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` ENTERTAINMENTS 
| Cd 
INTERVIEW - 


MATT 
DAMON Y 


wo EVA - 
ERZIGOVA 


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“| played with 
dolls when SUPERNAKED 
І was a kid” 

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a. = wr 
Since her stint as the face—and chest—of Wonderbra, Eva 
Herzigova has been an instantly recognizable member of 
the world’s elite modeling corps. Now bringing her star 
quality to a budding acting career, she's certainly a long 
way from the Czech Republic, where as a teen she was 
discovered soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Eva has an 
amazing presence from the moment she walks into the 
studio,” reports photographer Mario Sorrenti, who has 
also been working on a new fragrance commercial and a 
book detailing his latest exhibition. “Her personality is flirty, 
sweet and smart, and she makes things happen just by the 
way she moves and does things. She understood the image 
1 was going for and helped create the photographs. As a 
result, the shoot was playful, erotic, relaxed and enchanting.” 


Frank Owen returns to our pages with Detroit, Death City, a 
meditation on crime in the Motor City and a tragedy that 
devastated his wife's family. "When I began writing this story,” 
says Owen, “I was reminded of something Russell Simmons 
said to me while | was working on a piece for PLAYBOY about 
the death of Jam Master Jay: "Young black men die all the 
time in the ghetto, and you in the media could care less.’ For 
the most part that's been true. | started thinking about that in 
relation to Detroit, and that is how this piece came together.” 


“I've rarely done autobiograph- 
ical stories," says T.C. Boyle, 
who wrote this month's fiction, 
Up Against the Wall. “Why bother 
when the world out there is so 
deliciously mad? But since I've 
said over and over that anything 
can make for a good story, why 
rule out my own small nuggets 
of experience? This piece grew 
out of my brooding over the 
period of the late 1960s while 
writing my previous novel, Drop 
City, and it contains at least 
some autobiographical ele- 
ments. Aside from the tug of the 
storytelling, it may be interest- 
ing to those who know my work 
well, because it revisits charac- 
ters and situations from the first 
story | ever published, ‘The OD 
and Hepatitis Railroad or Bust." 


Game Masters, by John Bloom, 
offers a rare glimpse at an 
important engine of casino 
growth—the eccentric inven- 
tors of new card games. "One 
problem | had is that as soon 
as these guys get excited 
enough to start really talking 
about their games, it becomes 
a blizzard of math, and | was 
always a terrible math student. 
They talk about tiny statistical 
nuances involving the house 
edge, the real odds, the practi- 
cal odds, hands per hour, the 
win-per-table rate and the hold 
percentage, and you realize 
there are thousands of varia- 
tions within a single game. It 
gave me a great deal of respect 
for what these guys do." 


The illustration that accompanies Game Masters is by Amy 
Guip, whose photo-driven art has been used in ad cam- 
paigns by Hewlett-Packard and Negra Modelo. "The piece 
is based on a card design," she says. "Since there are two 
main characters in the story, ! thought it would be interest- 
ing to do a card because it has a top and a bottom. It 
reflects the fact that there are two sides to the story: One 
person is successful, the other isn't. We put dollar signs 
where the numbers would be because it's about money.” 


LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY 


- Paul Clinton, CNN 
ж 


THe МЕШ COMEDY FROM THE DIRECTOR OF 
ОШ? SCHOOL пм ROAD TRIP! 


u 


BEN STILLER OWEN WILSON 


-Out-Loud Funny." 
“This Year's Best Comedy! Lough 


^ UCD — _ "WE TOTALLY 
Y но. GOOUBONUSES! 


IG REEL ° DELETED SCENES 


Esse Pomc Gilbert Adler proa William Blinn Stuart Comfeld Akiva Goldsman Tony Ludwig Alan Riche son its Cr y Wil 
>], кше John O'Brien og Todd Philips s Scot Armstrong rece Todd Philips 


starskyandhutchmovie.com AOL Keyword: Starsky and Hutch 


© 2004 Warmer Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights raserved. 


vol. 51, no. 8—august 2004 


OY. 


features 


72 


76 


DETROIT, DEATH CITY 

Widespread violence and poverty have turned the Motor City into an American 
horror story. Our reporter examines Detroit's sad tale from the perspective of one 
native family—his own. His father-in-law, a 1960s revolutionary, tried to reinvent 
the metropolis; his brother-in-law renounced black power for the lure of the streets. 
BY FRANK OWEN 


GAME MASTERS 

Casinos always need new games to entice jaded gamblers. And 7 Card Thrill 
and 2-2-1 are the newest card games being slotted into second-tier casinos in Las 
Vegas, Mississippi and Allantic City. PLAYBOY tracks down their inventors—men 
who have staked their lives on the bet that the big casinos will adopt their games. 
Will they hit the jackpot? BY JOHN BLOOM 


THE SOPHISTICATED SUMMER GRILL 

Just because you're firing up the charcoal doesn't mean you have to feed your guests 
hamburgers and hot dogs. We asked four celebrity chefs to share their secrets for 
turning a backyard barbecue into a gourmet feast. BY KENT BLACK 


PLAYBOY'S NFL PREVIEW 

We looked into our crystal football to predict whether the Patriots will win 
another Super Bowl, who will be left standing when the Cowboys and Eagles 
butt heads, and which off-season trades and draft choices will have the biggest 
impact. Plus, PLAYBOY’s dream team and some little-known football stats. 

BY ALLEN ST. JOHN AND ALLEN BARRA 


CENTERFOLDS ON SEX: CARMELLA DE CESARE 
The 2004 Playmate of the Year isn't into one-night stands. Bul trust us—sex with 
her is well worth the wait. 


20Q SPIKE LEE 

The director of Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever tackles corporate greed in 
his new film, She Hate Me. He gives us unscripted answers to taboo questions 
about racial stereotypes, three-way relationships and the reason behind Tiger Woods's 
faltering game. BY WARREN KALBACKER 


fiction 


82 


UP AGAINST THE WALL 

Tò avoid fighting in Vietnam, a man takes a job teaching in an inner-city 
school. With the help of his friends, he ends up creating his own war zone. 
BY T.C. BOYLE 


interview 


MATT DAMON 

Damon has starred in Good Will Hunting, The Talented Mr. Ripley and 
Saving Private Ryan, partied his way around Hollywood with Ben Affleck, and 
loved and left some of the world’s most beautiful women. As The Bourne 
Supremacy hils theaters, we expose the real man behind the nice-guy facade. In 
ап outspoken Playboy Interview, Damon swears more than you'd expect him to, 
reveals the downside of falling for co-stars and provides an insider's account of 
the Bennifer breakup. BY STEPHEN REBELLO 


cover story 


In 1994 supermodel Evo Herzigovo ap- 
peared on billboards across the world, 
modeling the Wonderbra. Soles of the push- 
up brassiere skyrocketed, ond so did Evo's 
fome. Now she ond photogropher Morio 
Sorrenti open the gotes to the Gorden of Eva. 
Prepare to be tempted. Our Robbit became 
unhooked ot the sight of such beouly. 


vol. 51, no. 8—august 2004 


PLAYBOY. 


| contents continued | continued 


pictorials 


WOMEN BEHIND BARS 
These ladies serve sex on the beach. 
PLAYMATE: PILAR LASTRA 
We see No Rules in this 

Texan's future. 

ALL ABOUT EVA 


The Wonderbra model's cups 
cverfloweth. 


notes and news 


HANGIN’ WITH HEF 


MARDI GRAS 
MANSION MASH 

Simon Cowell, Heidi Fleiss 

and Owen Wilson parade 

around the Mansion on the 

Big Easy' big night. 

THE PLAYBOY FORUM 

The grim results a Bush win would 


have on the Supreme Court; Bill 
Gates Sr. begs the IRS to tax him. 


PLAYMATE NEWS 
Gretchen Mol stars as Bettie Page 
in the pinup queen's biopic; a 
tribute to Donna Michelle; Patrick 
Warburton's favorite Playmate. 


departments 


157 
158 
160 


ON THE SCENE 
GRAPEVINE 
POTPOURRI 


fashion 


PLAYBILL 

DEAR PLAYBOY 

AFTER HOURS 

MANTRACK 

THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES 

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY 


106 


INSIDE THE ENTOURAGE 
Jeremy Piven, Kevin Dillon and 
the other stars of HBO's newest 
series, Entourage, model suits 
with Tinseltown cool. 

BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS 


SLICK KICKERS 

Want some respect on the street? 
Pound the pavement in these 
sneakers. BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS 


reviews 


27 


30 


32 


33 


MOVIES 

M. Night Shyamalan's The 
Village is creepy; Catwoman 
isn't the cat's meow. 

DVDS 

Get hitched to Starsky @ Hutch; 
Kill Bill Vol. 2 beats its predeces- 
sor; Sigourney Weaver—topless! 
MUSIC 

The Hong Kong channels Blondie; 
the Mooney Suzuki returns; 
Tommy Stinson's solo album needs 
no Replacements. 

GAMES 

Get caught in Spider-Man 2% 
web; make the 2004 Olympic 
team in Athens. 

BOOKS 

Robert Olen Butler's Had a Good 
Time is a good read; the skinny on 


Fatty Arbuckle's life. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


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PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO, 


LEOPOLD FROEHLICH, STEPHE 
execulive editors 


y RANDALL 


TOM STAEBLER art director 
GARY COLE photography director 
LISA CINDOLO GRACE managing editor 
ROBERT LOVE editor al large 


EDITORIAL 
ATURES: А). BAINE.arlicles editor FORUM: CHIP ROWEsenior editor; PATTY LAMBERTI assistant editor 


MODERN LIVING: SCOTT ALEXANDER Senior editor STAFF: ALISON PRATO Senior associate editor; 
ROBERT B. DESALVO. TIMOTHY MOHR, JOSH ROBERTSON assistant editors; WEATHER HAEBE. 

CAROL KUBALEK, EMILY LITTLE, KENNY LULL editorial assistants CARTOONS: MICHELLE URRY editor 

COPY: WINIFREDORMOND copy chief; STEVE GORDON associate copy chief; CAMILLE cauti senior copy editor; 


ROBIN AIGNER, ANTOINE DOZOIS, copy edilors RESEARCH: DAVID COHEN research director; BRENDAN BARR 


senior researcher; RON MOTTA. DARON MURPHY, DAVID PFISTER, MATTHEW SHEPATIN researchers; 
MARK DURAN research librarian EDITORIAL PRODUCTION: JENNIFER JARONECZVK HAWTHORNE 
assistant managing editor; BONNIE SHELDEN manager; VALERY SOROKIN Associate READER SERVI 
MIKE OSTROWSKI correspondent CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: KEVIN BUCKLEY, JOSEPH DE ACETIS (FASHION), 


GRETCHEN EDGREN, LAWRENCE GROBEL KEN GROSS, WARREN KALBACKER, JAMES KAMINSKY 


ARTHUR KRETCHMER, JOE MORGENSTERN, JAMES R. PETERSEN, DAVID RENSIN, DAVID SHEFF, JOHN D. THOMAS 


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 ürt assistant; 


CORTEZ WELLS art services coordinator; MALINA LEE senior art administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
MARILYN GRABOWSKI west Coast editor; JIM LARSON managing editor; PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCÉS, 
KEVIN KUSTER, STEPHANIE MORRIS senior editors; RENAY LARSON assistant editor; 

ARNY FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; GEORGE GEORGIOU staff 
photographer; RICHARD 1ZU1. MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, GEN NISHINO, DAVID RAMS contributing 
photographers; вил. wire studio manager—los angeles; BONNIE JEAN RENNY 
manager, photo library; KEVIN CRAG manager, photo lab; mart ste1GBIGEL photo 
researcher; PENNY EKKERT. MELISSA ELIAS production coordinators 


DIANE SILBERSTEIN publisher 


ADVERTISING 
JEFF KIMMEL advertising director; RON STERN пеш york manager NEW YOR! 


HELEN BIANCULLI direct 
response advertising director; TATIANA VERENICIN fashion manager; 
LARRY MENKES Senior account executive; TRACY WI 


account executive; MARIE FIRNENO advertising 
operations director; KARA SARISKY advertising coordinator CHICAGO: jor HOFFER midwest sales manager; 
WADE BAXTER Senior account executive LOS ANGELES: PETE AUERBACH west coast manager; 
COREY SFIEGEL senior account executive DETROIT: DAN COLEMAN detroil manager 


MARKETING 
LISA NATALE associate publisher/marketing; SUE \GOE event marketing director; JULIA LIGHT marketing 
е 
services director; DONNA TAVOSO creative services director 


PRODUCTION 
MARIA MANDIS director; JODY JURGETO production manager; CINDY PONTARELLI. DEBBIE THLLOL 
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 E RADIKE senior vice president and general manager 


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© 2004 B& со. 


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Out and about with Mr. Playboy: (1) Hef and 
his gorgeous girlfriends posing for Paris Match 
magazine. (2) With director Michael Bay at 
L.A-'s Bliss. (3) Centerfolds Stephanie Glasson 
and Hiromi Oshima with the party posse at 
Concorde. (4) Hef and Martin Landau at the 
Mansion. (5) Thora Birch and Gene Kelly's 
widow, Patricia. (6) Playmates Pennelope 
Jimenez, Marketa Janska, Divini Rae and 
Tiffany Taylor. (7) Carrie Stevens with NFL 
legend John Elway. (8) Miss May Nicole 
Whitehead. (9) With Alana Stewart at Spago. 
(10) Holly and Tia Carrere at the 
Playboy Golf Scramble. (11) At Playmate 
Victoria Fuller's pop art exhibit. (12) 
Congratulating members of the Super 

Bowl champion New England Patriots. 

(13) Ultimate fighter Tito Ortiz and 
Bunnies. (14) Everlast rocking the Man- 

sion. (15) Dr. Garth Fisher and Brooke 
Burke. (16) Playmates Gillian Bonner 

and Shannon Stewart at Mr. Playboy's 

pad. (17) Rappers Method Man and 
Redman with the Original Man. 


Who needs Bourbon Street when you've got 
Hef, Centerfolds and Hollywood celebrities at 
a raucous Mardi Gras party at Playboy Man- 
sion West? (1) Holly and four American idols: 


В; 
Bl 


‘Hef, Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and 
Seacrest. (2) Sharon Lawrence ol 


h Hef. (10) Оз 

Wilson and Sherrie Rose. (11) Hef _ 
and 50th Anniversary Playmate 
Colleen Shannon. (12) Steve Bing _ 
and Heidi Fleiss. (13) Lakers | 

м Buss with a bevy of 

14) Julie Strain and ' 

Kevin Eastman getting feisty. (15) 
Shane West and Renee Sloan. (16) 
Lisa Ligon and Jack Osbourne. | 


А 
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MILE-HIGH PLAYMATE 
Pilot and Centerfold Nicole White- 
head is terminally gorgeous (Ready for 
Takeoff, May). 
Daniel Dudych 
Des Plaines, Illinois 


My heart skipped a beat when I saw 
Nicole in those high heels and stock- 
ings. Oh, those gams! 
Frank Lewis 
Akron, Ohio 


I'm glad to see an Alabama girl rep- 

resent our state so wonderfully. The 

South has the most beautiful women. 
Lance Brannon 
Sylacauga, Alabama 


Readers enjoy Miss Moy's wild ride. 


Nicole was gorgeous when she ap- 
peared as Cyber Girl of the Week in 
January 2002, and she's stunning now. 
How could it be, though, that she went 
from five-foot-five with a 34-inch chest 
to five-foot-four with a 32-inch chest? 
Bill Linn 
Phoenix, Arizona 
People shrink as they get older, Bill. 


I live next to Orlando Executive Air- 
port. I hope that's where Nicole flies 
out of, because I'd love for an unex- 
pected wind to bring her parachuting 
onto my front lawn. 
Roch Vaillancourt 
Orlando, Florida 


ANABOLIC ATHLETES 

1 found Jonathan Littman's inside 
account of the BALCO steroids bust 
(Gunning for the Big Guy, May) interest- 
ing and informative. However, I take 
issue with the contention that “govern- 


РИТА 


y D 


о y 


ment agencies have never considered 
steroids a priority.” I am a special 
agent with the FBI. From 1990 to 1993 
the FBI, along with the FDA and the 
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ran 
an undercover sting that targeted 
steroids dealers, Operation Equine re- 
sulted in the successful prosecution of 
more than 70 people and the seizure 
of 10 million dosage units of anabolic 
steroids (40 percent of which were 
counterfeit). The case generated sig- 
nificant media coverage at the time. 

Greg Stejskal 

Ann Arbor, Michigan 


Although steroids may play a role, 
the home run increase could also be 
attributed to denser wood used in 
bats, livelier balls, tter-friendly 
parks and a shrinking strike zone. 
Steroids do not improve vision or 
hand-eye coordination. Players must 
still hit a round ball traveling more 
than 90 miles an hour with a round 
bat in a little under a second. 

Pat Toms 
Tucson, Arizona 

That’s true, but evidence suggests that 
many BALCO clients ingested everything 
from human growth hormone, which sharp- 
ens eyesight and increases flexibility and 
muscle mass, to modafinil, which enhances 
wakefulness and vigilance. These drugs 
can help a batter select a pitch, see it, hit it 
and, with the help of steroids, slam it over 
the fence. 


GOOD VIBRATIONS 
"Thank you for bringing back smarty- 
pants sexpert Anna David to test all 
those vibrators (Sex Pistols, May). The 
most exciting stimulation devices are 
brains like David's. 
Hank Hosfield 
Portland, Oregon 


The photo of David with the jack- 

hammer is the sexiest I have ever seen. 
Jim Poore 

Carver, Massachuseus 


David notes that sex toys are illegal 
in six states. Which are they? 
Miranda Jones 
Vermilion, Ohio 
The situation isn't as definitive as ше 
made it sound. According to our legal de- 
partment, only Georgia, Mississippi and 
Texas still have active laws specifically ban- 
ning the sale or promotion (but not the pos- 
session or use) of sex toys, but some state 
statutes elsewhere could be interpreted to 
target vibrators. In Texas cautious sellers 
require buyers to sign a release stating they 
will use the toy only for educational pur- 


poses, which the authors of the book Sex Toys 
101 quip makes it “easier to buy a gun than 
a vibrator.” If you can't find a buzz locally, 
go online—few sites that sell sex toys appear 
to have restrictions on where they will ship. 


Anna David is the best-looking re- 
porter I've ever seen. Any chance of 
getting her to pose for a pictorial? 
Sam Reeves 
Fort Worth, Texas 
We called Anna to invite her back to the 
studio, but her phone just rang and rang. 


I've searched high and low for the 
Itty Bitty Bump-N-Grind. Help! I've 
just gone through my fifth Pearl But- 
terfly in 10 months. 

Missy Blankenship 
Harrisonburg, Virginia 

You can buy the Itty Bitty at goodvibes.com. 
Readers also asked about the Pure Bliss. 
That's al mypleasure.com. 


THE DEPTHS OF DEPP 
‘Thank you for your Playboy Interview 
with Johnny Depp (May). It provided 
an intimate look at a great actor. 
Laura Lee 
Hollywood, Florida 


Depp is one of a kind: He rambled 
on for eight pages but said nothing. 
Milan Simonich 
Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania 


The best actor of his generation? 


Great interview with Depp. You 
should have given him more pages— 
and a silk bathrobe. He is one of only 
a handful of truly gifted actors work- 
ing today. 
Evan Santos 
Adelanto, California 


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A HALF CENTURY OF HUMOR 
I was weaned on PLAYBOY humor. 
The cartoons collected in Playboy 50 
Years: The Cartoons were my sexual Dr. 
Seuss. This book is proof positive that 
nothing is funnier than sex. The 
design, color and printing are gor- 
geous. Thank you, Hef. 
Olivia 
Malibu, California 


MILITARY MURDER 
I'd always been told that many men 

who come back from war are lost souls. 
But reading about the Iraq veteran 
whose platoon mates killed him on 
American soil (Death and Dishonor, May) 
drove that home. We train men to kill, 
but do we train them in how to live 
after they've killed? 

Allie Huffman 

Raleigh, North Carolina 


You stabbed our troops in the back 
by publishing this article during a time 
of war. Whose side are you on? 

Steve Brandon 
Phoenix, Arizona 


Those soldiers dishonored them- 
selves and their country. 

Eric Brokaw 

Airman First Clas 

Moody AFB, Georgia 


BARBIE VS. PLAYMATES 
Mattel has ended Barbie and Ken's 
romance after 43 years. While Barbie 
isn't much of a thrill to me, Playmates 
sure are. Which Centerfolds’ measure- 
ments are closest to Barbie’s? 
Brian Kettleman 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 
By our calculations, a Barbie of aver- 
age Playmate height (five-foot-six) would 
be 32-19-29. At least four Playmates 
have measured a more expansive 32-22- 
32. The most recent is Jennifer Walcott, 
August 2001 


MODERN ICON 
Bravo to Pam Anderson (Inside Pam, 
May). Her heart is a thousand times 
more beautiful than her body. 
Jennifer Ulery 
Cleveland, Ohio 


Another Pam pictorial? Been there, 
done that. 
Steven Carl 
Boston, Massachusetts 


15 there a goof in the Pam Anderson 
pictorial? She has a tattoo on her left 
breast in some photos but not in others. 

Jim McMahan 
Castro Valley, California 

Good eye. It was one of many temporary 
tattoos painted on during the shoot. Are you 
applying for the job? 


We were impressed with Pam's know- 
ledge of hepatitis C. But it's a common 
misconception that if you feel fine, the 
disease isn't active. Hepatitis C is a nasty 
virus that causes slow, hard-core dam- 
age to the liver. Pam, who is in an early 
stage of the disease, uses herbal medi- 
cines. People should know, however, 
that 61 percent of hepatitis C patients 
treated vith a combination of prescrip- 
tion drugs that includes the latest ver- 
sion of interferon are virus-free. 

Heather Guerrero 
David Erickson 
‘Texas Liver Coalition 
Houston, Texas 


MASTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY 
Thank you for the touching tribute 
to Helmut Newton (Remembering Hel- 
mut Newton, May). He and his photos 
will be sorely missed, especially by peo- 
ple like me who are faithful subscribers 
to both PLAYBOY and Vogue. 
Kristen Westfall 
New Orleans, Louisiana 


MARTINI MAVEN 
Alter investigating various combina- 
tions of firewater (Raising the Bar, May), 
1 believe 1 have created the ultimate 
martini. My recipe is two parts Tan- 
queray No. 10 gin, two parts Grey 
Goose vodka and one part МоШу Prat 
vermouth. Shake briefly with crushed 
ice and serve in a chilled glass with the 
garnish of your choice. 
Bart Newell 
New Bern, North Carolina 
Your recipe resembles a martini that James 
Bond ordered in the first 007 book, Casino 
Royale, and named the vesper. It’s three 
measures of Gordon's gin, one measure of 


vodka and half a measure of Lillet blonde. 


= 
| 
narsor mokes o ET 


lasting impression. y= 


PERMANENT FAN 

On my birthday this year I had an 
artist begin work on a tattoo of Hef with 
the word РІАҮВОҮ on my right arm. It 
took 10 hours and three appointments- 
The tattoo artist said he had never seen 
anything like it. Everyone 1 meet com- 
pliments the likeness. 

Greg Pepper 


Knoxville, Tennessee 


E-mail: DEARPB@PLAYBOY.COM Or write: 730 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019 


ЛЕТОМ ES% 
ER, 
NULL) 


Please be as mature as our Estate Rums. Drink responsibly. 
Appleton" Estate UX Jamaica Rum, 40% Alc by Vol, Imported Бу Brown-Forman Spiris Americas Louie, KY 02004 www.appletonrumus,com 


©2004 AXE 


| babe ol = 
Lisa Ligon 
This vixen makes country- 
music videos sizzle 


[f you think hip-hop videos have 
Й cornered the market on sexy rump 
shakers, you haven't seen Lisa Ligon 
gyrating as the main attraction in two 
recent clips for country superstar Trace 
Adkins. In the hit “Hot Mama” she 
plays a harried housewife who, in the 
blink of the singer's eye, transforms 
into a sprinkler-soaked sex bomb. “I 
got to play this beautiful girl with per- 
fect hair and boobs pushed up to my 
chin,” says the former Dallas Cowboys 
cheerleader. “One time these guys 
came up to me in an airport and said, 


“| got to play this beauti- 
ful girl with boobs 
pushed up to my chin.” 


‘Oh my gosh, you're Hot Mama. We 
love you.’ Anytime someone recog- 
nizes me it makes me feel special.” 
Lisa's appearance in Adkins's video for 
“Chrome” is also a fan favorite, and 
while her moves leave no doubt as to 
her flexibility, her performance as an 
aficionado of fast machines was no 
stretch—her dance troupe, the Purr- 
fect Angelz, regularly appears at biker 
events across the country. “Anybody 
who is having a rally books us," she 
says. “I had a Harley-Davidson Sport- 
ster with Fatboy fenders and a 
teardrop tank that | drove everywhere 
in Texas. I'm a biker chick at heart— 
100 percent." It follows that Lisa 
craves excitement in all areas of her 
life. “I need a guy who keeps me on my 
toes. I love the shock factor. I'm not 
one of those girls you have to watch 
what you say around.” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ODETTE SUGERMAN 


шай gels - шшимћеахее[јасі 


“Dry Pits “Wi = 


afterhours ] 


...your bar isn't com- 
plete without the Brazil- 
ian wonder spirit 
cachaga. Pour a couple 
ounces over ice, add 
lime and sugar, and— 
olé! —you're drinking a 
caipirinha. Your cookout 
is now a Brazilian feast, 
and the women look like 
Gisele. Damn, these 
things are strong. 


...you're flicking switches with kid gloves. 
Don't be the fool whose George Foreman grill 
brings down the Northeastern power grid. If it 
happens this year, be prepared: Maglite key 
chain, old-style phone jacked into the wall 
and a Speed Stick in the medicine cabinet. 


...you'd like to get high, so you're heading to 
Cleveland's Voinovich Park for the final stop 
of the Red Bull Fliigtag Challenge tour, on 
August 14. Flügtag is a competition among 
kooks who've built flying machines. The 
catch? They don’t work. Pack your helmet. 


«you're on the lookout for psycho killers. 
Gory events of Augusts past include Lizzie 
Borden's whacks, Charles Whitman's shooting 
spree, the Tate-LaBianca murders and the 
Menendez boys’ parricide. It's not the heat, 
say pathologists. It's the humidity. 


... you'd like to see 
world-class air guitar. 
Last year American 
David “C-Diddy” Jung 
fended off international 
competition to win the 
World Air Guitar Cham- 
pionship. To watch him 
defend, you'll have to 
be in Finland August 25 
to 27—we're guessing 
this won't be televised. 


GREEKS 
GONE 
WILD 


THE ANCIENT 
OLYMPICS 
WERE PART 
LUSTY ROMP, 
PART PAGAN 
DEBAUCH 


‘The modern Olym- 
pics don't have the 
spice of the orig- 
inal Games. The 
following are a few 
tidbits we learned 
from Tony Per- 
rottet's book The 
Naked Olympics: 
*'The Greeks’ in- 
sistence on play- 
ing sports in the 
nude was consid- 
ered bizarre by 
other cultures, but 
not just because of 
all the twigs and 
berries flopping about. Nudity was seen as an equalizer: Sans 
finery, the rich were indistinguishable from the poor. 

«То achieve the ideal bronzed stage presence, athletes were slath- 
ered in olive oil at all times. The oil was stored in 40-gallon amphorae, 
and each athlete went through about a third of a pint a day. 
*Some athletes, believing sexual release was detrimental to one's 
performance, slept with a lead slab over their privates. It was 
thought that the metal would stave off nocturnal emissions. 

“The Olympics were a bonanza of first-class hookers. In tents nick- 
named kineleria ("fuck factories”), average patrons went for girls, 
often Corinthian, known as pornai. The upper class sampled the 
hetaerze, cultured working girls comparable to the geisha of Japan. 
+A hardworking prostitute at the Olympics could make in five days 
what she'd otherwise earn in a year. Elite hetaerae, called the mega- 
lomisthoi, could make enough at a single Olympics to buy a house. 


OUR FAVORITE 
MARTIAN 

SOMETHING'S BUNNY ON MARS 

In March this Rabbit showed up on an 


image sent back by Mars Rover Opportu- 
nity. Is it a cry for help? Does Mars really, 


as proposed by the sci-fi classic, need 
women? Or is the red planet just another 
heavenly body vying for our attention? 
Neither, it seems. NASA eggheads con- 
cluded that the five-centimeter object 
actually came from the rover itself. That's 
our Rabbit—always breaking away. 


21 


[ afterhours 


I'm Gonna Nurse You has the standard 
bishoujo characters: the demure girl, the 
sassy one, the silly one and the sex-crazed 
older woman. As usual, two of them are 
almost family—in this case, your foster 
mother and sister. Although it's mostly a 
nurse-fetish game, the creators have thrown 
in a horny nun to keep things interesting. 


Transfer Student takes place in a "junior col- 
lege," where the girls happen to wear high 
school uniforms. Here you ogle the coeds 
(who aren't in high school) until your “excite 
Score" rises, then pleasure yourself in the 
bathroom while dreaming up elaborate fan- 
tasies involving the new girl, the sexy senior 
and your stepmother. Get too excited without. 
release and you end up in the nurse's office 
with a bloody nose. Don't worry—she's hot too. 


In Tottemo Pheromone you've gone to live 
with a woman named Silk, who turns out to 
be a naked witch from another dimension. 
When Silk's younger self appears in the 
living room, you need to send her home by 
collecting the sexual power stored in 
women's bodies. This, then, is your mission: 
Hump every chick you find, then return to 
young Silk and shoot her full of power. 


In Divi-Dead, the masterpiece of Japanese 
adult games, you're sent to a boarding 


РЭ ИУ УУ д 22 h 
WHAT THE HELL KIND OF VIDEO GAMES ARE THE school to investigate strange student behav- 
JAPANESE PLAYING? ior. Soon you're waist deep in sorcery, vio- 
In Japan, horny video gamers go for the popular bishoujo, or “pretty girl” lence and occult rituals. You dream of a girl 
games. The object of these choose-your-own-adventure-style cartoons, in being groped by an octopus. Ghosts want to 
which actual gameplay is minimal, is to seduce or coerce women into sex— have sex with you. And the busty nurse, God 
hard-core, graphically illustrated sex. bless her, can't keep her clothes on. 


GENETICALLY MODIFIED 
DOUGHNUTS 


BARGOERS GET LOOPY AFTER CLOSING TIME 


Doughnuts—they're not just for 
breakfast anymore. In Portland, Ore- 
gon, two entrepreneurs are turning 
the cop's carb bomb into the ultimate 
late-night pick-me-up (and munchies 
cure). Veteran scenesters Tres Shan- 
non and Kenneth Pogson are the 
proprietors of Voodoo Doughnuts, a 
hip doughnuteria that’s open from 
10 em. to 10 a.m. For reasons we don't 
understand, the feds reportedly 
busted one of the shop's offerings, 
ordering Voodoo to cease and desist 
producing a NyQuil-glazed dough- 
nut filled with Pepto-Bismol and 
topped with crumbled cherry Tums. 
Still-available doughnuts include the 
Coffee-a-Go-Go, which is laced with 


caffeine; the Dirt, covered with уа- 
nilla glaze and Oreo bits; and the 
Triple Chocolate Penetration. The 
eponymous Voodoo doughnut is 
doll-shaped and comes with “pins” 
(usually pretzel sticks) perfect for 
exacting revenge on the hot blonde 
who passed on your closing-time 
advances. Ifyou do manage to find a 
lady friend for the evening, feed her 
the none too subtle Cock and Balls, 
a phallic treat with her name written 
on the shaft. And then there's the 
Blazer, a spliff-shaped cruller that 
pays tribute to the NBA's Trail 
Blazers (several of whom have been 
arrested for marijuana possession). 
Expect the DEA to investigate. 


APPLE 


FRESH, BOLD TASTE. EVERY TIME. 


AD. 
USE” Smokeless 
‚Trademark of U.S. Smokeless Тобасоб Co. ог ari affiliate, ©2004 U,S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. TOBACCO CA. 


24 


[ afterhours 


rey 


HONESTY CAMP MAKES EXECS TELL THE NUDE TRUTH 


Who's a Freud of getting naked? Psychologist Brad Blanton 
thinks everyone should tell the truth, and he has a tough-love 
plan to make you quit your lying ways: Strip. Since 1986 he's been 
holding Radical Honesty seminars at his Virginia ranch, where 
for $2,400 apiece a group of 16 liars embarks on an eight-day 
ue “On the third day everyone gets naked, and 
uals have to get in front of the group and tell their com- 
plete sexual history,” Blanton explains. “What they're proud of, 
what they're ashamed of. Get people to be totally honest about the 
most intimate parts of their lives, and the rest is easy.” The semi- 
nars have become popular with managers and executives who 
want a more honest workplace. Tony Robbins it ain't—just ask 
graduate Anne Bryer. "When I realized I had to get naked 1 started 
hyperventilating,” she says. “I stood up with my knees trembling 
and my hands covering my breasts. I wept.” The anxiety rarely 
lasts long, says Blanton. “People have trouble with it at first, but 
then you have trouble getting them to keep their dothes on.” 


FLIGHT OF 


FANTASY 
NEXT TRIP PACK 
A POCKETFUL OF 
TURBULENCE 


Inspired by the exclusive 
order of jet-setters who've 
managed the airborne score, 
the Mile High Kit is a traveler's 
portable case of kink. Now you won't 


be caught unprepared on a plane, 
or boat—like Batman with his utility ҮЛЕ you'll be ready for 
action, be ita quickie with а stranger en route ога marathon of 
honeymoon lovemaking. Why settle for condoms in the Dopp 
kit when you can take her higher with a tickler, a pleasure ring 
and a battery-powered massager? Go to milehighkit.com. 


HOT SHOT 


L.A. SPARKS PLUGGER HEATHER 
LA BELLA GOES ONE-ON-ONE 


PLAYBOY: What's your 
job title? 

HEATHER: I’m the direc- 
tor of tactical market- 
ing for the Los Angeles 
Sparks basketball team. 
1 develop business rela- 
tionships and find ways 
to increase ticket sales 
and the fan base. 
PLAYBOY: Have you been 
there long? 

HEATHER: This is my 
third season with the 
Sparks. But I've been in the WNBA since 2000—1 
used to be a statistician for the Indiana Fever. 
PLAYBOY: Are you а baller yourself? 

HEATHER: I've been into sports my whole life. I'm 
from Indiana—Bobby Knight country—so I've always 
been a big basketball fan. | was rough; | played with 
all the boys. I'd go for the rebounds and throw elbows. 
PLAYBOY: Ever bring the heat off the court? 
HEATHER: | definitely use my athleticism in the 
bedroom. Let's just say I'm very aggressive on 
and off the court. 


Employee of the Month candidates: Send pictures to Pusoy Photography Depart- 
ment, Atin: Employee of the Morth, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, licis 
60611. Must be at least 18 years old. Must send photocopies cf a drivers license 
and another valid ID (nol a credit card), one of which must include a current photo. 


| - 
Worth the gung 

Weight | 

The typical / 

D-cup breast | 

weighs about Ш 

8 pounds. 


Drive, He Said 
$58,000 Fare paid by 


Japanese actor Gitan Otsuro 
for a cab ride from Patagonia, 
Argentina to New York City. 


Desperadas 

1 1 The North American city 
Most Consecutive Days Spent Surfing | with the highest tamales: 
10,407, by Californian Dale Webster, who on Sunday, February 29, 1976 vowed to surf male ratio, 5 to 1, is Tehuan- 
every day until February 29 fell on a Sunday again—a span of 28 years. | tepec, Mexico. 


Energy Surplus Excesscargot 


Men today consume on average 168 The French eat / 
more calories а day than they did in the 500 million 

early 1970s. Women consume 335 more | snails 

calories than they did then. each year. 


The Long Road Home 


According to the Census Bureau, the time commuters spend traveling to | 
work each day, by location: | 


Wichita Tulsa National average Chicago New York 
16.5 16.8 24.4 32.7 38.4 
minutes minutes minutes minutes minutes 


Worst Olympic Performance by a Host Country 
Home field advantage usually gives a nation an edge in the Games—the host 
country has led the medal count in nine of the 24 modern summer Olympics, 
including in 1904, when the U.S. won 86.4% of the hardware because 
virtually nobody else showed up. This year's host, Greece, has been on an 
athletic skid for about a century and has a good shot at setting a new low. 


20. Finland, 1952 22 of 447 medals 4.9% Pop Dollar 

21. Korea, 1988 33 of 711 medals 4.6% dde А "s Mach 8 
22. Spain, 1992 22 of 771 medals 2.8% Mee Sa а led 
23. Canada, 1976 11 of 594 medals 1.8% years Britney-themed baby tees, posters and oth- 


24. Mexico, 1968 9 of 516 medals 1.7% er merch have brought in more than $30 main. | 
25 


Bombay Sapphire Martini 
by Vladimir Kagan 


SAPPHIRE INSPIRED 


movie of the month 
[ THE VILLA 


M. Night Shyamalan is back doing the twist 


Just when too many summer horror thrillers turn up pack- 
ing more laughs than scares, along comes The Village, the 
latest from director M. Night Shyamalan, famed for The 
Sixth Sense and Signs. The movie, set in an isolated Penn- 
sylvania valley settlement in 1897, gets seriously creepy 
once villager Joaquin Phoenix upsets an uneasy truce with 
a race of mythical creatures that inhabit the surrounding 
forest. Why did Shyamalan head into the woods, dragging 
along with him cast members Adrien Brody, William Hurt 
and Sigourney Weaver? “Longing for a simpler life,” he ex- 
plains, “especially as mine gets more complicated with 
every movie, led me originally to write a love story like 
Wuthering Heights, set in a 

time when people said things “The world is 
without irony, and emotions 

were felt to the nth degree. NOt aS black- 
Then | thought, What if there and-white as 

was something scary and terri- " 

ble just beyond the little house We thought. 

on the prairie? Audiences come 

to my movies with expectations, like, ‘Wow, that last one 
was great—what have you come up with this time?’ In this 
movie it’s the idea that if there were newly discovered mon- 
sters in the ocean or forest, that would create a feeling of 
Magic, a sense that the world is not as bland and black- 
and-white as we thought. It makes you feel like a kid." Make 
that a scared kid. (July 30) Stephen Rebello 


now showing 


I, Robot 

(Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Chi McBride) In this humans- 
versus-cyborgs action epic set in 2035 and based on the Isaac 
Asimoy tales, robotophobic cop Smith and robot-behavior psy- 
chologist Moynahan uncover the rise of the machines while 
investigating a murder linked to a rebel cyborg. 


Our call: We've been saturated [7] 
with futuristic movies such as [7] 
Minority Report, so unless di- 
rector Alex Proyas amps up the 
smarts and the flashy hard- 
ware, Asimov fans may revolt. 


Catwoman 

(Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Benjamin Bratt) 
Berry does double duty in this Batman one-off, playing a 
neurotic graphic designer bumped off by the evil owners 
(Stone and Wilson) of a cosmetics firm, only to be reincar- 
nated as a sexy masked avenger. 


Our call: We can’t forget Mich- 
elle Pfeiffer's raging Catwoman 
in Batman Returns, and we're 
hoping Berry's superheroine 
will be the cat's meow. So why 
are we smelling kitty litter? 


Collateral 

(Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Mark Ruffalo) Cruise makes an all- 
out effort to go badass in this thriller about a twisted hit man 
who forces Foxx, an L.A. cabbie and failed sitcom writer, to 
drive him from kill to kill. The screws tighten when Foxx tries 
to stop the carnage while cop Ruffalo closes in on Cruise. 


Our call: Our money's on The 
Insider director Michael Mann 
to make this one a tense, scary 
ride and help put Cruise back 
in the driver's seat after a cou- 
ple of recent near misses. 


Alien vs. Predator 

(Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen) Archaeologists, 
led by greedy billionaire Henriksen, get way more than they 
bargained for while drilling into the ruins of ancient temples 
below Antarctica and find themselves serving as lunch meat 
for two of the baddest species in creature-feature history. 


Our call: Our fingers are crossed 
that this Sigourney Weaver and 
Arnold Schwarzenegter-free 
prequel isn't another Freddy vs. 
Jason. 15 it too much to ask 
that we get scared witless? 


27 


28 


reviews [ movies 


That stars turned up at a Playboy 
Mansion premiere party for Quentin 
Tarantino's Kill Bill isn't surprising. 
What may seem odd is that they were 
celebrating the DVD release of Vol. 1 
while the movie was still playing in 
theaters. Welcome to the new reality 
of the movie business: DVDs, once 
the Rodney Dangerfield of the studio 
machine, have become the most im- 
portant part of a film's release cycle. 

Back in the old days of Blockbuster. 
and Hollywood Video, patient fans 
would wait up to nine months after a 
movie left theaters to rent—not buy— 
a videotape. Now a hit such as Big 
Fish shows up on DVD a mere four 
months after it opens in theaters. 
Hellboy appeared on the big screen in 
April; by July it was for sale on DVD at 
Best Buy, and The Alamo will likely 
break that speed record. 

"You used to put a movie on 1,000 
screens and leave it there for two 
months," says New Line Home Enter- 
tainment president Stephen Einhorn. 
“Now you get two or three weeks on 
3,000 screens. The benefit is that 
you can come out much earlier with a 
DVD without infringing on the theatri: 
cal leg. The closer you are, the more 
you can take advantage of the audi 
ence awareness that comes with the 
$50 million that studios often pay to 
market theatrical releases." 

The early availability of DVDs has. 
resulted in significant profits and 
turned out to be a promotional boon. 
Harvey Weinstein's decision to issue 
Kill Bill in two parts was widely 
scorned. But by releasing Vo/. 1 on 


art house 


[ THE RACE TO YOUR DVD PLAYER ] 


Films are moving from screen to disc faster than ever before 


disc three days before the second 
installment opened in theaters, Wein- 
stein hit pay dirt. He sold $47 million 
in DVDs the first week and boosted 
Vol. 2's opening-weekend box office 
to $25 million. (And happy studios 
get to keep 80 percent of the sale 
price of a DVD, compared with 50 
percent of theatrical grosses.) 


Perhaps no film benefited from 
DVDs more than Seabiscuit, a sum- 
mer release that wound up with a best 
picture nomination partly because of a 
wellmarketed DVD launch. 

"We were up against Lord of the 
Rings, Master and Commander and 
others that had just been in theaters 
and spending millions of dollars," says 
director Gary Ross. "Without our DVD I 
think we would have been completely 
forgotten." —Michael Fleming 


Garden State 

Scrubs star Zach Braff 
pulls triple duty as a 
writer, director and lead- 
ing man with this tale of 
an aspiring actor who 
returns to New Jersey 
from L.A. for his mother’s 
funeral and comes to 
terms with his past. It isn't. 
the most original movie, 
but Braff's creativity and 
fine supporting work by 
Natalie Portman make 
most of the flaws forgiv- 
able. —Andrew Johnston 


S С 


Capsule close-ups of recent films 
By Leonard Maltin 


SEEING OTHER PEOPLE Jay Mohr and 
Julianne Nicholson star in a fresh, funny 
comedy about a couple who have lived in 
harmony for five years. Now that they're 
about to get married, she decides they 
ought to sleep with other people first. ¥¥¥ 


Brad Pitt stars as Achilles in Wolf- 
gang Petersen's epic dramatization of 
Homer's Iliad. Eric Bana is great as Hector, 
Peter O'Toole is majestic as Priam, and the 
battle scenes are terrific. Diane Kruger 
makes a beautiful Helen of Troy. УУУУ 


THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR Jeff Bridges 
and his on-screen wife, Kim Basinger, are 
reeling from a family tragedy when a young, 
man comes to work as an assistant. He soon 
learns that his duties extend beyond ordinary 
chores to helping both wounded parties. yy 


| = A single mother has 
proin her son to believe that his dad is off 
at sea, someday to return. Now she has to 
find someone to pose as the father just for 
a day. A sweet, well-observed film starring. 
the gifted Emily Mortimer. ¥¥¥ 


BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS British actor 
Stephen Fry makes his directorial debut 
with this adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile 
Bodies, a caustic look at hedonism, which 
bears more than a passing resemblance to 
our current culture of celebrity. yy 


R | эз СВАСЕ Dissatisfied 
is life in Colombia, a teenage girl 
takes a job as a mule smuggling drugs into 
the U.S., little dreaming what lies in store. 
It's heartbreakingly real. No wonder it was a 
hit at this year’s Sundance Festival. УУУУ 


COFFEE AND CIGARETTES A collection 
of black-and-white shorts by Jim Jarmusch 
about unlikely encounters in coffeehouses— 
some of it is deadeningly dull, some of it 
quite fun. With Cate Blanchett (in a dual 
role), Bill Murray, Tom Waits and Steve 
Buscemi, it picks up after a slow start. yy Y 


HE >% Talk about block- 
buster: ine Italian import runs six hours 
(shown in two parts), but the time slips by as 
| we become engrossed in the lives of a fam- 
ily experiencing the social changes of the 
past four decades. These characters truly 
live and breathe. ¥¥¥// 


YYYY Don't mi: 
¥¥¥ Good show 


YY Worth a look 
Y Forget it 


reviews [ dvds 


month 


Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson cement their status as a classic comedy duo in this 
big-screen spin on the 1970s TV action hit, a conceptdriven pop-culture vehicle 
that manages to roll where similar retreads go flat. Plotwise it's little more than a 
special episode of the original show, as odd-couple cops Stiller and Wilson chase 
after cocaine kingpin Vince Vaughn, roaring through the Bay City streets in Starskys 


cherry-red Gran Torino. Like 
the StillerWilson hit Zoo/and- 
er, Starsky & Hutch plays out 
like a series of sketches, and 
the funny bits pile up. Direc- 
tor Todd Phillips coaxes a 
goofy cameo from Will Ferrell 
as a hot-for-Hutch con, helps 
Snoop Dogg find his inner 
Huggy Bear—who appears to 
be baked—and displays the 
charms of Carmen Electra and 
Brande Roderick as cheer- 
leaders. Extras: A fair bunch, 
including deleted scenes, com- 
mentary by Phillips, and a Snoop 
Dogg-hosted segment titled 
“Fashion Fa Shizzle Wit Huggy 
Bizzle.” ¥¥¥ —Gregory P. Fagan 


_[ STARSKY & HUTCH || 


Stiller and Wilson breathe some laughs into a camp classic 


THE LADYKILLERS (2004) Five goofball 
burglars dig a tunnel into a Mississippi 
casino's counting room from a nearby 
boardinghouse. When the little old landlady 
(Irma P. Hall) catches them red-handed, 
they agree she has to go. The plot from 
the 1955 British classic endures in this 
minor gem from Ethan and Joel Coen. 
Instead of Alec Guinness, though, we get 
the always likable Tom Hanks drawling 
his way over the top as the ringleader, 
professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr Ill. 


It's a Colonel Sanders-meets-Foghorn 
Leghorn performance that didn’t work 
оп the big screen but will attain a legend 
all its own via DVD replays. Extras: No 
Coen commen: 
tary, but it’s other- 
wise generous, 
including a “Com 
bat Theater Mas- 
ter Class” with 
the ass-whupping 
Ms. Hall. ¥¥—G.F 


Oh that every woman could age 
as elegantly as long-limbed 
Sigourney Weaver. She looks 
as if she even smells good— 
like French skin cream and faint 
cologne. And she seems to be 
| someone we could, you know, 
talk to, because she’s smart 
and everything. We get to see 
her anew this month in M. Night 
Shyamalan's The Village, but 
we keep a copy of 1986's Half 
Moon Street handy if for no 
other reason than the memo- 
rable scene in which Weaver, 
playing a foreign-affairs acade- 
mician turned escort, rides an 
exercise bike topless. 


KILL BILL VOL. 2 (2004) Quentin Tar- 
antino manages to deliver more in Vol. 2 
than viewers of Vol. 1 may expect. The 
director trades a bit of viscera for a lot 
more verbiage and adds context to the 
Bride's vengeance-driven tear through 
her hit list. Vol. 2 is still an eye-popping 
delight—literally, at one gooey point. But 
Uma Thurman's mission of mercilessness 
gathers steam as she deals with Budd 
(Michael Madsen), Elle Driver (Daryl 
Hannah) and Bill (David Carradine), who 
are all more interesting than Vol. 1's 
victims. Extras: Not exactly killer—just 
a making-of fea- 
turette and a 
deleted scene. 
Miramax is clearly 
holding back for 
the complete Kill 
Bill collection. 
СЕРІ —G.F 


HELLBOY (2004) He's big, red and horny, 
and he's one hell of a good time. Hellboy. 
is so faithful to its comic book origins, you 
almost feel you should be turning pages. 
while you watch it. But director Guillermo 
del Toro does it for you, composing each 
frame with graphic-novel noir touches that 
add depth to the delirium. Ron Perlman is 
ideal as the cigar-chomping Beast to Selma 
Blair's troubled Beauty, with real acting 
going on in the eyes and voice. Still need 
a plot? Okay, Rasputin rises from the dead 
and brings slimy monsters back from 
“the other side.” Extras: Two discs, lots 
of commentary 
and behind-the- 
scenes details; 
come Christmas, 
look for a hellish 
three-disc special 
edition. ¥¥¥ 
—Buzz McClain 


The Manchurian Candidate 

Why would Jonathan Demme remake 
John Frankenheimer's 1962 master- 
piece? Had he been hypnotized? Did he 
think he could improve on this candidate 
for the best-ever political satire and espi- 
onage thriller? Snap out of it! Yeah, it was 
filmed in black- 
and-white, but 
that’s part of its 
charm, and this 
DVD from MGM 
includes an inter- 
view about the 
movie with the 
Chairman him- 5 
self, star Frank 
Sinatra, It doesn't 
get much cooler 
than that. 


23 


music 


reviews 


Over the past few years people have 
talked about the New York music scene 
as if it were homogeneous—and as if it 
had something identifiably New York 
about it. But since the retro-fixated 
Strokes exhumed the likes of Television, 
Johnny Thunders and Richard Hell, most 
of the scene's big bands—the Walkmen, 
Interpol, the Rapture, the Yeah Yeah 
Yeahs—have pumped out such disparate 
sounds that they can be linked only by 
their zip codes. The Hong Kong, however, 
takes the Strokes’ approach to the city's 
musical history: The band fixes on a New 
York City predecessor—in this case, 
Blondie—and pays homage. And like the 
Strokes, the Hong Kong does a great 
job. Catherine Culpepper sings over a 
new-wave pulse that is, like the best of 
Blondie's work, tight, understated and 
anthemic. The band proves there is noth- 
ing wrong with wearing your heart on 
your sleeve—as long as it’s a heart of 
glass. (Etherdrag) ¥¥¥4 —Timothy Mohr 


[ THE HONG KONG + 


What's New York about the New York scene? 


ROCK THE FACES ] 


SLUM VILLAGE 

Detroit Deli (A Taste of Detroit) 

Hip-hop has been in a rut for the past sever- 
al years. With few exceptions it has been 
either mind-numbingly reiterative or naively 
idealistic. Slum Village has always been dif- 
ferent. Socially conscious without being 
moralistic or stupid, these Motor City rap- 
pers owe more to Kanye West than they do 
to Eminem. Young RJ's production captures 
some of Detroit's dusty soul groove, but as 
always with Slum Village, the lyrics carry the 


PLAYBOY: What would your namesake, 
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, have 
thought of "Pussy"? 

Jacko: Oh God, a woman like that? 
Im sure she thought her pussy was 
good, too. She got Onassis, the rich- 
est man, so she had to be doing her 
thing. Every woman better think her 
pussy is good. 

PLAYBOY: So sex is kind of important? 
АСКЕ: | love sex. Sex is like 80 per- 
cent of a relationship. Go where the 
sex is good. Don't hold back. 
PLAYBOY: Your album is so personal. 
Are you giving too much away? 


Jacki-O (born Angela Kohn) first turned our heads with her 
provocative single “Pussy (Real Good).” Her sharp debut album, 
Poe Little Rich Girl, sets a new standard for female hiphop. 


day. Astute and original, the writing avoids 
most hip-hop clichés while dealing with real 
concerns. This is a damn good CD as a 
whole, but the best track is “Reunion,” with 
former member Jay 
Dee. Slum Village 
is clearly a better 
band with Jay. 
Why not go all out 
with a full reunion? 
(Capitol) ¥¥¥ 

—Leopold Froehlich 


BLY AEE 6 


a —] 


TOMMY STINSON + Village Gorilla Head 
Stinson has spent the better part of his 
career playing alongside revered rock dra- 
ma kings (Paul Westerberg in the Replace- 
ments, Ах! Rose in Guns п’ Roses). If he 
were ever to write а memoir, it would have 
plenty of muck. For now we're lucky to have 
Stinson's first solo record, an ambitious, 
soulful outpouring that’s more Replace- 
ments than С п’ Fuckin’ R. Beginning and 
ending with tearjerkers (“Without a View” 
and "Someday”), it brims with emotion. 
Guests include Josh Freese and Dizzy 
Reed. And because Stinson made it with 
his own money 
before shopping 
it to labels, it’s 
One of the most 
genuine things 
we've heard all 
year. (Sanctuary) 
¥¥¥—Alison Prato 


THE MOONEY SUZUKI 

Alive & Amplified 

Garage rockers around the world nearly 
jumped out of their leather jackets when 
the Mooney Suzuki announced that the 
Matrix, the production team behind Avril 
Lavigne and Hilary Duff, would work on 
Alive & Amplified. The pop spit shine 
cleared a bit of the fuzz out of the guitars 
and lifted singer Sammy James Jr.'s 
vocals out of the gutter, but the band’s 
riffs are still gritty, especially on “Primitive 
Condition’ and the Kiss-style rocker “New 
York Girls.” Only when they recycle the riff 
from “Legal High” 
for the final track, 
"Love Bus,” do we 
start to wonder 
what they're try- 
ing to pull. (Co- 
lumbia) ¥¥¥ 
—Jason Buhrmester 


JACKFO: | give just enough, never everything. It's like when 
you're on a first date. Give him everything and he may not 
come back. Show a little thigh, a little cleavage, then on the 


next date he may get the blow job. 
PLAYBOY: Is it hard being a girl in rap? 
JACKEO: | love it. There are 3 billion 
men and not many females. At first 
you're like, How do | get respect? 
Focus and work hard, that’s how. 
PLAYBOY: Are you into drugs? 

зАск-о: Nothing hard-core. | like to 
party. | like to drink. I've smoked a 
little weed before, yeah. 

PLAYBOY: Who else would you like to 
work with? 

JACKFO: Dr. Dre, Jay-Z—the greats. | 
mean, | am working with the greats, 
but a girl ain't ever satisfied. —A.P 


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32 


reviews | 


games 


Г SPIDER-MAN 2 ] 
L ] 
Everyone’s favorite swinger spins а tangled web in his second outing 


As fun as it is to watch Sam Raimi and his effects wizards bring Spidey to life on the 
big screen, nothing beats slipping on the spandex yourself. The first movie had a 
decent game tie-in, but this time you get to do the Spidey thing Grand Theft 
‚Auto-style, and the results are spectacular. The new Spider-Man 2 (Activision, PS2, 
Xbox, GameCube) puts you in con- 
trol of the game's pace. Depending 
on your mood, you can fight petty 
crime on the streets (save Granny 
from that purse snatcher); tackle 
bigger foes such as Mysterio, 
Black Cat and Dr. Octopus; or take 
a sightseeing trip atop a taxi or 
swinging from a moving helicopter. 
Accurate web slinging lets you 
swoop down for street-hugging 
intersection rushes, while flawless 
controls and a detailed fighting 
system make pummeling villains a 
treat. Open gameplay and more 
than 100 side missions provide 
near endless replay value. All in all, 
it's a much larger adventure than 
the movie. ¥¥¥¥ —John Gaudiosi 


CRIMSON TEARS (Capcom, PS2) The 
only thing better than scantily clad ass- 
kicking anime femmes from the future is 
being in control of their scantily clad asses. 
This scifi brawler allows you to play as 
sword-wielding Amber, bomb-happy 
Kadie or a gun-toting dude named Tokio 
to put down a host of weird bad guys. 
Celshaded graphics and slick CG movie 
sequences push 
the story along, 
while the role 
playing elements 
add replayability 
to this sexy, styl- 
ized tale. ¥¥¥ 

—Marc Saltzman 


ATHENS 2004 (989 Sports, PS2) Less 
video game than virtual workout, this 
official Olympics sim proves that the 
clean and jerk isn’t just for frustrated 
teens. International superstars compete 
in more than 25 events; if watching them 
run, jump and lift is inspirational, you can 
grab a dance mat and court геаНИе 
heatstroke. While it's an enjoyable way 
to get into the 
Games, some 
repetitious play 
may make you 
consider trying 
an actual discus 
throw. vy. 

—Scott Steinberg 


WORLD OF WARCRAFT (Blizzard Enter- 
tainment, PC, Mac) Between the orcs and 
the dorks, the first massively multiplayer 
take on Blizzard's best-selling real-time 
strategy franchise is full of fantasy role- 
playing cliches. This time around, the | 
emphasis is on adventure over strategy | 
as you battle and quest your way through 

the world of Azeroth with thousands of | 
others online. The 
real surprise? Ex- 
cellent execution 
makes the sword- 
and-sorcery an- 
tics actually seem 
pretty damn cool. 
m —5.5. 


TERMINATOR 3: THE REDEMPTION 
(Atari, Xbox, PS2, GameCube) Redemption 
indeed. Atari has twice made a mess of the 
Terminator games, but in this third effort, 
being a cyborg killing machine is as much 
fun as we always knew it could be. Run- 
ning, driving and flying levels keep the 
time-traveling story moving, and blasting at 
Hunter Killers from the back of a pickup 
truck while steer- 
ing through the 
wasteland of 2032 
is exactly the kind 
of thrill that's 
missing from the 
first two games. 
УУУ —.G. 


[JAIL TIME | 


In Riddick, Xzibit puts death row 
on lockdown 


Hip-hop honcho Xzibit takes a break 
from albums and concerts to play sadis- 
tic prison guard Abbott in the new game 
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From 
Butcher Bay (Vivendi, Xbox). We caught 
up with him for a tour of what it's like 
deep inside death row: 


а: What's your connection to 
Abbott? 
a: We're both 
badasses. He's 
the warden who 
keeps all the dudes 
in check and puts 
the strong-arm on them. 
It's just like me and 
the rap game. 
о: What qualifies you 
to play such a mean 
motherfucker? 

: Shit, | taught Dr. 
Evil everything he 
knows. 
a: So thi: 
portrait? 
A: Nah. I looked to George W. 
Bush for inspiration. He's the 
most evil dude I know. 
о: Any advice for folks who are keen 
on ending your reign of terror? 
А: Stock up on ammo before trying. And 
keep moving—you better hope I don't 
get my hands on you first. —5.5. 


is а self- 


with contract, $179 without). Nokia's 
original N-Gage was laughably ill- 
conceived, but its sequel is no prank 
caller. Improvements to the hybrid 
mobile phone and gaming system 
include enhanced controls, 
a brighter screen, longer 
battery life, easier car- 
tridge loading anda f 
simplified multi- 
player setup. 
Reach out 
and ream. 
someone 
today. 
—5.5. 


Nokia N-Gage QD Game Deck ($99 | 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 154. 


reviews [ books 


of 


[ HAD A 


Postcards tell forgotten tales 


This series of short stories by the Pulitzer 
Prize-winning author was inspired by his 
collection of American postcards from 
the early 20th century. The 15 tales run 
alongside reproductions of the post- 
cards, which feature biplanes, women in 
lawn dresses, couples canoodling on 
benches and a hotel for visitors who 
have “more money than brains.” Each 
image recalls a nation filled with genteel 
optimism about its future despite tuber- 


culosis and trench warfare. Butler takes | 


the sometimes cryptic, sometimes pain- 
ful messages on the back of the cards 
and dreams up stories about the people 
who wrote them: a mother crossing the 
Atlantic to visit her soldier son, an iron- 
worker dating a girl with a wooden leg, a 
wife who fears she'll never see her dying 
husband again, an immigrant overjoyed 
to arrive in America. Sincere and un- 
sentimental, these stories show that 
while America's face has changed, its 
spirit hasn't. (Grove) Yyw/—Jessica Riddle 


NUDITY = Ruth Barcan 
Don't expect to find steamy stories or 
lurid pictures in this thoroughly re- 
searched look at one of societys more 
volatile issues. Nudity has both good and 
bad connotations. Taking a shower with- 
out clothes is normal, but sunbathing 
naked is typically illegal. Babies in diapers 
are cute, but old people in diapers are re- 
pugnant. And while some people detest 
images of naked women, others find them 
empowering. Despite Barcan's interviews 
with strippers and morticians, the book 
retains its scholarly tone. 
And though the aca- 
demic references don't 
exactly make for beach 
reading, the book may 
make you feel smarter 
the next time you wear 
your Speedo. (St. Mar- 
tin’) YY —Emily Little 


I, FATTY » Jerry Stahl 

Most people believe that comedian 
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle raped and smoth- 
ered Virginia Rappe to death in a hotel 
room in 1921. This fictional memoir aims 
to set the record straight. According to 
Stahl, Arbuckle suffered from erectile dys- 
function and was merely trying to wake up 
a passed-out Rappe by holding a cham- 


AUTH TARDAN 


TORIES Fag, 
- ULL 
fg RICAN pose 


yy 


MY OLD MAN * Amy Sohn 

PLAYBOY contributor Sohn also writes 
provocative columns for New York maga- 
zine about a familiar topic: sex and the city. 
Her first novel, Run Catch Kiss, was smart 
and kicky—the literary equivalent of Manolo 
Blahnik stilettos. In My Old Man, Sohn 
delves into the world of Rachel, a rabbinical 
school dropout who suffers a “quarter- 
life crisis" after a man she counseled 
dies. Rachel gets a job as a bartender, 
begins meeting an older Christian man 


pagne bottle against her vulva. After three 
for afternoon trysts and suspects her 
father is having his own affair as her mother 
goes through menopause. Both writer 
and protagonist are at- 
tractive, self-deprecating 
broads from Brooklyn, 
and Sohn tells the story 
with humor and uni- 
versal appeal. Can an 
HBO series be far be- 
hind? (Simon & Schu- 
ster) ¥¥¥  —Alison Prato 


trials a jury finally believed him. But it was. 
too late. Fatty was ruined, and he had 
developed a heroin habit. If you can look 
past Stahl's annoying 
turns of phrase (such as 
“The St. Francis was la 
cramp de la cramp of һо: 
tels"), you'll feel nothing 
but sympathy for Hot 1, FATTY 
lywood's first comic gs 
fat man. (Bloomsbury) iN 
yyy —Patty Lamberti ane нк, 
WOMEN » Stefan May 
Can't wait for the next issue of PLavBoy to 
arrive? This collection of erotic black-and- 
white photographs of naked women will 
help fill your time. As he proved in his 2002 
book, Couples, photographer May excels 
at capturing the beauty and grace of the 
female form. The best images in this book 
| are those in which 
the models weren't 
| obviously posed by 
the photographer but 
seem to have been 
| candidly snapped as 
they brush their 
hair, laugh with one 
another or swim in 
a lake. (TeNeues) 
vv —PL. 


33 


Lights Вох о Mer Fg зе А Madi Bh, 92 m: tar Ario. ni 
Box: 16 mg, "tar 17 mp. ¡co ай реттен ume os 


Newport Newport Medi, Newport package desig Newport ода 
Box (package design), Newport Pleasure and Newport Spinnaker 
TM ors Licensing Company LLC Reg. US. Pal, & Tm, ОМ. 


SURGEON GENERALS WARNING: Smoking 


Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, 


Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy. Quality Menthol! 


hey...il’s personal 


Moving Pictures 


Four years ago MP3 players changed 
the way we buy, record and listen to music. The players coming out this fall don't stop 
with tunes: LCD screens are slopped ocross their faces so you con entertoin yourself with 
TV shows, video clips and movies while you're stuck in rush hour troffic. These Personal 
Video Ployers fit snugly in o briefcase, allowing your entertainment (our female friend above, for exomple) to go where you go. 
Downloading works the some os on an MP3 ployer: Plug it into your computer ond let the files flow. (Some also let you record directly 
from ТУ or DVD) In the future, portnerships with content componies will make it easier for you to choose from a library of hot stuff. 
From left: iRiver's PMP-120 ($500, iriver.com) comes with 20 gigabytes of memory onboord, enough for 35 hours of video or 300 
hours of audio tracks; Creotive's Zen Portable Medio Center ($500, creative.com) runs on Microsoft's Media Center softwore ond 
also has 20 gigs; the Archos AV380 ($800, orchos.com), which debuted lost foll, is the granddoddy of the bunch. This beouty hos 80 
gigs of memory, with 20- and 40-gig versions olso available. All these come with a 3.5-inch screen and o metric ton of tech cred. 


A Cut Above the Rest 


The woy we see it, if you hove to scrape the stubble off your face every 
morning, you might as well make on event out of it. You'll find thot 
nothing wakes you up faster thon a stroight razor at your throat 
Dovo's Bergischer Lowe ($140, clossicshaving.com) 15 an heirloom in 
the making, with а buffalo-horn handle and hond- 

sharpened Swedish steel. The bock of the blode is " 
gold-plated, and the front is қ 
etched with a gold-ploted 
coat of arms. The Ceci Est 

un Pipe Pure Badger Shave 
Brush from eShove ($87, 
eshove.com) is every bit a 
piece of sculpture. The brush 
is stoinless steel with reol 
bodger hair. Use it to coot 
your face with Mario Bades- 
cu's Shoving Creom ($20, 
mariobadescu.com), which 
may be the slickest substance 
оп eorth. Badescu also has 
you covered before ond after. 
The deep-blue preshave con- 
ditioner ($24) softens hairs 
and reduces irritation, and 
the luxe aftershove moisturizer 
($14) will shave 10 years 

off your skin, And she'll love 
the scent of the moisturizer, 
which is lightly laced with 


lavender extroct. 


Got Wood? 


Look closely ot the speoker cones on JVC's gorgeous EX-A1 shelf 
system ($550, jvc.com). They're mode of wood. Why? For the 
same reason guitors ond violins ore made of the stuff: It provides 
quick sound propagation ond wide-frequency response. Techs 
have been trying to create wooden speaker cones for decades 
but hove been stymied by wood's tendency to crock. Toshikatsu 
Kuwohata, one of JVC's designers, worked on the problem for 
20 years before having the breokthrough ideo of soaking the 
wood in sake first—bizorre but effective. The speokers ore paired 
with a fontostic digital отр and integrated CD ond DVD Audio. It 
all odds up to a sound that's wormer and cleoner thon it has any 
business being at this price or size. 


Overnight Sensation 


No other city in the world is quite like Monte Carlo—home to 
the most famous Grand Prix race, the most luxurious casino 
ever built and some of Europe’s longest legs. The Renaissonce- 
era roods are just wide enough to accommodote the porode 
of mint Ferroris. But don't drive too far or you'll end up in the 
sapphire Mediterranean. The big news this summer: the reno- 
vated and recently reopened Hotel Metropole, о 146-room 
pleasure polace. Moster French chef Joél Robuchon created 
the hotel restouront's menu, and designer Jacques Garcia 
dreomed up the interior. Still not sold? Book the 1,300- 
square-foot penthouse and you con dine on the terrace over- 
looking Casino Squore (view pictured below). Rooms start at 
5422 o night, the penthouse at $4,450 a night. 


Clothestine: 
Mark Burnett 


Burnett is so busy cranking 
out hit reolity shows—he's 
the mostermind behind 
Survivor, The Restaurant, The 
Apprentice and The Casino— 
it’s hard to believe he has 
time to shop. But shop he 
does. “All British guys like to 
buy clothes,” he insists. 
"They're different from 
Americans in that way. In 
the States I'm called a 
metrosexuol, but of home 
I'm just a normol person. I 
prefer to shop in New York 
City, specifically in the West 
Villoge. And 1 know whot I 
like. | bosically wear two different outfits. There's my casuol 
one, which consists of my True Religion jeans with Proda 
shoes, my old Versace blozer ond a striped Paul Smith shirt. 
Then there's my dressy outfit, which is a suit by Dolce & 
Gabbono or Poul Smith. | make the best boyfriend becouse | 
love to shop.” Which begs the question: Whose boyfriend is 
he these doys? “Roma Downey's. We're cut from the same 
cloth. We think alike. And guess whot: We both like to shop.” 


The Perfect Time... 


* To rent a video: On Tuesdays at around one РМ. Most new 
films are released that day, sa you'll hove a good shot ct 
beating the crowd to the newest flicks. Plus, you con take 
advantage af the midweek deols that videa stores sametimes 
offer to boost traffic between the weekend mobs. The selec- 
tion is best at midday because late-night and marning returns 
have been reshelved and customers who wark nine to five 
hoven't yet arrived ta pick aver the assariment. 9 To put on 
sunscreen: 15 to 30 minutes befare exposure. Sunscreen 
tokes thot long ta absorb fully into the skin and start warking. 
And chances are yav're not slathering on enough. According 
to the American Acodemy of Dermatology, the average per- 
son needs ane ounce—about enough to fill a shat glass—ta 
cover the body entirely. Sunscreen may be slimy, but it’s 
better than skin cancer. ® To lock in fuel ail 

prices for the winter: Na later than 

August 31. Oil prices, 

which have been sky-high 

this year, usually start 

climbing in September os 

colder weather approaches. 

Makes sense, right? If you 

heat with oil, consider signing 

а fixed-rate contract for a year 

ог more. Nat sure if you want 

to bet on the directian of 

prices? Consul! eia.dae.gov, 

where government experts fore- 

cast short-term and long-term 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON РАО 


Mime and шем Ё 
ERIA MODELO, 8.0867 “E 


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


м 


Advertisement 


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 
from 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. I 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. 1 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 a 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 satchel 
and gave it to my husband. The bottle 
contained а natural supplement that 


Hot Spot 
| the inside story on Gre at 


Sex! 


by Jamie Ireland 


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 C., Ft. Worth, Texas 


Те you and the rest of our readers 
are in luck, because it just so happens 
I do 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 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, 1 
know of just one importer—Bóland 
Naturals. If you are interested, you can 
contact them at 1-866-276-1193 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? 


pm Vy, 


Jamie Ireland 


Hine Playboy Advisor 


My girlfriend and I have been together 
off and on for three years. Six months 
ago, while we were broken up, another 
of her exes stayed at her place. As she 
slept, he videotaped her with one hand 
while masturbating with the other. She 
found out about it but continues to hang 
out with the guy. Months later, after we 
were back together, she told me what 
had happened. 1 was outraged and told 
her I couldn't trust around her any 
longer. She said 1 couldn't tell her who to 
be friends with. I love this girl, but she 
refuses to see that this guy is a psycho 
who violated her. We've broken up again 
over this. What do you think?—B.W., 
Portland, Oregon 

Sounds as if they're meant for each other: 
Don't be surprised if tapes exist in which 
your ex-girlfriend isn't asleep. 


1 was having sex with an escort, and she 
asked me to perform CPR on her I asked 
if she was okay, and she said she was fine 
but that having a guy pump gently on 
her chest and give her mouth-to-mouth 
turned her on. Later she told me that six 
months earlier she had had a heart attack 
and been zapped back to life. Have you 
ever heard of anything like this?—A.A., 
Brooks, Alberta 

It's unusual. Simulated CPR is part of a 
medical fetish that includes people—over- 
whelmingly guys—who like to listen to heart- 
beats or give fake injections (check out the 
site medicaltoys.com for a taste of the vari- 
ety). Did you at least get a discount? 


I smoke one or two joints a day. Should 
I stop so that my wife and I have a 
better chance of conceiving?—M.L., 
Pasadena, California 

Yes. It’s well established that long-term, 
regular use of weed leads to decreased sperm 
production. A study released last year of 22 
men who smoked at least twice a day for five 
years або found that their sperm swam too 
fast too soon and had trouble attaching to the 
egg. Researchers believe it could take four to 
six clean months for things to return to nor- 
mal. Here's a possible antidote: A study of 
750 Brazilians suggests that guys who drink 
coffee have more energetic sperm. 


My husband is a hardworking guy who 
provides for his family and so on, but 
when it comes to fun and romance he's at 
a loss. He's 30 years old but acts as though 
he's 50. He works all the time and stresses 
about the house, bills, money and every- 
one else's problems. How can I help him 
lighten up, enjoy his family and live 
while he's young (and still has a w 
I've begun to do almost everything with- 
out him.—C.S., Portland, Oregon 

You need to tell your husband that his 
work habits are not working for you. We can 


anticipate his response: As do most worka- 
holics, he sees his family's pleas for affection 
and attention not as а sign that he is loved 
and needed but as an intrusion or an inter- 
ruption. Many meu struggle with this. They 
feel immense pressure to provide, which can 
make them crabby and distant. They prefer 
the controlled environment of work to the 
chaos of a home with children. Changing 
these habits is difficult. Usually it requires a 
close friend to lead by example. That’s what 
happened to literary agent Jonathon Lazear, 
who wrote a book about his experience, The 
Man Who Mistook His Job for a Life. He 
told us, “Too many men abandon their fami- 
lies, and for what? Is there a financial cri- 
sis? Most likely no. They're probably doing 
as their father did. Men need to remember 
that they're less productive when they over- 
work; they make mistakes. А wife тау have 
to say, We're ош of here unless you examine 
what you want. You can find a balance— 
and we'll help you." With any luck your 
husband won't join the legions of men who 
realize only later what they missed, especially 
in the lives of their children. 


What's the deal with duty-free shops at 
airports? I've never found the booze 
prices enticing. Is there some other ad- 
vantage to shopping at them?—N.R., 
Miami, Flor 

A lot depends on where you are and what 
you're buying. If you're flying home from 
Portugal, for example, you won't find better 
values on ports. Besides savings, duty-free 
shops offer two advantages: (1) Distilleries 
use them for market tests, so you can buy 
products that aren't available at liquor stores 
(be careful—sometimes only the packaging is 
different); and (2) the alcohol content can be 
higher in duty-free booze, which may im- 


ILLUSTRATION BY ISTVAN EANYAI 


prove taste. A common misconception is that 
duty-free means the consumer doesn't pay 
tax. In fact, with some exceptions, travelers 
entering the U.S, are allowed to bring in 
only one liter of booze tax-free, no matter 
where it was purchased. 


My fiancee, whom I've been dating for 
two years, thinks she can do whatever 
she wants without consulting me. It 
started with small things, such as assum- 
ing I would clean the house. Then she 
bought a $4,200 wedding ring. Then she 
revealed that she had declared bank- 
ruptcya few years ago. Yesterday I called 
her at work, and a co-worker told me she 
was on a smoke break—1 had no idea 
she smoked. How can I rectify this situa- 
tion and move on with the relation- 
ship?—G.F, Tulsa, Oklahoma 

You should move on, but without the 
relationship. The trust isn’t there. 


Whenever I watch porn I play with my 
nipples. I sometimes attach binder clips 
to get them hard. Is there any risk to 
this?—] ttsburgh, Pennsylvania 

Besides not having anything to hold your 
documents together? There's little danger 
unless you're wearing the clips for hours at a 
time. The interesting thing about nipple clips 
is that they pinch when you put them on and 
ache while they're there, but the real pain 
doesn’t come until you take them off and the 
blood rushes into the crushed flesh. 


Do exotic dancers ever connect with cus- 
tomers, or is it always just business?—R.G., 
Albuquerque, New Mexico 

A dancer may find you attractive, but she’s 
not looking for a date. We keep our head at 
strip clubs by pretending the women are very 
attractive used-car dealers. 


Id like to upgrade the power strips I use 
with my hi-fi equipment. Can you offer 
guidance?—N.N., Dallas, Texas 

Most people will find that a $30 to $50 
strip with surge protection is sufficient—look 
for the Underwriters Laboratories mark on 
both the box and the product, as well as the 
words “transient voltage.” Keep in mind 
that many strips have only a single metal- 
oxide varistor, which is what provides the 
protection, and it's а hamikaze—if there's a 
surge or a spike, it sacrifices itself! Once that 
happens, the strip may continue lo work but 
not protect against energy bursts. Some 
strips have MOV indicator lights, bul even 
those can’t always be trusted. The point is, 
don't assume that a strip with surge protec- 
tion will last forever. If you're daring, try the 
Wiremold L10320, which is popular among 
audiophiles who feel that the switches, fuses, 
circuil breakers and noise filters found on 
most strips diminish system performance. 
Naim, which makes high-end equipment, 


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recommends connecting all your components 
to the same strip, with the amp plugged into 
the outlet closest to the cord, followed by the 
sources. The theory is that different grounds 
in a house can vary a bit; оп high-end audio, 
that may cause noise. Naim also suggests 
having your power and source cords flow 
separately and “as gracefully as possible,” 
because “electricity does not travel efficiently 
around sharp corners and bends.” If you just 
paid $5,100 for a Naim CD player, that 
advice is comforting. 


М, best friend's sister says she can't 
date me because I'm close to her brother. 
Should this be a problem, and if so, how 
can I get her to sce past it?—C.P, Fort 
Collins, Colorado 

The bigger problem is she's not interested. 


You recently ran a letter about a guy 
whose fiancée disinvited his friends to the 
wedding because they had allowed him to 
"touch a whore" at his bachelor party. I 
don't think you put much eflort into your 
answer, Advisor. You can't blame just the 
girl. If the guy knew it could be a prob- 
lem, he should have prevented it. For 
example, they could have had a mixed 
bachelor-and-bachelorette party, which is 
all the rage. They could also have set 
down rules, such as “I won't touch tits if 
you don't grab cock.” When my husband 
and I had our parties, I told him I didn’t 
want him near naked women because 1 
knew his friends might set him up. I was 
right: They tried to pay a streetwalker to 
pose with him. Just because I don't want 
him around that sort of thing doesn't 
make me a controlling bitch. And it 
doesn't mean this girl was, either. She has 
the right to invite whomever she wants— 
it's her day. The problem is his being 
afraid to grow up and realize that real 
men listen to the women they love and ту 
to see the woman's point of view—A.T, 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania 

Real women get over themselves. Your 
advice is all good—couples should ialk—but 
10 suggest that the woman had a right to dis- 
invite her fiancés friends is just incorrect. 


М, husband has a fantasy that turns me 
off. He wants the two of us to perform 
fellatio on another man at the same time. 
The thought of my dear husband going 
down on another guy is too much for 
me. We tried fantasizing about it during 
sex, but it shuts me down. How can he 
enjoy this without my doing it or hearing 
about i?—A.T., Sudbury, Ontario 

We find it interesting, first, thal your hus- 
band, knowing the reaction most women 
would have, had the confidence to tell you 
this fantasy and, second, that you didn’t ask 
if we think he's gay. We don't necessarily — 
many people aren't so easily labeled. But 
both observations tell us you have a relation- 
ship that is stronger than most. So we sug- 
gesl this: Let your husband go down on 
you—while you're wearing a harness and a 
dildo. That way he’s not sucking another 


guys dick—he's sucking yours. (Then you 
can fuck him up the ass. Seriously. Start 
with your fingers, and use lols of lube.) The 
idea is to make this fantasy less about what 
your husband does and more about your 
playing the man. That may help you past the 
initial shock. Or it may just be beyond you. 
That's okay, too. At the least you may pick up 
some new techniques. 


1 know a guy who knows a guy who once 
got a speeding ticket and instead of 
pleading guilty mailed the court a check 
for $1 more than the fine. He received a 
$1 refund check but never cashed it. That 
kept the process suspended, so the ticket 
stayed off his record. He supposedly has 
a drawer of $1 checks and a clean driv- 
ing record. Is this possible?—].R., Port- 
land, Oregon 

Not in this universe. It may have worked 
for someone once, but this is an urban legend. 
that appears to have originated in Australia. 


Whenever my wife and I have a heart- 
to-heart talk (with no sexual impli 
tions), 1 get an erection. Why does this 
happen? We've been together for 27 
years, so it’s weird —D.F., Fort Calhoun, 
Nebraska 

It's not that weird. A heart-to-heart implies 
great intimacy and trust. For many people 
that sort of closeness is as arousing as physical 
touch. We'd suggest you have your next talk 
in bed, but it may affect your listening 


In your April response to a question 
about Super Audio CD, you should have 
made it clear that SACDs won't play on 
standard CD players unless the discs are 
hybrids, a.k.a. dual-layer—and even 
then you won't get the sharper sound 
unless you have an SACD player.—M.L.., 
Wauconda, Illinois 
Thanks for the clarification. 


While drunk, my girlfriend admitted to 
her best female friend and me that she 
had a dream in which her friend and 1 
were having sex and she didn't care. After 
she sobered up 1 asked her if she actually 
would care. She said, “Not really.” I think 
her friend may like me. Would it be okay 
to have sex with Бег? МЛ, Shippens- 
burg, Pennsylvania 

Sorry, but that wasn't enough of a yes— 
and we have pretty low standards. Bul you 
have a good line on a threesome. 


А gentleman wrote in May asking to get 
in touch with five readers who had writ- 
ten about their fantasies. I laughed at 
your answer: “There's no more room in 
the hot tub.” Butshy readers may take it 
the wrong way there are many hot tubs 
out there. People interested in meeting 
liberal friends should join a social group 
that encourages fantasy. The Black Rose 
in the D.C. arca is sexually explicit. 
Strictly social groups such as the Society 
for Creative Anachronism also mix fan- 
tasy and fun. I've found that women 


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AT NEWSSTANDS NOW 


who spend their weekends dressed as 
musketeers are more accepting of un- 
usual desires. Granted, these groups all 
require interpersonal skills. Asking the 
first lady you see to sleep with you may 
introduce you to the sharp end of four 
feet of steel —W.B.. Springfield, Virginia 

In that particular situation—with a fe- 
male musketeer—we'd have steel of our oum. 


А reader asked in May about a friend 
who would not tip on the alcohol portion 
of a restaurant meal. You didn't address 
the larger issue, which is why we're ex- 
pected to tip on meals at all. We need to 
stop looking down on people who are 
willing to pay only the price on the 
menu.—].S., Vermillion, South Dakota 

You can pay the price on the menu, but 
who's going to bring you the food? Skipping 
out on a tip might have worked in the Middle 
Ages, when leaving extra was done solely in 
gratitude. But like it or not, tipping is now a 
form of compensation. Early Americans con- 
sidered it undemocratic, but that changed in 
the late 19th century after wealthy Americans 
saw that it was done in Europe. Hotel and 
restaurant owners encouraged the practice 
because it allowed them to reduce wages and 
supervision of their staff. So many workers 
became dependent on tips thal customers who 
held out paid for their insolence: Bellmen 
made chalk marks on the bags of nontippers 
so they would remember which ones to drop; 
in Chicago in 1918 police arrested 100 wait- 
ers for spoiling the meals of repeat customers 
who refused to tip. Tipping can be confusing. 
Our advice is to trust your instincts. If it feels 
as if you should tip, make sure you do. If it 
feels as if you should give a little more, then 
do that, too. 


А final word on tipping: I've heard peo- 
ple justify not tipping on alcohol by ask- 
ing why they should tip the server when 
the bartender prepares the drinks. In 
most restaurants, the servers tip the bar- 
tenders based on the value of the drinks 
prepared. So this creep’s bar tips are 
being paid by the waitstaff. Educate the 
man!—K.L., Hanson, Massachusetts 
We'll do our best. 


When is the best time to break up with 
someone?—K.J., Chicago, Illinois 

Right after they've won the lottery, so they 
know you're serious. Actually, we prefer day- 
light hours, early in the week. But there's no 
good time for the person getting dumped. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, food 
and drink, stereo and sports cars lo dating 
dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be per- 
sonally answered if the writer includes a 
self-addressed, stamped envelope. The most 
interesting, pertinent questions will be pre- 
sented on these pages each month. Write the 
Playboy Advisor, 730 Fifth Avenue, New 
York, New York 10019, or send e-mail by 
visiting our website at playboyadvisor.com. 


THE PLAYBOY FORUM 
COURTING DISASTER 


WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SUPREME COURT 
IF GEORGE BUSH REMAINS PRESIDENT? 


BY EDWARD LAZARUS 


election, he is almost cer- 

tain to be able to mak 
the Supreme Court list to 
the right for a decade or 
more after he has left office. 
Because the current Court 
has split five to four on 
almost every charged issue, 
replacing even one justice 
could have a dramatic ef- 
fect. The time is ripe. No 
justice has retired in the 
past 10 years—the longest 
stretch without a new face 
since 1824. Age is catching 
up with the Court, much as 
it did in the early 1990s 
when William Brennan, 
Thurgood Marshall, Byron 
White and Harry Black- 
mun—for whom I serv: 

a clerk—all retired. 

The three justices most 
likely to leave are John Paul O'Connor 
and William Rehnquist. The chief justice, who turns 80 in 
October, is almost certain to step down if Bush wins. A 


| f President Bush wins the 


staunch conservative, he has strongly hinted that he wants 


a Republican to select his replacement. O'Connor, 74, is 
more moderate but has hinted at the same thing. 

"he X factor is Stevens, who is 84 and the most liberal 
justice on the Court. Although he would surely prefer that 
someone other than Bush appoint his successor, it's hard 
to imagine that he would forgo retirement for another 
four ycars. He already spends a good part of the winter in 
Florida, and his wife is said to be pushing him to leave. 


SHOULD | STAY OR SHOULD ! GO 


John Marshall Harlan (died 1911). In Leaving the Bench 
Supreme Court Justices al the End, David Atkinson recounts the 
story of a clerk who brought an emergency order to the sickly 
Harlan, who was running his chambers from a hospital bed. The 
justice bent over tosign the order, but when he returned it to the 
clerk, it had no signature. Harlan had signed the bedsheets 
William Howard Taft (retired 1930), In 1909, as president, 
Taft observed, “The condition of the Court is 
pitiable, and yet those old fools hold on with a tenac- 
ity that is most discouraging.” Within the next two 
years, five of the Court's nine justices had died. In 
1921 Taft joined the Court himself. He later wrote, 
"The only hope we have of keeping a consistent dec- 
laration of constitutional law is for us to live as long 
as we can.” He served until a month before his death 
William O. Douglas (retired 1975). In 1974 Douglas, 
who had served a record 35 years, suffered a stroke 


Supremes Rehnquist, O'Connor and Stevens—“And away we go. 


Rehnquist's retirement 
raises fewer issues of bal- 
ance. It’s hard to believe 
that the president could find 
anyone more conservative to 
replace him. That's not the 

se if Stevens leaves. And if 
hc and O'Connor both go, 
Bush could shift what would 
have been five-to-four votes 
to seven-to-twos. Although 
O'Connor usually votes con- 
servative, she put the brakes 
on the effort to overturn 
Roe v. Wade and keeps the 
right-leaning Court from 
becoming reactionary. 

Should the Court go fur- 
ther to the right, we'll see 
dramatic change on high- 

3 profile issues such as abor- 
tion and the se ion of 
church and state. But the 
most profound shift will be 

in the balance between federal and state powers. A Bush- 
driven Court would likely cut back severely on the ability 
of the federal government to act in the public interest, 
leaving more of these issues to the states. That would 

threaten worker health and safety, the environment and a 

range of civil rights. 

A Bush Court would also have vital consequences on how 
judges respond to the threat of terrorism. In coming years 
the Court will be asked to decide how much information the 
government can collect about us and how far itcan go to get 
that information. If Bush wins, these decisions are more 
likely to be made by justices who are comfortable deferring 


ЕМЕ COURT IS NEVER EASY 


He held on because he didn't want President Ford—who as а 
congressman in 1970 had tried to have Douglas impeached—to 
select his replacement. "Even if I'm half alive, 1 can sul cast a lib- 
eral vote,” he said. Doctors changed his mind. After he retired 
Douglas insisted he be allowed to vote on cases that had been 
argued while he was still on the Court, but his former colleagues 
ignored him. Potter Stewart (retired 1981). Súll healthy at 66, 
Stewart said, “It is better to leave too soon than to stay 
too long.” He worked part-time in lower courts but 
said it was “no fun to play in the minors after a career 
in the majors.” Some friends believed boredom con- 
tributed to his death in 1985. Lewis Powell (retired 
1987). Powell, who was 79 when he left, suggested that 
the founders should have forced justices to retire at 
75. Thurgood Marshall (pictured left, retired 1991). 
Marshall vowed to stay until death but could barely 
hear, see or walk. He survived his retirement Буа year. 


to claims that anything goes in the name 
of “national security.” 

The trick for Bush would be to select 
a nominee he can navigate through a 
sharply divided Senate. That's why his 
first choice would probably be a Latino, 
for the same reason LB] selected Mar- 
shall as the first black justice and Ronald 
Reagan nominated O'Connor as the first 
woman. Historic firsts are tougher for 
opponents to push aside, and Latinos 
are a key Democratic constituency. 

The most likely nominee is Alberto 
Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme 
Court justice who is now White House 
counsel. Some Republicans oppose him 
because they fear he may waver from 
the party line. The last thing they want 
is another David Souter, whom the first 
president Bush thought would be a 
solid right-winger. Instead he morphed 
into a reliable liberal, at least by the 
standards of today's Court. Politically, 
Gonzales's problem is the occasional 
moderation he showed on the Texas 
court and, in particular, a vote he cast 
allowing a minor to obtain an abortion. 
Conservatives also express concern that 
Gonzales, who acknowledges the value 
of diversity, would be soft in opposing 
affirmative action. But even if he shifted 
left, he would remain far more conserv- 
ative than Stevens and at least as con: 
servative as O'Connor. 

If Bush wanted a more established 
Latino conservative, the choice would 
be Emilio Garza, a federal appeals 
judge hearing cases in the South. Garza 
doesn't have the intellectual firepower 
of Gonzales, and at the age of 57 he is 
almost a decade older, meaning his in- 
fluence may not last as long. 

Each of Bush's second-tier options 
would face tough Democratic opposition 
If O'Connor retires first, a conservative 
female nominee may be a possibility 
The usual suspects are two other federal 
judges from the South—Edith Jones, 
who supports the death penalty without 
question, and Priscilla Owen, a staunch 
opponent of Roe v. Wade. As for white 
men, there are dozens. 

It's possible, as all things are possi- 
ble, that we will go another four years 
without any of the nine justices leaving 
or passing away. A seat on the Court, 
with all its majesty, is a tough job to 
give up. Yet the vast majority of mod- 
ern justices who retired didn't stay past 
their early 80s. That's worth remem- 
bering in the voting booth. 


Lazarus, a former prosecutor, is the author of 
Closed Chambers, a history of the modern Court, 
and is currently working on. Self-Inflicted 
Wounds, about the Court's worst decisions 


FORUM 


TAX ME, | 


'M RICH 


THE SOFTWARE MOGUL'S FATHER EXPLAINS. 
WHY HE LOVES THE ESTATE TAX 


BY BILL GATES SR. 


he federal estate tax is not dead. 
It only appears to be. Since the 


carly 1990s some of America's 
wealthiest families—not including my 
own—have financed a campaign to 
eliminate the tax. They argue that a | 
tax that affects only multimillionaires 
a bad thing. They deride it as a 
leath tax,” playing on the idea that | 
you can never escape the IRS. 

In 2001 these affluent Americans 
persuaded Congress to phase out 
the tax. By 2009 the amount ex- 
empted will rise from $1.5 million to 
$3.5 million ($7 million for couples) 
before the tax is repealed entirely 
in 2010. Unless Con- 
gress amends the law, 
which seems likely, 
the tax will return in 
2011. This quirk cre- 
ates a perverse incen- 
tive for elderly rich 
people to die in 2010. 

No one is happy 
with these changes. 
Many critics of the tax 
argue that it should 
be abandoned. I be- 
lieve we should keep 
it but with major re- 
forms, such as an in- 
crease in the amount. 
exempted so we can 
maintain the tax on 
truly enormous for- 
tunes while eliminating the need for 
many smaller estates and enterprises 
to be concerned about it. Given that 
my children and grandchildren may 
someday be hit with this sort of tax, 
my position may seem counterintu- 
itive. But my family agrees with my 
stance. Here's why: 

The reason Congress created the 
estate tax in 1916 was to slow the 
buildup of concentrations of wealth 
and power. Proponents of the tax felt 
this would protect democracy and the 
idea of America as a land of oppor- 
tunity for every citizen. At the same 
time, the tax would generate substan- 
tial revenue for the Treasury from 
those most able to pay—that is, 
recently deceased multimillionaires 
and billionaires. It has done just that. 
Last year the tax generated nearly 


$30 billion, It's estimated that over 
the next five decades the tax will gen- 
ate between $150 billion and $700. 
billion a year. That's big money, espe- 
cially for a government that is run- 
ning up huge deficits. 

The estate tax is also an incentive 
for charitable giving. Evidence sug- 
gests that withour it charitable giving. 
would decline by as much as $8 bil- 
lion a year, with the largest decrease 
coming from the largest estates. 

Critics charge that the estate tax is 
double taxation, but that isn't true. 
The bulk of wealth in taxable estates 
consists of appreciated stocks and real 
estate that have never 
been taxed. And the 
claim that the tax 
destroys family farms 
is also a canard. The 
pro-repeal American 
Farm Bureau has yet 
to produce an exam- 
ple of a farm lost be- 
cause of the tax. 

The way I see it, 
the estate tax is a rea- 
sonable repayment of 
a debt to society. Fam- 
ilies that accumulate 
wealth, including the 
Gates family of Seat- 
tle, have dispropor- 
tionately benefited 
from the system of 
public investment that we, as tax- 
payers and charitable givers, have 
put in place. Our economy thrives 
overall because we have order, stabil- 
ity, a predictable system of rules for 
investing and mechanisms to resolve 
disputes. Without public investment 
in research, we would have no micro- 
processors, no Internet and few won- 
der drugs. Further, we would see 
none of the business activity these 
innovations produce. Preserving the 
tax will ensure that our society values 
an individual's inherent—rather than 
inherited—worth 


Cales is a leader of Responsible Wealth 
(responsiblewealth.org) and the co-author, 
with Chuck Collins, of Wealth and Our 
Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax 
Accumulated Fortunes. 


tion introduced the Hugh 
Hefner First Amendment 
wards to recognize those 
defend our right to free speech. 
Each of this year's winners or set 
of winners received $5,000; 
Steven Aftergood directs the 
Project on Government Secrecy 
'ederation of American 
(fas.org) and edit 
s. His 1997 suit against 
the CIA led to the declassifica- 
tion of the agency's budget for 
the first time in 50 years. 
Nate Blakeslee, a reporter for 
Thi s Observer, broke the 
story of the Tulia drug scandal, 
in which a single detective's 
lies led to the convictions of 46 
innocent people 
Talia Buford, editor of the stu- 
dent newspaper at Hampton 
University in Virginia, had been 
ordered to print a memo from 
the school president on the front 
page. When Buford refused, the 
school had the pape: E 
Buford reprinted them with the 
memo but added a disclaimer. 


| п 1979 the Playboy Founda- 


who 


REALITY: At least 135 people 
who confessed to crimes were 
later exonerated by DNA or 
other evidence. Most people 
assume that anyone falsely 
accused would deny everything 
and ask for a lawyer. In fact, 
typically only experienced felons 
invoke their Miranda rights. The 
innocent man asks himself, 
Why should | stay silent? | have 
nothing to hide. He is unpre- 
pared for the psychological rigors 
of a professional interrogation. 
The detectives who conduct it 
are trained to convince the sus- 
pect that his situation is hope- 
less. Nothing prevents police 
from lying to get this done. 
They may tell a suspect he can 
go home if he confesses. Or 
they may claim to have evi- 
dence—including DNA and wit- 
nesses—that doesn't exist. 
Sociologist Richard Ofshe, who 
specializes in identifying false 
confessions, has reviewed inter- 
rogations in which officers told 
suspects that their crime had 


FORUM 


"The confrontation led to a task 
force that affirmed Hampton 
students' right to free speech 
and forbade administrators from 
confiscating future issues. 
David Cole, a Georgetown Uni- 
versity law professor and author 
liens: Double Standards 
and Constitutional Freedoms in the 
War on Terrorism, has defended 
dozens of immigrants accused of 
vague crimes such as being “a 
vocates of world communism. 


been recorded by satellite, that 
cops had lifted a “penis print” 
or that DNA tests had been 
completed within an hour. 
Although it’s illegal, coercion 
may also be used. Detectives 
may promise to get the charges 
reduced (‘I'll talk to the judge"). 
They may tell a juvenile or an 
accused sex offender that he 
will be dropped into the prison 
population to be raped. A con- 
fession is rarely beaten out of a 
suspect, Ofshe says—psy- 
chological pressure is usually 


A teen confesses to killing his 
younger sister. It wasn't true. 


1 VEAL 


David Skover and Ronald 
Collins, co-authors of The Trials 
of Lenny Bruce, successfully 
petitioned New York governor 
George Pataki to grant a post- 
humous pardon to the comedian 
for a 1964 obscenity conviction, 
Molly Ivins, a syndicated colum- 
nist based in Texas, received a 
Lifetime Achievement Award for 
her muckraking journalism. Her 
most recent book, with Lou 
Dubose, is Bushwhacked: Life т 
George W. Bush's America. 

Trina Magi and Linda Rams- 
dell of Vermont led a campaign 
to persuade Congress to rescind 
a provision of the USA Patriot 
Act that allowed the FBI to 
obtain secret warrants to view 
the records of bookstores and 
libraries. Magi is a librari 
Ramsdell owns a bookstore. 

Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real 
Time With Bill Maher, was hon- 
ored for eloquently defending 
free speech during a time when 
Americans have been encour- 
aged to abandon it in exchange 
for a false sense of security. 


enough. Anxious and despair- 
ing, a suspect won't question 
why the police, if they have all 
this evidence, would need a 
statement. The detective offers 
а мау o! Here's what 1 think 
happened," he'll say, recasting 
the crime as self-defense or an 
act that requires counseling, 
not prison time. If a suspect is 
frustrated and exhausted and 
believes there is strong evi- 
dence despite his innocence, a 
confession sounds like a great 
deal. After hours of pressure he 
comes to believe that he'll be 
convicted with or without a 
confession but that cooperating 
will mean leniency. Ofshe ar- 
gues, as do others, that police 
should be required to tape not 
just the confessions but the 
questioning. “The police argue 
against it, citing expense and 
other nonsense,” he says. “But 
they just don't want to give up 
the right to break the law in the 
interrogation room when they 
decide it’s necessary.” 


MARGINAL 


FROM A POLICE 

VIDEO posted at 

papersplease.org. On May 

21, 2000 Dudley Hiibel had a fight 
with his teenage daughter, Mimi, while 
She drove the family pickup near Win- 
nemucca, Nevada, After she punched 
him in the shoulder, he told her to pull 
over. Deputy Lee Dove of the Humboldt 
County Sheriff's Department responded 
to a report of domestic violence: 

Dove; | have a report that there's some 
fighting going on between you two. 
нивы: | don't know about that. 

nove: You got any identification? 
ниве: Why should 1 have an ID? 

Dove: We're conducting an investiga- 
tion, so 1 need to see some ID. 

“нивы: Nah, Im—just take me to jail 
Dove: | need to see some 10. 

нива: Why? 


ove: Because I'm conducting an 


Eea ub TT want to 

know what I'm charged with. 

Dove: You're not being charged. 

HIIBEL: What do you want with me? 

Dove: I'm conducting an investigation. 
hy? 


pove: Because | want to find out who 
you are, and I want to find 

out what | got going 

on here. Let me see 

Some identification; 


ниве: Go ahead 
and cuff me. 
DOVE: Let me see 
your 1D. 

Huer: I'm 

being cooperative. 
‘Dove: Let me see some identification. 
ниве: Cuff me and take me to jail. 
Dove: Let me see some identification 
and we'll talk, okay? 

HIIBEL: | don't want to talk. | broke no 
laws. Take me to jail. | don't care. 
Dove: Why would I take you to jail if 
you haven't done anything? 

нива: Because you want to. I'm not 
illegally parked. I'm not doing nothing. 
Dove: Let me see some identification. 
ниве: Why? 

Dove: Because. 

‘ype: Why? 

ove: You're not going to cooperate? 


Dudley Hiibel. 


Dove: Okay. Put your hands behind 
your back. 

ibel was fined for “obstructing 
delaying а peace officer.” The Supreme 
Court, which heard the case in March, 
was asked to decide whether а citizen 
can be arrested simply for refusing to 
identify himself. 


FROM AN APPLICATION by ICM 
Registry of Jupiter, Florida to (CANN, 
which governs top-level d 5 
create a new -xxx identifier: “Although 
other strings were considered, such as 
«sex, adult and „рот, our research 
demonstrated that they lacked broad 
geographic recognition and were 


{continued on page 47) 


READER RESPONSE 


TO EACH HIS OWN 

Wendell Berry nicely explains the 
dangers of extremism on both the left 
and the right (“The Perils of Foolish 
Use,” May). But it bothers me when he 
writes that individualists behave “as if 
there were no God.” The millions of peo- 
ple who don't believe in gods aren't living 
their life as ifanything goes. The recog- 
nition that this life and this world are not 
just for us individually but for everyone 
docs not require the threat of an after- 
life genocide imposed by supernatural 


The rugged individualist, hard ot wark. 


Nazis. It requires only empathy. The 

world would have been better off if the 

storytellers had had Moses come down 

the mountain with just one command- 

ment: “Keep thy religion to thyself.” 
Lowell Cooper and Sarah Prescott 
New Castle, Indiana 


Berry's commonsense writing on 
localized life and economics is a refresh- 
ing counterbalance to the din of global- 
ism. The inclusion of his work adds to 
PLAYBOY'S history of intellectual gravitas. 

Gary Parsons 
Boca Raton, Florida 


WISE USE, REDEFINED 
Ron Arnold, of the so-called wise-use 
movement (“Guru of Wise Use,” May), 
advocates cutting down the remaining 
old-growth forests, drilling for oil and 
gas on public lands, disrupting wildlife 
migration routes, constructing roads 
into wilderness areas and overturning 
the Endangered Species Act. Sounds 
more like stupid use to me. 
John Brennan 
Oakdale, California 


The problem with wise use is that it 
easily becomes “using it up." The U.S. 
Forest Service has allowed and even sub- 
sidized the strip-mining, clear-cutting 
and logging of 40 million acres of 


national forests—some of the very lands 
that Teddy Roosevelt protected from 
dishonest logging corporations a cen- 
tury ago. Both he and FDR referred to 
the logging industry as liars, cheats 
and thieves. Yet under the false claims 
of restoration, forest fires and forest 
health, these corporate and agency 
liars still cut down the most valuable 
trees and cathedral forests, You can see 
aerial photos of wise-use destruction 
at forestcouncil.org. 

Tim Hermach 

Native Forest Council 

Eugene, Oregon 


Arnold's agenda and that of the Bush 
administration is exploitation of the 
environment no matter what the conse- 
quences. The president describes him- 
self as a faithful Christian. So why is he 
destroying God's land? 

Bryan Mootz 
Carpinteria, California 


PLAYBOY would better serve its readers 
by publishing the views of environmental 
scientists or at least someone with intel- 
ligence who isn't spewing propaganda. 

Fred Breukelman 
Dover, Delaware 


Applying wise use to ATVs is a laugh. 
I've watched them plow through fences, 
chase animals and destroy flora and 
fauna and historic sights. Instead of 
destroying the arctic wilderness, why 
aren't we searching for other sources of 
energy? We know that fuels and lubri- 
cants can be made from corn, soy and 
even industrial hemp. But until those in 
power can control these materials, the 
rest of us won't be allowed to have non- 
polluting, renewable energy. 

Ed Clemensen 

Desert Hot Springs, California 


WE CANT ALL EAT CAKE 

Lam 80 years old, have seen much of 
the world, have fought in a war and 
have a lot of education. 1 realize that 
people believe in different things and 
everyone has his own bag. However, 
some things are logically, scientifically 
and factually stupid. In May John Passa- 
cantando of Greenpeace wrote you to 
list five ways the Bush administration is 
harming the environment. He said one 
way to solve the problem would be for 
people to vote, implying that people 
should vote for John Kerry. If Passacan- 


tando believes Kerry is going to do any- 
thing different, he's living in la-la land. 
No administration has ever done any- 
thing about these concerns, possibly 
because nothing can be done. I worked 
in a California plant that created clec- 
tricity by burning garbage. The plant 
was environmentally pure. Even the 
rainwater was washed before it went 
into the sewer. These things are possible 
but at great cost—companies will take 
their business elsewhere, We will have 
clean air, but that may be all we have. 
Tree huggers and liberals would like to 
a world where everyone eats 
That's not the way life works. 
John Waugen 
Anaheim, California 


DEATH PENALTY SOLUTION 
Scott Turow didn't need to come up 
with “Five Ways to Fix the Death Pen- 
alty” (May). There's only one fix: Elimi- 
nate it. Refusing to kill as vindication is 
the ultimate act of morality. 
Wallace Pugh 
Mansfield, Ohio 


OBSCENE MISTAKE 
In “The Bird Is the Word” (May), 
Chip Rowe states that Jimmie Wayne 
Jeíters gave the warden the finger from 


BOFFO Бу Joe Martin 


Arizona's electric chair. I'm a prisoner 
on death row, and I can assure you that 
the state has never used the chair. 
Robert Murray 
Florence, Arizona 
You're right. Jeffers flipped the warden 
the bird while being given a lethal injection. 
The result was the same. 


FORUM 


NEWSFRONT 


Adult actor Carmen Luvana gets tested as a precauti 


Chasing the Porn Bug 


Los ANGELES—This past spring, routine 
testing revealed that a male porn per- 
former had contracted HIV. According to 
the Adult Industry Medical Health Care 
Foundation, which reviewed porn tapes, 
the man had had on-screen sex with 13 
women since his last negative test, and 
those women had intercourse with 30 
other performers. A total of 53 рейогт- 
ers at risk were publicly identified and 
asked to voluntarily stop working until 
they could be cleared. Most production 
also shut down for months while per- 
formers waited for test results. As of 
early May, three of the 13 female per- 
formers had tested positive. County 
health officials called for mandatory con- 
dom usage on sets and seized AIM 
health records, saying they wanted to 
make sure that the personal partners of 
. actors exposed to HIV had been notified. 


Stripped of Her Claim 


ATLANTÁ—In 1997 Vanessa Steele-Inman was 
eliminated from the Miss Nude World Interna- 
tional pageant. She says she retrieved trashed 
ballots that showed she should not have been 
booted. She sued, claiming she had been black- 
listed for refusing to allow a promoter to lick 
whipped cream off her breasts. She also says 
an organizer loudly accused her of cheating: 

a slandershe believes ended her career in nude 
competition. A jury awarded her $2.5 million, 
which an appeals court reduced to $3,500. It 
reasoned that even if an organizer had accused 
her, it wasn't slander but a “privileged conver- 
sation” between business partners. 


A Crime of Self-Abuse 


LATROBE, PENNSYLVANIA—Police charged а 15: 

year-old girl with creating and distributing 
child pomography—photos she took of herself. 
undressing and masturbating and sent to men 
online. Authorities are hunting for the men. 


The Right to Party 


cHICAGO—Two daughters of Minnesota's attor- 
ney general partied hard at a club, and the 
night ended badly. The older sister, 22, lost 
her cool after a guy grabbed her ass, so 
bouncers took her outside. There she allegedly 
took a swing at a cop, who moved her across 
the street. A friend followed, using his cell 
phone to record the encounter, The woman is 
heard saying, “I have rights!" to which a voice 
identified as the officer's responds, "You got 
none right now, bitch." Police charged both 
sisters with resisting arrest. 


Fashion Passion 


LIVERPOOL, U.K—Shortly before Easter a company 
posted a photo of a “crucified” model on its 
website to promote a line of designer T-shirts. 
The monsignor of the city's Roman Catholic 
cathedral, which appears in the background, 
called the image blasphemous. "People think 
they can do anything they like with religious 
imagery these days," he said. The company, 
Bdbx, responded, "This fashion range is 
all about youth ess 

culture, being in 
your face, not 
being afraid to | 
break the rules 
and challenging 
convention"— 
but soon after 
apologized and 
pulled the image from its website. 


Stroke of Bad Luck 


105 ANGELES—An insurance claims manager 
installed a program that recorded every key- 
stroke on a company computer. He shared the 
information he gathered with the state Depart- 
ment of Insurance, which was investigating 
the company. After being fired, the man asked 
a co-worker to remove the logger. The col- 
league instead tipped off authorities, who 
charged the man with violating wiretap laws. 
(The Department of Insurance claims it never 
asked the former manager to do anything ille- 
gal.) The case is believed to be the first time a 
person has been indicted for installing a key- 
logger. He faces up to five years in prison. 


MARGINALIA 


(continued from page 45) 


perceived to be primarily Anglo-Saxon. 
Research also showed that the use cf. 
these strings could lead to confusion. 
For example, although information on 
family planning, birth control or abor- 
tion would potentially qualify for inclu- 
sion in a proposed «sex or ‚adult, such 
information would not intuitively be 
associated with xx. Likewise, the 
adoption of „porn would place the 
registry operator and ICANN in the dif- 
ficult position of making the determina- 
tion of what is and is not pornography. 
The proposed -xxx string clearly con- 
veys that the website contains adult 
material of a sexual nature.” 


FROM AN ESSAY by Brian Price in 
Legal Affairs. While serving 15 years in 
a Texas prison, Price prepared the last 
meals for about 200 condemned in- 
mates: “The meal requests were rarely 
complicated; many prisoners ordered 
food that they had eaten as children. 
The requests were released to the me- 
dia exactly the way the state received 
them. But 

many of the => 
meals that 27 Б 
Prisoners 
wanted 
were re- 
placed with 
less expen- 
sive or more 
accessible alterna- 
tives. The policy of the Texas Depart- 
ment of Corrections was that only food 
items kept on hand in the commissary 
and butcher shop could be used. If the 
condemned asked for lobster, for exam- 
ple, he would be served a filet of pro- 
cessed fish. The last real steak I pre- 
pared was in 1993. After that 
hamburger steaks were subbed in. 
Most vegetables came out of cans. 
Requests for large quantities were pared 
down. David Allen Castillo requested 
24 tacos in 1998. He got four" 


FROM A REPORT ty the Commit- 
tee on Government Reform Minority 
Office (www.house.gov/reform/min) 
called Iraq on the Record: "This is a 
comprehensive examination of state- 
ments about Iraq made by George 
Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rums- 
feld, Colin Powell and Condoleezza 
Rice, It identifies 237 statements that 
were misleading at the time they were 
made. It does not include statements 
that appear only in hindsight to be 
erroneous, Most of the statements were 
misleading because they expressed cer- 
tainty where none existed or failed to 
acknowledge the doubts gence 
officials. Ten of the statements were 
simply false. The statements began at 
least a year before hostilities in Iraq, 
when Cheney stated on March 17, 
2002, ‘We know they have biological 
and chemical weapons,’ and continue 
through January 22, 2004, when 
Cheney insisted, ‘There's overwhelming 
evidence that there was a connection 
between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi govem- 
ment.’ The 30-day period with the 
greatest number of misleading state- 
ments was before the congressional 
vote on the Iraq war resolution." 


LO 


F our years ago I was in Los Angeles 
covering the Democratic conven- 
tion when a woman wearing pearls 
and a power suit jabbed a finger into. 
my chest and asked, “Have you ever 
sucked a cock?” 

At the time, I was working through 
my fourth postmortem martini at a 
swanky hotel bar and had indiscreetly 
told the woman—a stranger—how all 
the corporate cash at both conven- 
tions made me wonder if there was 
any difference between the two par- 
ties. The woman, a campaign manager 
from Washington, was not pleased 
with that observation. 

“Have you ever sucked a cock?” she 
asked again, poking with each word. 1 
said no, I hadn't. 

“Well, I have,” she said, “and let me 
tell you a secret. Women don't like it. 
But we do it. Why? Because we want 
that Mercedes, And that’s why I suck 
corporate cock; to get money to keep 
my boss in Congress. You get it?” 

For the past 18 months legions of 
corporate fellators have descended on 
Boston and New York to book the 
hottest venues, bands and restaurants. 
The conventions themselves are such 
predictable leap-year spectacles that 
even the networks hate to cover them. 
But off camera, at exclusive parties, 
corporations spend ions feting 
lawmakers, particularly those in lead- 
ership positions and on appropria- 
tions and tax-writing committees. 
Since these parties are not direct con- 
tributions, nearly all the money spent 
on them is hidden from public view. 

Democratic planners long ago 
reserved hot Boston venues such as 
the New England Aquarium, the JFK 
Library and the Museum of Fine Arts. 
For the August GOP shindig in New 
York, think soirees at the Rainbow 
Room (rented for $75,000 a pop), sock 


hops, country music by the likes of 


Ziggy Мацеу The 
son of reggae 
legend Bob is 
scheduled to 
perform for 
Democratic 
guests from 
atop a barge: 


RUM 


POWER PARTIES 


PUT ON YOUR DANCING SHOES—IT'S TIME TO BUY SOME VOTES! 
BY SAMUEL LOEWENBERG 


Senator John Breaux says hello at his 2000 party 


Faith Hill and ‘Toby Keith and appear- 
ances by celebrities such as Тот Sel- 
leck and Bruce Willis. Plans are under 
way for corporate-sponsored yacht 
trips and chartered buses to Atlantic 
City (a big hit at the 2000 Philadelphia 
convention), The wet dream of every 
GOP party planner is an appearance 
by Governor Schwarzenegger. He's 
important not only for cachet but 
because he can direct funds to the 
Republican Governors Association, 
which, like its Democratic counterpart, 
is a state organization not subject to 
soft-money limits established by the 
McCain-Feingold Reform Act. 
Another loophole is the use of char- 
ities to funnel campaign funds. That 
alone has transformed this year's party 
scene. It's why House majority leader 
Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.) had planned to 
host a week's worth of events in New 
York to raise money for Celebrations 
for Children, his charity for disad- 
vantaged kids. By filtering the money 
through a charity, DeLay would have 
been able to have an even bigger event 
than he did in 2000 in Philadelphia, 
when he and more than a dozen cor- 
porate sponsors co-hosted a Blues 
‘Traveler concert. Because much of the 
partying is ostensibly for charity, most 


Wild Cherry The 
hit party song 
at both 2000. 
conventions 
wos the band's 
“Play That 
Funky Music 
(White Boy).” 


of what corporations shell out is tax 
deductible. Says one veteran lobbyist, 
“That's the real scandal.” 

In 2000, $25,000 made you a big- 
wig. This year DeLay was asking com- 
panies for as much as $500,000 each. 
Before the New York events were scut- 
tled because of pressure from watch- 
dog groups. contributors were being 
offered dinners with DeLay, invites to 
his golf tournament at Bethpage 
Black, tickets to Broadway shows and 
access to a luxury suite the night 
President Bush gives his acceptance 
speech. The kids would presumably 
have gotten what was left after the cor- 
porate cash bucket paid for expenses. 

Other anticipated shindigs: 

Representative John Bochner of 
Ohio will use the Republican con- 
vention for a four-day party at the 
cavernous Tunnel club. (Technically, 
because of the new ethics rules, lobby- 
ists will throw it on Boehner's behalf.) 
The party is being sponsored by vari- 
ous corporations giving $30,000 each. 

Friends of Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass.) 
are planning a Boston tea party, with 
the Boston Pops playing a piece by 
Star Wars maestro John Williams. The 
cost? Insiders say $800,000. 

John Breaux (D.-La.)—who once 
said that while his vote couldn't be 
bought, it could be rented—is the king 
of convention-party hosts. In Los 
Angeles in 2000, Breaux turned a 
Paramount back lot into a full-scale 
Mardi Gras, complete with imported 
bands and floats. The $500,000 event 
had so many corporate sponsors, he 
said, that any one of them couldn't 
possibly have influenced him. This 
year the Potomac Group, headed by 
Breaux's former chief of staff, is host- 
ing a Caribbean Beach Bash at the 
New England Aquarium to honor 
Breaux. Ziggy Marley will perform 
from a harbor barge. 


Tom Delay He 
can't take 
money from 
lobbyists any- 
more, but he 
con collect it 
for down-and- 
out children, 


Colobrstions far Bice, Inc. 


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| pe MASCAR The Best a Man Can Get“ 


нию ны, MATT DAMON 


A candid conversation with the Bourne Supremacy star about dating 
Winona, having panic attacks and what really went on with Ben and J. Lo 


Malt Damon has an image problem. Most 
media reports paint him as an affable, 
toothy, stand-up Mr: Clean-Cut—an earnest 
guy who takes acting seriously. But once 
the movie cameras switch off, Damon turns 
out to be а chain-smoking, beer-drinking, 
outspoken, complex guy who just happens to 
be the star of such films as Saving Private 
Ryan and The Bourne Supremacy, a sequel 
to the 2002 spy thriller The Bourne Identity. 
One reason for his image as a well- 
meaning good guy is his Cinderella story. 
Damon and lifelong pal Ben Affleck won 
Oscars for co-writing the 1997 hit Good Will 
Hunting, a script the then-strugeling 20- 
something actors had spent six years writing 
and refused to sell unless they starred in the 
movie. (Damon plays the title role of a trou- 
bled math genius; Affleck plays his friend 
from their old South Boston neighborhood.) 
On the heels of Good Will Hunting, other 
acting jobs started coming Damon's way. 
Impressive showings in The Rainmaker, 
directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and Sav- 
ing Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spiel- 
berg, put him on the A-list of Hollywood 
actors who get first crack at the best projects 
and their faces featured on magazine covers. 
What's more, his name was linked romanti- 
cally with actresses Claire Danes, Minnie 


“You start to meet people who can't pay their 
mortgage, and you think, But you were on 
the cover of Premiere eight years ago. And 
you assume that Tom Cruise is secure, but 1 
guarantee you that guy isn't secure either.” 


Driver, Penélope Cruz and, for several years, 
Winona Ryder. Then his career hit a rough 
patch when Rounders, The Legend of Bag- 
ger Vance and All the Pretty Horses—gigs 
many predicted would vault him to Tom 
Cruise-level status—crashed and burned 
with ticket buyers. Just as things looked 
bleak, he lucked out with the one-two punch 
of Ocean's Eleven and The Bourne Identity, 
which revitalized his career. 

Born Matthew Paige Damon in 1970, he 
and his brother, Kyle, born in 1967, lived in 
Newton, Massachusetts with their parents, 
Kent Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy 
Carlsson-Paige, a professor of early-childhood 
education, until the couple's divorce when 
Matt was two. His mother raised him in a 
commune-style house in a working-class sec- 
tion of Cambridge, where creative play and 
open conversation ruled. Having attracted 
considerable notice in performances at Cam- 
bridge Rindge and Latin School, Damon hit 
the TV- and movie-audition circuit, encour- 
aged by neighbor and fellow student Afflech, 
who had already begun landing commercials 
and TV roles, and by Affleck’s father, who 
had worked alongside Dustin Hoffman and 
Robert Duvall in the respected Theater Com- 
pany of Boston. In 1988, at the age of 18, 
Damon debuted in Mystic Pizza, which 


“Tue never been in a significant relationship 
for longer than two and a half years. If the 
price to pay for having dalliances forever is 
not having a family and children, then the 
dalliances are not worth it.” 


starred the then-unknown Julia Roberts, and 
enrolled as an English major at Harvard 
University. He bailed in 1991, however, 12 
credits short of graduation, following a cred- 
ible performance in the 1990 TV movie 
Rising Son. For the next five years he built up 
his acting résumé in such movies as School 
Ties and Geronimo: An American Legend. 
He and Affleck have remained close, showing 
up together in 1999's Dogma and creating 
Project Greenlight, a reality-TV series 
about young filmmakers struggling to make 
their first movies. 

PLAYBOY sent Stephen Rebello to Chicago 
to meet Damon ai the Peninsula hotel just 
after he had completed The Bourne Suprem- 
acy and begun filming Ocean’s Twelve. 


PLAYBOY: In an interview in 1997, the 
year Good Will Hunting was released, you 
sounded especially pumped about the 
minibar in your hotel room. Seven years 
later we're sitting in this grand hotel 
suite with a sumptuous spread of food 
and drink. Have you become blasé about 
the perks of fame? 

DAMON: I've lived in a lot of hotels since 
then. One fear 1 honestly have—and it's 
something I talk about to my family a 
lot—is that 1 don't want to experience 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY JULIAN BROAO 


“Ben got killed because he was in a high- 
profile relationship and the press fucking 
teed off on him. It was destroying his career. 
1 doubt Ben vill pick up another movie mag- 
azine in his life. He'll read this, though.” 


51 


PLAYBOY 


this bizarre life. I try to be vigilant about 
ways in which it's changing me. There's 
the stuff I'm aware of, and then there's 
the stuff I'm not aware of, which is why 
people who've known me a long time 
play a huge role in my life. You want 
somebody to say, "Dude, you fucking 
used to live for the minibar, and now you 
just take it for granted." 

PLAYBOY: Whether or not you take the 
minibar for granted, you've been tagged 
in the press as a nice guy. 

DAMON: As a celebrity you're often cred- 
ited with being the nicest human in the 
world just for being relatively normal 
during a routine exchange. It's like, 
“Don’t put that on me, because that's 
going to fuck me later.” 
PLAYBOY: Have you ever needed 
to give yourself an attitude 
adjustment? 

DAMON: I am constantly doing 
that in little ways. I haven't yet 
had the experience of pushing 
someone really close to me to 
the point of having to sit me 
down and say, “You really have 
to fucking pay attention, be- 
cause you're unaware that 
you're doing this or that.” First 
it's the minibar you take for 
granted, then it's a four-course 
meal, and suddenly you won't 
fly commercial anymore. And 
after that, who are you going to 
play, the billionaire? 

PLAYBOY: How does keeping a 
close watch on yourself affect 
your relationships, especially 
with women? 

DAMON: The bigger fear is that 
you won't want to participate in 
intimate relationships because 
they push back at you and 
superficial relationships don't. 
If you're a movie star, then they 
really don't push back at you. 
Someone's usually just happy 
you're talking to them, which 
means you can walk around 
having meaningless encounters 
with just about everybody and 
live with the perception that 
you're the greatest guy in the 
world, without having anything or any- 
one close to you. Whether you're famous 
or not, close relationships require work. 
You still have to participate, be there and 
get called on your shit. It’s easy to say, 
“You've called me on my shit. I don't 
want to talk to you anymore. I want to go 
have a drink down at the bar, where the 
guys say, 'Oh, you're great, just a regular 
guy.’ I don't want you telling me that I've 
got to fucking clean up after myself.” So 
the real thing is not to take that hall pass 
to great-guydom, which is really superfi- 
cial in the end. 

PLAYBOY: You've had several relation- 
ships with fellow actors that seemed to 
matter. Should you have handled your 


52 breakup with Minnie Driver, your then- 


girlfriend and Good Will Hunting co-star, 
differently? You announced it on The 
Oprah Winfrey Show. 

DAMON: No, that show aired three weeks 
after we had broken up, and the rela- 
tionship lasted less than six months. I 
said on ihe show, “We're still friends. I 
really like her, but I'm single.” And she 
said, “I found out that he broke up with 
me on The Oprah Winfrey Show.” She 
later retracted that and said, “I knew it 
was serious only when he said it on The 
Oprah Winfrey Show.” But even if that 
wasn't true, the damage had been done. 
Good Will Hunting had come out only a 
month before, and that was my first 
experience of getting stung So the hon- 
eymoon of thinking it's all good was 


| still care way too much what other 
people think. One thing Ben does 


better is live life on his terms. 


relatively short-lived. I wouldn't be in 
that relationship now. 

PLAYBOY: Why not? 

DANON: Being so excited you're in a 
movie that you immediately fall in love 
with your co-star hasn't happened to 
me since then. 

PLAYBOY: Is falling in love with co-stars a 
good habit to break? 

DAMON: Most people get over it pretty 
quickly. It’s like summer camp. The first 
year you go—and maybe even the sec- 
ond year—you have a summer romance, 
but finally it’s not that big a deal. 
PLAYBOY: Before the release last year of 
your comedy about conjoined twins, 
Stuck on You, rumors circulated that you 
and co-star Eva Mendes were stuck on 


each other. Not true? 

DAMON: No, not at all. I don't want to 
talk about Eva's personal life, but she 
has been in a serious relationship for 
years. I'm friends with her boyfriend; 
his nickname is the Invisible Man. It's 
funny that she’s constantly being linked 
to people, but George, her boyfriend, 
is always there. 

PLAYBOY: After you've broken up with a 
woman, do you remain friends or do you 
keep a distance? 

DAMON: It depends. Obviously with Min- 
nie there was no relationship after that, 
partly because I was disappointed in the 
attempt to make a story out of something 
I didn't think was a story. It didn't make 
me angry; it just bummed me out. 
PLAYBOY. Does media scrutiny 
speed up the demise of relation- 
ships between famous people? 
DAMON: My most recent rela- 
tionships have not been with 
famous women, but I was with 
a very famous woman, Winona 
Ryder, for a couple of years, 
and we had a great relation- 
ship. It ended for reasons far 
more pedestrian than, say, a 
mad orgy at the Four Seasons 
during which my feelings were 
hurt because Richard Gere was 
too interested in her. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: You and Ryder hadn't 
been together for years, but 
what was it like for you when 
the press scorched her for the 
2001 shoplifting incident? 
DAMON: When she was being 
pilloried in the press. to me it 
was like, "This too shall pass"— 
that somehow her true colors 
would come out and she would 
get past it because she's a great 
woman. It's the same way I feel 
watching Ben get ass-raped by 
the media. I think, That's my 
friend. You have no idea who 
this person is, and you don't 
сусп care. You're just trying to 
get your story filed and get in a 
couple of good zingers. So that 
part sucks, seeing somebody 
you care about being treated 
poorly in public. On the other hand, 
if they're really good people, they're 
going to be line. 

PLAYBOY: Have your romantic relation- 
ships been handled badly by the media? 
DAMON: To a certain degree, if you end 
up in the sights of Us Weekly or one of 
those other magazines, if you're the 
cover child or the cover couple, then 
you're fucked. The key is how not to be 
that guy To not be that guy, don't go out 
and do stupid shit. If you go out and 
attack a paparazzo or get into bar fights, 
you're just craving the attention. And 
don't date a celebrity. I don't think I 
could fall in love with a celebrity right 
now, because it would mean changing my 
lifestyle, and I like that my lifestyle feels 


normal to me most of the time. I com- 
partmentalize. There are these weird 
little blips where the celebrity side of 
things happen: I get dressed 10 minutes 
before a premiere, get out of the car and 
a hundred people take pictures. I shake 
a couple of hands at the party, and 45 
minutes later I'm back home in my 
sweatpants or walking down the street to 
get a pack of cigarettes or a magazine. 
PLAYBOY: You're in a relationship now 
with Luciana Barroso, an interior decora- 
tor. How do you keep relationships 
going, considering the long overseas 
shooting schedules you've been on lately? 
DAMON: I'm very happy with this woman. 
Casey Aflleck, Ben's brother, is about to 
have a baby, and I saw how everything 
changed with my brother when his kids 
came. I want a family someday. The 
long-distance thing is tough. But I as- 
sume eventually you think, Well, sum- 
mer camp's nice, but I own a pretty nice 
house, and that’s okay with me. I've never 
been in a significant relationship for 
longer than two and а half years, so that 
will all be new ground. Presumably these 
things deepen and grow, so those other 
things become less tempting. But if the 
price to pay for having dalliances forever 
is not having a family and children, then 
from where I'm sitting, the dalliances 
are not worth it. 

PLAYBOY: How did watching Affleck’s rela- 
tionship with Jennifer Lopez affect you? 
DAMON: Ben got killed because he was in 
a high-profile relationship and the press 
fucking teed off on him. They believed, 
cynically enough, that he was trying to 
get publicity. What they never under- 
stood was that Ben is far too smart not to 
know that being in that relationship was 
the worst thing for his career, It was 
absolutely destroying his career. He 
stayed in it because he loved her. The 
cynical perception was that he was court- 
ing the attention, when he was actually 
embarrassed by the attention. 

PLAYBOY: As an old friend, could you 
have done anything to advise him? 
DAMON: Ít was one of those weird situa- 
tions where there was absolutely nothing 
you could do. People weren't going to 


ately, you saw how much love 
was there. Asa friend, the only course of 
action is to support your friend, support 
the relationship and talk shit about the 
people who are writing things. 

PLAYBOY: Couldn't you say, “How about 
trying to dial down the big spending, the 
trips, the bling-bling?" 

DAMON: No, no way. One thing Ben has 
always done much better than I do is live 
life on his terms, not taking into consid- 
eration what something might look like 

I still care way too much what other peo- 
ple think. But if people are not in your 


Spy vs. Spy 


Who's the best secret agent on film? A look af the contenders 


James Bond 


Spy: Pierce Brosnon as 007, unkillable secret 
agent, swordsman and double entendre king, 
recruited by the British to save the world 
Deadly weapons: incredible gadgets, martial 
aris moves, suave sarcasm, patent leather hair 
Slogan: “Governments change. The lies stoy 
the same.” 

Mission accomplished: It’s been 42 years 
since the first Bond flick, and still nobody does 
it better. 


Spy: Matt Damon os David Webb, alias Jason 
Boume, ClA-trained assassin recruited to save 
the world 

Deadly weapons: mortial arts, multiple- 
language fluency, ability 10 outsmart anyone 
Slogan: "I'm on my own side now." 

Mission accomplished: Damon plays the 
haunted, paranoid, memory-challenged, turtle- 
neck-wearing badass so well, he’s rumored to 
be headed for yet another sequel. 


Spy: Vin Diesel as Xander Cage, extreme-sports 
athlete and adrenaline junkie recruited by the 
U.S. government to save the world 

Deadly weapons: dart-gun revolver, tats and a 
wicked bad ‘tude 

Slogan: “Stop thinking Prague police and stort 
thinking PlayStation. Blow shit up!” 

Mission accomplished: He’s Bond for bone- 
heads, but Diesel won't be lumbering his way 
through the sequel. Ice Cube is replacing him 


Spy: Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, gym rat ond 
covert-operations team member recruited by 
the U.S. government to save the world 

Deadly weapons: fab gadgets such as eye- 
glasses with built-in cameras 

Slogan: "We just rolled up a snowball ond 
threw it into hell. Now we'll see if it has a 


| chance.” 


Mission accomplished: As long os Cruise con 
pull off those actian scenes, he's golden. 


Spy: Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan, young low-level 
CIA analyst recruited by the U.S. government to 
save the world 

Deadly weapons: expertise in Soviet affairs 
and satellite-photo interpretation, Chechnya- 
size chip on his shoulder 

Slogan: "The bomb is in play." 

Mission accomplished: Affleck is okay os a 
guy who's been romantically smacked upside 
the head, but as a CIA ace? Hardly. 


Spy: Mike Myers as Austin Powers, freeze-dried 

1960s-era spy and lech defrosted by the British 

government to save the world 

Deadly weapons: bad teeth, serious chest hair 

and an arsenal of single entendres 

Slogan: “Shall we shag now, or shall we shag 

later?” 

Mission accomplished: Do we want Myers 

ever to stop skewering spy flicks? Oh be-have. 
—SR. 


53 


PLAYBOY 


xi 


inner circle, you don't have to spend 
your life worrying. The first time I met 
George Clooney was at his house soon 
after Good Will Hunting, and the first 
thing he asked was, “How are you 
doing?" I said, "I'm doing okay." After 
giving me some really good advice, he 
said, "Don't let them keep you inside," 
which was this great piece of wisdom 
Pau! Newman had dropped on him at 
one point. 

PLAYBOY: So you and Affleck aren't stay- 
ing inside. 

DAMON: Ben, much more than I, has 
lived by that from the beginning, and 
he didn't need anybody to tell him. Ben 
will do stuff and know what the percep- 
tion is going to be, but he doesn't care. 
With both Ben and me at this point in 
our lives, it’s like we care less just be- 
cause we're okay now. I'm fine. Say 
what you want. | don’t fucking care 
anymore. You can't alter perception, so 
there's no reason to spend your life 
worrying about it. 1 doubt Ben will pick 
up another movie magazine in his life. 
He'll read this, though. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: Is the media accurate in por- 
traying Affleck as having an addictive 
personality? 

DAMON: I don't think so. Both of us 
smoke like freight trains, but based on 
that, would you say I've got an addictive 
personality? 

PLAYBOY: You've never been in rehab, 


though, and he has. 

DAMON: No, I've never been in rehab. 
Ben made a choice to do something that. 
was extremely preemptive. Here's a guy 
who comes off three movies in a row and 
has never been late for work, has never 
missed a line and gets phone calls from 
people saying, “I'm really impressed. We 
just put you in a $90 million movie and 
you were great, The whole crew loved 
you, and we had no idea.” To label him 
with that is wrong and just easy and judg- 
mental. He's much more complicated. 
PLAYBOY: Let's talk about your child- 
hood. How did your parents' divorce 
affect you? 

DAMON: I have no recollection of their 
being together. I was two, so it seemed 
like a normal childhood to me. To this 
day I have only one friend whose par- 
ents are still married. All the rest are 
divorced, so 1 didn't feel that everyone 
else got to sitaround at exactly 6:30 and 
have dinner, and why did I get fucked 
here? My mother and father grew up in 
a generation when no one divorced, and 
they wanted the kids to feel okay. They 
were always telling us, "It's okay that 
we're divorced.” And we were saying, 
“Yeah, we know. We love both of you, 
you both love us, it didn’t work between 
you, and that makes total sense to us.” 
PLAYBOY: Did studying at alternative 
schools and growing up with your moth- 
er and brother in a politically minded 


experimental co-op house set you apart? 
DAMON: My mother is a professor of early- 
childhood education, I'd come home and 
she'd be watching cartoons, counting the 
acts of violence and commenting how the 
shows were becoming commercials to sell 
products to children and teach them how 
to use them. She said, “A generation of 
children will suffer because they're being 
desensitized to violence and are not being 
protected from these corporations.” She 
predicted something like Columbine a 
decade before it happened. 

PLAYBOY: Did she keep war toys away 
from you? 

DAMON: No, but she encouraged us to 
play with toys that used our imaginations. 
Asa result, my brother and 1 ended up 
being very creative people. He'sa painter 
and sculptor. Even when we were little 
kids Г remember him spending hours 
drawing a bionic arm on a piece of con- 
struction paper so he could put it on me 
and I could run around getting into my 
own Six Million Dollar Man adventures. 
My mother created a really good environ- 
ment for us to be who we were. 

PLAYBOY: Did you get static from neigh- 
borhood guys who weren't raised in such 
an evolved way? 

DAMON: I played with dolls when I was a 
kid—superhero dolls. I remember 
knowing that it might not be that cool to 
tell some of the other guys that I played 
with them, even if they were superheroes. 


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Featurette showcasing scenes of storyboards-to fim comparisons. 


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members of the cast and crew аз they rellect on making AIR AMERICA, Also included are perspectives 
of historians, along with the filmmakers, in a detailed discussion on the controversial assertions that 
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56 


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My mom isn't a Pollyanna. She knows 
that if you leave two boys in a room— 
whether they're brothers or friends or 
whatever—eventually one of them is 
going to hit the other. One of her spe- 
cialties is nonviolent conflict resolution, 
which was a huge topic around our din- 
ner table. She would never ignore the 
fact that violence is a part of the human 
condition. It’s about how it’s handled in 
the media, in film and television. 
PLAYBOY: Once you gave up your dolls. 
we assume you moved on to girls. 
DAMON: 1 kissed my first girl in fifth 
grade, Jennifer Andella. I was always 
interested in girls, though obviously 
more so in high school, when it becomes 
something different from just making 
out for five minutes after school, then 
jumping on the school bus for home. 
‘Our high school had a really good dra- 
ma department and a great teacher, and 
that was my reality for four years. And 
obviously pretty girls were in drama too. 
PLAYBOY: Did you get into acting partly 
because of the pretty girls? 

pamon: It was probably more for the 
attention than the great-looking girls, 
though in junior and senior year 1 was 
really interested in the girls. 

PLAYBOY: Do you have the drama depart- 
ment to thank for your first sexual 
experience? 

DAMON: Yeah. It was the summer 1 was 
16 years old, and we were doing the mu- 
sical Pippin. Ben and I were thick as 
thieves through that school year. Ben 
can't sing, so he just worked on the crew. 
A group of us would get together every 
night, then try to find somebody 21 to 
get beer. The girls were suddenly a little 
faster in the summertime. My mother 
had left that summer for Mexico to learn 
Spanish, and my brother was already in 
college. He had this great girlfriend, and 
fora month they were the matriarch and 
patriarch of the house. My mother to- 
tally trusted us, and for good reason, in 
the sense that we weren't totally out of 
control. I could have friends stay over, 
but I wasn't supposed to have girls. I 
knew my brother wasn't going to dime 
me out, so that summer was the first 
time I had sex, which was just incredible. 
PLAYBOY: So this girl was in the show you 
were doing? 

DAMON: Yes, and she was one of my 
closest friends in the world—and still is, 
actually—a tremendous, incredible 
woman. She was lying on this pullout 
couch, which just about fit in my bed- 
room. This is a girl I'd wanted to have 
sex with since 1 was 12, and there she 
was, lying on the couch while I was in my 
underwear on my bed. 1 was trying des- 
perately to think of anything to talk 
about so she wouldn't go to sleep. I didn't 
want the night to end. I was far too cow- 
ardly to make a move in a dark room on 


a summer night. Finally she said, “You 
know we both want to do something, so 
why don't you just get over here and do 
it?” I don't think I would ever have got- 
ten the courage to do it, so what she said 
was incredibly empowering. 

PLAYBOY: Was that night the beginning of 
something with her? 

Damon: No, we went right back to being 
friends and have been friends ever since. 
We had this whole kind of respect and 
admiration for each other, so after that 
night it never got weird, like, “Oh my 
God, what do I say to her now?” or any- 
thing like that. I'm sure it fucks things 
up if you start sleeping with your 
friends, but in this case it didn't. 
PLAYBOY: Did your mother ever catch you 
in compromising situations with anyone 
else or by yourself? 

DAMON: No, I knew when my private time 
was, so I set my clock for those moments. 
Even if she had caught me, she would 
never handle it in a way that associated 
something like that with guilt or shame. 
She was really in tune with my brother 
and me, and we had an incredibly forth- 
right relationship with her, so there was 
nothing we were embarrassed to tell her. 
The older I get, and as I start thinking 
about having children down the line and 
watch my brother raise his children, that's 
really amazing. It's hard to give a child the 
ability never to have to hide something, 
because most societal influences aren't 
pointing you in that direction. 

PLAYBOY: Having been brought up 
with such strong liberal thinking, are 
you political? 

DAMON: I have never voted in my life. My 
reasoning has always been—and this is the 
worst possible thing to say—that because 
I'm from Massachusetts, everyone I 
would have ever voted for didn't need my 
vote. But that’s changing now because of 
where we're going in this country. 
PLAYBOY: Are you even registered? 
DAMON: No, but I'm going to register 
before this next election. ГИ vote for 
John Kerry. The last election 1 had this 
feeling that everyone was just going 
toward the middle and it’s the same 
thing no matter what, and it turned out 
to be the most politically critical moment 
in my lifetime. Now it's like you want to 
mobilize everybody to get out and vote 
because look what's at stake. 

PLAYBOY: Growing up, did you ever have 
erotic crushes on celebrities? 

DAMON: My brother and I were in love 
with Lisa Bonet, an absolute knockout. 
Really beautiful women have that thing 
in their eyes—a kind of sparkle or twin- 
Kle that just does it for me. 

PLAYBOY: Did you ever meet Lisa Bonet 
and have to mask your childhood carnal 
thoughts about her? 

DAMON: I did, but I think I covered my 
tracks by blurting out something like, 


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“Гуе always been a big fan of yours.” I'm 
sure she’s heard that from guys before. 
That reminds me of when my brother 
and I were ага big dinner party in New 
York about five years ago. He saw Cheryl 
Tiegs and was like, “Wow, she still looks 
great. I have to go meet her. You don't 
know how many times I had sex with 
that woman.” So he went over, and she 
was very nice, and he was very polite, but 
he was happy to go home and tell his 
wife that he'd met Cheryl Tiegs. 
PLAYBOY: Did you have any other child- 
hood idols? 

РАМОМ: 1 thought Mickey Rourke was 
the coolest in The Pope of Greenwich Vil- 
lage and other movies. Ben and I used to 
say, “Man, he's fucking good,” and when 
we'd leave the theater, we'd light ciga- 
rettes and try to swagger a little, but we 
were so far from that guy. And Kim 
Basinger and Mickey in 9% Weeks? Now 
that was a twofer—the coolest guy and 
the sexiest woman. 

PLAYBOY: When you were 18 and Affleck 
already had an agent and was book- 
ing jobs, he helped you turn pro, and 
you got your first speaking role, in Mys- 
tie Pizza. Was there any competition 
between you? 

DAMON: It’s going to sound hinky, but 
that was never a factor. We pulled for 
each other. We were never іп a situation 
where it was down to just me and him— 
actually we were with Mystic Pizza, but 
they hired me because I was two years 
older than Ben and the law said you 
couldn't use a minor on a night shoot. 
More often than not we'd both get called 
back for a part, we'd both feel good 
about ourselves, and then we'd get shot 
down when we went for the next round. 
That carried through later, to L.A. in the 
carly 1990s, when we'd sce friends” 
careers take off and feel like, “Well, fuck 
it, someone's going to play the role. Га 
rather it be this friend of mine than 
some guy who's already working." 
PLAYBOY: Actors who were already work- 
ing in the early 1990s included Leonar- 
do DiCaprio, Edward Norton and Chris 
O'Donnell. Any tales of jousting for jobs? 
DAMON: I once said to Chris O'Donnell, 
who had the best agent of anybody at the 
timc, “What's this Scent of a Woman? Y 
heard it’s the lead role, that it's from the 
guy who directed Midnight Run and Al 
Pacino is in it. Do you know what it is?” 
Chris said, “Yeah, I have the script.” 
When 1 asked if I could borrow it, he 
said, “No, I need to practice.” The whole 
cast of School Ties—me, Ben, Brendan 
Fraser, Cole Hauser—went to New York 
to audition, but Chris was the only one 
who had read the script 

PLAYBOY: And he got that job. You and 
Norton were apparently neck and 
neck for Saving Private Ryan and Primal 
Fear. The two of you later co-starred in 


Rounders, so apparently you worked 
things out. 
DAMON: Edward was always in the run- 
ning for jobs. After he got Primal Fear I 
wanted to go up to him and say, “Just 
stop.” After Primal Fear I auditioned for 
The Rainmaker, and when it came down 
to me, Edward and another guy, I 
thought I didn’t have a chance. But 
Edward and I went out and got drunk 
together, and I said, “I'm fucked, but it’s 
great to meet you, man.” 
PLAYBOY: But you still got the part. For 
Courage Under Fire you put yourself on a 
crash diet so extreme you nearly caused 
serious physical damage. Do you have 
residual health problems? 
DAMON: It's not necessarily a scientific 
theory, but from a young age I've put 
myself in really high-pressure situations. 
After that movie, one of the medications 
they put me on was an antianxiety drug, 
Klonopin, because I had started to have 
symptoms such as blurry vision and hot 
flashes. Sitting in the waiting room of this 
great doctor at Massachusetts General 
Hospital, I read this article he happened 
to have written, I think for The New Eng- 
land Journal of Medicine, on exaggerated 
stress response. By the time I got 
through the first page, all the blood had 
gone out of my face. I walked into the 
doctor's office holding the article and 
said, "This is me." 
PLAYBOY: And was it? 
DAMON: Every single symptom. He asked 
how incredibly high-pressure situations 
like doing a movie affected me, and I 
said, “I don't fucking саге. 1 deal with 
it.” He told me, “It will manifest itself in 
another way. Your vision is blurry; 
you're having hot flashes. You're not 
okay.” He said that I had stored all this 
stuff inside and there was a delay in feel- 
ing the symptoms. I went on medication 
for six months or something and felt 
weird taking pills at the age of 25. I felt it 
was doing damage to me psychologically 
because I'd always thought of myself as 
healthy and unassailable. I started to get 
better, to the point that I took myself 
off the medicine without calling him. 
Quickly after that I had some symptoms. 
The doctor told me to give the medica- 
tion a few months, which I did, then 
went off it again. 
PLAYBOY: Do you still get the attacks? 
DAMON: I get symptoms, but they don’t 
start snowballing now. I really love my 
job, and I don't feel the perspective with 
which I do it now would lend itself to 
having an anxiety attack. 
PLAYBOY: After Good Will Hunting, a string 
of your big movies, including The Legend 
of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses, 
stalled at the box office. Talk about a 
setup for an anxiety attack. 
DAMON: | was Off that list you want to be 
(continued on page 149) 


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Detroit, Death City 


The Motor City has been a horror show for years. Most people 
have forgotten about it. But the human toll remains great 


It's a throwaway city for a throwaway society, a 
place where the American dream came to die. No 
other U.S. metropolis has suffered a decline as 
steep as Detroit's. From “the arsenal of democracy” 
during World War II to a blue-collar Shangri-la in 
the 1950s and 1960s—where a man could go 
straight from high school to the factory floor and 
earn enough money to buy a house and a car and 
support his family for the rest of his life—to a global symbol for what happens 
when cities go bad, a byword for violent crime, urban decay and racialized 
poverty. Today Detroit is America's forgotten city. 

Detroiters complain endlessly about negative media portrayals of their town, 
usually just after they've told you of the latest horrible crime they've wit- 
nessed. They claim that journalists give their city a bad rap. But long gone are 
the days when reporters from all over the world flocked to Detroit on Devil’s 
Night to capture the death throes of a great American metropolis. Once the 
most American of places, Detroit is now so far outside the mainstream that its 
plight rates lower than ethanol subsidies in our political discourse. Who 
cares—other than the residents—about the fate of Detroit, which even today 
would be regarded as a national disgrace in any civilized country? Other than 
knowing it as the home of white musicians such as Eminem, Kid Rock and the 
White Stripes, the rest of America couldn't care less about Detroit. 

If Detroit were a character in a novel, it wouldn't be believable. What mad- 
ness could possess a civilization to construct such a grand and magnificent 
place and then, within half a century, to obliterate so thoroughly what it had 
created? When talking about the state of Detroit, one is tempted to compare 
it to a natural disaster—some earthquake that laid waste to the landscape. 
Except there's nothing natural about what has happened to Detroit in the past 


TEF 


By Frank Owen 


ILLUSTRATION BY JANET WOOLLEY 


62 


SHRINK CITY 

In 1950 Detroit's 
population was 1.9 
million, making it the 
fifth-largest U.S. city. 
By 2000 its popula- 
tion was 950,000. 


VIEUX DETROIT 


Antoine de la Mothe 
Cadillac founded the 
city on July 24, 1701, 
almost a century 
before Chicago 

was founded. 


TOWN AND COUNTRY 


Detroit is 82.8 percent 
African American, 
second only to Gary, 
Indiana. Livonia, nine 
miles from the city, is 
96.5 percent white. 


MOTOR CITY 
Detroit's yearly pedes- 
trian fatality rate is 
the nation’s highest, 
at 5.05 per 100,000 
residents. New York 
City's rate is half that. 


TAX ANO SPEND 


30-plus years. Humans built this city, 
and humans—an unholy and uncon- 
scious alliance of fat-cat businessmen 
and street-corner criminals—destroyed 
it. Now other humans are trying to bring 
it back from the dead. 

Wayne State University professor Jerry 
Herron, who has written extensively 
about Detroit, compares it to a dispos- 
able industrial appliance—something 
that when used up gets thrown into the 
trash. “It's the disposable character of 
the city,” he says. “Once the auto in- 
dustry got here, the attitude was always 
to make your money and then move 
away, to dispose of the past and leave it 
behind, And that applied whether you 
were Henry Ford or the lowliest worker.” 

That's not how | imagined Detroit. 
When I was growing up in Manchester, 
U.K., Detroit was a mythical place, 
home of Tamla Motown, whose 1960s 
dance tunes—a slick, sophisticated 
sound that appealed across race lines 
and 3,000 miles of ocean—were popular 
throughout the 1970s among working- 
class youths in the north of England 
Manchester and Detroit seemed like 
twin cities—grimy industrial centers 
that had seen better days but nonethe- 
less played host to vibrant music scenes 
that provided a measure of colorful 
compensation for living in such a gray 
environment. Some people in my neigh- 
borhood regarded R. Dean Taylor 
(“There's a Ghost in My House") and 
the Funk Brothers' Earl Van Dyke practi- 
cally as legends. Plus, Detroit was the 
home of lggy Pop and Alice Cooper. How 
cool was that? 

So imagine my disappointment when 
| first came to Detroit in 1990 with my 
new bride to visit her parents. | thought 
Manchester was a dump, but Detroit 
made my hometown look like Venice. 
Burned-out houses, vacant storefronts, 
abandoned factories—whole neighbor- 
hoods looked as though an invading 
army had pillaged them. The atmos- 
phere of desolation was pervasive. 
Once-proud art deco skyscrapers stood 
empty and forlorn. Architectural won- 
ders such as the Statler-Hilton and 
Book-Cadillac hotels resembled home- 
less shelters. Michigan Central Station, 
formerly a handsome beaux arts build: 
ing on the western edge of downtown, 
was in the process of being methodically 
gutted by vandals and thieves to the 
extent that the 18-story structure would 
soon become a skeleton. 


Michigan Central railroad station. 


DON'T BOTHER 
Detroit residents earn Between 1978 and 
half what their subur- 1990 the city issued 
ban counterparts do. only 9,000 permits for 
They also spend about пем housing. In 1988 
half their disposable no building permits 
income in the suburbs. were issued. 


The most startling thing | saw was the large tracts of open land everywhere. 
Nature seemed to be bursting through the cracked sidewalks. Wildlife—possums, 
raccoons, foxes, even pheasants—sported in the rubble. It was as if the city were 
reverting to the prairie it had been before the French arrived in the 17006. І wasn't 
expecting to see people dancing in the street, in the words of the Martha & the 
Vandellas song. But | didn’t expect a depopulated wilderness where the pavement 
was so broken that people had to walk in the street. It will take years, maybe 
decades, to fix this place, | remember thinking. 

On subsequent visits | got to hear all the war stories and attend some of the 
funerals, and | saw a city in which life improved by increments, if at all, not so 
much rising like a phoenix from the ashes as crawling lethargically toward some 
semblance of normal city life. 

Since my first visit, conditions have gotten better. Downtown, if not exactly 
bustling, is no longer a ghost town after dark. White suburbanites who hadn't 
journeyed past 8 Mile Road in 20 years are now walking the streets—going to 
Greektown Casino, a Tigers game at the new Comerica Park or a performance at the 
meticulously refurbished Detroit Opera House. Young professional couples are mov- 
ing into luxury lofts by the river. The November opening of a Borders bookstore was 
cause for great municipal celebration. The current mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, boasted 
that nine new restaurants had opened downtown in the past year. In his recent 
state-of-the-city address Kilpatrick announced that Michigan Central Station was to 
be restored and turned into a new police headquarters. 

But in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown, little seems to have changed. 
The financial benefits of such large-scale commercial developments as the Renais- 
sance Center and Comerica Park haven't filtered out to the adjacent residential 
districts. Poverty is still widespread, and crime is still out of control. Some areas 
appear as if the Sanitation Department hasn't paid a visit in years. Why has the 
pace of revival been so slow? Other American cities—New York, Philadelphia, Indi- 
anapolis—have come back from the brink. Why not Detroit? 

“Beyond the murder rate, there are three statistics that tell you a lot about what's 
happening in Detroit,” says Wayne State’s Herron. “More than half the residents 
don't have high school diplomas, 47 percent of adults are functionally illiterate, 
and 44 percent of people between the ages of 16 and 60 are either unemployed or 
not looking for work. Half the population is disqualified from participating in the 
official economy except at the lowest levels.” 


Winter kill 
Beneath the blight, Detroit is a city of churches and families 


On bright morning;this past February, my wife and | flew into the new $1.2 billion 
Edward H. McNamara, Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the latest іп a long 
line of capital projects designed to resuscitate the city. Walking through a glass tun- 
пе! between concourses, we were surprised to find an ambient light-and-sound 
show. The vibe was akin to that of a chill-out room at a rave, perhaps an ironic nod 
to Detroit's status as the birthplace of techno music. Outside the terminal the plains 
of Southeast Michigan were dusted with snow. It was a bad time to come. The city 
Was іп mourning for Wo cops—one 26, the other 21—who had been shot dead the 
day before by a motorist after he was pulled over during a routine traffic stop. 
Even by Detrpit standards this latest incident was particularly senseless. 
Explaining why he pumped nearly a dozen bullets into the officers, the alleged cop 
Killer, who was quickly apprehended, said, “It was a mistake.” The fact that the 
‘Cops Were white and their alleged killer black seemed not to matter at all. The out- 
Pouring of sympathy for the slain officers was genuine and widespread among 
Detroiters of all races. The only note of racial animosity was sounded when two 
white suburbanites vandalized the black-fist statue downtown—the one commemo- 
rating Detroit-bred boxer Joe Louis—and left pictures of the slain cops at the base 
The killing of the officers was part of a bloody surge in homicides in the first part 
of the new year. The day after, a pizza deliveryman was shot dead, and an armored- 
car guard was slain in the early hours of the next day. In 2003 Detroit posted the 
lowest number of homicides since 1967—about half what it had been in the mid 
19705. Ву April 13, 2004, however, Detroit had logged 110 murders, a nearly 50 


URBAN RENEWAL FORDISM FAMILY VALUES 


ALMSGIVERS 
GM bought the Renais- In 1908 a Model T Thanks to the strength Married couples head 
sance Center for 572 sold for $850 of its churches, Detroit only 36.9 percent of 


million in 1996, The 
center, which opened 
in 1977, cost $350 
million to build. 


($16,000 in recent 
dollars). In 1925 it 
cost $290 ($3,000 in 
recent dollars). 


is the nation's most phil- 
anthropic city. Residents 
give 12 percent of their 
income to charity. 


Detroit families. Single 
fathers head 8.2 per- 
cent, single mothers 
54.9 percent. 


Detroit's Black Panther Party headquarters, 1969. 


percent jump over the murder rate in 
the first three months of 2003. 

Just when Detroit was having some 
success in rehabilitating its reputation 
and getting ready to host the 2006 Super 
Bowl, politicians worried that the Murder 
City image was making a comeback. 

If someone wants to commit a murder 
and get away with it, Detroit is as good 
a place as any to try. Year in and year 
out more than half the homicides in the 
city go unsolved. While the homicide 
rate has declined in recent years, and 
while New Orleans and Washington, D.C. 
have more murders per capita, Detroit 
continues to be the most dangerous 
major American city in terms of overall 
violent crime. Detroiters still die violent 
deaths at the rate of about one a day. To 
put that in perspective, if you compare 
killing rates over the past 35 years, 
Northern Ireland has been about eight 
times safer than the Motor City. 

Sometimes it seems as if there are 
two Detroits. There's the Detroit that, to 
a British outsider, resembles a sleepy 
Southern town. The swelling cadences 
of the preachers you hear on a Sunday 
morning. The pickup trucks you see 
everywhere. The neatly tended trailer 
parks on 8 Mile Road. The market signs 


VENEREAL CITY 
Detroit ranks second 
(behind San Fran- 
cisco) in per capita 
primary and sec- 
ondary infectious 
syphilis cases. 


HOT WHEELS 


Detroit is the nation's 
number one city for 
auto arson. In 1999 
more than 3,300 cars 
were torched, costing 
insurers $22 million. 


63 


64 


that advertise CLEAN CHITLINS BY THE 
POUND Or COONS FOR SALE (meaning гас- 
coon meat). The leisurely pace at which 
citizens go about their business. It's a 
fundamentally decent and deeply reli- 
gious world where strangers greet you on 
the street by saying “God bless you.” 
It's a tight-knit community in which 
family values and compassionate con- 
servatism are more than empty political 
slogans. This is а place where, as a local 
preacher told me, the real welfare 
department isn't the one at city hall but 
the network of churches that crisscross 
the city. No wonder my wife's cousin, a 
lifelong Detroiter, refers to his home- 
town as “up south,” the northernmost 
Southern city in America. 

But there's another Detroit—the bar- 
ren, crime-ridden, postindustrial waste- 
land satirized in the RoboCop movies. 
The American dream turned Darwinian 
nightmare. A coldhearted, hyperacquisi- 
tive, dog-eat-dog world where life is 
worth less than a leather jacket or a pair 
of Nikes, where even criminals from the 
rest of the country fear to tread. A realm 


Burn, baby, burn: A confrontation between cops and patrons of an after-hours club sparked the 
July 1967 riots that changed the face of the Motor City. Above: Troops try to keep order on 
Linwood Avenue. Left: the Ransom Gillis house, reduced to rubble by scavengers. 


whose heroes are notorious drug dealers from the past: negative role models such 
as Young Boys Inc., the Chambers brothers and Richard “Maserati Rick” Carter, 
who was famously shot dead in his hospital room and buried in a coffin that looked 
like a Mercedes, complete with spinning tires and a grille. A nihilistic, dead-end 
Culture of greed and violence so entrenched it seems impossible to uproot. A place 
where slinging drugs is the equivalent of Job Corps and crime is such an everyday 
part of life that it assumes the status of weather. 

As | have found out, though, these two Detroits are not separate. They’re bound 
by ties of kinship and community: The drug dealer on the corner or the killer lurk- 
ing in the shadows is somebody's son or cousin or nephew. 


Long hot summer 
The riots of July 1967 marked the beginning of a brutal decline 


This is а story about а father and son, one а 1960s revolutionary who became а 
Well-known figure in the fight to save Detroit, the other a scion of relative prosper- 
ty who became a drug dealer. It's the tale of my father-in-law and my brother-in- 
law. Buf Е also the story of the Detroit | came to know through marriage. It's a 
journey from hope to heartache, a drama that combines race, politics, violence and 
its victims. And it begins, as many Detroit stories do, with the 1967 riots, an event 
old-timers still talk about as if it happened yesterday. 

The riots deeply scarred Detroit. The devastation was so extensive that, 37 years 
later, some neighborhoods have yet to recover. Whites fled the city in panic. Within 
five years Detroit would become a black-majority city. Sparked on a hot July night 
by a relatively minor incident between vice cops and patrons at an illegal after-hours 
drinking СЇШБ (е blind pig, in local parlance) at 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue, 
it was the bloodiest and most destructive American insurrection in 50 years. It 
lasted five days and cost 43 lives and $50 million in property damage. President 
Lyndon Johnson called in federal troops to quell the disturbance 

Not long after the riots, the Durley family—Leito Sr. and his wife, Yolanda, along 
with their three kids (my future wife, Chene; her older sister, Initia; and her only 
brother, Leito Jr.)—moved into a three-bedroom Tudor with a driveway and a garage 
on Manor Street, in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood on Detroit's west side 

It was a solidly middle-class family. Yolanda worked as a pharmacist at a local 
hospital, and her husband was а vice president at the Edison electricity company, а 
good job for a black man in those days. When the Durleys moved to the neighbor- 
hood they were the only black family on the block. “Not long after we moved in, ron. 
SALE Signs started to go up,” remembers Initia 

In his spare time Leito Sr. was information minister for the Republic of New Afrika, 
a political group that wanted to establish a separate black nation in Mississippi, 
Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. “Free (continued on page 132) 


"I never wear a bathing suit when the sea is this rough so 1 can be 
sure you're keeping a close eye on me!” 


65 


Jill Christy (above and left) has heard a lot of lame pickup lines ot 
her rock-and-roll bor in Ohia, but ane stands out. "А guy asked me 
if wos pregnant,” she says. “When I said na, he said, ‘Moy | assist 
you with that?” Jill is an expert at knowing your poison. "I match 
your face with what you're drinking,” she says. “The next time you 
come up, I'll already have it mode." Rebecca Leigh (right ond 
opposite page) works at two bors in Colifornic and knows what 
puts the most tips into her pocket. “If three women are behind the 
bar, we do much better,” she says. “One guy and two girls throws 
everything off. It's beneficial to have girl power.” 


Meet the 
cocktail shakers 
who make 

us party until 
last call 


hey'll give it to us 
straight up with a 
twist. Afterward they 
may even give us a 
martini, too. They are our fa- 
vorite bartenders, the ones 
who have our hooch ready to 
go before we ask, the ones 
who pretend to listen intently 
to our confessions. We watch 
them set drinks on fire, 
toss bottles into the air, light 
people's smokes and look 
sensational. When we set 
out to find America's sexiest 
bartender, we knew it would 
be a daunting task. Hu 
dreds of mixologists from 
around the country sent in 
pictures. We narrowed the 
list to the 10 tall glasses of 
gin you see here. Server 
Heather Smith believes her 
neighborhood tavern in 
Pennsylvania is already a 
winner. “Everyone is wel- 
come," she says. "No one 
judges anyone. It's just a 
good time." Shioban Magee 
hopes the hoopla surround- 
ing our sexy bartender con- 
test will draw more thirsty 
customers to her New York 
bar. "If this boosts sales 
because people come in to 
see me, I'll be thrilled," she 
says. “ГИ sign issues for 
them." Jenny Soto knows 
how to keep guys coming 
back for more at her estab- 
lishment in California. "It's 
a fashion show behind the 
bar," Jenny says. "When I'm 
working | like to wear figure- 
flattering clothes. | love flirt- 
ing, especially with shy 
guys. | love showering them 
with attention.” Cheers to 
that. and to all the thirst- 
quenching professionals 
we've met along the way. 


ей 4 ў 


rer, 


Unlike some other bartenders we spoke with, New York's Shiobon Mogee (above) isn’t opposed to dating a cus- 


^l usually dole the alpha male,” she soys, “especially if he hos met me in the bar and has seen the way I oct 


I'm friendly. 1 dress provocatively. If they're okay with it, then they're okoy with me." Jenny Soto (right and bottom 
left on opposite page) works ot her father's bar in California. "I used to set drinks on fire,” 


he says. “But the fire got 
big tips ot her bor in Pennsylvania. "I have o pair of lucky ponts," she says. "When | weor them | clear at least $400.” 


Amy Preston (opposite, right) hos mostered the mixing of neorly 100 martinis at her bar in Californio. When it comes 


to customers hitting on her, she's seen it oll. “Women might say things thot are reolly sexual when they come on to 


oul of control a few times, and my dod put a stop to thot.” Heother Smith (opposite, top lefi) knows how іо dress for 
you, but they're not as grabby as the men ore,” she soys. 71 flirt with girls the same way I flirt with guys." 


Having o positive attitude makes Jeanine Hoss (left and abave left) a big draw at one of Los Vegas's most pop 
ular nightspats. “I like positive people, a great sense of humor and a smile,” she says. "I try nat to concentrate 
on dislikes. They're a waste of time ond energy.” Everything tastes better after meeting Ohio bartender Beyea 
(top right). Her specialty? “A sweet tart,” she says. "It's a shot with four Puckers: apple, cherry, raspberry and 
peach.” When it comes to dating, Alba Clark (bottom right) craves a challenge. “On the best date 1 ever had 
we went motorcycling in the rain,” she says. “We made love under a tree on the bike!” You may recognize Kara 
Monaca (apposite page) even if you've never been to her Flarida lounge. (She's in aur Girls of Summer special 
editian.) When asked why she doesn't date customers who came into her bar, Kara smiles. “All | meet are party 
people,” she says. “But | know showing skin helps earn me better tips. Гуе been given $50 and $100 bills.” 


Log on to Playboy.com and vote for America's sexiest bartender. 


9749494949494949494+949494949494949494949494949494949494949%4%4., 


n the night | met Henry Lo | was hanging out on the 
O slummy end of the Las Vegas Strip, at the Sahara. 

With its camel sculptures and vaguely Arabic sign- 
age, it’s a legendary part of old Vegas that has become the 
ultimate low-roller joint. Instead of the Rat Pack cavorting in 
the lounge until five a.m., the best you can hope to see today 
are the occasional winners celebrating at the $5 craps table. 

As | killed time playing blackjack, | was also watching a 
lonely table by the bar, where a bored dealer named Uten 
had her cards fanned across the felt and her arms akimbo, 
facing the empty chairs but looking as if she might start fil- 
ing her nails at any moment. She was attractive—as all 
dealers should be, in my opinion—so after an hour had 
passed with nobody hitting the table, | wandered over and 
noticed that the game was called 7 Card Thrill. 

“I've never played 7 Card Thrill,” I said to Uten, who | 
later found out is from Thailand, “but I'll give it a crack if 
you'll tell me the rules.” This wasn’t so easy, as Uten had 
never dealt 7 Card Thrill before. She had learned it just 
that day, and I was to be her first player. She motioned to 
her pit boss—a pleasant, boyish sort in a Wrangler cowboy 
shirt—and he came over to explain the rules. 


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y 
JOHN BLOOM 


The next thing | knew, four hours had passed and | was still 
playing 7 Card Thrill. It's a great game, like pai gow poker on 
fast-forward. It seems complex at first, but once you learn it 
you can knock out 40 or 50 hands in an hour and feel in total 
control of the strategy. It's a single-deck game in which play- 
ers are dealt seven cards and try to make the best five-card 
poker hand from among them to beat the house. Other rules 
include a time-and-a-half payout for twin aces anywhere on 
the table and an optional side bet whereby players can wager 
that they'll have a pair of aces or better from among their sev- 
encards. Faster than blackjack and pai gow but with elements 
of both, it’s a wild game of streaks, surprises and moments of 
unbearable tension when the dealer reveals her hand. 

After I'd broken the ice with Uten, a few more degenerates 
joined me at the 7 Card Thrill table, and soon we were getting 
raucous. Unlike in blackjack, players can't bust. Everyone has a 
sporting chance against the dealer until the last moment, which 
results in high-five camaraderie whenever the entire table wins. 

And that's where Henry Lo came in. For a brief period in the 
second or third hour, the chairs at the table were all taken, but 
when one opened up a guy slid into the mix just to observe 
and cheer for the rest of us. 


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Por 


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ILLUSTRATION BY AMY GUIP 


74 


I didn't notice him right away, despite his oversize glasses 
and bowl haircut, but after | revealed one particular hand, he 
burst out, “Cool! You beat her with the ace-low straight!” 

When Uten tried to claim the bet, he said, “No, that 
pays the player. It's just like pai gow.” The pit boss was 
called over to confirm the cheerleader's assertion, and 
suddenly I was $10 richer. 

"| guess | should thank you,” | said. 

“No problem,” he replied, grinning broadly. 

When | finally cashed in my chips, the guy asked, “Do 
you like this game?” 

“| love it," | told him. “Do you ever play it?” 

"| invented it,” he said. 

It turned out I'd never 
encountered 7 Card Thrill 
before because this was 
the only table in the world 
where it was being played. 
Henry Lo, my new friend, 
was an accounting school 
dropout from south Philadel- 
phia with a heavy Vietnamese 
accent and an affable man- 
ner. He was so bright-faced 
and rapid-fire, in fact, that 
he seemed to be starring in 
his own private infomercial. 
He had concocted the game 
three years earlier, he ex- 
plained over a drink that he 
barely touched, and then 
tested it briefly at Sunset 
Station casino in Henderson, 
Nevada. After going through 
several versions and $50,000 
for lawyers, patents, table 
designs and fees for the 
independent game analyst 
required by the gaming com- 
mission, he'd finally talked 
the Sahara into taking a 
flier. "But the table is open 
only on weekends," he said 
"And look where it is—be- 
hind the bar, where there's 
no traffic." 

Still, he was excited to get 
a shot, however limited. 
"First | was a blackjack play- 
er," he told me, "but that 
game makes me nervous. It's 


EXCITING! RELAXING! ENJOYABLE! It was all true, but Lo was having 
flashbacks: Somebody was screwing up his hand again. 
б 


| guess | had always known that someone has to invent casino 
games, but I'd always assumed it was some 17th century 
Frenchman at the court of Versailles. Lo was my first 
introduction to a fascinating new breed of gambler fostered by 
the casino boom of the past 15 years—a gambler who bets not 
just with money but with his career. The casino-game inventor, 
a profession that didn’t exist two decades ago, is strictly a 
long-shot player. The odds of his game breaking through are 
incredibly slim, perhaps 1,000 to one. But the payoff can be 
enormous—$10 million a year. 
And just as there are good 
poker players and bad poker 
Players, so there are success- 
ful game inventors and spec- 
tacularly unsuccessful ones. 
It's a veritable gold rush, with 
every dealer, player and cas 
ino hustler who's ever had a 
smidgen of an idea for a new 
game heading to the patent 
Office, trying to strike it rich. 
Most of them are only tinker- 
ing with an idea, but others, 
such as Lo, have an unset- 
tling gleam in their eye, like 
Walter Huston’s in The Trea- 
sure of the Sierra Madre. 
There are good reasons to 
be optimistic about the future 
of card games, even in slot- 
crazy American casinos. One 
recent weekend | motored 
to Atlantic City, where the 
Borgata, one of the newer, 
more lavish resorts on the 
Boardwalk, is rewriting history 
by loading the floor with table 
games. “It’s the most exciting 
place I've ever worked,” says 
Jim Rigot, the Borgata’s vice 
president of casino opera- 
tions. He is a 29-year casino 
veteran who oversees 139 
tables and more than 1,000 
gaming positions—an un- 
heard-of number in a town 
known for catering to little old 
ladies from Scranton. “We're 


Stressful, there are a lot of 
decisions, and a bad player 
at the table can screw up 


DEREK WEBB (TOP) IS THE BILL GATES OF CARD-GAME INVENTORS. 
HIS THREF CARD POKER BRINGS IN MORE THAN Sto MILLION A 
YEAR. HENRY LO (BOTTOM), AN ACCOUNTING SCHOOL DROPOUT, 
WANTS TO PULL OFF THE SAME FEAT WITH HIS OWN NEW GAME. 


actually taking out slot ma- 
chines to put in more tables— 
just the opposite of what 


your hand.” He grimaced and 

threw up his hands, as though 

the painful memories of Atlantic City yahoos splitting face 
cards were too numerous to recount. “| was always mad 
when | played that. So | switched to pai gow, where nobody 
can screw up my cards. It takes forever to play one hand, 
though. | hate the commission, and a tie goes to the dealer, 
so | decided to make my own game—like blackjack but not 
50 nerve-racking, and faster than pai gow. My game is more 
relaxing.” Lo beamed and his pupils enlarged as he raved 
on, a man possessed. 

That was three years ago; for one night we had made 7 
Card Thrill the hip game at the Sahara. But when | returned 
the following night, Uten was standing there again, staring 
into space, her cards fanned and untouched. Lo was there 
too, passing out his 7 Card Thrill rules, which read simPLEt 


everyone else is doing. The 
demand is clearly there.” 

“What we discovered,” says Larry Mullin, the Borgata's 
executive vice president, “is that table games declined in 
Atlantic City in the past 10 years because players were so 
discriminating that they left here and went to Connecticut ог 
Vegas. We started catering to them, and they came back. If 
you sit down at a table at the Borgata, you'll get a premium 
import beer in a bottle. It may sound like a small thing but 
not if you're accustomed to getting ап Old Milwaukee in a 
cup. The table-games player has more money, is younger 
and expects a lot more.” 

The economics are not hard to figure out. The average 
bus customer to Atlantic City has a $40 gambling budget 
If he can find a $10 blackjack table—and he won't on 
weekends at the Borgata, which (continued on page 80) 


“Big hats—big guns—et cetera!” 


THE SOPHISTICATED SUMMER DRILL 


Ingredients: four of the world's finest chefs, four sizzling summer recipes, one 


backyard and you. Season with liquor and beautiful women to taste 


By Hent Black 


ummer is upon us in full force, and with it comes 

the instinct to cut loose and indulge yourself. It's 

time for icy cocktails, gorgeous women and out- 

door dining. Unlike the winter party season, when 

hosts blow the dust off their fine china and crystal, 

summer means cooking over charcoal. Meals are 

served on paper plates, drinks in plastic cups. And 

in lieu of napkins, there's always a garden hose. 

This summer, why not try something special? 

Just because you're cooking outdoors doesn't mcan 

your creations should fail to weaken a woman's knees. 

Good company aside, the soul of a party can always be 

sipped from a glass or stuck with a fork—and a grilled 

meal can be as sophisticated and ambitious as anything 
you would serve on Christmas Eve. 

“The goal in grilling is to 
excite the flavors so you can 
really taste them," says Eric 
Ripert, the 39-year-old exec- 
utive chef of Le Bernardin, 
which the Zagat guide has 
voted the restaurant with the 
top food in New York City 
four years in a row. Ripert 
himself won the 2003 James 
Beard award for outstand- 
ing chef in the U.S., which 
is kind of like winning an 
Oscar for best performance 
in a kitchen. "You must find 
the best ingredients—the 
freshest fish, the best toma- 
toes,” he adds. 

Good advice indeed, and 
there's more where that came 
from. To help turn your 
summer fete into a four-star 
feast, PLAYBOY visited the 
kitchens of four New York 
chefs, some of the finest 
cooks in North America, and 
asked each of them to pre- 
pare one signature dish 


Ripert, Tom Colicchio of Gramercy Tavern and Craft, 
Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit and Riingo, and David 
Waltuck of the inimitable Chanterelle. We asked them to 
prepare dishes that would appeal to seafood lovers, 
steak freaks and everyone in between. While their offer- 
ings vary wildly, the chefs are unanimous in their 
approach to outdoor cooking. 

For starters, avoid the inferno at all costs. “The minute 
you put anything over an open flame,” says Colicchio, 
“you're going to get a tough, dry exterior and an 
uncooked center with a charred taste. The trick is to sear 
over high heat and then move your food to a cooler part 
of the grill to finish cooking.” 

Another steadfast rule: Prepare ahead of time. A good 
portion of the recipes that follow—Samuelsson's summer 
vegetables, Ripert's yogurt 
sauce, Waltuck's duck-fat 
béarnaise and Colicchio's clas- 
sic bordelaise—can be made 
well before your guests arrive. 
The last thing you want is to 
let them see you sweat, slic- 
ing and scorching in a panic 
when you should be clinking 
cocktail glasses and tending 
to their whims. And God for- 
bid you should run out of 
booze. Always keep the bar 
properly stocked. 

Last but never least, make 
sure that you have a great 
time. The party's vibe starts 
with you, the host. Whether 
you're entertaining two doz- 
en guests or just one, you 
might as well indulge your 
every desire: cocktails, wom- 
en, music, sunshine and 
some plates of fantastic sum- 
mer fare—four examples of 
which we're serving on the 
next two pages. They're a 
little more time-consuming 


using a grill—the kind of 
fare they would serve at 
their own backyard party. 
The distinguished cast: 


Our lineup of top chefs, photogrophed while working the grill 
in their Monhatton kitchens (clockwise from top left): Morcus 
Samuelsson ot Aquovit, Eric Ripert ot Le Bernordin, Tom Colic- 
chio ot Gromercy Tovern and David Waltuck ot Chonterelle. 


PHOTOGRAPHY EY JAMES IMBROGNO ANO NICK CAROILLICCHIO 


than your average cheese- 
burger, but the payoff is 
worth it. Feast your eyes and 
your stomach will follow. 


77 


78 


MARCUS 
SAMUELSSON 
AQUAVIT 
AND RIINGO 


You know you're in for an 
experience the moment 
you enter the dining room 
of Aquavit, just across the 
street from the Museum of 
Modern Art. The huge six- 
story atrium 15 a converted 
townhouse that once be- 
longed to Nelson Rocke- 
feller. With a garden, a 
waterfall and a one-of-a- 
kind menu, it has an atmos- 
phere that was made for 
impressing your girlfriend. 
Though Aquavit is her- 
alded as America’s premier 
Scandinavian restaurant, its 
menu isa United Nations of 
flavors. Chef Samuelsson, 
33, was born in Ethiopia, 
raised in Sweden and 
trained in France at Georges 
Blanc (which rates three 
Michelin stars). He brings 
ali those influences to the 
table (example: his warm 
beef carpaccio served in 
mushroom tea). Ringo, his 
new ultra-chic restaurant 
at New York’s Alex hotel, 
takes the experience in a 
different direction, adding 
Japanese flavors to its menu 
and its elegant interior. 
How does Samuelsson 
define the essence of grill- 
ing? “There’s something 
primal about it—men cook- 
ing outdoors, the hunters 
gathered around the fire.” 
His chicken dish, however, 
is anything but primitive. 
Exquisite is more the word 


*Grilled Chicken 
and Summer Vegetables 
(Serves 6) 


2 whole chickens 

2 eggplants, cut into 2-inch 
cubes 

6 scallions 

8 cloves garlic 

4 shallots, cut in half 

1 cup pine nuts 

1 cup chopped arugula 

1 cup chopped spinach 


Marinade 

1 cup olive oil 

1 сир soy sauce 

1 cup balsamic vinegar 

juice from six limes 

2 bird's-eye chilies, finely 
chopped 

4 sprigs thyme 

2 teaspoons sesame oil 

2 tablespoons miso paste 


Preheat oven (to 250”) and 
light grill. For the marinade, 
whisk olive oil with soy 
sauce and balsamic vinegar. 
Add lime juice, chilies and 
thyme, then sesame oil and 
miso. Brush marinade over 
chickens. Stuff chickens with 
eggplants, scallions, garli 
shallots and pine nuts. Ti 
chickens closed and bake for 
45 minutes, brushing with 
marinade and turning them 
every 10 minutes. Remove 
chickens and cut into legs, 
thighs and breasts. Brush 
with marinade (use a clean 
brush) and grill breasts four 
minutes on each side, legs 
and thighs eight minutes on 
each side. Sauté vegetables 
for five minutes or so, then 
toss with arugula and 
spinach. Serve on the side. 


ERIC RIPERT—LE BERNARDIN 


Among gourmands with pockets full of money, there may 
be no hotter seat in New York than at a table at Le 
Bernardin. Known for its religious reverence for seafood, 
this is where you go to experience classic service and the 
cuisine of Ripert. Raised in Andorra, on the border 
between Spain and France, Ripert came of age in the exclu- 
sive kitchens of Paris before arriving at Le Bernardin in 
1991. Critics were soon raving about his sea scallops with 
foie gras and roasted tournedos of monkfish. 

When cooking outdoors at his summer house, Ripert 
lays black slate over the grill. The slate crisps the outside of 
a piece of fish while keeping it from drying out. “When you 
grill tuna or swordfish, the steak should be no more than 
three fourths of an inch thick,” he advises. “Otherwise the 
crust will become too dry by the time the middle is warm.” 


*Seared Tuna Kebabs With Yogurt Sauce 
(Serves 4) 


1 pound tuna steak, cut into I-inch cubes 

2 red peppers, seeded, cut into 1-inch pieces 

2 yellow peppers, seeded, cut into 1-inch pieces 
2 medium zucchini, cut into 1-inch cubes 

1 red onion, cut into 1-inch pieces 

2 tablespoons herbes de Provence 

salt and pepper 

olive oil 


Yogurt Sauce 

1 cup plain yogurt 

1 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced 
1 clove garlic, minced 

1 tablespoon chopped chives 

juice of 1 lemon 

salt and pepper 


Light the grill and lay the slate over it. While it heats, make 
your sauce. Combine yogurt, cucumber, garlic, chives and 
lemon juice in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper, and set 
aside. In a medium saucepan of boiling salted water, blanch 
peppers, zucchini and onion for one minute. Drain in а colan- 
der and refresh with cold water. Thread tuna and vegetables 
оп metal skewers and season with salt, pepper and herbes 
de Provence. Smear oil lightly on the hot slate. Sear kebabs 
evenly for one to two minutes on each side. Transfer to a 
plate, and serve yogurt sauce on the side or dribbled on top. 


DAVID WALTUCK 
CHANTERELLE 


What is dining at Chan- 
terelle like? Perhaps its 
essence is best captured 
by a New York Times review- 
er who gleefully sampled 
the menu: “Virtually еу- 
erything I've tasted has 
been satisfying. Pillows of 
ravioli stuffed with pota- 
toes come with both white 
and black truffles. A ter- 
rine of foie gras is laced 
with the sweetness of 
white raisins, edged with 
the heat of black pepper- 
corns.” Hungry yet? 

Waltuck, 49, wasn't 
flaunting a rarefied pedi- 
gree in 1979 when he 
opened Chanterelle, a bas- 
tion of elegance, roman- 
ticism and imaginative 
French cuisine. Born and 
bred in the Bronx, he 
opened Chanterelle when 
he was just 24—an impres- 
sive feat, considering that 
his restaurant has twice 
earned four stars from The 
New York Times. 

His duck recipe is the 
most ambitious dish from 
our group of experts—and 
that translates to serious 
extravagance. Hey, you 
have to pay to play. 


«Duck Mixed Grill 

With Duck-Fat Béarnaise 
(Serves 6. All things duck are 
available at dartagnan.com.) 


2 duck breasts, separated 
(remove two thirds of the fat 
from breast) 

6 duck sausages 

3 duck-leg confits (separate 
legs from thighs) 

6 half-inch-thick pieces of foie 
gras, about 1 ounce each 

flour 


Duck-Fat Béarnaise 

/ Cup tarragon vinegar 

У cup dry white wine 

2 tablespoons finely chopped 
shallots 

Y cup coarsely chopped fresh 
tarragon 

1 tablespoon whole black 
peppercorns 

3 egg yolks 

ЗА cup rendered duck fat 

salt and pepper 


Combine vinegar, white wine, 
shallots, most of the tarragon 
(save two tablespoons for 
later) and pepper in a sauce 
pot. Bring to a boil and reduce 
by two thirds, then strain. Ina 
metal mixing bowl combine the 
reduction and egg yolks; whisk 
over a pot of simmering water 
until frothy and hot to the 
touch. Eggs must be cooked but 
not curdled. Meanwhile, heat 
duck fat; it should be very 
warm but not boiling hot. 
Remove from heat, and whisk 
duck fat gradually into eggs. 
You should end up with a thick, 
pourable sauce. If it gets too 
thick, add a little hot water. 
Season with salt and pepper to 
taste and add reserved tarragon. 
Keep in a warm place—not too 
hot or sauce will curdle, not too 
cool or it will solidify. 

Опа grill (not too hot), cook 
duck breasts until rare and the 
sausages for about five to 10 
minutes, flipping and moving 
the breasts to avoid flare-ups. 
Duck confits need only to be 
crisped on the skin side and 
reheated. Last thing on the 
grill: the foie gras. Dust lightly 
with flour and grill quickly so 
it cooks rare. Plate one piece 
foie gras, four slices duck 
breast, one sausage and one 
piece confit per person. 
Drizzle on duck-fat béarnaise. 
Grilled asparagus is a good 
accompaniment, as are 
potatoes fried in duck fat. 


TOM COLICCHIO 
GRAMERCY TAVERN AND CRAFT 


Few restaurants in the world are as perfectly romantic 
as Gramercy Tavern. In the mood for a casual date? 
The bar up front melds fine dining with a relaxed, 
cornucopia-themed decor. Feeling a bit more ambi- 
tious? The dining room in back is a shrine to every- 
thing edible. Think salt-baked salmon with pea shoots 
and rhubarb, or fondue of Maine crab with fava bean 
puree. Chef Colicchio, 41, opened Gramercy Tavern 
in 1994, and Craft (around the corner) and Crafisteak 
(in Las Vegas) more recently. One taste of his porter- 
house with bordelaise and you'll know why he was one 
of five nominees for this year’s James Beard award for 
outstanding chef in America. 


«Porterhouse Steak With Bordelaise Sauce 
(Serves 4) 


2 porterhouse steaks, 2 inches thick 
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper 


Bordelaise Sauce 

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 

1 small yellow onion, peeled and chopped 
1 small carrot, peeled and chopped 

1 stalk celery, chopped 

3 cups cremini mushrooms, chopped 
1 cup shallots, chopped 

1 bottle dry red wine 

3 quarts veal stock 

1 bunch thyme 

kosher salt and freshly ground pepper 


Begin with the sauce. Heat oil in a large saucepan 
over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, 
mushrooms and shallots. Cook until vegetables soften 
and begin to brown, about 1S minutes. Add wine and 
reduce until the pan is almost dry, about 25 minutes. 
Add stock, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer, 
skimming frequently until sauce is thick enough to 
coat the back of а spoon, at least one hour. Strain 
sauce through a fine colander, add thyme, and season 
with salt and pepper. Set aside to steep. 

Heat up your grill. Season steak on both sides with 
salt and pepper. Grill each side for about five minutes 
for medium rare. Transfer steaks to a plate and allow 
to rest in a warm place for five to 10 minutes. Mean- 
while, remove thyme from sauce and warm the sauce 
over low heat. Slice steak and serve with sauce. 


PLAYBOY 


80 


GAME MASTERS continued fron page 74) 


“New table games are the future. If we don't 
constantly create new games, casinos will die.” 


has $25-minimum tables because of the 
bigger crowds—he can lose it all in four 
bets. He's going to head for the nickel 
slots instead. The table-games player 
arrives by car and tends to be good for 
$500 or more. It’s the difference be- 
tween fans in the bleachers and season 
ticket holders in box seats. And the Bor- 
gata has captured the box-seats market. 

The problem for people like Lo is 
that casinos have captured that market 
so completely, they don't need any new 
games. The Borgata's table mix is 69 
blackjack, 17 roulette, 14 craps, 11 
Three Card Poker, five mini-baccarat, 
four pai gow poker, four Spanish 21, 
four Let It Ride, four Caribbean Stud 
Poker, three pai gow tiles, two baccarat, 
one big six and only one new game: 
Four Card Poker, recently launched by 
Shuffle Master Gaming. “I'm very 
much interested in any new product 
that comes along,” says Rigot when 
asked about the paucity of new games. 
“My office is full of files bulging with 
new games. The problem, from our 
point of view, is that table games are 
Just so labor intensive. For each new 
product we have to train the dealers, 
the supervisors, the pit managers, the 
shift managers, the surveillance guys 
and the gaming-commission staff. The 
training can take 12 weeks. Is it worth 
my time, the effort, all those resources? 
Especially when, conversely, a new slot 
machine requires no training at all.” 

“But new table games are the future,” 
counters Barry Morris, executive vice 
president at Caesars Indiana, the larg- 
est riverboat casino in the world. “If we 
don’t constantly create new table games, 
casinos as we know them will die.” 

“Lo find out who the true king oftable- 
game inventors is, I went to Morris, 
because he is an exception among 
casino execs. He's British, and the Brits 
love cards. Morris retired from a punk 
band in the late 1970s (“I had a safety 
pin through my nose, a chain attached 
to my ear and bright orange hair—25 
years ago 1 would have been spitting 
on you!”) to become a baccarat and 
blackjack dealer at “seedy sawdust joints” 
in the U_K. He then became a casino 
host at Paradise Island in the Bahamas, 
looking after jet-setters for Merv Grif- 
fin's Resorts International. In 1993 he 
jumped to Mississippi after gambling 
opened up there and quickly helped 
turn the state into the leading labora- 
tory for new table games in America. 

The 20th century saw so few new 


games in part because the four that were 
popular in Nevada in 1931—the year 
gambling was legalized there—are the 
same four games that form the core of 
all American casino pits today: blackjack, 
craps, roulette and baccarat. Las Vegas 
had no reason to change because most 
ofits customers were tourists who visited 
infrequently and were unlikely to get 
burned out on any particular game. But 
by 1995 almost every American lived 
within half a day's drive of a casino and 
the market was becoming saturated. 
The time was ripe for new sensations. 
Barry Morris's big score: Three 
Card Poker, introduced at the Grand 
Casino in Gulfport, Mississippi when 
he was vice president of table games 
there. lt is now the fastest-growing 
proprietary game in the world. “Derek 
Webb invented that game, and Derek 
and I made that game happen,” says 
Morris. “Derek Webb is your man.” 


I'm in а barn-shaped casino set amid 
the bleak cotton fields of northern 
Mississippi, trying to hunt down Derek 
Webb. I eventually find him banging 
on the door of the Bally's Casino steak- 
house, irritated that it hasn't opened оп 
time. He's been working nonstop on 
his latest game, something called 
2-2-1, and he's doing it in a place about 
as far from Vegas or Atlantic City as you 
can get—Tunica, Mississippi, home to 10 
riverboat casinos. The one Webb has 
chosen is small even by Tunica stan- 
dards. Most of its patrons are elderly 
players who graze at the buffet and then 
while away a few hours at the slots before 
climbing back into their RV or boarding 
a bus to West Memphis, Arkansas. 

“We do it here,” says Webb, “so that if 
we fail nobody knows about it.” The 
king of table games turns out to be re- 
markably unprepossessing. He could 
blend easily into any crowd, with his del- 
icate accountant's glasses, middle-class 
Midlands accent (he's from Derby, U.K., 
where his trade-unionist father worked 
in the Rolls-Royce factory) and promi- 
nent ears on a frank, slightly frowning 
face that reminds one of a character in a 
Hogarth print. He looks like the guy 
sitting next to you at the blackjack table 
who is polite, efficient and sociable but 
who just might be a card counter. 

As he moves among the day-trippers 
and retirees, usually accompanied by his 
elegant wife, Hannah O'Donnell, he 
could pass for just another tourist wait- 


ing for the early-bird buffet. No one 
would ever know that his income this 
year from Three Card Poker royalties in 
the U.K. alone will be about $1.4 million. 

Webb introduces himself to a crew of 
overworked dealers who have gath- 
ered at a converted blackjack table 
even though most of them have just 
come off an eight-hour shift and would 
rather be heading for their cars than 
chugging more caffeine to stay alert. 
Webb is in the dealer's position, and 
the dealers are in the players’ seats. 

“We have a new game for you!” Webb 
says, and they nod and smile agreeably. 
"It's called Triple-Hand Poker on the 
sign, but we call it 2-2-1. I represent the 
same company that brought you Three 
Card Poker and 21+3, so we've already 
had two winners for you, and we think 
you'll make this another one for us.” 

Webb is being either modest or cagey 
in using the royal we. When he takes a 
break later in the day, а corpulent deal- 
er sidles up to him and asks, “So who did 
you say invented Three Card Poker?” 

Webb flashes a sheepish grin. 

“You did? You did it yourself?” The 
dealer rises from his chair and extends 
his hand. “You da man!” 

Webb learned his trade in the smoky 
chaos of British card casinos, which tend 
to be so skanky that most women won't 
even go inside. There's no such thing as 
a social gambler in a British casino; 
everyone is there for greed and greed 
alone, and poker players are especially 
mercenary types. Webb made his living 
in places like that for 15 years. “I wasn't 
a great poker player,” he says, “but I was 
a goodish player. It's all a matter of what 
the competition is, and I was better than 
the opposition in Derby. I could play 
three times a week with a £50 buy-in and 
make £8,000 a night. When I started 
playing in the States it was harder. The 
higher the stakes, the higher the level of 
competence and the less potential for 
things happening—the chance to out- 
play somebody is not available as often.” 

Webb is a throwback, one of those 
professional gamblers from the days of 
Nick the Greek and Amarillo Slim, who 
never had a real job and spent most of 
his life working his way from table to 
table, seeking the ultimate game in 
which the players were soft and the 
money was huge. From 1979 to 1994 
Webb played seven-card stud, hold ‘em 
and Omaha in Derby. London, Las Ve- 
gas and other international gambling 
centers. Then he had the epiphany that 
all card players talk about. He was play- 
ing hold "em at the old Binion's Horse- 
shoe in Vegas; in a two-man showdown 
with an Irishman he'd known from way 
back, he lost the $50,000 pot ona single 
hand. It wasn't the largest he'd ever 
lost, but professional poker players, like 

(continued on page 138) 


“He says it’s an old Venetian tradition that the gondolier 
always gets his share.” 


ut 


fiction by T.C. BOYLE 


HOW DO YOU ESCAPE A DEAD- 
END JOB AND LIFE AT HOME? 
FIND THE RIGHT FRIENDS 


y childhood wasn't exactly ideal, and | 
mention it here not as an excuse but 
as a point of reference. For the record, 
both my parents drank heavily, and in 
the early days, before my father gave 
up and withered away somewhere 
deep in the upright shell of himself, 
there was shouting, there were accu- 
sations, tears, violence. And smoke. 
The house was a factory of smoke, his 
two packs a day of Camels challeng- 
ing the output of her two packs of 
Marlboros. | spent a lot of time out- 
side. | ran with the kids in the neigh- 
borhood, the athletic ones when | was 
younger, the sly and disaffected as | 
came into my teens, and after an indif- 
ferent career at an indifferent college, 
1 came back home to live rent-free in 
my childhood room in the attic as the 
rancor simmered below me and the 
smoke rose through the floorboards 
and seeped in around the door frame. 

After a fierce and protracted strug- 
gle, | landed a job teaching eighth- 
grade English in a ghetto school, 
though I hadn't taken any of the re- 
quired courses and had no intention 
of doing so. That job saved my life. 
Literally. Teaching, especially in a 
school as desperate as this, was con- 
sidered vital to the national security, 
and it got me a deferment two weeks 
short of the date | was to report for 
induction into the U.S. Army, with 
Vietnam vivid on the horizon. All well 
and fine. | had a job. And a routine. | 
got up early each morning, though it 


PAINTING BY PHIL HALE 


PLAYBOY 


маза strain, showered, put on a tie and 
introspectively chewed Sugar Pops in 
the car on the way to work. I ate lunch 
out of a brown paper bag. Nights I 
went straight to my room to play 
records and hammer away at my захо- 
phone and vocals. 

Then a day came—drizzling, cold, the 
wet skin of dead leaves on the pavement 
and nothing happening anywhere in the 
world, absolutely nothing—when I was 
in the local record store, turning over 
albums to study the bright glare of the 
product and skim the liner notes, killing 
time till the movie started in the mall. 
Something with a monumental bass line 
was playing over the speakers, some- 
thing slow, delicious, full of hooks and 
grooves and that steamroller bass, and 
when I looked up vacanıly to appreciate 
it I found I was looking into the face of a 
guy I recalled vaguely from high school. 

I saw in a glance he'd adopted the 
same look I had—greasy suede jacket, 
bell-bottoms and Dingo boots, his hair 
gone long over the collar in back, the 
shadowy beginnings of a mustache— 
and that was all it took. "Aren't 
you...Cole?” I said. “Cole, right?” And 
there he was, wrapping my hand in a 
cryptic soul shake, pronouncing my 
name without hesitation. We stood 
there catching up while people drifted 
by us and the bass pounded through 
the speakers. Where had he been? 
Korea, in the Army. Living with his 
own little mama-san, smoking opium 
every night till he couldn't feel the floor 
under his futon. And I was a teacher 
now, huh? What a gas. And should he 
start calling me professor, or what? 

We must have talked for halfan hour 
or so, the conversation ranging from 
people we knew in common to bands, 
drugs and girls we'd hungered for in 
school, until he said, “So what you 
doing tonight? Later, I mean.” 

I was ashamed to tell him I was plan- 
ning on taking in a movie alone, so I 


just shrugged. “I don't know. Go 


home, 1 guess, and listen to records.” 

“Where you living?” 

Another shrug, as if to show it was 
nothing, a temporary arrangement tll 
I could get on my feet, find my own 
place and begin my real life, the one 
I'd been apprenticing for all these 
years: "My parents'." 

Cole said nothing. Just gave me a 
numb look. "Yeah," he said, after a 
moment, ^I hear you. But listen, you 
wart to go out, drive around, smoke a 
number? You smoke, right?" 

1 did. Or I had. But I bad no con- 
nection, no stash of my own, no pri- 
vacy. "Yeah," I said, "sounds good." 

“I might know where there's a 
party,” he said, letting his cold blue 
eyes sweep the store as if the party 
might materialize in the far corner. 


"Ora bar," hesaid, coming back to me. 
“I know this bar——" 


I was late for homeroom in the morn- 
ing. It mattered in sorne obscure way— 
in the long run, that is, because funding 
was linked to attendance, and some- 
body had to be there to check off the 
names each morning—but the school 
was in such an advanced state of chaos 1 
don't know ifanyone even noticed. Not 
the first time, anyway. But homeroom 
was the least of my worries—it was mer- 
cifully brief, and no one was expected 
to do anything other than merely exist 
for the space of 10 minutes. The rest of 
the slate was the trial, one swollen class 
after another shuffling into the room, 
hating school, hating culture, hating 
me, and I hated them in turn because 
they were brainless and uniform and 
they didn't understand me at all. I was 
just like them, couldn't they see that? I 
was no oppressor, no tool of the ruling 
class but an authentic rebel, 21 years 
old and struggling mightily to grow a 


I saw in a glance he'd 
adopted the same look I 
had—greasy suede jacket, 
bell-bottoms and Dingo 
boots, his hair gone long 
over the collar in back. 


mustache because Ringo Starr had one 
and George Harrison and Eric Clapton 
and just about anybody else staring out 
at you from the front cover of a record 
album. But none of that mattered. I was 
the teacher, they were the students. 
Those were our roles, and they were as 
fixed and mutually exclusive as they'd 
been in my day, in my parents’ day, in 
George Washington's day for all I knew. 

From the minute the bell rang, the 
rebellion began to simmer. Two or 
three times a period it would break out 
in a riot and I would find myself con- 
fronting some wired, rangy semi- 
lunatic who'd been left back twice and 
at 16 already had his own mustache 
grown іп а thick as fur, and there went 
the boundaries in a hard wash ofthreat 
and violence. Usually I'd manage to 
get the offender out in the hall, away 
from the eyes of the mob, and if the 
occasion called for it, I would throw 
him against the wall, tear his shirt and 
use the precise language of the streets 
to let him know in excruciating detail 
just who was the one with the most at 


stake here. A minute later we'd return 
to the room, the victor and the van- 
quished, and the rest of them would feel 
something akin to awe for about 10 min- 
utes, and then it would all unwind арай 

Stress. That's what I'm talking about. 
One of the other new teachers—he 
looked to be 30 or so, without taste or 
style,a drudge who'd been through half 
a dozen schools already—used to get so 
worked up he'd have to dash into the 
lavatory and vomit between classes, and 
there was no conquering that smell, not 
even with a fistful of breath mints. The 
students knew it, and they came at him 
like hyenas piling on a corpse. He lasted 
a month, maybe less. This wasn't peda- 
gogy—it was survival. Still, everybody 
got paid and was free to go home when 
the bell rang at the end of the day, and 
some of them—some of us—even got to 
avoid the real combat zone, the one they 
showed in living color each night on the 
evening news. 


When I got home that afternoon Cole 
was waiting for me. He was parked out 
front of my house in his mother's VW 
Bug, a cigarette clamped between his 
teeth as he beat at the dashboard with a 
pair of drumsticks, the radio cranked up 
high. I could make out the seething 
churn of his shoulders and the rhythmic 
bob of his head through the oval win- 
dow set in the back of the Bug, the sticks 
flashing white, the car rocking on its 
springs, and when I killed the engine of 
my own car—a 1955 Pontiac that had 
once been blue but was piebald now with 
whitish patches of blistered paint—I 
could hear the music even through the 
safety glass of the rolled-up window. 
“Magic Carpet Ride,” that was the song, 
with its insistent bass and nagging vocal, 
a tune you couldn't escape on AM radio, 
and there were worse, plenty worse. 

My first impulse was to get out of the 
car and slide in beside him—here was 
adventure, liberation, a second consecu- 
tive night on the town—but then I 
thought better of it. I was dressed in my 
school clothes—dress pants I wouldn't. 
wish on a corpse, button-down shirt and 
ue, brown corduroy sport coat —and my 
hair was slicked down so tight to my 
scalp it looked as if it had been painted 
on, a style Га adopted to disguise the 
length and shagginess of it toward the 
end of appeasing the purse-mouthed 
principal and preserving my job. And 
life. But I couldn't let Cole see me like 
this—what would he think? I studied the 
back of the Bug a moment, waiting for 
his eyes to leap to the rearview mirror, 
but he was absorbed, oblivious, stoned 
no doubt—and I wanted to be stoned 
too, share the sacrament, shake it out. 
But not like this, not in these clothes. 

(continued on page 141) 


“We worked our abs last night. What say we work our pecs tonight.” 


86 


Miss August 
jumps 
from Texas 
to the silver 
screen 


ilar Lastra does not take her good fortune for grant- 
ed. Although the 23-year-old actress is excited to discuss her 
forthcoming movie roles, she first recalls how she’s come such 
a long way from her home in San Antonio. “My family was so 
poor that my sisters and 1 wore boys’ hand-me-downs,” she 
says. “My mother and father divorced when I was young. My 
father lives in Spain, along with most of my extended family. 
We came from nothing, so I'm grateful now when I look at 
everything I have.” A self-described bookworm in high school 
who “tried to rebel and be cool,” Pilar couldn't deceive her 
mother without feeling guilty. “I'd sneak out of the house at 
night, but I would leave a note for my mom so she could con- 
tact me. I didn't want her to worry. I never wanted to cause 
trouble. 1 пеуег got caught, thank God. I can’t imagine my 
mom crashing a party or calling and going, ‘Is my daughter 
there? You guys aren't drinking, are you? ” 

Miss August considered a variety of careers before commit- 
ting to acting. “One day I wanted to be a brain surgeon, the 
next a bus driver, then a teacher, then an undercover agent,” 
she says. “I decided to pursue acting because I can pretend to 
do all those things.” Pilar's first role was in a SeaWorld com- 
mercial. “J had to ride a roller coaster 25 times іп a row and 
still look excited after take 25,” she says. After moving to Los 
Angeles she shot more commercials and appeared on Days of 
Our Lives. “1 would like a big-box-office movie in my future, 
but more than that I want a role that requires me to be 
extremely brave,” she says. To build her fortitude Pilar has 
racked up a few fearless adventures: “When 1 was 19 I packed 
my саг and took off across the country. I'd also like to go to 
Spain. I've never been there, but I hear the partying is out of 
control. 1 would rather fall on my face a thousand times than 
live my life thinking, What if? 

While Pilar says she used to be anti-nudity, she changed her 
mind when PLAYBOY made her an offer. “I figured I should do 
nudity the right way, not in some cheesy, raunchy film,” she 
says. Next up? Roles in Hollywood PI. and opposite Gary Busey 
in the cage-fighting flick No Rules. “I have a bitch-fighting scene 
in No Rules," she says. "In real life 1 talk trash, but I never bite. 
I wouldn't know how. Га probably start crying.” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


When she's not pulling hair in catfights, Pilar is a tal- 
ented singer-songwriter who's looking for a writing 
partner. “I don't play a musical instrument, so it's hard 
for me to finish a melody,” she says. “I've written songs 
that I don't hear myself singing, though someone else 
could knock them out of the park. I'd like to find some- 
one who understands my energy flow.” Meeting would- 
be partners was a snap when she leased out apartments, 
an occupation that doubled as her own private dating 
service. “For a while I met all my boyfriends through 
that job,” she says. “I could do a background check, see 
if they had a criminal history and discover who was in 
debt. If one said he was a musician, Га be like, 'Sold" " 
Even though she had keys to all her tenants’ pads, Pilar 
swears she never snooped. Except for one time, on 
Valentine's Day. “I let myself into my boyfriend's apart- 
ment to leave candles, chocolate and hearts leading into 
the bedroom,” she says. “It was great.” 


“It’s okay to talk to ot 
hen we're out toge 
youre still coming home wii 


See more of Miss August at cyber.playboy.com. 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


NAME: “lax Nee 
BUST: — ZA warst. 25 — urs: 24 
нетснт: 6) 5 M2" wern: MO 
BIRTH DATE: MAS LA BIRTHPLACE: NMOS SECA OAR Ca o 
AMBITIONS Ia xg P. оссе СС. А техекхексен З ave oeopiz Gazl 
К 2. -— p : 
TURN- OSA esos, Codec , ү» Sense DE hoe 
Musical zer is Glas = Qui. 
TURNOFFS ЫА ык е оха tS saa ue Sorts Hace Aime Voc oe. 
Я а за A So Voss № coezxecs Ska pues Y 
JOBS BEFORE I STARTED ACTING: 2px Mexseex , NE ES ex. bag. Owe 
Day + كەلە‎ Despeszie Erm Xo SeW per Cor muy Toon! 
ACTRESS I ADMIRE AND WHY: et, Menace ~ \ feel = №25 
-ae Sore. Сара Brave noice io ner Career - 
FAVORITE SUMMER ACTIVITIES: Sea, An Sag lane 3 Sanos 
DES A Ч ТИ 


MOVIES I WISH I'D STARRED тн: NNisSior® : inges ioe, оС, 


Serre “еге Deo 


SES ASS SS Rieorvere. BY ада V ENE 


My NEM RA POY 


ARS RAS We NOK aie - Qa’ 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


А man told his friend, “I'm breaking up with 
Carol.” 

The friend asked, “What did she do?” 

The man replied, “She told me she was 
bisexual.” 

The guy said, “That sounds pretty hot. 
What's the problem?" 


“What's the problem?” the man asked. 
“Who wants to fuck just twice a year?” 


А newborn baby weighed in at 10 pounds. His 
body weighed five pounds, and his balls 
weighed five pounds. The hospital staff didn't 
know what to make of his condition. When the 
chief surgeon saw the crowd around the 
infant, he asked if there was a problem. A 
nurse said, “We don't know what to do with 
this baby boy.” 

‘The surgeon said, “You should put him into 
a mental institution. 

“Why?” another nurse asked. 

The surgeon said, “Isn't it obvious? He's 
half nuts.” 


The U.S. Postal Service issued a George W. 
Bush stamp. It soon discovered that the 
stamps were not sticking to envelopes, so it 
established a commission to investigate the 
matter, The commission reported the follow- 
ing findings: 

1. The stamps met all regulations. 

2. Nothing was wrong with the adhesive. 

3. People were just spitting on the wrong side. 


В. оное доке or THE MONTH: A blonde per- 
suaded her husband to let her come along on 
his hunting trip. When they were deep in the 
woods, he collapsed. She took out her cell 
phone and Sted ol 1. “I think my husband is 
dead,” she said. “What should I do?” 

The operator said, “Calm down. First, let's 
make sure he's dead.” 

The operator heard a gunshot. Then the 
blonde got back on the phone and said, “Okay. 
Now what?” 


According to an article in a women's maga- 
zine, a lady's sleeping position says a lot about 
her: Women who sleep on their side are sensi- 
tive, women who sleep on their stomach are 
competent, and women who sleep on their 
back with their ankles behind their ears are 


very popular. 


Р. лувоу cusssic A wealthy woman had a wild 
night out on the town with her friends. She 
awoke the next morning naked and suffering 
from a hangover, so she rang for her butler. 
“Jeeves,” she said, “I must have blacked out. 
i can't remember a thing about last night. 
How did I get to bed? 

“Well, madam,” he said, “I carried you up- 
Stairs and put you to bed.” 

"And my dress?” she asked. 
“It seemed a pity to wrinkle it,” he replied, 
“so I took it off and hung it up. 

“How did my underwear come off?” she 
asked. 

"I thought you might be uncomfortable, so I 
removed your bra and pantie 

She said, "I must have been tight.” 

“Only the first time, madam,” he replied. 


Two women were sitting in a doctor's waiting 
room. “I want a baby more than anything in 
the world,” the first woman said. “But I just 
can't get pregnant.” 

“I used to feel the same way,” the other 
woman said. “But then everything changed. 
Now I'm pregnant.” 

“You must tell me what you did,” the first 
woman said. 

“T went to a faith healer.” 

“But I've tried that,” she said. “My husband 
and I went to one for nearly a year, and it 
didn't help a bit.” 

The other woman smiled and whispered, 
“Try going alone next time.” 


What do you get when you cross Raggedy 
Ann with the Pillsbury Dough Boy? 
An ugly redhead with a yeast infection. 


How do asthmatic lesbians breathe? 
In snatches. 


Our Unabashed Dictionary defines same-sex 
marriage as what you get when homosexual 
lovers exchange wedding vows. 

Our Unabashed Dictionary defines some- 
sex marriage as what you get when heterosex- 
ual lovers exchange wedding vows. 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY, 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 is selected. Sorry, 
jokes cannot be returned. 


“Wow, Dad! Look at this great action figure!” 


99 


PLAYBOY’S 


NFL = 


| THE 2004 SEASON IS SHAPING UP TO BE ONE OF A KIND | | 


7 


(ат! Did you hear that? It wasn't 

the crunch of a blitzing linebacker 

inflicting a hit on a quarterback. It 
was the sound of a window of opportunity 
closing in the NFL. 

As football fans turn their attention away 
from clambakes and beach volleyball to 
matters of the gridiron, a few players and 
coaches are preparing for their moment of 
truth. More than in any recent season you'll 
see athletes doing the hustle with destiny in 
2004. Ir's put-up-or-shut-up time, and that 
means every game will be worth watching, 
even the ones involving Arizona. 

It starts with the Super Bowl-champion 
Patriots. Just when everyone was saying 
dynasties were dead in the NFL, the Pats 
went out and won two Super Bowls in three 
years. They begin this season riding a 15- 
game winning streak, three short of the 
record held by four different franchises. 
The Dolphins are one of those, and appro- 
priately enough, if the Pats break the record 
this year, it will happen at home against 
Miami in week five. 

By winning a second Super Bowl last year 
in Houston, Tom Brady and company have 
risen above the Pack. They’re now better 
than the Brett Favre-led Green Bay title 
teams and a notch below the John Elway-led 
Broncos. Another Super Bowl win this year 
would move the Patriots into а league with 
the elite teams of all time: Joe Montana's 
49ers, Troy Aikman's Cowboys and Terry 
Bradshaw's Steelers. The prospect of that 
alone makes this season a special one. 

If one guy is capable of interfering with a 


PLAYBOY'S PICKS 


AMERICAN FOOTBALL CONFERENCE 


INDIANAPOLIS 


NEW ENGLAND OVER 
| INDIANAPOLIS 


NATIONAL FOOTBALL CONFERENCE 


|ST. Louis, 
| DALLAS 


* SUPER BOWL Ж 
NEW ENGLAND OVER SEATTLE 


PLAYBOY'S 


NFL Pre 


Patriots dynasty, it’s Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, who 
also has a date with destiny this year. There’s no hotter place 
in sports than under center in the NFL. Succeed and you go 
to Disney World; fail and you go to the hospital. On paper, 
28-year-old Manning is 


in the Super Bowl, back when he was coach of the Giants. 
The Типа rebuilding projects with the Jets and Patriots were 
successful, but it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t gor that ring, 


especially in Texas. Former Parcells ргогё 


already one of the most 
productive passers in 
history. But to establish 
true greatness he has to 
win the big game—and 
more than once. Man- 
ning finally bagged a 
playoff game last season, 
but against New England 
in the AFC championship 
game he had thar deer- 
in-the-headlights look 
for which his detractors 
have always criticized 
him. Four interceptions 
later, his season was 
over. Manning's window 
of opportunity is begin- 
ning to close. In the 
NFL, one rough hit can 
end your career. 

The same can be said 
for the Eagles’ Donovan 
McNabb, 27, who has 
won the heart of every- 
one but Rush Limbaugh. 
McNabb’s Eagles have 
been on destiny's door- 
step for a while now and 
have lost the NEC title 
game at home for two 
straight years. With all- 
world wide receiver Ter- 
rell Owens to throw го, 
McNabb now has no 
more excuses, It’s pur 
up-or-shur-up time for 
him, too. 

History could also be 
made on the sidelines in 
2004. It’s been 14 sea- 


gé Bill Belichick has 
won four Super Bowls, 
two asa head coach (with 
the Pars), and is in posi- 
tion to eclipse his former 
mentor’s success. If Par- 
cells can win a title with 
Dallas—and the Cow- 
boys have added talent 
to their 10-6 squad of 
last vear—he'll be the 
first head coach го win а 
Super Bowl with two 
different teams. That 
would pur him in a 
league with Vince Lom- 
bardi. If he fails, you 
might find him in the 
next Levitra ad. 

There’s plenty more. 
Will the Falcons’ Michael 
Vick step up and morph 
from a great athlete into 
a championship-caliber 
quarterback? Will the 
Giants’ Jeremy Shockey 
finally zip the lip and live 
up to the hype? Can Joe 
Gibbs return from the 
grave and lead the tal 
ented Redskins back to 
the playoffs? 

There are a million sto- 
ries in an NEL season. In 
no other sport can an 
athlete achieve such hero- 
ism. At the same time, in 
no other sport can a hero 
become a has-been quite 
so quickly. Just ask Kurt 
Warner. Or the Tampa 
Bay Buccaneers. Did you 
catch that, Tom Brady? 


sons since Bill Parcells | clockwise from top: Patriots head coach Bill Belichick: Pats GB Tom Brady, | Peyton Manning? We're 
got the Gatorade shower | who has earned two Super Bowl MVPs in three seasons; the Colts’ Peyton all watching. 
Manning getting sacked by New England's Mike Vrabel in Indianapolis. 


Eî SOME FOOTBALL STATS YOU WON'T 
E FIND IN THE DAILIES THIS SEASON 


$230,000 


| THE 2004 preview y 


LISTED IN PROJECTED ORDER OF FINISH, OUR TEAM-BY-TEAM GUIDE TO 
THE WINNERS AND LOSERS ON THE ROAD TO SUPER BOWL XXXIX 


AFC East 


NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS 
SON: How do you top a 14-2 
— ж. терда season, 15 straight wns (counting һе play- 
offs) and а championship? OUTLOOK: Most 
of the 2003 squad returns, including Tom Brady. Ty Law, Wille 
McGinest, Tedy Bruschi, Deion Branch and Adam Vinatieri, The 
loss of run-stopping monster defensive tackle Ted Washington 
hurts, but 340-pound draft pick Vince Wilfork should fit right in 
on a defense that allowed the fewest points last year. The big 
news in New England: the arrival from Ihe Bengals of running 
back Corey Dillon, adisenchanted thue—not the ype of charac- 
ter guy that coach Bil Belichick typically covets. Will Dillon bring 
а rushing attack to New England. or will he be trouble? Tune in 
when the Pots take on Peyton Manning and the Colts in week 
one. CRYSTAL BALL: Brady and the Pats always make 


things interesting, winning тай biters week after week. Expect № 


more of the same ths season night up to the Super Bowl. 


MIAMI DOLPHINS 
E i: The 


Г 
Dolphins went 10 6 only to 9 
get shut out of the playoffs. 

That has to leave a bad taste 


<: Coach Dave Wannstedt 
has won 41 games in four years with the 
Dolphins, two more than Bil Belichick in 
New England. But he has won only one 
playcft game and has missed the post- 
season two years ina row. Foctballcrazed | 
Miani wil feel a sense of urgency his year, En 
The defense, third in the league in points allowed in 2003, should 
excel again, but will the offense? Receiver David Boston Б the big 
additon, әлі Ricky Willams is simply awesome. But а shakeup on 
the offensive line should have a bigger impact. CRYSTA 
BALL: Mami scary quarterback situation —eminenty abus- 
able Jay Fiedler and former Eagles backup AJ. Feeley — will tell 
you everything you need to know about Wannstedt 's job security. 


NEW YORK JETS 

4: OB 
SETS (ігі Pennington suffered 
a freak wrist injury during a preseason 
game and it was downhill from there. 
Record: 6-10. OUTLOOK: The 
offense could be one of the best in the 
league, depending on Pennington's abil- 
ity to deal with high expectations. The 
good news: He'll have a new target in 
receiver Justin McCareins, who'll com- 
plement emerging speedster Santana 
Moss. Curtis Martin rushed for 1,308 yards lastyear, but TI" 
age of 31 he may be slowing down. Free-agent safety Regge 
Tongue will delight New York Post headline writers and should 
improve an already decent defense. How critical ts a winning 
‘season in 2004? Unlike patient patriarch Leon Hess, current 
Jets owner Woody Johnson takes names. if the Jets don't make 
the playoffs, he'll take the names of coach Herman Edwards 


and GM Tery Bradway. BALL: A tough lale- 
season schedule will sink this К? $ postseason hopes. 
BUFFALO BILLS 


4: The Bills opened witha 
314 0 win over Tom Brady and the Patriots, but 
they won only five more games. 

New coach Mike Mularkey has the NFL's most unfortunate 
nare since Dick Butkus, but as the offensive coordinator in 
Pittsburgh he performed the impossible. He turned former 
XFLer Tommy Maddox into an elite NFL passer. Mularkey has 
more to work with here, with Drew Bledsoe, running back 
Travis Henry and receivers Eric Moulds and first-round draft 
pick Lee Evans. Because Bledsoe has the mobility of an oak 


tree. the play of guard Chris Villarrial, who replaces Pro Bowler 
Ruben Brown, could determine the QB's neurological well- 
being. The defense, which was second in the NFL in Nas 
allowed in 2003, shouldbe solid again. CRYS 
Іп most divisions the Bills would be a contender. in the tough 
AFC East. 6-8 would qualify as a moral victory 


NFC west 
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS 


— m) foy Rhodes's defense 
went from awful to ade- 
quate, while Matt Hasselbeck and the 
offense went from good to great. The Sea- 
hawks (10-6) made the postseason for 
the first time since 1999. OUT 
К: Seattle's top draft picks, 3 
defensive tackle Marcus Tubbs (Univer- />. 
sity of Texas) and safety Michael Boul- 2 
ware (Florida State), along with defensive нЕ) 
end Grant Wistrom, acquired from division rival St. Louis, vill 
toughen up the defense and put the Seahawks in a position to 
dominate this division. The offense didn't need any help. Hassel- 
beck threw for 3,841 yards and 26 TDs in 2003. despite 50 
dropped balls, including six in the end zone. Count on him and 
running back Shaun Alexander (1,435 yards) to fill the highlight 
reels again. CRYS = The Seahawks are post- 
season bound And they'll make some noise once they get there. 
ST. LOUIS RAMS 
5 : The Rams had a fine year 
«9 (12-4), but with all that talent the fans were 
expecting а championship. OUTLOOK: St. 
Louis enters the season with something to prove. The team 
returns most of its top offensive dogs, minus ailing Jesus 
freak Kurt Warner. In Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce and Marshall 
Faulk, signal caller Marc Bulger (3,845 passing yards in 2003, 
third in the NFL) will have more weapons than Donald Rums- 
feld. Then again, this team has been the pick to win the Super 
Bowl for the past three years. The defense has slipped from 
championship level, and new coordinator Larry Marmie is no 
Bill Belichick —his Cardinals defense was worst in the league 
last year. CRYSTAL BALL: A soft schedule will help 
the Rams snag а wild- card ‘spot. 


SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS 


GD yxp 
go over well ina rabid 


football city ike San Francisco. OUT- 
К: 08 Tim Rattay is no Joe Mon- 
tana, Coach Dennis Erickson has been 
touted as the Stephen Hawking of offen- 
sive football, but with Jeff Garcia. Terrell 
Owens, Tai Streets and Garrison Hearst 
all gone, the 49ers may need more than 
genius to match last year's 384 points 
The defense has talent, led by linebacker Julian Peterson, a legit 
Pro Bowler. But the squad underachieved last season—the 
Niners lost five games by three points or fewer A repeat of that 
pertormance andthe sel.mporant Erickson wil be coking fora 
job. CRYSTA Ls Niners fans primed for playoft 
excitement should dust off the tape of Super Bo! X, 


ARIZONA ( CARDINALS 
SEASON: Toke your pick of pejora- 
b 3 tives for the Worst organization in the NFL, a 
team that won four games in 2003. The last time 
10 games Jimmy Carter was president 
C= New coach Dennis Green brings a glimmer of 


hore to the desert. Green was moderately successful in Min- 
nesota, but now he'll have half the talent to work with. His 


the Cards we 


EVER LISTEN TO NFL PLAYERS TALK 
ABOUT THE GAME OFF CAMERA? 
THEY SOUND AS THOUGH THEY'RE 
SPEAKING PORTUGUESE. HERE’S A 
SHORT GLOSSARY OF TERMS 


BAD MOOD A player with a mean streak. The 
Ravens' Ray Lewis comes to mind. 


BIG BUBBLE A lineman with big buttocks and 
thick thighs. Usually meant as а compliment in 
the NFL. Example: Rams offensive tackle 
Orlando Pace. 


BIRD DOGGER A quarterback who locks onto 
one receiver throughout his pattern. Even the 
beer vendor outside the stadium knows where 
the pass will be thrown. Chad Pennington was 
criticized for this in his first few starts, back 
when Laveranues Coles was a Jet. 


COVER 2 Zone coverage in which each safely is 
responsible for half the deep part of the field. 


DIME А defense on passing downs—usually on 
second-and-long or third-and-long—that lines. 
up with six defensive backs. 


EDGE PASS RUSHER A defensive end or 
linebacker who has the speed to come from 
the outside and sack a quarterback. Lawrence 
Taylor was the quintessential edge pass rusher. 


EXTRA BAGGAGE A guy with problems off 
the field, Example: Ravens running back Jamal 
Lewis, who was charged in February with con- 


spiring to possess with the intent to distribute 
five kilos of cocaine. 


GETTING THROUGH TRASH When a defen- 
sive lineman or linebacker moves well around 
pileups to reach the quarterback or ball carrier. 


HOME RUN HITTER An explosive running back, 
receiver or return specialist who can break long 
touchdowns. Example: Kansas City's Dante Hall. 


LONG STRIDER A fast receiver who takes long 
steps. Generally, he prefers deep patterns to 
short ones with quick cuts or hooks. 


NICKELA defense on passing downs that lines 
up with five defensive backs. First used by 
George Allen's Redskins in the 1970s. 


RAG-DOLLING When an offensive lineman is 
tossed aside by a stronger defensive lineman or 
linebacker, as in “The Colts’ front line got rag- 
dolled all day long." 


ЗАМ, MIKE AND WILL The linebackers by 
position, as in strong side (Sam), middle (Mike) 
and weak side (Will). A center might say before 
a snap, "I'm on Mike. Who's got Will?” 


SLOW BLINKER A player who is short in the 
brains department. 


х PLAYBOY'S х 


ALL-PRO TEAM 


NFL.COM SENIOR ANALYST AND 
PLAYBOY CONTRIBUTOR 1! ANT 
PICKS THE BEST FOR 2004 


OFFENSE 
HALFBACK: CLINTON PORTIS, REDSKINS 
WIDE RECEIVER: RANDY MOSS, VIKINGS 
TIGHT END: TONY GONZALEZ, CHIEFS 
TACKLE: ORLANDO PACE, RAMS 
(GUARD: ALAN FANECA, STEELERS 
PUNTER: SHANE LECHLER, RAIDERS 
KICK RETURNER: DANTE HALL, CHIEFS 


EEE SE 
TACKLE: LA'ROI GLOVER, COWBOYS 


END: RICHARD SEYMOUR, PATRIOTS 


LINEBACKER: KEITH BULLUCK, TITANS 


CORNERBACK: CHAMP BAILEY, BRONCOS 


SAFETY: BRIAN DAWKINS, EAGLES 


THE 2004 preview Y 


main weapons: Anquan Boldin and rookie Larry Fitzgerald. 
two wideouts who can make the big play. ОВ Josh McCown 
has played in just 12 pro games. Defensive end Bert Berry, a 
former Bronco, should lend some credibility to what was an 
ineffective pass rush. El The Cards open 
against the Rams and the Pats. What is this, a cruel joke? 


АЕС souTH 


INDIANAPOLIS COLTS 

SON: So much for the 12-4 regu- 
( ) a ar season. The Patriots made glue out of the Colts 

in the AFC championship game. OUT! 

‘With Peyton Manning, Edgerrin James and Marvin Harrison all 
healthy, the Colts have their attack in place. So while all the 
buzz centers around the Manning-led offense (ihe reigning 
MVP is the only quarterback who still calls most of his own 
plays), coach Tony Dungy is quielly rebuilding the defense. 
The unit allowed just 7.7 yards per game more than the 
vaunted Patriots defense last year, and Dungy—the brains 
behind Tampa Bay's 2002 championship D—is tinkering the 
fight wey, opting for coaching adjustments rather than gam- 
bling on free agents. Top draft pick Bob Sanders (University of 
lowa) will provide help at safety CRY AL E AL Indy 
will go far. But can Manning finally win the big game? 


TENNESSEE TITANS 


The Titans had a great ) 

tun (12-4) behind a ban- MEG 

ner year for QB Steve NE 
McNair (24 passing TDs, four rush- 
ing TDs), but they came up three 
points short against New England in the 
playoffs. OUTLOOK: Tennessee 
had a quiet off-season, adding little 
talent. McNair is now 31 and has been 
listed as “questionable” on game day 
an astounding 23 times during the past three seasons. Run- 
ning back Eddie George is no longer the Eddie George of 1999 
‚and 2000. The defense played well last year but will have to 
make up for the losses of defensive linemen Jevon Kearse 
and Robaire Smith. On top of that. the team plays the Colts. 
Chiefs, Raiders and Broncos in succession in December. 
That's going to hurt. Literally, CRYSTAL BALL: The 
Titans will snag a wild-card berth. 


JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS 


The Jags went 5-11, losing 

all eight of their сар 

games. OUTLI 
This team has cleaned house since the 
Tom Coughlin era. The Jaguars’ fortunes 
are now in the hands of talented but - 
unproven second-year 08 Byron Left- 
wich. Draft pick Reggie Williams, a re- 
ceiver cut of Washington, should give 
Leftwich а first-rate target. while bruis- 
er Greg Jones bolsters the Fred Taylor—led running attack. The 
defense earned its pay last year, finishing sixth in yards al- 
lowed, but that goes only so far in a division with the Colts 
and Titans. Coach Jack Del Rio will have his hands ful int 
grating more than 10 free agents. CRYSTAL BALL: 


The talent of Leftwich will give fans something to scream 
HOUSTON TEXANS 

SON: They took the Pats into 

$ Ё Terans (5-11) were one of the worst teams in the 

league on both sides of the bal. OUTLOOK: 

troit on the road, are winnable, but all in all this team will be— 

how do you putit?—not good The bright spot is at the skill po- 


about, even as the Jags wallow in a mire of mediocrity. 
overtime in week 12, but that moment aside, the 

Houston's first two games, against San Diego at home and De- 

sitions: Quarterback David Сап, running back Domanick Davis 


and receiver Andre Johnson all have great potential. Sixof the 

Texans: top seven draft picks are defensive players. That's 

saying something. We're ot sure what but we find out 
д Doesn't look good. 


МЕС East 


PHILADELPHIA EAGLES 


=>. Е straight 
year Philly went 12-4 


and lost at home in the NFC champi- 
= onship game. € К: Once 
again he Eagles were better on defense e 
(17.9 points allowed, seventh in the NFL) 
than on offense (23.4, 11th), Will this 
year's D be as tough? The secondary 
losses of Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor 
will hurt. New OB hunter Jevon Kearse 
could charge the pass rush as long as he stays healthy —he 
played in only 18 of the past 32 games in Tennessee. The bigger 
news in Philly is the arrival of receiver Terrell Owens. Yes, he's an 
‚egomaniac, but he's the game breaker Donovan McNabb has. 
needed and will more than make up for the loss of running back 
Duce Staley. CRY: ¡LL Thanks to two superstar 
signings (Owens, Kearse), the Eagles take this division again. 


DALLAS | COWBOYS 
SE : Bill Parcells took over a team 
ж tha was 5-11 in 2002 and vent 10.6. The Dalas 
defense yielded the fewest yards per game (253 5) in 
the league The D should be stellar again. The 
offense? Well, at leastthis team пон has what you can calla star 


in Keyshawn Johnson. He'll help on third-and-five—and in the 
interview room. Watching Parcells, who tales no shit, work with 


| the receiver will be entertaining to say the least. And who vill 


throw the ball to Keyshawn? The Cowboys’ weak spot last year 
was at quarterback: Quincy Carter threw more interceptions (21) 
‘than TD passes (17). This season former Yankees farmhand and 
University of Michigan standout Drew Henson joins the team as a 
24-year-old rookie. Will he get the rod over Carter? Will Parcells 
Бе slapping Keyshawn on the butt or in the face? Win or lose, 
‘America's team will be fun to watch. Тһе 
Cowboys will make good use of a wild-card slot come January. 


WASHINGTON REDSKINS 


SON: After a 5-11 season. 
KB: coach Steve Spurrier packed his tags. OUT- 
D OOK: Can Joe Gibbs come out of retirement 
y and succeed intoday’s NFL as a 63-year-old head 
coach? Dick Vermeil and ВИ Parcells can do it, why can't Gibbs? 
Washington added serious talent in the off-season. The cflense 
should be much improved, with steady QB ark Brunell tossing to 
Pro Bowl recever Laveranues Coles and newly acquired lames. 
Thrash. And former Broncos halfback Clinton Ports will certainly 
make a difference, The all-too-generous defense (23.3 points per 
game, 25th) adds rookie safety Sean Taylor to help make up for 
the loss of star comer Champ Bailey. The problem child is owner 
Daniel Snyder. The guy who hired Spurrier ın the first place still 
runs the show. Will he stop meddling long enough to let Gibbs 
clean up the mess? CRYS 1L: The Shins wili win а 
few forthe Gitber and make a run at the playoffs. 


NEW YORK GIANTS 


т Ugh. 
Пу кө ovi con- 


tenders, the Giants (4-12) 
finished tied for 30th in points and 29th 
in points allowed. € К: New | 
coach Tom Coughlin is a  Parcells-ike 
disciplinarian—no shades, no beards, 
no platinum—who should turn things 
around quickly. But with more than 15 
free-agent additions. the Giants may 
need time to establish a rhythm. Rookie ОВ Eli Manning will 
make for а great story even И he (continued on page 153) 


5-44 ІН! 
| S 


“I hate to ; ; 
sa 
гу I told you so!” 


Та 


CLOCKWISE FROM FRONT RIGHT: Before Jeremy Piven played the weaselly dean in Old School, he was under fire In Black Hawk Down, starred in TVs Ellen and stole scenes in Rush Hour 2, Serendipity and Run- 


‚away Jury, In Entourage he's a high-powered agent; here he's in a suit ($2,395), shirt ($295) and tie ($170), all by ‘and a belt by ($70). Adrian Grenier is Vince, around whom 

the entourage gathers, He's in a sult by (5229), a shirt by ($80) and a belt by (975). Kevin Connolly Б in a blazer (5295), shirt ($125) and jeans ($135), all by 

ü Kevin Dillon ls in a jacket by (5495), a shirt by = ($79) and jeans ly (975). Jerry Ferrara is in a suit by P775: ELUS ($400) and a shirt by BLUE (565). 
= 

к = 


"ume — 


d I = LY 


Entourage tracks a group of buddies making their way through Hollywood after one of them-Vince, played by Grenier-makes It At right, Grenier reaches for hs smokes in a suit ($1,050) and 
окап shirt ($165) by 1057 CAVALLI anda bett by TORINO BELTS ($79). His shoes™with double buckle monk straps-are by 7:577 COLE ($175), Our staret is In a corset by CHANTAL THOMAS FOR LA 
PETITE COQUETTE ($840), a skirt by DUBUC ($330), lace-top sta-ups by WOLFORD ($48) and а rhinestone Rabbit Head neckiaco by PLAYBOY JEWEL ($30) Taking his role literally is Connolly, who plays 
Fc, one of the guys trying to keep Vinco grounded. He's ina sult by 0 (5775), a shirt by 2.2 COMPANY ($200) ead shoes by 1M, WESTON (5980). His Вей is by JOHNSTON & MURPHY ($55). 


N 


Aeris will talk about buzz and bar office, but there's опу one sar sign you're made itin Hollywood: getting ited to a party t the Playboy Mansion. FROM LEFT: Piven wears а sult ($485), shirt 
(875) and tie (568), ай by JOHN ПЯТЕН brown leather Bet, by TORINO BELTS ($79), hs а nickel plated brass buche, бег beautiful lingerette Is im a sheer sp ($210), bra (5149) and 
matching thong ($80), all by LA PERLA BLACK LABEL. Her boots ara by STU WEITZMAN ($400), Granier wears a sharkskin sult (52,350) and shirt ($345) by 11-107 and а pocket squara 
ty Jo BARTLET ($28). Connolly is in a suit by TED BAKER ENDURANCE ($595), a shirt by TED BAKER LONDON ($145) and leafers by NAUTICA FOOTWEAR (S100). 


Getting a Hefs-eye view 
of the world are Ferrara 
(left) and Dillon. Ferrara, 
who plays a good-timer 
named Turtle on the 
show, is decked out in 


lar shirt (5125) and бе 
(696), ally) 


boy cap is by 
($33), and 


his shoes are by 
7 ($130); his 
stalnless watch is by 
($395), Dillon, 
who fills the role of 
Vince's would-be-actor 
brother, ls wearing a 
sports coat (5495) and 
velvet turtleneck ($150) 
by? His 

are by 


His news- 


($150). 
Banal’ slp ($210) and 
thang ($90) are by 


„and 
her rock-steady stilettos 
ara by (5600). 


Chin up, chest out: Gre- 
nier experiences the joys. 
of a well-made couch, 
Playboy Mansion-styfe. 
He's in a stretch cot- 
tou suit by 5 

($750) and 
a silk shirt by 
($1,165). La Dolce Rita 
15 in an embroidered 
corset by 


(5415), boy 


shorts by 


($63) and gold chande- 
lier earrings by 
6160). 


FROM LEFT: Grenier lends his buddy a hand in а suit by LUDIAN ($995) and a striped shirt by / CEW ($65). Few peaple- Connol not among them, obviusly—are easly persuaded to leave the 


Mansion alter a heavy night ef partying with Playmates, Connolly isin a pin striped suit by (5857), a shirt by ($175) and a cognac belt y (875). 
Ferrara wears a three-button Jacket by ($500), a hooded sweater by (6265), cargo pants by GUESS ($79) and a stainless die's wetch by 
62,800). йеп i in a black sult ($1,100) and opte-patten shirt ($175) by and ate by (S125). Thanks for sharing the dream, boys. m 


WOMEN'S STYLING BY MERIEM ORLET WHERE ANO HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 154. 


The Laidler (870), by “310 Motoring 


Footwear, has green nubuck accents. 


оо о о E о о 


The blue-mesh-and-suede styling of Nau- j 


tica! 5 Rock (875) make it tech and tough. 


oe ui ni е e ee 


Lime-green suede and yellow nylon make 
Aida: 's sneaker (S507; stand o out. ^ 


This back: tothe future slip-on i is the. TDK 
(875) by Adidas. The stripes are шешш 


hs i9! ad of Гө, кше ete 
The Deflector ($75) and its three-color 
fade are available from Pony. rn 


ооо о е е е е ө o o 


ШЕ rubber-bottom Price “sneaker ($40), 
in two-tone suede, is by Penguin. 


e 9 9 ss 4 © 


. True, summer. іс sneaker season. Just be sure to leave your gym shoes in the 
„ locker. Here's what you need: the.latest.trainers in light looks.and bright colors 


photography by james imbrogno 


Nike's old-school sneaker with gold de- This blue-and-gray suede kick ($185) is 
tails is called the Air Force И Low ($65). the latest offering by Hugo Hugo Boss. 


Diesel makes the Auriga ($100), remix- The TH Vapor ($65), with suede and 
ing colors and fabrics for proper flash. nylon details, is by Tommy Hilfiger. 


Elastic straps across the top keep Eye-popping color makes the Finale ($50), Я 
Reebok's Carbon X ($90) “еек. — by Globe Shoes, a perfect summer shoe. 


WHERE AND HOWTO BUYÓN PACE 184 


“I don't know much about art, but seeing something you paid $2 million for really turns me on.” 


114 


SHE PLAYS 


People tak i 
е sex so lightly these days that it’s lost its 
t it’s lost its meani 


it's not bui i а 
ilt on se: lationship is goii Qe 
x alone. It's much me een 52 
n when you’ 
u're mon 


n b 

be slow and sensual. Then wed try all kinds of sexual posit like dog8Y style, 
meriding him and side by side. We'd do it all over the house—in the basement, 
in the shower, ON a table, in the living room and in front of a mirror. After 
we've christened every room, he'd catty me upstairs. We'd scream each oth- 
ег пате от ау things like #You turn me on” and “You make me so hot 
Pd try to time it so WE come together. When that moment nears we'd get 
into the missionary position. ed pull out and come all over my stom: 


Spike Lee 


PEAY BOYS 


The outspoken director takes on 50 Cent, NASCAR, 
Viagra and Strom Thurmond—just for starters 


1 


PLAYBOY: Your new film, She Hate Me, 
tackles the subjects of corporate greed 
and sex for money. For you that's tame 
stuff. Are you mellowing on us? 

LEE: Not at all. The majority of Ameri- 
cans think these corporate guys are 
crooks. I'm disheartened to see people 
work their entire lives and lose their life 
savings or their retirement or have the 
money for their children's education 
wiped out. Enron's Ken Lay has yet to 
spend a day in jail. And with the furor 
now about gay marriage, this film is an 
intelligent look at sex the way it is today. 
I did my research. The oldest sperm 
bank in New York state is in the Empire 
State Building, the great phallic sym- 
bol. If you're a woman, you go there 
and they have a folder—what color eyes 
do you want, how tall, lefi-handed or 
right-handed? If the donor has a post- 
grad degree, that costs more. It's almost 
as if people are playing God now. 


2 


PLAYBOY: You looked at explosive inner- 
city race relations in Do the Right Thing, 
explored interracial sex in Jungle Fever 
and made headlines with Malcolm X. 
But now it seems the most controver- 
sial director around is Mel Gibson. Are 
you jealous? 

Le: It’s good when other people come 
in and take the spears. But in all hon- 
esty, when I choose the films I want to 
do, I really don't choose them by ask- 
ing what new controversy I can tackle. 
I look first for a story. Sometimes con- 
troversy is inherent in real stories. 


3 


ы лувоу: She Hate Me's protagonist, an 
African American executive named 
Jack Armstrong, exposes wrongdoing 
and then gets framed by his own com- 
pany. He fights back and raises hell in a 
Senate hearing room. Haven't we seen 
that story before? 


Interview by Warren Kalbacker 


LEE: No, because I don't know if he wins. 
His business career is over. This film is 
really about whistle-blowers. When he’s 
in that Capitol setting, he cites the 
whistle-blowers from the CIA, Enron 
and WorldCom. And he cites a great 
whistle-blower who never got his due, 
Frank Wills [the security guard who dis- 
covered the Watergate break-in]; he 
later couldn't get a job and just fell by 


the wayside. He's a true American hero. 


4 


PLAYBOY: The Armstrong character 
changes careers and exhibits prodigious 
potency when he impregnates lesbians 
for big bucks. But we see him popping a 
few of those blue pills. Are you bracing 
yourself for complaints from black men 
who buy into the stud stereotype and 
might be insulted by the idea of Viagra? 
LEE I don't care who he is, any man put 
in that position is going to need some 
help. He's a breeder. The women come 
to him when they're ovulating, He's on 
24-hour call, like a doctor. Historically, 
white American men have felt some 
inadequacy when it comes to black 
men’s sexuality. Otherwise we wouldn't 
have been castrated and lynched be- 
cause of the fear of a black man looking 
at a white woman. There’s a great 
term—reckless eyeballing. Emmett Till 
was murdered for it. During the 1950s, 
when he was 14 years old, he went 
down to Mississippi for the summer 
and was murdered for reckless eye- 
balling. In The Birth of a Nation a white 
lady jumps off a cliff rather than be 
ravaged by the black savage. 


Б 


PLAYBOY: Lesbians lining up at the door 
to have sex with a virile black man—is 
that Spike Lee's ultimate fantasy? 

LEE: 1 would never do that. I couldn't, 
no matter how good a friend she was. 
But here you have someone in the busi- 
ness world with high ethics, and because 
of that he becomes a whistle-blower. To 


complicate matters, he doesn’t come up 
with the idea of impregnating lesbians; 
his ex-fiancée, who is now a lesbian, is 
the one insisting he do it. He's compro- 
mising the high standards that got him 
in trouble in the first place, but he's get- 
ting $10,000 a wallop. Meanwhile, she 
wants а 10 percent cut. And she's very 
slick, because she makes sure the first 
women she brings to him are really 
good-looking lipstick lesbians. But we 
tried to be careful. Not every woman 
there could be orgasmic. We had to 
show that some of those women have no 
use for men. They're not getting off; 
they just want to get pregnant. Then he 
starts to realize, I'm going to burn in 
hell. I'm just as bad as the people I blew 


the whistle on. 


6 


PLAYBOY: Did you deliberately cast Jim 
Brown as Armstrong's father to pro- 
vide a backstory for his masculinity? 

LEE: Jim Brown is the definition of 
manliness. I felt it would be amazing to 
have this man—who exemplified mas- 
culinity, strength and being a warrior— 
in a wheelchair and remain dignified. 
It really hit fim, because he said, “I've 
always been so physical. Me being in a 
wheelchair is a trip. 


7 


prayBoy: The Playboy Advisor cautions 
that relationships are usually affected 
adversely by the inclusion ofa third per- 
son. Given tbe three-way relationship, 
involving people vith kids, depicted in 
She Hate Me, should we assume you hold 
a different opinion? 

LEE: You really don't know what hap- 
pens with this new relationship. There’s 
a reason the film ends with Jim Brown 
looking at his son and laughing. He's 
like, “Oh boy!” No one should think 
that at the end of this film the charac- 
ters walk off into the sunset with the 
perfect three-way marriage. I don’t 
know how that could work. They all 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARC BAPTISTE 


17 


PLAYBOY 


118 


realize they don’t know how it is 
going to work. I wanted to end the 
film by showing that they were going 
to attempt it. 


8 


PLAYBOY: In Jungle Fever Ossie Davis 
delivers a passionate speech against 
the white man's exploitation of black 
women, Do you suppose Senator Strom 
Thurmond, who fathered Essie Mae 
Washington-Williams with a black 
woman, missed that movie? 

LEE: Old Strom missed a lot of stuff. 
That was a revelation about his daugh- 
ter This goes back to Thomas Jeffer- 
son. All these guys were going to the 
slave quarters to have sex and had 
children by black women. That bor- 
ders on rape. I just can't understand 
why she kept quiet. Maybe she felt she 
couldn't tell that secret to the world, 
so it passed. It's ironic that Thurmond 
was one of the staunchest segregation- 
ists. It made me start to wonder about. 
Jesse Helms. 


9 


PLAYBOY: John Turturro's turn as a 
Mafia don in She Hate Me is memo- 
rable in part because Monica Bellucci 
plays his daughter and in part because 
of his rant that "gangsta rappers can 
never be us.” What is it with Spike Lee 
and Italians? 

кке. When I was in first grade I moved 
to an Italian American neighborhood, 
Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. Since those 
formative years a lot of my friends 
have been Italian American. I've no- 
ticed that despite the friction between 
blacks and Italian Americans over the 
years, they have many similarities. It's 
hard for me to describe, but the sen- 
sibilities are very similar—the way 
people talk, the way they move, the 
flashiness, the loudness, the brashness. 
Turturro's character was a good op- 
portunity to give a riff. 


10 


PLAYBOY: You've been to Africa many 
times. What would you tell others 
about your experience? 

LEE: African Americans grew up here, 
so our images of Africa are for the 
most part uninformed. We get images 
from Tarzan movies—Ooga-booga 
and lions and tigers. It's astounding to 
Africans that African Americans don't 
know as much as they should about 
Africa. Even more, they don't want to 
know. This whole thing of race is very 
interesting to me. Now, because of 
DNA, African Americans can finally 
find out what region of Africa their an- 
cestors were from. My wife, Tanya, and 
I took a test—we swabbed the inside of 


our cheek with a Q-tip—from а com- 
pany called African Ancestry. Tanya's 
ancestors on her mother's side were 
from Sierra Leone. My mother's side 
came from what is now Niger, and my 
father’s side came from the region that 
is now Cameroon. It was a revelation 
for Tanya and me to finally discover 
where our ancestors were from. And I 
really encourage other African Ameri- 
cans to take that test. 


11 


PLAYBOY: You don't exactly have a high 
opinion of the Oscars, but do you hap- 
pen to have an acceptance speech in 
your desk drawer? 

LEE: №. As an artist you can't rely on 
any organization of power to validate 
your work, whether it be the Academy 
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 
the Grammys, the Tonys. You have to 
have enough confidence to know that 
what you do is worthwhile. For exam- 
ple, Ordinary People won for best pic- 
ture over Raging Bull. Robert Redford 
won for best director over Scorsese. 
No one is watching Ordinary People 
now. Driving Miss Daisy won for best 
picture, and it’s not being taught in 
college film classes across America as 
Do the Right Thing is. We didn't get 
nominated for best picture—I got 
nominated for original screenplay and 
Danny Aiello for best supporting 
actor—but every year Do the Right 
Thing grows in stature. Denzel should 
have won for Malcolm X. Who did he 
lose 10? А] Pacino, for that film he was 
blind in, Scent of a Woman. How can 
you compare Al Pacino's performance 
with what Denzel did in Malcolm X? 
Denzel got it later for Training Day, but 
that's not his best performance. You 
can go crazy thinking about that. 


12 


PLAYBOY: NASCAR is making a pitch for 
African American fans. Will we ever 
spot Spike Lee at the speedway? 

LEE: Jee-haw! I just imagine hearing 
some country-and-western song over a 
loudspeaker at NASCAR: “Hang them 
niggers up high! Hang them niggers 
up high!” I'm not going to по NASCAR. 


13 


PLAYBOY: You're an unabashed fan of 
your hometown. Some Brooklynites 
still maintain that their city screwed up 
in 1898 when it became part of New 
York. Do you think Brooklyn is the 
greatest city in the world? 

LEE: Brooklyn is my favorite borough. 
It looks as if the New Jersey Nets will 
move there, and | think that's great, 
even though it won't change my alle- 
giance to the Knicks. Everyone always 
forgets that 4 million people live in 


Brooklyn, and if you made a roster of 
all the great people who came out of 
there, you couldn't top it: Woody Allen, 
Barbra Streisand, Biggie Smalls. Very 
diverse. It's not a coincidence that 
Jackie Robinson, the first African 
‘American in modern baseball, played 
for the Brooklyn Dodgers. That's the 
spirit and the vibe of Brooklyn. 


14 


PLAYBOY: We enjoyed the Reverend Al 
Sharpton’s wit during the Democratic 
primaries and his performance as host 
оп Saturday Night Live. Can you help us 
figure him out? 

LEE: He was phenomenal on Saturday 
Night Live. He could definitely act in 
movies. Не was in Malcolm Х. He had a 
scene with Johnnie Cochran in Bamboo- 
zled—they were demonstrating against 
a television network. That poster of 
Sharpton in She Hate Me is from Sean 
John, Puffy's clothing line. If you 
watched all the primaries, Sharpton 
made more sense than anybody else. 
He wasn't going to get elecied, but he 
served a great purpose, because he 
kept the topics focused on what really 
matters to Americans. He will be an 
asset to Democrats come November. 


15 


PLAYBOY: Cornel West, a professor of 
religion and African American studies 
at Princeton, theorizes that white 
American youths are becoming cultur- 
ally Afro-Americanized. Do you agree? 
Would you like to claim some credit? 
LEE: I'm not going to take credit, but 
its true, because hip-hop has become 
the dominant culture. I'm not going 
to say that's all good. But it's not an 
overstatement if you look at the way 
hip-hop has invaded the culture— 
movies, music, fashion, language. 
African Americans have always had 
that influence on culture. We had the 
minstrel shows and then jazz. 1 don't 
know what the outcome will be, but 
it's good that we're getting acknowl- 
edgment for being creative. In some 
art forms that hasn't been the case. 
Rock and roll is seen as a tribute to 
Elvis; Bo Diddley, Little Richard and 
Chuck Berry are overlooked. 


16 


PLAYBOY: Your lawsuit against Spike 
TV for adopting the Spike moniker 
has been settled. But your award- 
winning student film was called Joe's 
Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. Did 
the makers of Barbershop and Barber- 
shop 2 know to tread lightly around 
your intellectual property? 
LEE: I never said there was a trademark 
(concluded on page 130) 


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ere's something the luckiest people in 
the world know: When Eva Herzigova rolls out of 
bed, she looks incredible. We discover this on a 
Wednesday morning in May, when the super- 
model swings open the door to her New York 
City hotel suite. She's wearing a delicate white 
shirt, jeans and white sneakers—a low-key but 
expensive outfit. Freckles dot her nose. 

“| just woke up,” she says. “Come in.” 

Eva is recovering from a late night. Though 
the gossip columns will report the next day that 
she was spotted partying with fellow knockout 
Carmen Kass at a restaurant called Butter, we 
can assure you she was working 
that night. She was posing for the 
photos you see here. 

The shoot, Eva says, is something 
she'd always planned to do: “For 
me, PLAYBOY is on the career list. 
l've been asked to pose a million 
times." So why now? "This was the 
first time | got everything | wanted, 
including the photographer. | picked 
Mario Sorrenti because of his work. 
It's artsy, mysterious, feminine and 
sexy. PLAYBoy is a great concept. It 
shows the beauty of the body in 
an elegant way.” 

Eva has been showing the beauty 
of the body since she began mod- 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIO SORRENTI 


"Beouty gets you far. But | wouldn't 
give up my brains, that's for sure.” 


LL ABOUT 


EWA 


It’s been 10 years since 

her Wonderbra billboards 
caused car crashes around 
the world. But Eva Herzigova 
is just getting started 


eling at the age of 16. Her big break arrived in 
1994, when she starred in a Wonderbra ad 
campaign. With Eva on traffic-stopping bill- 
boards around the globe, the push-up bras 
became a phenomenon and she became a 
household name. “Their sales went up 40 per- 
cent,” she says. To date, Eva has modeled for 
Guess, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Victoria's 
Secret. She recently launched a line of swimwear 
called Eva Herzigova. “Original, huh?” she says. 
“But it would be sad to call the line anything 
else. I've worked so hard to build a brand. You 
don't just throw that away.” 

The brand building has segued 
into acting, and like Michelle Pfeiffer 
and Cameron Diaz, Eva is making a 
successful transition. She even won 
a best actress award at the New 
York International Independent Film 
and Video Festival for her role in 
Just for the Time Being. Next up? 
Modigliani, in which she plays 
Picasso's first wife, and Go-Go 
Tales, starring Harvey Keitel. Eva 
sees acting as a natural next step. 
“When I'm being photographed | 
create a character. With acting | just 
find a voice.” But even when the 
pictures are still and the voice is 
silent, she leaves us speechless. 


121 


123 


126 


See more of Eva's pictorial at cyber.playboy.corn. 


PLAYBOY 


130 


Spike Lee 

(continued from page 118) 
on the word Spike. The problem was the 
combination of Spike and Spike TV. I 
hired Johnnie Cochran, and we got the 
settlement. To this day people come up 
to me on the street and say, “I watched 
your network, your channel.” I have no 
copyrights on barbershops. The barber- 
shop is a staple of the African American 
community, a meeting place. So that's 
there for any artist to utilize. 


17 


PLAYBOY: You deconstructed blackface— 
burnt cork over cocoa butter—in Bam- 


boozled. Can we learn something from 
the minstrel show? 

LEE. It’s putting on a mask. It's not who 
you are. It's projecting something that's 
not positive. And people laugh at you. A 
lot of minstrel shows and minstrel рео- 
ple are still around today. If you turn on 
BET and watch some of these rappers, 
that stuff is borderline minstrel show. 
They've just become more sophisticated, 
so you don't have to put on red lipstick 
and blackface. It's horrible, and they 
don't even realize it. I love rapping. The 
rap I grew upon originated in the South 
Bronx and was about having a good 
time: hip-hop, graffiti, break dancing 
and MCs rapping. It was not about “I 
got my nine millimeter and ГИ blow 


“Hi there. Would you like to come up here for an 
early morning dip?” 


your fucking brains out and make your 
ho or your bitch suck my dick.” 


18 


PLAYBOY: We hear you rapping right now. 
Want to go on? 
LEE: What was the title of 50 Cents 
debut album? Get Rich or Die Tryin’. He's 
one of the biggest rappers out there. He 
is not a fake act. He's been shot several 
times. He's shot at people. He wears а 
bulletproof vest when he's outside, and 
he’s not doing it for fashion. When 
young African Americans live by the 
code “Get rich or die tryin’,” it's a very 
sad state: [raps] “Whatever I got to do to 
get my Nikes, my Adidas, my Sean John, 
y Timberlands, my ride, to get my 
rims, so I can drink my Cristal, to have 
my platinums. I run the bitches and hos. 
1 gotta kill some people. I gotta shoot 
somebody. 1 gotta maim you. 1 gotta 
paralyze you. I gotta kill you. I gotta rob 
you.” It's insane. 


19 


PLAYBOY- You're a big sports fan. With 
NBA players on trial for rape and man- 
slaughter and with steroids a problem 
throughout the sports world, is it tough 
to root for a lot of athletes these days? 
LEE: I'm able to separate their personal 
stuff from what they do as athletes. This 
is not new. It's just that it wasn't reported 
back then. 1 know some people can't 
separate it. I was telling my wife that the 
Knicks may be getting Kobe, and her 
feeling was, Why would the Knicks want 
Kobe Bryant, an alleged rapist? Valid 
point. In the sports realm today, the bot- 
tom line is to win. If a great athlete has 
some character flaws or problems, that's 
overlooked as long as he is able to per- 
form. For singer R. Kelly, I can't make 
that separation. I saw that DVD with him 
and those girls. 1 have a nine-year-old 
daughter. I look at him im a different 
light now. I can't listen to his music, and 
1 wouldn't buy a record of his. 


20 


PLAYBOY: Everyone's giving advice to the 
slumping Tiger Woods. Some even sug- 
gest that his Swedish girlfriend has got- 
ten him off his game. Could the director 
of Jungle Fever counsel the pro? 

LEE: | heard that a lot. There may be 
some truth to it. [laughs] I've never met 
the woman. I've met Tiger a couple of 
times. The same thing happened with 
Derek Jeter recently when he was zero 
for 32—everybody and his mom were 
giving him advice. Sometimes you just 
have to let people alone and let them 
work it out. Hopefully Tiger will get 
back to where he was. 


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Detroit, Death City 


(continued from page 64) 


Each morning before he took the kids to school, Leito 
Sr. checked under the hood of his car for bombs. 


the land” was their slogan. Members 
renounced their citizenship and refused 
to pay taxes, telling white America to kiss 
their collective black behind. They 
loaded up on guns and ammo in prepa- 
ration for the coming conflagration. Not 
surprisingly, the FBI took notice of the 
RNAs pronouncements and activities 
and set out to sabotage the group. 

“Leito was always ahead of the times,” 
says Bob Newby, a friend and fellow 
activist who met Leito Sr. when both 
were studying at Wichita State University 
in the 1950s. “In the early 1960s, when 
everybody was talking about integration, 
he was talking about black power. He 
knew white America wasn't going to 
change. He thought integration was just 
utopian pie-in-the-sky politics.” 

Born at the height of the Depression 
in Independence, Kansas, Leito Sr. 
served as a paratrooper in the Army be- 
fore receiving a master's degree from 
Boston University. He came to liye in 
Detroit at the end of the 1950s, and the 
experience radicalized him. The racism 
of the police, the open segregation in 
housing, the way blacks were banned 
from employment in certain stores—all 
of it infuriated him. The effort to better 
his race became his new vocation. 

Leito Sr. was a proud and dignified 
man, not someone who would easily 
turn the other cheek. He always spoke 
proper English and never cursed. He 
rarely raised his voice, because he didn't 
have to. His authority and encyclopedic 
knowledge of world affairs were such 
that people listened when he talked. 

At six feet, two inches, he was an im- 
posing presence. In later years, after he 
started to go gray, he would be mistaken 
at airports for Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. 
When I first met him in the early 1990s, 
over Christmas dinner, he scared the 
hell out of me. He spent most of our 
meeting playing a game of pin the tail 
on the honky, blaming me personally for 
Ronald Reagan's policies, even though I 
was born and raised in a terraced house 
in working-class Manchester. Of course 
what really teed him off was that, in op- 
position to his firmly held racial beliefs, 
his Nubian princess had married a 
white man. 5011, you didn't have to like 
his stern personality or agree with his 
ideology to respect him. 

After Edison fired him in 1968 for his 
extracurricular political activities, Leito 
Sr. devoted himself full-time to insurrec- 
tion. The riots killed the dream of inte- 
gration in Detroit—where only four 
years before, Martin Luther King Jr. had 


132 led 125,000 people in a march down 


Woodward Avenue to Cobo Hall and 
delivered an early version of his “I have 
a dream" speech. 

It was a period of open racial hostility. 
A survey conducted after the riots re- 
vealed that 67 percent of white Detroiters 
believed blacks had only themselves to 
blame for their poverty. Leito Sr. saw 
what happened not as a riot but as a 
rebellion—an expression of rage against 
racism and oppression. Next time, how- 
ever, blacks would be organized. Instead 
of burning down their own neighbor- 
hoods, he vowed, they would take the 
fight to the white man. 

To this end, the Durley household 
became a home for revolutionaries. 
Though Leito Jr. was too young at the 
time to remember much, his sister Initia 
recalls H. Rap Brown and Huey Newton 
bouncing her on their knees. A secret 
door in the house Jed to a closet full of 
weaponry. An underground newspaper 
was printed in the basement. Each morn- 
ing before he took the kids to school, 
Leito Sr. checked under the hood of his 
car for bombs. Undercover government 
agents followed the family whenever 
they left the house. Everywhere they 
went, RNA bodyguards went with them. 
Later, the kids were the only ones in 
school who wore FREE ANGELA DAVIS 
badges and refused to stand for the 
pledge of allegiance. 

‘Things came to a head one spring 
night in 1969. Leito and Yolanda kissed 
their kids good-bye, told them they'd 
be back soon and headed over to the 
New Bethel Baptist Church, where the 
RNA was holding its second annual con- 
ference. The Reverend C.L. Franklin, 
Aretha Franklin's father, had founded 
the church, a warehouse-like building 
that dominated the neighborhood. 

Shortly before midnight, after the 
meeting had ended and people were 
starting to head home, two white officers 
in a patrol car stopped to ask questions. 
In those days the Detroit police depart- 
ment was as racist as any in Mississippi. 
The force was 90 percent white. Mem- 
bers of the RNA's paramilitary wing, the 
Black Legionnaires, were standing out- 
side. The Legionnaires were a fearsome 
sight—decked out in black berets, com- 
bat boots and leopard-skin epaulets, they 
were trained in self-defense and openly 
carried guns. The rookie officers got out 
of the car and approached the Legion- 
naires. A confrontation ensued that left 
one of the officers, Michael Czapski, dead 
on the sidewalk, his gun still holstered. 
His partner was seriously wounded. 

“One of the cops started to pull out his 


gun, but the young brothers outshot 
him,” Imari Obadele, then the group's 
charismatic leader, says today. “The cops 
were out to kill us that night. It was an 
attempt to assassinate the leadership of 
the RNA.” The Detroit police saw it as 
cold-blooded murder, the politically in- 
spired killing of a brother officer. Within 
minutes police vans and cruisers sur- 
rounded the church, and an armed siege 
followed. Cops fired rifles and pistols 
into the building. 

Yolanda was standing in the church 
lobby when bullets starting flying 
through the open doorway. She rushed 
back into the sanctuary to find her hus- 
band. RNA officials turned off the lights 
and told everybody to get on the floor, 
where they crawled under the pews as 
round after round whizzed above their 
heads, creating hysteria among the 
women and children. 

“It went on for 15 or 20 minutes,” 
recalls Yolanda. “They finally stopped 
shooting, then stormed the church and 
told everybody they were under arrest. 
We didn’t know what was going on.” 

A dozen guns and a cache of ammuni- 
tion were confiscated. Everybody was 
taken to the police station, where they 
were kept incommunicado while being 
fingerprinted and given nitrate tests to 
find out if they had fired a weapon. By the 
next day the police had released all but a 
handful of individuals. “Before they let us 
go they asked us to sign a release saying 
we hadn't been mistreated,” remembers 
Yolanda. “We told them to get lost.” 
Three RNA members went on trial for 
the murder, but all were acquitted. 


With the revolutionary father, I knew 
where I stood within minutes of meet- 
ing him. But my brother-in-law always 
seemed to be hiding something behind 
his gleaming smile. Popular with the 
ladies, he was a dapper, handsome man 
in his 30s, with Asian-looking eyes and 
an almond-shaped head that seemed a 
bit too small for his broad shoulders. 
Charming and well mannered, he was a 
ghetto playboy who enjoyed the good 
things in life. 

Leito Jr., or Lo, as his friends called 
him, was a drug supplier by trade— 
something the whole family was aware 
of. He once called to ask if I knew where 
he could get 10 keys ofcocaine in a hurry. 
There was a drought in New York's 
Washington Heights, where he normally 
bought his coke before transporting it to 
Detroit. Appalled that he was talking 
about a major drug transaction on my 
home phone, I told him I knew where to 
getan eight ball in a hurry, but that was 
about it, and then I hung up. 

Like so many other dealers, Leito fell 
on hard times. After finishing a prison 
stretch in the mid-1990s, he went back to 
the streets but was unable to hook up 
with his dope connections, most of 


whom were either dead, in jail or re- 
tired. A new set of hustlers had taken 
over the trade, which was now more 
anarchic than in the past. This wasn't 
like the old days, when someone fronted 
you a couple of keys of cocaine and told 
you to pay him back the next week. If 
you didn’t have the money right then 
and there, nobody would deal with you. 

Stressed out by his diminished circum- 
stances and too proud to show it, Leito 
felt increasingly trapped by his bad life 
choices. Running through his mind was 
the constant worry that he would be 
unable to support his son, Little Leito, 
who was living with the child's mother in 
South Carolina. He hated being poor 
and was embarrassed not to own a car, a 
severe social handicap in a city where the 
automobiles people drive are often bet- 
ter tended than their homes. The time 
had come to quit the game. Tired of the 
daily gangster grind, he was going 
through the hustler's equivalent of a 
midlife crisis, a harsh realization that 
while crime often pays in the short term, 
it rarely does over time. 


Club 313 occupies a one-story stucco 
building at the corner of Schoolcraft and 
Greenfield. When we pull into its park- 
ing lot on a cold February evening, the 
old attendant, seeing me write in a note- 
book, accuses me of being undercover 
heat. “I know what you doing, boy,” he 
says. “You taking down plate numbers. 
Don't lie.” It seems the police had been 
keeping an eye on the dance club. 

Earlier, onc of Leito's acquaintances 
had cautioned us, “You got to be careful 
about the questions you asking. These 
niggers up here is crazy, man. This ain't 
New York. These niggers don't want 
publicity. They want to shoot you.” 

A notice at the door instructs patrons, 
NO HOODS, BASEBALL HATS, GYM SHOES, 
JERSEYS. MEN 25 UP. A human colossus 
pats down customers on the way in, 
which is justas well, according to Kenny, 
the joint's amiable owner: "You'd be 
crazy to go to a nightclub in Detroit that 
doesn't check for guns. Shit, some 
restaurants in this town even search you 
for weapons.” Attired in a flight jacket, 
sneakers and a wool cap, he is in viola- 
tion of his own dress code, even though 
he wears an expensive Piaget watch. 

A large bar occupies the center of 
Kenny’s establishment. Leather booths 
ring the perimeter. The DJ plays a mix- 
ture of old-school soul and funk with 
some contemporary hip-hop—typical 
for а city where Frankie Beverly and 
Maze are still big stars. A line of young 
women in new boots gyrate on the dance 
floor in perfect formation as they check 
themselves out in the mirrored wall. 

Club 313 is the land of a thousand 
hustles. There's the social hustle, the 
booty-call hustle, the push-it hustle, the 
original hustle, the ballroom hustle and 


so forth. “Detroit has so many different 
hustles, it’s ridiculous,” says 313 bar- 
tender Adrienne, an elfin, light-skinned 
black woman whom Leito used to date. 

Leito often came to 313, where he'd sit 
in the corner drinking a split of Moét & 
Chandon. “He always used to reminisce 
about his life before he went to prison,” 
remembers Kenny. “He had a bad time 
after he got out. People he'd helped in 
the past turned their backs on him.” 

Sitting next to Kenny is his cousin Fly 
Guy, one of Leito's oldest friends. He 
wears a baby blue suede outfit, with 
matching hat, jacket and trousers. It 
looks more like a stage costume for a 
1970s funk band than something you'd 
wear on the street. Leito met Fly Guy at 
a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture 
Show in the early 1980s, when Leito 
saved him from a beating after Fly Guy 
was cornered in the cinema's parking 
lot. “That nigger taught me how to 
shoot,” Fly Guy says. “Before I met Lo I 
was throwing the bullets, spraying them 
all over the place. I'd turn the gun to the 
side and shoot like in the movies. Leito 
told me, ‘No, man, that's garbage. That's 
stuff you see on TV.” 

Living in Detroit, Fly Guy has seen his 
fair share of senseless slaughter. “When I 
was in high school two sisters had their 
mother killed for the insurance money. 
And guess how much the insurance pol- 
icy was for? Fifty thousand,” he recalls 
Later a friend of his was murdered 
because he stepped on somebody's shoes 
outside a bar and refused to apologize. 
He was shot in the back as he walked 
away. The victim's brother came to the 
bar the next week and blew away his 
brother's killer in front of a packed 
room. “A lot of people walking around 
Detroit don’t have any souls,” says Fly 
Guy. “There's people out here who are 
so petty they'll take your life over noth- 
ing. It's the crab-in-the-bucket syn- 
drome. We're all hungry down here at 
the bottom of this barrel. But if you're 
climbing up, trying to get out of this 
nonsense, I got to pull you down and 
take from you." 


Given the perilous nature of Leito's cho- 
sen lifestyle, it's a wonder he didn't quit 
the game sooner. While Leito was in 
prison, another friend was crippled after 
hoodlums heard he had a lot of cash in a 
safe at his home. They broke into his 
house and shot him a dozen times in the 
legs, arms and genitals with an Uzi, 
attempting to get him to give up the com- 
bination. Knowing that if he gave it up, 
the next bullet would be to his head, he 
held on for life. An acquaintance sitting 
outside in а car heard the commotion and 
called the police. The assailants ran away. 

By the early 1970s Leito's parents had 
separated. His father went from trying 
to overthrow the system to working 
within the system, taking a job as chief of 


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134 


public information for the Wayne 
County Commission, a position he held 
for three decades. After 1967 more 
blacks were elected to high office in 
Detroit. Former revolutionaries were 
now councilmen and commissioners. In 
1973 Detroit chose its first black mayor, 
Coleman Young. “Coleman Young had a 
high regard for Leito's intellect and 
often asked him for advice,” says one 
former mayoral aide. They would lunch 
together at the now-shuttered Enjoy, on 
Michigan Avenue, an unhygienic hole- 
in-the-wall soul food restaurant that 
functioned as a male clubhouse for the 
new political class. 

Leito Sr.'s dream of black power had 
been achieved only on a political level, 
not on an economic one, where it really 
would have counted. The 1967 riots were 
merely a prelude to a deepening eco- 
nomic crisis. In the face of cheaper and 
better-made Japanese imports, Detroit's 
auto industry suffered a dramatic decline. 
The OPEC crisis only exacerbated the 
slump. Between 1967 and 1981 Detroit 
lost half its manufacturing jobs. 

Scared whites continued to decamp to 
the suburbs. Many middle-class blacks 
soon followed, especially after the public 
school system collapsed. Court-mandated 
school busing hastened the exodus. 
Between 1970 and 1980 Detroit shed 
more than a fifth of its population. The 
diminished tax base was unable to sup- 
porta city increasingly made up of poor 
black people. During the next 20 years, 
Detroit would lose wo thirds of its prop- 
erty-tax base as the number of whites in 
the city dropped from 56 percent of the 


population in 1970 to 22 percentin 1990. 

Criminals became more brazen. In 
August 1976, at а Kool & the Gang 
concert, 150 members of the Errol Flynns 
gang (in tandem with another group, the 
Black Killers) committed what one gang- 
banger boasted was “the boldest mass 
robbery in Detroit history.” They stormed 
through Cobo Hall and stole money and 
jewelry, beating or sexually assaulting any 
of the 8,000 concertgoers who resisted. 
Named after the swashbuckling Holly- 
wood star of yore, the Errol Flynns 
fancied themselves debonair criminals. 
They came to the concert dressed in 
double-breasted suits and their signature 
black felt Borsalino fedoras, the collars of 
their shirts turned up, many of them 
carrying walking sticks. They comman- 
deered the stage and grabbed the micro- 
phones, chanting “Errol Flynn, Errol 
Flynn” and doing the Errol Flynn dance 
move popular at the time. 

As the industrial economy went into 
free fall and well-paid jobs on the assem- 
bly line dried up, a new underground 
economy developed in its place—a deadly 
trade that would end up destroying 
almost everything Leito Sr. held dear. 

“The politics changed dramatically,” 
remembers activist Bob Newby. “When I 
left Detroit in 1970 to go to graduate 
school, the talk was all about black power. 
When I came back in 1974 it was all 
about personal escapism. Drugs had a 
lot to do with that.” 


Oak Park—the Detroit suburb where 
Yolanda moved her family after her 


“Your hair looks good. Did your bitch do it for you?” 


divorce in the mid-1970s—bills itself as 
“the family city.” Driving around the neatly 
tended streets, you see nothing to dispel 
that image. Ranch-style homes, all nearly 
identical, line the streets. On the outside, 
at least, there's little to suggest this area 
was a breeding ground for criminality. 

Yet when Leito was in high school in 
the early 1980s, Oak Park had quite a 
reputation. This was the era of Young 
Boys Inc., a group of older men who 
used underage kids to peddle drugs. 
Milton “Butch” Jones, the gang’s leader, 
lived in Oak Park. He also had several 
houses for counting and storage in the 
neighborhood. The YBI's assembly-line 
cocaine and heroin operation reportedly 
grossed $35 million annually and flour- 
ished for five years before police and the 
feds broke up the gang in the early 
1980s. “At that time a lot of the major 
gangsters in Detroit came from Oak 
Park and Southfield,” says one of Leito's 
best friends, Pretty Tony. 

“You had kids when we were in school 
who were 15, 16 years old, driving 
BMWs and Benzes and wearing mink 
coats,” says Fly Guy, who also grew up in 
the area. “Why bust your butt going to 
college and doing the right thing when 
the person down the street who can't 
spell cat or dog has a pocket full of 
money? You look at yourself and say, 
*Damn, I got more brains than this one. 
I could do the same thing and make 
more money.’ Which Leito did.” 

All the Durley kids inherited their 
father’s rebelliousness. Middle-class 
security was а bore. “We didn't want to 
be preppy Negroes,” my wife says. 
“None of us wanted to hang out with the 
sort of people my mother wanted us to 
hang out with.” While the sisters con- 
tented themselves with symbolic rebel- 
lion by dressing up like punk rockers, 
the brother took a more hazardous 
path. The danger and excitement of the 
streets—a world from which his parents 
had always shielded him—appealed to 
Leito in a way tennis lessons and horse- 
back riding never could. Becoming a 
drug dealer represented everything he 
was bred not to become. 

Leito's career path resists easy socio- 
logical explanation. The normal excuses 
for criminal behavior—poverty, poor 
education, abusive parents—didn't 
apply in his case. He wasn't stupid, a 
delinquent because he was too dumb to 
do anything else, nor was he selling 
drugs because he needed to support a 
habit. He was widely read—everything 
from Shakespeare to Sun Tzu to Donald 
Goines. And you couldn't blame it on 
genetics: The Durley family had no his- 
tory of serious criminality. The only pos- 
sible explanation is cultural. Leito dug 
the lifestyle. He liked being a gangster. 

“Many young boys in Oak Park were 
selling drugs when they had no real rea- 
son to,” says his sister Initia, who suf- 
fered many sleepless nights worrying 


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about her brother's fate. “It had a lot to 
do with peer pressure. Leito was sling- 
ing drugs because his friends were.” 

Within the city proper, things went 
from bad to worse when the recession of 
the 1970s was followed by the downturn 
of the early 1980s. In parts of Detroit 
normal economic life ground to a stand- 
still On some strips the only signs of 
commercial activity were the ubiquitous 
party stores. In the 1980s Leito Sr. led a 
campaign called Denounce the 40 
Ounce, against the advertisement of malt 
liquor in poor neighborhoods. While the 
effort succeeded in persuading liquor 
manufacturers not to advertise in such 
areas, the proliferation of party stores 
continued unabated. Leito Sr. was also 
active behind the scenes, trying to com- 
bat the escalating problem of drugs in 
the community. He was а founder of 
Partnership for a Drug-Free Detroit. 

Meanwhile, his son and a couple of 
friends had set up shop at the Crystal 
House, a rundown motel on Greenfield 
Road. They would bribe the desk clerk, 
then rent 20 to 30 rooms and have a 
team of juveniles sell drugs for them. 
When one group of dealers would get 
tired, they'd go to bed and the next 
group would take over. It was a 24- 
hour operation. А 

Crack was just hitting Detroit. You 
could take an ounce of powdered co- 
caine, cook it, cut it up and sell it within 
an hour at the Crystal House, doubling 
or tripling your money. 

The notoriously violent Chambers 
brothers ruled Detroit's crack trade in 
those days. The four brothers from 
Arkansas got their start selling pot out of 
a party store; two moved on to selling 
crack by the mid-1980s. They supposedly 
grossed about $55 million a year, more 
than any privately owned legitimate 
business in the city. Dubbed “crack capi- 
talists” by writer William Adler, they 
employed hundreds of people and con- 
trolled some 200 crack houses before 
being arrested in 1988. According to 
Adler, there were 450 emergency room 
admissions for cocaine intoxication in 
1983. Four years later there were 3,811. 

Leito's operation paled in comparison 
with the Chambers brothers’. But he was 
still making $10,000 to $20,000 a week, 
which he spent on luxury cars, Armani 
suits, diamond watches and alligator 
shoes. He paraded around town toting a 
Bally briefcase that contained a MAC-11 
nine-millimeter machine gun. 

Along with the drug dealing, Leito 
was involved in running guns. His father 
once threatened to call the FBI after he 
found a large number of weapons under 
Leito's bed. "It's the only way he's going 
to learn,” he told his sobbing daughters 
as he reached for the phone. (He didn't 
make the call.) 

For years Leito avoided the law and 
made tons of money in the process. “We 


had no real concept of what money was 
worth,” says Fly Guy. “Having that 
amount of money so early in life fucked 
us all up to a certain extent, but it partic- 
ularly fucked up Leito.” 

Leito's luck couldn't last. In late Octo- 
ber 1987 two undercover Detroit cops 
spotted him in a brand-new Acura, talk- 
ing on his car phone in front of a build- 
ing known to be a drug hot spot. As the 
officers got out of their car and 
approached, Leito got out of his and ran 
across the street. As he ran he tossed a 
clear plastic bag containing white pow- 
der to the ground. One of the officers 
chased after Leito and tackled him from 
behind. Another bag was found in the 
jacket he was wearing—250 grams of 
cocaine т all. Found guilty of possession 
with intent to deliver, he was sentenced 
to 10 to 30 years. 

In 1992, while in prison, Leito was 
charged, with members of a gangster- 
rap group called the Rap Mafia, on a 
drug conspiracy count that could have 
kept him behind bars for the rest of his 


life. The cops claimed the Rap Mafia was 
merely a front for a $5-million-a-month 
cocaine operation. And Leito was 
allegedly one of the group's suppliers. 
Eventually Leito was found not guilty, 
but not before he pummeled the Rap 
Mafia associate who had ratted him out 
to the cops—someone he knew from 
Oak Park High—after they encountered 
each other in lockup. “Leito was so mad 
he probably would have killed him if it 
wasn't for the fact that he knew the guy's 
mother and family,” recalls Fly Guy. 


The Reverend Loyce Lester appears at 
the door of the Original New Grace Bap- 
tist Church, sporting a mink coat and 
wearing gold jewelry on his wrists. His 
hair is relaxed and puffed up in the style 
favored by James Brown and Al Sharp- 
ton. In Detroit, competition is fierce in 
the preacher business, and if you're not 
a showman, you won't attract a congre- 
gation. Every Sunday morning Lester's 
400-сарасну wood-paneled church, near 


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the intersection of Woodward Avenue 
and 7 Mile Road, is packed with parish- 
ioners. After the service, guards escort 
the elderly to their cars for their own 
safety. In this neighborhood, as in most 
of Detroit, the church is the anchor of 
the community and a sanctuary from the 
madness all around. 

Lester is the man to whom Leito 
turned for solace and guidance in the 
final years of his life. Introduced by a 
mutual friend, a former drug dealer 
who had seen the light, Lester took Leito 
under his wing. 

It's not unusual in Detroit for trou- 
bled souls to turn to God. Just as the 
city has a hundred versions of the 
hustle, it also has a hundred versions of 
Protestantism—denominations such as 
the Church of God, Church of Christ, 
Foursquare Gospel, Full Gospel, 
Nazarene, Bible Brethren, Charismatic 
and Missionary. Lester’s church is 
straight-up Baptist, but it illustrates 
one of the enduring contradictions of 
Detroit: How can such a God-fearing 
place be so godless? 

Alter Leito was paroled from prison, 
he told his family he was determined to 
turn his life around. But it wasn’t easy 
for an ex-con to get a legitimate job in 
Detroit. A real estate deal he'd put 
together collapsed after his partner ran 
off with the money. While he was inside, 
the funds he'd saved from dealing 
drugs had also disappeared—either 
spent on lawyers’ bills or stolen by for- 
mer associates or Corrupt cops. Restless 
and defiant, he continued to peddle 
drugs. For all his smarts, he seemed 
oblivious to the hurt he was causing 
himself and those who loved him. 

Predictably, less than two years had 
passed before Leito was back in trouble. 
In summer 1997 the Drug Enforcement 
Administration arrested a Colombian 
drug courier named Alfredo Reyes at 
the Dearborn Amtrak train station, 
where he was awaiting the delivery of 
half a kilo of heroin from Toledo, Ohio. 
Reyes told agents he'd planned to deliver 
the heroin later that day to an individual 
he knew only as Rambo. At the agents’ 
insistence, Reyes paged Rambo and set 
up a meeting in the parking lot of a 
party store in Southfield. At 3:45 вм. а 
red two-door Buick with Michigan plates 
pulled into the lot. Leito got out of the 
car and walked toward Reyes's car. As he 
was about to take delivery, the agents 
arrested him. 

During a pretrial hearing, Reyes 
backpedaled on his story. He said Rambo 
had expressed interest in buying the 
drugs but that they hadn't yet sealed a 
deal when he was arrested. The agents 
had sprung their trap too early. Leito 
was lucky; he was let go for insufficient 
evidence. Nonetheless, what his father's 
friend Malcolm X had called “the steadily 
tightening vise of the hustling life” 


would soon make its last turn. 

Seeking to aid his prodigal charge, 
Lester arranged an interview for Leito at 
Ford Motor. But the meeting was can- 
celed when the company announced a 
round of layoffs. Lester also persuaded a 
judge not to send Leito to jail after he 
violated his probation by not reporting 
to his parole officer. 

Leito did repairs at the church. He was 
an usher at funerals. He drove the rev- 
erend around town in Lester's Mercedes. 
On Wednesdays he cooked and served 
food to poor people at the Mercy Kitchen. 

Leito led a schizophrenic existence, 
running with the reverend during the 
day and hanging out with drug dealers 
at night. He was torn between the two 
Detroits—a struggle between two dogs. 
“Some people are born to stray,” says 
Lester. “Leito wasn’t your typical thug 
in the street. He could have been any- 
thing he wanted to be, but he chose that 
life. He was a rebellious child who 
became a rebellious adult, But he sin- 
cerely wanted to change.” 

About this time, Lester first met Leito's 
father. One part of Leito Sr. secretly 
admired his son's defiance toward his old 
enemies, the police and the FBI. “There 
was this outlaw camaraderie between the 
two of them,” recalls older sister Initia. 
But the father couldn't disguise the 
disappointment he felt that his son had 
become part of the problem. 

Understandably, Leito Sr., who by this 
time was ill with prostate cancer, was 
scared that his only son would end up in 
jail or, worse, dead. Indeed, father and 
son had code words that the son was to 
usc if rival drug dealers ever kidnapped 
him, a practice the father had supposedly 
picked up during his revolutionary days. 
He'd tried everything to help his son 
and was at the point of despair—until 
he met Lester. 

Impressed by the positive effect the 
reverend was having on Leito, the father, 
a lifelong atheist, started to rethink his 
attitude toward religion, which he had re- 
garded as the opiate of the black masses 
that had blinded his people to their ma- 
terial conditions. “Leito Sr. wasn't really 
a religious person,” says Lester. “But in 
his later years he said, ‘I think I made a 
mistake. I got caught up in the revolu- 
tionary movement. I didn't get caught 
up in Christ.” 


. 


Despite his dalliance with religion, Leito 
was unable to escape his predicament, 
as the events of July 22, 2003 would 
prove. Leito had been living in a beat- 
down ghetto on Detroit's west side, 
where petty thieves in pickup trucks 
regularly patrol the potholed streets, 
looking to steal aluminum from the 
sides of the shabby residences. 

Earlier in the evening Leito had been 


walking on the sidewalk, carrying a cell 
phone in one hand and a cigar in the 
other. Unusual for these parts, where the 
sound of gunshots is common, the neigh- 
borhood was hushed. Taking advantage 
of the temporary lull in hostilities, older 
residents in carpet slippers were out on 
their rickety wooden porches enjoying 
the summer evening. Leito said hello to 
his elderly neighbors before entering the 
side door of a brick bungalow at the 
corner of Plymouth Road and Montrose 
Street. He left the door slightly ajar 
because he was expecting company later. 

The sparsely furnished house was 
dark and deserted. With only narrow 
slits for windows, barely any light 
penetrated the interior. The smell of 
marijuana was 
overpowering; the 
kitchen table was 
covered with shop- 
ping bags full of 
the stuff. A number 
of handguns were 
within reach near 
the side door in 
case of trouble. A 
ТУ with the sound 
turned off played 
in the corner, 

A few days ear- 
lier, Leito had tak- 
en delivery of 20 
pounds of pot on 
consignment from 
a friend who was 


clearly, she recognized Leito's voice. “I 
ain't taking that shit,” she heard him say. 

The neighbor turned away from the 
window but was drawn back by the fa- 
miliar staccato of small-caliber machine- 
gun fire. She looked out and saw the 
four males spraying the corner with bul- 
lets. According to another neighbor, 
Leito tried to slap a machine gun out of 
one of his assailants’ hands. Then he 
made a run for the lot across the street. 
He managed to get to the middle of the 
road before he was brought down by 
three bullets in the back. Immobilized, 
he lay on the ground and looked up at 
his attackers. “It doesn’t have to be this 
way, man,” he said. One of the gunmen 
stepped forward, stood over him and 


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death from prostate cancer the previous 
year. Reverend Lester presided over 
Leito's funeral, as he had the father’s. 
While the two Leitos represented the 
two different visions of Detroit, in their 
final years they found common ground 
in the church. Both men had expressed 
a desire to be baptized, but only the 
father managed to do so, receiving the 
sacrament as he lay on his deathbed. 
My father-in-law's funeral was packed 
with dignitaries who came to praise his 
efforts to improve his community, while 
his son's funeral looked more like a 
hustlers’ convention. Elaborate floral 
arrangements covered the altar. Under- 
cover cops searching for leads mingled 
with the crowd. Leito, laid out in his cof- 
fin, looked as if he 
might get up at any 
moment. Lester, 
wearing a red-and- 
black robe, read 
from scripture— 
“What is your life 
but a vapor that 
appears for a little 
while and then van- 
ishes away?"—after 
which he turned 
his attention to the 
gangsters in atten- 
dance, a number of 
whom were In tears: 
“There are people 
in this room who 
know what hap- 


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too busy dodging a 
team of Colombian 
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the product. Leito 
was grateful for 
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was a problem: 
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and you owe it to 
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or four pounds, to 
the cousin of a 
childhood friend 
The price was a bargain-basement 
$1,000 a pound, payment to be ren- 
dered later. Earlier that day the dealer 
had told Leito he wasn't paying for the 
pot. He said he was going to send some 
of his boys around that night to return 
the spoiled goods. 

Around one in the morning four black 
men appeared at the side door of Leito's 
place. He must have felt comfortable in 
their presence, because he stepped out- 
side to greet them without a gun. He 
also wasn't wearing his bulletproof vest. 
Initially the conversation seemed friendly, 
but soon it turned angry. A neighbor 
across the street heard shouts and curses. 
From her bedroom window she could 
view the side of Leito's house. Although 
there wasn't enough light to see any faces 


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pumped a final bullet into the right side 
of his head. He then reached into Leito's 
trouser pocket and took his cell phone 
before escaping on foot. 

The police arrived with EMS almost 
immediately; detectives had been inves- 
tigating another shooting in the neigh- 
borhood when they received the call. 
Paramedics ripped open Leito's shirt and 
started to work on him. But it was too late. 

In the days after his death, whenever 
someone called Leito's cell phone, a voice 
nobody recognized would answer and say, 
“Your boy's gone. He ain't here no more,” 
followed by the sound of dead air. 


The family was devastated. Leito's two 
sisters hadn't gotten over their father's 


probably present 
that day. A proces- 
sion of Hummers 
and Mercedeses 
carried Leito to the 
cemetery. 


Take away the family tragedy and Leito's 
death was unremarkable, especially for 
Detroit. My personal connection aside, his 
death was so run-of the-mill that it didn't 
rate a mention in the papers. He wasn't а 
celebrity rapper. He wasn't a person of 
note. He wasn't even a celebrity criminal 
in a city that has seen plenty of those. He 
was simply another statistic in Detroit's 
| war of black-on-black violence. 

The day before the funeral I was sit- 
ting ina printing store that speciali 
memorial programs. 1 was writing the 
text for Leito's eulogy when I looked up 
and saw a wall of dead people, half of 
them under 40. In the city of the dead, 
unremarkable ghosts are everywhere 


sin 


137 


PLAYBOY 


GAME MASTERS (continued fiom page 60) 


“The day somebody told me how much the inventors of 


Caribbean Stud were making, I became an inventor.” 


athletes, tend to age quickly. He decided 
it was time to try something easier. “That 
same day somebody told me how much 
the owners of Caribbean Stud were mak- 
ing,” Webb says. “I became an inventor.” 
He began brainstorming game ideas. 
He'd played in so many dealer's-choice 
games over the years that he already had 
some idea that he was talented in this 
area—pro poker players like to invent 
games with deceptively wacky rules to 
gain an edge—and within a year he had 
registered his first patent: a three-card 
variant of poker with a number of op- 
tions. That game, launched in 1995, even- 
tually became Three Card Poker and 
established Webb as the man with the 
magic touch. Now, with Three Card Pok- 
er spreading worldwide, two new games 
starting to prove themselves, several more 
waiting in the wings and 30 patents reg- 
istered or pending, Webb has become 
the Bill Gates of table-game inventors. 
For two days we discuss cards—games 
theory, games politics, games patent law, 
games mathematics (“I can't do the math 
on my own games; | have to hire two guys 
to run computer programs”)—and the 
cutthroat competition to get new games 
into casinos. “There are 300 approved 
table games in Nevada, but only 30 to 40 
are available at any time,” Webb says. "ОҒ 
the rest, 200 will never make it to the casi- 
no floor.” The reason? "Operators are not 
interested. "They have a resistance to pro- 
prietary games: “We spent all this money 
to build and market this hotel. You tell me 
I have to pay you for your game? Screw 
you.’ You can introduce a game in Vegas 
or Atlantic City and have it taken off the 
floor a month later. And when that hap- 
pens, the game is tainted. It requires five 
Successes to overcome one defeat like that. 
In Nevada they don't really understand 
building a game for longevity. That's why 
we test in Mississippi, where they are will- 
ing to change, to try something new.” 
And that's why Webb and his wife— 
who have homes in Derby and Las 
Vegas—spend half their lives on the 
road, training the dealers themselves, 
shmoozing the casino bosses and making 
sure every new table is positioned, ad- 
vertised and promoted. On opening day 
for a new game, the pair stands by the 
table, buttonholing gamblers and sweet- 
talking them into giving the game a try. 
All the while Webb keeps an eye on his 
cell phone (other casino managers might 
need him) and the dealer (to make sure 
no mistakes are being made) while calcu- 
lating which virgin casino he needs to 
approach next. “We're very hands-on,” 


138 he says. “I launch the games one at a 


time, and it’s a very slow process. You 
have to run a gantlet of regulators, table- 
games executives, general managers, 
shift managers. Then we have to sell it to 
the dealers. The dealers sell it to the 
players. A lot of games are introduced at 
G2E, the global gaming trade show. But 
1 don't network. Player demand will 
make the game break through." 


Invented games— proprietary games, as 
they're called—have a short history. 
Only three have broken through in a big 
way in the past 15 years. The first was 
Caribbean Stud, which was patented in 
1989 and quickly became a cruise ship 
staple. It achieved popularity partly be- 
cause it was the first poker game banked 
by the house: Winning bets are paid from 
a preset pay table, as in video poker. 
“105 to make the ladies comfortable,” 
Webb says. “With traditional table games, 
ladies are not comfortable. But you see a 
lot of them playing the newer games. The 
new games are easier for them to play 
than real poker or even blackjack, where 
they may be regarded as unserious play- 
ers. They don't want to upset anybody.” 
In 1993 another house-banked poker 
variation called Let It Ride was intro- 
duced by Shuffle Master, the manufacturer 
of a casino shuffling machine, in an at- 
tempt to get more single-deck games into 
casinos. (If a game requires a single deck 
of cards, a machine is needed so that time 
is not wasted with constant hand shuffles.) 
Webb's Three Card Poker came along in 
1995, and by 1998 these three games rep- 
resented 80 percent of the proprictary 
market. And it's a lucrative market: 
Caribbean Stud earns its owners $10 mil- 
lion to $12 million a year, Let It Ride 
brings in about $10 million, and Three 
Card Poker—the most widely available, 
with over 1,000 tables—grosses more than 
$10 million a year in the U.S. alone, with 
additional profits coming from overseas. 
Webb's games are designed, as all 
casino games must be, so that the longer 
a gambler plays, the more he or she is 
likely to lose. Yet games in casinos weren't 
always this way. Prior to 1986 casinos 
gave the gambler virtually even odds to 
beat the house. Some games not found in 
Las Vegas today are faro, lansquenette, 
rouge et noir, monte, rondo, Chinese fan- 
tan, red white and blue, Diana and zig- 
inette—all of which are legal, all of which 
are specifically authorized by statute and 
many of which are still played in foreign 
gambling halls. They disappeared be- 
cause, quite simply, they were fair. The 
only way casinos could make money off 


them was to cheat. In 1986, when the 
last big Vegas mobster was found buried 
in an Indiana cornfield, the era of house 
cheating was over. Wall Street dates Уе- 
gas history from 1989, when gambling 
mogul Steve Wynn opened the Mirage 
with Michael Milken-backed junk bonds. 

That's why the first thing Webb does 
after he invents a game is send it to a pro- 
fessional gaming analyst—a mathemati- 
cian who runs computer simulations of 
several million hands, determining the 
precise advantage for the casino. Ideally, a 
new game should give the house a 20 per- 
cent hold, or profit. Creating a game with 
an excessively high hold or house edge— 
the house advantage on Caribbean Stud is 
5.3 percent, but one expert estimates a 50 
percent hold on the progressive bet—can 
get your game into the casinos but will 
frustrate players, who will gradually get 
burned out and start to drift away. A game 
with a low house edge has the potential to 
last a long time, but casinos will be reluc- 
tant to use it. An exception is blackjack, 
which gives the house only a 12 to 13 per- 
cent hold. (Technically, the house advan- 
tage for blackjack is as low as 1.2 percent, 
but bad players make up the difference.) 

Webb's cardinal rule is to keep the 
new games simple. First, they have to be 
variations of games players are already 
familiar with. (“Every new game that 
makes it will be a type of blackjack or 
poker,” he says.) They have to fit on a 
standard blackjack table. (“Casinos aren’t 
going to tolerate a lot of new equipment 
or give you alot of space. If craps or rou- 
lette were invented today, they wouldn't 
make it to the first tryout.”) And they 
have to give the player some, but not too 
much, control over the outcome. 

“If you're a serious gambler,” says Webb, 
“play poker. These games are not for se- 
rious gamblers. These are games for peo- 
ple who want to relax. You need to give 
the player decisions but not arcane deci- 
sions. Most people who come to a casino 
aren't trying to change their life. They're 
trying to spend a few hassle-free hours.” 

The game Webb was pushing in Tun- 
ica, 2-2-1, is a simplified version of pai 
gow poker, a one-deck game played 
against the dealer. Pai gow poker, a cards 
version of an Asian dominos game, took 
offin the 1980s, when American casinos 
became popular destinations for Japa- 
nese and Chinese tourists. The first ime 
I saw 2-2-1, the game had the look of a 
winner; while it appears complicated, it 
can be learned in about 20 minutes, and 
it rewards skill. Three hands are played 
at a time—with three equal bets—and 
because it’s rare to lose all three hands, 
players’ money doesn’t quickly disap- 
pear. It also has the potential to be a 
highly social game, since the players are 
allowed to show one another their cards 
and discuss how to play them. The only 
downside I could see is that all the 
possible combinations begin repeating 
themselves—but then, repetition is а 


trademark of blackjack, and that game 
has never suffered in popularity. 


‘Twenty years ago it would have been 
impossible for a guy like Webb to make 
money on a card game. Before Caribbean 
Stud, card games could be copyrighted, 
not patented, and the only reward for the 
inventor was the chance to name the game 
after himself. Hearts According to Scarne, 
for example, was named for John Scarne, 
the legendary casino consultant and gam- 
bling authority. In the 1980s the develop- 
ment of computer software changed U.S. 
intellectual-property law. Business meth- 
ods and concepts had become propri- 
etary, and games, like software, could be 
patented. It's now 
possible to own a 
20-ycar patent on a 
casino-game concept 
that has numerous 
variations. "When 
I designed Three 
Card Poker," says 
Webb, "I didn't say а 
word about it to any- 
one. You can't talk 
about it until your 
patents are secure." 

His principal the- 
ory is that casual 
gamblers, creatures 
of habit that they 
are, like games in 
which they have 
some perceived 
control over their 
betting. “Why i 
roulette popular: 
Webb asks. "That's 
60 percent of the 
business in Britain. 
If you had never 
seen roulette before 
and somebody tried 
to sell it to you, you 
would say, "Why do 
I nccd this giant 
table? Why do I 
need this giant па 
wheel? Why do I 
need so many num- 
bers on the table? Because you can gen- 
erate those numbers and allow people to 
bet on them without having this giant lay- 
out. Well, you need all the numbers be- 
cause people feel they have a system when 
they play. Actually placing the markers on 
the numbers allows players to feel in con- 
trol of a game that is really pure chance. 
There must be choices in the game, even 
though the choice between betting on 23 
and betting on seven is not really а choice 
at all. So you need apparent choices, limit- 
ed choices. You can have a system only if 
you have а choice.” 

Webb launched Three Card Poker in 
spring 1995 at the Jackpot, a membership 
card clubin Dublin, and it did well enough 
to get approved for trial at the tiny Isle of 


а, IL 60143-0809 


‘Add $3.50 shipping and handling char 
residents add 6.75% sales tax. 


Man casino that summer. When it outper- 


formed the British version of Caribbean 
Stud in its first two weeks, Webb knew it 
was viable. But major casinos in Britain 
didn't want the game until it had succeed- 
ed in America, so Webb tried Vegas. Bally’ 

agreed to offer it but canceled at the last 
minute, so Webb switched to the Stardust. 
“The dealers weren't trained adequately 
there, and as a result the game was 
pulled,” Webb says. Trump Plaza in 
Atlantic City also pulled out of a deal to try 
the game, and Webb ended up at the tiny 
Sands, where the game lasted a month be- 
fore failing. “That's when I discovered how 
valuable Mississippi is,” Webb says. “Three 
Card Poker was a volatile game, and it was 


subject to dealer error. In Mississippi they 


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By 1997 Webb had slipped into Col- 
orado, northern Nevada and other small 
gambling jurisdictions, and by March 
1998 he had an impressive 100 tables 
nationwide, including ones in Vegas and 
‚ where the game was picked 
up after it had proved itself elsewhere. 
But with success came litigation. Just as 
Webb was about to realize the fruits of 
invention, he was hit with a lawsuit by 
the then owner of Caribbean Stud, Pro- 
gressive Games Inc., which claimed he 
had infringed on its patent. Webb calls it 
sham litigation, brought on because he 
was challenging the market dominance 


Most major cradit cards accepted, 
1 


of its game. Mikohn Gaming Corpora- 
tion, which had acquired PGI, tried to 
buy Three Card Poker from Webb even 
as PGI was suing him. Eventually Webb 
sold his game to Shuffle Master because 
he couldn't handle the costs of the law- 
suit. In December 2002 he filed his own 
suit, accusing PGI and Mikohn, the cur- 
rent owner of Caribbean Stud, of anti- 
trust violations that essentially caused 
Webb to sell the American rights to his 
game at the bargain-basement price of 
$3 million with no profit participation. 
As his case slogs through the courts, 
Webb lives off his $1.75 million in royal- 
ties. Three Card Poker has continued to 
gain popularity worldwide, but the more 
than $10 million a year from its more 
than 1,000 tables in 
North America cur- 
rently goes to Shuf- 
fle Master. He has 
tested, along with 
21-3 and 2-2-1, 
1wo other games— 
PlayBacc (a version 
of baccarat) and 
YesDice (simpli- 
fied craps)—and is 
working on Jack- 
Black (a reverse 
blackjack game in 
which players share 
a hand against the 
casino), WayToGo 
(a red dog varia- 
tion), NuFaro (a 
faro adaptation) 
and ShowMe Pok- 
er (a house-banked 
poker game). His 
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property is called 
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When a new game 
is introduced for a 
trial run, the first thing a casino wants to 
know is if players will accept it. “This 
more important than the economics— 
more important than hold, more impor- 
tant than win per unit," says Rigot of the 
Borgata. "And ifthey do gravitate toward 
the game, the second thing you want to 
know is, Will they come back? Will they 
play it more than once? And the key is 
giving the customer a value for the ex- 
perience. The game can't be too strong. 
I'll give you an example. There was a 
game in the casinos for a while called red 
dog, also called in between and acey- 
deucey. It’s gone. You won't find it any- 
where. The consumer rejected the game 
because it was too strong. It pressed the 


player too much." Translation: The game 139 


PLAYBOY 


can't take the player's money too fast. 

And the game can't take the casino's 
money too fast, either. A few months after 
Tunica I go in search of Henry Lo again. 
His number has changed, and he is hard 
to locate. It turns out that since I last saw 
him, 7 Card Thrill has failed in three more 
casino trials. Lo has run out of money and 
is driving a junker. He has borrowed 
money from his mother, sister and broth- 
er. He can't pay his rent, he says, and he 
can't leave Vegas to promote the game be- 
cause he has no way to travel. He says all 
this with absolute delight. In fact, he bus- 
tles right over to the modest Boardwalk 
casino to meet me, and his first words are, 
“You want to play 7 Card Thrill? I have 
the layout, the cards, the...” 

He motions to the big black case in his 
right hand. He could set up the game 
anywhere, he says. My hotel room, 
maybe? He has a new pay table and a 
new bonus bet, and he is looking for 
investors. I calm him down, and we go 
for drinks in the lounge instead. 

He tells his tales of defeat in the way the 
Duke of Wellington must have described 
the battles before Waterloo—as mere 
learning stages. The Sahara terminated 7 
Card Thrill after four and a half months 
because there was “not enough volume.” 
Yet Lo knew that the shift manager fre- 
quently kept the game closed even on 
weekends. (“How can I get volume when 
the players show up and the game is 
closed?) Next he got a shot at Harrah's 
in the dusty resort town of Laughlin, on 
the Arizona border, where the mostly 
elderly tourists said they liked the game 
but didn't want to play it because it had 
no bonus bet; they wanted to be paid 
jackpots for royal flushes, four of a kinds 
and the like. So management took the 
game out, saying, “When you have a 
bonus bet, we'll take another look.” 

Lo cooled his heels for eight months, 
waiting for the Nevada gaming authori- 
ties to approve his bonus bet. When they 
did, he gota tryout at the Fiesta Rancho, 
a Vegas locals joint with light traffic. The 
game was canceled after two months 
because of “downsizing.” 

From there he went to the Fiesta Hen- 


derson, and this time he was determined 
to “babysit” the game every moment it 
was open. “The players play longer 
when I hang around,” Lo says. “And if 
the casino knows I'm there, it's more 
likely to keep the table open.” 

He ended up spending $4,000 of his 
own money making bets for the dealers 
and players. The game started well for 
the casino, averaging a 20 percent hold 
for the first 29 days of the first month. 
But on day 30 several gamblers won big, 
and the total hold for the month dropped 
to 13 percent. The second month was 
better, with 19 percent. In the third 
month a familiar pattern emerged: The 
table wasn't open that often. “If you're a 
new game,” Lo says, “you're the last to 
open and the first to close. There have to 
be a lot of people in the casino to open 
the game, and there weren't a lot of peo- 
ple in that casino.” 

The new version of 7 Card Thrill was 
finally done in by high rollers. The game 
pays $5,000 for a hand with five aces— 
four aces and the joker—and two players 
hit it in the third month. “It wouldn't 
matter over the long run,” says Lo, “be- 
cause the house advantage takes over. 
Butif you have low volume and the gen- 
eral manager is seeing $5,000 payouts, 
there's no time to recover that money.” 

One afternoon in October 2003 a high 
roller came into the casino and started 
playing two hands at a time with $500 
chips. He won $7,000 for the day. He 
returned the next day and lost $6,000 
before winning it back plus another 
$8,000. It was the last straw for the Fiesta 
Henderson. The game closed. “Henry, 
Um sorry,” the table-games manager 
said, “but I can't lose my job.” 


Meanwhile, Derek Webb was happily 
fine-tuning his каше. His experience 
testing 2-2-1 in Mississippi had inspired 
some improvements, and he planned to 
relaunch at his old friend Barry Morris's 
casino, Caesars Indiana. He also changed 
some of the rules to bring the house 
edge down from 2.3 percent to 1.2 per- 
cent. "We can do this because players 


don't play anywhere close to the true 
house advantage," he says. 

I'd never really asked Webb what his 
ultimate motivation is. After all, he has 
more than enough money from the games 
he's already invented. A life spent hang- 
ing out in casinos cant be that stimulat- 
ing when you've done it as long as he 
has, and he had mentioned more than 
once that his vife was getting a little tired. 
of traveling. So what's the attraction? 

“You can become a multimillionaire— 
that's the attraction,” he says. “And there's 
more to it than that. J obsess about it 
because I know how flawed the other 
games are. There are terrible games on 
the casino floor—terrible intellectually, 
mathematically and operationally.” 

He thinks for a minute and then 
comes to the point. “There’s no respect 
for what someone like me does,” he says. 
“The inventors of blackjack, roulette 
and craps are all forgotten. The only rea- 
son the state can license games is because 
someone invented them. You should 
respect the inventor.” 

‘Then his face brightens: “If you want 
to drive out to the airport with me....” 
He had yet another invention: the 
ViDiceo slot machine. Webb, apparently 
in an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em 
mood, had figured out how to take the 
elements of a table game and put them 
inside a slot machine. It was ready and 
waiting in a storage facility. Webb had 
already shown it to all the slot-machine 
manufacturers, but none wanted to mar- 
ket it. "So it's something else I'm going 
to do by myself," he says. I can already 
see the wheels turning. 

‘Two weeks later Webb was on the road 
again, launching the improved 2-2-1 in 
Indiana. | spoke to him on the phone 
and heard a lilt in his voice. It was work- 
ing even better this time. He wasn't yet 
ready to call it a success, because that 
would be like betting too heavily on 
pocket aces and letting everyone know 
what he was doing. The thing about 
gamblers is that you don't know they've 
won until the end of the game. 


SAVING THE 
COUNTRY CAN 


WA L L (continued from page 84) 


I was beat, truly. Two nights running with less than 
three hours of sleep. But I was energized, too. 


What I finally did was ease out of the car, 
slip down the block and cut through the 
neighbors’ to our backyard, where the 
bulk of the house screened me from view. 

1 came up the cellar stairs from the 
garage, my father sunk into the recliner 
in the living room with the TV going— 
the news grim and grimmer—and my 
mother rattling things around in the 
kitchen. “You going to eat tonight?” she 
asked, just to say something. I ate every 
night—I couldn't afford not to. She had a 
cigarette at her lips, a drink in her hand— 
scotch and water. Dishes were set out on 
the table, a pot of something going on 
the stove. "I'm making chili con carne." 

1 had a minute, just a ие, no more, 
because I was afraid Cole would wake up 
to the fact that he was waiting for nothing, 
and then it would be the room upstairs, 
the hypnosis of the records, the four walls 
and the sloping ceiling and a gulf of bore- 
dom so deep you could sail a fleet into it. 
“No,” I said, “I think I might go out.” 

She stirred the pot, went to set the cig- 
arette in the ashtray on the stove and 
saw that another was there, already 
burning and rimmed red with lipstick. 
“Without dinner?” (1 have to give her 
her due here—she loved me, her only 
son, and my father must have loved me 
too in his own way, but I didn’t know 
that then or didn't care, and it’s too late 
now to do anything about it.) 

“Yeah, I might eat out, 1 guess. With 
Cole.” 

“Who?” 

“Cole Harman. He was in high school 
with me?” 

She just shrugged. My father said 
nothing, not hello or good-bye or you 
look half-starved already and you tell me 
you're going to miss dinner? The TV 
emitted the steady whip crack of small- 
arms fire, and then the correspondent 
came оп with the day's body count. Four 
minutes later—the bells, the boots, a 
wide-collar shirt imprinted with two 
flaming outsize eyeballs under the 
greasy jacket, and my hair kinked up like 
Hendrix’s—and I was out the door. 


“Hey,” 1 said, rapping at the window of 
the Bug. “Hey, 

Cole looked up as if he'd been asleep, 
as if he'd been absorbed in some other 
reality altogether, one that didn't seem 
to admit or even recognize me. It took 
him a moment, and then he leaned 
across the passenger’s seat and flipped 
the lock, and I went round the car and 
slid in beside him. I said something like 
“Good to see you, man," and reached 


out for the soul shake, which he re- 
tumed, and then I said, “So what's up? 
You want to go to Chase's, or what?" 

He didn't reply, just handed me the 
tight white tube of a joint, put the car in 
gear and hit the accelerator with the 
sound of a hundred eggbeaters all rat- 
tling at once. I looked back to see my 
house receding at the end of the block 
and felt as if I'd been rescued. I put the 
lighter to the joint. 

The night before, we'd gone to Chase’s, 
a bar in town ГА never been to before, an 
ancient place with a pressed-tin ceiling 
and paneled booths gone the color of beef 
jerky with the smoke of a hundred thou- 
sand cigarettes. The music was of the 
moment, though, and the clientele mostly 
young—women were there in their low- 
slung jeans and gauzy tops, and it was 
good to see them, exciting in the way of an 
afterthought that suddenly blooms into 
prominence. (Га left a girlfriend behind 
at college, promising to call, visit, write, 
but long distance was expensive, she was 
500 miles away, and I wasn't much of a 
writer.) My assumption—my hope—was 
that we'd go back there tonight. 

But we didn't. Cole just drove aim- 
lessly, past bleached-out lawns and squat 
houses, down the naked tunnels of trees 
and into the country, where the odd 
field—crippled cornstalks, rotting pump- 
kins—was squeezed in among the hous- 
ing developments and the creep of 
shopping malls. We smoked the joint 
down to the nub, employed a roach clip 
and alternated hits till it was nothing but 
air. An hour stole by. The same hits 
thumped through the radio, the same 
commercials. It was getting dark. 

Afiera while we pulled up ata deserted 
spot along a blacktop road not two miles 
from my house. I knew the place from 
when I was akid, riding my bike out to the 
reservoir to fish and throw rocks and fool 
around. There was a waist-high wall of 
blackened stone running the length of a 
long two blocks and behind that a glimpse 
of a cluster of stone cottages through the 
dark veins of the trees. We'd been talking 
about something comforting—a band or a 
guitar player—and I'd been drifüng, 
wheeling round and round the moment, 
secure, calm, and now suddenly we were 
stopped out on the road in the middle of 
nowhere. “So what's the deal?" I said. 

A car came up the street in the oppo- 
site direction and the lights caught Cole's 
face. He squinted, puta hand up to shield 
his eyes till the car had passed, and he 
craned his neck to make sure it was still 
moving, watching for the flash of brake 
lights as it rounded the curve at the сог- 


ner behind us and vanished into the night. 
“Nothing,” he said, a spark of animation 
igniting his voice as if it were a joke—the 
car, the night, the joint—"1 just wanted 
you to meet some people, that's all.” 

“What people? Out here?” 1 gave it a 
beat. “You don't mean the little people, 
do you? The elves? Where are they— 
crouching behind the wall there? Or in 
their burrows—is that where they are, 
asleep in their burrows?” 

We both had a laugh, one of those 
protracted, breast-pounding jags of 
hilarity that remind you just how much 
you've smoked and how potent it was 
“No,” he said, still wheezing, “no. Big 
people. Real people, just like you and 
me.” He pointed to the faintest glow of 
light from the near cottage. “In there.” 

] was confused. The entrance to the 
place—the driveway, which squeezed 
under a stone arch that somebody had 
erected there at some distant point in our 
perfervid history—was up on the cross 
street at the end of the block, where the 
car had just turned. “So why don’t we just 
go in the driveway?” I wanted to know. 

Cole took a moment to light a cigarette, 
then he cracked the door, and the dark, 
pure, refrigerated smell of the night hit 
me. “Not cool,” he said. “Not cool at all.” 


I made a real effort the next day, and 
though I'd had less than three hours' 
sleep, I made homeroom with maybe six 
seconds to spare. The kids—the students, 
my charges—must have scented the 
debauch on me, the drift away from the 
straight and narrow they demanded as 
part of the social contract, because they 
were more restive than usual, more bois- 
terous and slippery, as if the seats couldn't 
contain them. There was one—there’s 
always one, memorable not for excellence 
or scholarship but for weakness, only 
that—and he spoke up now. Robert, his 
name was, Robert Rowe. He was 15, left 
back once, and he was no genius, but he 
had more of a spark in him than the 
others could ever hope for, and that made 
him stand out—it gave him power, but he 
didn’t know what to do with it. “Hey, Mr. 
Caddis," he called from the back of the 
room, where he was slumped in one of 
the undersize desks we'd inherited from 
another era, when the average student 
was shorter, slimmer, more attentive and 
eager. “You look like shit, you know that?” 

The rest of them—this was only home- 
room, where, as I've indicated, nothing 
was expected—froze for a moment. The 
interaction was delicious for them, I’m 
sure—they were scientists dissecting the 
minutest gradations of human behav- 
ior: Would I explode? Overheat and 
run for the lavatory like Mr. James, the 
puker? Ignore the comment? Pretend | 
hadn't heard? 

I was beat, truly. Two nights running 
with less than three hours of slcep. But I 


was energized, too, because something 141 


Pit AYN EO 


142 


new was happening to me, something 
that shone over the bleakness of this job, 
this place, my parents’ damaged lives, as 
if I'd suddenly discovered the high beams 
along a dark stretch of highway. “Yeah, 
Robert,” I said, holding him with my eyes, 
though he tried to duck away. “Thanks 
for the compliment.” A tutorial pause, 
flatly instructive. “You look like shit too.” 
The cottage, the stone cottage on the far 
side of the stone wall in the featureless 
mask of the night that had given way to 
this moment of this morning, was a place I 
felt I'd come home to after a long absence. 
I'd been to war, hadn't 12 Now I was 
home. How else to describe it, what that 
place meant to me from the minute the 
door swung back and I stepped inside? 
1 hadn't known what to expect. We 
vaulted the stone wall and picked our way 
through a dark tangle of leafless sumac 
and stickers that raked at our boots and 
the oversize flaps of our pants, and then 
there was another, lower wall, and we 
were in the yard. Out front was a dirt bike 
with its back wheel missing, skeletal 
under the porch light, and there were 
glittering fragments of other things there 
too, machines in various states of disas- 
sembly—a chain saw minus the chain, an 
engine block decorated with lit candles 


that flickered like votives in the dark cups 
of the cylinders, a gutted amplifier. And 
there was music. Loud now, loud enough 
to rattle the glass in the windowpanes. 
Somebody inside was playing along with 
the bass line of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” 

Cole went in without knocking, and I 
followed. Through a hallway and into the 
kitchen, obladi oblada life goes on, bra! 
There were two women there—girls—ris- 
ing up from the table in the kitchen with 
loopy grins to wrap their arms around 
Cole, and then, after the briefest of intro- 
ductions—" This is my friend John; he's a 
professor”—to embrace me, too. They 
were sisters, both tall, with the requisite 
hair parted in the middle and trailing 
down their shoulders: Suzie, the younger, 
darker and prettier one, and JoJo, two 
years older, with hair the color of rust 
before it flakes. There was a Baggie of pot 
on the table, a pipe and what looked to be 
half a bar of halyah candy but wasn’t 
candy at all. Joss sticks burned among the 
candles that lit the room. A cat looked up 
sleepily from a pile of newspaper in the 
corner. “You want to get high?" JoJo 
asked, and I was charmed instantly— 
here she was, the consummate hostess— 
anda portion of my uncertainty and awk- 
wardness went into retreat. 


"I can't talk now. We're downloading." 


I looked to Cole, and we both 
laughed, and this was a laugh of the 
same quality and flavor as the one we'd 
shared in the car. 

“What?” Suzie said, leaning back 
against the stove now, grinning wide. 
"Oh, I get it—you're already stoned, 
both of you, right? High as kites, right?" 

From the living room—the door was 
closed, and I had to presume it was the 
living room—there was the sudden 
screech of the needle lifting off the 
record, then the superamplified rasp of 
its dropping down again, and "Ob-La- 
Di, Ob-La-Da” came at us once more. 
JoJo saw my quizzical look and paused in 
putting the match to the pipe. "Oh, 
that's Mike—my boyfriend? He's like 
obsessed with that song.” 

I don't know how much time slid by 
before the door swung open—we were 
just sitting there at the table, enveloped 
in the shroud of our own consciousness, 
the cat receding into the corner that now 
seemed half a mile away, candles flicker- 
ing and sending insubstantial shadows 
up the walls. I turned round to see Mike 
standing in the door frame, we: 
strap of his bass like a band 
shirtless chest. He was big, six feet and 
something, ?00 pounds, and he was 
built, pectorals and biceps sharply de- 
fined, a stripe of hard blue vein running 
up each arm, but he didn't do calis- 
thenics or lift weights or anything like 
that—it was just the program of his genes. 
His hair was long, longer than either of 
the women's. He worea Fu Manchu mus- 
tache. He was sweating. “That was hot,” 
he said. “That was really hot.” 

JoJo looked up vacantly. “What,” she 
said, "you want me to turn down the heat?" 

He gave a laugh and leaned into the 
table to pluck a handful of popcorn out 
ofa bowl that had somehow materialized 
there. “No, I mean the—didn't you hear 
me? That last time? That was hot, that's 
what I'm saying.” 

It was only then that we got around to 
introductions, he and Cole swapping 
handclasps, and then Cole cocking a fin- 
ger at me. “He's a professor," he said. 

Mike took my hand—the soul shake, a 
pat on the shoulder—and stood there 
looking bemused. “A professor?” he said. 
“No shit?” 

1 was too stoned to parse all the nu- 
ances of the question, but still the blood 
must have risen to my face. “A teacher,” 1 
corrected. “You know, just to beat the 
draft? Like because if you——" and I 
went off on some disconnected mono- 
logue, talking because I was nervous, 
because I wanted to fit in, and I suppose 
I would have kept on talking till the sun 
came up but for the fact that everyone 
else had gone silent, and the realization 
of it suddenly hit me. 

“No shit?" Mike repeated, grinning in 
a dangerous way. He was swaying over 
the table, alternately feeding popcorn 
into the slot of his mouth and giving me 


a hooded look. “So how old are you? 
What—19, 20; 
“Twenty-one. ГЇЇ be 22 in Decembei 
There was more. It wasn't an inquisi 
tion exactly—Cole at one point spoke up 
He's cool"—but a kind 
of scientific examination of this rare bird 
that had mysteriously turned up at the 
kitchen table. What did I think? I 
thought Cole should ease up on the pro- 
fessor business—as I got to know him I 
realized he was inflating me in order to 
inflate himself—and that we should all 
smoke some of the hash, though I wasn't 
the host here and hadn't brought any- 
thing to the party. 
Eventually we did smoke. That was 
what this was all about—community, 
the community of 
mind and spirit and 
style. And we moved 
into the living room, 
where the big speak- 
ers were, to listen 
to the heartbeat of 
the music and feel 
the world settle in 
around us. There 
were pillows scat- 
tered across the 
floor, more cats, 
more incense, Shop- 
Rite cola and pep- 
permint tea in 
heavy homemade 
mugs and a slow, 
sweet seep of peace. 
I propped my head 
against a pillow, 
stretched my feet 
out before me. The 
music was a dream, 
and I closed my eyes 
and entered it. 


[A 
DA 


wah eor gt 
Kara Monaco 


A week or two later 
my mother asked 
me to meet her 
after work at a bar- 
restaurant called the 
Hollander. This was 
a place with pre- 
tensions to grander 
things, where older people—people my 
mother's age—came to drink manhat- 
tans and smoke cigarettes and feel ele- 
vated over the crowd that frequented 
taverns with sawdust on the floors, the 
sort of place my father favored. Teachers 
came to the Hollander, lawyers, people 
who owned car dealerships and dress 
shops. My mother was a secretary, my 
father a bus driver. And the Hollander 
was an ersatz place, with pompous wait- 
ers and а fake windmill out front. 
She was at the bar, smoking, sitting 
with a skinny white-haired guy I didn't 
recognize, and as I came up to them I 
realized he could have been my father's 
double, could have been my father, but 
he wasn't. There were introductions— 


his name was Jerry Reilly, and he was a 
teacher just like me—and a free beer 
appeared at my elbow, but I couldn't 
really fathom what was going on here or 
why my mother would want me to join 
her in a place like this. I played it cool, 
ducked my head and answered Jerry 
Reilly's interminable questions about 
school as best 1 could—yeah, sure, 1 
guess I liked it; it was better than being 
executed in Vietnam, wasn't it?—with- 
out irritating him to the point at which I 
would miss out on a free dinner, but all I 
wanted to do was get out of there and 
meet Cole at the cottage in the woods. As 
expeditiously as possible. Dinner down, 
good-byes and thank-yous on file, and 
out the door and into the car. 


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That wasn't how it worked out. Some- 
thing was in the air, and I couldn't fath- 
om what it was. I kept looking at Jerry 
Reilly, with his cuff links and snowy col- 
lar and whipcord tie and thinking, No, 
no way—my mother wouldn't cheat on 
my father, not with this guy. But her life 
and what she did with it was a work in 
progress. as unfathomable to me as my 
own life must have been to my students— 
and tonight's agenda was something else 
altogether, something that came in the 
form of a very special warning, specially 
delivered. We were on our third drink, 
seated in the dining room now, steaks all 
around, though my mother barely 
touched hers and Jerry Reilly just pushed 
his around the plate every time Г lifted 


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my eyes to look at him. "Listen, John,” 
my mother said finally, “1 just wanted to 
say something to you. About Cole." 
All the alarm bells went off simultane- 
ously in my head. "Cole?" I echoed. 
She gave me a look I'd known all my 
life, the one reserved for missteps and 
misdeeds. "He has a record." 
So that was it. “What's it to you?" 
My mother just shrugged. "I just 
thought you ought to know, that's all." 
"I know. Of course I know. And it's 
ing, believe me—a case of mistaken 
"They got the wrong guy is all." 
The fact was that Cole had been busted 
for selling marijuana to an undercover 
agent, and they were trying to make a 
felony out of it even as his mother leaned 
on a retired judge 
she knew to step in 
and quash it. I put. 
on a look of offend- 
ed innocence. “So 
what'd you do, hire 
a detective?” 
A thin smile. “I'm 
just worried about 
you, that's all.” 
How I bristled at 
this. I wasn't a 
child—1 could take 
care of myself. How 
many times had her 
soft, dejected voice 
come at me out of 
the shadows of the 
living room at three 
and four in the 
morning, where 
she'd sat smoking 
in the dark while I 
roamed the streets 
with my friends? 
Where had I been? 
she always wanted 
to know. Nowhere, 
Pd tell her. There 
was the dark, the 
smell of her ciga- 
rette, and then 
even softer: I w: 
worried. And what 
did I do now? I 
worked my face and 
gave her a disgusted look to show her 
how far above all this I was. 
She looked to Jerry Reilly, then back 
to me. I became aware of the sound of 
traffic out on the road. It was dark 
beyond the windows. “You're not using 
drugs," she asked, drawing at her ciga- 
rette so that the interrogative lift came in 
a fume of smoke, "are you? 


PLAYBOY 
P.O. Bor 809 


46 11515) or 


TEn C- 


The first time I saw anyone inject heroin 
was in the bathroom of that stone cot- 
tage in the woods. It was probably the 
third or fourth night I'd gone there with 
Cole to hang out, listen to music and be 
convivial on our own terms (he was liv- 


ing at his parents’ house too, and there 143 


Bet ASL RIO Y 


144 


was no percentage in that). Mike greeted 
us at the door—he'd puta leather jacket 
on oyer a T-shirt, and he was all busi- 
ness, heading out to the road to meet a 
guy named Nicky, and they were going 
on into town to score and we should just 
hang tight because they'd be right back 
and did we happen to have any cash on 
us?—and then we went in and sat with 
the girls and smoked and didn't think 
about much of anything until the front 
door jerked back on its hinges half an 
hour later and Mike and Nicky came 
storming into the room as if their jackets 
had been set afire. 

Then it was into the bathroom, Mike 
first, the door open to the rest of us lined 
up behind him: Nicky—short, with a full 
beard that did nothing to flesh out a face 
that had been reduced to the sharp 
lineaments of bone and cartilage—and 
the two sisters, Cole and me. I'd con- 
tributed $5 to the enterprise, though 1 
had my doubts. I'd never done anything 
like this, and | was scared of the conse- 
quences, the droning narration of the 
antidrug films from high school riding 
up ont of some backwater of my mind to 
assert itself, to take over, become shrill 


even. Mike threw off his jacket, tore 
open two glassine packets with his teeth 
and carefully, meticulously shook out the 
contents into a tablespoon. It was a white 
powder, and it could have been any- 
Thing staking soda, confectioners’ sugar, 
lent—but it wasn't, and I remember 
thinking how innocuous it looked, how 
anonymous. In the next moment Mike 
sat heavily on the toilet, drew some 
water up into the syringe I'd seen lying 
there on a shelf in the medicine cabinet 
last time Pd used the facilities, squeezed 
a few drops into the powder, mixed it 
around and then held a lighter beneath 
the spoon. Then he tied himself off at 
the biceps with a bit of rubber tubing, 
drew the mixture from the spoon 
through a ball of cotton and hit а vein. 1 
watched his eyes. Watched the rush take 
him and then the nod. Nicky was next, 
then Suzie, then JoJo and finally Cole. 
Mike hit them, one at a time, like a doc- 
tor. | watched each of them rush and go 
limp, my heart hammering at my rib 
cage, the record in the living room 
repeating over and over because nobody 
had bothered to put the changer down, 
and then it was my turn. Mike held up 


"Before we begin, what do you think about reality TV?" 


the glassine packet. “It's just a taste,” he 
said. “Three-dollar bag. You on for it?” 

“No,” J said, “I mean, I don’t think 
TAX 

He studied me a moment, then tossed 
me the bag. "It's a waste,” he said, “a real 
waste, man.” His voice was slow, the 
voice of a record played at the wrong 
speed. He shook his head with infinite 
calm, moving it carefully from side to side 
as if it weighed more than the cottage 
itself. “But hey, we'll snort it this time. 
You'll see what you're missing, right?” 

Т saw. Within the week I was getting 
off too, and it was my secret—my initia- 
tion into a whole new life—and the 
tracks, the bite marks of the needle that 
crawled first up one arm and then the 
other, were my testament. 


It was my job to do lunch duty one week 
a month, and lunch duty consisted of 
keeping the student body out of the 
building for 45 minutes while they pre- 
sumably went home, downtown or over 
to the high school and consumed what- 
ever nourishment was available to them. 
It was necessary to keep them out of the 
junior high building for the simple rea- 
son that they would destroy it through 
an abundance of natural high spirits and 
brainless joviality. 1 stood in the dim 
hallway, positioned centrally between 
the three doors that opened from the 
southern, eastern and western sides of 
the building, and made my best effort 
at chasing them down when they burst 
in howling against the frigid collapse of 
the noon hour. On the second day of 
my third tour of duty, Robert Rowe 
sauntered in through the front doors, 
and I put down my sandwich—the one 
my mother had made me in the hour of 
the wolf before going off to work her- 
self—and reminded him of the rules. 

He opened his face till it bloomed 
like a flower and held out his palms. He 
was wearing а T-shirt and a sleeveless 
parka. 1 saw that he'd begun to let his 
hair go long. “I just wanted to ask you a 
question is all.” 

I was chewing tuna fish on rye, stand- 
ing there in the middle of all that empti- 
ness in my ridiculous pants and rumpled. 
jacket. The building, like most institu- 
tions of higher and lower learning, was 
overheated, and in chasing half a dozen 
of my charges out the door ГА built up a 
sweat that threatened to break my hair 
loose of its mold. Without thinking, I 
slipped off the jacket and let it dangle 
from one hand; without thinking, I'd 
pulled a short-sleeve button-down shirt 
out of my closet that morning because all 
the others were dirty. That was the 
scene, That was the setup. “Sure,” I said. 
“Go ahead.” 

“I was just wondering—you ever read 
this book, The Man With the Golden Arm?” 

“Nelson Algren?” 

He nodded. 


“No,” I said. “I've heard of it, though.” 

He took а moment with this, then 
cocked his head back till it rolled on his 
shoulders, and he gave me a dead-on 
look. “He shoots up.” 

“Who?” 

“The guy in the book. АЙ the time.” 
He was studying me, gauging how far he 
could go. “You know what that's like?” 

I played dumb. 

“You don't? You really don't?" 

I shrugged. Dodged his eyes. 

‘There was a banging at the door 
behind us, hilarious faces there, then the 
beat of retreating footsteps. Robert 
moved back a pace, but he held me with 
his gaze. “Then what's with the spots on 
your arms, then?" 

I looked down at my arms as if I'd 
never seen them before, as if I'd been 
born without them and they'd been 
grafted on while I was napping. “Mos- 
quito bites,” 1 said. 

“In November? They must be some 

ass Mosquitoes.” 
'eah." I said, shifting the half-eaten 
sandwich from one hand to the other 
so I could cover up with the jacket. 
“Yeah, they are.” 


Mike liked the country. He'd grown up 
in the projects on the Lower East Side, 
always pressed in by concrete and black- 
top, and now that he was in the wilds of 
northern Westchester he began to keep 
animals, There were two chickens in a 
rudely constructed pen and a white duck 
he'd hatched from the egg, all of which 
met their fate one bitter night when a 
fox or, more likely, a dog sniffed them 
out. He had a goat, too, chained to a tree 
from which it had stripped the bark to a 
height of six feet or more, its head against 
the palm of your hand exactly like а rock 
with hair on it, and when hethought about 
it he'd toss it halfa bale of hay or a loaf of 
stale bread or even the cardboard con- 
tainers the beer came in. Inside he had a 
50-gallon aquarium with a pair of foot- 
long alligators huddled inside it under a 
heat lamp, and these he fed hamburger 
in the form of raw meatballs he'd work 
between his palms. Every once in a while 
someone would get stoned and expel a 
lungful of smoke into the aquarium to see 
what effect it would have on a pair of rep- 
tiles and the things would scrabble around 
against the glass enclosure, hissing. 

I was there one night without Cole— 
he was meeting with his lawyer, I think; I 
remember he'd shaved his mustache 
and trimmed his hair about that time— 
and I parked out on the street so as to 
avoid suspicion and made my way over 
the stone wall and through the darkened 
woods to the indistinct rumble of live 
music, the pulse of Mike's bass buoyed 
by the chink-chink of a high hat, an organ 
fill and cloudy vocals. My breath 
steamed around me. A sickle moon hung 
over the roof of the cottage, and one of 


the cats shot along the base of the outer 
wall as 1 pushed through the door. 
Everyone was gathered in the living 
room, JoJo and Suzie stretched out on 
the floor, Mike and his band, his new 
band, manning the instruments. I stood 
in the doorway а moment, feeling awk- 
ward. Nicky was on keyboards, and a guy 
I'd meta few times—Skip—was doing the 
drumming. But there was a stranger— 
older, in his late 20s, with an out-of-date 
haircut and the flaccid beginnings of 
jowls—up at the mike singing lead and 
playing guitar. I leaned against the door 
frame and listened, nodding my head to 
the beat, as they went through a version 
of “Rock & Roll Woman,” Mike stepping 
up to the microphone to blend his voice 
effortlessly with the new guy's on the 
complex harmonies, and it wasn't as if 
they were rehearsing at all. They could 
have been onstage playing the tune for 
the hundredth ume. When the song fin- 
ished I ducked into the room, nodding 


to Mike and saying something inane like . 


“Sounding good, man.” 

As it turned out, the new guy—his 
name was either Haze or Hayes, I never 
did get that straight—had played with 
Mike in a cover band the year before and 
then vanished from sight. Now he was 
back, and they were rehearsing for a 
series of gigs at a club out on Route 202, 
where eventually they'd become the 
house band. I sat there on the floor with 
the girls and listened and felt trans- 
ported—I wanted to get up and sing 
mysclf, ask them if they could use a sax- 
ophone to cut away from the guitar 
leads, but I couldn't work up the nerve. 
Afterward in the kitchen, when we were 
all stoned and riding high on the com- 
munion of the music, Haze launched 
into "Sunshine of Your Love" on his 
acoustic guitar, and 1 lost my inhibitions 
enough to try to blend my voice with his, 
with mixed results. But he kept on play- 
ing, and I kept on singing, till Mike went 
out to the living room and came back with 
the two alligators, one clutched in each 
hand, and began banging them together 
like tambourines, their legs scrambling 
at the air and tails flailing, the white 
miniature teeth fighting for purchase. 


Then there was parent-teacher night. 1 
got home from work and went straight 
to bed, and then, cruelly, had to get back 
up, put the tie on all over again and drive 
to school right in the middle of cocktail 
hour, or at the tail end of it, anyway. | 
make a joke of it now, but I was tentative 
about the whole thing, afraid of the par- 
ents’ scrutiny, afraid I'd be exposed for 
the impostor I was. I pictured them 
grilling me about the rules of grammar 
or Shakespeare's plays—the ones 1 hadn't 
read—but the parents were as hopeless 
as their offspring. Precious few of them 
turned up, and those who did looked so 
intimidated by their surroundings I had 


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the feeling they would have taken my 
word for practically anything. In one 
class—my fifth period—a single parent 
turned up. His son—an overweight, 
well-meaning kid mercilessly ragged by 
his classmates—was one of the few in the 
class who weren't behavioral problems, 
but the father kept insisting that his son 
was a real hell-raiser, “just like his old 
man.” He sat patiently, work-hardened 
hands folded on the miniature desk, 
through my fumbling explanation of 
what I was trying to accomplish with this 
particular class and the lofty goals to 
which each and every student aspired and 
more drivel of a similar nature, before 
he interrupted me to say, “He gives you 
a problem, you got my permission to just 
whack him one. All right? You get me?” 

I was stuffing papers into my briefcase 
just after the final bell rang at 8:15, 
thinking to meet Cole at Chase’s as soon 
as I could change out of my prison 
clothes, when a woman in her 30s—a 
mother—appeared in the doorway. She 
looked as if she'd been drained of blood, 
parchment skin and a high, sculpted 
bluff of bleached-blonde hair gone dead 
under the dehumanizing wash of the 
oyerhead lights. “Mr. Caddis?” she said 
in asmoker's rasp. “You got a minute?” 

A minute? I didn’t have 30 seconds. I 
wanted nothing but to get out of there 
and get loose before I fell into my bed 
for a few hours of inadequate dreamless 
sleep and then found myself right here 
all over again. “I’m in a hurry,” I told 
her. “I have—well, an appointment." 

“1 only want a minute.” There was 
something about her that looked vaguely 
familiar, something about the staring, 
cola-colored eyes and the way her upper 
teeth pushed at her lip, that reminded 
me of somebody, somewhere—and then 
it came to me: Robert Rowe. "I'm Rob- 
ert's mother,” she said. 

I didn't say anything, just parked my 
right buttock on the nearest desk and 
waited for her to go оп. Robert wasn’t in 
any of my classes, just homeroom. I 
wasn't his teacher. He wasn't my respon- 
sibility. The fat kid, yes. The black kid 
who flew around the room on the wings 
beating inside his brain, chanting “He's 
white, he's right” for hours at a time, the 
six-months-pregnant girl whose head 
would have fallen off if she stopped 
chewing gum for 30 seconds, yes and 
yes. But not Robert. Not Robert Rowe. 

She was wearing a dirty white sweater, 
misbuttoned. A plaid skirt. Loafers. If I 
had been older, more attuned, more 
sympathetic, I would have seen that she 
was pretty, pretty still, and that she was 
desperately trying to communicate some- 
thing to me, some nascent hope grown 
up out of the detritus of welfare checks 
and abandonment. “He looks up to you,” 
she said, and her voice choked as if sud- 
denly she couldn't breathe. 

This took me by surprise. I didn't 
know how to respond, so I threw it back 


at her, stalling a moment to assimila 
what she was saying. "Me?" I said. "He 
looks up to me?" 

Her eyes were pooling. She nodded. 

“But why me? I'm not even his teacher." 

"Ever since his father left," she began, 
but let that thought trail off as she strug- 
gled to summon anew one, the thought— 
the phrase—that would bring me around, 
that would touch me in the way she 
wanted to. “He talks about you all the 
time. He thinks you're cool. That's what 
he says, “Mr. Caddis is cool.'” 

Robert Rowe's face rose up to hover 
before me in the seat of my unconscious, 
a compressed little nugget of a face with 
the extruded teeth and Coca-Cola сусз 
of this woman, his mother, Mrs. Rowe. 
"That was who she was, Mrs. Rowe, I 
reminded myself, and I seized on the 
proper form of address in that moment: 
“Mrs. Rowe, look, he’s a great kid, but 
Um not, I mean—well, I'm not his 
teacher, you know tha” 

‘The room smelled of adolescent fevers 
and anxieties, of socks worn too long, 
unwashed hair, jackets that had never 
seen the inside of a dry cleaner’s. There 
was a fading map of the United States on 
the back wall, chalkboards so old they'd 
faded to gray. The linoleum was cracked 
and peeled. The desks were a joke. Her 
voice was so soft 1 could barely hear her 
over the buzz of the fluorescent lights. “I 
know,” she said. “But he's not...he's get- 
ting Fs—Ds and Fs. I don't know what to 
do with him. He won't listen to me—he 
hasn't listened to me in years.” 

"Yeah," I said, just to say something. 
He looked up to me, sure, but I had a 
date to meet Cole at Chase's. 

“Would you just, I don't know, look 
out for him? Would you? That's all I ask.” 


1 suppose there are several layers of 
irony here, not least of which is that I 
wasn't capable of looking out for myself, 
but I buried all that at the bar, and when 
I saw Robert Rowe in homeroom the 
next morning, I felt nothing more than 
a vague irritation. He was wearing a tie- 
dyed shirt—starbursts of pink and yel- 
low—under the parka, and he'd begun 
to kink his hair out in the way 1 wore 
mine at night; but that had to be a coin- 
cidence, because to my knowledge he'd 
never scen me outside of school. It was 
possible, of course. Anything was possi- 
ble. He could have seen me coming out 
of Chase's or stopped in my car along 
South Street with Mike or Cole, looking 
to score. I kept my head down, working 
at my papers—the endless, hopeless, 
scrawled-over tests and assignments— 
but I felt his eyes on me the whole time. 
Then the bell rang and he was gone with 
the rest of them. 

Iwas home early that evening, looking 
for sustenance—hoping to find my 
mother in the kitchen, stirring some- 
thing in a pot—because I was out of 


money till payday and Cole was lyinglow 
because his mother had found a bag of 
pot in his underwear drawer and 1 felt 
like taking a break from the cottage and 
music and dope. Just for the night. I fig- 
ured I'd stay in, read a bit, get to bed 
early. My mother wasn't there, though. 
She had a meeting. At school. One of the 
endless mectings she had to sit through, 
taking minutes in shorthand while the 
school board debated yet another bond 
issue. 1 wondered about that and won- 
dered about Jerry Reilly, too. 

My father was home. There was no 
other place he was likely to be—he'd given 
up going to the tavern or the diner or 
anyplace else. TV was his narcotic. And 
there he was, settled into his chair with a 
cocktail, watching Victor) al Sea (his sin- 
gle favorite program, as if he couldn't 
get enough of the war that had robbed 
him of his youth and personality), the 
dog, which had been young when 1 was 
in junior high myself, curled up stinking 
at his feet. We exchanged a few words— 
Where's Mom? At a meeting. You going 
to eat? No. A sandwich? I'll make you a 
sandwich? I said no—and then I heated 
a can of soup and went upstairs with it. 
For a long while I lay on the floor with 
my head sandwiched between the speak- 
ers, playing records over and over, and 
then I drifted off. 

It was latc when I woke— past one— 
and when I went downstairs to use the 
toilet my mother was just coming in the 
door. The old dog began slapping his tail 
on the carpet, too arthritic to get up; the 
lamp on the end table flicked on, drag- 
ging shadows out of the corners. “You 
just getting in?" 1 said. 

“Yes,” she said, her voice hushed. She 
was in her work clothes: flocked dress, 
stockings and heels, a cloth coat, no gloves, 
though the weather had turned raw. 

1 stood there a moment, listening to 
the thwack of the dog’s tail, half asleep, 
summoning the beat of an internal 
rhythm. I should have mounted the 
stairs, should have gone back to bed; 
instead, I said, “Late meeting?" 

My mother had set her purse down on 
the little table inside the door reserved 
for the telephone. She was slipping out 
of her coat. “We went out for drinks 
afterward," she said. “Some of us—me 
and Ruth, Larry Abrams, Ted Penny.” 

“And Jerry? What about him—was 
he there?” 

It took a moment, the coat flung over 
the banister, the dog settled back in his 
coil, the clank of the heat coming on 
noisy out ofall proportion, and then she 
turned to me, hands on her hips, and 
said, “Yes, Jerry was there. And you know 
what—P'm glad he was." A beat. She 
swayed slightly, or maybe that was my 
imagination. “You want to know why?” 

There was something in her voice that 
should have warned me off, but 1 was 
awake now, and instead of going back 
upstairs to bed I just stood there in the 


dim arc of light the lamp cast on the 
floor and shrugged my shoulders. She 
lifted her purse from the telephone 
stand and 1 saw that there was some- 
thing else there, a metal case the size of 
the two-tiered deluxe box of candy I 
gave her for Christmas cach year. It was 
a tape recorder, and she bent a moment 
to fit the plug in the socket next to the 
phone outlet. Then she straightened up 
and gave me that look again—the 
admonitory look, searing and sharp. “I 
want you to listen to something,” she 
said. “Something a friend of Jerry s—he 
works for the Peterskill police depart- 
ment; he's a detective—thought you 
ought to hear." 

I froze. There was no time to think, no 
tirne to fabricate a story, no time to wrig- 
gle or plead, because my own voice was 
coming at me out of the miniature 
speaker. “Hey,” 1 was saying, “you com- 
ing over or what? It's like past nine 
already, and everybody's waiting —" 

There was music in the background, 
cranked loud—'Spinning Wheel,” the 
tune of that fall, and we were all intoxi- 
cated by David Clayton-Thomas and the 
incisiveness of those punched-up horns— 
and my mind ran through the calendar 
of the past week, Friday or Saturday at 
the cottage in the woods, Cole running 
late, the usual party in progress... 

“Yeah, sure,” I heard Cole respond. 
He was at his mother's—it was his 
mother's birthday, “Just as soon as I сап 
get out of here.” 

“Okay, man," I said. “Catch you later, 
right?" 

That was it. Nothing incriminating, 
but incrimination wasn't the point of the 
exercise. It took me a moment, and then 
thought of Haze, his sudden appear- 
ance in our midst, the glad-handing and 
the parceling out of the cool, and then I 
understood why he'd come to us—the 
term infiltrated soared up out of no- 
where—and just who had put him up to 
it. 1 couldn't think of what to say. 

My mother could, though. She clicked 
off the tape with a punch of her index 
finger, “My friend said if you knew what 
was good for you you'd stay clear of that 
place for a while. For good.” We stood 
five feet apart. There was no embrace— 
we weren't an embracing family—no pat 
on the back, no gesture of any kind. Just 
the two of us standing there in the half- 
dark. When she spoke finally her voice 
was muted. “Do you understand what 
I'm telling you?” 


As soon as I got out of work the next day 
I changed my clothes and went straight 
to the cottage. It was raining steadily, a 
cold gray rain that drooled from the 
branches of the trees and braided in the 
gutters. Cole’s Bug was parked on the 
street as I drove up, but I didn't park 
beside him—I drove another half mile 
and parked on a side street, a cul-de-sac 


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PLAYBOY 


148 


where nobody would see the car. Then I 
put my head down and walked up the 
road in the rain, veering off into the 
woods the minute I saw a car turn into 
the street. I remember how bleak every- 
thing looked, the summer's trash 
revealed at the feet of the denuded trees, 
the weeds bowed and frost-burned, 
leaves clinging to my boots as if the 
ground were made of paste. My heart 
was pounding. It was a condition we 
called paranoia when we were smoking, 
the unreasoning feeling that something 
or somebody is about to pounce, that the 
world has become intractably dangerous 
and your own vulnerability has been 
flagged. But no, this wasn't paranoia: 
The threat was real. 

The hair was wet to my scalp and my 
jacket all but ruined by the time 1 
pushed through the front door. The 
house was quiet, no music bleeding 
through the speakers, no murmur of 
voices or tread of footsteps. There was 
the soft, fading scratch of one of the cats 
in the litter pan in the kitchen, and that 
was it—nothing, silence absolute. I stood 
in the entryway a moment, trying to 
scrape the mud and leaves from my 
boots, but it was hopeless, so finally I 
just stepped out of them in my stocking 
feet and left them there at the door. I 
suppose that was why Suzie and Cole 
didn't hear me coming—I hadn't meant 
to creep up on them, hadn't meant any- 
thing except to somehow come round to 
telling them what I knew, what I'd 
learned, warning them, sparing them, 
and as I say my heart was going and I 
was risking everything myself just to be 
there, just to be present—and when I 
stepped into the living room they gave 
me a shock. They were naked, their 
clothes flung down beside them, rolling 
on a blanket in sexual play or the pre- 


lude to it. 1 suppose it doesn't really mat- 
ter at this juncture to say that I'd found 
her attractive—she was the pretty one, 
always that—or that I felt all along that 
she'd favored me over Cole or Nicky or 
any of the others. That didn’t matter. 
That had nothing to do with it. Га come 
with a warning, and I had to deliver it. 

“Who's that?” Suzie's voice rose up out 
of the stillness. Cole was atop her, and 
she had to lift her head to fix her eyes on 
me. “John? Is that you?” 

Cole rolled off her and flipped a fold 
of the blanket over her. “Jesus,” he said, 
“you picked a great moment.” His eyes 
burned, though I could see he was try- 
ing to be cool, trying to minimize it, no 
big thing. 

“Jesus,” Suzie said, “you scared me. Do 
you always creep around like that?” 

“My boots,” I said. “They just—or 
actually, I just came by to tell you some- 
thing, that's all—I can't stay...” 

The rain was like two cupped palms 
holding the place in its grip. The gutters 
rattled. Pinpricks needled the roof. 
“Shit,” Cole said, and Suzie reached out 
to gather up her clothes, shielding her 
breasts in the crook of one arm. “I mean, 
shit, John. Couldn't you wait in the 
kitchen, I mean for like 10 fucking min- 
utes? Huh? Couldn't you?" 

I swung round without a word and pad- 
ded out to the kitchen even as the living 
room door thundered shut at my back. 
For a long while I sat at the familiar table 
with its detritus of burnt joss sticks, 
immolated candles, beer bottles, mugs, 
food wrappers and the like, thinking I 
could just write them a note— that would 
do it—or maybe I'd call Cole later, from 
home, when he got home, that was, at 
his mother's. But I couldn't find a pen- 
cil—nobody took notes here, that was for 
sure—and finally I just pushed myself 


ated 


“Before you go, who's better at this—me or Trump?” 


up, tiptoed to the door and fell back into 
my boots and the sodden jacket. 


It was just getting dark when I pulled up 
in front of the house. My father’s car was 
parked there at the curb, but my mother's 
wasn't, and it wasn't in the driveway, 
either. The rain kept coming down—the 
streets were flooding, broad sheets of 
water fanning away from the tires and 
the main road clogged with slow-moving 
cars and their tired headlights and fran- 
tically beating wipers. Iran for the house, 
kicked off my boots on the doorstep and 
flung myself inside as if I'd been away 
for years. My jacket streamed, and I hur- 
ried across the carpet to the accompani- 
ment of the dog's thwacking tail and hung 
it from the showerhead in the bathroom. 
Then I went to the kitchen to look in the 
refrigerator, feeling desolate and cheated. 
I didn’t have a habit, despite the stig- 
mata of my arms—I was a neophyte still, 
a two- or three-times-a-week user—but 1 
had a need, and that need yawned before 
me, opening up and opening up again 
as I leaned over the sink. The cottage 
was over. Cole was over. Life, as I'd come 
to know it, was finished. 

It was then that I noticed the figure of 
my father moving through the gloom of 
the backyard. He had on a pair of gal- 
oshes Га worn as a kid, the kind with the 
metal fasteners, and he was wearing а yel- 
low rain slicker and one of those winter 
hats with the fold-down earmuffs. I 
couldn't quite tell what he was doing out 
there, raking dirt or leaves, something to 
do with the rain, I guessed—the driveway 
was eroding, maybe that was it. It never 
crossed my mind that he might need 
help. And Robert Rowe never crossed my 
mind either, nor the fact that his speech 
had been garbled and slow at the noon 
hour and his eyes drifted toward a point 
no one in this world could see but him. 

No. I was hungry for something. 1 
didn't know what. It wasn't food, because I 
mechanically chewed a handful of saltines 
over the sink and washed them down with 
halfa glass of milk that tasted like chalk. I 
paced round the living room, snuck a 
drink out of my mother's bottle—Dewar's, 
that was what she drank; my father stuck 
with vodka, the cheaper the better, and I'd 
never acquired a taste for it. 1 had another 
drink and then another. After a while 1 
eased myself down in my father’s chair 
and gazed around the room where Га 
spent the better part of my life, the sec- 
ondhand furniture, the forest-green wall- 
paper gone pale around the window 
frames, the peeling sheet-metal planter Га 
made for my mother in shop class, the 
plants within it long since expired, just 
curls of dead things now. Finally I got up 
and turned on the TY, then settled back in 
my father’s chair as the jets came in low 
and the village went up in flames. 


MATT DAMON continua ron page 55) 


I was concerned that 1 not look like fucking Opie, so I 
spent six months studying kali and shooting guns. 


оп. The Legend of Bagger Vance tanked. All 
the Pretty Horses really tanked. And every- 
one in the industry was whispering, “I 
heard The Bourne Identity is in trouble” 
because we had done two rounds of 
reshoots and the release had been post- 
poned. I thought, Well, this fucking 
movie is gone, and that's three movies in 
a row that I've tried to headline, so that's 
it. I hadn't been offered a movie in 12, 
18 months—some little independent 
things but no class projects. The writing 
was on the vall vithin the industry, and 
I'd come to terms with that. 

PLAYBOY: Then along comes Ocean's 
Eleven, in which you and other big stars 
share screen time, and it's a hit. Was it a 
relief not to have the weight of the whole 
movie on your shoulders? 

DAMON: On Ocean's Eleven 1 remember 
going to the set to watch even when I 
wasn't working, because it was fun. I 
didn't want to go anywhere else. But 
yeah, it's a weird thing trying to carry a 
movie—a different kind of responsibility 
and a little unsettling. For instance, 
Leonardo DiCaprio was wildly inventive 
from a young age. To limit his options is 
like cutting one of his legs out from under 
him. He's a character actor, really, and 
that's how I see myself. It's a stunning 
realization that nobody is secure in this 
business. You start to meet people who 
can't pay their mortgages and you think, 
But you were on the cover of Premiere 
eight years ago. And you assume that 
Tom Cruise is secure, but I guarantee you 
that guy isn’t secure cither, because there 
are always footsteps behind you 

PLAYBOY: Ocean's Eleven was an ensemble 
movie, but The Bourne Identity was you 
front and center, and it wasa big hit. What 
impact did it have on your career options? 
DAMON: Í was in London doing the last 
performances of the play This Is Our 
Youth, and The Bourne Identity opened in 
America on a Friday. Saturday morning 
I was awakened by this flurry of excited 
phone calls from L.A.: "Oh my God, it's 
a fucking hit!" By Monday I had 30 big 
movie offers. That was a really good 
experience, because 1 thought, Now 1 
get it. This is a real business. You can be 
friendly with people, even be friends 
with them, but that doesn't mean they 
have to do you any favors like suddenly 
putting you in their movie. 

PLAYBOY: Unless you're in another hit. 
Affleck also had a big spy flick, The Sum of 
All Fears, around the same time, but 
yours did better, 


DAMON: Both of us were pulling for our 
own and the other's movie, and the 
stakes had gotten so high. During press 
interviews, people would ask, “Whose 
movie is going to do better?” and 1 was 
like, “I don’t fucking care, as long as 
we're both okay.” I honestly don’t care 
much anymore about the media stuff. 
Each of us got really leery talking about 
the other or about our friendship, be- 
cause it felt cheapened when we saw it in 
print. At this point I just acknowledge to 
myself that I love him and he's going to 
be in my life forever. 

PLAYBOY: Now you've done a sequel 
called The Bourne Supremacy. 

DAMON: I think what people loved about 
the first movie was the characters. One 
thing I like about this movie is that every 
act of violence comes at a price for the 
character. When he does these things, 
he's haunted and it takes a piece of him. 
He's not a paint-by-numbers spy. I don't 
think we could have done this story line 
if it weren't a sequel, because it's pretty 
dark. The director, Paul Greengrass, uses 
the same handheld-camera technique 
that his movie Bloody Sunday has, which 
always ratchets up the paranoia a bit. 
PLAYBOY: In the first Bourne movie, your 
character has amnesia. How's his mem- 
ory this time? 

DAMON: There's no way to talk about this 
movie without fucking it up. Well, he 
doesn't have his whole memory back. 
He's still working from these fragments, 
which we needed as a plot point so we'd 
have somewhere to go. Every character 
is developed from the first movie, but 
some of them turn out to be slightly dif- 
ferent than you thought they were. 
PLAYBOY: Are you a gun guy offscreen, 
like your character in the Bourne movies? 
DAMON: I don't like guns, and I really am 
scared of them—not scared in the sense 
that I wouldn't pick one up; I mean just 
respectful. Too many things can go 
wrong with a gun in your house, so 1 
don't own one, but I'm pretty good with 
them, because for the movie I did hun- 
dreds of hours of training with a former 
SWAT team shotgunner who had 
worked with Benicio Del Toro on Traffic. 
I was concerned, especially in the first 
Bourne, that 1 not look like fucking Opie, 
so I spent six months studying a Filipino 
martial arts form called kali. Then I 
worked with guns—holding, shooting— 
so that for the brief moments 1 hold one 
in the movies it looks as if I've done ita 
thousand times before. 


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PLAYBOY: Was doing this Bourne sequel 
your call, or did you have to fulfill 
a contract? 

DAMON: I didn't want to do one of those 
cynical sequels that are just an attempt 
to make money. 1 was always skeptical 
that a second movie would happen, 
because 1 didn't see where it could go. 
Suddenly there was a great director, 
screenwriter and producer, so I couldn't 
see why we shouldn't do it. 1 had never 
done a sequel, but I felt we had a chance 
to make it better than the first one. I 
hope we did. We took it places a big- 
budget studio movie doesn't normally 
go, and I'm proud of that. And the mes- 
sage is really good 

PLAYBOY: What is the message? 

DAMON: Essentially, at the end of the 
day—and this will pack them into the 
seats—it turns into a story of atonement. 
You can't make a sequel to an action 
movie and not have action in it, so 
there’s plenty of that. But basically 
you're expecting revenge, and you get 
atonement, which is a bit of a left turn, 
especially in this day and age. 

PLAYBOY: You've just started the second 
Ocean's Eleven caper, Ocean's Twelve. 
What's the fun this time? 

DAMON: It has everyone from the first 
movie and Catherine Zeta-Jones, too. 
There will be a lot of cameos, but it's still 
very much George and Brad, with the rest 
there to add certain colors throughout. 
It’s the perfect sequel to Ocean's Eleven. 
PLAYBOY: How do you observe the han- 
dling of fame by co-stars such as George 
Clooney and Brad Pitt? 


You FSS 
AT нме Like 
EVERYONE 
CSE? 


DAMON: They're really regular guys, just 
fun to be around. If you came from 
another planet and sat with them and 
they left the room, you would be 
shocked if somebody told you they were 
the two biggest movie stars in the world. 
They don’t put that out there. They 
don't covet it. Look at George's career in 
the past five years—three Steven Soder- 
bergh movies, two movies with the Coen 
brothers, plus he's directed a movie. It's 
those kinds of decisions I admire. You 
hear other people say, “Well, this is 
going to be a big studio hit. I should do 
it,” and suddenly they're playing a game 
you never win, because the ball will drop 
оп you, and it doesn't matter who you 
are. It almost dropped on me a couple 
years ago. I’m getting a second shot at 
that kind of rarefied air. So this time I'm 
enjoying doing movies I love. 

PLAYBOY: Are you happy with Project 
Greenlight, the reality-TV show you and 
Affleck produce, which documents the 
highs and lows of a novice filmmaker 
shooting a movie from start to finish? 
DAMON: Steven Soderbergh was shooting 
a car scene the other day. When stuff 
went wrong, he said, "We've just had our 
Project Greenlight moment." We still 
haven't done what we set cut to do. We 
have a good TV show, but the whole 
point was to drive people to make inter- 
esting, viable movies. Miramax put up 
almost $4 million for the first two 
movies, Stolen Summer and The Battle of 
Shaker Heights, and we didn't make the 
money back for them. This year, their 
good point was, “If you want to be faith- 


ful to the reality of the business, then 
you have to bring us a movie we would 
really make for that amount of money.” 
So we tried to encourage people to send 
a horror film, a romantic comedy or 
something that can realistically be made 
for that amount of money. 

PLAYBOY: And something on which Mira- 
max could recoup their money. 

DAMON: The script submissions are just 
coming in, and once they're culled 
Ben and I will read the top 50. We really 
believe in this idea. People thought we 
were setting up these filmmakers to 
fail, but we don't sit around thinking 
up ways to spend hundreds of hours of 
our own time, without getting paid, 
just to play a practical joke on some guy 
from Des Moines. 

PLAYBOY: Where's the Good Will Hunting 
follow-up project from you and Affleck 
that we've been hearing about? 

DAMON: It's in the same place it’s been 
for the past seven years, which is that we 
both want to do it. We saw each other a 
couple weeks ago in L.A., and we could 
feel the horse pulling on the reins 
because we really miss the experience of 
starting a small kernel of an idea and 
seeing it go all the way to being a movie. 
Like on Good Will Hunting, the motto for 
this one is “Let it write itself.” 

PLAYBOY: Considering how well your 
first collaboration went, do the two of 
you ever let people's high expectations 
paralyze you? 

DAMON: Neither of us looked forward 
enough to that two-by-four in the face to 
actually sit down and take the time to 
write it, especially when we were getting 
paid to act—which had always been the 
goal for us. We know we're going to get 
killed, so we're just going to do it and 
not worry what the perception is. 
PLAYBOY: After Ocean's Twelve you will 
work on The Informant, also with Steven 
Soderbergh. You're playing a real-life 
mole for the FBI in a corporate price- 
fixing scam. Is this the kind of character- 
actor role you've been looking for? 
DAMON: It’s the best role I've seen since 
The Talented Mr. Ripley. Steven and 1 were 
Just talking today about how people in 
Hollywood rise to a certain station, then 
sit there and defend their little beach- 
head, and slowly their careers keep los- 
ing ground. One thing I've always loved 
about Sean Penn is that he swings for the 
fences no matter what. I've made a cou- 
ple of scared swings up there. I don't 
want to do that anymore. 

PLAYBOY: In his 1999 Playboy Interview, 
Affleck jokingly said of you, “He gives a 
really great blow job.” Care to return 
the compliment? 

DAMON: I do give great head. I defi- 
nitely give a better blow job than Ben. I 
mean, I'm not lucky enough to be able 
to blow myself, but if I could, ГА never 
leave the house. 


PIL AY MI 


[TI 


“I was never the girl next door,” Bettie 
Page once said—and she was right. Often 
called the greatest pinup of all tim 

the legendary brunette model with 


the voluptuous figure first appeared in 
PLAYBOY as Miss January 1955. Photog- 
rapher Bunny Yeager had posed Bettie, 
wearing nothing but a Santa Claus hat, 
for a stock photo. When Yeager heard 
about the new men's magazine called 
PLAYBOY, she sold the photo to Hef for 
$100. That's just one piece of Bettie's 


You Bettie your life: Gretchen Mol (left) os 
Bettie Page (above) in the pinup's biopic. 


unbelievable life story. The rest of the 
dirty details will be revealed in The 
Ballad of Bettie Page, a biopic starring 
Gretchen Mol (left). Aside from 
chronicling Bettie's rise as a 1950s 
icon, the film will cover the now 
infamous investigation by Senator 
Estes Kefauver that linked Bettie to 
juvenile delinquency and porn. (In 1957 
she mysteriously vanished from the 
public eye, only to resurface more 
than 30 years later.) Will Mol do justice 
to the model who once said, “I love to 
swim in the nude and roam around the 
house in the nude. You're just as free as 
a bird!"? We can't wait to see her try. 


PLAYMATE PAPARAZZI PARADE 


Centerfold head 
turners, from far 
left; Calleen Shan- 
non at the Leather 
& Laces party in 
Houston; Heather 
Carolin an the set 
af Strip Paker Invi 
tational; Angel Boris 
at the Fashion 
Wire Daily Presents 
Wha's Next in the 
World af Fashion 
event; Stephanie 
Adams at Marquee 


in New York; Jenny 
McCarthy getting 
ready ta walk the 
runway in a Heath- 
erette fashian shaw. 


Miss August 1989? That's 
Gianna Amore. Considering 
her name, it’s not surpris- 
ing that Gianna grew up in. 
a "super-Italian" 
household in 

Rhode Island 

before our 

scouts asked 

her to pose. 

Her data sheet 

reveals that her 

least favorite 

pickup lines 

were “You're so 

beautiful, ГИ 

give you any- 

thing you want” 

and “Do you 

like my house? 

When are you 

moving in?” 


| LOOSE LIPS | 

“We are worried about what 
will happen if this country 
goes crazy. Neither of us 
wanted kids, Now we have 
2,000 and no stretch marks 
to show for it." —Susic (Scott) 
Krabacher, who along with 
her husband spends three 
weeks of every two months 
in Haiti, helping underpriv- 
ileged children 


_ \ CAROL AND 
DARLENE BERNAOLA 
ча СЕ 


THREE THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW 
ABOUT VICTORIA VALENTINO 

1. She was a professional singer- 
songwriter in the 1960s and is still tear- 
ing up the stage. “In 
February I sang ata 
book-launch party 
in Montreal. There 
were more than 700 
people in the audi- 
ence,” she says. 
2. Victoria writes ar- 
ticles for the society 
pages of local Ger- 
man and Hungarian 
newspapers. 
3. She has a cable- 
access show and is 
hoping it lands on a 
major women's network this year. “I 
interview women who've stepped 
outside the box,” she says. 


Does Victoria 


DONNA MICHELLE 1945-2004 


We were stunned to learn that 
Playmate of the Year 1964 Donna 
Michelle passed away in April. 
Here, thoughts on 
Donna from those 
who knew her best: 

“Donna was one 
of the most unfor- 
gettable women Гус 
ever known. We had 


a passionate, all too | | 


"1 had an idea for 
a cover with a girl posing in the 
shape of the Rabbit Head, but I 
thought no model would be able 
to do it. I asked Donna, and she 
did it with great eas 
Art Director Art Pau 


MY FAVORITE PLAYMATE 


By Patrick Warburton $ 


“My fovorite is Marilyn 
Monroe becouse of her 
depth, complexity and 
beouty. She wos olwoys 1 
the whole pockage. She 
hod so mony different looks. She 
wos a combination of inno- 
ж. сепсе, sexiness ond trouble, 
x There wos 
something 


about her 
thot wos 
vulnerable; 


men every- 
where 
wonted 
to sove 

| her.” 


dt ever 


The New York Post reported that 
ts star Mike Piazza spent 

| $500,000 on an engagement ring 

Мес Alicia Richter. Star | 

ine says it's worth 

$98, ‚000. Butis there a ring 

| акай? “Its absolutely false. 

Mike loves her, but the 

aren't engaged,” Piazza's 

| agent says... Tiffany Taylor, 

Pennelope Jimenez, St. Pauli girl 

Bergli We ear Divini Rae and 

Marketa Janska partied at the 

Mansion (below)....Bebe Buell 

performed at the late Joey 

Ramone's een bash in 

New York.... Alice Denham, who 


"We got the memo about the block dresses!” 
wrote the acclaimed novel My 


| Darling From the Lions, is working 


on a memoir, Sleeping With Bad 
Boys: Literary New York at Mid- 
Century, in which she'll discuss her 
relationship with James Dean, 
Hef and more....In mem- 

ory of PLAYBOY 

photographer 

Pompeo Posar, 

Helena Anton- 

accio sent us 

personal snap- 

pes (сеза from 


с 1990. "As “As 
a Playmate 
who was dis- 
covered by 


| Pompeo, Г 


have memo- 


take а bad picture? No, as we 

learned when dazens af pho- 

tos fram her Australian holiday 

landed on our desk. We nar- 

rowed the shats down to these: 

with Jamie Foxx; sunbathing; 
at SeoWorld. 


| ries that will 
last forever,” 

she says. “Не 
was a classy 
gentleman, E 
an artist who Pompeo and Heleno. 
viewed a woman's anatomy as 
art. 1 am blessed that I met him 
and became one of his Playmates 
and part of his art. 1 love you, 
Pompeo. Thank you.” 


cyber@club 
See your favorite Ploymate's 
pictorial in the Cyber Club 
at cyber.playboy.com. 


NFL PREVIEW 


(continued from page 104) 
sucks Ryan Leaf-style. (Feeling the heat, 
Eli?) A healthy Jeremy Shockey and Kurt 
Warner will come in handy. Free agents 
Carlos Emmons, Barrett Green and 
Fred Robbins will bolster the defense. 
CRYSTAL BALL: Coughlin will crack the 
whip, but this is a bitch of a division. 


МЕС NORTH 


GREEN BAY PACKERS 

LAST SEASON: Another good year in 
Green Bay (10-6) led to a heartbreaking 
three-point loss to the Eagles in the play- 
offs. OUTLOOK: Forget Lombardi—these 
Packers win with offense, finishing second 
in the МЕС in yards and points in 2003. 
The big hitters return, Running back Ah- 
man Green (1,883 rushing yards) is a true 
weapon, and Brett Favre is Brett Favre. 
His 208 consecutive starts is an NFL 
record for QBs. Will the streak come to an 
end this year? The Pack's defense was 
plain cheesy in 2003, and at press time 
they'd signed just two free agents (safety 
Mark Roman from the Bengals and cor- 
nerback Chris Watson from the Lions) to 
try to remedy the situation. Their draft 
picks (notably cornerback Ahmad Carroll 
out of Arkansas) may take time to fit i 
CRYSTAL BALL: Given coach Mike Sher- 
man's record, the Packers should take the 
division. But it won't be easy. 


CHICAGO BEARS 

LAST SEASON: Lucky for the Bears, 
Chicago loves its football—no matter 
how boring the offense gets. А 7-9 sea- 
son pushed QB Kordell Stewart and 
coach Dick Jauron out of town. OUT- 
LOOK: A new head coach in Lovie Smith, 
a new starting QB in Rex Grossman and 
highly touted draft picks in defensive 
tackles Tommie Harris and Tank John- 
son should sharpen this team's claw 
The games to watch are the two against 
archrival Green Bay, which has taken 18 
of the past 20 versus the Bears. A sweep 
of Green Bay would please Bears fans as 
much as a playoff berth would. It'll take 
clutch play from project Grossman, who 
should make Chicago fans forget about 
Shane Matthews. But will he bring back 
memories of Jim McMahon? CRYSTAL 
BALL: Da Bears will slip past the Vikings 
for second place, but a coveted playoff 
spot will remain out of reach. 


MINNESOTA VIKINGS 

LAST SEASON: The Vikings kicked off 
2003 with six straight wins and then fell 
apart, winning only three more games all 
year. They saved their worst for last, 
falling to lowly Arizona in the final week 
and missing out on the playoffs as a result. 
OUTLOOK: This club was the Chiefs of the 
"Ci : a stellar offense (first in the 
league in yards) and a sieve-like defense. 


The Vikings figure to be equally explo- 
sive and inconsistent this year. QB Daunte 
Culpepper and receiver Randy Moss can. 
make incredible plays, but Culpepper 
can't seem to win the big game, and Moss 
is a head case. As for the defense, free- 
agent safety Tyrone Carter should bring 
toughness to the secondary, and top draft 
pick Kenechi Udeze (USC) will be all over 
opposing quarterbacks. But the additions 
won't be enough to plug the lealis. Expect 
a lot of scoring at the Metrodome, on 
both ends of the ficld. CRYSTAL BALL: 
The Vikes will struggle to break .500. 


DETROIT LIONS 

LAST SEASON: The Lions improved to 
5-11 under popular coach Steve Mari- 
ucci. Given this team's dearth of talent, 
that’s saying something. OUTLOOK: A 
drafi-day bonanza, including touted wide 
receiver Roy Williams and linebacker 
Teddy Lehman, might bring relief. Snap- 
py QB Joey Harrington will have talent to 
throw to in Williams, former Ram Az- 
Zahir Hakim and sophomore Charles 
Rogers (coming off a collarbone injury). 
Mariucci needs to get his Lions past the 
Thanksgiving game in decent shape be- 
cause the late-season schedule could sink 
them: Indy, Green Bay and two games 
against Minnesota. CRYSTAL BALL: De- 
troit sports fans will be counting the days 
until the Pistons’ season starts. 


AFG west 


DENVER BRONCOS 

LAST SEASON: After a strong regular sea- 
son (10-6), Denver was humiliated by the 
Colts on wild-card weekend. OUTLOOK: 
It was the kind of offense-for-defense 
trade that gets football geeks buzzing: The 


Broncos swapped super running back 
Clinton Portis for the Redskins’ Champ 
Bailey, arguably the league's best cover 
guy. The team also added elite defenders 
in end Marco Coleman from Philadel- 
phia, tackle Luther Elliss from Detroit and 
safety John Lynch from Tampa Bay. On 
paper, coach Mike Shanahan's defense 
rivals any in the NFL. Former 49cr Garri- 
son Hearst should help fill the void left by 
Portis, while QB Jake Plummer will lead 
the offense; the Broncos were 9-2 with 
him in the lineup last season, including 
decisive victories over Kansas City and In- 
dianapolis. CRYSTAL BALL: How good 
are the Broncos? Despite games at K.C. 
and Tennessee and at home against 
Indianapolis in the final three weeks of 
the season, they win this division. 


KANSAS CITY CHIEFS 

LAST SEASON: The 9-0 start and 13-3 
record overall jazzed the fans. But the 
Chiefs never had the look ofa contender 
because the defense was as dreadful 
(29th in yards allowed) as the offense was 
dazzling (second in yards gained). OUT- 
LOOK: Expect more fireworks in Arrow- 
head. The only noteworthy additions to 
the defense are tackles Глопа! Dalton 
(formerly of the Redskins) and Junior 
Siavii, a second-round pick out of Ore- 
gon. Offensively, the Chiefs go to Баше 
with the same impressive weaponry: 
Priest Holmes (an NFL-record 27 TDs 
in 2003), Trent Green (second in the 
league in passing yards), tight end Tony 
Gonzalez and special-teams star Dante 
Hall (five TD returns). CRYSTAL BALL: 
The question is whether the Chiefs will 
score points as fast as they give them up. 
We see a wild card in this club's future, 
but we wouldn't bet the ranch on it. 


WHERE 


154 | 


ном 


то 


BUY 


Below isa list of retailers and. 
manufacturers you can con- 
tad for information on where 
to find this month's merchan- 
dise. To buy the apparel and 
equipment shown on pages 
32, 35-36, 106-111, 112— 
113, 157 and 160-161, 
check the listings below to 
find the stores nearest you. 


GAMES Au 


MY 


cole.com. La Perla Black 
Label, 866-LA-PERLA. La 
Petite Coquette, thelittle 
flirt.com. Lubiam, avail- 
% able at Macy's West. Marc 

Ecko Collection, available 
at Nordstrom. Nautica, 
866-282-4264. Perry 
Ellis, perryellis.com. 
Playboy Jewelry, playboy 
store.com. René Lezard, 


616-538-6000. Ron-n- 


Page 32: 989 Sports, 989 
sports.com. Activision, activision.com. 
Alari, atari.com. Blizzard Entertainment, 
blizzard.com. Capcom, capcom.com. 
Vivendi Universal Games, vugames.com. 
Wired: Nokia, nokia.com. 


MANTRACK 

Pages 35-36: Archos, archos.com. 
Creative Technology, creative.com. 
Dovo, classicshaving.com. eShave, 
eshave.com. IRiver, iriver.com. JVC, 
jvc.com. Mario Badescu Products, 
mariobadescu.com. 


INSIDE THE ENTOURAGE 

Pages 106-111: Arnold Brant, arnold 
brant.com. Blue Guru, 212-925-6931. 
Christopher Deane, 212-219-7788. Clai- 
borne, 800-581-7272. Country Gentle- 
man, available at Lord & Taylor. C.P. 
Company, 212-966-8994. реб, 212- 
965-8000. Devon Sedlacek, sedlacek 
design.com. Diesel Footwear, 877-7- 
DSL-FTw. Dolcepunta, 212-397-4300. 
Dubuc, 212-929-2400. Gianluca Isaia, 
available at Saks Fifth Avenue. Guess, 
guess.com. Hugo Hugo Boss, 800- 
HUGO-BOSS. /. Crew, jcrew.com. Jack 
Victor, 800-724-2923. J.M. Weston, 877- 
4-WESTON. John Bartlett, available at 
Bloomingdale's. Johnston & Murphy, 
johnstonmurphy.com. Just Cavalli, 
702-632-7777. Kenneth Cole, kenneth 


Ron, ron-n-ron.com. 
Seiko, seikousa.com. Stuart Weitzman, 
310-860-9600. Studio Chereskin, avail- 
able at Macy's. TagHeuer, 866-260- 
0460. Ted Baker, 212-343-8989. Torino 
Belts, torinobelts.com. Versace, 
versace.com. Wolford, 800-WOLFORD. 
Zang Toi, available at Nordstrom. 


SLICK KICKERS 

Pages 119-113: 310 Moloring Footwear, 
800-780-9990. Adidas, adidas.com. 
Aldo, 888-311-ALDO. Diesel, 877-7-051.- 
FTW. Globe Shoes, globeshoes.com. 
Hugo Hugo Boss, 800-HUGO-Boss. 
Nautica, 866-282-4964. Nike, niketown 
„сот. Penguin, 646-443-3520. Pony, 
866-22 1-PONY. Reebok, reebok.com. 
Tommy Hilfiger, tommy.com. 


ON THESCENE 
Page 157: BMW, bmwusa.com. 


POTPOURRI 

Pages 160-161: 1800, 1800tequila.com. 
Bonjour, bonjourproducts.com. Call- 
away, ercfusion.com. Canon, canonusa 
„сот. Gibson Audio, gibsonaudio.com. 
Philips, philipsusa.com. Pimp, tokyo 
flash.com. Playing Politics, playing 
politics2004.com. Scorpion Mezcal, 
scorpionmezcal.com. SkinMedica, avail- 
able through your dermatologist. 7йу- 
lorMade, taylormadegolf.com. 


EREDITS: FHDTOORAPHY Bv, э LARS BEAULIEU. FRANK FRANEA: P JOHN R. MOURGOS: MARID зопяент, F е ANNY 


FREYTAG. P тү KENNETH JOHANSSON 141. О 


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FREITAG. DAVID ROSE: P. 21 AV PHOTORLEHTINUYA. CORBIS GEDAGE GEORGIQU (21. P 22 CINA VELOUR, P Sa MIZUNO ISI. 
MATT WAGEMANK. P. 28 GETTY IMAGES. HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES. MIZUNO. MARK THOMASFOODPIK. KEVIN WIN. 
TERIGETTY IMAGES. P. 27 BUENA VISTA, DREAMWORKS. TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX 12). WARNER ШМО P. 20 EVERETT COL. 


(EVER. MODEL EVA HERTIGOVA. FHOTCORAPHER: MARIO SORRENTI 


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OAKLAND RAIDERS 

LAST SEASON: A year after Bill Callahan 
took this team to the big game, Oakland 
limped to a 4-12 record, OUTLOOK: 
New coach Могу Turner wasn't exactly 
the second coming of Don Shula in his 
seven years in Washington (49-59), and 
he inherits a team that was 30th out of 
32 teams in yards allowed. The defense 
will benefit from three linemen from 
recent Super Bowl winners—Warren 
Sapp (Tampa Bay), Ted Washington and 
Bobby Hamilton (New England). Mean- 
while, five different quarterbacks played 
for the Raiders last year. At press time, 
Rich Gannon (who's pushing 40) and 
Kerry Collins were to compete for the 
starting job. Offensive tackle Robert 
Gallery, the team’s top draft pick, will be 
their Luca Brasi. CRYSTAL BALL: In- 
juries will do this team in once again. 


SAN DIEGO CHARGERS 

LAST SEASON: The new uniforms were 
gorgeous. Everything else was ugly. San 
Diego finished 4-12. OUTLOOK: Maybe 
the Chargers should stay out of the QB 
biz. They drafted Ryan Leaf and passed 
on Michael Vick. Will Philip Rivers make 
them forget they traded Eli Manning to 
get him? Coach Marty Schottenheimer 
will choose between rookie Rivers, who 
was 12 years old the last time the coach 
won a playoff game, and Drew Brees. If 
they both suck, there's 41-year-old Doug 
Flutie. Aside from LaDainian Tomlinson 
(league-leading 2,370 total yards in 
2003, second in NFL history), the 
Chargers have little to build around, and 
it won't help that they lost receiver David 
Boston to Miami. The defense? Please. 
CRYSTAL BALL: San Diego will top last 
year's record, for whatever that’s worth. 


AFC NORTH 


CINCINNATI BENGALS 

LAST SEASON: Under new coach Mar- 
vin Lewis, the Bengals made the big 
leap to respectability (8-8). OUTLOOK: 
Here it is, football fans—our pick for 
this season's Cinderella team, this year's 
version of the 2003 Panthers. The Ben- 
gals made some no-guis, no-glory moves 
during the off-season, ditching QB John 
Kitna (3,591 yards, 26 TDs in 2003) in 
favor of former USC gunslinger Carson 
Palmer and sending veteran running 
back Gorey Dillon packing as well. Rudi 
Johnson and rookie Chris Perry (Michi- 
gan) will spearhead the ground attack. 
After some growing pains carly on, this 
talented offense should start to click. 
But the real difference this year will be 
on defense: The Bengals nabbed six 
highly regarded players on that side of 
the ball, including big-play cornerback 
Keiwan Ratliff. Coach Lewis, who built 
Baltimore’s Super Bowl defense, knows 
how to coach these kids. CRYSTAL 
BALL: With all that young talent, the 


Bengals will win a division title for the 
first time in 14 years. 


BALTIMORE RAVENS 

LAST SEASON: Led by Jamal Lewi: 
turned out one of the greatest rushing 
seasons ever (2,066 yards), the Ravens 
finished 10-6 before losing to Tennessee 
in the wild-card game. OUTLOOK; The 
most newsworthy addition to the Ravens? 
Former Giants coach Jim Fassel, who 
joins up as the offensive coordinator be- 
hind head man Brian Billick. Baltimore 
fans are hoping Fassel can jump-start the 
Kyle Boller-led air attack—only five 
teams had fewer TD passes last year. The 
bulk of the offensive line returns, good 
news for the running game. The question 
is whether Lewis can stay focused. The 
running back is facing federal drug 
charges involving a cocaine-dealing ring. 
Meanwhile, there's not much new to say 
about the Ray Lewis-led defense. It will 
be awesome as usual. CRYSTAL BALI 
In today’s NFL, it's tough to continue 
winning without a top quarterback. 


PITTSBURGH STEELERS 

LAST SEASON: This team ruled the field 
with one of the greatest rosters in history. 
Terry Bradshaw, Mean Joe Green—wait, 
that was 30 years ago. Bill Cowher's team 
fell short again (6-10). OUTLOOK: Jerome 
Bettis is on the decline, but free-agent 
pickup Duce Staley should carry his 
weight in the backfield. Staley can catch 
passes underneath coverage, presenting 
a big problem for defenses, which will 
have their hands full with the NFEs top 
receiving corps (Plaxico Burress, Hines 
Ward, Antwaan Randle El). The question 
is, Who will throw them the ball? Incum- 
bent Tommy Maddox will duke it out 
with top draft pick Ben Roethlisberger, 
who will be either the next Bradshaw or 
the next Mark Malone. Whoever takes 
the snaps had better put points on the 
board—the defense is mediocre at best. 
CRYSTAL BALL: If one of the QBs steps 
up, the Steclers could surprise. 


CLEVELAND BROWNS 

LAST SEASON: Another disappointing 
year in Cleveland (5-11). OUTLOOK: 
‘The Browns gave up on their supposed 
QB of the future, Tim Couch, in favor of 
Jeff Garcia. The former 49er—who will 
benefit from the addition of rookie 
tight end Kellen Winslow Jr—should 
improve an anemic offense (281.5 yards 
per game last season, 26th in the NFL). 
A couple of defensive additions could 
keep the games closer. Safety Sean 
Jones, a second-round pick, adds life to 
an uninspired secondary, and free-agent 
defensive end Ebenezer Ekuban will 
help stop the run—the Browns were 
23rd last year in rushing yards allowed. 
CRYSTAL BALL: The playoffs? No way. 
They'll have to shoot for respectability. 


МЕС зоитн 


NEW ORLEANS SAINTS 

LAST SEASON: An 8-8 finish, middle-of- 
the-road in almost every respect. OUT- 
LOOK: Football pontificators have talked 
up the Saints for years. This season the 
team will live up to the hype. The oflense 
will be anchored once again by inim- 
itable running back Deuce McAllister 
(1,641 yards in 2003), OB Aaron Brooks 
(24 TDs, eight interceptions) and receiver 
Joe Horn. They'll score plenty of points, 
and unlike last year, the defense will hold 
opposing teams at bay. Coach Jim Haslett, 
clearly on the hot scat, will count on two 
new defensive linemen to stop the rush: 
high-priced free agent Brian Young and 
first-round pick Will Smith (Ohio State). 
CRYSTAL BALL: The Saints will win a 
division title for the first time since 1991. 


TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS 

LAST SEASON: The Bucs went from Su- 
per Bowl champs to a losing year (7-9). 
OUTLOOK: Chucky's back, and he's up- 
set. During the off-season Jon Gruden 
persuaded new general manager Bruce 
Allen to jettison at least 14 players and 
bring in around 20 new faces. Among the 
departed are trash-talking receiver 
Keyshawn Johnson and defensive tackle 
Warren Sapp, who will be replaced by 
Darrell Russell, formerly with the Red- 
skins. Key veteran offensive producers 
Brad Johnson and fullback Mike Alstott 
return, but the team’s best running back, 
Michael Pittman, is likely to be suspended 
for multiple games after pleading guilty 
to a felony count of endangerment. As 
always, though, if this team is going to 
win, it will win on defense. CRYSTAL 
BALL: Gruden will yank his hair out try- 
ing to keep the Buccaneers in contention. 


CAROLINA PANTHERS 

LAST SEASON: An 11-5 record is one 
thing, but Jake Delhomme throwing 
three TDs in the Super Bowl? Come on 
OUTLOOK: No, you weren't dreaming — 
Carolina made it to the big game. But so 
did the 1998 Falcons. The good news: 
"The Panthers didn't lose any key players. 
The bad news: They didn't add any to 
compensate for a tougher schedule. It 
remains to be seen if coach John Fox will 
le QB Delhomme carry more of the load 
or continue to have him hand the ball to 
Stephen Davis and DeShaun Foster. Is 
this team for real? Even the NFL doesn't 
believe in the Panthers—they'll appear 
on Monday Night Football only once, while 
the Eagles, Cowboys, Rams and Packers 
will get the spotlight three times each. 
CRYSTAL BALL: Delhomme may be go- 
ing to Disney World in February, but 
he'll have to pay for the ticket himself. 


ATLANTA FALCONS 

LAST SEASON: Eleven losses and one 
busted Michael Vick fibula made for a 
chilly winter in Atlanta, OUTLOOK: The 
Falcons have a new coach (Jim Mora Jr.) 
and a new GM (Rich McKay), but not 
much else has changed. Perhaps more 
than any other team, Atlanta is a one- 
trick pony. Sure, there's talent: T.J. 
Duckett, Warrick Dunn, Peerless Price. 
But if Vick doesn't shine, this team won't 
win. And it remains to be seen whether 
he can stay in the pocket—and stay 
healthy. Coach Mora, the former 49ers 
defensive wizard, has his work cut out 
with this defense. The pathetic corps 
gave up 381.8 yards a game last year. 
CRYSTAL BALL: Vick can leap over tall 
buildings, but he’ll need more than that 
to move the Falcons up in this division. 


“This must be a safe-sex beach.” 


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WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN 


VICIOUS CYCLE 


MW's GS series has always defied convention. Neither cruiser 
nor sport bike, the adventure tourer could just as easily go 
from Paris to Dakar as down to the Kwik-E-Mart on a midnight 
munchies run. Now, 24 years after the GS debuted, BMW has 
rebuilt it from the ground up, offering a host of hidden delights (such 
as gas-saving microprocessors), guilty pleasures (antilock brakes you 


BILL CASH 


| 


That headlight is not squinting: The 
asymmetrical oval design is pure BMW. 
The modest but effective windshield 
adjusts through five positions. 


can disable to get sideways on dirt tracks) and trick accessories 
(collapsible aluminum saddlebags). The R 1200 is superlight at 496 
pounds, smooth as silk thanks to a counterbalanced opposed-twii 
engine and plenty powerful (100 horsepower). We test-dro: 
across South Africa and would have happily extended the trip to 
Helsinki. Price: $15,100. No, that isn’t a typo. —JAMES R. PETERS! 


The lightweight, com- 
pact instrument cluster 
does almost as much as 
your laptop. In addition 
to displaying the usual 
speed, mileage and revs, 
the flat panel reports 
time, gear, fuel level, oil 
temperature and trip 
distance—practically 
everything but how your 
stock portfolio is doing. 


A 100-horsepower 
opposed-twin engine, six- 
speed transmission and 
BMW's trademark 
bombproof shaft drive 
give the R 1200 GS 

even more zip than 

its forebears had. 

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 154, 


Puss 'n' Boots - 

We'll never forget Lost in Translation's opening shot: SCARLETT JOHANSSON 
in sheer pink panties. As a guest performer with the Pussycat Dolls, the 
future superstar proved she's a seductress onstage as well. 


Caribbean 
Dream 


Planning your 
next swanky 

? We 

St. Barts, 
where you'll 


MOSS cruising 
around topless. 


Apprentice Star to Bra: You're Fired! 
Getting axed by the Donald didn't stop KATRINA CAMPINS 


(right) and EREKA VETRINI from hanging out. As Kat said, 
“A woman who claims she doesn't use her sex appeal to 
sell hasn't learned to use it to her advantage.” 


something that 
clearly wasn’t 
in the script. 


(¿Jewel 


Don'tlisten - 


tothe 
naysayers, 
JEWEL. Fans 
who protest 
your new 
sexed-up 
image? Too 
much Hater- 
ade. We get 
it. Now burn 
the overalls 
and we're 
yours for life. 


The 
Skimpy 
Life 

Not one to be 
upstaged by 
sis Paris 

(or anyone 
else), NICKY 
HILTON daz- 
zled on the 
Rock & Re- 
public World 
Invasion fash- 
ion runway. 


Long-Stem 
Rose 

Model ARIEL ROSE 
is blooming: She's 
appeared in every- 
thing from American 
Pie 2 to reality show 
The Fifth Wheel. 


MWotpourri 


GET THE PICTURE 


Now you can carry a ON THE JUICE 
two-megapixel camera, Good news, amigos—1800 has upgraded 
a camcorder, an MP3 its tequilas to 100 percent agave prod- 
player and a USB ucts, The best way to enjoy the añejo 
drive without needing (below right, $40) is on the rocks with a 
any pockets (see Miss slice of orange. Scorpion mezcals are 
Exhibit A, left). The also 100 percent agave (though a 

Tatest in Philips’s line different strain). Try the reposado (below 
of key-chain-size prod- left, $50) in a margarita. The twist: Each 
ucts, the Key019 ($249, bottle comes with a real scorpion inside. 


doyourthing. philips Go ahead. We dare you. 
-com) packs an amazing 
amount of functionality 
into a tiny package. Pop 
off the end and you'll 
find a built-in USB port 
that plugs right into 
your computer, so you 
can transport files to 
and from the gadget's 
128-megabyte internal 
memory (around 24 
minutes’ worth of video). 
Though the Key019 is 
too small to have a 
regular LCD screen, 

its viewfinder doubles 
as a microdisplay for 
reviewing photos 

and video or paging 
through song lists. 


TEMP WORKER 


"rhe line between searing and burning is a 
fine one indeed. Stay on the fair side of it 
with Bonjour's Culinary Laser Thermom- 
eter ($90, williams-sonoma.com). Expressly 
designed for testing the temperatures of 
cooking surfaces, it has laser accuracy that 
ensures your culinary masterpieces don't 
end up charred beyond recognition. It 
doesn't work as well for gauging the hot- 
ness of, say, blondes and brunettes, 
Ba, but we're guessing you 
already have that 
covered. 


GENTLEMEN'S CLUBS 


These drivers look flashy, but as we learned in kindergarten, it’s 
what's on the inside that counts. The all-titanium R7 by TaylorMade 
(left, $600, taylormadegolf.com) has a set of tiny weights in the head 
that you can adjust to reduce or enhance hooks, fades and trajectory. 
Just screw off the bottom, shift the weights around as desired and— 
voila—no more blaming your shanks on the club. Callaway Golf's 
ERC Fusion model (right, $625, ercfusion.com) is a composite driver 
that melds carbon and titanium inside the clubhead. The point? 
The weight is redistributed to achieve what the pros call “optimum 

160 launch conditions.” You'll just call it awesome. 


JUKE JOINT 2004 


Until recently, if you wanted 
to listen to a jukebox you had 
to go to a bar. Portable MP3 
players have changed alll that, 
but we feel they still lack a cer- 
tain je ne sais quoi. Gibson's 
newly reconceived Wurlitzer 
Digital Jukebox ($2,000, 
gibsonaudio.com), however, 
ES quoi to spare. Fill the 80- 
gigabyte hard drive with MP3s 
and you can blast them through 
the 145-watt Klipsch speaker 
system for more than a month 
straight without repeating a 
song. To go mobile, just pop 
out the hard-drive “brain” and 
plug in some headphones. 


OIL OF NO WAY 


Whether from skiing, surf- 
ing or squinting to check out 
the beautiful babe across the 
bar, real men have wrinkles. 
They look good, until your 
face begins to resemble a 
road map of Miami, TNS 
Recovery Complex ($125 for 
a half ounce, skinmedica.com) 
is a new formula that lifts 
what's sagging without any 
harsh side effects. The secret 
ingredient? Foreskin. (No, 
really. It contains skin cells 
cultured in a lab from 

baby boys’ snipped bits.) 
Now that's what we call 
human resources. 


GEEK CHIC 


Face it, the 21st century was 
much cooler back in the 
1970s. If we were living in that 
decade's future, we'd all be 
wearing skintight jumpsuits, 
riding jet packs and keeping 
time with watches just like 
these. Straight from Japan, 
Pimp watches reject the dial 
in favor of an LED system. 
Yes, that means you get to 
learn to tell time all over 
again. (The vertical line on 
the left represents hours; the 
other dots represent minutes.) 
They're available in 18-karat- 
gold plate (left, $160) or stain- 
less steel (right, $143). Pick 
them up at tokyoflash.com. 


HOUSE OF CARDS 


Most people play poker with their friends, but 
sitting down with your enemies can be just as 

fun. Playing Politics cards ($8, playingpolitics2004 
.com) include full decks for Democrats or Repub- 
licans. The cards bear caricatures of the usual 
suspects, along with pithy statements about each 
one's record. For example, Alan Greenspan 
(nine of spades): “Ifyou understood what I said, 
you weren't listening close enough." Ollie North 
(eight of hearts): “Typical Republican. Had a 


great-looking secretary and never touched her.” 


PHOTO A-GO-GO 


Digital photo printers let you put a processing 
lab in your office. Now you can put one in your 
briefcase. Canon's tiny CP-330 photo printer 
($279, canon-usa.com) can print direcily from 
any Canon Powershot or PictBridge-enabled 
digital camera. A rechargeable battery allows 
you to pump out four-by-six prints wherever 


3 


menica 
— cod 
INT 


you want—whether in the bedroom, in the 
boardroom or on Mont Blanc. 


161 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 154 


ШиИйех! Month 


=! a 
‘OLYMPIC GLORY: ITS ALL GREEK TO US. 


WOMEN OF THE OLYMPICS—EVERYONE WILL BE WATCHING 
THE ATHENS SUMMER OLYMPICS, BUT WE HAVE SOMETHING 
YOU WONT SEE ON TV: THE WORLD'S SEXIEST FEMALE COM- 
PETITORS PREPPING FOR ACTION JUST LIKE THE ANCIENT 
GREEKS—IN THE BUFF AN EXPLOSIVE, CONTROVERSIAL FICTO- 
RIAL STARRING EIGHT OF THE WORLD'S ATHLETIC GODDESSES, 


THE GOOGLE GUYS—ON THE EVE OF AMERICA'S HOTTEST 
ІРО, MEET THE MEN WHO STARTED GOOGLE, SERGEY BRIN 
AND LARRY PAGE. THE COUNTRY'S NEWEST BILLIONAIRES 
DISCUSS THE SITE'S EARLY DAYS. HOW GOOGLING BECAME 
AN INTERNATIONAL PASTIME, THE CONTROVERSIES SUR- 
ROUNDING ITS SEARCH RESULTS AND WHY GOOGLE—UNLIKE 
MANY ОМСЕ-НОТ DOT-COMS—IS HERE TO STAY. PLAYBOY 
INTERVIEW BY DAVID SHEFF 


HACK THE VOTE—WE TRUST ATMS FOR OUR BANKING. WE 
TRUST INTERNET AUCTIONEERS WITH OUR CREDIT CARD 
NUMBERS. WHY NOT TRUST OUR VOTE TO COUNTING 
MACHINES? IN THEORY, TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING IS A MARVEL. 
BUT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL VOTE THIS NOVEMBER ON 
MACHINES THAT REQUIRE A LEAP OF FAITH—FAITH THAT THE 
POLLWORKERS HAVE SET UP THE CONTRAPTIONS CORRECTLY. 
WILL WE HAVE SEPTEMBER 2002 DEJA VU? BY DAN BAUM. 


PAINTED LOVE: THE MANSION'S WORKS OF ART, 


HOW TO DRESS LIKE THE NEW PLAYBOY. 


PLAYBOY'S COLLEGE FOOTBALL PREVIEW—LSU AND USC 
WERE CO-NATIONAL CHAMPIONS LAST SEASON. WHAT WILL 
THEY DO FOR AN ENCORE? OUR PIGSKIN WIZARDS PICK THE 
COUNTRY'S BEST TEAMS AND PLAYERS. BY GARY COLE 


YOU'RE KILLING ME! THE PLAYBOY COMPENDIUM OF 
OUTLAW HUMOR —АМ A-TO-Z ENCYCLOPEDIA HONORING 
COMICS, WRITERS AND ARTISTS WHO HAVE WORKED ON THE 
EDGE, INCLUDING LENNY BRUCE, SAM KINISON, RICHARD 
PRYOR, R. CRUMB AND HOWARD STERN. GO AHEAD, BUST 
A GUT. BY JAMIE MALANOWSKI 


HEF'S PAINTED LADIES—CONFUCIUS CALLED PAINTINGS 
POEMS WITHOUT WORDS. HEF CALLS THEM TYPICAL PARTY 
GUESTS. MEET THE MANSION'S NOTORIOUS PAINTED PRET- 
TIES, REVELERS WHO WEAR BODY PAINT—AND NOTHING 
ELSE. GO BEHIND THE SCENES AS THEY GET PRIMED, COATED, 
COLORED AND AIRBRUSHED FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE. 
ITS A MASTERPIECE. 


PLUS: FICTION BY JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, ARTHUR 
SCHLESINGER ON POWER, CENTERFOLD PEGGY 
McINTAGGART ON SEX, HOW TO ASSEMBLE THE QUIN- 
TESSENTIAL BAR, THE NEW PLAYBOY FASHION AND MISS 
SEPTEMBER, SCARLETT KEEGAN. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), August 2004, volume 51, number 8. Published monthly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 680 
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and 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. Posunaster: Send address change to 

162 Playboy, РО. Box 2007, Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail circ@ny.playboy.com. 


80% less secondhand smoke. 


May present less risk of cancer, 
chronic bronchitis and possibly emphysema. * 


The difference is worth discovering. 


Log on to find retailers near you and get a special introductory offer. 


* Eclipse is not perfect. For instonce, we do not cloim thot Eclipse presents smokers with less risk of cordiovascular 
disease or complicolions with pregnoncy. As everyone knows, all cigorettes present some health risk, including Eclipse. 


MENTHOL BOX: 4 mg. “tar”, 0.1 mg. nicotine, 
4 " ТИТ 1 BOX: 5 mg. “tar”, 0.1 mg. nicotine, av. per cigarette 
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Peu осот cli 
Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health. the unique design of Eclipse, For more product 
information, visit www.rjrt.com. 


BUD LIGHT SAYS CHOOSE ON TASTE. 
WE SAY THANKS FOR THE ENDORSEMENT.