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THE RETURN OF THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR 


PLAYBOY 


| 
ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN 


WWW pedis oy.com e SEPTEMBER 2006 


EXPLOSIVE INTERVIEW: EX-FEMA BOSS MICHAEL BROWN * 
EVA LONGORIA SEXES UP 20Q * JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 
OF A COAL MINE * PARIS HILTON'S LOOK-ALIKE NUDE * 
WORLD'S BEST COLLEGE FOOTBALL PICKS * SMART FASHION 


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Though set up to be the fall guy for the government's bun- 
gle of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Brown refused to play 
the president's patsy. Having weathered the storm, Brownie 
spoke about his experience to David Sheff in the Playboy 
Interview. “Normally people in government are very tight- 
lipped, so it was remarkable talking to Brown, who spoke 
freely.” Sheff says. “One reason for his openness is that he 
wants to clear his name. | also think he did the interview 
because he still feels a moral obligation to protect the peo- 
ple of this country by informing them that the govern- 
ment is not capable of handling the next major disaster. 
On both levels he is the equivalent of a soldier who seri- 
ously questions his commander, only in this case it takes 
balls because it's the commander in chief." 


“Hunter S. Thompson infected 
me with an aggressive edge— 
or at least sharpened the one | 
already had,” says artist Ralph 
Steadman. A little more than a 
year after HST's death, we pub- 
lish Smashing Windows from 
Steadman's memoir, The Joke's 
Over. The piece is an exchange 
between the longtime collabo- 
rators, two fathers concerned 
about the pressure of cul- 
tural conformity on their sons. 
“Hunter did not play father in 
the conventional way. But for all 
his mindless self-indulgence, 
which is legendary and crude, 
he always impressed me with 
his blind, selfless urge to cut 
out the crony bestiality of mod- 
ern society. | believed in him 
and was inspired by him." 


Prestigious fashion photogra- 
pher Fabrizio Ferri debuts in 
our pages this month with 
Dress Smart. "It is extremely 
rare that | work with people 
who are as passionate about 
their trade as Joseph De 
Асен and the релувоу fashion 
staff," Ferri says. "The creativ- 
ity. tirme and effort we put into 
the shoot was astounding. Be- 
cause we are all perfectionists 
ittook well over four hours just 
to set up the first shot. The 
time, as always, was well 
worth it. We emerged with 
beautiful pictures that empha- 
Size the clothes and also send 
an intelligent message. | think 
we made quite the bold fash- 
ion statement." 


Stephen Rebello had the pleasure of playing 20Q with 
Eva Longoria. “In person she is much more than just 
drop-dead gorgeous,” Rebello reports. "It's as though an 
exclamation point is hovering over her head. Like many 
gorgeous actresses | have interviewed, she swore she 
bloomed late and wasn't so hot in high school. This pat- 
tern has led me to advise every young man | know to be 


careful of turning down less desirable dates- 
seem to grow up to be sexy starlets." 


they all 


Mickey Edwards, formerly a Republican congressman 
from Oklahoma, wrote "Power Play” forthe Forum, in which 
he expresses his disgust at the partisanship rampant in the 
legislative branch. "It is unconstitutional that members of 
Congress are putting their party's beliefs before our institu- 
tion of checks and balances," Edwards says. "The Ameri- 
can people must confront their local representatives and 
demand that they uphold the foundation of our system of 
government, or else we will cease to live in a democracy." 


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vol. 53, no. 9—september 2006 


PLAYBOY 


5 со соп еп“ з | Sin ws 
features 

54 INSIDE DEEP MINE 26 
The U.S. is still the OPEC of coal, the cheapest and most plentiful energy 
source known to man. Descend into a Virginia coal mine with the workers 
who gamble their lives every day but make headlines only when it looks as 
if they'll lose, BY PAT JORDAN 

64 SMASHING WINDOWS 
Last year Hunter S. Thompson's ashes were shot out of a cannon. Now comes 
another blast: a missive fired off 25 years ago to Ralph Steadman, his friend 
and illustrator, after Steadman complained about his own son's behavior. The 
good doctor's bizarre parenting advice somehow still resonates. BY RALPH 
STEADMAN WITH HUNTER S. THOMPSON 

68 ARTISTIC LICENSE 
We rounded up a garageful of sports cars so exotic and exceptional that 
you are unlikely ever to see one. These ultra-exclusive beauties, crafted by 
small companies such as Pagani, Bugatti and Saleen, make Lamborghinis seem 
affordable. BY KEN GROSS 

92 PLAYBOY’S 2006 PIGSKIN PREVIEW 
As we celebrate 50 years of selecting the Playboy All America Team, we tackle 
such crucial college football matters as our picks for the top 25 squads, our 
2006 Anson Mount Scholar/Athlete winner and our Coach of the Year, Penn 
State's Joe Paterno. BY GARY COLE 

= fiction __ 

74 THE UNLUCKY MOTHER OF AQUILES MALDONADO 
A successful major league pitcher discovers the price of success when guerrillas 
in his native Venezuela kidnap his saintly mother. He soon learns that once 
something is forcibly taken from you, it is seldom returned intact. BY т.с. BOYLE 
the playboy forum 

43 POWER PLAY 
Our government has a system of checks and balances to keep President Bush 
from overreaching and becoming decider in chief. If Congress continues to 
let the president blatantly ignore the law, this balance of power could be thrown 
out of whack forever. BY MICKEY EDWARDS 
200 

108 EVA LONGORIA 
She became a household name by playing a seductive schemer on TV's top-rated 
Desperate Housewives. We ask Wisteria Lane's hottest resident how San Antonio 
Spurs guard Tony Parker wooed her, who should have a lesbian fling on the show 
and whether monogamy is overrated. BY STEPHEN REBELLO 
interview 

49 MICHAEL BROWN 


The maligned former FEMA chief became the fall guy for the disaster follow- 
ing Hurricane Katrina. The Bush administration wishes Brown would quietly 
disappear, but he keeps on fighting to clear his name. His gloves are off as 
he explains why Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertotf 
should be canned, how unprepared he thinks we are for a major disaster and 
which congressman can, as he says, "bite me." BY DAVID SHEFF 


COVER STORY 


Hef's three girlfriends—Holly Madison, Kendra 
Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt—return for 
our cover as El's top-rated series, The Girls 
Next Door, starts season two. Senior Contrib- 
uting Photographer Arny Freytag orchestrated 
the simultaneous shooting of the front and back 
cover photos. Our Rabbit laces up on the front, 
then morphs into his distant German cousin on 
the back cover for a rearwindow view. 


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vol. 53, no. 9—september 2006 


PLAYBOY 


n 1 | contents continued | 


pictorials 


58 


78 


110 


ONE NIGHT AS PARIS 
Check out everyone's favorite 
hotel heiress in the nude— 
sort of —when our look-alike 
checks in as Ms. Hilton. 


PLAYMATE: 

JANINE HABECK 

Miss September, who vas 
crowned Deutschland's 
Playmate of the Year 2005, 
is a testament to the power 
of German engineering, 


LOVE THY NEIGHBOR 

The Girls Next Door are back for 
more, this time in fantasy 
themes of their own devising 


notes and news 


n 


12 


107 


147 


THE WORLD OF PLAYBOY 
Tiffany Fallon and Joe Don 
Rooney sing at Kara Monaco's 
PMOY party; Cooper Hefner's 
band plays the Whisky a Go Go. 


HANGIN' WITH HEF 

When David Letterman asks the 
question "Will It Float?" the Man 
and his girlfriends respond; Al 
Pacino sizes up the Mansion 


CENTERFOLDS ON SEX: 
CHRISTINE SMITH 

Before joining the mile high club 
Miss December 2005 practices 
with sex in some tight spaces. 


PLAYMATE NEWS 

Miss February 1991 Cristy Thom 
makes the transition from 
Playmate to painter; PMOY Kara 
Monaco plays Willie Wisely's 
wife in his music video. 


departments 


PLAYBILL 


DEAR PLAYBOY 

AFTER HOURS 
MANTRACK 

THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES 

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY 
ON THE SCENE 
GRAPEVINE 

POTPOURRI 


fashion 


98 


DRESS SMART 

Witness the power of mind 
over matter: These are sharp- 
looking suits and jackets that 
only a savvy guy would buy. 
BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS 


reviews 


27 


28 


30 


32 


MOVIES 

Brian De Palma revisits an 
infamous murder mystery in 
The Black Dahlia; hype-heavy 
Snakes on a Plane slithers 
onto screens. 


DVDS 

Hugh Hefner's groundbreaking 
Playboy After Dark series debuts 
on DVD; United 93 proves it's 
not too soon for 9/11 films 


MUSIC 

Tennessee leads the way for 
American music; Radiohead's 
Thom Yorke takes his emo solo. 


BOOKS 

Tom McGuane defends country 
life and the short-story form; 
our editors pick the best late- 
summer reads, 


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HUCH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
ТОМ STAEBLER art director 
GARY COLE photography director 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH executive editor 
ROBERT LOVE editor at large 
JAMIE MALANOWSKI managing editor 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: AJ. BAIME articles editor; AMY GRACE LOYD literary editor FASHION: jostrh DE acerıs 
director; JENNIFER RYAN JONES editor FORUM: CHIP ROWE senior editor MODERN LIVING: scort 

ALEXANDER senior editor STAFF: ROBERT B. DESALVO, TIMOTHY МОНЕ, JOSH ROBERTSON associate 
editors; DAVID PFISTER assistant editor; HEXTHER HAEBE senior editorial assistanl; VIVIAN COLON. 

KENNY LULL editorial assistants; ROCKY RAKOVIC junior editor CARTOONS: NICHELLE URRY editor 

JENNIFER THIELE editorial coordinator COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; CAMILLE CAUTI associate 
copy chief; ROBERT HORNING, JAMIE REYNOLDS copy editors RESEARCH: DAVID COHEN research 

director; AP BRADBURY. BRENDAN CUMMINGS. MICHAEL MATASSA. RON MOTTA. DARON MURPHY researchers; 
MARK DURAN research librarian EDITORIAL PRODUCTION: 
edito 
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL (writer al large), KEVIN BUCI 


MATT DE MAZZA assistant managing 


correspondent 


; VALERIE THOMAS manager READER SERVICE: MIKE OSTROWSK: 


LEX, SIMON COOPER, CRETCHEN 


EDGREN, LAWRENCE GROBEL. KEN GROSS, WARREN KALBACKER, ARTHUR KRETCHMER (AUTOMOTIVE), 


JONATHAN LITT MAN, JOE MORGENSTERN, JAMES R. PETERSEN, STE 


HEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, 


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


ART 


ков WILSON deputy art director; SCOTT ANDERSON. BRUCE HANSEN, CHET SUSKI, 


Len wırLissenior art direclors; exvt CHAN senior art assistant; JOANNA METZGER art assistant; 


CORTEZ WELLS art services coordinaior; MALINA LEE senior art administrator 


PHOTOCRAPHY 


MARILYN GRABOWSKI west Coast editor; JIN LARSON managing editor; PATTY BEAUDETFRANCKS 


KEVIN KUSTER, STEPHANIE MORRIS senior edilors; MATT STEYGBIGEL associate editor; RENAY LARSON 


assistant editor; AkNY FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; GEORGE GEORGIOV 
staff photographer; RICHARD пал, MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, GEN NISHINO, DAVID RAMS contributing 
photographers; вил write studio manager—los angeles; BONNIE JEAN KENNY manager, photo library; 
KEVIN CRAIG manager, photo lab; PENNY EKKERT, KRYSTLE JOHNSON production coordinators 


LOUIS R. MOHN publisher 


ADVERTISIN 
ROB EISENHARDT, JONATHAN SCHWARTZ associate publishers; RON STERN new york manager; 
HELEN BIANCULLI direct response advertising director; MARIE FIRNENO advertising operations 
director NEW YORK: SHERI WARNKE southeast manager; току SARDINAS fashion/grooming 
manager CHICAGO: WADE BAXTER midwest sales manager LOS ANGELES 
COREY SPIEGEL west coast managers DETROIT: STACEY c. CROSS detroit manager 
SAN FRANCISCO: tn мем 


: PETE AUERBACH, 


ана northwest manager 


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


PRODUCTION 
MARIA MANDIS director; JODY JURGETO production manager; CINDY VONTARELLI, DEBBIE тилоо associate 


managers; CHAR KROWCZYK, BARB TEKIELA assistand managers; BILL BENWAY, SIMMIE WILLIAMS prepress 


CIRCULATION 


LARRY A. DJERF neusstond sales director; FHYILIS ROTUNNO subscription circulation director 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
MARCIA TERRONES rights & permissions director 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING 
вов ODONNELL managing director; DAVID WALKER editorial director 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, IN 
CHRISTIE HEFNER chairman, chief executive officer 
JAMES E RADTKE senior vice president and general manager 


BELLE OF THE BALL 


Of all the events we anticipate each spring, nothing tops the unveiling of the Playmate 
of the Year. The 2005 PMOY, Tiffany Fallon, and her new husband, country crooner 
Joe Don Rooney of Rascal Flatts (below right), serenaded the crowd with their origi- 


THE GUMBALL RALLY 

The Gumball 3000 intercontinen- 
tal road race began in London 
and finished eight days later with 
a party at the Playboy Mansion, 
where organizer Max Cooper cit- 
ed Swizz Beatz and Travis Barker 
tor their automotive prowess. 


nal ditty “Going to the Mansion" be- 
fore Mr. Playboy passed the PMOY 
ў honor to Kara Monaco (left) 


PLAYBOY AT THE DERBY 
Playboy's Kentucky Derby party 
posted stars from all fields, with 
actresses Essence Atkins and Gabri- 
elle Union (left), ESPN host John Sal- 
loy (below), gridiron greats Tom Brady 
and Dwight Freeney (bottom right) 
and rapper Ludacris (top right). 


BA 
ТҮРЕДЕ 


CHAEL 


KID ROCK 
Onthe LA. music scene, once you've played the Whisky 
a Go Go on the Sunset Strip (above), you've officially 
arrived. Cooper Hefner's band, the Skips, made its first 
public appearance at the legendary club, where Hef and 
Cooper's mather, 1989 Playmate пі the Year Kimherly 
Conrad, cheered the teenage drummer on. 


A Playmate slumber party, television inter- 
views, visits from celebrity friends and 
the annual Easter egg hunt were part of 
the Mansion social calendar. (1) Hef plays 
chaperone to 13 gorgeous girls at a slumber 
party for PMOY Kara Monaco that began 
with dinner at Geisha House. (2) Al Pacino 
scouts the Mansion for a movie. (3) Pamela 
Anderson visits the Mansion zoo with her 
children. (4) Donny Deutsch interviews Hef 
and his girls. (5) The world champion Chi- 
cago White Sox visit Playboy Mansion West. 
(6) Pal Tony Bennett pays a late-night visit. 
(7) Hef and Whoopi Goldberg at Sunday 
Morning Shootout on American Movie Clas- 
sics. (8) Captain and crew are in the Grotto 
for a segment of David Letterman's “Will It 
Float?” (9) Hef and his girls greeting guests 
on Easter. (10) MTV's Vinci Alonso with Tina 
Jordan and her daughter. (11) Fred Durst and 
his son. (12) Victoria Fuller collecting eggs. 
(13) Hef and fellow legends Burt Bacharach 
and James Саап, enjoying the holiday. 


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SHEPARD SMITH 
As onc of the creators of the web- 
site NewsHounds.us (our motto is "We 
watch Fox so you don't bave to"), 1 find 
it telling that Shepard Smith never 
denies in his Playboy Interview (June) 
that Fox News Channel has a conser- 
vative bias. While Smith is onc of thc 
more balanced of FNC's personnel, 
he faces less of a challenge becausc his 
job is essentially to inwoduce the news. 
"The actual reports are loaded with bias. 
For example, the same day President 
Bush said he prefers to call his NSA 
eavesdropping program “a terrorist- 
surveillance program,” anchor Harris 
Faulkner immediately adopted the ter- 
minology. It's also telling to compare 
the number of Fox reports on Demo- 
crat Cynthia McKinney's scuffle with 
a Capitol Hill police officer with the 
number of times Fox has reported on 
the CIA leak investigation. 
Ellen Brodsky 
Las Cruces, New Mexico 


It's ironic that in the same issue in 
which you attempt to rake Smith over 
the coals for the alleged right-wing bias 
at Fox News Channel, you also pub- 
lish a joke with a punch line that says 


Shepord Smith bolances his responses. 


Bill Clinton “almost” got impeached. 
There's no almost about it. Stop trying 
to rewrite history. The real joke is the 
transparency of your liberal bias. 
Benjamin Chan 
Lawrenceville, Georgia 


In all his bloviating about the blame 
game after Katrina, Smith never 


mentions Ray Nagin, the mayor of 


New Orleans, who basically disap- 
peared along with his police force 
after the hurricane 
Larry Zini 
Huntsville, Utah 


Kudos for your valiant attempt to get 
Smith to say something interesting. 
Jake Neufeld 
Brooklyn, New York 


During Smith's one apparent lapse 
of concentration he states, "Remember, 
we have a conservative audience." How 
do you attract a conservative audience 
with “fair and balanced" reporting? 

William Olson 
Lake City, Michigan 


If Smith can't talk about sex, poli- 
tics or religion, why is he speaking to 
тлувоуг As his listeners would say, “It 
don't make sense!” 

Richard Davis 
Santa Barbara, California 


I'm not sure how Smith "sleeps well 
at night" if he has any commitment 
to journalism. Does he not receive or 
read the FNC memos "guiding" its cor- 
respondents and anchors on how to 
report the news? Has he not seen the 
studies of the overwhelming bias of its 
guests toward Bush Republicanism? Is 
he not aware of the many stories Fox 
doesn't cover? I spent a year watching. 
and studying Fox News for my docu- 
mentary Oulfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's 
War on Journalism (outfoxed.org). As 
entertainment Fox News is very well- 
done. As news it is a disgrace. 

Robert Greenwald 
Los Angeles, California 


VULVA POWER 

Your report on vaginal “rejuvenation” 
(Rosebud, June) makes this old sexual 
liberationist want to cry. The idca of the 
perfect pussy comes from porn, which 
creates a visual fashion for scx just as 
Vogue dictates the latest in women’s 
apparel. A young wornan today knows 
her lover boy has been whacking off 
to slitlike pussies since puberty, so she 
wants one that looks the same. We can't 
blame Dr. David Matlock for proceed- 
ing full-greed ahead. He's giving cach of 
his clients what she thinks she wants—a 
clamshell pussy so her boyfriend won't 
have to mess with any drapery on his 
way to the hole. By contrast, the men 
who visit my site, bettydodson.com, 
often ask me why so many women shave 
their pubic hair and snip off their inner 


у 3D. © 


lips; these men prefer them the way 
they were. Let's face it, vulva ignorance. 
abounds, starting with the women who 
own them. Viva la vulva and vive la dif- 
férence! Otherwise every fuckable woman 
in America is going to lock as if she were 
made with a cookie cutter. 

Betty Dodson 

New York, New York 


It saddens me that so many women 
grow up ashamed of the body parts 
designed to be the source of life's 


The flower at the center of the world 


greatest pleasure. Believe it or not, 
gazillions of men think every pussy is 
beautiful. Guys. if you like the way she 
looks down there, tell her. 
Joani Blank 
Oakland, California 
Blank is the editor of Femalia, a collec- 
tion of intimate photographs of vulvas. 


Vulval cosmetic surgery is an inter- 
csting cultural phenomenon, but 800 
а ycar—or сусп 1,600, if the number 
doubles in 2006 as predicted —hardly 
scems like the "frenzy" Heather 
Caldwell describes. 1 can't be the 
only man who loves meaty, com- 
plicated ушуаз; if commercial por- 
nography is any indicator, guys аге 
going for more labial presence these 
days, not less. I'm also betting there 
are racial and cultural differences 
with regard to what types of vulvas 
men and women prefer. 1 find some 
thing disturbingly antisexual about 
idea of women trimming their 
labia. It reminds me of how, in the 
mid-19th century, upper-class white 
women had their clitorises removed 


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to free them from the embarrassment 
of having a libido. 
David Steinberg 
San Francisco, California 
Steinberg (davidsteinberg.us) is an erotic 
photographer and writer. 


BEST DAMN SPORTS BOOKS 
How can you omit George Plimpton's 
Paper Lion from your list of top sports 
books (Books, June)? If not the greatest 
sports book of all time, it is certainly 
the best one about football 
Jon Gerber 
Whitehall, Pennsylvania 


Where are the two best books about 
basketball: Foul! The Connie Hawkins 
Story by David Wolf and A Season on the 
Brink by John Feinstein? 

Milan Simonich 

Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania 


CHINESE INSULTS 

It should be noted that unless you 
get the tone of each word right when 
using the Chinese insults in Mantrack 
(June), nobody will understand you. 
By the way, the phrases in the two 
speech bubbles translate as "Kiss my 


Louis Tong 
Houston, Texas 


BASEBALL TRUTHS 


If we had more guys in baseball like 
John Kruk (The Wit and Wisdom of John 
Kruk, June), we would have cheaper 
tickets, lower salaries and fewer player 
strikes. Thanks, Krukker! 

Casey Rett 
Seattle, Washington 


FIRST COURSES 
Gary McCord says he was kicked off 

the air for saying the greens at Augusta 
had been "bikini waxed," but based on 
his selections for the world's top courses 
(Fairway to Heaven, June), it appears he 
can no longer even visit Georgia, Flor- 
ida or the Carolinas. I love McCord and 
his choices, but 1 wouldn't be surprised 
if the folks in Myrtle Beach are plan- 
ning a wax-and-feathers party for him 
if he comes to town. 

Lou Bristol 

Lake Worth, Florida 


YOUR SPACE 

Although 2006: A MySpace Odys- 
sey (June) perfectly portrays the first 
week or two of using th 
issue with Dave Itzkoff's dismis: 
attitude toward the music section. As 
a member of a local unsigned band, 1 
find MySpace to be a great networking 
tool. I regularly walk downtown now 
and feel like a rock star when people 


say, "It's the drummer from Katharsis! 
1 have you guys on MySpace!" 

Cory Granger 

Greenville, North Carolina 


While the subjects featured in The 
Women of MySpace (June) are lovely, Y'm 
disappointed that they don't reflect the 
range of women on thesite: some nerdy, 
some curvy, some punky. Your pictorial 
could have been called "Models Who 
Happen to Have MySpace Pages." 
Daniel Papp 
Plainsboro, New Jersey 


FAST RIDE 

Kara Monaco is a great choice for 
Playmate of the Year (June), but I 
take exception to your description of 


Kara Monaca hos the need for speed 


her new Honda CBRIOOORR. It's not 
slow, but it won't go anyvhere near 
200 miles an hour, even with а strong 
tailwind. Fast girl, though! 

John Revilla 

South Riding, Virginia 


Kara may be the first Miss June to 
become PMOY, but the second will 
surely be Stephanie Larimore (All the 
Right Steph, June) 

Jody Martin 

Greensboro, North Carolina 


WORD UP 
While reading the June issue, 1 
came across an unfamiliar word: 
elegiac. Then 1 saw it again in a sec- 
ond article, compelling me to grab a 
dictionary. Thank you, rLaynoy, for 
stimulating my literary self as well as 
my blood pressure 
Ron Radley 
Scaside, California 
Did ие say elegiac? We meant epicedial. 


Email via the web at LETTERS.PLAYBOY.COM Or write: 730 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019 


Kentuchy 


STRAIGHT 


Bourton Evan ares 
WHISKEY Aged longer to taste smoother. 


ane Bale Bacon a - evanwilliams.com 


age and dink 


стоксто  erRUTINI 


BONO ri WIDER AT ik 


SUITS SHIRTS NECKWEAR HATS BEITS ACCESSORIES. 
giorgiobrutini.com 


As an Ultimate Fighting Championship Octagon Girl, Rachelle Leah 
practices the time-honored ring girl's art: strutting around in a skimpy 
getup, holding a card and looking hot. For our interview she wears a 
baseball cap, a tank top and jeans, and she looks—according to 
some dude at the supermarket—daaamn hot. “I was just there, and 
this guy's like, "Daaamn, girl," she says. “That bugs me. If I were a 
guy and I found a girl attractive, I wouldn't be like that. I'd say, 
"You're absolutely beautiful. Can I take you out to lunch?”” Of course 
she'd do it that way. Rachelle is a go-getter who loves extreme sports 


"This guy's like, 
'Daaamn, girl. 
That bugs me.” 


1 SHE'S A FIGHT-NIGHT SIREN WHO'S REALLY KIND OF SHY 


and was training to be a paramedic when her modeling career took 
off. She's not invulnerable, though; she confesses to suffering from 
anxiety about the aforementioned skimpy getups. And it's not just at 
the matches: She also flashes the flesh as host of UFC: All Access, 
an MTV Cribs-style show, which tends to kick off with Rachelle in 
a state of undress. (For the first episode, cameras “surprised” her 
in her room while she was in only a bra and jeans.) "I'm getting to 
the point where | can joke about it,” she sighs. “When I look at 
all it's done for me, wearing a small outfit is not a big deal.” 


‘PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIE CHILDERS 


[afterhours 


video of the year 


Retro Sexual 


DJ BENNY BENASSI'S LATEST 
VIDEO PAYS TRIBUTE TO CLASSIC 
SKIN-FLICK ONE-SHEETS 


His frenetic beats are like aural spumoni 
to Euroclubbers; now Italian DJ Benny 
Benassi celebrates the art of acult cine- 
ma's golden age. With its parodies of 18 
adult-movie posters of the 1960s and 
1970s, "Who's Your Daddy?" is e stroll 
down memory lane for fans of such films 
as Emmanuelle, Hot Lunch and Bang 
Bang. "Benny's music is very sexual," 
says the video's director, Mauro Vecchi 
"You can add sexual images to it without 
being banal. The secret of these posters 
was that they were never too vulgar. The 
cartoonish drawings of the actresses were 
innocent on one level, hiding the ‘sins’ 
the films contained, yet on another level 
they were also saying, ‘This is nothing to 
be ashamed ог." Benassi concedes that 
the conceit may elude his young fans 
“Not everyone will get the references," 
he says, "but they can do the research. 
That's why Internet search engines were 
invented. Research is good for you!" 


Room Ceiling 
WHAT'S IN AN R? A NEW 
DOCUMENTARY CLAIMS 
NO ONE REALLY KNOWS 


According to the cineasts behind 
This Film Is Not Yet Rated, 
the process of rating movies is 
arcane at best and highly politi- 
cal at worst. Here are a few nug- 
gets from their exposé: 

* A PG-13 movie can contain 
one nonsexual use of the word 
fuck (e.g., "What the fuck?"). 
Using the word to refer to inter- 
course garners an R. 

* Bloodless killing and maim- 
ing are kosher in a PG-13 film. 
Bloodshed earns an R. 

* Specific things that have 
apparently earned films at 
least an initial NC-17 include 
more than three thrusts in a sex 
scene (Where the Truth Lies), 
teenage lesbian masturbation 
(But I'm a Cheerleader), pro- 
longed discussion of sex without 
explicit depiction (Orgazmo) and 
non-missionary style puppet sex 
(Team America: World Police). 


A League 
of His Own 


QUESTIONS FOR 
HOWARD STERN SIDE- 
KICK ARTIE LANGE, 
CO-WRITER AND STAR 
OF BEER LEAGUE 


How is Beer League simi- 
lar to Field of Dreams? 
There's a scene where 1 
make out with Amy Madi- 
gan. We had to cut it, but 
1 hope it makes the DVD. 
How is your film different? 
Our movie isn't for pussies. 
Why is Ralph Macchio in this movie? His 
audition was better than Scott Baio's. 
Was it difficult working with so many 
Italians? Yes. I hired one black guy so | 
would have someone to talk to. Is it true 
you've gained 100 pounds in the past 
year? No. Okay, but how much did you 
gain? Ninety-six pounds. Did you put it 
on for the movie, as Robert De Niro dic 
for Raging Bull? Absolutely. Would you 
describe yourself as a fat comedian or 
a fat actor? Neither. Just fat. What's 
your junk food of choice? Drake's Devil 
Dogs. What's your record for Devil Dogs 
eaten in one sitting? One morning on 


the Stern show I had 11. You used to do 
a lot of cocaine. What's your relation- 
ship with it today? The same as my rela- 
tionship with my dead father: I miss it 
oh so much. You drink a lot these days. 
What's the difference for you between 
coke and alcohol? Coke was killing me 
quickly; booze is being nice enough to 
take its time. Who's the most success- 
ful Mad TV alumnus? Orlando Jones. 
Where do you rank? Behind Nicole Sul- 
livan, in a 28-way tie for third place. 
What important question have we not 
asked? Why is my movie so fucking awe- 
some? Sorry, we're out of space. 


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machine Isiton ж. 
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бе. HARLEY-DAVIDSON] ire by it.” 


[afterhours 


double-sided Centerfold. I set up two underneath the second camera. That way 


ARNY FREYTAG TAKES 

US THROUGH THE CREATION 
OF THIS ISSUE'S FRONT- 
AND-BACK COVER 


Hef wanted two pictures shot simultane- 
ously, exactly like Nancy Cameron's 1974 


cameras and two sets of lights. With one 
remote control in each hand, I'd fire the 
front camera and set of lights, then 
immediately fire the rear camera. We 
also needed to see what was happening 
on both sides because what looks good 
from the front doesn't always look good 
from the back. So | put a video camera 


1 cculd say, "Move your hand over here," 
then look at the video screen and say, 
"But make sure your butt is still facing 
this way." And remember, this is times 
three; when Dwight Hooker shot Nancy, 
that was just one girl. It was a stressful 
shoot. Fortunately, these girls aren't self- 
conscious about anything—ever. 


Telling It Like It Wasn't 


"George Washington Carver changed the world 
with his nuts/Sat on a few and invented peanut 
butter with his butt/ BFD." 


—from Sarah Silverman's revisionist ditty “Nobody's Perfect," part of the 
bonus materlal on the soundtrack to her film Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic 


Any Way You Slice It 


It's registration time on America's campuses, and 
in case you hadn't heard, today's hottest topic cf 
study is becf. But be advised that not all bovine 
studies are created equal. What you learn about сом 
depends on where you go to school. 
Beef Production (ANSC 4403) 
"The breeding, feeding and managing of beef 
herds for profitable production of slaughter cattle. 
Emphasis on commercial cow-calf herds." 
—Department of Animal and Food Sciences, Texas Tech 
Best of Beef 
Join former Gramercy Tavern chef Sabrina Sexton 
to celebrate the joy of beef. You'll examine differ- 
ent cuts and discuss the preparations appropriate 
for each, then cook up a meaty meal." 
—The Institute of Culinary Education, New York City 
Beef (HACU 0256) 
"Where's the——? What's the——? Our livestock 
and athletes are pumped up with hormones and 
chemicals. We're on low-carb diets, watching real. 
ity TV. Porn stars are parliamentary reps, weight 
lifters are governators. Anything is possible. Shock 
and awe. Hasta la vista, baby. Break out the cattle 
prod. Did you say the anal probe?" 
—Cultural Studies workshop, Hampshire College 


unconventional wisdom 


“Ті Better to Receive... 
A STATS EXPERT BENCHES THE NFL’S BALL DROPPERS 


ESPN.com scribe KC Joyner, author of Scientific Football 
2006, doesn't buy the usual numbers. A case in point is 
yards per reception, a standard metric for judging wide 
receivers. "It doesn't factor in when a receiver doesn't 
reach а catchable ball, drops a pass or draws a penalty,” 
Joyner says. “1 think yards per attempt is a more accurate 
evaluation of a receiver." Here's how Joyner would refigure 
the top wideouts of 2005 (minimum 40 receptions): 


Yards Per Reception 
1. Ashley Lelie 18.3 
Terry Glenn 18.3 
3. Santana Moss 17.7 
4. Randy Moss 16.8 
5. Ernest Wilford 16.6 


Yards Per Attempt 

1. Santana Moss 11.4 

2. Steve Smith 10.7 
Eddie Kennison 10.7 

4. Ernest Wilford 10.0 

5. Terry Glenn 9.7 


5 
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[afterhours 


employee of the month 


What's Happening, Hot Stuff? 


WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIREHOUSE 
FLAMETHROWER KELLY JOHNSTON 


PLAYBOY: Says here you're a firefighter medic. What's that? 
KELLY: | fight fires. but | specialize in treating injured people 
on the scene. 

PLAYBOY: In the firehouse it's you and a bunch of manly men. 
Any knocking of the rubber boots? 

KELLY: No. We treat each other as a family, so | think of the 


drinks of the month 


SUIT UP AND DRINK YOUR TEAM TO VICTORY 


As football games go, the September 9 contest between 
Texas and Ohio State is a meeting of the haves and the 
haves—two giant top-five teams slugging it out, last year's 
champ against this year's favorite. But their mascot-themed 
beverages seem to tell a different tale. When a cool and 
classy martini out of Columbus lines up against a big ol’ 
bucket of Austin sunshine, which side will you be on? 
BUCKEYE 4EXAS 
vs. 
LONGHORN ICED TEA 


Buckeye Stir the gin and vermouth 
(Origin: old as the hills) with cracked ice and strain 
3 oz. gin into а chilled cocktail glass. 


Ya oz. dry vermouth 
I 


(Origin: 219 West, an 

Austin bar) 

% oz. Skyy vodka 

Ya oz. triple sec 

Ya oz. El Jimador Blanco 
tequila 

Ya oz. Bacardi light rum 

1% oz. sour mix 


Garnish with a black olive. 


1 oz. fresh lime juice 

1 oz. orange juice 

Dash of grenadine 

Splash of Coke 

Fill a pint glass with ice, 
add all the ingredients and 
shake. Garnish with a lime 
wedge and a cherry. 


guys as my brothers and they treat me like a sister—meaning 
they are very concerned with my social life. As in any family, 
we have fights, but they're normally over what to eat: Should 
we order takeout or fire up the grill? 

PLAYBOY: How often do you tend the flames? 

KELLY: Never. Grilling is a guy's job. 

PLAYBOY: Do guys you rescue fall in love with you? 

KELLY: All the time. Because our last names are on our clothes, 
| get love letters addressed to Johnston at the firehouse. One 
time this guy OD'd ard was violent. I had to wrestle him to the 
ground. When he came around he asked me out. | was like, 
“Dude, you just kicked my ass, and now you want a date?” 
PLAYBOY: What's a bigger rush for you: running into a burning 
building or having sex? 

KELLY: Both really get your adrenaline pumping. Fires tend to 
last longer, but you can't beat sex for immediate satisfaction. 


Employee of the Month candidates: Serd pictures to Playboy Photography Department, Atin: 
Employee of the Month, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Must be at least 
18 years old. Must send photocopies ol a driver's license and another valid ID (not a credit 
card), ore of which must include a current photo 


racial-sensitivity consultant 


An Animal House Undivided 


HOW RICHARD PRYOR SAVED THE DEXTER 
LAKE CLUB (“OTIS, MY MAN!") SCENE 


"Pryor and studio executive Thom Mount watched the 
film alone in a screening room on the Universal lot. As 
the lights came up, Mount asked Pryor whether he con- 
sidered the scene offensive. 
‘No, man,’ Pryor chuckled. “It's just fucking funny. And 
you know what else is funny?’ 
‘No,’ Mount replied. 
‘White people,’ Pryor said. ‘White people are funny. 
— Нот Josh Karp's A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug 
Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever. 


wma, 
D 
" 


RS 
> 
> 


iE A. IN THE DARK. 
-KENNET Cole 


کي 
BLACK -KENNETH COLE, THE FRAGRANCE FOR HIM.‏ 


ACK 


cone Coco 


SCENT PACKING? 
-KENNETH COLE 


| 8 Қ 
| A А) hs У | 


YOUR FREE GIFT 
COLE FRAGRANCE PURCHASE OF $59.50 OR MORE. 


IGNIFICA, INSIGNIFICA, 
All in the Family 


46% of all prison inmates have at least one relative 
who has also been in jail 


Interned Ad TV 


The death rate at a typical | The number of prod- 
major teaching hospital sees uct placements on 


a 4% spike each summer, U.S. prime-time net- 
attributed to the arrival of new work TV shows last 
med school grads in July. year was 101,212. 


Most Brassieres Linked 


114,782, by women in Cyprus who created a 70-mile- 
long chain of boulder holders. The feat easily busted the 
old record of 79,001, held by women in Singapore. 


| 
ЕЕ 
Through Thick and Thin 


On average, how your future viife's weight will 

fluctuate over time, according to Weight Watchers: “” 

The two of you meet and start dating: She loses 8.5 pounds. 
You develop a long-term relationship together: She gains 11. 
You propose, and she slims down for the wedding: She loses 9. 
She begins having kids: She gains 16. 

The kids get older; she experiences midlife panic and hits 
the gym: She loses 16. 


Optimists 
6 percent of Americans 
think their life story is 
worthy of a book, according 
to a poll by everythingyou 
shouldknow.com. | 
2 percent say they have 
sex pointers they 
believe they can share. 


| price check | 
Head Games 
B 135351... 


Paid at Internet | cut a $1.85 million policy to 


Creative Coupling 


A study done by British psychologists found 
that professional poets and artists have, on 
average, 7 sexual partners. That's more than 
twice as many as other people. 


No Higher Education 


1 of every 400 students who apply for 


auction for the | insure himself in case he suf- | federal financial aid for college is turned Ç 
"4 | one-shoulder | fered mental trauma from Eng- | down because of adrug conviction. 189,065 22007 
Vera Weng | land getting knocked out of the | have been rejected since the restriction was %) 
dress worn by | World Cup in the early stages instituted with the 2000-2001 school year. 


Keira Knightley 
\ at this years 


Academy All-American? 


Awards. 
Portion of a Ford Mustang's components Portion of a Toyota Sienna's com- 
that come from the U.S. or Canada: ponents from the same region: 


25 


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


movie of the month 
[ THE BLACK DAHLIA ] 


Brian De Palma revisits an infamous murder mystery 


In director Brian De Palma's new whodunit, two prizefighters 
turned L.A. cops—Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett—get 
in way over their heads while sleuthing the gruesome 
1947 murder of a would-be Hollywood starlet (Mia Kirsh- 
ner) nicknamed the Black Dahlia. The flick, which takes off 
from one of America's most bizarre unsolved crimes, is 
thick with twisted motives, big-city corruption, depravity 
and cool vintage clothes and cars. The snarly atmosphere 
is aided and abetted by Scarlett Johansson as Fckhart's 
smart, sexy girlfriend and Hilary Swank as a mysterious 
rich dame. The film's sexy-grimy vibe recalls movies such 
as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, which, like The Black 
Dahlia, is based on a James 


Ellroy novel. Says Eckhart, “The 
surreal thing is we pretty much 
filmed the entire movie in Bul 
garia, including a spectacular 
boxing match between Josh 


“The surreal 
thing is we pretty 
much filmed 


and me where there were 2,000 the entire movie 
to 3,000 Bulgarians cheering in Bulgaria." 

and booing in the stands. | 

watched a lot of James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson 
movies, so when | did an interrogation scene of our prime 
suspect and took ой my hat and the jacket of my three- 
piece wool suit with the shoulder holster and went at him 
in this old-school, spitfire way cops had in those days, | 
thought, We're cooking now.” —Stephen Rebello 


Snakes on a Plane 

(Samuel L. Jackson, Nathan Phillips) Slithering into theaters 
with mighty Internet-fueled hype, this high-altitude thriller finds 
FBI agents Jackson and Phillips protecting a Mafia-related wit- 
ness from an assassin. What's a killer to do? He unleashes 400 
serpents to lessen the witness's chances of arriving alive. 


Our call: You have to love the 
concept, even if it sounds like 
something you and your pal 
invented while drinking. Stu- 
pid? Maybe, but we're on board 
this panic plane. 


Invincible 

(Mark Wahlberg, Greg Kinnear, Elizabeth Banks) This against 
all-odds gridiron saga casts Wahlberg as a real-life sports fan 
who, faced with the loss of his wife and job, tries out for the 
Philadelphia Eagles. Making the cut despite zero experience, he 
becomes (surprise!) a local hero as the oldest rookie player. 


Our call: A feel-good Rocky- 
style tale like this needs а 
dose of the young Sylvester 
Stallone's underdog sincerity, 
and Wahlberg is one of the 
few actors who can pull it off. 


Factotum 

(Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Fisher Stevens) This 
take on Charles Bukowski's rancidly funny novel offers 
Dillon as a brilliant, grungy hell-raiser who beds a succes- 
sion of aimless women, plays the ponies and writes stories 
nobody is in any rush to publish. 


Our call: Read the novel 
instead—it's terrific, and this 
Cinematic interpretation may 
provoke some Bukowski cult- 
ists to howl and hurl things at 
the screen. 


DOA: Dead or Alive 

(Devon Aoki, Jaime Pressly, Natassia Malthe, Sarah Carter) 
This low-rent video-game adaptation features five scantily 
clad, genetically blessed babes who are highly trained in 
different styles of martial arts. The gals battle to the death 
on an exotic island in the ultimate chick fight. 


Our call: Sexy things fight- 
ing in bikinis and over-the-top 
action sequences from direc- 
tor Corey Yuen are all well and 
good, but this flick stoops to 
BloodRayne caliber. 


27 


dvds 


reviews 


dvd of the month 


PLAYBOY AFTER DARK ' 


Hef’s influential laid-back TV show makes its DVD debut 


In 1959 Hugh Hefner began hosting TV's ultimate parties—rubbing shoulders with such 
legends as Ella Fitzgerald, Lenny Bruce, Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr.—on Playboy's 


Penthouse and, 10 years later, 
on Playboy After Dark. The ca- 
sual free-form setting was 
groundbreaking and made you 
feel as if you were hanging with 
Hef and his famous friends as 
they shared laughs, played 
games and discussed the top- 
ics that made the 1960s such 
a trip. Variety called the show 
uninhibited and “more like a 
night on the town than a tryst 
with the tube.” We agree. This 
sophisticated time capsule col 
lects six of these swinging shin- 
digs for their long-awaited DVD 
debut. Best extra: A historical 
booklet by journalist Bill Zehme. 
YYYY ` —Robert B. DeSalvo 


PRISON BREAK: SEASON ONE (2005) 
Fox scored with this epic about a man 
who infiltrates a maximum-security 
prison in an attempt to free his inmate 
brother from death 
row before time 
runs out. Best ex- 
tra: Director Brett 
Ratner's audio 
commentary for 
the pilot. ¥¥¥ t 

Matt Steigbigel = ni 


V FOR VENDETTA (2006) This vivid so- 
cial commentary vibrates with visionary, 
if violent, viewpoints. Hugo Weaving is 
V, who advocates victory via vandalism 
and vows vengeance on the government 
he vilifies with 
help from Natalie 
Portman. Best ex- 
tras: Guy Fawkes's 
history and the 
comic-book ori- 
gins of V. УУУУ» 
—Stacie Hougland 


UNITED 93 (2006) United 93 depicts 
events aboard the doomed flight that 
crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Septem- 
ber 11, 2001 after 
a passenger as- 
sault on its four hi 
jackers. Balancing 
adroitly between 
the government's 
original let's-roll 
story and the 9/11 


- saloon singer in 


Commission's more ambiguous account, 
writer and director Paul Greengrass gels 
it painfully right. Best extra: United 93: 
The Families and the Film will drain your 
tear ducts. УУУУ —Greg Fagan 


JAMES STEWART: THE SIGNATURE 
COLLECTION This deluxe boxed set show. 
cases six of the icon's films premiering on 
DVD. Standouts include The Naked Spur 
(1953, pictured), which has Stewart acting 
against his easygoing persona as a burned- 
out Civil War vet turned bounty hunter. 
In The Spirit of 
St. Louis (1957) 
he expertly plays 
intrepid aviator 
Charles Lindbergh. 

Best extra: Vintage. 
Stewart shorts 

УУУУ —М.$. 


JAYNE MANSFIELD COLLECTION Mans- 
field was tagged early on as a Marilyn Mon- 
roe knockoff and rarely rose above that 
stereotype before her death. Happily, she 
plays to her comic strengths in these DVD 
debuts. She's a starlet in The ст Can't Help 
It (1956, pictured), a dizzy actress in Will 
Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and a 


The Sheriff of Frac- 
tured Jaw (1959). 
Best extra: A docu- 
mentary that re- 
Caps her PLAYBOY 
pictorial. ¥¥¥ 
—Buaz McClain 


SCANNER 


(2005) 
Television's best sitcom features in- 
effective boss Steve Carell stumbling 
his way through management and 
romance. It's just like your office, 
only more dysfunctional. WY 


(1977-1983) With the DVD debuts of 
the original theatrical versions, purists | 
can now return to Han Solo shoot- 
ing Greedo in cold blood. Sadly, the 
Ewoks are still on Endor. Wie 


(2006) Twisted 
bits of a dozen recent movies add 
up to a sporadically humorous low- 
brow sequel. Anna Faris still deliv- 
ers laughs. and Hef's girlfriends join 
Charlie Sheen in a crazy cameo. ¥¥'/2 

(1954) The original Japanese 
version of Godzilla—a misunderstood 
movie metaphor for the fear of nuclear 
annihilation—finally gets its due with 
a U.S. release. wu 

E: (2005) This 
season Dr. House rekindles the ro- 
mance with his old flame Stacy, drives 
his best bud to the brink, contains a 
devastating outbreak at the hospital 
and takes a bullet, literally. СҮР 


¥¥¥¥ D s YY Worth a look 
¥¥¥ Good show Y Forge 


Jaime Pressly may be the Joy of My 
Мате Is Earl, but try to find 19975 The 
Journey: Absolution (pictured) to see 
absolute proof of what lies beneath. 


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reviews [ music 


[ TENNESSEE TWO-STEP ] 


As always, the Volunteer State leads the way in American music 


MEMPHIS INDIE In Memphis, rock and rolls Fertile Crescent, 
the boogie disease is rampant. Jim Dickinson, the godfather 
of Memphis indie music, provides a redneck take on white rock 
and American blues with Jungle Jim & the Voodoo Tiger (Memphis 
International). Imagine the house band at the world boogie 
truck stop: 
Banjo, fiddle, 
slide guitar 
and kitchen 
whisk sidle 
easily be- 
tween shout- 
outs, shuffles 
and a samba. 
Dickinson's 
children, the 
North Missis- 
sippi Allstars, 
are the core 
and the roar 
of his back- 
ing band. The Allstars also collaborate with Al Kapone for a syrupy 
psychedelic overhaul of "No Mo" on their Electric Blue Watermelon: 
Screwed and Chopped EP (470). Even though Hustle & Flows 
Oscar win put Three 6 Mafia on the map, Kapone, author of three 
songs frorn the movie's soundtrack, still felt obliged to title his forth- 
coming album True Underdog (A/katraz). If you pine for some real 
"Ubangi Stornp" style, run to buy Cory Branan's 12 Songs (Mad- 
jack), an exhilarating album cf the good old stuff. Intense dynam- 
ics, deep humor, brave production and heavy songwriting: A new 
voice emerges to run with the greats. — Robert Gordon 


NASHVILLE UNDERGROUND The most interesting stuff com- 
ing out of the Music City today doesn't have much to do with big 
hats or pedal steel. As a bastion of the music industry, Nashville 
is home to an army of songwriters and session players, and 
most of these hired guns pursue their own work—daring, smart 
and soulfuk— 
when their 
day jobs are 
over. More 
than a few of 
these moon- 
lighters de- 
serve wider 
recognition. 
Chris Knight, 
who arrived 
in Nashville 
a few years 
back with a 
great batch 
of bleak 
songs, returns with Enough Rope (Emergent/92e), on which a 
newfound maturity accompanies his Kentucky drawl. Songwriter 
Mark Selby has enjoyed success with the pen, but now And the 
Horse He Rode In On (Mark Selby) chows his chops, as he plays and 
sings hits he wrote for the Dixie Chicks and Kenny Wayne Shep- 
herd. Jeff Black's Tin Lily (Dualtone) is an impressively hard-nosed 
collection of tough, powerful songs. Kevin Gordon's O Come Look 
At the Burning (Crowville Collective) may be the least classifiable 
of the lot but perhaps the best, with a strange assortment of 
swamp rock, blues and literate lyrics. —Leopold Froehlich 


TAPES "М TAPES + The Loon 

This Minneapolis quartet combines to 
good effect the playfulness of the Shins, 
the manic energy of the Talking Heads 
and the improbable intensity of the Violent 
Femmes. After the band's homemade 
release of this LP did well, a proper label 
Stepped in. Given the innovative sound, 
it's no wonder. (XL) vvv —Tim Mohr 


DIRTY PRETTY THINGS 

Waterloo to Anywhere 

Because of all the tabloid ink Pete 
Doherty garners, people forget Carl 
Barät was the McCartney to his Lennon 
in the late, great Libertines. Here Barát's 
new band reminds us with a blistering, | 
nearly flawless LP of sloppy melodic 
rock. (Interscope) ¥¥¥ —1M. 


THOM YORKE * The Eraser 

The rest of Radichead seems to have 
becorne increasingly extraneous to the 
band's recent output, so it's not surpris- 
ing that Yorke's solo LP has a sound 
similar to Radiohead's, with his mournful 
vocals over hiccuping electronics. Some 
songs even come off like variations on 
the groups older tunes. (XL) ¥¥¥ —Т.М. 


{ MIDLAKE 


| Other words, this is perfect endofssummer 


TOM PETTY • Highway Companion 

Petty bitch-slapped the music industry 
with his previous album, the anticorpo- 
rate Last DJ. With that off his chest he 
returns to mellower moments, drifting 
through this LP with a gentle strum and 
Byrds-brand melodies. There's no "Free 
Fallin'," but "Square One" is gorgeous. 
(American) ¥¥¥ —Jason Buhrmester 


The Trials of Van Occupanther 

Despite Texas roots, the five Midlakers 
create a relaxed groove akin to Belle & 
Sebestian's and add the ache of Radio- 
head. Alternatively, call it a cool, dark 
update of Fleetwood Mac or CSNY. In 


music. (Bella Union) ұзұУ: 


HEF'S FAVORITES 

Along with his more celebrated pas- 
sions, Hugh Hefner has enjoyed a life- 
time love of jazz. As a result, this set 
Offers an impressive group of selec- 
tions. Strongly informed by the music 
Hef listened to in Chicago, this sultry 
collection is perfect for any late-night 
endeavor. (Concord) ¥¥¥ LE 


--ІМ. 


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32 


reviews [ books 


stories of the month 


[ RIDING WITH TOM MCGUANE ] 


An American original defends the short story and country life 


9: Why is the short-story form held in such low regard? 

A: Short-story collections are a tough sell for publishers, but 1 don't think critics 
hold short stories in low regard, particularly if they're remotely aware of the work 
done in that form recently by people like “ 

Thom Jones, Susan Minot, Richard Ford, 
Julie Orringer and Nell Freudenberger. | 
think the best fiction of the past 20 years 
has been in the short-story form. 

Q: In "Miracle Boy," a story from your lat 
est collection, Gallatin Canyon, you rewisit 
your childhood and family. Does fiction 
allow you to write about your past in a way 
that nonfiction doesn't? 

А: Fiction or nonfiction, it's always some- 
body's version. Frank O'Connor said 
the best fiction—as in Chekhov—is 99 
percent nonfiction 

Q: How has the West changed since you've 
been living west of the 100th meridian? 

A: In the 38 years | have been here, 
ranching has nearly failed, extraction 
industries like timber have nearly disap- 
peared, and the gap between the classes has grown wider. With that has come 
some new disquiet and resentment. 

9: America seems divided not so much belweeri blue state and red slale bul between 
city and country. What do country people know that city people don't? 

А: They know where food comes from. They also have what Wallace Stegner called 
“the dignity of rarity." Individual prominence is strikingly different in the country. 

Q: You directed the film version of your novel Ninety-Two in the Shade. Was it 
your idea to cast the great Warren Oates as Nichol Dance? 

А: Yes. | thought he was the real deal, and it showed. 


[ UNFORGETTABLE MEMOIRS ] 


September is for remembering 


Jonathan Franzen uses the occasion of his 
mother's death to look back on his own 
awkward adolescence. 

It's too bad Alice Shel- 
don, who worked as a CIA 
analyst before assuming a 
secret identity as reclusive 
scifi writer James Tiptree 
Jr., never wrote her mem- 
oirs: The story Julie Phillips. 
3 tells in the brilliant James 
Е Tiptree Jr: The Double 

Life of Alice B. Sheldon 
starts with cannibals, ends 
in a murder-suicide and 
thrills all the way through. 
But for out-and-out dys- 
functionality, nothing beats 
Rich Cohen's Sweet and 
Low: A Family Story, in which the author 
(whose grandfather invented Sweet'N 
Low) describes the bitterness and infight- 
ing that result when his family's American 
dream turns sour. —Alex Abramovich 


The best writers tend to keep their egos in 
check. For them, it seems, the world is 
wonder enough. So it's no 
small pleasure to find that à 
few of our finest writers 
have gotten around to pub- 
lishing their memoirs. In A 
Writer's Life, Gay Talese 
details his years as a Bama 
undergrad, his apprentice- 
ship as a New York Times 
reporter and his long strug- 
gle with writer's block— 
many of the chapters here 
began as magazine articles 
Talese never got around to 
finishing. His meditation on 
John Wayne Bobbitt's miss- 
ing member is especially 
good. In Let Me Finish, New Yorker editor 
Roger Angell filters his remarkable auto- 
biography through the life of his legendary 
stepfather, Е.В. White, and in The Discom- 
fort Zone: A Personal History, novelist 


FRANZ 


late summer reads 
[ EDITORS' PICKS ] 


The season's not over 
until you've read one of these 


From time to time things happen in New 
York City that simply don't happen any- 
where else. In LADIES AND GENTLE- 
MEN, THE BRONX IS BURNING, Jona- 
than Mahler captures one of the most 
spectacular of those moments, the sum- 
mer of 1977, when, between a blackout, 
the Son of Sam, riots and a few Yankees 
psychodramas, Gotham used horror and 
folty to assert its primacy in the national 
imagination. • Die-hard Philip К. Dick 
fans and those looking for a thorough- 
going, mind-bending introduction should 
try VINTAGE PKD, which features ex- 
tracts from his novels VALIS, A Scanner 
Darkly, Ubik and The Three Stigmata of 
Palmer Eldritch, as well as several sto- 
ries, including "A Little Something for 
Us Tempunauts” and “I Hope 1 Shall 
Arrive Soon," plus essays and letters 
unavailable in book form. ® In his day 
David Goodis ranked with pulp greats 
Raymond Chan- 

dier and Dash- 

iell Hammett. 

BLACK FRIDAY, 


the meanest of 
his dark thrillers, 
will remind read- 
ers why. The Ser- - 
pent's Tail edi- | 


tion of the novel 

includes several 

stories that have 

been out of print 

in the U.S. for 

more than 50 

years. Criminal. + Fight Club author 
Chuck Palahniuk outdoes himself in 
HAUNTED, a collection of grisly, hilari- 
ous tales told by characters under lock- 
down at a writers' retreat. Cabin fever 
has never been more fun than with this 
motley crew caught in a desperate bid 
for survival and fame. = The twin hor- 
rors of young manhood are the past and 
the future. In UTTERLY MONKEY, the 
debut novel by Irish poet Nick Laird, а 
young London attorney is visited by a 
loutish chum from high school. Throw 
in girls, booze and a bomb, and you 
have a novel that's funny and vividly 
written. « In THE PIRATE COAST, by 
Richard Zacks, you get everything but 
a file in your cake: a founding father, 
Marines, mercenaries, foreign adven- 
tures and real-life pirates, all brought 
together by an entertaining nonfiction 
writer with an eye for the outlandish. 


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Into the Blue 


Quiksilver Travel's surf adventures get us stoked for the ultimate wave 


EVERY BOARD RIDER yearns to discover the perfect unspoiled break, an elusive ideal that is easy to imagine, hard to describe 
and nearly impossible to find. Who better than a stalwart board company to help you realize that dream? Quiksilver Travel, an off- 
shoot of the surf outfitter, specializes in dropping wave riders into some of the best and most secluded brine in the world—Samoa, 
Fiji, Mozambique—with a local expert to guide you to the most coveted swells. At Punta Roca in El Salvador (inset), where we put 
Quiksilver's service to the test, we met expert Robert Rotherham, an American expat and owner of the appropriately named Punta 
Roca Surf Resort. Stationed here since the 1970s, he knows the area as well as anyone. He set us up with local riders such as Quil 
silver pro Jimmy Rotherham, who adjusted the outings to our particular style and skill level. Guides can also take you farther afield 
to area sweet spots like Conchalio, San Blas, La Bocana, Zunsal and Mizata. Accommodations are refreshingly simple and perfectly 
suited to that stripped-down beachnik escape fantasy you've been entertaining all your life, complete with fresh fish dinners, cold 
local beers and a rogue scorpion in the shower. Rates for the Punta Roca destination run from $155 a person each night and include 
airport transfers, lodging, food and as many sessions as you can handle. Surf over to quiksilvertravel.com for more info. 


Best Surf Flicks About Time 
IF YOU CAN'T go to Malibu, go DIGITAL DISPLAYS ARE fantastic for data, but 3 
e tothe movies. Bruce Brown's mas- for telling time we'll take analog, thanks. Hence > 
terpiece, The Endless Summer (1966), our love for Linde Werdelin's Biformeter ($3,580 
showcases the world's most pristine surf to $4,300, lindewerdelin.com), a classic Swiss 
spots and the ultimate chilled lifestyle. watch with a mechanical movement, dive bezel and 
In Big Wednesday (1978) John Milius pre- style to burn. When you're ready 
sents a parable about surfing and adult- to get active, snap the Instru- 
hood. (Spoiler: They don't mix.) What do ment ($1,890) over the face and 
mix are surfing and robbery in Point Break you're wearing one of the most 
(1991). Add Keanu Reeves as a dazed FBI advanced wrist gadgets on the 
agent-surfer and you have an instant (if market, with sensors to monitor 
idiotic) classic. Only one film has Kate temperature, altitude, pulse and 
Bosworth and Michelle Rodriguez in biki- compass heading, all of whi 


nis: Blue Crush (2002). It also has surfing. reported to you graphically. 


36 


Rabbit Transit 


IT WAS THE CAR so many of us learned 
to drive in, the car we kissed our first 
girl in, the car that never seemed to let 
us down. This summer, after 22 years, 
Volkswagen released a new Rabbit for 
the North American market. (It's the 
fifth-generation Golf) The 1.3 million 
Rabbits that sold back in the day pale in 
comparison with this little demon, with 
its 2.5-liter, five-cylinder engine (which 
generates a zippy 150 hp), ABS and 
traction-control system. Two-door and 
four-door versions are available, start- 
ing at just $15,000. Info at vw.com. 


Small Is Beautiful 


On Board 


THE DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY and fast play of backgammon make it delightfully 
interactive and potentially seductive. Schedoni, the Italian fine-leather house that 
crafts luggage collections for Ferrari, fashions this board (53,500, schedoni.com) 
from the same tumbled leather as said luggage, and it travels just as beautifully. 
The case is Italian walnut, and the chips are palladium-clad brass. 


WHAT'S BIGGER THAN А PDA but smaller than a laptop and has all kinds of built-in doodads? If you answered “Kate Moss,” you're 
technically correct, but the answer we were looking for is an ultramobile PC. The first two out of the gate in this new computer category 
are Sony's Vaio UX ($1,800) and Samsung's Q1 ($1100). Though fairly expensive, both pack serious hardware under the hood, with touch 
screens, a full version of Windows XP Pro and built-in wi-fi and Bluetooth. With its seven-inch screen, the СІ weighs just less than two 
pounds, while 5ony's UX goes the small and chunky route with a 4.5-inch screen and a weight that's a hair more than a pound. They're 
hard to beat for video watching and web surfing (though not for serious text entry). Our rule of thumb for determining if a product will 
become part of our lives is that we shouldn't be able to tell if it's in our bag or not. These both disappear quite well. 


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What if men had a simple, reliable 
method of birth control the way women 
have the pill? It may be dangerous to stop 
the mojo, but it is our time. 1 saw some 
Brits on the Discovery Channel who 
soaked their balls in hot water for a few 
hours a day, with the idea that a man's 
testicles must be cooler than his body 
temperature to make sperm. (That's why 
the scrotum hangs away from the body.) 
It took a few weeks, but eventually the 
guys shot blanks. It struck me—why not 
create a discrete pouch that would keep a 
guy's testicles overheated? People laugh 
when I explain my idea, but I think it 
could change the world and make me 
rich.—W.S., Madison, Wisconsin 

We're sorry to disappoint you, bul you're 
80 years behind the times. Scientists have been 
studying Ihe effects of heat on sperm produc- 
lion since at least the 1920s, and several 
inventors have attempted without success to 
market testicle pouches and insulated under- 
wear. Heating your balls does seem to work, 
but it lakes discipline. A widely cited 1946 
study found that nine volunteers who soaked 
their balls in 116-degree water for 45 min- 
utes a day over three weeks became sterile for 
about six months. Other research has shown 
that holding the balls extremely close to the 
Jody raises the temperature enough to impede 
sperm production. But that too is a tough 
sell, aud we wouldn't trust either method. 
We've been writing about male contracep- 
tion research for years, and something revo- 
lutionary is always just over the horizon. The 
latest nonhormonal development, reversible 
inhibition of sperm under guidance, involves 
injecting into the vas deferens а gel that 
causes the heads of passing sperm to rupture. 
It’s about to undergo а large clinical trial 
in India. Fertility is restored when the gel is 
flushed out with an injection or by a com 
bination of vibration, electric current and 
perrectal massage. Elaine Lissner of the Male 
Contraception Information Project (neumale 
contraception.org) notes that even after 25 
years of research on RISUG, it's still a long 
way from being approved in the U.S. or 
Europe. "This is the most promising method 
because we know il works,” she says. “Several 
dozen men in India have been using it for 
a decade without problems, and 140 others 
have used it for three or four years." 


Га like to buy a high-definition televi- 
sion, but the numbers are confusing. 
Some sets are 720p, and others are 1080 
Is there more to it than simply different 
resolution? If not, why doesn't everyone 
buy 1080i?—J.N., Cincinnati, Ohio 
There is alittle more to it. The number rep- 
resents how many horizontal lines of pixels 
are on the screen, and the letter indicates how 
fast Ihe frame refreshes. Progressive scan- 
ning (р) redraus each line 60 times a second, 
whereas interlaced scanning (i) redraws only 


every other line at that rate, meaning it takes 
twice as long to redraw the entire frame. Fox, 
ESPN and ABC broadcast in 720p, while 
CBS, NBC, PBS aud НВО use 1080i. But 
any HDTV can handle both. Is hard lo say 
which is superior: 10804 has more resolu 
but doesn't handle motion as well; 720p dis- 
plays sports more smoothly, Also important is 
the quality of an HDTV's scales, which deter- 
mines how good one kind of signal will look 
on a different type of sel—e.g., how 720p or 
standard television's 480i will appear on a 
10801 set. You could get а 1080р set and be 
ahead of the curve, though no one is broad- 
casting in that standard yet. 


Whoever answered the question in May 
from the guy who'd had a threesome with 
his wife and a well-endowed friend has 
his head up his ass. You tell the husband 
to establish ground rules and make sure 
his friend understands he will always go 
home alone. Give me a break! You сап 
bet Mr. Huge Cock is banging that guy's 
wife behind his back every chance he gets. 
You should have told him his marriage is 
over. It’s no more than the idiot deserves 
for regaling his wife with stories about his 
friend" then bringing the bozo 


friend’s 
home so she could blow him —D.A., Com- 
merce City, Colorado 

For all we know, you may be right. But 
why would they go to the trouble of sneaking 
around when the husband has given his bless- 
ing? You should hang out with some swingers 
before you make such a harsh judgment about 
what does or doesn't work in a marriage. 


Your anticircumcision diatribe in May is 
silly and wrong. Despite what David Golla- 
her claims in his book. there are no highly 
sensitive nerve endings in the foreskin: 


ILLUSTRATION BY ISTVANBANYAL 


they are in the glans, just as a woman has 
nerve endings in the clitoris rather than 
the labia minora. The foreskin is merely 
an extension of the skin covering the shaft 
and has virtually no feeling. The Ameri- 
can Academy of Pediatrics, which in 1999 
decided not to recommend circumcision, 
caved to political pressure from a rather 
bizarre group of people claiming the pro- 
cedure is on a par with removing the cli- 
toris and/or labia. The data are clear that 
women partnered with circumcised men 
have fewer vaginal infections and lower 
rates of cervical cancer. The foreskin prob- 
ably had a protective function at some 
point, just as the hymen probably served 
asa barrier to fecal contamination. Indeed, 
in third world countries where hygiene is a 
luxury, they may still serve these function: 
Otherwise the data suggest circumcision is 
best. Incidentally, I teach a college course 
in human sexuality, and when this issue 
comes up I have yet to hear a female stu- 
dent say she finds an uncircumcised penis 
more attractivc.—D.M., Benton, Kansas 
Well, that's important. Many women don't 
find testicles that appealing either. A number 
of readers pulled out their knives after reading 
our response. Gollaher's book, Circumcision, is 
а thorough examination of the procedure und 
its history, including the results of u study of 
the prepuce by pathologists at the University of 
Manitoba, Based on our reading, “the data are 
clear" doesn't apply to most of the research on 
the subject, which is why we urge caution. As 
is our custom, we'll allow a few more readers 
to weigh in before vecring back to the more 
familiar territory of blow jolis and scotch. 


Although I tend toward the holistic 
and hippicish, I'm a young mother who 
decided to have my sons circumcised 

"The truth is, most women prefer giving 
head to a man who has been snipped. 
After polling my friends and much soul- 
searching, 1 decided a split second of 
pain they won't remember is worth the 
potential ramifications for their later plea- 
sure. That's not to say I didn't feel like an 
ogre when they cried while it was done. 
But wouldn't the pain of rejection at the 
hand or mouth of a girl unsure of what to 
do with or grossed out by an unfamiliar 
foreskin sting far worse? You also need to 
consider that little boys want to look like 
Daddy and don’t want to stand out in the 
locker room —N.M., Madison, Wisconsin 


1 grew up in the 19505. Because I was 
uncut, no one in the junior high school 
showers looked like me. It seemed to me 
that the other boys had all had sex, while 
I was still a virgin. Because I was never 
taught to wash down there, I always had 
problems, so in 1998 1 had a circumcision. 
1 finally felt like a regular guy. The bonus 
was that my wife started going down on 


39 


PLAYBOST 


me. You can stump for that useful flap all 
you want. I've had it both ways, and bald 
is better. —D.T,, Greeley, Colorado 


Thank you for opposing infant circumd- 
sion. I've been giving my husband the 
evil eye for years about reading PLAYBOY, 
but he now has my blessing for a lifetime 
subscription.—E.W., Jackson, Tennessee 

That didn't happen after the last time we 
shared tips for better cunnilingus? 


А; a woman, I find that the foreskin roll- 
g up and down makes each thrust more 
pleasurable than those from a circumcised 
penis —A R., Olympia, Washington 


1 can’t speak for every guy, but I was cir- 
cumcised as an infant and feel mutilated 
and violated by it.—M.C., Medina, Ohio 


А. someone with a father, two friends, 
a co-worker and a nephew who required 
circumcision as adults because of an 
infected or constricted foreskin, and who 
has slept with both cut and uncut men, 
I will present the other side of the argu- 
ment: (1) Circumcision of an infant is 
generally painless, and the healing time 
is rapid. Adult circumcision is painful, 
takes longer to heal and involves a larger 
amount of skin. (2) Most uncut men do 
not bother to wash their glans after urina- 
tion. Being presented with flakes of dried 
urine during spontaneous sex is distaste- 
ful. (8) A circumcised man will never tear 
his foreskin during vigorous masturba- 
tion or in a zipper. (4) I have never meta 
woman who doesn't prefer the cleanliness 
and granitelike hardness of a circumcised. 
erection. The flaccid worm-in-a-turtleneck. 
look is unappealing as well. (5) No woman 
Ihave asked has ever noticed uncircum- 
cised men experiencing extra orgasmic 
pleasure. We have noticed, however, that 
they can have difficulty reaching orgasm. 
While our society favors passive measures, 
any woman bearing a son should do her 
own rescarch and make an informed deci- 
sion.—L.L., Ottawa, Ontario 

There is no evideuce that uncircumcised 
men have trouble reaching orgasm, but that’s 
not our point. We're not arguing against 
adults being circumcised; we're saying there’s 
no compelling reason to cut an infant. He 
won't be having sex for years, and a parent 
can't predict what he or his lovers will prefer. 


[ve been with my company for a few 
years and worked hard to get to a 
junior management position. I have a 
lot of great ideas that could benefit the 
company, but the trouble is my boss is 
hardheaded and a little unprofessional. 
If I went to him with my ideas, I know 
he'd just dismiss them. Should I take a 
chance and meet with him or go over his 
head?—PA., Covina, California 

You have more than those two options. 
Bob Rosner, the author of Gray Matters: The 
Workplace Survival Guide, suggests you try lo 


40 find other department heads, managers or col- 


leagues to sponsor your innovatious. "Figure 
out where the best home is for each idea and 
take it there,” he says. "At the same time, you 
can be shopping around for better losses in 
the company; they won't all be insane. Volun- 
leer for committees or task forces, get to know 
people who work in other departments, and 
find out who the cool supervisors are. Place a 
bunch of bets because you can never tell which 
will pay off. People are much too rigid about 
the workplace and don’t see it as the ecosystem 
it is. You should simultaneously build a paper 
trail to document your ideas. Write your boss 
an otherwise dull e-mail—the more boring ihe 
intro, the less likely he'll pay attention—and 
append an aside such as “Ву the way, | was 
brainstorming with Charlie about the XYZ 
account and suggested this or that, and he 
thought it might work.’” Good luck. 


What is the proper length ofa tie?—R.C., 
Dallas, Texas 

It should hit the top of your belt buckle. 
No exceptions. 


In May you suggest a reader dreamed 
about cheating on his fiancée because of 
“biology.” Committing to one woman, you 
claim, causes "anxiety that sceps out in 
guilty fantasies.” Of all the things dreams 
may be, unconscious yearning no longer 
makes the list. Dreams are about data min- 
ing, pattern recognition, image respooling 
and verbal reassembly of current feed- 
back and broken snippets of conversation. 
Hell, he may have been repeating some- 
thing from a radio commercial he heard 
on the way to work. Omens and lusts are 
the stuff of romance novels but not dream 
processes. Next you'll be suggesting that 
dreams predict the future.—A.K., Fort 
Myers Beach, Florida 

His dream may have been all that and 
more, but this doesn't resolve the larger 
dilemma, which is that his fiancée heard him 
talking in his sleep as if he were cheating. We 
still believe, as we said in May, that there's no 
satisfactory way to explain it to her, regardless 
of whether he offers your scientific explana- 
tion or our Freudian one. 


What steps can I take to wake up on 
time and feel refreshed? Normally, I hit 
the snooze button three times and have 
to shower and drink a gallon of coffee 
before I can get going. I have tried cight 
hours of sleep, eating before bed, Tyle- 
nol PM, etc. Are some people just night 
owls?—B.C., Houston, Texas 

Morning or evening patterns do appear to 
have а biological basis. In one study of young 
men, Dr. Charles Czeisler, a professor of sleep 
medicine at Harvard, discovered thal the cir- 
«айап pacemaher—the part of the brain that 
regulates not only wakefulness but body temper- 
ature, hormones and digestion over a 24-hour 
cycle—differs in carly birds and night owls. 
Exposure to light also controls these rhythns. 
Research has found that wakefulness peaks two 
to three hours before hedlime and begins to drop 
off only in the last hour before sleep. You should 
try lo gel up each morning at the same time 


as often as possible, including weekends, and 
hit the sack when you feel drowsy. Adults who 
establish this routine generally need seven and 
a half to eight and a half hours of sleep a night. 
(Currently the average American gets only six 
and а half) If you still feel run-down, your 
sleep may le affected by depression, anxiety or 
sleep apnea, a condition that can cause heavy 
snorers to repeatedly stop breathing, which 
shakes them awake. "If you're having a hard 
time waking up, put a lamp with a 200-watt 
lightbulb on a timer next to your bed,” says Dr. 
Richard Snow, of the Snow Sleep Center in 
Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “Or leave your blinds 
open. Sunlight will wake you better than any- 
thing.” To ensure а restful night, avoid alcohol, 
cigarettes and heavy, spicy and sugary foods 
in the hours before bed, as well as computer 
and TV screens, which mimic sunlight. Day- 
time exercise can help. And you won't find this 
among the standard medical advice, but an 
orgasm or two puts us right out. 


M, wife and I were fooling around, and 
she pulled down my pants to give me a 
blow job. Suddenly she recoiled and said, 
“What the hell is that?" Turns out I had a 
small piece of tissue stuck on the head of 
my penis from when I had masturbated 
earlier in the day. She went to the bed- 
room and cried, and now she refuses to 
have sex with me. How can I convince 
her that masturbation is natural and 
that I still enjoy being with her? —M.W., 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Given her overreaction, this will be a dif- 
ficult assignment. You can explain that you've 
been touching yourself since you were 12 and 
that it has nothing to do with your desire to 
fuck her anytime she wants. However, she will 
likely need to hear this from a third party, 
With any luck her friends will reassure her 
that all boyfriends and husbands masturbate 
once in a while and that it’s a problem only if 
she’s unsatisfied. It's also not a problem if she 
touches herself 


When my girlfriend and I have sex, she 
likes to be on top. I have no problem 
with that, but sometimes she flails her 
arms and hits me in the face. Any sug- 
gestions?—N.D., Omaha, Nebraska 

А helmet comes to mind, which you could 
introduce with the fantasy that you're an 
amateur boxer, football star, motorcycle cop 
or school mascot. But the simpler solution is 
to hold her hands; this can be quite sensual 
and keep her balanced on your erection. It's 
a dance, after all. 


All reasonable questions —from fashion, food 
and drink, stereos and sports cars to dating 
dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be per- 
sonally answered if the writer includes а 
self-addressed, stamped envelope. The most 
interesting, pertinent questions will be pre- 
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Playboy Advisor, 730 Fifth Avenue, New 
York, New York 10019, or send e-mail by 
isiting our website al playboyadvisor.com. 


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THE PLAYBOY FORUM 


BY MICKEY EDWARDS 


hen political scientists in the future compile 

their lists of America's weak and strong presi- 

dents, George W. Bush, whatever his other 
achievements or failings, will inevitably be judged 
among those who, for better or worse, thoroughly 
dominated the politics of the day. But despite what one 
may think of the president's various proposals, it is not 
Busb's policics but how he came to be so powerful that 
should most worry us. 

The president has taken the nation into two signifi 
cant wars, reshaped American tax policy, changed the 
fundamental premises of our security policies (and оГ 
our relationship to other nations, individually and col- 
lectively), vastly expanded the government's role in sub- 
sidizing health-care costs and dramatically changed the 
way many public school classes are taught. 

It is also true that much of what this president has 

urged upon us has not come to pass, but in the end it is 
not merely the success or failure of individual initiatives 
that marks presidential strength but whether the White 
House is central to, or 
peripheral to, the national 
debate. One of Bush's pre- 
decessors, Jimmy Carter, 
blamed the nation's then 
current problems on a sort 
of national malaise (a "cri- 
sis of confidence," he called 
it), as though the president 
ofthe United States were a 
mere observer rather ıhan 
a partial shaper of events. 
President Bush's immedi- 
ate predecessor, Bill Clin- 
ton, felt forced to insist the 
presidency was still rel- 
evant. The question with 
Bush is not whether the 
presidency is relevant but 
whether any other part of 
the government is 

Presidential power ebbs 
and flows, of course, but 
it tends to flow in a fairly 
circumscribed way—for a 
short period after an elec- 
tion victory or in response 
10 a special circumstance 
that affords a president 
greater than usual def- 
erence. But in time the 
honeymoon ends and 
traditional constraints on 
presidential power are 


renewed. That has not been the case with the current 
occupant of the White House. 

Instead, the 21st century has seen the rise of a presi- 
dency that blatantly and deliberately ignores the law 
and openly defies and insults Congress. Actions by Con- 
gress are simply dismissed out of hand. When Congress 
set a requirement for court-ordered warrants before 
the government could eavesdrop on the private tele- 
phone conversations of American citizens, the White 
House simply ignored the requirement. When Con- 
gress attempted to prohibit the torture of U.S.-held 
prisoners, the administration answered, in effect, that it 
would take Congress's opinions into consideration and 
then decide for itself what to do. High-ranking admin- 
istration officials have threatened reprisals against sub- 
ordinates if they give Congress accurate information. 
Other administration officials, asked to answer a Senate 
committee's questions, have simply walked out of the 
room rather than comply. 

Our current president likes to think of himself as “the 
decider,” as he made clear 
in responding recently to 
suggestions that Secretary 
of Defense Donald Rums- 
feld resign or be fired. 
In the case of deciding 
whether to retain a partic- 
ular cabinet member's scr- 
vice, he's right, of course. 
But in rcgard to obcying a 
congressional mandatc— 
for example, to get a war 
rant before cavesdropping 
on American citizens—he's 
not. Bush was elected 
president, a constitution- 
ally prescribed and cir- 
cumscribed office, not the 
nation's decider in chief. 

But sometimes it scems 
this president docs indeed 
function as decider in chief, 
setting his own course and 
following it without much 
concern about possible 
objections from other gov- 
ernment quarters. How 
has this happened? 

Much of the current 
unease over presidential 
declarations of almost 
unlimited authority is 
focused on the clear over- 
reaching of the president 


43 


himself. But presidents overreach; 
George W. Bush is not the first to do so. 
The list of previous presidential over- 
reachers includes, among others, Thomas 
Jefferson, Harry Truman and Franklin 
Roosevelt. What makes this particular 
expansion of the imperial presidency 
more dangerous—anda far greater threat 
to cur very system of government—is 
congressional acquiescence. 

Our system of separated powers has 
devolved into an Americanized version 
of a European parliamentary system, 
in which the two major political parties 
have superseded the three branches 
of government and the constitutional 
scparation of powers. Many members 
of Congress apparently no longer see 
themselves as constitutionally obligated 
to function as part of a completely sep- 
arate and completely equal branch of 
government, charged with serving as 
the voice of the people, determining 
the laws, setting the priorities of the 
government and maintaining a check 
on the presidency. This is not a ques- 
tion of Congress's rights or its author- 
ity. It is a responsibility imposed by 
the Constitution. When a senator or 
representative takes an oath of office to 
support and defend the Constitution, 
he or she isalso swearing to perform the 
duties assigned by the Constitution 

Those duties do not include serving 
as de facto members of the White House 
staff, but that is precisely how many 
members of Congress behaved until 
the president's poll numbers fell so 
precipitously. Despite occasional huff- 
ing and puffing, members of Congress 


have refused to use any of their many 
powers (subpoena, oversight, control 
over public spending) to enforce their 
decisions. This is a Congress in which 
the Senate majority leader was actually 
handpicked by the president. (Can one 
imagine Senator Bill Frist investigat- 
ing the Bush Department of Defense 
the way Harry Truman investigated 
the Roosevelt War Department or the 
way J. William Fulbright investigated 
Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policies?) 
Leaders in both the House and Senate 


THE BASI 
ICAN GOVERNMENT— 
ARATION OF 
POWERS, CHECKS AND 
BALANCES—WILL BE LOS 
PERHAPS FOREVER. 


$ ОР 


have largely seen it as their function 
to enact the president's agenda rather 
than bring independent judgment to 
the issues of the day. 

It was ironic to see members of Con- 
gress—including members of the presi- 
dent's own party—express reservations 
about Bush's nomination of General 
Michael Hayden, the man who oversaw 
the National Security Agency's domes- 
tic spying operations, to head the CIA. 
The irony doubled days later when 
even more members of Congress— 
and more members of the president's 
party—became upset upon learn 
ing the NSA's spying operations had 


included gaining access to the phone 
records of millions of Americans. This 
was the Congress that had allowed the 
White House to forbid sharing infor- 
mation about this intelligence gather- 
ing with the full membership of the 
House and Senate intelligence com- 
mittees and their staffs. This was the 
Congress that, upon learning of the 
NSA's eavesdropping, had not stepped 
in to enforce—with budget cuts and 
subpoenas —its insistence that the 
administration get court-issued war- 
rants before doing domestic surveil- 
lance. Congress had, by its inaction, 
allowed to continue the very abuses 
about which it now complained 

This is an extremely dangerous 
period of presidential expansion pre- 
cisely because of Congress's acquies- 
cence and the fact that authority once 
ceded is almost impossible to retrieve. 
The more power the current Congress 
surrenders to the White House, the 
weaker future Congresses will be—and 
the stronger future presidents will be. 
The basis of American constitutional 
government—separation of powers, а 
system of checks and balances—will be 
lost, perhaps forever. 

If the president of the United States 
is guilty of malfeasance—wrongdoing— 
by virtue of having ignored the Consti- 
tution, then Congress is equally guilty 
of nonfeasance—also a crime—for 
failure to perform its constitutional 
duties. The United States has sur- 
vived presidential malfeasance before; 
congressional nonfeasance is a much 
more dangerous thing. 


AN IMBALANCE OF POWER 


N о single act speaks more 
to the decay of congres- 
sional power than President 
Bush's unprecedented use of 
signing statements. On more 
than 10 percent of the bills the 
president has signed—amount- 
ing to more than 750 times—he 
has claimed to have the right to 
ignore parts of laws he doesn't 
agree with. By making such 
claims he essentially declares 


UY 


the congressional ban on tor- 
ture, for example, but later 
added provisions (filed quietly 
on December 30) that claimed 
to take away the lawmaking 
authority of Congress and the 
courts' power in interpreting 
the Constitution. During the 
first 200 years of the Republic, 
presidents used signing state 
ments about a dozen times. Ed 
Meese, attorney general dur- 


himself the judge of his own constitutional powers and 
rules for himself without any checks and balances. With 
his signing statements Bush has challenged the congres- 
sional ban on torture, oversight provisions in the Patriot 
Act and whistle-blower protections for nuclear regulators. 
In each instance a compliant legislature has forgiven him 
his excesses. A president has the right to say whatever he 
wants, of course, but his only writing that matters legis- 
latively is his signature. He holds the power of veto—a 
refusal to sign a bill—but Bush has yet to use it. He signed 


ing the Reagan administration, popularized signing state 
ments by urging courts to look to them for evidence of 
whata statute "really means." Reagan appended signing 
statements 71 times, and Clinton used the provision 105 
times. But no one approaches Bush's numbers. What can 
Congress do? It could hold hearings or withhold funding. 
But it's unlikely that a partisan Congress would consider 
the more serious steps of censure or impeachment. Sena- 
tor Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
plans to hold hearings on signing statements. 


back-alley procedures. Doctors and 
patients sent to jail. Poor women 
forced to miss work and travel out of state to 
get care. These are some of the doomsday 
visions of a post-Roe v. Wade America. But a 
reversal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme 
Court may not prove so dire. The repeal of 
the federally protected right to terminate a 
pregnancy would likely have relatively Іше 
impact on abortion in America. Such a rever- 
sal could, however, have a huge, largely unan- 
ticipated effect on other areas of our lives. 
Roe has not made 
abortion universally 
accessible. Despite 
theoretical protec- 
tions enshrined in 
the contentious 1973 
ruling, 87 percent of [ese 
U.S. counties have no 
abortion providers. 
Various state laws 
permitted under 
Roe have introduced 
waiting periods, gag 
orders on doctors 
and other barriers to 
abortion. For women 
who live in these 
areas the situation is 
already grim, and the 
need to travel for an 
abortion is already a 
reality. But the states 
where women now 
go—Maryland, for 
instance, from the 
southeast—would 
continue to support 
abortion rights even if Roe were overturned. 
A reversal of Roe would open two other 
fronts to attack. The first is the legal defini- 
tion of life. The second is the privacy doctrine 
the Кое decision helped solidify as implicit in 
the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. 
Attempts to change the definition of life are 
already under way—both the recently passed 
South Dakota antiabortion bill and a potential 
ballot measure in Michigan define life as begin- 
ning at conception. Success on this front could 
have far-reaching implications. As Ramesh Pon- 
nuru writes in his book The Party of Death, “If 
abortion had not become the law of the land, 
we might not now be debating euthanasia or 
the killing of human embryos for research pur- 
poses. The same might work in reverse. The 
more we reject abortion, the more we might 


D roves of women dying after botched 


ABORTION AND YOU 


ROE V. WADE PROTECTS ALOT MORE THAN YOU THINK 


By Tim Mohr 


FORUM 


come to reject other choices for death too.” In 
other words, meddlin, cases such as Terri 
Schiavo's could be back on the menu, and 
stem-cell research could become a felony. 
Attacks on privacy may immediately target 
contraceptives, as hinted at during debate 
prior to the passage in May of a draconian 
antiabortion bill by Louisiana's House of Rep- 
resentatives. But the scope of attacks would be 
much broader than that: In 2003 when the 
US. Supreme Court struck down Texas's anti- 
sodomy laws in John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron 
Garner v. Texas, justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent- 
ing opinion specifically 
compared the case 
to Roe. He also wrote 
that the 14th Amend- 
ment “expressly allows 
states to deprive their 
citizens of ‘liberty,’ so 
long as ‘due process 
of law’ is provided.” 
Unfortunately, in this 
interpretation the 
right to experiment 
in the bedroom, the 
right to use contracep- 
tion and the right to 
| read the magazine in 
your hands—among 
many other “liberties” 
we take for granted 
today—would no lon- 
ger be protected once 
the landmark Roe had 
fallen. In summing 
up, Scalia stated, “The 
Court has taken sides 
in the culture war, 
departing from its role 
of assuring, as neutral observer, that the dem 
ocratic rules of engagement are observed. 
Under those rules of engagement, criminal- 
izing homosexuality was, he said, "well w 
the range of traditional democratic actior 
If Roe were reversed, the Supreme Court 
would open the door to banning almost any- 
thing conservatives dislike. And as conser- 
vatives themselves acknowledge, that list of 
dislikes extends into our most intimate spaces. 
It is not only a woman's womb protected by 
Roe; it is the library, laboratory and hospital, 
and the body and bedroom of every member 
of our society. Those areas would be vulnera- 
ble to even bolder attacks than we already see 
in conservative legislatures should the Court 
reverse Roe v. Wade. But you would still be able 
to go to Baltimore for an abortion. 


MARGINALI 


FROM ARE- 


woni 
de of Higher Education: "Long before 
the current wave of conservative at- 
tacks on the legacy and values of the 
Enlightenment, many left-wing aca- 
demics were deriding reason, free- 
бот and tolerance as bourgeois prej- 
dices, and scholarly objectivity as а 
smoke screen for the. 


view. Instead of 
championing 
individual rights, 
the academic left 
began to promote 
the ‘identity pali- 
tics' of defining peo- 
ple by race, gender and sexual orien- 
tation. But there is a parallel problem 
‘on the right. Today assaults on evolu- 
tion frequently find a platform in 
respectable conservative publications, 
50 do attacks on secularism and the 
separation of church and state. As 
Gitlin notes, many conservatives 
assert that the American republic was 
founded not on the principles of the 
Enlightenment but as a ‘Christian 
ration.’ On the right or the left, 
reason- and reality-based politics 

are increasingly hard to find. 


FROM A DISSENTING opinion 
written by Justice John Paul Stevens in 
the Supreme Court's Gar- 
cetti v. Ceballos ruling, a 
setback for whistle- 
blowers, in which the 
Court decided public 
employees were not 


while they are in office. The notion that 
there is a categorical difference be- 
tween speaking as a citizen and speak- 
ing in the course of one's employment 
is quite wrong. It is senseless to let 
constitutional protection for exactly the 
same words hinge on whether they fall 
within a job description." 


FROM COMMENTS by Richard 
Ebstein, a professor at Hebrew Uni- 
versity and the lead researcher of a 
study seeking a genetic component 
to sex addiction: "Some people really 
do think more about sex and place а 
greater importance on it than others 
Чо, and what our study suggests is 
that genes may make a substantial 
contribution to these differences. If 
you have a lower sex drive, it does 
not necessarily mean you should go 
to a sex therapist to see if something 
is wrong with you. IF 
it does not bother 
you or interfere with 
your life, then 
maybe you 
are best to 
just live with 2 
it. After all, if you —— 
(continued on 
page 47) 


45 


46 


READER RESPONSE 


MOUNTAINS VS. MOLE HILLS 

I'm not a Christian, but my back is 
getting up more and more when I sec 
Christian fundamentalists compared 
to Muslims acting out ("The War at 
Home," June). The Muslim world's 
reaction to Danish cartoons of Muham. 
mad was several orders of magnitude 
greater than Christian rcactions to The 
Last Temptation of Christ. In fact, in recent 
decades we have scen many examples 
of deliberate affronts to Christianity, 
and the response of those offended is 
usually condemned as mere ignorance 
and hatred. The double standard on 
this issue is appalling. Christians are 
told to get over it in the name of free 
speech, while the media trips all over 
itself to apologize and avoid offense 
when Muslims are angry. Show me an 
example in living memory when Chris- 
tians have run amok in every major 
city, looting, burning and murdering 


These religious fundamentalists don’t loot. 


in the name of Jesus. Then ГИ agree 
that Christian fundamentalists are just 
as scary and dangerous as their Muslim 
counterparts. Ugly behavior of any sort 
should, of course, be held up for scorn 
All I'm saying is we must use the same 
measuring stick for everybody 

Bill Brewer 

Colorado Springs, Colorado 


OPERATION DESERT THORN 

With regard to the statistics given 
in "Sex and the Service" (June): As a 
member of the United States Army, 
I realize I am part of one of the most 
conservative organizations in America 
Lam the only person I know of in my 


Force protection can mean different things. 


unit who voted for John Kerry, Al Gore 
and Bill Clinton (both times). 1 am an 
atheist, though I know chaplains play 
a vital role in the military. It docsn't 
bother me if someone is gay, wants an 
abortion or takes drugs—a person is 
born gay, abortions arc legal (for now, 
anyway), and drugs harm only the uscr. 
1t does bother me, however, when more 
than a million dollars is spent on “Every 
Soldier's Battle" kits to promote absti- 
nence. How many sets of body armor, 
up-armored HMMWVs, IED robots 
or other combat gear could that same 
amount of money have supplied? 

C. Benjamin Whalen 

Balad, Iraq 


САС ORDERS WILL SET YOU FREE 
The vitally important academic bill of 
rights does not operate “under the guise 
of protecting free speech” (“Newsfront,” 
June). It really does aim to protect free 
speech, a basic right endangered by the 
leftist hegemony in America's colleges. 
Stifling professors is a good thing when 
they waste classroom time raving mind- 
lessly about Bush or abortion. They get 
id very well to teach math or science. 
Parents shelling out 30 or 40 grand a 
year for their kids’ education may actu- 
ally be reactionary enough to expect 
professors to do their job. 
Ronald Wieck 
Kew Gardens, New York 


LOVE ON THE LINE 

I'm an immigration lawyer in Hous 
ton. Most of my clients are U.S. citi- 
zens married to inadmissible aliens. 1 
frequently attend forums for interna 
tional couples having severe immigra- 
tion problems. My clients, the forum 
attendees and I are all frustrated that 
most of the immigration debate is cen 
tered on employment-based concerns. 


The media and Congress have not suf 
ficiently discussed the impact of the law 
on couples. Speaking frankly, I believe 
the public still thinks it's unusual for 
white people and Latin people to want 
to have sex with cach other. 

Scott Laurel 

Houston, 


UNEASY LISTENING 
White House officials are prob- 
ably technically correct when they 
claim millions of domestic calls are 
not being listened to (“Don't Spy on 
Ме," June). However, that technicality 
is hiding the most treacherous crime 
ever committed against the American 
people. What if your electronic com- 
munications have shown you to be on 
the wrong political, religious, moral 
or sexual side? Well, then your trans- 
gressions have been duly noted in 
your NSA profile—or have they? It’s 
a secret, and only the administration 
knows for sure. 
Bill Moreno 
Calabasas, California 


BACKSTORY 

At a garage sale I picked up one of 
your issues from 1963, back when you 
were serializing Hef's Playboy Philoso- 
phy. The reader letters responding to 
previous installments were amazing— 
people from all walks of life, from 
Bible-thumping preachers to divin- 


THE PLAYBOY PHILOSOPHY, 


a чаридан gas mt 


The origins of our Forum section 


ity students to Unitarians, engaging 
in civil debate about a complex topic 
The recent years of Republican rule 
and creeping fundamentalism have 
been discouraging, but 1 have to say, 
that issue made me feel good again. 
I'm going to see if I can find all the 
issues from 1962 to 1966 just to read. 
the letters! 


Dan Kegel 
Los Angeles, € 


lifornia 


E-mail via the web at letters.playboy.com. Or 
write: 730 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019. 


Morality Bites 

BLACK JACK, MISSOURI—Olivia Shelltrack and Fon- 
dray Loving were denied an occupancy permit 
for the house they bought in this St. Louis sub- 
urb. The unmarried couple planned to move into 
the four-bedroom home with their two children 
and Shelltrack's daughter from an earlier rela- 
tionship, but a town ordinance bars occupancy 
by more than three people rot related by "blood, 
marriage or adoption." The city council recently 
voted down a proposal to change the law. Many 
municipalities have similar rules, hoping to pre- 
vent frat houses, brothels and, more recently, 
groups of unrelated immigrant workers sharing 
shelter. Mayor Norman McCourt claimed Black 
Jack's ordinance was designed to prevent over- 
crowding. But in a letter concerning a similar 
case in 1999, McCourt mentioned the commu- 
nity's "morals and standards.” He also wrote, 
"The easiest resolution to cure the situation 
would be for the occupants to get married. Our 
community believes this is the appropriate way 
to raise a family.” Shelltrack disagrees. “It just 
comes down to the fact that it shouldn't really be 
any d their business,” she says. "They shouldn't 
set their own moral values and agenda on any 
body. That's not how a city should be run." 


Good News, Bad News 

NEW YORK стү-1п this year's annual UN report 
on AIDS, worldwide growth rates of the disease 
appear to be slowing for the first time since it 
was identified 25 years ago. Dire prognostica 
tions about an explosion in the rate of new in 
fections in China and India, for instance, seem 
not to have come true. In the U.S. the number 


Terror Tactics 

WALDO, FLORIOA—On May 28 hazmat teams 
were called in to handle what police clas- 
sified as a weapon of mass destruction 
deployed against Café Risqué, an adult 
shop scheduled to open in this town, 
just outside Gainesville. Alachua County 
investigators said a two-gallon container 
filled with a “caustic, corrosive" fluid 
had been placed on an air conditioner. A 
hose ran from the jug into the building, 
and another connected it to an outside 
spigot; the chemical had been forced 
into the building with water, destroying 
опе room inside. For months prayer vig- 
ils had been held at the location in an at- 
tempt to prevent the shop from opening. 
“You're trying to hurt people," Sergeant 
Keith Faulk said of the attack. "You're 
trying to change their ideas and instill 
fear. That's exactly what terrorists do. 
This person is a local terrorist." 


of new cases has stabilized since 2000 at about 
40,000 a year, according to the Centers for Dis- 
ease Control and Prevention, though the number 
of people living with AIDS in the U.S. reached a 
new high of 1.2 million in 2005. The UN report 
provided more food for thought about the situa- 
tion here at home: Evidence suggests that risky 
sexual behavior may be increasing among gay 
men as the perceived threat of HIV recedes, and 
AIDS has become the leading cause of death 
among African American women ages 25 to 
34. Black women are also half as likely as other 
groups to receive the latest AIDS drugs. 


Target Practice 

Los aNGELES— Video-game developer Pandemic Stu- 
dios has angered Venezuelan politicians with its 
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, set in Venezuela 
and planned for release next year. According to the 
game's website, players attempt to overthrow "a 
power-hungry tyrant who messes with Venezue- 
125 oil supply sparking an invasion that Іште the 
country into a war zone.” Ven- 
ezuelan congressman Ismael 
Garcia called Mercenaries 2 
"psychological terror" and 
claimed it was a precursor to 
real American military action 
Though Рапсетіс vice presi- 
dent Greg Richardson says his 
company has no ties to the 
US. government, Pandemic's 
website describes its game 
Full Spectrum Warrior/Army Training as a "squad- 
level, dismounted, light-infantry training simulator 
created for use by the U.S. Army." 


MARGINALIA 


(continued from page 45) 
are not good at music, you don't 
keep on trying to play the 
saxophone." 


FROM THE LYRICS of the song 
“Not Ready to Make Nice,” the first 
single from the Dixie Chicks’ new 
album, Taking the Long Way: "How 
in the world can the words that I 
said/ Send somebody so over the 
edge/ That they'd write me a let- 
tet/ Sayin’ that | better shut up and 
sing/ Or my life will be over?" 


FROM A COURT RULING pro- 
tecting the confidentiality of online 
journalists’ sources after Apple sued 
reporters who had published materi- 
als on the Internet about an impend- 
ing product launch: “We decline the 
implicit invitation to embroil 
‘ourselves in questions of 
what constitutes. 

"legitimate joumal- 
ism.’ We can think of 
по workable test or 
principle that would. 
distinguish "legitimate" 
from ‘illegitimate’ news." 


FROM THE WEBSITE of the 
Minuteman Project, explaining 
the group's plan to build а 10-mile- 
long fence of metal barriers and 
razor wire along the border between 
Arizona and Mexico: “The Minute- 
man Project did not think up this. 
fence plan but is willing lo 
be part of ils creation, 
planning and implementa- 
tion on behalf of all 
American-loving 
patriots. The 
Minuteman Project 
welcomes all those 
who want to secure 
America by lend- 
ing a helping 

hand. This fence 
project is so 
important that it 
cannot depend on just one lone. 
group to finish such an ominous task. 
It will require the cooperation of 
many, possibly all of the American. 
people. The opposition will пизтерге- 
sent the Minutemen by calling 
them frauds, grandstanders and 
racists. Has America tired of hear- 
ing these empty words? | think so.” 


FROM A COLUMN by Jennifer 
Van Bergen on Findlaw.com, a legal- 
news site: "Recently, students at 
the University of Miami (a private 
school but one with a stated policy of 
fostering free speech) demonstrated 
alongside striking maintenance work- 
ers to show solidarity. Now they face 
the threat of disciplinary charges. 
These students received ‘administra- 
tive subpoenas’ to appear before a 
school official and were told they 
faced possible major disciplinary 
action on grounds of ‘disorderly con- 
duct’ and failure to comply with a 
school order. But instead of charging 
the students, the oficial asked them to 
look at pictures and identify others who 
participated in the strike activities.” 


47 


FORUM 


YOUR VOTE DOESN'T MATTER 


WITH NEW DATABASES, POLITICIANS DETERMINE ELECTION 
OUTCOMES BEFORE YOU ENTER THE BOOTH 


edistricting—better known as 
Вч 

years been honed to such an art 
that one of the basic tenets of democ- 
racy no longer holds. Voters are sup- 
posed to be able to choose their 
representatives; instead, politicians 
these days choose their voters. Of. 
course, gerrymandering—named after 
Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, 
who redrew state districts for the 1812 
clection—is nothing new. Districts are 


redrawn at least every 10 years, after 
each census. But until the 1990s such 
tinkering was undertaken with wax 
pencils and transparencies. With com- 
puters, new Census Bureau digital car- 
tography and geographic information 
systems able to crunch quantities of 
data and draw maps based on them, 
the practice has attained a sinister level 
of efficiency, In 2000 just six House 
members lost reelection bids—a 98 per 

cent success rate for incumbents. Mich: 


seat by 111 votes in 2000; after redis- 

ting, he won in 2002 by a margin 
of 37 percent. Of 153 U.S. House and 
state congressional scats up for grabs in 
California's 2004 clections, none 
changed hands. Why? Gerrymander- 
ing, engincered by lawmakers with little 
oversight, creates ever larger majorities 
for incumbents: In 2004 only 22 of 435 
House elections were decided by fewer 
than 10 percentage points. 


GEORGIA District 13 is represented by second-term Democrat David Scott, 
a brother-in-law of former Atlanta Brave Hank Aaron. Scott's district includes 
parts of the city of Atlanta plus portions of 11 counties, helping to keep two 
surrounding districts whiter and thus more dependably Republican. 


ILLINOIS The claws of crab-shaped district 17—the only Democratic district 
beyond Chicago and East St. Louis—wete added to make sure five surrounding. 
districts would remain reliably Republican. Incumbent Lane Evans is not running, 
making this one of the few open seats in the November midterm elections. 


MARYLAND District three, highlighted here, is one of several odd demarcations 
in the state, which also has two black majority districts awkwardly built around the 
city of Baltimore (district seven) and Prince George's County (district four). South- 
east of South Gate are sections of district one, a Republican stronghold. 


TEXAS The 25th district is reliably Democratic. Of its 651,619 

447,059 are Hispanic; on either side of it are similarly narrow distri 
stacked with Hispanics. Creating these supermajority districts allows others— 
such as the 14th, between Houston and Corpus Christi to remain Republican. 


PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MICHAEL BROWN 


A heckuva conversation with the maligned ex-FEMA chief about Katrina's 


fury, why we're : 


ill not safe and which congressman can, as he says, "bite me" 


Quer the course of several horrific days a year 
ago, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emer- 
gency Management Agency, went from rela- 
tive obscurity to fame and then, just as quickly, 
from fame to infamy. On August 29 Hurricane 
Katrina hit the Gulf coast and devastated more 
than 90,000 square miles. New Orleans was 
flooded, and more than 1,800 people died. 
In addition to causing death, injury and dis- 
placement, the storm caused approximately $75 
billion in damage. At first President George 
W. Bush famously lauded Brown, saying, 
"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." Within 
days, however, Brown was forced to resign after 
what was generally viewed as his, and the gov- 
ernment's, incompetence. 

Brown was vilified. Editorial writers, politi- 
cians and citizens called him everything from “an 
embarrassment and a menace" to “an unqualified 
political appointee” who was "utterly overwhelmed 
by the magnitude of the disaster.” “The more one 
learns about him, one is surprised he is in that 
ob in the first place,” said conservative commen- 
tator William Kristol on Fox News after Time 
magazine accused Brown of falsifying his résumé. 
Auron Broussurd, president of Louisiana's Jef- 
ferson Parish, told CBS's 48 Hours that FEMA 
under Brown “has committed murder here in 
New Orleans.” The late-night comedians had a 
field day at Brown's expense. Jon Stewart said 
Brown's performance had been downgraded from 
“heckuva” to "Faulknerian idiot man-child.” 


“Terrorism has to get the resources it needs but 
not at the expense of natural disasters, which 
we know are coming—earthquakes, hurri- 
canes. Chertoff keeps trying to shift the blame 
back to me, which solves nothing.” 


The barrage didn't end when Brown stepped 
aside. A House committee investigating the 
response to Katrina released more than 1,000 
damning e-mail messages sent between Brown 
and his staff. In one Brown is preoccupied with 
finding a sitter for his two dogs. In another, one 
of his assistants advises him to modify his appear- 
ance before talking to the press. “Even the presi- 
dent rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow,” she 
wrote. “Roll up the sleeves." During the worst of 
the hurricane Brown wrote to а co-worker, "1 am 
а fashion god. Are you proud of me?” 

The Bush administration might have wished 
Brown would quietly go away, bul he has not. 
Instead, after a series of congressional hear- 
ings and the release of videotapes showing him 
briefing the president during Katrina, he has 
been partially vindicated. Contradicting the 
view of Brown as inept, uninvolved, egotistical 
and unqualified, the videotapes show he was 
informed and engaged, though frustrated in 
has attempt to get the administration's atten- 
tion and support. Broum has refused io be the 
administration's fall guy. Instead he has fought 
back, charging that the government's preoccupa- 
tim with the war on terror distracted the nation 
and drained resources from FEMA, that his 
boss at the Department of Homeland Security, 
Michael Chertoff, restricted his ability to manage 
the disaster and that the New Orleans and Mis- 
sissippi governments were dysfunctional. 

Brown, 51, was born in Guymon, Okla- 


“We are less prepared now than before 
Katrina. It’s more of a mess than ever. People 
should be scared, and they should demand. 
more of Ihe government than this kind of 
half-assed way of doing things." 


homa, where his father worked as a printer. Не 
attended Central State University and receiued 
a law degree from Oklahoma City University 
in 1981. Afler graduating he worked as an 
assistant to the city manager of Edmond, ОМа- 
homa. His résumé stated he had emergency- 
services oversight in that position, but Time 
reported that the head of public relations for the 
city denied Brown had oversight over anybody, 
noting, “The assistant is more like an intern.” 
(The spokesperson later claimed that comment 
was taken out of context.) 

Brown also served as staff director of the 
Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma 
legislature, and he was elected to the Edmond 
City Council but resigned to practice law. He 
ran for Congress in 1988 and lost. Brown next 
became the judges and stewards commissioner 
for the International Arabian Horse Associa- 
tion. After Bush took office, in January 2001, 
Brown joined FEMA as general counsel, hired 
by his longtime friend Joe Allbaugh, then 
FEMA directos, who had run Bush's 2000 
election campaign. Allbaugh later named 
Brown to the post of FEMA deputy direc- 
tor; when Allbaugh resigned, Bush appointed 
Brown as director, in January 2003. 

Brown is married and has two children, and 
he divides his time between an apartment in 
Washington, D.C. and homes in Taos, New 
Mexico and Boulder, Colorado. He has started 
а new business, а consulting firm for disaster 


PHOTOGRAPHY © SAM KITTNER. 


“In the middle of the disaster I thought about 
quitting —ofter the first few days. But then 1 
thought, People are dying. people are suffer- 
ing; 1 can't leave. It was a no-win situation. 
So I truly had to be the scapegoat.” 


49 


PLATS OF 


50 


preparedness, but it will not be an easy ride. The 
Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, “No sane 
person would trust Brown to plop an egg into a 
pot of boiling water without screwing it up.” The 
St. Louis Post-Dispatch added, ‘After you hire 
Brownie, you might want to hire Bphoid Mary 
to help you avoid infectious diseases.” 

Anticipating the emotional anniversary of 
Katrina—a time when the nation will remember 
the dead and look ahead to determine how well 
we are poised for the next disaster —we tracked 
Broun down for an interview, Contributing 
Editor David Sheff met with him in Boulder. 

“After the public shellacking he had with- 
stood, I was surprised to find that not only is 
Broun still standing, he is thriving,” reports 
Sheff. "Brown is now a sought-after advisor on 
disaster preparedness to companies and commu- 
nities, as well as a media commenta- 
tor on everything from earthquakes 
to terrorism to avian flu. 

"As he was described during. 
Katrina—a characterization repeated 
in congressional hearmgs—Broun 
sometimes looks like a deer staring 
into headlights, but he also appears 
serious, thoughtful and concerned. 
After spending a day with him—dur- 
ing which, between interview sessions, 
he fielded endless phone calls and 
e-mails and appeared on Neil Cavu- 
105 show on Fox News Channel—I 
was struck by how far up he has 
fallen. Only in America can a tepu- 
tation for ineptitude lead to stardom 
plus a career that requires authority, 
trustworthiness and leadership." 


PLAYBOY: Looking back on 
Katrina one year later, do you 
agree with the Senate subcom- 
mittee that concluded FEMA 
should be scrapped? 

BROWN: One third to two thirds 
of the subcommittee's recom- 
mendations mirror almost word 
for word the points I had been 
trying to make to Tom Ridge, 
Michael Chertoff and the presi- 
dent for three years. Now, God 
forbid, they aren't going to admit 
Mike Brown was right. He has 
to continue to be the scapegoat. 
Now they say they want to abol- 
ish this dysfunctional agency and create a 
new one. The way they work, they'll prob- 
ably change the name and do nothing 
else. I don't think anything will change. 
1 think it will fall on its face. [groans] It's 
incredibly frustrating. 

PLAYBOY: You have blamed everyone for 
FEMA'S failures during Katrina—the 
Department of Homeland Sccurity, the 
administration and the local govern- 
ments in New Orleans and Mississippi. 
But most people still blame you 

BROWN: I know, and that's something 1 
live with every day. The truth has come 
out, though. It all comes down to the 
clash between FEMA and the Depart- 
ment of Homeland Security. 

PLAYBOY: What is the nature of this clash? 


BROWN: The DHS and I had a personal- 
ity clash, for lack of a better term. Of its 
185,000 employecs, well over 180,000 
are focused on terrorism prevention. The 
other very small group concentrates on 
how to respond when the big onc hap- 
pens. This creates an inherent clash. The 
bulk of the moncy gocs to prevention. In 
D.C. who do you think gets all the atten- 
tion? He who has the biggest pot of gold. 
Preparation gets the attention; dealing 
with disasters gets little. 

PLAYBOY: DHS secretary Michael Chertoff 
has charged you have tried to drive а 
wedge between the nation's interests іп 
preparing for disaster and preparing for 
terrorist attacks. How do you respond? 
BROWN: It's nonsense. Terrorism has to 


I'm a fighter. | made the determination 
to bide my time and, when the time 
was right, to come out fighting. 


get the resources it needs but not at the 
expense of natural disasters, which we 
know are coming—earthquakes, hurri- 
canes. Chertoff keeps trying to shift the 
blame back to me, which solves nothing. 
PLAYBOY: And you point the finger back 
at him. 

BROWN: My point is, if we don't acknowl- 
edge the problems with the system and 
fix them, we're in trouble. Nothing will 
ever change. 

PLAYBOY: А year later have we begun to 
fix them? 


: That's a serious accusation. 
BROWN: lt is. 
PLAYBOY: Let's make this perfectly clear: 
Are you suggesting we didn't learn from 


Katrina and are not better prepared 
for another disaster, whether a terrorist 
attack, hurricane or carthquake? 
BROWN: We arc less prepared now than 
before Katrina. The mistake was the knec- 
jerk reaction after 9/11. Politicians always 
want to show they're doing something 
“We're going to rearrange everything 
We're going to redo the organizational 
chart.” All the buzzwords, “We're going 
to create these synergies.” As a result it’s 
more of a mess than ever. 

PLAYBOY: After 9/11 and Katrina, that’s а 
scary thought. 

BROWN: People should be scared, and 
they should demand more of the gov- 
ernment than this kind of half-assed 
way of doing things 

PLAYBOY: If we're not better 
prepared for a natural disaster, 
are we at least ready for a ter- 
rorist attack? 

BROWN: No. 

PLAYBOY: Haven't we made new 
plans based on 9/11? 

BROWN: Let's say the next 9/11 is 
a similar attack. Terrorists take 
planes and tear buildings down 
or they bomb buildings; it hap- 
pens as it did in New York, but 
in Los Angeles. There are some 
really good people in L.A., but 
who's going to show up on 
behalf of FEMA? Who's going to 
show up on behalf of the DHS? 
Who's going to be in charge? 
PLAYBOY: Wouldn't Chertoff 
take charge? And if so, is that 
a good thing? 

BROWN: I don't think it would 
be a good thing. Chertoff is a 
bright man, but he's an appel 
late court judge. He tends to 
manage the way you do court 
decisions: “Put the brief in front 
of me, and ГЇЇ make a decision." 
You need more of a strategic 
point of view. You need dyna- 
mism, leadership and a plan. 
PLAYBOY: Which he lacks? 
BROWN: [Nods] In my opinion. 
PLAYBOY: Should he have been 
fired or, like you, asked to resign? 
BROWN: I always thought so. 
PLAYBOY: Why wasn't he? 

BROWN: I think it goes back to inertia. The 
president's not going to do anything. 
PLAYBOY: Wouldn't it make him look deci- 
sive to fire Chertoff? 

BROWN: I don't know. Go ask him. 
PLAYBOY: Do you maintain it was а mis- 
take for the Bush administration to put 
FEMA under the DHS? 

BROWN: It was 

PLAYBOY: But you were part of the team that 
integrated the agency under the DHS. 
BROWN: I thought I could make it work 
Гуе now done a 180-degree turn. It's not 
going to work. 

PLAYBOY: If everyone agrees FEMA failed 
during Katrina, why the resistance to 
dramatic change? 


BROWN: There are three things. I'm going 
to make everybody mad when I say them. 
First is inertia. The government doesn't 
move fast. Second are the turf battles in 
Congress. Everybody wants a piece of 
that pie. The DHS doesn't want to give 
up any of its turf. Third, pulling FEMA 
out of the DHS now is tantamount to 
admitting a mistake. This administration 
does not want to admit mistakes. 
PLAYBOY. Even at the expense of America's 
ability to respond to future disasters? 
BROWN: Yes. 

PLAYBOY: Exactly why is FEMA ineffective. 
under the DHS? 

BROWN: Pre-DHS the FEMA operation 
center used to pull together all the emer- 
gency support functions during a disaster. 
If we needed the Department of Trans- 
portation or the U.S. Postal Service to do 
something, like an orchestra conductor, we 
just tapped and said, “Go do it." We could 
say tothe Department of Defense, "I want 
you to take 50 Black Hawk helicopters to 
the scene of the disaster." It worked on 
April 19, 1995 with the Alfred Р. Murrah 
building in the Oklahoma City bombing. И 
worked on 9/11 when former FEMA direc- 
tor Joe Allbaugh and I totally integrated 
with the FBI, the New York City police 
and fire departments and the city's emer- 
gency management. At the Pentagon we 
integrated not only with urban search-and- 
rescue teams but with the U.S. military. 
FEMA was seen as the disaster expert. 
PLAY&OY. What changed? 

BROWN: The FEMA operation center still 
exists, but now you have the DHS operation 
center, and it competes with the Customs 
and Border Protection operation center and 
the Transportation Security Administration 
operation center. It's chaos and everyone 
is fighting for power and control and no 
опе responds and nothing gets done. Afier 
Katrina hit, | met with Governor Haley 
Barbour to find out what he needed in 
Mississippi. I got back on the G5 jet to head 
to Baton Rouge, and Chertoff caught me 
on the phone. He said, "I've been trying to 
reach you. I'm üred of you flying around 
everywhere. I want you to go to Baton 
Rouge and plop your butt down in Baton 
Rouge and not leave.” I was in the middle 
of a disaster, attempting to respond, in this 
case working with the Mississippi gover- 
nor, and Chertoff was screaming because 
1 hadn't called him back. 

PLAYBOY. How did you react? 

BROWN: I was dumbfounded. It was the 
most ludicrous order. I was speechless. 
PLAYBOY: Did you do as he said—plop 
your butt down in Baton Rouge? 
BROWN: 1 finally gained my composure 
and said, "Do you really want me to tell 
Haley Barbour and Governor Riley of Ala- 
bama and Governor Blanco of Louisiana 
and Senator Thad Cochran, the chair of 
the Senate Appropriations Committee, ‘I 
can't see you because I have been told to 
stay in Baton Rouge?” And he said yes. 
PLAYBOY: What were you thinking when 
this was happening? 


BROWN: At that point I didn't think to 
myself, I'm being set up. I thought, 
There's no way 1 can win this. 

PLAYBOY: But did Chertoff have a point? 
Could you have done your job better by 
staying put than by flying around? 
BROWN: My job was to get out there and 
find out what was happening. The only 
way to cut bureaucratic red tape is to go 
find the red tape. I'll give you an exam- 
ple. In Florida during Hurricane Andrew, 
1 was going to different counties with Jeb 
Bush. We split up, and I decided to go to 
a feeding station where there were Navy 
recruits. We had people lined up. I got 
there, and everybody was sitting around 
twiddling their thumbs. 1 was panic- 
stricken. I had a line of people, and it was 
hot. They needed ice. They needed water. 
They needed food. They were frustrated 
to begin with because of the disaster, and 
now they were more frustrated because 
the state and federal governments weren't 
doing what they were supposed to be 
doing. I was furious because my people 
in the field were sitting there. “We can't 
find anything,” they said. They were com- 
plaining they weren't getting what they 


The president has ihe bully 
pulpit. I can do 1,000 
interviews, but if the president 
had shown up, if he had 
been standing next to me, it 
would have been different. 


needed. Well, why the hell weren't they 
doing something about it? Sceing that, 1 
was able to break the red tape. 1 got on 
my cell phone. 1 started yelling at my fed- 
eral coordinating officer, "I'm at such and 
such a place. I don't know what's happen- 
ing, but we have a breakdown here. Fix it, 
and fix it now.” Within an hour I had heli- 
copters coming in and stuff happening, 
bringing in supplies so they could get that 
line going again. That's what the FEMA 
director is supposed to do. 

PLAYBOY: In retrospect, what prompted 
Chertoff to take you out of the field? 
BROWN: I don't know. Ask him. I think he 
was just thinking, I can't reach you on the 
phone [maps fingers] right when I want you 
Well, sometimes I would look at my phone 
and see it was Chertoff. 1 would think, 1 
don't have time for this. Гуе got a disaster 
to run. I wouldn't call him back instanta- 
neously. Apparently this upset him. 
PLAYBOY: Was Chertoff trying to put you 
in your place? Did he think you weren't 
being effective, or did he simply want to 
control you? 

BROWN: I think it was all of those things 
Suddenly this was the biggest thing to hit. 


the country. He was already being cri 
cized because he was off at some avian-flu 
conference. He wasn't engaged. There 
was this fecling that he had to gct control 
of me. It totally hamstrung me and sent 
me spiraling into disaster. 

PLAYBOY: You re spreading blame around, 
but it sounds as if you reserve your most 
bitter censure for Chertoff. 

BROWN: Yes. 

PLAYBOY: Did you consider ignoring his 
order to stay in Baton Rouge? 

BROWN: I did. I wish I had. 

PLAYBOY: Why didn't you? 

BROWN: I had a lot of good people 
around me. But with the exception of 
one or two, they were all too young and 
too D.C.-focused. These young turks 
work for the administration. They're not 
experienced. They're sometimes scared 
of their own shadow. 

PLAYBOY: But you were supposed to be 
in charge. 

BROWN: I know. Iam so mad at myself for 
not saying, "Screw you." But everybody 
around me was like. you know, “It’s the 
DHS." Yes. I wish I had said. "Screw it.” 
PLAYBOY: Chertoff obviously has another 
version of events. 

BROWN: The e-mails bear me out. 
PLAYBOY: We'll get to the e-mails. First, 
you have said the administration would 
not have fumbled this disaster as badly if 
it had been a terrorist attack. Do you still 
hold that position? 

BROWN: Yes. 

PLAYBOY: What would have made the 
difference? 

BROWN: For one thing, the president 
would have shown up on the first day. 
He wouldn't have stayed in Crawford 
pLaveoY: How would that have changed 
the circumstances? 

BROWN: The president has the bully pul- 
pit. I can do 1,000 interviews, but if the 
president had shown up, if he had been 
standing next to me, it would have been 
different. You would've had the entire 
federal government saying to the presi- 
dent, "What does Brown need?" 
PLAYBOY: Bush has been accused of fail- 
ing to recognize the seriousness of the 
Katrina problem. Did he? 

BROWN: I believe the president thought, 
We have another hurricane coming 
Brown did four of them last year back- 
to-back. Why is this one different? I don't 
think he grasped the catastrophic scope 
of Katrina. The president had confidence 
in me. “Brown'll take care of it." 
PLAYBOY: Wasn't it your job to make sure 
he understood? 

BROWN: The videotapes prove I informed 
the president and his staff. 

PLAYBOY: Even if Bush had shown up, 
managing the disaster would still have 
fallen into your hands. What specifically 
would have been different if this had 
been a terrorist attack? 

BROWN: Chertoff would have asserted 
himself, and we wouldn't have had 
multiple chains of command. 1 would 51 


PLAYBOY 


have gouen the Department of Defense 
faster. The DOD would've been [suaps 
fingers] right there. 1 was getting some 
DOD support, but 1 wasn't getting this 
varrrump that I wanted. 1 wrote an e-mail 
saying, "Where is the blankety-blank 
Army? I want the Army now," in all caps. 
Iwas desperate and furious. If the presi- 
dent had been there, they would have 
responded instantly. 

PLAYBOY: What would the DOD have 
been able to accomplish if its forces had 
arrived earlier? 

BROWN: I'd have gotten people out of the 
Superdome faster. It would've been full 
steam ahead—a helicopter evacuation, 
Humvees and personnel carriers, boat res- 
cue, whatever. I should have called Donald 
Rumsfeld and Gordon England, the dep- 
uty secretary, myself. I should have said, 
“Look, guys, this is one big Fing deal. We've 
got to fix this now.” They would have re- 
sponded, I am also disappointed in myself 
for playing along with DHS public affairs, 
FEMA public affairs and White House 
public affairs. They were all crafting the 
message, a lie. І was torn between trying to 
make it work their way and basically say- 
ing. “Screw you." At one point my deputy 
chief of staff told me he'd received a call 
from the White House in which he was told, 
“Get Mike to talk up the secretary more.” 
I was thinking, We have a catastrophic 
disaster on our hands here, and people are 
worried about who I am or am not talking 
up at a press conference? Srrew it! 
PLAYBOY: A White House e-mail quoted the 
president as being happy thar you were get- 
ting the flack, not him. When did you get a 
sense that you would be the fall guy? 
BROWN: 1 remember telling my wife I 
wasn't going to come out of this. Whatever 
I had accornplished in the previous three 
years had just gone down the tubes. 
PLAYBOY: What had you accomplished? By 
your own admission FEMA was a disaster. 
BROWN: We had made progress. 1 had 
tried to fix things. We had scenarios 
planned for four big catastrophes: a San 
Francisco earthquake, another terrorist 
attack on New York City, a category-5 
hurricane in the Gulf and an earthquake 
on the New Madrid Fault, which goes 
through Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas 
and parts of Ohio and Kentucky. With all 
due respect to my predecessors at FEMA, 
James Lee Witt and Allbaugh, both of 
whom I greatly respect and admire, the 
agency had never done catastrophic disas- 
ter planning. I pushed and pushed to do 
it. I asked for $100 million to get started. 
The DHS gave me $20 million, so I had 
to cut back. My hands were tied. 
PLAYBOY: Could you have gone around 
the DHS? 

BROWN: By going to the White House, 
saying, "These knuckleheads won't give 
me the money"? You can't do that in 
Washington for very long. 

PLAYBOY: How had you prepared for the 
2005 hurricane season? 


52 BROWN: We thought we were ready. We 


started watching what would become 
Katrina when it was still out in the 
Atlantic. We thought it would hit Miami 
like Hurricane Andrew. Bur it skirted 
Miami and went back into the Gulf. 
Then we were panicked. The storm still 
had enough internal pressure that we 
thought it was going to grow. The ques- 
tion was, Where is it going? Galveston? 
Gulfport? New Orleans? We started 
moving all our stuff into the Gulf four or 
five days before landfall. The cone got 
narrower and narrower. It was going to 
be New Orleans. 1 sent an urban search- 
and-rescue team, a national-disaster 
medical team, a federal coordinating offi- 
cer and a public-affairs person. Only one 
guy made it, my public-aflairs guy, Marty 
Bahamonde. The medical teams finally 
got there, but they decided to evacuate 
because it was getting worse and worse. 
On Sunday afternoon, putting it off as 
late as I could, trying to make sure I 
had everything lined up, I went out to 
Andrews Air Force Base, jumped on mili- 
tary air and squeezed under the radar 
into Baton Rouge. 1 immediately went 
to the evacuation operation center, met 


My friends in the 
Republican Party—the 
bullies—jumped all over 
Clinton about parsing words. 
Now the president was 
parsing words. 


with Governor Blanco and then went 
back to the hotel room to ride it out. By 
late Monday morning we were beginning 
10 get reports of flooding. 

PLAYBOY: Meanwhile Bush famously 
said, "No one anticipated the breach of 
the levees." 

BROWN: My jaw dropped. 

PLAYBOY: Was Bush ignorant of the situa- 
tion, or was it intentional deception? 
BROWN: He doesn't have an incred- 
ible command of the English language. 
Maybe he meant "None of us really 
wanted this to happen." 

PLAYBOY: "None of us really wanted this 
to happen" is far different from “No one 
anticipated the breach of the levees.” 
BROWN: Yes. My friends in the Republi- 
can Party—the bullies—jumped all over 
Clinton about parsing words. Now the 
president was parsing words. "Are the 
levees going to breach?" “Are they going 
to top?" Who cares? We were going to 
have flooding in New Orleans, and we 
knew New Orleans was a fishbowl. 
PLAYBOY: Is it conceivable the president 
didn't know the levees could breach? 
BROWN: I had been having regular con- 


versations with Andy Card, Bush's chief 
of staff, and Joe Hagin, Bush's deputy 
chief of staff. 
PLAYBOY: Were you fecling more isolated 
from the administration? 
BROWN: I was feeling totally out of control. 
PLAYBOY: Did you call the president at 
that point? 
BROWN: I spoke to Andy Card. I'll never 
forget what he said to me, because it was 
so unlike him. He said, "Well, Mike, 1 
don't know what to tell you, other than 
try to follow the chain of command and 
see if we can make it work." Chain of 
command? We had thousands of people 
in the Superdome, maybe 12,000. We had 
planned for 2,500. We had enough food 
and water for 24 hours. Chain of com- 
mand? We had people on rooftops. The 
airlines agreed to come in and start flying 
people out, but the TSA, which handles 
airport security, told me, "We can't do that 
yet because we don't have a way to screen 
these people." Screen them? I didn't give 
a shit about screening people. "Well, you 
know, we've got to run this back up the 
chain of command." Oh God! 
PLAYBOY: The TSA is under Chertoff too. 
Did you call and ask him to intervene? 
BROWN: Many times. If it had been 
answerable directly to me—but those 
people weren't answerable to me. 
PLAYBOY: At the time, you said the gov- 
ernments of Louisiana and New Orleans 
were dysfunctional. Would other cities 
have responded more effectively? 
BROWN: I got blasted in the media, but it’s 
the truth. There was an incompetent polit- 
ical structure, corruption and ignorance. 
PLAYBOY: Ignorance? 
BROWN: Not ignorance but ignoring the 
problems down there. I'm not going to 
say it publicly anywhere, but in my mind 
I know some states are better prepared. 
PLAYBOY: What's your opinion of К. David 
Paulison, who currently runs FEMA? 
BROWN: Joe Allbaugh and I brought him 
in. We had a couple of choices. We were 
looking for some people to run the U.S. 
Fire Administration, and our first choice 
didn't work out. So we found Dave and 
brought him in 
PLAYBOY: Are you saying he isn't qualified 
for the position? 
BROWN: I don't know. About seven or eight 
people turned down the job. Good people. 
I had tried to hire some of them before, and 
they turned me down because they didn't 
want to work for the federal government. 1 
don't blame them. 1 wish Dave well, but 1 
think he's been set up for failure. 
PLAYBOY: Why is he set up for failure? 
BROWN: He has the same problems 1 had, 
plus now it’s a demoralized agency with 
the same structure I was fighting. He's 
in a position where he can't really make 
any decisions. 
PLAYBOY: You've come out fighting, but 
couldn't this have destroyed you? Did 
you consider running away? Suicide? 
BROWN: No, it never crossed my mind. 
(continued on page 140) 


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54 


nasunny March morning I 
drove north on Route 19 
toward Deep Mine 26, Lick 
Fork, Lower Banner seam, in 
Dickenson County, at the extreme 
southwest corner of Virginia in the 
heart of Appalachia. There were coal- 
miner songs on the radio: "And when 
I die, dear Lord in heaven, /Please 
take my soul from the cold, dark 


mine.” I passed through the tiny coal- ~ 


camp town of Coeburn, where a sign 
read HOME OF FRIENDLY PEOPLE, апа 
turned right onto a corkscrewing two- 
lane blacktop that led me past tired 
old farmhouses, dilapidated trailer 
homes and abandoned log cabins as 
I wended up into the mountains. Fre- 
quently I had to slow down to let 22- 
wheel trucks go hurtling past me, and 
every so often I had to stop to let chil- 
dren cross the road after the school 
bus dropped them off or to give a 
beaver a chance to scuttle by. While 
waiting Га glance down the ravineat 
the rusted wrecks oí cars. 

Ten miles into the forest, by a 
set of railroad tracks, I turned left 
at a sign that read DEEP MINE 26 IN. 
Up ahead in a hollow between two 


Y 


| 


| 


ES 
[ET 


mountains I saw a line of Peterbilt 
dump trucks waiting their turn to 
park beside a towering pyramid of 
coal and have their cargo beds filled 
by shoveling bulldozers. I spotted a 
blue silo where coal was separated 
from rock and a conveyor belt that 
led down to a gaping black hole in 
the side of the mountain. To the left I 
saw a long, low prefabricated build- 
ing with a sign on it: PARAMONT COAL 
CO., LLC, DEEP MINE 25, A SUBSIDIARY OF 
ALPHA NATURAL RESOURCES, ABINGDON, VA. 

Thad no interest in coal mines or 
coal miners until January 2, 2006, 
when 12 miners were trapped and 
11 ultimately lost their lives in the 
Sago, West Virginia coal mine disas- 
ter. I began to think and read about 
coal miners, and now І was going to 
spend six days with them at Deep 
Mine 26. I would talk to miners 1,300 
feet underground and at restaurants. 
near their homes. I wanted to learn 
what I didn't know about coal min- 
ing. Most of all I wanted to know 
this: Who are these guys? 


At seven A.M. 12 section foremen sat 
on folding chairs within the cheap 


AS THE WORLD CONFRONTS A LOOMING ENERGY CRISIS, 
COAL PRODUCTION HAS AGAIN ASSUMED MAJOR 
IMPORTANCE. A FIRSTHAND LOOK AT HOW HALF THE 
NATION'S POWER SUPPLY IS WRESTED FROM THE EARTH 


BY PAT JORDAN 


— aE o | 


i 


A 1 


Ж 


56 


MINERS IN PIKEVILLE, KENTUCKY, 1998. THIS YEAR 33 MINERS HAVE DIED, PROMPTING CONGRESS TO PASS THE MINE 


pine-paneled walls of the mine superintendent's office. 
They wore hard hats, blue coveralls with glow-in-the-dark 
orange-and-silver stripes and steel-toe boots. Most of the 
men had beards, and their faces and hands were so filthy 
with coal dust that their eyes seemed to shine. They dipped 
Skoal from tin cans and spat tobacco juice into little plastic 
bottles while the superintendent, Henry Keith, 47, stood 
behind his desk and talked to them about safety. 

"All this Sago stuff is drawing us so much attention, 
y'all gotta study this like a bible," he said. Jerry Bled- 
soe, 52, the mine-safety foreman, passed out paperback 
copies of Title 30 of the Code of Federal Regulations. "It 
ain't just the fines; it's the impression," Keith continued. 
"И we got 62 S&S violations, it'll give us a black eye, 
even if we know they're nothing." S&S stands for "sig- 
nificant and substantial" —violations that contribute to 
an accident or illness. 

"God forbid we have an accident,” Bledsoe said, warn- 
ing about the media response. "They'll bring up our viola- 
tion history. It's a knee-jerk reaction. The best time to beat a 
violation is before an inspector writes it up. They're human 
beings. Dont argue with 'em. Just put doubt in their mind." 


10 Things to Know About 


АСТ OF 2006. 


Keith said, “Don't piss an inspector off. He's got you 
dead to rights." 

"Fess up," Bledsoe said. 

“If inspectors are told we've got a good reputation, 
that's what they see," Keith said. "If they're told we've 
got а bad rep, they're looking to write us uj 

Aíter the meeting Keith's assistant, Tim Vicars, took 
me on a tour of the building. I asked him if the Sago 
miners differed from those at 26. He said, "Well, West 
Virginia miners marry their sisters. But, hey, i 
family ain't good enough to marry, who is 
into the locker room where miners shower after their 
shifts. One of the miners told me, "It's the highlight of 
my day to shower and put on clean clothes. My neigh- 
bor's a doctor. He leaves for work dressed up. Miners 
dress up after work." 

We walked back to Keith's office. Vicars told me the 
mine is divided into thousands of rooms the size of a large 
bathroom. Miners cut out some coal going into a room, 
then cut out the rest as they retreat. 

Keith's office door was closed, so I sat outside with a 
miner named Shaky Baker. He (continued on page 132) 


EVERY DAY 42,000 miners 
go underground to produce 
an average of six tons of 
coal an hour. 
UNDERGROUND mines 
accounted for 96 percent 
of all U.S. coal 50 years 
ago. Today surface mines 
account for 60 percent. 
TWO THIRDS of under- 
ground coal extraction 

is performed by machines 
called continuous miners 
(pictured at right). 

ONE HALF of the nation's 
electricity is produced 

by burning coal in power- 
generating plants. 


THIS YEAR 26 miners have 
lost their lives underground, 
Seven on the surface. Last 
year 22 miners died. 

THE DEADLIEST under- 
ground mine disaster 
occurred in Monongah, West 
Virginia on December 6, 
1907, when 362 miners died. 
THE MOST plentiful energy 
resource in the U.S. is coal. 
Experts say reserves are 44 
times larger than those of oil, 
and coal is cheaper to extract. 
BURNING coal, though 
cleaner than ever, still pol- 
lutes. Each year coal-fired 
generating plants release 


1.9 billion metric tons of 
carbon dioxide (the chief 
culprit in global warming), 
about six times more than 
natural-gas plants emit. 


THE TOTAL number of 
coal-fired power plants in 
the U.S. is about 600. 


TRADE-OFFS and hard 
choices are at hand. 
Next-generation coal- 
burning plants can trap 
more CO,, but only a 
dozen or so of the 140 
new plants will use the 
new technology. Will the 
government mandate CO, 
emissions limits—or not? 


"It may appear bigger in the reflection, but it feels about the same to me.” 


57 


NIGHT 


PARTS 


MS. HILTON IN THE NUDE. SORT OF 


onsider the fate of young Natalie 
Reid. Some people are born with 
natural athletic ability, some with 
an acute mind, some with three 
nipples. Natalie was born with 
very particular DNA. causing her to bear a 
striking resemblance to the world's sexiest 
most famous celebutante. 

You may have heard of Natalie already. 
\ The 21-year-old Winnipeg-born beauty is 
+ the world's torernost Paris Hilton look-alike 
р | She has passed for Paris at fashion shows. 
Ä | * Clubs, restaurants and parties, as well as 
Y in photo shoots and on-camera interviews. 
| А All she has to do is dress to the nines and 
x walk out her door and the paparazzi come 
? N 4 4 running. Naturally. our curiosity got the bet- 
А ter of us. We had to see if this Paris was 
as delicious with her clothes off as the real 

one. Well? You make the call. 

A few answers to FAQs: Yes, Natalie has 
seen the lape. Yes. she is single. And yes. 
she has met Faris. “Нег reps got in contact 
with me,” Natalie says. “She invited me to 
her house in West Hollywood, and we hung 
out. She was tolally in shock, like staring 
at me and taking a lot of pictures." Still. 
being a ringer for a world-class sex symbol 
isn't always a gas. Natalie has to wear a 
brown wig if she wants to walk around with- 
/ out drawing crowds in New York and Los 
Angeles, her two current hometowns, She 
plans on reinventing herself in the future 

/ so she can do more modeling and TV jobs 
as Natalie Reid, not as Paris Hilton. When 
not working. Natalie keeps up on baseball 

1 and Formula Опе, and she loves to travel 
| What's the one place she most looks for- 
| | | ward to visiting? "Paris." Naturally. 


1 | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


SMASHING 
WINDOWS -< 


Ld 


БЫ . AN EPISTOLARY "b 43 
= gee LESSON IN RAISING SONS o Ze ® 4 
AND MAKING ART 4 


. P d E 


NAT j BY RALPH STEADMAN WITH HUNTER S. THOMPSON’ 


7 Jp met Hunter S. Thompson when we covered the 1970 Kentucky Derby for Scan- 
+ 


lan's Monthly. He was not what 1 had expected after reading his book on the 

Hell's Angels. No timeworn leather shining with old sump oil, no manic tat- 

too across a bare upper arm and certainly no hint of menace. He did have an 
impressive head cut from one piece of bone, the top part covered down to the eyes 
by a flimsy tight-brimmed sun hat. His eyes revealed nothing of what he thought 
of me. 1 found out later that his first impression was of "a matted-hair geek with 
string warts.” Despite all that (or because of it) we worked together for the next 
35 years, on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the other F&Ls and on more 
than a dozen books (the last was Fire in the Nuts, which 1 did as a limited chap- 
book of 150 copies in 2004), many assignments, movies and dozens of magazine 
articles. We covered the fall of Richard Nixon, the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire, the 
Super Bowl, the America’s Cup, the rise of greed and the slow erosion of personal 
freedoms in America that Hunter always railed against. 

People were fucking with Hunter's beloved Constitution, and he was born to 
banish the freaks who were doing it. In that way he was a real live American of the 
noble kind: a pioneer, a frontiersman, the last of the cowboys, even a conservative 
redneck with a huge and raging mind, taking the easy way out and mythologizing 
himself at the same time. 1 had the good fortune to work with one of the great 
originals of American literature. Maybe hc is the Mark Twain of the late 20th 
century. Maybe not. Time will sort the bastard out, and I leave it to others more 
qualified than I to assess and appraise his legacy. 

Hunter said.more than once, "Don't write, Ralph. You'll bring shame on your 
family.” Needless to say I ignored his warning in writing a book about our four 


[МУР me ЕЩЕ 


ЛГЕН qe 2) R ФУ | 
Ийт ipid 
MPR 5. THCYPSON 


WAS BORA) bil 


PLAYBOY 


66 


decades of gonzo collaboration. In the 
process, I ser abour collecting every 
thing we had ever written to each other. 
Hunter's letters were sometimes solici- 
tous and caring, sometimes cruel, but 
above all funny When one of my sons 
got into trouble іп late 1981, 1 wrote ro 
him, asking for advice. 

*Dear Hunte 

My son has been picked up by the 
police with another brick in his hand. The 
other one was already through a $500 
plate-glass window. He also 
finds your book Hell's Angels 
fascinating but doesn't care 
much for Fear and Loathing in 
Las Vegas because you don't 
dwell ar length on petroleum- 
based substances. He's nearly 
16 and locks the bathroom 
door. When he comes out he 
leaves the wall heater on and 
opens the bathroom window. 
He denies this flatly even 
though I hang about outside 
the bathroom door until he 
comes out. 

I beat him to within an 
inch of unconsciousness, and 
still he denies it. 

As a concerned Protestant 
father, what should 1 do next? 
How can I stand by and watch 
him destroy himself—and more impor- 
tant, the family name? 

I confiscated his gun because he shoots 
at children. He demands the gun with 
menace but would settle for the money. 

Juan was never like this, was he? 

Are we the first generation of parents to 
spawn a mutant tribe? Have we taughr 
them tricks even we would rather forger? 

Is it because they don't believe in 
anything anymore, and is the white 
man fucked? 


Are the sins of the fathers visited 
immediately on the sons, or aren't they 
supposed to wait a generation or two? 

And finally—why me? 

Don't try to answer any of these ques- 
tions, because you can't. You, like me, 
have nothing to say, no right ro explain 
and certainly no ability to understand. 

1 rue the day I gave my son the justi- 
fication to call me Judas. 

So there it is—and we await the out 
come. At least it’s not theft or rape 


Steadman {right} and Thompson at Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Calo- 
rada in May 1996, celebrating the 25th anniversary af gonzo. 


Yeh! God bless, send word or wire. 
Ralph" 


“Dear Ralph, 

1 received yr. tragic letter about yr. 
savage glue-sniffing son & read it while 
eating breakfast at 4:30 л.м. in a Waffle 
House on the edge of Mobile Bay, and 
1 made some notes on yr. problem at 
the time, but they are nor the notes that 
any decent man would want to send a 
friend. So I put them away until I could 


bring a bit more concentration to bear 
on the matrer. 

And I have come to this conclusion: 
Send the crazy little bugger to Austra- 
lia. We can get him a job herding sheep 
somewhere deep in the ourback, and 
that will straighten him out for sure. Or 
at least it will keep him busy. 

England is the wrong place for a boy 
who wants to smash windows. Because 
he's right, of course. He should smash 
windows. Anybody growing up in Fng- 
land today without a serious 
игре to smash windows is prob 
ably too dumb ro help. 

You are reaping the whirl 
wind, Ralph. Where in the 
name of art or anything else did 
you ever see anything that said 
you could draw queer pictures 
of the prime minister and call 
her no worse than a denatured 
pig Биг yr. own son shouldn't 
want to smash windows? 

We are not privy to that level 
of logic, Ralph. They don't even 
tcach it at Oxford. 

My own son, thank God, is 
а calm & rational boy who is 
even now filling out his appli- 
cations to Yale & various other 
Eastern elitist schools, and all 
he's cost me so far is a hellish 
drain of something like $10,000 a ycar 
just to keep him off the streets & away 
from the goddamn windows. 

What do windows cost, Ralph? They 
were about $55 apiece when I used to smash 
them—even the big plate-glass kind—but 
now they probably cost about $300 
apiece. Which is cheap, when you think 
on it. A wild boy with a good arm could 
smash about 30 big plate-glass windows 
a year & still cost you less than $10,000 
per annum. (concluded on page 130) 


"Ever notice the funny way dogs look at you when you're getting undressed?" 


Production cars so rare and exotic, you may never 


acing from zero to 60 mph in three seconds happens faster than it took you to read this sentence. Not many cars can run 
like that, but we have a couple pictured here. млувоу has rounded up a garageful of cars so exotic, there's not Ferrari 
or Lamborghini in the bunch. Street racers like this don't simply roll off assembly lines; they're crafted meticulously, 
one component at a time, in small shops by skilled artisans. The lowest priced among this stable costs 595,000; the 
highest is $1.3 million. The slowest will hit 160 mph, the fastest over 250. But enough talk, Let's ride. 


actually lay eyes on one—unless you've got the cash. that is 


*Koenlgsegg CCR Before you scoff at the idea of a Swedish supercar, consider that in 2005 a production Koenigsegg - 
CCR hit 241 mph and broke the McLaren FI's 231 mph speed record. Christian von Koenigsegg began building cars in 
1994. Faster than a Ferrari Enzo, his CCR features a twin-supercharged 4.7-liter V8 located amidships and a sequen- 
tially operated gearbox. This car is not yet available in America but makes moving to Europe worthwhile. Stats: zero 
to 60 in 3.2 seconds; 242 mph top speed; 806 bhp at 6,900 rpm; about $575,000 in Europe; koenigsegg.com. 


aleen S7 (big image) Who needs Italians? Slip open the scissor doors on this chunk of exotica from Cali- 
кота and you're ready to intimidate anything on the road. In ex-racer Steve Saleen's Le Mans-inspired 57 twin 
turbo, you get brilliant aerodynamics, immense disc brakes, hyperquick steering and acceleration that borders 
on the absurd. There's no traction control or antilock braking system, so you'd better know what you're doing. 
Stats: zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds; 248 mph top speed; 750 bhp at 6,300 rpm; $580,000; saleen.com. 
Legendary Bugatti has returned with the most expensive, powerful road car of all time. 
Put the whip to the Veyron's 1,001 horses (an eight-liter W16 engine with four superchargers, mounted amid- 
ships) as we did on a Florida airport runway and you slingshot to 100 mph in six seconds. With all-wheel drive 
you stay firmly planted as the horizon forces its way through the windshield. Despite its power, the Veyron is 
surprisingly tractable, if a bit bulky at low speeds, and the huge carbon-ceramic brakes could stop a semi on a 
dime. Stats: zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds; 253 mph top speed; 1,001 bhp at 6,000 rpm; $1.3 million; bugatti.com. 
«Pagani Zonda C125 Argentine expatriate Horacio Pagani cut his car teeth at Lamborghini. His С125 coupe 
(there's also a roadster), built in Modena, Italy (where Ferrari started), relies on tightly wrought alloy tubing 


and carbon fiber for an incredibly stiff structure. A souped-up AMG Mercedes-Benz 7.3-liter V12 lurks just 
behind the cockpit. The Pagani is not yet available stateside, but it's rumored to be arriving soon. Stats: zero 
to 60 in 3.7 seconds; 208 mph top speed; 555 bhp at 5,550 rpm; about $520,000; paganiautomobili.it. 
«Noble M15 Noble M12s are designed in the U.K., assembled in South Africa without engines and then imported 
to Hamilton, Ohio by 19 Racing. You ship the “roller” to your choice of shop, have a Jack Roush-built twin-turbo 
three-liter V6 and a six-speed manual bolted in, and for just over $100K you're ready to hunt for Porsche 9115 in 
your own ultralight GT. In 2008 a new Noble М15 (pictured) will be available, fully assembled stateside. Stats for 
ero to 60 in 3.5 seconds; 185 mph top speed; 455 bhp at 6,500 rpm; about $159,000; 1gracing.com. 

ge ero 8 A radical departure for the U.K.’s 95-year-old Morgan Motor Company, the Aero 8 is a streamlined, 
virtually all-aluminum, dare we say modern design, with bonded and riveted alloy panels. Morgan has been making 
top-of-the-line vintage throwbacks for years, and the Aero 8 is a thinly veiled racing machine. Still hand-built (only 
120 units a year), with BMW 4.4-liter V8 power and six-speed automatic, the car zips to 60 as fast as a new Corvette. 
Stats: zero to 60 in 4.5 seconds; 160 mph top speed; 325 bhp at 6,100 rpm; $95,000; morgancars-usa.com. 


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74 


AQUILES 


MALDONADO 


HER ALL-STAR SON MAY BE UNHIT- 
TABLE, BUT HE'S NOT UNTOUCHABLE 


T.C. BOYLE 


hen they took Aquiles Maldonado's 

mother, on a morning so hot it all but 

seared the hide off the 120,000 stray 

dogs in Caracas, give or take a few, no 
one would have guessed they would keep her as 
long as they did. Her husband was dead, mur- 
dered in a robbery attempt six years earlier, and 
he would remain unconcerned and uncommunica- 
tive. But there were the household servants and 
the employees of the machine shop ready to run 
through the compound beating their breasts, and 
while her own mother was as feeble as a dandelion 
gone to seed, she was supremely capable of worry. 
As were Marita's four grown sons and Aquiles's six 
children by five different aficionadas, whom she 
looked after, fed, scolded and sent off to school 
each morning. There was concern, plenty of con- 
cern, and it rose up and raced through the com- 
munity the minute the news hit the streets, "They 
took Marita Villalba," people shouted from window 
to window while others shouted back, "Who?" 

"Who?" voices cried out in outrage and aston- 
ishment. "Who? Aquiles Maldonado's mother, 
that's who!" 

At that time, Aquiles was playing for Baltimore, 
in the American League, away from home from the 
start of spring training in late February to the con- 
clusion of the regular season in the first week of 
October. He was 30 years old and had worked his 
way through four teams with a fierce determination 
to reach the zenith of his profession; he was now 
the Birds' closer, pitching with grit and fluidity at 
the end of the first year of his two-year, $11.5 million 
contract, despite the sharp burn he felt up under 
the rotator cuff of his pitching arm every time he 
changed his release point, about which he had told 
no one. There were three weeks left in the season, 
and the team, which had already been eliminated 
from playoff contention by the aggressive play of 
the Red Sox and Yankees, was just going through 


PAINTING BY PHIL HALE 


76 


the motions. But not Aquiles. Every time he was handed 
the ball with a lead to protect, however infrequently, he 
bore down with a fury so uncompromising, you would 
have thought every cent of his 11.5 million U.S. guaran- 
teed dollars rode on each and every pitch 

He was doing his pregame stretching and joking with 
the team's other Venezuelan player, Chucho Rangel, 
about the two tattooed güeras they'd taken back to 
the hotel the night before when the call came through. 
It was from his brother Néstor, and the moment he 
heard his brother's voice, he knew the news was bad 

"They got Mami,” Néstor sobbed into the receiver. 

"Who did?" 

There was a pause, as if his brother were call- 
ing from beneath the sea and needed to surface 
to catch his breath. "| don't know," he said, "The 
gangsters, the FARC, whoever." 

The field was the green of dreams, the stends 
spotted with fans come early for batting practice 
and autographs. He turned away from Chucho and 


the rest of them, hunched over his cell. “Рог what?" 
And then because the word slipped into his mouth, 
"For ransom?" 

Another pause, and when his brother came back to him, 
his voice was as pinched and hollow as if he were talking 
through his snorkel. “What do you think, pendejo?" 


“It just shouldn't be so hot this time of year," she'd been 
saying to Rómulo Cordero, foreman of the machine 
shop her son had bought her when he signed his first 
big-league contract. “I've never seen it like this—have 
you? Maybe in my mother's time..." 

The children were at school, under supervision of 
the nuns and the watchful eye of Christ in heaven, the 
lathes were turning with their insectoid drone, and she 
was in the back office, both fans going full speed and 
directed at her face and the three buttons of cleavage 
she allowed herself on the hottest days. Marita Villalba 
was 47 years old, 30 pounds heavier than she'd like to 
be but pretty still and so full of life (and, let's face it, 
money and respectability) that half the bachelors of 
the neighborhood—and all the widowers—were mad 
for the sight of her. Rómulo Cordero, a married man 
and father of nine, wasn't immune to her charms, but 
he was an employee first and never allowed himself 
to forget it. "In the 1960s when | was a boy," he said, 
peusing to sweeten his voice, "but you would have 
been too young to remember, it was 119 degrees by 11 
in the morning every day for a week, and people were 
placing bets on when it would break 120—" 


He never got to finish the story. At that moment four 
men in the uniform of the federal police strode sweat- 
ing into the office to crowd the little dirt-floored room, 
with its walls of unpainted plywood and the rusting 
filing cabinets and the oversized Steelcase desk on 
which Marita Villalba did her accounts. “I've already 
paid,” she said, barely glancing up at them. 

Their leader, a tall stoop-shouldered man with a con- 
genitally deformed eye and a reek of the barrio who didn't 
Took anything like a policeman, casually unholstered his 
gun. "We don't know anything about that. My instructions 
are to bring you to the station for questioning." 

And so it began. 

When they got outside to the courtyard, where the 
shop stood adjacent to the two-story frame house 
with its hardwood floors and tile roof, the tall one, 
who was referred to variously as Capitán and EI Ojo 
by the others, held open the door of a blistered pale- 
purple Honda with yellow racing stripes that was like 
no police vehicle Marita Villalba or Rómulo Cordero 
had ever seen. Marita balked. "Are you sure we have 
to до through with this?" she said, gesturing to the 
dusty backseat of the car, to the open gate of the com- 
pound and the city festering beyond it. “Can't we 
settle this right here?" She was digging in her purse 
for her checkbook when the tall one said abruptly, “ГИ 
Cell headquarters." Then he turned to Rómulo Cordero. 
“Напсі me your cell phone.“ 

Alarm signals began to go off in Marita Villalba's 
head. She sized up the three other men—boys, they 
were boys, street urchins dressed up in stolen uniforms 
with automatic pistols worth more than their own lives 
and the lives of all their ancestors combined clutched 
in nervous hands—even as Rómulo Cordero unhooked 
the cell phone from his belt and handed it to the tall 
man with the drooping eye. 

"Hello?" the man said into the phone. rict head- 
quarters? Yes, this is"—and he gave a name he invented 
out of the scorched air of the swollen morning—"and 
we have the Villalba woman." He paused. “Yes.” he said, 
"yes, | see. She must come in person." 

Marita glanced at her foreman, and they shared a look. 
The phone was dead, had been dead for two weeks and 
more, the batteries corroded in the shell of the hous- 
ing and new ones on order, endlessly on order, and they 
both broke for the open door of the shop at the same 
instant. It was hopeless. The weapons spoke their rapid 
language, cust clawed at her face and Rómulo Cordero 
went down with two red flowers blooming against the 
Scuffed leather of the tooled boot on his right foot, and 
the teenagers—the boys who should have been in school, 
should have been working at some honest trade under 
an honest master—seized Aquiles Maldonado's mother 
by the loose flesh of her upper arms. about which she 
was very sensitive, and forced her into the car. It took а 
minute, no more. And then they were gone. 


Accompanied by a bodyguard and his brother Néstor, 
Aquiles mounted the five flights of listing stairs at the 
Central Police Headquarters and found his way by trial 
and error through a dim dripping congeries of hallways 
to the offices of the antiextortion and kidnap division. 
The door was open. Commissioner Diosado Salas, 
Chief of the Division, was (continued on page 120) 


“OK, this time try grabbing the бай..." 


Miss September is the best German 
import since beer and the Benz 


trolling the beach in Santa Monica with 

Berlin native Janine Habeck, we immedi- 

ately think that this fine fráulein repre- 

e) sents a well-articulated argument for the 

value of immigration. Although she was named 

Germany's Playmate of the Year 2005 in our sister 

publication and appeared in our July issue's World 

Soccer Team lineup, the 23-year-old has long 

dreamed of becoming an American Playmate. “This 

is only the second time a German Playmate has 

immigrated to American илувоу," she says proudly, 

delighted to follow in the footsteps of Ursula Buch- 
fellner, Miss October 1979. 

Born in West Berlin toa German father and an 
Italian mother, Janine vividly remembers seeing 
the fall of the Berlin Wall. "I felt like I was a part 
of history,” she says. And even then she was think- 
ing about America. Suffice it to say that when she 
finally got here, she arrived in style. “I'm living 
at the Mansion and love Hef and his girlfriends,” 


~ де 9 ji: 
Miss September says. "We're all really close.” = _ = а 3 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN WAYDA, CENTERFOLD PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


80 


As for her love life, "At the moment, I don't have a boyfriend, but I am looking," she says. “A guy has to 
come to me, though, because I'm a princess." She likes to travel to exotic places for romantic vacations. "I 
used to date a football player—you'd call him a soccer player—and we went to Ibiza. It rained the whole 
time. We stayed in bed and ate lots of ice cream. Now that's what I call a romantic weekend." 

What lies ahead for Janine? As she gazes at the Pacific she confesses her love for California and the 
possibility of her relocating here. “I am my own management,” she laughs, suggesting she could offer 
young models guidance she never had. "In the immediate future I want to learn more English. I like 
the people here, so maybe I can stay and become a citizen. Why not?" We're all for it. 


See more of Miss September at cyber.playboy.com 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


NAME: Jose Habece č — 
mur. Әб _ мыт: 26 ans. Эб 
HEIGHT: 5 6" en MO 

BIRTH рате; 06.02.83 _ BIRTHPLACE: Ena 
parno ЭЗ Май ko be marked, ind or Ч years amd 
Work children Y, and D usant ko pose dor rm photos. 
rurw-ons: Chocolate, champagne and ES 


animals өе, make me (Ka 


TURNOFFS: le usha soler. in estaus le. 
ushao do bad. i ids . 

WHY AMERICANS SHOULD VISIT GERMANY: NLC ONS, a visit 
wel because Sy am de XOM TE ovd. чом 
Con eok usel learn his 

BEST BEER IN THE WORLD: 5 tman One 5 


B oo 
NUMBER OF SOCCER GAMES I'VE BEEN то: Q ТЕТІН АО or AS ~. 


ALL ABOUT MY роб: Hi me 16 mabi, He ig AO months old. 
He is my bab loue him much. 


PERSONAL IDOLS: елке Lopez, and D (be Taris Hilton. 


He voten | БГ ке ok the € 


Ke wit 
8 years ola! baby, Bambi. Playboy Shock, 


PLAYBOY'S PAHTY JOKES 


Two terrorists were chatting. One pulled out 
his wallet and flipped through the photo- 
graphs. “This is my oldest,” he said proudly. 
“He is a martyr. And this is my second oldest. 
He too is a martyr.” 

“Ah,” the second terrorist said, “they blow 
up so fast.” 


One day the devil challenged God to a baseball 
game. Smiling, God proclaimed, “You don't 
have а chance. Гуе got Babe Ruth, Mickey 
Mantle and all the greatest players up here." 

“Yes,” laughed the devil, “but I have all 
the umpires. 


А man at a play couldn't hear the actors! 
dialogue over the constant chatter of two 
women sitting in front of him. He tapped one 
on the shoulder. 

"Excuse me," he said, “1 can't hear very 
well." 

“I should hope not,” she replied curtly. 
"This is a private conversation." 


А teacher had asked her class to write а com- 
position about an interesting recent event in 
their lives. A boy got up and began to read his 
essay: " Daddy fell into the well last week." 

"My goodness!" the teacher interjected. 
"Is he okay?" 

“Не must be," said the boy. "He stopped 
yelling for help yesterday." 


What did the receptionist at the sperm clinic 
o clients when they were leaving? 
"Thanks for coming.” 


Two married buddies were at a bar one 
night when one turned to the other and 
said, "Whenever I go out drinking I park 
around the corner from my house and try 
to sneak in the backdoor, but I always seem 
to wake up my wife. Then she yells al me for 
being out so late.” 

"You're taking the wrong approach," the 
other guy said. "I screech into the driveway. 
slam the front door and yell to my wife that I 
want a blow job. By the time I get upstairs she's 
sound asleep." 


1 just found out my boyfriend is cheating on 
mie," the comely coed confessed to her friend. 

"That's terrible," the friend replied. 
"Which one?" 


А guy asked his friend Steve, a notorious 

s" man, how he satisfies women. 

1 just slam my penis on the dresser until it's 

numb; then I can go for hours,” bragged Steve. 
"That night the guy slammed his dick on the 

dresser while his wife was in the bathroom. 
"Steve," she called out, “is that you?” 


Two bulls were standing on top of a hill. The 
old bull turned to the young bull and 
really cold out today. I think ГІ go slip into a 
nice warm Jersey." 


man noticed his co-worker wearing an ear- 
lg. "I didn't know you were into that kind of 


just an earring,” the co-worker replied. 
“How long have you been wearing it?” the 
man asked. 
“Well,” his co-worker replied, “ever since my 
wife found it in our bed.” 


A penis said to the balls, “Get ready. We're 
going to a party.” 

“You fucking liar,” the ballls said 
get in and leave us outside.” 


(ou always 


Dia you hear about the lady who would never 
date a Marine? 
She was rotten to the Corps. 


I think my wife is unfaithful,” a man said 
to his friend. “I asked where she was last 
night, and she said she spent the night with 
her sister." 

"Why do you think she's unfaithfu 
the friend. 

The first man replied, “/ spent the night 
with her sister." 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, vıaynov, 
730 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, or 
by e-mail through our website al jokes.playboy.com. 

PLAVBOY will pay 8100 to the contributors whose sub- 
missions are selected. 


"Tennis, anyone?" 


91 


PLRYBOY'5 2006 


piGski 

Lad RA ШЕ Hh 

PREVIE 
> i E 


For 50 years pLaveoy has brought you the best NCAA football 
primer in the country, and there's no reason to stop now. Here are our 
picks for this season's standout players, teams and coaches 


By GARY COLE 


n 1957 Ike was a year into his second 
term as president. You could buy 
а pack of cigarettes or a gallon of 
gas for a quarter. Collier's magazine 
had just folded, and its tradition of 
selecting a college football All-America 
team, derived directly from the original All- 
America selections Walter Camp had con- 
ceived in 1889, was about to end with it. 

An enterprising Hugh Hefner, only three 
years into publishing pıaveov. spotted an 
opportunity. He hired Collier's football 
writer Francis Wallace, and in September 
1957 we published our first preseason col- 
lege football All America team roster. Hef 
turned the job over to р. луво\ staffer Anson 
Mount, who for the next 29 years filled the 
All America teams with players and coaches 
whose names have become synonymous 
with the greatness of the game: Bear Bry- 
ant, Forest Evashevski, Dick Butkus, Dan 
Marino, John Elway, Archie Griffin. 

The tradition didn't die with Mount in 
1986. The roll call of great players continued 
with the likes of Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, 
Barry Sanders, LaDainian Tomlinson, Peyton 
end Eli Manning and so many more. 

This issue, we celebrate 50 years of 
selecting pLaysoy college football All 
America teams and SO years as the most 
successful publication in forecasting which 
teams and players will be the nation's best. 
And it seems only fitting that this time 
around ргдүвоү would honor Joe Paterno 
with its Coach of the Year award. Paterno, 
whose reign at Penn State has spanned an 
incredible 4O years, is one of those rare 
icons who seem to get better with age— 
much like the magazine itself. 

Now it's time to lock forward 
to the upcoming college football 
season and predict who will be 
the best on the gridiron this year. oa 


OHIO STATE 
WEST VIRGINIA 
NOTRE DAME 
TEXAS 

usc 
OKLAHOMA 
MIAMI 
GEORGIA 
WISCONSIN 
FLORIDA 
CALIFORNIA 
FLORIDA STATE 
IOWA 

Lsu 

AUBURN 
LOUISVILLE 
TEXAS TECH 
NEBRASKA 
MICHIGAN 
PENN STATE 
ARIZONA STATE 
TENNESSEE 
BOSTON COLLEGE 
CLEIVISON 
ALABAMA 


93 


PLAYBOY'S 2006 А 


с 


OFFENSE 


Top row, from left: (76), lineman, Tennessee, 6’4”, 320, senior, played all offensive line positions for 
Vols except center; 5 (72), lineman, Wisconsin, 6'8", 303, senior, has 26 consecutive starts for Bodgers; 
(63), lineman, Texas, 6'4", 329, senior, started all 38 games of his career ot right tackle for Long- 
horns; \ (28), running back, Oklahoma, 6/2”, 215, junior, already has 16 100-yard rushing games 
in career; (16), placekicker, Colorado, 6'2", 210, senior, kicked 58-yard field goal last season; 
(79), lineman, USC, 6'5", 305, junior, first team All-Pac 10 on one of best offensive lines in nation. Bottom 
row, from left: I (8), wide receiver, USC, 6'5”, 210, junior, 91 receptions for 1,274 yards ond 16 
TDs; (10), quarterback, Ohio State, 6'1”, 215, senior, 2,893 yards of total offense last season, Fiesta 
Bowl MVP; : or (86), tight end, Arizona State, 6'5”, 260, junior, 94 receptions ond 10 TDs over two seo- 
sons; Ted (7), kick returner/receiver, Ohio State, 6'0”, 175, junior, two-time Playboy All America, caught 
51 posses last season; Mozos (76), center, West Virginia, 64”, 290, senior, two-time first team All-Big East; 
(1), runi 9 back, Northern Illinois, 577”, 177, senior, nation's number one returning rusher; 4 


94 (not pictured), wide receiver, Texas Tech, 63”, 222, senior, led Big 12 with 87.3 yards a game receiving. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD ігі 


L AMERICA TEAM 


BEFENSE 


Top row, from left: (13), cornerback, California, 6'2", 185, senior, 62 tackles last season, plus five 
interceptions; Ni (23), punter, Virginia Tech, 6'2", 273, senior, averaged 43.2 yards a punt last year; 
(93), lineman, Clemson, 6'5", 260, senior, had 9.5 quarterbock socks ond 15 tackles for losses; с 
(90), lineman, Nebraska, 6'6", 280, senior, 17 tackles for losses, including 9.5 quarterback sacks; (97), 
lineman, Texcs, 6/5, 315, junior, recorded 48 tackles, including five for losses. Bottom row, from left: 
(19), safety, Miami, 6'0”, 188, senior, 115 tackles and three interceptions last season; 1 (29), corner- 
back, Michigan, 511”, 194, senior, Wolverines’ active career leader in interceptions, with nine; J (42), linebacker 


end Anson Mount Scholar/Athlete, West Virginia, 6'2”, 225, senior, two-year starter with perfect 4.0 GPA; s 
(51), linebacker, Pittsburgh, 6'0", 240, senior, led Big East with 121 tackles. His father, Bennie, was a Playboy All Amer- 
ica in 1987; (49), linebacker, Mi іррі, 6'2", 230, senior, SEC Defensive Player of Year, led nation in 
tackles; (94), lineman, Georgia, 6'5", 255, senior, led team with 11.5 quarterback sacks; 

(not pictured), linebacker, Penn State, 6'2", 229, senior, won the 2005 Butkus Award as nation’s premier linebacker; 


d (not pictured), safety, LSU, 6'2”, 204, senior, 241 career tackles and nine interceptions. 95 


96 


=) 4. OHIO STATE 

Last Year: The Buckeyes 
punctuated their 10-2 season with 
a 34-20 win over Notre Dame in 
the Fiesta Bowl. 

Outlook: Ohio State's offense will be 
formidable. Quarterback Troy Smith 
is back for his senior season; he's 
12-2 as a starter, including two wins 
over Michigan and an MVP perfor- 
mance against Notre Dame in the 
Buckeyes' bowl win. He will look 
often and deep for Ted Ginn Jr., a 
threat to соге every time he touches 
the ball. Antonio Pittman, who 
rushed for more than 1,300 yards 
last year, is solid at running back. 
Weakness: The defense lost impact 
linebackers A.J. Hawk and Bobby 
Carpenter. Are coach Jim Tressell's 
replacements ready to step up? 
Key Game: Ohio State faces off 
against Texas in Austin on Sep- 
tember 9. If the Buckeyes win that 
game, they could run the table to 
the BCS championship. 

Prediction: 11-1 


2. WEST VIRGINIA 

Last Year: The Mountaineers 
crowned one of their best seasons 
ever (11-1) with a 38-35 Sugar Bowl 
victory over Georgia. 
Outlook: We're not claiming West 
Virginia is the second-best Learn in 
the nation, only that its easy sched- 
ule makes a number two finish 
entirely possible. That said, coach 
Rich Rodriguez has done a master- 
ful job in his five-year tenure in Mor- 
gantown. Success in football always 
starts at quarterback, and WVU has 
two good ones: sophomore Patrick 
White, а playmaker and running 
threat, and Adam Bednarik, who 
has recovered from injuries and was 
6-1 as a starter last season. Return- 
ing running back Steve Slaton, the 
Big East rookie of the year, capped 
off his season with an MVP perfor- 
mance in the Sugar Bowl. 
Weakness: The Mountaineers don't 
play anybody. If they slip up, they 
have no way to climb back in the 
standings. 
Key Game: The team's big test 
doesn't come until early Novem- 
ber when it travels to Louisville. 
Last year the Cardinals took West 
Virginia to three overtimes before 
WVU ргеуайесі 
Prediction: 11-1 


3. NOTRE DAME 
9 Last Year: 9-3, but the Irish 
couldn't get past Ohio State in the 
Fiesta Bowl. 
Outlook: What magic hath coach 
Charlie Weis wrought? In just a year 
he turned a team that only ғглувоу 


in the history of the game. Even legends have 

their critics, however, and when the Nittany Lions | 
struggled through a few tough seasons, me 
soid Joe Роз doy was post He was out o dae, 
out of touch А lesser man—ora man who loved | 


picked to finish in the top 25 into a 
squad with nearly enough swagger 
to topple USC from its perch as the 
top team in the nation. How? He gave 
quarterback Brady Quinn the confi- 
dence to excel, something Quinn, an 
early favorite to win this year's Heis- 
man. will likely do again. Weis also 
fired up the offensive line so that run- 
ning back Darius Walker could churn 
out 1,196 yards. He opened up oppos- 
ing defenses with wide receiver Jeff 
Samardzija. And he got just enough 
big plays out of Notre Dame's under- 
manned defense to give the Irish а 
chance to win every Saturday. 
Weakness: Lack of speed on defense, 
which allowed Ohio State to gain 617 
yards in the Fiesta Bowl. 

Key Game: Penn State and Michigan 
are substantial opponents, but Notre 
Dame's season could boil down to 
its game at USC on November 25. 
Prediction: 10-2 


x. 4. TEXAS 

Last Year: A tidy 13-0. Rose 
Bowl and BCS national champions. 
Outlook: Now that Mack Brown has 


that can't-win-the-big-one mon- 
key off his back, he can relax and 
enjoy coaching. That is, as long 
as his teams continue to contend 
for Big 12 and national titles each 
season. Though superstud quarter- 
back Vince Young left a year early 
for the NFL, the Longhorns are 
again loaded with talent. QB duties 
will fall to either redshirt fresh- 
man Colt McCoy or true freshman 
Jevan Snead. While neither can be 
expected to measure up to Young 
(who could?), they are both strong- 
armed and athletic. The defense 
has a liberal sprinkling of first- and 
second-team all-conference players 
returning as well. 

Weakness: Not having Young, a man 
among boys, who almost single- 
handedly willed the Longhorns to 
last year's national championship. 
Key Games: The aforementioned 
early battle against Ohio State, plus 
the usual showdown against Okla- 
homa on October 7. 

Prediction: 10-2 


5. USC 

Last Year: 12-1 The Trojans 
came within one play of winning 
their third consecutive national 
championship. 
Outlook: Coach Pete Carroll has 
built college football's most domi- 
nant program, a tact that will be 
convincingly proven when the Тго- 
jans finish in the top five yet again 
despite losing Heisman Trophy win- 
ners Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. 
Always the perfectionist, Carroll 
has installed Nick Holt as defen- 
sive coordinator, saying, "We defi- 
nitely are looking to improve on last 
year's showing." That improvement 
should come from star defensive 
end Lawrence Jackson and line- 
backers Keith Rivers and Oscar Lua, 
USC's leading tackler in 2005. 
Weakness: Replacing the production 
and experience of Leinart and Bush is 
impossible. The only experienced 
quarterback on the roster is John 
David Booty, who should have 
recovered from back surgery. 
Key Games: The Trojans' final three 
matchups, against California, Notre 
Dame and crosstown rival UCLA, 
will tell the tale. 
Prediction: 10-2 


6. OKLAHOMA 

+ Last Year: 8-4, with a 17-14 
victory over Oregon in the Pacific 
Life Holiday Bowl. 
Outlook: Coach Bob Stoops has 
lifted expectations for Oklahoma 
so high that last year's eight-win 
season felt almost like a losing one. 
Don't expect Stoops and the Soon- 
ers to miss (continued on page 144) 


The Train er 


Pr 


NO 


ШЦ were октор тенме 
Fou HERE wit US. HE Boss 
| Sip You COULD STARK Toppy. 
V 


PINAR) ARES 


dress; M А В T 


wear your mind on your sleeve with natural threads 


ing & single wind tur- 
Dine can displace 2,000 
tons of carbon dioxide 
1n one year —the equiv- 


alent of planting one 
square mile of forest. 


HIM: The moleskin 

peacoat ($696) and | ^ 
burgundy moleskin т 

trousers ($195) are p 
by L.B.M. 1911. His | . Zar” 
houndstooth cashmere ^ 

shirt ($2,588) is from 

Estate by Robert Talbott. ж / 

The silk ascot ($175) е f» і 

is From Best of Class | 
by Robert Talbott, His 
copper leather lace- 
up shoes ($1,238) are 
by Веги. HER: The 
olive coat (4750), 
brownish pants ($298) 
and black vest (9275) PLAYBOY 
are all by J, Lindeberg. FASHION 
Her sandels ($358) 

are by Rodo, FASHION BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS 


Г в О FERRI 
y 


LEFT: The Jacket ($988), shirt ($208) and pants ($350) are 
by Richmond X Uomo. The tie ($135) is by Massimo Bizzocchl, 
the pocket square ($65) is from Best of Class by Robert Tal- 
bott, and the shoes ($988) are bu Berluti. CENTER LEFT: The 
suit (51,895) and black tie ($135) are by Valentino, the shirt 
($281) is bu Ennlo Capasa for Costume National Homme, the 
pocket square (565) is from Best of Class by Robert Talbott, 
and the shoes (81.348) are by Berlutl. CENTER RIGHT: The 
Jacket (61,285) is by Dunhill, the shirt ($695) is by DSquared, 
the trousers ($790) are by Brioni, the tie ($125) is from 
Chelsea by Robert Talbott, and the pocket square ($60) is by 
Massimo Bizzocchi. HER: The top ($700) end skirt ($875) are 
by John Richmond. The sandals ($215) are by Stuart Weltzman, 
and the necklace ($225) is by Fortunoff. 


LE S А two-mile E... 


about half tha calorias contained in a small bar 
of chocolate. Traveling the same distance by car 
uses 10 times as much energy. K 


api. V ОВ „шь | 
| : эй) сап contaminate|us much as | 


1 million gallons of water. 


feg 


S- 


|. N se 


= 


{ 


H In 
LEFT: His suit ($2,198), 
shirt ($185) and tie [$125) 
are by Ozwald Boateng. The 
Pocket square ($65) is 
bu Robert Talbott, and the 
boots [$778] are by Ennio 
Capasa for Costume Natlonal 
Homme. RIGHT: His suit 
(31,983), vest ($348), shirt 
($198) and tie are by Ozwald 
Boateng. His pocket square 
($65) is from Best of Class by 
Robert Talbott, and his boots 
($656) are by Ennlo Capasa 
for Costume National Homme. 


448 HOURS 
The average American driver 


spends 443 hours a year be- 
hind the wheel, 


HIM: His Jacket ($278) and pants ($168) 
are bu Joseph Abboud. Gran Sasso makes 
the sweater vest ($168). The shirt ($325) 
is by Lorenzinl, and the tie ($135) is by 
Massimo Bizzocchl. His pocket square 
($65) is from Best of Class by Robert 
Talbott. His watch is by Bulgari. The belt. 
($335) is bu JM Weston. 


1 , 009 scientists say that 


because of reforestation the United 
States has more trees today than 
1% did 70 years ago. We have about 
230 billion trees—that's almost 
1,000 for every citizon, 


fo 


HIM: The earthy plaid three- 
quarter-length single- 
breasted wool coat ($1,595), 
purple-and-pink-checked 
dress shirt ($225), mustard 
moleskin trousers ($295) 
and pink silk tie with blue 
Medallions ($188) are all bu 
Сапай, His brown leather belt 
($168) is bu Trafalgar. The 
brown leather boots (3185) 
are bu Kenneth Cole, 

, 


LEFT: His suit ($1,895) is by Massimo Bizzocchl. His shirt ($325) is bu Lorenzini. The 
silk ascot [$175] and pocket square ($65) are from Best of Class by Robert Talbott. His 
shoes ($768) ere by JM Weston. CENTER: His suit ($2,795) is by Belvest. The cardigan 
[$278) is by Gran Sasso, and his shirt (4345) is by Lorenzini. The tie (9135) is by Massimo 
Bizzocchl, end the pocket square ($65) is from Best of Class by Robert Talbott, His shoes 
(3985) are by John Lobb. HER: The coat ($3,995), sweater with attached scarf (9595) 
and miniskirt ($1,195) are all by DSquared. The shoes ($575) are by Rodo. 


V 1.5 RALLORS «usi gnoe 


y ; "T Of ethanol to produce the same amount of energy as 
р At 
f қ one gallon of gas. 


WOMEN'S STYLING BY KATHY KALAFUT. 


LEFT: His trench coat with brown leather trim ($1,578), sweater ($638), shirt ($318) and pants ($488) are all by Ys. 
RIGHT: His single-breasted gray herringbone wool coat with peaked lapels ($4,588), white button-front shirt with 
black stripes ($679) and gray Donegal-tweed flat-front wool trousers (41,112) are all by Versace. The black moleskin 
vest (4276) is bu Rogues Gallery. His black leather belt with longhorn buckle ($188) is bu John Richmond. 


^: 
1/ 3 Vehicles are responsible for 


sbout one third of all global oil use 
but nearly two thirds of U.S, oil use. 


HIM: His black oiled-leather double-breested motarcucle Jacket with notched lapels 
(42,379), black coated-cgfton buttonsfront shirt ($485) and black moleskin trau- 
sers ($439) are7all from Ennio Capsa for Costume National Homme. The leather belt 
With round Texas buckle ($180),is by John Richmond. HER: The fue party dresé is 
by Lagerfeld Collection. Her black leather gloves ($250) are by.La LA Crasla, 
~ 
М 


\ 1 


| 


WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 121. 


106 


= D 


— sone | 
RECTOR | 2 


"Very impressive, Mr. Walker, but I said, “Let me see your testimonials." 


LOVE...OR MONEY? 


I've never been the kind of girl who 
thinks about her wedding or her dress. 
Pm putting that off for as long as 
possible, untl! my 505. It's stupid to 
hook up with a guy and stay with him 
when you're young. As for dating, ! 
hate pickup lines. They're all horrible. 
The best Is just “Hello, I'm so-and-so.” 
I'd rather have a guy say, “It’s nice to 
meet you,” than try to bribe or trick 
me into dating him. | want a man 
who is confident enough in himself 
to think I want to date him for who 
ha 15, not for what he can buy me. I've 
heard guys say, "ИП buy you a Tiffany 
necklace if you go out with me,” and | 
say, "Would you really want to go out 
with me If 1 sald yes?” 


A TIGHT SQUEEZE 

I'm not big on doing it in places where I might get caught, but a few months ago my boyfriend and I went to a huge 
restaurant. He followed me to the bathroom, and we did it right there in a stall. Руе wondered about doing it in an 
airplane bathroom: How do people join the mile high club? Is it real? Because I can barely turn around in there. 


dB -18 -20 -38 45 -50 


BY STEPHEN REBELLO 


LONGORIA 


TV'S SEXIEST STAR WEARS A G-STRING, LIKES A MAN WITH BACKBONE, SAVES HER MONEY 
AND KNOWS EXACTLY WHICH DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES SHOULD HAVE A LESBIAN FLING 


а 

PLAYBOY: You've become famous play- 
ing a red-hot two-timing vixen who can 
scam her way out of anything on Des- 
perate Housewives. Offscreen, how in- 
tense is your inner bitch? 

LONGORIA: Well, I am Latina, so ашо- 
matically I have a feistiness most other 
people don’t. When we made The Senti- 
nel, Kiefer Sutherland called me a firefly 
crossed with a mosquito—bright but, look 
our, I could bire. When I have lines on 
Desperate Housewives like “1 don't care if 
she shot triplets out of her ass—we're not 
having her as a surrogate,” 1 become my 
character, Gabrielle, even though we're so 
unalike. 1 think Рт a tamed tiger. 


о 

PLAYBOY: Your co-star Teri Hatcher is 
now reportedly TV's highest-paid actress. 
What arc you doing with your new- 
found fortune? 

LONGORIA: Never in the history of televi- 
sion has a show done so well this fast. Our 
show is where most shows would be in 
their fifth or sixth year, which was when 
the stars of Friends started making $1 mil- 
lion an episode. I'm still really frugal, 
which is funny. The other day I gor upser 


because every zipper was broken in a box 
of Ziploc bags I was using. My assistant 
said, “Ler’s just go buy another box,” but 
I insisted, “No, they're supposed to zip, 
okay?" I called the number on the pack- 
age and they sent me five free boxes. 1 felt 
better. It’s the principle of the matter. 


а 

PLAYBOY: You played another scheming, 
bombshell on The Young and the Rest- 
less. Why are you rhe actress everyone 
loves to hate? 

LONGORIA: I hope it's because 1 can play 
someone with no moral boundaries who 
does whar she wants when she wants. 
175 always much more fun for an actor 
ro play the villain. People genuinely love 
Gabrielle on. Desperate Housewives for. 
being a good person with good intentions 
who does bad things. But I was bad to the 
bone on The Young arid tbe Restless. 


a 
PLAYBOY: Which two characters on 
Desperate Housewives ought to have a 
lesbian fling? 
LONGORIA: Definitely Nicollette Sheri- 
dan, who is a ball of fun, and Marcia 
Cross, who I think is stunning. My char- 


acter would go for Nicollette too because 
Gabrielle is another ball of fun. They’d be 
a pair to reckon with. They would cause 
quite a ruckus. 


о 

PLAYBOY: Your new movie, Harsh Times, 
set in south L.A., is all about guns, drugs 
and crime. You play a lawyer-to-be who 
hooks up with а druggic screwup playcd 
by Freddy Rodríguez. Are there апу rcal- 
life parallels? 

LONGORIA: | used to have ап asshole 
for a boyfriend, although he wasn't like 
Freddy's character, who I believe loves 
my character but doesn’t have his shit 
together. I had a pretty evil person in my 
life. All my friends were going, “Run!” and 
1 was like, “But I love him.” Everybody 
has to experience one toxic relationship, 
and thank God 1 got mine out of the way. 
I'm attracted to driven, hardworking, hu- 
morous people, but the guys in the movie 
are either pretty serious or stoned. 


о 
PLAYBOY: Whar' it like го be a favorite 
target of the paparazzi? 
LONGORIA: Ir's like being in a fish- 
bowl. The [continued on page 138) 


Love 
NEIGHBOR 


The Girls Next Door, back for more 


By Steve Pond 


ala premieres and celebratory cast-and-crew screenings are commonplace in 
Hollywood, but few advance screenings are as intriguing or enticing as the one 
that takes place every time a new episode of The Girls Next Door arrives at the 
Playboy Mansion. PravBov editor-in-chief Hugh M. Hefner takes the disc upstairs 
to his bedroom, plops down on the bed with three young women who also happen to be the stars 
of the show and settles in for a private viewing party. 

For the next half hour Hef and his girlfriends—Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison and Bridget 
Marquardt—watch their adventures in Hef's wonderland, showcased each week on the reality 
series that became this past year's biggest hit on E! Entertainment Television. No show quite like 
it has ever aired in the long history of the medium. It provides a look inside the life Hef has created 
from his dreams and fantasies, as seen through the eyes of the three young women who share 
that unique life. The Girls Next Door, which kicks off its second season this month, has acquired 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RRNY FREYTAG 


111 


a rabid following and made stars of its three leading ladies, and when it's shown upstairs at 
the Mansion, those stars are apt to view their on-screen exploits with occasional cringing—but 
mostly with love and laughter. 

Then again, if you've been watching, you have a good idea of what those private viewing 
parties are like. You've been inside the Mansion, up the stairs, in Hef's bedroorn. You've gotten 
to know Holly, the number one girlfriend, who has been with Hef for five years. And Bridget, the 
northern California broadcast journalism graduate student who has wanted to be in PLavBov since 


na 


| olly Madison, 26, met Hef at the Mansion five years ago at his annual Midsummer Night's Dream 
[| party. Two days after their first date she moved in, and now she is Hef's number one girl. The 
gorgeous Oregon native is pictured as Marilyn Monroe from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. 


she was four years old. And Кепога, the free-spirited sports fanatic from San Diego who, at 21, 
isthe youngest of the girlfriends. You've seen their parties, their moods both good and bad, and 
their place in the often misunderstood world behind the Playboy Mansion gates. 

"I think the show has rather decidedly changed people's views of my life in the Mansion," says 
Hef. "It has had a remarkably humanizing effect on the way people look at me, the girls and our 
lives." According to all concerned, the show has also helped bring (text concluded on page 149) 


ridget Marquardt, 32, finds herself in a bit of a hairy situation. The California girl, currently working 
on her second master's degree (in broadcast journalism), is a horror-film fan. Here she's cast as 
exotic blonde Fay Wray in the best remake of King Kong we've seen yet. 


See more of Hef's girls at cyber.playboy.com. 


UNLUCKY MOTHER (continued ron page 76) 


The room became very quiet. There was no sound but 
for the fans and the faint mastication of the Chief. 


sitting behind his desk. "It's an honor,” 
he said, rising to greet them and wav- 
ing a hand to indicate the two chairs 
set before the desk. "Please, please,” 
he said, and Aquiles and Néstor, with 
a glance for the bodyguard, who had 
positioned himself just outside the 
door, eased tentatively into the chairs. 

The office looked like any other, 
bookshelves collapsing under the 
weight of papers curling at the edges, 
sagging venetian blinds, a poor pale- 
yellowish light descending from the 
fixtures in the ceiling, but the desk, 
nearly as massive as the one Aquiles's 
mother kept in her office at the 
machine shop, had been purged of 
the usual accoutrements—there were 
no papers, no files, no staplers or 
pens, not even a telephone or com- 
puter. Instead a white cloth had been 
spread neatly over the surface, and 
aside from the two pale-blue cuffs of 
the Chief's shirtsleeves and the pelota 
of his clenched brown hands, there 
were but four objects on the table: 
three newspaper clippings and a single 
sheet of white paper with something 
inscribed across it in what looked to be 
20-point type. 

All the way up the stairs, his brother 
and the bodyguard wheezing behind 
him, Aquiles had been preparing a 
speech— "I'll pay anything, do any- 
thing they say, just so long as they 
release her unharmed and as soon 
as possible, or expeditiously, I mean, 
expeditiously, isn't that the legal 
term?"—but now, before he could 
open his mouth, the Chief leaned 
back in the chair and snapped his fin- 
gers in the direction of the door at the 
rear of the room. Instantly the door 
flew open, and a waiter from the Fun- 
dador Cafe whirled across the floor 
with his way held high, bowing briefly 
to each of them before setting dovn 
three white ceramic plates and three 
Coca-Colas in their sculpted greenish 
bottles designed to fit the hand like 
the waist of a woman. In the center 
of each plate vas a steaming reina 
pepeada—a maize cake stuffed with 
avocado, chicken, potatoes, carrots 
and mayonnaise—Aquiles's favorite, 
the very thing he hungered for dur- 
ing all those months of exile in the 
north. "Please, please," the Chief said. 
“We eat. Then we talk." 

Aquiles was fresh off the plane. 
"There was no question of finishing 
the season, of worrying about bills, 


paychecks, the bachelor apartment he 
shared with Chucho Rangel in a high- 
rise within sight of Camden Yards or 
the milk-white Porsche in the parking 
garage beneath it, and the Orioles” 
manager, Frank Bowden, had given 
Aquiles his consent immediately. Not 
that it was anything more than a for- 
mality. Aquiles would have been on 
the next plane no matter what anyone 
said, even if they were in the playoffs, 
even the World Series. His mother 
was in danger. And he had come to 
save her. But he hadn't eaten since 
breakfast the previous day, and before 
he knew what he was doing, the sand- 
wich was gone. 

The room became very quiet. There 
was no sound but for the whirring of 
the fans and the faint mastication of 
the Chief, a small-boned man with 
an overlarge head and a crown of 
dark snaking hair that pulled away 
from his scalp as if an invisible hand 
were eternally tugging at it. Into the 
silence came the first reminder of 
the gravity of the situation: Néstor, 
his face clasped in both hands, had 
begun to sob in a quiet, soughing way. 
"Our mother," he choked, "she used 
to cook reinas for us, all her life she 
used to cook. And now, now 

“Hush,” the Chief said, his voice soft 
and expressive. "We'll get her back, 
don't you worry." And then, to Aquiles, 
in a different voice altogether, an offi- 
cial voice, hard with overuse, he said, 
"So you've heard from them." 

"Yes. A man called my cell—and I don't. 
know how ће got the number——” 

The Chief gave him a bitter smile, as 
if to say Don't be naive. 

Aquiles flushed. "He didn't say hello 
oranything, just "We have the package." 
That was all, and then he hung up." 

Néstor lifted his head. They both 
looked to the Chief. 

"Typical," he said. "You won't hear 
from them for another week, maybe 
two. Maybe more." 

Aquiles was stunned. "A week? But 
don't they want the money?" 

The Chief leaned into the desk, the 
black pits of his eyes locked on Aquiles. 
"What money? Did anybody say any- 
thing about money?" 

“No, but that’s what this is all about, 
isn't it? They wouldn't"—and here 
an inadmissible thought invaded his 
head—"They're not sadists, are they? 
They're not..." But he couldn't go 
on. Finally, gathering himself, he said, 


"They don't kidnap mothers just for 
the amusement of it, do they?" 

Smiling his bitter smile, the Chief 
boxed the slip of white paper so that it 
was facing Aquiles and pushed it across 
the table with the tips of two fingers. 
On it in those outsize letters was writ- 
ten a single figure: $11.5 million. In the 
next moment he was brandishing the 
newspaper clippings, shaking them so 
that the paper crackled with the vio- 
lence of it, and Aquiles could see what 
they were: arucles in the local press 
proclaiming the béisbol star Aquiles Mal- 
donado a national hero second only to 
Simón Bolívar and Hugo Chávez. In 
each of them the figure of $11.5 mil- 
lion had been underlined in red ink. 
“This is what they want," the Chief said 
finally, "money, yes. And now that they 
have your attention they will come back 
to you with a figure, maybe $5 million 
or so—they'd demand it all and more, 
except that they know you will not рау 
them a cent, not now or ever." 

“What do you mean? 

“I mean we do not negotiate with 
criminals." 

"But what about my mother?" 

He sighed. "We will get her back, 
don't you worry. It may take time 
and perhaps even a certain degree of 
pain"—here he reached down beneath 
the desk and with some effort set a 
two-quart pickle jar on the table hefore 
him—“but have no fear.” 

Aquiles stole a look at his brother. 
Néstor had jammed his forefinger into 
his mouth and was biting down as if to 
snap it in two, a habit he'd developed 
in childhood and had been unable to 
break. These were not pickles floating 
in the clear astringent liqui 

“Yes,” the Chief said, “this is the next 
step. It is called proof of life.” 

It took a moment for the horror 
to settle in. 

“But these fingers—there are four 
of them here, plus two small toes, one 
great toe and a left ear —represent cases 
we have resolved. Happily resolved 
What I'm telling you is be prepared 
First you will receive the proof of life, 
then the demand for money.” He 
paused. And then his fist came down, 
hard, on the desktop. “But you will not 
pay them, no matter what. 

“I will,” Aquiles insisted. “I'll pay 
them any; - 

"You won't. You can't. Because if 
you do, then every ballplayer's fam 
ily will be at risk, don't you under- 
stand that? And, I hate to say this, but 
you've brought it on yourself. I mean, 
please—driving a vermilion Hum- 
mer through the streets of this town? 
Parading around with your gold neck- 
laces and these disgraceful women, 
these pulas with their great inflated tits 
and swollen behinds? Did you really 


“Julia, there are some things we don't give to the needy." 


FTLAFEOT 


122 


have to go and paint your compound 
the color of a ripe tangerine?” 

Aquiles felt the anger coming up in 
him, but as soon as he detected it, it was 
gone: The man was right. He should 
have left his mother where she was, 
left her to the respectability of poverty, 
should have changed his name and 
come home in rags, wearing a beard 
and a false nose. He should never in his 
life have picked up a baseball. 

“All right,” the Chief was saying, and 
he stood to conclude the meeting. “They 
call you, you call me.” 

Both brothers rose awkwardly, the 
empty plate staring up at Aquiles like the 
blanched unblinking eye of accusation, 
the jar of horrors grinning beside it. The 
bodyguard poked his head in the door. 

“Oh, but wait, wait, I almost forgot.” 
The Chief snapped his fingers once 
again, and an assistant strode through 
the rear door with a cellophane pack- 
age of crisp white baseballs in one hand 
and a Magic Marker in the other. “If you 
wouldn't mind,” the Chief said. “For my 
son Aldo, with best wishes.” 


She was wedged between two of the boys 
in the cramped backseat of the car, the 
heat oppressive, the stink of confine- 
ment unbearable. El Ojo sat up front 
beside the other boy, who drove with an 


utter disregard for life. At first she tried 
to shout out the window at pedestrians, 
shrieking till she thought the glass of the 
windshield would shatter, but the boy 
to her right—pinch-faced, with two rot- 
ted teeth like fangs and a pair of lifeless 
black eyes—slapped her, and she slapped 
him right back, the guttersnipe, the little 
hoodlum, and who did he think he was? 
How dare he? Beyond that she remem- 
bered nothing, because the boy punched 
her then, punched her with all the coiled 
fury of his pipe-stem arm and balled fist, 
and the car jolted on its springs and 
the tires screamed and she passed into 
unconsciousness. 

When she came back to the world, she 
was in a skiff on a river she'd never seen 
before, its waters thick as paste, all the 
birds and insects in the universe scream- 
ing in unison. Her wrists had been tied 
behind her and her ankles bound with 
a loop of frayed plastic cord. The ache 
in her jaw stole up on her, her tongue 
probing the teeth there and tasting her 
own blood, and that made her angry, 
furious, and she focused all her rage 
on the boy who'd hit her—there he 
was, sitting athwart the seat in the bow, 
crushed beneath the weight of his sloped 
shoulders and the insolent wedge of the 
back of his head. She wanted to cry out. 
and accuse him, but she caught herself, 
because what if the boat tipped, what 


“Look, you happened in Vegas. Aren't you supposed to stay there?” 


then? She was helpless. No one, not even 
the Olympic butterfly champion, could 
swim with all four limbs bound. So she 
lay there on the rocking floor of the boat. 
soaked through with the bilge, the sun 
lashing her as she breathed the fumes of 
the engine and stared up into a seared 
fragment of the sky, waiting her chance. 

Finally, and it seemed as if they'd been 
on that river for days, though that was 
an impossibility, the engine choked on 
its own fumes, and they cut across the 
current to the far bank. El Ojo—she saw 
now that he had been the one at the til- 
ler—sprang out and seized a rope trail- 
ing from the branch of a jutting tree, and 
then the boy, the one who'd assaulted 
her, reached back to cut the cord at her 
ankles with a flick of his knife, and he 
100 was in the murky water, hauling the 
skiff ashore. She endured the thumps 
and bumps and the helpless feeling 
they gave her, and then, when he thrust 
a hand under her arm to lead her up 
onto the bank, the best she could do was 
mutter, "You stink. All of you. Don't you 
have any pride? Can't you even wash 
yourselves? Do you wear your clothes 
till they rot, is that it?” And then, when 
that got no response: "What about your 
mothers—what would they think?" 

They were on the bank now, El Ojo 
and the others taking pains to secrete 
the boat in the undergrowth, where they 
piled sticks and river-run debris atop it. 
"The boy who had hold of her just gave 
her his cold vampire's smile, the two 
stubs of his teeth stabbing at his lower 
lip. "We don't got no mothers," he said 
softly. "We're guerrillas.” 

“Hoodlums, you mean," she snapped 
back at him. “Criminals, narcotraficantes, 
kidnappers, cowards.” 

It came so quickly she had no time 
to react, the arm snaking out, the wrist 
uncoiling to bring the flat of his hand 
across her face, right where it had begun 
to bruise. And then, for good measure, 
he slapped her again. 

“Hey, Eduardo, shithead,” El Ojo 
rasped. "Get your ass over here and 
give us a hand. What do you think this 
is, a nightclub?" 

The others laughed. Her face stung, 
and already the flies and mosquitoes 
were probing at the place where it 
had swelled along the line of her jaw. 
She dropped her chin to her shoul- 
der for protection, but she didn't say 
anything. To this point she'd been too 
indignant to be scared, but now with 
the light fading into the trees and the 
mud sucking at her shoes and the ugly 
nameless things of the jungle creep- 
ing from their holes and dens to lay 
siege to the night, she began to feel 
the dread spread its wings inside her. 
This was about Aquiles. About her son, 
the major leaguer, the pride of her life. 
They wanted him, wanted his money 
he'd worked so hard to acquire since he 
was a barefoot boy molding a glove out 


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PLAYBOY 


124 


of old milk cartons and firing rocks at a 
target nailed to a tree, the money he'd 
earned by his sweat and talent—and 
the fame, the glory, the pride that came 
with it. They had no pride themselves, 
no human decency, but they would do 
anything to corrupt it. She'd heard the 
stories of the abductions, the mutila- 
tions, the families who'd paid ransom 
for their daughters, sons, parents, 
grandparents, even the family dog, 
only to pay again and again until hope 
gave way to despair. 

But then, even as they took hold of 
her and began to march her through the 
jungle. she saw her son's face rise before 
her, his portrait just as it appeared on his 
Topps card, one leg lifted in the windup 
and that little half smile he gave when 
he was embarrassed because the photog- 
rapher was there and the photographer 
had posed him. He'll come for me, she said 
to herself. I know he will. 


For Aquiles, the next three weeks were 
purgatorial. Each day he awoke sweat- 
ing in the silence of dawn and per- 
formed his stretching exercises on the 
Turkish carpet until the maid brought 
him his orange juice and the protein 
drink into which he mixed the contents 
of three raw eggs, two ounces of wheat- 
grass and a tablespoon of brewer's 
yeast. Then he sat dazed in front of the 
high-definition plasma TV he'd bought 
his mother for her 45th birthday, sur- 
rounded by his children (withdrawn 


from school for their own protection) 
and the unforgivably homely but capa- 
ble girl from the provinces, Suspira 
Salvatoros, who'd been brought in to 
see after their welfare in the absence 
of his mother. In the corner muttering 
darkly sat his abuela, the electric ghost 
of his mother’s features flitting across 
her face as she rattled her rosary and 
picked at the wart under her right eye 
till a thin line of serum ran down her 
cheek. The TV gave him nothing, not 
joy or even release, each show more 
stupefyingly banal than the last—how 
could people go about the business of. 
winning prizes, putting on costumes 
and spouting dialogue, singing, danc- 
ing, stirring soft-shell crabs and cilan- 
tro in a fry pan for Christ's sake, when 
his mother, Marita Villalba, was in the 
hands of criminals who refused even 
to communicate, let alone negotiate? 
Even baseball, even the playoffs, came 
to mean nothing to him. 

And then, one bleak changeless morn- 
ing, the sun like a firebrick tossed in the 
window and all Caracas up in arms over 
the abduction— FREE MARITA was scrawled 
in white soap on the windows of half the 
cars in town—he was cracking the eggs 
over his protein drink when Suspira 
Salvatoros knocked at the door. “Боп 
Aquiles," she murmured, sidling into 
the room in her shy fumbling way, her 
eyes downcast, "something has come 
for you. А missive.” In her hand—bi 
ten fingernails, a swell of fat—there was 
a single dirty white envelope, too thick 


“Now turn over and let's get you straightened out.” 


for a lewer and stained with a smear of 
something he couldn't name. He felt as 
if his chest had been torn open, as if his 
still-beating heart had been snatched 
out of him and flung down on the car- 
pet with the letter that dropped from 
his ineflectual fingers. Suspira Salvato- 
ros began to cry. And gradually, pain- 
fully, as if he were bending for the rosin 
bag in a nightmare defeat in which he 
could get no one out and the fans were 
jeering and the manager frozen in the 
dugout, he bent for the envelope and 
clutched it to him, hating the feel of it, 
the weight of it, the guilt and horror 
and accusation it carried. 

Inside was a human finger, the lit- 
tle finger of the left hand, two inches 
of bone, cartilage and flesh gone the 
color of old meat, and at the tip of it, a 
manicured nail, painted red. For along 
while he stood there, weak-kneed, the 
finger cold in the palm of his hand, and 
then he reverently folded it back into 
the envelope, secreted it in the inside 
pocket of his shirt closest to his heart 
and flung himself out the door. In the 
next moment he sprang into the car— 
the Hummer, and so what if it was the 
color of poppies and arterial blood? So 
much the worse for them, the desecra- 
tors, the criminals, the punks, and he 
was going to track them down if it was 
the last thing he did. Within minutes 
he'd reached the police headquar- 
ters and pounded up the five flights 
of stairs, the ashen-faced bodyguard 
plodding along behind him. Without 
a word for anyone he burst into the 
Chief's office and laid the envelope on 
the desk before him. 

The Chief had been arrested in the act 
of biting into a sweet cake while simulta- 
neously blowing the steam off a cup of 
coffee, the morning newspaper propped 
up in front of him. He gave Aquiles a 
knowing look. set down the cake and 
extracted the finger from the envelope. 

“TI pay." Aquiles said. “Just let me pay. 
Please, God. She's all I care about." 

The Chief held the finger out before 
him, studying it as if it were the most 
pedestrian thing in the world, a new sort 
of pen he'd been presented by the Boys’ 
Auxiliary, a stick of that dried-out bread 
the Italians serve with their antipasto. 
“You will not pay them," he said without 
glancing up. 

“I will.” Aquiles couldn't help rais- 
ing his voice. "The minute they call, 1 
swear ГИ give them anything, I don't 
сате—" 

Now the Chief raised his eyes. "Your 
presumption is that this is your moth- 
er's finger? 

Aquiles just stared at him. 

"She uses this shade of nail polish?" 

"Yes, 1—1 assume——" 

"Amateurs," the Chief spat. "We're on 
to them. We'll have them, believe me. 
And you—assume nothing.” 

The office seemed to quaver then as 


if the walls were closing in. Aquiles had 
begun to take deep breaths as he did on 
the mound when the situation was peril- 
ous, runner on first, no outs, a one-run ball 
game. "My mother's in pain," he said. 

"Your mother is not in pain. Not phys- 
ical pain, at any rate." The Chief had set 
the severed finger down on the napkin 
that cradled the sweet bun and brought 
the mug to his lips. He took a sip of the 
coffee and then set the mug down, too. 
"This is not your mother's finger," he 
said finally. "This is not, in fact, even 
the finger of a female. Look at it. Look 
closely. This," he pronounced, again lift- 
ing the mug to his lips, "is the finger of 
a man, a young man, maybe even a boy, 
playing revolutionary. They like that, the 
boys. Dressing up, hiding out in the jun- 
gle. Calling themselves"—and here he let 
out his bitter laugh—"guerrillas." 


She was a week in the jungle, huddled 
over a filthy stew pot thick with chunks 
of carpincho, some with the hide still on 
it. her digestion in turmoil, the insects 
burrowing into her, her dress—the shift 
she'd been wearing when they came for 
her—so foul it was like a layer of grease 
applied to her body. Then they took 
her farther into the jungle to a crude 
airstrip—the kind the narcotraficantes 
employ in their evil trade—and she was 
forced into a Cessna airplane with El 
Ojo, the boy with the pitiless eyes and 
an older man, the pilot, and they sailed 
high over the broken spine of the coun- 
tryside and up into the mountains. At 
first she was afraid they were taking her 
across the border to Colombia to trade 
her to the FARC rebels there, but she 
could see by the sun that they were 
heading southeast, and that was small 
comfort because every minute they were 
in the air, she was that many more miles 
from her home and rescue. Their desti- 
nation—it appeared as a cluster of frame 
cottages with thatched roofs and the 
splotched yawning mouth of a dried-up 
swimming pool—gave up nothing. not 
a road or even a path, to connect it with 
the outside world. 

The landing was rough, very rough, 
the іше plane lurching and pitching 
like one of those infernal rides at the 
fair, and when she climbed down out of 
the cockpit she had to bend at the waist 
and release the contents of her stomach 
in the grass no one had thought to cut. 
The boy, her tormentor, the one they 
called Eduardo, gave her a shove from 
behind so that she fell to her knees in 
her own mess, so hurt and confused 
and angry she had to fight to keep from 
crying in front of him. And then there 
were other boys there, a host of them, 
teenagers in dirty camouflage fatigues 
with the machine rifles slung over their 
shoulders, their faces blooming as they 
greeted Eduardo and El Ojo and then 
narrowing in suspicion as they regarded 


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126 


her. No one said a word to her. They 
unloaded the plane—beer, rum, ciga- 
reues, pornographic magazines, sacks 
of rice and three cartons of noodles in a 
cup—and then ambled over to a crude 
table set up in the shade of the trees at 
the edge of the clearing, talking and jok- 
ing all the while. She heard the hiss of 
the first beer and then a chorus of hisses 
as one after another they popped the 
aluminum tabs and pressed the cans to 
their lips, and she stood and gazed up at 
the barren sky and then let her eyes drop 
to the palisade of the jungle that went on 
unbroken as far as she could see. 
Within a week they'd accepted her. 
There was always one assigned to 
guard her, though for the life of her she 
couldn't imagine why—unless she could 
sprout wings like а turpial and soar out 
over the trees, she was a prisoner here 
just as surely as if she'd been locked away 
in a cell—but aside from that, they gave 
her free rein. Once she'd recovered from 
the shock of that inhuman flight, she 
began to poke through the dilapidated 
buildings, just to do something, just to 
keep occupied, and the first thing she 
found was a tin washtub. It was nothing 
to collect fragments of wood at the edge 
of the clearing and build a fire ring of 
loose stone. She heated water in the tub, 
shaved a bar of soap she found in the 
latrine, wrapped herself in the blanket 
they gave her and washed first her hair, 
then her dress. The boys were drunk on 
the yeasty warm beer, sporadically shoot- 
ingat something in the woods until El Ojo 
rose in a rage from his nap and cursed 


them, but soon they gathered round and 
solemnly stripped down to their under- 
wear and handed her their filth-stiffened 
garments, murmuring, “Please, señora” 
and "Would you mind?" and “Ме too, 
me too." All except Eduardo, that is. He 
just sneered and lived in his dirt. 
Ultimately, she knew these boys better 
than they knew themselves, boys playing 
soldier in the mornings, béisbol and füt- 
bol in the afternoons, gathering to drink 
and boast and lie as the sun fell into the 
trees. They were the spawn of prostitutes 
and addicts, uneducated, unvanted, 
unloved, raised by grandmothers, raised 
by no one. They knew nothing but cru- 
elty. Their teeth were bad. They'd be 
dead by 30. As the days accumulated 
she began to gather herbs at the edge of 
the jungle and sort through the store of 
cans and rice and dried meat and beans, 
sweetening the clearing on the hilltop 
with the ambrosial smell of her cooking. 
She found a garden hose and ran it from 
the creek that gave them their water to 
the lip of the empty swimming pool and 
soon the boys were cannonballing into 
the water, their shrieks of joy echoing 
through the trees even as the cool clear 
water cleansed and firmed their flesh and 
took the rankness out of their hair. Even 
El Ojo began to come round to hold out 
his tin plate or have his shirt washed, 
and before long he took to sitting in the 
shade beside her just to pass the time 
of day. "These kids,” he would say and 
shake his head in a slow portentous way, 
and she could only cluck her tongue in 
agreement. "You're a good mother," he 


"My word—that looks like quite a handful you've got 
there, young lady!" 


told her one night in his cat's tongue of 
a voice, "and I'm sorry we had to take 
you." He paused to lick the ends of the 
cigareue he'd rolled, and then he passed 
it to her. “But this is life." 

And then one morning as she was 
pressing our the corn cakes to bake on a 
tin sheet over the fire for the arepas she 
planned to serve for breakfast and dinner, 
100, there was а stir among the bovs—a 
knot of them gathered round the table 
and EI Ojo there, brandishing a pair of 
metal shears. “You,” he was saying, point- 
ing the shears at Eduardo, “you're the 
tough guy. Make the sacrifice." 

She was 30 feet from them, crouched 
Over a stump, both hands thick with corn 
meal. Eduardo fastened his eyes on her. 
"She's the hostage," he spat. "Not me." 

"She's a good person," El Ojo seid, 
saint, better than you'll ever be. I won't 
touch her—no one will. Now hold out 
your hand." 

Тһе boy never flinched. Even when 
the shears bit, even when metal con- 
tacted metal and the blood drained from 
his face. And all the while he never took 
his eyes from her. 


By the time the call came, the one Aquiles 
had been awaiting breathlessly through 
five and a half months of sleepless nights 
and paralyzed days, spring training was 
well under way. Twice the kidnappers 
had called to name their price—the first 
time it was $5 million, just as the Chief 
had predicted. and the next, inexpli- 
cably, it had dropped to two—but the 
voice on the other end of the phone, 
as hoarse and buzzing as the rattle of 
an inflamed serpent, never gave direc- 
tions as to where to deliver it. Aquiles 
fell into despair, his children turned on 
each other like demons so that their dis- 
putations rang through the courtyard 
in a continual clangor, his abuela's face 
was an open sore, and Suspira Salvato- 
ros cleaned and cooked with a vengeance 
even as she waded in amongst the chil- 
dren like the referee of an eternal wres- 
tling match. And then the call came. 
From the Chief. Aquiles pressed the cell 
to his ear and murmured, "Bueno?" and 
the Chief's voice roared back at him: 
"We've found her!" 

"Where?" 

"My informants tell me they have 
her at an abandoned tourist camp in 
Estado Bolívar." 

"But that's hundreds of miles from 
here." 

"Yes," the Chief said. "The amateurs." 

"I'm coming with you," Aquiles said 

"No. Absolutely no. Too dangerous. 
You'll just be in the way." 

"I'm coming." 

“No,” the Chief said. 

“I give you my solemn pledge that 
I will sign one truckload of baseballs 
for the sons and daughters of every 
man in the federal police district of 


Caracas, and I will give to your son, 
Aldo, my complete 2003, 2004 and 
2005 sets of Topps baseball cards direct 
from the USA.” 

There was a pause, then the Chief's 
voice came back at bim: "We leave in 
one hour. Bring a pair of boots." 


"They flew south in a commercial airliner, 
the Chief and 10 of his men in camou- 
flage fatigues with the patch of the Fed- 
eral Police on the right shoulder and 
Aquiles in gum boots, blue jeans and an 
old baseball jersey from his days with the 
Caracas Lions, and then they took a com- 
mandeered produce truck to the end of 
the last stretch of the last road on the 
map and got down to hike through the 
jungle. The terrain was difficult. Insects 
thickened the air. No sooner did they 
cross one foaming yellow cataract than 
they had to cross another, the ground 
underfoot as slippery as if it had been 
oiled, the trees alive with the continuous 
screech of birds and monkeys. And they 
were going uphill, always uphill, gaining 
altitude with each uncertain step. 

Though the Chief had insisted that 
Aquiles stay to the rear—“That's all we 
need," he said, "you getting shot, and 1 
can see the headlines already: 'Venezue- 
lan Baseball Star Killed in Attempt to Save 
His Sainted Mother " —Aquiles's training 
regimen had made him a man of iron, 
and time and again he found himself well 
out in front of the squad. Repeatedly the 
Chief had to call him back in a terse whis- 
per, and he slowed to let the others catch 
up. It vas vital that they stay together, the 
Chief maintained, because there were no 
trails here and they didn't know what they 
were looking for except that it was up 
ahead somewhere, high up through the 
mass of vegetation that barely gave up the 
light, and that it would reveal itself when 
they came close enough. 

"Then, some four hours later, when the 
men had gone gray in the face and they 
were all of them as soaked through as if 
they'd been standing fully clothed under 
the barracks shower, the strangest thing 
happened. The Chief had called a halt 
to check his compass reading and allow 
the men to collapse in the vegetation 
and squeeze the blood, pus and excess 
water from their boots, and Aquiles, 
though he could barely brook the delay, 
paused to slap mosquitoes on the back 
of his neck and raise the canteen of 
Gatorade to his mouth. That was when 
the scent came to him, a faint odor of 
cooking that insinuated itself along the 
narrow olfactory avenue between the 
reeking perfume of jungle blooms and 
the fecal stench of the mud, But this was 
no ordinary smell, no generic scent you 
might encounter in the alley out back 
ofa restaurant or drifting from a barrio 
window—this was his mother's cooking! 
His mother's! He could even name the 
dish: tripe stew! “Jefe,” he said, taking 


HOW TO BUY 


Below is a list of retailers 
and manufacturers you 
can contact for informa- 
tion on where to find this 
month's merchandise. 
To buy the apparel and 
equipment shown on 
pages 35-36, 98-105 
and 154-155, check the 
listings below to find the 
stores nearest you. 


MANTRACK 

Pages 35-36: Linde 
Werdelin, lindewerdelin.com. Quik- 
silver Travel, quiksilvertravel.com. 
Samsung, samsung.com. Schedoni, 
schedoni.com. Sony, sony.com. 
Volkswagen, vw.com. 


DRESS SMART 

Pages 98-105: Belvest, belvest 
.com. Berluti, berluti.com. Brioni, 
available at Brioni boutiques. 
Bulgari, bulgari.com. Canali, 
available at Bloomingdale's. 
DSquared, available at Gregory's 
in Houston. Dunhill, 866-929- 
0637. Ennio Capasa for Cos- 
tume National Homme, costume 
national.com. Fortunoff, fortunoff 
„сот. Gran Sasso, gransasso.com. 


J. Lindeberg, jlindeberg.com. 
JM Weston, $i 


-535-2100. John 
Lobb, johnlobb.com. John Rich- 
mond, johnrichmond.com. Joseph 


Abboud, 212-586- 
9140. Kenneth Cole, 
800-KEN-COLE. La Cra- 
sia, wegloveyou.com. 
Lagerfeld Collection, 
info@lagerfeld.com. 
L.B.M. 1911, avail- 
able at Mark Shale 
in Chicago. Loren- 
zini, www.lorenzini 
At. Massimo Bizzocchi, 
massimobizzocchi 
сот. Ozwald Boateng, 
ozwaldboaten 
.co.uk. Richmond 
Uomo, available at David Law- 
rence in Seattle. Robert Talbott, 
roberttalbott.com. Rode, satine 
boutique.com. Rogues Gal- 
lery, dandyrogue.com. Stuart 
Weitzman, stuartweitzman.com. 
Trafalgar, 203-853-4747. Valen- 
tino, available at Valentino bou- 
gues: Versace, versace.com. У», 
yohjiyamamoto.co.jp. 


POTPOURRI 
banes 154-155: Skullcandy, 
kullcandy.com. BallPark Pens, 
ballparkpens.com. Bugatti 
safe, stockinger.com. Cableyoyo, 
cableyoyo.com. Grooming Lounge, 
roominglounge.com. Jada 
Toys, jadatoys.com. Roundabout 
Signs, баке! igan con: 
$ершау, segway.com. Travel Ват, 
kegworks.com. 


CREDITS: PHOTOGRAPHY BY: ғ. 3 BRENNAN CAVANAUGH, FABRIZIO FERRI/MAREK AND ASSOCIATES. 
OSAN KITTNER, ANNA STEADMAN; Р. 5 STEPHEN WAYDA: P. 8 АМҮ FREYTAG (2): P. 11 KENNETH JOHANS- 
SON (2), DAVID KLEIN (2), ELAYNE LODGE (2), JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE.COM (2), JAMES TREVENEN 
(2); P. 12 BRYANT HOROWITZ, ELAYNE LODGE (11); F 15 DAVID ROSE; Р. 16 ELAYNE LODGE; Р. 22 CORBIS, 
MARK EDWARD HARRIS (2); P. 24 JAMES IMBROGNO (2), GLENN USDIN: P. 25 CORBIS, COURTESY OF 
FORD, GEORGE GEORGIOU, GETTY IMAGES (2), COURTESY OF TOYOTA. Р. 27 DIMENSION FILMS/COURTESY 
EVERETT COLLECTION, INC., NEW LINE CINEMA/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC., PICTUREHOUSE. 
ENTERTAINMENT/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC... UNIVERSAL/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, 
INC., COURTESY OF WALT DISNEY PICTURES; Р 28 COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC., MGM/THE 
KOBAL COLLECTION, TM AND COPYRIGHT С20ТН CENTURY FOX FILM CORP ALL RIGHTS RESERVED/ 
(COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC., 2006 SUNIVERSALICOURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC., 2006 
OWARNER BROS./COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC.: P. 30 GETTY IMAGES; P. 32 GETTY IMAGES; 
P. 35 GEORGE GEORGIOU, GETTY INAGES, COURTESY OF QUIKSILVER TRAVEL: Р. 36 GEORGE GEORGIOU, 
GETTY IMAGES, WARNER BROS/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION, INC. P. 44 GETTY IMAGES; P. 43 
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127 


PLAYBOY 


hold of the Chief's arm and pulling him 
to his feet, "do you smell that?" 

They approached the camp warily, 
the Chief's men fanning out with their 
weapons held rigidly before them. Sur- 
prise was of the essence, the Chief had 
insisted, adding chillingly that the guer- 
rillas were known to slit the throats of 
their captives rather than give them up 
and so they must be eliminated before 
they knew what hit them. Aquiles felt. 
the moment acutely. He'd never been 
so tense, so unnerved, in all his life. But 
he was a closer, and a closer lived on the 
naked edge of catastrophe every time he 
touched the ball, and as he moved for- 
ward with the rest of them, he felt the 
strength infuse him and knew he would 
be ready when the moment came. 

"There were sounds now—shouts and 
curses and cries of rapture amid a great 
splash and heave of water in motion— 
and then Aquiles parted the fronds of 
a palm and the whole scene was made 
visible. He saw rough huts under a dia- 
mond sky, a swimming pool exploding 
with splashing limbs and ecstatic faces, 
and there, not 30 feet away, the cook 


fire and the stooping form of a woman, 
white-haired, thin as bonc. It took him a 
moment to understand that this was his 
mother, work-hardened and deprived 
of her makeup and the Clairol Nice "n 
Easy he sent her by the cardboard case 
from the north. His first emotion, and he 
hated himself for it, was shame, shame 
for her and for himself, too. And then 
as the voices caromed round the pool— 
"Oaf! Fool! Get off me, Humberto, you 
ass!"—he felt nothing but anger. 

He would never know who started the 
shooting, whether it was one of the guer- 
rillas or the Chief and his men, but the 
noise of it, the lethal stutter that saw the 
naked figures jolted out of the pool and 
the water bloom with color, started him 
forward. He stepped from the bushes, 
oblivious to danger, stopping only to 
snatch a rock from the ground and 
mold it to his hand in the way he'd done 
10,000 times when he was a boy. That 
was when the skinny kid with the dead 
eyes sprang up out of nowhere to put 
a knife to his mother's throat, and what 
was the point of that? Aquiles couldn't 
understand. One night there was victory, 


"At least he died in his sleep." 


another night defeat. But you played the 
game just the same—you didn’t blow up 
the ballpark or shoot the opposing bat- 
ter. You didn’t extort money from the 
people who'd earned it through God- 
given talent and hard work. You didn’t 
threaten mothers. That wasn't right. 
That was impermissible. And so he 
cocked his arm and let fly with his fast- 
ball that had been clocked at 98 miles 
an hour on the radar gun at Camden 
Yards while 45,000 people stamped and 
shouted and chanted his name—High 
and inside, he was thinking, high and 
inside—and without complicating mat- 
ters, let's just say that his aim was true. 


Unfortunately Marita Villalba never fully 
recovered from her ordeal. She would 
awaken in the night, smelling game 
roasting over a campfire—smelling car- 
pincho with из rodent's hide intact —and 
She seemed lost in her own kitchen. She 
gave up dyeing her hair, rarely wore 
makeup or jewelry. The machine shop 
was nothing to her, and when Rómulo 
Cordero, hobbled by his wounds, had to 
step down, she didn't even come down- 
stairs to attend his retirement party, 
though the smell of the arepas, empana- 
das and chivo en coco radiated through 
the windows and up out of the yard 
and into the streets for blocks around. 
More and more she was content to let 
Suspira Salvatoros look after the kitchen 
and the children while she sat in the sun 
with her own mother, their collective fin- 
gers, all 20 of them, busy with the intri- 
cate needlepoint designs for which they 
became modestly famous in the immedi- 
ate neighborhood. 

Aquiles went back to the major leagues 
midway through the season, but after 
that moment of truth on the hilltop in 
the jungle of Estado Bolívar, he just 
couldn't summon the fire anymore. That, 
combined vith the injury to his rotator 
cuff, spelled disaster. He was shelled each 
time he went to the mound, the boos ris- 
ing in chorus till the manager took the 
ball from him for the last time, and he 
cleared waivers and came home to stay, 
his glory gone but the contract guar- 
anteed. The first thing he did was take 
Suspira Salvatoros to the altar, defeating 
the ambitions of any number of young 
and not-so-young women whose curses 
and lamentations could be heard echo- 
ing through the streets for weeks to 
come. Then he hired a team of painters 
to whitewash every corner of the com- 
pound, even to the tiles of the roof. And 
finally—and this was perhaps the hardest 
thing of all—he sold the vermilion Hum- 
mer to a TV actor known for his sensi- 
tive eyes and hyperactive jaw, replacing it 
with a used van of uncertain provenance 
and a color indistinguishable from the 
dirt of the streets. 


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PLAYBOY 


130 


SMASHING WINDOWS 


(continued from page 66) 

Is that right? Are my figures correct? 

Yeah, they are. If Juan smashed 30 big 
windows a year, I would still save $1,000. 

So send me the boy, Ralph—along 
with a certified check for $10,000—and 
ГИ turn him into a walking profit 
machine. Indeed. Send me all of those 
angry little limey bastards you can round 
up. We can do business on this score. 
Just ship them over, with a $10K cheque 
for each one, and after that you can go 
about yr. filthy, destructive business with 
a clear conscience. 

Тһе prime minister is а denatured pig, 
Ralph, and you should beat on her like 
a gong. Draw horrible cartoons of the 
bitch and sell them for many dollars to 
The Times & Private Eye! But don't come 
weeping to me when your son takes it 
into his head to smash a few windows. 
You might as well try to teach a young 
dog not to piss on a tree. 

Have you ever put a brick through a 
big plate-glass window, Ralph? It makes 
a wonderful goddamn noise, and the 
people inside run around like rats in 
a firestorm. It’s fun, Ralph, and a bar- 
gain at any price. 

What the fuck do you think we've 
been doing all these years? Do you 
think you were getting paid for yr. god- 
damn silly art? 

No, Ralph. You wcrc getting paid to 
smash windows. And that is an art in 
itself. The trick is getting paid for it. 

"What? Hello? Arc you still there, Ralph? 

You sniveling, hypocritical bastard. If 
yr. son had your instincts, he'd be shoot- 
ing at the prime minister instead of just 
smashing windows. 

Are you ready for that? How are you 
going to feel when you wake up one of 


"The best thing about tang 


my age a 


these mornings & flip on the telly at 
the Old Manor just in time to catch a 
news bulletin about the prime minis- 
ter being shot through the gizzard in 
Piccadilly Square, and then some BBC 
hot rod comes up with exclusive pic- 
tures of the dirty freak who did it, and 
he turns out to be your son? 

Think about it, Ralph, and don't 
bother me anymore vith yr. minor prob- 
lems. Just send the boy over to me. ГЇЇ 
soften him up with trench work until his 
green card runs out, then we'll move him 
to Australia. And five years from now 
you'll get an invitation to a wedding at a 
Sheep ranch in Perth. 

And so much for that, Ralph. We have 
our own problems to deal with. Children 
are like ТУ sets. When they start acting 
weird, whack them across the eyes with 
a big rubber basketball shoe. 

How's that for wisdom? 

Something wrong with it? 

No, I don't think so. Today's plate-glass 
window is tomorrow's BBC story. Keep 
that in mind & you won't go wrong. Just 
send me the boys and the cheques. 

(1 can’t spell that word, Ralph, but I 
think you know what I mean. It’s what 
happens when the son of a famous Eng- 
lish artist shows up on the telly with a 
burp gun in his hand & the still twitching 
body of the prime minister at his feet.) 

You can't even run from that one, 
Ralph—much less hide—so if you think 
it’s a rcal possibility, all I can advise you 
to do is stock up on whiskey and codeine. 
That will keep you dumb enough to 
handle the shock when that ratchet 
head, glue-crazy little freak finally does 
the deed. 

The subsequent publicity will be a 
nightmare. But don’t worry—your 
friends will stand behind you. I'll catch 
one of those polar flights out of Denver 


40 is I can date women half 


not go to jail.” 


and be there eight hours after it happens. 
We'll have a monster press conference in 
the lobby of Brown's Hotel. 

Say nothing until I get there. Don't 
even claim bloodlines with the boy. 
Say nothing. 

TIL talk to the press. And we will bury 
your shame forever, in a blizzard of 
angry bullshit. 

Right. And how's that for art? 

Never mind. Let's get back to this 
terrible problem you're having with 
your son. He's a murderous litile bas- 
tard for sure, and Jesus, Ralph, I think 
I might have misspoke myself when I 
said 10,000 would cover it. 

No, let's talk about 30, Ralph. You've 
got a real monster on your hands. 1 
wouldn't touch him for less than 30. 

[Handwritten] (Whoops—1 just got a 
call with regard to the opening of FeL in 
Las Vegas in London on Jan 25—where I 
will be the guest of honor.) 

You're in luck, Ralph. I can coun- 
sel the boy personally in my suite at 
Brown's Hotel. 

1 can film my personal counseling ses- 
sions, as well as the stage production. 

See you soon, 

Yr. buddy, HST” 


Asit happens, Hunter was right. It was 
hell at the time, but I think it worked, 
and today Theo is a great guitarist, 
singer, songwriter and all-around fine 
human being, who serves his commu- 
nity as a printer—not quite his own 
choice of penal servitude but an hon- 
est job. He stands like the Statue of 
Liberty operating state-of-the-art 
printing equipment, transforming 
drivel into elegant documents about 
mail-order bargains for personalized 
diapers, brochures for money- 
laundering opportunities and funeral- 
parlor circulars on how to die with 
dignity and be buried with long-term 
afterlife opportunities. 

As I have said, it is a way to earn 
an honest living. He is a musician, for 
God's sake! And that is exactly what he 
should be doing—all the time. But the 
world is warped, so he plays at being a 
printer. He would just as willingly print 
a political leaflet to impeach George 
W. Bush, if given the chance, and also 
Tony Blair. Just as easily he would print 
опе advocating a third term for both 
those sons of bitches. He is my beloved 
son and I love him dearly. Like me, he 
looks through a glass darkly. 

Since those far-off optimistic times, I 
have met some of the children of our 
generation, and they seem pretty good 
10 me, but the parents on the whole are 
a miserable mess, fucked-up and lost—a 
wandering tribe of disillusioned mutants 
whose brains died inside an ideology that 
seemed like a good idea at the time. 


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PLAYBOY 


MINE 26 


(continued from page 56) 
would have looked like a young Wilfred 
Brimley if his face and hands hadn't been 
covered in coal dust. 

"My grandpappy vasa miner, my pappy 
was a miner, and now my boy's a miner," 
he said. "The more things change, more 
they stay the same." A miner for 26 years, 
Baker described himself as "an old former 
hippie trying to survive." Once, he told 
me, a rock fell on his back and crushed his 
feet while he was underground. “А man's 
gotta be stupid not to be scared," he said. 
"But, hey, my wife got six years of col- 
lege, and I can make more in the mines 
than she can teaching in a prison." Min- 
ers make between $17 and $22 an hour. 
A person working in a retail store makes 
$5.15 an hour. 

The door opened. "Come in, buddy." 
Keith went toa dirty window with a water- 
ing can. On the windowsill were Styro- 
foam coffee cups filled with dirt and frail 
green shoots straining toward sunlight. 
“Tomatoes,” he said as he watered them. 
“When they're grown, ГИ plant ‘em out- 
side. By July ГЇЇ have tomatoes for the 
guys lunches.” At home he grows apples, 
cherries, grapes. pears and bananas, as 
well as basil, peppers, garlic and toma- 
toes for a chicken parmigiana sauce. His 
maternal grandfather, Guerno Galo: 
emigrated from Italy with his wife, Naz- 
zaranna, in 1098. During processing at 
Ellis Island, Galosi's name was changed 
to William Glass, his wife's to Miss Glass. 
A mine representative offered him a job 
cutting coal in Dante (pronounced dant), 
where Keith, one of six children, would 
eventually grow up. Keith's father died 
when Keith was seven. Keith went into 
the mines at 18. 

“I watched those old guys go into the 
mines," he said, sitting behind his desk, 
"and that's all I wanted to be. I couldn't 
wait to take my lunch bucket down there 
and listen to their old war stories." Keith 
looks boyish for a man his age, his pink 
face clean-shaven, his blue eyes as mis- 
chievous as a child's. He started in the 
mines as a red hat, an inexperienced 
laborer, and progressed to become a 
black hat, an equipment operator. At 22 
he became a white hat, a foreman. Mostly 
he's worked in union mines. "In those 
days,” he said, "the union watched out 
for you. Today there's not much differ- 
ence between union and nonunion mines 
except nonunion miners take care of 
themselves." Deep Mine 26, a nonunion 
mine, is well run and operated, says Phil 
Smith, the local communications director 
ofthe United Mine Workers of America, 
adding that nonunion guys sacrifice 
benefits for $1 or $2 more an hour in 
wages. The "tremendous difference" 
between union and nonunion, he says, 
is that when a nonunion miner goes to 
his foreman with a problem and the fore- 


132 man doesn't agree with him, the miner 


has to call a federal hodine, which can 
take hours or days to deal with the com- 
plaint. Ага union mine, а rep is on-site to 
deal with problems immediately. 

Thirty years ago, everything in a min- 
ing camp revolved around the mines. 
You socialized with miners," Keith said. 
"They were your family. Older guys taught 
younger guys." Unlike other jobs, coal 
mining instigated few rivalries because the 
close quarters demanded teamwork. Min- 
ers often lived in row houses owned by 
the mine company. They shopped in the 
company store, which had three sections: 
guns and tools on one side, clothes and 
dry goods on the other and groceries n 
the middle. "Everything was top quality," 
Keith said. "The best cuts of meat. You 
charged it, and the company took it out 
of your check. The stores vanished in 
the late 1970s because they'd become a 
headache for the mines to keep up." Also, 
Wal-Marts began appearing near small 
coal camps to take advantage of miners" 
disposable income. 

Mining camps in the past had a strict. 
social hierarchy, with nonmine workers 
at the bottom, miners in the middle and 
mine executives at the top. "When I was 
a boy I watched those big executives ї 
their fancy cars, smoking big cigars,” 
Keith said. "I realized that's what 1 
wanted to be. A prestigious person who 
made decisions." Keith smiled. “Now I'm 
the guy I used to watch in Dante.” Keith 
doesn't go down into the mines much 
anymore. He spends his days hosting the 
press, holding meetings, telling jokes. 

"After Sago, you get some fear," he said. 
"Anything out of our control could hap- 
pen. But if it's in our control, I can take 
care of you." Keith said miners know what 
to do when accidents happen, as they 
inevitably do. "There's a misconception 
that miners are dumb. We're MacGyver 
types. We can adjust to anything under- 
ground. Things change—the roof, the 
composition of the rock, moisture." 

Bledsoe came in with miner's gear for 
me: a hard hat with a safety light, safety 
glasses, coveralls with red-and-silver 
stripes and steel-toe rubber boots. Over 
my shoulders he hooked a harness that 
held a 14-hour battery for my hat light; a 
self-rescuer, a canteenlike container that 
held enough air to last an hour; and a 
methanometer, which measures methane 
and emits a sirenlike noise if it detects too 
much. I didn't tell Bledsoe I was claustro- 
phobic and feared being buried alive. I 
just signed the mine's safety form. 

While Keith made calls, Bledsoe and 1 
stepped outside onto the deck that looks 
out over the mine's surface. Miners cov- 
ered in coal dust moved in and out of a 
Quonset hut that serves as a warehouse. 
They hovered over machines, repair- 
ing them. Part of Bledsoe's job is to ride 
in the helicopter to the hospital with 
injured miners to see that they get the 
best care, and then to go into the mine 
and investigate accidents. 


Keith, in his clean miner's gear, came 
out onto the deck. He pointed to the sky. 
“Wild turkeys,” he said. They soared over 
a patch of pussy willows and disappeared 
into the woods. Keith pointed down to an 
old miner covered with coal dust, bend- 
ing over to pick up a log. "That's the old 
man, Carson Vanover,” he said. “He'll be 
65 tomorrow. We're gonna have a birth- 
day party for him. He made $140,000 
last year, working 100 hours a weck. We 
cut him back to 80 hours so he won't get 
hurt. Yeah, you can talk to him, but the 
old man don't go to nobody.” Keith called 
out to another miner, а heavyset man with 
a beard. "Hey, Shug, this here fella from 
PLAYBOY wants to talk to you." Shug flung 
the back of his hand at me and walked 
away. Keith laughed. "He's a preacher." 

Keith and I went down to the man- 
trip that would take us into the mine. It 
looked like the bottom half of a Brad- 
ley fighting vehicle. Sammy Adkins, the 
miner working on it, is a compact man 
who looks younger than his 52 years, 
even with coal dust covering his bearded 
face like war paint. We shook hands but 
only after he took a little sideways glance 
at the dirt on his. Then Keith and I got 
into the vehicle and rumbled toward the 
gaping hole in the mountain. We were 
to rumble slowly down into the mine at 
a six-degree angle for 2,700 feet until we 
reached the bottom, 1,300 feet below. 
On the conveyor belt were two signs: олу 
SHIFT 337 DAYS NO LOST TIME ACCIDENTS and 
EVENING SHIFT 98 DAYS NO LOST TIME ACCI- 
pers. We passed another sign, FINISH 
EACH DAY INJURY AND ACCIDENT FREE, then 
another overhead, 2.500 FEET. 

"The sunlight vanished behind us. We 
turned on our hat lights, which revealed 
the mine shaft ahead of us like a gray 
crypt. A cool blast rushed at our faces 
from the huge surface fans that blow in 
fresh air and suck out dirty air The shaft 
narrowed, and it was as if we were mov- 
ing down a funnel. We had to lean our 
heads toward each other to avoid hitting 
our hats on the mine roof. The floor 
became muddy. The odor of burning 
diesel fuel became stronger as we moved 
into narrower and narrower shafis. 

At 1,000 feet below, the mantrip began 
bumping and rattling over the muddy 
mine floor. Big electrical wires snaked 
against one wall. The mine seam, where 
the coal was exposed, was less than five feet 
high now, and the roof overhead was cov- 
ered with corrugated tin to keep it from 
falling in. We had to contort ourselves to 
avoid the big bolts that hold the roof up. 
‘Then we were on the mine floor. Keith 
and I turned off our hat lights. We were 
in darkness, blackness. 1 put my hand to 
my face but couldn't see it. 1 waited for my 
eyes to adjust to the darkness. Nothing. 

We turned our hat lights back on, and 
they bathed the shale walls, which were 
ribboned with coal, in a hazy, eerie gray 
light. Up ahead the shaft led into dark- 
ness. Other shafts shot off to the left and 


right, like ancient catacombs. We rum- 
bled forward past a medical station—a 
stretcher and some rolls of tape—and 
then we were even deeper into the nai 
rowing shaft, heading slowly toward 
the farthest end of the 100-acre mine. 
Here, miles from the mine's entrance, 
men were cutting coal. Keith told me 
each of the four working mines has a 
10-man crew: four roof bolters, two 
miners, one shuttle-car operator, опе 
foreman, one electrician and one miner 
to clean up. Miners haven't used picks 
and shovels since the late 1940s, when 
a diesel-powered machine called the 
continuous miner was invented to cut 
coal out of seams. 

Until the early 1900s miners carried 
canaries in cages down into a mine to 
help them detect methane, which is 
odorless. If a canary dropped dead off 
its perch, the miners hustled out of the 
mine. Today sensors have pretty much 
eliminated the threat of carbon mon- 
oxide poisoning; only when miners are 
trapped for hours, as in Sago, does it 
become a concern. If a detector senses 
too much methane in the mine, miners 
call up to the surface to have more fresh 
air pumped down. If the amount of 
methane becomes extremely dangerous, 
the detector automatically shuts off all 
machines, and miners walk or run toward 
п take as long as an 
id Mike Quillen, 
СЕО of Alpha Naniral Resources, which 
owns this mine, “the rule is, Get out of 
the mine. Only as a last resort do you 
barricade yourself т a room." 

Keith stopped the mantrip, and we 
got off. Almost immediately my hat hit 
the mine's roof, 48 inches from the floor. 
High coal, as the miners call it. Low coal 
is any seam less than 30 inches high. 
Keith tried to show me how to walk 
hunched over so that my upper body 
would be parallel to the floor. He folded 
his hands behind his back for balance, 
like an old college professor pacin 
his classroom. I lifted my head up again 
and clunked it against the roof. "Like 
this," he said. He twisted his head side- 


ways and glanced up as if sneaking a 
peck. I grabbed at a scam of coal and it 
faked off in my hand like a piecrust. 

Up ahead, flashing red-and-silver 
stripes moved against the black vel- 
vet darkness: The roof bolters were at 
work. “That's the most dangerous job 
because they go into a room first," Keith 
explained. They worked hunched over, 
using a big machine that operates like 
an upside-down jackhammer to drill 
five-foot-long holes into the roof rock. 
Into those holes they inserted tubes 
of resin to hold five-foot-long screws, 
which bolted roof plates the size of caf- 
‘степа trays above them. The noise was 
dealening; the men worked by gestur- 
ing to one another with movements 
of their hat lights or hands. They put 
up a plate every 50 seconds, working 
quickly, seriously. Keith introduced me; 
the men nodded but said nothing and 
continued working. 

Farther down the shaft in another 
crowded room were the big machines: а 
continuous miner, shuttle car and scooper. 
The continuous miner worked closest to 
the seams, the other two machines behind 
it. They moved forward, backward and 
sideways, missing each other by inches. 
Keith motioned to me to flatten myself 
against a wall to avoid them. 

The public has a grisly fascination 
with miners' deaths when they occur 
underground. Such deaths speak to our 
most primal fears of heing huried alive 
hundreds of feet under the earth. But 
in truth most miners' deaths are caused 
by the heavy machinery they use in the 
mine's confined spaces. 

The continuous miner, a loud, 
infernal-looking machine, can gouge 
coal from the wall at rates as fast as 38 
tons a minute. The business end of it 
has a large rotating drum equipped with 
curvy teeth made of carbide steel and 
tungsten, which give it a weird, men- 
acing medieval look. As the teeth cut 
coal out of the earth. the machine's two 
metal arms swept it back to the shuttle, 
which scooped the coal, pivoted 180 
degrees and rumbled down the shaft 


toward the conveyor belt. Later the 
scooper would clcan up what was lcft 
over. The continuous miner's operator 
stood a [ем yards behind it to the side. 
He flicked switches and pushed buttons 
on a metal box that hung at his waist 
from a harness around his shoulders. 

The room was cold, damp and windy. 
It smelled of diesel fuel. Coal dust hov- 
ered in the air, but the air was still light, 
breathable. My back began to ache. I 
turned my head sideways and glanced 
up at the roof. It seemed to be pressing 
down on me like those moving walls and 
ceilings in horror movies. 

Lasked Keith how many hours a day 
men work like this. "Ten-hour shifts," he 
said. When 1 had asked Mike Quillen if 
miners ever came to the surface during 
their shift to eat lunch or go to the bath- 
room, he said, "Only wimps come out." 

I signaled to Keith that I wanted to go 
back up to the surface. The man oper- 
ating the continuous miner smiled at 
me, his white teeth flashing in his dirty 
face. "Why don't you stay a couple hours 
more, buddy?" he asked. 

"That's hazard pay," I said. 

He said, “1 know." 

There was a crash behind us like fall- 
ing rock. Keith and the miners whirled 
around. Keith moved cautiously down 
the shaft until he almost disappeared. 
He called back, “Aw, it ain't nothing. Just 
part of the roof." We started walking 
hack tn our mantrip. One of the miners 
called out after us, ^Be careful." 

The mantrip rumbled through the 
shaft. Keith pointed to pieces of wire 
hanging like string from the roof of the 
shaft every few feet. "There are numbers 
on them," he said. "That's how we guide 
ourselves out. If a miner's trapped. we 
can locate him by the number. Nobody 
ever touches those strings." 

I saw sunlight up ahead. 

I took off my filthy coveralls in Keith's 
office and went to the bathroom. My entire 
face was covered with coal dust except for 
my eyes, which had been shielded by the 
protective glasses. I looked like a raccoon. 
My hands and wrists were filthy too. I 


T AGREE! THATS WHY 
f Оскер Sucw A 
SECLUDED SPOT/Í 
DONT LIKE A LARGE 
WDIENCE EITHER t 


scrubbed myself dean. When I got back to 
my hotel room I took a shower. 


At eight that night I sat at the crowded 
bar in an Applebee's with Sammy Adkins; 
his friend A.B., the designated driver for 
the evening; and Eric, a coal-truck driver. 
Adkins was playing hearts and flowers 
with the barmaid, Christine, who was 
from California. Eric and A.B. swapped 
war stories. Twenty-eight members of 
Eric's family have been killed in mines. 
A.B. mentioned the South Mountain 
mine explosion of 1992. “Killed eight,” 
he said. 1 helped people get out from 
under rock in my day. Most of the time 
you can't blame no one. It's a hostile 
environment. But I'm as comfortable in 
amine as 1 am here." 

Eric grabbed a waitress walking by 
and kissed her. She told me her father 
had been crippled in a mine accident. 
Everyone in the area seemed to have 
stories. They told them after work and 
over drinks but never at the mines—that 
might bring down the wrath of God. 

AB. ordered another Coke. Virginia 
has stringent drunk-driving laws, he 
explained. “If you blow a 0.4, you go to 
jail and lose your license.” For A.B. and 
Adkins, who live in Jenkins, Kentucky, at 
least 30 miles from their jobs, this would 
be a kind of death. 

A.B.. 47, has been а coal miner since һе 
was 20. “If you live in eastern Kentucky 
and you don't work in the mines,” he said, 
“you starve to death.” A.B. wore glasses. 
had a clean-shaven face and neatly parted 
hair and dressed like Bob Newhart. Adkins 
looked like a miner on the town: blow-dried 
mullet, diamond-stud earring, Harley- 
Davidson jacket that seemed brand-new. 
Adkins and A.B. are members of a motor- 
cycle club. “Miners are the only ones with 
enough money to buy a Harley,” A.B. sai 
“Makes us a prize catch for women." A.B. 
is happily married with children. He works 
in a Kentucky mine, although he used to 
work in Alpha mines, which he described 
as the safest mines around. 

“1 wouldn't be happy doing nothing 
else," Adkins said as Eric left. 

Our food came, and we ate in silence 
for a moment. Then Adkins asked how 
I liked it underground. Too cramped, I 
said. He laughed. “Hey, buddy, you was 
in high coal. To understand mining you 
gotta be in low coal." 

"That Bill Jim seam in Bell County, 
Kentucky," said A.B. "That's low coal. 
Them's tough old boys in Bell County. 
They work in 22-inch-high seams. They 
wear knee pads and elbow pads and 
crawl on their bellies, using their elbows 
like legs for 10 hours a shift. The boys 
shoot out coal with dynamite and then 
scoop it up with a 19-inch-high shuttle 
they call a low-coal Charley.” 

Why would anyone work under such 
conditions? I asked. A.B. looked at me. 
134 “The money,” he said. “The lower the 


PLAYBOY 


seam, the more companies pay.” Even the 
lowest-paid red hat makes twice as much 
as most nonminers in mining camps can 
make. Miners in this area can earn between 
$40,000 and $80,000 a year, depending on 
how much overtime they work. 

Out in the parking lot A.B. said, “You 
know, when you turn on a light, it goes 
on because of me. I feel 1 do some good.” 
He looked around at the many cars and 
noted, "Must be the first of the month." 
We got in Adkins's 2003 Toyota. It was 
as spotless as it must have been the day 
he drove it off the lot. He held up his 
hands to show me a ridge of black inside 
his fingernails. "The only place we can 
never get clean," he said. Miners are so 
obsessed with cleanliness, Adkins told 
me, they even dress in their best clothes 
to go shopping at Wal-Mart. 

The next morning I went to the ware- 
house to talk to Carson Vanover, the old 
man, before his birthday party. He sat 
on a dirty chair in a dirty office, his face 
and hands covered with coal dust, his 
blue coveralls gray vith it. He hunched 
toward me, his hands folded in front of 
him like a schoolboy, a big robust-looking 


"We drilled holes in the 
seams, stuck in the dynamite, 
lit the fuses and shot the coal 

out. You had to get oul of 


there real quick. You didn’t 
wanna be hit by debris." 


old man with a young man's blue eyes. 
The miners called him “а look-up-to 
kind of guy." His father took him down 
into a mine when he was five years old, 
then left him alone in the blackness. 

“No, sir, I didn't cry,” Vanover said. 
"By 14 I was no longer afraid. It was like 
being home. 1 was proud to follow in my 
daddy's footsteps, and his daddy's." 

In those days miners cut coal with 
picks and shoveled it into carts drawn by 
mules. There were no roof bolters, just 
rotting timbers; no methane detectors, 
just a little flame in a peaked glass on a 
miner's hat, called a possum light. When 
it flickered or changed color, there was 
100 much methane in the mine. 

Some of the early mines Vanover worked 
in used dynamite. "We drilled 11 holes in 
the seams," he said, "then we stuck in the 
dynamite, lit the fuses and shot the coal 
out. You had to get out of there real quick. 
You didn't wanna be hit by debris." 

I asked why he started in the mines. 
“1 was 18," he said. "I wanted to buy me 
а new car, a 1960 Chevy, turquoise and 
white, with a 348-cubic-inch engine. 1 
paid $108.56 a month for two years." 


Vanover proudly showed me his work 
sheet. At 65 he worked 13 to 20 hours a 
day, week after week. It annoyed him when 
Keith cut back his hours from 100 to 80. 

His last vacation came in 1984. After 
he married, his wife once asked him 
when he'd be coming home from work. 
He said, “When you see me comin’.” She 
never asked again. She once accused him 
of having a mistress, Minnie the Miner. 
He seemed to have no real interest in the 
money he earned except to buy toys—a 
boat, a camper, tools—he has no time to 
enjoy. "Anything I want," he said, 71 get." 

He has no plans to retire. "Some peo- 
ple say it's a dirty job," he said, "but 1 
figure when your number's up, you're 
done. How many people took boat rides 
after the Titanic? You just gotta pay atten- 
tion is all, or you're history.” 

Vanover's birthday party began at 
noon in the warehouse, where methane 
detectors and self-rescuers were stacked 
on shelves, each labeled with a miner's 
name. Every miner is responsible for 
his safety devices. About 20 miners had 
come up out of the mine for the party, a 
rare occasion for them on both counts. 
Keith had laid out a birthday cake, chili 
dogs and chips on a counter, and an ice 
chest filled with soda sat on the floor. The 
filthy miners hovered around the food in 
the kind of awkward silence workingmen 
exhibit in certain social situations. Adkins 
took a bite out of a cold chili dog and 
said. "They take care of us. don't they?" 

Keith led the miners in a rendition 
of "Happy Birthday." Vanover looked 
embarrassed. 

Тһе men stood around, eating, talking, 
razzing each other. Keith introduced me 
to a man with a big belly. "Now, don't say 
nothing about his belly," Keith grinned. 
Somebody called out to Shug the 
preacher and told him he had no ass. 
Shug turned and wiggled what he had 
in his baggy coveralls. The miner was 
right. Everyone laughed. It was like 
being in a baseball locker room in more 
innocent times. 

Later that day I drove to Clinchco, to 
the home ofa miner and preacher named 
Jimmy Ellis. Clinchco is an impoverished 
Appalachian mining camp of about 400 
people. Railroad tracks ran behind а line 
of rotting company row houses, a red- 
brick old-folks' home and a Triple T con- 
venience store. A sign read, READY OR NOT, 
JESUS 15 COMING. At the entrance to Mill 
Street a gleaming plaque was planted in 
the earth, a memorial to the coal miners 
of Dickenson County, dedicated to those 
who lost their lives in the industry. More 
than 300 names were on the plaque. 

Jimmy Ellis's house on Mill Street was 
а spotless yellow bungalow with four vee- 
hicles, as the miners called them, parked 
out front: a Ford F-150 truck, a Lincoln 
Navigator, a white Jaguar XJ6 and a Kia 
sedan so immaculate it was impossible 
to determine its age. Ellis, a chunky 
brown-skinned man with a miner's easy 


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smile, met me at the door, wearing a 
shimmering brown dress shirt and match- 
ingbrown pants. He introduced me to his 
wife, Cynthia, who was perfectly made-up 
and dressed in a silk blouse and slacks. In 
their living room were dozens of angel fig- 
vrines with the faces painted black, a scale 
model of an old whaling schooner and 
photographs in gilt frames of the Ellises" 
four children—all were now grown and 
had gone on to college—and their grand- 
children. One prominent photo was of 
Jimmy as a reverend, in black robes with 
gold embroidery and two gold crosses 
hanging around his neck. His church 
had recently burned down, the result of 
a kitchen fire. Alpha Natural Resources 
gave Jimmy $5,000 to help rebuild it. 
Paramont gave him $7,500. Mike Quillen 
gave him $1,000. He was with Jimmy on 
the helicopter that flew him to a hospital 
after he broke his back in a mine accident. 
eight months ago. 

^Mike Quillen called the whole time 
I was laid up,” said Jimmy. “He's a 
good person." 

“I worry about Jimmy after the acci- 
dent,” said Cynthia. "Him being slower." 
She glanced at him. "Older, too." They 
both laughed. 

А 58 Jimmy wasn't supposed to return 
to work as quickly as he had. “I'm healed 
up enough," he said. “If I'm able to 
work, I gotta work. I'm not old enough 
to retire." 

“We kiss and say we love each other 
every day he goes offto the mines," Cyn- 
thia said. Her brothers worked in mines, 
as did Jimmy's father. But as a teenager 
in Clinchco, Jimmy had no interest in 
them. He worked on and off in steel mills 
in Ohio, served in Vietnam, then went 
back to the steel mills until he finally 
accepted the inevitable in 1970. 

“The first time I went down in a mine, I 
said to myself, Lordy, what have I done?" 
he said. “The coal seam was 27 inches. But 
I've been there ever since. I bonded with 
the miners. They're like family. We share 
personal life, not like the steelworkers. If 
my daughter's sick, the miners ask about 
her. Miners don't see no prejudice." 

When Jimmy first started in the mines, 
he estimates, 50 percent of the miners 
were black. Now it's about three percent. 
"I worked in union mines until 1974," he 
said. "In those days the Man got a 
with murder. But today I like nonunion 
better. 1f you want something done, you 
don't have to ask. You just have to sac- 
rifice some benefits for higher salary. 
Miners spend; we don't save. Alpha's 
the best mine I've ever worked for. They 
take care of you like fami 

Jimmy has worked many different jobs 
in the mines. He has served as a laborer 
and roof bolter and has mined coal with 
dynamite and a pick and shovel. Now 
he's a section foreman. "I'm proud of my 
job,” he said. "I've achieved my goals." 

After more than 36 years of mining, 
136 Jimmy said, he could never work above- 


PLAYBOY 


ground again—not even his broken back 
could deter him. His accident happened 
on June 14, 2005. A two-ton rock fell 
on him. He crawled out from under it 
without help; then his crew got him up 
to the surface in 15 minutes. Within 45 
minutes he was at a hospital. "My men 
did a great job,” he said. He still walks 
hunched over from his back injury and 
his years underground. 

“You can always tell a miner,” said 
Cynthia. "Even at the beach they walk 
bent over.” Jimmy jumped up and gave 
me his miner's walk across the living 
room. Hunched over, his hands folded 
behind his back, he twisted his head and 
glanced up at an imaginary sun. Cynthia 
laughed. "Yes! That's it. He even walks 
like that in Lowe's." 

Jimmy said he had lived a full life 
before he found Jesus and was saved 
in 1990. "Like Saint Augustine," I said 
"You got your fair share." Jimmy and 
Cynthia roared with laughter, Cynthia 
making little waving motions at her 
cheeks as if to cool a hot flash. "Some 
people are Christians all their life," she 
said, "so they don't know how to live.” 


A two-ton rock fell on him. 
He crawled out from under 
it without help; then his 
crew got him up to the surface. 
Within 45 minutes he was 
at a hospital. 


“Amen!” Jimmy said with a sheepish 
grin. Then he added more seriously, "One 
day God told me, "Anything you touch, 
I'll tear it down if you don't serve me.’ So 
1 became a preacher in 1993. I have 27 
parishioners, some of them white." 


Тһе next morning 1 was in a coal truck 
loaded with more than 50 tons of coal dust. 
as it left the mine, headed toward the Toms 
Creek Preparation Plant in Coeburn. The 
driver was a man in his late 40s named 
Everett Hutchinson. He steered the big 
truck past the sign that read DEEP MINE 26 
окт, across the railroad tracks and onto the 
corkscrewing two-lane blacktop. He flicked 
on his CB radio and reported his position 
to the office. “Passing the yellow trailer.” 
Then he explained, “Let ‘em know where I 
am.” The twisting road is dangerous for the 
big 22-wheel, 18-gear trucks, which weigh 
21,000 pounds empty and up to 160,000 
pounds loaded. Hutchinson pointed to 
a culvert at the bottom of a switchback. 
“Three trucks turned over here.” 

It takes Hutchinson an hour to make 
the 20-mile wip back and forth from the 


mine to Toms. He gets paid $18 for each 
run. He shifted gears, slowing the heavy 
truck around a sharp curve. After strug- 
gling up а hill, we came to a flat stretch of 
blacktop and hurtled forward at almost 
45 miles an hour; it felt as if the big truck 
had become a runaway train. “It takes 
a football field to stop these things," he 
said. He slowed for a speeding car in the 
opposite lane. *My biggest fear is cars," 
he said. Often a driver will try to pass the 
truck on a blind curve or a hill, and just 
as often another truck will be coming in 
the opposite lane. 

Hutchinson spoke into his СВ, “RB] 
the call letters of an abandoned mine. A 
few minutes later we turned left at the 
sign for Toms, moved slowly up a hill 
and came to a weighing station. Then the 
truck moved up the grade to the hopper, 
which is like an open-sided self-storage 
room. Hutchinson backed the truck up, 
then dumped the coal onto the waffle- 
grid floor. From there the coal is put on a 
conveyer belt to a silo, where it is washed 
clean of dirt and rock. Then bulldozers 
load it onto waiting railroad cars that 
ship it all over the country: 

Driving back empty to Deep Mine 96, 
the big truck hit 55 miles an hour on 
the twisting blacktop. Hutchinson told 
me he used to be a long-haul trucker in 
Baltimore. "But my daughter got tired of 
going through metal detectors to get into 
her high school." So he moved to Coeburn 
in 1000 and began hauling coal. The laid- 
back country life was better for his family. 
He has been married almost 30 years to 
his high school sweetheart. “I knew her 
when she was seven and I was nine." He 
laughed. “Yeah, I pulled her pigtails.” He 
turned to look at me. "It's scary. You know, 
we buy each other anniversary cards, and 
we get the same cards." 

The following morning I was sitting 
in Keith's office talking to Jason Stan- 
ley, a 25-year-old red hat from a family 
with four generations of miners. He is 
tall, lean and boyishly handsome, and he 
had already acquired the miner's habit of 
dipping Skoal and spitting tobacco juice 
into a plastic bottle. 

“I never thought ГА go underground,” 
he said. “I thought Га break the tradition. 
So I went to college for two years. I thought 
Га be something great. But I couldn't fig- 
ure out what I wanted to be." He smiled. 

Stanley quit college and took a seri 
of call-center jobs. most recently 
Travelocity, for $8 an hour. “Traveloci 
broke my Appalachian accent," he said. 
"The miners make fun of my generic 
accent. They call me a Yankee." Stanley 
wasn't disappointed when his job was 
outsourced to India. In the summer of 
2005 he married Katrina Elkins, from 
Whitesburg, Kentucky. He told her the 
only way they could have a good life 
was if he worked in the mines. "She was 
scared to death at first," he told me. "I 
explained how my dad never lost time 
in 25 years." So in October 2005 he went 


underground. “I was fascinated by the 
rock formations,” he said. “It wasn't scary. 
The guys took me under their wing. I 
realized if I screwed up, I screwed up 
for everyone. It wasn't hard adjusting 
to older people, because they looked at 
everything in a funny way." When he got 
his first paycheck, Keith told him not to 
spend his money on a new car but to buy 
a beat-up truck instead. The next week 
Stanley showed him his used truck and 
then, grinning sheepishly, told him he'd 
bought a new Pontiac Trans Am, 100. 

Stanley spat tobacco juice into his bot- 
tle and said, “Му father tried to discour- 
age me, but now he's proud. I could be 
a miner for 40 years." He smiled in won- 
der. “The other day I went to McDon- 
ald's in my dirty 
uniform. People 
let me get ahead in 
line." Then he asked 
if I wanted to meet 
his wife. A few min- 
utes later I was fol- 
lowing his truck to 
Clintwood, a much 
neater, more pros- 
perous-looking coal 
camp than Clinchco. 
Jason and Katrina 
Stanley's trailer is 
at the top of a hill 
dotted with other 
modest homes and 
one sprawling ranch 
house with a mani- 
cured lawn, new 
tan siding and four 
cars in the driveway. 
That house belongs 
to Jason's father. 

Katrina met us at 
the door. She was, 
as the miners would 
say, “a bitty little 
thing," barely 100 
pounds. I told her 
she looked like Uma 
Thurman. She gave 
me a hard look and 
said, “Are you saying | 
1 have a big nose?” 

Jason jumped ae 
n. “He means you 
got a distinctive look.” 

“Jason says I look like Reese Wither- 
spoon," said Katrina 

1 sat on a sofa facing a small TV. Before 
1 could ask a question Katrina began 
talking. She told me she vas a "surprise 
baby" her mother had at 37, after having 
had two sons. Katrina's father died when 
she was two, and she spent a lot of time 
with her brothers, fishing and watching 
football games on television. 

The couple met at a Super Wal-Mart 
when [ason was a freshman in col- 
lege. "Wal-Mart is like our Hollywood," 
Katrina said. "We drove around the 
parking lot and yelled at whoever we 
thought was cute." When Jason asked 


жолмазаг 


= 


i 


her out, she refused at first because he 
was 18 and she was only 15. Finally she 
succumbed to his entreaties. "He was so 
intellectual,” she said. “I fell in love with 
his mind. Now he's my best friend." 

"She watches football, I watch the Dis- 
covery Channel," [ason said. “I spend a lot 
of time thinking.” He smiled sheepishly. 
"I'm trying to figure out the world." 

“He can play the piano, Katrina. 
“We both love classical mi He might 
be a miner on the outside, but he doesn't 
limit himself. I'm just enlightened listen- 
ingto . He's got a great heart. What I 
lack, he has; what he lacks, I have.” Jason 
already has an old mar's contemplative 
nature. He thinks before he speaks, 
whereas Katrina admits she may never 


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have had a thought she didn't express. 
Jason said he hopes to be able to put 
Katrina through college so she can get a 
job she would like, maybe something with 
animals. "She had poodles," he said, “Биг 
I wouldn't let her bring them into our 
house because we had new furniture." 

“He's like his father," said Katrina. 

“If you drop a crumb in my father's 
house, you'll hear about it," he said. 

I asked Katrina if she planned on 
having children. Her eyes grew steely. 
She said she had seen too many of her 
girlfriends get pregnant at 15. “1 don't 
want to be an average person. I want to 
be something special. God created this 
beautiful world, and I want to see it all." 


"I'm gonna take her to Virginia Beach," 
id Jason. 

atrina looked down as if embar- 
rassed. "I've never seen the ocean." 

When he first told her he was thinking 
of going down into the mines Katrina had 
cried, “Oh my God! Lord, you're going 
underground!" Then after Sago she was 
terrified to see him head to work. 

"It's hard not being with him," Katrina 
said. While Jason works a shorter, red-hat 
shift from 11 pm. to seven am., Katrina 
prowls her trailer, forcing herself to stay 
awake so that afier he returns she can get 
in bed with him at two r.m. when he goes 
to deep. When I commented that he must 
be tired a lot, she looked at me knowingly. 
"Oh, don't you worry," she said. "That's 
gotta happen." 

Jason smiled at his 
wife. I remembered 
Carson Vanover, who 
never saw his own 
wife. I asked Jason 
about him. He said, 
“I asked Carson why 
he worked so much. 
He said work was 
his hobby. But that 
ain't it.” He leaned 
over toward me, his 
elbows on his knees. 
"When he's in the 
Wal-Mart, he's just. 
an old man. When 
he’s in the mines he's 
the Old Man.” 

“Since Jason's 
been in the mines, 
he's become a 
man," said Katrina. 
"Some men are not 
even grown at 30." 
She smiled at her 
husband. "He even 
walks bent over like 
a miner in public. 
See the way he dips 
Skoal right from the 
tin? That's because 
his hands are dirty 


liberator.com with coal dust.” She 
sat there a moment, 
1.866.542.7283 her hands folded оп 


her lap. Then she 
said, "Jason values life more now. Death 
is gonna come, so you have to appreciate 
life more than be scared of it." 


Later I stopped by the Paramont offices 


to say good-bye to Henry Keith. “1 got 
something for you, buddy," he said. He 
handed me my dirty miner's coveralls. 


When I got back to Florida | showed 
the coveralls to my wife, and she offered to 
wash them for me. I told her not to bother. 
1 hung them on the back of my office door. 
"The next morning, when I went back to the 
office and sat at my desk, I saw them. 


137 


PLAYBOY 


EVA LONGORIA 


(continued from page 109) 
fish aren't doing anything but swimming 
along in their own merry way, yet people 
can't help but watch. If Brad and Ange- 
lina are in town, that's lucky for all of 
us because then there's a diversion, like 
the day Britney Spears had her baby. 
"That was also a good day for me. Earlier 
this year something fell on the Desperate 
Housewives sct and I got a concussion, but. 
I never lost consciousness and was home 
from the hospital within an hour. By the 
time I got home there must have been 
40 paparazzi outside my house. My girl- 
friends came over to take care of me, and 
while we were watching Oprah, the show 
was interrupted by "Breaking news: Eva 
Longoria almost fatally injured." 


Q7 
PLAYBOY: Have you gotten used to all 
the attention? 
LONGORIA: ГИ be at a basketball game, 
scarfing down nachos and hot dogs, and 
of course there will be all these photos 
of me with my mouth wide open and 


a nacho halfway in. It's all very weird. 
I think if I ever get used to that stuff, 
something's not right with me. 


as 

PLAYBOY. At what point do guys' stares 
turn into leers? 

LONGORIA: I don't think a guy seriously 
noticed me until late in high school, so 1 
never noticed men staring at me in the 
past, much less now. When my closest 
friends go, "That guy just won't stop 
looking at you," I'm always like, "What 
guy? Does he know me?" And they'll 
say, “Duh, yeah, he knows you." I always 
forget I'm on a TV show. I was shoot- 
ing something at a studio, and when we 
pulled up, all these photographers were 
waiting outside. I said to my friends, “Oh 
my God, you guys, who's here?” And 
they said, "You are." And I said, "Oh, 1 
thought a big star was here." 


Q9 
PLAYBOY: Your boyfriend is San Antonio 
Spurs guard Tony Parker. How does an 
NBA star woo a successful actress? 
LONGORIA: Tony did it correctly. I took 


"So, can I see you later—after the money shot?" 


my dad to a Spurs game, and the team 
asked if we wanted to meet the players 
afterward, because they would love to 
meet me. 1 said no, but my dad said yes. 
So we took my dad back to the locker 
room, met all the players and took pic- 
tures with them. Tony was the last one I 
met. He invited my dad out to dinncr, 
so of course I had to come. Then he 
asked me out for lunch. We talked on the 
phone for two months before we went 
on another date. It was very natural and 
slow, unexpected—very un-Hollywood. 
And here we are two ycars later. 


Q10 

PLAYBOY: If you're really Parker's sex 
teacher, as another interview suggested, 
what have you taught him lately? 
LONGORIA: That’s something I definitely 
want to clear up. That magazine story 
was quoted a lot, especially on the Inter- 
net: "Eva is the experienced one in the 
bedroom," and "Tony's had sex only 
once." I'm 31, Tony's 24. Tony’s been 
in one long-term relationship. Гуе been 
married, divorced and in several long- 
term relationships, so I'm definitely 
the experienced one. When I met him, 
he was already way more mature and 
responsible than I was by tenfold and 
had been in the spotlight longer than 
1 had. What can make me wobbly in a 
relationship is immaturity, which spawns 
all the other ugly things, but luckily 
‘Tony's more mature than I am. I'd also 
like to say Tony and I are not engaged. 
I'm not pregnant. Tony's definitely the 
teacher. He teaches me a lot of sweet, 
sexy things to say in French, but I can 
say them only to Tony. 


a11 

rLarsoy. Monogamy can be challenging, 
especially for two famous, busy people. 
Is monogamy overrated? 

LoNcoRIA: I think you're born monoga- 
mous, like a penguin—you have one 
mate, and that's all you can handle. 1 
don't have time to be with more than 
onc person. I think that's the key. I fly 
home to Texas every weekend to be 
with Tony, and we know we have lim- 
ited time together, so we don’t waste it 
on anything like fighting. In between we 
e-mail, phone and use our Sidekicks to 
send photos, which of course we keep 
clean. We're both so afraid of anything 
obscene turning up on the Internet. 


Q12 

PLAYBOY: You've been candid in inter- 
views about things you like, such as 
vibrators and G-strings. Are you cur- 
rently packing a vibrator? Are you wear- 
ing a G-string? 

LONGORIA: The function of a G-string 
is to give you no panty lines. The by- 
product of a G-string is that 
So the answer is yes, and it's white. 
The interviews in which I mentioned 


a vibrator were five years ago. With 
my relationship, obviously some things 
have changed. 


олз 

PLAYBOY. What's sexier to you: kissing or 
making love? 

LONGORIA: Kissing is way more personal 
than sex, which is why I hate, hate, hate 
doing kissing scenes on-screen. Sex can 
definitely be just physical. For me there's 
a connection—a sense of friendship, 
respect and sexuality—that comes more 
from a kiss than from sex. I didn't like it 
in the past when someone Kissed my neck, 
but I love it when Tony does. Some peo- 
ple have a fasanation with feet, but I hate 
that. ‘Tony could touch my feet, though, 
and 1 don't think I would mind. 


014 

PLAYBOY: You earned a degree in kinesi- 
ology from Texas A&M. When was the 
last time you applied your knowledge of 
human anatomy to movement? 
LONGORIA: It's been a while, but the 
knowledge is always applicable in my 
life because I want to be healthy. What 
I originally wanted to do was study 
sports medicine and be a trainer for a 
professional athletic team, like the Dallas 
Cowboys or the Spurs. I was a gym rat— 
kickboxing, yoga, Pilates, cycling, weight 
training, conditioning, circuit training. I 
just wanted to be in the gym all the time. 
Now I get bored with working out, зо my 
trainer mixes it up for me. 


a15 
PLAYBOY. You grew up as a gun enthusi- 
ast on a ranch in Corpus Christi, Texas. 
What's the last thing you hunted down, 
killed, skinned and atc? 
LONGORIA: It’s been a long time. Now I 
love to go target shooting and shoot а 
bull's-cye with my dad. There's definitely 
some truth to that old line "You can't 
get a man with a gun." Ever since Гус 
become this sex symbol or whatever you 
call it, guys hit оп me less. There's always 
that intimidation factor of a powerful 
woman who may shoot a man down— 
with or without a gun. 


a16 

тїлүвоү: How did your parents deal with 
guys hanging around the ranch? Were 
guns involved? 
LonGoria: My dad wouldn't let boys 
even call the house, let alone come 
over. The first time a boy called me for 
homework or something, I was in sixth 
grade, and my dad flipped out. I'm the 
extreme opposite of everybody else in 

don't look like the rest of 
them, and it was hard having my sis- 
ters tease me all the time, saying I w. 
adopted, I was switched at the hospi- 
tal or they found me in a Dumpster. 
Now it's just kind of flattering to be on 
any list of the most beautiful, hottest 


or sexiest. I just send the articles to my 
sisters, say “Ha!” and gloat a lot. 


Q17 

rıayno¥ What early gigs would you 
have killed for? 

LONGORIA: After I auditioned to be one 
of the girls who walked out with the 
wrestlers on Battle Dome, 1 thought, I 
can't believe 1 didn't get that. All you 
had to do was be pretty. I auditioned 
for Dark Angel, which Jessica Alba got. 
Eva Mendes and I met each other at 
the Spanglish auditions, and when 1 ran 
into her a few years later she said, "Can 
you imagine? If I had gotten Spanglish, 
1 wouldn't have done Hitch, and il you 
had gotten Spanglish, you wouldn't have 
done Desperate Housewives.” Growing up, 
my sisters and I were soap opera addicts 
because we didn't have money to go to 
the movies. So when I moved to L.A., I 
thought, If I could just get on a soap, my 
life would be great. I landed The Young 
and the Restless, but my character did so 
many bad things she was painted into a 
corner. So they fired me. 


a18 

pLaynoy: Not only were you fired from 
that show but your gig on the revived 
Dragnet lasted only a year. Do you have а 
message for people who put you down as 
you were heading up the ladder? 

LONGORIA: My career and current status 
speak for themselves, so somctimes that's 
the victory right there—or knowing that 
people like the ones who fired me from 
The Young and the Restless are forced to see 
me on billboards everywhere. But I've 
always had cheerleaders along the way. 


Тһе casting director for The Young and 
the Restless helped me find Dragnet, and 
when that was canceled ABC kept me 
and that's how I got Desperate Housewives 
I'm notbitter at all, although there is that 
one fashion designer who said, "We'rc not 
dressing her," because he thought I was 
such a nobody. When he sends clothes for 
free now, I send them right back. 


a19 

PLAYBOY: Whose career intrigues you? 
LONGORIA: Actually, 1 want to live with 
Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones 
and the babies. They're such a fun, dose- 
knit family. 1 could just су. guys, 
where are we going today?" 1 absolutely 
want to become a va-va-voom movie star 
like Catherine and still go home at night 
to put my kids to bed. I won't do a movie 
if it means canceling a vacation with Tony 
or my family. | would much rather get 
married and have babies than have the 
best career in the world. 


Q20 

PLAYBOY: What do guys need to learn 
about making women like you—or 
Gabrielle—happy? 

LONGORIA: I believe in the Men Are From 
Mars, Women Are From Venus idea that we 
don't have the same thinking pattern. 
A man should at least listen to what a 
woman has to say and then try to please 
her in a way that doesn't compromise 
who he is. A lot of guys overdo it and 
say, “I did everything for her," but I say, 
"Yeah, but you had the backbone of a 
jellyfish.” Never be a jellyfish. 


“Right al this point we decided to use the actual figures." 


139 


MICHAEL BROWN 


(continued from page 52) 
Suicide isn't my style. It’s not in my nature. 
PLAYBOY: When did it dawn on you that 
your career was in shambles? 
BROWN: Right after I was sent home. Sent 
home—what a stupid phrase. Like a child, 
I'd been going 24 hours a day; the cell 
phone and the BlackBerry were | 
ally attached to me 24 hours a day, sev 
days а week. I had the top-secret phones, 
and I was talking to the president of the 
United States. To go from that to zero 
miles an hour. 
PLAYBOY: What was the effect of the blame 
and humiliation? 
BROWN: Of being scapegoated? When 
everyone tried to shift all the blame for 
everything that went wrong onto my 
shoulders? What do you think? It's a 
heavy burden to carry. 
PLAYBOY: It was a high fall from the pres- 
ident's nationally televised accolades, 
when he said, "Brownie, you're doing a 
heckuva job." 
BROWN: That didn't mean anything to 
me. 105 typical of the president. He's a 
cheerleader. You know what the comment. 
did? How many people in the world do 
you think have ever called me Brownie? 
His name's George W. Bush. When he 
used that nickname, a lot of people in the 
media went, Is he an insider? Do they 
know each other? What's the deal here? 
That's when Time started researching my 
résumé and came up with the totally false. 
story about my having inflated it. 
PLAYBOY: The story was that you lied on 
your résumé, not just inflated it. 
BROWN: Yeah, and it was because the media 
thought I was the president's buddy. 
PLAYBOY: The buddy who was completely 
unqualified for the FEMA post—that the 
job vas patronage. 
BROWN: Ycah, and I had to live with that 
in the middle of everything else 
PLAYBOY: On your résumé you claimed to 
have been the assistant to the city man- 
ager in charge of emergency prepared- 
ness in Edmond, Oklaho Your boss 
told Time it was untrue. He said you were 
basically an intern. 
BROWN: Right, which has been proven 
totally false. I was in charge of emergency 
police and fire departments and was a 
liaison to the Emergency Services Divi- 
sion. I was on the committee to develop 
the new emergency operations center, 
which is still running. The spokesperson 
has since submitted an affidavit saying 
the magazine totally took what she was 
saying out of context. 
PLAYBOY: You were also accused of invent- 
ing a professorship. 
BROWN: Time totally skewed those things. 
PLAYBOY: If the story proved untrue, did 
Time print a retraction? 
BROWN: It never printed a retraction. 
People said, "Why don't you sue them?" 
Why waste my time on that? 
140 PLAYBOY: But it would have been far from 


PLAYBOY 


irrelevant if the person appointed to 
handle the disaster in New Orleans had 
licd on his résumé and was unqualified. 
BROWN: If it were true, it would be abso- 
lutely relevant. 

PLAYBOY: What about the charge of patron- 
age? Exactly how did you get the job? 
BROWN: Joc Allbaugh was Bush's chicf of 
staff as Texas governor and his national 
campaign manager in 2000. We've 
known each other sin 
called me, said the pr 
to nominate him as director of FEMA 
and wanted me to be his general coun- 
sel. After 9/11 the president turned to me 
and said, “Hey, you're doing such a good 
job, why don't you be the deputy direc- 
tor?" When Joe left, 1 became director. 
PLAYBOY: Do you maintain you were qual- 
ified to head FEMA? 

BROWN: Yes. 

PLAYBOY: Yet you admit you were unable 
to lead the organization in the way it 
needed to be led—to remake FEMA in 
ways that would have prepared it for 
this catastrophe. 

BROWN: In the middle of the disaster I 
thought about quitting—after the first 
few days. 1 thought about saying, “If 
this is the way we're going to do it, fine. 
Send somebody else in. They ve got eight 
hours to show up and I'm out." But then 
I thought, People are dying, people аге 
suffering; 1 can’t leave. It was a no-win sit- 
uation. So I truly had to be the scapegoat. 
Throw all the sins on this goat and send 
him over the diff. Okay, but I refuse to let. 
them chop my head off. I keep coming 
back. I'm their worst nightmare. 
PLAYBOY: It's true that you haven't gone 
quietly. What made you decide to fight 
back so publicly? 

BROWN: l'm a fighter, and I believe I'm 
right. When I lost my job and everyone 
was piling on, my wife and a couple of 
good friends said to me, "We know you're. 
down in the dumps now, but you're going 
to be judged by history for two things: 
whether you respond to this in a dignified 
way and whether you do it at the right 
time." I made the determination to bide 
my time and, when the time was right, to 
come out fighting. The time has come. 
PLAYBOY: As far as you know, at some 
point did the administration decide you 
would be the fall guy? 

BROWN: Yes, I've been told that 

PLAYBOY: Who said what to whom? 
BROWN: I can't say anything other than I've 
been told the conversation took place. 
PLAYBOY: Was it as specific as "Let's hang. 
him out to dry"? 

BROWN: Ycah. They had a plan in place 
before I was pulled out. 

PLAYBOY: As you look back, did the worst 
attacks оп you come from the admin- 
istration, the media, other politicians, 
editorial writers, angry citizens calling 
talk-radio shows or whom? 

BROWN: АП of the above. 

PLAYBOY: When was your final conversa- 
поп with the president? 


BROWN: On Air Force One, during his last 
trip when I was still at FEMA. I think it. 
was the Wednesday before the Friday 1 
was pushed out. 

PLAYBOY: Nothing since? 

BROWN: Nothing since. 

PLAYBOY: On the flight did he bctray a 
sense that you were to be fired? 

BROWN: No, it was a hardworking session. 
PLAYBOY: Did he indicate he was dissatis- 
fied with you? 

BROWN: No. 

PLAYBOY: There were other stunning low 
points, such as your telling Ted Kop- 
pel you had just learned about the cri 
sis at the convention center. Koppel was 
incredulous and said, "You just learned it? 
Haven't you been watching television?" 
BROWN: People can either believe this or 
not, but this is how it happened. We learned 
about the convention center on the after- 
noon people started going in there. 1 was 
up that entire night, with the exception of 
maybe a couple of hours of sleep. 1 started 
doing the shows the next evening. Kop- 
pel said, “What are you doing about the 
convention center?” | instantly said, “We 
just learned about the convention center." 
1 couldn't figure out what he was talking 
about. I meant “Yeah, 1 just learned about 
it when it started happening.” After that, 
one after the other, reporters kept asking 
the same damn question. 1 thought, Why 
do they keep asking this? What's the prob- 
lem here? When I finished the interviews 
and walked out, my aide said, "You kept. 
saying you just learned about it, and they 
were interpreting that to mean you had 
just learned about it in the past 30 minutes 
or hour, while they've been reporting it for 
the past 24 hours.” I went ballistic. 1 was 
out behind the satellite trucks, screaming, 
cussing, kicking—I was actually kicking 
one of the trucks, I was so mad, pound- 
ing on the thing. “Well, why didn't one 
of you guys step in and explain that to 
me between the breaks?” It was horrible 
phrasing, but I repeated it three or four 
times in a row, 

PLAYBOY: Which led to descriptions of you 
as a deer in headlights and. 
BROWN: "He's out of touch.” “He doesn’t 
have a clue what he's doing." “He's 
incompetent.” "He's not qualified for the 
job." "He's got to go." 

PLAYBOY: Was that the worst for you, or 
was it even worse when the House re- 
leased your embarrassing e-mails? 
BROWN: It was all equally bad. 

PLAYBOY: Were you horrified when you 
learned your e-mails had been released? 
BROWN: | was pissed off because every one 
of those e-mails was taken out of context. 
1 must have had 100,000 e-mails, and 
they sclectively released ones that made 
me look bad. Do you remember the 
famous one about being a fashion god? 
PLAYBOY: We do. 

BROWN: How could you forget that, right? 
PLAYBOY: Do you understand how damning 
it was that you were worrying about your 
wardrobe in the middle of the crisis? 


BROWN: I had just eaten lunch with the 
person I sent that to, and we were laugh- 
ing about it—we can laugh about it now. 
She had always bugged me to get rid of 
the white shirt and put ona FEMA T-shirt 
or FEMA cap or something. I would get 
mad and say, "No, we need to look pro- 
fessional." I wore a FEMA shirt that day 
because that's all I had left. Anyway, she 
emailed me and said something about how 
fabulous I looked. I e-mailed back, "Yeah, 
I got it at Nordstrom. Aren't I a fashion 
god?" Just trying to bring a little levity to 
the situation. I was making a joke. 
PLAYBOY: According to many Americans it 
was not a time for joking. You were also 
criticized for your e-mail asking for help. 
finding a dog sitter. 

BROWN: This ticks me off because it was 
a serious e-mail. When I left to go to 
Katrina, my wife left for Scottsdale to see 
our daughter. We have a Saint Bernard 
and a dachshund. They were locked up 
in the house, so I e-mailed my scheduler 
and asked her to find somebody ta watch 
the dogs for me. People were appalled 
that 1 was concerned about the dogs in 
the middle of a disaster. Well, what was 1 
supposed to do? Leave the dogs there to 
starve for the next week? 

PLAYBOY: Another e-mail was from one of 
your staffers, who said you needed time 
for a nice dinner now that Baton Rouge 
restaurants were open. At a time when 
people were starving, that didn't go over 
well cither. 

BROWN: But I didn't even know they were 
doing it. I mcan, that was just stupid. Of 
course I sent her back home. 

PLAYBOY: In another e-mail, a staffer 
advised you to roll up your sleeves to 
look as if you were working hard. “Even 
the president rolled his sleeves to just 
below the elbow," she wrote. You and 
your staff seemed preoccupied with your 
image and personal needs. 

BROWN: That was the same woman who 
sent me the e-mail saying, "He needs 
time to eat." 

PLAYBOY: Can you legitimately blame 
your staff for all these mistakes? You 
hired these people. You set the tone. One 
can assume your assistant had reason to 
believe it was her job to make sure you 
were well fed and dressed 

BROWN: When asked about that in a hear- 
ing, I said, "Not one of you sitting up 
here doesn't have some staff person who 
walks over before that red light goes on, 
who adjusts your tie or makes sure the 
powder is just right." Everybody does 
it—everybody. Look at who released 
those e-mails. Who selectively released 
ones that would make me look bad? 
Homeland Security. 

PLAYBOY: As part of a campaign to dis- 
credit you? 

BROWN: Draw your own conclusions. АЙ 1 
know is the department released certain 
e-mails. They were selectively released by the 
department to a Democratic congressman. 
PLAYBOY: There were other appalling 


e-mails. In one you talked about how 
bad you wanted to go home, walk your 
dogs and have a margarita. 

BROWN: The problem is they ignored the 
work I was doing—the hundreds of other 
e-mails and the videotapes that prove 
what was really going on, that I was work- 
ing against a system set up to fail. 
PLAYBOY: In one congressional hearing, 
Representative Gene Taylor from Missis- 
sippi said you couldn't relate to the losses of 
people hurt by the hurricane. You angrily 
fired back that you in fact did. Have you 
personally experienced disasters? 
BROWN: My earliest childhood memory is of 
being on my grandparents’ farm in Osage 
County, Oklahoma and running to the shel- 
ter, the cellar—which seemed like it took 
forever, but it was probably 20 yards from 
the house—to escape a tornado. The next 
one I remember vividly was in Edmond 
when I was an assistant to the city manager, 
the position Time said didn't exist. I went 
with the fire department on a run one day 
to a house engulfed in flames, everything 
totally destroyed; then I watched the family 
come home. I was devastated by this. I сап 
still smell that fire. 1 lost a Sunday-school 
teacher, blown up in the Murrah Building. 
I lost a friend who was on the plane that 
crashed into the Pentagon. That congress- 
man, that little twerp, said 1 didn't under- 
stand suffering. He said I didn't recognize 
the death and suffering that was going on. 
As I told him, I've seen death and suffer- 
ing. I've smelled death. 1 smelled death in 
the tsunami. I know what it's like to lose 
close friends in disasters. You don't know 
how many people I've hugged as FEMA 
director—rich people, poor people, all eth- 
nicities, people who lost everything. People 
who didn't think it was going to happen to 
them. For that little twerp to claim I didn't 
understand death and suffering—he can 
just bite me, for all I care. 

PLAYBOY: Representative Kay Granger from 
Texas asked how you can sleep at night. 
BROWN: You know what I want to say 
to Mrs. Granger? “How does Congress 
sleep at night when you people knew I'd 
been pointing out these potential fail- 
ures, yet you did nothing?” 

PLAYBOY: In a hearing you also had it out 
with Minnesota senator Norm Coleman. 
BROWN: I thought that was so chickenshit. 
He came in there and started saying I didn't 
show any leadership. He kept chastising me. 
T said, “Okay, now, ask me a question. Give 
me the specifics so I can respond to it.” And 
he turned and said, "Well, I'm sorry. I'm 
out of time, and I've got to go." He got up 
and left. What kind of man is that? If you 
don't have the guts to sit there and listen to 
my response and ask me questions about. 
my leadership. then screw you! 

PLAYBOY: You became a national joke on 
TV. Every comic and talk show host 
made fun of you. 

BROWN: | truly didn't hear most of them. 
PLAYBOY: Jon Stewart said your prior 
job with the International Arabian 
Horse Association was proof the Bush 


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PLAYBOY 


administration is beholden to the 
Arabian people. 

BROWN: My line was better—that dealing 
with horses' asses taught me how to deal 
with the federal government. 

PLAYBOY: Did you appreciate Stewart's 
description of you as a " Faulknerian idiot 
man-child"? 

BROWN: Oh Lord. Thank you for remind- 
ing me. 

PLAYBOY: How did your family take the 
attacks on you? 

BROWN: After all this we were having din- 
ner somewhere, and I said to our son 
and daughter, “You know, if I've embar- 
rassed you guys, I'm sorry." My son put 
his silverware down and looked at me 
eyeball-to-eyeball and said, "Dad, we're 
proud of you. You haven't embarrassed 
us at all." It meant a lot. 

PLAYBOY: How did your wife handle it? 
BROWN: She was incredibly supportive. It 
has brought the family closer together. It 
made us focus on what's important. 
PLAYBOY: Which is? 

BROWN: The people you love and doing 
good, meaningful work. You also find out 
who your rcal friends arc. They step for- 
ward to helpand offer encouragement. I'm 
very picky now about who I work with. 
PLAYBOY: How were your parents affected? 
BROWN: My father-in-law was an old 
country surgeon. Thank God he wasn't 


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alive during all this stuff, because it 
would have killed him. Oh Lord, it 
would've killed him. He would've been 
so mad at the president and others. 
Oh God. I heard from my mom and 
dad throughout. There really is nothing 
greater than a parent's love. No matter 
how hard someone's stepping on you or 
rubbing your face in it, “We're still proud 
of you. We're thinking of you and praying 
for you. Hang in there." I'm sure it hurt 
them, but boy, they would never let on. 
PLAYBOY: We've covered some of the 
horrifying moments, but was there one 
point when you began to feel some- 
what vindicated? 

BROWN: The most vindicating moment 
was when the videotapes came out. 
"They showed what I was actually doing 
Suddenly the mainstream media was 
saying, "Maybe we had this all wrong.” 
The floodgates opened. I never looked 
to be vindicated. I was mainly concerned 
about how to get on with my life. But 
now, to have been vindicated in this way 
has been beyond my expectations. 
PLAYBOY: Can these turnarounds make 
up for the attacks? Can your reputation 
truly be repaired? 

BROWN: Never 100 percent. It may come 
as a shock to people in the mainstream 
media, but a lot of the country doesn't 
pay any attention to them. Most people 


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don't watch the news; they don't know or 
care that Katie Couric is about to become 
anchor of the CBS Evening Neus. Some of 
the vindication will never occur. 
PLAYBOY: In one tape that turned many 
people's opinion, Bush seems distracted 
and uninterested in what you're saying. 
Much has been made of his not asking 
you any questions. 

BROWN: I think that's missing the point. If 
people want to claim the president wasn't 
engaged or wasn't grasping the magnitude 
of the disaster, that's a fair issue to debate. 
But to use that videotape as proof is the 
wrong way to do it. He was on the video- 
tape only to give a rah-rah speech. If they 
want to ask questions about engagement 
and responsibility, they should look at the 
fact that after the tsunami I told the presi- 
dent we weren't prepared for that kind of 
catastrophe. And nothing happened. 
PLAYBOY: Nothing? 

BROWN: It is scary. As I have said, things 
are worse than ever. 

PLAYBOY: At exactly what point did you 
warn the president the U.S. was unpre- 
pared for a major disaster? 

BROWN: Back when I returned from South 
Asia with Secretary Powell and Jeb Bush 
afier the tsunami. I told the president, 
"We're not ready for something like that 
in this country." As horrific as the World 
"Irade Center attack was, it was confined 


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to 16 acres. What would happen if there 
were an enormous catastrophe like the 
tsunami? Or what would happen if we 
were hit simultaneously in two American 
cities? We are unprepared. We ought to 
be honest with the American people. 
PLAYBOY: What needs to be done? 
BROWN: Fix the borders. All the focus is 
on the southern border, but think about 
how big the Canadian border is. Where's 
the leadership? We have lost our way. These 
arc perilous times. The radical Islamists are 
out to destroy our way of life. 

PLAYBOY: What changes would help with 
future disasters? 

BROWN: First, get every governor and 
emergency manager, the DHS secretary, 
every mayor and everyone else and deter- 
mine their capabili- 
ties and map out a 
strategy. You need to 
know what they can 
and can't do. Then 
drive all your re- 
sources to fix what 
needs to be fixed 
Natural disaster or 
terrorism, you have 
to plan for as many 
scenarios as possible. 
Say Al Qaeda decides 
it wants to do a bio 
event. It can't aero- 
solize smallpox to 
the point where it 
can cover a wide 
arca, but it could do 
a local mall. What 
capabilities do com- 
munities have to 
deal with that? What 
capabilities do the 
feds have to help? 
Let's see where we 
arc. Assess and make 
contingency plans 
for every possible 
scenario—at least 
as many as you can 
imagine. You've got 
10 imagine big, 
100—100,000 peo- 
ple displaced. We 
haven't trained peo- 
ple in this country. 
The alarm bell goes off. What do you 
do? We need to teach preparedness in 
grade schools. 

PLAYBOY: In your line of work, are you para- 
noid, always looking for potential danger? 
BROWN: J am always looking for vulner- 
abilities. 1 was sitting in Dulles airport last 
night after midnight, and the concourse 
was empty yet all these maintenance people 
were walking through with big carts full of 
screwdrivers, tools and piping. I'm think- 
ing, There's a vulnerability. I watch the way 
the TSA screens. It's archaic. Do we hon- 
estly believe that now, with hardened cock- 
pit doors, il somebody charged the cockpit 
with a knife or gun, the other passengers 
would sit there? We're still checking old 


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ladics for knitting needles; meanwhile I can 
get my Montblanc pen on a flight. I could 
use it to take somebody out—stab you in 
the jugular. We aren't using our resources 
very well. We aren't thinking. 

PLAYBOY: In preparing for disaster, where is 
the line between rational and paranoid? 

BROWN: In the case of a big disaster, 
whether a blizzard or Katrina or what- 
ever, it may take a firefighter or rescue 
worker up to 72 hours to get to you. So 
you should be ready to survive on your 
own for 72 hours. That's not paranoid. 
Most of us don’t think it's going to hap- 
pen to us. Disasters are called disasters 
because they inherently are disasters. 
There's nothing clean about them. 
There's nothing easy about them. 


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PLAYBOY: How worried are you about 
avian flu? 

BROWN: I'm not sure we've had an hon- 
est, objective discussion about avian flu. Be 
honest with the public and tell them what it 
means. We don't know how worried to be. 
PLAYBOY: What forms of terrorist attack 
concern you most? 

BROWN: Prior to 9/11 we had a lot of discus- 
sions at the White House about smallpox. 
I think they're still debating. Is smallpox 
a threat? Don't know. There were worries 
about dirty bombs. We need to think more 
about how to protect critical infrastructure. 
No matter how sophisticated we think we 
are as human beings, in a catastrophic 
event our humanity is exposed. 


WWW.PLAYBOY.COM/WW 


CALL TOLL-FREE TO 


800-423-9494 or visit 
Www.Playboystoro.com 


PLAYBOY: Wc often assume wc arc in con- 
trol, but we're learning the hard way that 
the best we may be able to do in many situ- 
ations is just mitigate the damage. 
BROWN: That's exactly right. The other 
point is we are learning we cannot expect 
our government to do everything for us. 
If we think we can rely on any level of 
government to take care of everything for 
us, we're doomed. 

ince resigning, you've started 
ing firm for disaster prepared- 
ness. Is it true a Louisiana parish consid- 
ered hiring you to help prepare for the 
upcoming hurricane season? 

BROWN: St. Bernard Parish asked me to 
come down to meet with them. They 
wanted to hire me, When word got out 
that I was coming 
down, a lot of peo- 
ple started com- 
plaining about it 
PLAYBOY: The Atlania 
Journal-Constitution 
wrote, “No sane 
person would trust 
Brown to plop an 
egg into a pot of 
boiling water with- 
out screwing it up.” 
BROWN: That's just 
gratuitous. 
PLAYBOY: Another 
newspaper said, 
“After you hire 
Brownie, you might 
want to hire Ty- 
phoid Mary to help 
you avoid infec- 
tious diseases.” 
BROWN: Another 
gratuitous one 
I just told them, 
“Look, guys, I'm 
not coming down. 
If you ever want 
to call and ask me 
questions or want 
advice, feel free.” 
PLAYBOY: Obviously, 
it’s not the reaction 
you want. But isn't 
it expected? 
BROWN: Actually, 
I was a little sur- 
prised. I didn't think it would be a cake- 
walk, but I didn’t think there would be 
a backlash. 

PLAYBOY: Do you really expect people to 
come to Michael Brown, the poster boy 
for the government's failures around 
Katrina, to help prepare for disaster? 
BROWN: But they are coming. Since the 
vidcotapes and hearings, people have 
called and said, "We like how you handled 
yourself. We're looking for some advice." 
"The hearings made the difference. People 
sawa stand-up guy. They think, He's been 
through hell. The big one is coming, and 
we want him on our side. 


[y] 


ir TA 
ORDER THESE ISSUES INSTANTLY WITH THE DIGITAL EDITION 


2008 Proy 


143 


PIGSKIN PREVIEW 
(continued from page 96) 
double digits in wins this усаг, however. 
Hampered by injuries in 2005, running 
back Adrian Peterson isa front-runner for 
the Heisman. Quarterback Rhett Bomar, 
the Holiday Bowl МУР is back and only 
a sophomore. Ifthe offensive line's poten- 
tial turns into on-field performance, Okla- 
homa will roll for lots of points. 
Weakness: The Sooner defense will miss 
the meanness of tackle Dusty Dvoracck 
and linebacker Clint Ingram. 
Key Game: No game is bigger for Okla- 
homa than its annual showdown in Dallas 
inst Texas, this year on October 7. 


PLAYBOY 


Last Year: 9-3. LSU buried the Hur- 
the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. 


season, the Hurricanes were 9-2, a record 
that at some schools may merit the coach- 
ing staff a pay raise. But when LSU torched 
Miami in the Peach Bowl, head coach Larry 
Coker wasted no time in dumping four 
assistants. The instruction to new offensive 
coordinator Rich Olson: Pick up the pace. 
Olson has a solid quarterback to build an 
offense around in Kyle Wright, a six-loot- 
four junior who threw for 18 touchdowns 
last year in his first season as a starter. Tight 
end Greg Olsen has drawn comparisons to 
Kellen Winslow—senior, not junior. 
Weakness: The Hurricanes have un- 
proven players on the offensive line and 
at some skill positions. The coaching staff 
turnover has brought in new systems that 
could cause early confusion. 

Key Games: Florida State in Miami on 
September 4 and at Louisville on Sep- 
tember 16. 

Prediction: 10-2 


8. GEORGIA 

Last Year: 10-3. The Bulldogs 
were SEC champions but lost the Nokia 
Sugar Bowl to West Virginia, 38-35. 
Outlook: Mark Richt is one of only 10 
Division 1-A coaches to have recorded 50 
or more victories in his first five seasons. 
‘Though Georgia lost a ton of big dogs to 
graduation, enough talent is left in Athens 
to turn the 10-win trick again. Three tal- 
ented running backs—Thomas Brown, 
Kregg Lumpkin and Danny Ware—await 
their chance to carry the ball this year, and 
the Bulldogs have a top kicking tandem in 
punter Gordon Ely-Kelso and placekicker 
Brandon Coutu. 
Weakness: Richt must replace do- 
everything quarterback D.J. Shockley, now 
playing on Sundays. Joe Tereshinski is the 
most experienced ol Georgia's four can- 
didates, but the question will most likely 
remain unsettled unul the season begins. 
Key Games: Road matchups against two 
SEC rivals—Florida on October 28 and 
Auburn on November 11 

144 Prediction: 10-2 


€ 9. WISCONSIN 

= Last Year: 10-3, culminating with 
a Capital One Bowl win over Auburn. 
Outlook: At first glance one may think 
Wisconsin doesn't belong in the top 25, 
much less the top 10. The Badgers have 
only three starters returning from last 
year's offense, its defense was injured 
and pushed around at times, and coach 
Barry Alvarez has given up the side- 
line for the front office. But Alvarez has 
anointed assistant Bret Bielema as his 
successor, and the defense, now healthy 
and more experienced, could be the best 
in the Big 10. Two of those three return- 
ing offensive starters are underrated 
quarterback John Stocco and talented 
tackle Joe Thomas. Alvarez has also 
stockpiled so many promising running 
backs and receivers that only game time 
will sort out the better from the best. 
Weakness: The talent is there, but the 
receivers and running backs have virtu- 
ally no experience. 

Key Games: The Badgers’ efforts at 
Michigan (September 23) and Iowa 
(November 11) will determine how far 
the team will go. Ohio State and Michi- 
gan State being absent from the schedule 
should help the cause. 

Prediction: 9-3 


40. FLORIDA 

Last Year: 9-3, including a victory 
over Iowa in the Outback Bowl 
Outlook: With Urban Meyer, the hottest 
young coach in the nation, at the helm, 
Florida appears ready to once again 
assume a spot as one of college football's 
most dominant programs. After a perfect 
19-0 season at Utah in 2004 garnered 
him the job in Gainesville, Meyer seemed 
to push all the right buttons as the Gators 
steadily improved over the course of last 
season. This year the team will be explosive 
on offense: Senior quarterback Chris Leak 
appears ready for a breakout year, and 
receiver Andre Caldwell is back as well 
Weakness: The defense is strong and 
experienced up front bur unproven in 
the secondary. 
Key Games: The Gators are tough when 
they play at home in the Swamp, but dif- 
ficult games at Tennessee, Auburn and 
Florida State will test Florida's mettle. 
Prediction: 9-3 


11. CALIFORNI; 

Last Year: 8-4, with three losses by 
a touchdown or less. 
Outlook: Under coach Jeff Tedford, the 
Bears have won 26 games in the past 
three seasons and have the horses this 
year to make a run at the top 10. They 
return virtually every skill player on 
offense, including Marshawn Lynch, one 
of the nation's best running backs. Nate 
Longshore, lost in the second quarter of 
last season's opener, is ready to resume 
his spot behind center, while Joe Ayoob, 
who started nine games in his absence, 
in the wings. Look for new offen- 


sive coordinator Mike Dunbar to throw 
in more than a few interesting wrinkles 
Weakness: The offensive line lost three 
starters, and the schedule got tougher 
Key Game: The Bears open early on 
September 2 against Tennessce in Knox- 
ville, always a tough place to play. Cal's 
biggest game, however, is against USC on 
November 18. 

Prediction: 9-3 


12. FLORIDA STATE 

Last Year: An uncharacteristic 
8-5. The Seminoles beat Virginia Tech 
for the ACC championship but lost the 
FedEx Orange Bowl to Penn State after 
three overtimes, 26-23. 
Outlook: With sophomore Drew Weath- 
erford back to run the offense and explo- 
sive running backs Lorenzo Booker and 
Antone Smith in the backfield, FSU will 
put lots of points on the board. Weath- 
erford broke Phil Rivers's ACC fresh- 
man passing record last season and has 
a shot at being the next great Seminoles 
quarterback. Another plus: Thirty-year 
head coach Bobby Bowden and longtime 
defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews 
experienced no staff turnover in the off- 
season, a rarity in Tallahassee. 
Weakness: The Seminole defense took 
significant hits from graduation and 
early defections to the NFL. 
Key Games: When isn't Florida State vs. 
Miami (September 4) a big game? And 
then there's the regular season closer 
against Florida on November 25 
Prediction: 9-3 


13. IOWA 

Last Year: A disappointing 7-5. 
ending with a 31-24 loss to Florida in 
the Outback Bowl. 
Outlook: Senior quarterback Drew Tate, 
who has passed for more than 5,600 career 
yards and 43 touchdowns, heads up what 
should be a potent Hawkeye offense. Tate 
will have a deep. talented line protecting 
him, and Albert Young, who rushed for 
more than 1,300 yards last season, com- 
ing out of the backfield. 
Weakness: Coach Kirk Ferentz has seven 
starters back on defense but will miss 
impact linebackers Chad Greenway and 
Abdul Hodge. 
Key Games: The game agains! Ohio State 
on September 30 will be challenging. as will 
the road game on October 21 at Michigan 
But the Hawkeyes play only four other 
opponents on the road this season. 
Prediction: 9-3 


; 14. LSU 

) Last Year: The Tigers capped an 
11-2 season with a 403 win over Miami in 
the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. 
Outlook: LSU has potentially dominat- 
ing talent at the offensive skill positions. 
Coach Les Miles has the luxury of three 
sharp quarterbacks: junior JaMarcus Rus- 
sell, Peach Bowl MVP Matt Flynn and 
redshirt freshman Ryan Perrilloux, whom 


many considered the top prep quarterback 
in the nation in 2004. Running backs Alley 
Broussard and Justin Vincent give the 
Tigers more than one option in the back- 
field, and the receiving corps is deep. 
Weakness: Question marks exist on both 
sides of the line after the departure of 
defensive tackles Kyle Williams and Claude 
Wroten and two-time Playboy All America 
offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth. 

Key Games: Road games at Auburn 
(September 16), Florida (October 7) and 
Tennessee (November 4) 

Prediction: 9-3 


a} 15. AUBURN 

Last Year: 9-3. The Tigers lost to 
Wisconsin in the Capital One Bowl, 24-10. 
Outlook: Obviously, reports of coach 
Tommy Tuberville's demise a couple of 
years ago were greatly exaggerated. Tuber- 
ville has posted nine wins in each of the past 
two seasons and has Auburn shooting for 
double digits this year. Look for quarterback 
Brandon Cox and running back Kenny 
Irons to head the offense. New defensive 
coordinator Will Muschamp expects ends 
Quentin Groves and Marquies Cunn to 
provide a speed rush from the outside and 
has moved Will Herring, a starting safety 
for three years, to linebacker. 
Weakness: The Tigers have to replace 
four wideouts who had more than 1,000 
yards receiving in their careers. 
Key Games: LSU at home on Septem- 
ber 16 and on the road at Alabama un 
November 18. 
Prediction: 9-3 


ey 16. LOUISVILLE 

Last Year: 9-3, finishing with a 
loss to Virginia Tech in the Toyota Gator 
Bowl, 35-24. 

Outlook: When was the last time Louisville's 
football team was ranked higher than its 
basketball squad? Credit fourth-year coach 
Bobby Petrino for ratcheting up the Cardi- 
nals’ overall talent level. Trivia quiz: Which 
running back named Bush led the nation in 
scoring last season? No, not Heisman win- 
ner Reggie of USC but first-team Big East 
pick Michael, a 250-pound bundle of speed 
and muscle returning to Louisville for his 
senior season. Quarterback Brian Brohm, 
who threw for 2,883 yards and 19 touch- 
downs last year, is only a junior. 
Weakness: Louisville doesn't play well оп 
the road and allows too many points. 
Key Games: Miami (September 16) and 
West Virginia (November 2). The good 
news: Both games are at home. 
Prediction: 9-3 


17. TEXAS TECH 

Last Year: 9-3. The Red Raiders 
lost the AT&T Cotton Bowl to Alabama 
оп a last-second field goal. 
Outlook: Sophomore Graham Harrell 
is the favorite to win the QB spot over 
redshirt freshman Chris Todd. Whoever 
emerges as coach Mike Leach's choice 
will throw to three of the best receivers 


in college football: Jarrett Hicks, Joel 
Filani and Robert Johnson, a converted. 
quarterback who was Big 12 offensive 
newcomer of the year in 2005. 
Weakness: Tech's defense has consistently 
improved during Leach's tenure, but it 
still has a way to go to keep conference 
bullies Texas and Oklahoma in check. 
Key Games: The aforementioned 
Longhorns (October 28) and Sooners 
(November 11). 

Prediction: 9-3 


uz 18. NEBRASKA 

М Last Year: 8-4, induding a 32-28 
win over Michigan in the MasterCard 
Alamo Bowl. 

Outlook: The transition was painful, 
but Nebraska football and its fans seem 
to have successfully made the switch to 
third-year coach Bill Callahan's West 
Coast offense. Quarterback Zac Taylor, 
who passed for a school-record 2,653 
yards and 19 touchdowns last season, is 
back for his senior year. Taylor has tal- 
ented receivers returning in Nate Swift 
and Terrence Nunn, plus tight end Matt 
Herian is healthy again after missing all 
of the past season with an injury. 
Weakness: The Cornhuskers’ running 
game rests on the shoulders of two 
largely untested sophomores. 

Key Games: Killer games at USC on 
September 16 and home against Texas 
on October 21 

Pıcdiction: 9-3 


18. MICHIGAN 

Last Year: 7-5. For the first time 
since 1984 the Wolverines didn't win at 
least eight games. 
Outlook: Coach Lloyd Carr doesn't 
seem able to recruit enough blue-chip 
talent these days to keep the Wolverines 
among the natior's elite. Solid and steady 
Chad Henne vill be back at quarterback, 
Mike Hart is at running back, and Steve 
Breaston, a fifth-year senior, will again he 
one of the premier kick returners in col- 
lege football. But can these three make the 
difference when it comes to showdowns 
against Notre Dame or Ohio State? 
Meakness: Three starters are gone from 
the offensive line. Michigan ranked ninth 
in the Big 10 last year in rushing. That 
puts too much pressure on Henne to 
make things happen. 
Key Game: It is and always will be Ohio 
State (November 18). 


20. PENN STATE 

ÊS Last Year: 11-1, а superlative season 
for the granddaddy of college coaches. 
Outlook: The Nittany Lions vill struggle 
to match last year's performance. Quar- 
terback and offensive leader Michael 
Robinson is gone, but his replacement, 
Anthony Morelli, has a strong arm and 
quick release, at least according to his 
coach. The return of Penn State's receiv- 
ing corps is a plus, and any defense with 


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145 


PLAYBOY 


146 


linebacker Paul Posluszny on the field 
will be intimidating. 

Weakness: Morelli's lack of experience 
could be a problem early in the season. 
Also, three offensive linemen from last 
year had to be replaced. 

Key Games: Away games at Notre Dame 
and Ohio State in September will make 
or break Penn State's season. 
Prediction: 8-4 


42 21. ARIZONA STATE 

E Last Year: 7-5. They beat Rutgers 
in the Insight Bowl, 45-40. 

Outlook: Any team that can field two quar- 
terbacks as good as Sam Keller and Rudy 
Carpenter has to get at least some consider- 
ation for our top 25. Keller, who threw for 
more than 2,000 yards and 20 touchdowns, 
injured his thumb in the last game ofthe reg- 
ular season, which gave Carpenter a chance 
to become MVP of the Insight Bowl. 
Weakness: A lack of proven players on 
defense may have the offense watching 
too much from the sidelines. 

Key Games: Two tough roadies: Septem- 


ber 23 at Cal and October 14 at USC. 
Prediction: 8-4 


т 22. TENNESSEE 

Last Year: The Vols finished a dis- 
appointing 5-6. 
Outlook: Phil Fulmer is on the spot, and 
he knows it. Tennessee football fans are 
тоо demanding to tolerate another losing 
season. So Fulmer rehired David Cutcliffe, 
most recently head coach at Mississippi, 
to serve as his offensive coordinator. Erik 
Ainge, returning for his junior season, will 
go from part-time to full-time quarterback. 
Running back Arian Foster could have a 
breakout season. The defense will build 
around tackle Justin Harrell. Tennessee is 
a better team than it showed last season, 
and the schedule brings most of its stron- 
gest opponents to Knoxville, where the 
Vols always play tough. 
Weakness: Both the offense and defense 
have more than a few. 
Key Games: Every conference game is 
key in the SEC East. 
Prediction: 8-4 


“Will it distract you if I access my e-mail?” 


23. BOSTON COLLEGE 

Last Year: 9-3, including a 27-21 
win over Boise State in the MPC Com- 
puters Bowl 
Outlook: Junior quarterback Mau Ryan 
is BC’s most experienced player to fill 
that position since Mark Hartsell in 1994. 
Ryan has completed 156 of 266 passes for 
1,864 yards and 10 touchdowns. Coach 
Tom O'Brien thinks he can only get bet- 
ter. In the meantime BC's running game, 
featuring L.V. Whitworth and Andre Cal- 
lender, will continue to demand opposing 
defenses’ attention. 
Weakness: An overall lack of depth on 
defense is a concern; Mathias Kiwanuka, 
who moved on to the NFL, will be impos- 
sible to replace at defensive end. 
Key Games: The Eagles’ season is high- 
lighted by road games at Florida State 
(October 21) and Miami (November 23). 
Prediction: 8-4 


24. CLEMSON 

Last Year: 8—4. The Tigers beat Col- 
orado 19-10 in the Champs Sports Bowl. 
Outlook: Coach Tommy Bowden has yet 
to see if quarterback Will Proctor can ade- 
quately replace Charlie Whitehurst, who 
graduated. Clemson has other places to 
turn for offense, most notably running back 
James Davis, last season’s ACC rookie of the 
year. An experienced offensive line will be a 
plus. Even if the offense falters, Clemson's 
defense, led by sackmaster Gaines Adams, 
will keep the team in most games. 
Weakness: An unproven quarterback is 
Clemson's biggest concern. 
Key Games: They both come early—Bos- 
ton College on September 9 and Florida 
State a week later. 
Prediction: 8-4 


win over Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl. 
Outlook: Not as bright as last year. Too 
many veteran defensive players are gone, 
as is quarterback Brodie Croyle, who 
did almost everything right last season. 
Still, Alabama has Ken Darby, who has 
a legit shot at being the first Bama run- 
ning back to gain more than 1,000 yards 
in three consecutive seasons. Linebacker 
Juwan Simpson will have to step up on a 
defense filled with newcomers. 
Weakness: Who will be quarterback? 
John Parker Wilson will likely start the 
season, although coach Mike Shula is still 
open to alternatives. 

Key Game: The Tide’s ridiculously easy 
home schedule, which doesn't toughen 
until Auburn comes to town at the end 
of the season, should guarantee the team 
seven wins. One or two more victories on 
the road will make for a successful season 
in what is essentially a rebuildi 
Prediction: 8-4 


Go to playboy.com for a behind-the-scenes look 
at this year's All America Weekend and to 
find out which football greats were named to 
PLAYBOY'S All-Time 50-Year Team. 


‘TURE PERFECT 


Miss September 1906 Dianne 
Chandler was discovered 
at the Playboy Club in Chi- 
cago, where she was working 
while in between semesters 
at the University of Illinois 
at Urbana- 


Cristy Thom has evolved. First she was Like the artist herself, Cristy's pieces 
the model in front of the camera, most : are both sexy and playful; they fre- 
memorably as Miss February 1991; now : quently feature glamorous women ог 
she's the art- kitschy ob- 
ist behind the jects. Citing 
paintbrush, John Currin, 
with her work Lisa Yuska- 


showcased in vage and Ger- 

New American hard Richter 

Paintings mag- as influences, 

azine. Cristy Cristy usu- 

began her ally employs 

creative tran- a highly tech- 

sition from nical photo- 

Playmate to realistic style. 

painter at Otis “Гуе always 

College of Art loved pho- Champaign 

and Design in tography, so (also the alma mater of one 
her native Los painting from Hugh M. Hefner). Luck- 
Angeles, fund- photos is sec- ily, Dianne left school and 
ing her tuition ond nature." moved to Chicago to become 
im part With (с Thom puts pont to conos wih stunning теңі She workson our own girl next door. 
money award- huge can- 


ed by Playboy. "I had always been creative, . vases, some taller than six feet. “I love being 


but I never actually painted or made fine : immersed in a big canvas and watching it 
art.” she says. “Alter appearing in PLAYBOY. : come to Ше.” she says. "The bigger it is, 
though, | started painting, and 1 just 2 the more it comes to life for me." 


"Well, you know, some guys 
buy Ferraris. Some guys 
jump on Oprah's couch. It 
just depends. Every 

man pretty much e 
goes through it. 
It’s how well 


loved it.” She met with success 
early, earning her first two 
gallery shows in 2000, a year 
before graduating with a 
bachelor of fine arts degree 

Since then she has built an 


Perhaps because of her exten- 
sive background in model- 
ing, Cristy also has a knack 
for photography, and she 
shoots to help make ends 
meet. "I can guide people 


extraordinary oeuvre of more Е well and tell them what to do : they deal with 
than 100 canvases and prints. Her Е and what Im looking for," she says. SES lenny 
work has attracted attention from galler- : “I got a lot from рглүноу in that way." McCarthy on 


all over the country and can be found : For more info on Cristy Thom visit 


DAS midlife crises 
private collections. cristythomart.com. 


QUICK STUDY 


Ho! spot or not spot, how can you fell? Follow the bunny trail. From left: Carol 
Bernaola lifts Spirit in New York City; Shauna Sand on deck at Resbok's Rbk 
flagship store in West Hollywood; Laurie Fetter gois buzz for Barfly іп West 
Hollywood; Kelly Monaco is locked away in the Abbey in West Hollywood; 
Christi Shake с? her favorite haunt, the Mansion, for the Robot Chicken party 


You seem to have been doing a lot of 


fitness modeling lately. Are you working 
out like a fiend? 

A: I didn't intend to become a 
fitness model. I just kind 
of fell into it. I've had a lot 
of time to work out, and 
I'm in better shape now 
than I've ever been. 

Q: What kind of fitness 
projects are you currently 
working on? 

A: I hada 10-page spread 
in Iron Man, and 1 just 
did a fitness video with 
Valerie Waters. She's a 
personal trainer to Hol- 
lywood celebrities. 

О: What kind of workout 
video is it? 

A: She promotes an exercise routine 


MY FAVORITE PLAYMATE 


By Billy Lane 
of Biker Build-Off 
My favorite Playmate 
is Miss February 1994 
end PMOY 1995 Julie 


Lynn Cialini becouse 
she embodies all the 
qualities thot elevote 
Playmates above the 
Е crowd: extraordinory ond 


timeless beauty, femininity, 
generosity, person- 
ality and closs 


that uses your own body weight and 
complements that with dumbbells. It's as 
if a personal trainer is working out with 
youin your own home. I demonstrate 
all the exercises. 
Q: So are you ever able to 
get away from training? 
А: 1 just went island- 
hopping on a private yacht 
in Greece. 1 saw some ofthe 
ruins, including the Acrop- 
olis of Athens. That was 
beautiful. My friends and I 
stopped at maybe five or six 
islands total. Some islands 
{ were laid-back, and I was 
really able to take in the 
culture. Others were party 
КЕШ islands. I enjoy getting into 
culture and seeing things I havent seen 
before and may never see again 


HOUSEBOUNP 


You could do 
a hell of c lat 
worse than 
landing PMOY 
Karo Monaca 
to play your 
lovely wife. In 
Willie Wisely’s 
videa for 
"Stayin' Home 
Again,” Kora 
hunts for din- 
ner, fights о 

| ninja ond uses 
telekinesis, all 
for the benefit 


of Wisely's 
stay-at-home 
slacker. 


The Jenny McCarthy juggernaut 
continues to chug along as the 1994 
Playmate of the Year stars in the 
comedy movie John Tucker Must 

Die, with Jesse Metcalfe, Brit- ^» 
tany Snow and Ashanti... 
Really, don't change that 
channel: ілувоу called оп 18 
Playmates (below, from left) “S 
Qiana Chase, Ava Fabian, 
Lindsey Vuolo, Tiffany Taylor, Shal- 
Ian Meiers, Sandra Hubby and Julie 
McCullough to entertain conven- 
tioneers at the National Cable & 
Telecommunications Association 
trade show in Atlanta.... PMOY 


Unconventional at the NCTA. 


1997 Victoria Silvstedt will appear 
in the film Carry Оп London.... News- 
papers report that Miss September 
1995 Donna D’Errico is divorcing 
Nikki Sixx.... Miss August 2001 Jen- 
nifer Walcott is on her way to be- 
coming a pilot. The Playmate took 
her first lesson last spring and hopes 
to have her license soon. Jennifer, 
who dates NFL safety Adam Ar- 
chuleta, was 

also spotted 

at the Ken- 

tucky Derby, 

where fans 

lauded her 

victory in 

CBS Sports 

Line.com’s 

Hottest Sig- 

nificant 

Other Tour ең, оп cloud nine 
PMOY 1993 Anna Nicole Smith 
is pregnant! She announced the 
news from the comfort of her 
pool in a video clip posted on 
her website... PMOY 2001 Brande 
Roderick was a celebrity contestant 
on Gameshow Marathon, an amal- 
gam of classic game shows, hosted 
by Ricki Lake on CBS. 


MORE PLAYMATES 


See your favorite Playmate's 
pictorial in the Cyber Club 
at cyber. playboy.com, or 
download her to your phone 
at playboymobile.com. 


GIRLS NEXT DOOR 


(continued from page 114) 
the girls together. “Ме have very dif- 
ferent interests,” says Holly, “but the 
show gives us common goals and 
hings to do together.” Adds Bridget, 
“It's made us focus on what we need 
to do as a team.” 

Hef, who turned down dozens of 
offers for a Playboy-themed real- 
ity series before agreeing to do this 
one with executive producer, award- 
winning documentary filmmaker and 
longtime friend Kevin Burns, wasn't 
initially convinced the show would have 
such a salutary effect on his girlfriends. 
“One of my concerns going in was that 
wc were importing something new 
into the relationship,” Hef says. "Any- 
time you do that, you wonder how it'll 
turn out. I had reservations, and so did 
Holly. But I think everyone was sur- 
prised that it’s as much fun as it is.” 

Another surprise: More than half the 
show's audience is female. "We knew it 
would be appealing to men,” says Hef, 
“but it has also established a cultlike 
following among women.” One female 
fan from Florida went so far as to fly 
to Los Angeles to have her hair done 
at the José Eber salon in Beverly Hills 
simply because that’s where the girls 
go; she lucked out and got to meet 
Holly, who was there at the time. “I get 
a lot of comments about the show,” Holly 
says. “One thing people say a lot is "You 
and Hef are so cute together,’ which is 


something they would never believe if 
they didn't see it for themselves.” 

The second season of The Girls 
Next Door arrives on the heels of the 
DVD release of the first 15 episodes 
and begins with a show documenting 
preparations for Hef's 80th birth- 
day festivities. But one wild weekend 
does not a proper Playboy celebration 
make, so Hef and the girls turned the 
party into a moveable feast, touring 
Europe for a whirlwind two-week, 
five-count jaunt with cameras in 
tow. Holly liked Paris the best (par- 
ticularly the catacombs), Bridget fell 
in love with Italy, and Kendra now 
wants to live in Cannes or St. Tropez. 
“All the hot people and the big-ass 
parties were there," she says. “1 felt 
like, This is wherc I belong." In fact, 
she admits, she wound up in "a really 
bad mood" when the group had to 
leave Cannes after less than a day. “I 
was so mad, and I'm sure that'll wind 
up in the show," she laughs. 

ans of the show will notice some- 
thing different about the second season: 
the girls newfound fame, which has led 
to roles in Scary Movie 4, an upcoming 
2007 calendar and talk of a book and 
a line of clothing and fragrances. "The 
girls have become almost overnight 
celebrities," says Hef, “and we talked 
about whether that should be shown. 
In the end we decided it's part of their 
lives and we should show it." 

For Holly, though, the highlight of 
the new season may be its documenta- 


tion of the photo shoots that appear 
in this issue of PLAYBOY. "Our shoots 
just keep getting better," she says. 
"The first pictorial was a lot of fun, the 
calendar was more fun, and this new 
one was just amazing." Each of Hef's 
girls was given the chance to come ир 
with her own glamour theme. The 
front-and-back cover, meanwhile, is a 
PLAYBOY first—as is the technique used 
for the two shots, which were taken 
at exactly the same instant. “It was 
one of the most complicated things 
I've ever done," says photographer 
Arny Freytag. "Because both shots 
had to be taken at the same time, I 
couldn't move from the front to the 
back to shoot both of them. So we put 
up a video screen underneath me so I 
could monitor the back view as I was 
shooting from the front." 

Now the Girls Next Door are back 
in these pages, back on TV, back liv- 
ing a lifestyle in which every party, 
outing or private moment just may 
be next week's nationwide entertain- 
ment. And from the look of things, 
they don't mind one bit. "Sometimes 
the filming gets old," admits Bridget, 
"but by the time the first scason was 
over, I found 1 enjoyed having the 
cameras around. After we finished, 
1 thought, Where are all my friends 
who follov me everywhere? Where's 
my entourage?" She laughs. "Be care- 
ful what you wish for, because now I 
have them back. 


"Sorry, bul I have to run. My driver will see to your orgasm." 


149 


‘©2008 Playboy 


E —— э 


Holly, Kendra and Bridget are your average all-American knockout blondes who happen to be dating 
Ней This D set gives an intimate view of their lives as they laugh, love, play and party 
all 15 episodes from the first season of their hi show Total run time 5 hrs. 35 mins. 


IT playboystore.com CALL 800-423-9494 D check or money order 
to: PLAYBOY, PO. Box 809, Itasca, IL 60143-0809 


Enter, mention or include source code MG655 during payment! 


Standard shipping & handling charges apply. Sales tax: On orders shipped to MY add 82754", IL add 72594 CA add 1.25% 
(СП sees зде гш en sing 4 handing бар as wel) Call the tol-lre: number to request a Playboy catalog. We accept most major credit cards. 


Catch an 
all-new 
season! 


Mayboy On The Scene 


WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN 


A pair of socially responsible entrepreneurs shows the big boys how it’s done 


ttached to such buzzwords as Chapter 11 and global 
warming, the reputation of the airline industry has 
recently taken a beating. So it comes as a surprise 
when a carrier not only is expanding and tuming a profit but is 
also environmentally sound. In 1991 eco-entrepreneurs Alexi 
Huntley and Alex Khajavi bought a struggling Costa Rican air- 
line that consisted of one turboprop and $1 million of debt. 
They recast it as NatureAir, grew the fleet to eight low-emission 
aircraft that jump between exotic points in Central America 


and have managed to increase profits by 35 percent each 
year. The company is also considered the world's first zero- 
emissions airline: By funding conservation projects in Costa 
Rica, NatureAir compensates for whatever carbon dioxide it 
emits in a given year. "The forests we're saving sequester the 
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," Huntley explains. "We 
get calls from carriers in the U.S. and Europe asking how we 
do this.” If the winged behemoths establish similar programs 
of their own, we may all breathe a little easier. 


І А А : Е 
= IR Jil YOMO 


Г > 


Michael Franti smart-bombs Iraq and Palestine 

didn't want to make a film that is a critique of the U.S. govern- 
| mentor uncover some conspiracy," says Michael Franti, founder 

of hip-hop-funk-rock-reggae band Spearhead. "I just wanted to 
show what war does to everyday life for people." Franti's talking 
about his documentary, / Know I'm Not Alone, which chronicles 
his travels in 2004 and 2005 through Iraq, Israel and Palestine. 
Released on the art-house circuit in July, the film, along with 
Spearhead's excellent new album, Yell Fire!, provides a moving 
demonstration of music's power to connect people and bridge 
barriers. During his emotionally affecting journey Franti plays 
for children in hospitals and off-duty soldiers in Baghdad bars. 
Walking through the streets, he meets musicians and is invited 
into people's homes, where his hosts open up with remarkable 
honesty over tea. “I'm holding a guitar, and I'm the first American 
they've ever met who isn't holding an M16," he says. “I feel the 
best case against war is not a political argument or an economic 
one. It's to show what the human cost of war really is." For more 
information go to spearheadvibrations.com. 


151 


Price 

of Fame 
Hardly a month 
goes by that 
Katie Price, a.k.a. 
JORDAN, doesn’t 
grace the cover 
ofa British lad 
magazine. With 
all the publicity 
it’s amazing she 
doesn't have 

а swelled head. 


M 
boo 


Doll You Need to Know 


Bullet points on the Pussycat Dolls: 1. The hottest one is NICOLE SCHERZINGER. 
le did all the lead vocals on their debut album. 3. She also did all the backing 
vocals. 4. She was in Eden's Crush, from the TV show Popstars. 5. The five other Dolls are 
152  Whatshername, Whatshername, Whatshername, Whatshername and Whatshername. 


Leanin' Mean 


Denver-based DJ MS. VICIOUS is a co-founder 
of Angelic, a group of five female spinners. 

For locals, the sight of her manning the decks 
in a leather bikini and fishnet body stocking 

is the sign of a good party. 


A Cause Near and Dear to Her Heart 
Pink-clad ELIZABETH HURLEY has become one of the world's lead- 
ing campaigners for breast-cancer awareness. It’s a logical step for a 
model and actress of whose breasts we are so often aware. 


1 Married 
Paul 
Her split with 
Масса has earned 
HEATHER MILLS 
the wrath of 
tabloids. Perhaps 
they'd be more 
sympathetic if she 
hadn't bailed on 
her brief career as 
a topless model. 


h 


How Weak Is 
Your Game? 


As host of various strong- 
man TV shows, ТАМ! 
TYSON witnesses Goliaths 


juggling Volkswagens on 
- a = um 
best pickup line is telli 
ттт Wat you bevel 


and squat, don’t bother. 


"mm. 


No Joke 


Here's a good 
one: What did 
Polish super- 
model ANNA 
DRAGANSKA 
do at the. 
beach? She 
sunned her 
beautiful cans. 
Hey, we said 


it was good, 


not funny. 


Шороигг! 


DRINKS TO GO 


A bar is not a place; it's a state of mind. Prove 
us right with this Deluxe Portable Travel Bar 
Set ($100, kegworks.com). Everything you 
need to make a perfect pair of cocktails — 
shaker, stirrer, strainer, jigger, tongs, napkins, 
even a couple of classic martini glasses and 
enough room for two full-size Боше of 
hooch—presents itself in one convenient 
case. The way we see it, if you're packing the 
right raw materials, happy hour is whenever 
you damn well say it is. Like, say, right now. 


STREET SMART 


Emancipating a grimy street sign from some 
suburban subdivision was once a drunken rite 
of passage. You hung it in your dorm, had some 
laughs, established a personal aesthetic and 
impressed the frosh with your flagrant disre- 
gard for Johnny Law. Roundabout Signs lends 
some international flair and adult sophistication 
to this idea with its collection of foreign road 
signs (from $125, roundaboutsigns.com). Clock- 
wise from top left: kangaroo crossing, tank 
crossing, autobahn, bumps ahead and...true love. 


STRINGS ATTACHED 


You're already lugging 
your guitar around. The 
last thing you want to 
have to carry is an 
amp. But without 
the amp, what's the 
point of hauling 
) the ax? The clever 
folks at Skullcandy 
have designed a 
backpack-style case 
that solves this vexing 
dilemma. The Amp Gig 
Bag ($170, skullcandy 
сот) has speakers built 
into its shoulder straps 
so you can broadcast 
your masterful nood- 
ling to the grateful 
folks nearby. Cooler 
still, there's a way to con- 
nect an MP3 player to 
the bag at the same time, 
so Mitch Mitchell and 
Noel Redding can back 
you up as you rock 


TUNE UP 


Okay, maybe this Dodge Magnum doesn’t have a real Hemi 
engine. Maybe it goes only a few miles an hour. But in its own 
way it’s got oodles of street cred. Jada Toys’ Dub City Dodge 
Magnum remote-control car ($100, jadatoys.com) is more than 
two and a half feet long (one-sixth scale) and has lights, a horn, a 
rechargeable battery that gets you plenty of zip on each charge 
and an impressive turning radius that lets you corner like a pro. 
Bonus: To our knowledge, it's the first remote-control car with 
an MP3 dock. Plug your iPod into the portal underneath the 
wagon and it'll blast tunes while you drive. No license required 


WOUND TIGHTLY 


Earbud headphones become tangled 
every time you pull them out. If it takes 
one minute to fix them and you use your 
player five times a day, you lose more than 
30 hours a year to this fiddly frustration. 
"The Cableyoyo Pop ($10, cableyoyo.com) 
isa cord winder that attaches to the back 
of your player with a suction cup, saving 
you a nuisance in the moment and buying 
you an extra day each year. 


OUT OF THE PARK 


Baseball memorabilia is great, but you're 
not going to play with a signed World Series 
ball. BallPark Pens ($85 to $500, ballpark 
pens.com), made from the seats of famous 
stadiums, aren't just historic; they're useful. 
You can take one to the game to keep a 
scorecard, then write down the number of 
the blonde behind you who was impressed 
by your attention to detail. Other handy 
iterns include bottle openers and corkscrews. 


LOCK STAR 


Сог a million in cash you need to 
store? A pair of someone's panties 
you couldn't bear to part with? 
What you see here is the Bugatti of 
sales—and we mean that literally. 
The company responsible for the 
Veyron 16.4, the single fastest. 
production car on earth (see page 
70), has lent its name to the 
ultimate impenetrable box (price 
on request, stockinger.com). It 
has 83 liters’ worth of space inside, 
a five-button combination keypad 
with alarm system, three-way 
bolt and two motor locks, an iron 
four-way ground anchorage and 
a torch-, tool- and fireproof body 
and door. It sounds an alarm 
if someone even comes near it. 


BEARD DESTROY! 


THAE 
TACE WASH 


CUTTING EDGE 


The guys at Grooming Lounge know the art of the shave as well as 
anyone. They offer top razor goop from such brands as Jack Black 
and Molton Brown, yet they are confident enough to brew their own 
concoctions in their D.C. barbershop, stuff them in a box and call it 
“The Greatest Shave Ever” Kit ($60, groominglounge.com). It 
packs a preshave face wash, Beard Master shave oil, Beard Destroyer 
shave cream and Happy Ending soothing aftershave. Smooth, baby. 


CYBERCADDY 


When others doubted, our faith 
never wavered. We knew in our 
hearts that someday someone 
would figure out a good use for the 
Segway transporter. The Segway 
GT Links package ($5,700, 
segway.com) comes with an attach- 
ment for carrying a golf bag, 
special tires that won't tear up the 
turfand an extended battery pack 
that will keep you rolling through 
36 holes. Gliding across the coun. 
tryside while standing up beats 
cramming into a golf cart any day, 
But remember, just because 

it has a beverage cooler doesn't 
mean you can drink and scoot. 


WHERE AND HOW TD BUY ON PAGE 12 


155 


ШИйехі Month 


LAKER GIRL 


BASES OF THE RIG 12 


BIG 12 BEAUTIES—FROM COQUETTISH COLORADO COEDS 
TO RACY RED RAIDERS, WE PRESENT OUR BIG COLLECTION 
FROM THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN. 


THE BASEMENT—THE CELLAR OF THE CHI TAU FRAT HOUSE 
AT CHICO STATE UNIVERSITY TURNED INTO A TORTURE CHAM 
BER THAT CLAIMED THE LIFE OF A PLEDGE. JONATHAN LITT- 
MAN TRACES THE STUDENT'S LAST HOURS AND WONDERS 
WHY GUYS DO SUCH TERRIBLE THINGS TO ONE ANOTHER. 


JONESY—HIS DRUG ADDICTIONS AND HIS BANDS BEHIND НІМ, 
STEVE JONES IS THE HOTTEST RADIO HOST IN LOS ANGELES 
PROLIFIC PROFILER DANIEL HALPERN FOLLOWS THE FORTU. 
NATE FORMER SEX PISTOL, WHO HAS BEEN GRANTED A SECOND 
SHOT AT LIFE AND STILL HAS AS MANY GROUPIES AS EVER. 


CHRISTINE DOLCE—WE RECEIVED AN AMAZING RESPONSE 
TO OUR WOMEN OF MYSPACE FEATURE. THE ONLY COM- 
PLAINT: “WHERE IS FORBIDDEN?" SORRY FOR HOLDING OUT, 
GUYS. NEXT MONTH WE GIVE THE QUEEN OF MYSPACE THE 
ROYAL TREATMENT WITH HER OWN PICTORIAL. 


LUDACRIS—A YEAR AGO THE DIRTY SOUTHERNER CLAIMED 
OPRAH HAD CENSORED HIM. IN THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW, WE GIVE 
HIM AN OPEN FORUM—EVERY WORD STRAIGHT FROM LUDA'S 
MOUTH. THE RAPPER WHO HAS PUT OUT FIVE SOLO ALBUMS IN 


| 
INTERVIEW. WHAT YOU GOT IN THAT ВАСЕ 


T3 


THE FRUITS OF OUR FORBIDDEN PICTORIAL 


SIX YEARS WHILE ALSO ACTING IN FIVE MOVIES TALKS TO ROB 
TANNENBAUM ABOUT HUSTLING AND FLOWING. 


SEXUAL PENSÉES— MASTER OF DARK COMEDY BRUCE JAY 
FRIEDMAN TAKES A LIGHTHEARTED LOOK AT THE SEXUAL 
DANCE. HIS CEREBRAL OBSERVATIONS OF CARNALITY COME TO 
LIFE IN ANDRÉ BARBE'S EROTIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 


DORM HAZE—"WE'LL BE YOUR FRIENDS ONLY IF YOU DO THE 
ELEPHANT WALK." ARCHAIC INITIATION RITUALS ARE PART OF 
THE COLLEGE PROCESS. WE TAKE A LOOK AT RECENT PRAC- 
TICES FROM THE PLAYFUL TO THE PERNICIOUS. 


OZARK LAKE ANINEXPERIENCED GIRL GOES FOR A SEEMINGLY 
INNOCUOUS RIDE ON THE WATER WITH A CHARMING OLDER MAN. 
THE LAKE IS PLACID UNTIL THE MAN STARTS ROCKING THE BOAT. 
ORIS IT ALL IN THE GIRL'S HEAD? FICTION BY NICK CONNELL 


JOHNNY KNOXVILLE—SOME THINK PHILIP JOHN CLAPP IS A 
‘SPELLBINDING SADOMASOCHIST. TO OTHERS HE'S JUST A JACK- 
ASS. WILL THE MAN WHO SWAM THROUGH SHIT HAVE LASTING 
POWER IN LA-LA LAND? 20Q BY JASON BUHRMESTER 


PLUS: PLAYBOYS BEST-DRESSED MEN ON CAMPUS; NEW YORK 
CITY'S TAXI OF THE FUTURE; AND HOW ТО SATISFY YOUR DATE 
DURING DINNER, EY TYLER FLORENCE. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), September 2006, volume 53, 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 chang; 
156 Playboy, PO. Box 2007, Harlan, lowa 51537-4007. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail cire@ny playboy.com. 


SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette 
Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide. 


MILDS BOX: 1% mg. "tar"; tO mg. nicotine, FILTER KINGS 
BOX: 16 mg. “tar”, 1.2 mg: nicotine, av. per cigarette by 
FTC method. Actuel amount may vary depending on how: 
you smoke. For TAN info, visit www.1jrttarnic.com. 


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