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STEROIDS, SEX AND FOUL BALLS
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INTERVIEW: THOMASL. FRIEDMAN
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Celebrated for his artwork in such com-
ics as Batman: Arkham Asylum and the
Sandman series, an is also
the director of MirrorMask, a visually
awesome sci-fi movie out this month.
Here he contributes the art for this
month’s fiction, The Fisherman and the
Jinn, by Robert Coover. “It is a sort of
collage,” McKean reports. “A painting
is scanned in, then pieces are played
with and put in different places.”

Opening the Forum is an essay by

writer and activist Ishmael Reed. Rid-
ing the bus to a new teaching job, the
author of Mumbo Jumbo began to
view the outcry over recent attempts to
privatize Social Security in a new light.
“If they used the kind of transportation
that poor people depend on, our poli-
ticians—who are driven from event to
event in limousines—would discover
that people are hurting,” he says.

For The Man in the Bomb Suit, Mark
Boal patrolled the explosive streets of
Baghdad with the elite U.S. soldiers who
defuse the deadly improvised explosive
devices, or IEDs, favored by гад! in-
surgents. “These guys are running up
to bombs while other people are run-
ning away from them,” says Boal, who
spent nearly a month living with the
men. “They encounter on a daily basis
the most lethal weapons in this conflict.
Other soldiers look at them as though
they’re insane sword swallowers or fire
walkers. It takes a surgeon’s hands—a
slipup will leave you dead or missing half
your body. They also have to be vigilant
24 hours a day, seven days a week,
because every working moment is a
life-or-death situation. They defuse hun-
dreds of bombs a month, but bombs are
talked about only when they explode.”

For this month’s fashion feature, The
New Playboy, eight of the world’s most
creative designers came up with in-
novative new looks for the contempo-
rary man. Renowned photographer

nothy White captured the designs.
“Instead of trying to be retro or futuristic,”
White explains, “we were trying to be in
the moment. Each shot tells the story of
the designer and his contribution to the
concept of The New Playboy.”

New York Times columnist and three-
time Pulitzer Prize winner TI

in is one of the most widely
read writers in the world. His pieces
are reprinted not only across the U.S.
but around the globe. His latest book,
The World Is Flat (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux), is a radical reappraisal of
the progress of globalization—and
a hot topic in this month’s Playboy
Interview, conducted by Contributing
Editor David Sheff. “This is the gold-
en age of being a commentator,”
Friedman says. “What is so cool about
the Internet is that | can go to Cairo
and bump into a 20-year-old who'll
say, ‘You know, the third paragraph of
your Wednesday column—I had a
problem with that.’ But it’s also an
awesome responsibility to get it right.
And that’s why | sit around in fear.”

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FOR EXPERTS ONLY x
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vol. 52, no. 9—september 2005

contents

features

112

HE MAN IN THE BOMB SUI

Iraq has become a repository for just about every weapons system known to man.

The situation is literally explosive, with an estimated 10 million mines buried in
the dirt, often in populated areas. We patrol Baghdad with ace bomb tech Staff
Sergeant Jeffrey S. Sarver of the Army's 788th Ordnance Company, an elite unit
that protects troops from improvised explosive devices. Sarver's distinction: He

has disarmed more of them than any man in the war. BY MARK BOAL

The roadster is the ultimate sports car, and those designed in the 1950s and
1960s reached a pinnacle of style and performance that has yet to be matched.
Get reverent about the five finest two-seaters ever built. BY KEN GROSS

In a 50-year career spent studying financial markets, Wall Street vet Raymond
F. Devoe Jr. has survived 18 bubbles. The man knows money, and he has sound
advice on how to plan your financial future. BY RAYMOND F. DEVOE JR.

Get blitzed with our picks for the top 25 college football teams and the Playboy
All America Team, as well as our 2005 Anson Mount Scholar/Athlete winner and
an interview with USC coach Pete Carroll on the state of the game. BY GARY COLE

fiction

The monotonous daily routine of an old fisherman is broken when he discovers a
brass jar with a jinn inside. Should he wish for the end of disease? World peace?
Or how about virility for 200 years? His wish is the jinn's command...if he can
make up his mind in time. BY ROBERT COOVER

the playboy forum

BACK TO THE 19305?

To ride the bus with underclass America is to be transported to the Depression era,
when there was no unemployment insurance or welfare government. Politicians
today may be shocked by the backlash to their attempts to privatize Social Security,
but that’s because they go first-class and not Greyhound. BY ISHMAEL REED

URT BUSCH
This young NASCAR champion has left other drivers in the dust with his skillful
handling and unapologetically aggressive behavior on and off the track. We get his
wheels spinning about Dale Earnhardt flipping him the bird, the perks of being a
champ and why he wears all those caps. BY WARREN KALBACKER

interview

A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, this New York Times columnist and best-
selling author has established himself as the leading popular commentator on
globalization. His latest book, The World Is Flat, describes the technological
revolution that has leveled the playing field for India and China to compete with
the West. He chats candidly about the war in Iraq, the future of the Middle East
and why two countries that are involved in Dell’s supply chain will never wage
war with each other. BY DAVID SHEFF

COVER STORY

Jessica Canseco, the gorgeous ex-wife
of the controversial one-time MVP, finally
breaks her silence about her five years as
a baseball wife, coming clean about sex,
lies and Jose's destructive steroid abuse.
Senior Contributing Photographer Stephen
Wayda scores big as the taut beauty pirou-
ettes sans tutu. Our Rabbit watches closely
from the waistline.

Boy ұ

HEU

vol. 52, no. 9—september 2005

Hl.
contents continued

pictorials

WEDISH BLONDE

Join the joyride with these Scan-
dinavian sweethearts as they
show how Stockholm stacks Up.

PLAYMATE:
ANESSA HOELSHER

easily the sexiest oenophile on
the planet

HE SLUGGER’S WIFE
Jessica Canseco busts out of

ex-husband Jose's shadow—and
her clothes—to give us a major
league flash dance.

notes and news

Hef is named one of the 100
Greatest Americans; the E! reality
series The Girls Next Door tails
his three girlfriends.

Tiffany Fallon, Bai Ling, screen
legend Jane Russell and the
Entourage guys help keep the
party going at the Mansion.

LAYMATE NEW
Don't wreck your neck as you
crane your head out the car win-
dow to take in Lauren Michelle
Hill's sexy new Guess billboard;
Erika Eleniak stars as one of the
two Ginger temptations on The
Real Gilligan's Island 2.

departments

fashion

What does the 21st century
man look like? We asked eight
top designers to construct the
varied looks of the modern
male—a guy who wants clothes
to complement rather than
define his sense of individuality.

David Cronenberg shakes up a
rural town in his disturbing A His-
tory of Violence; George Clooney is
a CIA terrorist hunter in Syriana.

VD
Go under the knife with Nip/Tuck;
attack the wack with essential
blaxploitation classics.

Head Diplomat Jim Jones drops
hard lyrics on his second LP;
Daddy Yankee discusses the
music genre reggaetón.

Gunslingers grapple with
vampires in the supernatural
Western Darkwatch; get mean
and green with The Incredible
Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

BOOK

Bret Easton Ellis's long-awaited
Lunar Park; the hallucina-

tory, erotic images of Cheyco
Leidmann's Sex Is Blue.

GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 680 NORTH LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611. PLAYBOY ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY
TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR GRAPHIC OR OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN LETTERS AND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND

GRAPHIC MATERIAL WILL BE TREATED AS UNCONDITIONALLY ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT PURPOSES AND MATERIAL
WILL BE SUBJECT TO PLAYBOY'S UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND TO COMMENT EDITORIALLY. PLAYBOY, DATE OF PRODUCTION:
JUNE 2005. CUSTODIAN OF RECORDS IS DIANE GRIFFIN. ALL RECORDS REQUIRED BY LAW TO BE MAINTAINED BY PUBLISHER ARE
LOCATED AT 680 NORTH LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611. CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 6 2005 BY PLAYBOY. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE AND RABBIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REGISTERED U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE. NO
PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELECTRONIC,
MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR RECORDING MEANS OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. ANY
SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMIFICTION IN THIS MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL PEOPLE AND
PLACES IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE PAGE 147] DANBURY MINT ONSERT IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED
COPIES. PACIFICO INSERT BETWEEN PAGES [267127] IN SELECTED DOMESTIC NEWSSTAND AND SUBSCRIPTION COPIES. CERTIFICADO
DE LICITUD DE TÍTULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993, Y CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO NO. 5108 DE FECHA
29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS POR LA COMISÍON CALIFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE LA
SECRETARIA DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO. RESERVA DE DERECHOS 04-2000-071710332800-102.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

IT'S ALWAYS GOOD ТО HAVE SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN THE FUTURE

It makes life all the more enjoyable. In this instance, the future is bigger and brighter - and it's about to arrive in the form of JVC's Designer
Pro Series, Full HD HD-ILA 70-inch TV.

Incorporating true 1920x1080p, 2-million pixel resolution and JVC's exclusive fifth-generation D.I.S.T. engine, JVC's HD-ILA 70-inch TV is
designed to give you a future that's clearly worth watching. Plus, its high-concept design and matching stand will transform your home theater
into a showplace that is sure to make the neighbors green with envy. But don't take our word for it — see it for yourself this September.

The Perfect Experience =
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THE PATRÓN

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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
ROBERT LOVE editor at large
JAMIE MALANOWSKI managing editor

EDITORIAL
FEATURES: A.J. BAIME articles editor FASHION: JOSEPH DE ACETIS director FORUM: CHIP ROWE
senior editor; PATTY LAMBERTI assistant editor MODERN LIVING: SCOTT ALEXANDER senior editor
STAFF: ALISON PRATO senior associate editor; ROBERT B. DESALVO, TIMOTHY MOHR
associate editors; JOSH ROBERTSON assistant editor; 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; ROBERT HORNING сору editor
RESEARCH: DAVID COHEN research director; BRENDAN BARR senior researcher; DAVID PFISTER associate
senior researcher; A.P. BRADBURY, RON MOTTA, 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,
SIMON COOPER, GRETCHEN EDGREN, LAWRENCE GROBEL, KEN GROSS, JENNIFER RYAN JONES (FASHION),
WARREN KALBACKER, ARTHUR KRETCHMER (AUTOMOTIVE), JOE MORGENSTERN, BARBARA NELLIS,
MERIEM ORLET (FASHION), JAMES R. PETERSEN, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN,
DAVID SHEFF, DAVID STEVENS, JOHN D. THOMAS, ALICE K. 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-FRANCES, 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: WADE BAXTER midwest
sales 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; BELINDA BANK merchandising manager

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

^ TEQUILA
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SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking
Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease,
Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.

OFEPLAYBOY

ONE OF THE GREATEST

The Discovery Channel and AOL have named Hef one of
the 100 Greatest Americans, along with presidents Wash-
ington, Lincoln, Kennedy and Bush, Thomas Edison,
Albert Einstein, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Walt Disney,

GEAR AND CLOTHING
IN LAS VEGAS А
Next time you’re blowing your win- |

in Vegas, make sure to stop by our 4
new boutique, the first freestanding |
Playboy store in the U.S. It features
memorabilia, artwork and clothes, and |
you may even spot a Bunny or two. i

& У = Y И n

BEVERLY
HILLS ROCK
"Beverly Hills, that's
where | want to be,"
Weezer frontman Riv-
ers Cuomo croons on
the band's hit single
"Beverly Hills." For
the video, only one
p à location made sense:
ер қ | the Playboy Мап-
х Ч 4 E sion. Between takes,
Hef, Holly, Bridget
and Kendra showed
Cuomo and his band-
N mates how to rock the
M. backgammon board.

HEF'S GIRLS GET REAL
The E! cameras have been tailing Mr. Playboy's girl-
friends Kendra, Holly and Bridget for a new reality $
show, The Girls Next Door. What's it like to be young, #
blonde and dating Hef? You'll soon find out.

MAYOR MARTINI MEETS THE PMOY
With a nickname like Mayor Martini, it's no won-
der Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman gets every-
body shaken and stirred. He stopped by the
Mansion Playmate of the Year party, bearing gifts
for PMOY 2005 Tiffany Fallon and Hef: keys to
the city. Vegas, baby!

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CHEATING HEARTS

The Playboy Fidelity Survey: Secret Sex
(June) doesn’t address one reason
many men cheat: a lack of sex at home.
My wife and I are in our early 40s. We
get along well but have sex only about
twice a month. She has no imagina-
tion in bed and expresses no desire
to improve the situation. That’s why I
have affairs. I'm too young to give up

Cheaters never win, but they do score.

sex, and I’m tired of trying to sell her
on the idea that sex can be fun, spon-
taneous and exciting.

Name withheld

New York, New York

My husband and I have been having
problems outside the bedroom, so he
started another relationship that isn't
entirely about his physical desires. This
makes cheating a murkier issue. People
who have affairs aren't all meeting in
parking lots and hotels just for the sex.

Name withheld
Atlanta, Georgia

As webmaster of |Philanderers.com,
I feel your numbers are bang-on in

regard to why people stray, although
Га guess the percentage of women who
cheat is higher than the 14 to 18 per-
cent you found. My sense is that women
are more reluctant than men to reveal
the truth about their indiscretions, even
when guaranteed anonymity. The high
number of affairs could, as you claim, be
attributed to the sexual revolution. But
it may also be a symptom of our culture's
emphasis on instant gratification. If you
believe what you see on prime-time tele-
vision, everyone is cheating and getting

Р |

away with it. Our motto? If you can't be
good, at least be careful.
Doug Mitchell
Toronto, Ontario

FROM A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY

I enjoyed The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Star Wars Galaxy (June), but you
overlooked an important aspect of the
series. The best thing about the GFFA
is that female characters are not just
damsels in impossible outfits waiting to
be saved. They are women in improb-
able outfits fighting right in there with
the guys.

nebekah Adam

New Hope, Minnesota

THE ROOT OF EVIL
Rohan Gunaratna’s Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed: The Brain (June) is superb.
Mohammed’s arrest has been a devas-
tating blow to Al Qaeda. While I’m not
discounting his fanaticism and crimes,
he’s brilliant in the way ancient warrior
kings were brilliant. KSM checks every
box in our Darwinian hindbrain that
says “This is a leader.”
Evan Santos
Adelanto, California

TIFFANY’S THE ONE
Congratulations to Tiffany Fallon
for being chosen Playmate of the
Year (June). Although all 12 of the
women are deserving, once again
PLAYBOY and its readers made the
right choice.
Gregory Hoodin
Cincinnati, Ohio

TOUR DE LANCE
The June Interview with Lance
Armstrong is one of the best
you’ve published. Keep kicking
ass and taking names, Lance.
Danny Slimak
Hermiston, Oregon

MANY LIKE IT HOT
I have been in love with Mari-
lyn Monroe my entire life and was
thrilled to see the new image of her
(Marilyn Revealed, June). When my
son was in high school I rented The
Seven Year Itch so he could see why
I think she is so special. We weren't 30
minutes into the film when he turned to
me and said, “Dad, I get it now!”
Jim Stone
Post Falls, Idaho

Marilyn Monroe has contributed
in many ways to PLAYBOY's success.
May I suggest that the magazine pay

its debt to her by revealing the truth
about her death? I attended her
autopsy as a deputy district attorney
for the city of Los Angeles. The coro-
ner concluded she had died from an
overdose of the barbiturate Nembutal.
Yet there were no needle marks on
her arms nor any remnants of cap-
sules found in her home. The circum-
stances of her death remain unclear.

John Miner

Los Angeles, California

KEEPING IT REAL
My husband and I read each new
issue of the magazine together, and it
has truly transformed our marriage. It
gives us a way to share our fantasies.
That feeds our sexual appetites, and
we are becoming more intimate and
passionate as a result. Thank you!
Cat McLaughlin
Killeen, Texas

PUZZLING RELATIONSHIPS
Robert Coover's short story Suburban
Jigsaw (June) is great, but I couldn't
solve the puzzle. Help! Гуе been work-
ing on it for two days.
Daniel Baker
New York, New York
The names that belong on each piece, from
left to right and top to bottom, are Larry,
Opal, Victor, Evelyn, Lucille, Pavel, Odette,
Igor, Rick, Lily, Oscar, Sheila, Irene, Homer,
Wanda and Alan. For the solution write the

о V

The solution to Coover's conundrum.

first letter of each name in its appropriate
box. Beginning at top left and moving in a
clockwise spiral, the message reads, “Love is
a whirlpool.”

EYE-OPENER

Thanks for the great article on
cocktails (Into the Drink, June). The
Hemingway daiquiri must have been

GEOFFREY GRAHN

SINCE 1783

& x KENTUCKYS fpsum ;
¿Kentucky

STRAIGHT

N Bourton
W HISKEY

one hell of a breakfast for Papa. One
question: What is the simple syrup the
recipe calls for?
Mark Seymour
Elkhart, Indiana
Simple syrup is half sugar, half water,
boiled to dissolve the sugar into the solution,
then cooled. Easy as cheese, only it's syrup.

MORE ON SCIENCE VS. RELIGION
Your articles about the origins of the
universe (The Meaning of It All, May) are
a great counter to the relentless babble
from “people of faith” who reject abun-
dant scientific evidence. However, I take
issue with one of physicist Simon Singh's
reasons for refuting the idea that the
universe has existed for eternity. He
writes, “Within a finite amount of time
all the objects in the universe should
have fallen toward one another, causing
the universe to collapse.” The universe
would expand forever if its initial veloc-
ity at the time of the big bang were equal
to or greater than the escape velocity. In
the 1970s scientists had a good approxi-
mation of the velocity of the universe
and were working to determine its mass
to calculate whether it would expand
forever. The discovery of dark energy,
which acts against gravity, made those
calculations moot.
Bob Whalen
Vista, California

As an astrophysicist who has spent
more than 25 years teaching astronomy,
I must counter Singh's assertions about
the big bang. Not everyone who calls it
“just a theory” is a Luddite. When Edwin
Hubble began studying the motion
of galaxies, he had to correct for the
motion of the earth and sun. This Dop-
pler motion shifts the wavelength of light
either toward the blue (approaching) or
red (receding). He assumed that the red-
shifted light from galaxies showed them
receding. This produced the idea of a
big bang. But another scientist, Halton
Arp, introduced more than 200 images
of interacting galaxies that are at very
different red shifts. An alternate expla-
nation for the red shift that generally
correlates with distance is light scatter
from dark-matter dust.

Robert Soberman
Voorhees, New Jersey

Singh replies, “On its own, each of my
reasons for believing in the big bang is not
wholly convincing, but together they make
a compelling case. Understanding dark
energy is a gap in modern cosmology, but
the mystery does not undermine the model.
Arp’s research is highly controversial and
certainly not enough to overturn the theory.
The vast majority of cosmologists agree that
the big bang is basically correct and is a
triumph of the human intellect. The expan-
sion of the universe is still the best way to
explain the red shift.”

THE DONALD ON DEFENSE
The June Grapevine includes a photo
of a “nipple slip” by Donald Trump's
wife. Take a closer look. The nip could
be part of the shadow of his hand.
Todd Harner
York, Pennsylvania

BAI LING, UNCUT
An outstanding pictorial! Bai Ling
(Bai, Bai, Baby!, June) is one of the
most beautiful actresses in the world.
Phil Brungard
West Haven, Connecticut

You say Bai Ling appears in Star
Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I
don’t recall seeing her. What gives?

Jamar Perry
Vancouver, Washington

Ling’s scene, which featured her nude
and covered with tattoos as she comforted
Natalie Portman, ended up on the cutting-

No doubt about it: Bai Ling is gorgeous.

room floor. Ling has suggested this had
something to do with her PLAYBOY picto-
rial. George Lucas denies it, noting that the
scene also featured his daughter.
summed up our feelings: “Hot inter-
galactic girl-girl action is sitting on a shelf
somewhere, but we won't get to see it!” Pray
to the Force for an expanded DVD.

GOING TO THE FIGHT
I was appalled by your suggestion in

Mantrack that readers attend bullfights
in Tijuana (“5 Reasons to Road-Trip
This Month,” June). Bullfighting is a
cruel act in which a debilitated bull is
brutally killed for entertainment. Even
before the bulls enter the ring they are
drugged so it’s easier for the matador
to stab and torture them. Real men are
kind to animals.

Chad Raith

Greensburg, Pennsylvania

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Gabrielle
Tuite

What Price fame? This model
and entrepreneur has some idea

We’ve often wondered why male con-
testants so readily lose their cool on The
Price Is Right. Are they so enticed by
the prospect of a new washing machine
that they must charge the stage like
horny rhinos? One look at Gabrielle Tuite,
one of the spokesmodel sirens known
as Barker’s Beauties, and it all makes
sense. “All those acting classes come in
handy,” she says. “You have to smile
and act excited about everything.” When
not caressing name-brand appliances,
Gabrielle pushes a_few items of her
own on her website, |gabrielletuite.com:
her first calendar, her line of jeans acces-
sories and her cuddly self. “I sell a five-
foot-long body pillow with a picture of

me topless—but holding myself grace-
fully. A woman’s body is beautiful, but
for me to pose nude it has to be the
right place and time.” Off the market for
three years, newly single Gabrielle is
looking for love—cautiously. “I’m picky
and have a hard time meeting guys I’m
attracted to,” she admits. “I like intelli-
gent businessmen with an adventurous
side, but | think people have precon-
ceptions because of how I look. Guys
say to me, ‘You must be a Playmate—
what month are you?”” At Aqua, a
lounge she is opening in Hollywood,
Gabrielle hopes to keep the cheesy
lines and other club fouls to a minimum.
“Aqua is hip and cool, but it's also a
place where you can hang out and listen
to sexy tunes,” she explains. “Clubs are
fun once in a while, but I’d rather social-
ize with my friends than scream over
music. New York has neighborhood bars,
and Miami has lounges, but L.A. lacks
those in-between places.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN RUSSO

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the bradbury chronicles

RAY VISION

A SCIENCE FICTION MASTER
TAKES STOCK

Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon From the
Cave, Too Far From the Stars collects 40
of Ray Bradbury’s essays written over a
period of 40 years. We sat down with the
author of The Martian Chronicles and
Fahrenheit 451 for a preview of his new
book’s ideas, both great and small.

Understanding: We’ve been out of the
caves for only about 5,000 years—we're
still ape-men, for Christ's sake—and
we’re on our way to the stars. We have
much to forgive ourselves for because we
have a lot to look forward to. The future
is immense. Be patient and forgiving.

Exploration: We should never have left
the moon. We should have built a per-
manent base and gone on to Mars. That’s
the next thing we have to do.

Commitment: Don't stop traveling
because of bad weather. My wife and
l once were to go to Blenheim Palace,
outside London. It’s Winston Churchill’s
birthplace, named for the Battle of Blen-
heim, which was fought in Germany in
1704. It began to rain, with lightning
and thunder, but we went anyway. We
were alone. We owned the whole god-
damn castle! The lightning and thunder
re-created the battle for us—the Battle
of Blenheim! That was a great day.

Creativity: Federico Fellini was a good
friend. His way of creating is also my

blind admissions

way of creating: not knowing what you're
doing. You mustn’t think about it; just
do it and keep your intellect out of the
way. Write with emotion, passion and
love, and you can’t go wrong.

Perspective: Trains are the only way to
see the country. | love to have supper
and go to my room with a bottle of cham-
pagne and drink it at midnight while |
look out at the rolling country and the
houses of all the people. | realize, going
by in the night, that all the people are
good. There are no evil people out there.
It’s all beautiful.

A few of the provocative anonymous postcards on display at|postsecret.blogspot.coml.

"Ww и

afterhours ]

animal lover

CONSERVATIVES SAY THE
DARNEDEST THINGS

Radio host Alan Colmes: You had
sex with animals?

Antiabortion activist Neal Horsley:
Absolutely. | was a fool. When you
grow up on a farm in Georgia, your
first girlfriend is a mule.

Colmes: Are you suggesting that
everybody who grows up on a farm in
Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?
Horsley: It has historically been the
case. You people are so far removed
from the reality. Welcome to domes-
tic life on the farm. If it’s warm and
it's damp and it vibrates, you might

in fact have sex with it.
--Ғох News Radio, May 2005

one for the road

In late August Hunter S. Thompson's
ashes will be taken to the top of
the Gonzo Memorial Fist on his
Colorado property and, per his
instructions, fired from a cannon.
To help raise funds for the 150-
foot column, collaborator Ralph
Steadman has teamed with Flying
Dog Ales to produce Gonzo Impe-

rial Porter. Supplies are very lim-
ited. Visit|flyingdogales.com|.

[ afterhours

sex and the city-state

EMPIRE BABYLON

With Rome HBO trains its unflinching eye on the
Late Republic period of the ancient city. Sparta-
cus it ain't. Complete with crucifixions and animal
sacrifices, the series shows the legendary metropo-
lis just as everything started going to pot. Executive
producer Bruno Heller gives us some background.
Poverty Sucks: Roman society in 52 B.c. was
both rich and decadent. It had once been a stoic
military culture, but by that point the upper
classes were no longer the backbone of the army,
and all the hard work was done by slaves. “Rome
had an obscenely wealthy nobility with a great
unwashed mob,” Heller says. “There wasn't
much of a middle class to hold the line.”

Both Ways: Roman men were equal-opportunity
fornicators. “Slave boys, slave girls—one was
as good as the other,” says Heller. Affection
for young boys was imported from Greek cul-
ture. Romans considered it a more refined
taste, “like drinking wine rather than beer.”
Fortunate Sons: It was a crime to seduce free-
born Roman boys. “So that made them all the
more attractive,” explains Heller. “A pretty,
noble boy had the same kind of allure as Brit-
ney Spears in a schoolgirl outfit.”

Wino City: Water was poor, partly because of
lead plumbing, so wine was used as a substi-
tute. “They'd have it with breakfast,” Heller
says. “It was concentrated, like Thunderbird, so
they mixed it with water to improve the taste.”

Biggus Dickus: A large penis was considered
comical and ugly but also an effective talis-
man for warding off bad luck. “Images of large
penises were the good-luck horseshoe of the
era, drawn on walls or hung over doorways.”
All Together Now: Public toilets were unisex, just
an arcade on the side of the road. “They were
social centers, like Starbucks,” says Heller. “You
would plan to meet your friends at the toilets.”
Stinking Rich: The nobility favored red or purple
garments made with rare, expensive dyes. One
pigment, for instance, was extracted from Mid-
dle Eastern shellfish. Having a fishy odor was
a sign of status, like wearing Chanel No. 5.

choo la la

NUDITY
FOR A

CAUSE

WHEN
NAKED
CELEBS GO
ON THE
BLOCK,
WHOSE SKIN
RAKES IT IN?

Four Inches, the
summer's most
buzzed-about
picture book,
features 44 fa-
mous women
wearing little
other than Jimmy
Choo shoes or

boots with stiletto heels. Proceeds from sales of the $65 tome go to AIDS research, as did the
money raised when Christie's auctioned off prints. In New York images of Paris Hilton and
Elle Macpherson each commanded $26,000, but Kate Moss's set the high-dollar mark at
$48,000. (Shagadelic Iman, above, was a steal at $5,500—come on, folks, have a
heart!) The London auction proved more lucrative: Moss, also the winner there, fetched
nearly $500,000, and Macpherson pulled in almost $300,000.

coming attraction

SONGS OF
INNOCENCE
AND
EXPERIENCE

Here's a musical comedy
even the average show
tune-hating joe can en-
joy. In Dr. Sex, the story
of sex researcher Dr.
Alfred Kinsey, premier-
ing off Broadway this
month, the wit and word-
play of lyricist Larry
Bortniker stay spicy
enough to keep every-
one's attention. In this
excerpt Kinsey realizes
his mission in life:
"What people really

do when the lights

are low,

І need to know.

What people really

do when the lights

are low,

And plainly so.
Collectively and singly,
What makes people
moist and tingly?

This is where my heart
says | must go.

From first arousal
straight through the
afterglow,

What people really

do when the lights

are low.

Are they rough, or are
they tender?

Have they preferences
in gender?

Are they likelier to
conquer

Or to lie back and
surrender?

Do they harden? Do
they soften?

(Does it happen very
often?)

And is there para-
phernalia

In or on their genitalia?
1 must be there to
follow it, blow by
blow,

What people really

do when the lights

are low."

MORE TASTE THAN BUD LIGHT
WITH HALF THE CARBS. TRUE.

Great Taste. Less Filling.

Good call.

Live Responsibly |
ات س‎ үң

Miller Lite has 96 cals., 3.2g carbs., less than 19 protein, 0.09 fat
per 12 oz serving. Bud Light has 6.69 carbs per 12 oz serving.

[ afterhours

drink of the month

PIMM DANDY

FRENCH QUARTER,
ENGLISH HOOCH

As the dog days of August
ease into the often still
sweaty first weeks of Sep-
tember, the thirsty man
wants something a little
sweet, a little sour and to-
tally chilled. A Pimm's Cup
will do the trick. Of the
many bevvies built on
James Pimm's gin-based
spirit, our pick is mixed by
the barkeeps at the Napo-
leon House in New Orleans.
Here's how they do it:

Fill tall 12 oz. glass with ice

Add 174 oz. Pimm's #1
and 3 oz. lemonade

Top off with 7-Up

Garnish with slice of
cucumber

Do not under any circum-
stance omit the cucumber.

half-mile-high club: n,
variation on the mile
high club; membership
is gained by practicing
self-love on an airplane.

PLAYBOY: What do you do?

FLY GIRL

TALKING THE SOUAWK WITH BIRD
MINDER AUTUMN MONAHAN

AUTUMN: I'm a bird keeper at the aviaries of
the San Diego Zoo. | do observations on birds,
keep track of breeding and feed them—you
can't be squeamish about worms.

PLAYBOY: Why birds?

AUTUMN: | click with them. It's great to walk
into an aviary and have them all come down
because they recognize you.

PLAYBOY: Do you work with any other animals?
AUTUMN: The gorillas. There are two females
who hate me, and | hate
them. There’s this one male
who likes me because | give
him peanuts. When | come
in he always makes this
purring noise and purses his
lips, and whenever the two
females give me a hard time
he scolds them. It’s good to
have a friend on the inside.
PLAYBOY: Do visitors try to
pick you up with birdcalls?
AUTUMN: Let's just say that parrots repeat what
they hear and now one does a wolf whistle.
PLAYBOY: Do the birds ever get fresh with you?
AUTUMN: They have tried to hump my head.
PLAYBOY: That's an interesting move. What if
a guy tried it?

AUTUMN: | would give him the bird.

Employee of the Month candidates: Send pictures to pLaysoy Photography
Department, Attn: Employee of the Month, 680 North Lake Shore Drive,
Chicago, Illinois 60611. Must be at least 18 years old. Must send photo-
copies of a driver's license and another valid ID (not a credit card), one of
which must include a current photo.

employee of the month

HERE'S TO THE RUNNERS-UP

The Baxter, opening this month, is a romantic comedy about the other guy in romantic
comedies, the guy who's the safe option for the female lead and thus fated to lose her.
We asked director Michael Showalter to pick his favorite Baxters:

1. Walter (Bill Pullman) in S/eepless in
Seattle. "He's the ultimate Baxter. With a
name like Walter, how could he not be? He
seems perfect, but the minute we find out
he has allergies, we know he's wrong for her.
Allergies are the opposite of romance."

2. Carl Smith (Brian Avery) in The Graduate.
"He's on the receiving end of filmdom's most
celebrated altar dumping. When he proposes
to Katharine Ross by saying they'd make 'a
pretty good team,' we know he's a goner. She
wants love; he wants to make the playoffs."
3. Hamish (Corin Redgrave) in Four Wed-
dings and a Funeral. "We know Andie
MacDowell should be with Hugh Grant, but

she marries this older man. The first time
we meet him we know it can't last. Why?
He's wearing a kilt."

4. Mark (Craig Kilborn) in Old School. "He's
an example of the Asshole Baxter variation
(see also Glenn in The Wedding Singer). He
appears to be nice and safe but is actually
a liar and a cheat—an even bigger dog than
Luke Wilson."

5. Professor Jennings (Donald Sutherland)
in Animal House. "When he walks into the
kitchen wearing a white fisherman's sweater
that reveals his bare ass—pure Baxter. We
know a girl like Karen Allen would never
stand for that kind of self-satisfaction."

\ <

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking
Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease,
Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.

What sort of man wears Playboy?

»4-

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SIGNIFICA,

Bites

Orkin, Inc. reported a
related calls in 2004.

jump in bedbug- of

Behind the Music

Licensed mariachi street perform-
ers in Mexico City: 1,700
Estimated number of muggers
who dress up as mariachis:

Longest Lecture

set by Errol
Моана?! оғ Zimbabwe, at Jagel-
lonian University in Krakow,
Poland. The lecture was on the
subject of democracy and shat-
tered the previous record, which
Muzawazi had also set, of 62
hours, 30 minutes.

$50,000

Cost of Kobe and Vanessa Bryant’s
“recommitment” ceremony.

INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS

Alias Nation

More than 1 ) people are cur-
rently hiding out in the Federal Wit-
ness Protection Program.

A study of millionaires
revealed they spend an average
a day on their per-
sonal finances.

Going in Style
Estimated average cost for an 80-
year-old American to live out the rest
of his days on a luxury cruise ship:

To hang around in an
assisted- living facility:

Holy Suds

Following a public mention of its

product by Pope Benedict XVI, the

Stuttgarter Hofbráu sent the pontiff
35 gallons of beer.

Maximum Wage

Per-minute fee for having Paris Hilton at
your party: $S

Per-minute fee paid to Donald Trump for a
seminar on real estate: $

The number of methamphetamine
labs law enforcement agencies
seized in 2004 in Maryland, Mas-
sachusetts, Vermont and New
Hampshire: 5

The number seized in Missouri, Ten-
nessee and Arkansas: 2,54

In Sink

Playing together at El Paso's Painted
Dunes Desert Golf Course, Randy
Massey and his stepmother, Terri
Massey, both aced the same hole in
the same round—the odds against
which are lion to 1

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YORK, NY,

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello get revenge

The American dream has seldom looked more broken
than it does in director David Cronenberg’s A History
of Violence. Viggo Mortensen plays a Midwestern Joe
Six-Pack who unexpectedly commits explosive, vigi-
lante-style mayhem on big-city thugs who menace him
and patrons of his diner in an idyllic rural town. Things
turn even bloodier and more disturbing when his past is
scrutinized by both the law and the bad guys (led by Ed
Harris). Says Cronenberg, “With its idea of a homesteader
protecting his wife, family and property with a gun, this
movie is as close to a modern Western as I'm ever going
to get, and it doesn't even take place in the West." What
it also has is two controversial

sex sequences, one in which “

Mortensen's wife (Maria Bello) Sex and

dresses in a cheerleader out Violence go

fit and another in which the together like
stars grapple aggressively on

a flight of stairs. "Those were ham and eggs."
such hard, wooden stairs,”

Cronenberg says, "that our stunt coordinator said it was
the first time he had to worry about whether the actors
should wear stunt pads for a sex scene. Maria got really
bruised." Good buzz makes the bruising worth it. Besides,
Cronenberg says, "People are prone to violence, and there
is a violent component to sexuality. Sex and violence go

Syriana

Based on CIA terrorist hunter Robert
Baer's best-selling memoir, this thriller features Clooney as the
drab, overweight veteran spook frazzled by the agency's con-
stant inability to stay ahead of the terrorist threat.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Anchorman supporting

player Carell plays a guy with a primo action-figure collection, a gig
in a high-end electronics store and, not surprisingly, a serious case
of arrested sexual development. Meeting Keener awakens his lib-
ido, but as luck would have it, she wants a sex-free relationship.

Just Like Heaven

In this supernatural romance, a lonesome architect (Ruffalo) meets
a pretty young woman (Witherspoon) who keeps insisting that his
new apartment is hers. The duo fall in love—of course—only to
learn that their unearthly relationship has a definite time limit.

Romance & Cigarettes

The comedy is jet-black as Gandolfini plays an iron-
worker whose hanky-panky with a sexpot (Winslet) unleashes
fury in his long-suffering wife (Sarandon). When their emotions
hit overload, the characters break out into classic pop songs.

together like ham and eggs."

Our call: A timely topic and a
killer cast, spearheaded by pro-
ducer Steven Soderbergh and
director Stephen Gaghan (Traf-
fic's screenwriter), mark a re-
turn to socially relevant flicks.

Our call: Flying against the
onslaught of assembly-line
teen romances, this sweet, tart
affair reminds us how messed
up and funny romance can be
at any age.

Our call: Your sixth sense
ought to tell you that this San
Francisco ghost story (think
of it as Ghost meets All of Me)
is heavier on the charm than
the shivers.

Our call: If you've ever won-
dered whether The Sopranos or
The Honeymooners would fly as
a musical with Bruce Springs-
teen and James Brown tunes,
you'll finally have your answer.

—Stephen Rebello

reviews [ dvds

dvd of the month

[ NIP/TUCK: THE COMPLETE
SECOND SEASON

Two plastic-surgeon pals tackle all Miami’s vices

Extremely sexy, wickedly sly and just as funny as it is dramatic, the FX cable series
Nip/Tuck will leave the unprepared viewer slack-jawed and addicted. The setup:
Odd-couple med school buddies Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy
(Julian McMahon) share a Miami plastic-surgery practice. Year two's arc puts Sean,
a worrier with a warping marriage, and Christian, a stud surgeon, through the soapy

wringer. We knew Julia (Joely
Richardson) was pregnant
when Sean married her 17
years ago; now we learn that
the baby was Christian’s and
that he boinked the bride’s
mom on the wedding day.
Don’t cry for Sean, though:
He bangs a blow-up doll and
the porn queen who modeled
for it—in a single show! The
bloody but fascinating plastic-
surgery operations make the
season better than Botox.
Extras: Liposucked scenes
and a featurette, Recurring
Pain: Three Women and Their
Man. ¥¥¥Y —Greg Fagan

FEVER PITCH (2005) In this guy-safe
romantic comedy from the Farrelly
brothers, Jimmy Fallon plays a school-
teacher and obsessive Boston Red Sox
fan who is forced to choose between his
new love, a successful businesswoman
played by Drew Barrymore, and his first
and forever love, the Red Sox. Is she
more important than lifelong season
tickets? This is a question so dumb only
the Farrelly brothers would see a movie
in it. But they
pull it off, sans
the usual Far-
relly fart jokes.
Extras: Deleted
scenes and three
featurettes. ұу»

—Kenny Lull

гі 1

SAHARA (2005) Matthew McConaughey
works his smooth Southern charm as a
treasure hunter searching the North African
desert for a lost American Civil War battle-
ship loaded with Confederate gold. You can
feel the heat between him and Penélope
Cruz, who plays a spirited UN doctor,
but sidekick Steve
Zahn's sly, dead-
pan performance
steals the show.
Extras: Deleted
scenes and three
featurettes. YY Y

—Matt Steigbigel

THE ASTAIRE AND ROGERS COLLEC-
TION: VOLUME ONE Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers made 10 musicals together,
and half of them debut on DVD here. Top
Hat (1935), with its art deco sets and
showstopping dance numbers, is the
one to see. Follow the Fleet (1936) has
seven Irving Berlin songs. Swing Time

(1936, pictured) features Astaire's “Bojan-

gles of Harlem"—proof he could make even
a blackface routine a touching homage.
Shall We Dance (1937) contains ballroom
dancing on roller skates, and The Barkleys

tease frame

of Broadway (1949) reteams the duo
after 10 years with a crackling script by
Singin' in the Rain writers Betty Comden
and Adolph Green.
Extras: New featur-
ettes, some with
commentary by
film historians
and/or Astaire's
daughter. УУУУ
—Buzz McClain

INSIDE DEEP THROAT (2005) This
intriguing documentary about Deep
Throat (1972) features colorful person-
alities such as Linda Lovelace and Harry
Reems and is filled with reflections about
the era from dozens of interviewees—
including Hugh Hefner. It’s an occasion-
ally humorous
and ultimately
sad exposé of
the movie. Extras:
Featurettes such
as Legends of
Erotica. ¥¥¥

—Thomas Cunha

LOST: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
(2004) Forty-eight castaways stranded on
an island isn't exactly a novel setup. But
since Lost also mixes in intriguing charac-
ter flashbacks that may reveal pieces to a
supernatural puzzle, it emerged as the
most surprising new show of the season.
As you await season two, comb through
the first 24 episodes (including the
two-hour season
bookends) to look
for some secrets.
Extras: Commen-
taries, featur-
ettes and deleted
scenes. УУУУ

—Brian Thomas

We’ve been ardent fans of slinky,
smoldering Gina Gershon for
some time now, with her curva-
ceous bod and killer curled lip.
On-screen she has tempted many
characters, male and female,
in films such as Bound (1996),
This World, Then the Fireworks
(1997), Face/Off (1997) and Prey
for Rock & Roll (2003). In the
fleshy, campy train wreck that
was Showgirls (1995, pictured),
she smartly played the conniving
Cristal with a knowing wink—and
emerged unscathed. See what
erupts later this month when she
teams with George Clooney in
the political thriller Syriana.

reviews [ dvds

the critical collector

[ SOUL CINEMA ]

When it comes to blaxploitation, revenge is a dish best served cool

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND: THE COM-
PLETE THIRD SEASON (1966) You'd
think that after three years of being
You would think anything that has exploitation in its name would be resented, but stranded, one of the single guys would
1970s black-exploitation films—blaxploitation for short—are continually greeted with a score with Ginger or Mary Ann. But you’d
firm soul handshake. “There’s always going to be a large fan base for the genre,” says also never think such a lame show would

Steve Housden, chief operating officer of Xenon
Pictures, a major distributor of blaxploitation
DVDs. “People of all races are constantly dis-
covering how even its lowest-budget films can
outdo Hollywood in creativity, excitement and
humor.” That's for sure: Witness Xenon's all-time
best-seller, Dolemite (1975), in which Rudy Ray
Moore plays an ex-con pimp who exacts revenge
on the Mob and the Man with an all-girl kung fu
army. It's inept and amateurish, to be sure, but
still compelling. The same goes for Melvin Van
Peebles's oddly revered Sweet Sweetback’s
Baadasssss Song. (Sweetback, by the way, is
slang for “big dick.”) No blaxploitation collection
would be complete without the Rocky-goes-to-
jail saga Penitentiary (1979); Coffy (1973),
featuring Pam Grier with razor blades hidden in
her Afro; Foxy Brown (1974, pictured at bottom
right), in which Grier replaces the razor blades
with a gun; and the 007-inspired Cleopatra
Jones (1973). Some of the genre's entries are
prized for their soundtracks—Isaac Hayes’s
Oscar-nominated score for Shaft (1971), Curtis
Mayfield's for Superfly (1972)—or for their
departures from familiar stories, such as Blac-
ula (1972, starring Denise Nicholas and Thal-

mus Rasulala, pictured at top). But the genre has a few -— films: Stylish Detroit
9000 (1973), the taut Godfather send-up Black Caesar (1973) and Across 110th

Street (1972) nearly escape the exploitation tag altogether.

special additions

Get historical about a screen icon, chariot races and a dance craze

The producers of Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days, a docu-
mentary that aired in 2001 on cable's AMC network, recon-
structed a 37-minute version of Something's Got to Give,
the unfinished film Monroe was fired from shortly before her
death. The reconstruction is a fascinating part of this 117-
minute treasure, as are insights from various witnesses to
the final flickering of Monroe's flame.... Ben-Hur (1959),
still the gold standard for swords-and-sandals pictures, gets
a wonderful new four-disc collector's edition that adds a
chariotload of extras. George Lucas and Ridley Scott share
thoughts in Ben-Hur: The Epic That Changed Cinema, a
new documentary and one of three offered in the set. Best
of all: Disc three serves up the restored 1925 silent film
adaptation of the General Lew Wallace novel Ben-Hur: A
Tale of the Christ.... Hip-hop went mainstream in 1984, the
year Breakin', Beat Street and Breakin' 2: Electric Booga-
loo all hit the big screen. The new Breakin' Collection bun-
dles these three films with a bonus disc, which includes
interviews with various old-school principals, like Rock
Steady Crew's Ken Swift, who hail the early movement's
emphasis on creative expression and lament the bling-
above-all ethos dominating hip-hop today. --б.Е

become an enduring cultural icon. YY

(2005) Don’t
let your girlfriend talk you into this
rote romantic comedy in which Will
& Grace's Debra Messing hires escort
Dermot Mulroney to dupe her ex-fiancé
at her sister's wedding. Sure to be an
in-flight entertainment threat. Y

CARMEN ELECTRA'S NAKED WOM-
EN WRESTLING LEAGUE: VOLUME
ONE (2005) These sexy vixens return
wrestling to its Greco-Roman roots—
nude and rude. The WWE has nothing
on Harriet Bush, Cruella Bleeds and
Demonica Disco's two gold Afros. УУУ?

(2005) Not
only does 25 percent of its proceeds go
to Amnesty International, but this col-
lection of worldwide modern-rock and
punk videos proves that the middle fin-
ger is a universal language. YY Y

RICK STEVES' EUROPE: ALL 43
SHOWS (2000-2005) PBS's peripa-
tetic Steves takes us on an eight-disc,
22-hour tour of every landmark, off-
the-beaten-path fountain and eetcafé
from Ireland to Benelux. ¥¥¥

(2005) A good idea
in 1979, a terribly timeworn one to-
day. Puppet aliens, depressed robots,
inane philosophy and “Don't panic!”
just aren't funny in 2005. YY

THE DEER HUNTER: SPECIAL
EDITION (1978) This masterpiece
about the devastating impact of the
Vietnam war on a few buddies from
a small Pennsylvania steel town still
haunts. This edition includes deleted
and extended scenes. YY YY

(2004) Todd
Solondz's biting satire showcases
eight actors playing 13-year-old Aviva,
a loner desperate to have a child and
then condemned to suffer society's
consequences. The most poignant
Aviva is Jennifer Jason Leigh. Y YY.

Don't miss Worth a look
Good show Forget it

reviews

music

DEEP DISH ж George Is On

This is everything electronica for home
use should be (infectious, head-bobbing)
and nothing that it shouldn’t (unimagina-
tive, pounding). Despite the great beats,
its largely song-based, with a nice mix
of vocalists. Even the two tracks built
on classic rock riffs transcend pointless
remix status. (Thrive) ¥¥¥% —Tim Mohr

CHILDREN OF NUGGETS
The original Nuggets rescued obscure ё
19605 garage bands too raw for radio. д

Now this 100-song collection bridges the Қ children Р

gap between “Louie Louie” and “Fell in
Love With a Girl.” Compiling music cre-
ated between 1976 and 1996, it shows
there was amazing rock even prior to the
Hives. (Rhino) ¥¥¥¥ —Jason Buhrmester

EMBASSY SWEETS

Diplomats’ Jim Jones shines solo on Harlem

On his second LP, Diplomats capo Jim Jones shows his
growth as an MC on productions perfectly suited to his
persona. The first single, “Baby Girl,” became a semi-
official summertime anthem. On the rest of the record,
Jones keeps it gully, with hard street Iyrics alongside
instructions for the ladies on how to get down with
the Dips. Harlem figures prominently in songs such as
“Gees Up,” “My Diary” and “Harlem,” as Jones takes us
on a ride through his hood (“We blowin' smoke while we
G-ride”) and paints pictures of the day-to-day struggle of
coming of age uptown. Hustling, partying and smoking
up are all part of the lifestyle, and Jones isn’t ashamed
to admit he’s a product of his environment. Along with
the Diplomats’ veteran stars—Cam'ron and Juelz San-
tana—Jones also invites new members of the Dip set
to showcase their talents on his album. On “Penitentiary
Chances” Hell Rell shows why he’s the self-proclaimed
“hardest out, hands down” among the Diplomats. The
first female Diplomat, Jha’ Jha, brings the Dirty South
crunk sound to “Drunk Hoe” (which also features P.
Diddy). And Jones’s protégé Max В offers a glimpse of
the future. (Koch) ¥¥¥¥ —Dean Gaskin

RODNEY CROWELL * The Outsider

GEORGE IS ON

At his day job Crowell writes hit sin-
gles for Music Row. At night he crafts
delightfully sardonic and literate songs
that hark back to the days of Sun
Records. With a tight band and relent-
less energy, Crowell's new music is
as good as any in his 30-year career.
(Columbia) ¥¥¥% — —Leopold Froehlich

DIAMOND NIGHTS * Popsicle

The Nights’ “The Girl's Attractive” is
a sleaze-rock classic. As deliciously
debauched as Louis XIV's "Finding Out
True Love Is Blind,” it’s like vintage Billy
Idol minus the cheese. Best of all, there's
much more here: A stab at 1980s arena
rock, “Destination Diamonds,” is just as
cool. (Кетадо) ¥¥¥% —T.M.

Latino MCs (Kid Frost, Big Pun) have always had a place in the many dance to "Gasolina"—the woman bent over or on all fours,

hip-hop scenes on both coasts. But reggaetón, the mix of hip-

hop, dancehall reggae and salsa that emerged
from the barrios of Puerto Rico in the early
1990s, represents something different. Lately
reggaeton has become a full-blown movement,
topping the Latin charts and pushing salsa and
merengue from America's Latin clubs. “For Lati-
nos reggaetón is what hip-hop is for people in
the United States—not just a kind of music but
a lifestyle," says Daddy Yankee, 29, the genre's
biggest star. He began making reggaetón as a
teen in tough San Juan barrios, long before any-
one dreamed a song like his “Gasolina” could
hit the Billboard Hot 100. Judging from the way

e д

the guy grinding his crotch into her caboose—you'd think the

crossover hit was about sex. Even the dance's
name, perreo, translates as “doggie style.”
Then there's the hook: “Le gusta la gasolina/
Dame más gasolina” (“She likes gasoline/Give
me more gasoline”). According to Yankee, Le
gusta la gasolina is Puerto Rican slang for “She
likes to hang out and party.” “But everybody
wants to make it a double entendre,” he says.
He cringes at the mention of “Macarena,” the
last Spanish-language song as recognizable
to the gringo crowd as “Gasolina.” “Reggaeton
is not lambada, and it’s not the macarena,” he
says. "Its a movement.”

napster.

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reviews | games

game of the month

[ COWBOYS AND VAMPIRES ]

The good, the bad and the undead

The Western is criminally underrepresented in video gaming. (There are more Mary-Kate
and Ashley games than decent Westerns.) Darkwatch (Capcom, PS2, Xbox), a super-
natural Gothic gunslinger, finally gives the genre some new blood—literally. You
are Jericho Cross, an 1870s train robber who unwittingly unleashes the undead

on a strange, sprawling American
Southwest. Infected in the incident,
you become a vampire with super-
human powers—uncamny strength,
the ability to leap impossible dis-
tances and “blood vision,” which
reveals threats and hidden items.
As it turns out, the 19th century
West is crawling with reanimated
gunfighters, undead snipers and
howling dead-girl banshees still in
their rotting dance-hall dresses.
You'll fight them through moonlit
graveyards and windblown can-
yons, using a combination of
weapons, special vampiric attacks
and steam-punk tech such as bat-
tle carriages and Gatling guns.
Fun as hell. ¥¥¥% —Chris Hudak

DUNGEON SIEGE II (Microsoft Game
Studios, Windows XP) The sequel to
2001's excellent hack-and-slash action
role-playing game takes you back to
the beautiful but deadly land of Aranna,
this time with a deeper story, a branch-
ing quest system, real-time fighting and
seemingly endless upgrade options for
appearance, skills, weapons and magic.
Plus, using the

co-op mode, you

can log on and

tackle the entire

single-player

campaign with a

friend. YY Y

—Marc Saltzman

THE INCREDIBLE HULK: ULTIMATE
DESTRUCTION (VU Games, GameCube,
PS2, Xbox) Some video games tell epic,
nuanced stories, and some simply tell
you to bust up the joint. We're so very
grateful this one's in the latter camp. Mar-
vel's not-so-lean green fighting machine
clobbers his last gaming incarnation
(a movie tie-in) by eliminating the Bruce
Banner compo-
nent and focus-
ing on smashing
buildings, rip-
ping cars apart
and confronting
gargantuan bad-
dies. ¥¥¥ —M. S.

FLATOUT (VU Games, PC, PS2, Xbox)
Catchy name, dismal game. Borrowing
liberally from its noble forebears Burnout
3, Need for Speed Underground and
Gran Turismo, this tepid racer doesn't
add much apart from a fixation with send-
ing the driver through the windshield
(an action that figures in several morbid
minigames). Today's driving games need
more than flashy
graphics and
realistic car dam-
age, something
this monotonous
motor-sport sim
sadly forgets. Y

—Adam Rosen

NCAA FOOTBALL '06 (EA Sports,
PS2, Xbox) This year EA's reliable col-
lege ball franchise brings enhanced
controls for jukes, sidesteps and tackle
breaking. Design a varsity protégé,
score him scholarships and earn the
respect of your frothing peers; they'll
fill your upgradable dorm room with
fan mail. Additional highlights include
new spring drills,
more dynamic
blow-by-blow
commentary and
a focus on piv-
otal players. Go.
Fight. Win. УУУУ
—Scott Steinberg

pixel profile

[ THE PLAYER |

McNabb knows how to play,
both on and off the field

Success hasn’t gone to Philadelphia
Eagles Pro Bowl quarterback Donovan
McNabb’s head, but it has put that head
on the cover of the phenomenal
Madden ’06 (EA Sports,
GameCube, PS2, Xbox).

PLAYBOY: You’re known

as a fairly hard-core

gamer. What systems

do you use?

MCNABB: Well, I’ve

got the PlayStation 2

and Xbox, of course.

I’ve got the PSP for my

pocket, plus an old PlayStation and an
Atari 2600. I’ve even got a Commodore
64. I’ve been playing for a long time.
PLAYBOY: Among your Eagles team-
mates, who’s the best at Madden?
MCNABB: | know you want me to say
I am, but | won't. It’s probably Т.О. or
Brian Westbrook.

PLAYBOY: This year's Madden lets you
run fantasy football leagues. What do
you think of fantasy football?
MCNABB: I’m amazed at how big it is.
People thank me for doing well for them
or tell me how many touchdowns they
need out of me that week.
PLAYBOY: What do you do off-season?
MCNABB: I spend time with my family.
We play a lot of video games.

—John Gaudiosi

wired
AR FORCE AXT ($80, [turtlebeach]

) The digital-audio pioneers at
Turtle Beach finally turn their attention
to game consoles with
this set of slam-
ming surround
headphones for
the Xbox. Four
separate speak-
ers in each ear
cup deliver crisp,
immersive 5.1 sur-
round sound,
plus it has a
built-in mike
for online
chatter.

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 147

100% Acave TEQUILA

| A LITTLE BIT OLDER
| A WHOLE LOT BOLDER

| ! THE ULTIMATE NIGHT OUT

reviews [ books

book of the month

]

The author of Less Than Zero again earns high marks

Post-Reagan America had a powerful reac-
tion to Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psy-
cho. The National Organization for Women
boycotted it, while Norman Mailer praised
its “Dostoyevskian themes.” Fourteen
years later, with the publication of Lunar
Park, everyone should agree that Ellis is
a talented writer capable of describing
far more than the art of chainsawing

through skulls. This book begins as a faux * ,

memoir in which Ellis recounts his years
of drug use (a “drug cop” follows him on
book tours) and his abusive relationship
with his father. But as demons wreak
havoc on Ellis’s fragile relationship with
his wife and son, the book takes a turn
toward the Gothic. The horror scenes pale
in comparison with those that focus on
the book’s universal theme—that all
men, despite their best efforts, turn into
their fathers. Near the book's end, Ellis
writes to himself, “Lunar Park will be your
last novel.” Let's hope that's fiction.
(Knopf) ұұу) —Patty Lamberti

Charles R. Cross

Jimi Hendrix remains a compelling figure
35 years after his death,
if only because no one
has equaled his mastery
of the guitar. Cross’s
biography reveals Hen-
drixs surprisingly brutal
childhood and his un-
usual career. (Hyperion)
YY Y —Leopold Froehlich

F = * Bill Roorbach
Searching far he source of a river (the
maps are wrong), this PLAvBov contributor
canoes and hikes through
his rural town. Along the
way he meets back-to-
the-land types and the
Maine natives who resent
them. You'll be homesick
for a place you've never
visited. (Dial Press)
YYY —Jessica Riddle

Temple
Stream

THE KILLINGS OF STANLEY K

James Carlos Blake

The author of Handsome Harry once again
deftly weaves real people and events
throughout this novel about champion
middleweight boxer Stanley Ketchel,
a.k.a. the Michigan Assassin. The real
Ketchel, like the fictional one, hoboed
across the country and was a fearless
fighter. His mistake? He tried to KO heavy-
weight champ Jack Johnson but came up
short. A notorious ladies' man, Ketchel was
shot dead by a jealous boyfriend at the age
of 24. These are the facts
from which Blake makes
an entertaining narra-
tive filled with all the
color and reckless excite-
ment of America at the
beginning of the 20th
century. (William Mor-
row) ¥¥¥ —Barbara Nellis

* Charles C. Mann
In Schol we were taught that Europeans
arrived on the shores of the New World to
find a sparsely inhabited, godforsaken
wilderness. As this brilliant survey points
out, our teachers were wrong. When
Columbus sailed, more people lived in the
Americas than in Europe. (The native popu-
lation was subsequently obliterated by
smallpox.) The Aztec capital of Tenochti-
tlán was larger than any European city. Nor
was America a pristine land of primeval
forest and enduring species. Native Amer-
icans elaborately man-
aged their environments
for thousands of years
before 1492. Mann pro-
vides us with a compel-
ling book that will alter
our assumptions about
history and place.
(Knopf) ¥¥¥¥ Е

James Carlos Blake

EXISB ж Сһеусо Leidmann
With his 5. book, the German photog-
rapher continues his exploration of a gar-
ish hallucinatory world defined by bizarre
erotic images. The photos here are the
stuff of dreams—enigmatic, lewd and dis-
junctive. Sex Is Blue raises more questions
than it answers, which is to be expected.
One thing is clear
from the 80 color-
saturated images:
Leidmann’s disqui-
eting world is not a
place in which we’d
want to live, but it’s
definitely a place
we'd like to visit for
a week. (teNeues)
YI Y —L.F.

SURGEON GENERAL WARNING:
Cigars Are Not A Safe Alternative
To Cigarettes.

AMEFIODLOME на SHV Өш ағы

Guide to Playing
Poker at Home

ошон зи sood чу оз RIND ЖЄ.

Basil Wester

Wiustrationa by LeRoy Neiman

“Ж Guide to Playing Poker at Home

Sef

LITTLE BLACK ВООК

Huon M. Неми
ind Bill РА

OLIVIA
SUVHAOS

SING

—

P. BEI EQ

* To receive FREE standard shipping
and handling in the U.S. only:

visit playboystore.com
(enter Source Code MG512 during
checkout) or

call 800-423-9494

(mention Source Code MG512) or

a E

+# ATIN +
s» SHUAANALMAVH +

Gide to Playing
Poker at Home

»4--
Basil Nos

Hilumstraciona by Leno, Penne s
Ponsa mse
PLATING. piariwe CARDS

ted

SOYEARS
¿CARTOONS

order by mail
please send check or money
order to: PLAYBOY

P.O. Box 809

Itasca, IL 60143-0809
(include Source Code MG512)

Illinois residents add 6.75% sales tax. Canadian orders accepted.
Call the toll-free number above to request a Playboy catalog.

Е
5
x

“14
DELUXE EDITION"

Tous Mimo
Bl susi ы Мне

A. Before you stage your own
Texas Hold 'Em tournament, get a hold
of this. Playboy offers detailed instructions
for all of the most popular versions of the
classic American card game—including strip
poker! You'll also learn countless other facts,
tips and strategies from Basil Nestor, author
of several best-selling books about gaming
Illustrated with с > Femlins by legendary
artist LeRoy Neiman, Hardcover. 54" x 8
160 pages.
10054 Playboy Guide to Playing Poker at
Home $12.95

B. Behind every successful man
stands a surprised wife. This is one
of the classic quips you'll find in this c
tion of the most uproarious zinger
appear in PLAYBOY magazine. Naturally,
LeRoy Neiman's Femlin—a mainstay on the
Party Jokes page since the '50s—ar S
throughout. Hardcover. 5%" x 8%"
392 pages.

10057 Big Little Book of Playboy
Party Jokes $7.98

C. Bartender, make it a double. This
deluxe guide by PLAYBOY's former food
and drink editor Thomas Mario includes
the 1,400 cocktail recipes, LeRoy Neiman
llustrations and theme-party tips from the
edition plus nearly 300 additional pages
packed with 350 photographs, additional
chapters on wine, beer and sake and much
more! Hardcover. 6" х 9%", 488 pages.
9403 Playboy Bartender's Guide—
Deluxe Edition 917.95

D. As Hef likes to say, “My life is an
open book. With illustrations.” So too is
this stylish volume in which, for the first
time ever, Playboy's legendary founder pro
vides advice and personal observations

for men of all ages. Resonant photographs
from his private archive illustrate Hefnerian
policies relating to eve
ife—from love and ladies to family and
dreams. Hardcover with a custom slip
cover case. 5" x 7%". 192 pages

9404 Hef's Little Black Book $19.95

гу aspect of a man's

E. I'll see your book and raise you
the accessories. Set includes the Playboy
Guide to Playing Poker at Home listed above
plus Rabbit Head poker chips and two stan
dard decks of Playboy playing cards.
10055 Playboy Poker Set $14.98

F. Now featuring another priceless line
drawing—Hef's signature. Playboy's
legendary founder personally signed a
imited number of these glorious books,
each featuring more than 400 hilarious
cartoons handpicked from the Playboy
archives by Hugh M. Hefner himself.
Hardcover. 9" x 12", 368 pages

10056 Playboy—50 Years: The Cartoons
Book (Signed By Hugh Hefner) $150
9197 Ріауроу--50 Years

The Cartoons Book (Unsigned) $50

G. If you only read PLAYBOY for the arti-
cles, here's what you've been missing.
This elegant anniversary volume captures
five decades of sex, art and American cul
ture as seen through the eyes of the world's
greatest photographers. More than 250 of
the most memorable images ever published
n the magazine appear in six chapters.
Hardcover. 9" x 12", 240 pages

4010 Playboy—50 Years

The Photographs Book $50

п MANTRACK

iy)

Divine Inspiration
Heaven, hell and high design come together in a luxury hotel in the Eternal City

THERE IS ALWAYS great drama on the streets of Rome, but it’s hard to top the spectacle you'll find inside the Aleph hotel near Via Veneto,
in the city's center. Stagger іп jet-lagged and you'll think you've wandered into a production of The Divine Comedy—because you have.
Designer Adam Tihany begins his witty interpretation of Dante’s classic journey into the netherworld at the door. You ascend a staircase
bathed in red light and enter a scarlet lobby area called Sin. After check-in you'll drop by the Angelo (look for the fallen kind) bar, where
the red stools resemble giant bee-stung lips and the cocktail list is as thick as a phone book. The downstairs spa is called Paradise, natu-
rally. And the rooms? High-style 1940s accessories, oversize photos of la dolce vita on the walls—we always knew Hades would be hap-
pening. Be sure to get one of the suites with a terrace and an alfresco Jacuzzi. The rates: $490 to $2,400. Book at|boscolohotels.com|

You’re having pizza
with a date at an out-
door cafe in Rome?
Try a Chianti, named
for the region in Tus-
cany where it’s made from san-
giovese grapes. Very versatile.

The waitress is alluring and
flirtatious. She recommends an
amarone—a bolder, more tan-
nic (and expensive) red made
in Valpolicella, near Verona.

Your date is staring at the
waitress as if she’s on the
menu. “I want to try something

Pve never had,” she says. How
about a full-bodied brunello,
the queen of Tuscan reds, also
made from sangiovese grapes?

That’s not what your date had
in mind. She’s thinking three-
some. Might as well go for
broke: a Barbaresco or a Barolo
from Piedmont, both made
from nebbiolo grapes. Dry and
velvety, with a long finish.

The three of you are basking
in the afterglow. Top it all off
with a slightly fizzy moscato—
Italy’s finest dessert wine.

About Time

This is the watch Alice would
buy her boyfriend at the gift
shop in Wonderland. The Gran
Data from Italy’s Ritmo Mundo
($1,400,|ritmomundo.com)|has
an oversize stainless-steel-
encased face that conveys
confidence, attitude and wit.
(Arnold wore a Ritmo Mundo
when he announced his run for
governor on Jay Leno’s show,
and he got the job.) You’re late,
you’re late, for a very important
date? Fashionably so.

um)

a= МАМТКАСК

d i n i n g d r i n k i

5
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шиш пи
у [у 3727233 23 4 2243 site LL ak EÛ ъч

Roll Your Own

Show off your raw passion with the ultimate sushi setup

SUSHI IS ONE OF THE SEXIEST MEALS—especially when served at your place. Wooden platters ($20) and rustic soy sauce
bowls ($16 for four) strike a chord of casual class, while natural cherry-bark chopsticks ($6), mossy stone chopstick rests ($3)
and a soy sauce dispenser ($8) keep things civilized. Make tea for two in the Sanguine Moon Tetsubin teapot ($83), then serve
it in kanji-inscribed teacups ($11). With a sushi stand ($12), you won’t have to play hide the hand roll, at least until dinner is
over. A final touch of Zen grace comes from sake cups ($150 each) and a decanter ($195) by Japanese artist Tomio Suzuki,
each one a unique work of art. After a few quaffs from these beauties, you and your companion might discover some chopstick
tricks Mr. Miyagi never imagined. For purchasing info see Where and How to Buy on

THE AMERICAN MARKET is finally waking up
to the pleasures of sake. Balance your palate
with these exquisite bottles. From top: Ginga
Shizuku (“Divine Droplets,” $60) has a promi-
nent and lively aroma full of Concord grapes
and melon, with hints of rice and fruit deep
into its long finish. Tentaka Kuni (“Hawk in the
Heavens,” $25) is fairly dry, but an underlying
richness animates its melon and citrus accents.
Mukune (“Root of Innocence,” $40) has a mel-
low feel and an immense breadth that encom-
passes nuts, fruit and a simple sweetness.

= MANTRACK

Play Thing

MEDIA CENTER PCs hook up to your TV and can re-
place most of your AV center. They play CDs, store
and play digital music and movies and let you browse
the web from your couch. Why doesn’t everyone
have one? Our theory: They typically don’t look as if
they belong in your living room. Voodoo shows the
industry how to get it right with its new Aria ($3,740,
voodoopc.com). A user-friendly LCD touch screen
set into a blazing-red chassis (one of 10 available
colors) allows you to access music or surf the web
when your TV is off. Inside it’s supercharged with
AMD's Athlon 64 processor, eight-channel audio
output and dual TV tuners. And it comes with Logi-
tech’s superb Harmony universal remote.

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 147

Prime Cut

YOU'RE SLICING a hali-
but carpaccio. She says,
“Nice knives!” You say,
“They're from newcom-
er Gunter Wilhelm—
German high-carbon
stainless steel, perfectly
weighted PakkaWood
handles. Now would
you put your pants on?
You're distracting me.”
Pictured: an 11-piece set
($325, |gunterwilhelm
.com), with 10- and
eight-inch chef’s knives
and an Asian cleaver.

The Brain Trust

THERE’S AN old adage motorcyclists use
to describe the dinky helmets some rid-
ers wear: “A $10 bucket for a $10 head.”
Behold the $1,000 bucket for the price-
less head (i.e., yours). Vemar’s new VSR
Carbon helmet ($900, Vemar-usa.com) is
fashioned from carbon fiber, an uncannily
light yet strong material favored by design-
ers of racing bikes and Formula One cars.
It won’t make you go any faster, but with
its great ventilation and nearly weightless
feel you'll barely notice you have it on.

``: ` Gillette
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Is there any method by which a man can
have multiple orgasms without losing his
erection? —H.K., Boston, Massachusetts

We have written in the past about a few
men who are able to achieve this naturally.
In one case, documented by sex researcher
Beverly Whipple, a 35-year-old man had six
orgasms in 14 minutes without losing his
erection. One hypothesis is that he and other
men produce little or no prolactin, a hormone
that appears to control a man’s recovery
period after climax. In 2003 scientists at the
University of Essen in Germany tested this by
giving 10 men either synthetic prolactin or
cabergoline, a drug that blocks the produc-
tion of the hormone. They asked each man to
masturbate while watching a porn movie. The
men who received cabergoline were hornier,
had stronger erections and got hard again
more quickly after climaxing. While research
continues, there is a natural way to improve
your stamina and shorten your refractory
period. Whipple, co-author of The G Spot
and Other Discoveries About Human Sexu-
ality, says the key is your pubococcygeus (PC)
muscle, which wraps around your anus and
the base of your penis. A standard exercise is
to clench as if stopping the flow of urine, hold
for three seconds and release. You can do sets
at stoplights, during boring meetings or while
watching TV; no one will be the wiser unless
you grunt. The goal, Whipple says, is to build
up to about 150 reps a day. She suggests men
track their progress by placing a tissue on
their erection and lifting their penis up and
down. Eventually you should be able to lift a
hand towel, then a bath towel. Women can
test their strength by inserting two fingers
into their vagina, spreading them into a V
and trying to close them by clenching. In stud-
ies, people with stronger PC muscles report
more control, sensitivity and desire, as well
as stronger orgasms. Men also become better
at delaying orgasm or even stopping ejacula-
tion, allowing them to have “dry” climaxes
and keep going.

I left a case of red wine in my car over-
night. The temperature dipped into the
mid-20s, and the bottles were cold but
not frozen. Is the wine ruined?—I.G.,
Bethesda, Maryland

It should be fine. The real danger to wine
is extreme heat. Even when wine does freeze
(which, because of its alcohol content, doesn't
typically happen until it drops to about 15
degrees), the more immediate concern is that
the cork will be forced out or the bottle will
shatter. One critic describes the benefits of put-
ting wine into a "sweet sleep," insisting that
it tastes better after being thawed and shaken
vigorously to dissolve the solids. To most oeno-
philes, that doesn't sound like a good way to
start a party. “You hear stories about some-
one discovering a cache of wine in a Scottish
castle where it's been stored for 100 years at
33 degrees, which puts the maturation pro-

cess in slow motion," says Willie Glückstern,
who owns Wines for Food in New York City.
"But freezing? Why? I'd think twice about

even putting some foods under that stress.
The ideal storage temperature is said to be
55 degrees, with a serving temperature for
reds about 10 degrees higher. (This can be
achieved by placing a room-temperature bottle
in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.) Many
people store wines close to room temperature
out of necessity, which is fine as long as it
doesn't exceed 70 degrees and remains consis-
tent. For wines kept at room temperature, it's
also best to drink reds within about 10 years
and whites within about two.

Two years ago my wife told me she is
bisexual. She arranged several three-
somes, which I loved. Ten months ago
she met our current girlfriend, and the
three of us are now planning a commit-
ment ceremony. The problem is, my wife
has changed. For 14 years I thought she
was straight; now I would say she is 75
percent gay and 25 percent straight. She
and our girlfriend are inseparable; they
are always holding hands and kissing. I
love my wife but have a feeling she would
choose our girlfriend over me. Do I have
a reason to feel this way, or am I being
pettyP—A.J., Cincinnati, Ohio

This is a common issue among newly poly-
amorous couples. Your wife and girlfriend
are enjoying the giddiness of a new romance.
That will subside. The more important ques-
tion is, where will the three of you be in five
years? It is possible to maintain a triad (or
even a quad) for decades, but only if each
partner understands that no two are greater
than the whole. For that reason you should not
expect that you and your wife will be the pri-
mary relationship, with your girlfriend orbit-

ILLUSTRATION BY ISTVAN BANYAI

ing. They should also not expect you to orbit
them. It may be too soon, after 10 months
of dating, for any of you to commit. Many
people in alternative relationships struggle
with jealousy; to combat it they rely on the
wisdom of those who have gone before. The
poly community has support groups in most
states and a national magazine called Loving

More (lovemore.com).

Im planning a Texas Hold ’Em party,
and I’m not sure when and at what rate
to raise the blinds. What do you sug-
gest?—P.Z., West Seneca, New York

Hosts typically raise the blinds by some
percentage (e.g., 25, 50, 100) every 30 or
60 minutes. Make sure everyone knows the
schedule before play begins. How often and
how much depends on whether you've invited
janitors or lawyers; you want everyone to be
comfortable with but challenged by the limits.
We all love watching the cowboys check their
hands on ESPN2, but have you considered
hosting a game that involves actual card play,
such as Omaha Hi-Lo or Seven-Card Stud?
They call it Hold ’Em for a reason—you
spend a lot of time doing nothing.

This girl I like broke up with her boy-
friend of nine months. I asked her to the
movies and got a maybe. What does that
mean?—J.H., Brunswick, Maine

It means maybe not.

I have been dating a girl for two months.
Early in the relationship she told me she
has HPV-16, one of the types linked to
cervical cancer. We haven’t had sex, and
I don’t know if I’m willing to get this
virus just to be with her. Am I being an
asshole? What are my chances of getting
a vaccination?—J.J., Mobile, Alabama
How long can you hold out? Vaccines that
prevent specific types of HPV, including
HPV-16, could be available as early as next
year, although their efficacy in men is still
being tested. They’re also most effective on
virgins; most sexually active adults have
already been infected with human papilloma-
virus but are unaware of it because they've
never had warts. Your girlfriend did the right
thing by telling you; the virus spreads through
skin contact and can be transmitted even if a
person doesn't have symptoms. That makes a
condom less effective than it is against STDs
carried in bodily fluids, although it's still bet-
ter than nothing. For most people HPV is not
cause enough to abandon a relationship—if
you want out for other reasons, don't blame
the virus. Besides warts, which can be treated
or removed, the primary risk is that HPV-16
and about a dozen other strains have been
linked to cervical and penile cancer. Both are
rare in North America, the latter in part
because many men here are circumcised,
which reduces the risk to nearly zero. But
that's not true of many other places in the

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world, where these cancers are more preva-
lent. That’s why a vaccine is so important.
Unbelievably, some conservative religious
groups oppose the development of HPV vac-
cines, saying they will encourage teenagers to
have sex before marriage.

M, boyfriend woke up in the middle of
the night because he was stressed about
his job. I listened to him and gave him a
massage, and he fell back to sleep. Do you
know of any creative ways in which part-
ners of high-profile individuals through-
out history have helped their mates deal
with stress?—J.J., Austin, Texas
One comes to mind.

In May a reader wrote because he didn’t
like wearing a wedding band and his wife
objected. You suggested he wear a ring as
a “small sacrifice” for his marriage. That
doesn’t sound like much of a compromise
to me. When my wife and I got engaged, I
let her know that I don’t wear jewelry. She
insisted only that I wear one for the cer-
emony. Maybe I just have a cool wife, or
maybe that reader’s wife needs to unwind
a little —S.T., Austin, Texas

You didn’t need to compromise, because
your wife agreed. More comments...

The reader should visit a jeweler, as you
suggested, but instead of getting a new
ring, he should buy a chain and put his
band on it, á la Frodo in The Lord of the
Rings. For symbolic reasons, it should
not have a clasp. He should also tell his
wife, “It’s closer to my heart this way.” It
worked for me. I have never worn jew-
elry, not even a watch, but I was surprised
at how little the chain distracted me after
a few days.—T'S., Dayton, Ohio

That’s a good compromise as long as your
wife doesn’t attach a leash. Or, depending on
your kink threshold, maybe that works too.

Why not call the situation what it is?
The reader’s wife, like most wives (and
husbands), wants to mark her territory.
It may not be the prettiest side of human
nature, but it is what it is.—E.Q., Grand
Rapids, Michigan

Let’s say that’s true. Now what?

M; husband has never worn his ring.
He is an electrician, and we both feel it's
safer that he doesn't. If the reader's wife
is so uncomfortable with his not wearing
a band, maybe he should get a ring tat-
too.—A.G., Wakefield, Massachusetts
That certainly makes it more difficult to slip
into your pocket. Thanks to all for writing.

For her 10th wedding anniversary my
wife’s best friend got a “pass” from her
husband to do anything or anyone she
wanted for a weck, as long as it happened
far away from home and he didn’t learn
any details. She immediately booked a
beach trip and called my wife to invite
her along. That was fine with me. As long
as my wife returns with videos and pho-

tos, I will forgive her anything. The idea
turned me on even more after my wife
mentioned that a 40-year-old woman will
do things to a 20-year-old guy that a 20-
year-old girl can’t imagine. How can two
husbands who would allow such adven-
tures be so different? When I mentioned
to him that the most erotic thing I had
ever seen was my wife having sex with
another guy, he looked as if he might
cry.—M.E., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

He's making a sacrifice, and you're making
an investment. We’d bet this wasn't his idea,
which makes us wary of endorsing it. Guys
who get off watching their wife get fucked
usually have a lot of confidence about whom
she'll end up with at the end of the night or the
week. You benefit twofold here because both
women will want to share details, and you'll
be the only one listening.

Should I launder or dry-clean my dress
shirts?—C.F., Toronto, Ontario

We prefer to launder with light starch and
have the shirts hand-pressed and placed on
hangers. It’s better at removing ring around
the collar and generally helps the shirts last
longer. They may last even longer without
starch, but that’s how we like it done. Dry
cleaning results in less shrinkage but leaves
the fabric too stiff for our taste.

Ive heard that if you buy a BMW you
can arrange to pick it up at the factory
in Germany and test-drive it on the auto-
bahn before you bring it home. Is that
true?—N.M., Denver, Colorado

Yes, although you’re setting yourself up for
major disappointment when you get the vehi-
cle back to 55 mph land. Five European auto-
makers offer factory packages— BMW
(Munich), Mercedes (Sindelfingen) and
Porsche (Stuttgart or Leipzig) in Germany,
and Volvo (Géteborg) and Saab (Trollhattan)
in Sweden. With the exception of Porsche,
which charges at least $1,150 for the privi-
lege, the companies discount seven to nine
percent off U.S. sticker prices. At a minimum
the packages include duties and shipping
costs; some also offer perks such as airline
tickets, hotel stays and short-term insurance.
You can tour Europe with your purchase for
up to six months before a hefty sales tax kicks
in (it’s 16 percent in Germany). Last year
about 6,000 people bought cars this way.
Everything is arranged months in advance
through stateside dealers because each vehicle
must be built to meet U.S. pollution-control and
safety standards. That’s the catch if you
attempt to buy and ship a car on your own.
Making it street legal here can cost thousands
of dollars. A few models aren’t available for
pickup; BMW’s Z4 and X5, for example, are
made in South Carolina.

I have been dating a woman for a few
months and am satisfied except for one
area of concern. She can reach orgasm
only if I leave the room. When I asked
her to explain, she said she’s embar-
rassed by her technique. How can I
build her confidence so we can share

her orgasms? Do you think she’s this way
because I don't turn her оп?—С.Р, Bos-
ton, Massachusetts

Doubtful. Do you have any clue how she
brings herself to orgasm? Through masturba-
tion she has probably trained herself to climax
only in a specific position. For instance, she
may have to lie on her stomach with a pillow
under her left elbow and her big toes touch-
ing. Or perhaps she has trouble reaching cli-
max and worries that you will believe it’s your
fault. Whatever the situation, your girlfriend
has to understand that no man will be satis-
fred as her fluffer. She needs to let you stay so
you can work on this challenge together. If
she’s insistent that you wait outside, the rela-
tionship is also going to make an early exit.

A friend has been giving me a hard time
about my new gas grill. He’s convinced it’s
my plebeian attempt to be a griller. To hear
him talk of charcoal you’d think he was
indulging in foreplay. “The longer, the
sweeter,” he says. But I grill almost daily, at
times for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
(Pancakes, eggs and pizza are some of my
favorite grilled meals.) I enjoy it as much
as he does, but I do it more quickly and
more often. In the end I think a juicy, sat-
isfying sirloin is more a matter of tech-
nique. What does the Advisor say?—S.P,
Kirchenthumbach, Germany

The Advisor says, “Will you two shut up
and flip our steak?” You each have what you
need. Although there is no question that meat
grilled over charcoal tastes better, you can’t
beat the convenience of gas. Don't give up on
charcoal; a chimney starter cuts down on the
prep time considerably while eliminating the
need for lighter fluid. And we prefer hard-
wood charcoal, which burns faster and with
greater intensity. For some reason it's a great
comfort to tend that dancing flame.

| nad a blind date that went so well, we
ended up having sex. But when I went
down on her, I was bothered to discover
that she had perfumed her pubic area.
'This woman has many of the qualities
I look for in a potential spouse, but the
fact that she was ready to go to bed with a
stranger has me wondering. Am I being
a prude, or do I have a legitimate con-
cern?—R.H., Prunedale, California

We love a woman who is prepared for
any circumstance, although who's to say she
doesn't perfume herself all the time? Regard-
less, you were no longer a stranger when she
went to bed with you.

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 vis-
iting our website at\playboyadvisor.com.

-« > BREWED for a MAN'S TASTE ==>

THE PLAYBOY FORUM

hortly after I began
S teaching at San Jose

State University, in
January, I started to receive
e-mails from representa-
tives of the International
Union of Hotel Workers.
They requested that I can-
cel a speech I’d been sched-
uled to make at a California
Association of Teachers of
English convention. The
union was boycotting the
Westin Santa Clara, which is
owned by Starwood, a multi-
national corporation. They
charged the Westin with
forcing its San Francisco and
Los Angeles workers to pay
more for health care, take
on heavier workloads and
accept low wages. Starwood
hotels in Los Angeles were
accused of intimidating and
harassing workers.

The e-mails were followed
by a visit to my campus office
from a diminutive white
woman. I told her I was busy
and didn't have time to talk.
The following week she came to my class and passed out
fliers that encouraged my students to urge me to with-
draw from my engagement. “Other keynote speakers have
decided to take a stand for justice and not enter the hotel,”
the flier read. “Why won't Professor Reed do the same?”

I was annoyed. The pressure continued when the
woman came to my office accompanied by a female pas-
tor. We had words, which must have startled those within
hearing range. I told the two women I didn't like their
tactics and felt as though I were being harassed. Finally,
when I said I was going to use the honorarium from the
speaking engagement to pay some of the female Nigerian
writers whose anthology I was going to publish, we agreed
on a compromise. I would make a statement in support of
the union before making my presentation.

Even though the Hospital Workers Union had helped
me get a job in New York that supported my writing when
I was young, my view of unions soured during the 1960s
when white workers began to drift toward the candidacy
of George Wallace.

Still, Iremained interested. Four of the books I had cho-
sen for a San Jose State course deal with labor and unions:
Chester Himes's Lonely Crusade, William Kennedy’s Ironweed,
Jack Conroy’s The Disinherited and Frank Chin’s Donald Duk,
which covers an 1867 strike waged by Chinese railroad work-

ers. Moreover, I was taking the
Greyhound bus from Oakland
to San Jose each week. To go
Greyhound is to be thrust into
the America of the 1930s. But
instead of Kennedy's white
hoboes, Steinbeck’s dust bowl
refugees or Conroy's coal
miners—whose position in
society Conroy likened to that
of mules—the passengers are
Mexican families (who carry
their belongings in cardboard
boxes) and poor black people
(whose meals for the day are
obtained from company vend-
ing machines). Also on board
are representatives of the
white underclass.

The day came for me to
speak. I planned to spend
only a few seconds acknowl-
edging the union's boycott.
But I found myself rumi-
nating about what the fate
of my parents’ generation
would have been without
unions. The books, the boy-
cott, my observations about
Greyhound's America and
my family's history all seemed to come together during
remarks that went on longer than 1 had planned.

My stepfather worked for Chevrolet for 30 years. His
widow, my mother, receives a pension and health benefits
from General Motors, which paid for three expensive heart
surgeries. Pd forgotten my mother was a former hotel
worker who, in 1942, led a work slowdown of housekeepers
over unfair labor practices. She turned 88 this June and has
published her memoirs, which she began at the age of 74.
GM is the largest health provider in the country as a result
of struggles waged by the United Auto Workers Union, one
of the first unions to organize African American workers.

She was spared the fate of Larry Donovan's mother, who
had to take in laundry to support her children after the acci-
dental death of her husband. Donovan, the lead character
in The Disinherited, says, “I never found one of those West-
ern Union canned greetings that fitted my mother—I never
saw one that I could send her in remembrance of the nights
she sweated over the irons or the days she spent bent over
the steaming washtub.” In those days there were no sur-
vivor benefits, unemployment insurance, welfare or Social
Security. The elderly had to work forever. Some commit-
ted suicide, their bodies found near the railroad tracks. The
women were old at 30. Lacking safety codes on the job, men
were frequently maimed in industrial accidents. Lacking

disability insurance, they had to work as
best they could with whatever body parts
remained. The setting for Conroy’s The
Disinherited is the United States from the
period preceding World War I until the
Depression. In /ronweed, set in 1938,
Kennedy’s characters live hand to mouth.
Both novels show the state of white pov-
erty before the social programs ushered
in during the Roosevelt era.

When Conroy lost his power struggle
with the New York aesthetes, the era ofthe
worker writer ended. According to writer
Douglas Wixson such proletarian writing
was replaced by work characterized by
“the eternal verities, textual difficulty and
personal confession.” In Wixson’s opinion,
that work was “safe from FBI scrutiny.”

This is the kind of writing that now
dominates college curricula, no matter
what right-wing propagandists assert
about tenured radicals controlling college
life. All one has to do is inspect the courses
listed in the catalogs of any 10 American
colleges or universities selected at random
to discover that Eurocentrism still reigns.

So where would the young men who
showed up at a town meeting on Febru-
ary 22 shouting “Social Security must go”
find out about the sacrifices made by men
and women like Lee Gordon, the union
organizer in Himes's Lonely Crusade, who
in the face of police violence picks up
the fallen union banner? Or Kennedy's
Francis Phelan, whose life is ruined after
he accidentally kills a strikebreaker dur-
ing an Albany trolley-car strike? They
certainly couldn't turn to cable televi-
sion, which carries a number of business
shows but not one devoted to labor. Or
to the newspapers, which don't assign
reporters to cover the labor beat. How
many of our current students have ever
heard of Walter Reuther, who as strike
leader for the UAW during the 1930s
survived two assassination attempts?
Indeed, according to professors Philip
Taft and Philip Ross, “Гһе United States
has had the bloodiest and most violent
labor history of any industrial nation in
the world.” Both Conroy's and Himes's
novels were the subjects of hostile, ideo-
logically driven reviews when they were
published but have managed to hobble
along through small-press reprints.

Conroy might have the last word. The
robber barons and the politicians whom
they lease seemed shocked by the initial
backlash to their efforts to privatize Social
Security. That’s because they go first-class
and not Greyhound. In the introduction
to the 1991 edition of The Disinherited, in
which Conroy compares Ronald Reagan
to Herbert Hoover, he asks, “Is it possible
that some of those who now lose their
pride and stoop low may rise up angry?”

By Rachel Shteir

f ever there were an American city

where strippers would rank as honor-

ary Wobblies, it would be San Fran-
cisco. It has the only worker-owned
peep show in the country (the Lusty
Lady), and the local chapter of the Ser-
vice Employees International Union
welcomes sex workers as members.
Hundreds of strippers work in the Bay
Area, and the industry is respectable
enough that the tourism bureau lists
adult attractions in one of its pam-
phlets. Five of the local
clubs are topless and
12 offer full nudity,
but all are involved in
a long-standing dis-
pute about the work-
ing status of dancers.

In 1993 about 30
dancers from the Mar-
ket Street Cinema met
to discuss working
conditions. When the
club ignored their
concerns, the women
formed the Exotic
Dancers Alliance and
complained to the city
fire department and
state agencies such as
the Division of Occu-
pational Safety and
Health, the Depart-
ment of Fair Employ-
ment and Housing
and the Labor Com-
mission. One of their
chief gripes was that
clubs classified them
as independent con-
tractors (which meant the owners could
avoid paying salaries, benefits and pay-
roll taxes) but controlled them as if they
were employees.

The Labor Commission agreed and
began to fine the club owners. But the
vagaries of state employment law and
a lack of strict enforcement led to a
game of cat and mouse. Rather than
hire the dancers, most clubs asked the
women to sign contracts, then imposed
“stage fees” of $100 to $500 a night
on any woman who wanted to work.
Dancers considered this an illegal sei-
zure of their tips. Many of the women
also claim that the fees forced them to

prostitute themselves to earn a living
and that some clubs encourage this
illegal act by installing private booths.
“Nothing takes the gentleman out of
a gentleman’s club like the knowledge
that you can get a blow job for $40,”
says dancer Datura Larson.

Larson and others believe the bat-
tle has dragged on for years because
of relations between city hall and club
owners. Former mayor Willie Brown
and former district attorney Terrence
Hallinan have repre-
sented clubs, which
all seem to have cash
to burn, while state
investigators oper-
ate on a shoestring.
Even before recent
budget cuts, the
Labor Commission
says, its investigation
had been stymied by
a lack of witnesses
(dancers fear being
blacklisted if they file
complaints) and the
labyrinth of shadow
partners and shell
corporations that
often makes it diffi-
cult to figure out who
should pay the fines.

The women won a
small victory last year
when Kamala Harris,
the city’s first female
district attorney,
refused to prosecute
dancers arrested for
prostitution in raids.
Instead she said she wanted reforms
that would ensure their safety. After
hearing testimony from dancers who
said customers had sexually harassed
or assaulted them, the city’s Commis-
sion on the Status of Women recom-
mended the city council ban both
stage fees and private booths.

Club owners say that the concern is
overblown, that the women are well
paid and well treated and that prosti-
tution does not occur on their watch.
“We have extensive security systems
and two-way radios,” says Craig, a
manager at the Crazy Horse, where
the dancers are employees. “There’s

not much anyone can do in the booths. Plus,
the customers like them. It enables an ordi-
nary guy to connect with a beautiful enter-
tainer, to tell her about his problems.”

Owners also like booths because they are
highly profitable in what is estimated to be
a $200 million industry in the San Francisco
area. Joe Carouba, president ofthe manage-
ment firm that staffs and operates a number
of San Francisco clubs
for the Deja Vu chain of
Lansing, Michigan, says
private dances account
for 50 percent of rev-
enue. The dancers he
oversees give the club the
fees they earn for the first
five dances of their shift,
then split the remainder
50-50. There are no stage
fees, and the women keep
all their tips. Brad Shafer,
an attorney for Deja Vu,
compares the arrange-
ment to that between a
hairdresser and a salon; the worker contrib-
utes to the expenses incurred by the busi-
ness. In this case, he says, those costs include
advertising and security.

Some dancers prefer this sort of ar-
rangement because it allows them to be
paid in cash. In fact, club owners cite this as
a defense. In this view, dancers will earn
less if clubs are forced to withhold taxes.
But being on salary has practical benefits,

DEBUNKER

Backstage at Delilah's in Philly, one of
the nation's few clubs run by women.

FORUM

such as unemployment payments and
worker's comp for injuries. Employees must
receive regular rest and meal breaks and be
paid at least minimum wage and overtime.
They can also file antidiscrimination and
retaliation complaints with the state.

Dave Manack, associate publisher of
the trade magazine Exotic Dancer, says that
however the women are paid, the owner
of a strip club has to be a
real dolt not to become a
millionaire. The dancers
usually do well too. He
estimates that a house
dancer in San Francisco
can make up to $1,500
a night, which translates
to $312,000 a year, work-
ing four nights a week.
Nancy Banks, founder
of an advocacy group
EE she says represents 100
strippers who prefer not
to work as employees,
says dancers can earn
big money without doing anything ille-
gal. She claims to make $400,000 a year
dancing without prostitution (other danc-
ers scoff at this) and declares that women
who take home less than six figures just
need to work harder.

“People want to believe strippers are vic-
tims,” says Carouba. “It's just hard for them
to believe men give women all that money
simply for being gorgeous.”

REALITY: Poorly trained dogs
will give false alerts to receive
treats, says Lawrence Myers, a
professor at the College of Veteri-
nary Medicine at Auburn Univer-
sity, who has studied detector
dogs since 1982. They can also
err as often as 40 percent of the
time, although handlers may ig-
nore or downplay mistakes. If no
illegal narcotics are found, the
animals must have detected a
lingering odor, they say, or been
influenced by the excitement of
the moment or an inadvertent
leash tug. Regardless of whether
the dog actually smells drugs, an
alert gives officers legal justifica-
tion to search without a warrant.
That's especially important after
this year's U.S. Supreme Court
ruling that police officers can le-
gally have a dog sniff every vehi-
cle they stop and perhaps even
parked cars or those at stoplights.
(Private homes and pedestrians

could also be fair game.) Tampa
defense attorney Rex Curry de-
scribes the way traffic stops work:
Police pull over a motorist for a
violation. For whatever reason,

4 +.

|
they suspect he has drugs. (In the
case the Supreme Court heard,
police said the well-dressed His-
panic defendant had seemed
nervous and had air freshener in
his car.) The driver refuses to

allow police to search, which
means the officers need probable
cause, i.e. more evidence than a
hunch, to proceed. Enter the drug
dog. If its handler says the animal
alerted, officers have the excuse
they need. When this happens
defense attorneys are quick to
note the lack of a testing stan-
dard and will challenge the dog’s
accuracy. In one of Curry’s cases
a federal court threw out a con-
viction because the dog’s five-
week training required only a 70
percent success rate to pass. Al-
though police talk about how
dogs love to fight crime, “dogs
play the game because they are
searching for approval, not drugs,”
says Curry. “They're natural lib-
ertarians—without constant re-
training they lose interest. Let's
return them to protecting people
from violence and theft, which is
the only proper purpose of law
enforcement anyway.”

FROM A LIST of 57

ministries reported to а

the IRS by Americans

United for Separation of

Church and State. IRS rules prohibit
nonprofits from endorsing candidates:
(1) Pastor of the Church of the Living
Water in Olympia, Washington says

a GOP candidate for Congress is “a
prophet to our nation.” (2) Pastor at
United Baptist Missionary Convention
in Baltimore writes the governor offer-
ing political support in exchange for
social-services funding. (3) Churches in
seven states distribute Christian Coali-
tion voter guides. (4) Pastor of the Al-
len African Methodist Episcopal Church
in New York says of Al Gore from the
pulpit, “I don’t do endorsements, but

I will say this man should be the next
president.” (5) Pastor of the Third New
Hope Missionary Baptist Church in
Detroit tells congregation not to vote
for candidate whose “name rhymes
with hush.” (6) Foundation for Human
Understanding radio show advises
listeners that Gore will betray nation

to the Chinese. (7) Bishop in Colorado
Springs orders Catholics not to vote

for pro-choice

candidates. (8) ,
Pastor of Faith %
Baptist Church іп
Waterford, Michi- 4
gan endorses his
son for school |
board on church =
letterhead. (9)

Jerry Falwell Ministries sends e-mail
endorsing George W. Bush. (10) Pastor
of the Friendship Missionary Baptist
Church in Miami says God ordained
John Kerry to run. (11) Pastor of
Mount Airy Church of God in Christ in
Philadelphia says, “І can't tell you who
to vote for, but my mama told me last
week, ‘Stay out of the bushes.’” (12)
Bride of Christ Church in Bellwood,
Pennsylvania offers to drive voters to
polls “in support of President Bush.”
(13) Pastor at East Waynesville Baptist
Church in North Carolina expels nine
parishioners who admit to voting for
Kerry. The IRS says it is investigating
30 churches, but Americans United
knows of only one that has had its tax-
exempt status revoked, for buying a
full-page ad in USA Today encouraging
people not to vote for Bill Clinton.

FROM A LIST of items seized by air-
port security and auctioned online by
the Transportation Security Administra-
tion, with win-
ning bids: eight
belt-clip screw-
driver kits, $4.95;
seven bullet key
chains, $5.24;
one sterling silver
Tiffany pocket-
knife, $28.01; АРМ
50 pounds of %,/ MELNA
utensils, $42; 40

pounds of nail clippers, $46.10; 20
padlocks with keys, $46.97; 50
pounds of cuticle scissors, $51.59;

50 pounds of steel scissors, $51.78;
20 pounds of letter openers, $53;

17 pounds (continued on

FORUM

READER RESPONSE

ON PAIN OF DEATH
In “The Last Days of Lethal Injec-
tion” (June) Dan Zegart says Eddie
Harper, who died by lethal injection for
murdering his parents to collect $86,541
in insurance money, may have felt pain
when he was killed. That may be true,

The death chamber in Huntsville, Texas.

but I’m sure his parents would have
preferred an injection over being shot
to death in their bed.
Jeff Boling
Cincinnati, Ohio

Earlier this year we published a study
in The Lancet that examines this issue
from the perspective of medical prac-
titioners. We found four problems to
refute the idea that execution by lethal
injection is humane. First, states refuse
to share technical details of how the pro-
cedures are done. Second, their execu-
tioners have no training in anesthesia.
Third, there is no monitoring of con-
sciousness and sensation, which means
states cannot tell if the condemned is
aware. Fourth, there is no evaluation
after the fact to prevent suffering in
future executions. Finally, we found
that postmortem blood thiopental lev-
els in 43 оҒ49 executions were inconsis-
tent with a surgical plane of anesthesia
and that 21 were consistent with aware-
ness. These results suggest that current
protocols pose a substantial risk of pro-
found pain and suffering, contrary to
the constitutional prohibition of cruel
and unusual punishment.

Dr. Leonidas Koniaris
University of Miami
Miami, Florida

This letter was also signed by Jon Sheldon,

Teresa Zimmers and Dr. David Lubarsky.

As an anesthesiologist I find it impos-
sible to believe anyone would remain

conscious after receiving a rapid injec-
tion of two grams of sodium thiopental,
which is four times the usual dose for a
225-pound man. If you support capital
punishment, the solution is to adjust the
dose or add another drug. Most of us
hope that someday we will die quietly in
our sleep. Except for the trial, appeals, last
meal, long walk and needle in the arm,
that's the death the condemned receive.
Dr. Dean Berkus
Beverly Hills, California

If you want to start a bleeding-hearts
campaign, why not pick a cause worth
fighting for, such as AIDS or poverty?

Toby Speechley
Manhattan Beach, California

AN AIRMAN’S CONCERNS
I serve in the U.S. Air Force and have
been told by my commanding officer
that I must attend a National Prayer
Luncheon at my base. Can I or any
nonreligious member of the military be
compelled to do this? When I expressed
my concern my commanding officer
said, “Just go. It's a free meal.” I plan to
attend only because my career will be
jeopardized if I don't.
Name and location withheld
Your CO should know better, but he or she
may see a difference between requiring atten-
dance (which may be lawful) and requiring
participation (which is not).

DNA DRAGNET
Since the publication of your article on
police attempts to coerce every adult male
in Truro, Massachusetts to give a “volun-
tary” DNA sample as part of a murder

Police arrested Christopher McCowen, 33.

investigation (“An End to Innocence,”
June), authorities have charged the vic-
tim's trash collector with the killing. He
was linked to the crime not by the drag-

net but by a DNA sample collected from
all regular visitors to the victim’s home.
The arrest shows that focused investi-
gations, not indiscriminate DNA sweeps
of innocent citizens, remain the basis of
effective police work. It also highlights
the importance of not overwhelming
crime labs with wasteful tests.

Carol Rose

ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts

Boston, Massachusetts

YOUR BRAIN ON PORN
In the March Forum you note that anti-
porn activists believe sexual images can
cause brain damage. I have struggled
with an addiction to porn that was in
many ways like being addicted to drugs.

Your reward circuitry is now activated.

In fact, a study at Massachusetts General
Hospital found that men who are shown
photos of attractive women have the
same brain response that addicts have to
drugs or hungry people have to food. If
men have such a powerful response to
attractive women, imagine the response
they have when viewing these women
engaged in explicit acts. Add to that
the psychological response of an orgasm
(which any man would choose over
drugs) and you have the makings of a
powerful addiction.
Name withheld
Tampa, Florida
You can believe what you like, but there’s
no scientific evidence that porn addiction
exists. The study you cite, from 2001, found
that photos of pretty women activated the
same “reward circuitry” of the straight male
brain affected by food, drugs and money. It
also found that, given the choice, men will
look at beautiful female faces longer than
average or ugly ones. We’re all doomed.

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

The Sanctity of Politics

HoUsTON—About the same time religious conser-
vatives were protesting court decisions that al-
lowed Terri Schiavo's husband to end her life,
two city hospitals applied a 1999 Texas law that
allows them to stop treatment 10 days after no-
tifying the family of their intent. One infant with
advanced leukemia died five days before she
was to stop receiving care, and the family of a
68-year-old man in a vegetative state found a
nursing home that would accept him. A second
infant, who suffered from a fatal form of dwarf-
ism, died after officials at Texas Children's Hos-
pital pulled the plug against the wishes of his
parents. No congressional subpoenas arrived,
no fundamentalists appeared on TV to defend
the culture of life, and no protesters chanted out-
side—perhaps because the law had been signed
by then-governor George W. Bush.

Arming Terrorists

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A GAO investigation for Con-
gress found that state and FBI officials could
not prevent 35 of 44 weapon purchases by
people on the FBl’s terrorist watch list during
a five-month period in early 2004. The report
notes that under current law “membership in a
terrorist organization does not prohibit a person
from owning a gun” and that the applicants
had no felony convictions, visa violations or
other factors that would disqualify them.

Teaching the Bible

ODESSA, TEXAS—As supporters prayed and sang
hymns outside, the Ector County school board
voted 6-0 to add an elective high school course

org) offer a more rigorous and

Illegal Love

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA—Police dispatcher
Deborah Hobbs (pictured) says her boss,
the county sheriff, gave her an ultima-
tum: Marry her live-in boyfriend, move
out, or be fired. It’s illegal for unwed
couples to cohabit in North Carolina and
six other states. Hobbs quit, then asked
a state court to invalidate the statute,
which dates to 1805. North Carolina
may have a tough time playing defense
in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court
ruling that overturned all remaining state
bans on consensual sex between adults.
That decision prompted the Virginia Su-
preme Court this year to strike down a
law there that criminalized sex between
singles. The case involved a woman who
sued her ex for $5 million for allegedly
giving her herpes. A judge had dismissed
the action, ruling that the woman could
not sue for damages from an illegal act.

in which the only textbook is the Bible. A month
earlier, a lawyer from a religious-right group, the
National Council on Bible Curriculum in Pub-
lic Schools, had explained to the board how it
could add a course called “The Bible in History
and Literature” without violating a 1963 Su-
preme Court decision that bars public schools
from preaching to students. The council boasts
that 1,100 high schools in 35 states offer its
yearlong class, which critics
call a thinly veiled attempt
at Christian indoctrination.
The Protestant, Catholic and
Jewish educators at the Bible

Literacy Project [(bibleliteracy

balanced curriculum and this
fall will publish a textbook on
the subject. English teachers generally agree
that students need an academic knowledge of
the good book because of the many biblical al-
lusions in U.S. and English literature.

| Know Where You Live

ORLANDO—A woman who wrote a letter to the
editor of a local newspaper criticizing police
use of Tasers and calling the sheriff fat received
an unpleasant surprise in the mail—a letter
from the sheriff accusing her of libel. He had
used the state driver's license database to track
her down. His office insists he did not violate
state and federal privacy laws, because he was
responding to a concerned citizen. The woman
says she wrote in response to a report that, in
order to obtain a urine sample, a deputy had
zapped a suspect handcuffed to a hospital bed.

MARGINALIA
(continued from

of tweezers, $61.02; one purple som-
brero, $67.22; 50 pounds of tools,
$91; 23 pounds of lighters, $102.50;
50 pounds of corkscrews, $128.50;
40 pounds of pocketknives, $218.50.
To view current auctions, search eBay
for the keyword NTSA.

FROM A COLLECTION of 360
government photos released in April
that show U.S. casualties being re-
turned from Iraq and Afghanistan. This
image, which was censored by the Pen-
tagon, shows an honor guard carrying a
casket off a military transport plane:

FROM A LETTER written by an
inmate in Oregon to George Bush two
weeks after the 9/11 attacks: “Presi-
dent Goerge W Bush you think cause
you go over There and Blow Them up
that The killing will Stop in you Dream
Never mind that this is only the Beg-
ing of the Badass war They have more
Posion gas Then you know. ha ha.

You Will Die too George W Bush real
Soon They Promissed That you would
Long Live Bin Laden.” This past April a
federal court overturned his 18-month
sentence for threatening the president,
calling the letter “political hyperbole”
protected by the First Amendment.

FROM THE BOOK Sex, Men and
God: A Godly Man's Road Map to Sexual
Success, by Douglas Weiss: “Here are
several exercises to help men stay free
from lust. (1) When a person becomes
an object of your lust, turn her back into
a person by giving her a relational con-
text to God and others in prayer. Here

is a sample: ‘I pray that her husband or
future husband will be a man of God. |
pray that her children or future children
will serve you all their days. | pray that
you would encourage her parents and
bless their daughter.” How many women
do you think the enemy is going to pres-
ent if all you do is pray for them? (2)
Keep your eyes above her neck. If you
still lust gazing into her eyes, avoid her
eyes as well. (3) Don’t look at awoman
longer than three seconds. Living in the
computer age, men can scan a woman
faster than that. Regardless, keep your
gaze short. (4) Each time you lust, put
a mark on your ‘lust log,” which is sim-
ply a piece of paper you carry in your
pocket. Check in daily for 100 days
with your account-
ability partner. Some
competitive friends
make the man with
the highest score

pay for lunch. You'll
be amazed at how
quickly you stop lust-
ing when there is free
food on the line!”

ss” —
"EE

SICK AND TIRED

Richard Shick, who worked for the Illi-
nois public aid agency, suffered from
hearing loss, poor vision, carpal tun-
nel syndrome, bad teeth, obesity, sleep
apnea and an intestinal disorder. When
his supervisor appeared unsympathetic
to his needs for daily naps and frequent
bathroom breaks, Shick met with fed-
eral officials to complain. On his way
home he stopped by a convenience
store and, using a sawed-off shotgun,
robbed it of $200. Following his arrest,
the agency fired him. Shick sued.

іст: Discrimination, accord-
ing to a jury, which awarded
Shick $5 million after hearing
testimony that he suffered from a
“dissociative disorder” caused by
his supervisor’s treatment. The
judge tacked on $303,830 for
lost wages, but an appeals court
ruled that since Shick would be
spending the next 10 years in
prison, he couldn’t expect that
he would have earned that.

ARE YOU GAY?

A postal worker’s colleagues
teased him mercilessly for being
effeminate. He alleges they taped pic-
tures of Richard Simmons to his sta-
tion, asked him if he planned to march
in a gay parade, asked if he had AIDS
and called him a “sword swallower.”

VERDICT: Discrimination, according to a
federal court, which ruled that men can
harass other men by holding them to
“stereotyped expectations of masculin-
ity.” Many of the 15 percent of sexual
harassment cases filed with federal offi-
cials by men involve straight guys who are
mocked or grabbed by co-workers who
perceive them as not manly enough.

SEX-SHOP ANTICS

The supervisor at an adult video store
fired a clerk because, she said, he didn’t
fit in and didn’t finish his paperwork.
The clerk sued, saying the supervisor
had forced him to wear a harness at
work, spanked him with a riding crop

when he made mistakes and once led
him around the store on a leash.

VERDICT: Discrimination. A jury awarded
the clerk $31,000 in damages.

NAUGHTY TALK

Christopher Lack, a sales associate at Wal-
Mart in Beckley, West Virginia, alleged
a number of incidents involving his
supervisor, James Bragg: (1) When Lack
told Bragg he was off the clock, Bragg
said, “Good, I am too” and pretended

Steve Carell of The “ж says something inappropriate.

to unzip his pants. (2) While Lack was
helping a customer, Bragg approached
and said, “Ineed a small bag, and not the
one between your legs.” (3) Bragg made
comments about eating “penis butter
and jelly sandwiches” and ended con-
versations with “Spank you very much.”
(4) At a holiday party Bragg grabbed
his crotch and said, “Chris, here’s your
present!” Lack replied, “You're stupid.”
Bragg said, “If I’m stupid, you can work
on Christmas,” which Lack had to do.
Bragg admitted only to saying “Squeeze
me” and “Spank you very much.”

VERDICT: Discrimination, according to
a jury. It gave Lack $80,000, although
an appeals court rejected the award.
Ironically, the fact that female employees
also filed complaints about Bragg under-
mined everyone's case—it showed he
was allegedly crude around everyone,
regardless of gender.

NURSE LOVE

During a home visit to a gay couple,
one of whom was dying of AIDS, a
public health nurse told the men
they needed to have faith in Jesus
because God “doesn't like the homo-
sexual lifestyle.” The state repri-
manded the nurse, who sued for
religious discrimination.

T DI

ERDICT: Not discrimination. A federal

court ruled that state employees have

no First Amendment right to

talk to clients about their reli-
gious beliefs.

WHITE POWER

Christopher Peterson worked
for a telemarketing firm. He
also served as a minister in a
white-power “church.” When
the company learned this, it
demoted him so he would no
longer be supervising three
minority employees.

IN?

VERDICT: Discrimination, accord-

ing to a federal court, which
ruled that absent any evidence
that Peterson treated nonwhites differ-
ently at work, sincerely held beliefs can
be considered a religion even if they
are not “acceptable, logical, consistent
or comprehensible to others.”

Kenneth Tyler told his supervisor that
co-workers had threatened to burn
down his house and poison him. A psy-
chiatrist diagnosed him as delusional,
but Tyler refused to take medication.
Instead, he asked to be transferred.
After the move he complained that his
new co-workers also persecuted him. He
demanded to be transferred back and
given his own parking spot. The com-
pany refused.

AINATION?

VERDICT: Not discrimination, according
to a federal court. It ruled that compa-
nies need not correct conditions that
exist only in a worker’s imagination.

VIVE

*NOT TRUE. BUT IT'S BEEN KNOWN TO MAKE PEOPLE SPEAK LOUDER.
DRINK RESPONSIBLY.

Jose Cuervo
Especial

Oz
йет

Hecho en México. Desde 1795.

m
on 1

V 2
2

СОМРОВИЕ

ТАСОМА | MOVING FORWARD »

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uno: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

A candid conversation with America’s most influential columnist about the
war in Iraq, the future of the Middle East and why you need to go back to school

A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, New
York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman is
arguably America’s and possibly the world’s
most influential columnist. As the National
Review’s Jay Nordlinger put it, “He is the
one to whom everyone’s turning. Friedman’s
opinion is on everyone’s lips. I hear this from
conservatives, from liberals—from everybody.”

Not only do Friedman’s opinions occupy a
“globally important patch of journalistic real
estate,” as media critic Howard Kurtz said,
but the twice-weekly column is syndicated
in more than 700 newspapers around the
world. It is frequently (and often furiously)
e-mailed and has been quoted in presidential
press conferences.

Besides writing the column, Friedman,
52, has written a series of best-selling books,
including From Beirut to Jerusalem, an essen-
tial text on the Middle East, and The Lexus
and the Olive Tree, which established him as
the leading popular commentator on global-
ization. His current book, The World Is Flat,
charges that 9/11 distracted America from
the most important transformation since the
invention of the printing press: the technol-
ogy revolution that has, in his words, “flat-
tened the world” so that people in India and
China can compete on a level playing field
with people in the West.

Everyone who reads Friedman has an
opinion about his opinions. Though he is a

“People who like themselves—who see oppor-
tunity—don’t wrap themselves in dynamite
and blow themselves up. Young Taiwanese
and young Koreans don’t like us very much,
but they aren’t blowing themselves up.”

liberal on many issues, Harper’s has com-
pared him to Newt Gingrich. Though he is a
conservative on some issues, the right regu-
larly lambastes him. Friedman has also been
criticized for occasionally crossing the line
from journalism to politics: In 2002 he wrote
a series of columns that became central to the
unfolding Middle East peace process. Ted
Koppel declared, “Journalistic-fueled diplo-
macy is highly inappropriate,” but New York
magazine media critic Michael Wolff cheered
him on, describing Friedman as “a Hollywood
character—Mr. Smith goes to Riyadh.”

Contributing Editor David Sheff, whose
interview with CBS chief Leslie Moonves
appeared in our April issue, cornered Fried-
man in Washington, D.C. and New York City.
“It was eye-opening to see a print journalist
with the kind of celebrity normally reserved
for movie stars and TV anchormen,” observes
Sheff: “Passersby who recognized him wanted
to sound off. A lobbyist approached him with a
scoop, and a longtime reader turned away from
a U.S. district court judge in the middle of a
conversation so that he could rush up to Fried-
man to praise that day’s column. One expects
Friedman to be knowledgeable and opinionated,
but I was surprised by his accessible, easy man-
ner and self-deprecating sense of humor.”

PLAYBOY: After years of leaning left, you
shocked many of your readers with your

support of the war in Iraq. Are you sur-
prised to find yourself arguing the side
of the Bush administration?

FRIEDMAN: I did what I thought and still
think was right. I checked my politics
at the door when I decided to support
this war, but I resent that Bush and his
people didn’t check theirs.

PLAYBOY: Meaning?

FRIEDMAN: Meaning they have used the
war to push their agenda and to instill
fear. They have made enormous mis-
takes and never acknowledged them.
Donald Rumsfeld has performed so
incompetently for so long, and the pres-
ident hasn’t fired him. It’s shameful after
Abu Ghraib and the deaths of Iraqi
POWs. It is a travesty. You can’t win the
war of ideas in a Muslim world when
you are utterly indifferent to the murder
of prisoners. The Republicans went on
about the right to life of Terri Schiavo,
and yet they couldn’t care less about our
moral responsibility for the deaths of
prisoners of war. It’s as if 9/11 were a
shot of novocaine into our nation’s moral
nerves. It was such a shock that we still
haven’t gotten over it. It has made peo-
ple indifferent to things that we should
be outraged about.

PLAYBOY: After all that, why do you con-
tinue to support the war, well after the

‘Arafat was a real obstacle to peace. He
wasn't the only one, but he was an obstacle.
I saw a wonderful cartoon of Arafat at the
gates of hell and the devil saying, ‘Wow, our
first Nobel Prize winner.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM KITTNER

“Courage, arrogance—call it what you want,
but you can’t say George Bush is a political
coward. He bet the farm. So where is his lead-
ership on the issues that really matter? Га like
to see him use that political courage.”

PLAYBOY

definitive conclusion that there were no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
FRIEDMAN: For me the war was never
about weapons of mass destruction. I
never believed that argument. Even if
there were WMDs, the amount was pid-
dling and easily deterrable. For me the
reason to go to war was not WMDs but
PMDs—people of mass destruction. The
boys of 9/11 were produced by a politi-
cal climate in the Arab world that was
deeply toxic. For 50 years we treated
the Arab world as if it were a collection
of gas stations. All we cared about were
three things: that they kept the pumps
open and the prices low and were nice to
the Jews. Basically we said, “Other than
that you can do whatever you want out
back.” They could treat their
women however they wanted,
educate their children in what-
ever intolerance they liked and
describe us as the force of evil.
They could be as corrupt as
they wanted. On 9/11 we were
hit with the distilled essence of
everything going on out back. I
wasn't going to play that game
anymore. George Bush wasn’t
either, and he made the right
decision. If we didn’t find a
way to begin to change the con-
text in the Arab world, we were
inviting another 9/11.

There were four reasons for
the war: the right reason, the
stated reason, the moral reason
and the real reason. The stated
reason was WMDs. It was an
excuse the president used. The
moral reason was the genocidal
regime responsible for killing
hundreds of thousands of its
own people. The right reason
was regime change, to try to
build a democratic context in
the heart of the Arab world. But
the real reason was to send the
following message: “Ladies and
gentlemen of the Arab world, we
mean you no ill, but we noticed
something on 9/11. Many Arabs
and Muslims applauded it. So
listen when I tell you the follow-
ing: You are now going to see American
boys and girls go from Basra to Bagh-
dad. Which part of this don’t you under-
stand? We will not sit here idly while you
come over to our country, kill 3,000 of
our brothers and sisters and then bake a
cake—which some people in Saudi Ara-
bia did—to celebrate. Try it again and we
are going to come into the heart of your
world and there will be vast and unpre-
dictable consequences.”

PLAYBOY: But Iraq didn’t attack us on
September 11. Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda did.

FRIEDMAN: Yes, but in my view terrorism
is 98 percent about what governments
let happen—the charities they allow to
raise and funnel money, the lies they

allow to be told about us in their press
and the terrible intolerance they allow to
be preached.

PLAYBOY: Then why didn’t we attack Paki-
stan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia?
FRIEDMAN: We went to Iraq for one rea-
son: We could.

PLAYBOY: But if the real reason was to
send a message and deter future attacks,
how do you respond to the experts who
say the war will create more, not fewer,
terrorists because of increased resent-
ment of and even hatred for the United
States throughout the Arab world?
FRIEDMAN: I don’t believe it. I’m ready for
somebody to prove it to me if it’s true.
What the left has totally missed is how
many people are quietly rooting for us

All we cared about was that they
kept the pumps open and the prices
low and were nice to the Jews.

to succeed. Look at Lebanon, Egypt and
Palestine.

PLAYBOY: Are you suggesting that people
in those countries are our new fans?
FRIEDMAN: Do they like George Bush or
even America? No. But we have unlocked
something very important.

PLAYBOY: Unlocked what, aside from
increased anti-Americanism?

FRIEDMAN: We have unlocked a democ-
racy movement in that region that has
the potential to transform it. And that is
how we will win the war on terrorism.
Some things are true even if George
Bush believes them. The only way to
win against terrorism is to win the war
of ideas, which can be fought only by
Arabs and Muslims. American public

diplomacy can’t do it. First of all, I don’t
want them to like us. I’m not too fond
of some of them some days, frankly.
I’m not too fond of how they treat their
women. I’m not too fond of how some
of them preach intolerance. But I want
them to like themselves. People who like
themselves—who see hope and oppor-
tunity—don’t tend to wrap themselves
in dynamite and blow themselves up.
Young Taiwanese and young Koreans
don’t like us very much either, but they
aren’t strapping on dynamite and blow-
ing themselves up. The war on terrorism
is a war of ideas, so the question becomes,
How do you create the context in which
young people can fulfill their aspirations
and potential and have a voice in their
future? We have helped change
the context in Iraq so that the
people there may be able to.
PLAYBOY: But the news from
postwar Iraq doesn’t include
much about people with hope
and opportunity.

FRIEDMAN: We have taken the
first step and are a million miles
from the end point. However,
the first Arab government has
been formed as a result of a hor-
izontal conversation between
Arab people. There is a Kurd-
ish president—the first Arab
government with a leader from
a political minority. There is a
government that has a chance
to fight the war of ideas inside
its own country in its own lan-
guage, inside its own religion
and among its own people.
That is a result of the war. We
have helped create the context
for this to happen. We have
empowered progressive forces
to fight the war of ideas from
the inside. The second-largest
Muslim country in the world is
not Iran, not Saudi Arabia, not
Pakistan. It is India. Here is an
interesting statistic from 9/11:
There are no Indian Muslims
in Al Qaeda, as far as we know.
There are no Indian Muslims
in Guantanamo Bay. We know
that Al Qaeda is a Noah’s ark of Mus-
lims from all over the world, but none of
them are from India.

PLAYBOY: We don’t necessarily know if
there are Al Qaeda cells in India.
FRIEDMAN: Maybe there are, but none
have manifested themselves. Why is that?
Could it be because the richest man in
India is a Muslim software entrepreneur,
Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro, the
biggest outsourcing firm in the world?
Could it be because the president of
India is a Muslim? Could it be because an
Indian Muslim woman is on the Indian
supreme court and Muslims have been
governors of Indian states?

PLAYBOY: How does this fight terrorism?
FRIEDMAN: Give me a context in which

young people see that they have a chance
to have an entrepreneurial idea and start
one of the biggest companies in their
world and become one of the 10 richest
people on Forbes’s list. Give me a context
in which anyone can aspire to the highest
offices. Give me a context in which peo-
ple who have a legal dispute can get it
resolved in court—and not have to bribe
the judge with a goat. And guess what—
they don’t want to blow up the world;
they want to be part of it. When I was in
India after we invaded Afghanistan,
there was a debate on Indian television
between the leading Muslim cleric of
New Delhi and the country’s leading
female movie star. The cleric called on all
Indian Muslims to rise up and join the
jihad in Afghanistan against America.
The leading Indian movie star basically
told him to shove it, live on Indian
national TV. Why did she do that?
Because she could. She lives in a context
that empowers her and protects her as
an Indian Muslim woman to do that—to
fight that war of ideas. She didn't do it
because she read American propaganda.
It sprang from her own soul. That is
what changes the world. Things will
change if we have little Indias in every
one of the Arab countries. And this is
what motivated me to support the Bush
administration, even with its flawed
actors and flawed approach.

PLAYBOY: But is a little India a possible
outcome in Palestine?

FRIEDMAN: It's our best hope. If Israel
gets out of Gaza—and I think it will —for
the first time we're going to have a situ-
ation in which the Palestinians have their
own place in the sun. It's a miserable
place—densely populated, underdevel-
oped, chopped up because of the settle-
ments and security fences and roads—but
it’s going to be their place in the sun.
Next, if the Palestinians turn Gaza into
something more like Dubai and less like
Mogadishu, it will make a Palestinian
state on the West Bank inevitable. In my
view it's incumbent on Israel for its own
interest to help Palestinians make sure
the state is more like Dubai and less like
Mogadishu. It's incumbent on the U.S.
to help, and Lord knows it's incumbent
on the Arab states.

PLAYBOY: What is the impact of the death
of Yasir Arafat on the prospect of peace
in the Middle East?

FRIEDMAN: Arafat was a real obstacle to
peace. He wasn't the only one, but he was
an obstacle. He has gone to his maker, or
maybe not. І saw a wonderful cartoon of
Arafat at the gates of hell and the devil
saying, “Wow, our first Nobel Prize win-
ner.” [laughs] But wherever he is, he's
gone, and I think the Palestinians have
a much better chance at a decent future
as a result of that.

PLAYBOY: Post-Arafat, what is the most
likely scenario?

FRIEDMAN: One thing I learned about the
Middle East is you get big changes when

Reverse Ang

Prominent Jordanian columnist Salama Na'mat explains us to them

Call him a Thomas L. Friedman for the
Middle East. Salama Na'mat is the Wash-
ington bureau chief for the pan-Arab daily
newspaper Al-Hayat and a sought-after
commentator on Arabic TV. Followed—and
quoted—by Friedman and other Middle
East watchers here, his contrarian takes
on U.S. policy are must-reads for Arabs
looking to understand America.
PLAYBOY: Is it difficult to explain the
U.S. to Arab readers?

NA’MAT: When someone like me
explains to them what is going on—not
justifying American policies but explaining
them—people in the region have a ten-
dency to want to shoot the messenger.
PLAYBOY: What is making them so mad
that they want to shoot the messenger?
NA’MAT: Most people in the Arab world
don't buy U.S. rhetoric. They like to think
this administration just
wants to go and take
the oil. For the past half
century America has
been backing the ene-
mies of the people: the
dictators, the corrupt
families that have been
ruling these countries—
families with flags, in
other words. The U.S.
was interested only in
securing the flow of oil.
Now all of a sudden
the U.S. says it wants to
change that. On the
one hand we have to
give the president
credit for saying, “Our
policies were mistaken
for the past 60 years.
We backed dictator-
ships for the sake of short-term stability.”
On the other hand he still receives these
dictators in the White House, calling
them his friends. His words are not
matched by his deeds.

PLAYBOY: What could change people's
minds about U.S. intentions?

NA’ МАТ: Тһе U.S. continues to extend
military and economic aid to countries
that are not advancing toward democ-
racy. If the administration wants democ-
racy, what about the people being
arrested in Syria and Iran or the reform-
ers arrested in Saudi Arabia—why aren't
you saying a word about these people?
The question is, Will George Bush back
down now, or is he going to say, “What's
happening is not enough. We’re going to
put more pressure on these countries that
are not advancing toward reform, punish
these countries, cut off aid to these
countries”? As yet, we haven't seen any
concrete steps to indicate that the
administration will start isolating and
exposing these regimes. It needs to act if
anyone is to believe it.

PLAYBOY: Does the U.S. deserve any
credit for recent elections and reforms?
NA’MAT: In Palestine it’s not true that the
Bush doctrine is responsible for elections.

Bush’s words are
not matched by his deeds.

We've had elections in Palestine in the
past. Actually Arafat was elected in 1994,
freely elected. The Israelis did not allow
elections until Arafat's death because
they knew that if elections took place he
would win again. In Lebanon mistakes
made by the Syrians, coupled with the
assassination of the prime minister, led to
the independence uprising, which ousted
the Syrians. I’m not saying the U.S. did
not back these moves. I’m saying the U.S.
did not initiate these moves.

PLAYBOY: And what about the constitu-
tional reforms undertaken in Egypt?
NA’MAT: The Egyptian president, Hosni
Mubarak, manipulated the process, kept
it under the control of his ruling party and
basically made fools of the Americans.
The opposition boycotted the referendum
because the reforms were a fraud. As a
result Bush said some-
thing about “urging”
President Mubarak—
you can “urge” these
regimes forever. These
people do not want to
give up power.
PLAYBOY: Is global-
ization, as in Fried-
man’s flat-earth theory,
affecting the Middle
East?

NA’MAT: | disagree
with Friedman's over-
simplification of the sit-
uation. This applies to
societies that are con-
nected to globalization
by trade, the Internet,
communications. In the
Middle East about two
percent of people have
access to the Internet. A huge number of
people are not connected to communica-
tions. We have an average illiteracy rate
of 40 to 50 percent. What he’s talking
about is true only for the elites, who are
connected. But their interests are linked
with the dictatorships and autocracies;
these people have no interest in change.
PLAYBOY: Is the American media tell-
ing us what we need to know about the
Arab world?

NA'MAT: | don't want to single out
Friedman, but he and others like him
go to the Middle East and want to have
access to the top leaders. To do that,
they have to be on good terms with
them. If Friedman were to write about
what is really happening in Egypt, he
wouldn't be allowed into Egypt again.
This is dangerous because the public is
being misled. The public is being kept
in the dark. You can’t just ignore prob-
lems somewhere else, because these
problems could come and haunt you at
home, as happened on 9/11. When the
U.S. focuses all its foreign policy on that
part of the world, you would imagine the
media would get more interested. But
four years after 9/11 the U.S. media are
not doing any better. —Tim Mohr

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GET FREE SHIPPING AND HANDLING!

the big players do the right thing for the
wrong reasons. If you wait for everyone
to do the right things for the right rea-
sons, you wait forever in that neighbor-
hood. Israel is not getting out of Gaza
because Ariel Sharon woke up and Arafat
was gone and he said, ^Whoa, now I get
Palestinian nationalism!" Israel is getting
out of Gaza because it faced a threat of
an apartheid situation there.

PLAYBOY: How was it becoming an apart-
heid situation?

FRIEDMAN: There will be more Palestin-
ians than Jews between the Mediter-
ranean and the Jordan River if Israel
doesn't relinquish the Gaza Strip.
PLAYBOY: Would Israel necessarily care if
there were more Palestinians than Jews?
FRIEDMAN: Israel is a society that is swayed
by that kind of moral pressure. They are
getting out of Gaza ultimately to preserve
the Jewish state. And on the other side,
the Palestinians aren't cooperating with
this passively because they've suddenly
adopted a new view of Ariel Sharon. So
lo and behold, both sides are doing the
right thing for the wrong reasons. But
it's a big deal.

PLAYBOY: The next hot spot in the
Middle East is likely to be Iran. Is the
Bush administration taking the correct
approach there?

FRIEDMAN: Iran is vexing, but I believe
in engagement. The best argument for
it is our Cuba policy. How many presi-
dents has Castro survived now? At what
point do we say that the Cuba lab test
has proved that the isolation policy is a
failure? In Iran I believe in the Dr. Kev-
orkian solution of assisted suicide. More
than anything else, the mullahs fear
an American embassy back in Tehran.
'There should be one. I want to fill the
veins of Iranians with Coca-Cola and Big
Macs. I want to fill them with Microsoft
Windows and Google. In the long run
it's the best way to bring about a peace-
ful transition inside Iran—one driven by
Iranians from the inside.

PLAYBOY: Fine, but the mullahs aren't
going to relinquish control if they don't
have to, and nuclear weapons, if they
develop them, might be a persuasive
argument.

FRIEDMAN: It's a complicated situation,
but generally we will get more and
faster internally driven transforma-
tion in Iran by opening an American
embassy and through trade and engage-
ment than we will through a policy of
isolation. Ultimately we'll have more to
say about even their nuclear program,
if they decide to have one. It's not a
slam dunk. There are Iranians inside
the country who say that isolation is
better: “Don't embrace these guys." I
take their view seriously, but we have
to find a way to separate the bad guys
at the top from the vast majority of Ira-
nians who want to embrace modernity
and the West—who want engagement.
'There are precedents throughout the

Middle East to show what can hap-
pen. Throughout the region—in Iraq,
Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt—
some of the things are in place. That's
the challenge for Condoleezza Rice,
the challenge for this administration.
'They're only halfway home. Do not go
on a victory lap yet.

PLAYBOY: Are you optimistic about the par-
liamentary election and the withdrawal
of Syria's military from Lebanon?
FRIEDMAN: It's enormously exciting. To
some degree in Lebanon they saw what
happened in Ukraine and Georgia, and
they certainly see what happened in
Iraq. These events are coming to their
'TVs via satellite and into their neighbor-
hoods by e-mail and the web. It embold-
ens them, and they ask, “Why can't we
have it here?"

PLAYBOY: Is the situation in Egypt similar?
FRIEDMAN: Yes. An Egyptian delegation
was visiting Washington this week, and
a guy came up to me at a reception and
said, “Mr. Friedman, I run the biggest
call center in Egypt for Microsoft." It's
where democracy starts now that the
world has flattened.

PLAYBOY: Explain your concept of the
flattened world.

FRIEDMAN: I became the foreign affairs
columnist for The New York Times in
1995 and covered international eco-
nomics until September 11, 2001. After
9/11 I dropped the globalization stuff
like a stone and went off and covered
the 9/11 wars for three years. In the
meantime I began doing a series of
documentaries for the Discovery Chan-
nel. We planned one on how people
abroad look at America, which was a
big issue then. While we were costing
it out, a certain Democratic presidential
candidate named John Kerry came out
with his blast against "Benedict Arnold
executives" who were outsourcing. It
elevated the issue, and we decided to do
a show called The Other Side of Outsourc-
ing, looking at it from the place that has
benefited from much of the outsourc-
ing, India, to get the perspective from
that country. I dropped the 9/11 story,
and we went to the Indian Silicon Valley
and did about 60 hours of interviews. I
got sicker and sicker.

PLAYBOY: What made you sick?
FRIEDMAN: Because somewhere between
the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to
do my taxes from Bangalore and the one
who wanted to write my software from
Bangalore and the one who wanted to
read my X-rays from Bangalore and the
one who wanted to trace my lost luggage
from Bangalore, I realized that while I
was sleeping, something really big had
happened. The world had changed and
I'd missed it.

PLAYBOY: What exactly had you missed?
FRIEDMAN: The flattening. We were so
busy with 9/11 that we all missed it in this
country—the administration did. We
shifted resources, we shifted attention,

and we shifted our energy. The idea
crystallized during my last interview in
India with Nandan Nilekani, an old
friend who is the CEO of Infosys. Info-
sys is like the IBM of India, one of the
gems of the Indian IT industry. He
said to me, “Tom, I’ve got to tell you,
the playing field is being leveled, and
you Americans are not ready.” He
explained how technology has leveled
the playing field so that India can par-
ticipate in the world economy as easily
as the United States does. So can
China. And now Egypt hasa call center
for Microsoft. Nandan said that this
change is the great achievement of the
21st century. I didn't completely
understand it, but I knew that I had
missed something and my framework
badly needed updating. Back at my
hotel I called my wife and told her,
“Honey, I’m going to write a book
called The World Is Flat.” I took three
months off from my column before the
election to do so.

PLAYBOY: For 10 years, since Netscape
went public and use of the Internet
began to increase, we have been hear-
ing that IT is going to change the world
by leveling the playing field. Why is
this different?

FRIEDMAN: A difference of degree
becomes a difference of kind. Carly
Fiorina, formerly of Hewlett-Packard,
nailed it. She said that the IT revolu-
tion of the past 20 years was “the end
of the beginning.” That is, everything
we called the IT revolution—sorry,
friends—was just the warm-up act. It
was about the sharpening and distri-
bution of the tools of collaboration so
that people and companies could seam-
lessly collaborate across the globe. It's
why they can do my taxes or trace my
luggage in India. Now we are going to
see the real IT revolution. The Internet
boom brought in huge investment. All
that money was used to quickly build the
global high-bandwidth Internet. Then
after the bust, people's capital shrank,
and they had to look for cheaper and
more efficient ways to innovate. Because
the world is flat, they could go to India
and China and other places to do what-
ever needed to be done cheaply and
efficiently. So globalization was turbo-
charged. The bust also caused the big
companies to pull back, opening the
door for small companies around the
world to take advantage of the high-
bandwidth pipelines. An Indian start-up
could compete with an American giant.
PLAYBOY: Why did we miss that?
FRIEDMAN: Our heads were in the sand
because of a perfect storm. We were
focusing on the war on terrorism
and nothing else. And let's be hon-
est, it was a good political gig for the
Bush administration. Number two,
Enron made CEOs guilty until proven
innocent. As a result, none of them
wanted to talk out loud about what

was going on. None of them wanted
to ask for anything they needed to
compete and collaborate effectively
in this flat world. Believe it or not,
after Enron, the Bush administration,
which to all of us seemed slavishly pro-
business, didn't want to be seen with
the CEOs of the most important com-
panies. Then came the dot-com bust,
and people assumed it was all over. As
a result of the perfect storm, exactly at
the inflection point, it was like when
Gutenberg gave us the printing press.
We were off fighting some medieval
war with the knights in shining armor.
PLAYBOY: With what implications? Isn't
America still well ahead of other coun-
tries in terms of technology and access
to information?

FRIEDMAN: While our heads were in the
sand, other countries caught up. It's
the reason our jobs have gone to India.
They can do the same work for cheaper.
One of my daughters is a sophomore in
college and the other is іп 11th grade.
When I was growing up my parents
used to say to me, “Tom, finish your
dinner. People in China and India are
starving.” Now I tell my girls, “Girls, go
finish your homework. People in China
and India are starving for your jobs.”
The good news is that the top tech
CEOs in the country—people like Bill
Gates, Michael Dell, Marc Andreessen,
Craig Barrett and John Doerr—know
what is going on. They are outsourc-
ing, insourcing, offshoring—everything
required to compete in the flat world.
The bad news is that nobody has told
the kids. That is, the country doesn't
know what's going on. The national
debate is not revolving around what we
need to do as a country to strengthen
our abilities—individuals’ abilities and
the abilities of our companies—to thrive
in this new flat world. Instead of talk-
ing about preparing America, during
the last election we had the Democrats
debating whether NAFTA was a good
idea and the Republicans putting duct
tape over the mouth of chief White
House economist N. Gregory Mankiw
when he said that outsourcing makes a
lot of sense. They stashed him in Dick
Cheney's basement. There was a kind
of conspiracy of silence. Now we are in
this totally nuts situation with a presi-
dent with a mandate whose great legacy
project is unraveling the New Deal by
trying to privatize Social Security.
PLAYBOY: Do you disagree that the system
will be bankrupt?

FRIEDMAN: We need to fix Social Security,
but that’s amath problem. What we need
is anew New Deal between companies,
government and citizens.

PLAYBOY: What would this new New Deal
look like?

FRIEDMAN: It would include a package
of policies to empower and strengthen
Americans to compete in a flat world.
When was the last time you heard

BEAUTIFUL
AND
MERCILESS.

w/Ä '
AUGUST 9
{sity themdVie.com jam

PLAYBOY

George Bush talk about competitive-
ness? Instead he’s talking about keep-
ing the first-round intellectual draft
choices of the world out because their
name is Mohammed or they may once
have changed flights in Riyadh. We are
talking about Band-Aids for education,
ignoring the catastrophe of our educa-
tional system. Last year the Republican
Congress and this administration cut
the National Science Foundation budget
by $100 million. Pm convinced there
is a Chinese spy in the White House
who whispered in the president’s ear,
“Why don’t you cut the National Sci-
ence Foundation budget by $100 mil-
lion?” and he happily agreed. Why not
really retard yourself, stop innovation?
We are not doing the right things, and
we are actively doing the wrong things.
The issue of expensing stock options is
a perfect example. They are trying to
hamper companies so that it will be far
more expensive to give stock options
to their employees. As a result, entre-
preneurs won't be able to attract talent
from India and China or even keep
our own talent in the U.S. China is not
expensing stock options. On the con-
trary, it is telling its companies to lavish
them on people—to use them to get its
best and brightest to come home from
America back to China.

PLAYBOY: Though some people in China
and India are thriving, hundreds of
millions of them aren't. They remain
impoverished.

FRIEDMAN: It has to start somewhere.
Thirty-five years ago if you had the
choice of being born a B-plus student
in the Bronx or a genius in Bangalore,
you would choose B-plus student in the
Bronx because your life opportunities
were so much greater. You couldn't plug
and play as a genius in Bangalore unless
you got a visa, in which case you had to
give up your culture, your native dress,
your sari, your curry and your extended
family and move. Now, when the world
is flat, if you are a genius in Bangalore,
your life chances are amazing.

PLAYBOY: What do you say to a person
whose job has been outsourced and
who may not be as enthusiastic about
the flat world as you are?

FRIEDMAN: Welcome to my world. I just
wrote а 488-page book in 11 months. ГП
be the first to tell you 1 didn't know a
single thing in that book a year ago. I
had to retool myself. In order to do my
job, I had to go back to school. Every-
one is going to have to do it. There is no
choice. If I can't explain the world to you
in a way that makes sense, one day my
editors at The New York Times are going to
tap me on the shoulder and say, “Tom,
maybe you want to move on,” because I
won't be relevant.

PLAYBOY: But many American workers
don't have the opportunity to go back to
school. They want their government to

64 protect their jobs.

FRIEDMAN: The government is failing
them but not by not protecting their
jobs. That's why we need a different
presidency. So to someone who has lost
his job because it has been outsourced
I say, “The world is flat. I didn't flat-
ten it. I didn't start it. I can't stop it.”
As a nation maybe we could stop it at
the cost of impoverishing everybody—
of radically reducing our standard of
living. But that is a loser model. The
least globalized countries are the ones
that put up walls: North Korea, Cuba,
Sudan. They're not doing well for
their folks. Instead we can seize the
challenge and opportunity. We must
use the profits that we make to take
care of the left-behinds. If someone
has lost a job because it has been out-
sourced, we need options for him so he
can improve his knowledge skills and
move vertically into this world. It’s the
only way forward. Anyone who argues
differently is doing great harm to this
country and to their children and to
our future. Whining about the Indians
who are taking our jobs doesn't help
the Americans who are losing jobs.

We have had too many
leaders who are making us
stupid and afraid. Rather

than explaining the opportu-
nities of the world, they are
making us afraid of it.

What is the better alternative? Social-
ism is a wonderful system for mak-
ing people equally poor. Capitalism
makes people unequally rich but gives
more people at the bottom a chance to
become rich. Always remember: Poor
people don't resent rich people any-
where near as much as the left thinks.
What they resent is having no chance
to get rich themselves. Is capitalism
brutal? You bet it is. It's the most bru-
tal, mean, nasty economic system in the
world—except for all the others. So we
need a different kind of political lead-
ership. We have had too many leaders
who are making us stupid and afraid.
Rather than explaining the opportuni-
ties of the world, they are making us
afraid of it. We have CNN running a
business show that goes out of its way
to make us more afraid—to hype all
the downsides of the flat world.
PLAYBOY: Are you referring to Lou
Dobbs's show?

FRIEDMAN: You might say that. I have
no problem with a TV show or an
author pointing out the downsides of
globalization, but not when you suggest

that globalization is bad only after a
20-year period when more people have
been lifted out of poverty in India and
China into the middle class and lower-
middle class faster than at any time in
the history of the planet. Not when
you suggest that it's all bad at a time
when America has been part of so many
incredible innovations and, excuse me,
our standard of living has also steadily
risen. Our unemployment rate is still
only 5.2 percent. When you use your
TV show as a forum for that dangerous
perspective, it is irresponsible. I expect
better from CNN. I don't expect it to
be slavishly pro-business—some might
say that's what that show was like dur-
ing the dot-com bubble—but I expect
a balanced perspective.

PLAYBOY: Exactly what would you have
President Bush telling Americans?
FRIEDMAN: I think he needs to explain
the enormous challenges and opportu-
nities of the flat world, that it poses as
comprehensive and serious a challenge
to us as communism did. The job of
government is to prepare our people,
but not for lifetime employment. I wish
we could still have that world, but we
don't. What the government should be
about is thinking through the policies
that would make more and more Ameri-
cans employable for life.

PLAYBOY: Besides education, what policies
are you thinking of?

FRIEDMAN: Portable health care for all
Americans so they can move from job to
job as new industries are born and others
are destroyed. Portable pensions. I never
want to see people having to stay at a
dying company because their pension is
locked there. I believe we need wage
insurance. And in the new deal for the
flat world, the government needs to
guarantee every American tertiary edu-
cation. It has to be not compulsory but
available to every single American
through subsidies, tax breaks and grants.
My mantra is, Not a man on Mars— what
a loopy idea! We need to get every man
and woman onto a college campus in
America. That’s the new New Deal.
PLAYBOY: What would you have people
trained to do? It's no longer enough to
be trained in information-technology
jobs, since many of them are precisely
the ones being outsourced to India,
China and other countries.

FRIEDMAN: To me the galvanizing idea—
the moon shot of our generation that
could inspire and motivate young peo-
ple to go into science and engineering
in ways they haven't been for almost two
decades now—is energy independence.
First of all, it would make us the moral
leader of the world in ways that we can
only dream of now. It would make us a
shining example of reducing energy use
and reducing climate change. It would
make us independent of having to sup-
port some of the worst governments in
the world. We never tell the truth to

governments that we’re dependent on
for oil just as addicts never tell the truth
to their pushers. This new deal would
be great for the dollar. It would be great
for the budget deficit. As a friend says,
it wouldn’t be win-win but win-win-win-
win. That is the moon shot to galvanize
our generation. It’s crying out for this
president to pick it up, and if he doesn't,
then I hope the next one will.

PLAYBOY: Meanwhile billions of people in
the world—not only in India and China
but in Africa and the Middle East—are
unlikely to be reeducated anytime soon.
They have little education in the first
place. They don't even have food, clean
water or health care.

FRIEDMAN: Yes, and it's a big problem.
I’m convinced that 9/11 was about
humiliation, not economics. When do
people get enraged? Not when they
don't have enough money. It is when
they feel deeply degraded and humili-
ated. A big part of the world feels humil-
iated from being left behind. The flat
world is intensifying humiliation. You
get your humiliation fiber-optically in
the flat world. You get it at 56K. In the
flat world you can see where the cara-
van is and how far behind you are. The
humiliation that comes with that is what
drives the rage that fueled not only
9/11 but the millions of Muslims who
cheered it. They thought, We gave them
a punch in the nose. God, that felt good,
even though it was a futile exercise. Yes,
much of the world is too sick and too
poor; some countries have broken gov-
ernments, and many have no access to
the flattening world. The world isn't flat
for them. With all the progress in India,
700 million people are living in despair.
So in India and Africa and other places
like them, it's an enormous problem.
But in 1991, India—a country of a bil-
lion people—had about $100 million in
the bank. It was going bankrupt after
four decades of compassionate, warm,
soft, caring socialist economics. In 1991
Manmohan Singh, now prime minister,
then finance minister, oversaw the glo-
balizing of the Indian economy. Today
India has somewhere close to $120 bil-
lion in reserves, reserves it can now use
to do exactly the retraining, infrastruc-
ture building, school building and more
that is needed to lift people out of pov-
erty and give them the tools to succeed
in the modern world.

PLAYBOY: Your theory sounds a lot like a
global version of Reagan's trickle-down
economics. But throughout history we
have seen that wealth doesn't necessar-
ily trickle down.

FRIEDMAN: It can trickle down if we do the
right things. The national and global pri-
orities should all be the same: Improve
infrastructure—in some cases that means
drinking water—and education. The rest
follows. As I said, we're millions of miles
from where we need to be. These are
the areas where we need leadership and

political courage. Iraq was such a radical
shake of the dice, against the wishes of a
lot of President Bush’s most trusted advi-
sors, that I know at some level he must
have great political courage. Га like to
see him use that political courage.
PLAYBOY: Rather than seeing it as political
courage, some view Iraq as an example
of Bush's arrogance.

FRIEDMAN: Courage, arrogance—call it
what you want, but you can't say the guy
is a political coward. He bet the farm.
So where is his leadership on the issues
that really matter? People always say
that Karl Rove is a genius. There are so
many questions to look at that relate to
people's future—making them employ-
able in the future, providing a positive
future for their children—but Rove got
them to vote on whether gays can marry.
That is a kind of genius. Instead of offer-
ing America a politics of opportunity and
aspiration, it’s a politics based on fear.
PLAYBOY: You're a journalist who often
sounds like a politician. Is your goal to
affect public policy?

FRIEDMAN: I don't mean to sound sappy,
but the goal is to make the world a bet-
ter place. I’m a sappy patriot. I am a big
believer that we have the greatest country
in the world and the greatest opportuni-
ties in the world, and I want to take care
of this thing and pass it on—not just for
my kids but because you take America
out of the world and the world’s a very
different place. What do you think would
be going on between Japan and China
right now if not for America's influence
on Asia? Do you think Germany and
France would be in a common currency
if America had not been in the picture?
Would Israel exist without America? We
are the straw that stirs the drink. When
we do it well, the drink comes out well;
when we do it maladroitly—and we do
that sometimes—the drink suffers.
PLAYBOY: Do you enjoy the power you
have through your column?

FRIEDMAN: I do not wake up in the morn-
ing, look in the mirror, flex my muscles
and say, “Wow, are you powerful.” It's
the opposite. The morning after a col-
umn, I agonize. Did I get it right? It
starts even before anyone outside the
house reads it. My wife reads almost
every column, and I literally hold my
breath for the white or dark smoke. If
she says a column doesn't work, which
she is wont to do on occasion, I have to
go upstairs, rip it up and start over.
PLAYBOY: Do you ever dig in your heels?
FRIEDMAN: The best fights we have are
over my column, but when she tells me
it doesn't work, I don't say, "Tough, I'm
going with it." I go with my tail between
my legs back up to my office and rework
it. If you're sitting around thinking how
powerful you are—“I’m Zeus on Mount
Olympus; I'm going to toss down a few
thunderbolts"—you stop reporting.
Why should you? Zeus doesn't need
to report. He is sending thunderbolts

I WISH YOU'O DROPPED
BY EARLIER.

sinatvthemovie.co

down from the mountain. He can say
whatever he wants. If I were to do that,
it would be all over.

PLAYBOY: Do you look back at any of your
columns and cringe? When were you
completely wrong?

FRIEDMAN: I was roundly criticized by
people I respect for a column in which I
wrote that I didn’t care two cents about
what happened in Bosnia. I was not actu-
ally writing about the massacre or the
genocide. What I was writing about was
that we needed to go in and help our
British and French allies. I was making a
point that what mattered was our alli-
ances with Britain and France, not
whether Bosnia is an independent coun-
try. Unfortunately I expressed it in a
very poor way. It was just dumb. I take
that one back.

PLAYBOY: You have also taken heat for your
Golden Arches theory—that two coun-
tries with McDonald's restaurants would
never get into a war with each other. The
theory collapsed with Belgrade.
FRIEDMAN: When I wrote that, I specifically
excluded civil wars. I said civil wars don't
count, because McDonald's served both
sides in the Russian, El Salvadoran and
Nicaraguan civil wars. Then immediately
after the book in which I wrote that came
out, we bombed Belgrade, and Belgrade
had 10 or 11 McDonald’s. Of course every
international relations professor wrote say-
ing, “Nah-nah-nah-naaah-nah. Belgrade has
McDonald’s.” My view of Belgrade is that
itis a civil war in which we intervened, but
let’s leave that aside. Let’s say there is one
exception to the rule. That means the rule
holds up 99 out of 100 times. For social
science, that ain't too bad, okay? I wasn't
doing quantum mechanics. It doesn't dis-
prove the point I was trying to make that
the more countries are integrated into the
global economy, the more they develop a
middle class that can sustain a network of
McDonald's, the less incentive there is to
go to war and the higher the cost.
PLAYBOY: You received criticism not
for reporting but for making the news
when in 2002 you floated Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah's plan for an Israeli-
Palestinian peace. Do you agree that
you crossed the line?

FRIEDMAN: It all started at the Davos World
Economic Summit that was held in New
York City in the year after 9/11. I was talk-
ing to a Moroccan friend, bemoaning the
state of the peace process. An Arab summit
was coming up, and I said, “Why don’t the
Arabs just make a simple statement to the
Israelis: full peace—that is, total normal-
ization of trade and diplomatic recogni-
tion—for full withdrawal?” He liked that
and encouraged me to put it out there. I
happened to bump into Amir Moussa, the
head of the Arab League, who was also
there. I tried it out on him, and he said,
“You know, why don’t you put that out
there?” Occasionally I do these letters from
the president to Arab leaders as columns. I
decided to write a letter from Bush to the

Arab League, laying it all out. By coinci-
dence I went to Saudi Arabia a couple of
weeks later and interviewed Crown Prince
Abdullah. I asked him about this pro-
posal. He completely shocked me by say-
ing, “Well, you’ve broken into my drawer,
because that’s my idea. That has been the
peace plan I’ve been thinking of propos-
ing.” We were speaking off the record in
his house in Riyadh, and I asked him to
put it on the record. He was uncomfort-
able doing that. I tried to convince him
until two in the morning. Finally he said,
“T want to sleep on it.” It took awhile, but
he decided to put it on the record. Abdul-
lah stuck by it, and it took off. At the time,
everything was frozen in the peace process,
so it was a big deal.

PLAYBOY: Might Abdullah have been
using you?

FRIEDMAN: For what? Was some of this an
effort to burnish the Saudi image after
9/11? Absolutely. But if an Arab leader
wants to use me to present a break-
through peace proposal that might break
the logjam in Middle East peace, well,
here's my number. Call anytime. Abdul-
lah eventually took it to the Arab League.
It remains on the table as the only con-
sensus Arab peace initiative.

PLAYBOY: Ted Koppel criticized you. He
said, “Journalistic-fueled diplomacy is
highly inappropriate.”

FRIEDMAN: Yes, I did a terrible thing.
I’m going to confess it now in PLAYBOY.
I went to Saudi Arabia. I interviewed
the crown prince. I asked him what
he thought of this peace proposal. I
opened my notebook. I wrote down
what he said. I told the world. The fact
that it had diplomatic ramifications
was totally out of my control. And by
the way, I’m not on the news desk. I’m
the one who wrote the thing. I made it
up. It all came out of my head to begin
with. The Columbia Journalism Review
may have some issue with this, but as
we all know, the journalism business is
not without its jealousy factor. So some
of that, I’m sure, is at play as well.
PLAYBOY: Does criticism, whether from
Ted Koppel or Harper's, which compared
you to Newt Gingrich, bother you?
FRIEDMAN: I missed that in Harper's. It's hard
to keep track of them all. But look, Pm no
more thin-skinned or thick-skinned than
anybody else. People tell you, “It’s water off
a duck's back.” I haven't yet met the per-
son for whom that is true—whether it's the
president of the United States, the secretary
of state or journalists. Nobody likes to be
written about in a way that's mocking or
sneering. You'd prefer to have people sup-
port your ideas and approve of them. But
I’ve certainly reached a stage in my life in
which I understand they'll come after you
only if they think you count. I take it as a
compliment that I'm in there stirring the
pot. If you're dishing it out—and I am dish-
ing it out —you've got to be able to take it.
'That's my attitude. Just keep it clean and
take a number. We'll get to everybody.

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PLAYBOY

PLAYBOY: Does your role change depend-
ing on the administration in the White
House? Was your role during the Clin-
ton years different from what it is now?
FRIEDMAN: І was Clinton's biggest critic
on NATO expansion. I was a complete
pain in the butt for him. Now I’m Bush's
biggest critic on energy. I was Clinton's
biggest supporter on NAFTA, and I have
probably been one of the people who
have given the Democratic rationale for
the war in Iraq. І am now a harsh critic
of the current administration for its fail-
ure to prepare us for the flat world.
PLAYBOY: We haven't yet discussed the
impact of the flattening of the world on
sex. What will be different?

FRIEDMAN: Pornography and gambling
have been two huge killer apps in terms
of driving bandwidth around the world;
anyone who traces the history of the
development of the Internet knows that
gambling and pornography played a huge
role. Those, file swapping, and music and
video downloads are probably the biggest.
The overall point is that the flattening of
the world is a friend of Infosys and of Al
Qaeda. Al Qaeda is an open-source global
supply chain, only a suicide supply chain.
It is a friend of pornography and e-bank-
ing. It is a friend of trafficking in women
and trafficking in AIDS drugs. The bad
guys are always early adopters, whether
it’s Al Qaeda or people who traffic in
women or put up gambling sites from
the Cayman Islands. The flattening of the
world goes both ways. These technologies
do only one thing: They enable you to
reach farther faster. What you reach far-
ther faster to do, whether it’s to alleviate
poverty or promote prostitution, depends
on your imagination.

PLAYBOY: Given the dangers, do you
advocate more or less regulation of
technology?

FRIEDMAN: Regulation is important. Some
solutions are technological, some are reg-
ulatory, and they are all evolving. People
thought regulating music was impossible
after Napster. Lo and behold, we found
a solution to the problem, and every-
one—or almost everyone, I think—is
happy. Now we have a way to provide
entertainment for people at a reasonable
price and at the same time remunerate
artists so they will go out and write songs
and remunerate record companies so
they will produce those songs in a way
that we can all enjoy them. As a result we
have ¡Tunes and the iPod.

PLAYBOY: Do you use them?

FRIEDMAN: І do.

PLAYBOY: What's on your iPod?
FRIEDMAN: My iPod has things like Simon
and Garfunkel, Shania Twain, the Dixie
Chicks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Oh God, you're really going to date me
with these.

PLAYBOY: It dates you to a childhood in
the 1960s. Were you raised in a family
that was engaged in politics?

FRIEDMAN: Politics and current events

were discussed. My parents subscribed
to Time magazine and the morning and
afternoon newspapers. For whatever
reason, I devoured them. I used to read
the columnists.

PLAYBOY: What did your parents do for
a living?

FRIEDMAN: My father was the vice presi-
dent of a ball-bearing company, and my
mother was a part-time bookkeeper for a
delicatessen. I grew up in a small suburb
of Minneapolis called St. Louis Park. I
grew up in a conservative Jewish family.
PLAYBOY: When did you decide to become
a journalist?

FRIEDMAN: In 10th grade I took journal-
ism. The teacher was the opposite of cool,
but we hung around her classroom like it
was the malt shop and she was Wolfman
Jack. She had a huge impact on me. I was
on my high school paper, too, though not
on my college paper. But while I was in
London for college, I wrote and submit-
ted a column to the op-ed page of The
Des Moines Register. They paid me $50. I
was hooked ever after. Throughout col-
lege I wrote several more op-ed pieces.
Then I got a job at UPI even though I

In my view, the India-
Pakistan cease-fire was
brought to you not by General
Powell but by General
Electric. You know, “We
bring good things to life.”

had never covered a fire or a city hall
meeting. But I had these 10 or 12 op-ed
columns. So I actually started journalism
as a columnist out of London.

PLAYBOY: How did your beat become the
Middle East?

FRIEDMAN: The number two man at the
UPI bureau in Beirut got nipped in the
ear by a piece of flying glass or some-
thing when a man was robbing a jewelry
store. He basically said, “I want out of
here.” I was asked if I wanted to go to
Beirut. I was always interested in the
Middle East, and here was an opportu-
nity of a lifetime.

PLAYBOY: Back to your Golden Arches
theory: Are you waiting for the time
when we will see McDonald’s restaurants
throughout the Middle East—in the new
Palestinian state, in Baghdad?

FRIEDMAN: Believe me, it will be a wonder-
ful sign. However, undeterred by the crit-
ics, in the new book I have evolved the
Golden Arches theory into the Dell theory
of conflict prevention. It says that two
countries that are part of the same global
supply chain will never fight a war.
PLAYBOY: Yet pairs of Asian countries,

including China and Taiwan and China
and Japan, are part of the same global sup-
ply chain. Though unlikely, it’s conceivable
that they could wind up in a war.
FRIEDMAN: Yes, China may invade Japan,
if you’re listening to the rhetoric. China
may invade Taiwan. But if they were to go
to war, they’d have to weigh the price. If
they lose their part of the supply chain—if
the supply chain moves away from them
because companies have decided they are
no longer a reliable link—it would be like
pouring cement down an oil well.

I’m trying to make a larger point about
how foreign policy is written. I’m thinking
about the conversations that must go on
in these countries. Chinese leaders might
be saying, “I think those Taiwanese are
getting awfully uppity. Let’s invade them.”
Maybe the generals come in and say, “We
need to invade them. Yes, they are tear-
ing the motherland asunder.” Others are
saying, “Yeah, let’s invade them.” But the
general goes out the door and the leaders
start talking: “You know, my son’s a part-
ner with a Taiwanese in a wafer factory.”
Somebody else at the table says, “You
know, my son is a partner in a semicon-
ductor plant in Taiwan.” Suddenly after
reflection they say, “You know, why don’t
we give the Taiwanese another chance?”

In my view, the India-Pakistan cease-
fire after their nuclear crisis was brought
to you not by General Powell but by
General Electric. You know, “We bring
good things to life.”

There is this idiotic view of geopoli-

tics that the only conversation going on
is one about armies. It says that these
other issues—the supply chain, deficit-
to-GDP ratio, currency values and how
we're going to get the next generation of
technology in order to thrive in the mod-
ern world—isn't part of the conversation.
Well, that's nuts. It's a very impoverished
view of foreign affairs, and at the end of
the day it can't explain the world.
PLAYBOY: Given that view's prevalence,
are you pessimistic?
FRIEDMAN: There is good news, too. No
society on the planet is better positioned
to keep its people upgrading their edu-
cation and making good collaborators in
this pluralistic society than the United
States. We have the best research uni-
versities in the world, the most rule of
law and the most efficient capital markets
in the world by a factor of God knows
how many. But we are not playing to our
strengths. We are riding on a lot of iner-
tia. It’s not too late—yet. I figured this
out only in the past year or two. I was
a complete ignoramus about the deep
impact of technology. I retooled myself
so that I could stay relevant, just as we
all have to do. My framework needed
updating. My 2.0 version needed to be
updated to 3.0. Because if I didn’t update
it, I was going to write something very
stupid in The New York Times.

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/ /

t’s 4:30 p.m., early December 2004, and a cara-
ES of Humvees rumbles out of Camp Victory
carrying Staff Sergeant Jeffrey S. Sarver and his
team of bomb-squad technicians from the U.S.
Army’s 788th Ordnance Company. As Sarver's

team bounces down Victory's rutted roads, the
convoy passes a helipad where Chinooks, Black

Hawks and Apaches thump in and out, some of
them armed with laser-guided missiles and 30-
millimeter cannons that fire fist-size shells. Sarver
sees the Bradley and Abrams tanks sitting in neat
rows, like cars at a dealership, their depleted-
uranium bumpers aligned with precision. All that
lethal hardware is parked, more or less useless

Sarver (above) takes the long, lonely walk downrange to defuse an improvised explosive device, known in this war as an IED, while an Army
Ranger watches his back. Right, from top: Sarver, Williams and Millward, part of the Badass Baghdad Bomb Squad (their words). During their
six-month tour, which ended in January 2005, these three soldiers are believed to have “rendered safe” more IEDs than any other explosive-
ordnance-disposal team since combat operations in Iraq began. They may have saved hundreds of lives.

against the Iraqi insurgency's main weapon in this phase of the
war: improvised explosive devices made from artillery shells, nine-
volt batteries and electrical tape—what the troops call IEDs.

As they leave the front gate, Sarver is in high spirits. He grabs
the radio and sings out in his West Virginia twang, “Hey, ah, do
you want to be the dirty old man or the cute young boy?”

“РИ be the boy,” comes the
response with a laugh. It’s
Sarver’s junior team member,
Specialist Jonathan Williams.
“Okay, cute boy. This is
dirty old man, over.”
“Roger, ol’ man. We’re en
route to the ah-ee-dee.”
Turning onto a main road,
the busiest bomb squad in Iraq
enters Baghdad—a massive
city, filthy and foul-smelling,
teeming with life despite two
decades of war—and the caravan blasts down its highways, jump-
ing curbs on the side streets, pushing through traffic like VIPs. The
lead Humvee driver leans on the horn, and his gunner in the .50-
caliber machine gun turret shouts, “/mshee, imshee, imshee! Go
away, go away, go away!” his finger ready on the trigger if any car
violates the cushion of space between them and anything Iraqi.

At last they arrive at an intersection where everything is still.
Here the city has stopped dead, pressing itself against road-
blocks set up by a Ranger team, and traffic is backing up on
both sides of the busy crossroads. This is what the war in Iraq
looks like on most days: a traffic jam and a roadside bomb.
The war has stopped to wait for Sarver and his fellow techs,
ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK BOAL

the 100- to 150-man counterforce in this theater, who are
specifically trained to handle the homemade bombs that now
account for more than half of American hostile deaths.

Sarver is out of his seat and moving fast, darting up to a clus-
ter of Ranger officers. A little guy, just five-foot-eight in combat
boots, Sarver is a head shorter than the Rangers. His helmet
bobs at the level of their shoulders as he steps up and slaps one
of them on the back, saying, “What’s goin’ on boys? What have
we got here? Where’s the ah-ee-dee at?”

The Rangers point to a white plastic bag fluttering in the
breeze on the side of a dusty median, 300 meters downrange.

Sarver, 33, in wraparound shooting shades that make his
baby face look even younger, takes a second to consider the
possibilities: Is it real or a decoy to lure him into the kill zone of
a second bomb? Is it a hoax designed only to pull him into the
shooting range of a sniper? Is it wired to a mine or daisy-chained
to a series of IEDs? Is it wired at all or remote-controlled? Is
it on a mechanical timer ticking down? Wired in a collapsible
circuit that will trigger the explosion when he cuts it? He runs
back to his truck, a few inches of belly fat moving under his uni-
form. He keeps his time on the ground to a minimum because it
is impossible to tell whether that Iraqi in the dark suit with the
cell phone is calling his wife or transmitting Sarver’s position
to a sniper team. This is a job so dangerous that bomb techs
in Iraq are five times more likely to die than all other soldiers
in the theater.

He tells Specialist Williams and Sergeant Chris Millward to
break out the $150,000 Talon robot, which has articulating
plier grips and tanklike treads. The bot moves out under the
remote control of a military-grade laptop that Sergeant Millward
operates on the hood of the Humvee. It zips down to the bag

and pulls it apart. Then it separates the shell from the electron-
ics, or at least it appears to. Army protocol insists the area is
not safe until a human explosive-ordnance-disposal tech goes
downrange and sees the device with his own eyes. Sarver's team
kneels in the dirt, working on his armor like squires attending
a knight. Soon he is strapped into an 80-pound bomb-protec-
tion envelope that will save his life if the blast is caused by
five pounds or less of explosives. As the men secure the straps,
Sarver looks down, impatient.

“Come on, man, let’s go,” Sarver says. “Let’s go.”

Williams seals Sarver in by inserting a clear visor over the
helmet. He taps his boss on the shoulder, and Sarver is off,
each step bringing him closer to a personal encounter with
a lethal machine. His world changes as he gets closer to the
bomb. At 10 feet out, the point of no return, he encounters
what he calls the Morbid Thrill. He feels a methlike surge of
adrenaline. In the helmet’s amplified speakers he hears his
heart thump and his breath rasp, and then he sees it up close,
the IED, an ancient artillery round wired to a blasting cap, half
hidden in the white plastic bag.

He grabs the cap and heads back toward the safety zone,
barely noticing a second white bag nearly out of his sight line
іп a roadside gully. There is a moment now when he doesn't
breathe. He can run for his life and hope to beat this second-
ary bomb, which an insurgent placed specifically to kill him as
he worked on the first one, or he can dive on it and take his
chances. He pitches himself into the dirt and reaches for the
blasting cap's wire with shaky hands, the menu of possible out-
comes running through his mind. He decides he has to act now;
there is no time for deliberation. He pulls it apart, pink wire by
pink wire, since all of Baghdad’s bombs seem to be wired with
discolored old Soviet detonation cord. Then he breathes.

When he removes his helmet he stands sweating, pale, his body
shaking from the rush. Williams and Millward run to help their
boss out of the suit. Sarver is giddy, asking for a beer, cracking
crude jokes about how close he came this time. “Can you smell the
poop? Can you see the stain? | think | shit my pants.”

Clear now, the area is reopened to traffic, and Team One
turns toward the base, speeding down Route Irish while
mosques broadcast the call to evening prayer. Soon it will
be dark, curfew time, and the bomb makers will be at home.
Sarver often wonders about these men. Would they shout
“Allah akbar” (“God is great”) if he were splattered on their
streets? Are they political or just ex-soldiers in it for the
$25,000 bounty the insurgency has reputedly placed on the
heads of EOD techs—money to feed their kids, nothing per-
sonal? Back in Michigan his own son will turn eight in March.
Another child is on the way, brother or sister to Jared. Не!!!
see them both when his tour ends—just 30 more days of a
six-month deployment that began that summer. That wasn't so
bad. Thirty days not to get shot or blown into bits of DNA.

Then it comes to him again, the pep talk he gives himself
in the downtime between missions. As the Humvee rocks and
rattles down the road, Sarver stares out the window at the
ад! dusk gorgeously transformed by all the pollution into a
blazing sunset, and he plays it over again in his mind: This
is great. | love this place. If | keep going, I will have racked
up more IEDs and disarmed more bombs than any man in
the history of this war.

buck in the forests north of Fort McCoy, Wisconsin,

Sarver arrived in Iraq. He was excited to be there. During
his nine years as an EOD tech he'd been to Egypt, Bosnia and
Korea, but those were merely peacetime jobs, whereas this
was, as he says, a “full-on combat operation” that had the
entire United States military behind it. He had all the high-tech
equipment he could use: electronics to jam the insurgents' cell
phones, which they use to detonate IEDs, the suit, the bot. It
was a long way from World War 1, when bomb-disposal teams

Е: months earlier, only weeks after he bagged his last

were first created. Starting in 1942, when Germany blitzed
London with time-delayed bombs, specially trained U.S. sol-
diers joined British officers who diagrammed the devices using
pencil sketches before they attempted to defuse them with
common tools. Many of these men died. During the Vietnam
war the job grew even more dangerous. Bomb techs learned
to unravel trip wires in the jungle, and they were called upon
to work in hospital operating rooms, helping surgeons remove
unexploded ordnance embedded in the bodies of wounded
Gls. Not until the war in Iraq did IEDs become “the enemy's
weapon of choice,” in the words of Major General Martin
Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division. Bomb
techs suddenly became indispensable.

a bomb expert's specialized skills would be crucial to the

success of Operation Iraqi Freedom II. “That's all the
Army does all day, is go out on patrols looking for IEDs,” says
Sarver. “They got guys just sitting out there for hours in tanks
and Humvees, just waiting to get hit by an IED. This whole
war is about IEDs.”

In July 2004 orders came down that Sarver should put
together a team and head to An Najaf, a town 100 miles south
of Baghdad. As his partner, Sarver picked Williams, 26, a prom-
ising young tech just months out of training. Williams had been
among the 40 percent of enrollees to complete the EOD school
at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. He wears round steel-framed
glasses, which give him a slightly bookish appearance, and he
comports himself with an easygoing manner, quick to smile and
laugh. “Hey, Williams, how would you like to go down with me
to Najaf, where we can drink some beers and relax?” Sarver said
one afternoon by the horseshoe pit. "It'll be cool.”

When they arrived in August, the 11th Marine Expedition-
ary Unit was fighting some 2,000 insurgents under the com-
mand of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the Wadi AI Salam
cemetery. It is one of the holiest places in Shiite Islam, for
it adjoins the shrine of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the prophet
Muhammad, and is one of the world's largest burial grounds,
with an estimated 5 million bodies interred in a vast network of
tombs and underground crypts three miles long and 1.8 miles
wide. The insurgents fired on the advancing marines from
positions behind the gravestones and tombs, many of which
were adorned with life-size photographs of the deceased. Sev-
eral times while working, Sarver and the other men fighting

E: Sarver, Baghdad was a proving ground, a place where

The insurgents’ weapon of choice, circa 2004: a classic
Baghdad IED, constructed with a South African 155-
millimeter artillery round wired to a cordless phone, a
nine-volt battery and a timer from a washing machine.

Anatomy of an explosion: The forced detonation of a Russian rocket-propelled grenade by an EOD team at Camp Victory, Baghdad, December
2004. The rocket was packed with C-4 explosives to control the detonation, creating a typical military explosion. Unlike HMEs (what EOD guys
call Hollywood movie explosions), with a fireball billowing gorgeous red flames into the sky, the conventional military explosion is ugly and dirty.
The most dangerous part of these explosions is overpressure, supercompressed gases that rush out from the blast at 13,000 miles an hour.

squeezed off shots only to discover later that their bullets had
hit pictures of dead men. Little by little, American airpower
drove back al-Sadr’s militia, but as it retreated it left behind
a group of suicide fighters to defend the cemetery, which had
been booby-trapped with mines and rockets and IEDs.

While the main fighting force hung back a few hundred
yards, Sarver and Williams went in first with Marine EOD
techs. In three weeks of some of the heaviest action ever
experienced by bomb techs, they fought and worked amid the
tombs in 120-degree heat, sweating off pounds of body weight
every day. Each morning, Sarver and Williams returned to an
area of the cemetery that was particularly dense with IEDs.
They gained 10, 15 feet of ground at a time, as in some World
War | trench warfare, except they were disarming bombs as
mortars crashed down around them. Sarver worked freestyle
in An Najaf, off the book. There were no protocols to explain
how to disarm a ground-to-air missile that had been lashed to
the top of a palm tree while people were shooting at you. Often
they would get pinned down. The marines encouraged them
to press on, shouting, “Come on, man, run, run. They can't
hit shit.” That wasn't always the case. Sarver saw a private hit
and killed instantly by an 80-millimeter mortar that severed
his torso and blew it 20 feet away from his legs. “The poor
guy died because he'd been ordered to run into a wrecked-out
Humvee to retrieve a helmet,” Sarver says.

At the peak of the fighting, two black-robed militiamen armed
with AK-47s darted between the graves, taking potshots at
Sarver's team as they were bent over trying to dig out an IED
buried in the ground. Sarver crawled to a rise that looked down
on the militiamen, and when they stood Sarver shot one of
them. When he wasn't being shot at, Sarver worried about the
frag from the mortars exploding around him, scraps of metal

traveling at 2,700 feet per second, which would cut through
flesh and bone, searing the tissue in its flight path as it broke
through and came popping out the other side of what used to be
you. Even more than the frag, he feared overpressure, the wave
of supercompressed gases that expands from the center of a
blast. (All chemical explosions are solids turning into gases at a
very fast rate.) This compressed air comes at an unlucky bomb
tech at a force equal to 700 tons per square inch, traveling at
a speed of 13,000 miles an hour, a destructive storm that rips
through the suit, crushes the lungs and liquefies the brain; the
fire that follows will roar upward through the ventilation cracks
in his helmet and cook him inside. It’s possible to survive а
blast of overpressure if you’re far enough away from the deto-
nation, and this has given rise to a strange debate in the EOD
community: Is it better to have your lungs full or empty if you're
hit by overpressure from a distance? Each has its merits; a full
lung is less likely to rattle against the rib cage and be punc-
tured, but it is also more likely to burst on impact. At an even
greater distance overpressure merely freezes your skin.

At night Bradleys fired their 25-millimeter cannons until
first light, and the boom-boom-boom made the tents billow
and flap. Next door in the medical tent, the moans of wounded
marines joined the sound of coalition artillery. “You couldn’t
sleep when the tanks were firing,” Sarver recalls, “and then
you'd see the Maverick missiles coming in from Harrier jets
miles away. They'd be rumbling overhead—grrrrrr—and at
night the afterburners would have flames spitting out, and you
could see these bombs—they’re 500 pounds each—bounce
as they hit the ground before they went boooooom! Oh man,
these bombs were huge.” The bombs destroyed the old tombs
and whoever might still be hiding in there with the dead.

Mortuary Affairs hadn’t been (continued on

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This is positively your worst vacation idea ever!”

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SWEDISH

We searched high and low,
and now it’s official: The world’s most
beautiful blondes live in Sweden

ago, prefer blondes. But she wasn't
thinking about some nouveau Jazz

Age development. Our jones for blondes is
in our DNA, something that got hardwired
in the species on that day eons ago when
some simple-celled ancestor crawled out
of the primordial ooze onto some chilly
beach, beheld the sun, the great blazing
orb, and sensed that with all that light and
heat a rich, multicelled life would be pos-
sible. It's the same with us. We see those
halos of golden hair and we are warmed.

Pictured on these pages is evidence
that, of all the world’s brilliant blondes,
the Swedish blonde is the beluga caviar,
the Havana Cohiba, the Bobby Hull slap
shot, the Boston baked bean— in short,
the gold standard for the golden haired.
Now, if you’re a Danish blonde, a Nor-
wegian blonde, a Finnish blonde, even
a marigold-yellow Bronx blonde, you
may wonder if your charms aren't being
given short shrift. Well, maybe they are.
We'll make a note to investigate. But for
now just give us a moment to appreciate
these corn silk-haired Swedes.

Sweden has given the world many gifts,
but some are a little heavy on the push-
back. For example, a Swede, Alfred Nobel,
invented TNT. Thanks, Al—very helpful.
Vikings: a great nickname for a football
team but not exactly PC on the pillage issue.
Ikea furniture: looks fab in the catalog but
daunting spread out in pieces on the floor.
ABBA: sold a lot of records but not to any-
body who'll admit it. The guitar stylings of
Yngwie J. Malmsteen.... See a pattern?

But the blondes just keep giving. With
their blue eyes, the milky radiance of their
skin and their shining corona of hair, a
light exudes from them that does not dim.
Men love blondes and always have. In
Sweden, one of the lands of the midnight
sun, the skies may blacken in winter, but
the nights are never truly dark.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ARNY FREYTAG

6 entlemen, as Anita Loos told us years

To create this pictorial we dispatched a photographic team to search Sweden from Svappavaara in the north to Trelleborg in the south.
They scoured the countryside, interviewed scores of milkmaids and mermaids and tirelessly stayed up all night in Sweden’s many bars
and discos, all in an effort to bring our dear readers the most beautiful pictures of the most beautiful blondes in the world. Among their
discoveries were the lovely Jessica Oakley (above), who is studying business in Stockholm (that's the capital), and the beautiful Alexandra
Andersson (opposite page), whose image reminds us to tell you that Svensk Mjölk is the name of the Swedish Dairy Association.

The Swedish diet— which is a rich smörgåsbord of
köttbullar (Swedish meatballs), surströmming (fermented
Baltic herring), käldolmar (cabbage rolls), kroppkakor
(potato dumplings filled with pork), fläsk och bruna
bönor (pork rinds and brown beans) and pyttipanna
(hacked and fried meat, onions and preboiled pota-
toes)—might sit a bit heavily on some folks, but it cer-
tainly doesn't seem to be weighing down Göteborg’s
lovely Lisa Märtensson, a singer (above); the sensuous
Simone Cronstrand (right); and the alluring Elita Lofblad
(opposite page), shown here with a tiny Smart car
painted in the blue-and-yellow colors of the Swedish
flag. We know what you’re thinking: What car?

" PN

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д ұғ ы "a
RE TAL
Swedes can be thought of as a people of extremes. They have 24
hours of sun every day for two months in the summer and 24 hours
of darkness every day in the winter. They did their rampaging thing
with the Vikings and haven't fought a war since 1814. They'll run Pippi
Longstocking at you, and when you've had enough they'll bring on
Ingmar Bergman. This makes us wonder to what extremes a relation-
ship might go if it were with the extremely sophisticated Cindy Paulsson
(top left, with fashionable Swedish furniture) or the extremely steamy
Louise Henziger (bottom left, in a Swedish sauna) or the extremely
romantic Rebekah Johansson (above, with delicate Swedish flowers) or
the extremely beguiling Emma Johnsson (opposite and opening pages,
showing why she should captain Sweden's Extreme Flirting team).

See more Swedish blondes at byber.playboy.com).

FISHERMAN

JINN

FICTION BY

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVE MCKEAN

CASTING A NET INTO THE SEA IS
MUCH EASIER THAN DECIDING
WHAT YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE

he old fisherman has had
| another shitty day, haul-
ing up the dead detritus
of the sea. He’s already cast
his net three times; four’s his
limit. Why? He doesn’t remem-
ber, but that's it, one to go. He
tucks up his shirttails, wades
in waist-deep, casts again
for the thousand-thousandth
time, give or take a throw or
two. He waits for the net to
sink. He can feel fish swim-
ming between his legs, tick-
ling his cods. Praise God, the
bountiful sea. But this time his
net snags on the bottom. It’s
not fair. He works his scrawny
old ass to the bone, and what
does he have to show for it?
Wet rags and an empty belly.
Even if he caught a fish, what
would he do with it? He'd sell
it to a rich man, go hungry
and cast his net again. His
existence is a ceaseless pun-
ishment. He throws off his
clothes and dives under. The
net's about all he's got in the
world; he has to rescue it.
This time it has caught a
brass jar with a lead stopper.
Looks old, maybe he can sell
it in the copper market. It's
heavy, not easy to drag it out
of there; he nearly drowns try-
ing, and the net gets shredded.
Maybe there's a jinn inside, he
thinks. If he doesn't kill me,
maybe І can wish for enough
money to be free from these

Come on, think, think! The end of all disease?
World peace? No, fuck the world! It’s his
turn! How about healthy and alert and virile
for 200 years: Is that one wish or several?

stupid labors, eat other people’s fish. Or get my youth
back, the old dangler functioning again. New teeth. The
apple of Samargand to cure my crotch itch. A young,
beautiful wife who talks less. A rich princess maybe. Rule
a kingdom. Ride horses. Kill a few people. Sure enough,
the lead seal has been stamped with an ancient seal
ring. For once in his life he’s in luck. He gets out his knife
but then has second thoughts. If there’s a jinn bottled
up inside, squashed in there for centuries, he could be
in a pretty explosive mood. Life's shit, sure, but does
he really want to end it and no doubt in some horrible
way only jinns can imagine? But what other way does it
ever end? Even now he can feel things in his bones that
suggest bad times coming. Best to take a chance. He
scrapes away at the lead stopper until he pries it loose.

What comes out might be smoke, it might be dust,
smells like death. Maybe just somebody's ashes. But the
muck continues to curl out of the neck of the jar, slowly
rising into the sky over him and spreading out over the
sea, more and more of it, until that's all he can see. The
sun’s blotted out, the sea’s brighter than the sky, it’s as
if the world is turning upside down. Then the dark mist
gathers and takes shape, and suddenly, with a great clap
of thunder that sets his knees knocking, there’s a mon-
strous jinn standing there, feet planted in the shallow
waters at the shore, head in the clouds, eyes blazing
like there’s a fire in its head, its teeth big as gravestones,
gnashing. Sparks fly. If the old fisherman had any boots,
he’d be quaking in them. As it is, naked still from his dive,
he’s trembling all over like a thin, pale jellyfish. The jinn,
in a pent-up rage, kicks the brass jar far out to sea. There
goes his ticket to the copper market. The jinn might be
talking to him, but he can’t hear a thing. He’s pissing
himself with terror, his ears are popping, his tongue is
dry, his jaws are locked as if hammered together. “What?
What?” he croaks at last. “| said,” says the jinn, his voice
like the wind on a violent day, “make a wish, Master!
Choose carefully, for I’ve time for only one!”

Master? Ah, it’s true then, the old stories, it’s really
happening. He’s just been making a list; he can’t
remember it. Wealth, yes, heaps of it. But of what use is
wealth if he dies before he can spend it? Likewise bed-
ding down with princesses. Marrying a princess without
youth would be like fishing with a torn net. But wishing
for youth without a princess would be like casting his
net on the desert. Can he wish for more wishes?

“You cannot, Master, as | will not be here to fulfill
them! Make haste while there’s time!”

“Oh, | don’t know! | can’t think! | wasn’t ready for this!”

The jinn is bigger and scarier than ever. He has long
snaky hair and claws where his fingernails should be.
But he’s harder to see. It’s as if his edges are dissolving.
There’s less of him even as there’s more of him. Come
on, think, think! The end of all disease? World peace?
No, fuck the world! It’s his turn! How about healthy and
alert and virile for at least 200 years: Is that one wish or
several? And what would happen when the 200 years
were up, how could he face that? What about simply a
long life, get it going, what the hell, see what happens?
He knows what happens. Just prolonging the misery.
Some sort of toy? A flying carpet? An invisible cloak?
A bottomless beer jug?

“Hurry, Master! Before it’s too late!”

“I’m too old to hurry, damn it!”

The jinn is huge now. Almost as big as the cloud from
which he was formed. But you can see the sun shining
through him, and the fire in his eyes has dimmed to a
flicker. His voice has become thin and echoey, his face
is losing its features, his extensions are growing vague,
bits and pieces blowing away when the wind blows.
Which may be only his own heavy breathing.

“| know! Power! | want power! No! | want endless joy!”

“What...?”

“Endless joy! | want——!”

"| can't he-ea-ar уои-и-и-и...!”

"Wait! Stay where you are! Joy! Just make me happy!”

Nothing left of the jinn now but a few beardy wisps
floating in the breeze, and then they too fade away.

"Please! Come back, damn it!" he cries. "At least
mend my net!"

But the jinn is gone. Not a trace. It's too late. Praise
God, fucked again. The old fisherman hauls on his shirt
with its wet tails, rolls up the rotten shreds of his net. On
the sand, he spies part of the stamped lead seal. Ah. So
he got something out of the encounter after all. A story.
You see this lead seal? Let me tell you what happened.
Trouble is, he's told too many stories like it before, none
of them true, so no one will believe him now. Why would
they? He wouldn't believe himself. They might even put
him away. Lock him up as an old loony. He /s an old
loony; he wouldn't have an argument. And even if they
did believe him, they'd want to know what he did with
the jar. They'd think he stole it and would cut off his
hands for thieving. Fuck that. He pitches the lead seal
into the sea. He'll repair his net and have another go
tomorrow. Maybe he'll catch a mermaid.

ут. ney ce

“Mom loves English gardens, but she’s always had Italian gardeners.”

EZ mM

Fast times in the Shelby Cobra, the Ferrari Spyder California

BY KEN GROSS

ehind closed doors іп PLAYBoY’s fantasy garage, you'll discover five seductive roadsters that turn heads like a
Vermeer at an arts-and-crafts fair. Take a close look. You won’t see their like again.

The roadster is the ultimate sports car, an open-air auto built for speed with a cockpit for two, and the models designed during
the 1950s and 1960s set high-water marks for style and performance. The cars we’ve photographed here are the finest postwar
two-seaters. (Disagree? Write us, please, and include photos.) These aren’t just trophy cars; they’re masterpieces you want to
command on the pavement. Today intrusive electronics have excised most of the skill and fun out of motoring. Not so with these.
The gas pedal is directly linked to the carburetors. When you shift the gears, you can hear them connect, and you must shift them
well. Skilled input is rewarded with animated response.

The value of these cars in dollars (and yen and euros) has appreciated over time, but for us that’s not the point. The glittering
wheels, the throaty growl of a powerful engine, the perfection of a hood line, the ability to attack a twisty road with an exhaust
note booming off the hillsides—that’s what we love about these roadsters. If only there were more of them to go around.

and more of the most coveted roadsters the world has ever seen

1957 MERCEDES-BENZ 300 SL

Mercedes-Benz built its first SLs (for sport and light) after World War Il to com-
pete in Europe's most illustrious races, such as Italy’s 1,000-mile Mille Miglia
and France’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. These coupes topped out at 155 miles an
hour. An all-encompassing network of frame tubing dictated skyward-lifting
gullwing doors that are now legendary. What you see here is the production
roadster. Only 1,858 were built, all between 1957 and 1963. Under the hood: a
250 bhp, three-liter 45-degree-slant six-cylinder engine with a single overhead
camshaft and fuel injection (a first in a production car). Drive a 300 SL today
and you'll be amazed at the power and handling. About $250,000 will buy a
mint-condition model, if you can find an owner willing to part with one.

91957 BMW 507

Styled by German count Albrecht Goertz (who later designed the Datsun 240Z), BMW's 507 packs a 150 bhp, twin-carb V8 into a shortened
sedan chassis. Rakish wheel cutouts frame tall tires, and the cockpit is cozier than a double bed. Only 253 were built. At a then-lofty $9,000,
a 507 was more expensive than a gullwing Benz—and still BMW lost money on each one. Today market prices top $300,000. We hammered
a 507 on Alpine back roads from Verona to Lake Como, and it solved the Italian hairpins with the aplomb of a new М6.

21964 FORD SHELBY COBRA 289

Racing legend Carroll Shelby designed the Cobra in 1962 as a competition model. Inspired by Britain's AC Ace, a lightweight, tubular-frame
demon with disc brakes and agile road manners, the Cobra quickly became Ford's answer to the Corvette—a car powered by an American-
made engine that could take checkered flags in races all over the States and Europe. The original Cobra had a 260-cubic-inch V8, but
Shelby soon upgraded to the bigger 289-cubic-inch engine that's inside the roadster pictured here. The top drivers in the 1960s—Phil Hill,

1967 CHEVROLET CORVETTE 427/435 STING RAY

In 1967 Corvette cognoscenti special-ordered the L71, a 435 bhp, 427-cubic-inch big-block engine with aluminum heads, side exhausts, a
close-ratio gearbox and aluminum wheels. The all-American racer could do sub-five-second zero-to-60 sprints and run to 160 mph, and all
bragging rights were included. The top-line Vette's sticker was around $6,000, an incredible performance bargain. Today a Sting Ray like this
with desirable options is a $150,000-plus car. It rides like a coal cart, with StairMaster clutch effort. Put your legs to work and hang on.

Dan Gurney, Ken Miles and Bob Bondurant—flocked to a car they knew could dominate the competition. Shelby later shoehorned Ford's
500 bhp, 427-cubic-inch V8 under the hood. (Although the car had the aerodynamics of a barn door, its sheer power was overwhelming.)
The smaller, more nimble 289 is the most coveted model today. Perhaps no other American-made car inspires as much awe among gear-
heads. Can't handle the $400,000 tag? Stay tuned for the brand-new Shelby Cobra that Ford will release in 2007.

°1960 FERRARI 250GT
SPYDER CALIFORNIA (SWB)

Ferrari rolled out a mere 54 short-wheel-base Spyder Californias from its Maranello, Italy factory between 1960 and 1963, so the $2.5 million
price tag on a vintage model today is shocking but understandable. This is the holy grail for collectors, a car that gets prettier and more elegant
the longer you stare at it. Powered by Ferrari's 280 bhp, three-liter V12 with a trio of Weber carburetors linked to a four-speed, close-ratio
gearbox, a competition model could dash from zero to 60 in little more than six seconds and hit 155 mph. The SWB's shifter is precise, its
steering is crisp, the power is immediate, and the pitch of its V12 is operatic. Driven expertly, it still shows many sports cars the fast way home.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD IZUI

“Pm just a butterfly...!”

HOW I SURVIVED 18 BUBBLES
AND LEARNED TO LOVE STOCKS

BY RAYMOND Е DEVOE JR.

anuary 14, 2005 marked an anniversary
| not celebrated on Wall Street: Five
J years earlier the Dow Jones Industrial
Average, an index of well-known, predom-
inantly blue-chip industrial stocks, hit its
all-time high of 11,722.98. For most of the
first half of 2005 the Dow Jones hovered
around 10,500, or 10.4 percent below that
high. The Standard & Poor's 500, another
index used to measure the stock market's
performance, had fallen 8.9 percent from
its March 24, 2000 peak of 1,527.46. But
the real damage investors and shareholders
had suffered in the past five years could be
seen on the NASDAQ Composite Index of
more than 4,000 mostly high-tech stocks,
which remained more than 40 percent
below its high of March 10, 2000. Those
were the days of unlimited optimism about
stock prices, matched only by overenthusi-
astic projections from the managements of
that era's highfliers.

When asked when bear markets start,
Sir John Templeton, founder of the
"Templeton Funds, has a standard answer:
“Bear markets start at the point of maxi-
mum bullishness, and bull markets begin
at the point of maximum bearishness."
That sounds prophetic in retrospect, since
those three indexes peaked within two and
a half months of one another. I had turned

extremely bearish more than a year before
that two-month period, feeling that the
superspeculative mania had reached its
high point. I was premature, which in the
stock market translates as “I was wrong." It
got even wilder, approaching insanity, and
went on longer than I could have imag-
ined. I have been through many speculative
manias during my 50-year career on Wall
Street, but they are typically confined to a
single sector, such as technology, energy
or airlines. This опе was much more wide-
spread and not limited to technology and
Internet stocks, although they led the way
with outrageous valuations based on overly
optimistic management projections and
the near panic among customers to obtain
the newest equipment before their com-
petitors did.

Any Wall Street veteran who has been
through a speculative mania knows how it
will end: badly and with tears. The only
question is when. In early 2000, when
mutual-fund investors were surveyed
about their expectations for annual returns
over the next decade, their answer was 18.2
percent, which was close to the S&P 5005
average annual return during the previous
decade. Financial behaviorists label this
kind of thinking “anchoring,” projecting
the recent past into the future. Retirement

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PLUNKERT

ДИ

таз

зузаан

vr.

ATOMIC STOCKS:

BOWLING FOR DOLLARS:

SPACE-SCIENCE-TECH BOOM:

AIRLINES:

COLOR TV:

MAINFRAME MANIA:

THE GREAT GARBAGE MARKET OF 1968:

THREE, TWO, ONE, CONTACTSI:

THE NIFTY 50:

y one they
on page 158)

e by

planning was simple with those returns; all
you had to do was buy and hold.

An 18 percent annual gain means
almost doubling your wealth every four

| years. Thus, if you had 20 years before

retirement, your wealth would double five
times, resulting in an end value 32 times
your starting investment. “Though it may
seem naive now, that passed as retirement
planning for many at the time. It was also
one of the reasons for the precipitous drop
in the savings rate. Why bother to cut back
consumption to save for retirement when
the stock market would save for you?

Now the baby boomers are five years
closer to retirement, and their 401(k)s are
in disarray. This may be one reason for the
recent bubble in the housing market; many
disappointed stock investors are attempt-
ing to make up for lost time and money.
Bubbles form when investors develop
the attitude that this is a new era or that
this time it’s different. Investors’ attitudes
toward stocks five years ago were the same
as those in today’s housing frenzy. There
is one significant difference, though: The
leverage now used is much greater, another
indication of complacency.

The British had a saying about the late,
great bull market: “Even a blindfolded
monkey with a pin should find it easy to
make money.” But it did not start out that
way. It began in the early 1980s, when
inflation, measured by the Consumer
Price Index, was around 13 percent, the
30-year Treasury bond provided a yield
of more than 15 percent, and the Dow
Industrials sold at less than eight times
earnings and yielded more than six per-
cent. Bonds and stocks were on every
investor's hate list. Bonds were consid-
ered certificates of confiscation because
of high inflation, and most investors
were terrified of stocks. The bear mar-
ket of 1973 and 1974, the worst since the
Depression, was still fresh in investors’
minds; the Dow Industrials had then
fallen 41.5 percent, and many stocks were
down a lot more than that. Stocks were
last on any investor's list of retirement
investments, if they were included at
all. Bank time deposits provided double-
digit yields, but after taxes and inflation
the investor was losing purchasing power.
The nest eggs of the time were so-called
collectibles, anything to protect against
inflation. Those collectibles included
gold (at more than $800 an ounce), art
and monogrammed plates—almost any-
thing except financial assets. It was a clas-
sic time of maximum bearishness toward
stocks, when bull markets begin.

The great bull market began in fear
but gained strength from a confluence

of extremely favorable factors. Those
included falling inflation, the longest-ever
bull market in bonds (a 22-year run that
brought the yield on 30-year Treasurys
down from 15 percent to 4.17 percent
and culminated in yields hitting a 46-year
low in 2003), a robust economy with ris-
ing corporate profits and, finally, starting
with the Mexican crisis of 1995, the Fed-
eral Reserve responding to every perceived
crisis by cutting interest rates and flooding
the banking system with liquidity.

The last factor meant that real interest
rates were low and occasionally negative.
This “free money” led to overexpansion in
many sectors of the economy and sloshed
over into the stock market, particularly
into NASDAQ stocks. I mark the begin-
ning of the technology bubble with the
Netscape initial public offering in August
1995. (In 1998 Netscape was bought by
America Online, which merged with Time
Warner in 2000.) This coincided with the
Mexican economic crisis and the begin-
ning of the Fed's “cut and flood” policy.
Offered at $28 a share, Netscape stock
hit $170 a share four months later, and
the Internet and its stocks were labeled
the new American frontier. Underwriters,
astonished to find that the public demand
for Internet stocks was almost insatiable,
ignored companies’ short time in busi-
ness (about 18 months for Netscape) and
lack of profitability. And so was born the
dot-com boom, which spread to anything
technological, innovative or new.

GOLDILOCKS TO GULLIVER

Perhaps the most overused term to
describe the economy behind the stock
bubble was Goldilocks, meaning not too
hot, not too cold, but just right. When
the business fixed-investment bubble blew
up in March 2001, a year after the
NASDAQ peak, all sorts of monetary and
fiscal stimuli were implemented to com-
bat the resulting recession—13 interest
rate cuts by the Fed, two major tax cuts
and budget deficits approaching $400
billion. The soaring trade deficit allowed
foreign central banks to recycle dollars
into U.S. Treasurys, bringing them to
near half-century lows. Mortgage refi-
nancing companies adopted an innovative
tactic: cash-outs, by which homeowners
could get lower mortgage rates while
removing some of the equity in their
home. The Fed estimated homeowners
took out $300 billion in equity in 2001
and 2002, half of which was spent
shortly afterward. Consumer homes
became automated teller machines from

which equity could be systematicall
withdrawn. (continued on

“..and it removes stains instantly!”

Miss September's
future is ripe with possibilities

hen the lights go out
in Georgia, Vanessa
Hoelsher is there to
make sure you don't
grow thirsty. The
23-year-old special-
events coordinator
is often out on the town in her home of Atlanta,
promoting her company's wines and spirits. “If
there's anything going on in Georgia with our
liquor brands—whether it’s Usher's birthday
party or whatever—I'm kind of the go-to per-
son,” she says. It's not hard to understand why
she gravitated to this line of work. Vanessa is
direct and approachable as well as beautiful,
an intoxicating Southern belle who—here's a
shockeroo—lacks a Southern accent. “My fam-
ily comes from Ohio, which is probably why I
didn't pick up the accent,” she explains. The
Buckeye descendant remains tight with her
family. “I have three brothers, and one ofthem
is my twin. You'd think 1 would have been a
tomboy, but I’ve always been feminine and
girlie. I did get a thicker skin from having all
those boys in the house. I’m not easily offended.
Гтп the first one to laugh at myself.”

Miss September didn't have much modeling
experience before sending her pictures to
PLAYBOY, but she did pose for a shock jock's
billboard in Atlanta. “The ad was a satire that
read MORNING DOMINATION,” she says with more
than a flash of naughtiness in her eye. “I wore
a black leather dress and had a whip. I wasn't
dealing with professional photographers, so I
had to walk wrapped in a station banner past
all these sales reps to do the shoot in a confer-
ence room.” That didn't make her feel self-
conscious, nor does posing nude. Indeed,
Vanessa is accustomed to being looked at. “I
cannot go into a Wal-Mart without getting hit
on,” she says. “ГІ look so bad— yoga pants, no
makeup, straight from the gym—and guys will
follow me around and try to talk to me.” Van-
essa doesn't think this is an altogether bad
thing. “I’m definitely not a first-move kind of

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN WAYDA

Since her father has been developing wine brands for 30 years,
Vanessa predicts a Sideways career move into his company.
“Vve always had an interest,” she says. “| love sauvignon blanc,
cabernet and those tender reds that make you hurt really bad
the next day. My company represents Sicilian wines that are very
good—similar to pinot noir. I’m not a wine geek, but | have the
basic knowledge. There’s always so much to learn.”

girl. I like it when a guy has the nerve to
ask a girl out on a date instead of drop-
ping a cheesy line. Still, the Wal-Mart
thing weirds me out.” So what is her
type? “I like rugged guys. I don't like
dating men prettier than I am or men
who take longer to get ready than I do.
I dated this football player who was
metro and loved shoes and shopping—
there’s something going on there. My
friends tease me and say, ‘You just like
these macho, meathead guys.’ Every zs
time some big guy walks by, they say,
"There's your new boyfriend, Vanessa.’
I can't help it."

Since her job requires her to be an
enthusiastic socializer, Vanessa cherishes
low-key nights at home with her room-
mate, two cats and the latest biography.
And while she's game for exciting
opportunities that may come her way, mi
she won't soon be leaving on that mid- EM
night train from Georgia. “I like Atlanta
and would not drop everything to move
to L.A.,” she says with a smile. “I’m not
going to roll the dice and just move
somewhere to see what happens."

D» DS
; E >, u= ENON >. p^
eS a oe

See more of Miss September at|cyber.playboy.coml

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в owes

MISS SEPTEMBER

PLAYBOY’S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH

DE a C DDDOGQG ее ести

ма LA e

ум итте»:
- с ғы tat ж
- ми. Мн

PLAYMATE DATA SHEET

NAME: 552, оё

ан OUD М2. ‚__15__ шор
\

НЕІСНТ: Dio | lo WEIGHT: 0 — _.

BIRTH DATE: bn an, UM |

AMBITIONS :

:
: `
M А А. А e АА A 4 A a 1 А ^n a
:
but do noHung to change Hem...

MY CHARITY WORK FOR ANIMALS: Is Way important do me.
OLD SOUL OR YOUNG AT uer. Г haxe a very old soul.

7 1
FAVORITE OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES: Going to fastball. games (Go,Falcens!),

School Pichwre-Ayrs. E ux YE:
Makes me Lough! FM Grade.

70727

АЕ

PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES

A wife told her lawyer, “I want a divorce. My
husband is getting a little queer to sleep with.”
“What do you mean?” the attorney asked.
“Does he force you to indulge in unusual sex
practices?”
“No, he doesn’t,” the woman replied. “And
neither does the little queer.”

A woman walked into a drugstore and asked
the pharmacist if he sold extra-large-size con-
doms. He replied, “Yes, we do. Would you like
to buy some?”

“No,” she said, “but do you mind if I wait
around here until someone does?”

As an elderly Russian man lay in his hos-
pital bed dying, he became delusional. He
asked his nurse to help him fulfill his last
wish. “I was good friends with Nikita Khru-
shchev,” he said. “Га do anything to kiss
him good-bye.”

“Khrushchev?” the nurse said. “He's been
dead a long time.”

“I don't care,” the man said. “I want to kiss
him good-bye.”

Remembering Khrushchev was bald, the
nurse pulled her breasts out from her bra
and offered the left one to him. “He is
kneeling before you,” the nurse said. “His
head is near your lips.”

The man grabbed her breast and said,
“Nikita, my old friend! Good to see you
again.”

He kissed the breast, which the nurse enjoyed
greatly. She then asked, “How about kissing
Dick Cheney's head?”

“Is he here too?” the man asked.

“Of course,” she replied, offering her right
breast.

“Dick, delighted to meet you,” the man said,
kissing and stroking the breast.

The nurse felt herself getting moist and
asked, “Have you met Fidel Castro?”

A sexually promiscuous woman was taking
her driver's license test. She had a little trouble
parallel parking, however, winding up a couple
of feet away from the curb. “Could you get a
little closer?” the examiner asked.

She unbuckled her seat belt, slid over toward
the examiner and asked, “Now what?”

Bronne JOKE OF THE MONTH: What do a peroxide
blonde and a Boeing 747 have in common?
They both have black boxes.

Two middle-aged Jewish men got to talking.
One said to the other, “You know, last weekend
I had a good Sabbath.”

His friend replied, “Oh yeah? What did

ou do?”

“Well,” the man said. “My whole family woke
up early. We put on our finest clothes and went
to temple. It was a beautiful, moving service.
Then we came back to the house, had bagels and
lox and shared family stories. Then I rented the
movie The Ten Commandments, and we sat down
as a family and watched it. Then my wife cooked
a great dinner. It was a good Sabbath.”

“That's funny,” the other man said, “because
I had a good Sabbath too.”

“You don't say?” the first man said. “What
did you do?”

“Well,” he said, “around noon I woke up. I
met my friend at a bar, and we got rip-roaring
drunk. Then we picked up two hookers. We
took them to a cheap motel, and I screwed one
while he screwed the other. Then we switched
girls. Then I went home and screwed my wife
and fell asleep. It was a good Sabbath.”

“How can you call that a good Sabbath?”
the first man said in disbelief. “That's a great
Sabbath.”

A woman went before a Judge to explain why
she wanted to divorce her husband. She said,
“T can’t stand his hobosexuality.”

The judge replied, “I think you mean homo-
sexuality.”

“No,” she said, “I mean hobosexuality. He’s
a bum fuck.”

Рлүвоү cıassıc: Two old men were sitting on
a park bench. A blonde woman walked by. One
old man asked the other, “Ever sleep with a
blonde?”

The other old man replied, “Many a time.
Many a time.”

A brunette walked by. The old man asked,
“Ever sleep with a brunette?”

The other old man said, “Many a time. Many
a time.”

A redhead walked by, and the old man asked
the other, “Ever sleep with a redhead?”

He replied, “Not a wink.”

Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY,
730 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, 0
by e-mail through our website 5.
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributor whose sub-
mission is selected.

—— >

وو

...Sorry, gents—no jackets, no admittance...

“

111

RANKINGS

TOP

"OB PIGSKIN PREVIEW ше
FOR

t's Tuesday, and Matt Leinart—the quarterback who ) 0 0 4
led USC to an undefeated season and a second straight

national championship last year—is headed to 'Togo's
to have lunch with his dad, Bob. “Nothing fancy, but
it's become a ritual," says the six-foot-five lefty, who

BY GARY COLE

7C SeHOLAR/ATHLETE ^ ^ Q&AWITHCOACH ЭВ ALLAMERICIS ™

looks more than a little like Super Bowl hero Tom Brady. l, USC
“The last time I missed our Tuesday lunch we lost to Cal.”
That was back in September 2003. “We’re not going to 2. Texas
miss another one.”
Nor did Leinart miss dinner with his brother Ryan the 23 LS U
night before. Nor did he fail to visit his parents’ house
on Sunday so that his mom, Linda, could do his laundry. 4. Tennessee
“That's something I’m going to have to start doing myself E "ET
one of these days," Lent says. БЕЗ rginia Tech
After sandwiches and small talk with Dad, Leinart
heads back to the USC football office to watch game 6. Тома
film. He already spent two hours there with quarter-
backs coach Steve Sarkisian this morning. “I’m watching 7. Oklahoma
a lot more film this year,” he says. “I want to be better
prepared.” And why not? All his hard work has paid 8. Aubu rn
off big so far. He has a Heisman Trophy sitting on the .
family mantel, and when he throws his next touchdown 9. Geo rgia
pass—perhaps as soon as the season opener against
Hawaii in Honolulu on September 3—he'll tie the USC .M ichigan

record of 72, set by Carson Palmer.

After last season USC fans expected Leinart to give up
his final year of college eligibility to play in the NFL. He
might have been the number one pick in the draft and
certainly would be a multimillionaire today. But he was
having too much fun to leave school early. ^My favorite
day of the week is game day,” he says. “I'm not nervous,
just excited. It's the greatest feeling in the world."

Tuesday is his toughest day of the week. After studying
film, he practices from 4:15 р.м. to 6:30 р.м. and then heads
to class. He needs only two more units to earn a degree, so
he signed up for an elective two nights a week. When asked
what he's taking, he smiles. "Dance," he says. What kind of
dance? "Ballroom dancing." Note to USC opponents: Matt
Leinart will be more graceful in the pocket this season.

'Thanks to Leinart's return, we're picking USC to win
yet another national championship. Predicting that a team
will win a second consecutive title, as we did last year, is a
rarity. Tabbing one to win for a third straight time (call it
two and a half, since USC and LSU split the national title
in 2003) is unheard of. The ball isn't round and doesn't
bounce predictably. Too many things can go wrong. But

. Miami

. Florida

. Ohio State

. Louisville

. Florida State

. Fresno State

. Boise State

. Texas Tech

. Arizona State
. Boston College

STATS

PREDICTIONS

N HL Hr rt ы ын ын н
(е) | «9 | (бө) | sl | e» | Өлі | Де ODE | ©

5 Т E.
we can't go against the Trojans and Leinart—not as long as 21. California ©
he and his father keep having lunch on Tuesdays. =
22. Тома State =
e Р 5
23. Georgia Tech
1. USC Last year: A 13-0 season capped by a
e. 55-19 rout of Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, 24. Notre Dame
which earned the Trojans a second consecu- б
tive national title. 25. Wyom Ing

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JSN 3430

Q&A

What they have: Quarterback Matt Lein-
art, the reigning Heisman Trophy win-
ner, who surprised nearly everyone when
he elected to stay in school for his senior
year. Seven other starters return from an
offense that riddled Oklahoma’s vaunted
defense. Reggie Bush, who finished in the
top five in the Heisman voting, is back
for his junior season after totaling 2,330
all-purpose yards in 2004. The receiving
corps is deep, as is the offensive line, which
is bolstered by the return of tackle Win-
ston Justice, who sat out last year because
of a student-conduct violation.

What they lack: Pete Carroll took hard
hits to his coaching staff, with four assis-
tants leveraging USC’s success to land
other jobs. The biggest loss was offen-
sive coordinator Norm Chow, who took
the same job with the Tennessee Titans.
Carroll has filled the holes with internal
promotions and outside hires, mostly
from Ше NFLs assistant-coaching ranks.
'The defense lost four All-Americans
from last year's squad, which might
prove significant. But USC brings in one
top-five recruiting class after another, so
a major falloff in talent is unlikely.
Outlook: No school in modern NCAA his-
tory has won three straight football titles,
but anything less will be a disappointment
for Carroll's team. The USC faithful are
already chanting "Three Pete."
Prediction: 12-0

< > 2. TEXAS Last year: 11-1,
e X. including a narrow 38-37
~*~" win over Michigan in the

Rose Bowl.

EXTRA POINT

What they have: Vince Young at quarter-
back. Young looked like a reincarnation
of Michael Vick in last year's Rose Bowl.
For the season he threw for 1,849 yards
and 12 touchdowns and became the first
player in UT history to both run and
throw for more than 1,000 yards in a sea-
son. The Longhorns also have an expe-
rienced offensive line, an explosive tight
end in David Thomas and nine starters
returning from a defense that ranked
among the nation's best in 2004.

What they lack: Cedric Benson at run-
ning back. Benson rushed for more
than 1,000 yards in each of his four
years in Austin. Selvin Young, no rela-
tion to Vince, is Benson's heir apparent,
but he was sidelined this spring with
an ankle injury. The Texas defense will
miss the ferocity of two-time Playboy All
America linebacker Derrick Johnson,
an NFL first-round draft pick.
Outlook: Mack Brown has won at least
nine games in each of the past nine
seasons—two with North Carolina and
seven with Texas. This team will continue
the streak, and if Texas can finally beat
Oklahoma, a return trip to the Rose Bowl
might be in order. This time it would be
for the national championship.
Prediction: 10-1

. 3. LSU Last year: 9-3. The
UM Tigers lost to Iowa (30-25) in

t3 the Capital One Bowl.
What they have: Twenty starters back
from a team loaded with talent. Run-

ning backs Alley Broussard and Joseph
Addai both averaged more than six

yards a carry last year, and each has a
shot at a 1,000-yard season. The offen-
sive line, led by Playboy All America
Andrew Whitworth, averages more
than 300 pounds apiece, and the defen-
sive front, led by tackles Claude Wroten
and Kyle Williams, is like a brick wall.
What they lack: Coach Nick Saban, who
left Baton Rouge for the Miami Dolphins.
In just a few seasons Saban reestablished
LSU as one of the nation's premier college
football powers. Les Miles, most recently
head coach at Oklahoma State, is in the
tough position oftrying to keep the Tigers
at the top. Though he has talent on the
roster, Miles won't have quarterback Mar-
cus Randall or defensive stalwarts Corey
Webster and Marcus Spears.

Outlook: LSU is nearly impossible to
beat in Baton Rouge, and the Tigers
face their toughest opponents (Ten-
nessee, Florida, Auburn, Arkansas) at
home. Look for JaMarcus Russell to
step up big at quarterback and for the
Tigers to win the SEC West.
Prediction: 10-1

A j 4. TENNESSEE Last year:
| ^g 10-3, finishing with an SEC
MAD Eastern Division title and a 38-7
win over Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl.

What they have: A full cupboard on
defense. Fight starters are back, includ-
ing Playboy All Americas Jesse Mahelona,
on the line, and Jason Allen, in the sec-
ondary. The Volunteers' linebacking
corps should be improved with the

return of Kevin Simon, healthy again
aftersiting out — (continued on page 140

Coach Pete Carroll discusses whether his rock-ribbed Trojans can protect USC's title

U nder the leadership of Pete Carroll, the USC Trojans are riding a 22-game winning streak. They
aim to capture a third consecutive national title this season, a feat unprecedented in modern
NCAA history. We spoke with Playboy's Coach of the Year late in the spring.

PLAYBOY: Were you surprised that quarterback Matt Leinart decided to stay in school for another
season rather than head to the NFL?
CARROLL: A lot of other people were surprised, but | can't say | was. Matt said all along he wanted to
stay in school. | knew his situation here was a good one. And knowing how supportive his parents
were about his decision, | wasn't surprised at all.
PLAYBOY: What's the status of running back LenDale White, and do any other players have eligibility
questions heading into the season?
CARROLL: The NCAA has raised its academic standards, and that's something we communicated to our
players in the off-season. If you want to succeed on this team, you've got to get the job done in the class-

room. LenDale did what he needed to do this summer, and he'll be ready for the first game this fall.
PLAYBOY: You lost some impact players on defense—Shaun Cody, Mike Patterson, Matt Grootegoed. Can the defense be as good as last year's?
CARROLL: It'll be difficult to replace all the experience and talent we've had on the defensive side of the ball. The three guys you men-
tioned started almost every game when they were here. But we have a good group coming up. They handled things well this spring,
so while | think it will be difficult for us to be better than we were last year, I’m hoping we'll be as good.
PLAYBOY: How much will the losses of Norm Chow and some of your other assistants from last season affect the team?
CARROLL: Our philosophy and systems remain in place, so the changes are to personnel only, not approach. In the spring | saw signs
that our coaching transition has taken place seamlessly.
PLAYBOY: What don't you like about coaching college football?
CARROLL: There's nothing to dislike about my situation at USC, but | wish we had a playoff system to determine the national champi-

onship rather than the current BCS setup.

PLAYBOY: Can all your aspirations as a football coach be attained at USC?
CARROLL: My goal as a coach is to try to establish a long-standing tradition of excellence. You can't do that by jumping from job to job.
| remember walking out of the stadium when | was with the Buffalo Bills and looking up at the wall listing Marv Levy’s accomplish-
ments. He may not have won a Super Bowl, but he established a winning tradition over the long haul. That's my goal, and | think

USC is the right place to do it.

—
er
ur

“OK, that's one and two. What's the third thing you find most attractive about me?”

117

the new playboy

eight of the world's top designers offer innovative updates of classic looks for the modern man

fashion by
Joseph De Acetis

J.Lindeberg

“Like the Playboy man,

we are intellectual and
modern, comfortable at a
serious meeting or arock
concert,” says Lindeberg.
OPPOSITE PAGE: The jacket
($595), vest ($225), trousers
($235), shirt ($595) and tie
($100) are by J.Lindeberg.
Her dress is by Binetti
($525), her wrap by Armani
Collezioni ($625), and her
boots by Casadei ($560).

Chairs from Troy (138 Greene Street, NYC).
Couch from Fritz Hansen (fritzhansen.com).

Alessandro Dell’Acqua

“The Playboy man does not follow any particular trend. He follows his personal attitude,” says Dell'Acqua. “Our collection fits him
perfectly: It has a natural masculinity, and it’s wholly sensual.” Above, the jacket ($1,195), trousers ($1,195), vest ($300) and shirt
($325) are by Alessandro Dell’Acqua, and his boots are by the Frye Company ($195). She is in a gown by Nakulsen ($595).

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIMOTHY WHITE / PRODUCED BY JENNIFER RYAN JONES

Cloak

“Cloak is for guys who, like
Playboy guys, want clothing
to complement rather than
define their already strong
sense of individuality,” says
designer Alexandre Plokhov.
The blazer ($1,250), trousers
($390) and shirt ($320) are
by Cloak. The shoes are by
BOSS Hugo Boss ($295),
and the belt by Torino ($75).
Her dress is by Gharani
Strok ($645), and her shoes
are by Casadei ($370).

Chair by Arnie available at Fritz Hansen.
Martin Visser sofa available at Troy.

Valentino

“Like Playboy, Valentino is synonymous with elegance—in a classic way, with dashing
cuts and great-quality fabrics, but with a modern spin,” says Valentino Garavani.

At left, Valentino makes the jacket ($1,195), trousers ($350) and shirt ($275). The tie
is by Best of Class by Robert Talbott ($125), and the shoes are by Bostonian ($90).
At right, his jacket ($3,250), trousers ($295) and shirt ($425) are by Valentino. His
shoes are by Mezlan ($195), and his socks by Gold Toe ($7).

WOMEN’S STYLING BY MERIEM ORLET

Jean Paul Gaultier

“We're taking the silhouettes
of the 1930s and reinterpret-
ing them in a new modernist
way for the man of the

21st century,” says Gaultier.
THIS PAGE: At top, the trou-
sers ($820) and shirt ($635)
are by Jean Paul Gaultier
Homme, and the mesh top is
by Gaultier Knits Homme
($235). At bottom, his shirt
($830), waistcoat ($830)
and trousers ($700) are by
Jean Paul Gaultier Homme.
His fedora is by Optimo
Hats ($495). Both belts are
by Trafalgar ($65).

Ted Baker

“Our fall collection is for
the most self-assured—a
nod to 1960s gangster chic
and international playboys,”
Baker reports. OPPOSITE
PAGE: At left, he's in a coat
($1,095), shirt ($295), tie
($75) and velvet trousers
($325) by Ted Baker London.
At right are a velvet jacket
($795), pants ($295),

shirt ($395) and tie ($75),
also by Ted Baker London.
She's in a top by Alessandro
Dell'Acqua ($975) and a
skirt ($560) and coat ($3,200)
by House of Diehl.

Swan chair available at Fritz Hansen.

WHERE AND HOW ТО BUY ON PAGE 1

500), shirt ($525), tie
85) and pocket square
also by Brioni. She is
s ($950) and shrug
Armani Collezioni.

$3:

o
5
n
©
Ф
м
©
+
с
та:
=
E
«
Е
2
=
m
>
©

“At lettiare à suit ($3,500)

"shirt ($515), tie ($185) >
and pocket square ($70)

Egg chair available at T

BY WARREN KALBACKER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG FOSTER/
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

KURT BUSCH

One of NASCAR’s hottest wheels sounds off about the perks of being
a champ, the curse of headlights and why he wears all those hats

PLAYBOY: NASCAR didn’t invent the
ball cap, but it has taken that hat to the
next level. Just how many caps do you
don after a win?

BUSCH: You’ll go through 30 spon-
sor hats during the hat dance in vic-
tory lane. When sponsors pay you the
money they do, you’re going to wear
those hats. They fit your head real good.
Our team has about a dozen sponsors,
NASCAR has its sponsors, and the race-
tracks have theirs. Some want specific
photos. Coca-Cola wants me doing a
chug—with label out and hat on, mind
you. I have a huge personal collection,
mainly baseball hats. Pm heavily into
the Chicago Cubs, and baseball hats
have a low profile and a clean fit. The
trucker style has that mesh. But I do
wear one of those, a John Deere, when
I mow my lawn with my John Deere
tractor. Pm from Las Vegas originally,
but Pve grown to be a country boy.

PLAYBOY: Is there a sponsor you couldn’t
imagine driving for?

BUSCH: It would suck to be sponsored
by Viagra when you’re 26 years old.
Mark Martin’s cool, but he’s able to
blend in with the marketing for that

brand. It’s a tough question because
sponsors pay the bills and allow us to
race no matter what name is on the car.

PLAYBOY: NASCAR has generated its
share of dynasties—Petty, Earnhardt and
Jarrett. Is there an auto-racing gene?
BUSCH: You catch the racing bug from
your family. That’s how most of us get
involved. My dad raced, and there was
always a race car in our two-car garage.
One year he won 15 out of 16 races.
That was in Las Vegas, where he raced
primarily. You almost have to win if you
want to break even. I didn’t start racing
till I was 15. I had my own little home-
made-style go-kart, and Dad taught me
how to drive it. I was a hands-on crew
guy for him, doing tires, changing oil. I
was the grunt. Mom thought it was too
dangerous, but she went to work for
our tire money when I was racing.

04
PLAYBOY: You studied pharmacy in col-
lege. Were you trying to deny your inner
race car driver?
BUSCH: I was trying to make sure Ihad
my priorities straight—go to school
and race as a hobby. I was doing okay

in college, struggling a little bit, and it
looked as though the medicine wasn't
as interesting as the racing. Every time
I looked around, I noticed I was at a
racetrack and my books were on the
backseat of my Volkswagen Bug. Rac-
ing was beginning to take over.

PLAYBOY: In your rookie year Dale “the
Intimidator” Earnhardt flashed you the
finger. Did you feel that was an honor, a
salute to your aggressive driving style?
BUSCH: It was February 2001. That
was the inaugural Daytona 500 for me.
It was confusing at first. I was mind-
ing my own business in my lane, and
he changed lanes. I may have crowded
him a little bit. [laughs] I thought, What
did I do? If he’s mad at me, I obviously
did something wrong. That was his last
race. He crashed in the last corner of
the last lap and passed away at the hos-
pital. It was not talked about until later.
Now it's great to be able to laugh about
it. It was an honor to get the bird from
the Intimidator in his last race.

PLAYBOY: Well-financed racing teams
support young drivers with the finest

127

PLAYBOY

128

equipment and experienced pit crews
and crew chiefs. But it all comes down
to the driver. Is car 97 a real pressure
cooker?

BUSCH: Definitely. I got the job at Roush
Racing through what they call the
Gong Show. They selected a group of
drivers out of hundreds of résumés and
narrowed us down to five, then told us
one of the five was going to get the job.
I put pressure on myself because they
want you to win right away, but I put on
so much pressure that I didn't do that
hot. They brought me back after I won
a lower-division championship. When
you get into the excitement of quali-
fying at the race or the last few laps,
your adrenaline is pumping so hard
you don't even know you're breath-
ing. You don't even know you're driv-
ing. You can't hear anything inside the
car. You're in the zone. You get lost in
it. And you have to get there by being
comfortable, taking deep breaths and
staying loose.

PLAYBOY: In 2003 you bumped Jimmy
Spencer, he punched you, and you
were booed by fans. Do you have a
strategy to become a more popular
champ?

BUSCH: I still get booed. Dale Earn-
hardt once said whoever gets the most
noise wins. It’s what makes our sport
so great. You have 43 guys out on the
track who anyone can root for, so fans
are going to pick their driver and go
against a few others. It’s going to take
time to change my image. Winning a
championship definitely helps. I do
sponsor affairs, and that can help
fans gain a picture of who I really am.
When I came in at 22 I didn’t know
if I was going to have a job the next
day, and that made me race too hard.
I ran over some people on the track,
and then I got a bit sarcastic trying to
cover up for that. Now I see the big-
ger picture, and it’s made me a better
person. I’m 26 and having more fun.
You grow and mature with age.

PLAYBOY: You arrive at the track with
what you believe is a perfect setup—a
tune-up, suspension and aerodynam-
ics geared to the day’s race. But isn’t a
car’s setup a moving target?

BUSCH: One thing you'll never hear
from a race car driver is “The car
was perfect.” You’re always adjusting
it. The race progresses. More rubber
from the tires gets laid down. More oil
gets spilled on the track. ‘Temperatures
change. Every track is different. Some
tracks need a soft setup, others a stiffer

one because they’re more banked to
hold the stock cars at speed. Tire pres-
sure is a big factor. We'll change half a
pound of air during pit stops and make
the car drive differently. That's the
competitive state we're in. I'm involved
in setup out on the racetrack. If the car
is tight —if the front end won't turn
well—I relay that information. I like
a car on the looser side. You're not
restricted by what the front tires are
grabbing. I give advice because I feel
all four tires underneath me. We call it
the ass-o-meter.

PLAYBOY: Did your stint as a grunt for
your dad give you an appreciation of
what a pit crew does?

BUSCH: Those guys are athletes. Those
seven guys throw themselves into
danger. Cars are pulling in behind,
around and in front of mine. And
they have to dodge those cars and
complete a pit stop in 12 seconds. Fif-
teen seconds is way too long. You're
going to lose 10 spots in the pits. In
real life, if I have a flat tire, whether
on my own vehicle or a rental car, I
can't help but make it a NASCAR-
style pit stop. I thrash through it and
see if I can get it done as quickly with
a regular tire iron. I don't have the
pressurized gun. I've done one in
about three and a half minutes.

010

PLAYBOY: NASCAR track lengths and
layouts vary. You have to compete on
all of them. Can road courses, with
their twists, turns and differing eleva-
tions, be tough for a driver used to an
oval circuit’s high-speed lefts?

BUSCH: Right turns are cool with me. I
enjoy the road courses. If we had more
on the circuit, that would be okay.
When I first came in Iran real good on
the big ones—1.5 miles. I hated short
tracks. The cars would never turn, the
rear tires would never hook up, and
Га be sliding all around, overdriving
the car. Only a couple of tracks are
really long: Daytona is 2.5 miles, Tal-
ladega is 2.66. Watkins Glen—that’s a
road course—is 2.5 miles. Over time
you learn what your favorable tracks
are versus tracks that you struggle on.
You have to go to those tracks and work
on them to get better. NASCAR gives
us seven practices. You can choose the
tracks you want to go on.

PLAYBOY: At one time NASCAR driv-
ers had a reputation for carousing

the night before a race. Does today’s
driver spend more time in the gym
than the bar?

BUSCH: Yes, it's changed. The sport
originated from moonshining—quick
runs through the Southeast trying to
outrun the law. Now there’s such a
demand on a driver’s time, whether for
sponsors or autograph sessions, that
you want time to spend with your fam-
ily or loved ones. So you’re with them
the night before a race. You try to geta
good night's sleep. I do cardiovascular
work to build up my lungs, and I have
a treadmill at the house. I do a lot of
strength training for my upper body
because Гтп working a wheel.

PLAYBOY: The reigning champ gets the
best parking place at every NASCAR
track. How does it feel to be right
up there with the employee of the
month?

BUSCH: That helps in many ways. The
team gets to park our tractor trailer
first. Our car is the first through techni-
cal inspection every week. If we have a
small infraction, we have plenty oftime
to go back and fix it. Another perk is
that I get to hit the track first in prac-
tice. If you’re the defending champion,
you get to go out first every week. They
spoil you the whole year.

013

PLAYBOY: Can those of us who are
not NASCAR drivers learn to draft
behind 18-wheelers and get better
gas mileage?

BUSCH: You can. My car was a Volk-
swagen Bug. It had about 40 horse-
power and would do only 60 miles an
hour floored. You don't want to drive
a car at its limit, because you're going
to burn something up. I would make
trips to L.A. from Tucson to watch a
race. On Interstate 10 through Indio,
California the headwind is fero-
cious. So I’d get behind a fast semi
and could do 70 without burning my
engine up and with better mileage.
It matters how ballsy you are about
getting close. You get an ideal draft
at five feet, but you don't want to get
that close and deal with a mad 18-
wheeler driver.

014
PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about backseat driv-
ing. Is it possible for a NASCAR cham-
pion to ride with his girlfriend behind
the wheel without giving p

BUSCH: My girlfriend drives we =
(concluded on |

“Just think. None of this would have happened if
you hadn't been wearing that T-shirt.”

129

THE SLUGGER’S
WIFE

From triples to three-ways, Jessica Canseco has seen it all

By David Hochman

t began with one of the most embarrassing bobbles
of the decade.
Nineteen-year-old Jessica Sekely, fresh as the
Ohio farm on which she'd been raised, was on her
third day of training at Hooters in Cleveland when
Jose Canseco, one of the greatest sluggers of his
era, walked in and cast his gaze upon her. Clearly he was
smitten, though not until the next night was it clear how
deeply her glorious image had been impressed on his
mind. That night, during a game against the Indians, the
Havana-born Texas Rangers outfielder, the first player in
major league history to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases
in the same season, lost a fly ball in the lights. It plunked
him on the head, bounced over the wall for a home run
and earned him a prominent spot in the pantheon of great
sports bloopers.

“| guess | distracted him,” Jessica says with a smile, sit-
ting pretty in her luxury high-rise apartment in Los Angeles.
“Maybe | should have taken it as a warning.”

Instead Jessica got an all-stadium pass to one of the
wildest periods in modern sports. As Jose's girlfriend

and then wife (his second), she quickly learned a little
secret. “Baseball is not the apple-pie experience every-
body makes it out to be,” she says. There were the count-
less sex partners Jose listed by hair color in his little
black book. There were the steroids that hobbled him
with injuries and caused his testicles to disappear. Then
there was the threesome Jessica arranged with one of
her friends in a desperate effort to keep Jose interested.
“Honestly, | don't think | ever said no to him,” she says.
“Jose was always in complete control.”

At the time they met, Jose was one of the game's most
luminous stars. In the late 1980s he and Mark McGwire
were the celebrated Bash Brothers who slugged the Oak-
land A's into three consecutive World Series. He'd won
a Rookie of the Year award in 1986, was the American
League's MVP in 1988 and was a regular at the All-Star
Game. He made his mark off the field as well, with an
appetite for high-performance automobiles, a fondness
for exotic pets (he kept a collection of lynx and cougars),
a proclivity for getting into trouble (he earned a number
of notorious speeding tickets and was cited for carrying

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN WAYDA

131

a loaded handgun in his car) and an
eye for the ladies. In his recent tell-all
on steroids and fast times in baseball,
Canseco estimates he slept with a
“couple hundred” women in 17 sea-
sons in the majors. He would some-
times organize a “beauty contest”
in his hotel room to select potential
dates, and the winners would be
allowed to join him in public later that
evening. The guy also toyed with the
Material Girl. (The New York Post once
dubbed him “Madonna’s bat boy.”)

But it's easy to understand why a
man who could have any woman would
choose Jessica. In her black tank top
and sweatpants, she is as voluptuous
as her ex-husband was rock solid, and
she devoted herself wholeheartedly to
pleasing him, she says, whether that
meant riding shotgun on 200-mile-an-
hour joyrides in his $225,000 Lambor-
ghini Diablo or merely having sex with
him іп Fenway Park. “I can't tell you
where exactly,” she says. "I don't want
to get in trouble.”

Almost from the beginning Jessica
knew she was in for a different kind
of relationship. Jose would some-
times shower before going out in
the middle of the day and then not
answer his phone for hours on end.
Soon Jessica started hearing sto-
ries from other girlfriends and wives
about ballplayers having mistresses
in different cities whom they’d fly to
away games for assignations. One
of the wives specifically said that
Jose was part of that group. At first
Jessica didn't want to believe it, but
the evidence kept mounting. “One
time | went to Orlando, and when |
came back, the girlfriend of Jose's
brother Ozzie [also a major leaguer]
told me another girl had been there,”
she says. “Then the woman started
calling the house, claiming she was
pregnant.” Meanwhile Jose was
extremely suspicious of Jessica's
behavior. “He hated it if | went any-
where where guys might hit on me,”
she says. “There were days when |
couldn't leave the house.”

All that injected testosterone wasn't
making the situation any easier. Jes-
sica first learned of Jose's steroid use
four or five months into their relation-
ship, though she didn’t really know
what steroids were. As she delved
into the subject, she began to real-
ize the source of her husband's bulky
physique. Jose carried 240 pounds on
his six-foot-four frame, though Jessica
knew (text concluded on page 138)

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PLAYBOY

138

Jessica Canseco (continued rom page 133

“Г used to have to dress him in the morning,” she
says. “His body just kept shutting down.”

that, with more bulges than a pack of
12th-graders at a strip club, his size
wasn’t natural. “He had this buildup
of muscle on a frame that’s thin and
tall,” she says. “You can see it in his
legs. He has these bird legs. Jose
wasn’t supposed to be so big.”

Jessica saw firsthand what the fans
could only speculate about. The roids
were slowly destroying Jose’s career.
His excess muscle mass was wreak-
ing havoc on his back and joints and
accounted for many of his trips to the
disabled list. As his power faded, gen-
eral managers began to conclude he
wasn’t worth the investment. (Even-
tually he changed teams eight times.)
After numerous surgeries he deteri-
orated to the point where he could
barely function off the field. “I used
to have to dress him in the morning,”
Jessica says, “put his socks on because
he couldn’t bend. His body just kept
shutting down.” Although Canseco
ended up with 462 home runs and
won another World Series ring with
the Yankees in 2000, noted baseball
columnist Peter Gammons says that
he ranks with Darryl Strawberry and
Dwight Gooden as the biggest wastes
of talent of their era.

Then there was the matter of Jose’s
other, well, teammates. In his auto-
biography Canseco is frank about
the effect steroids had on his private
parts. Jessica is even more candid. “It
does definitely affect your testicles,”
she says shyly. “That’s for sure. Jose’s
were nonexistent. They’re not there.”
Didn’t she think that was odd? “A lit-
tle. Because, you know, men have...
balls. It wasn’t until we separated
and I dated that I realized it.” Jessica
dated Kansas City Chiefs tight end
Tony Gonzalez, among other men.
“With other guys,” she says, “I was
like, Wow, those are some very large
balls!” At the same time, the human
growth hormone Jose was taking
actually made his penis larger. “Your
penis is a muscle, so it makes it heavy,
solid,” she says. “He was very well-
endowed down there.”

Not that it made him happy. One
day Jose would be on a high; the
next it was as if the world was crash-
ing. Because Jessica didn’t have any-
one else in her life, she had to adapt
to his moods. And there were worse
things, though some of these she isn’t
quite ready to reveal. Jessica admits
she engaged in activities she knew

weren't healthy for her husband, but
when asked point-blank whether she
was forced to inject Jose with ste-
roids, she hedges. “I think it’s best
I don’t talk about it,” she says. “You
can imagine what I saw, but yeah, I
just can’t. Ask me something else.”

Did she ever use steroids herself?
She laughs nervously and says, “I
don’t want to talk about that, either,
but I’ve been around women who
have, and it’s not good for them at all.
Putting testosterone in a woman isn’t
normal. It affects women badly.”

Surely the temptation to use them
would have been enormous. Jose was
quite specific about how he wanted
Jessica to look, and although she
had been a gymnast and dancer and
had been named “best body” in high
school, she was a little too thin for
Jose. He was constantly telling her
to eat. Says Jessica, “He doesn’t like
skinny girls. He wanted me to be
meaty. One time my mom came and
saw me and was mortified. I wasn’t
fat, but I was about 130 pounds of
solid muscle—all because Jose wanted
me that way.”

Today, despite all the differences,
Jose and Jessica’s relationship is ami-
cable. They talk on the phone nearly
every day because of their eight-
year-old daughter, Josie, and Jessica
is supportive of Jose shining a light
into the dark corners of baseball. “If
it can help America’s pastime get
under control, writing the book was
great,” she says, “because I think ste-
roids are horrible. There are times
when you need to use them under
a doctor’s care, and that’s fine, but
recreationally they can really mess
with you.”

Jessica’s apartment in the Westwood
section of L.A. is elegant and cozy
but not nearly as opulent as her for-
mer surroundings. The palace she
and Jose shared in Weston, Florida
was 22,000 square feet, with enough
room for their fleet of impossibly
expensive automobiles. She admits
she loved the lavish lifestyle but is
freer and happier today without
it—and without a steady man in her
life—than she’s ever been before.
The Florida house was the setting
for the Cansecos’ wildest and dark-
est times. Their relationship was on
a roller coaster: She would leave,

Jose would beg her to return, and
then things would go haywire again.
Despite his promises he kept seeing
other women. Once, Jessica caught
Jose with a secret cell phone he used
to contact other women. “I managed
to get his password, and there were,
like, four messages from girls saying,
‘Oh, I’m waiting for you to meet me.””

Jessica also got hold of notes and
numbers, as well as a book with con-
tact information for women in vari-
ous towns. Says Jessica, “There were
things like “Two girls in Detroit. Strip-
pers. Brown hair.’ He’d have to write
down descriptions because there
were so many of them.” Another
time she found a note that read,
“Your number-one regular.” Jessica
suspects it was from a woman in Oak-
land whom Jose had been seeing for
years, dating back to his first mar-
riage. The woman started showing
up at games, she says. “Jose always
said she was there for another player,
but I knew,” Jessica says. “The other
wives couldn’t believe she was there.
We knew Jose had slept with her. I
didn’t know if all the other guys were
sleeping with her too.”

Out of answers, Jessica resorted to
desperate measures. By this time she
and Jose weren’t living together but
were still having sex. Taking one last
shot at making the relationship work,
Jessica invited a friend of hers to join
them in the bedroom. “We had a
threesome,” she says. “It was at a point
where I thought, What else can I do?
He can have me and another woman,
and we'll see if this will finally sow his
wild oats." No such luck. “It doesn't
work," she says. ^I thought, This could
be perfect. We'll be together forever.
What a disappointment!"

That was pretty much the last
straw. Jessica moved out and the
divorce was finalized in 2000. These
days she's writing her own book,
due out this fall, and taking acting
lessons. Sometimes she thinks back
on that fateful day in Hooters and
the man with the oak-tree arms who
appeared at her table. She wonders
what might have happened if she
had that afternoon to live over again.
Slipping the band off her ponytail,
she says, "Looking back on the way
things happened, all the things I
went through and the way I felt all
those years, I wouldn't have stayed.
'Then again, I wouldn't have become
as strong as I am now." That's the
sort of strength even someone as big
as Jose Canseco can't take away from

her now.

“That's not my foot.”

139

PLAYBOY

140

PIGSKIN PREVIEW

(continued from
last season with an injury. On offense, Erik
Ainge is back at quarterback; he passed for
a freshman school record 17 touchdowns
in 2004. Gerald Riggs Jr. will be a force at
tailback, and Tennessee always has a crew
of fleet-footed wide receivers.

What they lack: The Vols are thin on the
offensive line, and the defensive second-
ary is talented but young. Overall, how-
ever, this team isn’t missing much.
Outlook: Anything less than another SEC
East title will be considered a failure, and
coach Phil Fulmer and the Tennessee
fans have their sights set even higher.
Prediction: 10-1

Bowl.

What they have: Another top-10 team.
'The Hokies have skill at nearly every
position, although the only marquee
name is Playboy All America cornerback
Jimmy Williams. The offense features
eight returning starters. Coach Frank
Beamer generally likes to run the ball,
but with a strong group of receivers and
no proven stud in the backfield, the Hok-
ies may look to pass more often. Defen-
sive coach Bud Foster likes speed, and
he has plenty of it this season, so expect
Tech’s defense to be quick to the ball.
What they lack: Quarterback Bryan
Randall, who graduated. Marcus Vick,
brother of NFL superstar Michael, will
replace him after sitting out last season
because of off-field problems. Four other
quarterbacks are on the roster, all six-foot-

5. VIRGINIA TECH Last
year: 10-3, ending with a 16-
13 loss to Auburn in the Sugar

three or taller, so Beamer has options.
Outlook: The genes will kick in, and Vick
will emerge as a star. The schedule is eas-
ier—no USC, and Miami has to come to
Blacksburg. Underrated coach Beamer
continues to attract talent to a school most
people can't find on a map.

Prediction: 10-1
6. IOWA Last year: 10-2, with
a 30-25 victory over LSU in the
Capital One Bowl.
What they have: One of the best young
coaches in college football. Kirk Ferentz,
beginning his seventh season at Iowa,
continues to land strong recruiting classes,
and he coaches them to their potential.
Drew Tate is back at quarterback after
earning first-team Big 10 honors last year
as a sophomore. The bulk of the offensive
line returns, as do the top two receivers,
so expect the Hawkeyes to be explosive.
Linebackers Chad Greenway and Abdul
Hodge are two of the country's best.
What they lack: Last season's entire
defensive front has gone the cap-and-
gown route. Coordinator Norm Parker
thinks he has promising players ready to
step up, but experience up the middle is
lacking. The pressure will be on the rest
of the defense to compensate.
Outlook: Ifthe defensive front gels, Iowa
will be a definite BCS contender.
Prediction: 9-2

7. OKLAHOMA Last year:
12-1, but for the second straight
year the Sooners ended a strong
season with a bowl game loss.

What they have: Running back Adrian
Peterson, who broke nearly every fresh-
man rushing record last season. He'll
run behind Davin Joseph, one of college

"I should warn you, I’m a poor loser.”

football's best offensive linemen. Defen-
sive tackle Dusty Dvoracek, a consensus
All-Big 12 selection in 2003 who sat out
last season because of disciplinary prob-
lems, is eager to prove he's worthy of
being a high NFL draft pick next year.
What they lack: The Sooners are another
team trying to find a quarterback. Jason
White, who won one Heisman Trophy
and finished in the top three for another,
is gone, and his shoes will be difficult to
fill. Three candidates are in the wings: Paul
Thompson, who redshirted last season,
Tommy Grady, who backed up White last
year, and Rhett Bomar, the top-rated prep
quarterback in the nation two years ago.
Outlook: Coach Bob Stoops's team is
in a rebuilding mode. Though a top-10
finish is still likely, the Sooners figure to
end up outside the top five for the first
time since 2001.

Prediction: 9-2
e У 8. AUBURN Last year: 13-0.
Because of cupcake nonconfer-
VERE ence games against the Citadel
and Louisiana-Monroe, the Tigers couldn't
be too vocal about not getting a chance to
play in the BCS title game.
What they have: Quite a bit, despite the loss
of four players chosen in the first round of
the NFL draft (quarterback Jason Camp-
bell, defensive back Carlos Rogers and
running backs Ronnie Brown and Cadillac
Williams). Marcus McNeill (six-foot-nine,
332 pounds) will hold down the left-tackle
spot and protect Auburn's next quarter-
back, likely Campbell's backup, Brandon
Cox. The backfield is still strong. Tre Smith,
who sat out last season on a medical red-
shirt, is ready for action, as is Carl Stewart,
the team's third-leading rusher in 2004.
A quick defense will operate out of a 4-3
alignment the majority of the time under
new defensive coordinator David Gibbs.
What they lack: Experience on offense.
No trio could make up for the departures
of Campbell, Brown and Williams.
Outlook: Opening with five home games,
the Tigers should get off to a quick start.
But tough late-season trips to LSU,
Arkansas and Georgia make another SEC
championship a reach.
Prediction: 9-2

9. GEORGIA Last year: 10-
2. The Bulldogs beat Wisconsin
(24—21) in the Outback Bowl.

What they have: A huge offensive line (aver-
aging 308 pounds) to block for running
backs Danny Ware and Thomas Brown,
who combined for more than 1,600 rush-
ing yards last season. Coach Mark Richt,
42-10 in four years, also has senior quar-
terback D.J. Shockley, who has patiently
played understudy to now-graduated
David Greene. Shockley has impressive
arm strength and running ability, but can
he make the right decisions in the clutch?

What they lack: A surefire replacement for
departed defensive end David Pollack, who
had 12.5 sacks last year. Junior Quentin

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PLAYBOY

142

Moses will make up for part of that loss.
Georgia’s biggest weakness, however, is its
secondary, which gave up too many passing
yards last year. Without Pollack to rush the
passer, the challenge will be even greater.
Outlook: IfShockley clicks at QB and defen-
sive coordinator Willie Martinez can solve
the Bulldogs' secondary woes, Georgia will
vie with Tennessee for the SEC East title.
Prediction: 9-2

10. MICHIGAN Last year:
9-3. A promising season
turned ugly as the Wolverines

dropped their final two games, allowing
37 points to Ohio State and 38 to Texas
in the Rose Bowl.

What they have: A find in quarterback
Chad Henne, who more than filled the
bill as a freshman. Michigan also has
Mike Hart, a tough inside runner and a
dangerous receiver out of the backfield.
He's another sophomore star in the
making. The anchor of the defense is
tackle Gabe Watson, who looks as if he's

wearing pads even before he suits up.
What they lack: Depth at quarterback.
Coming off shoulder surgery, backup Matt
Gutierrez is a question mark. Jason Avant
is a promising receiver, but he won't pro-
vide the deep threat of Braylon Edwards,
now with the Cleveland Browns. The
defense also lacks depth and has some
real concerns in the secondary, especially
with the graduation of two-time Playboy
All America Marlin Jackson.

Outlook: Michigan has averaged better
than nine wins a season during coach
Lloyd Carr's 10-year tenure in Ann Arbor,
but Carr hasn't been able to get his team
over the hump and into a national cham-
pionship game since 1997.

Prediction: 9-2

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a EN

11. MIAMI Last year: 9-3,
including a 27-10 win over
Florida in the Peach Bowl.

What they have: Opponents will have a
hard time scoring on Miami. The only
loss from last season’s starting defense is
Antrel Rolle, a first-round pick in the NFL

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draft. He’ll be replaced by Playboy All
America Devin Hester. Linebacker Willie
Williams will make a significant impact in
his first season, and Greg Threat returns
in the secondary after leading the team
in tackles last year. On offense Playboy
All America Eric Winston may be the best
tackle in the nation, and tight end Greg
Olsen (six-foot-six, 247 pounds) is a prob-
able future NFL first-rounder.

What they lack: A proven quarterback to
replace Brock Berlin. Sophomore Kyle
Wright won the starting job over redshirt
freshman Kirby Freeman, who will be his
backup. The quality of Wright's play will
determine whether the Hurricanes are a
top-five or a top-15 team.

Outlook: Sunny. Larry Coker, entering
his fifth season as head coach, continues
to land great recruits. This year's jewels
include USA Today's high school defensive
player of the year, Kenny Phillips. The
offensive and defensive starting units will
feature multiple underclassmen. Coker's
biggest problem moving forward will be
in persuading players to stay in school
rather than turn pro early.

Prediction: 8-3

12. FLORIDA Last year: 7-
- 5, which wasn't good enough
2 for coach Ron Zook, who lost
his job. Urban Meyer, one of the nation's
top young talents, was hired after leading
Utah to 22 wins the past two seasons.
What they have: Chris Leak, who should
be one of the nation's five best college
quarterbacks. A junior, he already has
45 career TD passes, and he'll fare well
in Meyer's spread-out scheme, thanks
in part to an experienced front line
led by senior center Mike Degory. On
defense, eight of 11 starters return,
including secondary standouts Jarvis
Herring and Dee Webb.

What they lack: The ability to stop the
run. Opponents exploited the middle of
this defense last season and could do so
again unless a young linebacking corps
steps up to the challenge.

Outlook: Pretty good and trending up.
Meyer will maximize this team's ability,
which is considerable.

Prediction: 8-3. The chant from the
stands: “Who needs Steve Spurrier?"

13. OHIO STATE Last year:
A spotty 8-4, but the Buckeyes
finished well by topping rival
Michigan and routing Oklahoma State
(33—7) in the Alamo Bowl.

What they have: A dominant defense.
Nine starters are back, including Play-
boy All America linebacker A.J. Hawk.
'The defensive front is strong and expe-
rienced inside and young but fast on the
ends. Offensively, coach Jim Tressel has
game-breaking receivers in Santonio
Holmes and Ted Ginn Jr. The offensive
line is solid, and Antonio Pittman is the
best of a good group of running backs.
What they lack: The certainty of having a

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PLAYBOY

144

quarterback who can take this team over
the top. Justin Zwick played poorly early
last season but came on strong late. A pro-
totypical pocket passer, he relies on good
reads and avoiding errors to make up
for his lack of athleticism. OSU has yet
to settle on a replacement for Mike
Nugent, the best placekicker in college
football last season.

Outlook: Ifthe Buckeyes can win an
early game against Texas, a BCS bowl

is a possibility. The longer-range out-
look for Tressel may not be as sunny.
Scandal has plagued the Ohio State
program since Maurice Clarett made
accusations that boosters were compen-
sating athletes. If more dirty laundry
turns up, Tressel will probably be out.
Prediction: 8-3

N
e

14. LOUISVILLE Last
year: 11-1, including a 44-
40 shoot-out victory over
Boise State in the Liberty Bowl. The
lone blemish on Louisville’s record
was a razor-thin 41-38 loss to Miami.
What they have: Building on a solid foun-
dation inherited from former coach John L.
Smith, coach Bobby Petrino has turned the
Cardinals into a national power. Louisville’s
success going forward will depend largely
on the arm of highly touted sophomore
Brian Brohm, who takes over at quarter-
back for the departed Stefan LeFors. When
he's not airing it out, Brohm will hand the
ball to running back Michael Bush.

What they lack: A defense as formidable
as last season's, which ranked 15th in
the nation. Linebacker Robert McCune,
the heart of last year's squad, is gone,
and the secondary has been depleted by
graduation as well.

Outlook: The Louisville faithful held
their collective breath when rumors
surfaced that Petrino might be headed

to LSU. But he's back, and his Cardi-
nals are favored to win the Big East in
their first season in the conference.
Prediction: 9-2

included wandering in the street in the
middle of the night and telling officers
that he was God. Redshirt freshmen
Drew Weatherford and Xavier Lee, with

2005

And the Award Goes to...

|“ Backes is a cornerback and kick-return
specialist at Northwestern University. Last
season the five-foot-nine, 190-pound senior
led the Big 10 in kickoff returns with a 30.3-
yard average. He has also made 99 tackles
over the past two seasons in the Wildcats’
secondary. Currently holding a 3.8 overall
grade point average in psychology (premed),
he will graduate this year and has already
been accepted to Northwestern’s School of

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classroom, pLayBoy has selected Jeff as its Anson Mount Scholar/Athlete for 2005 and will
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15. FLORIDA STATE Last

year: 9-3, ending with a 30-18

win over West Virginia in the
Gator Bowl.
What they have: Lightning speed on
defense. Ernie Sims and Playboy All Amer-
ica corner Antonio Cromartie anchor a
unit that will cause trouble for opposing
offenses. FSU is loaded at running back,
with a group led by Leon Washington and
Lorenzo Booker.
What they lack: An experienced quar-
terback now that Wyatt Sexton’s status
with the team is uncertain. Sexton, who
started seven games last season and
is the son of Seminoles running-back
coach Billy Sexton, was suspended on
June 3 for a violation of team rules.
The junior was also arrested by Talla-
hassee police for “erratic behavior” that

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just one collegiate snap between them,
will battle for the QB spot.

Outlook: Despite the uncertainties
at quarterback, Florida State is good
enough to win another ACC title.

Prediction: 8-3
e. year: 9-3. The Bulldogs fin-
ished with a six-game winning
streak, in which they outscored oppo-
nents 317-114.
What they have: Seventeen returning
starters, including Paul Pinegar, who's back
for his fourth season at quarterback. Pin-
egar became just the seventh OB in NCAA
history to win three straight bowl games
as a starter and stands a good chance to
become the first to win a fourth. Coach Pat
Hill has a strong offensive line, a bevy of
speedy running backs and plenty of good
receivers. The defense, best in the WAC in
every major statistical category last year,
should be just as good this season.
What they lack: Opportunities to play
before a national audience. This power-
ful program still flies under the radar.
Outlook: Hill has been able to keep his
coaching staff intact, and he signed another
top-notch recruiting class, all of whom are
expected to redshirt. As long as he remains
in Fresno, the Bulldogs will succeed.

Prediction: 10-2
€ year: 11-1. The Broncos suf-
'— fered their only loss, to Louis-
ville, in a Liberty Bowl nail-biter.
What they have: Quarterback Jared
Zabransky, who could be the WAC's offen-
sive player of the year. Seven other start-
ers are back on offense, including running
backs Lee Marks and Jon Helmandollar
and receivers Drisan James and Derek
Schouman. Middle linebacker Korey Hall
leads a defense that was one of the best in
the nation at stopping the run.

16. FRESNO STATE Last

17. BOISE STATE Last

What they lack: Situated far from major
media markets, the Broncos’ program
hasn’t benefited from the kind of credibil-
ity that media coverage provides. Their 11
wins a year ago, however, got the attention
of the football writers back East. Coach
Dan Hawkins continues to do a great job
of recruiting at a school that's a long way
from any traditional football talent base.
Boise State's biggest obstacle will be a
tougher schedule that includes games at
Georgia, Oregon State and Fresno State.
Outlook: This team will be tremendous
until Hawkins is lured to a higher-profile
coaching job.

Prediction: 10-2

18. TEXAS TECH Last year:

8-4, including an impressive

45-31 win over California in
the Holiday Bowl.
What they have: Because coach Mike Leach
has consistently recruited well in his five
years in Lubbock, the Red Raiders are tal-
ented and deep on both sides of the ball.
Last year's quarterback, Sonny Cumbie,
graduated, but like his predecessor, B.J.
Symons, Cumbie was a one-season starter.
Now fifth-year senior Cody Hodges gets his
chance, supported by running back Tau-
rean Henderson and wide receiver Jarrett
Hicks. The biggest turnaround for Tech has
been on defense. It finished 100th in the
nation two years ago before stepping up
to 42nd last season. Defensive coach Lyle
Setencich has eight starters back.
What they lack: Leach may be pushing
his luck with this one-season-starter busi-
ness at quarterback. Three starters on the
offensive line graduated, and Leach is still
looking for a tight end.
Outlook: This is a well-rounded team
in a tough conference. Tech's schedule
includes games against Texas, Oklahoma,
Nebraska and Kansas State.
Prediction: 8-3

%, 3 19. ARIZONA STATE Last

Ro year: 9-3, capped by a 27-23 win

over Purdue in the Sun Bowl.

What they have: The second-best team in
the Pac 10. Coach Dirk Koetter has most
of last year’s roster to work with. The
Sun Devils’ receiving corps, led by tight
end Zach Miller and Playboy All America
wide receiver Derek Hagan, is especially
dangerous. There’s also excellent size
and strength on the offensive line. The
strength ofthe defense is at linebacker, led
by Jamar Williams and Dale Robinson.
What they lack: An experienced leader
behind center now that Andrew Walter
has graduated. Sam Keller, who filled in
for Walter in the Sun Bowl, will likely be
the starter. New defensive coordinator
Bill Miller will look to seven junior-college
transfers to contribute immediately.
Outlook: Koetter will continue the turn-
around he began two seasons ago. Apart
from a road game against LSU, ASU
plays its toughest opponents at home.
Prediction: 8-3

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145

PLAYBOY

20. BOSTON COLLEGE

Last year: 9-3, including a

37-24 win over North Caro-
lina in the Continental Tire Bowl.
What they have: A defense that will keep
the Eagles in games. The unit got a big
break when Playboy All America end
Mathias Kiwanuka opted to stick around
for his senior year. BC also returns one of
the nation’s best groups of linebackers, led
by last year’s Big East Rookie ofthe Year,
Brian Toal. The offensive line is solid, and
coach Tom O’Brien has an assortment of
talented running backs and receivers.
What they lack: BC’s success, like so many
other teams”, will hinge on the play of an
unproven quarterback. Quinton Porter,
who started 10 games in 2003, is back
after having been supplanted by the now-
departed Paul Peterson. If Porter shines,
the Eagles can go a long way.
Outlook: In BC’s first year in the ACC,
September 17 looms large: a home game
against Florida State. But expect the
Eagles to get a bowl game invitation for
the seventh consecutive year.
Prediction: 9-2

21. CALIFORNIA Last year:
10-2. Cal's only losses were by six
points to national champ USC and
to Texas Tech (45-31) in the Holiday Bowl.

What they have: A powerful offensive line

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that returns largely intact. Six-foot-seven,
340-pound tackle Ryan O'Callaghan and
center Marvin Philip are the best of the
group. The Bears also have a star emerging
in rusher Marshawn Lynch, who scored 10
'TDs last season as a backup to 2,000-yard
rusher J.J. Arrington. Coach Jeff Ted-
ford has mined the junior-college circuit
effectively, bringing in quarterback Joseph
Ayoob, a JC first-team All-American.
What they lack: Certitude. Quarterback
Aaron Rodgers went to the Green Bay Pack-
ers in the first round of the draft. School
career reception leader Geoff McArthur
and single-season sack record holder Ryan
Riddle are also gone.

Outlook: Not bad for a team that lost so
much to graduation. Cal has a relatively
weak nonconference schedule, and other
than USC the Pac 10 isn't that tough.

Prediction: 8-3
d. 7-5, which is not that impres-
sive until you consider that the
Cyclones won five of their last six to finish
tied for first in the Big 12's North Division.
'They also beat Miami of Ohio (17-13) in
the Independence Bowl.
What they have: More skill and depth
than this program has seen in a long
time. Bret Meyer returns at quarterback
after accounting for 2,257 yards of total

22. IOWA STATE Last year:

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offense in 2004. Thousand-yard rusher
Stevie Hicks is back as well. The defensive
line, with Nick Leaders at nose guard and
Brent Curvey at tackle, could be the best
in school history. Linebacker Tim Dobbins
was the Big 12 Defensive Newcomer of the
Year last season.

What they lack: The confidence to win
big games. That’s the challenge coach Dan
McCarney faces as he attempts to beat the
Big 12 powerhouses. ISU’s defense will
keep the Cyclones in striking distance.
Outlook: Definitely looking up. The team’s
run defense last season was its best since
the 1940s, and most of the unit returns.
The division as a whole will be better, but
ISU should be improved as well.

Prediction: 7-4
s year: 7-5, including a 51-14
win over Syracuse in the
Champs Sports Bowl.
What they have: A mostly intact defense
that was 12th in the nation last season,
allowing 298 yards a game. Middle line-
backer Gerris Wilkinson and defensive
end Eric Henderson are two of Tech's
best, and several players have all-con-
ference potential under the tutelage of
defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta. On
offense the team has one of the nation's
best young receivers in Calvin Johnson

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and an outstanding tailback in P.J. Dan-
iels, who returns after missing part of last
season with an injury.

What they lack: A consistent quarterback.
Reggie Ball returns after starting the past
two seasons, but coach Chan Gailey isn't
entirely in Ball's camp. The coach is tak-
ing a hard look at two redshirt freshmen.
Gailey also needs to replenish a depleted
offensive line.

Outlook: Promising, if the offense can
score. This is a scrappy bunch looking for
a breakout year. Opponents beware.
Prediction: 7-4

24. NOTRE DAME Last

year: Coach Tyrone Will-

ingham's 6-6 swan song was
punctuated by a 38-21 loss to Oregon
State in the Insight Bowl.
What they have: New head coach Charlie
Weis and his four Super Bowl rings. The
former New England Patriots offensive
coordinator will attempt to restore the
luster to the Golden Domers by attract-
ing blue-chip football talent. Brady Quinn,
about to start his third season at QB, dra-
matically improved his touchdown-to-inter-
ception ratio in 2004, finishing with 17 TD
passes. The offense lost just one starter, so
the Irish should be able to score.
What they lack: Cohesiveness. It's tough
to get new systems running under a first-
year coaching staff. Only three defensive
starters return, but that may not be a bad
thing: Notre Dame’s play against the pass
was miserable a year ago.
Outlook: Much depends on the coaches’
ability to shore up the Irish defense. As
usual, Notre Dame's schedule is formi-
dable. The fans can pray for an impressive
first season for Weis, but they will have to
be patient while he builds the program.
Prediction: 7-4

% » 25. WYOMING Last year: 7-
k AS. 5, finishing with a 24-21 win over
2321 UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl.
What they have: Joe Glenn, one ofthe best
up-and-coming coaches in college football.
In two years Glenn has rescued the Cow-
boys from mediocrity. Wyoming also has
the best receiving corps in the Mountain
West Conference, a strong offensive line
and game-breaking running backs. Corey
Bramlet, who threw for 2,409 yards and
12 touchdowns in 2004, leads the attack
again. Eight starters return from last year's
improved defense, including nose guard
Dusty Hoffschneider, defensive back Der-
rick Martin and safety John Wendling.
What they lack: Depth at quarterback. If
Bramlet goes down, the Cowboys will be in
trouble. Running backs Ivan Harrison and
Joseph Harris, who each missed spring
drills with injuries, have to get healthy.
Outlook: If Wyoming can survive tough
early road games (Florida, Air Force, Mis-
sissippi), a bowl game could be in store.
Prediction: 7-4

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147

PLAYBOY

148

BOMB SUIT (continued from

Baghdad is a city of bombs—mines, artillery shells, gre-
nades, dynamite—detonated by suicide or cell phones.

prepared for the bloodiness of the bat-
tle, and the dead marines were stored in
ice coolers, he says. Sarver recalls that
every time he went in there to grab a
Coke, he saw the face of a young private
nestled in the ice next to the sodas. “I
knew him. He was a really nice kid,” he
says, shaking his head.

Toward the end of the month in An
Najaf, Sarver and Williams were disman-
tling IEDs under heavy fire, and Wil-
liams began shaking, disoriented from
the severe 120-degree heat. Sarver sent
Williams back to the Humvee for water.
When Sarver made it back to the truck
uprange he found Williams prone in the
back of the Humvee.

“Williams, where's the firing device?”
Sarver asked.

“T left it back at the IEDs,” Williams
replied.

“Did you cut the wires?”

Williams stammered.

“Did you cut them? Did you cut them,
Williams?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you segregate them?”

“Yeah. But the mortars are getting
really close.”

“Did you put a charge on them?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you put a fucking charge
on them? Now we have to go back and
blow them up!”

The two men were forced to go back to
the IEDs in order to put a charge on the
explosives and detonate them safely.

“How much time fuse are you using?”

“I put, uh....” Williams stammered
some more.

“Three feet!”

“Why are we yelling?”

“Because we’re getting shot at!”

Sarver never held the incident
against him. In fact, as they were
driving back to Baghdad, Sarver told
the younger man that he trusted him
and that there was no tech—not even
another team leader—he’d rather have
at his back. “You are going to be hot

“Kyle is part of my new fitness plan. He has a third less
fat than my regular boyfriend.”

shit one day, Williams, and one hell of
a leader,” he said.

Then he shared his private view of the
war. “Where else in the world do you
think you're going to get to disarm five
or six IEDs in a day?” Sarver asked him.
Back in the States you would be lucky to
see an IED once every five years, he said,
so they may as well enjoy the opportu-
nity to work while they had it. Plus, ifthe
pace continued, they might just end up
disarming more bombs than any team in
the war. That would be a better souvenir
than the memory of the private's face
nestled in ice cubes.

The subject turned to their home lives,
and Sarver told Williams about his son:
“One cool dude. He's like me, a hard-
headed bastard. But he's a stud.” Then,
ever the team leader, Sarver advised the
younger man on how to handle being
separated from his wife by the war. There
were ways to behave during those phone
calls home that would put a woman's mind
to rest. “Ah-huh, okay,” Williams said.

“Sarver's always trying to tell me how
to live my life,” Williams says later. “It's
just funny. I mean, I'll listen to him
when it comes to IEDs or being an EOD
tech, because he’s a great team leader.
But he’s telling me how I should talk to
my wife. And I’m like, ‘Jeff, you’re not
even married.”

All EOD techs start their training at a
school in Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
The Army looks for volunteers who are
confident, forthright, comfortable under
extreme pressure and emotionally stable.
To get into the training program, a pro-
spective tech first needs a high score on
the mechanical-aptitude portion of the
armed forces exam. Once the school
begins, candidates are gradually win-
nowed out over six months of training,
and only 40 percent will graduate. “We
have not yet cracked the code on what
makes a great EOD tech. There is no
textbook answer to the question of how
to be a team leader,” says Staff Sergeant
Major Matthew Hughs, the commander
of Eglin's bomb school. “The only way to
find out ifa man has the right qualities
is to put him in the field, in the situation,
and see how he does. You can simulate it,
but the simulation will never be as tough
as the real thing.”

When Sarver was six years old his dad,
a carpenter, took him hunting for the
first time. They left the trailer park near
Huntington, West Virginia and went into
the forest. Dad showed him how to be
alone, how to be self-sufficient. If you
were willing to bear the isolation of wait-
ing for hours in a thicket, you could catch
an animal in its natural grace, a flash of
fur, muscle and hoof. His mother never
understood him, Sarver says. She always
wanted to take him shopping, to visit rel-
atives and socialize. “Sorry, Mom,” he'd
say, “I just don't have the gay gene.”

As Sarver got older he was introduced
to more intense encounters: how a coy-
ote, its hind leg caught in a trap, would
scream and howl, then finally whimper in
a voice that sounded like an infant's; or
how a 200-pound buck shot in the sweet
spot above its shoulder would shiver, fall
to its knees and lie panting, its last hot
death breaths melting the snow. Sarver
fell for all of it. He spent his free time
hunting, and when he wasn't hunting he
pored over hunting catalogs, and when
his family moved to Ohio Sarver discov-
ered new hunting grounds.

He finished high school and worked
in construction for a few months before
joining the Army at the age of 19. Later
he signed up for the Rangers. That was
cool at first. The legendarily tough entry
requirements were a cakewalk after a
childhood spent tracking coyotes. He did
the whole gung-ho routine—he jumped
out of airplanes, marched for 12 miles
in full battle rattle, got in bar fights,
punching until he hit bone, scarring his
knuckles—and proved himself to be an
excellent soldier, a natural. But in a year
Sarver soured on the Rangers. He came
to hate the long marches with 100 other
guys on a trek to nowhere, just to train
as a group. Despite the Ranger Creed,
Sarver never got over the feeling that
he was just another glorified grunt. This
suspicion was solidified when he was sent
to Central America on a hush-hush mis-
sion that escalated into a disastrous jun-
gle firefight. Sarver took an AK-47 round
in the hip. The medic cleaned the wound
by twisting his finger in the bullet hole,
shot him full of morphine, then sent him
back to the fight. After that Sarver quit
the Rangers, figuring anything would
be better than mindless groupthink. He
volunteered for EOD, where brains mat-
tered more than biceps; plus these guys
didn't march, they traveled in trucks. He
proved to be suited to the job.

Sarver showed an intuitive grasp of
engineering and with a quick glance could
suss out the architecture of any bomb.
This was evident even in training sessions,
when the techs built their own bombs to
practice with. Instead of the shoe boxes
with basic triggers that the other techs
built, Sarver's mock IED consisted of a
monitor hookup, remote cameras, an
array of motion detectors and multiple
triggers linked by collapsible circuits so
that if one were cut the others would
deploy. “If I put that in a room, nobody
could beat it,” he says. “It's the ultimate
IED.” More important, Sarver proved
that he could work on bombs without
becoming bogged down by fear.

To Sarver EOD offered an infinite num-
ber of challenges—man-versus-materials
moments when he would go down on a
bomb and everything else would fall away,
the Morbid Thrill. There were times, in
fact—as when he was in Egypt disarm-
ing unexploded ordnance from the Arab-
Israeli wars—when he understood that

each bomb has a fascinating and danger-
ous allure: It has strengths and weaknesses
like any adversary, and there is beauty
to be found in a well-constructed killing
machine. There were times when he felt
bomb work was better—far better—than
hunting. The only problem with the job:
There weren't that many bombs to dis-
arm, and it could be hellishly slow going
between deployments.

In September 2004 Sarver and Williams
were back in Baghdad, where the situ-
ation had deteriorated even further. At
this point in the war, the U.S. Army had
pretty much hunkered down, hemmed
in by an invisible insurgency that relied
on small arms and improvised explosive
devices. Every day a small part of this
huge operation was sent into the streets
of Baghdad to look for IEDs, which had
also killed countless Iraqi civilians—we
don't count them, and neither does the
interim government—as well as more
than 200 American soldiers, sailors and
marines. While it was hell on the Iraqis,
it was heaven for the EOD techs.

Baghdad, bombed twice from above,
erupts beneath the feet of its conquerors
several times a day. It is a city of bombs—
mines, artillery shells, grenades, dynamite,
cordite—exploding by suicidal transport
or remotely held wireless phones, spread-
ing blood and body parts, leaving a sig-
nature of black, greasy smoke curling
above the carnage. This is a modern city
of nearly 6 million, almost the same popu-
lation as Hong Kong's but spread over a
metropolitan area of 81 square miles. It
is a major urban center by any standard,
but more to the point it is Iraq’s capital,
with office towers and mosques, highways
and traffic circles, middle-class neighbor-
hoods like Mansur and slums whose mar-
kets draw pedestrians by the thousands at
midday. With the rise of the insurgency,
these features of a modern metropolis
have been transformed into opportuni-
ties and platforms for killing Americans.
From tall buildings and mosques, snip-
ers watch and wait for passing patrols.
The traffic on the roads gives cover to car
bombers, who merely have to pull along-
side your Humvee and wave hello. In the
slums people bury bombs in the dirt roads
among the garbage, in the concrete medi-
ans of the highways and in the bodies of
roadkill, while the street dogs bark and
never seem to stop.

These bombs are created from a vast
supply of explosives left over from a
dictatorship that poured its riches into
military hardware. Saddam Hussein
even stockpiled missiles that couldn't
be launched, and they collected rust on
the ground, waiting for this opportunity.
After a war with Iran, Kurdish uprisings
and two invasions by the United States,
Iraqi soil has become a repository for
every weapons system on the market.
In the ground are an estimated 10 mil-

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149

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150

lion land mines—if Baghdad is a city of
bombs, Iraq is a nation of mines—mak-
ing it one of the most heavily mined areas
on the planet. Even if the U.S. Army
sealed the borders today, there would be
enough explosives loose in Iraq to sus-
tain the insurgency for several decades.

All this has taken the U.S. military by
surprise. The protocol for suspected IEDs
calls for securing a 300-meter perimeter
around the bomb. No soldier goes near
it and nothing can happen until the EOD
arrives and takes control of the scene.
The problem is there are only about 150
trained Army EOD techs in Iraq, a reflec-
tion of the fact that, until this war, bomb
work was never considered a major duty
of the nation’s fighting forces. The Army
is scrambling to add more techs. Plans are
in the works to activate a total of 1,400
techs in the next four years by somehow
convincing soldiers to join what may be
the most dangerous unit in the armed
forces for an extra $150 a month in
“demolition pay.” In the meantime U.S.
generals have announced a Manhattan
Project-like effort to combat IEDs and
perhaps come up with a better day-to-
day solution than having troops shoot at
them, which is known as “recon by fire.”
This almost never works out and in most
cases renders the unexploded bomb that
much harder to defuse.

As summer turned to fall in Baghdad,
Sarver and Williams worked 48-hour
shifts, taking only a day off between runs

into the city. The days blurred. Either it
was morning or night, either you were
driving out from the base or coming
home, either the bomb was in a pile of
garbage or in the carcass of a dead dog
or on the side of the road, and either
you disarmed it or, if you were too late,
there would be bodies or brains on the
backseat of a truck. The incidents always
started the same way, with Sarver jump-
ing out of the truck and joshing with the
soldiers on the ground—the lewd, crude
ball of energy. Then he would go down
on the bomb alone and feel the Morbid
Thrill. Then he’d come back uprange,
glowing from the rush, only to learn that
command wanted him to get back in his
truck and drive to a new intersection
where another bomb was waiting.

By September, intelligence estimates put
the number of bomb makers in Baghdad
at somewhere between five and 50, but as
one expert said, “the skill set was spread-
ing.” How else to explain the daily rise in
the intensity of the campaign? Sarver fol-
lowed these intelligence reports closely,
and he tried to help by passing along the
bomb circuitry he collected on his missions.
After coming back to the base from a day
in the field, he would sort the bits of wiring
he’d picked up on Baghdad’s streets and
place them in neatly labeled plastic bags,
which would eventually be sent to the
FBI for analysis. In these devices Sarver
could read the history of the insurgency
as it grew in ferocity and sophistication.
When he first landed in Iraq the bombs he
encountered were rudimentary: a blasting

"I'm used to being around celebrities. That's something you
develop as a stalker.”

cap and shell connected by a command
wire to an insurgent with a button. Now
they were progressing to more lethal,
wireless designs, incorporating modified
car alarms, pagers and wireless phones
for remote detonation. Still, the insurgents
were far from fully exploiting the available
technology. He predicts they will turn to
remote motion sensors, pressure sensors,
heat sensors and light sensors, all of which
they will use to increase the body count.

After every shift, Sarver comes back to
the base and paints a little bomb stencil
on the door of his Humvee to keep track
of his numbers. “How many you got
now?” asks Staff Sergeant Kelsey Hen-
drickson, a tall, bald, strapping 26-year-
old tech. Sarver tells him 120 IEDs and
four vehicle-borne IEDs—car bombs.

“Man, I hate the car bombs,” Hen-
drickson says. “They’re the worst.”

“ГІ take 'em. Give 'em to me."

“You can have them.” Hendrickson
lights a cigarette. “Who cares, anyway?
It's not like you get a special prize for
disarming x number of IEDs, you know.
They don’t put a patch with anumber on
it on your uniform.”

“But ГП know,” Sarver says.

Sarver, a loner by nature, dips in and
out of the roughhousing Southern-boy
frat house of the 788th’s social life. For
the other guys it is the only way to blow
off steam. “You need an escape,” one
tech tells me. “The last thing you want to
do is come back and sit around thinking
about what you just did, because then
you'll go crazy. As long as you don't get
contemplative, you’re all right.” Sarver
takes his meals alone. When it’s time to
go to the gym and the guys are all guz-
zling protein shakes and getting ready
to lift heavy, they don’t even bother to
ask him anymore.

"I'm saving my energy for IEDs,”
he'll say.

By October Sarver and Williams had dis-
armed 160 IEDs. The insurgency began
targeting Iraqi civilians. One day Sarver's
team was called out on two IEDs, but one
went off before Team One reached it,
and it killed an Iraqi family driving by in
a pickup truck—father, mother, daugh-
ter and a sheep tethered in the flatbed.
“If we had stopped, it could have been
the starting point of an ambush because
we didn't have the trucks to secure it. On
the other hand, it really bothers me that
a kid got killed inside that truck," Sarver
says. ^That was a catastrophic kill. There
was brains all through the truck—that
gray matter. Nobody survived."

'That night Sarver went back to his
trailer, which he shares with Williams.
Sarver has divided the room with a
wall of lockers, squeezing Williams into
a corner. ^You don't need the space,"
he declared, pulling seniority. All Wil-
liams has on his side are pictures of his
family and his EOD certificate. Sarver

has decorated his considerably larger
wall space like a command center, with
photographs of classic IEDs, schematic
drawings of fuses and maps of Baghdad
showing the locations of major installa-
tions. His computer screen saver is an
image of a bomb tech in Ireland tak-
ing the lonely walk downrange. Sarver
keeps recovered bomb parts in a box
by his bed. He keeps pictures of his
son and his new girlfriend in his desk
drawer, under bits and pieces of IEDs.
Sarver would take out the photos if any-
body asked to see them, but he wouldn't
volunteer them.

In December, with only a month left
in the tour, Sarver and the other techs
feel the stress pile up. The last 30 days
are the most dangerous time. Even
under the best conditions EOD is one of
the most dangerous jobs in the military,
but the chances of dying grow especially
high in the last month, when fatigue,
distraction and homesickness can dull
a soldiers instincts. “You zig when the
bomber zags” is how Sarver describes the
kind of mental mistake that can lead to
death. Staff Sergeant Michael Sutter, an
experienced tech and a close friend of
Sarver's, zigged at the wrong time and
died in the field the day after Christmas
2003, his last scheduled day on duty. Staff
Sergeant Kimberly Voelz was laid open
on the side of the road by a bomb that
had been duct-taped to a telephone pole,
and she survived long enough to make it
home and die in her husband’s arms.

In the second week of December,
on a rare call when a colonel is in the
field, Sarver’s team travels to a location
in downtown Baghdad. A hundred feet
away is a rebar house with a high cement
wall and a satellite dish, typical Baghdad
styling—a dull, putty-colored job like
everything else in Baghdad, a whole city
in earth tones and faded yellows, with
beat-up shitty cars, a once modern, shiny
place now banged up and dirty.

Team One attempts to disarm the IED
with a robot, but it doesn't work and
Sarver has to take the long walk by him-
self. Millward seals him into the bomb
suit, which makes him look like a cross
between the Michelin Man and a hazmat
specialist. The only visible part of him is
his face; it is slightly distorted by the clear
acrylic visor of the helmet, but if you look
closely you can see he is smiling as he
walks down on the bomb and prepares to
face the ultimate fear. The rest of his face
is tight with terror—the wide nose, small
soft chin and large blue-green eyes, all
drawn in and back—except for the lips,
which are set in a cocky smile.

As he leaves the safety of the group,
thoughts of his family flash at him. What
have I done bad? he thinks. Have I done
everything I should have done? Have I done
everything I can as an individual? Will my
family be okay if this bomb goes off? How dif-
ferent from my parents, married for 40 years.
My relationships have been big flops. So many

mistakes. If I learned from each one, shouldn't
I be a Ph.D. by now?

As he approaches the bomb his mind
goes blank. “Everything shuts down
except for you and the device. І can hear
myself breathing.” His heart beats so loud
he can hear it in his helmet, overlaid with
the sound of the barking dogs; they all
sound so close they could be biting off his
ear. There is a radio receiver in the suit,
but it's turned off to avoid sending stray
radio waves that could set offthe IED. So
he is walking toward the bomb without
any communication with his team—cut
off, alone and in the open.

“When you get to 10 feet away from it,
you get comfortable because you are at
the point of no return,” he explains. “And
you look at it. Everything is shut off.”

This bomb sits beneath a pile of garbage,
the rusty metal cone poking out from
under a banana peel, under a mountain
of trash: rotting vegetables, plastic, tin
cans. Sarver puts his hands on the device,
an artillery shell containing 18 pounds of
explosives with a blasting cap cemented
in the nose. Rising from the cap is a pink
wire leading to a battery connected to a cell
phone. When the phone rings, it opens a
circuit that sends 1.5 volts of electricity—
less than the static charge on your dry-
cleaning bag—to the blasting cap, which
then detonates the entire contraption.

He must separate the blasting cap
from the main charge, but it won't come
out of the cement. Sarver reaches for his
knife and starts digging. He digs around
the wire, where there is no more than an

inch of space to work with, and he tries
desperately not to disturb the cap, which
can blow from even a hard jolt.

Sarver is digging with the knife, try-
ing to lift out the cap. From 300 meters
away, he seems to be moving at hyper-
speed, but inside the bomb helmet the
moments seem to be stretched, and
he feels as if he's moving in superslow
motion. Finally the wire gives, the bomb
separates, it's over, and he stands up. His
face is flushed, and his body shakes in
the aftermath of his adrenal hailstorm.

It's clear that he's tasted the incompa-
rable rush of having disarmed a deadly
weapon—of having seen how easy and
real it would be to die—and lived. He
rejoices in the sensations of his existence:
the salty sweat falling in his eyes, the 80
pounds of weight on his back, the dogs
barking madly in his ear.

When Sarver is finished, the colo-
nel, whose personal convoy had almost
been destroyed by the IED, comes up
to congratulate him. Sarver recognizes
him as one of the authors of the “recon
by fire” tactic.

“Are you the crazy man in the bomb
suit?” the colonel asks.

“Yes, sir, that was me.”

“Look at that hero. America’s finest.
That is some good shit. Check that shit
out—all right, good job,” he says and
shakes Sarver’s hand. “I want a picture
with this man.”

Then Sarver begins to explain to
the colonel exactly how a bullet would
have failed to disarm the device. The

= ))

— Kon Eee к ИНИ

“Тһе new bed's arrived, Harry—it’s great!"

151

PLAYBOY

152

colonel nods, makes no reply. Sarver
picks up the remains of the bomb to
illustrate the point.

“Hey, hey, hey,” says the colonel. “Don’t
be touching that thing around me.”

As he walks away, the colonel says to
his aide, “You wouldn’t catch me going
down on no fucking bomb.”

That night Camp Victory is dark, nearly
pitch-black. The Baghdad smog hides
the stars, and the lights are turned off to
avoid giving the enemy easy targets. It is
quiet in the camp, too; the sounds that
escape from individual trailers—music,
laughter—quickly lose volume in the
wide-open spaces, and Sarver, killing
time in his room, confronts thoughts of
home. “Not a day goes by that I don't
think of my son,” he says. “I know that I
will not have the kind of relationship with
him that my dad had with me,” he adds
wistfully. Sarver's dad wasn't in the mili-
tary, and military life is different, espe-
cially EOD. Separations and relationship
troubles are par for the course. “That's
why they say EOD stands for ‘every one
divorced,” Sarver says.

Taking a broom in hand, he sweeps the
day’s worth of sand out the front door of
his trailer, then wipes the floor clean with
a rag. “Believe it or not,” he says, “I’m
really going to miss this shithole.”

On Christmas Eve, with six days left in
his field duties and 190 bombs painted
on his truck, Sarver is sent to assess the
damage caused by an oil-tanker-truck
bomb that has exploded in front of
the Moroccan embassy. By the time he
arrives, the only illumination is coming
from a fire smoldering in the top of a
palm tree. The air, thick with debris,
smells wretched: sulfur, burned fuel
and human blood.

A family of five has been caught under
the rubble of one building, and the bod-
ies are still inside as Sarver and his crew
examine the scene. A taxi driver who was
sitting in his car within the blast radius
has been taken away, but the vehicle

57
pw

remains, a charred hull still smoking, its
insides melted and wrecked, and bits of
the driver's hip on the seat.

Sarver examines the site with the guys
from forensics, shining his flashlight in
the crater, 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep,
where there had been concrete and road.
He steps through the crunching glass
and bits of metal to the engine block and
looks at that for traces of explosives to see
whether the bomb was detonated remotely
or was the work of a suicide bomber.

Now he walks from the center of the
blast, his flashlight beam illuminating the
progress of the destruction. At 40 paces
he walks through a completely blackened
expanse that gives way in another five
paces to a few visible shapes—a bit of con-
crete, part ofa wall. Then come recogniz-
able things, charred but not consumed,
and then finally just burned, the paint on
a gate blistered from the heat. Beyond
the gate, weird-looking chickens peck at
the dirt, their feathers burned off. Sarver
aims his light up into the branches of a
tree and finds an orange, perfect and
ripe. "This is where it ended," he says,
then walks back to the center.

Sarver notices two well-dressed men
standing in the doorway of their home.
He approaches them. "I'm sorry this had
to happen to you," he says.

"I'm sorry too,” says one of the men,
a Kuwaiti.

“Was anybody hurt?"

“My brother, next door. The glass fell
on him. But he's okay."

"I'm sorry. If you see anything hazard-
ous, give us a call and we will come and
take it away for you."

"Yes, thank you." Then he shrugs and
tilts his head. "What can we do? What
can we do?”

Back at the base the men of Team One
and Team Two sink into the couch. They
tear into packages of Froot Loops and
add the bitter reconstituted Iraqi milk.
They talk about random cartoons and
movies with funny-sounding characters.
'To emphasize a point, Millward imitates
Elmer Fudd and then tries an impression
of Daffy Duck that makes Williams laugh
so hard the milk dribbles down his cheek.

WELL, WELL,
so T SEE МУ
SUGGESTION

TO ASSIST YOU
WORKED OUT.
Сул.) (WINK)

Williams and Millward keep goofing off,
laughing and laughing, while Sarver,
ashen, leans against the wall, still lost in
what he has seen. “Them chickens is what
got me,” he says finally. “It was horrible
the way they had their feathers burnt.”

A tech who is walking by overhears
Sarver and asks, “Did the chickens smell
like barbecue?"

“No, man, they....” Sarver shakes his
head and shrugs, as if he is unwilling or
unable to answer the question aimed to
poke fun at his softness. He pushes him-
self away from the wall, stands straight
for a moment, then leans back. He stands
there with his hunched shoulders, look-
ing down at the floor. After a while he
gets up to leave, and on the way out he
finally says, “By the way, it’s Christmas
Eve, so merry fucking Christmas.”

Christmas comes and passes without
celebration; then it is time to go. Before
he leaves Iraq, Sarver tallies his bombs
one last time. The number is 208. Every
bomb he defused meant an Iraqi or an
American didn’t die that day. How many
lives has he saved? The number could be
anywhere from dozens to several hun-
dred people. This does not go unno-
ticed by Army brass. In his After Action
Report, the commander of the 788th
Ordnance Company (EOD), Captain
Christopher Wilson, notes that Sarver’s
team “was engaged by enemy militia on
almost every mission” and in the end
had “rendered safe the largest number
of IEDs that were disarmed by any one
team since operations began in Iraq.”

On a C-130 en route to Wisconsin,
flying for the last time over Camp Vic-
tory and the unending parking lots of
machinery, Staff Sergeant Sarver is offi-
cially a hero. Nestled in the pocket of his
shirt is a Bronze Star.

In late January the company lands in
Wisconsin, nine days before Iraq holds its
national elections. The men quickly find
that the town next to their base in Fort
McCoy—Sparta, Wisconsin, population
8,727—is just as dull as when they left it:
shopping malls and bars and fast food.

At night Sparta shuts down, especially
beyond the main road, where the farm-
land, much of it Amish, stretches out for
miles of open countryside with only cows
and silos and flat, straight roads all the
way to St. Paul, Minnesota. In the woods
the ground is covered with several feet of
snow, but the men do not pile into a car
and go camping in the powder.

Nor do they wish to linger at home-
coming parties down at the local tav-
ern, not after all that time rubbing up
against one another in Iraq. They split
up, each to his own. Williams rushes
home to his wife and two boys, one
of whom is already “a little terrorist.”
Sarver returns to his modest rented
one-bedroom five minutes from the
main road in Sparta.

He finds the place just as he left it,
undisturbed by trespassers or visitors.
None of his 100 rifles, shotguns and
handguns have been moved from the
three gun cabinets, the largest of which
blocks the entrance to the front door,
forcing him to use the side entrance.
The living room also looks fine, still
crowded with animal mounts—a pheas-
ant, a fox, abeaver and a deer head, all
hung on the wall and positioned with
their eyes turned away from the couch
so Sarver can sit there and admire the
lush fur and brilliant feathers without
being confronted by their staring eyes.
Which is what he does. He sits on the
couch, checks out his mounts, orders
pizza and watches TV.

Then—as always, keeping his position
fluid, not spending too much time in one
place—he goes off on a hunting trip, a
spree that leads to his killing dozens of
animals and storing up enough meat
to make him self-sufficient for a year. “I
take pride in providing for myself,” he
says. The hunting trips may have had
another purpose as well: They’ve used
up his vacation time, and he will not be
seeing his son right away.

One night he calls Williams and invites
him to come out for a beer. “Come on,
man, you have to,” he says, but Williams
begs off, citing obligations to his kids
and wife. So Sarver calls another tech,
a younger guy, and he agrees to knock
back a few cold ones.

Sarver settles back on his bar stool
and tells his friend how much he misses
Iraq. More beers are ordered—it's now
going on two cases—and Sarver is feel-
ing lively again. “Baghdad was a blast,”
he says, the best time of his life. “Where
else can you wake up in the morning
and say, ‘Okay, God, what are you going
to give me?’ Where else can I spend the
morning taking apart an IED and in the
afternoon drive down the road with 200
pounds of explosives in my truck, blow-
ing up car bombs and trucks? 1 love all
that stuff. Anything that goes boom. It's
addictive. The thump, the boom—I love
it. It’s like the moth to the bright white
light for me.”

As the beers flow and Sarver gets a
little sloppy, his posture slackens and
the emotions come more readily to the
surface of his face, softening it. He says
he will be missing his second kid’s birth
because he used up so much time hunt-
ing. He doesn’t want to ask another guy
to sub for him. “ГП never hear the end
of it from those guys,” he says, and per-
haps he is right, for already they are
mocking ol’ Sarver for sowing his seed
and warning him that he will soon be
besieged by crying infants. They say
he’ll have to move across the state line
just to find a little peace and a fresh
batch of women to love and leave. He is
now not even sure if the thing with the
new girlfriend, the one who’s having his
baby, will work out after all. “That’s up
in the air right now,” he says.

“Have you told her yet that you’re
gonna miss the birth?”

“I’m going to have to sit with her
tomorrow and tell her.”

“Well, I guess it’s good for you,” says
the buddy.

“Yes, it is,” Sarver says as he gets up to
go to the bathroom.

“Fuck it,” he says when he comes back.
Then, slamming another beer, he adds
that he needs to transfer to another
unit so he can get back into the theater
quickly. “I need to get back to Iraq.”

The next day he goes to work with
a massive hangover and has to tackle a
mountain of papers. This is his life now:
filling out forms, answering to civilians,
killing time. Only once in a month does
he have to take the bomb suit out of the
truck, when a family calls, having found
an old pineapple grenade from World
War Il in their dead grandfather’s trunk.
The job is so easy it’s ridiculous; it’s a
PUCA (pick up and carry away), and
Sarver scoops up the old grenade and
doesn’t even bother to try to find the
challenge in it because there is just none
to be found.

A few weeks later, Sarver receives
an e-mail. Back in Iraq, the new Team
Three was hit with an IED. The team
leader was killed instantly.

Finally a day off arrives. Hunting sea-
son is over, and there are no pineapple
grenades to pick up. Sarver decides to
visit his family; he drives to Ohio and
spends an evening with his father. Then
he goes to his ex-girlfriend’s house in
Michigan to see his son, Jared. After
hugging them, he’s hit with a wave of
emotion, and he excuses himself to take
a moment alone on the front porch.

Sarver sits down and takes a deep
breath. He looks out into the calm Michi-
gan evening, in the nation he has sworn
to protect, where there are no IEDs to
harm his son. Then Staff Sergeant Jeffrey
S. Sarver, the best bomb tech in Bagh-
dad, puts his head in his hands, and for
two hours straight he cries.

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HAPPY RETURNS
(continued from

Which brings us to the present and
what to do now. First, almost all the
economic factors that created the Gol-
dilocks economy have slowed, stopped
or reversed. The economy remains
sluggish, and because the recession
was brought about by a crash in capi-
tal spending, it has not responded well
to the fiscal and monetary stimuli. The
reason? Even low interest rates won't
help when excess capacity is widespread
and profit margins are under pressure.
Inflation and interest rates are rising
and in my view will continue to rise. I
have no idea if consumers are “stretched
to their limit,” as some in the business

press have argued. But retail sales this
year have been mediocre, higher infla-
tion and interest rates will pinch, and
higher gasoline prices for the full year
will restrain enthusiasm. Cash-out refi-
nancings will be significantly lower, but
home equity loans should continue to
grow. This may reflect a fundamental
change in consumer borrowing—away
from more costly credit card debt. The
automakers, through expensive incen-
tive programs, have financed today’s
sales from future profits. Unfortunately
the future is now.

The Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries appears to have
raised its target floor for crude oil prices
from $30 to $40 a barrel, probably
because of strong worldwide demand,

“... Understand Wilcox's up for the Nobel Prize in
genetic engineering.”

particularly from India and China. In
addition, oil is denominated in dollars,
so with the weakness of the dollar OPEC
members receive less profit when it is
converted to other currencies. Hous-
ing starts have been erratic, but prices
for existing-home sales continue to rise.
For April 2005 the national median
home price was $206,000, up 15.1 per-
cent from a year before. Residential real
estate seems to be another avenue for
investors trying to make up for their fail-
ures in stocks. It looks like another bub-
ble to me. I don't expect housing prices
to tank the way the NASDAQ did—but
their mere stabilizing would remove one
of the economy's major propellants.

Regarding the weak dollar, there is
good news, bad news and potentially
horrible news. The good news is that
imported products now cost more, so
domestic manufacturers have seen some
improvement because their own prices
are more attractive to consumers. The
bad news is that higher import prices
allow U.S. manufacturers some power
to raise their own prices, thus raising
inflationary pressures. The potentially
horrible news is that foreigners may lose
confidence in the dollar, starting a run
on the currency. If foreigners start sell-
ing Treasury securities, yields will rise
and at some point the Fed may have to
intervene and raise interest rates to pro-
tect the dollar.

With the demise of the Goldilocks
factors perhaps the postboom economy
has entered another, more appropriate
mythical land: Lilliput, the island where
Gulliver, in Jonathan Swift's tale, wakes
up and finds himself tied down by the
six-inch-tall Lilliputians. Whereas pre-
vious conditions were “just right,” the
economy is now restrained by many
small changes in those factors. Under
these circumstances the stock market will
not be as rewarding as it has been in pre-
vious decades. In another analogy, the
economic tailwinds of the past have been
replaced by headwinds, making progress
for stocks more difficult. More difficult
but not impossible—there will always be
attractive individual issues.

In 2004 investors and speculators reen-
tered the market and picked up where
they had left off five years earlier. If I
were to write a report titled “What Inves-
tors Learned in the First Quarter 2000
to Second Quarter 2002 Bear Market,”
1t would contain only the phrase used in
prospectuses: “This page intentionally
left blank.” Speculation has resumed,
and it's as pronounced as it was in the
late 1990s. The names of the stocks in
play may be different, but the funda-
mentals remain highly questionable.
I won't go into the individual stocks—
from stun-gun makers to satellite radio
systems and Internet darlings—but valu-
ations are exceptionally high no matter
how they're measured. It does not seem
to matter. Some issues trade between

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156

50 million and 90 million shares daily,
which approaches the float—the amount
of stock outstanding that is tradable.
The game being played is to chase the
stocks that are going up—and not just
individuals are doing it. When done by
institutions it can be called momentum
investing, although it certainly is not
investing.

BAD ADVICE

With some regularity the financial
media—newspapers, magazines and
TV—produce reports titled “Where to
Invest in [fill in the new year].” This year
some of the advice has been highly ques-
tionable: The Wall Street Journal started
the trend with a lengthy article on alter-
native investments, titled “Investing
Your ‘Play Money’” and subtitled “With
Market Returns Modest, Some Investors
Are Placing Bets on Wall Street's Risky

Corners.” Some of the suggestions are
really just that—bets. Some media rec-
ommendations encourage you to “have
more fun with your portfolio,” get “more
bang for your buck” or, in the Wall Street
Journal article, “dodge the tedium of
what has generally been a relatively flat
stock market. That boredom is likely to
continue.”

Two of the worst investment strategies
are hope and prayer, with hope coming
in second because prayers are sometimes
answered. There might be a Clarence,
the angel, second class, of the film It’s a
Wonderful Life, willing to come down to
earth to boost your portfolio. The Jour-
nal article suggests that no more than
five percent of a person's portfolio be
put into “play money.” Others advise
investing no more than you can afford
to lose completely, but we all know how
that develops: One or two successful lev-

“We'll have to postpone it a week because of that seven-day
waiting period for handguns.”

eraged trades and investors are hooked
and in over their head.

Some of the other suggestions to alle-
viate boredom:

*Stock options. These are contracts
to buy or sell a stock at a specified price
within a stated period and can be excit-
ing enough to cure investors' boredom.
'The terror felt in losing all your money
quickly is a sure cure for tedium. The
rule of thumb regarding stock options
is that roughly two thirds are worth-
less when they expire. Experts call this
the aspirin game. When a person racks
up staggering losses in options and the
losses are still running, it is quite diffi-
cult to sleep at night. He or she will go
into the bathroom and consider how
much capital has been lost and what can
be done now to limit the losses. If the
marital partner asks what's going on, the
standard reply is “Taking an aspirin."

e Microcap or small-cap stocks. The
microcaps, or penny stocks, posted in
the pink sheets include many that are
outright pump-and-dump swindles.
Good investments are available in small-
capitalization stocks; the trouble is that
little information is available on many of
them. 'The many mutual funds specializ-
ing in small-cap or midcap issues would
be a better way to go. The Journal article
cited one stock dealing in Elvis Presley
memorabilia, which went from 10 cents
a share to more than $11. I thought that
example was inflammatory. All too fre-
quently when you want to sell some of
your pink-sheet stocks your broker gives
you the punch line to an old Wall Street
joke: "Sell? Sell to whom?"

* Venture capital. As they say in New
York City, “Fuhgeddaboutit!”—unless
you can put up several million dollars
and your net worth is a lot more than
that. A rule of thumb among venture
capitalists is to look at 10 or more pro-
posals before investing in one, then hope
one in 10 of those selections becomes a
big winner. That's one in 100 professional
investments working out.

‘Junk bonds. My stomach lurched
when I read this suggestion. The yields
may be high, but there’s always a ques-
tion about whether they'll offset the
risk of defaults. Thousands of sophisti-
cated investors—individuals and institu-
tions—are looking for fallen angels that
may recover. The danger here is not only
that the yield may not offset the default
risk but that buyers tend to leverage up.
Buying a million dollars’ worth of bonds
for a $50,000 down payment means the
price of the junk bond has to move only
about two points against you and you'll
be asked to put up more money.

* Futures. Usually included with the
pitch to hold futures is a warning that,
while a large amount of some commodity
can be controlled with a “pittance of cash,”
it is “possible to lose more than the origi-
nal investment.” I question the use of the
word investment—for the nonprofessional

these are really just bets. Among pro-
fessional futures traders, an estimated
five to 10 percent make a comfortable
living; most of the others are marginal
and undercapitalized and have a low
threshold of panic.

e Hedge funds. Because the Securities
and Exchange Commission requires
that investors in hedge funds be sophis-
ticated, there is usually a minimum ini-
tial investment, as well as a minimum
net worth—frequently more than $1
million. But some financial services
firms now require only $100,000 as an
initial investment, and one brokerage
firm has a minimum of $25,000. Results,
fee structures and volatility range widely,
and some firms do not hedge but only
buy stocks long. Critics of hedge funds
maintain that there is an element of
moral hazard involved with the fee
structure. Frequently there is a manage-
ment fee and an incentive fee of 20 per-
cent of the profits. If the fund takes 20
percent of the profits and none of the
losses, there is an incentive to take
higher risks, which may not be in the
best interest of the investor. There may
also be difficulties or delays in withdraw-
ing money. With roughly $1 trillion
under management, many hedge funds
appear to be using the same strategies
with the same securities. My opinion?
Hedge funds are not for everyone, but
if those who qualify thoroughly investi-
gate them, they're probably the least
dangerous of the alternatives to stocks
suggested in where-to-invest articles.

22 PERCENT OF YOUR LIFE

The current stock market is an odd
mixture of boredom, frustration, hope,
fearlessness, speculation, bullishness
and occasional panic when an earnings
disappointment or surprise unfavorable
development is announced (think Vioxx/
Merck and General Motors). TV’s talk-
ing heads keep asking, “Are we in a new
bull market?” The analysts generally say
we are and go into contortions about why
the three popular averages, all virtually
unchanged through May of this year, are
not applicable to the market's action over
the balance of the year.

I see no indication of Templeton's
“point of maximum bearishness,” but
the fear factor, as measured by the Chi-
cago Board Options Exchange Volatility
Index, or VIX, is quite low, just above
the 10-year low of last December. Money
managers appear overwhelmingly bull-
ish, and the put-call ratio shows high lev-
els of bullishness, but multiples remain
high by historical standards, actually
outrageously high for many Internet and
technology companies. In addition, yields
are low, speculative activity is extensive,
and insider sales outnumber insider pur-
chases by more than 40 to one; it used to
be considered a bearish sign when the
ratio exceeded 20 to one.

I do not think this is a new bull mar-

ket in that, like a rising tide, it will lift
all boats. People do not consider that the
bull market of the 1990s was a decade-
long aberration. Historically most bull
markets last less than three years. The
economic headwinds I mentioned before
should restrain a broad advance in stocks
for at least the balance of this year. What
investors are going through now is what
ГП call the trauma of withdrawal due to
drastically lowered expectations. This
will be compounded by another type of
headwind. During the explosive part of
the bull cycle, the prevailing thought on
Wall Street was, “Stocks have to go up.
The demand is too great—there won't
be enough stocks to go around.” In my
experience, the demand for stocks is
always vastly overestimated and the sup-
ply similarly underestimated. But now all
that stock in 401(k)s, held for approach-
ing retirements, represents supply. It will
be coming into the market as baby boom-
ers retire and cash it out or reinvest in
securities providing yields.

No nest egg is safe and perfect—not
collectibles, bonds, stocks, housing, art
or gold. But over the longer term, stocks
have outperformed all competitors. A
credible study reported in the January
1, 2005 issue of The Economist concluded
that over the past 100 years American
stocks have outperformed U.S. Treasury
bonds (and bills), property, art and gold,
providing an annual average total return
of 9.7 percent, or 6.3 percent after infla-
tion. Property returned close to seven
percent annually before inflation, and
U.S. Treasurys less than five percent
annually before inflation.

What to avoid? With inflation likely to
pick up, the bond market will be under
significant pressure and is one area to
avoid. 1 would also stay away from the
high-technology sector. Valuations are
high, inventories are exceptionally high,
and excess capacity is wdespread and ris-
ing—with prices falling. More significant,
many of the products once considered
innovative are being commoditized—and
will behave the way commodities do when
there is excess supply.

I have always maintained that tech-
nology is a cyclical business and that the
innovation driving it also makes it risky
for investors. Just look at the personal
computer—over the hill at the age of 30.
(1 mean it is no longer a growth product;
the market is saturated.) I would also avoid
many of the Internet darlings. Competi-
tors have few barriers to entry, and compe-
tition is rising in many areas. The Internet
market is not limitless, as many expected it
would be. The traditional brick-and-mor-
tar operations have already fought back,
and there are signs of developing maturity.
The market is growing but not exponen-
tially, as it once was.

I still consider stocks the best invest-
ment over the longer term and not just
the 100 years illustrated in that study.
What got investors in trouble was not

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157

PLAYBOY

158

necessarily stocks but chasing hot
mutual funds and new technologies that
never lived up to expectations. Inves-
tors consistently overpay for growth,
but the best performances derive from
those stodgy companies that provide a
reasonable yield and consistently raise
their dividends. You pay a high price for
a sexy story, but few live up to expecta-
tions. Investing in stocks is not meant to
excite but to provide for a more com-
fortable retirement.

The first of the 77 million baby boom-
ers will turn 62 in 2008, becoming eligible
for Social Security as they enter retire-
ment. The widely discussed problems
in Social Security represent only a small
part of the problem for these Americans,
who are facing a full-fledged retirement
crisis. Financial planners describe the
three legs of the stool that workers are
expected to rely on for retirement: Social
Security, employer-provided retirement
plans and personal savings. Even casual
observers can see that all three are show-
ing downward trends and are less likely
to support retiring boomers in their cur-
rent lifestyles. Roughly 60 percent of
middle-class Americans do not believe
Social Security will provide them with
income for their retirement, and 20 per-
cent have not even started planning for
this time. The retirement crisis as I see it
is a collision of demographics, econom-
ics and financial behavior that should
be addressed sooner rather than later.
A person retiring today at the age of 65
can expect to live another 18 years on
average. So my question is, What finan-

cial plans have you made for these years,
which make up 22 percent of your life?

The best retirement plan, in my opin-
ion, would have to include stocks. Many
sectors will remain attractive over the lon-
ger term—health care is one example. I
expect energy prices to remain relatively
high for some time too. 1 would recom-
mend sector funds or exchange-traded
funds focusing on health care or energy,
as well as index funds. Though I was
appalled by the inclusion of microcap
issues in “play money” portfolios, midcap
and small-cap stocks have outperformed
larger-capitalization indexes for extensive
periods. There are many small-cap-stock
mutual funds, offering varying degrees
of risk. Not enough information is avail-
able for most investors to buy individual
issues, so let the professionals do it. Avoid
anything to do with the pink sheets or
microcap stocks. You could get a lot more
excitement than you expected.

Perhaps it's best to remember the
old curse “May you live in interesting
times.” We have gone through enough
excitement. Boredom and tedium may
be due to the withdrawal caused by dras-
tically lowered expectations as investors
adjust from unrealistic stock returns of
18 percent annually to something closer
to six percent annually after inflation.
Stocks may not be the perfect nest egg
for retirement—nothing is. But a care-
fully selected portfolio of reasonably
priced stocks with a moderate yield and
a record of consistently raising dividends
should be the best choice.

“So what are you saying, Joanne? Are you saying
we should see other people?”

page 96

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Have you noticed that the
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Lauren as Miss February 2001.

THE CENTERFOLD FASHION AWARDS

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“That was cool,” Lauren
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Four decades after pos-
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has enough
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that little shift right down
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stared. But I’m sure they
snickered when I left.”

159

160

PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR PARTY

POP QUESTIONS: SANDRA HUBBY

Q: So what have you been up to?

A: Гхе been traveling as a Playboy
ambassador, going to Mexico City and
Australia and other places I’d never
been before.

Q: You moved from
Ohio to California.
Do you miss living
in а small town?

A: I miss the space
Ohio offers. It’s nice

to go down the back

roads. There aren’t

tons of traffic lights

and six-lane roads. Basically I try not to
drive in California.

Q: Do you have any big plans for
after you’re finished spreading the
Playboy love?

A: ГП eventually go back to Ohio,
where ГП take courses and apply to get
my real estate license—anything but a
normal nine-to-five job.

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cyber club

LEROW NEIMAN,

KURT BUSG

(continued from ag 8
on the gas. My dad drives well. Mom
is on the gas. If I ride with friends and
they’re not looking ahead and catching
the green lights when they’re supposed
to, ifthey’re stuck behind a car when the
other lane is open or if they're just yip-
yapping, yeah, I’m ready to tell them
how to drive. But if I’m with sponsors,
I'll put up with it. It’s their time.

PLAYBOY: Are objects in your rearview
mirror really closer than they appear?
BUSCH: If it’s a fierce competitor, he’s
right on you. We do have a center rear-
view but no side mirrors. We’d prob-
ably knock them off. The cute answer
is that we have our spotter up above
with radio communications, so he
keeps track of where other cars are. I
probably look once a lap. You absorb
it for less than a second—who’s there?
As it gets down to the end of the race
and I’m racing for a win, I might look
twice as often, but I’m telling myself
not to look. I want to focus on the
line—whether to run high or low—or
on hitting my marks or keeping the
fastest lap.

PLAYBOY: At a recent NASCAR exhibit, no
one seemed to notice that the Taurus’s
headlights were only decals. What’s with
the illusion? Is NASCAR trying to con-
vince us that its cars actually have some-
thing in common with the cars the rest
of us drive?

BUSCH: Cars without headlights don’t look
right. Cars have headlights, so we need
headlights. We are NASCAR because we
drive stock cars. Decals make the sche-
matics look correct. Taking the real head-
lights out is also a safety thing because all
the drivers would run into one another
and poke them out. You don’t want to
have glass out on the racetrack.

017

PLAYBOY: The rest of us have driven fuel-
injected cars for years. NASCAR sticks
with carburetors. Will its technology
ever catch up?

BUSCH: Eventually. Гуе worked on carbu-
retors. I understand them. What NASCAR
is trying to do, at least for a while, is keep
money away from that aspect of compe-
tition. It would mean millions of dollars
in fuel-injection-software research
because the air-fuel mixture is basically
what runs a car. I’m sure NASCAR will
be forced to turn to injectors, and it
will find the proper technology to put
in the cars. There's research and devel-

opment going on for that, but right now
we just run carburetors.

018

PLAYBOY: Carburetor restrictor plates
slow NASCAR drivers down a bit. Do
you hate them?

BUSCH: Some guys hate them. I’m on the
fence. If you have to race and they’re
going to hand out points and a check,
then you learn how to race with them. If
they take them off, you learn to race with-
out them. They put restrictor plates on
our cars at Daytona and Talladega so that
we don't go too fast. They're the largest
tracks we race on, and without restrictor
plates we’d be running 230 miles an hour,
way too fast for a stock car. ГП hit 200
at most of our racetracks, but the aver-
age speed is 185, and that’s unrestricted.
Restrictor plates create entertainment
value at Daytona and Talladega with the
three-wide draft—30 cars on top of one
another in three columns. But restrictor
plates are needed for safety. I’m sitting
in the seat. I don’t want my ass to run
into something so hard at such a rate
of speed that I can’t come back from it.
I’ve been in some good wrecks. [laughs]
I was dazed after one. I remember look-
ing at the interview tape afterward, but I
don’t remember giving the interview. It
was one of those goofy scramble-the-eggs
wrecks. It’s all about taking care of that
egg in the carton.

PLAYBOY: Early this season NASCAR cited
several drivers and crew chiefs for sus-

pension and fueling irregularities. Were
they cheating?

BUSCH: It’s a fine line. Every team in the
garage is out to develop something new.
If it’s not in the rules, it must be okay
for a little while. It’s up to NASCAR to
govern what teams bring to the race-
track. Negotiations take place. Some
teams might get away with more. Com-
petition is so tight right now that when
you have that small advantage, you’re
going to be that much faster. Half an
inch out of line at 200 miles an hour
adds up to quite a bit of speed. Every-
body wants to win, and you take risks,
but NASCAR continues to make it
tougher for cheaters.

PLAYBOY: Is bumping a strategy, or is it
unavoidable?

BUSCH: There are so many different
types of bumps. You can do it acci-
dentally. You can do it to help pass
somebody—that’s bump drafting. And
you can do it intentionally when you
have that hunger and that drive when
you’re young. That’s when I bumped
Jimmy Spencer out of the way to win
my first race ever, at Bristol. He fin-
ished second, though. It’s not like I
wrecked him. I have bumped guys and
wrecked them by accident. I’ve heard
cool quotes from drivers, like “I didn’t
bump him. He just backed into me.”
Dick Trickle says, “Yeah, I bumped
him. He just chose to wreck it instead
of save it.” Bumping happens, and it’s
best just not to do it.

Tee

ECUR m, CATERING =н |
ND PET GROOMING | |

161

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Ша субоу

WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN

The Long Run

Dean Karnazes jogs more than 100 miles
at a time—is that even legal?

eschylus once said, “Suffering leads to

wisdom,” butthe Greek playwright has noth-

ing on the remarkably indefatigable Dean
Karnazes, who has made a career of running more
than 100 miles at a stretch—and pushing the hu-
man body further than any other marathoner in
history. In his memoir, Ultramarathon Man: Con-
fessions of an All-Night Runner, 42-year-old Kar-
nazes chronicles everything from completing
the Badwater 135-mile race through Death Val-
ley (during which his shoes literally melted) to
tackling a 200-mile relay—as the only guy on his
team. During races Karnazes keeps his energy
up by eating éclairs, burritos and pizza ordered
from the road. Still, he sometimes falls asleep
while running. The obvious question: Is he crazy,
masochistic or both? “This is a good thing,” he
says. “If | thought | were damaging my body, |
wouldn’t do it. My life mission is to get Americans
to be more active.” Karnazes has been approached
for the motion-picture rights to his life story, but
before he gets to that, he has another goal. “This
fall | want to run 500 miles nonstop from San
Francisco to L.A.,” he says. If he completes it,
that distance will put him in the world-record
books, as well as raise thousands of dollars for
charity. But come on, does it ever get old? “Actu-
ally, | wish I were running right now.”

Mr. Outsider

The man behind some of the world’s most
inscrutable films takes a stab at pop

im Jarmusch is already thinking about his tombstone.

“It ll probably say, ‘He never saw any Star Wars films or

Gone With the Wind,’” jokes the iconoclastic director.
Jarmusch, 52, has been making movies his own rebellious
way for more than 20 years, from his 1983 breakthrough,
Stranger Than Paradise, to 2003’s chain-smoking, java-
swilling Coffee and Cigarettes. “I’m not anti-Hollywood,”
he explains. “It’s just not the place for me. | would be
either very unhappy or a complete failure.” Jarmusch’s
latest film, Broken Flowers, is his most accessible yet. A
Grand Prix winner at Cannes, the comedy follows a man
(played by Bill Murray) who learns he has a long-lost son
as he reconnects with a series of ex-lovers (including
Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange and Julie Delpy). Jarmusch
says Broken Flowers isn’t an attempt to strike box-office
gold, just an excuse to work with a national treasure. “I
think Bill Murray should run for president,” says the direc-
tor. “The thing is, he’d probably win. All chaos would break
loose, but we’d have fun for a while.” 163

Marceau 2
Called Life

Anybody want to storm the
Bastille? French actress SOPHIE
MARCEAU seems set to proclaim
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” Alas, чы... |

she merely suffered а wardrobe mal- \ K 4
function at Cannes.

JIM SMEAL/BEIMAGES

Supermodel, Superexposed
Surely you've read JANICE DICKINSON’s books, No Lifeguard on
Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel and
Everything About Me Is Fake...and I’m Perfect. We have a title for
the next one: Pride and Prefabrication.

Opera
Lungs
Now that
we know
British
actress
JENNIFER
ELLISON

is in the
movie The
Phantom of
the Opera,
maybe we'll
spend more
time with
the DVD....

Pretty and
Pink

After lunch with
friends on Sun-
set Boulevard in
West Hollywood,
PINK was spot-
ted smoking—
and smoldering.
Expect anew CD
from Missunda- |
ztood next year. ^

Great
Cannes

Known for her
racy Calvin Klein
ads, Russian
model NATALIA
VODIANOVA
didn’t disappoint
at the Cannes
Film Festival
premiere of the
movie Joyeaux
Noël. “1 have
everything I

want,” she once
said. Funny, all
we want is her.

DJ Diva

DJ LUCY AUDI-
BERT (a.k.a. DJ.
Agent A) has
flaunted her
musical skills
everywhere
from San Fran-
cisco to Hono-
lulu. If this is
how she shows
up for gigs,
we'll be her
biggest fans.

We
' M t"

A Knightley to Remember

At this very moment actress KEIRA KNIGHTLEY is possibly
being stalked by paparazzi in an airport near you. She's only
20, so expect at least a few more decades of excellent shots.

Motpourri

WHAT THE STORE MOUSE SAID

Net cafes are great for travelers, but we don't
like the idea of using mice that have been han-
dled by every grubby hippie with a Gmail
account. Smart travelers bring their own and
make it logear's Memory Optical Mini Mouse
($60, liogear.com). Tiny enough to slip into your
pocket, with a tangle-free retractable cord, it
contains a 128-megabyte USB hard drive for your
files. Just plug in the mouse as you normally
would and it shows up as an external hard drive
on even the funkiest public computer.

166 |

SIMPLY DELICIOUS

Nothing’s simpler than boiling eggs. However,
judging from our well-documented ability to forget
to set the timer when we dunk the little bastards,
the process could still use some tuning up. Amaz-
ingly enough, the kitchenware wizards at Norpro
have managed to simplify the process further with
their Egg Rite egg timer ($7, amazon.com]. Just
toss it into the water along with your soon to be
soft-boiled chicken ova and watch the indicator

on the side as it passes through SOFT, MEDIUM and
HARD. If you screw it up now, you're on your own.

GOOD CALL

By now you've probably
heard of voice over IP
(or VOIP), a nifty phone
system that routes your
chatter through the
Internet instead of con-
ventional phone lines.
The service works well
and can save you serious
dough on long distance.
It's new, though, and so
far it has been a bit lack-
luster in the hardware
department. Finally Vonage
is offering its users that
most basic phone
amenity: a cordless
handset ($100,
vonage.com). We
were already
partial to the
company;
this just gives
us one more
reason to rec-
ommend it.

FACE VALUE

Every square inch of your skin contains 19 feet of blood vessels
(that’s about as long as your average anaconda), not to mention
90 oil glands and 625 sweat glands. Who knew? The scientists at
Bullie did. They’ve created a full line of skin-care goo in three
different formulations so you can tailor a regimen to the needs
of your individual epidermis, whether it's normal, dry or oily.
Pictured, from left: under-eye restorative ($20) with aloe, cucum-
ber and green tea; post-shave and toner ($19) with ginseng and
wheat amino acids; moisturizer ($30) with antioxidant vitamins A,
B, C, E and K; close-shave gel ($16) with eucalyptus, tea tree oil
and aloe; and cleanser ($24) with amino acids and cucumber.

STIR IT UP

Good rum is a vacation in a glass, a Carib-
bean sunset in every sip. Two favorites:
10 Cane ($35) from Trinidad with its
earthy sugarcane flavor—great for cock-
tails or over ice—and Bacardi’s 12-year-
old Reserva Limitada sipping rum ($50),
f a which packs a serious but-
3
n
Bo

terscotch note. You can get
it only at Bacardi HQ in
Puerto Rico, but believe us,
it's worth the trip.

2
2

EARS TO YOU

We love taking our music and games with us, but we can’t stand
the crummy earbuds that ship with every gadget. Aside from being
one-size-fits-none, most have an appalling lack of boom. Fix that
with a pair of Headbanger Audio Ear Subs (headbangeraudio.com),
which come with a powered-bass amp. It’s not audiophile quali-
ty, but it'll put bass in your face for just $30 to $40.

WANNA BET?

Ride shotgun with a top profes-
DISTILLING PRREECTION 1 sional poker player during a
CANE 3 tournament's climax in Expert

) Insight: Final Table Poker ($25,
expertinsight.com]. A ground-
breaking new instructional DVD
featuring Celebrity Poker Showdown
co-host (and PLAYBOY contributor)
Phil Gordon, it plays more like

HEF’S BIG BLACK BOOK

New from Taschen, The Playboy Book ($40,
taschen.com) delivers between its two covers
half a century’s worth of the greatest maga-
zine ever published. Inside you'll find every
Playmate—all 600 of them—from the first
50 years. You'll tour the Playboy Clubs, the

a movie than a lesson; viewers
hear Phil’s internal monologue
while he plays 25 hands at the
final table of a no-limit Texas
Hold ’Em tournament. Think
of it as 15 years of the school of
hard knocks in chewable form.

Mansion and the DC-9 Big Bunny jet, and get
the backstory on the finest entertainment
for men. You'll also say hello to Kristy Swan-
son (pictured). She’s very nice, you know.

WET SUIT

Mares’s new Limited Edition Metal line of scuba rigs is the Paul Smith
tuxedo of the diving world, serving your underwater breathing needs
with unparalleled style. The company’s most technologically advanced
gear ever includes the Metal Tech LE regulator ($700), the Morphos
buoyancy compensator ($850) and the Quattro Excel fins ($250).
Mares will even engrave your name on the regulator. Available at
limitededition.mares.com} DVD of Open Water not included.

167

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 14

PAC 10 BEAUTIES.

VOLUPTUOUS VIDEO VIXEN.

GIRLS OF THE PAC 10—MEET THE SUNTANNED WOMEN
FROM THE CONFERENCE OF CHAMPIONS. YOUR HOMEWORK:
NUDE APPRECIATION.

COLLEGE SEX 101—WE ASKED 101 COLLEGE GIRLS EVERY-
THING YOU’VE WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX, DATING AND
CAMPUS CAROUSING. FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT KIND OF PANTIES
DO YOU WEAR? HAVE YOU EVER POSED FOR A NAUGHTY CELL
PHONE PHOTO? HAVE YOU HOOKED UP WITH ANOTHER GIRL?
THE ANSWERS ARE TANTALIZING, A BIT SHOCKING—AND COM-
PLETELY REAL. THIS IS OUR HOTTEST SEX SURVEY EVER.

GEORGE CARLIN—FRESH FROM A MELTDOWN ON A VEGAS
STAGE AND A STINT IN REHAB, THE GROUNDBREAKING CO-
MEDIAN COMES CLEAN ABOUT WHAT WENT WRONG, HOW
HE'S MAKING IT RIGHT AND HOW HE STILL HAS MORE BRAIN
CELLS THAN ANY OTHER COMIC. A PLAYBOY INTERVIEW BY
DAVID HOCHMAN

EARNEST GOES TO COLLEGE—FOR THE FIRST TIME IN

YEARS, COLLEGE KIDS ARE MORE CONCERNED WITH JOINING
CLUBS AND BUILDING THEIR RESUMES THAN PLANNING THE
NEXT KEGGER. WHAT’S GOING ON? WHAT WOULD THE GUYS
FROM ANIMAL HOUSE THINK OF ALL THIS SERIOUS CAREER-
MINDEDNESS? RICHARD MORGAN INVESTIGATES.

BEWITCHED, PLAYBOY STYLE.

STATEHOOD—IT’S YOUR 12TH BIRTHDAY AND YOU'RE HALF-
WAY THROUGH YOUR FIFTH O’DOUL’S. YOU’RE KNEELING BE-
NEATH THE BLACKBOARD, KEEPING SCORE, READY TO DODGE
ANY DART THAT BOUNCES OFF THE WIRE. IT'S FUNNY—GROW-
ING UP IN A BAR ISN'T AS GLAMOROUS AS IT USED TO SOUND.
BY KEVIN A. GONZALEZ, OUR COLLEGE FICTION CONTEST
WINNER. PLUS: CAMPUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE WORLD’S
NEXT PICASSOS, WARHOLS AND SILVERSTEINS.

OZZY OSBOURNE—THE LEGENDARY PRINCE OF DARKNESS
ON THE WORLD’S BEST AND WORST REHABS, BEING PIGEON-
HOLED AS A CRAZY ROCK STAR WHO BITES THE HEADS OFF
BATS AND WHY HE’S PISSED THAT “OVERFUCKINGWEIGHT
GUYS” ALWAYS PORTRAY HIM ON TV. “DO | LOOK THAT FAT?”
HE WONDERS. 20Q BY ALISON PRATO

VIDEO GAME BLOWOUT—FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW
YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAME VIXENS ARE GETTING NAKED—
AND WE'RE NOT PLAYING. A SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION
FOR THE GAME BOY IN ALL OF US.

PLUS: A FAST AND FURIOUS BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT
NASCAR, BACK-TO-CAMPUS FASHION, 21ST CENTURY WITCH
FIONA HORNE, MISS OCTOBER AMANDA PAIGE AND BED-
ROOM SECRETS FROM CENTERFOLD PILAR LASTRA.

Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), September 2005, volume 52, number 9. Published monthly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 680
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Cana-
dian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for 12 issues. Postmaster: Send address ch
168 to Playboy, Р.О. Box 2007, Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mailleirc@ny.playboy.com

HAND SELECTED

A LABOR OF LOVE

A UNIQUE CLIMATE AND RICH VOLCANIC SOIL PROVIDE PERFECT CONDITIONS FOR GROWING

THE SUCCULENT BLUE AGAVE USED EXCLUSIVELY FOR TEQUILA DON JULIO.

AFTER SPENDING BETWEEN SEVEN AND TEN YEARS MATURING, ONLY THE PERFECTLY RIPE

PLANTS ARE HAND-PICKED FOR PRODUCTION.

MATURING THE PLANTS THIS LONG ENSURES TEQUILA DON JULIO IS UNUSUALLY SWEET.

<METHODS-|

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