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LESS FILLING. 
HALF THE CARBS OF BUD LIGHT. 


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©2004 Mer Brewing Со. Mao, Wi 


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_ Ga Informer Online 


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Tk THE SQUAD IS YOUR WEAPON" 


ONE-TOUCH ` PRELUDETO AUTHENTIC 
SQUAD CONTROL EPISODE III IMMERSIVE LEVELS GAMING STAR WARS WEAPONS 


In Stolen Screams Simon Cooper 
tracks the investigation into the bold 
August 2004 theft in Oslo of Edvard 
Munch's painting The Scream. “| 
always like stories that involve cops 
and robbers and a bit of glamour,” he 
says. “There is definitely a veneer of 
class to art theft. And the connections 
between art theft and other sorts 
of crime are very exciting—it’s The 
Thomas Crown Affair meets Heat." 


The artwork that accompanies Chuck 
Palahniuk's new tale, Punchdrunk, is 
by Geoffrey Grahn. "It's a dark story,” 
Grahn says. "I tried to pull out some 
of the main elements of it and do 
something graphic but without giving 
away the surprise ending." For the 
unique look of his piece, Grahn com- 
bines techniques: “I work with реп 
and ink and scratchboard, then do a 
lot of coloring on the computer." 


When Debbie Gibson took "Only in My 
Dreams" to the upper reaches of the 
pop charts in 1987, she probably didn't 
realize that the dreams of the guys 
her age were somewhat different— 
and that she wasn't wearing clothes 
in them. Now photographer Guido 
Argentini brings those dreams to life. 
"She didn't want anyone around, so it 
was just us," says Argentini. "That was 
a good thing, because most of my best 
work has been done that way—just me 
and the model. It is an advantage hav- 
ing just two people in the room. It is 
more intimate." Her best feature from 
behind the camera? “I don't even have 
to think about it," he says. "Her legs. In 
every shot | tried to enhance them. We 
got very different sides of her face and 
expression with different sorts of light- 
ing. But her legs lit up every shot." 


Michael Fleming grapples with The 
Rock for this month's Playboy Inter- 
view. "He created a persona that made 
him a millionaire," Fleming explains. 
“So | knew he would be intelligent. And 
he is. But | didn't expect him to be as 
self-deprecating as he was, When you 
think about his persona as the Rock, 
you have certain expectations. And yet 
he is down-to-earth, humble and fun.” 
But he still talks plenty of trash here. 


Our annual music issue gets its killer 
riffs from the efforts of Joseph De 
Acetis, Tim Mohr, Leopold Froehlich, 
Alison Prato and especially Mick 
Rock. Anyone who owns LPs by 
Bowie, Queen, Blondie or other bands 
from the glam and punk eras already 
knows the work of this legendary pho- 
tographer. In Sex, Duds and Rock and 
Roll he shoots cool new acts—includ- 
ing the Grammy-nominated Killers— 
wearing the latest attitude-driven fash- 
ions. Elsewhere in the package we 
scoop upcoming trends, check in with 
such notables as Velvet Revolver's 
Scott Weiland and the Streets, and tal- 
ly the reader votes in our poll. Best of 
all, we include exclusive accounts of 
rockers losing their virginity—and what 
they were listening to when they did. 


HAS BUND. wege 


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vol. 52, по. 3—march 2005 


со п езп 5 


features 


70 STOLEN SCREAMS 
Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is world famous. It's been called “the 
primal image of urban alienation” and is a symbol of Norwegian national pride 
In slightly over a decade, it has also been stolen twice by daring thieves. Here is 
the suspenseful story of how cunning detectives versed in the international art- 
theft game found the painting and nabbed the culprits the first time—and how 
that case may suggest who has The Scream today. BY SIMON COOPER 


90 THE YEAR IN MUSIC 2005 
Thousands of you voted—and we listened! Velvet Revolver snags the award for 
best rock album, Kanye West wins for best hip-hop, and David Bowie is (finally!) 
inducted into the Playboy Hall of Fame. Who else won? You'll be surprised. 
Also: an ode to music goddesses from Gwen Stefani to Christina Aguilera, Q&As 
with Scott Weiland and the Streets, and first-hand tales of how your favorite 
rock stars lost their virginity. It's enough music to blow your speakers. 


98 SOUND + ART 
Looking for $200,000 worth of sound? PLAYBOY shows you how to get a premium 
audio system on the cheap. BY KYLE KOLBE 


116 VANITY VINYL 
Your series ended, your movie went straight to DVD, and not even Vegas is 
calling. When all else fails in Hollywood, cut a record. PLAYBoy assembles the 
best of the worst in our own version of Celebrity Idol. BY JAKE AUSTEN 


fiction 


86 PUNCHDRUNK 
Two Army veterans set off cross-country in drag, lip-synching to Babs, 
Celine and Bette. Their stages are rodeos, redneck bars and gun-show parking 
lots. The mission: a slugfest to save the world. The outcome: dubious. 
BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK 


the playboy forum 


53 TOWN VS. COUNTRY 
Call it blue state vs. red state, but in fact it's city vs. country. The friction can UV 
be seen in microcosm in Washington, where urbane Seattle is fighting with the This year, after successful performances in 


rugged individualists out in the hills. BY Jon prime time, on the best-sellers’ list, in model- 
ing and in heiressing, Paris Hilton indubitably 
ranks as the girl with whom we'd most likely 


200 want to succeed. It explains her appearance 
оп top of our list of the sexiest celebrities of 
128 KID ROCK the year, surpassing some bare and bountiful 


competition. Our Rabbit worked his way into 
this photo taken by Odette Sugerman. He's 
convinced we've netted a lovely catch. 


The Kid reveals how he’s bedded some of the hottest women to grace the 
pages of PLAYBOY, the joys of pimping in identical duds with his 11-year-old son 
and why he supports Bush whether he agrees with him or not. BY ALAN LIGHT 


interview 


61 THE ROCK 
The world always needs an action hero, and former wrestler the Rock—who gave 
up his defensive-lineman spot at the University of Miami to Warren Sapp—is 
happy to serve. But he's no grunting Stallone clone. In his new movie, for 
instance, he plays a gay bodyguard. In the Playboy Interview he talks about 
Steroids in sports (and his own use of them), when to brawl with fans and how 
he lost his virginity—both on-screen and in high school. BY MICHAEL FLEMING 


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vol. 52, по. 3—march 2005 


pictorials 


76 


PLAYBOY’S 25 SEXIEST 
CELEBRITIES 

Hubble, Hubble! PLAYBOY goes 
stargazing. This month we pay 
homage with a constellation of 
the hottest women imaginable. 


PLAYMATE: 

JILLIAN GRACE 

Howard Stern's sexy discovery 
fulfills her childhood fantasy to 
become a Playmate. 


DEBBIE DOES PLAYBOY 
Deborah Gibson gets comfortable 
with her sexuality, and we get lost 
in her eyes, among other places, 


notes and news 


15 
16 


127 


WORLD OF PLAYBOY 


LA VIDA HEF 

Steven Tyler, Tara Reid, Hunter S. 
Thompson, Dennis Rodman and 
many beautiful women stop Hef 
from singing “'О Sole Mio,” 


CENTERFOLDS ON SEX: 
COLLEEN MARIE 

Colleen Marie dislikes giving 
direction in bed, but she makes 
sure her requests are heard. 


PLAYMATE NEWS 

Playmates get physical on the 
Playboy X-Treme Team, and Krista 
Kelly recalls the first time she 
read PLAYBOY. 


departments 


PLAYBILL 

DEAR PLAYBOY 

AFTER HOURS 
MANTRACK 

THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR 


PARTY JOKES 

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY 
ON THE SCENE 
GRAPEVINE 

POTPOURRI 


fashion 


120 


SEX, DUDS AND ROCK 
AND ROLL 

Mick Rock rocks the fashion 

and music world! The celebrated 
photographer captures today's 
coolest performers in the hottest 
new styles. BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS 


reviews 


36 


41 


42 


43 


MOVIES 

Uma Thurman heats up Be Cool; 
Kevin Costner is The Upside 

of Anger; Naomi Watts electrifies 
The Ring Two. 


DVDS 

How to find the hidden treasures 
in DVDs; Saw is on the cutting 
edge of filmmaking. 


MUSIC 

The rambling melodies of the 
Mars Volta; the Kills are frighten- 
ingly good. 


GAMES 

Why PlayStation Portable is the 
first must-have from Sony since 
the Walkman; Oddworld Inhabi- 
tants creates another world. 


BOOKS 

John Edgar Wideman works out 
some quirky stories in God's Gym; 
confessions we're all Not Proud of. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


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PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO 
editorial director 


STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
TOM STAEBLER art director 
GARY COLE photography director 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH executive editor 
LISA CINDOLO GRACE managing editor 
ROBERT LOVE editor at large 
HOWARD STERN east coast photo editor 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: JAMIE MALANOWSKI features editor; A.J. BAIME articles editor FASHION: JOSEPH DE ACETIS 
director FORUM: CHIP ROWE senior editor; PATTY LAMBERTI assistant editor MODERN LIVIN 


SCOTT ALEXANDER senior editor STAFF: ALISON PRATO senior associate editor; ROBERT В. DESALVO, 
TIMOTHY MOHR, JOSH ROBERTSON assistant editors; VIVIAN COLON, HEATHER HAEBE, KENNY LULL editorial 
assistants CARTOONS: MICHELLE URRY editor COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND сору chief; STEVE GORDON 
associate copy chief; CAMILLE CAUTI senior copy editor; JEAN RODIE copy editor RESEARCH: DAVID COHEN 
research director; BRENDAN BARR senior researcher; DAVID PFISTER associale senior researcher; RON MOTTA, 
DARON MURPHY, MATTHEW SHEPATIN researchers; MARK DURAN research librarian EDITORIAL 
PRODUCTION: JENNIFER JARONECZYK HAWTHORNE assistant managing editor; VALERIE THOMAS 
manager; VALERY SOROKIN associate READER SERVICE: MIKE OSTROWSKI correspondent 
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL (WRITER AT LARGE), KEVIN BUCKLEY, GRETCHEN EDGREN, 
LAWRENCE GROBEL, KEN GROSS, JENNIFER RYAN JONES (FASHION), WARREN KALBACKER, ARTHUR KRETCHMER 


(AUTOMOTIVE), JOE MORGENSTERN, BARBARA NELLIS, MERIEM ORLET (FASHION), JAMES R. PETERS! 
STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSI 


DAVID SHEFF, DAVID STEVENS, JOHN D. THOMAS, ALICE К. TURNER 


HEIDI PARKER west coast editor 


ART 
SCOTT ANDERSON, BRUCE HANSEN, CHET SUSKI, LEN WILLIS, ROB WILSON senior art directors; 
PAUL CHAN senior art assistant; JOANNA METZGER art assistant; 
CORTEZ WELLS art services coordinator; MALINA LEE senior art administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
MARILYN GRABOWSKI west coast editor; JIM LARSON managing editor; PATTY BEAUDET-FRAN 
KEVIN KUSTER, STEPHANIE MORRIS Senior editors; RENAY LARSON assistant editor; 
ARNY FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; GEORGE GEORGIOU staff 
photographer; RICHARD IZUI, MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, GEN NISHINO, DAVID RAMS contributing 
photographers; BILL WHITE studio manager—los angeles; BONNIE JEAN KENNY 
manager, photo library; KEVIN CRAIG manager, photo lab; MATT STEIGBIGEL photo 
researcher; PENNY EKKERT, KRYSTLE JOHNSON production coordinators 


DIANE SILBERSTEIN publisher 


ADVERTISING 
JEFF KIMMEL advertising director; RON STERN new york manager; HELEN BIANCULLI direct response 
advertising director; MARIE FIRNENO advertising operations director; KARA SARISKY advertising coordinator 
NEW YORK: LARRY MENKES entertainment/electronics manager; SHERI WARNKE southeast manager; TONY 
SARDINAS, TRACY WISE account managers CHICAGO: JOE HOFFER midwest sales manager; WADE BAXTER 
senior account manager LOS ANGELES: PETE AUERBACH, COREY SPIEGEL west coast managers DETROIT: 
DAN COLEMAN detroit manager SAN FRANCISCO: ED MEAGHER northwest manager 


MARKETING 
LISA NATALE associate publisher/marketing; JULIA LIGHT marketing services director; 
CHRISTOPHER SHOOLIS research director; DONNA TAVOSO creative services director 


PRODUCTION 
MARIA MANDIS director; JODY JURGETO production manager; CINDY PONTARELLI, DEBBIE TILLOU associate 
managers; CHAR KROWCZYK. BARB TEKIELA 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 P RADTKE senior vice president and general manager 


"Nothing is off limits. Nothing is impossible. Drive any vehicle. Use | 
“алу weapon. Destroy anything and everything, Yet are a mercena 
a completely interactive” battlefield environment and the only 


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`” MERCENARIES - 


PLAYGROUND OF DESTRUCTION” 


— 
JETRA À 


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ze PANDENIC ud PlayStation. 


SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking 
By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal 
Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight. 


THE PLAYBOY 


HEF SIGHTINGS, MANSION FROLICS AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES 


WILD, WILD WEST COAST 
The Wildlife WayStation held its 
10th Annual Safari Brunch ben- 
efit at the Playboy Mansion, giv- 
ing out an International Lifetime 
Achievement Award to Dr. Rich- 
ard Leakey for his dedication to 
the conservation of wild animals 
around the world. Hef received 
the award last year. 


THE SERPENT AND THE 
| CENTERFOLDS 

| Over the past 28 years, the WayStation 
has saved more than 76,000 animals. 
Left: Playmates Scarlett Keegan and 
Lauren Michelle Hill. Above: Nick So- 
derblom and Desperate Housewives' 
Nicolette Sheridan lend their support. 


a Special Friend Award on behalf 
of Sharon Stone for her “never- 
ending support of the WaySta- 
tion's outreach and education ef- 
forts.” More than 400 animals call Ë 
the WayStation home. 


COMIC-BOOK 
CONFIDENTIAL 
What's (almost) better 
than the true-life ad- 
ventures of Hef and 
his girls? A comic- 
book version. Stan | 
Lee, creator of Spider- | 
Man, the Hulk and 
more, met with Hef at 
the Mansion to dis- 
cuss the pilot for the 
animated MTV series 
Hef's Superbunnies. 


PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL 

To celebrate our December Music Poll, we teamed 
with Napster for a rocking party at Prey in L.A. Guest 
of honor Miss December Tiffany Fallon partied with 
members of 311 (above), singer Mya (below right) and 
actor Ethan Embry (below) 
The night also celebrated 
Leo DiCaprio’s birthday. 
(Yes, Gisele was there.) 


ONCE UPON A CLASSIC 
Ben Stiller and his wife, Christine Taylor, hosted an 
invite-only Grand Classics screening of Sweet Smell 
of Success at the Mansion. Grand Classics is devoted 
to film preservation, and this event was a fund-raiser 
for the American Film Institute. Hef and his girls were 
there, as were Stiller's parents, Anne Meara and Jerry 
Stiller (above right), and Bridget Moynahan (right). 


af 


‘The latest in the life of Mr. Playboy: (1) Hef, up- 
coming Playmate Courtney Rachel Culkin and 
his girlfriends running into Steven Tyler and his 
wife, Teresa, at Koi. (2) The Man flanked by Play- 
mates Tiffany Fallon and Jillian Grace. (3) Car- 
rying on with Dennis Rodman at Bliss. (4) Fuel 
singer Brett Scallions playing at the Mansion's 
Black Dragon-Cutty Sark Sweepstakes bash. (5) 
The band Busted and pal. (6) Tara Reid and 
Holly getting crazy at Concorde. (7) Hef, his girl- 
friends, Amazing Race Centerfold Victoria Fuller, 
her husband, Jon Baker, and fellow cast mem- 
bers watching the show’s premiere at Sports- 
men's Lodge. (8) 50th Anniversary Centerfold 
Colleen Shannon and Hef. (9) Shauna Sand and 
Lana Kinnear at Hunter S. Thompson's book 
signing at the Taschen store. (10) Holly, Hef and 
Carmella DeCesare at Glamourcon in L.A. (11) 
Brande Roderick signing autographs for fans. 
(12) Hefand his girlfriends with Playmate Kim- 
berly Holland. (13) With Lisa Dergan, host of 
Totally Outrageous Behavior, at Glamourcon. (14) 
With Bridget, Jillian Grace and Kendra at Bliss. | 


HOW WOULD YOU DO ON THE INSIDE? 


IT'S YOUR FIRST DAY IN PRISON. 
YOUR CELLMATE TRIES TO 
INTIMIDATE YOU AND MAKES 
UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES. YOU: 


iat 2 Hue Ў 
| ] dal al 


ATTACK HIM. ASSERT ‘STARE HIM DOWN. SHOW HIM OFFER TO PAY HIM TO CALL THE GUARD AND 
DOMINANCE BEFORE HE DOES. YOU AREN'T AFRAID. LEAVE YOU ALONE. ASK Т0 BE TRANSFERRED 
| | TO ANOTHER CELL. 
هه‎ | | | | 
| 
| | 
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НЕ OVERPOWERS YOU, YOU | HE AGREES. HIS PRICE THE GUAROS TRANSFER YOU 
SPEND YOUR FIRST NIGHT IN | 1$ $100 A DAY. YOU: TO A NEW CELL. YOUR NEW 
THE PRISON HOSPITAL. YOU: | FRIENDLY CELLMATE OFFERS 

| YOU SOME HEROIN. 
| | 
| 


SERA A YO 


SEEK PROTECTION FROM TRY TO SURVIVE REFUSE. ACCEPT. | 
ONE OF THE GANGS. ON YOUR OWN. 
| | 
4 2-2. 
М 
A GANG MEMBER AGREES TO YOUR CELLMATE THE NEXT DAY HE UPS HIS. THE NEXT DAY НЕ 
PROTECT YOU FOR $100 A DAY. ASSAULTS YOU EVERY PRICE TO $300 A DAY. OFFERS YOU MORE. 
NIGHT FOR 3 WEEKS. | 
AFTER 2 MONTHS YOU FINALLY, HE THREATENS THE NEXT DAY HE UPS HIS AFTER 3 WEEKS OF 
RUN OUT OF MONEY. YOUR FAMILY. PRICE TO $1000 A DAY. GENEROUSLY SHARING, 
HE TELLS YOU THAT 


YOU OWE HIM $5000. 


| 


YOU BECOME HIS PROPERTY. YOU BECOME HIS PROPERTY. YOU BECOME HIS PROPERTY. YOU BECOME HIS PROPERTY. 


SIXTEEN HOURS OF CHOICES YOU'LL NEVER WANT TO MAKE. 
Own The Complete Fourth Season of 0Z on DVD. Then go back inside with seasons five and six-coming soon. 


BAHAMAS? PUERTO VALLARTA? OR PERHAPS 
A QUICK TRIP THROUGH THE GEARS? 


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DENISE RICHARDS 
I am a bisexual 40-year-old woman 

who loves your magazine because you 
understand that a beautiful woman is 
like a work of art. I found the Denise 
Richards pictorial (Wild Thing, Decem- 
ber) especially beautiful. Thank you for 
a wonderful holiday present. 

C. Jones 

Sioux Falls, South Dakota 


I've always said that if I could be 
reincarnated as anyone, I would be 
Hef. Now Га rather be Charlie Sheen. 

Kurt Levins 
Marlton, New Jersey 


Why did you photograph such a 
beautiful woman covered in sand and 
mud? It's neither artistic nor erotic. 

Owen Jones 
Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida 


The only thing better than a Denise 
Richards pictorial would be one of her 
Wild Things co-star Neve Campbell. 
Kyle Tamminen 
Thunder Bay, Ontario 


ar I sat behind Denise in Span- 
ish class during high school, but I can't 
find any of my old yearbooks to con- 


Denise Richards: It’s all in the eyes. 


firm it. Did she spend her freshman 
year at Tinley Park High? Those pierc- 
ing green eyes...bonita! 
Steve Jadzak 
Tinley Park, Illinois 
She did, and she says hola. 


As the mother of two young boys, I 
think it's nice that PLAYBOY finds new 


|| G 


moms like Denise Richards sexy. Your 

next search should be for MILFs! 
Michele Greentree 
Chantilly, Virginia 


For shame! Your cover promised 10 
pages of Denise Richards nude. I see 
eight; she’s in a bikini in the first two. 

Curtis Barker 
Valley Village, California 
Can we get half credits for those? 


COMIC-BOOK ART 
Thank you for allowing Glen David 

Gold to shine a spotlight on our little 
hobby of collecting comic-book art (The 
Incredible Adventures of the Collector, 
December). I'm sure many PLAYBOY 
readers grew up on a diet of capes and 
masks and have a box of comics some- 
where that they've read to shreds. The 
hobby feeds on that nostalgia. Anyone 
who is curious is invited to join us at 
Comicart-L at yahoogroups.com. 

Gary Land 

Grand Rapids, Michigan 


Gold provides a fascinating look at 

a seedy and escapist business. It'd be 

great to see more comic art in PLAYBOY. 
Dale Moore 

Bonney Lake, Washington 


Gold reads one self-help book and 
thinks he knows everything. Yes, some 
people become addicted to accumulat- 
ing, and that's unfortunate. But some 
of us collect within our means, appre- 
ciate the artistic value of things and 
simply like possessing an artifact of pop 
culture as a touchstone for some per- 
sonal memory. It's speculators like 
Gold who drive prices higher. 

Aaron Davi: 
DeKalb, Illinois 


Initially I thought collecting comics 
would be a harmless way to blow a few 
bucks. Then I had to move home to 
take care of my ailing mother. She has 
recovered, but for a time the child had 
become the parent. What better retreat 
than the four-color escapism of comic 
books? Unlike Gold, I can't ascribe my 
fascination solely to comic books’ abil- 
ity to evoke memories of happier, more 
secure times. I think it’s the fact that 
death never has the final say in comics. 
They are the domain of superscience, 
potions and serums, cloning and regen- 
eration, resurrections and reincarna- 
tion. They reassure us that evil will be 
defeated, no matter what the state of 
the real world. 


Greg O'Driscoll 
Nahunta, Georgia 


WHEN DINO ROAMED THE EARTH 
How fortunate Dean Martin must 
feel in that big lounge in the sky know- 
ing that he appears so close to your 
Playmate and Denise Richards (The 
Importance of Being Dino, December). 
The first stage of his career was with 
Jerry Lewis. The second was with a 
group of guys who played Las Vegas 
like a ride at Disneyland. As an execu- 


Still having a good time, somewhere. 


tive at NBC, I knew Martin in his third 
life, on television. When The Dean Mar- 
tin Show began, he was 48, but to me he 
was like a kid in an adult body. Pro- 
ducer Greg Garrison recognized that 
boy and gave him a fire pole, bookcases 
of booze and all the Golddiggers he 
wanted. In the next stage of his career, 
audiences in Vega ted to believe 
he was drinking cocktails. In reality it 
was apple juice. He never really drank 
martinis. A little scotch for dinner or a 
cold can of beer was what he liked. 
What he devoured best was a good 
game of golf. Martin’s career was built 
on the PLAYBOY image, and Bill Zehme 
captures what endeared Martin to us. 
By the way, Bill, I have shoes to go with 
your pair of Dean’s pants. 

Neil Daniels 

DeanMartinFanCenter.com 

Arcadia, California 


When are you finally going to put 
Martin in your music Hall of Fame? 1 
am tired of writing in his name on my 
music poll ballot every year. 

Delmo Walters Jr. 
Bronx, New York 


Zehme writes that “Martin and Lewis 
were considered the biggest act in the 


PIELA TBE OY 


So you're the scholarly type. That 
doesn't mean you're all work and no play, 
This gray cotton/polyester sweat 
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20 


history of show busin: Tell that to 
the Beatles, Elvis or even Martin's pal 
Frank Sinatra. Even Dean Martin was 
bigger than Martin and Lewi: 
Bruce Маг! 
Berkeley, California 


ANSON MOUNT WINNER 
For years you have awarded the 
Anson Mount Scholar-Athlete award to 
the college basketball player who best 
excels in the classroom and on the 
court. Yet I didn't see it in your Decem- 
ber preview (In the Paint). 
Al Lazette 
Portland, Michigan 
We simply ran out of space but are 
pleased to recognize the winner here. Chris 
Hill, a senior guard for Michigan State, has 
а 3.98 GPA and a deadly jumper. In his 
honor we presented the university with 
$5,000 for its general scholarship fund. 


FALLING FOR FALLON 
Tiffany Fallon is so beautiful it hurts 
(Christmas With Tiffany, December). I 
have a little bar in my home and keep 
the Centerfold open on it. This month 
I can't do it—she's too distracting. If 
she doesn't win Playmate of the Year, 
you'll be receiving a letter of protest. 
Anthony Pellegrino 
Aberdeen, Washington 


After months of blonde Playmates, 
you finally have a blue-eyed brunette 
who's taller than five-foot-five. Not 
only that, she’s 30 years old. Keep 
them coming! 


George Freeman 
Orange, California 


THE PERFECT GIFT 
From its fantastic Playmate to the 
Dean Martin tribute to the Denise 
Richards pictorial, your December 
issue is one of the best since I began 
subscribing 15 years ago. 
Chris Fiegehen 
Carson City, Nevada 


REMEMBERING POMPEO 

Thank you for your tribute to one 
of PLAYBOY's great photographers 
(Remembering Pompeo Posar, December). 
Pompeo was the first person ever to 
photograph me in my birthday suit. In 
fact, mine was his last Centerfold. I was 
extremely nervous. In his thick Italian 
accent Pompeo said sweetly, “Your 
boobies look so beautiful, like soft cush- 
ions,” which was a pleasant change 
from hearing “Nice tits” all the time on 
the street. He made me laugh and 
helped me relax. Pompeo made me 
feel like I was doing great, even though 
I knew the magazine had to throw 
away the photos taken during the first 
few days because I looked like a deer in 
headlights. His endearing nature made 


me fall in love with him and made my 
Playmate shoot one of the best experi- 
ences of my life. I will always keep him 
close to my heart and soft cushions. 
Jenny McCarthy 
Los Angeles, California 


I don’t mind admitting that I have 
read PLAYBOY for 50 years mostly be- 
cause of the knockout photographs. 
And Pompeo created a large number 
of the masterpieces. 

Lanny Middings 
San Ramon, California 


I shot Centerfolds with Pompeo 
between 1968 and 1980. He had the 
most remarkable techniques of any 
photographer I knew, and they paid 
off. Centerfolds often take days to 
shoot in the studio. I have compared 
it to photographing a group of 40 
people, because if you got her hair 
right, her expression might be off, or 
if you got her hand right, her head 
might be turned wrong. We didn't 


One of Pompeo's great shots, from 1971. 


work with assistants, so we would end 
up taking hundreds of eight-by-tens 
to get the perfect shot for the Center- 
fold. That's why the photo Pompeo 
shot of Playmate Claire Rambeau 
(Miss October 1971) is so amazing. 
Although it was taken outside on a hill 
in natural light, he nailed it within an 
hour. Pompeo's least favorite photo 
was one of his most famous, the cover 
of the December 1968 issue, for which 
ansformed Playmate Cynthia Myers 
into a Christmas tree. He thought he 
made her look fat. We kidded him 
about that for yea: 


Dwight Hooker 
Salt Lake City, Utah 


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Gloria Velez 


This veteran rump shaker is 
juiced to bum-rush the show 


loria Velez has sexed up plenty of 

rap videos, but don't tell her that 
rhyming is a boys-only gig. “I started 
out dancing in videos for Jay-Z, Ja Rule 
and Sisqó. People think video girls 
just know how to look pretty and shake 
their ass,” she says. “I really had to 
prove myself. Hip-hop isn’t a look, 
clothes or a color. It's a movement and 
a culture.” With a song on the upcom- 
ing Clover G Records compilation 
album and her 14-track Mixtape CD 
(available at gloriavelez.com), 26- 
year-old Gloria is all over the mike. 


“I've got the ear candy 
and the eye candy—you 
can't go wrong." 


"You've got to give people more than 
just one type of flow," she says. “1 can 
rap fast or slow and sexy. | like to mix in 
a little rock, Latin and down south so 
people who don't even like hip-hop will 
listen." And to paraphrase a past cross- 
over diva, no money man can win this 
single mom's love. "My son is my little 
big man, my life, so you have to share 
me, not take care of me,” she says. “I 
want a man to be spiritual and ground- 
ed—my best friend. Sometimes I like to 
be in control. Sometimes 1 like to be 
controlled. It all depends on what mood 
I'm in. Who doesn't like sex?" Gloria's 
appeal has earned her spots on Chap- 
pelle's Show and Playboy TV, as well as 
tags such as “the Pamela Anderson of 
hip-hop" and Triple Threat. "Very few 
women have beauty, brains and talent," 
she says. “I've got the ear candy and 
the eye candy—you can't go wrong." 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANTOINE VERGLAS 


23 


24 


[ afterhours 


MY MILK SHAKE IS BETTER THAN YOURS 


SPECIAL DELIVERY: Gloria first 
tried rapping in an all-girl group 
at the age of 20. “I started 
rhyming, and a girl in the group 
said, ‘You can do this because 


you sing fast,’ she says. “Ever 
since then I've practiced my 
lyrics, and that helps me write 
my poetry. | just keep rapping.” 


NAKED GLORY: At one point 
Gloria worked at strip clubs аз 
an exotic dancer to support 
her family. “Some guys were 
genuinely nice and just out to 
look at beautiful women,” she 
says. “I'm not afraid of the 
stage, and I'm real comfortable 
with my body, too.” 


BELIEVE THE TYPE: Gloria 
welcomes feedback on her 
website, especially from wom- 
feel women can relate to 
me,” she says. “I can give 
them confidence and motiva- 
tion by being a single mom 
and a model who i 
tuous, not a skinny rai 


BUM RAP: “Of course rappers 
try to hit on you when you 
ideo—they're men,” 
she says. “They hired us to be 
there and make them look 
good, but it's acting. Honestly, 
they were real gentlemen. If 
you said no, it was no. And I'm 
really strong when I say по.” 


2 
©2005 AXE 


THE NEW LONGER LASTING u © 
AXE EFFECT. > _ 


0 
2 
ІШЕ 
3 
2 
OF 


Deadwood” HBO 'rawand winning Original кенені 


The Complete First Season, with over 90 minutes of damn good extras. 


Available on DVD February 8. 


Tune in to the new season premiere on March 6. 


8 


afterhours ] 


BROTHER, CAN YOU 


SPARE $8 TRILLION? 
CREATIVE WAYS TO TAME THE DEBT 


At year's end the national debt ceiling was a record 
$8.2 trillion, which is around 70 percent of the size 
of the entire U.S. economy. To put it mildly, some 
belt tightening and fund-raising are in order. A few 
measures the Congressional Budget Office is mulling: 


Mow Canada's lawn twice a month 


Print a gag $8 trillion bill. Buy duct tape, a pack of 
gum and a jar of pickles with it at Wal-Mart. Take 
the change and run 


Sell corporate sponsorships for presidential appear- 
ances. There's a fortune in soundbites like "War in 
Iraq? I'm lovin’ it," "Rumsfeld—like a rock!" and 
"Nothing runs like Michael O. Leavitt, your new 
Secretary of Health and Human Services." 


Declare war on creditors in the tradition of the war 
on drugs and the war on terror. Identify an axis of 
creditors and make no distinction between credi- 
tors and the nations that harbor them 


Never buy Patriot cruise missiles without a coupon. 


Throw a fair on the White House lawn with a Con- 
doleezza Rice kissing booth, a Karl Rove dunk 
tank, Lynne Cheney's heart-smart baked goods and 
a song-and-dance show in the big barn by John 
Ashcroft & the Soaring Eagles. 


LowerMyBills.com. 


Land on an aircraft carrier and declare ourselves all 
paid up. 


Invest in a can't-miss reality-TV series: Saddam 
Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Henry Kissinger 
must share a tiny house while lying low in a remote 
South American village 


Put it all on 17 black 


stripped to kill 


NICE BAZOOKAS 


AT ACTIONGIRLS.COM, MODELS GO BALLISTIC 


With its odd vignettes about heavily 
armed, nudity-prone heroines and 
villainesses, Actiongirls.com takes a 
flamethrower to the idea that dows 
loadable skin clips can't look good 
love hot girls,” says Actiongirls.com 
director-webmaster Scotty JX, “and 
ys been my dream to make 
action movies. In my films, oiled- 
up models shoot guns, girls work 
out in the nude, girls wrestle in the shower: It's like playing with action 

e and Sylvia Saint.” 
world is high on suspense 
and vague on plot. In one clip the chesty Zemanova prowls a crum- 
bling factory. A mystery woman on a motorcycle skids into the frame, 
then leaves. Moments later Zemanova shoots random objects with 
a shotgun, then sheds her sweat-soaked top. And then it's over—that, 
folks, is entertainment! “Not all models have what it takes to be Action- 
The guns are heavy. The girls have to hit the deck 
take after take. They're real troupers, and they have fun kicking ass.” 


FACIAL FEAT 
ER WEARERS 
HT OF 


Germany's world-beating 
beard growers (last seen 
in March 200475 After 
Hours) are at it again. In 
this Stuttgart stunt, 20 
wild-whiskered Fritzes 
hooked hair to form a 
record beard chain—24 
meters! Wunderbar. 


27 


[ afterhours 


to Sleeping With Chicks, on how to get your lady friend to 
get down with a girl—and let you watch or play along. 


She has to think your relationship is solid; otherwise she'll 
see the idea as a threat, and she'll resist. Don’t even hint at 
Canadian doubles if your relationship's fire is flickering. 


If your girl likes porn, see how she reacts to girl-on-girl 
scenes. (Avoid all-girl movies, e.g. anything with the word 
munchers in the title.) If she’s getting a little hot, suggest the 
three-way—casually, as if you'd never thought of it before. 


Reading erotica aloud might be a better bet. You want her 
to imagine getting naked with a girlfriend—perhaps eas- 
ier to do with fictional characters than Jenna Jameson. 
(Exception: Your girl and Jenna are friends.) Again, the 
girl-girl is a component of the story but not its entire focus. 
Propose writing a sexual wish list of five to 10 things (activ- 
ities, not people or objects) you'd like to do. Bury the girl- 
on-girl among other ideas; she'll either pick it or skip it. 
Admit it's a fantasy but one you don't expect will ever hap- 
pen. You're confiding, not trying to convince. She may do 
it just to see the look on your face. Practice that look. 


Seeing you touch another woman is something she prob- 
ably thinks of as horrific, not exciting. Set up a mirror in 


r your bedroom to get her used to watching sex. If she finds 
THREE'S COMPANY she likes the voyeuristic thrill, she may be more open to 
THE TRIPLE—IS IT EASIER THAN YOU THINK? seeing you with another girl. Or in a bigger mirror. 


PES T UNI 


HOW TO WIN YOUR OFFICE 
POOL, FROM A GUY WHO DOES 


March Madness is America's best excuse to 
gamble, and at bracket time the pressure on 
my co-workers—hard-core sports geeks who 
frankly have no lives—is intense. Two years 
ago | won the office pool by correctly picking 
Syracuse, and I'll never let them hear the end 
of it. My points of emphasis for 2005: 

1. Learn from your mistakes. | can't tell you 
how many times I've been burned by Cincinnati 
The Bearcats are just no good in the tournament. 
2. Don't obsess over the play-in game. Flip a 
coin. Do eeny-meeny-miney-moe. Whatever. 

3. Ignore fancy analysis of the small teams. It 

doesn't matter who Florida A&M's go-to guy is AU NATUREL HIGH 
What matters is the coach, the program, the 
schedule and how the team plays on the road 
4. The backcourt makes the offense. The dom- 
inant center is extinct—elite teams need explo- 
sive guards. All you need up front is defense. 


The High Times gatefold—an extra 
large photo of grade-A pot—began as 
a cheeky homage to our own Play- 


5. Trust the cliché. People say defense wins championships, but mates but ended up a staple of the 
they bet on offense. Take last year’s Wake Forest team—the kids stoner bible. For the magazine's 30th 
were fun to watch, but they played no defense, and they were sitting anniversary the editors tweaked the 
ducks in the tournament. They gave up 158 points in the first two idea again with this image of artfully 


games before losing to St. Joe's—a team that played great defense. bud-decked model Aesha Waks. 
Max Kellerman is the host of Fox Sports Network’s |, Max Somehow they knew weed approve. 


THE WORLD’S #1 ULTRA PREMIUM TEQUILA 
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30 


afterhours 


| leave it to beavers 


SUD BROTHERS 


BEER-BACKED FRATERNITY PROMOTES ALE BONDING 


watching TV," says Oregon State University junior Joel 
and we thought, What if we start a fake frat and see if 
Pabst will sponsor it?" The idea was either genius or folly—and 
one way to find out which. VanDyke and classmate 
‘ruhwirth pitched it to the Pabst Brewing Co.; imagine the 
students' surprise when a Pabst executive gave the idea the green 
light. Pi Beta Rho (get it?), the nation’s first brewer-affiliated frat, 
isn't recognized by the university, but the blue-ribbon boys of Pabst 
ire hardly troubled. "Everyone in the Greek community 
says VanDyke. "We have quite a few kegs rolling through 
From a Pabst rep they call the Godfather, the six men of [IBP 
ed branded banners, dartboards and tin signs; their end of the 
bargain includes keeping a 2.5 GPA and "requesting Pabst on t 
every bar we go to.” Ad hoc initiation includes viewing the 
Blue Velvet, in which Dennis Hopper's character blurts, 
Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!” Can Mu Gamma Delta be far off? 


sounds familiar 


THE DIFFERENCE 


FOR THE DISCRIMINATING DISCERNER 


Barbara Bush is the slender Yalie with the 

high forehead; Jenna Bush is the husky 

blonde who falls down in bars. 

Cocaine is a white guy serving two years; 

crack is a black guy doing 10. 

Men's Health is a magazine about abs; 

Men's Fitness is a magazine about lats; Muscle & Fitness is a 
magazine about 'roids; Muscle Car Enthusiast is a magazine 
about Vettes and Stangs; Health & Fitness Car is not a magazine, 
nor should it be. 

An agent knocks on the door; a special agent shoots you; a secret 
agent makes it look like a suicide. 

Gambling is done with wadded-up bills; gaming is done with chips. 
Prostrate means you're lying flat; prostate means you're bent over. 


| етріоуве of the month 


HOT ITEM 


HARDWORKING HSN MODEL SARA DYE 
GIVES US THE SOFT SELL 


PLAYBOY: What do you do? 


SARA: I'm what they call 
on-air talent for the Home 
Shopping Network, | model 
everything—jewelry, hair 
products and clothes. I've 
done more than 2,000 
hours of television. 


PLAYBOY: Does an HSN 
model have a fan following? 


SARA: Yes, guys set up web 
pages and Yahoo groups. 
The men are like, “Oh, Sara's 
on right now, and she's wearing a skirt.” They take 
pictures off the TV and post them online. There are 
little thumbnails of me modeling earrings all over the 
Internet—it's pretty funny. 


PLAYBOY: How do you dress for modeling jewelry? 


SARA: We usually wear little dresses and full makeup. 
For modeling necklaces you need something especially 
low-cut. They encourage sexiness but don't want you 
to be too sexy. It's always freezing in the studio—they 
say they have to keep it that way for the camera equip- 
ment. And you know what happens to a woman's nip- 
ples when it gets cold. That's always an issue at HSN. 


Employee of the Month candidates: Send pictures to оу Photography Depart- 
ment, Attn: Employee of the Month, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, nois 
60611. Must be at least 18 years old. Must send photocopies of a driver's license 
and another vabd D (not a credit card), one of which must mclude a current photo 


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HORRORS FROM 
OUTER SPACE, 


PARADE. 
THE LINING, 

AND RESURREST 

TRE DERN! 


H— 


Time Served 


Average sentence a 
murderer would get if 


the victim is: 
Unemployed 
9.3 years 
A prior violent offender 
9.6 years 
Under 12 years old 
11.4 years 
=» A black man 
КУ 11.6 years 
LYLE TALBOT A white man 
AL Land topar | 14.7 years 
— tec ا‎ 
por" A black woman 
17.1 years 
+ { 
Apostles of the Hack Over 65 years old 
The Church of Ed Wood, which worships the direc- 18.6 years 
tor of Plan 9 From Outer Space (considered the worst A white woman 
film ever made), has more than 3,500 members. 19.0 years 


Wut R U Wearing 


30% of men say they send instant 
messages while naked; only 12% of 
women say they do. 


Church and State 


38% of Americans wouldn't vote for 

a well-qualified Muslim for president. 
52% wouldn't vote for a well- 
qualified atheist. 2. 


Money Shot 


The last-second 
spread-beating basket 
(a 38-foot three- 
pointer) sunk by Duke 
guard Chris Duhon 

in the semifinals 

of the 2004 NCAA 
tournament cost 
bettors $30 million. 


= 


Oldest Working 
Lightbulb 


1 0 years (and counting), 
A T for the four-watt bulb 
at fire station #6 in Livermore, 
California. It has been in con- 
tinual use (albeit interrupted by 
a couple of power outages and 
moves) ever since it was first 
switched on in 1901. 


JUK? 
el 


Lean Outrageous 
Year Fortunes of War 
39% of As reparations for “lost 
Americans profits” due to the ongoing 
would give conflict, Iraq has paid: 

up one year $18 million to Halliburton 
of their life $3.8 million to Pepsi 

if they could $2.6 million to Nestlé 
always re- $1.6 million to Shell 

main at their $321,000 to KFC 

ideal weight. $189,449 to Toys "R" Us 


A Quick 
Puck 


$575.96 
Paid at an 
auction for 
hockey legend 
Bobby Hull's 
45-year-old 
false teeth. 
Hull said they 
were lost in 

a Swiss hotel 
in 1959. 


Scum of the Net 


The typical PC is infected with 25 
spyware programs. 


j 


33 


911” 


ç ә , 


poro cy W a o o - 
. © 
s 
- 2 


| 


F W S 


BE COOL | 


Get Shorty dances to a new tune 


Attitude is everything in Be Cool, the further adventures of 
Chili Palmer, the Miami mobster turned Hollywood pro- 
ducer first played by John Travolta in the 1995 hit Get 
Shorty. This time out Travolta's hipster thug is fed up with 
the movie business, so he and Uma Thurman, the widow of 
a skeevy music executive, jump-start their music-industry 
careers by stealing a young singer (Christina Milian) from 
such comically twisted gangstas as Cedric the Entertainer 
(a music kingpin who lives in a white gated community), 
André 3000 (his trigger-happy posse member), Vince 
Vaughn (a playa with a predilection for acting black) and the 
Rock (Vaughn's gay bodyguard). Be Cool's cast is A-list, 
but as with Get Shorty, what's 


more important is the film's “This one will 
origin as a novel by Elmore 


Leonard, the maestro of gritty be over-the-top 
talk and scalding satire. Hav: with music and 
ing watched Hollywood maim " 

much of his work, the author is comedy. 

ready for anything. “I've been 

through this too many times to take it seriously,” he says. 
“| mean, the 1969 version of The Big Bounce is the second: 
worst movie ever made, and when | saw the 2004 version 
| said, ‘Now | know the worst movie.’ I'm not sure that Be 
Cool is going to follow what | wrote as closely as Get 
Shorty did, but | think this one will be more entertaining and 
over-the-top with music and comedy.” Stephen Rebello 


The Upside of Anger 


Our call: A powerful cast, 


(Joan Allen, Kevin , Keri Russell) Looking for a master 
class in acting? Check out Allen as the mother of four head- 
strong daughters dealing with the loss of the man of the house. 
Complications arise once Mom begins a relationship with 
Costner, a former ballplayer turned radio host. 


boosted by Costner's return to 
a movie-star role, scrubs the 
sap off this romance from 
director Mike Binder (TV's 
Mind of the Married Man). 


King's Ransom 

(Anthony Anders N legi |) This comedy casts 
ATTEN EE iE cad E "dk digging wife serves him 
with divorce papers. Apparently the planet's only zillionaire 
who forgot to get a prenup, Anderson hatches a scheme to get 
himself kidnapped in order to keep his fortune intact. 


Our call: Anderson, who re- 
cently had his own brushes 
with the law, could probably 
use some belly laughs right 
now. But he might have to look 
elsewhere—and so will we. 


The Jacket 


(Adrien Brody, F t 


n) Brody plays a 


Our call: Try to look past the 
blah title and head-scratching 


Gulf war vet slammed toa morgue drawer at a psychiatric hos- | plotline. The chemistry between = 
pital. In a drug-induced sensory-deprived state, he time trips to | the two stars and the spooky Ж 
discover that he was framed for a murder, he will soon die and a | atmosphere should make this Ж 


woman from his past (Knightley) may hold the key to his future. | more than Gothika redux. 


The Ring Two 

G In this follow-up to the 
original shriekfest, Watts d her son try to put behind them 
all that weirdness about a videotape that kills anyone who 
watches it. But a homicide and the illness of Watts's son lead 
our heroine back to a one-on-one with a very pissed-off ghost. 


Our call: Watts amps up every- 
thing she's in, and the pretzel- 
like plot and industrial-strength 
shock moments should scare 
us all into hoping we'll hear 
ringing in our ears a third time. 


35 


36 


reviews [ dvds 


[ FINDING NEVERLAND ] 


Johnny Depp soars as the writer behind Peter Pan 


There are so many places you could go wrong in depicting the genesis of Peter Pan, 
the eternal boy imagined by Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie in London circa 1904. Yet 
director Marc Forster manages to sidestep them all in this near-perfect drama, deliv- 
ering a richly evocative take on the tale behind the myth without going all pixie dust 
on us. Depp is sublime as Barrie, a man who befriends a beautiful young widow (Kate 


Winslet) and her four spirited 
boys, engaging the lads in 
reveries of fanciful play that 
inspired Peter Pan. Edwardian 
society frowned on all this, 
as did Barrie's wife (Radha 
Mitchell) and the boys’ grand- 
mother (Julie Christie). Depp, 
like no other actor of his gen- 
eration, can find the balance 
of genius, joy and innocence 
that makes it fly. Extras: De- 
leted scenes, two making-of 
featurettes and a three-way 
commentary track with For- 
ster, writer David Magee and 
producer Richard Gladstein. 
ууу —Greg Fagan 


THE GRUDGE (2004) The prologue to 
this Ring-esque shocker maintains that 
when someone dies in a powerful rage a 
curse is unleashed at the murder scene 
that spreads to all who trespass. Sarah 
Michelle Gellar plays an American social 
worker in Tokyo who stumbles on such 
a damned dwelling and confronts its 
vengeful ghosts. Director Takashi Shi- 
mizu, who also helmed the Japanese orig- 
inal, Ju-on, chills blood with this super- 
natural revenge 
yarn, Extras: Com- 
mentaries, a doc- 
umentary and a 
medical feature 
on audience fear 
response. ¥¥¥ 

—Robert B. DeSalvo 


A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945) 
Director Elia Kazan's tear-jerking take 
on Betty Smith's novel concerns a poor 
family's struggles in turn-of-the-century 
Brooklyn. Both Peggy Ann Garner and 
James Dunn earned Oscars, and Dorothy 
McGuire's performance continues to 
resonate. Extras: 
A news clip with 
Smith, a featur- 
ette on McGuire 
and commentary 
from film historian 
Richard Schickel. 
yyy GF 


DEADWOOD: THE COMPLETE FIRST 
SEASON (2004) The traditional Western is 
turned upside down in the lawless gold- 
mining town of Deadwood, the setting of 
HBO's slow-building, thoroughly addictive 
frontier drama starring Timothy Olyphant, 
Brad Dourif, John Hawkes and Keith Car- 
radine. Beginning with a pilot episode 
directed by action auteur Walter Hill, Dead- 
wood charbroils standard Western tropes 
and real-life figures (Wild Bill Hickok, 
Calamity Jane), using language that ini- 
tially shocks but ultimately elevates the 


show's intensity. Gambling, gunfights, 
whoring and dirty double-crossing have 
never before seemed so cool. Extras: Fea- 
turette on the real 
Deadwood, South 
Dakota and four 
audio commen- 
taries from cre- 
ator David Milch 
and the stars. 
yyyy --б.Е 


SAW (2004) Strangers Cary Elwes and 
Leigh Whannell wake up shackled to 
opposite walls of a dilapidated industrial 
bathroom, with hacksaws nearby that 
won't cut chains, just flesh. Getting ideas? 
Meanwhile, detective Danny Glover chases 
clues leading to the Jigsaw killer, whose 
victims die by 
their own hands 
in grisly traps. 
Extras: Commen- 
taries and a Fear 
Factory music 
video. yy 
—Buzz McClain L 


LADDER 49 (2004) Director Jay Russell 
avoids greeting-card sentiments and keeps 
things blatantly macho in this tale about 
Baltimore firefighters. Joaquin Phoenix 
plays a fresh-faced rookie, and John Tra- 
volta coasts on his natural gravity as the 
firehouse captain. The film takes a couple 
of risks that pay off: There is no villain 
other than the fiery job itself, and the end- 
ing is decidedly 
non-Hollywood. 
Extras: Deleted 
scenes, a mak- 
ing-of featurette 
and a documen- 
tary on firefight- 
ers. ¥¥4 —B.M. 


Monica Bellucci may be Italy's 
most intoxicating export since 
red wine. The former law student 
made her U.S. debut in Dracula 
(1992, pictured) as a lusty vam- 
pire, and we glimpsed more of 
her as the inscrutable object of 
desire in Maléna (2000). She 
wowed us as a hooker in Broth- 
erhood of the Wolf (2001), a 
costume-popping Persephone 
in The Matrix Reloaded and 
Revolutions (both 2003) and 
as Mary Magdalene in The Pas- 
sion of the Christ (2004). Our 
favorite Italian dish heats up 
screens later this year in The 
Brothers Grimm. 


D ә ® ° k 


) N S 242 
" It's about quality, not quantity. + Visit crownroyal.com 
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38 


reviews [ dvds 


[| HOW TO CRACK DVD EASTER EGGS ] 


These hidden treasures are worth the hunt 


Legend has it that in 1997 the computer geeks working on the DVD of Dr. No (1962, 
pictured) hatched the first Easter egg—a hidden DVD feature—by planting a tempt- 
ing martini recipe and the cocktail's history on the disc. It's not hard to find; just go 
to the special-features menu, highlight the inconspicuous martini glass and there you 
have it. Hidden features have been 
encoded in video games for years, 
but DVD producers have taken the fun 
to new levels. Built into the right 
channel of the “K-Billy Radio” graphic 
on disc two of Reservoir Dogs: 10th 
Anniversary Special Edition (1992) 
is a secret split-screen version of the 
ear-slicing torture sequence: One 
screen shows the scene, the other 
shows it reenacted by action figures. 
Put your cursor on the lips on the main 
menu page of The Rocky Horror Pic- 
ture Show: 25th Anniversary Edition 
(1975) and you'll discover a hidden 
third version of the movie, this one in 
black and white until Dr. Frank N. 
Furter enters and it bursts into color а 
la The Wizard of Oz. Behind the gag 
reel feature in the unrated version of 
The Girl Next Door (2004) is a nine- 
minute sex-education video. Buried in 
the main menu of the 2001 DVD of Ë 2 

The Beastmaster (1982) are additional glimpses of a nude Tanya Roberts. If you like 
music inspired by The Matrix, check out the languages раде оп The Matrix Revisited 
(2001) and enjoy the 180-minute, 41-song “jukebox.” You can spend hours stroking 
your remote, trying to find these ova obscura, but plenty of websites, such as 
DVDreview.com, are happy to map out the paths to access. —B.M. 


special additi 


Donnie is darker, Corleones face off, and a hoops classic is revealed 


Thanks to DVD sales, Donnie Darko became such a legitimate 
film phenomenon that director Richard Kelly recut the movie for 
a theatrical rerelease last year, a version now available on disc 
as Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut. It remains a natural-born 
cult oddity about a troubled teenage boy (Jake Gyllenhaal) 
whose six-foot rabbit pal informs him that the world will end in 
28 days, The 20 minutes Kelly splices in here and there make 
this a clearer and more satisfying cut. The disc also includes a 
commentary from Kelly and fellow indie auteur Kevin Smith, plus 
four new featurettes... Action fans didn't get to see Robert De 
Niro and Al Pacino—who co-starred in The Godfather: Part II— 
actually appear in the same scene until writer-director Michael 
Mann brought them together in his 1995 crime thriller Heat, now 
available in a 10th-anniversary special edition. It has five making- 
of featurettes, including the film's pivotal Pacino vs. De Niro con- 
frontation. There's also commentary by Mann and 11 additional 
never-before-seen scenes.... The new collector's edition of the 
beloved basketball docudrama Hoosiers gets the special treat- 
ment it deserves, particularly through footage of the actual 1954 
game that inspired the film's thrilling climax. The bonus disc 
boasts a meaty documentary, "Hoosier History: The Truth Behind 
the Legend," and includes 13 deleted scenes. —G.F 


THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES 


(2004) Two Argentinean compadres 
embark on an eight-month motorcycle 
trek in this adventure partly based on 
Che Guevara's 1952 journal. The 
exotic landscapes prove more interest- 
ing than the embellished story. ¥¥ 4 


- (2004) Swinging limo driver 
Jude Law tears through a bevy of 
Manhattan beauties, including Marisa 
Tomei and Sienna Miller, in this glossy 
remake of the tough Michael Caine 
classic. This version squeaks by on 
Law's trademark wit and charm. ¥¥ 


BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS (2003) 
Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel Vile 
Bodies sank its teeth into London's 
celebutante subculture circa 1930. 
The biggest laughs in this adaptation 
come from Jim Broadbent, as a great 
drunk, and Peter O'Toole. УУУ 


(2004) A retired batting 
king discovers that he is really Mr. 
2997 and must return to the big 
leagues to reclaim his glory. Bernie 
Mac has a few comic hits in this other- 
wise corny baseball flick. YY 


FANDANGO (1985) In this under- 
rated road pic set in 1971, Kevin Cost- 
ner, Judd Nelson and Sam Robards 
star as college grads who take one last 
wild trip to Mexico before adulthood or 
Vietnam claims them. ¥¥¥ 


(2004) 
This dizzying mess of a movie fires 
comedic buckshot at big targets. It 
includes a few inspired bits, but the 
best is Dustin Hoffman's turn as ап 
“existential detective.” YY 


BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER 
(2004) Compiled from years of video 
footage, this compelling portrait of 
gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, 
examines the triumphs and travails of 
his career. Available exclusively at 
breakfastwithhunter.com. ¥¥¥ 


(1996) Jennifer Jason 
Leigh plays a 1930s movie moll who 
takes a politician's wife hostage in this 
ambitious Robert Altman film. It's no 
Nashville, but a scorching jazz score 
and Y portrayal of a 


Harry 's 
gangster make this worth owning. ¥¥¥ 


Worti 
Forget it 


Don't 
Good show 


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PLAYBOY 


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PLAYBOY PICKS 


ORIS 


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Si E. 


ORIS announces the Frank Sinatra 
Limited Edition Jazz Timepiece 


Oris Swiss Made Watches announces its newest Jazz 
watch, the Frank Sinatra Limited Edition, to be released in 
June 2005, To locate an authorized dealer in your area 
please call 914.547ORIS, e-mail ticktockl@orisusa.com, or 
visit oris-watch.com 


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Introducing BIC* C2 Metal™ 
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hassle. Geared to match your “on-the-go” 
lifestyle, Available in April 


Tee off on your local golf course and you could 
land on the green at the Playboy Mansion. 


Starting in June, The Playboy Golf Scramble will be swinging into 
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reviews [ music 


[ MARS VOLTA WIGS OUT ] 


Two boys embark on an emo-funk odyssey 


Just when you've given up all hope that music can still be 
unpredictable, along comes the Mars Volta with Frances 
the Mute, a shrieking, psychedelic kick in the arse. With 
meandering song structures and rambling melodies, 
these former members of Texas emo heroes At the 
Drive-In (other former members split off to start the rock 
band Sparta) carve out an even deeper, darker niche 
than the one they found with 2003's stellar De-Loused in 
the Comatorium. At times Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar 
Rodriguez-Lopez get a little too self-indulgent with their 
drugged-out, sullen tunes. They begin and end the 
album, for instance, with versions of the track “Sar- 
cophagi." And the more than 12-minute-long song "L'Via 
L'Viaquez" is a study in extreme patience. (You won't be 
hearing it on your radio anytime soon.) But it's still inter- 
esting to listen as the Afroed duo experiments with var- 
ious production techniques and trippy vocals—from 
creepy slasher-movie whispers to Geddy Lee wails. 
Divided into five sections, this larger-than-life musical 
journey is not for everyone—not even for some hard- 
core At the Drive-In fans, perhaps—but that's an excel- 
lent thing. (Universal) vvv —Alison Prato 


MANDO DIAO + Hurricane Bar 

This Swedish quartet falls somewhere 
along the arc connecting the Libertines, 
Strokes and Hives. Happily, the band dis- 
tinguishes itself with a preternatural abil- 
ity to write memorable melodies and by 
striking a perfect balance between 
unhinged passion and disciplined harmo- 
niousness. (Mute) yyy% —Tim Mohr 


MARY GAUTHIER + Mercy Now 

Gauthier's reputation for world-weary 
songs and heartbroke singing is already 
well established. But when she comes 
up with a great song like “Your Sister 
Cried,” it takes her to a new level. Her 
bayou laments are sparse and simple, 
but her artistry is pure and absolute. 
(Lost Highway) ¥¥¥ —Leopold Froehlich 


THE BIG OL’ BOX OF NEW ORLEANS 
With the arrival of spring, our thoughts 
turn to plastic beads and crawfish bread. 
What better way to prepare for Mardi 
Gras than with a well-documented four- 
disc set of new and old Crescent City 
classics? There are welcome surprises 
here, but where are Master P and Mys- 
tikal? (Shout Factory) ¥¥¥ —LF 


QUALO + Believe 

Far from breaking new ground, most 
socially conscious hip-hop founders under 
its own clichés. But with “How to Make a 
Baby Mama'—funny but not so funny— 
this Chicago collective takes social con- 
sciousness in a new direction. With great 
production and smart lyrics, Believe is 
impressive. (The Movement) ¥¥¥4—L.F 


ESET 


гои Boxe | 


ЖИ IS 


it 


UNWRITTEN LAW 

Here's to the Mourning 

Though lumped with Blink-182 and Sum 
41, this SoCal group has always been 
more sonically diverse. On this LP, stick- 
and-move riffs blend punk and metal with 
bits of electronic. As pop-punk wanes, 
Unwritten Law comes out with its pierc- 
ings intact. (Lava) ¥¥¥ —Jason Buhrmester 


THE KILLS * No Wow 

It's hard to believe two people could be 
as threateningly rock-and-roll as this duo. 
W--the girl singer—snarls and spits 


THE KILLS 
and writhes, while Hotel—the boy guitar N 4 
wonder—unleashes riffs so venomous 2% 


they make the White Stripes sound like |Б 4 
music for kids. Frighteningly good. Апа аф 
frightening. (RCA) ¥¥¥¥ —T.M. 


KASABIAN + Kasabian 

Baggy is back. Like the Happy Mondays, 
Primal Scream and New Fast Automatic 
Daffodils, Kasabian makes party music 
swathed in the murky gray atmosphere 
of Britain's rust belt. Turns out that catchy 
beats, buoyant bass lines, keyboard 
bursts and half-sneered vocals are still a 
winning formula. (RCA) vvv —TM. 


BRIGHT EYES + I'm Wide Awake 

Kid genius Conor Oberst (a.k.a. Bright 
Eyes) built his following with brilliant 
dirges of teen depression. Here he 
ditches the self-absorption to duet with 
Emmylou Harris and sing about politics. 
If he's trying to shake the Dylan com- 
parisons, he isn't making it any easier. 
Amazing. (Saddle Creek) YYYY —J.B. 


KASABIAN 


41 


WHY DID YOU OPEN THIS? 


The page numbers clearly indicate that 
it does not exist. Yet something bothered 
you. It was closed. So you opened it. 
Obviously, you are an open person. 
Someone who isn't afraid to explore 
uncharted territory. A maverick. Just the 
type to consider the MINI Cooper 
Convertible. The fact is, we didn't make 
very many of these things. And we don't 
want them going to people who'll drive 
around with the top up on a nice day. 
But since you've proven that you're open, 
we can tell you stuff we wouldn't tell a 
regular person. Such as, MSRP for the 
MINI Cooper Convertible starts at $22,000: 
After all, we want to make sure they fall 
into the right hands. Like yours. 


THE MINI CONVERTIBLE. ALWAYS OPEN. 


рае н Cooper ае shown $29.420 MSRP. Price excludes license, registration nd options. Actual price determined by MINI Dealer. 
of ort peer LLC. The MINI name and logo are registered trademarks. 


MINIUSA.COM 


reviews | games 


[ WEIRD WEIRD WEST ] 
L 1 
Another excursion to Oddworld, this time as a bounty hunter 
The folks at Oddworld Inhabitants like nothing better than creating bizarre, deeply 
detailed worlds and then filling them with sweet, grotesque and obnoxious crea- 


tures. We've waited three years to see their latest iconoclastic romp, Oddworld 
Stranger’s Wrath (Electronic Arts, Xbox). An alien Western of sorts, Wrath seam- 


lessly blends first-person shoot- 
ing and third-person stealth, with 
one foot planted in A Fistful of 
Dollars and the other in Blazing 
Saddles, As the titular Stranger, 
you're a frontier bounty hunter 
armed with ammo that's literally 
alive—projectile skunk bombs, 
rapid-fire wasps and “chip-punks” 
that taunt your enemies. Though 
a loner at heart, the Stranger, as 
the story progresses, is swept up 
in events larger than himself (and 
too much fun to spoil here). This 
is what you get when you mix raw 
creativity with time and a big bud- 
get. Hilarious, addictive and as 
much a must for film fans as for 
gamers. УУЗУ —John Gaudiosi 


IRON PHOENIX (Sega, Xbox) This is the 
first hand-to-hand fighter to allow up to 16 
players to jump into the ring (or the colos- 
sal temple of the snake god) at once. 
Though it's light on plot and fairly pointless 
off-line, against human opponents its wide 
range of bladed weapons, power-ups and 
combos makes the action fast and furious. 
Original modes such as “giant kill” (one 
player is bigger 
and stronger, and 
everyone else 
tries to kill him) 
make this a true 
adrenaline-soaked 
obsession. ¥¥¥ 

—Scott Alexander 


PROJECT: SNOWBLIND (Eidos, PC, PS2, 
Xbox) You are Nathan Frost, surgically 
enhanced supersoldier, Your mission: Foil 
a plot by Hong Kong's new rebel gov- 
ernment. Riveting cut-scenes outline the 
grim backstory as you explore life on the 
makeshift battlefields of 2065 (Bud- 
dhist temple shoot-out, anyone?). Metic- 
ulous graphics, dazzling weapons, 
customizable im- 
plant abilities 
and 16-person on- 
line showdowns 
add up to one of 
the best titles of 
late. yyy% 

—Scott Steinberg 


RESIDENT EVIL 4 (Capcom, GameCube) 
Change is good. The new installment of 
the venerated survival horror series is 
zombie-free, which, all in all, is good. Leon 
S. Kennedy (from Resident Evil 2) is now 
a U.S. agent and has been sent to a 
remote European village to find the pres- 
ident’s daughter. Much perforation of 
creepy townsfolk and fearsome beasties en- 
sues. Cinematic 
3D visuals, smart 
enemy Al and 
truly terrifying sur- 
prises will keep 
gamers glued to 
their set. yyy% 
—Marc Saltzman 


DEATH BY DEGREES (Namco, PS2) 
Game developers, repeat after us: Hav- 
ing a hot heroine does not guarantee a 
good game. We understand wanting to 
cast Nina from grandpappy fighting game 
Tekken as a secret agent fending off 
thugs on a cruise ship. Bikinis, evening- 
wear—slam dunk, right? But once the 
thrill of seeing the beautiful woman 
stomping scum- 
bags fades, the 
clichéd plot and 
anemic writing 
begin wearing 
holes in your pa- 
tience. Disappoint- 
ing. ¥¥  —S.S. 


[ PORTABLE MAYHEM ] 


Sony brings the world yet 
another must-have gadget 


Designed to deliver music, video and 
games, Sony's new PlayStation Portable 
sports a 4.3-inch widescreen display 
and familiar PS2-like controls. Using a 
new media format, a mini-CD called the 
Universal Media Disc, the PSP will fea- 
ture full-length original films, new 
music and the main event: full 3D gam- 
ing. Here's a peek at some of what 
you'll be playing. —Adam Rosen 


HOT SHOTS GOLF Up to eight dement- 
ed duffers can tee off on half a dozen 
courses. Idiotproof fun on the fairway. 


TWISTED METAL: HEAD-ON Multi- 
player vehicular madness begs the ques- 
tion: napalm launcher or machine gun? 


NBA 2005 Get your game on against 
other ballers over Wi-Fi and play a vari- 
ety of mini-games and timed challenges. 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 147. 


reviews [ books 


book of the 


John Edgar Wideman is one of the best 
American writers working today, and 
his first short-story collection in more 
than a decade, God’s Gym, is full of ele- 
gantly written, quirky stories (including 
one that originally appeared in PLAYBOY). 
As he has done so well throughout his 
career, Wideman raises serious sub- 
jects with delicacy and even humor. For 
example, in “Weight” a son says, “My 
mother believes in a god, a sweaty 
bleeding god presiding over a fitness 
class. She should wear a T-shirt: God's 
Gym.” In “Who Invented the Jump Shot,” 
the protagonist, a black man, attends a 
college seminar and watches as his 
white colleagues rewrite the history of 
popular culture by “planting their flag 
on a chunk of territory because no na- 
tive's around to holler ‘Stop. Thief.” As 
usual, Wideman and his morally up- 
standing characters hold the authority 
and get the last laugh. (Houghton Mif- 
flin) ¥¥¥ — Barbara Nellis 


NOT PROUD: A SMORGASBORD 

OF SHAME * Scott Huot and G.W. Brazier 
This collection of confessions originates 
from a popular website on which people 
anonymously admit their darkest secrets (or 
simply make up implausible stuff). Here you 
can act out your voyeuristic tendencies by 
reading about the sins and desires of 
others. The authors organize their book into 
seven deadly sins, plus a bonus miscellany 
for those hard-to-define ones. A couple of 
the more bizarre admissions: “Sometimes | 


A а) 
JOHN EDGAR 
WIDEMAN 


“н 


the month | E ] 
[ WIDEMAN'S WORKOUT ] 


Ten intense short stories from a master of the form 


pee into a two-liter bottle when I'm іп bed 
and getting up is just not an option" and “I 
like to walk in the park at night and fon- 
dle the statues." Not 
Proud has it share 
of the sick and twist- 
ed, but the embar- 
rassing thoughts 
of everyday peo- 
ple make it human. 
(Simon & Schuster) 
¥¥—Jennifer Berkery 


Not Proud 


s. 


MR. CHINA * Tim Clissold 

West stumbles through East in this busi- 
nessman's memoir. After cleaning up on 
Wall Street, investment banker “Pat” at- 
tempts to do the same in China. As his 
right-hand man, Clissold quickly discovers 
that the Chinese interpret the rules of pri- 
vate-equity investment differently. This sets 
the stage for a surprisingly hard to put 
down book with passionate characters and 
vivid landscapes. Clissold excels at ana- 
lyzing a strange business culture, in which 
parties are held to celebrate deals that fall 
apart soon after dessert. 
He may have failed by 
American standards, but 
he succeeds in restoring 
life to many small Chi- | MRICHINA 
nese villages and explor- | 


ing a fascinating culture. 
(HarperBusiness) ¥¥¥ 
—J. Jaroneczyk Hawthorne 


HOLY SKIRTS * René Steinke 

It's a shame that Vincent van Gogh wasn't 
appreciated until after he died. It's even 
more shameful that female artists such 
as the Baroness Elsa von Freytag- 
Loringhoven, a poet who was one of the 
more notable Greenwich Village eccen- 
trics, met a worse fate. This novel re- 
imagines her life from her days as a nude 
statue in German burlesques through 
1917, when she recited her poetry in 
New York City bars. The story is as much 
about a starving artist who satiates her- 
self with sex as it is 
about how World War | || 
affected New Yorkers |) 
living on the fringe. The 
baroness's antics make 
the Andy Warhol crowd 
seem tame by compari- 
son. (William Morrow) 
yyy —Patty Lamberti 


°| 


BAD GIRLS: FILM FATALES, SIRENS 
AND MOLLS * Tony Turtu 
The author catalogues classic Hollywood 
vamps, trollops and hussies, and provides 
trivia about the films and the actresses. 
Filled with movie stills and lobby cards, 
the book also includes an interview with 
Angie Dickinson, who has played her 
share of schem- 
ers. Dickinson's 
reason for appear- 
ing in these guilty 
pleasures? “You 
see, | couldn't do 
Shakespeare, but 
1 could do a sa- 
loon girl.” (Collec- 
tors Press) ұұУ 
—Jessica Riddle 


43 


PERHAPS PEOPLE JUST 
LIKE THINGS FROM IRELAND. 


ON SECOND THOUGHT... 


IT COULD NUSTE BE THE TASTE. 


Laser Beem 
The new MS is the hottest, most technologically advanced BMW ever 


BMW DOESN’T OFFER a new M5 sport sedan every year—more like every five or six. So when it does, serious players race for their 
checkbooks. The 2006 model pictured here is already shredding roads in Germany to rave reviews, and now it’s coming to Ameri- 
ca. So what's new? Engineers stiffened the car's suspension, sliced in a set of side air vents and threw on some 19-inch alloy wheels 
and a quartet of oversize tailpipes. Under the hood lurks a У10 engine (a first in a sedan) that pumps out 500 bhp and 383 foot- 
pounds of torque. The zero-to-120-mph sprint takes 14.5 seconds, with a high-pitched shriek from the tuned exhaust that'll curl your 
hair. Also new is the seven-speed manual gearbox, which permits hyper-rapid shifting or fully automatic operation. And get this: 
BMW has included launch control electronics just like those on its F1 cars. Nail the throttle and the M5 hammers out a series of to-the- 
redline 65-millisecond snap shifts. “Got your seat belt on, sweetheart? Here we go.” Look for it in showrooms this fall for about $90K. 


Think Again: 
The Computer 


FOR ALL THE TALK about 
their being personal, com- 
puters are often anything 
but, especially when it comes 
to design. But drop a few 
bucks (8,900 of them for the 
cocobolo wood unit shown 
here) at Wood Contour 
(woodcontour.com) and the 
company will create a moni- 
tor and keyboard that match 
both your hardware and 
office trim. Wood Contour 
offers 175 different finishes, 
including stone—for the 
complete caveman-lawyer 
look you've always wanted. 


About Time: Luminox F-16 


EVEN WITH the lights off she should 
look good. Your watch, that is. Luminox 
teamed with Lockheed Martin (builder of 


the F-16 fighter jet) to bring you the F-16 
chronograph. The little number has tiny 
tritium lights built into the face so pilots 


can tell time in pitch blackness. It also 
makes for a good wingman in a dark bar. 


ап MANTRACK | 


Arabian Nights 


Welcome to the city-state of Dubai, where the local sheikh knows how to party 


THE PERSIAN GULF isn’t exactly known for rocking good times these days, but that’s changing in 
Dubai. The city-state is quickly becoming the Vegas of the Middle East. Okay, there’s no gambling, 
but this member of the United Arab Emirates is constructing outrageous properties, such as an 
underwater hotel and a glass-encased ski resort with a revolving mountain. And the place is hot for 
sports. Last year Tiger Woods competed in the Dubai Desert Classic and Jennifer Capriati in the 
Dubai Tennis Championships, and the $6 million purse in the Dubai World Cup (left), which runs this 
month, is the largest in Thoroughbred racing. Our pick for the hottest spot in town is the One & Only 
Royal Mirage (above), a resort that fuses Arabian mystique with a modern, hedonistic vibe. With its 
domed minarets and torch-lit reflecting pools, you expect Ali Baba himself to slink around a corner 
in an Armani suit. The resort also features the sexiest bar in the Middle East: the Rooftop, an open- 
air terrace where exquisite international lovelies lounge on pillows as a DJ spins electronica. Eighty 
percent of those living here are expats—Arabs, Indians, Thais and Brits, mostly young, on the make 
and with cash to burn. Emirates airline flies direct from New York City starting at $900 (book at 
emirates.com); rooms at the Mirage start at $263 a night (royalmiragedubai.com). 


Take the High Road Packing Heat 

THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE... GUN HOLSTERS see 
Hotel room: The Imperial Suite in Geneva’s Hotel President some rough duty, so 
Wilson—$33,000 a night. It features a 26-seat dining table and the good ones are built 
bulletproof windows. Airline ticket: Round-trip nonstop be- damn tough. Phoenix- 


tween Los Angeles and London on British Airways 
Y first class—$15,750. Includes a full bed and a pass to 
London’s swank Molton Brown spa. Drink in a hotel 4 
® bar: The Engaging Martini at Boston's Fairmont Copley | Polster makers, and its 
Plaza—$12,750. Includes two olives and a one-carat dia- | Sport utility bag ($630, 
mond ring. Legal hooker: Twenty-four hours at Stiletto in usgalco.com) is the per- 
Sydney, the world's first “designer bordello"—$5,090 a | fect fit for traveling light 
day per lady. That’s sex only. Bondage costs extra. in heavy places. 


based Galco is one of 
the country’s top leather 


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HOT SPOT 


the inside story on healthy Sex »y sario ireiana 


Learning “The Ropes”.. 


qu month | got a letter from a reader 
in Texas about a "little secret" that has 
made her love 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 
à business trip in Europe and he was 
hotter than ever before. The power and 
sexual energy that he suddenly had 
was even more than when we first 
started making love almost 10 years 
ago! It was incredible. He flat wore me 
out! And the best part of it all—he was 
having a multiple climax. | know what 
you're thinking: men don't have multiples. 
That's what | thought too, but trust me 
he was! And his newfound pow! pow! 
power! stimulated me into my own 
intense climax. 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. After a few. 
days, | 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 nearly 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. 


fitness, roman 


Jamie Ireland is a freelance 
writer in the areas of 


Then he pulled a small bottle from his 
satchel and gave it to my husband. The 
bottle contained a natural supplement 
that the nutritionist told my husband 
would teach him "the ropes" of good sex. 

My husband takes this 
supplement everyday. 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 


ex, 


and travel 
—— ————— 


2 you and the rest of our 
readers are in luck, because 
it just so happens | do know about “the 
ropes" and the supplement your husband's 
Swedish friend likely shared. The physical 
contractions and fluid release during a 
male orgasm can be multiplied and 
intensified by a product called Ogöplex 
Pure Extract”. It's a supplement that will 
most certainly trigger much longer and 
stronger 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 her, bringing a whole new 
meaning to the term simultaneous climax! 

The term used by the Swedish nutritionist 
is actually fairly common slang throughout 
Europe 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 going and going and going.” 

As far as finding it in the States, | know 
of just one importer—Bóland Naturals. If 
you are interested, you can contact them 
at 1-866-276-1193 or ogoplex.com. Ogóplex 
tablets are pure flower seed extract and 
are 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? 


Yn ula 


< Jamie Ireland 


48 


MANTRACK 


t e с h І е i 5 и 


All About Image 


IT’S THE DIGITAL AGE, but 
you can still pretend you're 
living in the swinging 
1960s with the retro-style 
OptioMX4 digital camera 
from Pentax ($300, 
pentax.com). Beneath 
the skin, of course, 
this design homage 
| to the pistol-grip 
Super 8 is utterly 
modern, with preci- 
| sion Pentax optics 
/ (including an impres- 
^ sive 10x optical zoom) 
and a 4.2 megapixel sen- 
sor (not off the charts but 
totally sufficient for every- 
day use). It records onto SD 
cards, so their size deter- 
mines your storage. For 
extra retro flair, make all 
your subjects smile too big 
and wave at the camera 
while remaining silent. 


en 


\ 
мй 


This Table’s Got Balls 


POOL HAS A SERIOUS image problem. Long considered the sport 
of lowlifes, drunks and hustlers, it’s more likely to conjure visions of 
overflowing ashtrays than of tastefully designed interiors, control 
and refinement. The designers of о8о Studio have come to the res- 
cue with their pared-down take on the classic table ($7,350, 
оВо.сот). This sleek slab of slate and powder-coated steel may not 
help your bank shot, but it’s guaranteed to improve the look of your 
game room. It’s pool reduced to its barest elements, and what’s 
left is slim, serene and calming—in other words, the way the game 
ought to be. And if this is all a little too Zen for you, you can always 
spice things up with a custom felt adapted from any photograph 
(right, $400 to $500 extra, championshipbilliards.com). 


Celebrity Skinz 


WE'VE HAD IT DRILLED into our 
head over and over: The iPod is 
an aesthetic triumph. It’s also oh 
so 2003. Jazz up your magical 
music box with Pod Skinz ($50, 
macskinz.com), which protect 
your tunes with work by today's 
top graphic artists, including 
Frank Kozik, Coop and Joe Chiodo 
(right). And don't worry about 
the unwashed hordes biting your 
style. Each skin is made in limited 
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TRIUMPH 


"I've always been his number 
опе, that is until he got his new 
Triumph Speed Triple. Now 
I've been relegated to number 
two! He claims he now has an 
insatiable need to get out and 
tide. Which is just fine for him, 
but what about my needs?” 


The motorcycle that defined 
the naked sports bike has 
raised the bar again. The 
all-new Triumph Speed Triple 
redefines the naked sports 
bike with aggressive European 
styling and a powerful new 
engine. The stunning new 
Speed Triple features trademark 
dual headlights, minimalist 
bodywork, massive USD forks, 
radial brakes, high-mounted 
twin-sided exhaust, and a 
single-sided swingarm. Its 
torquey 128-horsepower, 
1,050cc, 3-cylinder engine 
provides the muscle to back 
up its looks. 


We could keep going but 
words just don't do it justice. 
Stop by your local Triumph 
dealer today for an up-close 
and personal look at this one- 
of-a-kind bike. But be warned, 
‘one look may have you leaving 
everything on the road, and 

at home, way behind. 


Triumph Speed Triple 
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ine Playboy Advisor 


E 


Im a car-audio installer. An instructor 
at a training conference told me that cli- 
toral resonance is 33 hertz, give or take, 
depending on the woman's weight. This 
means that anything vibrating 33 times 
per second will cause the clitoris to res- 
onate. Howard Stern made an example 
of this in Private Parts when he got a 
woman off by having her sit on a speaker, 
and just about any woman will respond 
to a bass note at that frequency if your 
subwoofer can play that low. Is there any 
truth to this?—J.B., Yuma, Arizona 

Don't touch that dial. The idea that 33 Hz 
is the optimal resonance to get a woman off 
originated with an experiment performed in 
1992 by car-audio consultant Todd Ramsey. 
While on spring break in Daytona Beach, 
Ramsey and his buddies spent three days ask- 
ing women to sit in the front seat of a Honda 
Accord. The crew then swept the frequencies 
from high to low on an 18-inch subwoofer, pow- 
ered by a 1,000-шай amp, in the trunk. The 
women gave the thumbs-up when the vibrations 
{felt best. Once Ramsey had crunched the num- 
for about 100 volunteers, including mak- 
ing adjustments for their self-reported weights, 
he calculated that the optimal resonance for a 
woman of 115 to 125 pounds is 33 Hz. Not 
so coincidentally, he says, that's about the 
same resonance as an idling Harley or a spin- 
ning washing machine. In 2001 Ramse 
about the CR (clitoral resonance) factor in Auto 
Sound & Security. “I'm still waiting for a call 
from one of the big automakers,” he says 
today. One CR disciple is Richie Warren, 
‘founder of Fuel records, which produces bass- 
heavy music for car-audio systems. To pro- 
mote Fuel at auto shows, Warren straps three 
models across the top of a Dodge Challenger 
and booms a 33 Hz tone “until they're com- 
ing all over the car.” Visit the labels site at 
liquidinjuredhearing.com, where you will find 
а resonator that produces tones from 30 to 110 
Hz. Ask your partner to sit on your quality sub- 
woofer, hook up your computer to your sound 
system and sweep through the tones to find 
her number (the heavier the woman, the 
lower the frequency). The only downside is that 
she may leave with your stereo. 


The trainer at my gym set me up with a 
strength routine that includes two sets of 
10 lifts for each of eight exercises. He told 
me to increase the weight on the second 
rep. But a gym regular who has been a 
bodybuilder for 50 years told me that’s all 
wrong. He says I should lower the weight 
on the second rep. Who's right?—B.W., 
Mishawaka, Indiana 

Raising the weight sounds too much like lift 
failure—that is, you lift until you can’t lift 
anymore. That can lead to injury and hasn't 
been shown to increase strength any more than 
just lifting until it’s difficult. According to Phil 
Wharton, who trains many top athletes and 
is co-author with his father, Jim, of The 


Whartons' Strength Book, research has shown 
that each set after the first delivers only an 
11 percent gain in benefit. So a second set is 
worth the effort after two to three minutes of 
rest, but the first is where you should focus 
your energy. A team from the American Col- 
lege of Sports Medicine reviewed 264 studies 
of resistance training and concluded that 
novices should start with eight to 12 reps at 
60 to 70 percent of the most weight they can 
lift. When you are able to complete two reps 
more than your maximum during two con- 
secutive workouts, increase the weight for that 
exercise to the point at which the final reps are 
again difficult. This will typically be a jump 
of two to 10 percent. 


Whaat is charisma, and how do you cul- 
M.S., Raleigh, North Carolina 

Charisma is the ability to make other peo- 
ple feel good about themselves. It requires equal 
measures of confidence and empathy. It also 
helps to have a good tailor. 


Ihave been sleeping with a friend for the 
past five years. Sex always starts and ends 
with my giving him head. Can a woman 
blow a guy too much? If I cut back, will 
it change the way he thinks about me? I 
think I’m spending too much time giving 
one man so many blow jobs. I guess I 
wish he appreciated them more.— 
Columbus, Ohio 

Appreciated them or appreciated you? 
After five years this isn't a friendship—it's a 
cheap date. You won't hear complaints from 
your buddy, because even routine sex is better 
than nothing. And while we could give you a 
long list of techniques to shake things up, those 
would eventually become routine as well. If you 
want more intimacy, you need to find a more 
intimate relationship. 


ILLUSTRATION BY ISTVAN BANYAI 


1 nave one word for the group of "rea 
life" threesome stories readers shared in 
November: fantasy. First, the participants 
were always two women and a man. In 
my experience, it is extremely difficult to 
find a woman to play with a couple. Sec- 
ond, threesomes do not happen sponta- 
neously. Everything from the choice of 
the third to the setting of the seduction 
through the sex act that starts the en- 
counter requires planning. I started 
reading the letters with interest but 
ended up bemused. You need to recali- 
brate your bullshit detector.—G.W., Long 
Beach, California 

Our detector beeps every time we open the 
mail. We don’t send out investigators or 
require affidavits, but after reading tens of 
thousands of letters over the years, we have a 
good sense of when someone is trying to con из. 
in mind that we reprinted just one or two 
paragraphs from e-mails that can go on for 
pages, including mundane details that don't 
often show up in fantasies. You didn't read 
stories involving two men because it’s not a 
three-way unless the men have sex with each 
other. That happens, but it’s beyond our mis- 
sion. Finally, most threesomes do require 
planning, but it may take only a few minutes. 


My boyfriend wears panty hose in pub- 
lic, even with shorts. He says panty hose 
on men is a trend. Is he goofy or in 
style®—].T., Grand Rapids, Michigan 
He may be ahead of his time—except for the 
shorts. Thousands of men wear panty hose for 
nonsexual reasons (that is, they aren't ci 
dressers). One major supplie. 
man & Sons, whose chief executive, Steve 
Katz, began marketing to men in 1999 after 
trying on dozens of pairs of women's nylons 
and noting what he didn’t like about their fit. 
The result is a durable hose with a fly, longer 
legs, a lower waistband and more room for 
the male package. Katz and his wife launched 
comfilon.com to sell hose as a fashionable alter- 
native to socks and long underwear for men 
who have the “nylon gene,” or as a practical 
one for warmth, circulation or to avoid contact 
with itchy wool pants. They also created a more 
macho site at activskin.com to target cops, 
truckers, construction workers, athletes and 
soldiers in Iraq (to protect against sand 
fleas). In fact, a pair kept us ventilated and 
compressed while answering your letter. That's 
startling only in that we usually go commando. 


lama 24-year-old woman in my second 
relationship. The problem is that I hate 
sex. I feel no desire to be sexual with 
anyone, male or female. I don't like fore- 
play. I don't like trying new positions. I 
like it one way, with my boyfriend on top, 
and quick. I don't like giving or receiv- 
ing oral sex. I don't masturbate and 
don't think I've ever had an orgasm, nor 
do I want one. Between relationships I 


51 


didn’t miss sex in the least. In fact, I was 
relieved that it wasn't part of my life. I 
haven't been molested or raped, if that's 
what you're thinking. I just think sex is 
overrated and a nuisance. Any idea 
what might be wrong?—M.A., Fitch- 
burg, Massachusetts 

We'll give your boyfriends the benefit of 
the doubt and suggest that you have a low 
libido or perhaps none at all. The question is 
whether you suffer from a physical or mental 
condition that can be treated (psychiatrists call 
it hypoactive sexual desire disorder) or 
whether you are naturally asexual, which is 
a controversial diagnosis. Brain chemistry 
plays a huge role in our feelings of falling in 
love and in lust and long-term attachment— 
perhaps some people lack the chemicals for 
lust. It may be helpful to read posts from 
other people who feel as you do. There's a 
forum at asexuality.org and even a dating ser- 
vice at asexualpals.com. The online definition 
of “asexual” is inclusive: It applies to people 
who say they masturbate but can't feel roman- 
tic love and those who say they have never 
been horny but feel romantic passion. Before 
we accept the existence of amoeba man, we'd 
like to see a few proclaimed asexuals in the 
lab. If scientists ever document a human being 
with no measurable libido, we'll let you know. 


PLAYBOY 


Can you tell just by looking at someone 
if he or she is lying to you?—R.T., Phila- 
delphia, Pennsylvania 

Most people aren't accomplished enough 
liars to conceal their guilt. Jack Trimarco, a 
former FBI profiler who hosts a Court TV 
show called Fake Out, says you should be 
suspicious of a person who: (1) changes his 
usual speech patterns—a person may also 
pause as he invents a lie or repeat the ques- 
tion to buy time; (2) subconsciously lowers his 
voice because he's ashamed of the lie he’s 
about to deliver; (3) denies specifics, such as 
insisting she didn't cheat with the neighbor 
because the guy actually lives three doors 
down; (4) remains calm while working hard 
to convince you that you're mistaken—an 
innocent person is more likely to grow angry, 
and his denials to grow stronger; (5) changes 
the subject; (6) displays conflicting verbal and 
nonverbal behaviors, such as saying no 
while nodding yes; (7) changes her story 
over time (“А lie is hard to remember, while the 
truth is easy,” Trimarco says); (8) avoids eye 
contact. Someday you may not need intu- 
ition to ferret out untruths. A few British 
insurance companies are experimenting 
with voice-analysis software to identify people 
who call in with false claims (initially, about 
10 percent have been identified as suspi- 
cious), and scientists are scanning the brains 
of volunteers to see if they can identify which 
areas light up when a lie is told. 


| want to share a technique I use to give 
my lovers intense orgasms. While she is 
on top and I am inside her, I ask her to 
move her hips in a circular motion. 
Then I press my open hand or fist on 
the area three to four inches above her 
52 clitoris. By doing this, the head of my 


penis makes direct contact with her G 
spot, which has given many of my lovers 
their first ejaculatory climaxes. I thank 
all the readers who have shared tips, 
and I hope mine is also useful.—M.W., 
Silver Spring, Maryland 

Have you tried that at 33 Hz? 


What are the odds that a guy will date 
a supermodel?—G.P, Canton, Ohio 

We'd settle for a regular model. Gregory 
Baer tackles this question in his book Life: The 
Odds. Assuming that the top 25 supermodels 
date five American guys a year and that the 
average guy spends 10 years searching, your 
odds are 88,000 to one. You improve your 
chances dramatically—to about 10 to one—if 
you're in New York City or Paris and are an 
actor, musician, athlete, photographer, pro- 
ducer, director or male model. Using super- 
market tabloids, Baer tracked the dating 
patterns of 44 supermodels and found that this 
group constitutes 82 percent of supermodel 
boyfriends. The other 18 percent are nearly all 
lawyers, doctors or other rich guys. 


Can you stand one more comment re- 
garding the reader whose wife cured her 
hiccups by going down on him? My girl- 
friend gets the hiccups often—for several 
hours at a time, two or three times a 
week. Recently she developed a bad case 
during intercourse. I was amazed to find 
that her vagina tightened with each one. 
Plus, her hiccups stopped the moment she 
came. It works out for everyone.—H.K., 
Hartford, Connecticut 

The fact that your online nickname is hlaver 
suggests you discovered this some time ago. But 
your girlfriend should see a doctor if she's 
hiccuping that much. It could be a sign of a 
more serious condition. 


Why is it so hard to get someone to 
move out? A college friend moved in with 
me to help pay the mortgage, but he's a 
slob and I need him gone. I can't afford 
a lawyer, and I'm not sure what can be 
done short of throwing his stuff in the 
street and changing the locks. Any sug- 
gestions?—K.L., San Jose, California 

You may have no choice but to go to court. 
Local laws vary, but in your county and others 
you must first give your roommate a written 
30-day notice. The next step is to ask the judge 
for an "unlawful detainer action." The sher- 
iff will deliver this document, then remove your 
roommate and his stuff. Don't do anything 
drastic, such as changing the locks, pitching 
his belongings or moving out and shutting off 
the utilities. That will put you on the defen- 
sive and only delay the proceedings. This is 
true even if the person is related to you. 
Many people assume that a long-term guest 
has no right to stay if there's no lease, but that's 
not how the law sees it. 


la like to hire an escort. What's the most 
important thing to know?—L.J., San 
Antonio, Texas 

That you should bathe first. While compil- 
ing her anthology Paying for It, Greta 


Christina asked the prostitutes and domina- 
trices who contributed what they expect from 
customers. “Most sex workers don't give a 
damn about your weight, age, race, physical 
shape or ability,” she writes, “but they do care 
if you smell bad. 


What is the life expectancy of a DVD? 
Га hate to put the discs I've filled with 
home videos and photos into a player 10 
years from now and get an error mes- 
sage.—R.F, St. Paul, Minnesota 

Your discs should last for decades as long 
as you handle them by the edges and store them 
upright and away from extreme temperature, 
sunlight or moisture. (It probably won't be an 
issue, because as formats become smaller and 
denser you'll duplicate the data.) You may have 
read that DVDs can rot, which is a fallacy 
fanned largely by a 2003 article in The Syd- 
ney Morning Herald. It described the work of 
failure-analysis engineer Rohan Byrnes, who 
noticed under a microscope that his DVDs had 
developed dark spots. But Byrnes says he found 
the spots only in a few older discs and hasn't 
seen them again. 


For more than 30 years I have kepta 
log of my sexual activi by date and 
type of sex and whether with a girl- 
friend, my wife, my mistress or alone. 
Over the past five years I have averaged 
183 ejaculations a year. Only 25 percent 
of those were self-induced. My girl- 
friend, who is in her early 40s, marvels 
at my appetite. She encouraged me to 
ask the Advisor if I am out of the ordi- 
nary. What is the average activity of men 
above the age of 55? (I'm 61.) Are there 
differences by decade? According to my 
records, my total orgasms have declined 
about 10 percent each decade since my 
20s.—C.B., Atlanta, Georgia 

Kinsey would have loved you. Your figures 
sound about right. The sex drive of most men 
peaks in their late teens or early 205, after 
which testosterone levels drop by about one per- 
cent a year. Many guys first notice a change in 
their 40s. They need more fantasizing and 
direct stimulation to become erect, can't stay 
hard as long, produce less semen, have less 
forceful climaxes and need more time to get 
hard again after orgasm. But as long as a man 
is healthy and active, he should never stop 
being horny or getting it up. One survey of si 
gles over 70 found that two thirds were getting 
laid. In another, half of respondents ages 80 to 
102 said they continue to think about sex. 
There is hope for us all. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, food 
and drink, stereo and sports cars to dating 
dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be per- 
sonally answered if the writer includes 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. 


PHE PLAYBOY FORUM 
TOWN VS. COUNTRY 


THE REAL WAR BETWEEN THE REDS AND THE BLUES 
IS BEING FOUGHT NATIONWIDE—AT THE COUNTY LEVEL 


BY JONATHAN RABAN 


n 1861 a conservative 
agrarian society was in 
militant rebellion against 
an urban industrial one 
Watching the election re- 
turns last November, one 
was tempted to see an im- 
age, distorted but clearly 
recognizable, of the Civil 
War, as city after city went 
for Kerry, the countryside 
was solidly for Bush, and 
the suburbs—especially the 
outer suburbs—tipped the 
balance in favor of the Re- 
publicans. It wasn't red 
states against blue states so 
much as flaming red rural 
areas rising up against 
the big cities, and it was 
happening all over the 
country, on the supposedly 
liberal coasts as well as 
in the supposedly conser 
vative heartland 
I ive in Seattle—secular, 
lefty, latte-drinking, gay 
bar-laden, antiwar, Prius- 
driving, civically smug Seat- 
tle—as entrenchedly blue a 
city as one can find this side of the Hudson. Yet even within 
King County, which includes Seattle but frays out on its 
astern side into farmland, fir plantations, small, squelchy 
in Peaks—like towns (much of David Lynch's series was shot 
in the county) and mountainous near-wilderness, you can 
see the terms on which the war is being fought on a national 
scale: the antipathy between urbanites and ruralists, the 
extravagant mythmaking on both sides, the pitched bat- 
tles—many of them superficially religious in character— 
and the damage inflicted on the American polity by the 
conflict. The angry red heartland isn't a distant region, 
quartered along the banks of the Mississippi; it’s a 20-minute 
drive from the steepling condos of downtown Seattle. 
The urbanites, of course, dearly love the countryside 
(which they call the environment). Each weekend they fan 
out across it—weirdly clad in the latest Velcro-fastening 
sports gear, looking like mobile versions of the ads in Out- 
side magazine—to raft down and fly-fish in its rivers, ski 
its slopes, climb its rocks, hike and mountain bike its trails, 
watch its wildlife, inhale its valuable air. They're known, 
by the countryside's inhabitants, as 206ers, after Seattle’s 
area code. To the people who live and work in the envi- 
ronment, the 206ers are much more than a nuisance to 
be borne and a considerable source of rural revenue: They 


represent a force of intol- 
erable political oppression 
Washington is a state 
where the city can usually 
narrowly outvote the coun- 
tryside, as it did in 2000, 
when our present junior 
senator, Maria Cantwell, а 
Seattle-based Democrat 
who mostly funded her 
own campaign with a fo 
tune speedily acquired dur- 
ing the dot-com boom, b 
three-term Republican in- 
cumbent Slade Gorton by a 
cigarette paper-thin majo, 
ity. She carried just five of 
the 39 counties in the state, 
all in urban western Wash- 
ington. During the cam- 
paign Cantwell was painted 
by Gorton surrogates as 
a typical big-city elitist; a 
206er who preferred salm- 
on and spotted owls to 
people; a ruthless and un- 
caring enemy of the timbe 
industry, farmers, mining 
interests (Gorton's support 
for a cyanide-leach gold 
mine in Okanogan County was a touchstone issue), the 
building trade and anyone who chose to live and work in 
the environment instead of treating it as a weekend play- 
ground. Her narrow win was bemoaned as a grievous exam- 
ple of the tyranny of the city over the countryside—the 
unreasonable ability of five counties to outvote the other 
34—and of the bloated metropolitan leisure class over hard- 
working ordinary Americans of the kind who don't need 
to call AAA when they want to change a tire. 

Much the same demographic pattern applies in King 
County itself, where metropolitan Seattle occupies less 
than a third of the county’s total area but can crush rural 
voters with its sheer density of population. So the city 
decides what people in the countryside may do with their 
land, and the county courthouse in Seattle is regularly 
encircled by wrathful wagon trains of horse trucks and 
pickups adorned with signs protesting the “sovietization” 
of rural America. A couple of years ago Ron Sims, the 
King County executive, issued a moratorium on build- 
ing new churches (and schools) in the “environmentally 
sensitive” eastern part of the county on the grounds th 
a church is a “large footprint item,” bringing heavy traffic 
and other urban ills to the delicate countryside. As far as 
many easterners were concerned, he might as well ha 


declared atheism the county’s official 
religion. Sims eventually climbed down 
on that one, but a string of “critical areas 
ordinances” has issued from his office, 
extending “setbacks” around streams 
and wetlands and forbidding the cutting 
of brush and timber on as much as 65 
percent of a rural property to maintain 
habitat and protect watersheds. Each 
ordinance, justified by the findings of 
“best available science,” has brought 
forth howls of rage from the country 
dwellers, who like to claim that only 
those who live on the land truly unde: 
stand the land and that cargo-pantsed, 
condo-dwelling bureaucrats are 
gantly abusing their constitutio 


rights. 
“Best available science” has come to 
mean a catchall license to trespass, lec- 
ture and dictate, bringing science itself 
under a cloud of deep rural animus and 
suspicion of being yet another of those 


legendary vices practiced in the city. 

Аз the suburbs spread and former 
logging towns turn into dormitories for 
city workers, the people who live in 
these “critical areas” resemble less and 
less the stereotype of the muddy-booted 
reactionary countryman. Take the not 
so hypothetical case of the young vet- 
erinary assistant who bought a few acres 
in eastern King County to realize her 
childhood dream of having a horse farm 
and riding school, only to discover that 
land-use ordinances confine her to a 
clearance of 35 percent of the property 
and 100-yard setbacks around the edge 
of her stream and her patch of wetland. 
Nothing could be better calculated to 
convert a lifelong liberal Democrat into 
an angry Republican overnight. The 
lash of urban enlightenment over rural 
ignorance falls on many such backs now 

A decade ago the easterners attempted 
the classic American maneuver of sece: 
sion. Armed with a petition signed by 
25,000 people, they sought a divorce 
from King County and independent 
status as a new entity, Cedar County. 
After six years of legal to-ing and fro-ing, 
the secessionists were defeated by a unan- 
imous ruling from the state supreme 
court. “They took a chain saw to us,” the 
former president of the Cedar County 
movement told the Seattle Times, in a turn 
of phrase both apt and ironic in view of 
the chain saw's crucial symbolism in the 
urban-rural war. It hardly needs saying 
that supreme court justices are gener- 
ally big-city types: Of the nine justices 
who make up the current Washington 
Supreme Court, seven are from the 
urban corridor in western Washington, 
one is from the city of Spokane in the 
ast, and one is from Clallam County on 
the Olympic (concluded on page 146) 


FORUM 


SAY A PRAYER 
FOR SCIENCE 


А STUDY SHOWS THAT GOD EXISTS! 


od reaches down from the heay- 

ens to influence our health, if 

you believe a Columbia Univer- 
sity study published in the Journal of 
Reproductive Medicine. It concludes that 
women undergoing in vitro fertilization 
are twice as likely to get pregnant if 
strangers pray for them. 

The study involved Korean women 
undergoing fertility treatment in 
Seoul. Christians in North America 
and Australia prayed over faxed pho- 
tos of 100 women. Another group of 
99 women received no prayers. None 
of the women knew she was involved 
in a study. Yet 50 percent of the first 
group reportedly got pregnant, versus 
26 percent of the control. 

That sounds amaz- 
ing, but all is not as it 
would appear. Those 
asked to pray were di- 
vided into subgroup: 
One group prayed for 
the 100 women, a sec- 
ond prayed that the 
first group's prayers 
would be heard and 
that "God's will or 
desire" would be "ful- 
filled in the life of the 
patient," and a third 
group prayed that 
God's will or desire 
would be fulfilled for 
the people praying. 
That is, this third 
group prayed to improve the efficiency 
of the prayers of the second group, 
which in turn prayed to increase the effi- 
ciency of the first group, which prayed 
for the 100 women to get pregnant. 

Since no one knows God's will, how 
do we judge the outcome of such a 
ludicrous setup? What exactly is the 
proper dose of prayer? And why 
would God help patients undergoing 
IVF when the Catholic Church has 
declared the technique immoral? The 
study was conducted (or not con- 
ducted—its authors refuse to share 
their data for review) by an infertility 
specialist, Dr. Kwang Cha, and a para- 
normal researcher and con artist 
named Daniel Wirth, who apparently 
organized the groups. After Dr. Cha 


By Bruce Flamm 


met with Dr. Rogerio Lobo of Colum- 
bia University, Dr. Lobo attached his 
name to the study, and it was then 
presented to the journal, for which 
Lobo serves as an editorial advisor. 
Columbia University and the media 
would eventually identify Lobo as the 
study’s lead author. 

Lobo, then chairman of the univer- 
sity’s Department of Obstetrics and 
Gynecology, presented the miraculous 
results on Good Morning America. This 
sort of publicity, which leads to hun- 
dreds of fleeting news references, is a 
triumph for groups such as the John 
Templeton Foundation that pump 
millions of dollars each year into 
faith-healing studies. The federal 
government itself has 
spent $2.3 million for 
faith research over the 
past four years. 

All this optimism 
ignores a critical fact: 
Despite almost weekly 
reports of “miracles” 
somewhere in the 
world, no supernatural 
force has been demon- 
strated under con- 
trolled conditions. If 
one ever is, science 
we know it will cease 
to exist—why attempt 
to conduct research 
if prayers can alter 
your results: 

Faith healers want proof that their 
concept of God is correct and other 
beliefs are false, If their prayers yield 
miracles, it shows that everyone else 
worships the wrong god. This strategy 
dates to biblical times. The story of 
some poor victim of leprosy being 
cured was never about the leper but 
about displaying the awesome power 
of one’s chosen deity. Unfortunately, 
many people today believe they have 
insight into the will of God. They claim 
that either directly or through the 
Bible, he has told them that premari- 
tal sex, homosexuality, birth control 
pills, condoms, masturbation and pic- 
tures of nude women are evil. If only 
they had a scientific study in a respect- 
ed medical journal to prove it is so. 


FORUM 


LAST OF THE KINSEY HATERS 


THE MOVIE REVIVES A BAND OF NUTCASES 


T: film Kinsey has done more than 
educate moviegoers about the science, 
determination and hucksterism of 
Alfred Kinsey. Like a bolt of lightning in a 
classic horror flick, it has revived a long- 
dormant band of Kinsey haters. They had 
no platform until the film began to garner 
critical acclaim; now they seem to be ever 
where, serving as “fair and balanced” foils 
to impugn Kinsey's visionary research and 
slander him as a pedophile 
Although the haters occupy the lunatic 
fringe, they can't be dismissed 
entirely. They have the ears of 
influential people in Washington 
and hope to use the publicity to 
sec 
addiction” and pass laws restrict- 
ing erotica. And they're not above using 
bizarre rhetoric to get the job done. 
Consider the musings of Robert Knight, 
director of Concerned Women of America’s 
Culture and Family Institute, who in 
November told a reporter, “Kinsey's proper 
place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele.” This 
raised eyebrows even among Knight's col- 
leagues, so he backpedaled. “Mengele,” he 
conceded, “is in another class when it comes 
to crimes against humanity. 


Comparing 
Kinsey toa 
е funds to research “porn Nazi butcher. from parents and others who 


But Knight didn't know when to shut up 
The problem, he continued, is not so much 
the comparison but that it wasn't appro- 
priate for him, as “an American gentile,” 
make it. So he summoned Judith Reisman, 
“the Jewish woman who first exposed Kin- 
sey's vile 'research,'” to reiterate it. Reisman 
is the source of the most ludicrous Kinsey 
hing. She claims, for example, without 
evidence, that his research involved the se 
ual torture of 2 infants. In fact, Kinsey's 
only method was the interview. He reported 
a number of details about child 
sexual behavior that he gleaned 
mostly from adults recalling their 
childhood experimentation, partly 


innocently witnessed children mas- 
turbating, and in a few instances from pe- 
dophiles describing their crimes. Reisman, 
however, is certain that Kinsey at least 
encouraged people to abuse children and 
more likely got in on the abuse himself. 
This, she says, makes Kinsey worse than 
Mengele insey's torture is a gift that 
keeps on giving in the broken lives and vic 
lated souls who went on to torture othe 
people wonder why they lost 
1 revolution. —DANIEL RADOSH 


HOW PORNOGRAPHY CAUSES BRAIN DAMAGE 


In a 2003 Supreme Court decision that 
struck down state sodomy laws, a dissenting 
justice observed that, under the reasoning 
of the majority, obscenity laws should also 
be invalidated. Antiporn activists, seeing this 
as a sign that opposing porn solely on 

moral grounds has no future, adopted HE 


a “scientific” strategy, claiming that 5% 
watching people have sex causes k 
brain damage. “Pornography causes 
masturbation, which causes the re- 


lease of naturally occurring opioids,” psychi- 
atrist Jeffrey Satinover told a Senate commit- 
tee. “It does what heroin can't do.” Mary Anne 
Layden, who runs a sexualtrauma program, 
said porn is worse than cocaine because 
coke leaves your system but erotica 
stays forever. Judith Reisman (left) 
called for funds to study “erototoxins,” 
taking the notion that sex 15 dirty to the 
cellular level. A new war on drugs has 
been declared—and the drug is sex. 


MARGINALIA 2 


FROM THE BOOK 

Where the Right Went 

Wrong, by Patrick 

Buchanan: “Historically Republicans 
have been the party of conservative 
virtues—of balanced budgets, of a 
healthy skepticism toward foreign 
wars, of a commitment to traditional 
values and fierce resistance to the 
growth of government power and world 
empire. No more. The party has em- 
braced a neo-imperial foreign policy 
that would have been seen by the 
Founding Fathers as a breach of faith. 
It has cast off the philosophy of Taft, 
Goldwater and Reagan to remake itself 
into the Big Government party. Many 
Republicans have abandoned the cam- 
paign to make America a color-blind 
society and begun to stack arms in the 
culture wars, The Republican philoso- 
phy might be summarized thus: ‘To 
hell with principle. What matters is 
power, and that we have it and that 
they do not," 


FROM A LIST 

of words that are 

blocked from in- 

stant messages 

sent to PCs or cell 

phones in China 

by a large tele- 

com firm there 

called QQ: 

democracy, 

Christian, Falun 

Gong, Hu Jintao, 

human rights, 

multiparty, oppose corruption, un- 
derground church, overthrow, prostitu- 
tion, riot, sex, Talwan independence, 
Tiananmen, traitor. 


FROM A REPORT by the Tax Foun- 
dation: “Taxpayers in New Mexico bene- 
fit most from the give-and-take with 
Uncle Sam, receiving $1.99 in federal 
funds for every dollar they pay in taxes. 
New Jersey benefits least, receiving 57 
cents per tax dollar. Other states that 
receive little spending per tax dollar are 
New Hampshire, Connecticut, Min- 
nesota, Nevada and Illinois. The Dis- 
trict of Columbia is by far the biggest 
beneficiary of federal spending, receiv- 
ing $6.59 for every tax dollar." 


FROM A COLUMN posted online 
by conservative talk show host Chuck 
Baldwin: “During the 1990s 1 was re- 
peatedly asked, 'Do you think Bill Clin- 
ton is the Antichrist?’ But not a single 
person has asked if I think George 
Bush is the Antichrist. Instead many 
people attribute to him godlike quali- 
ties, which actually makes him a better 
candidate. The Antichrist must be 
someone who appears as good and 
benevolent. Bush is being defended, 
lauded and glorified for 

everything he does, no mat- 

ter how unconstitutional or 
unscriptural it might be. 

His acceptance by the 

overwhelming majority 

of Christians proves 

the country is ready 

for the Antichrist, 

whoever he is.” 

(continued on page 57) 


READER RESPONSE 


FREEDOM TO READ 
In “Book 'Em” (December), Patricia 
Schroeder explains how Section 215 of 


the Patriot Act threatens the privacy of 


bookstore and library records. We don’t 
know whether the government is using its 
new power, It refuses to say, and book- 
sellers and librarians are not allowed to 
reveal that they have received a Patriot 
Act order. We do know that law enforce- 
ment has attempted to obtain records in 
non-Patriot cases. Kenneth Starr got the 
ball rolling in 1998 when he subpoenaed 
Monica Lewinsky's records from two D.C. 


Do you have permission to open that book? 


bookstores. Denver police issued a search 
warrant to the Tattered Cover Book Stor 
for the tides of books purchased by a drug 
suspect. Cleveland police demanded that 
Amazon.com turn over a list of everyone 
in northeastern Ohio who had purchased 
either of two audio CDs, Cyborgasm and 
Cyborgasm II. Booksellers and librarians 
have challenged these actions, but we 
need to amend the act. That's why we 
have joined with the Association of Amer- 
ican Publishers to create the Campaign 
for Reader Privacy. PLAYBOY readers can 
sign our petition at readerprivacy.org 

Salman Rushdie 

PEN American Center 

New York, New York 

This letter was also signed by Mitchell Kap- 

lan of the American Booksellers Association 
and Judith Krug of the American Library 
Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. 


Many people don't realize it, but the 
Patriot Act protects cable porn but not 
the Bible. Section 211 of the act gives 
privacy protection to distributors and 
users of cable porn (“such disclosure 
shall not include records revealing cable 
subscriber selection of video program- 
ming”), while Section 215 offers no sim- 
ilar protection to people who purchase 


a Bible. Bookstore customers, like cable 
customers, have made it clear they don’t 
want the government to know what they 
are viewing, especially when buying 
books on topics such as guns, addiction, 
abortion, depression and sexuality 
Phillip Bevis 
Arundel Books 
Seattle, Washington 


FIX THE COLLEGE 

In “5 Ways to Fix the Electoral Pro- 
cess” (December), John Anderson sug 
gests abolishing the electoral college. 1 
agree. Our winner-take-all system disen- 
franchises voters who support losing 
candidates in each state. For instance, 
nearly 3 million Floridians voted for Al 
sore in 2000, but because George Bush 
got 537 more votes, he гесе 
the state's electoral votes. A candidate 
can thus win some states by narrow mar- 
gins, lose others by large margins and 
still win the election even if he loses the 
popular vote. In a multiple-candidate 
contest, the system might even suppress 
the votes of the majority. In 1996 less 
than a majority of voters decided elec- 
toral votes in 26 states. In 2000 plurali- 
ties determined the allocation in nine 
states. In 2004 it occurred only in Wis- 


| 

| 

| 

4j JT 
CU 

PR 


Electoral college results, 2004 


consin, where John Kerry claimed the 
electoral votes with 49.8 percent. 
George Edwards III 
College Station, Texas 
Edwards is the author of Why the Е 
toral College Is Bad for America. 


KEEP THE SAUDIS PUMPING 
The U.S.-Saudi relationship may be 
shifting, and perhaps China is position- 
ing itself to take our place as the favored 
partner for Saudi oil, but these are not 
changes about which we need to be overly 
concerned (“Our Next War,” Novem- 


ved all of 


ber). Instead we should pray for the sta- 
bility of the Saudi royal family. As long as 
it remains in power, the nature of our re- 
lationship is relatively unimportant. The 
world market is one big pool. No nation 
will sell its oil for less than it can get 
elsewhere. Put simply, there is no “U.S.- 
audi special relationship" discount. 
That's why we can't insulate ourselves 


King Fahd of Saudi Arabia: Hang in there. 


by reducing our reliance on Saudi oil. 
Suppose the U.S. imported all its oil 
from Canada and Mexico. If political 
unrest in Saudi Arabia were to reduce the 
country's exports, we would still be af- 
fected. Its customers would look to buy oil 
from Canada and Mexico, which would 
raise prices. Should fundamentalists take 
over, the new regime could easily sabo- 
tage Western economies. Saudi Arabia 
produces 12 percent of world supply. 
Losing this much oil would increase 
prices well beyond $100 a barrel and 
generate a severe recession. 
Robert Kaufmann 
Cutler Cleveland 
Boston, Massachusetts 
The authors teach at Boston University's 
Center for Energy and Environmental Stud- 
ies and maintain the website oilanalytics.org. 


PAY THE PIPER 
1 would like to explain a simple con- 
cept to the inmate who wrote in Decem- 
ber complaining that Texas prisons had 
banned PLAYBOY: You lose your free- 
dom when you break the law. 
David Teets 
Los Angeles, California 
That's true, but the Eighth Amendment 
forbids cruel and unusual punishment. 


E-mail: forum@playboy.com. Or write: 730 
Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019. 


FORUM 


NEWSFRONT 


A Real Pair and a Happy Pig 


What causes Janet Jackson-like contro- 
versy overseas? In the text of her pictorial 
in the Dutch edition of PLAYBOY, actress 
Georgina Verbaan claims to be all natural. 
Several gossip columnists expressed their 
doubts, noting that she had not always 
been so busty. “Boobgate” became the 
talk of Amsterdam until Verbaan had her 
breasts X-rayed and posted the implant- 
free evidence on her website. She says her 
breasts grew because she had gained 
weight and started taking the pill. In the 
U.K. Rebecca Loos, a former assistant to 
and alleged ex-lover of David Beckham, 
caused a dustup when she masturbated a 
pig and collected its semen during a reality 
show called The Farm. Three dozen view- 
ers complained to the British equivalent of 
the FCC that the scene was akin to bes- 
tiality, but the agency ruled that it had not 
been “degrading or harmful to the boar.” 


When Your Druggist Is a Pill 


NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, TEXAS—Pro-choice groups 
have taken up the cause of a woman whose 
pharmacist refused to refill her birth control 
prescription on moral grounds. He is among a 
small but vocal group of druggists and doctors 
who believe that because hormone-based con- 
traceptives could prevent a fertilized egg from 
attaching to the uterus, they might be assisting 
an abortion. Only Arkansas, Mississippi and 
South Dakota allow pharmacists to turn pa- 
tients away for religious reasons, but legislation 
is being considered in a number of other states, 
including Texas. Professional standards dictate 
that morally challenged pharmacists refer pa- 
tients to colleagues who will fill the prescrip- 
tion, but some won't even do that. 


Zero Sense, Once Again 

GILBERT, ARIZONA—Officials at Greenfield Junior 
High suspended two students for “nonmedical 
use of drugs" that violated the district's zero- 
tolerance policy. While inflating balloons for a 
school dance, the pair had inhaled helium to 
make themselves talk funny. In Crawford, New 
York, officials at Pine Bush High called police 
and suspended a senior for five days after a 
security guard spotted a rifle in his car. It was 
actually a musket replica; the student, who is a 
member of the school's Civil War club, had 
spent the weekend at a mock battle. Police 
arrested the 17-year-old on weapons charges. 


Who Complains? 


WASHINGTON, D.c.—Soon after Janet Jackson's 
right breast won the 2004 Super Bowl, FCC 


chair Michael Powell appeared before Congress 
to report that his agency had received a record 
number of complaints about indecency in 
2003—more than 240,000, up from 14,000 
the year before. The figures implied the need for 
a crackdown. But this past December a reporter 
for Mediaweek.com took a closer look. He found 
that 99.8 percent of the complaints originated 
with the conservative Parents Television Council. 
In 2004 99.9 percent of the complaints about 
programs other than the Super Bowl also origi- 
nated with the PTC. Another reporter examined 
the 90 complaints that led 
to a $1.2 million fine for an 
episode of Fox's Married by 
America (left) and found 
they had been submitted by 
23 people. Fox notes that 
all but four of the com- 
plaints were identical and 
that only one person men- 
tioned seeing the program. 
More than 5 million house- 
holds watched the episode. 


Ignorance Is Our Mission 

AUSTIN, TEXAS— The state board of education 
eliminated “asexual stealth phrases" in health 
textbooks—replacing partners with husband 
and wife, for instance—and deleted all refer- 
ences to condoms. Republican Terri Leo also 
proposed that the sentence "Opinions vary on 
why homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals as a 
group are more prone to self-destructive behav- 
iors like depression, illegal drug use and sui- 
cide" be added to teacher manuals. 


MARGINALIA 


(continued from page 55) 


FROM A REPORT in The New York 
Times about a shareholder lawsuit 
filed against the Disney company over 
a $140 million severance pack- 
age given to former 
president Michael 
Ovitz: "According 

to an internal review. 
sought by Disney 

in 1997, Ovitz spent. 
$76,413 of the 
company's money for 
limos and rental cars, 
$48,305 for a home 
screening room, $6,500 for Christmas 
tips and $9,535 for flowers for execu- 
tive meetings held at his home. The 
company also paid for Ovitz's subscrip- 
tion to PLAYBOY." 


FROM A COLUMN by H.L. Menck- 
еп in the September 1930 issue of 
American Mercury: “Civilization in the 
U.S, survives only in the big cities, and 
many of them—notably Boston and 
Philadelphia—seem to be sliding to the 
cow-country level. No doubt this stan- 
dardization will go on until a few of the 
more resolute towns, headed by New 
York, take to open revolt and try to 
break out of the Union. But it will be 
hard to accomplish, for the tradition 
that the Union is indissoluble is now 
firmly established. If it had been bro- 
ken in 1865, life would be far pleasan- 
ter today for every American of any 
noticeable decency. There are, to be 
sure, advantages in the Union for 
everyone, but it must be manifest that 
they are greatest for the worst kinds of 
people. All the benefit that a New Yorker 
gets out of Kansas is no more than 
what he gets out of Saskatchewan, the 
Argentine pampas or Siberia. But New 
York to a Kansan is not only a place 
where he may get drunk, look at dirty 
shows and buy bogus antiques; it is 
also a place where he may enforce his 
dunghill ideas upon his betters." 


FROM GUIDELINES of the National 
Rifle Association for the use of $2,650 
Eddie Eagle costumes it sells to police 
to promote firearm safety: (1) Eddie 
Eagle may not be shown holding a 
weapon. (2) Eddie Eagle may 

not appear where firearms 
are being used, sold or dis- 
played. (3) Eddie Eagle 
does not speak and must 
be accompanied by a 
spokesperson at all times. 
(4) Eddie Eagle may 
never be associated with 
violent activity. (5) Eddie 
Eagle never endorses any 
person, product or company. 
He never endorses any po- 
litical candidate or party. 
He does not appear at rib- 
bon cuttings or store openings. 

(6) Eddie Eagle is always clothed in a 
red vest and white high-top sneakers. 
He may not wear a hat or a T-shirt. 
(7) Eddie Eagle never reveals his true 
(8) Eddie Eagle is never of- 

.. jokes, obscene gestures. 
(9) Eddie Eagle does not smoke, use 
illegal drugs or drink alcohol. (10) Ed- 
die Eagle never responds to hecklers. 


Mouse, 
Eisner, Ovitz. 


ЕОКОМ 


POLITICAL CURRENCY 


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n ІНЕ ROCK 


A candid conversation with the next Schwarzenegger about his first gay 
role, fighting with violent fans and why Tobey Maguire is no action star 


There are plenty of over-the-top moments in Be 
Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty, which trans- 
ports Chili Palmer (played by John Travolta) 
from the movie business to the music business. 
Cedric the Entertainer portrays the ultimate 
hip-hop mogul, who prefers to live in a white 
gated community. Vince Vaughn plays a white 
guy who desperately wants to be black. But it 
will be hard for either of them to top the Rock as 
Vaughn's flamboyantly gay bodyguard; wearing 
a skintight costume and red cowboy boots, he 
belts out a version of Loretta Lynn's classic “You 
Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man. 

It's a rare foray into comedy for Dwayne 
the Rock” Johnson, the wrestler turned actor 
who has been touted as the heir apparent to 
Arnold Schwarzenegger after scoring big in 
The Scorpion King. Scorpion was a surprise 
hit for the neophyte actor (his first role, in 
The Mummy Returns, lasted a mere seven 
minutes), and he made headlines even before 
the film was released when it was announced 
he was being paid $5.5 million, the biggest 
paycheck a studio has given to a first-time 
leading man. The movie's success was even 
more unexpected because the Rock was the 
top star in the WWE at the time, and show 
business has been singularly unkind to 
professional wrestlers who try to make the 


“You cannot go into the stands after fans. It 
is nonnegotiable. I was so hated that when I 
went into the ring I was bombarded with bat- 
teries, cans, you name it. Once, fighting my 
way through the crowd, I got cut with a blade.” 


leap from the squared circle to the big screen 

The Rock's ring career didn't follow a nor- 
mal path either. Although wrestling was in 
his blood—his dad, Rocky Johnson, was one of 
the first major black wrestling stars, and his 
maternal grandfather was the famous Samoan 
wrestler “High Chief” Peter Maivia—the 
Rock got off to a lousy start. His early perfor- 
mances in the ring as a “baby face 
named Rocky Maivia, after his father and 
grandfather, were failures. 

With nothing to lose, the WWE reinvented 
the Rock as a heel. That's usually the last stop 
before being fired, but the Rock made it work 
with the unusual tactic of insulting the audi- 
ence with comedic rants from the ring. “I 
became the Don Rickles of wrestling,” he 
said, His defiant and arrogant antihero 
became wrestling’s most popular persona since 
Hulk Hogan, and his memoir, The Rock 
Says, became a number one best-seller. 

His shaky start in wrestling wasn't his first 
brush with failure. A strapping six-foot-four 
and 220 pounds as a teen, young Dwayne 
Johnson wanted to be a football player. A high 
school all-American, he played on the Univer- 
sity of Miami Hurricanes’ 1991 national 
championship team. A short foray into Cana- 
dian football ended when he was cut from the 


(good guy) 


“Men find an action hero believable if they can 
say, ‘Wow, I believe this guy can really kick 
some fucking ass, mine included.’ I loved 
Spider-Man, but I'm not too sure Tobey 
Maguire could kick a lot of people's asses.” 


Calgary Stampeders in 1995. Johnson returned 
to Florida with $7 in his pocket and few 
options other than trying the family business. 
PLAYBOY sent journalist Michael Fleming, 
who recently interviewed Jim Carrey and 
Quentin Tarantino, to talk to the Rock. The 
two met in Prague, where the actor was once 
again in action-hero mode to film Doom, a 
movie based on the computer game. Fleming 
reports, “Like Schwarzenegger, who parlayed 
his career as a bodybuilder into stardom, the 
Rock is carefully straddling several worlds. 
He has put wrestling behind him except for rare 
guest appearances, but he's kept the name that 
made him a WWE icon. Our first session began 
over dinner at one of Prague's best restaurants, 
and the Rock proved to be a complicated sub- 
ject, sometimes sounding like a guy who wants 
to be taken seriously as an actor and some- 


times coming across as a macho, cocky jock who 
doesn't care what anyone thinks. 

PLAYBOY: In Be Cool you play a Samoan 
bodyguard and aspiring entertainer. 
Much to the surprise of many, your char- 
acter, Elliot, is also gay. 

THE ROCK: Elliot was in Elmore Leonard's 
book. Elmore told me, “I wrote it with 
you in mind, but I never thought you 


“I kept getting into fights. I fought my own 
teammates. Kevin Patrick, who I'm good 
friends with today—I tried to pull his tongue 
out. I don't advise that, because tongues are 
very slippery. You can't get a good grip.” 


61 


PL R YUS TO Y 


62 


would play the character if it were ever 
made into a movie.” We were just doing 
Walking Tall, and they sent the script, say- 
ing, “Just read it.” It was fantastic. 
PLAYBOY: Did you have any hesitatioi 
THE ROCK: Because he’s gay? Absolutely 
not. It was a great opportunity to work 
with seasoned actors such as John Tra- 
volta and Harvey Keitel in a role that 
required depth. There is a dichotomy to 
Elliot. He is a proud gay man, but he's 
also a bodyguard who has killed people 
and wouldn't mind doing it again. 
PLAYBOY: What would you have don 
the director said Elliot had to kiss a man 
on the mouth? 
THE ROCK: It would depend on a few 
ables. What kind of toothpaste is he 
using? Is he ruggedly hand- 
some like me? Does he have 
nice lips? Then he might have a 
shot. A wise man once told me 
that a warm pair of lips is a 
warm pair of lips. 

PLAYBOY: You camp it up in Be 
Cool, even singing a Loretta 
Lynn song. 
THE ROCK: 
Enough to Take My Man" 
classic. I suggested it to 
, the director, becau 
wanted to make the character 
more interesting. The script 
ot wanting to be in 
‚ but I thought, Why 
roadway? Why not sing 
country? Women sing songs 
about теп. Gary thought it 
was funny. He even let me do 
a Polynesian slap dance. 
PLAYBOY: Does part of you think 
your wrestling buddies will 
never let you live this down? 
THE ROCK: They know better 
than anyone that my goal has 
always been to entertain. Look, 
I like doing action—there's 
nothing quite like blowing shit 
up. But I also love comedy and 
movies with a dramatic tone 
like Walking Tall. 

PLAYBOY: So far your love 
scenes h. been with beauti- 


You Ain't Woman 
isa 


promise | will tell you. ( 


show her why they call me the Rock, a 
cop car appeared, the red light came on, 
and it was horribly embarrassing. 
PLAYBOY: To borrow a wrestling term, 
were you able to execute the pin anyway 
THE ROCK: Not only did I execute the pin, 
I turned her into a new woman. It was 
the best 11 seconds of her life. 

PLAYBOY: You were mature for your age. 
Were you a stick man, or were you a com- 
mitment guy? 

THE ROCK: Commitment guy. Once, in 
high school, when I thought I was a pure 
mac without the roni, I tried to pull off 
every man’s impossible dream. I took not 
one but two girls to the prom. 

PLAYBOY: The impossible dream would be 
to score twice after the prom. Did you? 


IF | make a movie that 


would kill my ci 


е 


make а bad movie? That would be а first. 
THE ROCK: Absolutely. If it's that bad, then 
I will for sure let people know; otherwise 
it would kill my cre: ity. I don't think 
I'd say, "This movie is shit. Don't see it. 
I'd probably say, "There are points in this 
movie that are good and some that ar 
shitty.” I appreciate the value of a dollar, 
and I have a strong bullshit detector. You 
know that moment when you're sitting in. 
a theater—you're watching and you go, 
"Oh, bullshit!" I don't want bullshit 
moments in my movies. 

PLAYBOY: Have you become a good actor? 
THE ROCK: Decent. My goal was always to 
get better with every movie and one day 
become really good. And always to be 
honest with myself. It's a progression 
in confidence. I've surrounded 
myself with good actors and 
directors who will help me raise 
my game. I have driven people 
crazy by being a complete sponge 
on the set. I've worked with very 
good acting coaches. I now 
understand exactly what I want 
to do with my character in a 
scene and that I have to exe 
cute and own it on the day. 
PLAYBOY: When you were making 
the transition were you tempted 
by a big check for a bad script? 
THE ROCK: This never about 
money, because I a pretty 
penny by the time the movies 
happened. Nothing seemed right 
for me until The Mummy Returns. 
Small role, little dialogue. I 
thought, Less chance to mess up. 
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised you 
dominated the film’s trailer: 
THE ROCK: I was just so jacked 
over the marketing campaign. It 
was my first movie. I went to see 
The Grinch just to watch the 
trailer. People responded when it 
said at the end, “The Mummy 
Returns. Summer.” That was my 
dream come true. Га been a fan 
of mov ince I was a kid. Never 
in my wildest dreams did I imag- 
| ine myself starring in them or 
| sitting here with you in Prague 


ful actresses such as Kelly Hu 

and Ashley Scott. Is that a vicarious thrill 
for a married man? 

THE ROCK: l like to think the vicarious 
thrill that comes with doing love scenes 
with gorgeous actresses is one of the 
spoils of being a leading man. No com- 
plaints, but it is awkward with 100 peo- 
ple standing around. Most of the crew 
will look away during love scenes, but you 
know a couple of freaks will be staring, 
hoping to see a nipple or something. 
PLAYBOY: Which was more awkward, los- 
ing your vi in The Scorpion King or 
losing it 


Losing my screen virginity 
in comparison with the real thing. 
I was 14, in a park in the middle of the 
night, and right before I was going to 


THE ROCK: Didn't even get to try. I wound 
up in my room at one A.M., just me and 
my copy of Juggs magazine. 

PLAYBOY: How many minutes was your 
screen debut in The Mummy Returns? 
THE ROCK: Seven, maybe. 

PLAYBOY: You were paid $5.5 million for 
The Scorpion King, and you're now mak 
ing more than twice that. Hollywood 
fickle. When Walking Tall and The Run- 
down didn't do Scorpion King-size busi- 
ness, were you worried? 

THE ROCK: It’s disappointing. You want it 
to do well because you put in so much 
time and effort. But I believed in those 
movies. If I make one that sucks, I 
promise I will tell you. 

PLAYBOY: You'll warn your audience if you 


doing the Playboy Interview. 
PLAYBOY: Why not? 
THE ROCK: I try to have clear goals. When 
I was on television wrestling, film was a 
fantasy. I didn't go to Juilliard. I had no 
connections. I entertained people on tele- 
vision two to four hours a week. I aimed 
to be in a sitcom, which was why I pushed 
the comedy in wrestling. 
PLAYBOY: Were movie people dismissive 
at first? 
THE ROCK: Never dismissive, especially 
once I met somebody. Some executives 
were hesitant. That was fine. I knew I'd 
prove myself in time. 
PLAYBOY: How did you do that? 
THE ROCK: 1 remember speaking to Uni- 
versal Studios president Ron Meyer right 
around the time of The Mummy Returns. 1 


said, “Give me a shot. Just give me a 
shot.” I wanted them to come en me 
in the ring. They all came—Ron, Uni- 
versal Pictures chairman Stacey Snider. 
PLAYBOY: And what did they s: 
THE ROCK: They were very congratulatory. 
They had no idea how I performed live. 
It felt great to hear that. 

PLAYBOY: They thought it was just grunt- 
ing and groanin 
THE ROCK: They did, and a lot of times it 
is. To me the challenge was coming up 
with new monologues. There wasn't 
much dialogue until old big mouth here 
came 
wrestling I loved most. 

PLAYBOY: Hulk Hogan and other wrestlers 
failed at movies. Why? 

THE ROCK: I’m not sure. I know what was 
important to me—choosing good mater- 
ial, studying, making sure everybody 
knew I wasn't in it for the paycheck. I'm 
not too sure if Hogan and those other 
wrestlers did that. 

PLAYBOY: You are considered the newest 
in a line of action stars that includes 
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis 
and Sly Stallone. Besides brawn, what 
do you guys have that makes women 
love you and men want to be you? 
THE ROCK: Women might like the every- 
man appeal, Arnold's accent, Sly's abs, 
Bruce's ass. Men find an action hero 
believable if they can say, "Wow, I believe 
this guy can really kick some fucking ass, 
mine included." I loved Spider-Man, but 
I'm not too sure Tobey Maguire could 
kick my or a lot of other people's asses. 
PLAYBOY: Your ring persona was brash, but 
you are hardly boastful when talking 
about your screen work. When you were 
both wrestling and promoting movies, did 
the Rock slip out and get you into trouble? 
THE ROCK: Well, it was awkward when I 
was asked to compare myself to Arnold 
and I said I was much better looking. 
PLAYBOY: Did he bust you on that? 

THE ROCK: Of course. He said [in a passable 
Schwarzenegger), "Vot do you mean you 
are better looking? 1 am much better 
looking dan you." 

PLAYBOY: He must like you. He passed you 
the action-hero baton in The Rundown. 
THE ROCK: I didn't anticipate an iconic 
moment, but he said he knew exactly 
what he was doing. I'd invited him to the 
set to have lunch, and my director, Peter 
Berg, walked up and said, "Hey, you want 
me to ask him to be in the movie for a 
I said, "Yeah, ask him." Arnold 
stood right up and said, “Let's go.” And 
within 20 minutes we were on the set 
Peter was like, "What do you want to say 
Arnold said, "I want to tell him to have 
fun." Arnold knew early on that I wanted 
to do this, and he was helpful with advice. 
PLAYBOY: You worked with stopher 
Walken in The Rundown. Everybody comes 
away with a good story. Give us one 

THE ROCK: We're on the set, shooting the 
shit, and he asks me, “You like the Stones? 
They're coming to town.” I'm like, “Yes, 


along. That became the part of 


“Cut me, Mick” 


Other great rocks from American history 


Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock, begin 
work on inventing Thanksgiving. 


Steadfast general George Thomas whips rebs, 
gets nicknamed the Rock of Chickamauga. 


John D. Rockefeller establishes the 
Standard Oil combine, turns surname 
into synonym for rich. 


Besieged American troops hold out for 
five months on Corregidor, a.k.a. the 
Rock, in Manila Bay, the Philippines. 


Devout Catholic Dr. John Rock helps 
develop the birth control pil 


Bill Haley and His Comets 
record “(We're Gonna) Rock 
Around the Clock,” a break- 
through rock-and: hit. 


Tall, dark, handsome, closeted 
Rock Hudson stars with Doris Day 
in Pillow Talk. 


Sgt. Rock of Easy C. 
Comics’ Our Army at War #1 


Last escape attempt from Sa 
Francisco Bay’s Alcatraz, nick- 
named the Rock. 


A flinty John Wayne plays Navy cap: 
tain Rock Torrey in In Harm's Way. 


Men go to the moon, come 
back with rocks. 


Yo! Rocky Balboa debuts. 


Renée Zellweger's performance 
as Roxie Hart in Chicago earns her 
ап Oscar nomination. 


Kid Rock answers pLavsor’s 20 
Questions (page 128). 


ОА сор obsessed 
with the case. 


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of course. When are they coming?” He 
says, “Uh, October 15. They're coming 
pretty soon. We should go. Can you get us 
some tickets?” I said, “Sure.” It’s Chris 
Walken and I'm excited, so I get on the 
phone immediately. 1 hang up, and it 
dawns on me there and then. I say, “Chris, 
when did you say the concert was?” He 
says, “October 15.” I say, “Yes, but today’s 
November 12.” And this is the genius of 
Christopher Walken, right? He says, “Oh, 
November, October, I don’t know. Some- 
times you get them mixed up.” 
PLAYBOY: You were Vince McMahon's 
biggest star in the WWE. Was there ten- 
sion during your exit? 
THE ROCK: Never. By the time this article 
comes out, I'll be done with him con- 
tractually, but Vince and I are very close. 
We worked together, my grandfather 
worked for his dad, and my dad worked 
for him. He's been as supportive as a dad 
to me. He knew I loved being in The 
Mummy Returns. I told him I wanted to 
break into films with The Scorpion King 
but that I'd wrestle as well 

I grew up in wrestling. I am proud 
that my grandfather and dad wrestled. 
But when I filmed The Scorpion King 1 
worked through the week, and on Sun- 
day I would fly somewhere to do Raw or 
a pay-per-view. I had no days off, and it 
almost killed me. I wanted to give 110 
percent to acting, and after that I real- 
ized I'd have to choose. 
PLAYBOY: McMahon has parted with many 
former stars and made them leave their 
ring names behind because he owned 
them. How were you able to walk away 
with "the Rock"? 
THE ROCK: I was always up-front and hon- 
est, never brought in an agent. I sat down 
with him and said, “This is what I would 
love to do. This is the deal I would like. 
It's just you and me." He said, “I have 100 
percent faith in you, and I am behind you 
all the way.” 
PLAYBOY: He didn't add, “Even though 
you're destroying my business”? 
THE ROCK: He didn't say that to me. 
PLAYBOY: But he did get a fee and a pro- 
ducing credit on several of your movies 
а concession. 
THE ROCK: Sure. 
PLAYBOY: Did that bother you? 
THE ROCK: No. It was me saying m 
under contract, and here, this is for you. 
Thank you.” It didn't bother me. I guess 
it was money that would have gone to 
me. I was fine with it. 
PLAYBOY: The documentary Beyond the 
Mat shows what became of former wres- 
tling greats like Jake “the Snake" Roberts. 
He, for example, descended into drug 
addiction and failure. 
THE ROCK: I was sad to see that. 
PLAYBOY: It made wrestling seem like a bad 
business to be in if you planned to age. Are 
today’s stars paid enough to be set for life? 
THE ROCK: A lot more are. In the days of 
Jake “the Snake” Roberts and my dad and 
grandfather, it was a cash business. They'd 


get the gate and pay the boys in cash 
that day. My dad got paid in cash a lot 
PLAYBOY: Why are so many of them broke? 
THE ROCK: A lot of them didn't save. There 
wasn'ta lot of financial planning going on 
when those guys were on the road 300 
days a year. You'd pick up $600 or $700 
for the week, but you had to pay all your 
road expenses and drive 2,000 to 3,000 
miles a week. 

PLAYBOY: What did your dad make in a 
good year? 

THE ROCK: His biggest years came when he 
was working for Vince. We were up there 
for about two or three years, and he made 
an average of about $100,000 or $110,000. 
Back in the 1980s that was really good. I've 
got to give it to my old man. I'm half black 
and half Samoan, and my dad pioneered 
the way for black wrestlers. Even though 
the results were prearranged and still are, 
he was athletic and charismatic enough to 
be made champion in places like Florida 
and Georgia. That was quite an accom- 
plishment in the 1970s, working the South 
in a predominantly white business that 
catered to predominantly white fans. He 
won them over. 

PLAYBOY: Was your dad a good father? 
THE ROCK: Yes, but our relationship went 
through a very stressful time. He was gone 
so many years, always on the road from 
the time I was born. Now I'm lucky to be 
in one spot, filming on location. My wife 
and daughter can stay with me. I'm not in 
a different city every night, Through the 
duration of his career, he was. All ofa sud- 
den he retired from wrestling, he came 
home, and there was another man in the 
house. I was 15, six-foot-four, 220 pounds, 
playing football, coming into my own, very 
close to my mom. Suddenly he was my 
dad again. That caused a lot of stress. 
PLAYBOY: Did you square off? 

THE ROCK: You bet, because at 15 I knew 
everything, not knowing jack shit. My 
dad clearly knew more than I did about 
how he wanted his household run. Yes, 
we'd square off. Never physically, but it 
got to that boiling point. Being a dad 
myself and looking back, I give my dad 
credit for how well he handled himself. 
He made it in his business, then went out 
without a lot to show for it. Then his son 
became a success. That had to be tough 
PLAYBOY: He didn't retire by choice, did he? 
THE ROCK: No. 

PLAYBOY: Couldn't get a job? 

THE ROCK: Basically. And the ones he got 
were nightly gigs. The wrestling business 
is a hard one. You saw in that documen- 
tary what happens to a lot of those guys. 
I was fortunate in the sense that my dad 
was never on coke, never beat my mom. 
He was an alcoholic, and he beat it. I'm 
very proud of him. 

PLAYBOY: What was your favorite thing 
about wrestling? 

THE ROCK: The fans. They give me as 
much energy as I give them. They give it 
right back to me. 

PLAYBOY: When you started out in wrestling 


you were a guy named Rocky Maivia. For 
some reason the fans didn't like you. Did 
you feel like a failure 
THE ROCK: Very much so. I couldn't under- 
stand it. I was thinking, Man, I'm working 
my balls off, giving everything I have to a 
business that I love, that I grew up in, and 
I'm getting this back. So I finally stepped 
back and said, “Let's assess what is hap- 
pening here. I'm Intercontinental Cham- 
pion, a good guy, a hero, and they're 
chanting ‘Rocky sucks.’” I asked Pat Pat- 
terson, who was my agent and has seen 
everything. He said, “This has never hap- 
pened before in this sport.” I was about to 
throw up my hands. I didn't know what to 
do. But I've got to tell you, never was I 
thinking, These motherfuckers! 
PLAYBOY: You never resented the audience? 
THE ROCK: No. At first I was like, What the 
fuck? Imagine Madison Square Garden, 
the Mecca of arenas. You know what it feels 
like to hear a crowd 22,000 strong chant- 
ing “Rocky sucks”? I think I was more 


pissed that I couldn't go out there and be 
myself. When I lost a match I had to smile 


When somebody said, “You fucking suck, 
I had to wave and say, "Thanks." 
PLAYBOY: Ron Artest and his Indiana Pac- 
ers teammates created a near riot when he 
charged into the stands to brawl with a 
fan who had hit him with a beer. Do you 
understand his reaction? 

THE ROCK: Only to a degree. You need to 
maintain a level of professionalism. You 
cannot go into the stands after fans. It is 
fucking nonnegotiable. Having said that, 
I remember when I first turned heel. I 
became so hated that when I went into 
the ring I was bombarded with batteries, 
coins, cans, you name it. I had to leave 
every night with security covering my 
head. If I saw somebody throwing things, 
I made sure security grabbed him and 
got him out of there. Not only that, 1 
grabbed the mike and talked shit to the 
guy all the way out. I have been in matches 
when I went outside the ring and fans 
have reached over the barricade to grab. 
or try to hit me. At that point it's open 
season. I have handed out a lot of ass 
whippings in those situations. When fans 
go beyond the barricade or come onto 
the court, they are in your house. Those 
fans in Detroit were looking for action. It 
becomes survival of the fittest. 

PLAYBOY: Artest avoided fighting after 
Ben Wallace shoved him. But then he 
came unglued when hit with a beer cup. 
THE ROCK: Artest should have fought Wal- 
lace right then. I'm cool with ass whippings 
that come after a hard foul, in the h š 
battle. But getting hit with a beer while 
lying on the scorer's table? Try getting hit 
with a battery above your eye and having 
to get stitches like I did. Back in the day, 
I'd walk in before 22,000 Texas fans, grab 
the mike and say, “Finally the Rock has 
come back to Dallas, and he is here to elec- 
trify the largest gathering of trailer-park 
trash the Rock has ever seen.” I'd say that 
with a big smile. Shit would get thrown. 


Batteries hurt like hell. But I'd hold it 
together as I said, “You, fatty, you're gone. 
You with the Ray Charles haircut, outta 
here.” Once, fighting my way through the 
crowd, I got cut with a knife or an X-Acto 
blade. Гуе got a four-inch scar on my 
arm. I also got sliced on my back. I've got 
a cut on the back of my head. When my 
hair is short like it is in Walking Tall, you 
can see it in shots from behind. 

PLAYBOY: How long did it take to win over 
the crowd after becoming a bad guy? 
THE ROCK: One defining week, after I 
came back from a five-month break 
rehabbing my torn-up knee. I was a good 
guy on my way out, planning to go back 
to law school. I'd gone from Interconti- 
nental Champion to getting beaten on 
ГУ every week. Everybody wrote me off, 
and even I said, “Okay, I gave it my best 
shot, and it didn’t work.” 
PLAYBOY: You were a failure as a hero. Did 
you figure your wrestling career was over? 
THE ROCK: Absolutely. I try to be real to 
myself. I was asked to turn heel, and I 
said I would love to, knowing it was the 
kiss of death. When you don't make it 
as a baby face, they give you a run as a 
heel, and you get beaten every night 
by a bunch of baby faces. Then you are 
gone. But I got one last swin; 
PLAYBOY: How did you turn it around? 
THE ROCK: I asked for a little microphone 
time. They were like, “Sure, whatever.” 
The week after I turned heel, I went out 
before a packed house in Chicago. The 
whole place started chanting “Rocky 
sucks!” But this time I stared them down 
like you would if somebody talked shit to 
you on the street. I had about one minute. 
The story line was about my joining a fac- 
tion of bad guys who were black and 
played the race card. I grabbed the mike 
and said, “I just want everybody to know 
I may do a lot of things, but suck isn't one 
of them. This is not a white thing or a 
black thing. It’s a thing where if anybody 
comes in front of me, I'm going to whip 
your candy ass.” 

PLAYBOY: What did the crowd do? 

THE ROCK: It reacted. The response was 
awesome. Suddenly I was on fire. Within 
two weeks I was the main event. I refo- 
cused on entertaining. And it was like 
somebody had flipped a switch. People 
were cheering the shit out of me even as 
I became the Don Rickles of wrestling. 
The more I insulted them, the more 
they loved me 

PLAYBOY: You were in front of a stadium 
full of fans, wearing tight spandex shorts. 
Did you ever feel embarrassed? 

THE ROCK: Well, once my ball popped out 
of my tights 

PLAYBOY: Does that qualify, in wrestling 
jargon, as a foreign object? 

THE ROCK: In my case a very large foreign 
object. Print that! It was unbeknownst to 
me when it happened, until I looked at 
one of the production pictures of me 
lying on my back. I looked down, and 
whoa! I remember calling the office, 


A criminal obsessed 
with the cash. 


> 


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AL PACINO ROBERT DENIRO 
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11 Additional Scenes 
Five New Featurettes 
Commentary by Michael Mann 


ШІН ІШІ ma 
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PLAYBOY 


66 


going, “You guys have got to look at this. 
Burn that print.” 

PLAYBOY: What's the worst thing you ever 
saw in the ring? 

THE ROCK: Death. My good friend Owen 
Hart passed away in the ring. He died 
in a fall. He was being lowered about 80 
feet by cable in Kansas City. 

PLAYBOY: Was he one of the guys who 
helped you make the transition from 
football to wrestling? 

THE ROCK: Absolutely. He and his brother 
Bret. We were very close because they 
came from a wrestling family too. Owen 
was being lowered, and 1 guess he tripped 
his harness and fell. His match was right 
before ours. We were backstage warming 
up. I had all my shit together, and we 
were ready to go. And then it happened. 
PLAYBOY: The media criticized the deci- 
sion to continue the matches. What were 
you feeling? 

THE ROCK: Panic. I was right there at the 
monitor, watching with Vince. My first 
instinct was to go help my friend. I didn't 
know what the fuck was going on. I 
remember telling Vince, "I've got to go 
out there.” Vince was looking at me, not 
telling me no, not telling me yes. Then it 
dawned оп me. If I went out there, every- 
body would be yelling, “Yeah, Rock.” I 
didn't want them to think it was part of the 
show. I decided at that moment that it was 
best to allow the paramedics to do their 
job. When they brought him back, I was 
right there behind the curtain. He was 
dead. I saw it in his eyes. They were open. 
PLAYBOY: He was one of your best friends, 
and you still got into the ring. Why? 
THE ROCK: It was one of the hardest things 
I've ever had to do. He hadn't actually 
been pronounced dead. They were still 
working on him. I opened the ambulance 
door, put him in. Then I had a decision 
to make. Do I go out there? And then you 
start to think, I don't know if he is really 
dead, nor do the 20,000 people here or 
the millions more watching at home on 
pay-per-view. Vince told me, "I'm contin- 
uing with the show. People at home have 
bought it, and there are people here. None 
of us knows what's going to happen with 
Owen right now.” He also told me, "It's 
entirely up to you what you want to do.” 
I said, "I'm going to perform, and I'm 
going to pray to God he's okay, pray for his 
family.” I knew they were watching and 
going crazy. He had a little boy and a lit- 
tle girl. There was so much going on in my 
head. I was thinking about my own family. 
After the match I called my wife, and she 
was crying, “Owen's dead.” I didn't know. 
PLAYBOY: In hindsight, was that the 
right decision? 

THE ROCK: I don't regret it. 1 did what I 
thought I had to do. I found out after my 
match that he'd passed away. Worst night 
I've ever gone through. 

PLAYBOY: You had good times, too. Com- 
pare the adrenaline rush of winning the 
NCAA football title with winning a wres- 
tling title. 


THE ROCK: There's nothing like winning 
the national title like we did when we 
beat Nebraska 22-0 in the Orange Bowl. 
PLAYBOY: You had anger problems when 
you played college ball. You once made 
national sports highlight reels by chas- 
ing after an opposing team's mascot. 
What would you have done if you had 
caught the guy? 

THE ROCK: I would've knocked him into 
next week and whipped his ass is what I 
would've done. 

PLAYBOY: Was the guy wearing a bird 
suit or something? 

THE ROCK: No, he was the San Diego State 
Aztec. We'd just gotten into this big fight 
on the field. The closest thing to me was 
this mascot who was on our sidelines, 
talking stuff. 

PLAYBOY: What did you think when you 
watched yourself on TV? 

THE ROCK: I thought I looked like an 18- 
karat asshole. 

PLAYBOY: What did your family think? 
THE ROCK: Mom saw it. There's no bull- 
shitting Mom. I embarrassed her; I em- 
barrassed myself. What am I doing? I'm 
chasing a mascot. My helmet is off, and 


I was living with five guys in 
two bedrooms, sleeping on 
piss-stained mattresses. Then 
I got cut two months into the 
season, and I realized football 
was over. It was horrible. 


I've got this big Afro. Thank goodness I 
didn't catch him. 

PLAYBOY: Did anger make you a bet- 
ter player? 

THE ROCK: No. I always had a short tem- 
per. Now I'm direct and talk out a prob- 
lem. Back then I would just get into a lot 
of fights. In Hawaii I got arrested a 
bunch of times. 

PLAYBOY: When was the last time you got 
truly angry? 

THE ROCK: I almost got into a big fucking 
fight when I was on Punk'd. 

PLAYBOY: That's the one when Ashton 
Kutcher blew up your trailer and then 
blamed you. 

THE ROCK: They play it a zillion times now. 
One guy was talking to the cop and fuck- 
ing with me, getting in my space. I thought 
he was going to take a swing at me. I 
pushed the cop, going after this guy. Гуе 
been arrested seven or eight times for 
fighting, so I thought I was going to get 
the nightstick. I was pissed. The guy 
claimed I was responsible. He fired a girl 
right in front of me and then blamed me. 
I said, “You don't know me, so just step 
back." Then it looked like the guy and the 
cop were in cahoots. They were actors, so 


of course they were, but at the time I was 
thinking, These motherfuckers know 
each other, and they're fucking with me. 
The guy tapped the cop and said, “You'd 
better talk to him before——" and I said, 
"Excuse me, before you do what?" It 
became very real then. I almost lost it. 
My Be Cool director stepped in and 
screamed, "No, no, no, Dwayne. You're 
being Punk'd!" He was fucking terrified. 
My man saw his whole movie about to go 
up in flames. I laughed later when I real- 
ized how much it took to pull off the 
prank. But mostly I was relieved. Гуе 
got so much to lose. 

PLAYBOY: Was your teenage anger just 
pure rage? 

THE ROCK: No. It wasn't like a blackout. The 
thing is, I never started trouble, but I had 
no problem finishing it. And I was with 
the wrong crowd when I was younger. It's 
a good thing we left Hawaii. I wasn't get- 
ting arrested in college, but I kept getting 
into fights. I fought my own teammates. 
Kevin Patrick, who I'm good friends with 
today—I tried to pull his tongue out. I 
don't advise that, because tongues are 
very slippery. You can't get a good grip. 
PLAYBOY: Also there's an annoying set 
of teeth. 

THE ROCK: Don't I know. He bit my hand. 
Look, I've still got a scar. Some of it was 
being an aggressive guy in an aggressive 
sport, competing every day for your job. 
PLAYBOY: You were close to flunking then, 
weren't you? 

THE ROCK: I had a 0.7 grade point average. 
You have to work to get 0.7. Not go to 
class, leave school without taking your 
midterms—that will get you 0.7. It will 
also put you in danger of losing a schol- 
arship worth $100,000. And it guarantees 
a fresh ass whipping from your mom 
when you get home. I wasn't playing, 
because I'd been injured and had surgery. 
This was after it looked like I'd be the only 
freshman playing. Then I dislocated my 
shoulder, tore all the ligaments and was 
out for the year. I distanced myself from 
the team and fell into depression. I was 
homesick, didn't go to class, hated life, 
didn't take the midterms. 

PLAYBOY: Yet you hung in there? 

THE ROCK: I went back, and it was embar- 
rassing. I had to get notes from every pro- 
fessor to show the coaches that I was in 
class. I thought of myself as a responsible 
guy with goals, and I had to show these 
papers like I was some little kid. But I did 
okay. I wound up going from academic 
probation to academic captain and having 
a decent GPA by the time I graduated. 
PLAYBOY: A shoulder and back injury 
kept you from being drafted by the NFL. 
Had you not been injured, could you 
have made it? 

THE ROCK: I don't think so. Once I'd 
played with Warren Sapp, Ray Lewis and 
some other guys, I could see they had 
something special. We were all fast and 
strong, but they had something extra 
and instinctive that I didn't. 


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PLAYBOY: But you still tried. 

THE ROCK: I'd spent six, seven years play- 
ing. Going into my senior year I was all- 
American. I got hurt, and Warren took 
my place. I had a dismal fucking ye 
and I didn't get drafted or get a fre 
agent contract. But the CFL came calling. 
I figured Га use it as a stepping-stone to 
the NFL. It was horrible. It was hands 
down the worst period in my life. 
PLAYBOY: Why? 

THE ROCK: I'd left home at 18, and I was 
the first in my family to graduate. My 
parents were proud. Friends like War- 
ren Sapp were playing football for mil- 
lions of dollars. I wanted to take care of 
my girlfriend and buy my mom and dad 
their first house. 

PLAYBOY: Was your father finished with 
wrestling by then? 

THE ROCK: Out of the business. My par- 
ents had a cleaning company, cleaning 
whatever they could—office buildings, 
toilets, whatever. And I went up and was 
making $300 Canadian, not enough to 
send money home to parents who were 
struggling like a motherfucker. I was liv- 
ing with five guys in two bedrooms, sleep- 
ing on piss-stained mattresses. Then I got 
cut two months into the season, and I 
realized football was over. 

PLAYBOY: So you tried wrestling? 

THE ROCK: I called my dad in the middle 
of the night and asked him to pick me 
up. I had $7 in my pocket. I moved back 
into their two-bedroom apartment, and 
I was lying on the couch when it hit me: 
Shit, I'm 24 and I'm moving back in with 
my parents 

PLAYBOY: What did your father think of 
your new career plan? 

THE ROCK: He was adamantly against it 
He said to me, “Look around. Look what 
I have. I have been where you want to 
go, and this is where it got me. Is this 
what you want?” 

PLAYBOY: You were newly married. Your 
wife, Dany, had a job and stayed in Miami 
while you paraded around the country in 
tights. Women were probably throwing 
themselves at you in every city. Did she 
ever get jealous? 

THE ROCK: No. I never gave her reason 
to be. When I was on the road I never 
saw the city. 1 flew in, drove to the build- 
ing, performed, left and got right back 
onto the highway 

PLAYBOY: So you were a heel in the ring 
and a baby face in real life. 

THE ROCK: I'm saying I was very focused. 
The only awkward times came when she 
and I would go to restaurants together; 
the forwardness of women surprised her 
PLAYBOY: You weren't out there being a 
hound dog all over the country? 

THE ROCK: No, no, no. I would never put 
myself in that position. My priority was 
to stay out of trouble, which the guys 
knew and respected. I'd drink with my 
buddies, but I mostly sat in my hotel 
room, ordered pizza and wrote what I 
ing to do in the ring 


wa: 


PLAYBOY: Do you have to work hard to 
look the way you do? 
THE ROCK: Absolutely. 1 get up at 5:30 
every morning and train for an hour or 
more. I love that. I watch my diet, too, 
though 1 am a big junk food junkie. 1 
don't fuck around. One day a week ГЇЇ 
eat two large pizzas and two dozen dough- 
nuts. But to do that you have to train 
religiously so your metabolism is condi- 
tioned enough that when you eat that 
stuff, the carbs, fat and sugar get ab- 
sorbed. If I kept eating pizza and dough- 
nuts on the second and third days, that 
would be trouble. 
PLAYBOY: Have you ever done steroids? 
THE ROCK: Once, in college, for a month 
and a half. I had no idea what I was tak- 
ing, which is the idiocy of college kids. 
I thought I was taking steroids. For all 
I know it was Tylenol. It didn’t help me 
on the field 
PLAYBOY: Wrestling went through its own 
steroid-cleanup campaign when some of 
the stars were impossibly muscular. Were 
steroids prevalent? 
THE ROCK: A lot of guys were doing steroids 
back then, and some guys still do them 
ГУ audiences aren't blind. They can look 
at a wrestler’s physique and tell the differ- 
ence. I was lucky to be blessed with genet- 
ics, and I never wanted to be the biggest 
guy out there. Bodybuilding doesn't inter- 
est me as much as athletic training does 
PLAYBOY: Could you see yourself getti 
plastic surgery to stay youthful? 
THE ROCK: Well, I couldn't touch my face. 
It's too pretty, too ruggedly handsome. I 
don't see it happening, but I might feel 
different in 20 years, and I'd tell you if I 
did. I hear a lot of actors popping chops 
about how women shouldn't get plastic 
surgery, shouldn't get their boobs done. 
Shut up. Ifa woman or a man wants to get 
a nip or a tuck to be happy, do it. I have. 
PLAYBOY: You have? Where? 
THE ROCK: I did a live show in the ring in 
1997, and I went home and watched it 
later on tape. There's a tight shot of me 
sauntering in like I'm as cool as the other 
side of the pillow. I looked closely and 
said to my wife, "What the fuck is that? I 
have man titties hanging off the sides of 
my pecs." I had a quick procedure, and 
then I could saunter with full confidence. 
PLAYBOY: As a fitness symbol, what do you 
think of the supersizing of America, espe- 
cially among kids? 
THE ROCK: Don't blame McDonald's, Bur- 
ger King and KFC. Without getting too 
political, I say the beauty of this country 
is that, much as you can say anything you 
want, you can eat anything you want 
Here's a novel idea: Put down the Big 
Mac and have a salad. Get on the tread- 
mill. I am concerned about how available 
fast food is to kids in school cafeter 
That should be regulated. 
PLAYBOY: When you were wrestling's 
biggest draw in 2000, you appeared at 
both the Republican and Democratic 
(concluded on page 148) 


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SCREAMS 


HEN AR CH 

RES Ti RP 
[9] A 

WA E T Л 

wo H E IN 
al ST 

ED A ONA 

L Sr 

ND ШЕН ЕАМ ІМ 


п Sunday, August 22, 2004, Christina 
Vassiliou stepped inside the doors of a 
small art museum in Oslo. For Vassil- 


iou, who was traveling with her mother, the vaca- 
tion to Norway was a reward and a pilgrimage: 
a reward for her recent graduation from Rutgers 
University law school in New Jersey, a pilgrim- 
age to see a work of art that fascinated her 
almost as much as its creator, Norwegian expres- 
sionist painter Edvard Munch. 

The Munch Museum is situated in a north- 
eastern neighborhood of Oslo, Norway’s elegant, 
quiet capital city. There are narrow cobblestoned 
streets, trams, immaculate squares and well-tended 
parks. Every hour or so, delicate chimes ring 
from towers on the street corners, giving visitors 
the impression of a city set inside a music box. 

The tourist season was waning. The streets 
were deserted that morning except for a few 
people walking to cafes. A little after 11 A.M., 


BY SIMON COOPER 


Vassiliou, 26, stood in front of the painting she 
had waited то years and traveled 3,700 miles to 
see: The Scream, the iconic depiction of human 
angst, which has become one of the most rec- 
ognized images in the world. 

The painting, created in 1893, is nearly as 
enigmatic and mysterious as Leonardo da 
Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Is the man screaming, or is 
he shielding his ears from some infernal noise? 
Whatever the viewer sees, Munch’s bold, thick 
brushstrokes conjure a creation whose power 
far exceeds the two-and-a-half-foot-by-three- 
foot frame that contains it. “It is the primal 
image of urban alienation,” says Robert Rosen- 
blum, a curator at New York City’s Guggen- 
heim museum. “It looks like an anxiety attack.” 

Vassiliou, jet-lagged and overwhelmed by the 
power of the painting she had read about for 
so many years, found herself deep in thought, 
lulled by the soft shuffling sounds of the other 


72 


gallerygoers, when she heard a man’s voice cry out. 

“Gun!” 

This single word, shouted in English, echoed through 
the hushed interior of the museum. There were more 
shouts, this time in Norwegian, and a commotion erupted 
just out of sight, back in the main foyer. 

Two men ran past the cafe and the little gift shop and 
up to the ticket booth. One pulled out a revolver with an 
enormous, Magnum-size barrel and held it to the head of 
a female guard. He shouted to the crowd to get down. 

Vassiliou turned in the 
direction of the shouting. She 
saw the second man, dressed 
in a gray hooded top and 
wearing a black face mask 
and black leather gloves, 
heading straight toward her. 
Suddenly he veered away and 
moved toward an 1893 
Munch painting titled Ma- 
donna. He banged it against 
the wall until it broke free, 
severing the gray wires that 
connected it to an alarm that 
sounded at the local police 
station. He took the painting 
to a viewing area and con- 
tinued to smash it against a 
wooden bench, obviously try- 
ing to break off its dark, 
ornate frame. 

Then the man stopped 
and spun in a complete 360. 
He appeared to be confused, 
as if he didn’t know what to 
do next. His eyes, the only 
part of his face visible behind the black mask, searched 
the walls. Then he saw what he was looking for. 

With Madonna still in one hand, the man strode past 
Vassiliou and tore The 
Scream from the wall. The 
young American woman was 
frozen to the spot in fear. She 
stood close enough to touch 
the robber, who at over six 
feet tall towered above her. 
She says she will never forget 
his blue eyes. 

In an instant he was gone: 
back to the lobby, where he 
handed one of the paintings 
to his armed accomplice. 
They fled the building, dash- 
ing about a hundred yards 
over a lawn—one of them 
twice dropped a painting—to 
a waiting black 1992 Audi 
Аб wagon manned by a third 
member of the crew. The works were placed in the car, 
and the Audi peeled away, disappearing into the Nor- 
wegian capital’s winding side streets. 


Honor among thieves? Enger (left) and Ellingsen, 
two friends who stole The Scream in 1994, 


In no more than two minutes the thieves had helped 
themselves to two modern masterpieces estimated to 
have a combined value of more than $100 million. 


No alarm rang in the museum, and no guards gave chase. 
Despite a collection containing 1,000 paintings and more 
than 23,000 drawings and prints worth about $3 billion, 
the Munch Museum does not arm its guards. 

The three men sped away from the museum, briefly 
hooking to the west on a 
street called Toyengata be- 
fore turning north, follow- 
ing a road that encircles the 
zoological gardens opposite 
the Munch Museum. 

Inside the getaway car, the 
thieves were tearing away 
Madonna’s frame and hurl- 
ing pieces out of the car 
windows: Fragments were 
later found lying on the 
sidewalk, in gutters and 
under parked cars, like a 
bread crumb trail marking 
the robbers’ flight. 

By the time they passed 
through a major intersection 
bisected by tram lines, they 
were out of the immediate 
vicinity of the museum. Up 
hills and through Sunday- 
quiet roads, they drove 
deeper into the suburban 
outskirts of the city, the 
roads getting smaller, until 
they pulled behind a block of modern apartments. 
There, in a muddy spot used to store construction 
materials, they broke off the final pieces of the frame 
and tossed them from the 
car. Turning around, the 
robbers continued north. 
Only two or three minutes 
had passed since they exited 
the museum. 

They took a road called 
Hasleveien into a residential 
area of Oslo, past a Bible 
school and over a graffiti- 
emblazoned railway bridge, 
then made a sharp left into 
the dirt parking lot of the 
dreary Sinsen tennis club. Sin- 
sen is one of those drab neigh- 
borhoods so familiar to the 
outskirts of all big cities: util- 
itarian, frayed at the edges, 
squeezed between highways 
and rails, a place you pass through to get somewhere else. 

The thieves ditched the Audi in a parking lot and set 
off a fire extinguisher inside it in an attempt to destroy 


4 
{ 


ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE BENNY 


74 


any forensic evidence they'd left 
behind. It was smart thinking not to 
torch the vehicle, which would have 
drawn police to Sinsen; the car was not 
discovered for hours 

At this point police lost the trail. Per- 
haps another car or cars were parked 
there and the crooks simply swapped 
vehicles. Or maybe they exited the 
parking lot on foot. Only 10 feet of 
grass and weeds separated them from 
the railway tracks that run to Bergen 
and Trondheim. It would have been an 
easy stroll to the highway opposite and 
from there into the ether. There were 
too many possibilities. 


Back at the museum there was chaos. 
Three guards were present that day, 
two women and a man. None seemed 
to have any idea what to do. Va: 
remembers being told, “It’s okay. They 
didn't get any paintings,” the guard 
seemingly unaware of the blank spaces 
on the walls right in front of her. 

Meanwhile the crime scene was being 
overrun. The guards hadn't closed the 
front doors, and tourists continued to 
enter, mingling with the witnesses to 
ist. Vassiliou estimates it was at 
20 minutes before the first police 
officer showed up. Many witnesses had 
already left the museum. 

A helicopter scrambled to scan the 


A tale of two thefts: (bottom left) the ladder left behind by Enger and Ellingsen 
after the January 1994 theft of The Scream from Norway's National Gallery in 
Oslo; (top left) museum officials show off the recovered painting in May 1994; 
(above) 10 years later two other thieves head for a getaway car with the second 
Scream; (top) boys in the hoods, caught in the act during the 2004 theft. 


city for signs of the Audi, but by then the getaway car had been abandoned. The 
police did not find it until three рм. Airports, ports and border crossings were 
put on alert, but this was a futile gesture. 

The police stumbled across one bit of luck: some remarkable videotaped 
footage of the robbers leaving the building. The images came not from the 
museum's few security cameras but from the cameras of tourists disembarking 
from a bus in the parking lot. 

“No glass in front of the paintings, no alarm systems as in French museum 
where a bell rings if visitors have gotten too close—not even a cordon to keep peo- 
ple back a certain distance. There was no search of people's bags at the entrance, 
and the guards were nowhere to be seen.” This assessment, given to a reporter by 
an indignant French witness named François Castang, was repeated in newspa- 
pers throughout Europe and the U 

Norway seemed to turn against the museum directors rather than the thieves. 
ALMOST AS EASY AS ROBBING A KIOSK, read the headline in the daily newspaper 
Aftenposten. Most of the world’s media carried the news on the front page or in 
prime time, adding to Norway's embarrassment. 

In Oslo, Munch Museum spokesperson Jorunn Christofferson responded defen- 
sively: “We have guards, but when thieves threaten the guards with a gun there 
is not much to be done.” 

A palpable sense of shame radiated not just from the museum but from Nor- 
way itself. Munch and his most famous painting are deeply embedded in the 
national psyche. They are examples of world-class achievement in a country of 
4.5 million souls striving for a sense of identity among Scandinavian nations. 
From the upper reaches of the intelligentsia to the criminal underworld, every 
Norwegian knows Munch and his value to the national pride. The country 
was ashamed not just because of the ease with which one of Norway's national 
treasures had been taken but because, as it turns out, this wasn't the first time 
The Scream had been stolen in Oslo. (continued on page 84) 


( 


2 


livin 
°4 


‘Are you the one 
who doesn't believe in the 
Easter Bunny?” 


playboy's 


celebrities 


ou may think that stars don't love company, that they instead 
prefer splendid isolation where nothing glitters that isn't 


them. Not so. Stars are forever combining into constellations 
and galaxies where they vie to outdazzle one another. The stars we 
gather here-young ones such as Jessica and Britney and eternal 
beauties such as Halle and Pam-are modern models of luminosity, 
their stellar sexiness having ignited a million billion flashbulbs. 
That is truest of this year's sexiest star, Paris Hilton, whose mag- 
netic attractiveness can disrupt any man's internal compass. She 
has triumphed in prime time, web time and fashion ads and on the 
best-seller list. Are there any unconquered quarters remaining? This 
year Paris takes on the movies; on the big screen her uptown- 
underground allure will surely draw even more admirers. 


Rebecca Romijn Just be- 
cause а woman is a vicious blue 
mutant doesn't mean she's all bad. 


Eva Mendes Pictured here 
under a happy pelt. she can cur- 
rently be seen tied to Will Smith 
in Hitch 


Salma Hayek After the sunset. 
before the sunset. at the rising of 
the moon~anytime, baby! 


Denise Richards The orna- 
ment who graced our December 
cover can be caught in Elvis Has 
Left the Building. 


Halle Berry First a sublime Cat- 
woman, next Foxy Brown. Clearly 
this is a woman who loves the 
classics. 


Anna Kournikova She's still 
hot. and that's no backhanded 
compliment. 


Jenny McCarthy One of the 
great PMOYs lights up the small 
screen in The Bad Girls Guide. 


Jaime Pressly Her upcoming film is 
called Cruel World. A world without her 
would be crueler. 


Charlize Theron Happily, her Monster 
phase is behind us. 

Victoria Silvstedt will there be no 
Boat Trip in 2005? No Out Cold? No Miss 
Cast Away? Is Hollywood mad? 

Pam Anderson Novelist. actress. 
activist. 15 there nothing she can't do? 
Kirsten Dunst Spidey's love will soon 
appear as Marie Antoinette. Forget the 
carbs—for her. we'd eat cake. 

Carmella DeCesare she’s the choicest 
part of Monday Night Raw. 

Carmen Electra Her upcoming film is 
called Dirty Love. The title alone is riveting. 
Heidi Klum A fascinating woman. 
right down to her line of Birkenstocks. 


Jessica Simpson The perfect person 
to fill Daisy Duke's shorts. 


Beyoncé Crazy in love? With 
her, wouldn't you be crazy not 
tobe? 


Britney Spears Is she really 


retiring so she can raise a crop 
of little Federlines? 


Brooke Burke Isn't it a tad 
ironic that this beauty hosts a 
series called Rank? 


Cameron Diaz vo. Princess 
Fiona-we have our ogreish 
side too! 


Anna Nicole Smith She's 
larger than life and more real 
than reality. 


Jennifer Lopez Jenny from 
the block recently opened the 
world's first J. Lo store—in Russia 


Kate Beckinsale She's one 
of the few vampiresses wed wel- 
come near our jugular. 


Jenna Jameson Most famous 
for her nonfiction best-sell — 
What? She does more than write? 


PLAYBOY 


84 


SCREAMS (continue rom page 74) 


It took 50 seconds to pull off the greatest art theft since 
1911, when the Mona Lisa was taken from the Louvre. 


SEPTEMBER 2004: DICK ELLIS 


It is late September 2004, and in Lon- 
don's Gray's Inn—a large quadrangle 
inhabited by members of the British 
legal profession since the 1500s—fall 
leaves are being blown in tight eddies 
around a courtyard. The Scream and 
Madonna have been missing for a month. 
In a discreet third-floor office in a dis- 
creet redbrick building, Dick Ellis is 
poring over the details of the robbery. 
Like most stolen-art experts (he is a for- 
mer member of a British police art- 
crimes squad), he fears it will be years 
before the paintings resurface. 

Ellis, a former competitive rower, has 
settled into a comfortable middle age. 
Ina dark blue suit, cream shirt and red 
tie, he gives off the confident, authori- 
tative air of a career policeman, which 
he is. The son of a surgeon and a phys- 
iotherapist, brother to a doctor and a 
psychiatric nurse, Ellis figured out early 
on that he would not follow the family 
tradition. “I knew I didn't deal terribly 
well with people who are ill," he says. At 
the age of 19 he joined London's Met- 
ropolitan Police. 

Early in his career a burglar broke 
into his parents' house and made off 
with the family silver. It was a clean, 
professional job; the crook drilled a 
small hole in a window at the back of 
the house before inserting a wire tool 
that lifted the catch. Ellis took it upon 
himself to investigate and two days later. 
tracked the family's silver sugar bowl to 
a stall at a local market. His detective 
work resulted in the return not only of 
his parents' collection but also of silver 
belonging to their neighbors, all tar- 
geted by the same thief. Ellis went on to 
co-found Scotland Yard's Art and An- 
tiques Squad in 1990 as a detective 
sergeant. Now retired from the Metro- 
politan Police, he runs his own con- 
sultancy, International Art Recovery, 
tracking stolen art and antiques for pri- 
vate clients and institutions. 

"The stolen-art market works like any 
other market," he says. "Criminals are 
just businessmen who have made a 
career choice to earn their money ille- 
gally, and art is like any other com- 
modity in which they deal, such as 
drugs or firearms. But when it comes to 
something as distinctive as The Scream, 
you're talking about an extremely diffi- 
cult market. Yes, these paintings are 
incredibly valuable, but they are also so 
well-known they are unsellable." 

Then what possibly could have moti- 


vated these three men to commit an 
audacious daylight theft of paintings 
that have little or no street value? 

"It wasn't for the insurance," says 
Ellis matter-of-factly. "As any art thief 
worth his salt knows, such paintings are 
rarely insured, due to the prohibitive 
cost of the premiums." For ransom, 
then? Again unlikely, says Ellis: *The 
museum has no real money of its own, 
and the Norwegian government has 
clearly stated that it will not, under any 
circumstances, pay ransoms." 

Criminals usually assign a stolen 
painting a value of about 10 percent of 
its highest publicly reported worth. The 
painting can then be used in negotia- 
tions for drugs, arms or other black- 
market items such as jewelry or silver. 
In 1990 a painting by Dutch master 
Gabriel Metsu was recovered in Istan- 
bul, where it had been part of a heroin 
deal. And Vermeer's 1670 work Lady 
Writing a Letter With Her Maid was recov- 
ered from an Antwerp gem dealer, who 
had taken it as collateral against a loan 
he'd made to the thieves. “Paintings cir- 
culate like bonds," Ellis says, "like any 
other international commodity." 

But Ellis ventures that something else 
may have been at work here. In the case 
of The Scream, he thinks the thieves may 
have decided to steal something "so sig- 
nificant nationally that it would be a big 
snub to the authorities. It would really 
catch the headlines and make a state- 
ment—a way of showing the police and 
their colleagues that these men are the 
number one criminals in Norway." 

Bragging rights for the thieves— 
could that have been the motivation? 
"That deduction, the educated guess of 
а savvy art cop, turned out to be the key 
to solving the case of the missing 1994 
Scream. Dick Ellis should know—he 
headed up the international investiga- 
tion that recovered it. 

Edvard Munch painted the harrow- 
ing figure in The Scream multiple times: 
in oil, in tempera and in a mixture of 
the two on cardboard. He created lith- 
ographs as well, and the originals of 
these are worth millions, though not 
nearly as much as the paintings. In the 
early hours of February 12, 1994, two 
young criminals raided the National 
Gallery in Oslo and stole its copy of The 
Scream, which is called the first version 
of the painting and considered the most 
valuable of the four known versions. 
The 2004 thieves stole the painting 
known as the second Scream, for the 


order in which it was painted. (It is also 
called, unkindly, the seasick Scream, for 
its livid green palette.) Version three is 
still held safely in the Munch Museum, 
and the fourth is in the hands of a pri- 
vate collector. Though less well-known, 
the thieves’ other 2004 trophy, Ma- 
donna—a dark, erotic portrait of a wom- 
an—is considered another example of 
the artist's genius. 

After examining the circumstances of 
the two robberies, Ellis has begun to 
believe that faint undercurrents may 
connect the heists. It's not a simple 
story. A full decade divides the two 
crimes, which involve three stolen mas- 
terpieces, half a dozen crooks, squad- 
rons of police, art experts from three 
countries, $472,000 in cash and a mur- 
der. But tangled in the strands of the 
tale that follows may be tantalizing clues 
to solve the 2004 theft, as well as the 
reasons professional thieves have gone 
to such trouble to steal Norway's most 
famous painting—twice. 


BAD BOYS: ELLINGSEN AND ENGER 


“Thanks for the bad security.” 

These five words were handwritten 
on a postcard and pinned to the space 
on the wall where, a few minutes ear- 
lier, The Scream had hung. It was the 
early hours of February 12, 1994; a cur- 
tain twisted in the winter wind blowing 
through the window where the thieves 
had entered. A ladder led down to the 
street right outside the front door of the 
National Gallery in Oslo. 

Grainy security camera footage 
would later document the crime for 
police and embarrassed gallery offi- 
cials. At 6:30 A.M. two masked men 
came around the side of the museum. 
They propped their ladder against the 
museum's front wall; while one held it 
steady, the other began to ascend the 
rungs. He didn't make it to the top. 
Maybe it was the cold, maybe the 
rungs were slippery with ice, or maybe 
he was just so nervous that his shaking 
legs couldn't hold him, but 18-year-old 
William Ellingsen slipped and nearly 
fell on top of Päl Enger, his partner 
in crime. 

Ellingsen quickly recovered and went 
back up, reaching the window. The 
teenager broke the window, went inside 
and simply pulled The Scream off the wall. 

It was all over in 50 seconds. Fifty 
seconds to pull off the greatest and 
easiest art theft since 1911, when for- 
mer Louvre employee Vincenzo 
Peruggia made off with the Mona Lisa 
tucked under his smock. That theft 
wasn't noticed for an entire day, but 
the masterpiece was finally recovered 
two years later from a trunk in a Flo- 
rence, Italy hotel room. The ensuing 
publicity ensured that the Mona Lisa 

(continued on page 152) 


Жо. 


"I assume you'll be wanting a double?” 


85 


Z 
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, VIOLENCE/IS THE a wi WAY To GIVE PEACE ACHANCE 


ebber looks around, his face pushed 
W out of shape, one cheekbone lo 
than the other. One of his eyes is 
just a milk-white ball pinched in the red-black 
swelling under his brow. His lips, Webber’s 
lips, are split so deep in the middle he’s got 
four lips instead of two. Inside all those lips, 
you can’t see a single tooth left. 
Webber looks around the jet’s cabin, the 
white leather on the walls, the bird’s-eye 
maple varnished to a mirror shine. Webber 


ICTION Y 


HUCK 


looks at the drink in his hand, the ice hardly 
melted in the blast of the air-Cönditioning. 
He says, too loud on accountiof his hearing 
loss, he almost shouts, “Wherelwe at?” 

They're in a Gulfstream G550)\the ñicest 
rivate jet you can charter, Flint says. Then 
Flint digs two fingers into a pants\pocket 
an@ hands something across the aisle to 


ALAHNIUK 


РАКТА КАВ ОЛУ. 


88 


FOR А FUND-RAISER, OUR FIRST IDEA WAS FIVE BUCKS TO PUNCH A MIME. 


“Almost where?” Webber says, and he drinks the 
pill down. 

He's still twisted around enough to see the white 
leather club chairs that recline and swivel. The white 
carpet. The bird's-eye maple tables, polished to the 
point they look wet. The white suede couches that line 
the cabin. The matching throw cushions. The maga- 
zines, each one as big as a movie poster, called Elite 
Traveler, with a cover price of $35. The 24-karat-gold- 
plated cup holders and the faucets in the bathroom. 
The galley with its espresso machine and halogen light 
bouncing bright off the lead-crystal glassware. The 
microwave and fridge and ice machine. All this, flying 
along at 51,000 feet, Mach zero-point-eight-eight, 
somewhere above the Mediterranean. All of them 
drinking scotch. All of this nicer than anything you'll 
ever be inside, anything short of a casket. 

Webber tilts his drink back, sticks his big red potato 
nose into the cold air, and you can see up inside each 
nostril, see how they don't really go anywhere, not any- 
more. But Webber says, “What's that smell?" 

And Flint sniffs and says, “Does ammonium nitrate 
ring a bell?” 

It's the ammonium nitrate their buddy Jenson had 
ready for them in Florida. Their buddy from the Gulf 
war. Our Reverend Godless. 

“You mean like fertilizer?” Webber says. And Flint 
says, “Half a ton.” 

Webber's hand, it's shaking so hard you can hear the 
ice rattle in his empty glass. That shaking, it's just trau- 
matic Parkinson's is all. Traumatic encephalopathy will 
do that to you, where partial necrosis of brain tissue 
takes place. Neurons replaced by brain-dead scar tis- 
sue. You put on a curly red wig and false eyelashes, lip- 
synch to Bette Midler at the Collaris County Fair and 
Rodeo and offer people the chance to punch your face 
at 10 bucks a shot, and you can make some real money. 

Other places, you'll need to wear a curly blonde wig, 
Squeeze your ass into a tight sequined dress, your feet 
in the biggest pair of high heels you can find. Lip-synch 
to Barbra Streisand singing that "Evergreen" song and 
you'd better have a friend waiting to drive you to the 
emergency room. Take a couple of Vicodins before- 
hand, before you glue on those long pink Barbra 
Streisand fingernails; after them you can't pick up any- 
thing smaller than a beer bottle. Take your painkillers 
first and you can sing both sides of Co/or Me Barbra 
before a really good shot puts you down. 

For a fund-raiser, our first idea was Five Bucks to 
Punch a Mime. And it worked, mostly in college towns, 
the aggie schools. Some towns, nobody went home 
without some of that clown white smeared across their 
knuckles. Clown white and blood. 

Problem is, the novelty wears off. Renting a Gulf- 
stream costs bucks. Just buying the gas and oil to fly 
from here to Europe costs about 30 grand. One-way 
it's not so bad, but you never want to go into a charter 
place saying you plan to fly the plane only one-way... 
Talk about your red flags. 

No, Webber would put on that black leotard and 
folks would already be salivating to hit him. He'd paint 


his face white, step into his invisible box, start miming 
away, and the cash would just flow in. Colleges mostly, 
but we did good business at county and state fairs, too. 
Even if folks took it as some kind of minstrel show, 
they'd still pay to knock him down, to make him bleed. 

For roadhouse bars, after the mime routine petered 
out, we tried 5O Bucks to Punch a Chick. Flint had this 
girl who was up for it. But after, like, one shot to the 
face, she was saying, "No way..." On the floor, sitting in 
the peanut shells on the floor and holding her nose, this 
girl says, "Let me go to flight school. Let me play the 
pilot instead. I still want to help." 

We still had must've been half the bar standing in line 
with their money. Divorced dads, dumped boyfriends, 
guys with old potty-training issues, all of them want- 
ing to take their best shot. 

Flint says, “I can fix this." And he helps his girl to her 
feet. Taking her by the elbow, he leads her into the 
ladies' room. Going in with her, Flint holds up his hand, 
fingers spread, and he says, "Give me five minutes." 

Just out of the Army like that, we didn't figure how 
else to make that kind of money, not legal-wise. The 
way Flint saw it, there's no law yet that says folks can't 
pay to sock you. 

It's then that Flint comes out of the ladies' room 
wearing the girl's Saturday-night wig, all her makeup 
used up on his big, clean-shaven face. He's unbuttoned 
his shirt and tied the shirttails together over his gut 
with paper towels stuffed in to make boobs. With 
whole tubes of lipstick smeared around his mouth, 
Flint, he says, "Let's do this thing..." 

Folks standing in line, they're saying 50 bucks to 
punch some guy is a cheat. So Flint, he says, "Make it 
10 bucks..." Folks still hang back, look around for some 
better way to waste their cash. 

It's then that Webber goes over to the jukebox, drops 
in a quarter, presses a few buttons and—magic. The 
music starts, and for the length of one exhale all you 
can hear is every man in the bar letting out a long 
groan. The song, it's the wailing song from the end of 
that Titanic movie. That Canadian chick. 

And Flint, with his blonde wig and big clown mouth, 
he steps up onto a chair, then up onto a table, and he 
starts singing along. With the whole bar watching, Flint 
gives it everything he's got, sliding his hands up and 
down the sides of his blue jeans. His eyes closed, all you 
сап see there is his shimmering blue eye shadow. That 
red smear, singing. 

Right on time, Webber reaches up to offer Flint a 
hand down. Flint takes it, ladylike, still lip-synching. You 
can see now his fingernails painted candy red. And 
Webber whispers to him, “| plugged in five bucks’ 
worth of quarters.” Webber helps Flint down to face 
the first man in line, and Webber says, “This song's the 
only thing they're going to hear all night.” 

From Webber's five bucks they made almost $600 
that night. Not a fist left that bar not beat deep, tat- 
tooed blue and red and eyeliner green with the 
makeup from Flint's face. Some guys, they'd hit him 
until that hand got tired and then get back in line to 
use their other. (continued on page 143) 


“Does anyone else have to go potty?!” 


nce again, music stands at a turning 

point. As has been the case since 

the advents of the player piano and 
the jukebox, technology drives the art in | 
a different direction. Today iTunes, Pro |} 
Tools, P2P and ring tones provide the 
impetus for a new form of music. The 


J song has supplanted the album as the 
format of our era. Considering that 
albums are mostly little more than 
overpriced expressions of self-impor- 
tant excess, that isn’t a bad thing. 
With the exception of the period 
/ between Sgt, Pepper's їп 1967 and /л 
d Utero in 1993, American popular mu- 
» sic has been dominated by the song. 
ў Now that the historical aberration of 
the LP has ended, we can return to that 
remarkable tradition. We can listen to 
'Avril's “My Happy Ending” and not bother 
with her album. And songs are made by pro- 
/ ducers, not artists. Much as they did 
during the reigns of Sam Phillips and Phil 
y" Spector, producers have taken artistic control | 
7 from musicians. This may or may not turn out 
to be a good development. But nearly every- 
чё опе will agree that we’re ready for a change. 
/ ASHANTI 
» Her latest CD is called Concrete 
F Rose for good reason: Ashanti is 


tough enough to hang with the bad 
boys of the Inc. Records (formerly 
Murder Inc.), but her crooning is so 
sweet it makes your teeth hurt. Four years after she sang the 
hook on Ja Rule's “Always on Time,” we still have that damn 
song—and her body—stuck in our mind. 


STA! 


! —AL GREEN 


=] SATURDAY NIGHT FE! 
| 


[ГА _THE BEE GEES 


G 


—FELIX DA 
HOUSECAT 


OF MARQUEES AND MUSIC 


IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, ART IS EASILY LOST AMID THE STARDOM 


Before Smile came out last 
fall it was referred to as the greatest album 
never released. How do you think it would 


have sold had you released it in 1967? 


WILSON: It would have influenced peo- 
ple in the business to want to make better 
music, but it wouldn’t have sold at all. It 
would have been too ahead of its time. 


Is it true you once took a 
crap on your father’s dinner plate? 


WILSON: My brothers and I cooked it 
up. Dennis said, “Why don’t you shit on 


a plate and put it on Dad’s table?” So 1 


did. My dad came out going, “What the 
hell is this?” Then—boom! boom!—he 
beat me up. It was worth it. That was the 
funniest joke I ever played on anybody. 
PLAYES What's something we don't 
know about your days as a Beach Boy? 
WILSON: I don't like the beach. And I 
will never, ever try surfing. I’m too afraid 
ГЇЇ get hit in the head with the surfboard. 


CHRISTINA AGUILERA 


LONDON CALLING 


ПА 


DARKNESS ON THE EDGE 
OF TOWN 


IT TAKES A NATION 
OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US 
BACK 


THE 
TIMES 
THEY 
ARE A- 
CHANGIN’ 


SLICK RICK 


How has hip-hop changed 
since the days of Doug E. Fresh? 


RICK: It has become more commercial, a 
lot more mainstream. It's big business now, 
and other races have embraced it. In the 
past, major companies would never have 
thought of using hip-hop jingles to sell 
their products. 


What kind of music do you 
listen to at home? 


RICK: 1 like stuff from the 1960s and early 
1970s, and old-school reggae. A lot of mu- 
sic from the 1960s and 1970s has more 
originality and soul. That was before music 


ығы 


Р You're such a tremendous rock 
frontman. Who are some of your favorite 
frontmen in rock history? 


WEILAND: There are five guys who, if 1 
threw them into a cup I would call that cup 
the holy grail of rock and roll. They're 
James Brown, David Bowie, Jim Morrison, 
Iggy Pop and Mick Jagger. 


Have you met all five? 


WEILAND: The only one I haven't met is 
Bowie, He's probably my greatest icon, 
not just as a frontman but as a musical 
artist. He’s grown older so gracefully, and 
he continues to raise the bar. He's a style 
icon. I’ve always respected the way he 
takes fashion to the level of an art form. 
That’s something I try to do. Rock-and- 
roll clothes are fun, bur that’s just one 
aspect of my appreciation of clothing and 


became more of a business. I guess аг 
was a magical era. That’s why James 
Brown sallaka Е be the king of soul for 
me. Nobody has matched that level of 
strength musically, as far as I'm con- 
cerned. Soul is everlasting. 


What new music do you 
listen to? 


RICK: Missy Elliott definitely carries a 
house hip-hop type of flavor that has 
strength. But with today’s hip-hop, it’s 
hard to find a track you can enjoy danc- 
ing to-Allot of people Бачы ЭШ 
you hear few songs in heavy rotation 
that you are drawn to, 


Who would you say are 
the most underrated hip-hoppers work- 


ing tod: 


RICK: Certain members of the Wu-Tang 
Clan are underrated, like RZA, Raekwon 
and Ghostface. 


The South is hot in hip-hop 
today. Its music is simpler than the mu- 
sic you make, 


RICK: I'm not really familiar with any 
of that. I'm a New York City person. 
Unless it has a cute story or something, 
I'm really not interested. The bounce era 
isn't for me. I'm of a different era. It’s cute 
for the kids, for the young generation, 
you know? 


fashion. My meeting with Jim Morri- 
son was on a psychic level while Í Was 
high on opium. 


In the “Fall to Pieces” video 
you re-create some of the lowest mo- 
ments from when you were hooked on 
drugs. Was it hard to go back there? 


WEILAND: Yeah, it was. To do it con- 
vincingly I had to reach down inside 
and pull those feelings back up. I had to 
go to thar lonely, bles blank, empty, 
dark place. It was like being in a pit thar 
you cannot crawl out of. The video 
could have turned out cheesy, but T 
think we pulled it off. 


Why do you and your band- 
mates have so much onstage chemistry? 


WEILAND: Because we've all lived our 
lives to the hilt. We have each other's 
back. When you have five ex-junkies in 
a gang, anything can happen at any time: 
to any one of us, There's tension, energy, 
angst and sensuality between us. There's 
danger in the music. That's why people 
are so attracted to it. There isn’t a lor of 
realness and truth in rock music today. 
So much of it is canned and controlled; 


You have two kids. Do they 
know their father is a rock star? 


WEILAND: They do, and they're totally 
into it. My son, Noah, is four, and he 
thinks he's in the band. When he comes: 
to our shows we hook him up with a 
mike, a mike stand and a monitor on the 
side of the stage. He sings along and 
dances to the entire show. He even has 
some of my moves down. 


anything in the van that everyone doesn't SCOSUE 


like, so we tend to listen to a lot of hip-hop 
and а lot of Johnny Cash. And soul music 
Bobby Womack is big with us. Shana has 
an Oris Redding mix that we all love 
We're all Hall and Oates fans for some rea 


hat seems to surprise von 


"LET'S GET IT ON" 


NUBE South. Thi 


W 


[2] “LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY” 


[з] “HEAD LIKE A HOLE” 


PATTERSON HOOD: А] “NO QUARTER” 
dd р š K k 


“CALI- 
FORNIA 
LOVE” 


SEX, DRUGS AND PARTICLE PHYSICS? BEFORE THEY TOPPED THE 
CHARTS, THESE MUSICIANS HIT THE BOOKS 

DEXTER HOLLAND, MILO AUKERMAN, RUBEN BLADES 

THE OFFSPRING DESCENDENTS 


SAM BEAM, 
IRON AND WINE 


5 | Mn E | 


She's not just a girl anymore. Contrary to what 
she sang in No Doubt's 1996 hit, Stefani has 
grown into a star. She's a fashion designer. A 
Scorsese actor. And she even made disco 
cool again with her solo CD, Love, Angel, 
Music, Baby. We have one question: When it 
comes to PLAY8OY, what you waiting for? 


YOU DO YOUR THING 


MY HONKY TONK HISTORY 


HORSE OF A 
DIFFERENT COLOR 


WHEN THE 
SUN GOES 
DOWN 


MARTINA | 


THE STREETS 


a — 


You recorded your first album 
at your parents’ house. What was the hard- 
est part about recording in the kitchen? 


MIKE SKINNER: The hardest thing was 
having to go to work as well. When you 
don’t have enough money to do music full- 
time, you need to have a normal job, too. 
Having two full-time jobs drives you into the 
ground. I was actually working in the lingerie 
section of a department store at the time. 


Why would you leave that job? 
SKINNER: Exactly. It was an emotional day 


What are you listening to now? 


SKINNER: The Dizzee Rascal album is one 


BLACK EYED PEAS 


Who came up with the idea of 
changing “Let's Get Retarded” to "Let's 
Get It Started”? 


WILL.ILAM: Me. When we'd do arena gigs, 
the handicapped section would be next to 
the stage. I never felt comfortable doing 
“Let's Get Retarded” in front of the handi 
capped, so when we played big arenas we 
would change the song to “Let's Get It 
Started.” The NBA wanted to use a song, 
and we gave them a version of “Let’s Get It 
Started” to get the championship started 


Whar sort of music do you lis- 
ten то at home? 


WILL.I.AM: Bossa nova and samba. And 
old-school hip-hop. It ain't old school to 
me. 1 don't call Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick 
and Special Ed old school. That’s when 


of my favorites of 2004. 1 also r 
like the latest from Snoop. But 
commit much time to listening 
whole album. 

Which do you prefer, 
or brandy? 
SKINNER: They should be used in сі 
bination. Drink a lot of brandy 
really starts fucking with you. B 
good if you want to add a silly edge 
the night, but beer puts you on 
back. Plus it makes you far. m pos 
so I have to watch what I cat. 


Tell us about the worst! 
over you've ever had on tour. 3 


SKINNER: We were in New York Ci 
playing the Mercury Lounge. There 
a lor more than alcohol involved, Oi 


were still going at it when the sun 
up, so we didn't bother going to sl 
On the way to the airport I was so si 
We're not used to American vans—tl 
have different suspensions or something 
American vans wallow around. I cou 
have killed myself. I managed to sort my- 
self out with a McDonald's at JFK. Far 
and sugar are all it takes. 3 


C ге 


ын 
What happened to wat 
ing what you eat? 


SKINNER: Yeah, right? 1 have to еа! 
less fast food. " 


hip-hop was at its purest. Back then it 
was really about the art form. 


Where do you think music 
will be in five years? 


WILL.I.AM: The phone company is 
going to own it. In five or 10 years mu- 
sic will be all about phones. A lot of 
phone companies already make most of 
their money from ring tones. But you 
can’t have a ring tone with a good beat 
on it. That will reinforce melodies and 
songwriting structure so they can be 
translated over phones. 


Who are some of your fa- 
vorite songwriters? 


WILL.I.AM: Antonio Carlos Jobim; Ste- 
vie Wonder; Earth, Wind & Fire; Esthero. 


Is it a challenge to have such 
a good-looking woman in the band? 


WILL.I.AM: Yeah, that's a big challenge 
because I know she can sing. She's a 
good songwriter and a great performe 
The challenge is how to make it to where 
people don’t see you as just a hot little 
chick but really see you for what you 
came in for. You're not a model; you 
never wanted to be a burlesque artist. 
You're a fucking great singer. How do 
you make people notice you for that? 


When is your new CD com 
ing out? 


WILL.I.AM: This spring. It’s called 


Monkey Business. 


When you're a rock star, life consists of a few seminal 
moments: discovering Never Mind the Bollocks, los- 
ing your virginity, playing your first show and selling 
out the Garden seven nights in a row. (The first three 
are relatively easy, but few can do number four.) Be- 
cause it’s more fun to talk about sex than that other 
stuff, we cornered a few candid musicians and asked 
them the million-dollar question: How did you lose 
your virginity? If they could remember what they 
were listening to when the action went down, all the 
better. Now, do you remember your first time? 


UNCLE KRACK don’t remember exactly what 
happened. We were drinking. | was probably on acid. 
| could have been with a guy or a girl—who fucking 
knows? | remember how exciting but also how anticli- 
mactic it was. | remember being happy to lose it and 
that it was fucking sweet. It was summertime, and we 
were down in this swampy area we called Sleepy Hol- 
low. A fire was going, and there were a lot of drugs. A 
Steve Miller greatest-hits record was probably play- 
ing—all we did was drop dots and listen to Steve 
Miller. The details are sketchy since it was so long 
ago. Most people keep in touch and shit, don’t they? 
Well, | was a scumbag. Ladies, be thankful you were 
nowhere near Detroit in 1989. 


b AUF DE UR It was high school gradua- 
tion weekend in 1989. My boyfriend and | were both 
16. He went to a more prestigious school, and | went 
to an arty, experimental public school. | went to his 
graduation weekend, and a lot of rich kids and jocks 
who had big country homes were there. We camped 
outside one, and as the more bohemian one | was 
already feeling uncomfortable being at the rich kids" 
graduation. My boyfriend was an extreme mod, so 
when he pitched our tent he draped his Union Jack 
across it. As we were attempting to lose our virgin- 
ity we got attacked by the jocks, who kicked our tent 
and yelled, “Fuck the mods!" We spent the next 
night in a hotel with Guns N' Roses' Appetite for 
Destruction playing on auto reverse. That's when we 
finally accomplished the deed. 


TRAVIS B 2 | lost my virginity in sev- 
enth grade. | was just 13, and | lost it to a ninth grade 


S AND PARADISE BY THE DASHBOARD LIC 


cheerleader I'd always had a crush on. | was a scared 
kid with a weird haircut, and | didn't think a ninth 
grader would be into me. We were in music class to- 
gether, and she would flirt with me and touch my 
dick. One night my friends and | skateboarded to her 
house. Her family had a trailer in the back, and she 
and | went in there and made out and did all that 
crazy stuff. | don't think we had any music playing. 
She was on top—she wasn’t fucking around. It was 
very, "I'm older, | know more, and I'm about to take 
you to school.” She was a badass, rad girl, Her vagina 
felt like hot jelly. I'd never felt one before. | don’t be- 
lieve it lasted long. Afterward it was awkward, and | 
didn’t talk to her. | should have handled the situation 
better, but | didn’t know. At 13 all you want to do is 
get laid. | remember walking home at three a.m. and 
thinking, | don’t care if | have sex again; it’s no big 
deal. Then she went around telling everyone she was 
pregnant, scaring the shit out of me. Later we became 
good friends and laughed about it. 


JACK BLACK I'm not one of those people who like 
music playing when they make love. When | lost my 
virginity | played “Comfortably Numb” from Pink 
Floyd’s The Wall, and that soured the whole music- 
while-boning experience for me. Music to bone to—I 
don't do that. | was 17 and a senior in high school. I'd 
had an experience with a girl before that, but you 
can't really call it the time | lost my virginity, because 
it was dry humping. It was hot. Our genitals were rub- 
bing against each other with just a thin piece of fab- 
ric between us. It felt fantastic, and | shot my load in 
my pants. You could see the stain, and it was very em- 
barrassing. She knew. She was sweet about it. 


ELL WILLIAMS I was 16. | was talking shit to 
this woman at my job—we worked at McDonald's— 
acting as if I'd fucked before, and | had to go through 
with it because 1 couldn't back down. She was ап old- 
er lady, 28 or 29. 


LIL JON My first time was with my then girlfriend in 
my mom's basement. It sure wasn't her first time. She 
said | did a good job, but she could have been lying. 


LUDACRIS | was 17. She (continued on page 148) 


PLAYBOY'S 2005 


FOR THE PAST 48 YEARS 
WE’VE ASKED OUR READERS 
TO SELECT THEIR FAVORITE 
MUSICIANS AND RECORDINGS 
FROM THE PREVIOUS YEAR. 
THE BALLOT HAS BEEN SIM- 
PLIFIED OVER TIME, AND 
WE’VE ADJUSTED IT TO RE- 
FLECT NEW MUSICAL GENRES. 
BUT JAZZ HAS ALWAYS HELD 
A SPECIAL SPOT IN THE 
PLAYBOY LIFESTYLE. THIS 
YEAR, IN ADDITION TO HON- 
ORING OUR 13 MUSIC POLL 
WINNERS, WE EMBRACE OUR 
COMMITMENT TO THIS GREAT 
AMERICAN ART FORM BY 
NAMING OUR FIRST PLAYBOY 
JAZZ ARTIST OF THE YEAR, 
PIANIST JASON MORAN. 


JAZZ ARTIST 
JASON MORAN 


т”, 


BEST ROCK 
Ч | VELVET REVOLVER 


BEST HIP-HOP. 
KANYE WEST 


We used to think Usher was just another 
baby-faced soul singer. Then he hooked 
up with Lil Jon and Ludacris, made the 
crunk hit of the year and got the girlies 
in the clubs dancing on the banquettes. 


got into jazz when 
his father played him a Thelonious Monk 
record back in Houston. "It flipped me 
out,” the 30-year-old pianist says. Moran 
subsequently made his mark in 1997 as a 
member of Greg Osby’s touring band 
Since then he’s established his reputation 
as a restless innovator and peerless leader. 
His latest release, Same Mother (Blue 
Note), is a dazzling work of recombinant 
barrelhouse blues. We've always admired 
Moran's ability to keep moving forward. 
“Jazz will continue to fold the world into 
its pocker, as it has always done,” he says. 


BEST ELECTR’ 
FATBOY SLIM 


BEST JAZZ 
RAY CHARLES. 


OUR READERS SELECT THEIR FAVORITES FROM 2004 


Ar 
ac 


COUNTRY 
GRETCHEN WILSON 


BEST SOUNDTRACK 
METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER 


BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT 
LENNY KRAVITZ 


NEXT BIG THING 
THE KILLERS 


has sustained his 
illustrious career by creating a series of 
extraordinary juxtapositions to refresh his 
music and image: Ziggy Stardust versus 
the Thin White Duke, glam wizard versus 
blue-eyed-soul singer, down-and-out in 
Berlin versus decked out in New York. 
And amazingly—given that he made his 
earliest recordings when now long defunct 
acts like the Monkees, Herman's Hermits 
and the Hollies dominated the charts— 


Bowie remains capable of making new 
music that matters. (Way back when, he 
changed his name from Davey Jones be- 
cause of the Monkee with the same name.) 
This chameleon first enchanted America in 
1972 with his Rise and Fall of Ziggy Star- 
dust and the Spiders From Mars album 
and tour—a stage act still considered а 
benchmark for outrageous showmanship. 
When he tired of that persona, he moved 
on to others, catalogued in his string of 
diverse hits: “Rebel Rebel,” “Fame,” “Gol- 
den Years,” “Heroes,” “Under Pressure 
“Let's Dance.” Then he founded an indie 
band, Tin Machine, and eventually tackled 
electronic music. As a producer Bowie 
helped other artists—including the Stooges, 
Lou Reed and Mort the Hoople—reach 
new peaks. The success of Bowie's most 


recent tour proves his star is still bright. 
Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. 


Rogue Audio M-150 
monoblock amp. 


W Avid Diva turntable. 


z 


is spending $20,000 on а 


Y Arcam Full Metal y, 
Jacket CD 33 player. \ 


x š 


haee 


t happens to every 

man at some point 
in his life. And while 
it can be worrisome, 
it's also perfectly nor- 
mal and nothing to be 
ashamed of. All you 
did was outgrow your 
stereo. But now that 
your ears have matured 
and it's painful to listen 
to Mahler's Third Sym- 
phony or Shellac's At 
Action Park through that 
tinny, pumped-up, arti- 
ficial-sounding insult 
on your shelf, you're 
worried. Worried that 
you'll have to drop six 
figures on your next 
system to be satisfied. 
Well, there's something 
you should know: High- 
end audio equipment 
doesn't need to be in- 
sanely expensive. Reg- 
ular old expensive will 
do just fine. In other 
words, yes, you have to 
drop some dough, but 
as Richard Hardesty, 


Y Meadowlark Audio's 
Kestrel 2 speakers and 
Blackbird subwoofer. 


— stereo a bargain? In the world of high-end audio * By Kyle Kolbe 


b WO 
4 


Audio Perfec- 

st Journal (audio 
rfectionist.com), puts 
it, “you don't need to 
take out a second mort- 
gage to afford a high- 
quality stereo. The 
highest price tags are 
seldom an indicator 
of the highest quality." 
Just don't try explain- 
ing that to the staff at 
most audiophile snob 
shops, whose sole mis- 
sion is to make sure 
you walk out the door 
significantly lighter 
than when you walked 
in. What they won't tell 
you is that you can get 
90 percent of the sound 
quality for a tenth of 
what they'd like to 
fleece you for. Put it this 
way: The system we've 
assembled here costs 
around $20,000, and 
it's a steal. We'd put it 
up against a typical 
$200,000 setup without 


puorocrapny sy ceorcectorsiou thinking twice. 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 147. 


`Y Rogue Audio Magnum 99 preamp. 


100 


TURNTABLE Vinyl is the original high-resolution audio 
format, but decks from a top manufacturer such as Clear- 
audio can approach $20,000. Leave them to the people who 
believe price equals quality, and pick up Avid's Diva for 
$2,500. A spring-suspension system, a heavy platter, an out- 
board motor and a plinthless design help this table sound as 
clean and dynamic as any digital source but with analog's 
rhythmic thrust and superior imaging. Your King Tubby 
dub plates will never sound the same again. 

CD PLAYER Any stereo has to play today’s most popular 
format, the CD, and decent playback makes a huge difference. 
There are stupefying values in today’s market—$300 units 
that'll play CDs, DVDs and MP3s and then run to the store to 
buy smokes for you. But be strong. It’s a digital format, but 
what comes out of the back of the player is all analog. The con- 
version between the two is what separates the harsh reproduc- 
tion of mass-market players from the natural sound of the 
premium set. The smart money's on Arcam's Full Metal Jack- 
et CD 33 upsampling CD player ($2,500), with a damped chas- 
sis (to absorb vibrations), dual nonswitching power supplies 
and excellent filtering in the digital-analog conversion. Trust 
us, you'll hear the difference by the end of the first note. 


The Damage 


Avid Diva turntable 
Arcam CD 33 player. 
Rogue Audio Magnum 
99 preamp... 


Analog 
Rules 


= 
= 


accomplish the fundamental duty of all audio equipment: 
making the output signal match the input signal. That means 
reproducing the frequency, timing and amplitude of the 
original sound. And while most speakers get frequency and 
amplitude right, only three manufacturers manage to nail 
time coherence: Vandersteen Audio, Thiel and Meadowlark 
Audio. We went with Meadowlark's Kestrel 2 for its musicality, 
beauty and value. Two grand a pair buys you sloped baffles, 
first-order crossovers, high-quality drivers and an excellent 
transmission-line bass-loading design. They'll all but let you 
hear the sound of fingerprints drying on a fret board. 
SUBWOOFER Your subwoofer should be neither seen nor 
heard. Its only job is to pick up where your loudspeakers roll 
off. Meadowlark's new Blackbird subwoofer ($2,500) fills in 
the Kestrel 2's bottom octave with bass that gives your music a 
solid, self-effacing floor to stand on. Its 1,000-watt amp is iso- 
lated in a subenclosure apart from the rest of the box's elec- 
tronics, and its 10-inch-long throw woofer has real extension 
down to 20 hertz. If you're sick of slurred, boomy bass that 
drags, then the Blackbird is your drug of choice. 
INTERCONNECTS AND MOUNTING Listening to this 
setup through a bunch of old thin wires is like making a 


Timing and Phase 


Most speakers contain three sep- 
arate drivers for handling music's 
highs, middles and lows. But since 


Rogue Audio M-150 
monoblock amps (2). 
Meadowlark Audio Kestrel 2 
speakers ss 
Meadowlark Audio Бойын 
subwoofer 
SolidSteel 6.3 audio rack... 
SolidSteel amp stands (2) 
AudioQuest Cheetah 
ітегсоппесі..................... 52,100 
AudioQuest Mont Blanc 

speaker cable... 5 
PS Audio xStream Prelude 
AC line (six) 
PS Audio Juice Bar 


$2,500 
$1,000 
$600 


vinyl's 
glorious second act 


Reports of the LP's death 
have been greatly exaggerated 
Fact is, the ойша” Revel went away (it 
just got а litê Беру) Аһ: point it's 
probably ео #9219 find your favorite al 
bums on news) Bagram pressings than to 
wait for the пї@ labelsife release them 
in either of the leading high- 
digital audio formats (DVD-Audio 
and Super Audio CD). And in 
terms of emotional punch 
nothing can compare 


efinition 


the three propagate sound differ- 
ently, they need to travel varied 
distances for their sound waves 
to reach your ears as one. Waves 
arriving slightly out of sync with 
one another lack what's called 
timing coherence. Bad timing kills 
your sense of where each instru- 
ment is located, and because your 
brain must compensate you ex- 
perience “listening fatigue.” Buy- 
ing phase-correct speakers (such 
as the Kestrel 2s we recommend) 
will let you enjoy your music lon- 


power strip 


Total $22,074 


AMPLIFICATION The amp is the easiest place to skimp 


and the most crucial area not to. Typical home theater re- 
ceivers feature everything from surround sound to syntheti- 
cally altered speaker output that can make them sound like the 
Royal Albert Hall. Fun, but none of it is musically accurate. 
These boxes are exercises in extreme compromise. Your first 
step toward enlightenment is upgrading to a separate preamp 
and power amp. Start with a preamp that has analog gain 
(digital gain controls toss away bits of the digital stream at 
lower volumes). You can pay up to $15,000 for one of these, 
but you'll be just as happy with Rogue Audio's $2,500 Mag- 
num 99 tube preamp. The tubes will lend magic to your music 
while remaining true to the original signal, and the 99 pro- 
vides amazing separation of instruments in the stereo image. 
For your power amp, you're looking for large, clean and stable 
power reserves. Monoblock amps devote a separately housed 
amplifier to each channel, and Rogue Audio's M-150 mono- 
block tube amps glow with a calm power, unafraid of all but 
the most extreme speaker loads (they can push up to 150 
watts each). Price: $4,000 for the pair. 

SPEAKERS They're the most important part of a stereo, 
yet the vast majority of speakers on the market today— from 
200 bookshelf pair to $40,000 floor standers—fail to 


ger and hear each port more 
clearly and distinctly. 


frozen margarita with Patrón Platinum. You're paying an 
awful lot of money for something you won't even taste. We 
used AudioQuest's Cheetah interconnects ($2,100 for 2.5 
meters) between the CD player, preamp and amps. The 
Kestrel 2 speakers receive their signal through AudioQuest 
Mont Blanc speaker cable ($1,400 for a pair of eight-footers). 
To stabilize everything, we placed the turntable, CD player 
and preamp on a SolidSteel 6.3 three-shelf equipment 
stand ($1,000). The monoblocks went on SolidSteel's Model 
B amplifier stands ($300 in silver). Finally, for clean power, 
we used PS Audio's xStream Prelude AC line ($129) plugged 
into a PS Audio Juice Bar outlet strip ($200). 

MOMENT OF TRUTH After 45 minutes of switching on 
the components in sequence and waiting for them to warm 
up, the stereo was alive (Aliiive! Sorry). We played the Pixies’ 
Surfer Rosa on LP, followed by Harnoncourt's version of 
Mozart's Requiem оп CD. Somewhere in there we lost track 
of time. By three A.M. we had come toa shocking conclusion: 
This system sounds really good. And it will last decades. All 
you'll have to worry about now is your electricity bill and 
your friends’ sudden unwillingness to vacate your couch. 


“He turns into this horrible thing every full moon!” 


101 


102 


tbmazing NL 


With a hand from Howard Stern, 


Many women visit The Howard Stern Show in hopes of 
becoming a Playmate; Jillian is the first to succeed 
When ғідүвоү Senior Photo Editor Kevin Kuster dis- 
closed that she'd been selected, Jillian shed tears of joy. 


Miss March's wish comes true 


ast year Katharine Walter, mother of beautiful 19-year-old 
Jillian Grace, wrote a letter to Howard Stern. She told him her 
daughter's dream was to be a PLAYBOY Centerfold and asked 
him for an evaluation. Stern did not become America's favorite 
2 shock jock by being slow to seize opportunity. "I've got to get 
this broad on the phone, at least," he said. "My dream in high school was 
to do tons of coke, but my mom didn't go out and score for me." Stern was 
joking about the last part (we think), but soon Jillian and her mom had 
trekked from Washington, Missouri to the Stern show in New York 
Almost immediately everyone in the studio—including PLAYBOY Senior 
Photo Editor Kevin Kuster, who also flew in for the occasion—became 
enamored with Jillian's radiant smile, knockout natural body and soft- 
spoken, girl-next-door appeal. “Most women who come in here never 
end up in PLAYBOY," said Stern. "They think they're hot, and they're not. 
Jillian looks like a Playmate to me in every sense of the word. Boom!" Hef 
agreed, and Stern got dubbed Deputy Fditor for his scouting skills. 
"Howard is my favorite comedian and one of my heroes, and I'd like 
to thank him for having faith in me,” says Jillian, noting that when she 
moved from the more populous Springfield, Missouri four years ago, 
listening to Stern helped make her new rural surroundings more toler- 
able. Now she has adjusted. “Ev one in California asks me what we do 
in Missouri,” she says. “М we have fun. There are a lot of open fields 
in the area, and we build bonfires in them. Everybody parks their trucks 
close together and turns on their stereos, and we have a great time. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


Nobody can break anything їп a field.” 
Breaking, as in into a sweat, is some. 
thing Jillian knows a lot about. She's a 
certified personal trainer, a career that 
has definitely influenced her views. “A 
big muscular back is my favorite part of 
a man's body,” she says. “But looks aren't 
really important. Attraction is more 
out having fun with a guy, and 


pretty far on a fi 
have small-town-girl values, I guess." 
thing wrong with that, particularly 
when the small-town girl possesses an 
intoxicating sweetness. Jillian even 
blushes when we ask about the naughty 
Girl Scout costume she wore to Hef's 
Halloween bash. “It was a green mid- 
riff shirt that tied in the front, with 
thigh-high stockings and a short skirt 
with patches sewn on,” she says. “One 
patch had lollipops that said LICK ME 
(text concluded on page 140) 


ian is proud to show off her all-natural 
physique. “I definitely hope to stay this 
way,” she says. “In Missouri my breasts 
are big, but in Los Angeles they’re just 
average. I'm happy with my body, though, 
and | would not want to change it just to 
please other people.” 


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


PLAYBOY’S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH 


Е 
- 


MISS MARCH 


ies "TN І BEC EAS 
4 Ru ^ air 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


NAME: ‘han race 

mus: wasr: 244 rps: IG 
4 4 

HEIGHT: DS wercur:__//Z 


TURN-ONS a, [e] о, 
Paw) t Ait all tt az , Y, 
TURNOFFS: O, Ow). 1 е / 


О, е ед e Jar 
BEST ADVICE I EVER сот ~My mown always told me То” 


Coi 0 
a баса plan. 
WHY 1 LOVE MISSOURI: — you do no Life theuxather today, 


-it could be totally d fecus Zornorraum; کسان‎ e 


TV SHOWS I CAN'T MISS: 
SEXIEST MAN ALIVE: Seven Zyler о уа 


IF MONEY WAS NOT AN ISSUE, I'D BUY: A miniature. pe Corre 
z 


um je меге 
INED) 


a 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


A rebel group in Colombia broke into a con- 
vent and rounded up all the nuns. The guer- 
rilla leader announced, “We have been in the 
jungle for months without female companion- 
ship. We apologize in advance, but we are going 
to have sex with every single one of you.” 

One of the young nuns shielded the Mother 
Superior and said, “No! Not Mother Superior!” 

‘The Mother Superior pushed her aside and 
said, “He said every single one of us.” 


A woman seeking a divorce fell in love with 
her lawyer even though he was a married man. 
After the divorce decree, she visited him in his 
office and said, “Isn't there some way we can 
be together?” 

Taking her by the shoulders, the lawyer 
said, “Snatched drinks in grimy bars, talking 
dirty over the phone, hurried meetings in 
Sordid motel rooms—is that really what you 
want for us?" 

"No, no," she sobbed. 

"Well," the divorce lawyer said, "it was just a 
suggestion." 


А third-grade teacher asked one of her stu- 
dents to spell the word straight. The boy did so. 
"Then the teacher asked, "What is the definition 
of the word?" 

The boy replied, “Without ice." 


Vintners in the Napa Valley who produce 
pinot blancs and pinot grigios have developed 
a new hybrid grape. It acts as an antidiuretic 
and will reduce the number of trips an older 
person has to make to the toilet during the 
night. They will be marketing the new wine 
аз pinot more. 


How is sex like music? For every person who 
pays for it, hundreds are getting it for free. 


Two friends agreed to meet for drinks after 
work. One arrived late and said, "Sorry, but on 
my way here I saw three punks slapping my 
old boss around." 
His friend asked, "Did you stop to help?" 
The guy said, “No. I figured the three of 
them could handle it." 


А naked woman walked into a bar and asked 
if she could get a drink. The bartender said, 
“No problem, but it doesn't look like you'll be 
able to pay for it." 

The woman pointed to her pussy and said, 
“Will this do?” 

The bartender took a look and said, “Got 
anything smaller?” 


Three married couples moved into town and 
wanted to join the local church. The minister 
told them that before they could be admitted, 
they had to abstain from sex for 30 days. One 
month later they returned. The minister asked 
them if they had fulfilled the requirement. The 
elderly couple said they'd had no trouble 
abstaining. The middle-aged couple said the 
first two weeks were difficult, but they managed 
to abstain. The third couple were newlyweds. 
The husband said, “We were doing okay until 
my wife dropped a can of paint.” 

‘The minister asked, “A can of paint?” 

The husband said, “Yes. When she bent over 
to pick it up, I couldn't control myself and гау- 
ished her on the spot.” 

The minister said, “Well, I'm sorry. But given 
that fact, you won't be welcome in our church.” 

The husband said, “I understand. We're no 
longer welcome in Home Depot, either.” 


Why do mice have small balls? 
Not many of them know how to dance. 


What do you call two dozen rednecks atan orgy? 
A family reunion. 


А man complained to a friend, “I had it all 
money, a beautiful house, a big car, the love of 
a beautiful woman—and now it's all gone.” 
His friend asked, “What happened?” 
The man said, “My wife found out. Now she 
has it all.” 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY, 
730 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, or 
e-mail through our website at jokes.playboy.com. 
100 will be paid to the contributor whose sub- 
mission is selected. 


“Pm usually quite shy when I meet a girl for the first time.” 


115 


LORNE GREENE, Welcome to the Pon 
derosa (1964). Pa Cartwright, who cut 
six albums, scored a hit with his mostly 
spoken ballad “Ringo.” Performed with 
a “pure, naked virility” (in the words of 
Henry Mancini), it went to number one. 


RICHARD ROUNDTREE, The Man 
From Shaft (197. 
thin, but soul producer Eugene McDan 
I'm 


. Roundtree’s voice is 


iels saves most of the cuts. Best lyric: 
a private eye, with private plans/T'll 
make private love, with gentle hand 


BURT REYNOLDS, Me What 1 Am 
(1974). Manly yet gentle love songs. 


TELLY SAVALAS, Telly 
(1974). The TV chrome 
dome admits in the liner 


notes that “singing is not 
my bag.” His cover of the 
Beatles’ “Something” 
sounds as if the some 


thing is on his shoulder 
and he’s challenging 
you to knock it off. 


STEVEN SEAGAL, 
Songs From the Cry 
tal Cave (2004). 
Moody 


and wailing blues 


vocals 


guitar from the 

ponytailed martial 
artist. Available only 
in France. 


TTING AN 


HERVE VILLECHAIZE, “Why” (1980) 
Despite his fear of being infantilized (he 
often grew facial hair when Fantasy 
Island wasn’t shooting), Villechaize 
agreed to contribute to an album called 
Children of the World. In a voice that 
falls somewhere between those of an ill 
child and a healthy Muppet, he asks the 


timeless question “Why...do...peo 


ple...have to fight?” To his credit Ville 
chaize seems ignorant of how odious 
the recording is, as evidenced by a TV 
appearance archived at treasurehiding 
.com/random/why.htm. 


GARY COLEMAN, “The Outlaw and 
the Indian” (19$ 
rap single features Coleman and his 


7). This car crash of a 


advisor at the time, a Michael Jackson 
imitator named Dion Mial, who is “rap- 
ping with my latest squaw” in the feyest 


voice possible when Coleman interrupts, 
“Hey, Indian dude, don't cop a 'tude, 
don't start no feud!” Coleman maintains 
a bit of his dignity by not uttering 
“Whachu talkin’ "bout, Indian?” 


MARCEL MARCEAU, The Best of Mar- 
cel Marceau (1970). Both sides are silent 
until the last minute, which is filled with 
applause. Make sure to put down the 
needle exactly 19 minutes before you 
bring it home, lest the clapping seem 
either premature or sarcastic. 


The Love 
and Terror Cult 


MAE WEST, “Twist and 
Shout” (1966). The 73- 
year-old alternates be- 
tween faking climax and singing with 


such vibrato she sounds like Miss Piggy. 


JAYNE MANSFIELD, “Suey” (1967). 
Mansfield coos gibberish over a guitar 
some believe is played by Jimi Hendrix. 


BRIGITTE BARDOT, “Comic Strip” 
(1968). This duet with troll-like French 
sex god Serge Gainsbourg has Bardot 
using comic-book sound effects that some 
hear as metaphors for orgasm—“Shebam! 
Pow! Blop! Wizz!” Others don’t. 


ANDREA TRUE, “Моге More More (Pt. 
1)” (1976). When the former porn star 
asks, “How do you like it? How do you 
like it?” only a fool doesn’t respond, 
“Quite a bit! Quite a bi 


PHYLICIA ALLEN, “Josephine Super- 
star" (1978). Before becoming TV's 
Clair Huxtable, Allen was married to 
the cop from Village People and collabo- 
rated on a disco concept album about 
the life of Josephine Baker. It features the 
sexiest celebrity LP cover ever. 


SAMANTHA FOX, “Touch Me (I Want 
Your Body)" (1986). The British model 
hit number one in 15 countries and had 
the largest breasts of anyone who released 
a record in 1986, other than Barry White. 


KIM BASINGER, “The Crime" (1989). 
This call-and-response seduction be- 
tween Basinger and Prince is the least 
sexy thing either has ever done. 


ALYSSA MILANO, “Kimi Wa Sunshine 
Boy” (1989). The Who's the Boss? star 
cut five albums that were hits overseas. 
This song is special: It’s in Japanglish. 


NAOMI CAMPBELL, “Cool as Ice 
(Everybody Get Loose)” (1991). The 


short-tempered supermodel 
launched her musical career by singing a 
duet with Vanilla Ice. Costly error. 


PRINCESS STEPHANIE, “In the 
Closet” (1992). The Monaco royal’s 
pop stardom peaked with a cameo on 
Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. Sharing 
a song about being in the closet with 
Jacko—ir’s a fairy tale come true. 


PARIS HILTON, “Screwed” (20052). A 
Miami club crowd booed Hilton as she 
lip-synched this single from her forth- 
coming debut album. But if the video is 
anything like her last one, thumbs up. 


PETER WYNGARDE, Peter Wyngarde 
(1970). The star of the U.K. detective 
show Department S resisted efforts to 
capitalize on his fame until RCA gave 
him full artistic control. He then deliv- 
ered what may be the most deliberately 
insane album ever recorded. The stand- 
out track is “Rape,” on which Wyngarde 
reviews how rape is conducted around 
the world (Italy: “Oh, Madonna, you 
didn't offer, for that ГЇЇ have your daugh- 
Rape is hardly ever neces- 
.S.: “American rape is full of 
Hippie and the Skinhead” de- 
scribes a confrontation between a gay 
flower child and a marauding skinhead, 
presented as a country-and-western 
nursery rhyme (“Billy was a queer, 
pilly, sexy hippy/He wore his gear 
frilly, hairy, zippy...”). The album 

sold briskly until the BBC banned it. 

RCA then pulled it from its catalog. | 


hate 


NICHELLE NICHOLS, Down to Earth 
(1968). It's the only album ever to in- 
clude versions of both “The Lady Is a 
Tramp” and the Star Trek theme. 


LEONARD NIMOY, The Way I Feel 
(1968). This album is as hard to turn off as 
the early weeks of American Idol. Nimoy 
made about a dozen LPs altogether, each 
in his signature flat-and-shaky style. 


WILLIAM SHATNER, The Transformed 
Man (1968). Shatner doesn’t win too 
many accolades for best actor, but he’s 
seldom challenged for the most acting 
award. That's especially true of this clas- 
sic, with his melodramatic incantations 
of Dylan and Beatles lyrics. The best 
track combines the depressing “Spleen 
(“Hope, like a bat fluttering blindly, beats 
his wings against the walls and dashes his 
head on the rotting ceiling”) with a stac- 
cato delivery of “Lucy in the Sky With 
Diamonds,” in which 

Shatner appears to be 
under the influence 
of drugs he seems 
quite unfamiliar 
with (“Lucy! In! 


118 


The! Sky! With diamooooOONDS 
Last year Shatner cut an album, Has 


Been, with Ben Folds, that no one is mak- 
ing fun of—yet. 


CASSIUS CLAY, | Am the Greatest! 
(1963). The future Muhammad Ali's disc 
includes taunts (“I predict Mr. Liston’s 
dismemberment/TIl hit him so hard he'll 
wonder where October and November 
went”) and boasts (“This will be the 
best-selling album of all time Sales 


were slower than expected. 


EVEL KNIEVEL, Е 
(1974). After reciting 
music, Evel takes questions. When a 


I Speaks to the Kids 
z his own poetry to 


young fan asks why one should always 
wear a helmet, the daredevil smacks him 
upside the head to demonstrate 


CARL LEWIS, Modern Man (1987) 
Lewis’s musical career ended in 1993 
when his voice cracked while he sang the 
national anthem before an NBA game. 
His remains the only known version of 
“The Star-Spangled Banner” that in- 


cludes a midsong apology. 


KOBE BRYANT, Visions (2000). On the 
track “Thug Poet,” which features Nas 
and 50 Cent, Bryant cites automatic 
weapons, cocaine and federal agents as 
metaphors for his rhyming ability. The 
album was so bad, the record label de- 
cided not to officially release it 


JOHN KERRY AND THE ELECTRAS, 
The Electras (1961). Prior to shipping off 
to Vietnam, Kerry played bass in this 
rich-kid instrumental surf band. A copy 
of its lone LP sold for $2. 


51 on eBay. 


EVERETT DIRKSEN, Gallant Men 
(1967). The “golden voice of the Sen- 


ate” from Illinois won a Grammy for 
this collection of patriotic readings. 


SAM ERVIN JR., Senator Sam at Home | 
(1973). The North Carolina senator fol 
lowed up his important work as chair- 
man of the Watergate Committee with 
renditions of “Bridge Over Troubled 
Water” and “If I Had a Hammer.” 


ROBERT BYRD, Mountain Fiddler 
(1978). The senator from West Virginia 
played at campaign stops but still won. 


ORRIN HATCH, Jesus’ Love Is Like a 
River (1998). The Utah senator, who 
earns $20,000 a year in song royalties, 
says that anyone who illegally down- 
loads more than three songs should have 
his computer destroyed. 

7 IN TRA 
5 | 


TIMOTHY LEARY, Turn On, Tune In, 

Drop Out (1966). Leary pontificates іп | 
LSD-induced gibberish (“Our slimy pro 
tozoan fathers in moist cellular heaven, 
hallowed be thy tissue name...”) over 
psychedelic music 


CHARLES MANSON, Lie: The Love 
and Terror Cult (1970). The Beach 
Boys recorded a song by the then 
unknown Manson on 20/20, 
but he couldn’t land a con- 
tract of his own. Some 
theorize that he sent 
the Family to kill 
two producers 
who had re- 
jected his work 
bur thar they tar- 
geted the wrong peo- 
ple. Manson released 
Lie to fund his defense. 


coaching 
Mr. T as a rapper is a far 
DAVID 


lime 
‚ ("I am the night 
Г wanna rock 


Il night lı ' 
YV the night E) 


JOE PESCI, Vincent 
LaGuardia Gambini Sings 
Just for You (1998). As a 
teen Pesci recorded an LP 

(concluded on page 161) 


Tender Words 


= 


You LiKE HE 


FANTASTIC. WHEN 
WE MAKE LOVE HE SAYS 
58% HOST WONDERFUL 
PANG u 


RA WIDE, 
SH GONNA 
MA enit you 
in fe. 


C WHAT YoU IKE 
BET, You Suut} 
> 


WHAT ABOUTRAT probiert al ZARRINGZ Ho, 1 ром 
Yolk WERE HAVING WITH ИКЕ MER who WEAR 
TAR WEARINGZ EARRINGS se 


HIS WORDS ARE So ХЕРА, 
ROMANTIC. WHEN IH wif WH 
Y FORGET AU MY PROBLEHS. A 


119 


SEX, DUDS 


AND Aan A N D IR О\ L 


erties 


Fashion by JOSEPH DE ACETIS This is the most dangerous- 
sounding band to cross the 
Pond in ages. Clockwise from 
Music and style go hand in top: Gary Powell wears a T- 
hand—just look at the coolest Ru BY DRAGONEENELDTEE 
new acts storming the stage 


ING COMPANY ($50) and 
Pants by JOHN RICHMOND 
DENIM ($380). Carl Barat is 
Photography by MICK ROCK in a shirt ($450) and sleeve- 
less tee ($530) by JOHN 
RICHMOND DENIM, jeans by 
TRASH AND VAUDEVILLE 
($48) and a hat by BAILEY 
($34). John Hassall is in a 
JOHN RICHMOND DENIM T- 
shirt ($430), jeans by TRASH 
AND VAUDEVILLE ($48) and 
a blazer by DAANG GOOD- 
MAN FOR TRIPP NYC ($58). 


Produced by JENNIFER RYAN JONES 


THE LIBERTINES 


Two Way Monologue (Astralwerks), the Norwegian songwriter’s latest album, showcases his perfect melodies, wistful lyrics апа 
Sen ë - Қ l 


varied arrangements. He’s in pants ($480), a jacket ($1,225) and print shirt ($385), all by JEAN PAUL GAULTIER HOMME. 


= е 
—, y - 
(4 


1, based in Glasgow, is part of the thriving indie scene there, which over the years has produced the Jesus and 
ain, Primal Scream and Belle & Sebastian. The band’s latest album, Final Straw (A&M), is packed with sweeping, 
mic rock reminiscent of early U2 as well as Coldplay. Back row, from left: Johnny Quinn is in a denim jacket by 
($340) and jeans by ($179). Tom Simpson wears an embroidered hoodie ($56) and a T-shirt 
) by than Connolly’s in a track jacket by ($50), an embroidered T-shirt by 
($36) and his own jeans. Mark McClelland wears a jacket by ($170). Reclining in front is 
list—and band mastermind—Gary Lightbody, in a jacket by ($60) and his own jeans. 


FAT JOE 


Нг. .25 — VA т 
irt FT MISKEEN ORIGINALS ($85) jeans 7 CHROME ($195) and Air Force 1s by NIKE ($180). His hat is bı 


THE KILLERS 


126 


“Td like to prove to you that the best things in 
life are not always free.” 


SILENCE IS SEXY 


Some women like to give men 
directions in bed, but Рт a little 
shy. I won't say, “You're doing it 
wrong" or *Why aren't you do- 
ing it this way?" But I will moan 
more if a guy is doing some- 
thing I like. If he's really close 
to my G spot and | want him to 
be even closer, PII shift my 
body until he's touching the 
right place. Sometimes you 
have to talk while having sex. 
If we're in one position and 
1 feel like doing it differently, 
VII say, “Turn me over." PII 
also say, “Harder, faster.” And 
when I’m going down on a 
guy or if I'm on top of him, I 
always like to ask, “Оо you 
like it better this way or that 
way?" That way he can just 
nod and he doesn't have to 
explain the details. 


Kid Rock 


PLAY BONS 


How did this scraggly dude become rock's party 
master? And how does he get those women? 


1 


PLAYBOY: You're everywhere we look. At 
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you led 
the jam session with Tom Petty and 
Steve Winwood. Next you're at a Willie 
Nelson tribute, and Keith Richards, 
Jerry Lee Lewis and Merle Haggard 
are playing in your band. How'd you 
turn into the host with the most? 

KID ROCK: I just like to jam. I like to play. 
It's amazing to see the people at this 


level who can't jam. People at the top of 


the charts who sell all these records 
and yet can't fucking jam. You'd think 
they would learn how to jam before 
attempting to become superstars—that 
might help music out a little bit. In this 
and age when everything’s so con- 
trived, maybe people feel it if you're 
doing something from the heart. Or 
maybe I’m just fun to hang out with 


2 


PLAYBOY: You became popular for a 
sound that merged rock and rap, but 
lately you've moved toward country 
Does different music bring you a dif- 
ferent audience? 

KID ROCK: A couple of good ballads 
equals a lot more good-looking girls 
the shows. I don't care how cool some- 
one thinks it is, I do not want to be 
playing in front of 10,000 sweaty guys 
every night. I love Slipknot—I like 
their records—but I don't want to play 
for that crowd. 


3 


PLAYBOY: "Picture" was a major turning 
point in your career. It's certainly your 
biggest hit. Why did you have so much 
trouble getting it released? 

KID ROCK: At t I didn't know it was 
one of the best songs Га ever written, 
and it wasn't until later, when we 
recorded it, that everyone agreed it 
was kind of magical. Then people 
started overthinking it. I don't want to 
mention names, but one of the heads of 


Interview by Alan Light 


the record company said to me, “I've 
been singing it to people at the radio 
stations, and they're not really hearing 
it." And I'm like, "You've got to be 
fucking kidding me. You're singing 
it? You can't sing—obviously you'd be 
in a different position if you could." 
That was just comical to me. Then I 
had to confront somebody and say, “1 
heard you said that if we release this 
single it'll kill my career. Is that true?” 
And they said yeah. I pretty much said, 
"Fuck you. That's wrong." And then of 
course the record was successful, and 
those same people took credit for it 


4 


PLAYBOY: Were you angry? 
KID ROCK: It just pisses me off. At first, 
when you're young, you don't care, 
and now it feels as if all I do is bitch 
about this shit. It's almost to the point 
that I ought to just shut my fucking 
mouth and go home to my fucking 
money and fuck all y'all [laughs]. Be- 
cause it's not fun to sit around bitching 
about it. Whatever happened to talking 
about pussy and blow? 


5 


PLAYBOY: So how would you fix the 
record busines: 
KID ROCK: Sign talented people. People 
with some scars and some cuts and 
some feel, bands that have been out 
touring, playing music. Don't go fish 
some fucking kid out of a mall for some 
goddamned American Idol bullshit show. 
I mean, that's a great comedy sketch, 
but put one of these fucking American 
idols next to me on a fucking stage and 
let's see who ends up the idol. It's sad, 
too, because these kids are just trying to 
make some money, and God bless 'em, 
they should be able to, but look what it's 
done to music. It's turned it into gar- 
bage. So I'd start by signing talented 
people. I think that's where it's going, 
too—you see it coming around. 


6 


PLAYBOY: Record companies are in a 
frenzy over downloading and piracy. 
Are you worried? 

KID ROCK: It's going to happen. We're 
not going to stop it. It's like anything 
else—someone will capitalize and make 
a mint off it, and then we'll all get jacked 
around, walls will be set up, and eventu- 
ally itll work itself out. Right now who 
knows who's doing it right and who's 
doing it wrong? When it first started 
happening the record companies came 
to me and said, “We need you to stand 
up against this bootlegging and piracy 
and shit. All the other artists are.” But 
after doing research on it and talking to 
people with some brains—because I'm 
not the most knowledgeable person on 
this—I said, “Wait a second.” The 
record companies have been ripping 
off the artists for years. Now somebody's 
ripping off the record companies, and 
they want the artists to stand up for 
them. So I was like, “Fuck you! I'm hap- 
py they're ripping you off." It's kind of 
funny. I'm getting ripped off either way. 


7 


PLAYBOY: Will albums last? 

KID ROCK: It’s turning into a singles mar- 
ket. I love how they do those awards 
shows, like [in an announcer's voice], 
‘And now, with 10 number one sin- 
gles...” Man, you look back 20 years at 
all the number one hits from the old 
Billboards and you don't know any of 
them—they’re all garbage! It's just 
because radio is such a political, bullshit 
world. But I think a great album is 
where the true heart of the thing lies. I 
don't want to have my shit turn into sin- 
gles. I don't mind you downloading my 
shit—download the album, fine. But 
just cherry-picking songs, fuck that. 


8 


PLAYBOY: How does the country world 
stack up to the hip-hop world? 


129 


POLOAYSB.0»5Y. 


130 


KID ROCK: If you're blind, they're identi- 
cal. They're two communities that 
aren't mainstream but influence the 
mainstream heavily, and they both talk 
about their communities and what's 
going on with their heritage and cul- 
ture. Each side has a tight-knit group 
of people who guest on each other's 
records and tours. It's funny to see it all 
start to mesh, too. Proof, from Em- 
inem's group D12, just said to me, 
“God, my favorite song is ‘It’s Five 
O'Clock Somewhere, " by Alan Jackson 
and Jimmy Buffett. That's just one ex- 
ample, but you hear it all the time. 

It's totally going to happen. As white 
hip-hop kids get back in touch with 
their roots—and, I guess you could say, 
with their whiteness—it's inevitable. It 
will help a lot in race relations, too. To 
have someone who is white and some- 
one who is black and have them be ex- 
actly who they want to be, do whatever 
they want and be able to get along—I 
mean, that's pretty much the key. It's 
not going to end racism, but it'll be a 
positive thing. 


9 


PLAYBOY: You went to Iraq and played 
for the troops. What was that like? 

KID ROCK: It was all great, very reward- 
ing, one of the best experiences of my 
life. Flying into Baghdad International 
Airport and walking through this 
crowd of 5,000 people and everyone's 
just screaming—it's the biggest acco- 
lade you can get, a bigger scream than 
we could ever hear in the largest arena 
in the United States. Think of when 
you're watching a movie and someone's 
acting like he's starving. You can't really 
appreciate it ‘cause you're sitting 
there with a big fucking popcorn and 
а Coke in your hand. You just can't ap- 
preciate it enough until you go there 
and see how young these kids are and 
how hot and shitty it is, with sand and 
garbage blowing all over. It's the worst 
possible fucking place you could be on 
the face of the earth. Why can't we 
have a war in Tahiti? 


10 


PLAYBOY: What are your feelings about 
the war at this point? 

кїр ROCK: I won't necessarily always 
agree with the president, but ГЇЇ sup- 
port him and stand by him. To be 
honest, I’m not educated enough to 
speak about it, and I don’t think any 
of these other motherfuckers are, either. 
Um pretty sure Janeane Garofalo's 
and that chick from the Dixie Chicks’ 
educations don't stretch that far. Look 
up Condi Rice's or George Bush's 
education, where they went to school. 
They've been doing this shit their 
whole fucking lives, while we've been 


out dicking around with guitars, en- 
tertaining people. Fuckers in Holly- 
wood who want to use the camera to 
be like, “Guess who I'm fuckin’ now?" 
and “Oh, stop the war!"—all that shit 
just makes me sick. It really makes my 
stomach turn. 


11 


PLAYBOY: Ashlee Simpson got caught 
lip-synching on Saturday Night Live. 
And last year you complained about 
the Super Bowl halftime show, not be- 
cause of Janet Jackson's wardrobe mal- 
function but because no one sang live. 

kip ROCK: I don't give a shit if my kid 
sees Janet Jackson's boob. Big deal. 
What I do give a shit about is if some- 
one—and I don't know if this is true— 
was trying to use that as a publicity 
scam. Then you can go fuck yourself. 
How about this: Next time leave your 
tape machine at home and sing live, be- 
cause then you wouldn't have the time 
to sit around and conjure up plans to 
pull off your shirt. At halftime I was the 
only one singing live, and I'm proud to 


My experience in the hood 
is that those kids were a 
lot more educated in a lot of 
ways than we were. You 
didn't have to preach to those 
kids about not doing drugs. 


say it. I'm not putting anybody else 
down, but I'm proud that I always sing 
live. I'm not the greatest singer in the 
world, but I ain't scared. The attraction 
of live performance has come down to 
shock value: “Is someone going to pull 
his dick out? We better pay attention.” 


12 


PLAYBOY- Back in the early 1990s you 
were struggling, doing things like 
playing eighth on a bill of nine on a 
rap tour. How do you look back on 
those years? 

кїр ROCK: It goes back to what I was 
saying earlier about having some 
scars and some feel, finding out what 
works and what doesn't. It's just ex- 
perience, like with anything else. I 
don't want some fucking 18-year-old 
kid to paint my house. I want the guy 
who's been doing it for a while, who 
really knows what he's doing, who's a 
professional. Sometimes it does get to 
be routine—same setup, same bus. I 
mean, I love it to death, but it's the 
show that keeps us going, switching it 


up every night. But back then it was 
different every night. Maybe we would 
get a hotel room and wouldn't have to 
sleep on top of the van that night. 
Maybe we could have people help us 
load our shit in today. Ah, that made 
it awesome back then. 


13 


PLAYBOY: Was there a low point? 

KID ROCK: Probably years ago, before 
my kid was born, being in New York 
for a year and making the Polyfuze 
Method album, living like a rat, on 
dope and crack. That was pretty 
low—but even so, it wasn't that low. I 
still made my albums, did my shit, 
kept moving forward. It wasn't some 
fucking sad story in my life. It was a 
coming-of-age experience. 


14 


PLAYBOY. Fame and money can come 
quickly. Are you surprised that more 
rappers and rockers don't get into 
more trouble? 

KID ROCK: It's weird. My experience in 
the hood is that those kids were a lot 
more educated in a lot of ways than we 
were as kids in the suburbs. You didn't 
have to preach to those kids about not 
doing drugs, about what the value of a 
dollar meant. Then all of a sudden 
somebody gets all that money and loses 
his fucking mind. Everybody hears all 
the stories, from Behind the Music on 
down. If you've got half a fucking 
brain cell left you can look at this shit 
and go, "Oh, all right, I should look 
out for that slip." At least invent a new 
way to fuck up. That would be okay. 
Spend $50 million to try to go to the 
moon or something. That would have 
been a good one if that kid—whatever 
the kid's name is from "М Sync [Lance 
Bass]—succeeded at it. Spend all his 
fucking money and then get shafted— 
at least that Behind the Music story 
would be original. 


15 


PLAYBOY: Whom do you look at and say, 
"That's the career I want to have"? 
кїр ROCK: Bob Seger has been a role 
model for me. He's been around so 
long and has made such great music. 
He's paid his dues really hard, he's 
proud to be where he's from, he's a 
great family man, and he walked away 
from all this with his dignity, without 
looking like an idiot, without bitching 
and moaning about how hard he 
worked. It's great to see somebody 
walk away from this with his dignity, 
because so many people don't, and 
they turn into jokes. Or I could just be 
like Willie Nelson and hang out and 
(concluded on page 142) 


“Just remember, Wilbert, it’s not over until the fat lady moans.” 


131 


DOES 


No longer a teen idol, 
Deborah Gibson enjoys 
a new feeling of freedom 


By David Hochman 


eborah Gibson cares about you. 
| She wants to know if your cappuc- 
| сіпо is foamy enough and if the 

heat lamp outside Buzz Coffee, a 
favorite place of hers on the Sunset 
Strip, is keeping you toasty. To make 
you smile she will peel off her stretchy 
blue sweater just to show you the even 
stretchier baby tee—the one with 
Thumper the rabbit on it—underneath. 
And when there's a break in the con- 
versation, the girl will close her eyes, 
take a breath and sing to you. Sweetly, 
teasingly, almost in a whisper. 

“I'm wild and free,” the song goes. 
“I'm nothing but me.” It's her latest sin- 
gle, called “Naked.” And it's definitely 
keeping you toasty. 

You may remember her as Debbie, 
the young Long Islander who sold 16 
million albums, beginning in 1987 with 
Out of the Blue, but Deborah is the 
one you won't forget. At the age of 34 


“There's not a joke about myself | haven't 
heard," Gibson says. “But I'm like, ‘Okay, 
whatever, bring it on.“ 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUIDO ARGENTINI 


есу » 
———— HÀ 


Sivit ее 


ete tennis УНЕ УИ eren 
= 


she is graceful where she was once 
gangly, and she has traded the sweet-16 
routine—Debbie often gave interviews 
alongside her teddy bear collection 
and pooh-poohed sex before mar- 
riage—for grown-up glam 

I'm not that girl anymore," she says. 
Gone are the bowler hats, the over- 
size blazers and the high-tops. She 
has filled out in all the right places and 
is more tl game to talk about sex, 
drugs and rock and roll. “I feel like I'm 
breaking all the rules," she says. 

Which is funny, because the rules de- 
fined Gibson. By not smoking or swear- 
ing or wearing torpedo brassieres, she 
established herself as the un-Madonna, 
a sort of Top 40 hall monitor. Pure and 
chaste, Gibson sang sunny songs of 
love and odes to electric youth. Gib- 
son's goodness showed us precisely 
what was bad, yet it also made us won- 
der what she was hiding—or at least 
what was under her buttoned-up ox- 
fords. A little girl, it turns out. 

The truth is, Gibson wasn't as late to 
the ball as she'd like us to believe. In 
the early 1990s, around the time she 
and archrival Tiffany were discovering 
how fickle mall jammers can be, Gib- 
son suddenly got the double meaning 
of her top 10 hit "Shake Your Love. 

"I was 19 when | first had sex," she 
says. She looks at you directly when 
she says this, the way she might once 


have talked to you about algebra class. 
“It was so new and overwhelming, but 
the guy was great. I'm glad | grew up 
with the no-premarital-sex idea in my 
head, because it forced me not to grow 
up before | was ready. But once | discov- 
ered sex there was no turning back." 


There was a time when practically every 
suburban girl knew the lyrics to “Only 
in My (text concluded on page 147) 


Gibson says she was 19 when she first 
became intimate with a man. “But once | 
discovered sex, there was no looking back.” 


“I’m really comfortable 
with my body. 

I’m probably the only 
34-year-old in L.A. who 


See more of Deborah Gibson's pictorial at cyber.playboy.com. 


| 


PRU ASTE OT 


fmazing GRACE 


(continued from page 104) 
underneath.” She bites her lip as she 
mentions this detail, as if she’s wonder- 
ing whether she’s being indiscreet. The 
look deepens when we ask if this playful- 
ness translates to her real love life. Then 
she laughs. “It's like that song that goes, 
"They want a lady in the street but a freak 
in bed,” she says. "I think that plays true 
for everyone.” 

Although Jillian is considering moving 
to a city for a few months, she isn't likely 
to surrender her small-town charm. Miss 
March is, after all, a girl whose enthusi- 
asm for her new Honda Del Sol (“I don't 
know anything about cars, but they're so 
cute!”) is eclipsed only by her fondness 
for yodeling. “It started out as a joke, but 
I started enjoying it,” she with a 
laugh. “I'm on lesson five, but the sound 
gets too high-pitched for my speakers, so 
I'm kind of stuck at that stage.” As she 
tilts back her head and starts to yodel, it 
becomes clear that someone with such 
lungs would never let success go to her 
head. “I’m feeling pretty grounded,” she 
says. "I'm a Midwest girl, that's for sure." 


A Chat With Jillian’s Mom 


Jillian's mother, Katharine Walter, 
helped her daughter become a Play- 
mate. We talked to her about sup- 
porting Jillian's ambitions. 
PLAYBOY: Why did you 
write to Howard Stern? 
KATHARINE: Jillian had 
wanted to be in PLAYBOY 
since she was 12 years 
old. Last year she even 
wrote a school paper 
about it. Because she's a 
Howard Stern fan, 1 sent 
the paper and her picture 
to him. I didn't think any- 
thing would come ofit. 
PLAYBOY: Did you encour- 
age her to pursue other 
careers? 

KATHARINE: Sure, but it 
would always come back to 
PLAYBOY. I didn't want to be a hypocrite. 
1 gave up accounting to make glass 
dollhouses that take a year to build, so 
I'm not one to preach about nine-to- 
five jobs. I finally said, “If that’s 
you want, ГЇЇ support your decision.” 


PLAYBOY: Were you apprehensive 
about being on The Howard Stern Show? 
KATHARINE: The first time I watched it, 
they were evaluating a girl and throw- 
ing cupcakes at her tush. I was petri- 
fied that they were going to be horrible 
to Jillian. That changed 
after I met Howard. He's 
very funny, but he has his 
morals in check. I used to 
listen to classical music 
every day, but now I listen 
to Howard. 


PLAYBOY: Did you offer 
Jillian advice before she 
came to to shoot this 
pictori; 


KATHARINE: Only about 
25 pages of it! Basically I 
said, “If you don't want to 
do something, don't.” We 
live in a small town full of 
conservative Republicans 
and farmers. People have asked me if 
I'm worried. I've said, “She's going to 
a gated mansion where they have secu- 
rity guards. She's probably safer there 
than anywhere 1 could send her.” 
"That's comforting to me. 


How Do You Say,“ WHEN (20 
AWAKE, You WILL REMEMBER 
NAMING,” (м ЕҰрЕюсц”% 


Ls Playboy.com 
seeks Supercuts' 
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consideration. 


сот 


94 www.playboy.com 


PLAYBOY 


142 


Kid Rock (continued from page 130) 


Just be cool and be yourself, be funny, be nice to 
people. How’s that for a concept? Just be nice. 


smoke weed and have fun. That sounds 
nice. I could go either way, man. 


16 


PLAYBOY: What have you learned from 
hanging out with Nelson and Jerry Lee 
Lewis and those guys? 

KID ROCK: Actually, I'm going to Memphis 
to record with Jerry Lee, to get some 
piano lessons. You can't learn that any- 
where. I don’t think enough of that is 
being passed down from these great play- 
ers. I know I wouldn't have learned any- 
where else the shit Hank Jr. has shown 
me on guitar. "Oh no, you tune it down 
like this. Let me show you that Allman 
Brothers chord here. Oh, if you want to 
play with that bottle, you gotta go like 
this." They'll show you the real way, a les- 
son you can't get at Guitar Center. That's 
the most valuable shit you can learn. I 


have no problem saying I’m not the best 
player. I'll get there one day, but as cocky 
and outspoken as I am, I’m humble 
enough to know when someone's better, 
and I know how to shut the fuck up and 
listen. I'm pretty good at that. 


17 


PLAYBOY: You're very close to your young 
son. Does he go on the road with you? 

кїр ROCK: He came out last weekend. 
He's 11, and the older he gets, the more 
fun it gets. We just do fun shit, like when 
me and him and Uncle Kracker bought 
the same outfits—blue sports coats, Nike 
Air Force 15 and little derby hats and shit 
to go pimping in. He understands what 
his dad is. He knows we're going to be 
drinking, having a good time, and he 
sees things in a certain light and knows 
no harm's being done—something peo- 


“Why, yes...I have my father's features and my mother's fixtures..." 


ple from the outside looking in might 
not understand. But I know he under- 
stands. He's my son. He isn't starstruck, 
just does not give a shit at all. He's been 
around it and the people who come 
through the house enough. Maybe if the 
star of Yu-Gi-Oh! showed up he'd be im- 
pressed, but other than that he just 
doesn't care. 


18 


PLAYBOY: Some of your girlfriends—Pam 
Anderson, Jaime Pressly—have had a 
certain visibility in this magazine. Is it at 
all strange knowing that millions of guys 
checked out your girlfriend naked? 

KID ROCK: Not at all. I think, if anything, 
it's great, as a matter of fact, because it 
lets you know who's the man [laughs]. Oh 
my God, don't print it like that. Make 
sure there's quote marks around that 
and it says I'm laughing—“The singer 
goes, 'Ha-ha.'" I would come off so bad 
if you print it like that. I am just joking. 


19 


PLAYBOY: We'll take care of you. You're 
a pretty scraggly dude—how do you 
wind up with women like that? What's 
your advice? 

KID ROCK: I don't even know. I'm just not 
a dick. As much as I might sound like 
one on my records, I'm just not a dick. 
Just be cool and be yourself, be funny, be 
nice to people. How about that for a con- 
cept? Just be nice. You can do whatever 
the fuck you want if you're nice. "Can I 
put it in your ass—please?" [laughs] 


20 


PLAYBOY: You've had Pam Anderson as a 
girlfriend, been a character on The Simp- 
sons, sung at the Super Bowl. What's left 
to accomplish? 

KID ROCK: Die young, leave a good- 
looking corpse, right? I don't know. It 
would have been nice to have a big fam- 
ily—I always kind of wanted that—but I 
guess with what I do, God's not going to 
afford me that. But I really can't com- 
plain about what he has afforded me, so 
it’s like anything else—you can't have it 
all. I don't know if I'm really into having 
a 15-year-old kid and having babies run- 
ning around again. I've often thought 
about adopting some older kids. We'll 
see what happens. 

I'm either going to find a wife or I'm 
going to get some servants. But I don't 
want them for the same reason [laughs]— 
it's not that I want a wife to be a servant. 
With a wife, I could have somebody 
around who could really enjoy every- 
thing I have, who I could just share it all 
with. But other than that I'd want ser- 
vants so I could have all my friends over 
all the time, and then the servants could 
just clean everything up. 


PUNCHDRUNH „ев 


Women, the drunker they get, the more they love to 
slug a drag queen, knowing it’s a man. 


That wailing Titanic song, it almost 
fucking killed Flint. That and the guys 
wearing big honking finger rings. After 
that we had a rule about no rings. That, 
and we'd check to see you weren't palm- 
ing a roll of dimes or a lead fishing weight 
to make your fist do more damage. 

Of all the folks, the women are the 
worst. Some of them ain't happy unless 
they see teeth fly out the other side of 
your mouth. Women, the drunker they 
get, the more they love, love, love to slug 
a drag queen, knowing it's a man. Espe- 
cially if he’s dressed and looking better 
than they are. Slapping was fine too, but 
no scratching. 

Right quick, the market opened up. 
Webber and Flint, they started skipping 
dinner, drinking light beer. Any new 
town, you'd catch one of them standing 
sideways in front of a mirror, looking at 
his stomach, his shoulders pulled back 
and his butt stuck out. 

Every town, you'd swear they each had 
another damn suitcase. This suitcase for 
dressy dresses, evening dresses. Then 
garment bags so's they wouldn't wrinkle 
as much. Bags for shoes and wig boxes. A 
big new makeup case for each of them. 

It got so their getups were cutting into 
the bottom line. But say a word about it 
and Flint would tell you, “You got to 
spend it to make it.” That's not even 
adding up what they spent for music. Hit 
or miss, they found that most people 
want to slug you if you play the following 
record albums: Color Me Barbra, Stoney 
End, The Way We Were, Thighs and Whis- 
pers, Broken Blossom and Beaches. Really, 
especially Beaches. 

You could put Mahatma Gandhi into a 
convent, cut off his nuts and shoot him 
full of Demerol, and he'd still take a shot 
at your face if you played him that “Wind 
Beneath My Wings” song. Least that was 
Webber's experience. 

None of this is what the military trained 
them for. But coming home, you don't 
find any want ads for munitions experts, 
targeting specialists, missions point men. 
Coming home, they didn’t find much of 
any kind of job. Nothing that paid near 
what Flint was getting, his legs peeking 
through the slit down the side of a green 
satin evening gown, his toes webbed with 
nylon stockings and poking out the front 
of gold sandals. Flint stopping just long 
enough between songs and slugs to put 
more foundation over his bruises, his cig- 
arette ringed with red from his lips. His 
lipstick and blood. 

County fairs were good business, but 
motorcycle runs came in a close second. 
Rodeos were good too. So were boat 


shows. Or the parking lots outside those 
big gun-and-knife conventions. No, they 
never had to look too far for a good- 
paying crowd. 

Driving back to the motel one night, 
after Webber and Flint had left most of 
their makeup smeared on the blacktop 
outside the Western States Guns and 
Ammo Expo, Webber pulls the rearview 
mirror around to where he's riding 
shotgun. Webber rolls his face around 
to see it in the mirror at every angle and 


says, “I can't be up to this much longer.” 

Webber, he looks fine. Besides, how he 
looks don’t matter. The song matters 
more. The wig and lipstick. 

“I was never what you'd call pretty,” 
Webber says, “but least I always kept 
myself looking...nice.” 

Flint is driving, looking at the chipped 
red paint on his fingernails, holding 
the steering wheel. Nibbling down a 
torn nail with his chipped teeth, Flint 
says, “I was thinking about using a stage 
name.” Still looking at his fingernails, he 
says, “What do you think of the name 
Pepper Bacon?” 

About by now, Flint's girl, she was off 
in flight school. That's just as well. Things 
was sliding downhill. For instance, just 
before they got set up and ready in the 
parking lot outside the Mountain States 


“I don't know, but judging from all the couples on board, 
I think it’s some kind of sex cruise.” 


143 


PL A YB Ory, 


Gem and Mineral Show, Webber looks at 
Flint and says, “Your goddamn boobs are 
too big...” 

Flint’s wearing a halter kind of long 
dress, with straps that tie behind his 
neck to keep the front up. And yeah, his 
boobs look big, but Flint says it’s the new 
dress. And Webber says, “No, it ain't. 
Your boobs been growing for the past 
four states.” 

“All your carping,” Flint says, 
‘cause they're bigger than yours. 

And Webber says, real quiet out the 
corner of his lipstick mouth, he says, 
“Former staff sergeant Flint Stedman, 
you're turning into a sloppy goddamn 
cow...” 

Then it’s sequins and wig hair flying 
every which way. That night they raked 
in a total of zero cash. Nobody wants to 
slug a mess like that, already all scratched 
up and bleeding. Eyes all bloodshot and 
mascara all smeared from crying. Look- 
ing back, that little catfight damn near 
scuttled their mission. 

The reason this country can’t win a war 
is that we're all the time fighting each 
other instead of the enemy. Same as with 
the Congress not letting the military do 
its job. Nothing ever gets settled that way. 
Webber and Flint, they ain't bad people, 
just typical of what we're trying to rise 
above. Their whole mission is to settle 
this terrorism situation, settle it for good. 
And doing that takes money. To keep 
Flint's girl in school. To get their hands 
on a jet. Get the drugs they'll need to 
knock out the regular lease-company 
pilot. That all takes solid cash money. 

The truth be told, Flint's tits were get- 
ting a little on the scary side. 

Flying here, reclining on white leather 
at 51,000 feet, they're headed south 
along the Red Sea, all the way to Jedda, 
where they'll hang a left. The other 
guys in the air right now, all of them 
headed for their own assigned targets, 
you have to wonder how they made 
their money, what pain and torture they 
went through. 


You can still see where Webber got his 
ears pierced and how pulled down and 
stretched out they still look from those 
dangle earrings. 

Looking back, most of the wars in his- 
tory were over somebody s religion. 

This is just the attack to end all wars. 
Or at least most of them. 

After Flint got control of his tits, they 
toured from college to college, any- 
where people drank beer with nothing 
to do. By then Flint had a detached 
retina floating around, making him 
blind in that eye. Webber had a 60 per- 
cent hearing loss from his brain getting 
bounced around. Traumatic brain lesions, 
the emergency room called it. They 
were both of them a little shaky, need- 
ing both hands to hold a mascara wand 
steady, both of them too stiff to work the 
zipper up the back of his own dress. 
Wobbly even on their medium heels. 
Still, they went on. 

When it came time, when the jet fight- 
ers from the United Arab Emirates 
would come to shadow them, Flint might 
be too blind to fly, but he'd be in the 
cockpit with everything he'd learned in 
the Air Force. 

Here, in the white leather cabin of 
their Gulfstream G550, Flint has kicked 
off both his boots, and his bare feet show 
toenails still painted titty pink. You can 
still smell a hint of Chanel No. 5 perfume 
mixed with his BO. 

One of their last shows, in Missoula, 
Montana, a girl steps out of the crowd 
to tell them they're hateful bigots, that 
they're encouraging violent hate crimes 
being acted out against the gender- 
conflicted members of our otherwise 
peaceful pluralistic society. 

Webber standing there, cut off in the 
middle of singing “Buttons and Bows,” 
the spiffy Doris Day version, not the 
cheesy Dinah Shore version, he's wearing 
a strapless blue satin sheath with all his 
chest hair, his shoulder and arm hair bil- 
lowing from wrist to wrist like a lush boa 
of black feathers, and he asks this girl, 


“So you wanna buy a punch or not?” 

Flint's one step away, at the head of the 
line, taking people’s money, and he says, 
“Take your best shot.” He says, “Half 
price for chicks.” 

And the girl, she just looks at them, 
tapping one of her feet in its tennis shoe, 
her mouth clamped shut and pulled way 
over to one side of her face. 

Finally she says, “Can you fake-sing 
that Titanic song?” And Flint takes her 
10 bucks and gives her a hug. “For you,” 
he says, “we can play that song all night 
long...” 

That was the night they finally topped 
50 grand for the mission. 

Now, outside the jet, you can see the 
torn brown-and-gold coastline of Saudi 
Arabia. The windows of a Gulfstream аге 
two, three times the size of the little port- 
holes you get on a commercial jetliner. 
Just looking out at the sun and ocean, 
everything else mixed together from this 
high up, you'd almost want to live, to 
scrub the whole mission and head home 
no matter how bleak the future. 

A Gulfstream carries enough fuel to fly 
6,750 nautical miles, even with an 85 per- 
cent headwind. Their target was going to 
take only 6,701, leaving just enough jet 
fuel to trigger their luggage, their suit- 
cases and the many bags that Jenson had 
loaded in Florida, where they landed 
because the pilot started to feel sick. This 
was after they got him a cup of coffee. 
Three Vicodins ground and mixed in 
black coffee would make most people 
dizzy, groggy, sick. So they landed. Off- 
loaded the regular pilot, on-loaded the 
bags. Mr. Jenson humping the ammo- 
nium nitrate. And here was Flint's girl, 
Sheila, fresh out of flight school and 
ready to take off. 

In the open doorway to the cockpit 
you can see Sheila slip her earphones 
down to rest around her neck. Looking 
back over one shoulder, she says, “Just 
heard on the radio. Somebody dove a jet 
full of fertilizer into the Vatican....” 

“Go figure,” Webber says. 


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Looking out his window, kicked back 
in his white leather recliner, Flint says, 
“We got company.” Off that side of the 
plane, you can see two jet fighters. Flint 
gives them a little wave. The profile of 
each little fighter pilot, they don't wave 
back. And Webber looks at the ice melt- 
ing in his empty glass and says, "Where 
are we going?" 

From the cockpit, Sheila says, “We've 
had them since we made the turn inland 
at Jedda." She puts her headphones back 
over her ears. And Flint leans across the 
aisle to pour the empty glass full of scotch, 
again, and Flint says, "Does Mecca ring a 
bell, old buddy? The al-Haram? How 
about the Ka'ba?” 

Sheila, one hand touching the ear- 
phone over one ear, she says, “They got 
the Mormon Tabernacle, the National 
Baptist Convention headquarters, the 
Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock, 
the Beverly Hills Hotel...” 

Nope, Flint says. Disarmament didn't 
work. The United Nations didn’t either. 
Still, maybe this will. With their friend 
Jenson, our Reverend Godless, to be the 
sole survivor. 


Webber left that girl from 
Missoula everything he had, 
including the Mustang, 
his set of Craftsman tools and 
14 Coach purses with the 
shoes and outfits to match. 


Webber says, “What's in the Beverly 
Hills Hotel?” And Flint drains his glass 
and says, “Тһе Dalai Lama.... 

That girl in Missoula, Montana, Web- 
ber got her name and phone number 
that night. When it came time for them 
all to write out their last will and testa- 
ments, Webber left that girl everything he 
had in the world, including the Mustang 
parked in his folks’ breezeway, his set of 
Craftsman tools and 14 Coach purses 
with the shoes and outfits to match. 

That night, after she'd paid 50 bucks 
to kick Webber's ass, the college girl looks 
at him with his blind white eye swollen 
almost shut, his lips split. He's three years 
older than her, but he looks like her 
grandma, and she says, “So why is it 
you're doing this?” 

And Webber peels off the wig, all the 
strands and curls of blonde hair stuck to 
the blood dried around his nose and 
mouth. Webber says, “Everybody wants 
to make the world a better place.” 

Drinking his light beer, Flint looks at 
Webber. Shaking his head, he says, 
fucker...." Flint says, “Is that my 


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146 


RABAN 


(continued from page 54) 
Peninsula. So once again, as the secession- 
ists saw it, the city drubbed the countryside 
with its imperious rule. 

The rage is all the greater because the 
countryside knows in its heart that it is 
right. America’s sustaining myths are 
rural ones: Virtue resides in the soil, in 
the little house on the prairie, the lonely 
clapboard church, the one-room school, 
the small self-governing Puritan town- 
ship. American writers from James Feni- 
more Cooper and Henry Thoreau to 
Gary Snyder and Barry Lopez have 
expended much eloquence on the theme 
that true wisdom is to be found in the 
woods, not in the arid intellectualism 
(read “best available science”) of the city. 
Like Britain (and unlike France or Italy), 
the U.S., despite producing at least two of 
the great cities of the world, is prone to 
see the city as William Cobbett saw Lon- 
don, as a "great wen,” a pustular, abnor- 
mal swelling on the fair face of the 
countryside. The modern suburban 
dream of rus in urbe reflects that feeling: 
To live in Issaquah, a suburban town 17 
miles east of Seattle, on the edge of the 
Tiger Mountain State Forest, is to conjoin 
oneself to the good countryside and 
escape the bad city. So it’s hardly surpris- 
ing that when the suburbs have to choose 
a side in the war at election time, they 
declare themselves for the country and 
the mystical values that come with being 
close to the smell of the woods and the 
footprints of the mountain lion. Subur- 
banites love to think their God's little acre 
of tract housing is almost, if not quite, a 
farm (one of the most hallowed words in 
American mythology), and if farmers’ 
property rights are threatened by the city, 
they'll go with the farmers every time. 

Faced by this rebellion, the city has been 
quick to turn with venom on the country- 
side, I have heard Seattleites describe driv- 
ing the few hundred miles to Spokane or 
Boise, Idaho as if they had traveled 
through Romania under the Ceausescu 
dictatorship. They extol the grandeur of 
the environment along the route, even as 


they deplore the meanness of the people 
they saw there: their massed ranks of bel- 
ligerent American flags, their forests of 
Bush-Cheney signs, their unspeakable 
restaurants, the scarifying messages on 
the signboards of their fundamentalist 
churches. From behind the steering wheel, 
they've seen bigots, creationists, rabid pro- 
lifers, environmental vandals—unwashed, 
illiberal America, red in tooth, claw, reli- 
gion and politics. “East of the mountains,” 
as Seattle likes to say, meaning the Cascade 
Range, lies a benighted foreign country, 
the Jesusland that stole the 2004 election. 

I've been guilty of this myself. Driving 
one night through eastern Washington 
long ago, I happened to pick up an AM 
station on which a deep-voiced preacher 
was performing phone-in exorcisms, 
bringing sobbing women to what 
sounded like orgasm as he wrestled evil 
spirits from their innermost beings. For 
a while this show so colored my view of 
“east of the mountains” that I readily fell 
in with the received urban wisdom that 
the eastern half of the state is populated 
by far-right religious lunatics. 

Not true at all. The American Religion 
Data Archive (thearda.com), maintained by 
the sociology department at Penn State 
University, maps the U.S., county by 
county, by religious affiliation and church 
membership. In many counties in Alabama 
and Arkansas you can see the overwhelm- 
ing preponderance of “evangelical Protes- 
tant” over all other categories, including 
“unclaimed”—the category that includes 
unbelievers like me, along, I imagine, with 
people whose beliefs are so eccentric they 
defy categorization altogether. It turns 
out that ungodly Seattle and King County 
have a lower proportion of unclaimeds 
(62.7 percent) than rural counties east of 
the mountains such as Stevens (72.7 per- 
cent) or Pend Oreille (76.6 percent). As the 
figure for Spokane County (63.9 percent) 
confirms, people in cities are more likely 
to go to church than people in the coun- 
tryside in generally irreligious Washington. 

Yet it’s true that the rural east does 
vote in step with the Christian right—not 
because it’s full of born-againers but 
because, perhaps, there is a natural coin- 


“Yeah, but with me—up front—you know I'm a weasel.” 


cidence of interest between country 
dwellers and evangelicals. The funda- 
mentalists are skeptical of science; so, for 
its own reasons, is the countryside. Fun- 
damentalist theology, with its elevation of 
personal responsibility (to your god, for 
your own soul and your own property) 
above the merely communal, chimes 
nicely with the country’s view of things. 
American Protestantism and American 
individualism have been twinned since 
the Puritans set up the Massachusetts Bay 
colony, but in recent years the city, with 
its loathed science and loathed bureau- 
cracy, has come to be perceived, in the 
suburbs hardly less than in the country- 
side, as the enemy of individualism—not 
for philosophical or religious reasons but 
because of “setbacks” and “critical areas.” 

Liberals blamed the result of the last 
election on culture wars of the kind 
described brilliantly by Thomas Frank in 
What's the Matter With Kansas? But what's 
the matter with Kansas is what's the mat- 
ter with Connecticut and California and 
Washington state: The countryside is up 
in arms against the city over the issues 
of land use and property rights, and the 
city, in its high-minded high-handedness, 
must bear much of the blame for this. 

The hated Ron Sims acknowledged as 
much after the Cedar County secession- 
ists lost their case in the state supreme 
court. Sims said the movement succeeded 
in telling the county it needs to decen- 
tralize and be more sensitive to rural con- 
cerns. “It has been a message that has 
clearly been received by me,” he said in 
1998. Seven years on, Sims is still in 
place, and the country still comes to 
town, waving placards saying RON SIMS, 
KISS MY GRASS. One recent aggrieved pro- 
tester asked a Seattle Times reporter, “Can 
I come take 65 percent of your condo?” 

Late last November the Bush adminis- 
tration proposed to cut more than 80 per- 
cent of designated “critical habitat” for 
Pacific salmon and steelhead from south- 
ern California north to the Canadian bor- 
der. Coming so soon after the election, the 
proposal looked like an extravagant thank- 
you note to the builders, loggers and 
landowners of the coastal heartland and a 
cheerful fuck-you to the effete city crowd 
of environmentalists and recreational users 
of the countryside. Grandly scorning best 
available science, it gave notice to America 
that this administration means to cham- 
pion your right to do what you damn well 
please on your own damn land. 

It is the duty of "civil governments" to 
"protect the rights of property, as well as 
those of life and liberty," Isham Harris, 
governor of Tennessee, told the state leg- 
islature in January 1861 as he severed Ten- 
nessee from the Union. The war between 
the states began as a quarrel over property 
rights. Be grateful for small mercies: In the 
present rancorous division of the U.S., at 
least property means property, not slaves. 


DEBBIE GIBSON 


(continued from page 134) 
Dreams” and “Lost in Your Eyes.” The 
music wasn't cool, but Gibson knows in 
her heart that she planted the seeds for 
the current crop of female pop-rockers. 

“Britney, Jessica Simpson and all the 
rest will deny that they grew up on my 
music,” Gibson says with a sly smile. 
“But I'm sorry. If you were living in the 
South when ‘Shake Your Love’ was a hit, 
you were singing it with a hairbrush in 
your pink bedroom.” 

There's no bitterness in her tone, prob- 
ably because (a) Gibson is rich enough not 
to care, and (b) she actually has talent and 
always did. Gibson wrote, produced and 
sang her own songs even when all she had 
was a crappy Casio keyboard and a four- 
track tape machine in the family garage. 

And then there's (c): Gibson's career 
continues to thrive. She has flourished as 
a stage actress for more than a decade, 
with lead roles on Broadway and Lon- 
don's West End and in traveling pro- 
ductions of Les Misérables, Grease and 
Chicago. Doing theater helped her con- 
nect with her sensuality. Take her role in 
Gypsy: "I've never felt more powerful 
than when I was standing in front of an 
audience with nothing but feathers cov- 
ering my breasts." 

The same sense of confidence is dis- 
played in these pictures. "There's not a 
joke about myself I haven't heard," Gib- 
son says. "I'm already anticipating peo- 
ple's reactions to seeing me here: 'Lost in 
Your Thighs,’ ‘Electric Boobs.’ But I'm 
like, ‘Okay, whatever, bring it оп." 

In many ways Gibson is a whole new 
woman these days. She sold the pop-star 
mansion and now lives on her own in Los 
Angeles—happy, optimistic and, as the 
song goes, wild and free. Still, she hasn't 
left New York behind entirely. “I’m not 
like other L.A. girls,” she says. “I like guys 
who can bring out the rude, politically 
incorrect side of me. And I'm really com- 
fortable in my own skin and really com- 
fortable with my body. I haven't had so 
much as a Botox shot. I’m probably the 
only 34-year-old in L.A. who hasn't. 
Everything's natural." 

Which is why she decided to show off 
here, even though it earned her a few 
raised eyebrows. “My dad doesn't even 
like that they have nude statues in the 
White House,” she says. “But PLAYBOY is 
an icon. My guy friends want to know, 
“Сап you get me into the Mansion?” 

Gibson is more than happy to keep 
looking forward. “I recently had some 
old clothes shipped to me. When I saw 
the jackets with the padded shoulders I 
thought, I can’t believe I was 19 years old 
and dressing like Joan Collins. I felt like 
begging the world to forgive me.” 

The way she looks now, we're the ones 
who should be begging. 


WHERE 


Below is a list of retailers 
and manufacturers you can 
contact for information on 
where to find this month’s 
merchandise. To buy the 
apparel and equipment 
shown on pages 42, 4548, 
98-100, 120-125 and 
166-167, check the listings 
below to find the stores 
nearest you. 


GAMES 
Page 42: Capcom, capcom.com. Eidos, 
eidos.com. Electronic Arts, eagames 
.com. Namco, namco.com. Sega, 
sega.com. Sony, playstation.com. 


MANTRACK 

Pages 45-48: BMW, bmwusa 
.com. Galco, usgalco.com. Luminox, 
luminox.com. 080 Studio, o80.com. 
Pentax, pentax.com. PodSkinz, mac 
skinz.com. Royal Mirage Dubai, 
royalmiragedubai.com. Wood Contour, 
woodcontour.com. 


SOUND + ART 
Pages 98-100: Arcam, aslgroup.com. 
AudioQuest, Avid, PS Audio, SolidSteel, 
amusicdirect.com. Meadowlark Audio, 
meadowlarkaudio.com. Rogue Audio, 
rogueaudio.com. 


SEX, DUDS AND 

ROCK AND ROLL 

Pages 120-125: A.B.S by Allen Schwartz, 
absstyle.com. Bailey, baileyhats.com. 
Buckler, bucklerjeans.com. Caffeine, 


TO 


BUY 


caffeineculture.com. 
Champion 1919 Collec- 
tion, champion1919 
сот. Chrome, available 
at Lark in Chicago. Chip 
& Pepper, available at 
Bloomingdale's. Co- 
lumbia, columbia.com. 
Daang Goodman for Tripp 
NYC, available at Trash 
and Vaudeville in NYC. 
Diesel, diesel.com. Drag- 
onfly Clothing Company, 
dragonflyclothing.com. Duckie 
Brown, 212-675-8627. Iceberg, 310- 
274-0760. Jean Paul Da'mage, avail- 
able at Saks Fifth Avenue. Jean Paul 
Gaultier, available at Chasalla in 
Chicago. Jean Paul Gaultier Homme, 
available at Jean Paul Gaultier in 
NYC. John Richmond Denim, available 
at Lounge in NYC. Miskeen Originals, 
miskeenoriginals.com. New Era, 
available at Lids stores nationwide. 
Nike, nike.com, Paul Smith, available 
at Paul Smith in NYC. Trash and 
Vaudeville, available at Trash and 
Vaudeville in NYC. 


POTPOURRI 

Pages 166-167: Anson Mills, anson 
mills.com. The Countryman Press, 
countrymanpress.com. John Allan's, 
saks.com. Orvis, orvis.com. Piece of 
Adventure, pieceofadventure.com. 
Playboy Store, playboystore.com. Tech- 
notunes, technotunes.com. Traveler 
Guitar, travelerguitar.com. WR. Case 
& Sons Cutlery, wrcase.com. 


'LOUTIERAGENCY COM. PRODUCER. MARILYN GRABOWSKI 


147 


PLAYBOY 


148 


THE ROCK 


(continued from page 68) 
conyentions. Who got your vote in 2004? 
THE ROCK: I voted for Bush, just as I did 
in 2000. 
PLAYBOY: Why? 
THE ROCK: I believe in working hard and 
taking care of your family, giving thanks 
to God, having fun. And in supporting 
your troops and the president in power. 
I believe in Bush's leadership. Had John 
Kerry won, he'd have gotten 110 percent 
of my support. But we have to be thank- 
ful every day and not forget our troops 
fighting for our freedom, guys who've 
agreed to pay the price if necessary. 
PLAYBOY: Are you a Republican? 
THE ROCK: Im a fiscal conservative, but I'm 
very liberal on some issues—like you can 
be gay and you should be allowed to marry 
who you want to marry. Who are we to 
judge? The paramount issue, in my opin- 
ion, is the defense of this country. I also feel 
that under no circumstances should any- 
body who's an American speak against 
America. I am passionate about that. 
PLAYBOY: Not long after you had your first 
child you put a traditional Samoan tattoo 
оп your arm. Did fatherhood lead you to 
embrace your heritage? 
THE ROCK: I'm sure it did. My daughter 
inspires me like nobody else Гуе encoun- 
tered. I was always very proud of being 
half black and half Samoan, but only 
recently have 1 wanted to grasp the cul- 
ture on my mom's and my dad's side. My 
grandfather had a body full of traditional 
tattoos. I wanted to tell the story of my 
life with them too. 
PLAYBOY: Was this something you had 
planned for a long time? 
THE ROCK: I'd always thought about it. 


In Polynesian culture tattooing is a big 
emotional and spiritual thing. This is 
not some anchor with my wife’s name 
wrapped around it or a heart with a dag- 
ger through it. It's meaningful because 
you're telling your story. I have a Poly- 
nesian warrior's face that covers my 
heart. My life, struggles, loyalties and 
family are here. My daughter is here, my 
ancestors. God is here. 

PLAYBOY: How long did it take? 

THE ROCK: Sixty hours, three sessions. The 
first was maybe 18 hours. It's all done 
freehand. I sat with this guy who is an 
amazing artist. His name is Po'oino. He 
lives on the beach—no house. 

PLAYBOY: Did he also do your grandfa- 
ther's work? 

THE ROCK: No, another Samoan tattoo 
artist did my grandfather's work in 
Samoa in the 1970s. My grandfather had 
it done with a bone, tap-tapping. That 
was very painful, and he almost died. 
PLAYBOY: Why? 

THE ROCK: Ink poisoning and the fact that 
the process typically takes about a week 
and my grandfather had to get it done in 
two days. He had to get back into the 
ring, so it was done around the clock. 
He ended up in the hospital. 

PLAYBOY: What about you? Are you fin- 
ished with tattooing yourself? 

THE ROCK: Nah, I'm going to get my 
face done. 

PLAYBOY: That will be a first for an action 
star. Do you fear you'll be compared to 
Mike Tyson? 

THE ROCK: Here's what I really fear—get- 
ting that call from Ron Meyer at Univer- 
sal, and he's screaming, "What are you 
doing? You've destroyed your career!" 
That's why I'll never do it. 


"Who is she?!" 


MUSIC 


(continued from page 95) 
was in college. We were in my dad's 
house. He was home at the time, and she 
and I were on a water bed. You hear sto- 
ries about people climaxing quickly their 
first time, but for some reason I went for 
a long-ass time—20 minutes. 


MARILYN MANSON I think I was 16. 
It's been so long I forget. It was on a 
baseball diamond at about 11 вм. in Can- 
ton, Ohio. I'd gotten drunk on Jim Beam 
that Га stolen from my grandmother and 
smuggled in my Kiss thermos. It lasted 
35 seconds. It was just something I had 
to get out of the way. 


SLASH I was 13, and she was 12. We 
did it at her and her mom's apartment. 
We were listening to Houses of the Holy 
by Led Zeppelin. The song that comes 
to mind is "Dancing Days." We were 
smoking a lot of pot and drinking 
Southern Comfort. We had to go to the 
laundry room to do it. Every time after 
that, her mom would take a Valium and 
we would do it on the couch in the liv- 
ing room. When I hear that record now, 
it reminds me of that. When you're that 
age, to really have sex is a big deal to 
everybody else. But to us it was just this 
thing we were into. After a while her 
mom got hip to it. As long as we kept 
the door closed it was okay. 


G. LOVE We were listening to High Tide 
and Green Grass by the Rolling Stones. I 
was 15; she was 14. We would always go 
to her house after sports practice because 
she lived by the school. We were very 
much in love. We used to chill before her. 
dad came home and listen to Janis Joplin, 
the Velvet Underground and the Cowboy 
Junkies. But that day it was the Stones. I 
still have the record, and of course today 
it sounds better than ever. 


JACOBY SHADDIX, PAPA ROACH I 
was at a party, and this girl from school 
asked for a ride home. I was about to 
drop her off, and she goes, "I don't feel 
like going home. Can I come to your 
house?" My parents were asleep, and 
my room was 10 feet away from theirs. 
We were listening to Pyromania by Def 
Leppard. She goe: уе had a crush on 
you for a year.” I'm like, “Fucking cool." 
This chick wasn't a virgin. She jumped 
on me, and we started making out. 
Then we started fucking. We were 
going at it for a while, then she got off 
and sucked my dick. I was like, This 
can't be happening. This is the shit you 
see in porno movies. Then the door 
flew open, and my mom came in. I was 
sitting there with a raging hard-on. My 
mom was white as a ghost. She slammed 
the door, and I was tripping. I guess it’s 
shocking to walk in and see your son 
getting a blow job. I was scared of the 
pussy for a good year after that. 


JA RULE Anything with a smooth 
groove is good when it’s time to get 
rowdy. My first time was horrible. My 
cousin and I had these two chicks who 
were sisters, and we took them into a 
stairwell in the projects. There wasn't 
enough space, and I couldn't get 
anything right. You have to be comfort- 
able your first time. 


GENE SIMMONS I had just turned 14. 
I had a newspaper route and had to 
pick up the weekly pay. It was a Friday 
night around Christmas, and it was 
freezing. This woman must have been 
in her early 20s and must have been 
drunk. She came to the door in 
through nightie and started crying, “ 
my husband. It's 
Christmas. Where is 
he?” I said, “Maybe 
ГЇЇ come back later. 
She goes, “No, come 
in.” She sat me 
down, pulled my 
pants down and 
rode me. When it 
was all over, I wa 
afraid to come back. 
I got the money and 
a nice tip. I suppose 
I gave her the tip. 


TOMMY LEE I was 
13 years old. It was 
the girl next door— 
my sister's best 
friend—and I got 
busted by my sister. 
My sister walked in 
and saw me fucking 
her on the floor of 
the garage, wher 
used to have this lit- 
tle drum room. She 
just freaked. And 
because it was her 
best friend, she told 
my parents. Fuck, it 
was all bad, dude. 
An all-bad first 


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right back to my house, but we left the 
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us. We went to his aunt's house and did 
it in this tiny room on a little twin bed 
in the corner. 


JONATHAN DAVIS, KORN I was 18. It 
was a fluke. I was hanging out with my 
friends, drinking and kicking back, and 
this girl took me home and fucked the 
shit out of me. I didn't want to say I was 
a virgin, so I just did it—and she loved 
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CONRAD KEELY, AND YOU WILL 
KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD I 
was listening to Sonic Youth's self-titled 
first album. My girlfriend and I had 
driven to Seattle to see a Nirvana show 
Before the show she asked if I wanted to 
make out in the car. So then it happened, 
and as we were in the heat of it, Krist 
Novoselic knocked on the door and 
asked us for a light. He said, "This car 
smells like teen spirit!" And I told him, 
"That's not teen spirit—that's my jizz!” I 
didn't realize who he was until I saw him 
onstage. I still think that's probably the 
best Sonic Youth record to fuck to. 


BRET MICHAELS I was almost 15, and 
my buddies and I had a plan. We 


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decided separately to be with the same 
girl, but I was going to go first. We went 
on motorbikes, and we'd strapped a 
blanket down. I brought my Nazareth 
Hair of the Dog, and “Love Hurts” was 
playing. My buddies took off on their 
dirt bikes, and the girl and I were in the 
woods. I'd bought an unlubricated con- 
dom because I didn’t know jack shit 
about condoms. I'd never put one on 
before, so it ripped. She was lying on 
the blanket and smoking, and she said, 
“Are you ready?” She didn’t get a 
chance to put out her cigarette before 
I was done. 


NELLY 1 was real young. The girl was 
15, and I was 12. I lied to her and told 
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SCOTT RUSSO, UNWRITTEN LAW I 
think I was 14. My friends and I used 
to hang out at this building site and 
smoke weed, drink our parents’ liquor 
and talk about how none of us had had 
sex yet. Girls weren't on my radar—all 
I cared about was skateboarding—but 
then this girl invited me to her house 
when her parents were out. She pulled 
me up to her mom's room, and we 
started making out. I hadn't had a wet 
dream yet, and I hadn't started mas- 
turbating, so I had no idea what com- 
ing felt like. As soon as I put it in I 
thought, God, this is better than Di 
neyland—quickly 
followed by, Holy 
shit, I'm going to 
piss. It probably 
lasted a minute and 
a half. MTV was 
on, U2's "With or 
Without You" was 
playing, and I was 
terrified that I'd 
just pissed inside 
this girl. 


WAYNE COYNE, 
THE FLAMING 
LIPS It was no big 
deal. I think I was 
16. I had gotten a 
job working as a 
cook at Long John 
Silver's. This woman 
I knew from high 
school, who I ended 
up living with for 
four years, came by 
one summer night 
with a few of her 
friends. They were 
drunk, and it hap- 
pened about five 
hours later at her 
house. Steely Dan 
was playing in the 
background, and I 
did the best I could. 


CAM’RON | w 


were at a friend's house cutting school, 


s 12. Me and my baby 


and we put on a porno and did it. 


JOSH HOMME Well, I lost it, but then I 
found it behind the couch with that one 
sock that’s always missing. I was sup- 
posed to go to youth group and didn't 
go. She was a girl I knew from school. 1 
mean, I was 13—who else would she be? 
But it was way better than I expected. 
I've been addicted ever since. 


DAVE NAVARRO I was 13. I arrived at 
her house around three р.м. By 3:04 I 
was on my way home. I felt like a king. 


CARMEN ELECTRA I was 16. It was in 
Cincinnati in the backseat of a car. It 
wasn't glamorous. I don't remember it 


149 


PLAYBOY 


150 


being so great. I actually felt really bad 
that I didn’t wait longer. 


XZIBIT I was 14 years old and in my 
dad's bedroom. I was living in his apart- 
ment. There was this girl, and she took 
it from me viciously. It was the roughest 
three minutes of my life. She never saw 
it coming. 


CHESTER BENNINGTON, LINKIN 
PARK I don't remember losing my vir- 
ginity. I think I was 15 and on ether. 


DERYCK WHIBLEY, SUM 41 I was in 
eighth grade, and I wanted to be the first 
guy in my school to have sex. My girl- 
friend was a big slut. After a week of dat- 
ing her, I boned her. We did it in my 
parents’ house when my mom was away 
for two days. It was quick. I've definitely 
had better sex since then. 


LEMMY KILMISTER, MOTORHEAD 
I was 15, but she was 18, I think. She 
was on vacation in the resort town 
where I lived. She removed her bra for 
me because I couldn't figure it out. It 
was 45 seconds of ecstasy. Later on we 
did it for almost two minutes, and by 
the time she went home we had it up 
to about 25 minutes. That bloody sand 
gets everywhere. 


DANGER MOUSE Jodeci was playing, 
something from Forever My Lady. She 
was the neighborhood ho. We skipped 
school and I planned to seduce her, but 
I got scared and tried to talk her into 
leaving. She was like, "You're not get- 


ting out of this." The combination of 
being dominated by the girl while lis- 
tening to men sing kind of fucked me 
up. I didn't have sex sober again for 
about eight years. 


LARS FREDERIKSEN, RANCID I lost 
my virginity to my now friend's girl- 
friend. He was supposed to lose his vir- 
ginity to her, but I got her first. I was in 
seventh grade. He was in sixth. We 
didn't know each other then. He and this 
girl used to hang out after school, smoke 
cigarettes, watch Voltron and make out. 
She called him and said, "Today is the 
day," but he was grounded. The next 
day his friends had to tell him that some 
guy named Lars slept with her. 


LADY SAW I lost mine when I was 17 to 
a guy who was very attractive and much 
older. He was also married. He told me, 
"Married people make the best lovers." 
He was a god. His son and I could have 
been lovers, but I wasn't interested in the 
son. It was painful, but afterward I was 
hooked. We'd do it wherever and when- 
ever. We couldn't keep our hands off each 
other. At night we would be on the beach 
doing crazy stuff. He taught me how to 
ride a guy. That's been my favorite posi- 
tion ever since. 


SULLY ERNA, GODSMACK I don't 
think I had a song playing when I lost my 
virginity. I don't remember what the hell 
was going on. We were 12 and 13 years 
old, I think. Music's always been impor- 
tant, but at that moment it didn't mat- 


"In the interest of diversity, would you be willing to 
undergo a sex change?" 


ter. It was all about figuring out how to 
put that square block in the round hole. 


FAT JOE I was 16 or 17. I used to work 
in a candy store in Harlem. The girl lived 
on the second floor of the building. 1 
went up there with her. She was older 
than me, a woman, like 25, and she just 
started giving me head. How did I do? 
Well, I didn't have to do much. It was like 
The Basketball Diaries, when Leonardo 
DiCaprio gets high on dope. Woo! You 
never forget that first one. She's proba- 
bly some real old lady now. 


MF DOOM I was listening to Keith 
Sweat's "Make It Last Forever." Back 
then he was the king. If you wanted to 
get a female in the mood, Keith was 
making panties drop. Maybe I was sub- 
consciously trying to make it last forever. 
Looking back I wish it had been some- 
thing like John Coltrane's "My Favorite 
"Things"—all instrumental, smooth with 
no vocals. Now that's some mack shit. 


STEVE SMITH, DIRTY VEGAS It was 
with my friend's girl. To this day he still. 
doesn't know. She was a little older than 
me, and I thought I was a rock god. I 
had Terence Trent D'Arby's "Sign Your 
Name" on. 


VAN HUNT A girl had a crush on me, but 
I didn't like her. Her big brother said if I 
didn't go out with her he would kick my 
ass. I started dating her. I had never had 
sex before, and it seemed like an exciting 
thing to do, so one day after a party we 
had sex. I think the music was Michael 
Jackson's “Dangerous.” After a couple of 
weeks of going out and trying to pretend 
that I liked her, I figured I owed myself a 
little loving. I had more fun masturbating. 


MATT GOIAS, FANNYPACK The first 
time I did it was to a Jungle Brothers 
album, Done by the Forces of Nature. 1 
think the song was "Belly Dancin' Dina." 
She was a big girl, and 1 definitely felt 
more comfortable doing it the first time 
with a big girl. As we used to say, "Prac- 
tice for the pretty ones." 


JEFF HANNEMAN, SLAYER I didn't 
have any hair on my balls. I hadn't even 
masturbated. I was with my friend's older 
sister. We were swimming at her grand- 
mother's house, and she said, "You have 
to take your clothes off before we go in 
the house. That's Grandma's new rule." 
The next thing I knew she was going 
down on me. I was scared shitless, but we 
hung out all day and had sex. I was 
going, "This is amazing!" She was into 
Zeppelin and kept playing "Kashmir" 
over and over. I found out years later that 
she'd used me. She had a new boyfriend 
who bragged about how his ex-girlfriend 
gave good head. She had never given 
head before, so she was experimenting 
on me. I'm not complaining. 


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PLAYBOY 


152 


SCREAMS continues from page 84) 


The stolen Scream was a $60 million painting every- 
one wanted back but no one wanted to pay for. 


would become the most famous paint- 
ing in the world. 

Now The Scream was suddenly gone, 
and this 1994 theft also produced national 
embarrassment for Norway. Not only had 
the most famous and valuable painting by 
its most famous citizen been stolen, but it 
was taken on the morning of the first day 
of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, a 
town about 80 miles north of Oslo. 

Police suspected the theft was a public- 
ity stunt by a radical antiabortion group 
that had threatened to disrupt the Olym- 


pic Games. The group immediately 
claimed responsibility and announced it 
would return the painting if a graphic 
antiabortion commercial was aired on 
national television. For the Norwegian 
authorities, it certainly appeared to be a 
political crime. Little did they know that 
the assault had actually been planned 
and perpetrated by two friends from the 
poor Oslo neighborhood of Tveita. 
Enger, 26 at the time, had played pro- 
fessional soccer for the Norwegian club 
Valerenga, but his first love was theft. In 


“How ‘bout that bass, eh?” 


1988 he made his first major score, walk- 
ing off with Munch's Vampire from the ill- 
fated Munch Museum. Enger was quickly 
caught and jailed, and the painting—also 
worth millions—was safely recovered. 

A few years later, out of jail and back in 
Tveita, Enger hooked up with the teen- 
age Ellingsen, a young man with spiky 
blond hair, a slight build and an almost 
cherubic face. “We were like brothers,” 
Enger later told a reporter. 

In those heady days of winter 1994, 
Enger and Ellingsen must have been 
jubilant. Their 50-second snatch was 
famous, on front pages and in leading 
newscasts around the world. They were 
the toast of the Norwegian underworld. 

But the duo could not be accused of 
thinking ahead. They assumed that the 
deep pockets of the museum's insurance 
company would pay the ransom they 
demanded. But The Scream, they learned, 
was uninsured. And as Dick Ellis could 
have told them, the Norwegian govern- 
ment would never pay a ransom. 

Ellingsen and Enger found themselves 
in possession of a $60 million painting 
everyone wanted back but no one wanted 
to pay for. 

They desperately needed a plan B. 


CHARLEY HILL 


Charley Hill is probably the politest man 
you'll ever meet. He asks if our interview 
can take place in London's Kew Gardens, 
a lush botanical paradise and former 
haunt of kings and queens of England. 
Once inside, he proceeds to guide a 
detailed tour, pointing out horticultural 
and architectural features and displaying 
an encyclopedic knowledge of the people 
and events that shaped the gardens. Dur- 
ing a stop for a cup of tea and a slice of 
cake at Kew's cafe, he carefully thanks 
everyone—the attendant at the gate, the 
girl at the cash register, the busboy clean- 
ing the tables outside. 

This is not your typical cop. He looks 
and sounds like a university professor. 
He plays choral music in his car, a little 
silver Renault. 

"The son of a U.S. Air Force officer and 
an English mother, Hill was raised on 
both sides of the Atlantic. He attended 
George Washington University in Wash- 
ington, D.C., where, he says, he was 
"bored out of my mind." So he volun- 
teered for the Vietnam draft and in 1968 
found himself in the 173rd Airborne 
Brigade, fighting deep in enemy terri- 
tory. “I was the intellectual grunt of our 
platoon,” he says. 

After Vietnam, Hill returned to his 
studies, winning a Fulbright scholarship 
that took him to Trinity College in Dublin. 
From there he experimented for two 
years as a schoolteacher before deciding 
he wanted to be an Anglican priest. Using 
money from a Veterans Benefits Admin- 
istration grant, Hill completed a bachelor 
of divinity at King’s College London. By 
the time he earned his degree, he says, 


the most valuable thing he had learned 
was that his strong faith had little to do 
ith the Church, “So I joined the police,” 
he says, and for the next 20 years he dis- 
ished himself as a gifted, if maveric 
detectiv not the Yard's idea ofa 
good police administrator,” he says. “1 
take that as 


organization that tackles transborder 
crime. Stationed in the Hague, the Dutch 
Hill commuted each week from 
his London home, catching a plane early 
on Monday mornings and flying back 
late on Fridays. 

The Monday after The Scream 
reported stolen, Hill got the call from 
London. Scotland Yard's Art and An- 
tiques Squad had come into possession 
of a lead and wanted him to go under- 
cover. Hill, who had spent much of his 
r in the Yard's Criminal Intelli- 
gence Unit infiltrating drug cre nd 
organized crime gangs, was a natural 
He had underc skills and the 


strategy. 
уе me a few minutes to think about 
it,” Hill said to his contact before hang- 
ing up. He stared out his office window, 
azing down at the canal below. A plan 
ormed in his mind, nd he called back 
immediately. "Here's what we'll do," he 
id. He would pretend to be a repre- 
sentative of the J. Paul Getty Museum in 
Los Angeles, which was at the time spend- 
ing tens of millions of dollars in a major 
acquisitions spree. The thieves would be 
told the museum had decided to pay to 
retrieve the painting for the sake of world 
art. Hill theorized that, with the Getty's 
money as bait, the crooks would lead him 
to the stolen picture. 

Dick Ellis, the s point man for 
ream investigation, liked the plan. 
Now all they needed was for the thieves 
to make their move—and for the Getty. 
to play along. 

Ellis flew to Califo: and arranged a 
ing with the Getty's head of security. 
To Ellis's delight, the museum gave the 
plan its wholehearted support. It created 
a special post for Charley Hill, who would 
dopt the identity of Chris Roberts 
ing ambassador for the Getty. To ensure 
the charade was convincing, the Getty 
le up business cards and letterhead 
5 eated a telephone number 
that would always be answered by a sec- 
retary and even put Roberts on the pay- 
roll, backdating its computer records to 

ive him seniority. 
“Ші returned to London triumphant. 
The trap was set. 


DEALING WITH THE DEVIL. 
Charley Hill is explaining why crooks 
steal “smudges,” art-trade slang for 
paintings. “You have to understand,” he 
says. “There's nothing glamorous about 
this. It's not like in the movies. There's 


no Mr. Big in a castle on a hill order- 
ing the theft of great works of art so he 
can hang them in his private museum. 
That's just crap." 

The true face of art theft, says Hill, 
is rather more mundane, practical and 
brutal. Most stolen paintings are minor 
works, valuable but not too well-known 
and easy to slip into the hands of the 
many dealers who bridge the world 
between the black market and the legit- 
imate one. 

Art is bought and sold in a free-market 
economy, and within it the black market 
in stolen art is unregulated, unpoliced 
and uninvestigated. Stolen paintings are 
recycled through auction houses or pri- 
vate trades, often ending up in the hands 
of innocent purchasers. 

According to Julian Radcliffe, chair- 
man of the Art Loss Register, it takes 
seven to eight years on average for a 
painting to resurface from the black 
market. Forty percent of the 160,000 
stolen items in the ALR's database are 
paintings, he adds. 

Hill has scored a number of high-pro- 
file recoveries in the past decade, includ- 
ing that of Rest on the Flight to 


sance s enced The painting 
1995, and Hill recovered it in 9009 Не 
adds that one option for art thi 
use paintings as collateral to fund other 
illicit deals. 

“What you quickly learn in this game,” 
says Hill, “is that no crook steals art 
exclusively.” Art theft is usually part of 
lively portfolio of criminal activities 
including burglaries, petty theft, du 
deals and even bank robberi 

On the trail of a stolen painting, you 
must enter this world, and once there a 
deal with the d. normally required. 
It is a deal that places most art recoveries 
on a fine ethical line. 

In 2003 the Tate paid $6.7 million to 
secure the return of two J.M.W. Turners, 
stolen in 1994 and valued at $46 million. 
Тһе money was paid to a middleman 
who brokered the deal between the 
crooks and the museum. Hill had simi- 
larly arranged for a $139,000 finder's fee 
to be paid to the middleman who engi- 
neered the return of the Titian. 

The art world doesn't consider these 
deals to be ransoms, as they usually 
involve people steps removed from the 
thieves themselves. Still, it is dangerous 
territory. “Given the choice between 
never seeing these pictures again and 
getting them back, most people would 
prefer to get them back. If someone helps 
in getting them back, that person should 
get what is proportionately a small sum 
of money compared to what the art is 
really worth,” says Hill. 

These negotiations usually require 
time and patience, two qualities Elling- 
sen and Enger were not familiar with. 
They demanded outright ransom. In 


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order to get The Scream back, police 
decided they would have to allow the 
crooks to get uncomfortably close to a 
huge sum of money. 


PLAN B: OLSEN AND ULVING 


With the hottest painting in the world on 
their hands and an ever decreasing num- 
ber of options for getting rid of it, 
Ellingsen and Enger turned to an 
acquaintance in Norway's criminal 
underworld. Jan Olsen, who had com- 
pleted an 11-year jail sentence for arson 
a few years earlier, was recruited to act as 
a go-between in negotiations for the 
painting's return. Olsen's major qualifi- 
cation for this role was his claim that he 
could get direct access to the chairman of 
the National Gallery. Olsen's tactic was to 
approach the gallery and tell the chair- 
man that unless someone paid up, The 
Scream would be returned in pieces. 

Olsen's inside track was a circuitous 
one. By chance, he'd been sporadically 
buying pictures from an art dealer and 
auctioneer named Einar-Tore Ulving. 
Over the course of their business rela- 
tionship the two men had had several 
conversations, and during one exchange 
Olsen learned that Ulving's wife's cousin. 
was the National Gallery's chairman. 

Ulving remembers Olsen's first ap- 
proach shortly after The Scream was 
stolen: “Не called and said he wanted 
to meet me. He seemed very uncom- 
fortable talking on the telephone. We 
met outside a hotel, and he told me 
he could get The Scream back and asked 
if I could arrange a meeting using my 
family connections." A meeting be- 
tween the crook and the chairman was 
duly arranged. 

Olsen was told that if things were to 


progress, he must provide absolute proof 
that he could deliver The Scream. “Read 
Dagbladet on Tuesday," Olsen told Ulving. 
“You'll get your proof.” 

Sure enough, the Tuesday cover story 
of this Norwegian daily newspaper fea- 
tured a nearly full-page picture of a 
fragment of The Scream's broken frame, 
discovered near a bus stop in the small 
town of Nittedal, about 10 miles north- 
east of Oslo. The piece of frame had 
been found following an *anonymous" 
tip to the paper. “That was good proof," 
says Ulving. 


THESTING 


On May 5, 1994 Charley Hill (as Chris 
Roberts) spoke with Ulving. It had been 
decided that the Roberts character 
should be based in Brussels to further 
muddy any possible connection between 
him and the London police. Hill flew to 
Brussels that morning to make the call. 
He told Ulving he would be in Oslo that 
evening and staying at the Plaza Hotel. 
Could a meeting be arranged between 
him and Olsen? 

A little before 10 рм. Hill walked into 
the lobby of the Plaza. Sporting a jaunty 
bow tie and looking every inch ihe art 
scholar, he strode up to the reception 
desk and loudly announced his name. 
Ulving and Olsen approached the man 
from the Getty. 

Olsen made an immediate impression 
on Hill. Although in his 40s, he was clearly 
in superb shape, a good-looking, confident 
man who while in prison had become an 
expert kickboxer. Next to him stood Ulv- 
ing the art dealer, shorter and balding, 
nervously smoking Marlboro Lights. 

Alter some quick introductions, Ulving 
made his excuses and tried to leave. "I 


CADWerL— 


“The gentleman at the end of the bar would like to buy you 
as many drinks as it might take.” 


thought I was there just to introduce 
Olsen to this man Roberts,” he says. He 
was rudely disabused ofthe notion. Olsen 
told him, “No, no, you're not leaving 
here. My English is not good. I need you 
to translate.” Thus beginning what he 
described as a “long, long two days,” Ulv- 
ing reluctantly checked into the Plaza. 

Hill went to his suite on the 27th floor 
to freshen up. Three floors below, an 
advance team, including a British un- 
dercover officer called Sid Walker (not 
his real name; his identity is still secret), 
had established a surveillance operation 
to monitor the sting along with Norwe- 
gian police. 

That evening Hill, Olsen and Ulving 
sat in the lounge of the Plaza and began 
their negotiations for the return of The 
Scream. Olsen said the robbers wanted 
3.15 million Norwegian kroner (about 
$472,000) to return the painting, a price 
Hill agreed to. Given the lateness of the 
hour, the men called it a night and ar- 
ranged to meet again at breakfast. 

At eight A.M. Hill and Ulving were tak- 
ing the elevator down to breakfast when, 
Hill says, he began to get a bad feeling. 
When the elevator doors opened, he was 
confronted with a sight that filled him 
with horror, 

“What was absolutely, staggeringly 
unbelievable was that the Scandinavian 
police were having their annual drug 
conference that weekend in the hotel," 
says Ellis. "Neither the Norwegian police 
nor the bad guys had thought to check 
the hotel out before our team turned 
up." Added to the mix of hundreds of 
cops were dozens of plainclothes Norwe- 
gian officers who had been drafted to 
monitor the sting operation. "It was a dis- 
aster," says Ellis. 

Hill, Olsen and Ulving reconvened 
that afternoon in the Plaza's reception 
area, but this time Hill was accompanied 
by Sid Walker, whom he introduced as a 
guard for the money. While Ulving 
stayed in the lobby, Hill and Walker took 
Olsen upstairs to Walker's room, where 
Walker produced a sports bag filled with 
nearly half a million dollars in what 
police call flash money. 

Police have an awkward relationship 
with flash money, says Ellis: “You need it 
because once you have flashed the bad 
guys the sight of a suitcase full of cash, 
they tend to go for it. Trouble is, you 
have to make sure you get it back." Hill 
and Walker were nervous about the sheer 
volume of cash now inches from the face 
of Olsen, a violent career criminal. Being 
that close to half a million dollars seemed 
to calm Olsen, though, who had become 
increasingly agitated by the police pres- 
ence in the hotel. He left the two under- 
cover policemen, saying he had a "short 
but important meeting" to attend, and 
returned an hour later having apparently 
received the authorization to proceed. 

Because of the police conference at the 
Plaza, nobody argued with the suggestion. 


that they move to the quieter Grand 
Hotel a few blocks away. While they 
switched hotels, Olsen ordered Ulving to 
drive him to the underground parking lot 
ofan apartment building. Once they were 
inside, a man appeared from the shad- 
ows equipped with what looked to Ulv- 
ing like some sort of metal detector. Olsen 
and the man spoke briefly, and then the 
car was swept for bugs and tracking 
devices. Satisfied the car was not under 
electronic surveillance, the men drove to 
a quiet side road near the city center, 
where Olsen ordered Ulving to stop the 
car and turn off the engine and lights. 

They sat in the dark in Ulving's black 
Mercedes 300TE wagon for several min- 
utes. Then a rear passenger door opened 
and a man slid onto the backseat. He was 
dressed in all black, with a cap pulled 
down over his forehead and a scarf 
pulled up over his nose and mouth. He 
positioned himself directly behind Ulv- 
ing, preventing the driver from ob- 
serving him. For the next 12 hours the 
man Ulving knew only as Mr. X would be 
his constant shadow, sent by the crooks to 
supervise the handover of the money and 
the painting. 

“I had a very bad feeling. I was very 
unhappy,” says Ulving of Mr. X’s entrance. 
The hulking, silent man scared him. 

Hill was in his room when the phone 
rang. He glanced at the clock; it was 11:30 
рм. Ulving was in reception. The deal was 
on. Hill went down to meet the three 
men. Sitting in the back of the Mercedes, 
he told them bluntly, "I am not going foi 
a midnight walk in the woods with you." 

"Then the painting will be destroyed," 
said Mr. X. "It's now or never." 

It was Ulving who solved the impasse. 
"Look, why don't I go with Mr. X to see 
the painting, and Olsen can stay here 
with you and the money?" Everyone 
agreed, but as Hill got out of the car, Mr. 
X said, "If anyone follows us, my people. 
will find out immediately, and the paint- 
ing will be destroyed." He closed the 
door and turned to Ulving. 

"Drive." 

Ulving did as he was told. "We started 
to drive going out of Oslo," he says, 
"turning left, right, left, right, going 
straight ahead and through some tunnels 
until we ended up in Etterstad, in east 
Oslo. Mr. X told me to stop. He got out 
and walked about 50 yards to a phone 
box where, I assume, he made a call. He 
came back a few minutes later and told 
me to drive south on the E18 highway 
and not use my cell phone. He said 
someone would call and give me instruc- 
tions. Then he walked off." 


"The E18 led straight to Ulving's home in 
the picturesque town of Tønsberg, 30 
miles south of Oslo. An hour later there 
had still been no call, so Ulving decided 
to go home. It was two A.M. on Saturday, 
two days since he'd last seen his wife and 


children. Ulving pulled up in front of his 
house and went inside. As he opened the 
door to his house, his home phone began 
to ring. A man's voice told him to get 
back in his car and drive to a diner called 
By the Way, just outside Tonsberg. 

Spooked at the realization that his 
house was being watched, Ulving did as 
he was told and five minutes later pulled 
into the diner's deserted parking lot. 
Five minutes after that he was still there, 
sitting alone in the dark. "Suddenly Mr. 
X appeared from behind the building, 
and he was holding something wrapped 
in a blue sheet," he says. "He put it in 
the trunk of my car and then told me 
to drive home. At that point I refused." 

It was one thing to be at the beck and 
call of Mr. X (whom Hill describes as a 
psychopath). But Ulving says he drew the. 
line at letting the man into his home, 
where his wife and two daughters were 
sleeping. "My brain was racing," Ulving 
says. “There was no way I wanted this 
man in the same place as my family.” A 
solution suggested itself. Ulving owned a 
summer residence a few minutes farther 
up the road in the old fishing village of 
Äsgärdstrand, which by coincidence also 
happened to be where Munch had a 
summerhouse and studio in a converted 
fisherman's cottage. Ulving knew the 
Åsgårdstrand house would be closed up 
for the winter and deserted. 

It was freezing inside the summer- 
house. The wrapped painting was placed 
on the dining room table. Ulving gin- 
gerly unwrapped the package. 

He says it felt as though the air were 
vibrating around him. "When you are 
that close to genius, you can feel it com- 
ing out at you from inside the paint," he 
says. He rewrapped the painting and 
took it to the basement through a small 
hatch in the kitchen floor. 

Mr. X ordered Ulving into the front 
room. It was now three A.M. For the next 
two hours they sat in cold, dark silence, 
the anonymous thug brooding silently, 
hunched inside his coat, facing the door. 
Ulving, exhausted but unable to sleep, 
was chain-smoking, reasonably con- 
cerned for his life. No one in all of Nor- 
way knew where he was at that moment. 

Ап hour or so later, sick of waiting in 
the cold, dark cottage, Ulving hatched a 
plan to lure Mr. X out of the house. He 
promised the criminal the chance to 
drive his Mercedes 500SL, a tiny two- 
seat convertible that was not only expen- 
sive but rarely seen in Scandinavia. So 
the art dealer and his hulking body- 
guard drove back to Ulving's family 
home, swapped cars and then spent a 
few hours killing time, driving the back 
roads between Tønsberg and the small 
town of Drammen, waiting for dawn to 
break and Ulving's cell phone to ring. 


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156 


self. He was sitting in the backseat of a 
rental car watching his partner, Walker, 
put on a show for Olsen. Walker was giv- 
ing the crook a master class in anti- 
surveillance driving. “Olsen was obviously 
impressed,” says Hill. “He had no idea 
the man in the driver's seat was the 
most accomplished professional under- 
cover officer in the London Metropoli- 
tan Police.” Dick Ellis says of Walker, 
“He was just amazing.” 

The three men were on their way to 
Drammen, about 20 minutes southwest 
of Oslo, their destination a diner near a 
tollbooth where they had been told the 
exchange could take place. As they 
arrived Hill noticed a brand-new Mer- 
cedes 500SL parked outside. 

Inside the diner at a table with his mind- 
er sat Ulving, looking miserable. Walker 
volunteered to get everyone coffee, and 
when he returned Ulving was confirming 
that, yes, he had seen the painting. So the 
robbers had seen the money, Ulving the 
intermediary had seen the painting, and 
now here they all were, sitting some- 
where in the middle of nowhere without 
a plan. Nobody seemed to know what to 
do next. А tour bus began to unload its 
passengers, and the cafe started to fill up. 


Walker suggested a solution: He would 
take Olsen and Mr. X back to the hotel, 
where the money was stashed, while 
Hill and Ulving went back to Äsgärd- 
strand for the painting. As Oslo was 
closer, it seemed to give the crooks the 
advantage of getting to the money at 
least half an hour before Hill and Uly- 
ing could get to the painting. It was 
agreed that Hill would call the hotel as 
soon as he had seen the painting, and 
the money would then be handed over 
by his partner, Walker. 

Hill and Ulving set out for the sum- 
mer cottage in Ulving's Mercedes 500SL. 
Hill says the journey took years off his 
life: “Not only was Ulving a terrible 
driver, but he was also groggy from 
exhaustion and lack of sleep and kept 
weaving all over the road. I was sure we 
were going to end up in a ditch or 
under the wheels of a truck.” Eventually 
the pair arrived at Ulving's house and 
went inside. Ulving went to the kitchen 
and opened the hatch to the basement. 

Hill never lost his sense of caution, 
even with the mild-mannered Ulving. 
“I'm not going down there,” Hill said. 
Ulving shrugged and disappeared into 
the darkness, emerging a second or so 


“Face it, Al. It’s time to lose the pony.” 


later holding the wrapped painting. Hill 
took it from him and walked to the din- 
ing room table. He carefully laid it down 
and pulled back the edges of the sheet. 

“Shit.” 

Hill found himself looking at a rather 
plain piece of board covered with a few 
scribbles and smears of paint. We've 
been had, he thought, before realizing 
he was looking at the back of the pic- 
ture, which bears the remains of 
Munch's first, failed attempt to capture 
The Scream. Hill turned the painting 
over, and there in front of him at last 
was the famous howling figure. “The 
thing about a masterpiece is that it tells 
you it is a masterpiece,” he says. “You 
can look at a thousand paintings, but 
when you look at something like The 
Scream—boom!—it comes straight out at 
you.” The painting also bears telltale 
wax splatters caused by Munch blowing 
out a candle too close to it. The distinc- 
tive splatters are like a fingerprint Hill 
had memorized. “You can't blow a 
dle out twice the same way,” says Hill. 
The wax marks he saw were the in- 
disputable proof he needed. 


“Oh fucking hell, what have I done?” 

The painting was too big to fit through 
the door of Ulving's compact sports car. 
The two men opened the roof, and Hill 
managed to squeeze the painting behind 
the seats. Hill jiggled it and was able to 
push it down another inch or two— 
enough to close the roof. Hill then real- 
ized that, as he'd wrestled with the 
painting, he had accidentally pushed 
one of the Mercedes's headrests so far 
into the back of the picture that a small 
but noticeable lump had appeared in the 
screaming figure's shoulder. 

“Oh shit.” 

He looked over at Ulving, who seemed 
not to have noticed. With his secret 
intact, the top secured and a slightly 
dented Norwegian masterpiece pressing 
into the back of his head, Hill let Ulving 
drive him to the nearby Ásgárdstrand 
Hotel. After renting a room Hill took 
the painting in through a rear fire 
escape and barricaded himself inside 
Room 525, pushing all the furniture 
against the door. 

It was 10:30 a.m. Pouring himself a 
generous whiskey from the minibar, Hill 
picked up the phone and dialed. 

"I've got it,” he told the voice on the 
other end. 


Back in Oslo, the Norwegian police sur- 
veillance operation had descended into 
fiasco. The team managed to miss 
Walker, Olsen and Mr. X walking in 
through the front of the hotel and going 
up to Walker's room. And Walker didn't 
know that the two-man police team that 
was supposed to be in the room next to 
his had wandered off to get breakfast, 


taking the bag containing the $472,000 E 

ransom with them. == : 
Walker sat in the room with the two SE Ih = 
N 


crooks, unaware that he was totally == 
alone and without backup. As the тіп- = SEDUCTION 101 
utes ticked away, Olsen and Mr. X got А НЕВЕ 


more and more anxious. Тһе tension in 
the room was rising to an uncomfort- 
able pitch when the door suddenly 
swung open. Standing in the doorway 
were the two Norwegian policemen, in 
full uniform, holding Big Macs, cups of 
coffee and the bag of cash. 

They had walked into the wrong room. 


. +. Al " 1 % 
Тү: ш ғто501 56.99 ¥ 
VAD 


NOT A SCRATCH, began the story in 


Dagbladet heralding the safe return of КЕ To order by mall, send check or 
The Scream on May 7, 1994. “They must отмо, money order to: 
R д 5 CLEMSON - DUK 

have ironed the bump out," says Hill, 5 PLAYBOY 
“ iced.” EORGIA TECH P.D. Box 809 

or not noticed, ñ Source Code MG527 

Over the next few days Ellingsen, Itasca, IL 60143-0809 
Enge: ы eveale : ' aU shipping and handing 
Enger, Olsen and Mr vealed to be ТЕ AS on aná nt 
an old criminal accomplice of Enger's á = ident add 6 75% sales Lax. 

д d (Canadian orders accepted.) 

named Bjørn Grytdal—were rounded 


up and charged. Enger, it seemed, 
couldn't resist telling the world about his 800-423-9494 
role. He was arrested after placing a үт та Nese) oF 

7 5 AE. В 1 playboystore.com 
notice about the birth of his son in a eet mater сый cards accepted. 
local newspaper, announcing that his 
son had arrived in this world “met et 
skrik!" —" with a scream.” 

The four conspirators were 
but the court decided that be: 
and Walker had entered the country 
using assports, they had been there 
illegally; therefore their entire operation 
had been unlawful. Convictions against 
three of the four men were overturned 
on appeal. Only conviction ofre- NOTHING 


g " 
ng stolen property stuck. BUT NAKED 


THE TEFLON KID 


has changed in many w 


heist; separated by a de ; i 

the two crimes provide a picture of just А P YOU WANT 'EM? 
how much. Ten years ago, stealing The | Ж Т 
Scream was an almost civilized affair: Two | Ë ME THIS SPECIAL 
unarmed young men used a ladder to ARE: EDITION'S 
pull off an almost comical robbery in the BEAUTIFUL СОТ EMI 
still hours of early morning. In 2004 | lie 
thugs with guns barged into a museum | j aa M = 
oa dispose RE ; | [тоог sooo ¥ | 
visitors in a highly calculated and pro- 
fessionally executed raid. F Ккк 

Lulled by a liberal, open and—thanks | Ë f Ae / [учан 


in part to oil—affluent standard of life, r ¿ 1 4 i P.0. Box 809 
| g Source Code MG526 


Norway has been slow to react tothe j 3 Itasca, IL 60143-0809 
rapidly changing face of modern crime. i 3 Add 53.50 shipping and handing. 
Only 4.5 million people live in this land , \ f н charg per total order. ina 


about the size of Montana 
tyle most Amer 


and they А! h 4 4 „| (Canadian orders accepted.) 
ns would l 


enit і Ж 7 800-423-9494 


average family income 

greater than that of American 2 ¡E E ыж». (Source Code М6526) ог 
families, and health and education are У ا‎ ñ TS 5 4 playboystore.com 
heavily subsidized. The UN Human c 8 х Most major credit с ted 
Development Index rates Norway the put i Ea = 


world’s most livable country year after 
Despite this affluence, though, 
have risen across the board in 
with violent crime increasing 
percent in the past eight years. 


Norw 
nearly 


PLAYBOY 


158 


Yet there are few jails in this most lib- 
eral of countries, and the courts are 
loath to impose heavy prison sentences. 
Prisoners are often not remanded to 
holding cells before trial, and even 
when convicted they can spend months 
in the community waiting for jail space 
to open. Once inside, prisoners are 
released on leave after they serve a third 
of their sentence. 

The system appears to be incapable of 
dealing with the highly mobile, profes- 
sional criminal gangs that now operate 
across the open borders of Scandinavia 
and the rest of Europe. These criminals 
sans frontiéres slip through the porous 
borders with impunity, carrying out raids 
in one country and escaping to another. 

In the past 10 years a highly violent 
hard core of professional armed rob- 
bers has evolved within Scandinavia. 
Not so much a gang as an informal net- 
work, this eclectic group includes Nor- 
wegians, Swedes, Albanians, Finns, 
Bulgarians, Pakistanis, Iranians—along 
with bikers and even neo-Nazis. Racial, 
cultural and spiritual differences are put 
aside when it comes to their work. They 
are real-life reservoir dogs, specializing 
in armed bank robberies planned and 
conducted with military precision. 
Among their number, according to Nor- 
wegian police, was the cherubic blond 
bandit William Ellingsen. 

After walking away from his Scream 
charges Ellingsen entered this world. 
His crimes began to escalate. In 1998 he 
was implicated in a $170,000 bank rob- 
bery. He escaped to Costa Rica but was 
captured and deported to Norway, 
where he somehow managed to escape 


conviction. In September 2001 he was 
part of a team that pulled off what the 
Norwegian daily newspaper Verdens 
Gang called “the impossible.” 

Ellingsen and his crew drilled their 
way through the concrete floor of a 
bank and dropped into the safe-deposit 
vault, where they opened and emptied 
more than 500 boxes, getting away with 
millions in cash, jewelry and other 
valuables. Ellingsen was caught and 
charged, but as usual the police couldn't 
make the case stick. 

He was the Scandinavian Teflon Kid, 
good-looking, intelligent and daring. But 
on February 6, 2004, his luck ran out. 

That night a number of underworld 
enforcers and debt collectors—the Nor- 
wegians call them torpedoes—held a 
party in the posh Gabels Gate area of 
Oslo, The gathering was well attended 
by members of the city’s criminal fra- 
ternity, including Ellingsen. When a 
fight broke out between a bouncer and 
two torpedoes, Ellingsen tried to inter- 
vene. One of the men responded by 
pulling a pistol and opening fire. Elling- 
sen was hit and killed. 

He was buried on February 13 to the 
sound of “Amazing Grace” and Metal- 
lica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” Three hun- 
dred mourners attended his funera 
among them the créme de la créme of 
Norway's criminal elite. 

On that cold Oslo day it was doubt- 
ful that those at the funeral were con- 
scious of the poignancy of the date on 
which they were burying their friend 
and comrade. Exactly 10 years and one 
day earlier, at the age of 18, Ellingsen 
had first burst onto the criminal scene 


“Her first love was the accordion.” 


when he made off with the second most 
famous painting in the world. 


EPILOGUE: AUGUST 2004 


Of the four men involved in the 1994 
heist only Pål Enger and Bjorn Grytdal 
(Mr. X) were still in circulation when the 
August 2004 robbery took place. Elling- 
sen was dead, as was Jan Olsen, who had 
died the previous year as a result of intra- 
venous heroin use. 

Enger, who'd become something of a 
celebrity criminal over the previous 
decade, engineering little stunts to keep 
his name and photo in the newspapers, 
became uncharacteristically media shy 
in the aftermath of the Munch Museum 
raid. "Weapons are not my style," he 
said in a terse interview following the 
heist. “I have always used the methods 
of a gentleman." After being pulled in 
for questioning by Oslo police, the nor- 
mally ebullient Enger disappeared. His 
cell phone is now dead, and at the time 
of this writing he had not been seen for 
several weeks. 

For Charley Hill, The Scream has stirred 
both memories and curiosity. Hill, an 
analyst of the Norwegian criminal land- 
scape, believes that the solution to last 
year's robbery may lie in the past. And in 
а surprising twist, he says, there may be 
connections to the fallen Ellingsen. 

Two months after Ellingsen's death, 
the most violent robbery in Norwegian 
history was carried out in the west coast 
town of Stavanger. On April 5, 10 
armed robbers raided Nokas, a hub for 
Norwegian banks. The robbers first 
drove a truck into the parking garage 
entrance of the local police station and 
set it on fire. As police ran from the 
building, the robbers hurled tear-gas 
canisters, creating a blinding fog. 
Mobile patrols responding to the alarms. 
were sprayed with gunfire by the rob- 
bers, who were armed with automatic 
weapons. It was, by all accounts, like a 
scene from the movie Heat. 

The gang then attacked the bank, 
smashing its way into the counting room 
with sledgehammers. In 30 minutes the 
crooks managed to haul away $8.5 mil- 
lion, keeping the police at bay with 
bursts of suppressing fire. During this 
firefight, which occurred around 8:30 
A.M., а police commander was killed. 

The level of violence and the murder 
of the policeman caused outrage in Nor- 
way. The authorities responded by 
declaring war on the criminal fraternity 
they suspected of being behind the raid: 
Ellingsen's former comrades. Soon many 
of those who had attended Ellingsen's 
funeral were either behind bars or the 
subjects of intensive police searches, their 
names appearing on wanted lists around 
Scandinavia. They included one of 
Ellingsen's pallbearers, who police 
believed was the mastermind behind the 
Stavanger robbery. 

(concluded on page 161) 


MATE 2 NEWS 


ng phy 


al has never been an 


members of the Playboy X-Treme Team. 
Led b: ptain Danelle Folta (above, far 
ft am is in its seventh year, has 
competed in more 
than 70 events and 
has more than 25 


left), the t 


Playmate 


2002's Fiji Eco-Challenge is 
in the works. (Cameron 
Diaz will star as Danelle.) 
re also plans for 
ality show chroni- 


aking? 


cling the search for a 
new teammate. Con- 
testants will endure 
mental and physical 
challenges, including 
an X-Treme makeov 


ing camp we put them “We're a unique group, 
through hell,” Danelle Danelle 


says. “We take away outside influenc 


make them rel 
through it.” The hard wor 
more than just first-place 


sand | the team is about physi- 


cal gth and bein 
positive.” In the end, Н 
picks the winner, natch. 


15 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH 


Deborah Driggs became 
Miss March 1990 to earn 
money for acting classes, but 
she had no idea that one of 
her classmates would be her 
future husband: gymnast 
and 1984 Olympic gold med- 
alist Mitch Gaylord. Though 
she wrote on 

her Data 

Sheet that her 

biggest fear 

was “being 

stuck in an 

elevator with 

another ac- 


“but at the 

end, the 

teacher 

paired us 

for a kiss- - 
ing scene." One way they 
keep their relationship thriv- 
ing: Last year Deb co-wrote 
Hot Pink: The Girls’ Guide 

to Primping, Passion and Pubic 
Fashion, about everything 
from pubic-hair grooming 
to bedroom behavior. Go to 
hotpinkbook.com. 


CENTERFOLD STYLE FILE 


Everywhere the Play- 
mates go, photogra 
phers fall over one 
another to take their 
pictures. From left: Cara 
Zavaleta on the streets 
of Manhattan during 
her Playmate press jun 
ket; Victoria Silvstedt at 
an afterparty in Los 
Angeles; Nikki Ziering 
hosting a private party 
at Mansion nightclub 
in South Beach; Anna 
Nicole Smith backstage 
ot the American Music 
Awards; and Shauno 
Sand ot L.A.'s Spider 
Club for a Buffalo Jeans 
sponsor party. 


PLAYMATE GOSSIP 


Nicole Wood, Stephanie Hein- 
rich and Alicia Rickter (below) 
popped up on ESPN2's morn- 
ing chat show Cold Pizza to 
celebrate the release of the 

of Playmates DVD 

п 
mate has gone daytime. 
Following in the footsteps of 
General Hospital star Kelly 
Monaco, Daphnee Duplaix 
Samuel has joined the cast of 
the soap opera Passions, playing 
Valerie Davis. “She's an executive 
assistant who winds up with more 
than stock options on her mind 


I haven't seen many of the guys, but I'd 
А: I was a tomboy in high school. I like to stick my tongue out at them. 
played basketball and volley О: Do you remember the first 
ball, but now I prefer watching time you read P 

to playing. I love to watch A: One of my ex-boyfriends 
hi , but of course I never used to read it. It always 


Cold Pizza gets hot 


when she meets her new boss,” 
reports NBC's websit Spotted 


had the opportunity to partic- 
ipate—the guys wouldn't let 
me. I think they were afraid I 
would beat them. 

Q: What would your former 


mates say about your 


A: I don't know what the girls 


drove me crazy. One time I 
found the magazine in the 
bathroom, and I was so jeal- 
ous that I hid it under the 
sink so he wouldn't see it. 
That was the first time I ever 
really saw one. 

Q: Do you like being tall? 

M 


the night of the American Music 
Awards: Jenny McCarthy bond- 
ing with Mandy Moor 
Anderson hanging with 
Stefani (below). In other Pam 
news, according to Daily Variety 
she's set to sí à sitcom about 
а woman who's trying to stop fall- 
ing for the 


would say. I think the guys ien I was younger I had 
would be shocked to see me a major complex about my 
now because I was never of height. Now I love being tall, 
interest to them. I got teased a lot and I love wearing heels. Sometimes, 
because I looked like a boy. They never though, it's just a pain in the ass to find 


flirted with me. I never got valentines. pants that are long enough. 


FOURSOME, ANYONE? 


For golfers with superior taste, nothing beats the 
Playboy Golf Scramble, which combines the country's 
best courses with the world's most beautiful Center 
folds. The 2004 semifinals were held at the Palms 
Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. A glimpse of the ac 

tion, from left: Pilar Lastra; the day's hostesses Is there оп all-girl band in the works? 


Deanna Brooks interviewing players. wrong men. Fox has committed 


to six episodes... Still haven't got- 
ten enough servings of the Amer- 
ican Pie flicks? American Pie 4 
Band Camp, featuring Jennifer 
Walcott and Angela Little, will 
soon be out on video. 


cyber ¥club 
See your favorite Playmate's 
pictorial in the Cyber Club 
at cyber.playboy.com 


SCREAMS 


(continued from page 158) 

As police continued to turn up the heat 
on Ellingsen's former associates, rumors 
began to circulate in Oslo that another 
big score was imminent—one that would 
have significant symbolic value. 

It is hard to deny that the theft of The 
Scream and Madonna perfectly fit the bill, 
says Hill. “Don’t make the mistake of try- 
ing to rationalize a crime like this,” he 
explains, “because both the 1994 and 
2004 thefts were carried out by irrational 
people who see the world very differ- 
ently from you and me. These people 
are short-term thinkers and planners. 
They live for the now, and they tend not 
to live very long.” 

Hill continues, “Crimes like this make 
sense to them because they feel they are 
showing the world what they are capa- 
ble of. These are trophy crimes. They 
have nothing to do with money—they 
can make much, much more from drugs, 
prostitution or armed robbery. No, this 
is their telling the world, ‘We can do 
what we like when we like, take what we 
like and fuck you.’ For those involved in 
the Stavanger robbery, it would have 
made perfect sense to order this theft. 
The crooks would have seen it as a good 
way to get the police chasing after some- 
thing else and a good way of telling the 
world they are still capable of pulling 
any job they want.” 

Sources close to the Norwegian police 
inquiry have admitted that one of the 
leading theories of the 2004 Munch 
theft is that it had been perpetrated to 
draw police and media attention away 
from Stavanger. Several newspapers 
and a Norwegian television station have 
run stories quoting anonymous sources 
confirming that the Stavanger crew 
ordered the robbery. The Norwegian 
television station TV2 reported that the 
robbers were paid about $30,000 to 
commit the crime. 

In late December Norwegian police 
arrested an unnamed 37-year-old man 
and confirmed that they have identi- 
fied two other suspects. The paintings 
remain missing. Iver Stensrud, head of 
the organized crime unit of the Oslo 
police department, said, “We don't 
know where they are, whether they are 
still in Norway or whether they have 
gone abroad.” The Norwegian daily 
Verdens Gang, claiming to have informa- 
tion from criminal sources, reported 
that both The Scream and Madonna are 
still in Norway but that both works sus- 
tained damage during the robbery. 
Madonna was thought to be signifi- 
cantly damaged, while The Scream was 
described as “diminished.” 


Francis Lundh contributed additional report- 
ing from Norway. 


VANITY VINYL 


(continued from page 118) 
called Little Joe Sure Can Sing! A few years 
after My Cousin Vinny, he returned to the 
studio for this novelty, which includes a 
gangsta rap in which Pesci discusses 
whacking squealers and sodomy with a 
crack pipe. 


FOUR UNINSPIRING RECORDINGS 
INSPIRED BY A HIGHER POWER 


TAMMY FAYE BAKKER, Building on the 
Rock (1975). This is one of several al- 
bums on which Bakker plays Susie Mop- 
pet, a pigtailed pig girl who explains їп а 
shrill falsetto how smiling protects you 
from sin, which probably isn’t true. 


LOUIS FARRAKHAN, “Let Us Unite” 
(1984). In the 1950s the leader of the 
Nation of Islam was a calypso recording 
artist known as the Charmer. Smooth. 


DAVID KORESH, Voice of Fire (1994). 
Muddled guitar rock. According to Ko- 
resh's bass player, “it’s very difficult 
being in a band with God's messenger.” 


ANTON LAVEY, Satan Takes a Holiday 
(1995). The elevator music in hell. 


THREE BEST CELEBRITY 
ALBUMS OF ALL TIME 


ROBERT MITCHUM, Calypso—Is Like 
So... (1957). Apparently the tough-guy 
actor hung tight with calypso musicians 
while filming a movie in Trinidad and 
returned to Hollywood ready to bring 


EUN 
| || 

| Ит уут found out that | | 

| in uman years yare 35 


| years ald. So when do you 
= plan on maling out © 


the West Indian vibe to the masses. 
Many ridicule this album, but it’s one of 
the most entertaining calypso records 
of its day. Songs such as “Mama Look a 
Boo Boo” are a gas. 


SHEL SILVERSTEIN, Freakin’ al the Freak- 
ers Ball (1972). Famous for his kids' books 
and his work in PLAYBOY, Silverstein was 
also a fine songwriter (“А Boy Named 
Sue"). The title track invokes a utopia in 
which all the freaky people get off to- 
gether: "White ones, black ones, yellow 
and red ones, necrophiliacs lookin' for 
dead ones.... Plaster casters castin' their 
plasters, masturbators baitin' their mas- 
ters.... Freakin’ at the freakers ball, y'all." 
It's one of the most beautiful sentiments 
ever expressed in song. 


DIVINE, Му First Album (1982). In Amer- 
ica the hefty drag queen is best known 
for his work in such John Waters clas- 
sics as Hairspray. But for a time in the 
1980s Divine was one of the biggest 
names in dance music in Mexico and 
Europe. The driving "Native Love,” the 
swelling "Shoot Your Shot" and the 
ridiculous "Jungle Jezebel" feature hyp- 
notizing beats and bitchy, tough lyrics 
such as "You wimp, you wimp, hey who 
you calling a blimp?/I ain't your Aunt 
Jemima, and honey, you ain't my pimp!" 


For more celebrity music, including audio 
clips, visit playboy.com/magazine. 


н! 


161 


The hottest amateur erotic scenes ever shot. 


By ordinary, average people. 


Maybe someone from your neighborhood. 
Only on Naughty Amateur Home Videos. 


Only on Playboy TV. 


Saturdays, 8:30 ET/9:30 PT 

Find out more at playboytv.com. 
Then call your local cable or satellite 
provider to order Playboy TV. 


©2005 Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved. PLAYBOY TV. 


Miayboy 


WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN 


The toast of Ireland, Fergal Murray is one stout fellow 


ow many pints of Guinness have | had in my life?” Fergal Murray asks as 

he loafs in an armchair at Gravity Bar, a stylish watering hole that looks 

out over the city of Dublin. “Well, one a day for 25 years is about 10,000. 
Figure you have to double that. Then probably double it again.” There's a 
pause as he takes in the view. "About 50,000, I'd say." For the past 10 years 
Murray has served as brewmaster at Guinness's historic St. James's Gate 
facility in Dublin, where every drop of the stout drunk in America is made. By 
some accounts the 42-year-old is the most important man in Ireland. His job is 
to make sure every pint of Guinness you drink tastes as it did 249 years ago, 
when the company was founded. Suffice it to say that he makes friends quick- 
ly at the pub. “Grown men have cried when they've met me,” he says. Though 
the affable brewer seems to take it all in stride, he's quite particular about the 
way his stout should be served. The seven rules for pouring a Guinness: (1) 
Use a clean, dry pint glass. (2) Pour at a 45-degree angle with the tap nozzle 
half an inch from the glass. (3) Stop pouring when the pint is three fourths full. 
(4) Let it settle for 119.5 seconds, give or take a few tenths. (5) Top off slowly to 
get a rounded head. (6) Drink. (7) Repeat as necessary. David Critchell 163 


Ехїга! Ехїга! 
Reid All 
About It 


TARA REID up- 
staged everyone, 
including Paris 
Hilton, at P. 
Diddy's birthday 
party in NYC. She 
told the New York 
Post, “I'm known 
as this retard. 1 
want to grow up. 
1 don't want to 
be the drunk girl. 
I'm not crazy any- 
more." Tara, we 
like you just the 
way you are. 


Banks for the Mammaries 
The least favorite feature of Victoria's Secret 
model TYRA BANKS? Her fingers. "An ex-boy- 
friend called them Freddy Krueger fingers," 
she once said. Sounds like a picky fellow. 


Slip Sliding Away 
Perhaps you recognize model ANGELA LINDVALL from her various Prada, 
Gucci and Tommy Hilfiger ads. Or from her multipage spreads in Elle and W. 
Or maybe you've never heard of her. That's okay. We admit we hadn't either. 
But from now on, we're hijacking our girlfriend's Vogue. 


Kink Pink 

It's not easy being green, but 
it looks like fun to be PINK, 
here posing for Fashion 
Wire Daily. But where's her 
little dog, Fucker? 


Nothing But Net 
On and off the tennis court, 
SERENA WILLIAMS has 
become a fashion icon. She 
even has her own clothing 
line, Aneres (get it?). At the 
London premiere of After 
the Sunset, the champ 
caused quite a racket. 


ALYSSA SVED 
has toured 
the globe in 
ballet and 
hip-hop pro- 
ductions and 
appeared on 
the TV.show. 
North Shore. 
‘We're think 
ing horizontal 


Cruz Flash рәр 
Penélope Cruz's equally hot sister, MONICA, is 
the face of L'Oréal in Spain. Tell us quickly—are 
there any more at home like you? 


Motpourri 


THEY RUB YOU THE RIGHT WAY 


The secret to John Allan's success? He takes high- 
end grooming goos like those found in salons 
where the perms are expensive and the techno 
is deafening, then sells them in old-style men’s 
clubs, where a guy can sip whiskey while he gets 


cream ($30), Oc pomade 
($19), Gelle X hair gel ($14), X-Bar soap ($11), 
Mint conditioner ($17) and lip balm ($7). 


A LITTLE SOMETHING ON THE SIDE 


't the grilled 
It's the polenta 


"The tastiest thing on this plat 
peppei 
we 


organic heirloom polenta is ground from spin 
rosso della Va red-and-gold corn. It was 
the 16th century, when 

5 invented, but it’s now hard to find. 
If you've ever eaten polenta in a four-star joint 
(Thomas Keller's Per Se, per esempio), you've. 
tasted the heavenly stuff. Four 12-ounce bags 
go for $20. Get info at ansonmills.com. 


BIG SOUND, 
SMALL PACKAGE 


Whether he's tracking down 
a lost love or trying to get the 
band back together, every man 
at some point needs to take 
the show on the road. When 
the highway comes knocking 
on your door, no other ax 
у quite like a Traveler 
0, travelerguitar.com). 


design puts the tuning 
e the guitar's body, 
ng the whole package 
remarkably compact (the 
upper-arm support shown 
here on the Speedster model is 
removable). The Escape 
model even has an onboard 
headphone amp so you 
can rock out in the back of 
the van without disturbing 
anyone. It also comes in an 
"acoustic n, which, 
against all common sense, 
an amp to be heard. 


THE EVEN SHARPER INSTINCT 


Owning a pocketknife is a rite of passage. First you get your. 
Swiss Army blade, which you use to impress your friends at show- 
and-tell. Then, after the stitches are taken out, you graduate to 
the gentleman's knife, which you use to impress the ladies. Now, 
because nothing says "I'm the sensitive type" like a blade-and- 
bullet combo, W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery has joined the fi m 
company Ruger to produce Ruger-branded pocketknives. Pic- 
tured: the three-and-five-eighths-inch Medium Stockman ($93), 
with three blades, and the four-inch Mid-Folding Hunter ($130), 
with one blade. The slicers are made of hand-forged surgical 
steel, with Brazilian cattle-bone handles. Info at wrcase.com. 


ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK 
MP3 players 


e fantastic, but at the 
end of the day they're one more gadget 
in your pocket. Reduce your overall 
pantsload with the Technotunes MP3 
watch ($200, technotunes.com). With 256 
megabytes of storage, it'll get you about 
four hours of music, a match for most 
flash players. Load it up via USB, plug in 
some headphones and you're perpetually 
ready to rock. We 
salute you. 


FIRING SQUAD 


Next time she needs a flame, light up 
her life with the planet's two most 
dependable sources of heai 
е special-edition 

playboystore.com) features 
a different classic cover from the 1960s, 
1970s or 1980s. Just take our advice and 
don't let yours out of your sight. We 
found these have an uncanny ability to 

sprout legs and walk away. 


GOLF SHOTS 


Who wants to wait until the 19th 
hole for a whiskey when you've 
just shanked the drive on the 
fourth? To take the edge off crises 
such as gabby partners, four- 
putts and a tab of the brown acid, 
Orvis offers the golfer's flask 
($39, orvis.com)—a four-ounce 
stainless steel sanity saver that 
tucks into a classy brown leather 
pouch and holds markers, tees, 
a pitch repairer, a pencil and 

a scorecard. There’s nothing 
like a dram of malt to steady the 
hands—and to keep you from 
wrapping that expensive driver 
around an oak tree. 


WET DREAMS 


With 3 million lakes, 3,000 rivers and plenty of seacoast, Alaska is 
a fisherman's paradise. If you can't make the trip, here's the next 
best thing: Troy Letherman and Tony Weaver's Top Water ($50, 
the Countryman Press), an informative guide full of amazing pho- 
tos. Each of Alaska’s top 10 game fish has a chapter devoted to 
it, with detai PO and 900, anih 
most impo! 


100,000-MILE-HIGH CLUB 


Ever опе has baggage, but not 


dition totes from 
Piece of TREES ($95 to $195, 
pieceofadventure.com) are made. 


missions. Choosing one means 
picking both a style (laptop, 
messenger or shoulder) and 
moment in astro history (the 
2004 International Space 

or the 1990 Russian So 

mission). E. 

plenty of pockets and padding 
to keep your laptop or gadgets 
snug. The way we sce it, if 
what they're made of was tough 
enough to carry a spaceship, 
it's tough enough to tote your 
earthbound burden. 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGI 


ШЩШех Month 


Û 
FICTION BY TC. BOYLE 


BATH TIME WITH THE WWE'S CHRISTY HEMME 


CHRISTY HEMME—YOU'VE SEEN THE WORLD WRESTLING 
ENTERTAINMENT SUPERSTAR AS A MAN SHOW JUGGY DANCER, 
A MUSCLE-AND-FITNESS MODEL AND THE WINNER OF SPIKE 
TV'S RAW DIVA CONTEST. BUT YOU'VE NEVER SEEN HER LIKE 
THIS. AN EXCLUSIVE ALL-NUDE PICTORIAL 


THE LAST DAYS OF UDAY HUSSEIN—IN HIS 39 YEARS, SAD- 
DAM'S OLDEST SON LIVED A LIFE OF PRIVILEGE AND WEALTH 
HE WAS A SADIST AND A WOMANIZER, AS MOST OF THE WORLD 
LEARNED. HE ALSO RAN A NATIONAL NEWSPAPER, THE MOST 
POPULAR TV NETWORK IN THE NATION AND OTHER BUSI- 
NESSES—WHILE HE SIPHONED OFF MILLIONS FOR HIS OUT- 
LAW EMPIRE. IT TURNS OUT THAT UDAY, WHO HAD BEEN 
PASSED OVER BY HIS POWERFUL FATHER, ALSO HAD A HID- 
DEN AGENDA. WITH STARTLING EXCLUSIVE REPORTING FROM 
INSIDE UDAY'S CAMP, THIS IS A STORY THAT WILL REWRITE 
IRAQ'S HISTORY. BY PETER ARNETT 


GIRLFRIEND GONE WILD—JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE WITH A 
WOMAN WHO THINKS PORN IS DISGUSTING DOESN'T MEAN 
YOU CAN'T LIVE OUT YOUR SEX FANTASIES. SOMETIMES ALL 
YOU HAVE TO DO IS ASK. OUR INTREPID REPORTER COAXES 
HIS GIRLFRIEND INTO THE SEXUAL UNKNOWN, INCLUDING A 
HOMEMADE SEX TAPE. BY COREY LEVITAN 


SUIT YOURSELF! APRIL FASHION. 


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BORN IN BRAZIL 


LESLIE MOONVES—THE CHAIRMAN OF CBS IS ONE OF AMER- 
ICA'S MOST PROMINENT AND CREATIVE BROADCASTERS. 
TUNE IN FOR PREVIOUSLY UNEXPLORED DISCUSSIONS OF 
CBS'S BIG TURNAROUND, HOW MANY CSI SPIN-OFFS HE'S 
WILLING TO AIR, HIS BEING CALLED TOO CONSERVATIVE AND 
HOW DAVID LETTERMAN'S NEW BABY HELPED BOOST RAT- 
INGS. PLAYBOY INTERVIEW BY DAVID SHEFF 


ARE YOU A FOOL?—FORGET PRANKING THE GUY IN THE 
NEXT CUBE AND TAKE OUR QUIZ. DID YOU ACCIDENTALLY 
SEND A PORNOGRAPHIC E-MAIL TO YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW? 
WHAT IF YOU FOUND A RANDOM BOTTLE OF PILLS ON THE 
GROUND? HOW WOULD YOU REACT? DEPENDING ON YOUR 
ANSWERS, MR. Т MAY OR MAY NOT PITY YOU. 


MENA SUVARI—FROM HER ROLE IN AMERICAN PIE TO HER 
SEXY TURN AS KEVIN SPACEY'S LUST OBJECT IN AMERICAN 
BEAUTY, THE ALL-AMERICAN GIRL HAS HAD AN ILLUSTRIOUS 
CAREER—AND SHE'S ONLY 26. 200 BY STEPHEN REBELLO 


PLUS: FICTION BY T.C. BOYLE, THE BEST IN NEW SUITS, THE 
PERFECT POKER NIGHT, BRAZILIAN BEAUTIES FLAUNT THEIR 
BIKINI WAXES, BABE OF THE MONTH CAMILLE ANDERSON 
AND MISS APRIL, COURTNEY RACHEL CULKIN. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), March 2005, volume 52, number 3. Published monthly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy 

North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post C 

dian Publications Май Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for 12 issues. Postmaster: Send address change to 
168 Playboy, PO. Box 2007, Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail circ@ny.playboy.com. 


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