOY: Your mom raised you without 
your biological father. Premiere magazine 
trotted him out after you became fa- 
mous. Was that unfair? 

TARANTINO: That really bothered me for a 
long time. It was one of those crappy by- 
products of fame. I've never met him 
and don't have any desire to. He's not my 
father. Just because you fucked my mom 
doesn't make you my father. The only 
thing I've got to say to him is “Thanks for 
the fucking sperm." He had 30 years to 
look me up, and he tries after I'm fa- 
mous? It was sad. For a while, when I was 
going by that name and he didn't look 
me up, I thought, Well, that's cool of 
him. He's showing some class. Stay the 
fuck out of the picture. But that limelight 
is a little hard for people to turn down. 
PLAYBOY: We can't leave without asking. 
the one question you always refuse to an- 
swer. What's glowing inside that brief- 
case in Pulp Fiction? And for that matter, 
what happens when Mr. Pink runs off 
after the shootout in Reservoir Dogs? 
TARANTINO: ГІЇ never explain what was in 
that briefcase—not to be a prick but be- 
cause people come up with their own ex- 
planations, and that is the explanation. 
Same with Mr. Pink. 

I once said this as a dig to Oliver Stone, 
but I don't really mean it as a dig any- 
more. When Oliver Stone does his 
movies, he has a big idea he wants to get 
across, and he wants everyone to leave 
the theater with that idea. They can reject 
the idea, but they'd better get it or hell 
think he didn't do his job. I want to do a 
whole lot of work for you, but I want to 
leave 10, maybe even 20 percent for you 
to imagine so the movie is really yours. 
You have a version. Stuff that's open for 
interpretation, 1 want your interpreta- 
tion. The minute I tell you what I think, 
you'll throw away whatever you've come 
up with in your head. You can't help it. 1 
would too. You'd feel like a fool. 

So you tell me what's in the briefcase. 
If you think it's Marsellus's soul and he's 
bought it back from the devil, which is 
one guess I've heard, well, you are right: 
It's his soul. That I actually did a movie 
that can inspire such wildly imaginative 
readings makes me proud. 

It's funny where a throwaway line can 
lead you. You know what my favorite 
line is in the pawnshop scene in Pulp Fic- 
tion? Holly Hunter noticed it. It comes 
when they're deciding who they're go- 
ing to fuck first. They choose Marsellus, 
and it's "You want to do it here?" The 
other guy says, “No, let's take him into 
Russell's old room." You're left thinking, 
Who the fuck is Russell and how did it 
become his old room? ГИ leave you 
guessing on that one, too. 


cubergciub 


144 


HEDGEHOG AT 50 


(continued from page 80) 
asked for autographs. Mandy Patinkin. 
Patti LuPone. Eddie Murphy had his 
bodyguards come over to say hello. 
Same with Richard Pryor. Then at a 
Manhattan restaurant, I get a tap on the 
back, and this guy goes, ‘Love your 
work!’ It's Billy Joel. ГІЇ never forget 
that. Garth Brooks sent someone over to 
say hi to me once. The latest two? Sting 
and Sheryl Crow. I got the picture to go 
with it, too. Those two totally made my 
day—oh my god, such a thrill!—but I've 
got thousands and thousands of stories 
about different celebrities. I'm just touch- 
ing on the highlights." 

Suddenly, Dalny apparently decides 
she's about had it with Ron and his sto- 
ries, even if they arc the highlights. 

“You are talking about people I can- 
not stand,” she hisses. "In my opinion 
they're not even celebrities 

For a moment, not knowing where 
this outburst came from, Ron looks thor- 
oughly disoriented. Finally he says, “You 
don't know them, though. I mean, 1 
don't know them that much either... 


But Dalny is not to be placated, not 
even by Ron's rather sad parenthetical 
admission. "You guys are bugging the 
hell out of me," she continues, building 
up steam. "I'm Dalny Marga and you're. 
treating me like I'm not. You don't think 
about anyone but yourself. You never. 
tell anybody how beautiful I am. You 
never give me any connections.” 

“Dalny, I don't do that much porn 
anymore," Ron says bleakly. “I do one 
scene every two months. When do you 
see me doing porn? 1 hardly ever do it 
anymore. I don't even like porn. Porn is 
boring. I'm trying to do more main- 
stream stuff. You know that. But re- 
member that day we did that little shoot 
for Hustler?” 

“You gotta be kidding me!" 

“Now, honey —" 

“You know what? You're jealous of 
me, because you would have been refer- 
ring me to Metro if you weren't, and 
when a man is jealous of a little girl 
named Dalny Marga, that's pathetic.” 

"you've never been this weird in your 
entire life,” Ron says. 

“I'm weird? Because I'm saying it 
like it is?” 


P. ye. 


“Get ready, Ahab, to meet the contestant you chose as 
your perfect match...” 


“You're going a little too far," Ron 
says, getting up from his seat and head- 
ing out the front door, Pretty soon he 
and Dalny are standing in the middle of 
Sunset, with Dalny shricking, “I want to 
be a movie star! What's so wrong with 
that? You don't ever think big, like, 
“She's a movie star! She's got fans! 
You're just using me. You're a user! You 
never mention Dalny Marga. You just 
cover me up. Just shut the fuck up. Shut 
the fuck up. I want you to get me work! 
Why don't you get me work?" she cries 
out miserably. 

"I have no say in casting," Ron says to 
her, levelly. “Honey, with Metro, I have a 
contract. You make money without hav- 
ing to work. That's the whole idea with a 
contract—they pay you not to work. I 
have no say in casting. 1 go out with you 
because we get along and have fun, don't 
we? We hardly ever have sex. We go to 
great parties, see great people, go to fun 
events, have nice meals.” 

Dalny can hardly believe her ears. “So 
what!” she shouts. “So what! It is so 
pathetic!" And so the night goes, with 
Dalny telling it s from her point 
of view, in the middle of Ron's beloved 
Sunset Strip. 


Ш. MACBETH WITH A BONER 


John Holmes—some people consider 
him to be even more famous than Ron 
Jeremy—died of complications from 
AIDS in 1988. Harry Reems, another of 
the greats from the early days of modern 
porn, is now 56 and selling real estate to 
Mormons in Salt Lake City. Jamie Gillis, 
60, and John Leslie, 58, are still the 
business but mostly behind the camera, 
rarely in front, Ron is especially fond of 
these last two. “They were my heroes in 
the day, because they were the greatest,” 
he says. “Jamie could fuck a bed of calves" 
liver and make it look convincing. He 
dated New York magazine food critic Gael 
Greene, who took him all over the world 
on wine and jam tastings. To this day, he 
can tell you where a mouthful of jelly is 
from. And John Leslie was always a great 
actor, with a lot of charisma and a John 
‘Travolta look. Actually, they were both 
great performers in any genre.” Even so, 
you rarely hear anything about those 
guys anymore. Ron, on the other hand, 
is ubiquitous: He's on Howard Stern and 
the ferry Springer Show. He takes on Tom- 
my Lee in a Celebrity Death Match cock- 
fight on MTV. He's a running gag on 
Beavis and Butt-head. He's arrested for 
allegedly trying to boink a girl in a strip 
club (the charges are later dropped, 
though not before The New York Post 
splashes the story all over its gossip 
pages). He's arrested for pandering, 
twice, and is acquitted both times. He's 
accused by Rolling Stone of getting girls 
for rock stars—like rock stars really need 
his help getting girls. He's on The View 
with Barbara Walters, on Nightline with 
Ted Koppel and on Geraldo with Geral- 


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do. He's on The Man Show, of course, but 
he'salso on The Weakest Link. 

You totally expect to see him in porn 
movies such as ГІЇ Have Another Вий 
Light, Kid Sparkle's House of Freaks, 
Throbin Hood: Prince of Beaves, Super 
Hornio Brothers and You Said a Mouthful. 
But maybe you're just kicking back, sa- 
voring 94 Weeks or Boogie Nights, and 
there he is again, in the credits as a con- 
sultant. Okay, those are mainstream kink 
flicks. What about suburban mall fare 
such as Reindeer Games, directed by John 
Frankenheimer and starring Ben Af- 
fleck? He's in that one, too, unmistak- 
able as Prisoner #1. You can't even 
escape him on reruns of NeusRadio or 
Just Shoot Me. 

In fact, mo porn star short of the 
estimable Traci Lords has ever so crossed 
over into other areas of the entertain- 
ment business. And yet, following his 
final buffer, all that is likely to appear on 
his tombstone is НЕ GOT LAID. 

This does not bother Ron, however, 
largely because he doesn't believe that 
such will be his fate. 

“In some of my adult films I've done 
some really nice acting,” he says. “Plus, І 
think I've helped make porn more fun 
and put a nice look on it. My sex was al- 
ways fun, erotic, friendly, smiles. I mean, 
what's going to be on Cameron Diaz’s 
tombstone? Did she make miracles? Did 
she do Shakespearean soliloquies? I've 
accomplished something. If! were going 
to be a dishwasher or a shoeshine man, 
I'd want to be the best dishwasher, the 
best shoeshiner. I was raised to believe 
that anything you do, you do the best. 
Let's see Richard Burton or Sir John 
Gielgud do Hamlet or Macbeth with a 
boner. Let's see those guys keep an erec- 
tion and do memorized dialogue. Any- 
one who thinks porn doesn’t inyolve 
some kind of skill is a blithering idiot. We 
are performers!” 

Then again, so what if all the tomb- 
stone says is HE GOT LAID? 

"I like the choices I've made,” he goes 
on. “I've hang glided off mountains, rid- 
den horses, sailed oceans, been with gor- 


geous women, made porn films in Ѕрай 
been on private Learjets. I've met Б 
mous people. Гуе been recognized. 1 
mean, when I'm 90 years old, sitting in a 
rocking chair and smoking a pipe and. 
have probably had a prostate operation. 
and can't fuck anymore, I'm going to 
look back on all this shit and say, 'Damn! 
It's been kind of fun!’ I think Гуе got a 
great life. I really do." 


The year is 1968, the same year that 
10,000 North Vietnamese die in the Tet. 
Offensive, that Charlie Company mas- 
sacres the villagers of My Lai, that Mar- 
tin Luther King Jr. is murdered, that 
Robert Kennedy is murdered, that 
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Inven- 
tion release We're Only in It for the Money, 
that the Chicago cops kick much hippie 
ass at the Democratic National Conven- 
tion, that nutty Richard Nixon becomes 
the 37th president of the United States 
and that Ron Jeremy, age 15, is at Ten 
Mile River Boy Scout Camp, in upstate 
New York, near Narrowsburg, with his 
own little world set to explode all 
around him. He is reaching down to tie 
his boots when it dawns on him that, 
without much additional effort, he could 
probably stick his penis in his mouth. He 
tries. He can. He tries it some more. 

Later on, not knowing what to make 
of the mind-boggling discover), he calls 
his dad. “Dad,” he says. ^I can kiss my 
own penis. Is this normal?" 

“Is anybody in the room with you?" 

“No.” 

“Well, may I suggest that you don't tell 
anybody but me that you can do this? 
They might laugh at you. There's noth- 
ing wrong with it, I guess, but it's not ex- 
асйу normal. When you're 18, there will 
be girls who'll kiss it for you. So don't 
worry about it.” 

He didn’t worry about й, but he didn’t 
forget about it, either. So that’s another 
thing Ron is famous for, in movies such 
as Inside Seka, The Lady Is a Tramp, Lips 
and Fresh Meal: taking the gifts that God 
gave him, using them to full advantage 


IM ONLY IN TOWN 


and blowing himself on film. You could 
say his ambition knows no bounds and 
he will do anything to stand out in a 
crowd, and you'd probably be right. 

One day he is at the fabulous Sunset 
Marquis hotel, out by the pool, sitting in 
the shade under a cafe umbrella. He or- 
ders a steak salad and talks more about 
his carly years: about his father, Arnold 
Hyatt, a physicist, and his mother, Sylvia, 
who was a cryptographer in the OSS 
during World War II and died of Parkin- 
son's disease two years after Ron entered 
the business. He says that she never 
cared that he was in porn. She was a free 
spirit who understood that her middle 
child was a free spirit too, unlike her old- 
er son, Larry, who graduated from Har- 
vard at the top of his class and was an 
executive at Marriott International, or 
her daughter, Susie, who is a substitute 
teacher. Or any of the family's other rel- 
atives, who were all doctors, lawyers, 
teachers, veterinarians and diplomats 
and bad names like Barney Greengrass 
and were partners of the late gangster 
Bugsy Siegel. 

Picking at his salad, he recalls how he 
was almost a prodigy on the piano as a 
Kid; was the fastest runner in his elemen- 
tary school; received numerous report 
cards while attending Benjamin Cardo- 
zo High in Queens that said, "If only 
Ronnie would apply himself"; graduat- 
ed from Queens College with a bachelor 
of arts in theater and education; is one 
point shy of his master's in education; 
studicd serious acting with the Dramatis 
Personis and La MaMa theater compa- 
nies in Manhattan; waited tables in the 
Catskills on weekends; allowed his girl- 
friend Alice Schlehner to send a nude 
picture of him to Playgirl magazine in 
1978; appeared in that October's Play- 
girl, with Three’s Company star John Ritter 
on the cover; was sucked into the easy- 
money world of porn, his first film being 
Tigresses and Other Man-Eaters, for which 
he was paid $200 and in which you see 
only his body, never his face; changed 
his last name at his father's request; de- 
veloped a love of James Taylor’s music; 


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РТА YBOY 


also developed a love of oatmeal, Wheat- 
s, shrimp and lobster, and every other 
n the world except blue cheese 
dressing; joined Greenpeace; counts 
among his best friends Dennis Hoff from 
the Bunny Ranch, Al Goldstein of Screw 
and Mark Carrier, the beefy but shad- 
owy head of Metro; and is now, at the 
age of 50, a porn star who is saying nut- 
ty, outrageous stuff he's never said be- 
fore, such as, “I'm getting more monog- 
amous. I'm not as wild and crazy. I once 
wanted different nooky every other day. 
Now it's once every week, and I'm okay," 
and "I want to have kids. As great as my 
life has bcen, they say all that simply dis- 
appears the minute you hear your kid 
say “Daddy.” 

“It was with Natalie that I first realized 
I wanted kids,” he continues. “True sto- 
ry. Natalie missed a period or two. Nor- 
mally I'd go, ‘Oh, fuck, here comes abor- 
tion time.’ But we thought about it and 
decided to have it. It was like, “Let's do it. 
Let's do the whole thing.’ And then she 
got her period. 1 go to sleep at night 
sometimes and dream I had that kid. 
‘True story. I'm playing with my litde ba- 
by boy, and then I wake up. It’s a painful 
dream, and I’m miserable.” 

This gets him to thinking more about 
Natalie. “One of the problems me and 


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Natalie have—it's a very sad thing, but 
you can love somebody, and the sex and 
the electricity can still wane a little bit, 1 
can barrel through, but I'm often better 
with a new face. And being that I’m kind 
of famous and known for having a penis, 
a lot of girls want to check it out. But if a 
girl's 26, like Natalie is, she wants to have 
sex and not go too many days without it. 
I'm not the powerhouse lover I was be- 
fore, and yet she doesn't seem to mind. 
She goes, ‘I don't mind." " 

While talking, he's still working on his 
steak salad, every once in a while looking 
around to see if anyone nearby is some- 
one he should notice (no) or who should 
notice him (yes). Suddenly he turns 
silent, purscs his lips, sticks a finger in 
the air as if testing for wind, moves his 
great big furry head to the righr, leans 
over and vomits onto the pavement, 
twice. 

Instantly all eyes are on him. A waiter 
rushes over. 

"I'm fine,” Ron says. “I'm okay. Sorry. 
That was weird. I haven't done that in 
my life. I haven't donc that in ycars. Just. 
fluid carne out, that's all." 

He sits there. He feels no need to 
clean up in the bathroom. He gets some 
horseradish onto a fork, eats it and then 
says, a little too loudly, “Phil Anselmo об 


Pantera? Nice guy. A fan of porn, too." 
And apparently all is right with Ron's 
world once again. 


He's driving to Redondo Beach, to Bur- 
bank, to the cleaners, to the bank, to the 
AIDS clinic for his monthly test, to the 
Burbank Airport Hilton for one of those 
sci-fi conventions where all the old stars 
show up to sign autographs and it's a 
whole sad scene full of geeks and los: 
He's driving, and while he's driving he's 
talking, and the talking never stops. 
You'd think that he would run out of 
things to say, but you'd be wrong. 

What he likes to do after a good meal: 
"Вигр, roll over, float a nicc air biscuit, 
watch HBO and sleep till spring." What 
he thinks about while masturbating: 
nothing, because he doesn't masturbate, 
hasn't in years, can't remember the last 
time he did. Whom he sometimes fanta- 
sizes about while getting it up for a porn 
scene: Michelle Pfeiffer, when she turns 
into a bird in the movie Ladyhawke. How. 
he would fecl if a porn girl said she'd 
heard it was a bad career move to work. 
with him: "That would bother me, that 
would infuriate me, because it's bull. 
Now, Jenna Jameson once said, "He's a 
great guy. He's a friend of mine, but if 


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you work with Ron Jeremy you should 
get an Academy Award as an actress.’ I 
cracked up over that. Some girls just 
wantto work with cute young boys. “Ron 
Jeremy? No, he's heavy, he's hairy and 
he's old.’ I've heard that, which is all 
right. But I would say more girls wanted 
to than didn't." 

At the sci-fi convention he meets up 
with his friend Greg Watkins, who is a 
porn director. Ron is mobbed by fans, of 
course, which is great and all, but he's 
more interested in seeing the has-been 
stars in attendance. Why, there's Loren- 
zo Lamas and there's Lorenzo's ex! 

One of the greatest moments in Ron's 
life was when director John Franken- 
heimer flew him to 
Paris to play a bit 
part in the Robert 
De Niro caper 
Ronin. One of the 
saddest moments 
was when Franken- 
heimer had to cut 
him from the film 
at the insistence об 
United Artists exec- 
utives, even though 
the credit “Ron as 
Fishmonger” re- 
mains, as a kind of 
reminder of at least 
one arca of his life 
in which his fabled 
luck has never held 

“I always wished 
I had gotten more 
breaks back in New 
York, off-Broadway, 
and gotten more 
legitimate work,” 
he says while stroll- 
ing around. “But 
look at the odds 
The odds in main- 
stream are thou- 
sands to one. The 
odds in porn are 
one hundred to 
one. Because you 
pull your penis 
out—a lot of guys 
won't do that. None 
of your Broadway actors are going to do 
that. So I was able to get into porn, and 1 
was accepted there.” 

A guy and his girlfriend interrupt 
him, shivering with excitement, the guy 
thrusting his camera at strangers and 
saying, “Please, can somebody snap a 
picture for us so I can get my girlfriend 
in the shot? How often do you get to 
stand next to Ron Jeremy?” 

Standing back, his friend Greg 
Watkins says, “Ron would cut off his left 
nutto be a real actor. Actually, he'd settle 
for being a has-been actor over being a 
porn actor. Deep down, all he wants is to. 
be taken seriously as an actor.” While 
Greg's at it, he ticks offa few other things 


150 to know about his friend. “He's the 


cheapest man 1 know. When he flies, he 
uses garbage bags as his luggage. I saw 
him get a $90 parking ticket once, and 
tears, physical tears, came to his eyes. 
Oh my god, did he cry." Then he gets 
back to talking about Ron and the mov- 
ies: "He was really good friends with 
Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer tried to 
squeeze him in whenever he could, and 
he did in Reindeer Games, 52 Pick-Up and 
Dead Bang. But where was Ron in Ronin? 
Cut. Frankenheimer was using Ron for 
the girls. He got laid, so he was happy. I 
mean, some people look at him like, 
"Well, he's my connection to pus: 
gets me pussy, ГІЇ put him in a movie.’ ГА 
do it. But then if you get cut out, what 


on the phone. 

"Have you ever met Dalny Marga?" he 
asks Joe Wilson. “You know who I'm 
talking about, the blonde girl, old 1930s 
star type? Well, if you can ever find her 
work, she's really a great kid—does great 
anal scenes, double anal, the whole 
works, you know? You think maybe like 
the older sister or the mom or some part 
like that? That is so nice. Great. At least 
I've kept my word just saying this to you. 
Hey, Joe, thanks. Okay, man, bye-bye." 

"Then he calls Natalie. 

Actually, when Ron said that he and 
Natalie were living together at his 
condo, that was a lie. They are no longer 
roommates with romance. She has been 
living with a girl- 
friend in the Valley 
for a while now, un- 
happy with Ron 
and his Ron's-luck, 
free-bird lifestyle. 
She doesn't want to 
see him tonight, 
but Ron is insistent. 

“Natalie, we're 
already on our 
way,” he says. “All 
right, honey? It 
won't kill you. ГІЇ 
just say hello. All 
right, honey? All 
right? How's 20 
minutes? All right, 
doll? Is that all 
right? I can't hear 
you. All right, ГИ 
see you shortly. All 
right, doll, no soon- 
er than 20 minutes. 
АШ right? Bye-bye, 
doll. Bye, honey." 


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you have?" 

In another room Ron sees the guy 
who played Eddie Munster on the old 
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IV. DO SOMETHING, CHANGE SOMETHING 


Back on the road, Ron is thinking about 
Natalie. He's also thinking about Dalny 
Marga. "So what!" Dalny Marga had said 
about everything she and Ron did to- 
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met, the sex they didn't necessarily have. 
"So what! It is so pathetic!" 

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eyes like a curtain. She says that Ron, 
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relationship and not have it mean any- 
thing. She says that's wrong. She also 
says that Ron's insistence on an open 
lifestyle wouldn't be so hurtful if he 
made love to her more often or even just 
spent more time with her. 

"I'm just asking for something," she 
says. “Do something. Change something. 
I mean, we're so opposite, I don't even 
know how we lasted for three years. 
You'd think at a certain point you'd go, 
"This girl likes me for who I am even if I 
do really stupid, off-the-wall things that 
normal people don't do. Maybe 1 should 
change for the better When you're in a 
relationship, you want to develop and 
change for the better. You're on this plan- 
et for only a short while, so why not?" 

"Well," Ron says, "you have seen me 
go from a couple of extracurricular girls 
a week to once a month or something. I 
mean, my libido has dropped a little, but 
I also made it drop a little. And 1 did say 
that if we had a kid, maybe I would do 
total monogamy.” 

“You sit there and you convince peo- 
ple of your plans, but you don't do any- 
thing,” Natalie says softly. “So who cares? 
I'm not going to have kids with you in 
the hopes that you will change. Hell no.” 

“Hell no,” says Ron, laughing, think- 
ing this is funny. 

“You won't even change now,” she 
says, and she’s perfectly serious. “You 
can't do the simplest life things that nor- 
mal people do. You're too involved with 
your own needs. I know how you are, 
Ron, and kids don't fix anything. They 
make it worse.” 

“Well, that’s true to some extent.” 

“What do you know?” Natalie says 
sharply. “This is just typical. Girls will 
end the relationship long before guys 
do, and they're just trying to find the 
right time. Then the guy realizes it, and 
he tries to get her back, but she's already 
done and over with.” 

"Yeah, but you're not,” 

Her head snaps up at him. “How do 
you know?" 

Ron chuckles. "Natalie, Natalie, who 
are you kidding?" 

And she giggles too. 

After dinner Ron drives back to his 
condo. On the way, he phones his 25- 
year-old, Jennifer, and asks her to be 
there when he arrives. He calls her doll, 
sweetie and honey. Coming off the 101 
freeway onto Highland, he remarks on 
how good tonight's meal was and how 
full he is. While stopped at the Highland 
and Sunset stoplight, he cracks the car 
window to get some air, shakes his head 
to clear the cobwebs and rests his hands 
on his tummy. His hands rise and fall 
and rise and fall. Pretty soon, his eyes 
are shut and he's snoring gently, asleep 
at the wheel, and when the light in front. 
of him changes, he is the last to know. 


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152 


BENTONVILLE 


(continued from page 86) 
“THE WHOLE GAME 


Think about this: If Alice and the rest of 
Wal-Mart's 1.4 million employees de- 
manded and got even a tiny wage in- 
crease, the cumulative hit could be big 
enough to force the company to raise 
prices, shaving its advantage and poten- 
tially unraveling its entire “We sell for less" 
formula. So Wal-Mart must constantly 
market itself to its employees to retain 
their goodwill (every morning you can 
hear them: “Give me a W! Give me an A! 
Give me an 11”), and it does this with the 
same skill it brings to everything else. Alice 
can buy stock without paying commis- 
sions, with a 15 percent company match 
up to the first $1,800—a benefit not unlike 
those offered to the employees of many 
corporations—but she's come to believe 
it's akin to a miracle. While store workers 
can rarely buy enough to achieve real 
security, there is the dream: Anyone who 
bought 10 Wal-Mart shares in 1970 owns 
stock worth $1.2 million today. 

Wal-Mart appeals to its workers' loyal- 
ties with policies seemingly unrelated to 
wages and benefits. First among them is 
a commitment to live on as tight a bud- 
get as any of the company's store em- 
ployees. The top offices of the world's 
largest corporation are situated not in a 
New York City office tower but in a 
cheaply remodeled warehouse on Ben- 
tonville's Walton Boulevard. The main 
lobby is as dreary as an unemployment 
office: rows of plastic chairs, a Formica 
reception counter, gray linoleum floors, 
a Pepsi machine and a box where em- 
ployees can rest worn-out American 
flags from their homes and car acrials 
"to be respectfully retired." Posters of a 
glowering eagle representing freedom 
are taped to the walls, and fliers invite all 
comers to a Wal-Mart-sponsored "patri- 


otic music festival" with "over 1,000 flags" 
and balloons, a special salute to all our 
veterans and those currently serving in 
the armed forces." 

Wal-Mart doesn't care if you're the top 
sales executive of Procter & Gamble: 
This cavern is where you wait until the 
executive you're meeting—who is invari- 
ably dressed in the chinos and sport 
shirts sold off Wal-Mart racks—shuffles 
down the corridor to get you. 

Beyond the lobby is a long hallway of 
supplier rooms, where some of the 
biggest and most important deals in 
modern retailing are struck. If you were 
to fire a revolver ata police officer, you'd 
be interrogated in a nicer setting. Each 
room is a booth just big enough for a 
Formica counter and four vinyl chairs, 
open to plain view through a glass wall. 
In each, under a frowning photo of Mr. 
Sam and his stern varning against offer- 
ing gifts to buyers, people huddle over 
paperwork, examining lineups of fuzzy 
slippers, a stack of bar soap or a pile of 
brassieres on the counter between them. 

Wal-Mart's headquarters are so breath- 
takingly ugly, so studiously low-rent, that 
saving money can't be the entire motive 
for it. The message to employees is: You 
live on a budget, and so do we. Talk to any 
Wal-Mart employee long enough and 
you'll hear about the old dog-scented 
pickup truck Sam Walton drove to the 
end, even when he was one of the world's 
richest men. The truck is the centerpiece 
of the Wal-Mart museum, and for good 
reason: It establishes Mr. Sam, and by ex- 
tension his company, as having no person- 
alinterest in finery or anything besides his 
mission of delivering goods to working 
people at the lowest possible price. 

Chicfexecutive officer Lee Scott earned 
$18 million last year (twice what he earned 
the year before), but employees won't see 
his home in Architectural Digest. What they 
see is boxes of goods from the warehouse 


"Okay, ГИ laugh at your дай jokes, compliment your mom's cooking 
and we'll have a wonderful Thanksgiving.” 


all emblazoned RETURN FOR CREDIT, EACH 
BOX COSTS THE COMPANY AN AVERAGE 75 
CENTS. How can you ask for a raise from a 
company that thrifty? When employees 
do see Scott, he’s usually in the stores, 
where, like the lowest grunt, he rolls up 
his sleeves to stock shelves or guide cus- 
tomers. Wal-Mart's top managers don't 
constantly roam, as the regional vice pres- 
idents do, but they periodically show up 
unannounced in stores to ask questions 
and help out, just as Walton did. Wal- 
Mart buyers, with the power to make or 
break a brand, are royalty to consumer- 
products companies, but most qualify for 
the job only afier serving six months on 
the floor of a store. Every few months 
they go back for a three-day refresher, 
stocking shelves and running registers. 

Again and again the company goes out 
of its way to declare itself on the side of 
decent, ordinary, unsophisticated Ameri- 
cans who city folk just don’t get. It has a 
policy of allowing people who roam the 
country in recreational vehides to camp 
overnight, free, in any store parking lot, 
and it sometimes sends employees out 
with coffee in the morning. Itlets retirees 
who like to hang out in the store run no- 
stakes bingo games in the aisles at night, 
and it sometimes donates inexpensive 
items such as paper towels as prizes. 

“Wal-Mart is a cultural thing,” says 
Richard Kochersperger, who teaches 
marketing at Saint Joseph's University in 
Philadelphia. “Lee Scott was tutored and 
mentored by former chief executive offi- 
cer David Glass, who was tutored and 
mentored by Mr. Sam himself. What's 
amazing is that so far they've been able 
to replicate that culture in 3,000 stores 
and among 1.4 million employees. 
That's the whole game.” 


ENTER THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS 


‘Two stools down at the Ruby Tuesday 
bar, a man introduces himself as Tony 
and says he moved here from Virginia a 
year ago. Not for a fancy job—"I' m just a 
Janitor,” he says happily, over the din— 
but for the sake of his church, the Word 
of Life Fellowship, out on Highway 102. 
Why he chose Bentonville is the logical 
next question, and hearing it he leans 
close and stage-whispers, “To fight Satan. 

‘Tony is about 40, with shiny black hair, 
rapturous eyes and a brilliant white 
smile. “Ever wonder why the most pow- 
erful economic entity in the country is 
right here in the most religious spot in 
the country?” he asks me, signaling for 
another Coke. “Satan is а mimicker. God 
is here, so Satan is here. Wal-Mart start- 
ed out good, selling things cheap to peo- 
ple who didn't have a lot of money. But 
that's how Satan works,” Tony says con- 
spiratorially. “He starts out good, but it's 
a deception, always. Wherever God lays 
down his power base, Satan mimics him. 
This is the capital of the good, so Wal- 
Mart started out good. The reason the 
religious right is here in Bentonville is 


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that it's holding off Wal-Mart. This is the 
power center. This is where the final bat- 
tle is shaping up. Bentonville is five years 
behind the satanic curve." 

“Meaning what?" I ask. “The final bat- 
tle is five years away?" 

Tony just lifts his eyebrows meaning- 
fully. He vill be drawn out no further. 
Instead, he begins the windup to a full- 
blown pitch. He wants me to renounce 
that beer in front of me and all it repre- 
sents and join the struggle. 

In the next few days I run his theory 
by some locals—the waitress at Maude 
Ethel's Family Restaurant, the young 
cashier at the Panda Chinese Restau- 
rant, and a self-described redneck, buy- 
ing Mountain Dew at the 6-Twelve con- 
venience store off Highway 62. No one 
dismisses it. “I've thought that too," the 
redneck says judiciously. “Doesn't seem a 
coincidence you have so much religion 
and so much money in the same little 
Place. It isn’t something I like to think 
about too much, to tell you the truth.” 

Wal-Mart cultivates the loyalty of its 
rural, largely female workforce by taking 
the side of the strict parent when it comes 
to the magazines, music and movies it 
sells. It won't sell CDs with parental- 
warning stickers on them, the company 
says, "after listening to our customers and 
associates" (associates being Waltonspeak 
for “employees”). The stores dropped 
Maxim, Stuff and FHM from their lucra- 
tive newsstands and this spring began 
covering up Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Marie 
Claire and Redbook by placing them in spe- 
cial bins “to accommodate those cus- 
tomers who are uncomfortable with the 
Janguage on some of the magazine cov- 
ers,” a company representative says. 

The First Amendment prohibits gov- 
ernment censorship, but Wal-Mart is now 
so huge that its perfectly legal corporate 
policies can hinder freedom of choice. In 
communities where Wal-Mart replaces in- 
dependent bookstores and record shops, 
only music, films and literature that have 


been pre-approved by Wal-Mart's execu- 
tives will be available to consumers. 

“The distinction between public and 
private is not as distinct as it once was, 
especially when you consider companies 
as big as Wal-Mart,” says University of 
South Garolina sociologist Mathicu 
Deflem, who studies the effects of corpo- 
rate policies on society. “Wal-Mart has 
huge public relevance, and its actions af- 
fect society on a huge scale. The Consti- 
tution doesn't allow for this. It was writ- 
ten in very different times.” 

The counterculture loves to vilify Wal- 
Mart's minions as “self-appointed moral 
guardians of the Christian Coalition,” 
and Wal-Mart doesn't take any pains to 
disabuse them of that notion. I suspect 
that, like the exhortation to save boxes 
for 75 cents’ credit, Wal-Mart's ostenta- 
tious piety is for the benefit of its vast 
rural workforce as much as for its cus- 
tomers, Dressing up an enormous, ag- 
gressively anti-union corporate entity as 
a devout, culturally strict, frugal country 
store run by a single glad-handing ghost, 
with the possibility of a better life some- 
day thrown in—could that be what keeps 
an employee like Alice cheerful while on 
her knees with the Woolite? 


PUNKS ON CAPITALISM 


Bentonville has no local hangouts. Some- 
one throws a switch at nightfall, and 
downtown goes dark. If you want a beer 
after work you go out to the strip, where 
chain restaurants rise from the asphalt 
like neon petit fours. At the Chili's bar sits 
a young guy who appears to be a full-on 
punk, from his nasty little goatee and 
black T-shirt to the red-and-green tattoo 
of a Japanese-style fish snaking down his 
arm. His name is Tony Diaz, and remark- 
ably, he was a Wal-Mart toy buyer before 
leaving for San Diego to become a free- 
lance toy developer. He's back in town to 
see some friends from his Wal-Mart days. 

Diaz says he was aware the minute he 
started at Wal-Mart that he didn't fit in. 


“When you first start working there you 
wonder, Is this a cult or something? Be- 
cause it's like everybody loves the place,” 
he says. But even he was drawn in and 
now loves working with Wal-Mart above 
all other toy sellers. “Buyers at other 
companies always want to bc wincd and 
dined. They want a weekend at this golf 
resort or tickets to this ball game," he 
says. "Wal-Mart says, Ме don't need any 
of that crap. Just give us the lowest price 
you can sustain every day.’ You can't buy 
a cup of coffee fora Wal-Mart buyer, and 
they take that shit seriously." 

The breathtaking efficiency of Wal- 
Mart is the workingman's friend, he 
says. “A guy gets off work and has to go 
here to get his hardware and here to get 
his clothes and here to buy his groceries,” 
he says loudly. “He has to spend all that 
time, or he can go to Wal-Mart and he 
ends up paying less.” As for the local 
hardware stores, haberdashers and gro- 
cers forced out of business by Wal-Mart's 
buying power, Diaz has no sympathy. 
“Consumers vote for what they want,” 
he says. “The very essence of this coun- 
try is capitalism, and if you don't like it, 
find someplace else to live.” He lays a 
few bills on the bar and stands up. “My 
grandfather owns a chain of plumbing- 
supply stores on the East Coast,” he adds 
quietly. “And he used to ask me, ‘How 
can you work for those bastards?” 

Wal-Mart has never been able to square 
its professed Main Street values—the 
greeters at store doors, the flag-waving 
patriotism—with the uncomfortable fact 
that its arrival is bad news for Main Street 
wherever it goes. An Iowa State Universi- 
ty professor who studied Wal-Mart's im- 
pact on his state in the 10 years afier it 
first appeared in 1983 quanti 
downtown and buy-local ас! 
long asserted: Wal-Mart kills off mom- 
and-pop stores. Who can compete with a 
company that buys items by the train- 
load? In Iowa hundreds of clothing, hard- 
ware, grocery and shoe stores have been 
hurt or wiped out, with hundreds of mil- 
lions of dollars going instead to Wal-Mart. 

Bentonville is getting a taste of its own 
medicine. Several storefronts are vacant, 
and some shops are teetering. A lovely 
coffee shop within walking distance of the 
courthouse, with easy chairs around a 
fireplace and a cappuccino maker as big 
as a locomotive, is failing. “Everything's 
moved out to the strip,” owner Pam Darst 
says with obvious bitterness. “If the local 
people don't want us, fine.” The indepen- 
dent bookstore on the square is in its final 
days as well. "No other way to say it: Big- 
box killed us," says the manager, who, 
when she sees my notebook, suggests with 
a wry smile that Í speak to the store's own- 
er. That would be Lynne Walton, daugh- 
ter-in-law of Sam, put out of business by 
the phenomenon her husband's father 
pioneered. (She did not return my calls.) 

At the Bentonville chamber of com- 
merce, which ostensibly represents the 


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town's small businesses as well as the big, 
economic development director Rich 
Davis asserts that downtowns killed off 
by Wal-Mart “were dead already—they 
Just didn't know it.” Family-owned busi- 
nesses don't want to compete, in Davis's 
opinion. “If you're open only Monday 
through Friday from eight to five, what 
happens at night or on the weekends in 
our consumer-driven society?” 

Sleep, I suggest, or recreation. Visit 
friends. Relax. Davis grimaces. He bran- 
dishes data showing that while a new 
Wal-Mart may finish off downtown di- 
nosaurs, it's a magnet for “restaurants, 
convenience stores, 24-hour activity.” 
Sales-tax revenue— "aggregate business 
activity"—often goes up, he says, not 
down, when a Wal-Mart comes to town. 

I go looking for aggregate business ac- 
tivity in Bentonville. As might be expect- 
ed, it’s out on the strip, clustered around a 
Wal-Mart Supercenter the size of the Pen- 
tagon. What survives on this airport-size 
slab of asphalt is businesses that don't (yct) 
compete with Wal-Mart: Benton House 
Carpet, a tanning salon, pawnshops, radi- 
ator shops, an auto-parts store. I looked 
forward to finding a down-home barbe- 
cue shack or one of those good Southern 
restaurants serving black-eyed peas, col- 
lards and sweet-potato pie. But every time 
I ask a local for a recommendation I get 
steered out here to Chili's, Applebec's or 
one of the other national chains on vast 
pools of blacktop parking lots. 

“I don't cry over mom-and-pop busi- 
nesses that have to close because a Wal- 
Mart moves in,” says a graveyard-shift 
greeter at one of the 24-hour Wal-Marts I 
stop at on my way from the airport. He's 
a retired civil servant, as perky at one A.M. 
as a bandleader on speed. “Compete is 
what I say. Do it better,” he says. “If you 
offer a good product at a fair price and 
take care of your customers, you'll suc- 
ceed. You can do this. Mr. Sam did it.” 


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store a day somewhere in the world. (Store 
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acres of floor space plus roughly three ог 
four times more in parking.) Today Wal- 
Mart has conquered Mexico, Puerto Rico, 
Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, 
the U.K. and Germany—tomorrow the 
world. A leading retail trade journal, Retail 
Merchandiser, effectively threw in the towel 
on behalf of other retailers, declaring on 
its May cover, IT'S WAL-MART'S WORLD. 
Signsin the stores ask incessantly, WHY 
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possibility that someday there may not 
be anywhere else, that Wal-Mart will 
have conquered every category of com- 
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How long Wal-Mart can keep this up is 
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(Dert Island 

(continued from page 110) 
know could be even smarter than she is, 
went to the University of Chicago, and 
my youngest brother went to Yale and 
graduated in about 12 days. I am the 
one who missed, by a twat hair, becom- 
ing the only person in the history of 
either side of the family not to graduate 
from any college, at least since the Civil 
War. On the other hand, there is now 
hope that I ama late bloomer, as only 
last year I was named Dent Island's best 
local novelist in the annual best-and- 
worst edition of the paper. (Actually, 1 
tied for best novelist with Sheriff Cliff 
Doane, whom I forgot to mention back 
in the cultural highlights section but who 
nevertheless wrote a novel, The Island 
Strangler, and can occasionally be seen 
signing copies of it down at the Dog Ear 
bookstore in Austin. Yes, I'm afraid we 
do for a fact have a sheriff who invents 
serial killers.) 

But what 1 was getting around to 
before I was sidetracked into this busi- 
ness about colleges was that Ms. Con- 
ners apparently had it all—carriage 
and brains and a Harvard diploma— 
and arrived on the island with high 
expectations for herself and the aca- 
demic growth of our community. I have 
heard that carly on someone asked her, 
“Why here?” and she only gazed off 
into the trees and said she found the 
place perfectly suited to her needs. 

What do you make of an answer like 
that? Better yet, what do you make of 
walking into your house and finding your 


15-year-old daughter sitting cross-legged 
on the couch, studying Maya Angelou? 

The next year, in creative writing, Ms. 
Conners assigned the class to write a 
Story imagining a meeting between Bill 
Clinton and Othello. This was right after 
‘Toni Morrison stirred up the East Coast 
with an essay claiming Clinton was 
America’s first black president. My 
daughter was sitting cross-legged on the 
couch again when she told me what she 
was writing. 

Clinton? I thought, Christ, what about 
Coolidge? 

The year after Toni Morrison, it was a 
course called Navigation 4, designed to 
prepare the island's university-bound 
students to research and write papers 
that might help them stay in college after 
they were admitted. 

Now, as it happened, also taking Navi- 
gation 4 that semester was a friend of my 
daughter's, a sweet, serious kid named 
Harriet Nelson, who preferred, for obvi- 
ous reasons, to be called by her last 
name. Her parents had pulled her out of 
high school one day at the beginning of 
her junior year and stood in the hall 
while she emptied her locker into a card- 
board box, crying and embarrassed, the 
whole school watching, all over a boy she 
liked and they didn't. 

They put her in the island's alterna- 
tive school, where she sat with the bark- 
ers (whom we try to keep away from the 
tourists) and the paper eaters and the 
Fuller twins, who one night took the lug 
nuts off all the county school buses, and 
fell further behind and further away all 
the time, 


“Апа of course ше do have a nice selection of belts made 
from fine Italian leather.” 


Three months into her senior year, 
however, the boy she loved turned 18 
and quit school to go to Reno, Nevada 
and learn to deal blackjack, and Nelson 
was allowed to return to Dent High and 
her friends. It was good news, but like a 
lot of good news it was too late. There 
had always been something a little sad 
about the kid, and resigned, and she 
already knew that she wouldn't be leav- 
ing the island—the worst hand you can 
be dealt around here when you're 17. 

"To her credit, she held off the outside 
world and what it had in mind for her as 
long as she could, which was what she 
was doing when she signed up for Ms. 
Conners's Navigation 4. It was a course 
for students going places, and Ms. Con- 
ners taught it as if it was already college, 
as if they were all adults. 

Ms. Conners had turned moody that 
year, which I understood to mean that 
mother nature was sending out mixed sig- 
nals (have a baby or tear out somebody's 
throat—how do you decide?). That or just 
boredom. Sometimes in the winter all 
there is for excitement around here are 
mud slides and the occasional reminder 
that you are always on the clock. (Unless 
you live in town, sooner or later you are 
going to hita deer on the way home—it 
isn't called Dent Island for nothing.) 

The first incident of moody behavior 1 
heard about was when Ms. Conners 
arrived one morning 45 minutes late for 
class, looking like she'd slept in her car, 
and told the story of Ralph Ellison's losing 
400 pages ofa novel in a house fire. And 
as she told the story she began weeping. 

A few weeks later, a concerned parent 
called the principal after Ms. Conners, 
wearing a funeral veil, lectured for an 
hour on the similarities between fiction 
writing and a high-wire act known as the 
Flying Wallendas. The principal's name 
is Dr. Potter, and the Wallendas' story, as 
you probably know, is that they were a 
circus family, and about 11 of them were 
hanging from the same bicycle one after- 
noon a hundred feet in the air, and the 
next thing you knew they were all lying 
around like flies on the windowsill at the 
end of fly season, little, bent, upside- 
down legs everywhere you looked. 

‘Toward the end of the semester, Ms. 
Conners asked the class to imagine what 
it was like to be swallowed. 

And while this was going on—while 
Ms. Conners was giving up on Dent 
Island—Nelson was giving up on Navi- 
gation 4. And for the same reason. I 
didn't say this to my kid, but I think we 
all have a voice, something from down 
by the pond, that knows what it knows. 


And so during the last week of her senior 
year, my daughter came home one day 
with the news that Ms. Conners, who 
had been particularly moody that week, 
had given Nelson an F on her research 
project. The project was 60 percent of 


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her grade, which meant that she was go- 
ing to fail the course, which, combined 
with the months she lost sitting with the 
paper eaters and the lug-nut looseners 
at the alternative school, meant that she 
didn't have enough credits to graduate. 

A summer makeup course was possi- 
ble, but even if she found the time—and 
she had to work that summer; she knew 
she would always have to work—her 
diploma would come in the mail or at 
some shotgun-wedding sort of ceremony 
in Mr. Potter's office. 

“Ms. Conners knows she's going to 
miss graduation?" I said. 

She said Nelson's parents had gone to. 
school and tried talking to her in person, 
but she wouldn't budge. “She finally said 
she'd let her redo the paper, but it's too 
late,” she said. 

My stepfather, as 1 mentioned, was al- 
so a teacher and made it his business all 
his life not to tell kids like Nelson it was 
to0 late. He never told me that either, 
and I was some version of Nelson myself. 

"Ms. Conners said there was nothing 
she could do," she said. “The deadline 
for the grades to be in is tomorrow. 

Then she wentinto her room with one 
of the dogs to work on the speech she 
was supposed to give at graduation. She 
had been chosen to talk to her classmates 
about the challenges awaiting them in 
the real world. 


At dinner ! asked how the challenges of 
the real world were shaping up. I was try- 
ing to get her to include the challenges 
awaiting her principal, Dr. Potter. Specifi- 
cally, in the real world of Dr. Potter, every 
spring the seniors were going to turn his 
VW upside down in the parking lot, no 
matter where he parked it, which would 
trigger a relapse of his wife’s condition, 
meaning she would end up writing a let- 
ter to the editor calling the whole island 
inbred, which the paper would print, 
and then he would have to apologize for 
that in a letter of his own. They love a 
dustup over at the paper, but my kid 
didn't think it was appropriate to bring 
up Dr. Potter's problems at graduation. 

She gets that appropriate stuff from 
the other side of the aisle, by the way, but 
then her mother and I have been tug- 
ging at her from different directions for 
years, a lot of it, in fact, at the dinner 
table, It started like this: Even as a baby, 
she hated peas. You'd spoon them into 
her mouth and she'd lean over the side 
of the high chair and spit them on the 
dogs. When she was four, she'd push 
them into a little pile on the far side of 
her plate, where they wouldn't touch 
any of the other food. Myself, 1 did not 
think a life without peas was necessarily 
meaningless. 

"Why not try them?" her mother 
would say. "You have to try them once...” 

1 was sitting across the table. This was 
before we came to the island, and we 


lived in a cabin on a little lake in New 
Jersey. The roof leaked, the floor was 
rotting, and we didn't have much mon- 
ey, but that house was a good time. My 
wife and I never in our lives got around 
to talking about bringing up the child; 
we each just did what we did. On the 
evening Im telling you about now, 1 
took a $20 bill out of my pocket. “Twen- 
ту dollars to eat one pea," I said. "То рег 
you ready for the real world." 

She looked at her mother; she looked 
at her plate. Whatever you're thinking, 1 
don't want to hear it. She did not grow 
up believing life was $20 a pea. She grew 
up believing she could pick out some of 
the good parts, though, which in this 
case was the expression on her mother's 
face. At that moment you could have 
exactly fit a vacuum attachment into her 
mouth. My daughter sorted through the 
peas with her spoon and chose one—a 
small one—and ate it. Then she picked 
up the $20 and went to the silverware 
drawer to get а clean spoon. "Happy?" 
her mother said. 

"Yes," I said. “Yes, Lam.” 


Nelson had written her Navigation 4 
report on graffiti. Her title was "Is Graf- 
fiti Really Art?" The paper was supposed 
to be 15 to 20 pages long, and it went 
like this: 

Graffiti is everywhere. The ghetto, the sub- 
ways, the schools, the sidewalks, our churches, 
synagogues, cathedrals and places of worship. 
Even perhaps our redwood forests and other 
national monuments and treasures. What 


causes the youth to “sign” in this unruly man- 
ner which causes others discomfort? Is it soci- 
ety? No one really knows. Who could know 
but the youths? But more importantly, is it 
art? Well, that is the question. That is truly an 
interesting question. Art is beauty, and beauty, 
according to Aristotle and other age-old 
philosophers, is in the eye of the beholder. Each 
of us has their own opinion, so in the end, who 
can really say what is art? 

Fifteen handwritten pages, three 
sources—a recent article in Time maga- 
zine, Webster's New World Dictionary, the 
New Oxford American Dictionary—big mar- 
gins, the bottom two lines devoted to the 
word over along with an arrow showing 
Ms. Conners where to find the next 
page. Enough padding to insulate the 
state of Vermont. 

Ms. Conners had quit marking the 
mistakes in spelling, grammar, punctua- 
tion and all the rest after two pages and 
instead wrote a simple one-line note at 
the end, calling the paper a betrayal of 
the spirit of the class. 

Nelson stood in our kitchen while 1 
looked it over, her eyes tired and starting 
to well tears. Knowing what was in the 
paper, knowing that she was 17 years old 
and this was the end of the road. 

I sent her home and went over to the 
little house in the trees where I work. 
The place seems smaller at night, and 1 
never go there after dark without being 
reminded of the other place, the one by 
the lake, and the nights I worked there 
after 1 got home from my job at the 
newspaper. My first book came out of. 
the typewriter while my wife and my 


“It’s basically the same as the regular ice shows, except 
that the women aren't wearing anything under their skirts and 
the men aren’t gay.” 


159 


PLAYBOY 


160 


daughter slept in other parts of the 
house, and I would get up from the desk 
every half hour at two and three and 
four in the morning to look at them, just 
stand there for a little while in the door- 
way, on a floor that sagged under my 
weight, watching them sleep. 

Which is as much excuse as I'm going 
to make. I did what I did, and Nelson 
came over at six in the morning and 
picked up the paper, took it home and 
rewrote it word for word. A day passed, 
and the deadline passed with it. 

Then another day, and then the 
phone rang Thursday morning. It was 
Ms. Conners. 

“I find myself in a very odd position,” 
she said. 

Lord, when I think of those words 
now. 

Ms. Conners was waiting, but 1 did not 
spend 10 years writing a newspaper col- 
umn in Philadelphia without learning 
when to shut the fuck up. It is the key to 
everything, 1 think, learning when to 
shut up. 

She said, “Let me begin by saying I 
have been struggling with this.... No, 
let me just begin by saying Harriet has 
told me that she went to you and your 
daughter for help with her paper." 

I said, "A nice kid, isn't she?" 

"Yes, well, they both are. The thing 
I'm in quite a quandary, as it were, аги 
was hoping you might be able to 


straighten me out. After reading the 
paper several times, 1 find that I can't 
shake the question of how much of itshe 
actually wrote..." And she left that out 
there for a while, perhaps expecting a 
confession, or an adult conversation. 

I said, "Well, 1 think you could say 1 
gave her a steer in the right direction. I 
showed her the things she had in there 
that didn't belong where they were." 
Which was true, in its way. I'm assum. 
ing that she read it when she copied it. 
"And then I made some suggestions 
about how she might reword what was 
left. The kind of things you must do all 
the time." 

There was another pause, and then 
she said, "You understand, my concern 
here is fairness. I want to be fair to her, 
but I also want to be fair to the rest ofthe 
class. I want to be fair to myself." 

And there it was, the mother lode. 
“Fair to myself.” But I had shut the fuck 
up for Nelson, and I stayed shut the fuck 
up. Although I wanted to 1 didn’t tell 
Ms. Conners that I knew who had be- 
trayed the spirit of the class, that Nelson 
was not the one who came in pretending 
that literature was important until she 
found out she couldn't write it herself. 

“She wrote every word,” 1 said. 

Nelson got a C-minus on the paper— 
Ms. Conners told me that twice before 
she hung up, making sure I understood 
that it was a C-minus, apparently under 


"This is the biggest penis you could find?" 


the impression that I could be insulted 
academically—and a D for the course. 


It was my first graduation. For one rea- 
son or another I never went to any of my 
own or my brothers’ or my sister's, so 1 
don't know if it's the same in other 
places, but the audience behaved as if 
they were at a basketball game. Yelling, 
whooping, stomping. Paper airplanes, 
streamers. There was even a wave in a 
section of the audience for a kid from 
one of the big island families. 

My daughter got up and gave her 
speech, which I regret to report did not 
mention Mr. Potter's VW or his wife, and 
while she was speaking I noticed Nelson 
sitting with her chin in her hand beside 
an empty folding chair, as if my kid had 
already left for the world and left her 
behind, and later, in the courtyard, I saw 
them hugging each other and crying 


Nelson works in the coffee shop now, the 
one you drive by on the road to the 
ferry, and still comes over to visit when 
the pea lover is home from college. She 
had a baby a year out of high school and 
loves the kid to death. 

Ms. Conners left the school district 
that same year, in handcuffs, after a now- 
famous tryst with an 11th-grade student, 
which, if you can believe the sheriff's 
office, had been going on for two years. 

Myself, I am once again poleaxed at 
my habitual misreading of the human 
condition, wondering why I even bother 
to have opinions. My wife says I'm being 
too hard on myself, but the island tourist. 
commission got closer than I did: “Dent 
Island—come fall in love all over again." 

Ms. Conners ended up with five years’ 
probation and a six-figure book deal, and 
everybody else involved sued the school 
district and was interviewed on afternoon 
television. Ms. Conners had to undergo 
mandatory counseling and register as a 
Class 2 sex offender wherever she went, 
which I thought was taking things too far. 
1 remember being 14, and I would have 
cut off a toe for a shot at Ms. Conners, 
and looking at the nub right now, my 
guess is I wouldn't much regret it. I сап 
testify in court that I've done worse 
things to myself with less reason. 

Among the people who do not see it 
that way, however, you may count the 
regular inhabitants of Unde Moses's 
B&B, who take an unexpectedly puritan 
view of the matter. 

Down at Uncle Moses's, Ms. Conners's 
name—when somebody has the bad 
taste to bring it up—still stirs a certain 
gnawing resentment. A grudging feel- 
ing, probably as old as sitting around 
getting shitfaced itself: a feeling that 
somehow we have been used as a 
stepping-stone to the big time. 


JESSE JAMES 
Е 
TONY | HAWK, 


= et 
у му GIBBONS 


Le 


А BUYERS GALLERY 


On sale at newsstands near you. Call (888) 354-6326 to order your copy. 
Visit our Web site: www.dupontregistry.com 


162 


Below is a list of retailers 
and manufacturers you can 
contact for information on 
where to find this month's 
merchandise. To buy the ap- 
parel and equipment shown 
on pages 47-48, 90-93, 
120-125 and 141, check 
the listings below to find the 
slores nearest. you. 


MANTRACK 

Pages 47-48: BainUltra, 
800-463-2187 or bainultra.com. KVH, 
kvh.com. Ritz-Carlton, 800-576-5582 
or ritzcarlton.com. Simon & Schuster, 
simonandschuster.com. 


YEAR IN 

VIDEO GAMES 

Pages 90-93: Top 10 of 200: Ictivi- 
sion, 310-255-2050 or activision 
«com. EA, 877-324-2637 or са.сот. 
Eidos, cidos.com. Microsoft, 800- 
MICROSOFT or riscofnations.com. 
Namco, namco.com. Nintendo, 800- 
255-3700 or nintendo.com. Rockstar, 
410-933-9191 or rockstargames.com 
/midnightclub2. Sierra, from VU 
Games, vugames.com. Trendspotting: 
Activision, 310-255-2050 or activision 
«сот. CDV, psychotoxic.com. Dream- 
catcher, 888-611-9999 or dream 
catchergames.com. EA, 877-324- 
2637 or ea.com. Jaleco, jaleco.com. 
Konami, konamigaming.com. Mid- 
way, midway.com. ЗДО, 3do.com. 
Online: Amped 2, NFL Fever and 
Project Gotham Racing 2, xbox.com. 


BUY 


Sony, 800-345-7669 or 
playstation.com. Tony 
Hawk's Underground, acti 
vision.com. 


CLOTHES TO 

THE EDGE 

Pages 120-125: Apple, 
apple.com. Armani Jeans, 
armanijeans.com. Avirex, 
avirex.com. Billabong, 
billabong.com. Clive, 
cliveyo.com. Columbia 
Sportswear, columbia.com. Dakine, 
dakine.com. DC, deshoecousa.com. 
Dub Weathergear, dubweathergear.com. 
Ecko Unlimited, eckounltd.com. 
Electric, electricvisual.com. Gant, 
gant.com. Grenade Gloves, 760-648- 
7399. iPath, ipath.com. Jack's Garage, 
jacksurfcom. K-Swiss, kswiss.com. 
Lithium, 888-8-LiTHIUM. LRG, 
drjays.com. Rusty, rusty.com. Savier, 
savier.com. Scott, scottusa.com. Smith, 
smithsport.com. Southshore Soldiers, 
southshoresoldiers.com. Special Blend, 
special-blend.com. Spy, spyoptic.com. 
Tommy Hilfiger, tommy.com. Triple 
5 Soul, triplc5soul.com. Vestal, 
vestalwatch.com. Volcom, volcom.com. 
Zoo York, zooyork.com. 


ON THE SCENE 

Page 141: Burton, burton.com. K2, 
k9gravitytools.com. Mad River 
Rocket, madriverrocket.com. Paris, 
theparisco.com. Sevylor, sevylor.com. 
Sims, 888-360-51м5. Tubbs, tubbs 


snowshoes.com. 


HAMILTON FOR зомс сом. STYLING JASON FANNER FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTA 


ROCK CAMP 


(continued from page 116) 
"We're changing the song order. We're 
moving 'Summertime Blues' to the end of 
the set and starting with ‘All Right Now." 
His announcement is met with panic. 
"Why don't we do it how we practiced?" 
“Cause Daltrey isn't ready yet. Don't 
you want Roger to sing with you guys?” 
It occurs to me that I don't give a shit. 
I say so, but nobody pays much attention. 
When we launch into “All Right Now,” 
I'm surprised to realize that the huge, 
ugly sound blaring into the club is us. It's 
shambling but energetic. I look over at St. 
Holmes. He shrugs his shoulders. I'm on. 
1 jump to the microphone and let fire. 
Later I'll see photos of myself doing all the 
embarrassing, hackneyed things rock 
singers do—closing my eyes, clenching 
the microphone—but right now it feels 
fucking great. 1 don't give a shit that my 
voice is off-key or that my bass lines are 
wandering so far they need a passport. 
After we careen through our medley 
the crowd roars, and I realize that Dal- 
trey is there to lead us through “Sum- 
mertime Blues.” Strangely, as one of the 
most famous voices in rock howls the 
opening lines—"I'm gonna raise a fuss, 
I'm gonna raise a holler"—it's less surreal 
than I would have imagined. Standing 
about 5%” and dressed іп a sweatshirt, 
Daltrey is hardly an imposing figure. 
Surc, the song sounds better than when. 
Lori and I sang it, but I find myself more 
annoyed than appreciative that he's dis- 
tracting attention from our mistakes. Af- 
ter five days of hammering these songs 
into presentable form, pulling a genuine 
rock god onstage feels like a cheap ploy. 
He's a ringer. The audience eats it up. 
We file offstage, and after five minutes 
of basking in our peers’ congratulations 
we're absorbed in the anonymity of the 
crowd. Onstage, the Liberators are blast- 
ing through “I Wanna Be Sedated.” Gold- 
en was right: Their singer is terrible. 
“How do you think we sounded up 
there?” Lori asks. 
1 tell her I think we were okay. 
“I'm ready to do it again,” she says. 
Truth is, I don't know ho: sounded 
up there—probably pretty awful. But it 
felt like rock and roll 
It would be easy to dismiss suburbanites 
paying washed-up stars to teach them how 
to "eat, sleep and live rock and roll" as the 
least rock-and-roll thing this side of the. 
"Taliban. But the night of the finale I ask 
Daltrey whether its painful listening to all 
these camper bands maul the Who's cat- 
alog. He stares at me as if I were an idiot. 
“No, not at all,” he says. “As long as they 
think they're doing it, it doesn't matter, 
Rock and roll is about not giving a fuck.” 
He motions toward the campers filling the 
club. “And these people are out there not 


giving a fuck.” 


PLAYMATE £ NEWS 


LOOK FOR 
RANDOMLY 
INSERTED 
AUTOGRAPHS, 
AUTHENTIC 
KISSES, 
BIKINI 
SWAICH 
CARDS 
&NEW 
MOVIE 
CARDS! 


It's been nearly a year since the messy 
breakup between Miss May 1996 Shauna 
Sand and Lorenzo Lamas, who were mar- 
ried for six years, and we're relieved to re- 
port that the couple are no longer at each 
other's throats. If you recall, they had а 
very public, nasty split, during which 
Lorenzo accused Shauna of being hot- 
tempered and of choking and punching 
him. Shauna's response? "I have never hit 
him," she says. "And he's a black belt in 
karate and weighs 180 pounds. I'm tiny— 
100 pounds."(On her Playmate data 
sheet, Shauna revealed that her turnoffs 
arc “violence, jealousy, airhcads and gos- 
sip.") The restraining order Lorenzo filed 

s been dropped, and the couple has 
agreed to joint custody of their three 


20 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH 


Veronica Gamba was born 
in Buenos Aires, and by the 
time she became 


Miss November 
1983 she had 
already mod- 
eled all over 
Europe. At 


4 


x 
Left: Shouno 

showing Mer 

trading cards. 

Right: With 

Lamas in 

happier times away with the 
naked gold 


young daughters, Alexandra, Victoria and 
Isabella. Careerwise, however, Lorenzo 
may not be faring so well. He became the 
butt of jokes when he wielded a laser 
pointer as a judge on the reality TV flop 
Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest 
People. Shauna, on the other hand, knows 
that she doesn't 
need a laser 
pointer to prove 
that, yes, she is 
indeed very hot. 
Her latest mov- 
ie, Ghost Rock, 
starring Gary 
Busey, is in the 
can, and the 
Bench Warmer 
5 trading cards 

P є featuring her im- 
hauna and Heidi Mark. age are ош now. ; 


“Being ап L.A. resident 
gives me a chance to spend 
more time at the Mansion. 
Jerry Springer is a good 
friend of mine, but the 
coolest celebrity I've met so 
far is Nicolas Cage, Once, at 
a Playboy party, we sat up 
all night talking. He's an 
incredibly interesting per- 
son."—Nicole Narain 


Although she 
spent weeks living 
with M.C. Ham- 
mer, Corey Feld- 
man and Vince 

il, The Surreal 
Life alum Brande 
Roderick emerged 
intact and remark- 
ably sane. Fram 
far left: at the 
California Design 
Callege's fashion 
show gala; at a 
movie premiere; 
at a Pussycat 
Dolls party; at the 
Fragronce Foun- 
datian's Annual 
FiFi Awords.. 


HOT SHOT 


THREE THINGS YOU DIDN'T 
KNOW ABOUT TINA JORDAN 


1. She has six sisters and two brothers. 

“It was very Brady Bunch," she says. 

2. She'll never for- 
get the first time 
Hef called her on 
her cell phone. 
“He's such anim- 
portant man. I 
felt so special." 

3. Robert De Niro 
makes her star- 
struck, but she 

/ can handle How- 
ard Stern. “I was in 

Tino hanging 15 Minutes for about 15 

with Toro Reid. seconds,” she says. “It 

was great to be in a film with a Holly- 
wood legend. Appearing on Howard 

Stern was fun. He even seemed a little 

smitten with me, which I found sweet." 


By the time you read this, Shanna 
Moakler will have given birth to her 
second child, a boy named Landon 
The proud papa? Blink-182's Travis 


Barker. We caught 
up with her before 
the blessed event. 

Q: Is your daugh- 
ter Atiana (whose 
dad is Oscar de la 
Hoya) cool with this? 

A: Yes. She wants 
her brother now! 

Q: Will Landon be 
into music? 

A: Yes. Travis had 
a baby-blue drum set 
made for the nursery. Two drummers 
in one house are a lot, but we hope 
music will influence him as it has us. 


МҮ FAVORITE PLAYMATE 


By Neko Case 


Поме Miss December 1972 
Mercy Rooney. In her 
Centerfold she's weoring 


wool chops and standing 
in front of о chair mode ої 
horns. | alwoys hong the 
photo obove my work space. It totol- 
ш ly inspires me. She 
looks so tough! She's 
riding horse naked 
in her other pictures. 


Do you know how 
shorp the little bones 
on top of o horse 
ore? Oh, pleose. It 
would be very 
poinful—she's o 
tough gal. 


Lay _— When maensraeers amex. | 


Since A.J. McLean got out of rehab, he has adapted a few (less 
destructive) habits: clinging to Playmates and wearing Van Dutch 
cops. Now that he's into Van Dutch, does that mean we hove to 
switch ta VON вітсн, the version sold at tshirthell.com? 


PLAYMATE GOSSIP 


Jenny McCarthy's first book, 
Jen-X, looked good on our coffee 
tables—not that we read it. Now 
she's working on a preg- 


nancy guide. Belly Laughs: = 
Everything Funny and Not- \ i 
So-Funny Headed Your Way 

During Pregnancy will be 

out next year, and again, we E 
most definitely won't read it. 

What's next for Jenny, a Pulitzer? 
That might be a good move, 


Pam and Christino: ту girls. 


since, unfortunately, the sitcom 
she shot for ABC never made it 
past the pilot....It was a good run 
for Kelly Monaco, who was nom- 
inated for a Daytime Emmy for 
her work on the soap Port Charles. 
Fans are irate that the show has 
been canceled....Pam Anderson 
enjoyed drrrty girl talk with 
Christina Aguilera (above) at 
L.A.'s Asia de Cuba.... It's been 25, 
years since Martha Smith played 
Babs in Animal House, and to 


“Don't leove me olone with these guys!” 


celebrate the film's anniversary, 
Martha and her co-stars shot a 
“Where are they now?" mocku- 
mentary....The only thing miss- 
ing when Benicio Del Toro, 
PMOY Christina Santiago and 
Hunter S. Thompson (above) 
hung out at the CineVegas Film 
Festival 2003? A video camera. 


No one's got balls like Indiana Jones. 


THE ADVENTURES OF 


роді, 


The Complete Movie Collection 
Available for the First Time on DVD 


ү. я 


[Jue Je 
(Tm | 


This four-disc set includes all three films: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, 


Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. ..all digitelly remastered, 


restored frame-by-frame and presented in 5.1 surround sound. Developed under the supervision of 
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the fourth disc contains three hours of never-before-seen features 
created exclusively for this must-have DVD collection. 


Whip Up Some Adventure on DVD October 21st. 
ШЫМ W 


1 


“Dude! Remember Eva from Accounting? 
Check it out. She's on Playboy TV" 


- = - 
You never know who or what you”1] see when real folks get it on in front of the cameras. 
They're not acting. They're not faking. They're not holding back, See reality TV at its 
steamiest... and you'll know why this is Playboy TV's most popular show! 


Mm ¿=> | NAUGHTY AMATEUR HOME VIDEOS 
vy E 


A 
BES W'S NEW EPISODES IN OCTOBER 
LM УА x 

асл 
Hosted by Julia Ann, CATCH IT EVERY TUESDAY AT 10ET/ 10PT 
Inari Vachs, & Chris Evans. 


Only On Playboy TV! 


Te pope toman goo DlayDOVtV.COm „ту елны коп your beal cabo no 


52003 Playboy 


ош Grup Ine Al ig нае PLAYBOY TV 


WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN 


COLD RUSH! 


nstead of strapping on a pair of skis and waiting an 
hour in a lift line, try bombing the mountain aboard 
опе of these new-school snow toys. The succ 
snowboarding has made a slopeside speed fix more 
ble than ever before; Vail, Tahoe, Copper Moun- 
tain, Sugarbush and other North American resorts hav 
opened areas for nonskiing thrill-seekers. Winter tubes, 


Below: A slick tarpaulin bottom and oversize handles 
help make the Sevylor Sno Pro one hell of a downhill 
ride ($75). Мор the tube is a pair of Piranha snowshoes 
with titanium crampons, by Tubbs ($400), and Burton 
Snowboards’ Liquid Lounger backpack/collapsible chair 
featuring a built-in bar for slopeside partying ($110). 


GEORGE GEORGIOU 


WHERE AND HOW 1O ALY 


bikes, snowshoes and sleds are fun, 
but our favorite powder toy is e Sims 
snowboard (left) featuring adult film 
star Jenna Jameson. "Ours are the only 
boards you'll want to sleep 

the company. Isn't it afraid that will 
bring оп an early thaw? —tyNN stt DON. 


Left: Sims Snowboards' Fader Vivid 
porn star series includes Jenna Jameson 
($400, minus bindings). Below: The 
SnoXross combines a rear ski for speed, 
a front ski for steering and a collapsible 
frame for storage and hauling ($125). 


Above: Mad River Rocket's motto “Get on Your Knees” says it all. The 
company's Killer B sled with built-in knee pads and a quick-release 
lap belt is a sure ticket to riding serious air ($75). Left: The revolu- 
tionary SMX Snowcycle looks like something Lance Armstrong would 
love—it includes a suspension system, an adjustable seat and han- 
dlebars, and shaped skis for snow carving ($525). 


M@rapevine 


Boobylicious 

Current It girl BEYONCE KNOWLES has a hit album, 4 Brazen 

Dangerously in Love, and a movie comedy, The Fight- | h 

ing Temptations. But what's really caught our atten- | Sharon 

tion—aside from this dress—is all the media hoopla. Flips Out 

Superstardom is her destiny. By now, we 
know if 
SHARON 
OSBOURNE's 
TV talk show 
has panned 
out, but 

her way it 

won't stop 
her from 
letting it all 
hang out. 


Just Like a Natural Woman 
As friends of the environment, we're all for naked tree-hugging. Model ALYSSA 
LOVELACE has appeared on Playboy TV and was featured in two movi 


Rat Race and Torque. We'd chain ourselves to a redwood with her anytime. 


These Boys 

Were Not Rejected 

You've probably heard the ALL-AMERICAN 
REJECTS song on the American Wedding 
soundtrack. After they tour Europe and the Far 
East, look for them to hit the stage in the U.S. 


Surf's Up 

SANDEE MAGALLANES has been featured 
Hola, Roselyn in Beautiful Women of Hawaii calendars 
and Wicked Wahine perfume ads. Here, 
she again shows up the tropical scenery. 


ROSELYN SANCHEZ was the hottest thing in Rush Hour 
2 and the Latin-flavored comedy Chasing Papi. And 
she can run circles around the red-carpet competiti 


In (and Out) 


š Fashion 
Model ARIANE SOMMER 

gives the crowd its 

- money's worth at a 


Monte Carlo charity gala. 


Motpourri 


VESTED INTEREST 


Think a magician's coat has a lot of hidden 
pockets? Take a hike, Siegfried. Your cell 
phone, PC, CDs, MP3 player, audiotapes, spare 
batteries, keys—you name it—can vanish into 
the ScotteVest 3.0's 42 pockets with nary a 
bulge or dangling wire. The jacket also eases 
your way through airport security, because all 
your electronic goodies are organized. Very 
James Bond. Prices range from $160 for a 
microfiber model to $400 for black leather. Go 
to scottevest.com, or call 866-909-vesr. 


THE BAR'S BACK IN BARBECUE 


Beerman BBQ's Beer Can Baster is just what 
you need—another excuse to pop the top of 
your favorite brew. Once you've opened a can, 
down about half of it, add spices to what's left 
and snap on the Baster. A dial lets you adjust 
the flow of juice from low to high, depending 
on the desired thickness. Meat, poultry and 
seafood never tasted better. Celebrate by open- 
ing another can. Price: $13 at barbecue 
retailers, or go to beermanbbq.com. 


4 = 


MSEX H 1T HAIR'S 


LOOKING AT 
YOU, KIT 
According to Hair Care 
Down There, a whole lot 
| of shaping and shaving is 
going on in the female of 

it the species’ southern 
hemisphere. The tradi- 
tional triangle, of course, 
is always a fave, but our 
"inside sources tell us that 
most ladies headed south. 
opt for the landing strip, 
the heart or the smoothie, 
Hair Care's $65 shaving 
kit (insert) includes a 
narrow-cartridge razor, 
safety scissors, a small 
brush for fluffing, a two- 
sided comb, a swivel mir- 
ror, shape-maker stencils 
and a stencil pen. oint- 
ments and an illustrated 
guide. Whee! Go to hair 
caredownthere.com, or 
call 800-908-нсрт. 


DESKTOP DETECTIVE 


If your girlfriend has hot flashes whenever her computer chimes 
“You've got mail," maybe it's time you checked out SpectorSoft's 
eBlaster 3.0. When installed on an unsuspecting subject's com- 
puter, this spyware program will e-mail to your computer both 
incoming and outgoing e-mails and a copy of both sides of any 
chat room conversation, along with the URLs of websites visited. 
You can even specify certain words or phrases, and if those words 
are typed, eBlaster lets you know. The program works whether 
your computer is across town or overseas. Of course, if you're 
being e-blasted, there's always the French Foreign Legion. The 
price to snoop: $100 at eBlaster.com, or call 888-598-2788. 


AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, ETC. 


The 1960s comic book superhero the 
Atom (below) had his tiny hands full deal- 
ing with the turbulence of his time—all 
that emphasis on speed, space and tech- 
nology. Spidey and the Hulk weren't 
relaxing either. Their angst and aggres- 
sion are captured in The Silver Age of Com- 
ic Book Art, by Arlen Schumer, a $50 hard- 
cover that celebrates these and other 
1950s and 1960s superheroes in graphics 


and text. Order from collectorspress.com 


SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE 


SG Custom Sound goes where other 
stereo companies woof out. It will create 
stereo speakers in any design (keep it 
clean, guys), including ice cream sundaes, 
cornucopias, even coffins. Prices begin at 
$1,250 (that's whata pair of sundaes goes 
for) and hit higher notes depending on 
whether wood, papier-maché, PVC, met- 
al or other materials are used. Go to sg 
customsound.com, or call 718-224-5083. 


DISTILLED COOL 


Effen vodka, from Holland, 
tastes as smooth as its rubber- 
sheathed bottle is sleek. Effen's 
filtering process uses peat in- 
stead of charcoal (peat is pur- 
portedly more effecüve in 
removing impurities). Price: 
$30. Hpnotiq, a trendy blue 
liqueur from France, is a blend 
of cognac, vodka and tropical 
fruit juices. It makes a great cos- 
mopolitan. Price: $25. Wet by 
Beefeater is a pear-infused vari- 
ation of the company's tradition- 
al gin. Mix it with lemon juice, 
blue curacao, simple syrup, 
lemon soda and mint for a wet 
blue. Bottoms up! Price: $23. 


BUFFALO LEAVES THE FORT 


It may look like the Alamo, but anyone who has been to Denver 
will recognize a restaurant named the Fort, an adobe replica of a 
Colorado trading post. Game, especially buffalo, is the Fort's culi- 
nary forte, as many plate cleaners, including President Clinton 
and Boris Yeltsin, can attest. Now the Fort Trading Co. will ship 
buffalo burgers, filets and New York strips, as well as quail and 
venison, to your fort. Prices range from $45 for 15 burgers to 
$300 for a dozen filets, Go to forttradingco.com to order. 


INTERNAL FLAME 


“To be as tan as George Hamilton 
by Christmas, start popping 
EluSun tanning pills now. The 
capsules, which Europeans 
have been swallowing for years, 
contain marine carotenes from 
Australian algae, concentrates 
of vitamin E and fatty acids— 
ingredients that Dolisos Amer- 
ica, the manufacturer (it's a 
subsidiary of Pierre Fabre in 
France), claims will give you a 
tan without the sun. It takes 
about two months to achieve 
some results. The stuff is cheap: 
only $20 for 120 capsules, from 
800-0011505. Best of all: no tan 
lines. Of course, you still won't 
look like Hamilton. 


ü 171 


Шехі Month 


PLAYMATE SEARCH: JUST A TYPICAL DAY AT THE MANSIONI 


THE LAST DAYS OF JAM MASTER JAY—A YEAR AGO RUN- 
D.M.C.'S GROUNDBREAKING DJ WAS GUNNED DOWN WHILE 
PLAYING VIDEO GAMES IN HIS RECORDING STUDIO. AN AR- 
REST HAS YET TO BE MADE. HOW DID THE KILLER GET IN? 
WHY WAS THERE NO SURVEILLANCE TAPE? AND WHAT ACTIV- 
ITIES LED UP TO THE FATEFUL NIGHT? WRITER FRANK OWEN 
WALKS THE MEAN STREETS OF HOLLIS, QUEENS AND GETS 
IN WITH JAY'S POSSE 


SEXPERIMENTS Ії -ІМ JUNE WE TOOK A HARD LOOK АТ 
WEIRD SEX RESEARCH. NOW WE FOCUS OUR SPECULUMS ON 
BIZARRE SEXUAL CASE STUDIES. THESE TRUE TALES ARE 
STRANGE AND UNSETTLING—YOU'LL NEVER THINK OF PENILE 
STRANGULATION, SCALP SYPHILIS AND CONTAGIOUS BLOW- 
UP DOLLS IN THE SAME WAY AGAIN. CAVEAT: DO NOT READ 
BEFORE DINNER. OR SEX. BY CHIP ROWE 


JOHN CUSACK—THE TEEN-FLICK FIXTURE TURNED FORMI- 
DABLE LEADING MAN HAS DONE MORE THAN 40 MOVIES BUT 
UNTIL NOW HAS KEPT HIS PRIVATE LIFE PRIVATE. HE GIVES 
THE GOODS ON THE HIGH PRICE OF FAME, THOSE INCES- 
SANT CUSACK-FOR-PRESIDENT RUMORS AND HOW HE AL- 
WAYS MANAGES TO GET THE GIRL—ON-SCREEN AND IN REAL 
LIFE. PLAYBOY INTERVIEW BY DAVID SHEFF 


ANYONE GOT A CIGARETTE? A STEAMY SEX IN CINEMA 2003. 


WHO KILLED JAM MASTER JAY? 


cd 


PLAYBOY'S ANNUAL MUSIC РОН. THIS YEAR'S MUSICAL 
LANDSCAPE HAS BEEN CRAZY, CRAPPY AND COMMENDABLE, 
AND AS USUAL EVERYONE IN OUR OFFICE IS HAVING STEREO 
WARS. NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO WEIGH IN. VOTE FOR ALBUM 
OF THE YEAR, HALL OF FAME, SONG YOU HATE TO LIKE 
(TIMBERLAKE, ANYONE?) AND MORE IN OUR YEARLY ROUNDUP 


WILLIAM H. MACY—YOU'D NEVER KNOW FROM HIS ODDBALL 
ROLES, BUT THIS ACTOR'S ACTOR IS THE MOST NORMAL GUY 
IN HOLLYWOOD. WE GOT HIM TO JAW ABOUT THE DARK 
STUFF: GAMBLING, SEEING HIS BARE ASS ON-SCREEN, PISS- 
ING OFF THE EXTRAS IN BOOGIE NIGHTS AND THE DIRTY 
JOKE HE ALMOST TOLD ON OSCAR NIGHT. 20 QUESTIONS 
BY WARREN KALBACKER 


SEX IN CINEMA 2003—SEVERAL MOVIES POPPED OUR CORN 
THIS YEAR, AND NOT ONE OF THEM WAS SEABISCUIT 


PLUS: OUR GIFT GUIDE TO THE LATEST, GREATEST GUY GEAR 
FOR CHRISTMAS, FICTION BY ETHAN COEN, EVERYTHING 
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT COLLEGE HOOPS. HOW TO 
DRESS LIKE THE PLAYBOY MAN, OUR LATEST CRUSH, NICHOLE 
HILTZ, FIVE WAYS TO FIX WORLD HUNGER, DAREDEVIL COCK- 
TAILS AND THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY PLAYMATE SEARCH 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), November 2003, volume 50, number 11. Published monthly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 680 
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinoisand at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Cana- 
dian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for 12 issues. Postmaster: Send address change to 
172 Playboy, РО. Box 2007, Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. For subscription-related questions, e-mail circ@ny.playboy.com. Editorial: edit@playboy.com.