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Golfing the same course is like sleeping
with the same woman, which means golf
and travel are a natural pair. For Swing
Fever we sent Kevin Cook and a team of
writers to five ultimate buddy-trip destina-
tions. “This guide has the alpha and
omega,” Cook says. “To be putting in
Scotland makes you feel as if you're play-
ing in the past, and playing desert golf in
Vegas is like swinging on the moon. Both
are must-visits for anyone who golís."

Boosting the Big Tuna is a grimy true-
crime exclusive about the Outfit (the
Chicago Mob), written by the co-author
of When Corruption Was King, Hillel
Levin. “Thanks to The Sopranos, The
Godfather and characters like John
Gotti, the East Coast Mafia has always
gotten more attention,” Levin says.
“That was probably fine for the guys
from the Outfit, who were smart
enough to keep their mouth shut.”

Does the woman to the left look famil-
iar? She should: Ashley Massaro was
a finalist in the 50th Anniversary Play-
mate search, then a Cyber Girl of the
Week in 2004, under the pseudonym
Mackenzie Ryan. Since her appear-
ance in PlayBoy Ashley has taken the
crown in the WWE's RAW Diva Search,
won the first-ever Bra 8. Panties Gaunt-
let match and become a SmackDown!
diva. For all her hard work, we honor
her with the cover pictorial, Star Struck.
“She was really thrilled with the experi-
ence,” says Senior Contributing Pho-
tographer Arny Freytag, who shot the
spread. "She's being featured here,
whereas in the ring. she's one of many
characters in a bigger show." Freytag
admires his subject's tone and defini-
tion. “But her best feature by far,” he
says, “is that beautiful face.”

In L.A. Confidential 2007, former gossip
columnist for New York magazine and
author of the novel 4% Famous Debo-
rah Schoeneman takes a look at how
the blogosphere scoops traditional
media in scuttlebutt. “Celebrities are
constantly misbehaving, and blogs get
real-time reporting in a way old media
never could,” Schoeneman says. “I'm
not sure if Cindy Adams knows who
Perez Hilton is, but ! think she should.”

As the weather warms, we'll be bring-
ing out our lightweight suits, this year
in subdued colors with vibrant acces-
sories. To showcase these suits in our
Spring and Summer Fashion Forecast
the PLaveov Fashion Department and
photographer Antoine Verglas went
to that pleasure-seekers playground
St. Barthélemy. Counterintuitively,
Verglas ignored the St. Barts beaches
and focused on the industrial areas of
the island instead, "I wanted to have a
monochromatic background that
wouldn't overwhelm the colors of the
suits,” he says. The images reflect the
signature Verglas style of intimate,
almost documentary photography. “1
am fed up with the static of posed
models in fashion spreads." he says.
“I think all of the action in these photos
is wonderfully cinematic.”

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vol. 54, по. 4—april 2007

features

100

BOOSTING THE BIG TUNA

John Mendell was a top-notch street burglar who allegedly robbed the secret lair of
Chicago Mafia boss Tony “Big Tuna" Accardo. Then Mendell got iced. Nearly three
decades later we present a true-crime exclusive as the man accused of his murder
finally goes to trial, in a case dubbed Operation Family Secrets. BY HILLEL LEVIN

L.A. CONFIDENTIAL 2007

A renegade group of gossip blogs, including Perez Hilton, Jossip and Gawker,
has ripped up the Hollywood-reporting system. Our writer—a former gossip
columnist for New York magazine's Intelligencer—takes a look at who's who,
who's a liar, who's suing whom and how blogs have changed the way journal-
ists cover celebrities. BY DEBORAH SCHOENEMAN

SWING FEVER

Few men live near a legendary golf course; most will travel a great distance to
get to one. For where there are great courses, there are also superb hotels, bars
and beautiful women. We crash the ultimate greens parties. BY STEVE AGER,
KEVIN COOK AND SCOTT GUMMER

DR. T TO THE RESCUE

For years human growth hormone has been the jock's favorite steroid, and why
not? Promoters in the antiaging industry claim it makes you bigger and stronger,
increases your libido, restores your youthful looks and adds years to your life. Now
it Is being marketed as the ultimate elixir. An acclaimed writer quizzes doctors,
pseudophysicians, patients and critics about the wonder drug. BY PAT JORDAN

fiction

THE THIRD SENSE

The Nobel Prize-winning novelist returns to PLavBoy with a story about the
potential ruin of domestic bliss. Keyed by the unmistakable scent of another
woman, a wife sniffs out her husband's infidelity, leaving her to decide whether
to confront her feelings or bury them. BY NADINE GORDIMER

the playboy forum

BREAKING THE LAW

Patents are supposed to be reserved for inventions that are navel and useful; instead,
under our outrageous patent laws, they are being doled out for broad, ill-defined
concepts and turned into a system of legalized extortion. BY LORI ANDREWS

20Q

WILL ARNETT

Most people know him as Gob, the inept magician from Arrested Development,
but with five films due this year, that will change. The Canadian funnyman
ponders Arnett backlash, his role as a ruthless figure skater in Blades of Glory
and why It would be sweet to take Will Ferrell down. BY ERIC SPITZNAGEL

interview

BILL MAHER

The political satirist whose name is synonymous with “politically incorrect" skewers
the nation’s movers and shakers on his hit HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher.
His unsparing criticism of President Bush and religion—not to mention his Steve
Irwin Halloween costume—has made him no stranger to controversy. Now the host
and best-selling author comes even cleaner with a candid discussion about the Iraq
war, dating younger women and that stripper's pole in his home. BY DAVID SHEFF

COVER STORY

Wrestling glamazon Ashley Massaro is
relatively new to the WWE, but already
fans are crazy for the blonde contender
and Starstruck, her signature move. We
can't wait to see who she pins to the mat
in the next WrestleMania. Senior Contrib-
uting Photographer Arny Freytag captures
why Ashley hurts so good. The shapely
athlete has our Rabbit in a firm wristlock.

%
DOMINATION
THE MOTHER E

Kawasaki

Let the good times roll.

KAWASAKI CARES: Always wear a helmet, ejt р er de nuce of drugs alcool Adhere to the
maintenance sched. n our ownd A closed coste. ©2007 Kawasaki Motors

vol. 54, no. 4—april 2007

N À
à Y 4

pictorials

THE WILD

WORLD OF PLAYBOY
Enjoy a tasting menu of the
most beautiful Playmates from
our international editions.

PLAYMATE:

GIULIANA MARINO
Arresting Miss April is a German
Playmate of Italian ancestry who
is positioned to conquer America

STAR STRUCK

WWE diva Ashley Massaro shows
off her best moves in this sexy pic-
torial. Plus, we feature bonus pho-
tos of the WWE's hottest women.

notes and news

151

THE WORLD OF PLAYBOY
While Hef and the Girls Next
Door visit the set of Ellen,
red-hot Cindy Margolis parties
down with the Playmates.

HANGIN’ WITH HEF

Holly holds court at her regal
birthday party, Jenny McCarthy
hosts а fund-raiser, and the
world celebrates Thanksgiving
at the Mansion

PLAYMATE NEWS

A review of the Playmates who
have heated up CSI: Miami,
including Marketa Janska, Alison
Waite, Qiana Chase and Monica
Leigh: take our quiz and match
the Playmate with her real
MySpace headline.

departments
PLAYBILL
DEAR PLAYBOY
AFTER HOURS
REVIEWS

39 MANTRACK
45 THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR
98 PARTY JOKES
131 WHERE AND HOW TO BUY
155 ON THE SCENE
156 GRAPEVINE
158 POTPOURRI
fashion — —
104 SPRING AND SUMMER

FASHION FORECAST

Men's designers are pairing light
weight fabrics like cotton, silk and
tropical wool with sophisticated
weaves to craft hip suits that re-
main comfortable even as the mer-
Cury rises. BY JOSEPH DE ACETIS

this month on playboy com —

HE PLAYBOY.COM А-!

Bat 1

league baseball stadiums.

000 touring our top 10 minor |

The search begins

THE 21ST QUESTION
Get the final word from Blades of
Glory star Will Arnett. |

BATTLE OF THE (EST
Each week two newsworthy

women go head-to-head

in the

Beat о

prognosticator

and wit
in our

web's hottest poll.

KET BUSTER
ur Playmate

n big
annual

college-hoops

contest

PRINTED IN USA

MAKES OTHER ye. FEEL y

he pert к GRAHAM

WoopFORD RESERVE

DisTILLER'S SELECT

вом HAS ARRIVED:

Bour

Enjoy your bourbon responsibly.

PLATYSROSY

HERE'S to
the GIRLS

Tug PLAYMATE BOOK

Beginning with Marilyn Monroe and
including more recent legends like
Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole
Smith, this history of PLavBov Center-
folds profiles every Playmate from the
1950s through the newest beauties of
the new millennium, Includes fantastic
nude photos as well as updated per-
sonal information about their lives —just
enough to spark your memory or pique
your interest to see more. Hardcover.
9" x 12", 464 pages.

10376 The Playmate Book:

50 Years $40

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PLAYBOY

HUGH M. HEFNER
editor-in-chief

CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO
editorial director
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor
TOM STAEBLER art director
GARY COLE photography director
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH executive editor
JAMIE MALANOWSKI managing editor

EDITORIAL
FEATURES: a) saime articles editor; ayy GRACE Lov literary editor FASHION: JOSEPH DE ACETIS
director; JENNIFER RYAN JONES editor FORUM: CHIP ROWE senior editor MODERN LIVING:
SCOTT ALEXANDER Senior editor STAFF: ROBERT B DE SALVO, TIMOTHY МОНЕ. JOSH ROBERTSON
associate editors; DAVID PFISTER assistant editor; HEATHER HAEBE senior editorial assistant:
VIVIAN COLON. GILBERT Macias editorial assistants; ROCKY RAKOVIC junior editor
CARTOONS: JENNIFER THIELE (new york), AMANDA WARREN (los angeles) editorial coordinators
COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND сору chief; CAMILLE CAUTI associate copy chief: ANTOINE DOZOIS. ROBERT
HORNING copy editors RESEARCH: DAVID COHEN research director; BRENDAN CUMMINGS deputy
research chief; RON моттазепіот researcher; BRYAN ABRAMS. AR BRADBURY, MICHAEL MATASSA researchers;
MARK DURAN research librarian EDITORIAL PRODUCTION: MATT DE MAZZA assistant managing editor;
VALERIE THOMAS manager; SIOBHAN TREANOR production associate READER SERVICE: MIKE OSTROWSKI
correspondent CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL (writer at large). KEVIN BUCKLEY, SIMON COOPER,

GRETCHEN EDGREN, LAWRENCE GROBEL, KEN GROSS, WARREN KALBACKER, ARTHUR KRETCHMER (AL TOMOTIVE)
JONATHAN LITTMAN. JOE MORGENSTERN. JAMES R PETERSEN. STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIK. DAVID SHEFF
DAVID STEVENS, ROB TANNENBAUM, JOHN D THOMAS, ALICE K TURNER

ART
ROB WILSON deputy art director; SCOTT ANDERSON. BRUCE HANSEN, CHET SUSKI
LEN WILLIS Senior art directors; PAUL CHAN Senior art assisiant; JOANNA METZGER art assistant;

CORTEZ WELLS art services coordinator; MALINA LEE senior art administrator

PHOTOGRAPHY
MARILYN GRABOWSKI west coast editor; JIM LARSON managing editor; PATTY BEAUDET FRANCES,
KEVIN KUSTER. STEPHANIE MORRIS Senior editors; MATT STEIGBIGEL associate editor; RENAY LARSON
assistant editor; ARNY FREYTAG. STEPHEN WAYDA Senior contributing photographers; GEORGE GEORGIOL
staff photographer; RICHARD 1201, MIZUNO. BYRON NEWMAN, GEN NISHINO. DAVID RAMS contributing
photographers; вил. WHITE 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

ADVERTISING
ROB EISENHARDT, JONATHAN SCHWARTZ associate publishers; RON STERN new york manager;
HELEN BIANCULLI direct response advertising director; MARIE FIRNENO advertising operations
director NEW YORK: 5
manager; SARAH BLOOMENTHAL account manager CHICAGO: WADE BAXTER midwest sales manager
LOS ANGELES: PETE AUFRBACH. COREY SPIEGEL west coast managers DETROIT: STEVE ROUSSEAU
detroit manager SAN FRANCISCO: ED MEAGHER northwest manager

MARKETING
uisa NATALE associate publisher/markeling; STEPHEN MURRAY marketing services director;
DANA ROSENTHAL events marketing director; CHRISTOPHER SHOOLIS research director;
DONNA TAVOSO Creative services director

HERI WARNKE southeast manager; TONY SARDINAS fashion/grooming

PRODUCTION
MARIA MANDIS director; JODY JURGETO production manager; CINDY FONTAKELLI, DEBBIE THLLOU associate

managers; CHAR KROWCZYK, BARB TEKIFLA assistant managers; BILL BENWAY, SIMMIE WILLIAMS prepress

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

ADMINISTRATIVE
MARCIA TERRONES rights & permissions director

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING
BOB O'DONNELL managing director; DAVID WALKER editorial director

PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC
CHRISTIE HEFNER chairman, chief executive officer
вов MEVERS president, media group
JAMES PRADTKE senior vice president and general manager

OFEPLAYBOY

HEF SIGHTINGS, MANSION FROLICS AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES

A CHAT WITH ELLEN
When Hef and the girls visited the set of the hit daytime talk show Ellen to speak with 589
comedienne Ellen DeGeneres about love, lite and The Girls Next Door, the foursome

shared superstar billing with Dustin Hoffman and Sean “Diddy” Combs.

E Z.

WHAT'S THAT SMELL?
Stephen Dorff, Colin Farrell and Carmen
Electra were among the celebrities who |
flocked to an Axe Lab party at the Man-
sion, suggesting that the olfactory sense
may be the most powerful one of all.

A DECEMBER TO REMEMBER
Merry Playmates Courtney Culkin and Lindsey Vuolo
helped cover girl Cindy Margolis launch the red-hot
Christmas issue at midtown Manhattan's Frederick's.

JACKPOT!
Playboy un-
veiled a seduc-
tive new line
of Playboy slot
machines with
a party at the
Mansion hosted
by PMOY Kara
Monaco. The
new slots are
without a doubt
the sexiest one-
armed bandits
ever to hit casi-
nos and can be
found in the pit
of Las Vegas's
Palms as well
as other casinos
worldwide.

BILLBOARD BABES

Kendra, Holly and Bridget were star presenters
at this year's Billboard Music Awards, where they
handed out awards to the year's top acts.

HANGI

(1) Playmates and pals celebrate Holly's birthday
with a Marie Antoinette theme. Hef lets them
eat cake—and ice cream, too. (2) Hef's growing
boys, Cooper and Marston, enjoy a traditional
Mansion Thanksgiving. (3) Fred Dryer and his
daughter Caitlin at Thanksgiving dinner. (4)
Hef and his girls support Jenny McCarthy's
fund-raiser for autistic children. (5) Jenny's
beau, Jim Carrey, at the same event. (6) Kendra
gives San Diego Charger Shawne Merriman a
tour of the Mansion. (7) Tom Leykis's Bunny
Ball live from the Mansion. (8) Celebrity Paranor-
mal Project star Bridget with co-star David Car-
radine at the show's launch party at Social
Hollywood. (9) Victoria Fuller, Jonathan Baker
and their daughter attend Thanksgiving dinner.
(10) Playmate Brande Roderick wows fans at
Glamourcon. (11) PLAYBOY cover girl Mia
St. John and Playmate Colleen Shannon, also

at Glamourcon. (12) Playmates Pilar Lastra
and Amanda Paige with actor Nick Cannon

at the Axe Lab party. (13) ET's Kevin Frazier
interviews Hef during a cover shoot for the
newly redesigned On DirecTV magazine.

س ص س ل م

AAA AAA EEE AER PP E RCA

ITEM: 41137752 746
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Sure we could use

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Because the button is more than a
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is what it is. Representing the
integrity of the whole shootin’ match.
So we know that if we can't equip
our garments with buttons that are

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MAKING THINGS RIGHT™

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SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking
By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal
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а T

P I o

y b o у

PASSIONATE PAM
In my 25 years of enjoying your

magazine, I have never stared so long
at a cover as I did with January's shot
of Pam Anderson (The Passion of Pam).
What man, given a real shot, wouldn't
want her, and what woman doesn't
crave the power she projects? Some of
us will never tire of her.

John Smith

Coatesville, Pennsylvania

Thank you for a Pamtastic start to
the new year, and my warmest thanks

|, ر‎ il NKV Л
| SWALTEWPHOSbEY.
The power of Pom: her 12th cover.

to Anderson for her continuing repre-
sentation of Canadian beauty. I hope
she finds the love she desires.
David Czuba
Montreal, Quebec

How dare you compare Pam Ander-

son to Marilyn Monroe. Shame!
Victoria Snow
Austin, Texas

Neal Gabler understands what makes
Pam Anderson so breathtaking: She is
comfortable in her own skin and with
her role as the reigning sex goddess.
William Bradley
Newington, Connecticut

OIL MAN

Your interview with T. Boone Pick-
ens (Playboy Interview, January) certainly
displays his skills as a booster, but for
those without much experience in the
oil industry, a little history
a corporate raider, Pickens did force
oil companies to stop wasting money.
But he also pressured companies like
Unocal and Phillips Petroleum to raise
their debt-to-cash-flow ratio, using the
borrowed money to pay off sharehold-

ers like himself, which left the compa-
nies struggling after the price collapse
in 1986. He wagered on higher natural
gas prices and lost. His expectations for
oil prices will almost certainly prove to
be equally misguided. Although politi-
cal events may drive oil prices sharply
higher for a time, the idea that oil pro-
duction has peaked is based on curve
fitting by a few retired geologists who
don't understand statistical analysis. Oil
as an asset has always proved to be a
poor long-term investment.

Michael Lynch

Amherst, Massachusetts

Lynch is president of Strategic Energy &

Economic Research

Is Pickens off his rocker? The man
seems to know nothing about what hap-
pens to people after he steals companies
and fires everybody. He is a classic con-
servative Republican fat-cat clown whose
only concern is hoarding cash. There's a
lot of that going around lately.

Johnny Cummings
Boston, Massachusetts

Pickens claims the U.S. has the cheap-
est gas in the industrialized world. In
fact, a number of other countries have
cheaper gas; it has sold in Venezuela
for 12 cents a gallon. Sure, Europe has
seen $7 a gallon, but we pay almost that
much when you consider the income
taxes required to keep a foreign mili-
tary presence to protect supply lines
Pickens says he wants the U.S. to be oil
independent, but that seems impracti-
cal given that it would require at least a
60 percent reduction in consumption,
or taking six of 10 cars off the road.
Pickens promotes nuclear power as an
option. There's a lot of evidence
that modern U.S. plants are
safe, reliable and well run, but
no one knows the true cost to
build, operate and deactivate a
plant and then permanently dis-
pose of the spent fuel, because
therc is a lack of accurate cost
data. Nudear plants produce 20
percent of our electric power; to
sustain that will require 50 new
plants by 2030. The fundamen-
tal question is economic. Is it
better to spend billions to build
plants that will last a few decades
but generate radioactive waste,
or develop renewable supplies
that are available indefinitely?

Scou Pugh
Annapolis, Maryland

Pugh, a retired Navy captain and nuclear-
sub commander, is a director of the Associa-
tion for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas-USA

AT THE BORDER
Jimmy Breslin puts a human face
on the hypocrisy that is U.S. immigra-
tion policy (The Immigration Mess, Janu-
ary). For more than a decade we have
worked to integrate the North Ameri-
can market, with great success. At the
same time, we have sought to prevent
the integration of labor. ‘To finesse this
contradiction we dramatically increase
our presence on the U.S.-Mexico
border. Although this has had no
detectable effect on the rate of undoc-
umented in-migration, it has reduced
the rate of out-migration. Having run
the gauntlet, migrants hunker down
and stay longer. As a result, the rate of
out-migration has dropped by half. 1
cannot decide which is more absurd—
building a 700-mile fence along a
2,000-mile border or spending billions
of public dollars to increase the size of
America’s undocumented population.
Douglas Massey
Princeton, New Jersey
Massey, a professor at Princeton, is author
of Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican hrmi-
gration in an Age of Economic Integration.

Over the past 40 years, as the U.S.
workforce has grown older and bet-
ter educated, our labor markets have
attracted younger, less-educated immi-
grant workers. They come to replace
Americans who seek new opportunities
in an economy that puts a premium on
knowledge and training. But our broken
immigration system has not kept pace
with these changes. Since 1965 feckless
politicians have passed a dizzying array
of laws aimed at keeping people out and
making it easier to deport those who are
here but have done very little to create

Should the fences be removed—or extended?

a system that is any good at letting in
the people we need. Congress has made
a significant adjustment to the annual
quotas on legal immigration only once
in the past 42 years. Despite 500,000
undocumented workers arriving every
year, the government offers only 5,000

TLATY20T*

A HALF
CENTURY
OF HISTORY-
MAKING IMAGES!

If you read PLAYBOv only for the articles,
here's what you've been missing. This
elegant anniversary volume captures
six decades of sex, art and American
culture as seen through the eyes of
Andy Warhol, Bruce Weber, Helmut
Newton and more of the world's greatest
photographers. More than 250 of the
most memorable images ever published
in the magazine appear in six chapters
(The Celebrities, The Personalities,

The Playmates, The Lifestyle, The Art

of рглүвоү and The Covers), each featur-
ing an introduction by longtime PLAYBOY
insider James R. Petersen. Hardcover.
9" x 12". 240 pages.

4010 Playboy—50 Years:

The Photographs Book $50

€ To receive FREE standard shipping

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permanent visas for less-skilled workers
and a smattering of temporary work
permits, which are not available to most
employers. So the workers risk life and
limb to find a way through the back
door. In a vicious cycle of incompetence,
politicians spend billions to secure the
borders from the undocumented work-
ers their own policies have created
Immigration isn't just a law-enforcement
issue; it is a valuable resource and a per-
manent component of our labor market
that must be better managed
Benjamin Johnson
Washington, D.C.
Johnson is director of the Immigration
Policy Center (immigrationpolicy.org).

Breslin is full of crap. I left California
to escape the devastating effects of illegal
immigration. I resent that illegal immi-
grants get paid in cash, then send their
pregnant partners to the welfare offices
1 resent paying for the defense and
incarceration of illegal immigrants who
commit crimes. 1 resent the refusal of
illegal immigrants to assimilate. I resent
corporate America labeling everything it
produces in Spanish. I resent the absurd
argument that illegal immigrants fill jobs
Americans do not want. There are plenty
of poor Americans who want to work
They just can't support their families on
$10 an hour before taxes, and they don't
want jobs that don't offer workers’ comp
or other safeguards. You have only to
walk into any emergency room, public
school, welfare office or courthouse in
almost any corner of the country to see
the true cost of illegal immigration.

Jim Loughner
Woodstock, Georgia

Rather than putting up a fence, we
might better spend our tax dollars
helping Mexico improve its infrastruc-
ture. This could create jobs to help
slow the influx of immigrants, as well
as assist a neighbor in need of basic
necessities such as clean water.

Elliot Marcus
Eugene, Oregon

Breslin's argument seems to be that
we make it too difficult for immigrants
to break the law. A 700-mile fence has
some value—it eliminates 700 miles we
have to patrol.

Jeffrey Benincasa
Arlington, Massachuseus

MEETING SALINGER

1 enjoyed Neil Cohen's article about
discovering a letter J.D. Salinger wrote
to an old girlfriend (Love, Jerry, Decem-
ber). 1 also possess a letter from Salin-
ger, written after my friend Mick and
I visited him in 1974. We both liked
Holden Caulfield and could relate to
him, so one day we decided to drive up

to see Salinger. He lived on 100 acres
in a small town in New Hampshire. As
we nervously approached his house
atop a long, hilly, unpaved drive-
way, the drapes of the front window
opened and closed. A dog barked. We
retreated, but as we did, there was J.D.
himself, rolling past in a Ford Bronco.
He told us he was on his way to the
post office and asked us if there was
anything we wanted. We told him no,
we were just friends of Holden's and
fans of his and thought it would be
swell to meet him. My father, a retired
journalist, encouraged me to write
about the encounter for The New Yorker:
Knowing that Salinger values his pri-
vacy, I wrote to ask for his okay. His
response was kind and encouraging,
but he asked that I keep the details of
our meeting unpublished. Along time
has passed, so 1 hope he will forgive
this fond remembrance.

John Mitten

Manchester, New Hampshire

SPORTS NUTS
Chris Berman, Bob Ley and Tom
Mees are the best anchors in ESPN

Craig Kilborn and Dan Patrick ham it up

SportsCenter history because they focus
on the game, not their images (The
Greatest Show in Sports, January).
Gerald Festa
Pacific Palisades, California

I'm surprised nobody mentions my
favorite SportsCenter moments: the
clever, hilarious and star-studded com-
mercials for the show.
Daniel Van Vechten
Morrisville, New York

Robin Roberts and Linda Cohn
should have been your cover models.
she's ready.

Charlie Johnson
jainview. Texas

‚dback at blog. playboy.com.

E-mail via the web at LETTERS РІ АҮВОҮ.СОМ Or write: 730 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019

also available at

Finisk*tine |

Always there for
¡whatever you wear!

babe of tl

WITH A CANVAS LIKE
THIS, WHO NEEDS PAINT?

They're words any man wants
to hear from Lisa Gleave: “This
will be a chance to explore my
wild side.” It would be nice if
she said them while contem-
plating a tarty number at Victo-
ria's Secret or tugging at her
bikini strings on a beach in the
south of France, but she's
merely reading the menu at a
sushi restaurant. Still, it means
we're having lunch with Lisa
Gleave, displaced Australian
guardian of briefcase number
three on Deal or No Deal, and
that ain't bad. Her wild side in
this case is gustatory; she'll
have the spicy tuna. It's a de-
parture from the “nice, bland”
Aussie fare she grew up on and
still likes, but she’s an L.A. girl
now and feels she really ought
to get with the program. She
has at least been body-painted,
a rite of passage for this town's
elite blondes. “The airbrush is
cold,” she says. “It tickles.
They're putting stencils up
against your boobs, your butt
and other parts my mum won't
let me mention. | was in the
middle of a six-hour application
for an episode of CSI: NY, lying
naked on a cold metal table,
when | met Gary Sinise. He
smiled and was polite." You may
also remember a body-painted
Lisa from Accepted, in which
she and real-life pal Alejandra
Gutierrez play flanking eye candy
to PLaveor favorite Diora Baird.
“Alejandra and | were meant to
be there for only one day, as
the body-painting babes," Lisa
recalls. "But the director liked
us so much he kept putting us
in more scenes." And in that
way a starlet was born,

"| was
lying
naked on
a table
when 1
met Gary
Sinise.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIE CHILDERS

[afterhours

, turn on

The Girl
Goes in the
Picture
VINTAGE CAR-

TOONS SEXED
UP DIGITALLY

How do you improve
a classic Bill Ward
gag? Femme Fatales
magazine called
on pinup Aria
Giovanni. “They
chose me because
I'm naturally curvy,”
she says. “I had
fun playing a
character—and

I love frilly

retro lingerie.”

1 don't know why you dos t ave air-conditioning like ail the other offices, Mr. Brandt”

Telltale Signs

If you buy zodiac hooey, a girl's
birth date will tell you every
thing—even her sexual tenden-
cies. The following profiles,
adapted from Myrna Lamb's The
Astrology of Great Sex, are grossly
oversimplified and for novelty
purposes only.

Aries (March 21-April 19): A bit
vain about her oral skills. Seeks
clean sheets and teeth.

Taurus (April 20-May 20): The
queen of hand jobs. Avoid smearing
her with cold or sticky food

Gemini (May 21-June 20): Goes
for edible panties and anal beads.
Don't bother hiding your porn.
Cancer (June 21-July 22): She's all
about her breasts; neglect them at
your peril.

Leo (July 23-August 22): Costumes,
props, role-playing—she's a born
performer. Between acts, applaud
Virgo (August 23-September
22): Fears disease and boredom

THE NEED-TO-KNOW ON BEDROOM ASTROLOGY

Doesn't mind porn films if they
have a lot of "story."

Libra (September 23-October 22):
Already knows whether she likes
anal sex. Appreciates a simple
thank-you.

Scorpio (October 23-November
21): Likes a quickie. Everything
turns her on. Sex is her religion
Don't skimp on the cunnilingus.
Sagittarius (November 22-Decem-
ber 21): Masturbates a lot. Up for
sex in the woods or the butt. Or
both at the same time

Capricorn (December 22-Janu-
ary 19): Likes your natural smell.
Bring flowers. Keep your hands to
yourself in public.

Aquarius (January 20-February
18): She'll cook you dinner and
chat your ear off. Sex takes 30 min-
utes or less

Pisces (February 19-March 20):
Orgasms at the drop of a hat. Likes
to do it on a boat.

Glass de la Concorde

Civilized people usually avoid bright-green
beverages. But this is no ordinary bright
green—it's Chartreuse, a bittersweet, grassy
liqueur beloved of Europhiles yet unknown
to most Americans. If you can't have April in
Paris, try to have a little Paris in you this April
(recipe from Drinks, by Vincent Gasnier).

Champs-Elysées

2 tablespoons cognac

1 tablespoon green Chartreuse

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 dashes bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker
and strain into a chilled martini glass.

rabbit to the rescue

A Hero and His Hat
NEW LIDS FOR NEW YORK’S BRAVEST

In January Wesley Autrey
saved a man from an
onrushing subway train,
but his Playboy cap suf-
fered a serious smudge. As
a small acknowledgement
of a large act, we sent
Autrey three spiffy new hats
and a Mansion invite.

“ACTION-PACKED ACTION!” “INCREDIBLY MINI.”

-ELBERT CAPRI, Entertainment Inquirer -RICKY ST. JOHN, The National American

ШИШ sms ЕШ or JIM TURTLEDOVE THE 207 MINICOOPER S "HAMMER & COOP" SVEN KUANTAN. CHAIGSY BREE BELA BUTLER JONATHAN SEP ЕЙ
DAVO CHARLES BENJAMIN HAMPTON HORGAN- ШШЕ III LUI DOW) PETER KODA °C ШШ “= TRUDY HARY кз === MISTER PUNZ = III
“MESA IT 2: JOHNSON JOHISTON = MARGARET DUNN. == KOBE KUNT G JENNER LAYTON 55 EDRARO ШИЛ XDD DETER E

ШШШ Now PLAYING AT HAMMERANDCOOP.COM op d

2007 MINI, a division of BMW of North America. LLC. The MINI name and lo

[ afterhours

A quick and dirty guide to exploitation
cinema from Rob Zombie, who guest-
directed a segment of Grindhouse.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975) "It's
intensely violent, and Nazis are unpleas-
ant, but the sex element puts it over
the top and makes it fun to watch. For
Grindhouse I've directed a fake trailer
for Werewolf Women of the SS.”

Coffy (1973) “Some films in the blax-
ploitation subgenre, like Shaft or Super

House 101

RENT THESE FIVE CLASSICS BEFORE YOU SEE THE TARANTINO-RODRIGUEZ BLOCKBUSTER

CANNIBAT
HOLOCAUST!

Fly, were big hits. | prefer the ones with
Pam Grier and Sid Haig, and this is by
far the best. It's Pam at the top of her
game—the Afro didn't get any bigger.”

The Last House on the Left (1972) "It's
а rape, murder and revenge story. Wes
Craven directed it, but | don't consider it
horror—to me, it’s just pure grind house.”
Cannibal Holocaust (1980) "This is by
far the most extreme movie ever made
It's just...sickening. | remember watch-

ing it in some gross theater, and | just
couldn't believe what | was seeing.”

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) “A lot
of grind house is bad—bad movies made
by bad filmmakers. But Russ Meyer
was very talented. When people see his
movies for the first time, they say, 'Holy
shit, these are fucking good.' Faster,
Pussycat! was his crowning achievement,
and it's his mildest film. It has no nudity.
It's the Citizen Kane of grind house."

The Greatest
Story Ever Sold

CLIFFORD IRVING
FOOLED THE WORLD

In 1972 Clifford Irving won
notoriety by falsely claiming he
was co-writing the autobiogra-
phy of Howard Hughes. This
month his story (sort of) hits
the big screen in The Hoax.

stranger than fiction

nonrunners

Playboy: A lot of people believed you, including your publisher, McGraw-Hill,
which advanced you $765,000. Were you having fun?

Clifford Irving: Oh yes, that was the whole point. But it's like crossing Niagara
Falls on а tightrope—when the rope starts to fray, it's not so fun anymore.
Playboy: Were you surprised that you had to go to jail?

Playboy: 15 it true that the hoax enabled your marital infidelity?

Irving: Yes, my girlfriend at the time was Nina van Pallandt, a singer, and |
would actually set up “meetings” with Hughes to coincide with her travels. We
met in Mexico, California, New York, wherever | had to go for research.
Playboy: Was the story in your book significantly different from Hughes's life?
Irving: | gave him a more exciting life than he'd had. In my book he's friends
with Hemingway. He becomes a bush pilot in Ethiopia. The editors reading it
would say, “Jesus, this reads like a novel.” I'd say, “Yes, isn’t it amazing?”
Playboy: When your subject is crazy, people will believe all kinds of stories.
Irving: Hughes was a little nuts, yeah. But | go under the assumption that you
can understand the world only if you've realized that it's half mad and that
nobody knows what they're doing. People don't hear well, and they don't see
well. If you grasp the essential madness of life, everything becomes possible
and nothing is as upsetting as it was before.

Playboy: How do you feel about The Hoax, the movie based on your story?
Irving: | read the script, and it's completely inaccurate. It's total fiction

IM WITH
STUPID

Please Kill Me

OVER-THE-TOP EDITORIAL
CARTOONS FINALLY SEE PRINT

David Wallis's Killed Cartoons: Casualties
of the War on Free Expression collects
gags that newspaper honchos deemed
too risky to run, The Charlotte Observer
spiked Doug Marlette's grim sketch of
Jesus carrying an electric chair (top); Clay
Bennett's jab at Slick Willie was too sug-
gestive for the St. Petersburg Times.

DISCOVER SKOAL BANDITS’

SMOKELESS TOBACCO

Begin your journey at чу SkoalBandits.com

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EN
Skoal and Bandits are registared trademarks, and ~Y is a trademark of U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. or an affiliate. ©2006 U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co,

[afterhours

BUYING A HOME? MORTGAGE BROKER JANIE
ANDREWS CAN SAVE YOU A FEW SMACKERS

PLAYBOY: How does mortgage brokering work?

I call a client and try to get him a lower interest rate
than the one he's paying. It sounds boring, but | love it.
PLAYBOY: What does it pay?

1 can easily make $10,000 a month. | work to be inde
pendent and have fun on my own time. I'm all business at my
job, and | go wild after hours—it's as if | have an alter ego
PLAYBOY: We guess your work attire is different from what you
wear when you go out to play.

At work | wear big clothes and keep my hair pulled
back—the sexy librarian look. When | go out, it’s big hair
and small clothes. I'm five-foot-10, so | wear short skirts
to show off my legs
PLAYBOY: Please tell us you show off other parts, too.

Yes, | love my double Ds.

PLAYBOY: Who doesn't?

Ha! They do make it easier for me to close the deal
PLAYBOY: What do you like to do when you're out on the town?

Dance at clubs. Sometimes l'Il wear a blonde wig just to
be mysterious. | love change, which is why I can't be in a com-
mitted relationship. | understand why guys don't like sleeping
with the same person all the time— don't either.

pictures to Playboy Photogras
580 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611
send photocopies of a drver's valid ID
ard), one of which must include a current photo.

Mole in the Family

THE FBI’S MOST FAMOUS MOB INFILTRATOR
CRACKS EVERYONE'S FAVORITE GANGSTERS

The Sopranos is back for its last season; we ask Joe Pistone,
the real-life Donnie Brasco, how he'd get inside:

“The weak link is Tony Soprano’s nephew, Christopher,
played by Michael Imperioli. He likes broads and has a
drug problem, so those are two ways to get close to him.
In some of the episodes I've seen, he wants to break into
the movie-production business to impress his uncle and
show he can go legit. That's the angle I'd go with —it has
the advantage of your not having to portray yourself as a
bad guy. You play to his vanity. Now, this won't be a one-
shot deal. You're not just going to meet him one night
and say, ‘Hey, I'm Donnie Brasco, and I'm a big movie
producer.’ You'll put things in place. You're going to have
contacts in the business or set up a deal. You'll arrange a
scenario in which you're in a restaurant or you're out in
L.A. and you'll have these guys come up to you, saying,
‘Hey, Donnie, great script you sent me. I'm looking
forward to your next project.’ He'll be impressed. You'll
establish your expertise, and then he'll defer to you
because you're the man. That's the important thing in
undercover: You have to have something he wants."

Joe Pistone's most recent book is Donnie Brasco:
Unfinished Business.

Pianist Envy
A SCENE FROM AN OSCARS AFTERPARTY

"These girls weren't talking to anyone else; they were just
lining up patiently, occasionally checking their watches,
waiting to have a chat with Adrien Brody.

1 asked one guy, something of a Hollywood insider,
what was going on with Brody and company.

"That's a fuck queue,’ he said.

| gulped. ‘A what?"

‘A fuck queue. The girls are waiting to talk to Adrien
Brody in the hope that he will take them home and fuck
'em. Maybe he's going to choose someone from the
queue and maybe not.' My informant shrugged. 'But the
girls live in hope."

To be fair to Adrien Brody, he looked mildly embar-
rassed and apparently discomfited by the whole thing. 1
looked at him in sympathy (well, sort of)."

—from Sean Thomas's Millions of Women
Are Waiting to Meet You: A Memoir

buenas noches

б it d

imparted Croan Imports LLC. Chicago, IL 60603

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Fred Segal FEST

paris

R А W

SIGNIFICA

Percentage of Americans who think federal agencies have intruded on
privacy rights during terrorism investigations: 66

Percentage who oppose congressional hearings on how the Bush admin-
istration has handled surveillance and other terrorısm-related issues: 4

le
Hard Time | £2

The U.K.'s depart-
ment of internal
affairs, the Home
Office, settled out
of court with 198
arrested heroin
addicts who had i
claimed that jailing
them “cold turkey”
amounted to assault

and a violation of

human rights. Each

prisoner and former urceali 21

ınmate was paid; q
some received as
much as 500

You can have a wax replica of yi
by Madame Tussauds for $270

The Real Cost
of the Irish Flu

According to researchers
at the San Francisco
Veterans Affairs Medical
Center, hangovers cost
America's economy about
$148 ion annually in
worker absenteeism and
poor job performance

We Wouldn't Call
Them Swingers

A survey by Golf Digest and Golf for
Women found that 31% of their female
readers would abstain from sex for one
year for an opportunity to play Augusta
National, which does not admit women
as members of the club.

DATA

INSIGNIFICA, STAT

AND FACT
National Del Going Soft

The average American
60 for every
$100 of take-home pay
this past October.

of spa cus-

tomers are
men, says the Interna-
tional Spa Association

Based on government estimates of U.S. marijuana
production and a producer price of about $1,600 a
pound, the total value of all the pot grown annually
has been calculated to be just less than
Here is how marijuana compares with the country's
top three legal cash crops:

Marijuana Corn Hay

billion

Soybeans

Ilion billion

Stand and Deliver

Commercial delivery services like UPS and FedEx pay
through the nose for making stops in New York City,
with an average of 7,000 parking tickets slapped on
their vehicles every day. In 2005 delivery companies
paid more than $102 million in fines to the city.

Winning bid on eBay for a bra Jessica Alba wore
during the filming of Sin City.

k 24 | TÉ fee
bt

Kazakhs tan

Paid for by the Board of Tourism for Kazakhstan

Over 30 minutes of outrageous
deleted scenes & footage.
ON DVD MARCH 6

movie of the month
THE HOAX

А Howard Hughes con goes way wrong

The funky, loose new comedy-drama The Hoax charts the rise
and fall of а classic American con job perpetrated by novelist
Clifford Irving in the early 1970s (see After Hours, page 22).
He exploded a cultural bornbshell by concocting what he prom-
ised would be “the book of the century,” an authorized biog-
raphy of billionaire Howard Hughes. But when the reclusive,
eccentric Hughes came out of selfimposed hiding to expose
the book as a complete phony, Irving, his wife and a fellow
conspirator were indicted for intent to defraud and served jail
time. Directed by Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules), the
factbased film stars an energized Richard Gere as the tightly
wound daredevil Irving, along with the impressive Alfred Molina,
Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden,
Stanley Tucci and Julie Delpy.
Says the Swedish-born director,
^| was on a natural high making
this movie, which reminds me of
the freeform, playful, ironic films
Woody Allen and Milos Forman
made in the 1970s.” He was
equally turned on by tackling the mercurial and elusive How-
ard Hughes, who “appears” in the film via old newsreels, still
photos and archival recordings. “| have always been fascinated
by this recluse who had all these great adventures, his pick of
all the girls in Hollywood, and all that power and money but
who collapsed into a very flawed hurnan being who wasn't able
to cope with the world,” Hallstrom says. | —Stephen Rebello

“Hughes

collapsed into
a very flawed
human being.”

nc h

Grindhouse

Quentin Taran-
tino and Robert Rodriguez unleash a 1970s-style double feature.
Russell stars in Tarantino's “Death Proof” as a psychotic stunt-
man, and Rodriguez's zombie flick “Planet Terror" has McGowan
as a pissed-off amputee sporting a machine gun for a leg.

Our call: A crazy-cool cast, break-
neck action sequences, gonzo hu-
mor and relentless splatter make
this the most hellaciously raucous
must-see sleaze-and-gore fest
we're likely to see this year.

Blades of Glory

Fe J Expect mighty
laughs with Ferrell and Heder playing rival champion figure skaters
whose brawling gets them banned from men's singles competi-
tion. Years later the disgraced duo bury the hatchet and exploit a
loophole that lets them compete again—by skating as a pair.

Our call: This one easily skates
past its comic competition with
an idiotproof funny premise,
a shrewd supporting cast and
Ferrell knocking out Talladega
Nights-level humor.

I Think I Love My Wife
Directing again for the

first time since 2003's Head of State, Rock also co-wrote and stars
in this romantic-comedy twist on 1972's Chloe in the Afternoon.
He plays a married dad who fantasizes about other women when
Washington, an old pal's sexy mistress, tests his willpower.

Our call: Rock-heads who rush
cineplexes expecting one of
his balls-out comedy assaults
may leave wondering why he
appears to be going for Will
Smith-type likability on-screen.

Rescue Dawn

Steve Z. In director Werner
Herzog's gripping fact-based movie, Bale plays a gung-ho Vietnam-
era pilot who is gunned down over Laos. He is captured by the Viet-
cong, masterminds an escape with his fellow prisoners and tries to
survive a trek through dangerous Southeast Asian jungles.

Our call: Strong acting, canny di-
rection, stunning cinematography
and a hell of a survival story don't
quite add up to a full-on Herzog
masterpiece, but this will do until
the real thing comes along.

reviews [ dvds

dvd of the month
[ CASINO ROYALE |

Daniel Craig may be the best James Bond ever

The cinematic stewards behind lan Fleming's iconic spy franchise have built a better
Bond. Daniel Craig's 007 debut goes back to Fleming's first Bond novel and
rediscovers, to startling effect, the licensed killer lurking beneath the urbane sophisti-
cate. Craig is an explosive brute, whether snapping off a bartender's “Shaken or
stirred?” query with “Do | look like | give a damn?” or pursuing Sebastien Foucan in a jaw-

dropping foot chase through
a Madagascar construction
project. This origin story
charts Bond's elevation to
double-O status, and only
Judi Dench, as M, returns
from the previous films.
There's genuine emotion in
Craig’s liaison with Eva
Green, the most delicately

lovely Bond girl ever. Bond
is back, and we can't wait
for the next one. Also avail-
able on Blu-ray. Best extra:
The “Bond Girls Are Forever"
featurette, even if it's too
brief. УУУУ Greg Fagan

BORAT (2006) Kazakhstani reporter Borat
visits U.S. peoples and wants to make
romance explosion on Pamela Ander-
son. Also he wrestle naked with fat man
and make tears
in eyes. Sacha
Baron Cohen gets
big high five, Best
extra: Crazy-in-
head publicity
tour. YY Y Vo
—Buzz McClain SSL WA.

ENTOURAGE: SEASON THREE, PART 1
(2006) Vinny Chase and his boys (includ-
ing Emmy winner Jeremy Piven) return to
take on every major talent agent in
L.A. and piss off
a big studio chief.
Best extra: Go on
location in Vegas
and hug it out
with the cast,
bitches. ¥¥¥
—Bryan Reesman

ERROL FLYNN: THE SIGNATURE COL-
LECTION VOLUME 2 Dashing Errol
Flynn shows why he is a swashbuckling
legend in these — Ă—
five new-to-DVD
adventure titles,
including The
Charge of the
Light Brigade
(1936), The Dawn
Patrol (1938),

Dive Bomber (1941) and Adventures of
Don Juan (1948, pictured). Flynn's por-
trayal of boxer James J. Corbett in Gentle-
man Jim (1942) is one of his finest roles.
Best extra: Flynn's radio-show adaptation
of Jim. УУУУ —Matt Steigbigel

BABEL (2006) In this ambitious drama, a
random gunshot wounds Cate Blanchett,
who's vacationing in Morocco with husband
Brad Pitt; Moroccan cops go after the
shepherd boy who fired the shot. Circum-
stance forces the couple's nanny to take
their two young kids to Mexico for a
wedding, and in Tokyo а a deaf-mute
schoolgirl goes -
through a painful
bout with adoles-
cence. Also avail-
able on Bluray and
HD DVD. Best ex-
tra: Only a trailer
here. УУУ —G.F

W.C. FIELDS COMEDY COLLECTION
VOLUME TWO The bulbous-nosed funny-
man just wants an afternoon off in the
sublime sitcom The Man on the Flying Tra-
реге (1935). Also included in this five-film
set are The Old ;
Fashioned Way
(1934, pictured) `
and Poppy (1936).
Best extra: A
documentary fea:
turette. y yy
—Brian Thomas

CHILDREN OF MEN (2006) In a dys-
topian future where there hasn't been
à newborn in 18 years, Clive Owen
must drag the one pregnant girl to
safety. Don't blink or you'll miss top-
billed Julianne Moore. ¥¥¥2

(2006) It's Lord of the Rings
lite as a young adventurer seeks to re-
vive the dormant age of dragons and
topple a tyrant (John Malkovich). The
effects sparkle, but the bored charac-
ters make the climax fizzle. ¥¥

BOBBY (2006) Emilio Estevez's en-
semble piece with too many subplots
dramatizes the night Bobby Kennedy
was assassinated. The dynamic cast
includes Anthony Hopkins, Demi
Moore, Sharon Stone and more. yy

(1980) This pioneering jiggle sit-
com stars Tom Hanks in drag trying to
get Donna Dixon into his dress. Tame
stuff now, but Dixon is luscious. УУУ»

SHORTBUS (2006) This pansexual
playground boasts real on-screen sex,
but a story would have been nice.
These NYC bohemians appear to have
zero interests beyond genital bump-
ing; oddly that's not enough. YY

УУУУ Don't

YY Worth a look
Y Fo

tease e

¥¥¥ Good show

Now that Charmed has cast its final
spell, Rose McGowan is free to
return to racier on-screen antics, as
when she lost her blouse in Going
All the Way (pictured). In this month’s
Grindhouse she plays a gun-wielding
gal who takes on a zombie army,

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette
Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.

reviews [ music

planet rock

[ FRESH AIR ]

French chill kings Air talk about Darwin, ¡Tunes and their Pocket Symphony

О: When you write music, do you think in English?

A: Yes, English is lighter, less consequential, less emotional for us. If you say, “I love
you,” it's natural and light. If you say, “Je t'aime," it's heavy—too heavy. And we get
too picky in French. France is a poetry culture, and so much good poetry has already
been written. We can't compete with song lyrics by people like Serge Gainsbourg.
Also, English is the language of ш; and machines and astronauts. It has
that symbolism for us.

О: Each of your LPs, includ-
ing this one, is quite differ-
ent from its predecessor.
How do you evolve?

A: Between albums we
do many things. After
Talkie Walkie we made
some music for TV and
the film Marie Antoinette,
and we made a record
with Charlotte Gains-
bourg. On that project
we discovered we were
able to play together well
on guitar and piano. That
affected how we com-
posed Pocket Symphony.
Also, we never rerecord
anything, and we discard
a lot of what we record. We figure the bad ideas will die and the good ones will
stay with us—it's a Darwinian concept of recording.

О: You release great singles, but you are also known for creating cohesive albums.
Do you worry the album era is ending?

A: I don't know how long we can keep making albums. This may be the last time we do
it. We are right on the edge now. We may be releasing one track a month on iTunes in
the future. But we like to improvise, so we will tour and then see what the story is when
we are ready to record again. Who knows what will be going on in a year and a half?

[ BACK TO THE FUTURE ]

The world's first digital reissue label plans to release 75 titles this year

Anthologyrecordings.com is the future nobody's doing legitimate digital reis-
of music distribution—a virtual label with sues.” Abrahamsson grew up obsessing
a true identity as opposed to endless over certain labels, especially SST. “I was

postings by anonymous
bands. A trove of out-
of-print and obscure

treasures, Anthology's
offerings include dub,
no-wave and vintage
rock. (Pictured here are
globe-spanning psych-

rock LPs from Peru's EE

Traffic Sound, Germa- T etr.
ny's My Solid Ground, quis
y

San Francisco's Fifty
Foot Hose and Sweden's
Párson Sound.) “Sure,

there are bit torrents and blogs where
you can grab some great rare albums,”
says founder Keith Abrahamsson, “but

way into Descendents,
Black Flag and Husker
Dü, and that label had
a whole culture around
it,” he says. Now he's
fostering his own cult-
label identity: “Often |
end up randomly calling
a number and saying, ‘Is
this the same so-and-so
who was in a hard-rock
band in 1971” It's a
great feeling to be able
to speak with the people

who made these incredible—and crimi
nally unheard—records and then be able
to turn some fresh ears on to them.”

audio parts

[HOT TUNES]

Time is precious and music plentiful.
So here are 20 songs to learn and
sing from upcoming and recent al-
bums—and what's cool about them.

"Intervention," Arcade Fire Organ-based
hymn from the Church of David Byrne.

“Bruiser (Miami 4000)," The Phoenix
Foundation Winsome Kiwi robopop.

"Horisont," Audionom From Sweden.
Raucous and hypnotic at the same time.

"Sickos," Harlem Shakes Hipster sock-
hop rock with pomp and synth chimes.

“Chop Suey,” Busy P Squelchy chop-up of
2 Live Crew, from Ed Banger compilation.

“Superstar Tradesman,” The View An
uplifting never-look-back punk anthem.

“Nowhere Warm,” Kate Havnevik Piano-
based atmospherica from Norway.

“Forever Young,” Youth Group Bummed-
out guitar cover of 1980s prom favorite.

"A to Z," Dawn of Man D.C.-scene inten-
sity from buddies of TV on the Radio.

“Sailboat,” Bob & Gene Reissue of a
Buffalo teen duo's rare soul scorcher.

“Conductor 71," Fujiya & Miyagi This Brit
trio—huh?—makes whimsical krautrock.

“It's Natural to Be Afraid,” Explosions in
the Sky A sprawling noise-rock epic.

“Breaker,” Low Slowcore heroes go all
Radiohead, using minimalist electronics.

“If You Leave Me Now," Daniel Ágúst
Funereal synth pop from ex-GusGus singer.

“Sparks of Love,” Cyann & Ben Brood-
ing, contemplative French shoegazing.

"Rats," Cheeseburger Does Bon Scott-era
AC/DC the way the White Stripes do Zep.

“Dirty Dirt,” Bunny Rabbit Peaches,
M.I.A., Lady Sovereign...Bunny Rabbit.

“Chills,” Peter, Bjorn and John Shows
“Young Folks” was no fluke.

“Myth Takes,” !!! Fluid—but not slap—
bass, rockabilly reverb, whispered vocals.

“North American Scum,” LCD Sound-
system “Daft Punk Is Playing at My
House” part two.

DOWNLOAD FREE, EXCLUSIVE TRACKS BY THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION, AUDIONOM AND HARLEM SHAKES AT PLAYBOY.COM/MAGAZINE/CDS.

reviews [ games

[ PRAISE ZEUS ]

Kratos maims and defiles his way through ancient Greece. Again

The first installment of God of War was a bloodthirsty romp in which you lived out
the adventures of a well-oiled killing machine determined to put the hurt on a god.
Featuring a near-effortless contro! scheme that immediately made players feel
incredibly powerful but also rewarded subtlety and experimentation, it was a heady

blend of mythology, moral ambi-
guity, puzzle solving and good
old-fashioned ultraviolence. Hav-
ing defeated Ares and become
the god of war himself, Kratos is
back in God of War Il (PS2), but
luckily for gamers everywhere,
all is not well. Once again he
must take up his trusty Blades
of Chaos and do reprehensible
things to set the world right.
Enhanced graphics and a slew
of new monsters, moves and
settings (fistfight on the back of
a flying griffin, anyone?) cement
this as not only the last great
game for the reliable warhorse
that was the PS2 but possibly
the best. YY YY —Scott Alexander

BULLET WITCH (360) This game's star,
the lovely Alicia Claus, graced Novem-
ber's Women of Video Games 2006 pic-
torial, and she looks just as good in
action as a guntoting, spell-casting agent
of death. The game's visuals are a great
mix of sexuality and destruction, but
unfortunately, its repetitive gameplay
and aiming difficulties left us somewhat
frustrated. Still,
she's hot, the con-
cepts unique, and
if you're into the
Japanese violent-
cute aesthetic,
you'll have fun.
УУУ —Scott Stein

VIRTUA FIGHTER 5 [PS3) Equal parts
home-theater showpiece and painstak-
ingly balanced one-on-one brawler, this
martial-arts epic awed us with its HD
graphics and 5.1 surround sound that are
even fiercer than the 17-strong cast of
assorted kung fu misfits. If you've ever
wanted to see masked Mexican wres-
tlers slam doe-eyed, crane-kicking Asian
temptresses into
shimmering pud-
dies of water sur-
rounded by dusty
desert ruins, then
welcome to para-
dise. ууу
—Scott Steinberg

DEF JAM: ICON (PS3, 360) The brilliant
premise of the Def Jam games is that you
can brawl as hip-hop stars (this time
including the Game, Ludacris and Big
Boi). This gorgeous next-gen version
takes that one step further by integrat-
ing music into each showdown. Time your
attacks to the music track that's playing
and you'll be able to, say, roast your foe
on the flames
shooting from a
busted gas pump.
Choosing differ-
ent music for each
level adds replay
depth. ууу
—John Gaudiosi

MOTORSTORM (PS3) Climb behind the
wheel of a souped-up motorbike or
buggy in this beautifully dirty off-road
adventure that fetishizes no-holds-
barred mud racing. Cutoffs and crashes
are just as important as speed and
strategy, and the PS3's power provides
near-photorealistic vehicles and tracks
with real-time cinematic destruction
Our favorites are
the TV-like “crash
cams" that cause
a strange phe-
nomenon we can
only call “joy
wincing.” ¥¥¥
Marc Saltzman

trend watch

[ PLAYING THE NEWS ]

Games that give you something to
think about as you twitch

Not all video games are about saving
the princess or powering up; some leap
from mere entertainment to political
statements. These so-called newsgames
offer serious points about topics from
airport security to the McDonaldization
of the world. Here's a sampling.

THE ARCADE WIRE: AIRPORT SECURITY
(addictinggames
-com/airport
security.html)
From lan Bogost,
Georgia Tech's
master of agenda
games, this title
has you manag-
ing an angry mob
trying to get through airport security.
Keep an eye out for the “threat to pub-
lic safety” du jour (like, say, snakes or
shampoo), and toss them in the trash can
before a passenger sets off the alarm.
MCDONALD'S VIDEOGAME (mcvideo
game.com) Nei-
ther created nor
endorsed by
McDonald's,
this game has
you run the com-
pany by abusing
your employees,
coercing local
governments to protect your interests
and bribing South American officials to
kick off massive deforestation—that is,
if you want any kind of profit margin.
AYITI: THE COST OF LIFE (costof
life.org) This
UNICEF-backed
game lets you
manage the lives
of a family of five
in rural Haiti.
The Global Kids
and gameLab
creation tasks
you with juggling the overwhelming
concerns of health, debt and education
in a cartoon world. Not easy.

SUPER COLUMBINE MASSACRE RPG!
(columbinegame
„com) on
the 1999 shoot-
ings at Columbine
High School, this
title puts you in
the shoes of Eric
Harris and Dylan
Klebold. its goal
is to shake your assumptions about what
spurred that day’s violence, both in the
lives of the duo and in society. The game
was a finalist at this year's Slamdance
festival, but protestors got it pulled be-
fore final judging began. —Brian Crecente

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 131

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reviews [ books

[ CHILDHOOD AT WAR ]

At 13 Ishmael Beah fought in his government's army. After the war, he fought to get his life back

PLAYBOY: Tell us about the effects of civil war.
ISHMAEL BEAH: When war broke out in Sierra
Leone, everything began to change. The simple
and caring world | had known as a child became
a place of suspicion, and the landscape itself
was soon littered with dead bodies. Mornings
were no longer greeted with the singing of
birds but with gunshots and the laments of
mothers who had lost their children.

PLAYBOY: What are the circumstances neces-
Sary to make a boy a killer?

BEAH: First you destroy everything the boy
knows: family, friends, community, home. He
15 traumatized after this, so the rest is easy.
He is vulnerable and easily manipulated. For
my part, | was physically still a boy when |
was a soldier, but psychologically | was not
who | once was.

PLAYBOY: Who or what is responsible for
what happened to you?

BEAH: | believe the culture of my country col-

lapsed because of endemic political corruption, which gave rise what its effects are—firsthand—but also to show that these
to the war and the destruction of so many lives. children can regain their lives as | have.

PLAYBOY: What most facilitated your rehabilitation? PLAYBOY: What motivates you today? What gives you hope?
ВЕАН: Knowing that there are people who care regardless of what BEAH: The fact that | am alive gives me hope, and I celebrate every
happened, that there are people who can still see my humanity. moment. Surviving the war was nothing short of a miracle.

PLAYBOY: Do you now consider the United
States your home?

a lon g BEAH: it is my second home. | received an
education here and have some family here,
way gone but what makes me who | am today, what

helped me survive the war, | owe to my
upbringing in Sierra Leone.
PLAYBOY: What is your sense of how Ameri-

Memes opa cans view Africa?
BEAH: | think there is often too much attention
Әм бо! der paid to the negative things happening there.
g There should be sorne balance. For example,

there are people living next door to neigh-
bors who killed their families, and they have
forgiven them. For the most part, people

ishmael aren't capable of such acts elsewhere.
PLAYBOY: What persuaded you to write
b ea h your story?

Beau: | thought it important not only to
show how this appalling phenomenon of
recruiting children for war happens and

[ AMNESIA WILL

The Raw Shark Texts 15 the latest in unforgettable fiction

Once authors had appropriated the
vocabulary of psychoanalysis, mid-20th
century crime novelists perfected the
genre of the amnesia narrative—with the
diagnosis and cure of an unreliable narra-
tor's baffling forgetfulness substituting for
the investigation and solution of a crime.
The most unsettling versions
of these stories, though, have
always suggested that it isn’t
merely the missing pieces
of the narrator's identity that
must be known but the very
nature of the world in which
he lives. In this sense Steven
Hall's The Raw Shark Texts has
more in common with works
like Flann O'Brien's nightmar-
ish The Third Policeman (and
the Wachowski brothers’ The
Matrix) than with a classic clunked-on-
the-noggin story. Here, Eric Sanderson
awakens one day to find he has no idea
who he is. Following clues provided by
someone who signs his correspondence
“the first Eric Sanderson,” he discovers
he has suffered from recurring memory
loss since the death of his girlfriend

SET YOU FREE ] potboiler
[A BLACK BOOK ]

three years earlier. Even more disturb- Murder, kidnapping and a literary
ing, he learns he is being pursued by a answer to whodunit

“memory shark,” called a Ludovician, that | This unsettling Irish noir from Man Booker
feeds on memories and other aspects Prize winner John Banville (pseudony-
of identity. Sanderson's cat-and-mouse mously slum-
search for the shark unveils a hidden | ming it here
world—solid, real and vividly imagined аз Benjamin
by Hall. It's true, at times, as | Black) traces a
ме race toward the explication | conspiracy
of Sanderson's mysterious his- шор ч Ap
tory and the breaking of the do eee
amnesiac loop in which he's | stratum of
been trapped, that the story the Catholic
owes more to the flash of the | Church. But
Wachowskis than to Borges don't worry;
and Calvino, who provide epi- no clues are
graphs to the novel's sections, found in the
and that the love affair that | works of Da

blossoms between Sander- | Vinci. When z
son and Scout, his traveling | Ct are uncovered, there is no sense

of relief. In this capable thriller complete.
Companion, seems similarly made for with a dead blonde and a hero who
the movies. But Hall pulls it all off with boozes too much—Banville is more con-
such élan and good humor (and the most cerned (and adept) with the moral ambi-
charmingly irreverent disregard for coher- guities of his richiy drawn characters, And
ent plotting since the early work of Jona- like Quirke, the pathologist protagonist
than Lethem) that ultimately you're happy who asks too many questions, the reader
to have climbed into his conceptual shark | iS apt to getan unexpected gut punch now
cage. УУУ; —Christopher Sorrentino | and again. Yyyy —Andrew Bradbury

\
= 5 m w

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a» MANTRACK

Snow Job

Our mission: to throw the ultimate spring-skiing bachelor party weekend in Aspen

THE GROOM WAS no

t. He was a smart and ambitious man, and he liked the finer things in life (his fiancée, for example). The bach-

elor party we'd throw him couldn't be any half-ass affair, so we headed to Aspen, Colorado for two days of fun in the Rockies. We began
by renting the Mountain Valley Retreat (rates vary, mc-cartneyprop.com), a six-bedroom playhouse with all the amenities—gi hot tub,
sundeck overlooking town. On day one we woke early and met Bob of Aspen Mountain Powder Tours (aspensnowmass.com), who took
us literally over the top—cat skiing on the back side of Aspen Mountain. We had 10,000 vertical feet of virgin powder to ourselves for
the day. Aprés-ski began at 39 Degrees at the Sky Hotel (theskyhotel.com), an unbeatable spot with outdoor fireplaces, a heated pool
and lounge chairs. For dinner we hit Nobu's Matsuhisa Aspen (nobumatsuhisa.com), naturally. A live band at the Belly Up Aspen (belly
upaspen.com) flowed into late-night drinks at Eric's Bar (no website; ask around town), where a gorgeous brunette whipped us at eight

ball. In the morning we gorged on ribs for breakfast at Hickory House Ribs (hickoryhous:

s.com), en route to Aspen Highlands, where

we hiked the bowl, a must-do-before-you-die experience. The view from atop Highland Bowl may be the most breathtaking in the

Rockies. Then you ski down. Margaritas at our pad led into
weekend-wrap party back at Eric's. ya-yas offi.

er at Elevation (try the venison chop, elevationaspen.com) and finally a

lly out, the groom was now ready for the altar. ion accomplished.

April Is the Cruelest Month...?

IT IS if you're T.S. Eliot—great poet, hardly Mr.
Laughs. Three tips for making April merry:
— Spring cocktail: We call this house cocktail the
spring fling—two shots gin and a half shot cassis over ice ina
rocks glass; top with soda and garnish with a lemon wedge.
Spring lamb: Summit Creek Natural Lamb is a Colorado
company that delivers four-star-quality lamb to your door
($120 for two eight-bone racks, summitcreeklamb.com).
Wash the winter dust off the grill and fire it up.

Spring read: Got a few minutes to kill while your dinner’s
cooking? Arriving in bookstores April 5 is Tommy's Honor:
The Story of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Golf's
Founding Father and Son, courtesy of PLAYBOY contributor
Kevin Cook (see his scrivenings on page 76).

Nick of Time

RECENT INVENTIONS such as
pivoting heads and multiple blades
have proved to be mercifully for-
giving when you're groggy and
in a rush. Still, proponents of the
double-edge safety razor are more
loyal than Cubs fans. Although their
method requires more care, it offers
less irritation and longer blade life.
With a razor, brush, stand and
bowl, the Merkur Futur Shaving Set
puts a 215% century face on early
20th century technology ($200,
nashvilleknifeshop.com).

——

TIME WILL TELL if this vixen of a motorcar will shock the establish-
ment or go the way of the Studebaker, but we like what we've seen
so far. The 2008 Tesla Roadster is a zero-emission electric supercar
with a body that reminds us of an updated Ferrari Dino 246. Its 6,831 tiny lithium-ion
batteries zap power to an electric motor that spins at a Formula One-like 13,500 rpm
and develops about 250 bhp and 205 foot-pounds of torque. That's sufficient to hurl
this tiny terror to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, with a top speed of more than 130
mph in near silence. Based on a Lotus Elise chassis, the Tesla comes to life in the Lotus
factory in Hethel, U.K. From a 3.S-hour battery charge, you'll reportedly get around 250
miles. Fully loaded, the Tesla will run you about $100,000. Tweaks are still being made,
but the company plans to fill orders next spring. More info at teslamotors.com.

Darling Nikki

DIGITAL SLR cameras
give you superb image
quality. Unfortunately,
they're also expen-
sive and bulky.
Nikon tackles
both problems
with its 6.1-mega-
pixel D40 ($600,
nikonusa.com),
which comes with a 3x
zoom lens. At just over a
pound, it's smaller and lighter
than other D-SLRs, yet its curva-
ceous contours provide the secure
grip often lacking in itty-bitty
compact shooters. You get the
same exceptional metering sys-
tem and high light sensitivity
found in higher-end Nikons, as well
as helpful on-screen instructions for
40 using advanced features.

Something Fishy

AQUA BOMB n: An MK-84 bomb
that has been emptied of its explo-
sives and recast as a six-foot-eight-
inch, 10-gallon fish tank. Crafted by
MotoArt ($3,950, motoart.com),
this playful piece of home furnishing
comes with a built-in pump filter for
the fishies, lighting to illuminate the
tank and a storage compartment
for your fish food and whatnot. It's
the perfect home for your piranha.
Seven powder-coated colors are
available, so matching the drapes
will not be a problem. If this doesn't
work as a conversation starter,
you're dating the wrong women.

Ever see a grown man cry?
©

ROI ROVAL Bent Canadan shy 40% Ae ©0507 Te Crown Royal Company Nova CT vaat Crowe ton It's about quality. not quantity ^

== MANTRACK

a & 4.» Ss ©

Be There, Be Square

NOPE, YOU'RE NOT seeing things: Nike's new Sumo?
driver ($480, nikegolf.com) has a square head. It’s the
Dolph Lundgren of golf clubs. (Work with us here.)
Without our getting into Physics 101, the oddly shaped
head offers added stability and doesn't twist as much
as Other drivers when you swing, so even shots from the
heel or toe fly straight and far. The design adheres to
USGA size limits, making it legal in tournament play.

License to Grill
THERE ARE TWO kinds of grillers: gas guy and charcoal guy. Each
is certain the other їз an idiot. Here's a grill that can make both of
them happy. The Fuego О1 (from $3,500, fuegoliving.com) has the
sharp looks of a high-end indoor range but is made for the great
outdoors, with a retractable lid and weatherproof knobs. Ample
prep areas help keep things civilized, and a thermostat on the grill-
ing surface tells you when to throw your meat onto the fire. Most
important, though, Fuego allows you to switch from gas to charcoal
grilling on the fly, proving the only real idiots are absolutists.

CHESS AS WE know it developed in Europe

in the 15th century, evolving from

Asian origins. Back then, royalty

Played with pieces carved by

artisans. Celebrate the tradi-

tion with the Chess Scalloped

set ($2,285, zontikgames

.com). With an inlaid-

> leather playing surface

and a leather-bound

plinth, it’s an instant

classic. The pieces are

fashioned in the timeless

Staunton pattern, the same one

used in the landmark world-cham-

pionship match between Boris

Spassky and Bobby Fischer in 1972.

When not in use, the pieces rest comfort-
ably in the plinth's suede-lined interior.

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 131

After driving 24 hours straight,

A CHECKERED FLAG LOOKS A LOT
LIKE AN ANGEL.

Ҥ you missed the Grand-Am Rolex 24 At Daytona, you missed one of the most exciting races in history.

The grueling wheel-to-wheel 24 hour endurance event saw road racing superstars Scott Pruett and
SPORTS CAR SERIES

Juan Pablo Montoya and breakout rookie Salvador Duran triumph in a nose-to-tail nail biter that was A

up for grabs until the final lap. Don't miss another history making race! www.grand-am.com

Watch all the action on 02

March 3 > City n July 5 Daytona International Speedway 3pm et.
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Bam а guy who has a female friend with
whom I feel very comfortable. She is
engaged, but 1 find her attractive and
often masturbate while thinking about her.
I'd like to tell her what 1 do, though I'm
not sure why, because no good can come
of it. I think about this a lot. Should I tell
her?—W.R., Los Angeles, California

You want to tell her because you hope she'll
respond in a positive way, but “You saved
me $5.95 last night" has never worked as a
pickup line. And have you noticed that swect-
heart cards never include platitudes about
rubbing one out? That's because women have
no interest in the fact that you whack off
unless they ате involved with you (and seldom
even then). We're not supposed to talk about
this publicly, but any woman a man meets and
finds remotely attractive is eventually going
to help bring him to orgasm. Women must
suspect this deviancy in their male friends
and acquaintances but choose to remain in
denial—or at least not ponder it too deeply.
Or maybe they're doing the same thing. We
haven't had the guts to ask.

What do you think of the trend toward
tighter and shorter jackets and pants so
short you can see sock?—R.L., Boston,
Massachusetts
We're way behind this trend and hope we
never catch up. Its most recent champion is
designer Thom Browne, who markets jackets
that appear to be too tight and pants that are
several inches too shori. People sneer, but now
the look is being copied, and Brooks Brothers
has hired Browne to help revive its line. The
editor of Details has been quoted as saying that
while he “didnt fully understand" the trend at
first, Browne should be commended for taking
а routine activity such as putting on a suit and
“making it different.” Huh? You would cer-
tainly stand out if you cut off your coat sleeves
or put denim patches on your knees, but that
doesn't mean you'd look good.

| have a deep obsession with spike-heel
boots, which my wife is aware of. Some
nights at home she dresses up, but she
won't wear the boots in public. She says
she doesn't want people staring, but it’s
not as if I'm asking her to dress like a
hooker. I tell her she should be confi-
dent knowing her husband likes it. She's
partial to one pair I gave her, but she
wears flared jeans that cover all but the
toe. She has a closetful of boots I never
get to see. 1 know she gets tired of my
comments, so why doesn't she wear the
fucking boots already? Throw a dog a
bone! What's your take?—S.D., Roselle

y. Given the letters we've received
from other married men with singular obses-
sions, you're doing well if your wife indulges
you so readily in the bedroom. Taking it to the
streets is another matter. Besides, what's in it

for her? An exciting sex life? It's more likely
she'll get only more boots and more demands.
The problem is the dog is always hungry,
and he gnaws the same bone for every meal.
Rather than nag her, which won't get you
anywhere, praise her for her generosity so far
and work on expanding your appetites.

In December a reader wrote about how
his wife of 18 months told him she loves
him but isn't “in love” with him. Your
response made me question the value
of all the advice you have given in the
past about relationships. In my 27 years
of marriage, Гуе found that both part-
ners are in a state of constant change.
Your moods, health, happiness, roman-
tic involvement with each other and so
many other things go up and down. To
say as you did that this marriage has no
future, when all that may be happening
is a temporary romantic swing, is mi
guided. My wife and I have been through
this cycle several times but have Hen
ended up still in love. Sometimes you're
on the wave, sometimes you're in front of
it, and sometimes you wipe out, but you
always end up back on another as long
as you keep swimming together.—M.L..
Phoenix, Arizona

That's all well and good, but if your part-
ner starts questioning the nature of her love.
for you after the first 18 months, there may
he no waves involved except the one about
to knock you on your ass. Whenever people
say they are no longer “in love” with their
partner but still love him or her, we think
they have seen or read too many romances.
The intense, euphoric. obsessive-compulsive
feelings you have when you're first together,
designed to get you to reproduce without
thinking too deeply about the consequences,

ILLUSTRATION BY ISTVAN BANYAI

always wear off. Your brain can't maintain
the rush. That's when people realize the work
involved in continuing the partnership. The
sure sign you are in a mature relationship
is that you have occasional moments when
you hate your partners guts but don't bail
because you know you aren't going to find
better—only different. The strongest mar-
riages acknowledge these moments of disdain
and, as you say, ride the wave.

A reader asked in December about mix-
ers for the bottle of firewater (aguardiente)
he had purchased in Honduras. The
equivalent in Brazil is cachaca, although
I can't imagine mixing it with Sprite, as
you said many Hondurans do. Instead it's
used to make the national drink, the cai-
pirinha. You'll need a lime, two ounces of
cachaça, sugar and ice cubes. Roll the lime
to loosen the juices, then cut it into eight
wedges and place them in a glass. Add
sugar to taste and crush the pieces with a
pestle, pulp side up. Add the cachaga and
stir. Add ice, stir again and serve.—TS,,
San Francisco, California

Have you tried caipirinhas made with half
a tangerine? Delicious. Although it's created
with sugarcane, cachaca is often marketed
here as Brazilian rum. Importers are trying
to introduce more of the good stuff, hoping it
will become as popular in the States as tequila.
The best cachagas are sipped straight and the
harsher varieties saved for caipirinhas. Pre-
mium brands available in the U.S. include
Leblon, Beleza Pura, Agua Luca and Cabana;
оп the less expensive end ts Pitu.

l am a 29-year-old black man. When
white women get me into bed, the first
thing they go for is my.cock. They are
eager to validate the stereotype that
black men are well hung. But my penis is
only two inches when soft and five inches
erect. Do I need to see a doctor? This is
ruining my love life. 1 wonder if other
black men have this problem.—].S., Fort
Lauderdale, Florida

Every black man who has slept with a white
woman has been sized up this way. Scott
Poulson-Bryant, author of Hung: A Medita-
tion on the Measure of Black Men in America,
recalls an incident in college when he hooked
up with a white girl at a party. “She pursued
me," he says. “Afterward she said, I thought
your dick would be bigger” 1 asked her w
and she said, “Because you're black.’ Then 1
said, ‘I thought it would be bigger too.’ That
isn't to say I have a tiny penis, but as a black
man 1 always thought I should have a certain
measure.” Black women generally don't have
these expectations, Poulson-Bryant says,
because they see more black dicks. The stereo-
type dates to at least the 15th century, when
white explorers measured a few well-endowed
African tribesmen and made a sweeping
conclusion that later fit well with racist

PLAYBOY

propaganda that African American men are
sexual savages. In truth, the few studies that
have looked at penis size haven't found black
erections to be any larger than average, which
is five to six inches. You can't do anything lo
change expectations about your size, but you
can be comfortable with what you have to
offer. The best way to put this stereotype to rest
is to have more interracial fucking.

Му wife and I love sliced mushrooms
with steak. I usually sauté them with but-
ter. Sometimes I add herbs and spices or
make gravy. I have even added green
onions, garlic and asparagus, but I'm
running out of ideas. Do you have any
suggestions;— J.C., Cleveland, Texas

You're on the right track but just need a
guide, Ours is Amy Farges, co-owner of the
New York City mushroom shop Marché aux
Delices (auxdelices.com). "I usually sauté
mushrooms with sea salt and pepper, then add
shallots, although anything from the onion
family enhances the flavor,” says Farges,
author of The Mushroom Lover's Mushroom
Cookbook and Primer. “Cook until the shal-
lots are slightly brown, then add demi-glace,
reduce until syrupy and add white or black
truffle butter. Vary the herbs you put in based
on the meat you're serving. For instance, lar-
ragon works well with fish or chicken, or try a
combination of oregano, thyme and rosemary
with game. Chives and chervil are always
wonderful with mushrooms. If you're cook-
ing only white bultons, you are missing out.
You can find shiitake, cremini, oyster and
portobello just about anywhere, as well as
dried mushrooms such as morel, porcini and
black trumpets. If you use dried mushrooms,
reconstitute them by soaking in broth or wine,
whichever you prefer. Strain out any sand and
chop them fine. They'll still be chewy, so add
them 10 some button mushrooms that you've
sautéed to create liquid. The dried mushrooms
provide flavor, and the buttons give you tex-
ture; together it’s a nice balance."

My girlfriend has developed a fascination
with strap-ons. She's enjoying her power
trip, and we're both having fun with it.
However, she’s noticed that when she uses
any of her dildos that are eight inches or
longer on me, I get soft. She thinks this
is psychological, since she inserts only six
inches of the foot-long one. But that also
happens to be the thickest one she owns.
Am I being psyched out, or is this a physi-
cal reaction?—L.M., Annapolis, Maryland

It’s a physical reaction. “In my experience
it happens about 50 percent of the time when
a guy is being penetrated,” says Tristan Taor-
mino, author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal
Sex for Women and a gonzo porn director
who has seen her fair share of males being
taken from behind by women, “Although men
have a hard time believing they can be turned
on if they don't have an erection, you have to
relax all the muscles in your pelvic area for
anal sex to be comfortable, Plus, some guys
have told me that when they're having their
prostate stimulated, they focus all their energy

46 оп that, so their penis isn't part of the equa-

tion.” A man doesn't need an erection to reach
orgasm. When it happens during strap-on
sex, he may ejaculate prostatic fluid. the part
of semen produced by the prostate gland.

Alter reading the text of the Women of
MySpace pictorial you published last sum-
mer, my 40-year-old boyfriend (I'm 26)
suddenly thinks I am “whoring around”
because 1 have a page on the site. Can
you please clarify that having friends
on MySpace doesn’t mean anything? I
thought we had a solid relationship, but
if he believes what he reads in PLAYBOY
instead of me, I'm not so sure.—N.H.,
Key West, Florida

Complaining about your MySpace page is
just a convenient way for your boyfriend to
say he doesn't trust you. If he insists you shut-
ter the page, what will he do next to isolate
уон from а world filled with other men? Your
cell phone is dangerous too.

1 thought PLAYBOY was for men, not
pussies! Your contention in December
that there is no good way to do push-ups
is bunk. Not only are push-ups effective
at toning the chest, triceps and shoulders,
they strengthen muscles in ways your
body can actually use. A push-up is also
a lot like sex: If you do it wrong, you'll
get hurt, so don’t compromise form. The
dozens of Playmates, including me, who
have been on the Playboy X-Treme Team
have worked up a sweat many times from
push-ups, and our rotator cuffs feel fine
Our coach, Lieutenant Colonel Blain
Reeves, a former Army ranger instruc-
tor, notes that proper form by military
standards is to put your hands flat on
the floor, shoulder-width apart. Your
legs should be straight and your feet no
more than a foot apart. Your back needs
to be straight and your stomach tucked,
Lower yourself slowly, concentrating on
maintaining your form, until your chest
touches the floor. If this is too difficult,
you can do a modified push-up with
your knees touching the floor—Danelle
Folta, Los Angeles, California

Great. Not only have we irritated one of
our favorite Playmates, she happens to be
able to kick our ass. Yet even in the face of
that personal risk (or reward), we will stick
with the advice Phil Wharton gave us. He's
been a fitness guru for 18 years, trained and
rehabbed some of the world’s top athletes and
never led us astray in the gym. “You can do
а good push-up,” he concedes, “but most
people don't have coaches, spotters or mir-
rors to make sure they don't put undue stress
on their body. They likely sit at work all day,
too, so their backs are already in spasm,
which increases the potential damage. If you
ave intent on including push-ups in your
routine, you should first do other exercises to
prepare the muscles around your joints.”

Last August a reader asked why he gets
turned on by his girlfriend's moans dur-
ing sex yet she doesn't seem to react the
same way to his. You discussed the idea

that this helps the female control the
male's arousal. There's another reason
I thought you'd find interesting: Bio-
logically, the chance of “successful” sex
(i.e., pregnancy) is higher if both part-
ners reach orgasm at the same time. By
controlling the man’s arousal until she
ready to climax, a woman can make this
more likely.—B.S., Staunton, Virginia

That's assuming a woman's orgasm has
anything to do with fertilization. A few
studies have suggested the contractions of
orgasm may help sperm along. Other research
has hinted that a woman climaxes more read-
ily when she is fertile. There’s also evidence
that genetics determines how easily a female
can come. But all this is far from conclusive
It's just as likely that а woman's orgasm has
no influence on anything besides her mental
health. In The Case of the Female Orgasm,
biologist Elisabeth Lloyd dissects a number
of hypotheses about why women reach cli-
max and endorses one proposed in 1979 by
anthropologist Donald Symons. Since the
genitals of both genders are constructed from
the same type of tissue, why shouldn't orgasm
produce the same response in both males
and females? Symons argues that the female
orgasm did not evolve to fulfill any purpose.
It is simply a potential.

А woman 1 used to see for booty calls
before she returned to her boyfriend
stopped by to see me and said she wanted
to scroll through the digital photos we had
taken during sex. So I popped the CD
into my computer. Suddenly she tapped
the eject button on the drive, grabbed the
disk and snapped it in half. [ have a few
of the images on another computer, but
can anyone besides Homeland Security
retrieve the rest? The pictures are all
X-rated, so that needs to be taken into
account.—PB., Baltimore, Maryland

Your ex sounds like a woman we'd like to
meet—no regrets bul no evidence, either. Her
mistake was to believe digital isn't forever,
but her salvation is the fact that you didn't
make extensive backups. We asked around
and couldn't find any geeks who offered hope
of recovery. You could tape the CD together,
but it is unlikely a drive will be able to read it,
and you may end up destroying the equipment
if the disk breaks apart as it spins at high
speeds. Your energy may be better spent filling
a CD—and a copy—with new photos.

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 a
self-addressed, stamped envelope. The most
interesting, pertinent questions will be pre-
sented in these pages each month. Write the
Playboy Advisor, 730 Fifth Avenue, New
York, New York 10019, or send e-mail by vis-
iting our website at playboyadvisor.com. The
Advisor's latest book, Dear Playboy Advisor,
is available at bookstores, by phoning 800-
423-9494 or online at playboystore.com.

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THE PLAYBOY FORUM
BREAKING THE LAW

OUR RIDICULOUS PATENT LAWS HAVE LEFT US WITH A
SYSTEM OF LEGALIZED EXTORTION

BY LORI ANDREWS

ou wake up with an idea for a tax shelter for a cli
Y= Vou get out of bed, have a cup of java and pack

а peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich for work. As
you shave you decide your hair is scruffy, so you cut your
bangs. Then you head to the kitchen and pour milk over
your combination of Special K and Lucky Charms. You're
out the door, feeling on top of the world. Except you've
violated at least four patents before breakfast.

The queen in Through the Looking Glass explains that she
“believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,”
but this time it's the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that
has fallen through the rabbit hole. Fifty patents have already
been granted for tax-reduction strategies. Smucker's used its
patent on the crustless peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich to
threaten legal action against Albie Foods for infringement.
A barber patented the two-handed
process for cutting hair (comb in
‘one hand and scissors in the other),
And the company Cereality has
filed patent-application number
20050160005 to cover “displaying
and mixing competitively branded
food products” and adding “a third
portion of liquid.”

Patents used to be granted for
concrete inventions, such as a
particular type of mousetrap. But
now patents are doled out for
broad concepts, which is like pat-
enting the idea of trapping mice
and charging a royalty anytime
someone catches a rodent.

Patents are supposed to be
reserved for inventions that are
novel, nonobvious and useful. A
patent allows its holder to pro-
hibit anyone else from making,
using or selling the invention
For 20 years patent holders can
charge whatever royalty they
want to those who use their inven-
tions—or even prohibit someone
from using them. That made
sense when patents covered nuts-
and-bolts inventions. But allow-
ing patent holders to charge for ideas and even censor
them entirely violates the First Amendment protection of
speech and thought. Already, the work of researchers, doc-
tors and tax advisors has been hampered by unwarranted
patents. And the cost of goods and services has risen as
inappropriate royalty fees are passed on to consumers.

For the past 150 years the U.S. Supreme Court has
maintained that patents should be granted for inventions,
not ideas or natural facts. In 1980 the Court reiterated

May 10, 1977

that the “laws of nature, physical phenomena and abstract
ideas have been held not patentable. Einstein could not
patent his celebrated law that E=mc*, nor could Newton
have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are ‘free
to all men and reserved exdusively to none." Another
Supreme Court case stated that “Congress may not autho-
rize the issuance of patents whose effects are to remove
existent knowledge from the public domain or to restrict
free access to materials already available.

But in 1998 the Federal Circuit—the pro-patent court,
created during the Reagan administration, that hears all
patent appeals—ignored that precedent and granted a
patent for a method of doing business. That led to an
increasing number of patents on correlations, applica-
tions of the law and even mixing cereal:

Rather than being a means to
spur innovation, patents have
become a method of legalized
extortion by which a royalty is
extracted for activities people are
already engaged in. About half
the 4 million American women
who give birth each year undergo
blood tests for a hormone called
human chorionic gonadotropin
(hCG). A low level of the hormone
indicates that the fetus may have
implanted somewhere other than
the uterus, The test was never pat-
ented and has been widely used
since the 1960s. Dr. Mark Bogart
noticed women with a high level of
the hormone were more likely to
havea fetus with Down syndrome
He filed a patent not for a new test
or treatment but for the medical
fact that high hCG correlates with
Down syndrome. Then he began
suing labs that used the test. An
Arizona clinic agreed to pay him
$90,000 for previous tests and
a royalty for cach future test. A
national laboratory chain agreed
to pay $1 million annually. This
year a court will hear his patent-
infringement lawsuit against the state of California, where
more than half a million women give birth each year.

In a similar case, tests for homocysteine in the body were
used for years to predict certain cardiac problems. But
researchers from Columbia University and the University of
Colorado began to notice that a high level of homoc:
could predict а vitamin В deficiency. They patented that
medical fact, along witha real invention—a particular test for
homocysteine levels. Someone else invented a better test, but

4,022,227

using it violates the patent. Why? Because
when a doctor gets the results of the test,
he will think about the patented medical
fact. Once an idea is out there, you can't
unthink it. Even doctors who use the test
to assess cardiac risks owe a royalty since
they know a high level of homocysteine
is related to vitamin deficiency

The Federal Circuit ruled that a lab-
oratory infringed on that patent (and
thus was liable for more than $2 million
in damages) because it published an
article relaying the medical fact. Aston-
ishingly, the appellate court held that
physicians who order the test infringe
the patent merely by thinking about
the relationship between homocysteine
and vitamin deficiency.

The US. Patent and Trademark Office's
own procedures encourage improper pat-
ents. The office pays patent examiners for
each file they investigate. The easiest way
to get paid is to grant the patent. If the
examiner denies the patent, the appli-
cant will appeal and it will take longer to
close the file; the examiner will make less
money because he or she will have to work
on the appeal rather than collect a pay-
check for granting new patents

In theory the courts can throw out
faulty patents, but generally under U.S
law only someone who infringes a patent
can challenge it. Plus, the average pat-
ent lawsuit costs more than $4 million
So rather than try to knock out invalid
patents, many companies pay the royal-
ties and pass the costs on to consumers.
Research in Motion, the maker of the
BlackBerry, would probably have pre
vailed in a lawsuit against NTP, which
claimed a patenton the concept of send-
ing e-mails from computers to wireless
devices. But Research in Motion did not
want to risk a blackout of its product, so
it paid $612.5 million to settle.

We can fix the problem by giving
members of the public a voice in the
patent-application process and the right
to challenge existing patents. In Europe,
where such a procedure exists, a third of
challenged patents are revoked. The pat
ent office and the Federal Circuit should
follow the Supreme Court precedents
against patenting abstract ideas, natu-
ral phenomena and products of nature
And a special group of patent examiners
should be given the task of protecting the
public interest. This country was founded
on principles of free speech and thought
Under copyright law, no one can own an
idea. But now patents interfere with our
free exchange of ideas

Lori Andrews, professor of law at Chicago-
Kent College of Law, is author of the genetics
thrillers Sequence and The Silent Assassin.

FORUM

IRAQI SUCCESS STORY

A POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST THAT
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WANTS NO PART OF

hey could have been a major
| asset to American foreign pol-
icy, but instead they're merely
the best-kept secret in the Middle East:
Across the Arab world, from North
Africa to the Gulf states and includ-
ing Iraq, workers have been organiz-
ing into pro-Western, pro-American
labor unions. They have even been
asking the world’s superpower for
help. They're fighting for basic human
rights, a civil society and collective һаг-
gaining power in a region where the
labor force has been historically ill-
treated. They're progressive, feminist
and antifundamentalist and want to
be engines of civil society and nation
building. Yet even as the situation in
Iraq continues to deteriorate, labor
unions have not been well received in
the Bush administration. For the new
Democratic-controlled Congress, how-
ever, unionism could offer a way for-
ward in Iraq, and supporting it could
bolster the standing of the United
States throughout the region
Think back to the world’s great
political transformations of the past

By Joseph Braude

60 years and you'll find organized
workers playing a constructive role.
General Douglas MacArthur made
“encouragement of the unionization
of labor” a central plan in his strategy
for post-World War II Japan. The
unions that grew out of MacArthur's
commitment served to stabilize Japa-
nese democracy for decades. The post
war German Trade Union Federation
similarly helped shape post-Nazi poli-
tics and, 40 years later, reintegrate the
divided country’s east and west. Com-
munism fell in Poland due in part
to Lech Walesa’s dissident Solidarity
movement, a federation of shipyard
workers that went on to champion
free elections after the dictatorship
collapsed. And the Congress of South
African Trade Unions helped keep
that country together after apartheid,
thanks to ideals of equity and social
justice that transcended South Africa's
fractious tribes.

All these movements benefited
from significant outside support—
from Democrat Harry Truman,
whose administration championed

German and Japanese reconstruction, to
Republican Ronald Reagan, who recog-
nized Solidarity’s Walesa for the national
hero and valuable American ally he was

Of course, American support of foreign
labor movements hasn't always been on
the side of the angels. Back in the days of
George Meany, the AFL-CIO created the
American Institute for Free Labor Devel-
opment, which was reportedly involved in
all sorts of CIA shenanigans in El Salva-
dor and Brazil

Nevertheless, it’s obvious the
Middle East needs heroes too,
as surely as the United States
needs Arab allies, and labor's
champions from Baghdad to
the Bay of Tangier can provide
many examples of both. Take
the Iraqi Federation of Trade
Unions, which had been agitating for Sad-
dam Hussein's ouster since before George
W. Bush took over the Texas Rangers.
While Islamist insurgents plotted to blow
up ballot boxes two years ago, union chiefs
in Iraq fought to get out the vote. Or
consider the nascent trade federations in
mercantile, oil-rich Gulf states like Kuwait,
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirate:
These patriarchal sheikdoms are notori-
ously unfeminist and anti-Israel. Yet among

Bahrain's 46 trade
f

federations, for exam-
ple, four have elected
female chiefs and all
46 have endorsed a
two-state solution to
the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. That's not bad
for a segment of the
Arab world in which
Al Qaeda has become a
familiar threat

These hopeful ven-
tures are indigenous
grassroots efforts that
grew out of today's
appalling labor condi-
tions throughout the
Middle East. Accord-
ing to a report by the
International Labour
Organization, working
conditions in several
Arab states approach the bottom of inter-
national standards. There are reports
of people working 24 hours at a stretch,
employee beatings and more—especially
for migrant workers. Some of the worst
abuses, moreover, have happened in
facilities that serve American companies
So grassroots labor movements might not
expect robust support from an antilabor
administration.

Despite the efforts of Arab labor activists,
who have sought American assistance in

Who better
than Democrats
to support
Arab labor?

|
Р
| i
"d

Iraqi refinery worker: Americon ally?

their struggle against these abuses, the reac-
tionary Bush administration has repeatedly
snubbed them. In 2003 U.S.-appointed
Iraq proconsul L. Paul Bremer preserved
Saddam-era laws that prohibited collective
bargaining, even as he supplanted much
of the ex-dictator's legal system with his
own executive orders. Bremer declined
to unfreeze union assets that the IFTU
claimed rightfully belonged to it, thus
stunting the federation's ability to act while
the American administration
pushed through aggressive
privatization measures. The
financially strapped organi-
zation's chief, Hadi Saleh,
was inadequately guarded in
2005 when five Iraqi insur-
gents came to his home and
strangled him. Beyond Iraq,
the White House’s ambitious policy in the
Middle East envisions a NAFTA-like free-
trade zone across the region. According
to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Heba
Shazli, an Egyptian native who trains Arab
labor activists, the neoconservative rush
to sign free-trade agreements with Arab
states has too often come at the expense
of critical dialogue on labor abuse. “There
is no address in the U.S. government for
us to go to to appeal for funds for this very
fundamental principle
of democracy and gov-
ernance,” says Shazli
“Iris absolutely amaz-
ing and shameful.”

None of this should
come as a surprise to
anyone who compre-
hends the extremism
of the Bush administra-
tion. But such a policy
doesn't necessarily serve
American interests.

Who better than
Democrats, with their
formidable labor con-
stituency, to support the
brave Iraqi man I met
at the AFL-CIO's mod-
est office in downtown
Amman, who works
long hours teaching
Iraqis, Jordanians and
Palestinians about their rights of collec-
tive bargaining and human dignity? What
could be more necessary, in a region rife
with sectarianism and extremist ideologies,
than to support a secular movement that
upholds egalitarian ideals and strives for
reasonable goals?

Supporting Arab labor could be the
Democrats’ “big idea” to help win hearts
and minds in the Middle East. And it
could strengthen civil society and improve
social equity at the same time.

MARGINALIA

FROM BABY-
LON'S ARK,
published in March by
Thomas Dunne Books
and written by Lawrence Anthony, a
South African conservationist who
helped save the Baghdad zoo after
the U.S. invasion: “At the height of
the anarchy I asked several American
officers and soldiers for a gun, argu-
ing that we were the only people on
duty in the theater (as they called
Baghdad) without a weapon. The
request was always refused. They
said they couldn't go around giving
weapons to civilians. But without a
gun we would be forever victims,
completely unable to defend our-
selves or protect

the animals. I =

kept pestering

anyone | could to

get me one. Even-

tually a captain,

who shall remain

nameless, disgusted

by what he saw happening and our
being powerless to stop it, slipped me a
nine-millimeter pistol that had formerly
belonged to an Iraqi officer killed in
battle. The captain did it with no fuss
and asked for no thanks, but we
knew he was putting his career on
the line for the survival of the zoo.
The difference was immediate. 1
would stride up to manageable
groups of footers, point the pistol and
gesture angrily at them to move on,
and quickly. They always did.”

FROM A PRESS release issued by
Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility in December 2006:
“Grand Canyon National Park is not
permitted to give an official estimate of
the geologic age of its principal feature,
due to pressure from Bush administra-
tion appointees. Despite promising a
prompt review of its

approval for a

book claiming

the Grand

Canyon was

created by

Noah's flood

rather than

by geologic

forces, more

than three years later no

review has ever been done and the
book remains on sale at the park,
according to documents released
today. ‘In order to avoid offending
religious fundamentalists, our
National Park Service is under
orders to suspend its belief in geology,"
stated PEER executive director Jeff
Ruch. ‘It is disconcerting that the
official position of a national park
as to the geologic age of the Grand
Canyon is no comment."

FROM AN ARTICLE in Sri Lanka's
Sunday Observer about bartering for
sex in Iran: "In a smart boutique
displaying an array of miniskirts and
skimpy tops, the shopkeeper was too
busy attending to his female customers
to listen to a sermon on HIV/AIDS.
(continued on page 53)

READER RESPONSE I

THE EYES HAVE IT

Jonathan Raban's article “We're
Watching You” (January) brings to light
some of the core issues we as a country
will have to deal with in the new cen-
tury. To avert a terrorist threat, most
of us would gladly allow some dimin-
ishment of our personal privacy. The
promise of safety is difficult to ignore.
But locked in a new kind of war whose
rules remain vague, our government is
making decisions that set us on a slip-
pery slope. Systems like Echelon have
been indispensable to our national secu-
rity, but when the eyes of such systems
are turned on American houscholds, we
as citizens are right to take notice. That
gaze most certainly keeps us safer, but at
what cost? Who will watch the watcher?
We stand at a fulcrum between security
and freedom. Weighting freedom too
heavily puts us in physical jeopardy;
overweighting safety may nullify the
very freedom we hold dear. Finding bal-

Nat all reality televisian is innocuous.

ance between these two pressures will
be pivotal to our future as a nation.
Josh Conviser
Montecito, California
Conviser is author of the book Echelon,
published by Random House.

FIGHTING WORDS

The analogy Stephen Van Eck draws
between conservatism and radical
Islam in January's "Reader Respon
is logically flawed at best. Let's agree
that conservatives are at the forefront
ofthe battle with radical Islam and that.
liberals, in large part, want nothing to
do with this fight. Now let's project a
victory for Muhammad's warriors and
assume conservatives are either wiped
out or rendered powerless. Islam is
not just a religion. It makes no pre-
tense of separating church and state.
Since in strict Muslim societies PLAYBOY
is banned, how long do you suppose

any liberal lifestyle would be tolerated
if one day the rule of sharia became the
law of the land?

Mike Kuzara
Wyarno, Wyoming

Talk about flawed logic. In the false dichot-
omy you create, your argument may seem win-
ning. But it doesn't hold up to scrutiny: To
suggest American liberals want nothing to do
with the fight to defend the nation’s treasured
liberties is absurd. At issue is not whether to
fight, but how. So let's agree on this instead.
Certainly liberals are not alone in taking issue
with the notion that the best way to combat theo-
cratic authoritarianism is to adopt it at home

BLACK AND WHITE AND GRAY ALL OVER
Concerning the letters in December's
Reader Response”: Yes, God loves
everyone. That does not mean, how-
ever, he approves of everyone's sins. I
am a fundamentalist and a Republican,
and I feel that advocating the killing of
gays and abortion doctors should be
punished to the full extent of the law.
But let me also point out that laws pro-
tecting your readers’ right to trash reli-
gious fundamentalists are the same laws
that protect hatemongers.
David McRae
Denver, Colorado

Everyone seems to be writing in these
days with one side's viewpoint. Repub.
lican, Democrat —how many of us are
actually one or the other? I agree and
disagree with both sides. 1 am pro-life,
which automatically kicks me to the
right. On the other hand I am in favor of
gay marriage, which kicks me back over
to the left. People on the right refer to
the Bible and say homosexuality is a sin,
but by that standard so is cating shell-
fish—and I don't sce anyone trying to
outlaw Red Lobster. Also, 1 am not for

organized religion in schools. Children
raised in non-Christian or agnostic homes
should not be made to feel like outcasts.
Our country is ethnically and religiously
diverse. That’s what makes it so great
Why would we try to impress conformity
on a society that prides itself on noncon-
formity? This country shouldn't be split
in half on everything. 1 am 25, and many
of my peers feel the same way. We need
new representatives able to speak for us
and the new world we live in. We need a
new political party, with new faces, new
platforms and certainly new ideas
Debra Logan
Biloxi, Mississippi
We hear you. You can perhaps take sol-
ace in the fact that you are in similarly
independent-minded company among fel-
low readers. The Playboy Voter poll (Octo-
ber and November 2006) showed that our
readers reject the prescribed right-lejt break-
down of most issues and seek a commonsense
middle ground.
4s for David McRae, he appears to come
dangerously close to equating criticism on the
one side with violence on the other. We can't
remember any recent instance of a religion-
bashing gay-marriage supporter beating up
a couple in the midst of a covenant wedding,
but alas, stories of antiabortion and antigay
advocates resorting to violence to advance
their causes are all too common. The crime
against society is not the hating. which we are

Which side da уси disagree with less?

all free to do; й is the punching, stabbing or
bombing. Another distinction should be made
as well: Those critical of religion in public
life try to secure a philosophical area free
from what they see as constricting systems of
thought. But advocates on the other side try
to shackle nonbelievers to a restrictive moral
philosophy they do not share. In a free society,
which is the more palatable goal?

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

NEWSFRONT

ORUM

POSTAL

Outrage as Bush claims new
powers to open YOUR mail

PREZ GOES

Letter Bomb

WASHINGTON, D.c.—President Bush add-
ed a signing statement to the Postal
Accountability and Enhancement Act,
asserting the right to bypass federal
law protecting the privacy of Americans’
mail. Several laws, including the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978,
make it a crime to open mail without
judicial approval (though exceptions
for suspected bombs already exist).
Many observers believe Bush's signing
statement means he has already begun
or intends to begin warrantless mail
snooping. Even Republicans—including
Senator Susan Collins, who sponsored
the original bill—have called on Bush to
clarify his intent. As ACLU lawyer Ann
Beeson puts it, "The question is, What
does the signing statement mean? Why
has he suddenly put this in writing if
this isn't a change in policy?"

Flour Child

PHILADELPHIA—À woman jailed for three weeks
on drug charges while a freshman at Bryn
Mawr College settled a lawsuit against the
city for $180,000. The problem with the
charges? The woman, Janet Lee, was arrested
for carrying ordinary flour, albeit in condoms.
At Bryn Mawr, an all-female school, flour-
filled condoms are popular as a funny twist
on stress-relieving Koosh balls, and Lee,
apparently unaware that drug mules some-
times use condoms to transport contraband,
attempted to board a flight home with a few
of them. A baggage screener saw the con
doms in Lee's carry-on luggage and called in
city police. Officers claimed their field test
showed the flour to be a mix of opium and
cocaine. “Under the circumstances, some-
thing went terribly wrong,” says Lee's law:
yer, Jeffrey Ibrahim, who can’t understand
how the tests could have been so flawed
and why it took so long for the mistake to
be corrected. In settling the case, the city
admitted no wrongdoing

Beaver Research

CORVALLIS, OREGON. Scientists at Oregon State
University are attempting to flip off biologi-
cal switches that cause homosexuality in
sheep. The project, initiated by the feder-
al Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho and
funded by the National Institutes of Health,
aims to help sheep farmers for whom the
eight percent of rams who mount other rams
represent a serious economic blow. After
determining that “male-oriented rams aren't

completely masculinized during the sexual
differentiation process” of fetal develop-
ment, researchers have developed hormone
treatments that have led homosexual rams
to mount ewes. Gay activists have been
quick to decry the research, worrying that
such treatments will eventually be modified
for use on humans, technologically enabling
parents to essentially breed out homosexu-
ality. Lead researcher Charles Roselli, of Or-
egon Health and Science University, defends
the work: “In general, sexuality has been
understudied because of political concerns
People don't want science looking into what
determines sexuality. It's a touchy issue. In
fact, several studies have shown that people
who believe homosexuality is biologically
based are less homophobic than those who
think this orientation is acquired.”

Bottoms Up

PORTLAND. MAINE—Anticipating a legal chal-
lenge, the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforce-
ment dropped a ban on several beer labels,
including the one for Santa's Butt
Winter Porter and two that de-
pict naked women. On the Winter
Porter label, Santa is sitting on
a butt—an archaic word for the
barrels in which beer was once
aged and transported. One of the
other two labels—both of which
are based on paintings—is a re-
production of Eugene Delacroix's
Liberty Leading the People, which
hangs in the Louvre in Paris

MARGINALIA

(continued from page 51)

“1 don't know anything about it at all.
Come back after I've finished with
my customers,’ he told the volunteer
health-education worker. The volunteer,
Amir Fattahi, was unsurprised.
Observation and experience told

him he had interrupted no ordinary
business transaction. The four young
women, he surmised, were prostitutes
striking a deal with the shopkeeper,
offering sex in exchange for free

or cheap clothes, an increasingly
common arrangement in Tehran’s
fashion shops.”

FROM THE BOOK A Game As
Old As Empire, published in March
by BK Currents: “Those who serve
the interests of global empire play
many different roles. A London
bank sets up an offshore subsi
staffed by men and women with
respectable university degrees
dressed in the same designer outfits
you would expect to see in the City
ог on Wall Street. Yet their work
each day consists of hiding embez-
лдей funds, laundering the profits
from drug sales and helping multina-
tional corporations

evade taxes. They

are economic

hit men, An IMF

team arrives in an

African capital

armed with the

power to extend

vitally needed

economy to a flood of goods dumped
by North American and European
exporters. They are economic hit men.
A consultant sets up shop in Bagh-
dad's Green Zone, where, protected
by the U.S. Army, he writes new laws
governing exploitation of Iraq's oil
reserves. He is an economic hit man.”

FROM COMMENTS BY Tim
Everist, co-founder of Australian
fashion label Schwipe, about the
supposed rebelliousness of the
company, which prints slogans such
as “Think before you breed” and
“Ketamine is a drug for horses” on
clothes and marketing materials: “To
make your own brand is a way of not
using what's on offer, but it's a pretty
weak form of rebellion. If you're
gonna rebel, don't go to school, don't
wear clothes, stit like that.”

FROM A DISSENT written by
Judge Diana Gribbon
Motz in a North
Carolina case in
which the majority
opinion upheld a ban
on erotic simulation in
strip clubs: “Мо one
would mistake a

dancer gyrating her
hips for someone having
intercourse, nor believe
that а Carolina Panthers
cheerleader patting

her buttocks as part of
a dance routine was
masturbating.”

he no doubt about it: Taxes

| suck. Everyone fudges a little,

Ë but some people go to extremes,
searching the fine print for loopholes
that ultimately exist only in their
imagination. This past December
Wesley Snipes surrendered to police
in Orlando after the IRS accused the
actor of claiming nearly $12 million
in fraudulent refunds between 1999
and 2004. Snipes relied on an inter-
pretation of the regulations that cre-
ated Section 861 of the federal tax
code to argue that any citizen who
works for a U.S. company is exempt
from income tax. You hadn't heard?
So many scofllaws have cited repeat-
edly discredited legal arguments such
as this that judges have taken to fining

their lawyers. Here are a few others.

Taxes are voluntary. The IRS says
so in its own publications. The word
voluntary refers to the fact that indi-
viduals can prepare their own returns
and determine how much they owe
rather than have the IRS do it. Pay-

ing taxes is involuntary.

You don’t have to pay taxes on wages
because they are a
zero-sum exchange
of labor for money.
The intent of the
16th Amendment
(“Congress shall
have power to lay
and collect taxes
on incomes, from
whatever source
derived”) has so
far been clear to
every judge asked
to interpret it.

U.S. currency
can’t be taxed,
because the gov-
ernment doesn’t
own enough gold
to allow every bill
to be exchanged.
Therefore, paper
money is merely a
debt owed to you by
the Treasury. Stop
the presses—the

U.S. is no longer on the gold standard.
Ironically, tax cheats do not make this
argument when deducting expenses
they paid with paper money

Federal income taxes violate the
Fifth Amendment, which prohibits
the government from taking prop-
erty without due process of law.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1916
that the Constitution can't be read to
both grant Congress the power to tax
and also take it away. Besides, the IRS
says it provides due process: You can
pay your tax and sue for a refund or
refuse to pay a disputed tax until a
court hears your appeal

If you revoke or refuse your citizen-
ship, you don't have to pay taxes.
Although it’s possible to rescind your
citizenship, you can't just click your
heels three times. In a typical case, in
1991 the court rejected a tax evader's

gument that he was a "freeborn,
natural individual, a citizen of the
State of Indiana and a master, not
servant, of his government.” Before
they were shut down, a Colorado
couple sold a $1,600 tax package that

Wesley Snipes, second from left, arrives in Orlando this past December, accompanied
by his legal team. Snipes claimed nearly $12 million in questionable refunds.

BY CHIP ROWE

claimed you could become exempt by
sending a form letter to the IRS to
change your status from U.S. citizen
to American citizen.

Only residents of federal areas—
Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam
and other territories, Indian reserva-
tions and military bases—must pay
taxes. This notion arises from a delib-
erate misreading of the word includes,
used in the definition of who must
pay income taxes, as meaning “only”
instead of “in addition.”

The 16th Amendment, which allows
Congress to collect taxes, wasn’t prop-
erly ratified in 1913. In The Law That
Never Was, Bill Benson says he visited
48 state capitals and discovered that
33 legislatures had ratified versions
with typos, making the amendment
null and void. A court ruled in 1989
that Benson’s argument has no merit.

Citizens aren’t required to file Form
1040 because its instructions don’t
have an OMB control number as
required by the Paperwork Reduc-
tion Act. The form has the number,
and it covers the
instructions.

The 16th Amend-
ment is intended to
tax only corporate
profits. Besides,
Congress revoked
the income tax
in 1954. In 2003
a judge indulged
Irwin Schiff,
author of The Fed-
eral Mafia: How
It Illegally Imposes

^ and Unlaufully Col-
lects Income Taxes,
for an hour as he
explained these
notions, which she
(like many other
jurists before her)
dismissed as non-
sense. Schiff is cur-
rently serving a
13-year sentence
for tax evasion

www BILL MAHER

A candid conversation with the godfather of political humor about the
war, the president, sex crimes, religion and all sorts of political incorrectness

In an age when millions of Americans turn
to late-night TV and YouTube videos for
satiric commentary on the day's news, Bill
Maher is, as he has put it himself, the godfa-
ther of political humor.

An "acid-longued comedian" and “one of
the establishment's most entertaining critics,”
according to The New York Times, Maher sends
up the nation’s movers and shakers on his HBO
hit, Real Time With Bill Maher, a freewheeling
and funny roundtable discussion of national and
global issues. His guests have included George
Clooney, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Robin
Williams, Drew Barrymore, the Reverend Jesse
Jackson, General Wesley Clark, Gary Hart, Pat
Buchanan, Ben Affleck, John Edwards and
George Carlin

On the show, which has received multiple
Emmy nominations, Maher has continually
attacked George W. Bush—calling the presi-
dent "a catastrophe that walks like a man” and
the “retarded child emperor” —and criticized
the war in Iraq. But Maher is no knee-jerk lib-
eral. He is pro-death penalty and pro-Israel,
supports a powerful military and has strongly
libertarian views on sex and drugs. For Maher
there are no sacred cows. This past Halloween
he angered the entire continent of Australia
by dressing up as TV's Steve Irwin just weeks
after a stingray fatally speared the Crocodile
Hunter. More recently Maher was embroiled

“I don't believe life is necessarily precious, I
don't believe everything happens for a reason,
and I don't think people necessarily have good-
ness in them. Life is precious? fi can be. It can
also be a waste of protoplasm.”

in controversy when he outed Ken Mehlman,
chairman of the Republican National Com-
mittee at the time, as a homosexual; Mehlman
later quit his job. Christian groups also fre
quently assail Maher for his cracks about reli-
which he calls stupid and dangerous

gion
None of these storms compare to the hurri-
cane generated by one of his comments follow-
ing the 9/11 attacks. The president had called
the terrorists cowards, prompting Maher to
respond on his late-night ABC talk show, Polit-
ically Incorrect, “Lobbing cruise missiles from
2,000 miles away—that’s cowardly. Staying
in the airplane when it hits the building хау
what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.”
Maher was denounced by the White House
and vilified by the media. Advertisers such
as Sears and FedEx pulled their ads from
the show, and it was soon canceled. Many
people assumed it marked the end of Maher's
career, but they were wrong. Six days after the
cancellation, he received an award from the
Los Angeles Press Club for championing free
speech, followed by a Hugh M. Hefner First
Amendment Award. In 2003 he returned to
television with his smarter, funnier, hipper
and, thanks to HBO, uncensored new show.
Besides working in television, Maher,
51, has wrillen a number of books, includ-
ing When You Ride Alone You Ride With
Bin Laden, New Rules and Does Auybody

“1 can probably come across as bullying —espe-
cially since it's my show and I have home-court
advantage. I should watch that. The real bul-
lies are O'Reilly and Hannity, though. They
never let you finish a sentence.”

Have a Problem With That? He was also
one of the first TV stars to have a regu
lar Internet show, on Amazon.com. and
his blog appears on The Huffington Post
He is currently producing and directing a
documentary about religion

After the 2006 election, as Republicans lost
control of the House and Senate, we decided
to track Maher down for his second Playboy
Interview. Contributing Editor David Sheff,
who interviewed the comedian а decade ago,
traveled to Los Angeles for the follow-up.
Sheff reports, “Maher hasn't mellowed. On
the contrary, he is more emphatic and confi-
dent—and funnier. The sessions, which took
place at an L.A. hotel (Sylvester Stallone was
hanging around) and at Maher's Beverly
Hills home (yes, there is a stripper's pole in
the club room), began at two Pam., which is
early morning for him. He started off sleepily
but quickly warmed to the subjects at hand,
including the war in Iraq, past and upcoming
elections, and the Hollywood trend of starlets
eschewing underwear.”

PLAYBOY: After the Democratic upset in
the midterm election and with a year and
a half Icft for the Bush administration,
are you feeling more optimistic about the
country's directioi
МАНЕВ: Are you kidding? 105 a disaster.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIZUNO

“Barack Obama is exciting. Everyone says he's
a rock star, which is one of the most overused
phrases these days; everybody's a rock star. You
know what? If you're not getting blown after
the event, you're not a rock Мак”

FTES ESOT

Unmitigated. Every day we're killing
more American soldiers for an immoral
and unwinnable war based on lies. We're
killing innocent Iraqis. The environment
is disintegrating. 1—5 one debacle after
the next. Much of the rest of the world
loathes us. We're infinitely less safe than
we were before 9/11. Other than that,
everything's great.

PLAYBOY: President Bush may disagree.

MAHER: The world is not safer: We took Sad-
dam Hussein out, but the idea that he was in
league with Osama bin Laden was a direct
lie, a bigger lie than the weapons of mass
destruction. Being a power-hungry dicta-
tor, Hussein would never have given some-
body a nuclear weapon, especially someone
like Bin Laden, who hated him
because he was a secularist. Even
three years ago the world wasn't
safer because we'd gone into Iraq
Now even Iraq isn't safer. We want
to keep Muslim extremists who
hate Americans from coming here
and hurting us, so what do we do?
We go into the heart of the Mus-
lim world and start this cockfight.
Muslims around the world do not
look at our invasion of Iraq as ап
attempt to install democracy and
freedom. They're far more cyni-
cal, and they have reason to be.
America has meddled in foreign
affairs many times, usually for its
own self-interest. We meddled
in Iraq in 1963 under Kennedy
and put a young assassin named
Saddam Hussein on the case of
killing its leader. We abandoned
the Kurds in 1991. When Bush's
father encouraged the Shiites to
rise against Hussein, we pulled a
Bay of Pigs and didn't show up;
they were massacred. In their
view we went in for oil and per-
haps just to fuck with Muslims.
‘There will be angry Muslims for
generations. To those on the right
who say Muslims hated us anyway,
yes, a certain number of them did.
But I don't see how taking that
hate and raising it from a sim-
mer toa boil has helped matters.
We were having a picnic and a couple of
hornets were stinging us, so we went over
and hit the nest with a stick. Exactly how
is the world safer?

PLAYBOY: What would you have the U.S.
do at this point?

MAHER: Get out of Iraq. Having troops
and bases in the heart of the Muslim
world is a thorn in the side of the
people who live there. Throughout
the region, we are building giant bases
with Pizza Huts and car dealerships,
stuff that goes over really well in that
part of the world. Next there will be a
Spearmint Rhino gentlemen's club.
PLAYBOY: If we pull out, there will likely
be increased chaos and slaughter.

56 MAHER: The sooner we get out, the sooner

it will end. Turkey will come in? Iran will
come in? Maybe, maybe not. It's Allah's
will. Who knows? Maybe it will shake
out in a not so horrible way. The coun-
try of Iraq has existed only since 193
It's seven years younger than Paul New-
man. So what if it breaks apart into three
countries? It's not worth one more dead
American to uphold a linc on a map that.
Winston Churchill drew, probably when
he was drunk. We disbanded the Iraqi
army, which was not a great idea because
now there's a group of Sunnis who know
how to use weapons, have no future and
have reason to hate us because we put
the Shiites in power. We created a mas-
sive insurgent guerrilla army. We painted
ourselves into a corner, and Bush still

Paris Hilton is the head bitch
in the high school of America.

doesn't get it. The Iraq that was is gone
and will never rise again. It has already
partitioned itself into three countries
Kurdistan is completely autonomous in
the north, the Shiite southern part is a
theocracy mostly allied with Iran, and
the middle is a mess. The Sunnis are still
trying to hold on. They're never going
to put it back together again. When we
went in, we were told Iraqis would throw
flowers at us. Anyone who was of a mind
to throw flowers is either dead or gone.
Moderate Lraq doesn’t exist anymore.
PLAYBO| the 2006 election vindicate
your views on Iraq?

MAHER: It was a breath of fresh air.
Democrats may differ from Repub
cans only in that they are bought off

by a slightly less scary group of special
interests, but at this point a slightly less
scary group looks pretty good.
PLAYBOY: What will a Democratic Con
gress do better?

MAHER: Put pressure on the administra
tion to end the war. Barbara Boxer said
she's going to hold hearings on global
warming. With scientists! In America!
Wow. Bush's theory is we should teach
intelligent design along with creation-
ism—treat stupidity as if it's а compet-
ing school of thought. In addition, in
medical school, along with what ob-gyns
normally learn, we're going to teach
that storks bring babies

PLAYBOY: You once said that if we get any
stupider about science, soon we won't
even be able to make our own
crystal meth

MAHER: Look at our leader. He
doesn't believe in evoluti
embarrassed by the cretins
have taken over. Luckily they're
on the way out. In the next
election, even if the Repub-
licans win the presidency, at
least it won't be Bush

PLAYBOY: What Democratic can-
didate would you support?
MAHER: Barack Obama is excit-
ing. Everyone says he's a rock
star, which is one of the most
overused phrases these days;
everybody'sa rock star. You know
what? If you're not getting blown
after the event, you're not a rock
star. But okay, Obama is a rock
star. Fine, if that's what it takes.
He seems articulate and serious
and thoughtful and electable.
PLAYBOY: Some people say he's
inexperienced and unprepared
to be president.

MAHER: Bush was woefully
unprepared. It obviously doesn't
prevent Americans from voting
for you. If Obama wants it, he's
one of the Democrats’ most via-
ble candidates. John Edwards
too. In America you can't get
elected president unless you
can pronounce all four e's in
the word shit. Clinton, Carter
and Bush could. Edwards can.

PLAYBOY: Can you?

MAHER: She-e-e-e-it.

PLAYBOY: You'd be a great can
MAHER: Yeah, right. I think religion is
bad and drugs are good. You want to be
my campaign manager?

PLAYBOY: Sure. We like a challenge,
especially when dealing with your
checkered past.

MAHER: Who has more of a checkered
past than Bush? He was a drunk until һе
аз 40. He wouldn't answer the cocaine
question, which was a way of saying.
"Yeah, I did it, and go fuck yourself."
That's one of the few things I a
him for. He basically said, “I was a sinner,
and now I'm not.” Americans love that.

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PLAYBOY

What they don't like is when you get
blown in office,

PLAYBOY: Speaking of Bill Clinton, you have
said he should be allowed to run again.
MAHER: In a democracy, the people
should be able to elect whomever they
want. It’s not a very clever tribe of Indi-
ans that prevents its greatest warriors
from taking the field of battle.

PLAYBOY: The Constitution would have to
be changed for him to do so.

MAHER: We'll change it so both he and
Arnold Schwarzenegger can run. Can
you imagine the interest if Clinton ran
against Schwarzenegger? The debate
could be on pay-per-view.

PLAYBOY: Would you support Clinton?
MAHER: Sure. He has a reputation as a
party animal because of the Monica
Lewinsky situation, but basically he's а
wonk. He can do Monica and run the
country. He's a multitasker. If he had
been president when Katrina hit, he
would have been in New Orleans three
days before the storm. He wouldn't
have slept. Yes, he would have been
getting blown—come on, Slick Willie in
the Big Easy? He would have had some
excellent étouffée. But he would have
been working the whole time. I think
the country has learned a lesson: If he
can do the job, let the guy be who he is.
People don't care about sex.

PLAYBOY: They cared about Mark Foley.
MAHER: Monica Lewinsky was an adult.
Foley went after boys. Actually, | wasn't
terribly taken aback by Foley. He was
like a college professor, in a job where
every year there's a new wave of fresh
meat. He would look over the field and
decide. He probably had pretty good
radar to know which kids were ame-
nable. From the evidence we have, he
tried to do something only after they
were out of the page program. If a 19-
year-old gay kid wants to go out with an
older guy, why noi? The guys his own
age are probably dumb doofuses.
PLAYBOY: But even after leaving their jobs as
pages, they were far younger than Foley.
MAHER: Look, I'm a 51-year-old man, and
1 go out with girls in their early 20s. I'd be
hypocritical if 1 said it's ridiculous for a gay
man to do that. I'm very libertarian about
love. I'm the only guy I've ever heard who
defends Mary Kay Letourneau.

PLAYBOY: Are you saying teachers should
be allowed to have sex with their 13-
year-old students, as she did, and not
go to jail?
МАНЕВ: I think it’s a little offbeat, but you
know, I believe in the double standard.
1f a 28-year-old male teacher is screw-
ing a 13-year-old girl, that's a crime. But
with Debra Lafave [another teacher who
had sex with a student] screwing her 14-
year-old boy student, the crime is that
we didn't get it on videotape. Was he
being taken advantage of? I wish 1 had
been taken advantage of like that. What a
memory she gave him! I would think he's

58 а champion among his friends. Are you

kidding? Even with Michael Jackson —
PLAYBOY: Are you defending him, too?
MAHER: I'm not defending him, but I do
believe his case has a nuance that makes
it different from other child molestation
cases—not that I'm saying he necessar-
ily did it, but come on. Jackson’s worst
accusers never said he did anything bru-
tal, like bend them over a table and ram
them—you know, like a priest. The worst
they said he did was a little grabby-grabby
under the covers. Don't get me wrong.
It's a crime. You shouldn't be able to grab
a kid that age, but when I heard about it,
all I could think of was my being brutally
beaten up on the playground when I was
12—a kid punching me in the face while
another held me down. If I could go
back and trade that experience for being
gently masturbated by a pop star, I would
do a New York second. Frankie Valli
could jerk me off. Bobby Sherman could.
Marvin Gaye could

PLAYBOY: You're being remarkably
open-minded.

MAHER: Woody Allen is the one we might
have been wrong about. I was pretty
hard on him on my show, but how many

When you say things when
you're drunk, it’s not the liquor
talking. The liquor makes you
more honest. Mel Gibson is
а bright, talented guy and а
despicable anti-Semite.

years has his relationship continued?
Maybe that, like Letourneau's, was true
love. If you look at him or Letourneau,
who is still with the guy after her time
in jail—they have two kids—the lesson is
love will take the form it’s going to take.
Sometimes it’s at great variance with the
mainstream. [ don't think teachers should
be allowed to do that. I think they should
be fired. But to send that woman to jail
and separate them all those years?
PLAYBOY: You may think Clinton's or even
Foley's personal life is irrelevant, but you
apparently draw the line in some cases,
such as when you outed Ken Mehlman,
who was chairman of the Republican
National Committee.

МАНЕВ: I didn't know I was outing him.
My bad

PLAYBOY: How could you not have known?
MAHER: I guess I'm in a bit of a news-
junkie bubble. For years everyone talked
about him as if it was known he was
gay. The truth is I don't know. I never
dated the guy.

PLAYBOY: Are you apologizing?

MAHER: If I disrupted anybody's life, I'm
sorry. I probably shouldn't have said it. I'm

not an outer. 1 don't believe in outing. 1
mentioned Mehlman because I had a joke
about him. I didn't mean to out him
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised when CNN
cut your comments about Mehlman and
had YouTube remove the clip from its
website? Also, The New York Times wrote
about the incident but didn't print
Mchlman's name.
MAHER: | was surprised because I didn't
think 1 was doing anything out of school.
PLAYBOY: Do you make an exception to your
feelings about outing ifthe closeted gay man
espouses traditional family values, demon-
izes gays and pushes antigay legislation?
MAHER: I don't. For years it was an inside
joke about Mehlman, but do I really
know? Everybody talks about everybody.
Rosie O'Donnell said Oprah is “a little bit
gay.” I'd never heard that before. Every-
body makes Tom Cruise gay jokes now. 1
don't know if that's true, either.
PLAYBOY: You called Katie Holmes Tom
Cruise's beard.
MAHER: Yeah. There are something like 95
celebrity fragrances now, so on the show
we made up fragrances by other celebri-
Чез. Tom Cruise's was called Bat Shit —the
fragrance to use on your beard.
PLAYBOY: Аз a comedian, do you rub your
hands together when you wake up to
news about the misadventures of celeb-
rities like Cruise and Mel Gibson?
MAHER: It's gold.
PLAYBOY: What was your opinion of Gib-
son's arrest and outburst?
MAHER: When you say things when
you're drunk, it's not the liquor talking.
The liquor makes you more honest. He's
a bright, talented guy and a despicable
anti-Semite. All those people live by the
press, then they're surprised when they
die by the press. At least Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie are clever enough to take
a page out of the old John and Yoko book
and say, “If you're going to photograph
everything we do, we're going to use
that for good. You'll have to photograph
starving children and AIDS in Africa.” 1
admire them for doing that.
PLAYBOY: Who are your favorite celebri-
ties to make fun of?
MAHER: We don't usually talk about
celebrities much, but occasionally in the
monologue we mention the brat patrol—
the Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay
Lohan contingent. I feel no guilt about
whatever joke we do, because these
people exist only to be made fun of.
They don't otherwise contribute. I guess
Lindsay Lohan is an actress, but Britney
Spears doesn't seem to have a career any-
more except as tabloid fodder.
PLAYBOY: That group is continually pho-
tographed without underwear. What do
you make of the trend?
МАНЕВ: I would never discourage it.
Girls not wearing underwear is a won-
derful thing.
PLAYBOY: Have any of those girls been on
your show?

(continued on page 130)

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othing was as it appeared at 1407 Ashland Avenue

in River Forest, an affluent suburb west of Chicago.

From the street, the ranch-style home—clad in buff-

colored fieldstone—looked smaller and more subdued
than the houses around it. By the first week of the new year
the elderly owners were already ensconced in their warm-
weather second residence and had a caretaker periodically
drop by to make sure the furnace still worked and no pipes
had burst. On the morning of January 7, 1978 the caretaker
pulled into the semicircular driveway just as he had the day
before. Michael Volpe was 75, white-haired and slight in stat-
ure but still spry. After opening the sculpted double doors, he
was prepared to work the buttons just inside to disarm the
elaborate security system. But instead he stood transfixed in

the mirrored foyer. Something was wrong. Although there was
no sign that the burglar alarm had been tripped, the house
was in disarray. As he would later testify, he saw his boss's
pants turned inside out and strewn about the hallway, a viola-
tion that seemed to disturb him even more than the opened
drawers and overturned furniture.

Almost every burglary is shocking, especially for the per-
son who discovers it. But this was not your typical suburban
break-in nor was the owner your typical victim. Volpe didn't
pick up the phone to dial the police. In fact, he never reported
the crime. The home's owner and Volpe's longtime employer,

BY HILLEL LEVIN

RIGHT: TONY ACCARDO (CENTER, IN GLASSES) WITH CHICAGO BOSSES IN 1978.

Anthony Accardo, wasn't one to leave his troubles to the local
authorities. For decades Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo had been
leader of the Outfit, Chicago's Mafia, and some considered
him to be the most powerful man in the history of organized
crime. His long reign was due in good part to his willing-
ness—even eagerness—to delegate authority to a coterie of
able underbosses. But that day, at the age of 71, he hopped
onto the next plane out of Palm Springs, prepared to take
matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile, in the working-class suburb of Lincolnwood
on the North Side of Chicago, there was another home in
which nothing was as it appeared. This house, a sturdy
two-story brick Georgian, was much bigger than the modest
wood-frames on the rest of the block. As far as the neighbors
were concerned, the homeowner, 31-year-old John Mendell,
was a hardworking young man who ran the machine shop
his father-in-law had established a few blocks away. He was

tall with shaggy dark hair and a full mustache, but such
was the fashion of the day. No one questioned the source
of the furs and jewels his older, redheaded wife wore. Nor
did anyone appear to notice the late hours he kept—until he
went missing and was found dead, on February 20, 1978,
trussed and slashed in the trunk of his car. In newspaper
accounts of the murder, he was described not as the enter-
prising small-business man his neighbors knew but as a
burglar, one of Chicago's top wire men, capable of defeating
the most sophisticated alarm systems. In an equally bizarre
turn, the media linked him to both the Accardo break-in,
which took place 10 days before his disappearance, and a
million-dollar jewel heist of the previous month.

Mendell was not the only one swept into the vortex of
Accardo's fury. In just two weeks, four of Mendell’s fellow
boosters had been found dead in cars parked around Chi-
cago. To cover the tracks of their killers, as many as four
others would die in the coming months. Even caretaker
Volpe would disappear. All in all it was a murderous spree
unparalleled in the Outfit's modern era, and it gave FBI

John Wendell (above left) was a groat wire
man, tut when he made his big heist through
а window at Levinson's pamshop (above), he
initiated а chain of events that left him
dead in the trunk of an Oldsmobile. Mendell
allegedly broke into Anthony Accardo's subur-
ban Chicago house (above right) with ex-cop
Vincent Moretti (middle right), looking for
Jewels. Underboss Joey Aiuppa (near right) was
the old-timer who engineered the vicious ret-
ribution. Ron Jarrett (left) and Little Tony
Borsellino (far right) helped kill Mendell.

agents their best shot yet at busting Accardo, who despite
his long criminal career had never spent a night in prison

But no charges would ever come from the intensive inves-
tigations that followed the burglar killings, and over the years
the Accardo boost became another much-debated yarn in
Outfit lore. When FBI agent turned crime writer Bill Roemer
used the tale to open his book Accardo: The Genuine Godfa-
ther, some journalists and police investigators scoffed. They
argued the cascade of hits was just a heavy-handed Outfit
campaign to collect street taxes from independent burglars
and had little or nothing to do with the break-in

This year, nearly three decades later, some of the mystery
surrounding Mendell’s death will lift, as a major racketeering
trial gets under way in Chicago. The case, dubbed Opera-
tion Family Secrets, pits U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (of
Valerie Plame fame) against some of the remaining leaders
and enforcers of the Outfit, now but a shadow of its former

self in the heyday under Accardo. The government charges
that the Mob furthered its criminal enterprise by using an
elite team of hit men to commit 18 murders. One of the
killers, Nicholas Calabrese, will be a key witness. The most
notable victim on the indictment's list is Tony Spilotro, the
Outfit's incendiary Vegas enforcer and the basis for Joe
Pesci's character in Martin Scorsese's Casino. According
to prosecutors, Spilotro was killed in a Bensenville, Illinois
basement and not in the Indiana cornfield where he was
buried, as vividly depicted in the film.

Mendell is also on that murder list, along with two of
his associates. According to the indictment, Nicholas Cal-
abrese's older brother, Frank—the Outfit's most reliably
vicious hit man—was among those dispatched to kill the
burglars. Although the killings have received hardly any
attention from the Chicago press, they remain the most
fascinating of family secrets for Mob aficionados.

Questions will always remain about the break-in, but recent
interviews with investigators and others involved with the
crimes and the criminals offer new (continued on page 80)

“We came out to smoke but stayed to diddle.”

TASTING
| E FROM OUR
R

IGN EDITIONS

ongratulations! You've just
won an all-expenses-paid
trip around the globe, and
you don't even have to move.
You'll meet some of the
world's most exotic women,
all of whom have mysteri-
ously misplaced their clothes.
Ophélie Marie of France
would like to play the piano
for you. Edyta Kochanowska
of Poland wishes to sit with
you by a fire. There's no tell-
ing what Estela Pereira of
Brazil has in mind. Life is
good, isn't it? You won't get
this treatment anywhere else.

Regina
Deutinger

Regina, 24, hails from Munich
and knows her way around a
Ferris wheel. She's got a
heart as gold as her locks.
Turn-ons: fast cars, jewelry,
sunny beaches and the
ocean. Her measurements:
97-60-92. See? She can even
make learning the metric sys-
tem worthwhile.

Estela
Pereira

BRAZIL

Estela is not your average day
atthe beach. Brazilian pLaveoy's
Official World Cup girl 2006, she
makes even the most heralded
Latin soccer stars fall over them:
selves trying to score. The 21-
year-old Rio de Janeiro native's
shockingly sexy pictorial in the
issue below (May 2006) runs no
fewer than 26 pages. Tidbit for
foot fetishists: She wears size
six and a half.

О h éli This tasty little brioche from Avignon says her role model is Pam Ander-
р епе son. Ophélie has studied all of Pam's postures in her movies and PLAYBOY
M z: pictorials, and she can reproduce them on demand. Very impressive. Still.
апе Ophélie possesses a certain je ne sais quoi, a style and Sexiness uniquely

her own. And frankly, the naked-in-heels look will never go out of fashion
FRAN С E as far as we're concerned. In her spare time, the 23-year-old likes skydiv-

ing, skiing, snowboarding and a night out with a man in uniform.

Beautiful Roxana—Romanian рідувоү'ѕ 2006 Playmate of the
Year—has dreams she would like to fulfill while she’s here on
earth: a pictorial in American PLAYBoy and sex on an airplane, for
starters. She describes herself as “optimistic, volcanic and ambi-
tious.” She likes massages and extreme sports, and she says
she prefers men who have a sense of humor and no inhibitions.
That's definitely our kind of girl.

Of all the beauties in this
dizzying pictorial, Sanja has
generated the most enthu-
siasm among the younger
members of our staff. The
succulent 23-year-old from
the city of Kranj possesses
both a confidence and an
innocence that make her
photographs—well, see for
yourself. No wonder Sanja
was named Miss Slovenia in
2005. We're guessing you'll
be seeing more of her.

Dasha
Astafyeva

Dashing Dasha hails from a
town called Ordzhonikidze,
which is perched on the Black
Sea. The mysterious 21-year-
old plans to study English,
and we hope she follows
through. She likes kids, the
movie Amélie and the music
of Goran Bregovic (the genius
behind the song “100 Lat
Моде) Parze”). When asked
about the best date she has
ever been on, Dasha says, "I
hope it will on!"

Olga
Kurbatova

Russian рглүвоү'$ Playmate
of the Year. Those six words
alone would make any man
curious. Well, here she is:
Olga Kurbatova, who last
appeared in cur Russian
edition's July 2006 issue
with her PMOY pictorial.
Born in Moscow, the 27-
year-old is a big tennis fan
(naturally, with a name end-
ing in -ova). We don't know
about her skills, but we can
vouch for her form.

Edyta

Kochanowska

She likes dancing, sports,
Italian food and cinema.
She dreams of someday
living in a beautiful home
On а glistening lake. She
hails from Olsztyn and will
Soon turn 24. Her name is
Edyta, and she is a Polish
vixen. There is something
about the curve in her lower
back that makes us think
of skiing down the greatest
slope of fresh powder in
the world.

п а Friday night last November Michael Richards was

Performing stand-up at the Laugh Factory in Los An-
geles. A group of young black men in the cheap seats
started heckling the comedian, who looked very much like
Kramer, the character he played in Seinfeld. But then, sud-
denly, the kooky guy from across the hall lost it.

“Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a
fucking fork up your ass," Richards screamed at the heck-
lers. One of the young men had already started filming
the tirade. Richards continued, “You can talk, you can
talk, you can talk. You're brave now, motherfucker. Throw
his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A
nigger; look, there's a nigger!”

The guy with the camera happened to have a friend
at TMZ.com, an entertainment-news website named for

the “30-mile zone” around Hollywood, a show-business
moniker for the concept that anything important to the
industry occurs there. The footage was live on the site
by 8:30 л.м. the following Monday. The next day the story
was all over the newspapers, even commanding the tab-
loid covers. But by then anyone with an insatiable appetite
for celebrity gossip had already gotten the goods.

The Richards rant was the top video of 2006 for TMZ, a
year-old site owned partially by America Online-clocking
in at a staggering 4 million streams. “Seeing is absolutely
believing,” says Harvey Levin, TMZ's fast-talking, perma-
tanned managing editor, who oversees a staff of 25 in
Glendale, California. “Now we do it only if what we know
we're getting is true, and that has changed the game.”

Thanks to TMZ and a growing handful of other sites

devoted to posting footage of celebrities
misbehaving in the YouTube era, the gossip
game has dramatically changed. Gone are
the days of name-brand gossip columnists
hobnobbing with socialites and celebrities
for scoops in gilded dining rooms and at
red-carpet premieres. Gone is the gravi-
tas of columns conjecturing about which
boldfaced name may be getting drunk,
divorced or dissed. What use is conjecture
when you can watch hard-partying oil heir
Brandon Davis talk trash about Lindsay
Lohan's “firecrotch” or read the police
report of Mel Gibson getting arrested for
drunk driving while spewing anti-Semitic
slurs-practically in real time?

"| think it's the Wild West out there,”
says venerable publicist Ken Sunshine,
who represents tabloid mascots Justin
Timberlake and Leonardo DiCaprio. “It has
certainly dramatically changed the nature
of the way celebrities get covered, and |
don't know if that's for better or worse.”

Now it’s agame of getting the gossip on-
line quickly and with empirical evidence on
sites like TMZ and The Smoking Gun and
having those reports instantly dissected
on gossip sites, including Gawker, Defamer,
Fleshbot, Jossip, Hollywood Tuna, Pink
Is the New Blog, Perez Hilton and dozens
of others. The new need for speed means
that when Paris Hilton backs into a car or
Britney Spears flashes her perfectly waxed
crotch, you are there. The image spreads
across the world in mere seconds and forces
mainstream media to cover scandals that
would once have been deemed too poten-

tially libelous for publication. “Traditional
media are embracing these stories more
than ever before because people like read-
ing them and they know they're legit,” says
Levin, also a lawyer, a former TV newsman
and the onetime executive producer of the
syndicated entertainment show Celebrity
Justice. Sunshine, along with most other
celebrity publicists, thinks this is perhaps
the worst thing about the new-media
gossip era: “Legitimate news outlets
that cover celebrities will now just pick
up what's posted on these sites and
think they're covered legally.”

Even if mainstream media won't cover
a celebrity scandal that breaks online, the
scandal lives forever in a hyperlinked inter-
national network of blogs. Just over a week
after the Richards rant, Britney flashed

ing pie chart. Pre-“vagflash,” 59 percent
of Britney's press reports mentioned her
divorce. After the flash, 44 percent of her
press reports mentioned the vag, usually in
the headline or first paragraph.
Gawkerassociate editor Doree Shafrir, a29-
year-old Columbia Journalism School gradu-
ate, says she was inundated with responses
to her posts about the vagflash. In a meta-
moment Shafrir also posted an interview
with Levin of TMZ and an unnamed photog-
rapher about the provenance of this crotch
shot. “The role of a gossip blogger is to offer
fresh insight and perspective,” says Shafrir.
“No one cares if you're first anymore.”
Instead of being first, blogs now try to
get hits for fresh commentary and have
that commentary linked on other blogs to
drive traffic and increase ad revenue. “It's
not that Lindsay Lohan fell down and
broke her wrist,” says
David Hauslaib,
the cherub-faced
editorial director
of Jossip, which
gets about
50,000 hits a
day. “It's how
Lindsay's pub-
licist is trying
to spin it.” The

her vagina to the paparazzi while exit-

ing a car. Fleshbot ran the picture and
expressed disappointment that the
shot wasn't more revealing: “You can't
see a goddamn thing; there's not even
the barest hint of a peach cleft or land-
ing strip to indicate that

you are, in fact, looking

at actual female pu- =
denda and not the glossy,
rounded surface of a li
size Barbie-doll crotch.” A
day later Britney flashed the
photographers a much more sat-
isfying X-rated shot while exit-
ing Paris's car. It was almost
as if Britney had hiked up

her short dress (sans under-
wear) for the cameras. You
could see everything-even the
C-section scar-on Fleshbot and
the numerous sites that subse-

quently linked to it.
A month later the incident was

still hot in the blogosphere. Gawker,

which is owned by Nick Denton (the Ж

same New York-based publisher of

Defamer and Fleshbot), ran a post

titled "Britney's Vagflash: The

Breakdown” with an accompany-

commentary doesn't even have to be par-
ticularly juicy. Levin says a seven-second
video posted on TMZ of Britney walking
down a hotel lobby corridor commands
an insane number of hits. “People want
to know if she's gained weight or if she
looks happy. Has she changed her hair?”
Many paparazzi videos featured on sites
like TMZ and X17online.com are equally
boring-endless shots of celebrities in
bad lighting, waiting outside a club for
the valet to bring their car. But for many
readers it's almost like being there. Even
network TV is impressed: Fox is creating a
TMZ-based TV show for the fall.

Shafrir works part-time at the Gawker
headquarters in SoHo, in a street-level
loft where about 25 people under the age
of 35 sit in front of Mac laptops and Dell
desktops al! day, surfing the Net. On a re-
cent Thursday afternoon the bloggers are
silently working while Bob Dylan plays from
someone's computer. There is intermittent
giggling as they stumble upon something
funny in the blogosphere and presumably
link to it. Book galleys, magazines and
newspapers cover most of the shiny black
desk surfaces. By five р.м. they are clearing
out after a long day. Shafrir and her cohort,
Emily Gould, head to the unofficial Silicon
Alley canteen, Balthazar, for a drink. Nei-
ther has plans to hit any industry events to
network and forage for gossip that night-
highly unusual for two new hires under 30
in a high-profile media job.

1 should know. Back when | was the
gossip columnist for New York magazine,
I would usually hit at least two events
a night, and it almost always paid off
with sources, quotes and items. It was
a mandatory part of the job-cabs could
be expensed. It was fine to show up at

the office around noon the next day if |
had gotten good gossip the night before.
Gould, however, starts her day at the of-
fice before eight a.m.

"We're certainly not on Nadine John-
son's list,” says Shafrir. She is referring to
the invite roster of a powerful New York
publicist who represents the nightclub
Bungalow 8 and hotelier André Balazs,
among other chic clients who host hot-
ticket events. Johnson was once married to
longtime New York Post Page Six gossip
editor Richard Johnson, and it's hardly a
coincidence that her clients are often men-
tioned favorably in his column, (The couple
has kids together.) “Some people see us as
the enemy,” adds Gould, a dewy 25-year-
old wearing a white sweater, tall white
leather boots and jeans, “and some people
see us asa frenemy-because we are.”

Unlike the old guard of gossip colum
nists (see Liz Smith and Cindy Adams),
the new Gawker gals are not interested in
making friends with the rich and famous.
They could care less about lunching at a
media hangout like Michael's or dining
at a glitterati clubhouse like the Waverly
Inn. Not only do they shun the spotlight,
they feel uncomfortable if it's pointed in
their direction. Gould’s personal blog was
recently hacked into, an experience she
found extremely unsettling. It's hard to
imagine she could muster the courage to
try to interview a notoriously press-averse
celebrity like Robert De Niro.

“We aren't starstruck like Perez Hilton,”
says Shafrir, referring to blogger Mario
Lavandeira, who two years ago started a
site named for his favorite celebutante.
He's known for editorializing on paparazzi
shots and recently wrote (in what looks like
Wite-Out) the words tragic, mess and trosh

mee”

HILT ÜN сом =
(Qu luc

CRI RR M Rer Con

across pictures of a bloated-looking Britney
heading to a nightclub days before Page Six
reported she was going to a “spa” to recover
from a spate of intense partying. He also
draws what he calls coke boogers coming
out of celebrity nostrils and semen com-
ing out of their mouths. He has dismissed
some famous actresses as sluts and obses-
sively speculates on which celebrities may
be gay; he has been at least partly respon-
sible for Lance Bass and Neil Patrick Harris
publicly announcing their homosexuality.
Despite all this, Perez Hilton gets major
advertising from NBC, VH1 and the ABC
Family channel-mainstream media out-
lets eager to reach his 4 million daily hits.
“If ABC Family is down with Perez Hilton,”
Lavandeira says, “my ad sales people are

doing something right”

A larger-than-life character with black-
framed glasses and hair color that
changes weekly,

(continued on page 136)

PSYCHIATRIST

“Excuse me, doctor, but aren't you going a long way around
to find out what's wrong with my head?”

How to pack the

greatest golf game of

x your life, the hottest
party and the best of

everything else into

one vacation

ош'ге at the airport with a friend or two, awaiting takeoff. Greener pastures lie in wait for you somewhere exotic and far away.

You are about to fly thousands of miles to play one (or two or three...) of the world's great golf courses. But that's not all. After

our round, perhaps you'll cap off the doy with liquor-spiked coconut drinks in a bar full of well-filled bikinis. Or at Vegas's

КЕ ЖЕЕ Ен Gaby аме drem in Selena where golf was har Del forget fo schedule your

hotel woke-up call; your next tee time is just after sunrise. • Most men don't live near a legendary golf course. For this reason, golf and

travel have E enjoyed a marriage made in heaven. Where there are great courses, there are superb hotels, bars and beautiful
women. There is history, and there is always a party. Pictured here: the par-four 10th hole at Prestwick in Scotland. You're up...

¿By Golf in Oz: Australia
They call it Oz because it’s a magical faraway land and
because Aussie sounds like Ozzie, especially when you've
been drinking. On the Sandbelt around Melbourne you'll
discover stellar courses as well as some of down under's best
ecches, bars and beauties.
PLAYING: Eighty years ago Dr. Alister MacKenzie left the United
Ki for America, where he and
Bobby Jones designed Augusta
National, arguably the grenst golf
course in the world. But MacKenzie
also had a hand in three world-class
courses in Oz. Best among them is
Royal Melbourne (royalmelbourne
.com.au), which on most lists ranks in
the world's top five. You need a letter
of introduction from a U.S. club to
tread Royal Mel glass-slick greens,
but Aussies are a friendly i ask
around, mention how far you've
come and you might get on. Victoria
Golf Club (victoriagolf.com.au) fea-
tures MacKenzie's famed Sandbelt
bunkers. Golf fans will remember the
time in a 1964 tournament when
Arnold Palmer climbed 15 feet up a
tree on the ninth hole to hit а “tree
iron.” Par that hole and your bud-
dies will have to buy you an Arnold
Palmer cocktail—lemonade and iced tea (with your choice of
spike). Finally, Kingston Heath (kingstonheath.com.au) has hun-
gry rough that makes it one of Australia’s finest tests. Other noted
courses in the area include Metropolitan (metropolitangolf.com.cu)
and Commonwealth (www.commonwealihgolf.com.au]. While
u're out there, play a game of “bottle, bottle, bottle,” a local
Eerie in whieh Players bel à good bolo of Aussie ted wine
оп the front nine, back nine and total score.
STAYING: The Park Hyatt Melbourne in town (from $350 a night,
melbourne.park.hyatt.com) features ће Radii restaurant—try the
ivory-chocolate mousse—and Cuba, a cigar lounge where the
$65 Cuban Cohiba Robusto is king of the humidor. You're half
ап hour from the courses but smack in the middle of the city.
PARTYING: Downtime down under starts at St. Kilda Beach, where
gentle bay waves move past swimmers Io lap at the feet of Aussie
sunbathers. After dark you could start at the Ding Dong Lounge
on Market Lane (dingdonglounge.com.au), where live rock shakes
the rafters well into e night Far c quieter evening; the Melbourne
Supper Club (melbournepubs.com] is open until six a.m. on week-
ends, Think weathered couches, cigar smoke and jazz. For a real
delight, however, hit Tony Starr's Kitten Club (kittenclub.com.au) on
Litle Collins Street, where the style is 1960s cool and you might
find a souvenir to take home with you. —Steve Ager

D Green Monkey: Barbados

A mere three-and-a-half-hour flight from Miami, Barba-
dos is a golfer’s paradise. It’s no coincidence that many pros (lan
Woosnam, Ernie Els) have homes on
this quaint little island.

PLAYING: You'll want to play three
courses; all are in St. James, just north
of Bridgetown, the capital. Royal
Westmoreland (royal-westmoreland
сот), a Robert Trent Jones Jr. caurse,
is private but offers lee times to visitors
daily between 10:20 and 11 am. You
can also get a pass if you're staying on
sile in Qe d tabo = er ls The
171-yord third is modeled on the Redan
hole at North Berwick in Scotland. But
brilliant as it is, Royal W takes a back-

After a
round ‘at
Australja's
Royal
Melbourne,
ride some
woves at
Bells Beoch.

The par-three 16th hole at Green Monkey in Barbados.

seat to two Tom Fozio courses ot the Sandy Lane resort [sa
сот). The Country Club Course, home of last year's уыз г
Championships World Cup, is a purist’ delight. lts lush greens, five
lakes and smashing views of the Caribbean let you know you're
рее a special game even if your score sucks. The second is the
rand-new Green Monkey, named for the island's species of Chlo-
rocebus, vervet monkeys you will likely see wandering the course.
(Р yo" find one carrying a golf dub, run.) Green Monkey has coral
diffs—it is carved out of an old quarry—and a monkey-shaped
grass island in a bunker on the 16th hole (see photo below). Land
оп that monkey and you can shave two shots off your score.
STAYING: You may as well go for broke and stay at Sandy
Lane (from $900 a night, sandylane.com). This is all-out living,
where the service is so high-end, visiting Se feel as if they
haven't left home. Tiger Woods was married here, in 2004,
end rented all 112 rooms. For an alternative, a romantic room
at Cobblers Cove (from $315, cobblers
cove.com) will tickle your fancy, and the
hotel can arrange a tee time at Royal
Westmoreland or Sandy Lane. If you pre-
fer a louder type coy, gel conte pek
chip im and rent your own vila by ke
through barbadosvillavacations.com.
PARTYING: For the perfect 19th hole, head
to the Whistling Frog at the south-coast party
hotel Time Out at the Gap (gemsbarbados
com). Order the pan-fried fying fish, a local
delicacy. Beach time is a must. The island
sand ranges from pearly white to hot pink.
For dinner, the Crane Resort (thecrane
сот) оте of world-class Caribbean fa-
vors and dazzling views of Crane Beach—is
o must. When you're ready for whatever
comes next, opt for Club Xtreme (clubxtreme
ле), a 10,000-square-foot bacchanal in
which the DJ stays up late and laser lights will
burn your eyes, if the borely dressed women
haven't already. Kevin Cook

s to
sea

28 Maui Wowee: Hawaii
The Hawaiian Islands boast no shortage of killer golf
resorts worth the long trip—Princeville on Kauai, Manele Bay
оп Lanai, Mauna Kea on the Big Island. But for an all-around
good time, Wailea, on the island of Maui, delivers the right mix
of play on and off the course. Here's the lei of the land.
PLAYING: Wailea is а community full of resorts outside Kihei,
оп the island's southern coast. You'll want to play three courses:
Мойес Gold, Emerald ond Old Blue {waileayolf com), each
a visual treat with tropical vegetation and sea vistas, all in the
shadow of Maui's famous volcano, Haleakala. The Gold course
is the standard: 7,078 yards, home to the annual Champions
Tour Skins Game. Rugged and undulating, it is the toughest
Wailea course—a true test of skill and intellect. Robert Trent
Jones Jr. designed both this course and the Emerald, a scenic
track thet borders the Gold and is marked by wider, easier lo:
hit fairways. The Blue, Arthur Jack Snyder's baby at the foot of
Haleakala, is the most forgiving of
the three, best left for the morning
after а late night. Bonus: In winter
you con whale-watch while waiting
for your turn to putt.
STAYING: All the Wailea resorts
are plush, notably the Four Sea-
sons (from $440, fourseasons
.com/maui); its pools, fountains and
groomed exotic gardens are so ele-
gant, you feel as if you're walking
around the top of a wedding cake
Grand Wailea (from $625, grand
wailea.com) is like Eden with lots of

rae

bartenders. Still, we recommend a condo rental through Desti-
notion Resorts Hawaii (drhmaui.com). Get your own spot with
bedrooms featuring private lanais with epic views just steps from
the ocean. Then host your own revelry.
PARTYING: Mulligan’s, Wailea’s cuthentic Irish pub (mulliganson
theblue.com), is just steps from the Blue course—Guinness, Bass
and Harp on tap, plenty of Jameson and fresh-from-the-sea
fish and chips. For dinner, Ferraro’s at Wailea’s Four Seasons
serves melt-in-your-mouth fresh Hawaiian seafood with an Ital-
ian spin, on outdoor tables skirting the sea. As for nightlife, the
Hawaiian vibe is more mai tai on the lanai with a slack-key-
guitar soundtrack than thumping “What did you say?” cacoph-
опу. Drive 30 minutes up the road to Lahaina, and you're in
the thick of on old whaling town turned bar happy hof spot
Take your pick of ће litter. Before you head back to the main-
land, stop by the Spa Grande at the Grand Wailea and have
3 а small woman do
a classic shiatsu
back-walk mas-
sage with her feet
($225 to $275).
It’s the only way
you should ever let
woman walk all
over you.
—Scott Gummer

Zam Skin City:
8 Las Vegas
Nights in Vegos
are for risking your
wad at the tables
ogling flat screens
in the sports book
and seeing what
sort of woman
lands in your lap.
But keep in mind
à that the days start

$ О ^^ early. The quality
of golf in Vegos rivals the beauty of the women and the cut of
the aged beef. You want to be on the tee before the sun heats
up and the pinkie-ring crowd clogs the course.
PLAYING: As Sin City strippers will tell you, fake ain't always
bad. Vegas sports an amazing pair el replica golf courses:
the Royal Links (www.royallinksgolfclub.com), with facsimiles
of famous British Open holes, and Веаг' Best (bearsbest.com),
which features spot-on reproductions of Jack Nicklaus's best-
designed holes. The ne plus ultra in Vegas, however, is still
Shadow Creek роце ъан ro cansa visual atún:
ning, it merits the $500 greens fee. "It's the golf course on the
moon,” designer Tom Fazio has said of his gem in the Nevada
desert. Rugged mountains rise on the horizon, and the course
is as manicured as Victoria Beckham's claws. The 17th hole is
а postcard par three over a crystalline lake to a flag backed by
mountoins and a waterfall. You'll love it even if it devours a few
of your Titleists. And the 18th is even more stunning (see photo
above). Keep in mind that skins is a Vegas institution. Each
hole has а money value; the winner of that hole wins the skin.
If there’s a tie, the pot carries over to the next hole.
STAYING: The hottest hotel in Vegas may be the Palms (from
$89, palms.com), where upstairs you will find the new Playboy
Club, With tables to throw some cards around and some of the
shapeliest waitresses and dealers in town (meet Lindsey, pic-
tured top right), there's no question you're in the right spot.

PARTYING: A guy could write a doctoral thesis on how to pa
in Vegas. For now let's keep it simple. Dinner: the New York strip
at Craftsteak at the MGM [mgmgrand.com). Strip club: Spear-
mint Rhino (spearmintrhino.com); a slim $400 gets you o VIP
champagne dance—a private hour with a plas: beauty on top

18th hole at Vegas's inimitable Shod
“Creek, We recommend ON

of which you can order a
botile of champogne, with
fresh strawberries and
cream. Alternative strip
club: the Palomino Club,
Vegas's only fully nude
club that serves alcohol.
After hours: Once you've
made the rounds at the
Playboy Club, head
upstairs to the Palms’
indoor-outdoor Ghostbar,
off the 55th floor. Good
luck finding a better view
of the Vegas skyline. Just
don’t look down. —K.C.

à Hallowed Turf: Scotland

A visit to golf's cradle is a necessary pilgrimage. The sport
was born in the Kingdom of Fife, and you can still play on the
very turf where it all began centuries ago.

PLAYING: The Old Course in St. Andrews (www.standrews.org
АК) is the most important course on earth. Reserve tee times
online (reservations@standrews.org.uk) or through the Old
Course Hotel, but keep in mind the course is booked months in
advance. The dal Belle. a tee-time lottery, is a better bet. Phone
01334-466666 the Чоу before you want to play and cross your
fingers. Golf travel firms can arrange tee times but may double
the £125 greens fee (about $250). Your best chance to walk the
hallowed turf? Arrive ot sunup and be willing to split your four-
some—the starter can often get singles and twosomes out early.
When you do get on, be red for the 17th hole, the best tee
shot in golf: the feared Road Hole. This is no place to wuss out.
Smack your drive over the corner of the Old Course Hotel. And
if you make bogey, remember what Ben Crenshaw said: “The
reason the Road Hole is the greatest par four in the world is
because it's a par five.” Lest you prove you're a dumb Yank who
thinks there's only one course in Scotland, you also need to play
the adjacent New Course, opened in 1895, which is slightly
easier to get onto. Seven miles away is Kingsbarns (kingsborns
com), a Kyle Phillips design that may be the best Scottish course
ofthe 21st century, and just across the Firth of Tay lies historic Car-
noustie (cornoustegalins co.uk), site of this year's British Open.
STAYING: The Old Course Hotel looms at the corner of the
Road Hole (with shatterproof windows on that side}, yet it's a
bit of an eyesore. Save your pounds for homier Macdonald
Rusacks [from $300, macdonald-hotels.co.uk), a Victorian
throwback overlooking the 18th hole, or the delightfully tacky
golf-mad Dunvegan on
North Street (from $100,
dunvegan-hotel.com).
PARTYING: One of the
greatest things about
Scotland is its pubs. Spot
оге that looks good, walk
through the door and pal
up o bar stool, You'll find
a nice mix of men and
women, old ond young,
whiskey and beer. Some
tips to help you get
around: Don't ¿end a
Scottish bartender by tip-
ping him; his tip is included in the price of your drink. If a guy
in kilt starts singing karaoke, sing along. The Barber's Pole
on South Street offers a free whiskey with every haircut. The
food at the Seafood Restaurant overlooking St. Andrews Bay
is top-rank. Haggis (sheep's stomach stuffed with everything
but the kitchen sink) isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. Try it.
Hell, it wos good enough for Old Tom. -KC.

Welcome
to the
Ployboy
Club ot
the Polms.

The Qld. Course in
Si- Andrews, Scotland.

PLAYBOY

BIG TUNA (continued from page 62)

A parking ticket in

licated the car had sat, with

Mendell in it, for more than a month in the cold.

perspectives on why Mendell's crew
would attempt the risky caperand why
Accardo responded so ferociously. They
also indicate how close the G came to put-
ting Big ‘Tuna in the сап

Gangster murders were nothing new to
Chicago, but there was something out
of the ordinary about the five bodies
that turned up beginning in the early
weeks of 1978: They were all left in cars
in suburban parking lots on the edge
of Chicago; the victims were all known
burglars, some already targets of the
FBI's Top Thief program, which put
particular burglars under surveillance.
But these bodies were also meant to be
found, and the men were killed in ways
that sent a message to other criminals.

First discovered was Bernard Ryan,
34, who was slumped behind the wheel
of his brother's snow-encrusted Lincoln
Continental with a trusty police scan-
ner at his side. A renowned jewel thief
and three-time convicted burglar, Ryan
looked ready to go out on another job—
until he was dispatched with a few bul-
lets to the back of his head.

‘The next body to turn up belonged to
опе of Ryan’s frequent boost partners,
29-year-old Steven Garcia. He didn't
go so gently. His chest had been punc-
tured five times with an ice pick, one of
the Outfit's preferred means of torture,
and his throat cut from ear to ear—Mob
code for betrayal. When Garcia's kill-
ers shoved his body into the trunk of a
rented car, they left a gold chain around
his neck so there would be no mistaking
that he hadn't died in a robbery.

A few days later small-time crook Vin-
cent Moretti, 51, and burglar Donald
Renno, 31, were found in the backseat of
Renno’s Cadillac, parked behind a neigh-
borhood bar. Both had been stabbed in the
neck and head, but Renno may just have
picked the wrong day to take his friend
to breakfast. Moretti, a barrel-chested
ex-cop, had been shown special attention
before he died. He was stomped—the ul-
timate Outfit sign of contempt—until his
ribs broke and his kidneys ruptured

Once it was clear the killings were
linked, FBI agents were assigned to
each victim to assist local homicide de-
partments with the investigation. Bob
Pecoraro had just been transferred to
Chicago from New York City, where he
had worked on some of the same tough
guys portrayed in Nicholas Pileggi's book
Wiseguy and its movie version, Good Fellas,

but he was still unprepared for Second
City-style violence. “When I hear peo-
ple start to glamorize these Mob types
in movies and things,” he says, “I just
want to show them the body of Vincent
Moretti so they can see how vicious and
merciless these people can be."

But even Moretti did not prepare Pec-
oraro for the corpse of Mendell, who had
been the first to disappear and the last to
be found, in the trunk of a used Oldsmo-
bile. The car was parked by 2 meter in
a rundown South Side neighborhood. A
parking ticket, plastered among others
on the windshield, indicated the car had
sat, with Mendell in it, for more than a
month in the Windy City cold. Pecoraro
was there when they pulled Mendell
out, his body folded and frozen like an
iceman's in a glacier. "I had never seen
anything like it,” he says. “Не had icicles
in his eyes. dell's throat had been
cut and his chest punctured like Garcia’s,
but a noose had been wrapped around
his neck and then threaded behind him
to bind his hands and ankles. The medi-
cal examiner told Pecoraro that Mendell
must have died an agonizing death. “As
he was writhing in pain,” he said, “he was
tightening the noose, but it made him
bleed that much more slowly.”

Pecoraro found something else about
the corpse especially curious. It was clad
in only a brown velour sweater, a gold
chain necklace and underwear. The ho-
micide detective explained the killers had
probably taken Mendell's pants so he
wouldn't run away. “If I had known they
were going to kill me,” Pecoraro says, “I
would have gotten out of there with or
without my pants.”

The torture visited on Mendell made him
the focus of the investigation into the bur-
glars’ deaths. The Chicago Tribune initially
described him as “an ex-convict who had
served federal and state prison terms for
theft, sale and possession of narcotics.”
But that record is hard to verify, along
with much else about his background.
Some police first reported his name аз
Mandell, the sort of spelling they saw in
Lincolnwood, a suburb with a large Jewish
population. But according to Social Secu-
rity records, Mendell hailed from South
Dakota, where his name can be traced
back to farm families who fled Ukraine to
homestead on the Great Plains. His first
known Chicago address, in a blue-collar
South Side neighborhood, was recorded
when he was arrested, at the age of 20, for

Killing a narcotics snitch. His alleged part-
ner in the crime was a cocktail waitress
seven years his elder, whom the newspa-
per described as a pretty, dark-eyed red-
head. Prosecutors dropped the charges
when their key witness's credibility was
called into questio

In his few remaining years, Mendell
somehow made the transition from low-
level drug dealing to high-end burglary.
He was next in the news at the age of 23
when he was arrested outside a Goldblatt
Bros. department store, pretending to
be a repairman called to fix the burglar
alarm. By then his home address was on
the North Side, in one of the ritziest high-
rises on the city’s lakefront.

John Volland, a retired lieutenant with
the Chicago Police Department's Criminal
Investigation Unit, would not have been
surprised if Mendell had actually worked
for an alarm company. “I often wondered
who trained him,” he says. “Other people
had his capacity to get through burglar
systems, but he was unique in knowing
what he could get away with.”

For a while it looked as if he could
also get away with living a double life.
Just two years after the Goldblatt arrest
he was married and living in his nice
Lincolnwood home. According to pub-
lic documents, his wife, Victoria, was
12 years his senior, but Mendell looked
older than his age, so perhaps they were
a good match. According to Volland,
they both appeared to be engaged in
her father's tool-and-die business.

But during this time, Mendell also kept
up with his booster buddies and still frus-
trated police attempts to nail him. “The
trouble with good thieves is they dont
leave much behind,” says Jack O'Rourke,
an FBI agent who has spent his career
pursuing them. Mendell carried police
scanners, like other professionals, but he
also had a sixth sense about veillance,
pulling to the side of the freeway when-
ever he thought he was being tailed.

In 1971 Mendell was arrested again
with some ominous associates, all home-
boys from the South Side. The charge was
stealing $250,000 worth of Bayer aspirin
from a trucking depot. An FBI stakeout
caught the boosters at a highway rest stop
just as they were ready to cross state lines.
Along with Mendell were three made
members of the Outfit, including Sam
Bills (the only one to serve time for the
theft) and Ronald Jarrett, who would be
arrested more than 50 times for charges
ranging from assault and burglary to
rape. Although Jarrett was never charged
with murder, he was known inside the
Outfit as a stone-cold killer. He was both
neighbor and friend to Frank Calabrese
and was ultimately gunned down in 2000
by a rival drug dealer.

For the FBI's Pecoraro, free-agent
criminals like Mendell were different

(continued on page 140)

Div

“Actually, I have nothing on for tonight...!”

; FICTION
BY

nen 2 1

THE SCENT OF A WOMAN LINGERS IN THE MIND LONG AFTER IT FADES.

The senses, “usually reckoned as five—sight. hearing, smell, taste, touch.”

—The Oxford English Dictionary

e's the owner of one of the private airlines that have taken up the internal

routes between small cities and local areas the national airline, flying at astro-

nomical heights to five continents, hasn't bothered with. Until lately, that is,

when its aircraft with full-length sleeper beds and gourmet menus haven't
succeeded in cosseting it against falling profits. Now it wants to pick up cents on
the local routes' discount market, enter into competition with modest craft flitting to
unimportant places on home ground.

But that wouldn't have anything to do with this night

Could have been some other night (Tuesdays he plays squash) if it didn't happen to
be when there was a meeting of private airline owners to discuss their protest against
the national carrier's intention as a violation of the law of unfair competition, since
the great span of the national wings is subsidized by taxpayers' money. She didn't go
along to listen in on the meeting because she was behind time with marking papers in
media studies from her students in that university department. She was not alone at
her desk, their dog lay under it at her feet, a fur-flounced English setter much loved by
master and mistress, particularly since their son had gone off to boarding school. Dina
the darling held the vacant place of only child. So intelligent, she even seemed to enjoy
music; a Pearl Fishers CD was playing, and she wasn't asleep. Well, one mustn't become
a dotty dog lover, Dina was probably waiting to catch his footfall at the front door.

It came when the last paper was marked and being shuffled together with the rest for
tomorrow; she got up, stretching as she was instructed at aerobics class, and followed
the dog's scramble downstairs.

He was securing the door with its locks and looped chain, safety for their night, and
they exchanged, How'd it go, any progress? Oh, round in circles again; that bloody lawyer
didn't show—but the master didn't have to push down the dog's usual bounding interfer-
ence when the master came home from anywhere, anytime. Hullo my girl—his expected
greeting ignored, no paws landing in response on his shoulders. While he was questioned
about the evening and they considered coffee or a drink before bed, you choose, the dog
was intently scenting round his shoes. He must have stepped in something. As they went
upstairs together, he turning from above her to repeat exasperated remarks about why he
was so late, how long the meeting had dragged on, the dog pushed past her to impede
him, dilated nose rising against his pants legs. Dina, down! What d'you think you're doing!
He slapped the furry rump to make her mount ahead. She stood at the top of the stairs
in the hunting dog's point stance, faced at him. Dina'd never been in the field, her master

ILLUSTRATION BY DUNG HOANG

NADINE GORDIMER

Front
Sinu

¿Cribrifor

was not a hunting man. Some displaced atavistic
tic come up in an indulged house pet.

While they undressed they decided for cof-
fee. Dina didn't jump on their bed in customary
invitation for them to join her; she was giving
concentrated attention to his discarded pants,
shirt, shoes. Must be the shoes that perfumed his
attraction. Doggy doo, Eva said. Wait a minute,
don't put them on the rug. I'll run the tap over the
soles. Wendell laughed at the crumple of distaste
lifting from her nose, her concern for the kilim. In
the bathroom instead she wet a streamer of the
toilet roll, rubbed each sole and flushed the paper
down the bowl: Although there was no mess
clinging to the leather, a smell might remain. She
propped his shoes to dry, uppers resting against
the wall of the shower stall.

When she came back into the bedroom he'd
dropped off, asleep, lying in his pajama pants,
the newspaper untidy across his naked chest:
opened his eyes with a start.

THE SOFTNESS OF :
BREASTS IN OPPOSITION |
TO THE MALE RIB CAGE !
AND SPINE IS ONE OF THE
WORDLESS QUESTIONS
AND ANSWERS BETWEEN
MEN AND WOMEN.

“Still want coffee?”

He yawned assent.

“Come, Dina. Bedtime.”

As a child enjoys a cuddle in the parents’ bed
before banishment to his own, it was the dog's
routine acceptance that she would descend to
her basket in the kitchen when the indulgence
was declared over. Tonight she wasn't on the bed
with master; she got up slowly from where she lay
beside a chair, turned her head in some quick last
summons to sniff at his clothes lying there and went
down to her place while Eva brewed the coffee.

They drank it side by side in bed. “I didn’t make
it too strong? Looks as if nothing could keep you
awake tonight anyway.”

There were disturbed nights these days, when
she would be awakened by the sleepless changed
rhythm of the breathing beside her, the inter-
rupted beat at the heart of intimacy shared by
lovers over their 16 years. He had put all their
funds into his airline. Flight Hadeda (her choice,
the name of the ibis that flew over the house call-
ing out commandingly). Profits of the real estate
business he'd sold, her inheritance from her
father's platinum mining interests. Those enter-
prises of old-regime white capitalism were not
the way to safe success in a mixed economy—
politically correct capitalism. Such enterprises
were now anxiously negotiating round affirma-
tive action requirements that this percentage or

that of holdings in their companies be reserved
for black entrepreneurs, with workers becoming
token shareholders in stock exchange profits.
A small airline, dedicated to solving something
of the transport problems of a vast developing
country, had patriotic significance. If Wendell and
his partner are white, the cabin attendants. one
of the pilots and the engineer are black. Isn't it an
honest, not exploitative, initiative on which they've
risked everything? She knows what keeps him
open-eyed, dead-still in the night: If the national
airline takes up the homely routes, its resources
will ground the Everything in loss. Once or twice
she has broken the rigid silence intended to spare
her; the threat is hers as well. There is no use to
talk about it in the stare of night; she senses that
he takes her voice's entry to his thoughts maybe
as some sort of reproach: The airline is his ven-
ture, way out, in middle age.

The coffee cups are on the floor, either side of
their bed. She turned on her elbow to kiss him
good night but he lifted a hand and got up to put
on the pajama jacket. She liked his bare chest
near her, the muscles a little thicker—not fat—than
they used to be; when you are very tired you feel
chilly at night. Climbing back to bed, he stretched
to turn off the light above. His sigh of weariness
was almost a groan, let him sleep; she did not
expect him to turn to her. Let the mutual heart
beat quietly. Before moving away for private
space they mostly fell asleep in what she called
the spoon-and-fork way: she on her side and his
body folded along her back, or he on his other
side and she curved along his. Of course he was
the spoon when enveloping her back in protec-
tion from shoulders to thighs; her body was the
slighter line of the fork, its light bent tines touch-
ing the base of his nape, her breasts nestled under
his dorsal muscles. This depended haphazardly
on who turned this or that side first; tonight he
rolled onto his right, approaching deep sleep giv-
ing him a push that way. The gentle impetus
reached her to follow, round against him. The
softness of breasts in opposition to the male rib
cage and spine is one of the wordless questions
and answers between men and women. In
offended vanity that long survives, she never for-
got that once, in early days, he'd remarked as an
objective observation, she didn't have really good
legs; her breasts were his admiring, lasting discov-
ery. In bantering moods of passion she'd tell him
he was atit man, end he would counter with mock
regret that he hadn't ever had a woman with
those ample poster ones on display. In tonight's
version of the spoon-and-fork embrace she always
had her closed eyes touched against his hair
and her nose and lips in the nape of his neck. She
liked to breathe there, into him and breathe him
in, taking possession he was not conscious of and
was yet the essence of them both. These were
not the sort of night moments you tell the other;
anyway they half belong to the coming state of
sleep, the heightened awareness of things that's
called the unconscious. (continued on page 126)

| said
sen!

MAY

| | el 23 „а ES
¿BS

“Гое missed you during the migration season!

IULIANA ¿pe ( JREAT

European goddess Giuliana Marino conquers America

orld travelers may recognize this fabulously beauti
ful woman. Her name is Giuliana Marino, and she
is German PLAYBOY's Playmate of the Year for 2006.
Hef met her in Munich on a recent wip and found her charm

irresistible. “He asked me if I wanted to come to America to
be a Playmate,” says the 20-year-old lovely. It was an offer
she couldn't refuse, and now she is Miss April.

You may be thinking, If Giuliana Marino is a German name,
I'm a Wiener schnitzel. Actually, this bella donna is a full-
blooded Italian but was raised in Deutschland. "I feel a bit
schizo,” she says in charmingly accented English. “When I go

y, I'm the German. And when I'm in Germany, I'm the
Italian. Now when I'm in America, people don't know what
to make of me!” Except a knockout, of course. Giuliana's
ambition is to start a career in law enforcement and become
a criminal profiler. “My uncle is a police officer in Rome in a
special unit, and it sounds very exciting," she says. "I believe
in justice. The police academy takes about two and a half
years, and after that I want to be a young mom."

We can't imagine what Giuliana would look like in a tight
fitting police uniform, but suffice it to say there's not a man
alive who could resist this arresting officer.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN WAYDA

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PLAYMATE DATA SHEET

NAME: Ç. ulana Мосо
pust: 5 | WAIST: SD HIPs SD
HEIGHT: SEEN og Ay

BIRTH DATE: Moy 42, ib BIRTHPLACE: — of

AMBITIONS : . йома a ko bewe. a profiler after

MN pem sy ti cia Critrunol poy.

TURN-ONS:

мы oe gy ad eu VR

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY AND WHY: J'u

Hutu awy Dcuttuag de OL scouec.

THINGS ITALIANS DO BETTER: llOliQ S make Hin bext cooks.
The food wy Haly _ Qu CL Lu allay.
FAVORITE COP uc ы =
Tu X-Files, Low & Order: Criusimal ludent.

IN THE MORNING: Sur обадих iu a kad mood.

My Second bictaday

tasted supersuwezt.

P TTE or К
SS деш d fg

PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES

What is the Congressional Record?
Four pages.

." the prosecutor said
to the defendant. “You came home from work
early and found your wife in bed with a strange
man. You then took out a pistol and shot your
wife, killing her. So why did you shoot your
wife and not her lover?”

The defendant replied, “It seemed
than shooting a different man every dı

ег

Why won't cannibals eat divorced women?
They're always bitter.

A husband asked his wile to go to the hard-

e store and buy а door hinge for him. She
went to the store, picked out the hinge and
headed to the cashier. The clerk noticed she
didn't have any fasteners for it. "Do you want
a screw for that hinge?” he asked

“No,” she said, "but I'll blow you for that
toaster in the window.”

A young boy asked his mother, “Ma, is it
true that people can be taken apart like
machines?”

“Of course not,”

she answered. “Where did
PETS

, “the other day Daddy was
ne on the phone, and he said
he screwed the ass off his secretary."

Fact: The donkey is the only known animal
that can reproduce by ass fucking.

Two coeds went to the movies one night. In
the middle of the feature, one girl leaned
over to the other and whispered, “What
should I do? The guy sitting next to me is
masturbating.”

Don't do anything,” her friend said. “Just
оге him.”

“I can't," the first girl said. “He's using
my hand.”

What is the difference between George W.
Bush and E. cali?
Е. coli has an exit strategy.

A boxer was getting the tar beaten out of him
by his opponent. As he was being counted down
by the referee for the fourth time in the match,
his manager said, “Stay down till eight.”

“Okay,” the dazed boxer said. “What time is
it now?”

A teenage blonde who wanted to earn some
money decided to hire herself out as a handy-
man and started canvassing the neighborhood.
She went to the front door of the first house
and asked the owner if he had any odd jobs for
her to do. “Well, you can paint my porch,” he
а. "How much would you charge?"
How about $50?" she answered.

The man agreed and told her the paint she
would need was in the garage. The mans wife
overheard the conyersation and said to her
husband, “Does she re: he porch goes all
the way around the house?”

“She should,” the man replied. “She was
standing on the porch when we talked.”

A short time later the blonde came to the
door to collect her money. “You're finished
already?” he asked.

“Yes,” the blonde answered, “and I had paint
left over, so 1 gave it two coats.” Impressed.
the man reached into his pocket for $50, “And
by the way,” the blonde added, "that's not a
Porch. it's a Ferrari."

Whats the worst thing you can say to a man
who complains that his wife is frigid?
“No, she isn't!"

Two men were bragging about their families.
“My grandfather correctly predicted the yea
he was going to die,” one said to the other.

“Oh yeah?” the other said. “My grandpa
knew the exact day of the year he was going
to die.”

“A judge told him,” the second replied.

Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, vı.aynov,
730 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, or
by e-mail through our website at jokes. моно
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributors whose
submissions are selected.

“We're busy right now...can I put you on hold?”

IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO BE YOUNG-MANY МЕМ ARE TRYING TO STAY VIRILE AND
BUFF FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. SOME MEDICAL DOCTORS, AND MORE THAN
A FEW QUACKS, THINK HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE 15 ONE OF THE ANSWERS

DR. T
TO THE

RESCUE

BY PAT JORDAN

he cocktail party was held in a suite of rooms

on the third floor of the Venetian, a hotel on

the Las Vegas Strip. It was crowded with

attendees from the 14th annual International

Congress on Anti-Aging Medicine and Regen-
erative Biomedical Technologies, hosted by A4M. the
American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine

A gaunt man with a villain's mustache was giving a
PowerPoint slide show of dead rats. The word pome-
gronote appeared on-screen. He said, “Our pomegran-
ate capsules are our best product.” A man sitting
cross-legged on the floor nodded and scribbled on a
pad while the man using PowerPoint exclaimed about
pomegranate juice's efficacy in prolonging life. Every-
one else was standing around the suite, talking.

A handsome young man wearing wire-rimmed
glasses talked about the health benefits of coenzyme
010. A tall massage therapist, whose motto is "Feel the
heat,” was talking loudly about her upcoming breast

reduction, The PowerPoint man glared at her and said,
“If you'll just bear with me, I'll only be a minute.” He
went back to his rats and pomegranate juice.

А round little Chinese woman was grazing at the
hors d'oeuvres table as if this were her last meal. A
handsome silver-haired ex-porn star said something
to her. She snapped, “Where from? From Boston. What
you think?” An Irish A4M lawyer in a muscle T-shirt was
telling a journalist in a Hawaiian shirt that he didn’t
trust journalists. The lawyer had patches of hair missing
from his scalp, which looked like a threadbare quilt.

A woman in a black spangled dress with dyed black
hair and a manic bird's black eyes talked about her
sexology practice in an indecipherable foreign accent.
The ex-porn star and a man with a white beard nodded.
When she left, a man with a reddish walrus mustache
came over to the two men. He said, “She's crazy. Stay
away from her.” He eyed the ex-porn star and said,
“You look great. I could give you something that would

LLUSTRATION Br MIRKO IL

101

102

maintain that look into your BOs.” The man with the white
beard said, “What about me?” The man with the reddish
mustache laughed and said, “You're circling the drain.” This
mustached man is known as Dr. Testosterone. He has a clinic
in a Victorian house in Michigan called the Man Cave. which
is devoted “to all things male.”

A young. skinny blonde in a too-short dress that barely
covered her ass presented herself to the ex-porn star,
the man with the white beard and Dr. Testosterone. She
said, "My bags were searched at the airport. They took out
all my dildos.”

Dr. T smiled and said, “Of course.”

The girl said, “You missed the
orgy last night. There were bodies
strewn everywhere.” She smiled
lasciviously at the ex-porn star
and added, “You gonna stay for
tonight's orgy?”

When she left, Dr. T said, “You
know, it is all about sex."

Or. Testosterone, whose real
name is John Crisler, D.O., was
referring not only to this A4M
conference but to all the anti-
aging organizations and institutes
throughout the world in more
than 80 countries: the Society for
Free Radical Biology and Medicine,
the European Academy for Qual-
ity of Life and Longevity Medicine, the International Hor-
mone Society, Cenegenics Medical Institute, the Longevity
Institute, the Palm Springs Life Extension Institute. The
word antiaging, it seems, is an umbrella term that covers
a host of New Age and medical therapies that critics claim
are quackery and true believers think are the cutting edge
of modern medicine for the 2lst century. But all that talk
about extended old age and the quality of life is merely win-
dow dressing that hides one of the antiaging movement's
dirty little secrets. Crisler said that when the antiaging
movement first started to promote its benefits, it listed an
increased libido first. But people were put off by such a bla-
tant appeal to sex. “So we listed all the other benefits first
and put libido last,” he said, “like it was an afterthought.”
He grinned, then added, “But it is all about sex.”

The antiaging movement's other dirty little secret: It’s
not really about diet and exercise. It is about injecting
human growth hormone and testosterone into patients or
applying testosterone as а cream. The antiaging industry
claims that as a body ages. it loses a good percentage of
its HGH and testosterone, and the loss of these two vital
hormones accelerates the aging process and leads to age-
related diseases. Simply replenishing the body with HGH
and testosterone, the antiaging movement claims, can not
only stop the aging process, prevent diseases and improve
appearance and the quality of life but also reverse the
aging process entirely.

The term antiaging is a misnomer meant to foster the
impression that the industry's raison d'être is to medically
treat the elderly in order to improve and extend their life.
But most people do not use antiaging therapies to extend
their life. They take HGH and testosterone to exchange fat for
muscle, to grow hair and tighten skin. The antiaging industry
is actually about cosmetics; it is the Botox of the elst cen-
tury. Its typical patient is a man in his late 30s or mid-40s
who has always considered himself a player He has already
had a little Botox, a little work around the eyes, a little neck
tightening, a little liposuction. Now he wants some muscles,

A scientist's-eye view of HGH, which is produced by
the pituitary gland and diminishes as humans age.

too, and thicker hair that doesn't look like the spring grass
of hair plugs, and maybe a jolt of energy, a spring in his step
and, of course, increased libido. He wants to be that captain
of industry he has worked so hard to become, but with it
he wants all the advantages of youth. He wants it all. Botox
and plastic surgery made him look younger. Human growth
hormone and testosterone make him be younger.

It all began in the mid-1980s with Dr. Daniel Rudman, an
endocrinologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who
had spent a good part of his
medical career developing HGH
for short children. According to
his wife and research partner,
Inge Rudman, “When he felt he'd
solved that problem, he noticed
his parents were not aging well.
They were in their 70s and weak,
stooped, with shrunken muscles.
Since he knew that children on
HGH grew taller, increased their
muscle size and were more out-
going. he thought HGH might help
his parents.”

Rudman applied for National
Institutes of Health funding for a
study on HGH's benefits in treat-
ing the frail elderly. He started his
studies in 1983 and, according to
Inge, was the first to publish his findings on HGH їп older
patients. “The rest was history,” she adds. “Unfortunately,
he never helped his parents, who died before his study was
published in The New England Journal of Medicine.”

In that NEJM article, “The Effects of Human Growth
Hormone in Men Over 60 Years Old,” Rudman explains the
groundwork for his study. He picked 21 healthy men between
the ages of 6l and 83. Twelve received injections of biosyn-
thetic HGH three times a week, and the other nine received
nothing. After six months the HGH group had an 8.8 percent
increase in muscle mass, a 14.4 percent decrease in fat,
a 16 percent increase in bone density and a 7.1 percent
increase in skin thickness. The non-HGH group experienced
no changes. He writes in his conclusion that “diminished
secretion of HGH is responsible in part for the decrease
of lean body mass, [the increase in fat] and the thinning of
the skin that occurs in old age... These structural changes
have been considered unavcidable results of aging [but this
study shows] that age-related changes in body composi-
tion should be correctable in part by the administration of
HGH." He added later in a TV interview, "We reversed 10 to
20 years of the aging process.”

In his article Rudman also claims he expected “no
adverse reactions to HGH.” since “similar or larger doses
have caused no undesired reactions in children or young
adults.” He did notice a slight spike in his HGH subjects
glucose, which hinted at possible diabetes. but that spike
vanished once the men stopped taking the hormone. He
did not, however, totally preclude the possibility that HGH
therapies could be dangerous. He wondered what adverse
side effects might be discovered in HGH patients once more
elderly patients were studied. As a scientist. he realized
that his studies were preliminary and not conclusive. His
study group was too small and his six-month study period
too short a time span. Still, he believed he had substantial
proof that the “potential benefits of growth hormone merit
continuing attention and investigation.”

The antiaging industry didn't (continued on page 143]

Some claim HGH can reverse aging by 10 to 20 years.

“ГИ concede you've put it behind you, Turner. But it’s still behind you.”

SPRING +
SUMMER

FASHION FORECAST

FASHION BY
JOSEPH
DE ACETIS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

ANTOINE
VERGLAS

PROOUCEO BY
JENNIFER
RYAN JONES

* lobal warming is no joke: Meteorologists are predicting that | tropical wool with sophisticated weaves, crafting suits that are hip
42007 will be the hattest year on this blue marble since the | and remain comfortable even asthe mercury rises. Not only do these
Í dinos. The summer is apt to be brutal, and unless you mix | suits let your body breathe, their neutral color schemes reflect light
drinks at a tiki bar, you can't go to work in a Hawaiian shirt and Ber- | from the sweltering summer sun. Shades of pale gray and khakialso
muda shorts. Not that you would anyway. You have style and class, | give you a chance to bring a sense of yourself to your style by choos-
which means while your colleagues are sweating through their | ing accessories in any conceivable color, A quiet palette promotes
stuffy “all-season” jackets, you stay cool in a summer suit. Men's | versatility: You can wear a strong tie to the office and then switch to
‚designers are now pairing lightweight fabrics like cotton, silk and | something fun when you whisk your girl off for a summer getaway.

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WOMEN'S STVLING BY
WHERE + HOW TO

BY ERIC SPITZNAGEL

PHOTOGRAPHY BY
NIGEL PARRY

Sil

PLAYBOY: In the new Will Ferrell com-
edy, Blades of Glory, you play Stranz,
a four-time figure-skating champ. Were
you cast for your comic timing or your
ability to perform a flawless triple axel?
ARNETT: People say I move like a dancer. 1
get that all the time. There comes a point in
your career when you have to give in to the
chorus of fans saying, “We see the way you
move. You're like a cat. Please, share your
gifts with the world.” Eventually you just
give the people what they want. Actually
I'm not much of a skater. The more difficult
skating moves were obviously performed
by trained professionals. I was able to do
a few of the big jumps, but mostly I just
did the smiling. When the skater finishes his
routine and waves to the camera and smiles
while he’s waiting for his scores to come up,
that was all me. J was so ready for that.

PLAYBOY: You were raised in Canada,
where hockey is a national pastime.
Aren't all Canadians born with the abil-
ity to skate?

ARNETT: 1 certainly had an advantage
growing up in Canada. I knew how to
skate. When I was a kid I played a lot of
hockey. 1 haven't done it in a while, but I

THE ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT ALUM BARES ALL ABOUT BEING
MARRIED TO SNL ROYALTY, DEALING WITH SEMISTARDOM AND
HOW HE'S GOING TO TAKE WILL FERRELL DOWN

still goof around whenever I can. ГЇЇ break
опе of my kneecaps or purposely injure
myself, stuff like that. But now I'm pretty
much relegated to obsessively watching
hockey. I watch every single game the
Toronto Maple Leafs play all season.
Thar’s how I spend my Saturdays.

PLAYBOY: But Saturday is the day your
wife, Amy Poehler, appears on Saturday
Night Live. You don't ignore her for
hockey, do you?

ARNETT: Saturdays are a big night in
our house. I watch the Leafs at seven
p.m. and then go see Amy on Saturday
Night Live. If I'm really happy, I can pre-
tend it’s because Amy was in an amazing
sketch, but it’s actually because Matt
Stajan did a great poke check.

PLAYBOY: Your character in Blades of
Glory is a treacherous bad guy who will
stop at nothing to destroy his competi-
tion. It’s hard to imagine a skating
lain without thinking of Tonya Harding.
Did you use her as inspiration?

ARNETT: I pictured Stranz as more of a Jeff
Gillooly-type guy. Jeff was the unspoken
hero in that whole Harding scandal. I

remember when it first broke, the New
York Post published this hilanous story
about it. Her bodyguard had just come out
and admitted that Tonya was responsible
for the Kerrigan attack, and the Post printed
this headline: BODYGUARD FINGERS TONYA.
I taped the article to the back of my closet
and had it up there for a couple of years.

PLAYBOY: Why do men in competitive
skating wear such frilly costumes with
so many sequins and ruffles?

ARNETT: The cast watched a lot of Olym-
pic skating as research for the movie, and
we realized you can't go too far with the
costumes. Some of the outfits are just in-
sane. Your first thought is, Well, they're ob-
viously gay. But that’s not true. These guys
are incredible athletes, and the costumes are
just a part of skating tradition. But ГЇЇ tell
you what: I kind of liked it. When I put on
the tights and the dance belt, everything is a
little tighter down below. And when you're
showing that much, you’re gonna get some
big laughs. I got kind of addicted to it.

G6
PLAYBOY: Some journalists believe you're
poised to become the next Will Ferrell.
Is there room (continued on page 150)

113

By Jason Harper

TAR STRUCK

WWE Diva Ashley Massaro
has us on the ropes

"m a really sweet girl!” Ashley Massaro says. “Really!” We believe her. Really. She is sitting
in the WWE offices in midtown Manhattan, looking relaxed with her long blonde hair pulled
back and wearing just a touch of natural-looking makeup. A thick turtleneck sweater does

Beautiful 27-year-old Ashley Massaro, New York native and WWE Diva, will, work her
signature move, Starstruck (notice the star tattoos on her elbows), in WresfleMania's
April 1 pay-per-view extravaganza. That body, that face, that move—we're seeing stars,
and we haven't even entered the ring. Here's a little taste of what to expect.

little to hide her figure—incredibly
shapely and curvaceous but at the
same time cut as sharp as a sushi
knife. Her face is model beautiful,
though few models have two ring
piercings in their lower lip. We
believe Ashley is a really sweet
girl not merely because she says
so and because she seems so, but
because we have never stood in a
wrestling ring in front of thousands
of howling fans and felt her elbow
land on our nose.

Ashley is excited. She is on the
verge of her biggest moment so
far: On April 1 the WWE Diva will
fight in the extravaganza known as
WrestleMania, which will be aired
live on pay-per-view. Her career with
WWE began just two years ago when
she won the 2005 RAW Diva Search.
Soon after, the searing 27-year-old
New York native got her first taste of
the ring when she faced off and held
her own against Torrie Wilson and
Candice Michelle, two other WWE
Divas. “The only thing | knew at that
point were street-fight moves,” she
says. To answer the next logical ques-
tion: Yes, Ashley has been in street
fights. “But only in self-defense.”

Now, in 2007, SmackDown!'s lat-
est, greatest find is poised to hit the
big time, and she has all the tools
to make her shot pay off. You may
have noticed the star tattoos on her
elbows. Her signature move is Star-
struck, a brutal elbow drop off the
ropes—a feat of visual flair and acro-
batic acumen that whips fans into a
frenzy. And if you think wrestling is
not real enough, consider Ashley's
injuries so far: a broken nose (which
she never got fixed but looks per-
fect to us), a crushed knuckle and a
broken ankle that was repaired with
a five-inch metal plate that sets off
radar detectors when she flies, which
is often. “We travel more than rock
bands,” says Ashley, who has visited,
among other places, Iraq, where she
met some of the troops. So tar her
success has come naturally. “This is
really me, not an act,” Ashley says,
“and | think the fans get that.”

Speaking of real, those ringside rival-
ries between the WWE ladies—real?
“Well,” Ashley says, “I'm easygoing,
with chicks especially. | just let things
slide off my back. The girls are so cool.
We get along.” Despite, of course, the
professional jealousy that comes with
appearing in PLavBov. Ashley winces
when we mention this. "Yesterday a
girl in the ring was all over my face and
tried to tear this out," she says, touch-
ing one of her lip rings. "She said she
wanted to wreck my face and make
me ugly before the magazine comes
out." Ashley grins. Not likely.

Celebrating a
quintet of beautiful
body slammers
who have appeared
in PLAYBOY

restling was not part of the

original pLaysoy equation.
Coltrane, Picasso, Sartre—cool.
Gorgeous George and Wahoo
McDaniel—not so much. But
back then wrestlers were mostly
men. The wrestling patriarchy
has been shaken by an equal-
rights revolution, and now pro
wrestling features women. Glori-
ous women! Fabulous women!
With long, flowing hair and daz-
zling teeth and amazing phy-
siques tightly wrapped in sparkly
spandex! In the face of such
allure, how could we withhold our
appreciation? We have joined the
ranks of World Wrestling Enter-
tainment's biggest fans, delighted
to encounter any of these ladies
anywhere but on a canvas mat.

It was good girl Torrie (left) vs. the
wicked Sable on the cover of our March
2004 issue, and here they are posed
opposite one another again. Although
the two beauties have drop-kicked
each other from one coast to the next.
they insist they are good friends.

PHOTOGRAPHY
BY ARNY FREYIAG

“Out of the ring, out of her clothes, outrageous” was how we heralded the lovely Candi helle (above) on our April 2006

cover. A year before that, RAW Diva Christy Hemme (below) got our engines running. The ble Chyna (opposite) twice ruled
our cover, once as a goddess of wrestling in November 2000 and then as her mortal self, Joanie Laurer, in January 2002.

PLAYBOY

126

T H I R D S E N S E (continued from page 84)

The intensity of sweat, semen, cosmetics, saliva, salt
tears; all become an odor distilled as theirs alone.

None of his business, secret even from
herself, that she enters him there as,
female, she can't the way he enters her.

Or it's just something else, the way you
would bury your face in that incredibly
innocent sensuous touch and smell of
an infant's hollow under the back of its
skull. But that's not a memory that per-
sists from the distant infancy of a 15-
year-old whose voice has broken. She
moves her face, herself, into the паре
as she does, without at first meeting
the skin, not to disturb, the touch of the
lips to come after the gentlest touch of
her breathing there:

She's sniffing. She's drawing back
a little from the hollow, smooth and
unlined as if it were that of a man of 20.
Comes close again. Scenting. Her nose
drawn tight, then nostrils flared to short
intakes of whatever. Scenting. She knows
their smell, the smell of his skin mingled
with what she is, a blend of infusions
from the mysterious chemistry of differ-
ent activities in different parts of their
bodies, giving off a flora of flesh juices,
the intensity or delicacy of sweat, semen,
cosmetics, saliva, salt tears; all become
an odor distilled as theirs alone.

Scenting on him the smell of an-
other woman.

She moved carefully out of bed. He was
beyond stirring as her warmth left him
She went into the bathroom. Switched
on the light above the mirror and forced
herself to look at herself. To make sure. It
was facing a kind of photography no one
had invented. It wasn't the old confron-
tation with oneself, There was another
woman who occupied the place of that
image. Smell her.

She, herself, was halfway down the
passage darkness to the bed in the
room that served as guest room and
storeroom when—despising that use-
less gesture—she went back. In their
bed she lay spaced away from where
she would allow herself to approach,
scenting again what she already had
Rationality attacked: why didn't he
shower instead of dozing bare-chested
and then climbing into bed. Yes, he'd
got up and put on the pajama jacket
in place of the shower's precaution
He showered when he came home
after squash games. Was it really from
the squash courts he returned, always,
‘Tuesday nights.

It wasn't that she didn't allow herself
to think further; she could not think.
A blank. So that it might not begin to
fill, she left their bed again as carefully,

silently as the first time and in the bath-
room found his bottle of sleeping pills
(she never took soporifics, a university
lectureship and the takeoff and landing
ofa risky airline enterprise did not share
the same "stress"). She shook out what
looked like a plastic globule of golden ой
and swallowed it with gulps of tap water
cupped in her hand. When she woke
from its unfamiliar stun in the morn-
ing he was coming from the bathroom,
shiningly freshly shaven, called, “Hullo
darling” as he did “Hullo my girl” in
affectionate homecoming to their dog.

Eva and Wendell Tate lived the pattern
of the working week, seven days and
the next seven days differentiated only
by the disruptions of Wendell's alter-
nations of tentative hopes and anxiety
about negotiations with the national air-
line that might bring not a solution for
Flight Hadeda's survival but a resolution
as its bankruptcy. “That's no exaggera-
tion.” He rejected her suggestion that,
as negotiations were lagging on, this was
surely a good sign that the government
was at last having doubts. After all its rap-
ping the private sector over the knuck-
les for not taking enough responsibility
in new ways to develop the infrastruc-
ture.... Beginning to listen to the pri-
vate airlines. “Government could have
just gone ahead and granted licenses to
the national after that window-dressing
democratic first meeting with all of you.
Why didn't it? I think it’s tiptoeing
round a compromise."

He had pulled his upper and lower
lips in over his teeth as if to stop what
he didn't want to say.

There were also words she didn't
want to say.

She did something out of her anger
and disbelief that disgusted her. But
she did it. She called the squash club on
a Tuesday night and asked to speak to
Wendell Tate. The receptionist told her
to hold: for her, an admonition not to
breathe. The voice came back, “Sorry,
Mr. Tate is not here tonight.” “Sorry,”
the regret a form of colloquial courtesy
personnel are taught.

Eva read in bed, and the dog's indul-
gence, there with her, was extended.
Music accompanied them and she did not
look at her watch until the dog jumped
off and made for the stairs. Wendell was
back. And early. Down, Dina, down!
They were in the bedroom doorway, the
dog with paws leaped to his shoulders.

Dina's come to accept what she scents as
part of the aura now of the couple and
the house; she does not have to recall the
atavism of hunting instincts

Eva does not remark on the hour.
And he doesn't remark that he finds
her already gone to bed. Perhaps he
isn't aware of her. She's never experi-
enced coming home to one man from
another, although she once had a
woman friend who said she managed it
with some sort of novel pleasure.

“Win or lose?” Eva asked. The old
formula response would be in the
same light exchange; a mock excuse
if he'd been out of form, mock boast if
he'd played well—they knew Tuesdays
were for keeping fit rather than sport;
avoiding the onset of that male preg-
nancy, a middle-age belly:

“I think I'm getting bored with the
club. All my contemporaries working
out. Most of us past it.”

She tried to keep to the safe formula.
“So you lost for once!”

He did not answer.

He'd gone to the bathroom; there
was the rainfall susurrus—he was tak-
ing a shower this time. When he came
back she saw him naked; yes, nothing
unusual about that, the chest she liked,
the stomach with the little fold—no,
it's muscle, no, no, not fat—the penis
in its sheath of foreskin. But she saw
the naked body as she had seen herself
in the bathroom mirror that first night
when she and the dog scented him.

He spoke, turned from her, geuing
into pajamas. “It looks worse every day.
There's a leak that's come to us. Adams
knows one of their officials. They've
had approved a schedule of the routes
they intend to take up. Analyzing cost
structures if bookings are to be taken
only online, cut out the travel agents’
levy on passengers.”

“But you can do the same.”

“We can? Travel agents feed us pas-
sengers as part of overseas visitors"
round-trip tours. We can't afford to
ditch them.” He came to the bed.

“Aren't you taking Dina?"

Recalled to where he was from wher-
ever he had been, he put his hand on
the dog's head and the tvo went to
the stairs. When he reappeared he ро!
into bed and did not lean for the good-
night kiss. The alternate to his reason
for avoidance could be the despairing
abstraction: distrait. As Wendell turned
out their light he spoke aloud but not
to her. “Hadeda's down. Scrap.”

For the first time in 16 years there
was no possibility of one comforting
the other in embrace. She said in the
dark, "You can't give up." She didn't
know whether this was a statement
about Flight Hadeda or a bitter conclu-
sion about where he had been, this and
other nights.

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PLAYBOY

128

They did continue what the new-
millennium vocabulary terms “having
sex,” not making love, from time to
time, less often than before. This would
be when they had had a night out with
friends, drinking a lot of wine, or had
stood around at her duty academic cel-
ebrations when everyone drank succes-
sive vodkas, gins or whiskeys to disprove
the decorum of academia.

So, it was possible for him to desire
her then. Hard to understand. She's
always refused to believe the meek sex-
ist acceptance that man's desire is dif-
ferent from woman's. When they went
through the repertoire of caresses real
desire was not present in her body; for
her, as it must be for him, desire must
belong with another woman.

She was looking for the right moment
to come out with it. How to say what there
was to be said. The “Are you having an
affair” of soap operas. “You are having
an affair,” restating the obvious. “You're
making love to some woman; even the
dog smells her on you.” Away with euphe-
misms. When to speak? At night? Early in
the morning, a breakfast subject? Before

Patrick came home for the holidays? What
happens when such things are said. Would
they both go to work after the breakfast,
take their son to the movies, act as if the
words hadn't been said, until he was out
of the way, back at school.

The night before Easter she was tak-
ing from the freezer a lamb stew that.
was to be the last meal together before
it was spoken. What she would find the
right way to say. When he came home he
closed the living room door behind him
against the entry of the dog and strode
over to turn mute the voice of the news-
caster on the television

“I'm shutting up shop. Just a matter
of selling the two jets; no one’s going
to be stupid enough to buy the license.
Fat hope of that. Adams and I have
gone through the figures for the past 18
months and even if the national thing
weren't about to wipe us off, it's there—
we're flying steadily into loss.”

The brightly miming faces were
exchanged on the screen while he said
what he had to say.

“But we knew you'd have to rely on
our capital for at least two years before

“You say it’s a free country? My God, when did that happen?”

you'd get into profit; it's not the same
issue as the national one.”

“The competition will make the other
irrelevant, that’s all. Why wait for that
Sell the planes. Won't make up the loss
The overdraft.”

“I'll be something.”

There were images dwelling on the
dead lying somewhere—Afghanistan,
Darfur, Iraq

“For what. To do what.”

He's been a man of ideas in maturity,
with connections, friends in enterprises

“You'll look around.” That's what he did
before, set out to change his life from earth-
bound real estate to freedom of the sky.

He lifted his spread hands, palm up,
and let them drop as if they would fall
from his wrists, while the screen was
filled by the giant grin-grimace of a tri-
umphant footballer. “How are we going
to live in the meantime.”

“I don't bring in bread on the cor-
porate scale, oh yes, but there’s a good
chance I'll be appointed head of the
department with the beginning of the
new academic year.”

“It'll just about pay the fees at Patrick's
millionaire school." That school also had
been the father's ambitious mold-breaking
choice for their son; if it was now a matter
of reproach, the reproach was for himself,
not a sharp reception of her provision of
an interim rescue. Despair rzvaged his face
like the signs of a terminal illness.

She did not say what she had decided was
the right time and the right words to say.

She saw he managed to cat a little of
the lamb as some sort of acknowledg-
ment of her offer.

Eva recalled that time, the Tuesday when
he came home from the woman and said
about his fellows at the squash court where
he hadn't played with them—"Sorry, Mr.
Tate is not here tonight" —he was getting
bored with the club, "All my contempo-
raries working out. Most of us past it."

Past it.

"Too late. In middle age the schoolboy
adventure of Flight Hadeda, even that
night in unadmitted faltering and threat-
ened by the national carrier he had no
means to counter. Inside Eva, sometimes
softening, the failure accepted; perhaps
he had been too tired, stressed's the cover-
all word, to make love.

What other way to reassure, restore
himself. Not past it; proof of the engen-
dered male power of life, arousal to
potency: by another woman.

Eva never confronted Wendell with the
smell of the woman scented on him. She
did not know whether he saw the woman
some other time, now that he had given
up the Tuesday night squash club; when
or whether he had given up the affair. She
did not know nor return, by the means

she and the dog possessed, for evidence.

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PLAYBOY

BILL MAHER „рн page 38)

You can't just instill democracy. You can't just graft it
onto a society that has no institutions of public law.

MAHER: Are you kidding? I don't know
what we'd talk about. Paris Hilton is an
amazing phenomenon, though. Did you
notice that the second Britney Spears
was free of her husband, she came under
Paris's spell? Paris is the head-honcho
cheerleader who decides who's cool and
who's in her group. You can make fun
of her, and I of course enjoy doing so
quite often, but you have to give her her
due. Somehow she is the head bitch in
the high school of America

PLAYBOY: What is it about her?

МАНЕВ: I think it's confidence. She's a rich
kid. I compare her to George W. Bush,
a rich kid who really didn't accomplish
anything but had the confidence rich kids
often have—an attitude that the world
should come to them because it always
has. It’s very attractive to a nation of fol
lowers. Britney Spears, who nominally
should be the leader of the pack—she
actually had a career, has sold millions
of dollars’ worth of records—and Lind-
say Lohan, an actress who does movies,
understand who the boss is: Paris Hilton.
It's because she does what the Democrats
don't do and the Republicans have con-
sistently done. They let the country come
to them. By standing their ground and
standing by their principles, they have
successfully moved the country way, way
to the right. When Barry Goldwater
ran in 1964, he lost by a landslide, but
they didn’t care. Ronald Reagan was a
laugh-out-loud joke when he first ran for
president, in 1968, But he stood by what
he thought was right and true, and the
country came to him

PLAYBOY: Why do Americans find that
appealing?

MAHER: Most people in this country want
to follow. They want to be told what to
think. It’s an attribute that has served
Bush well, too. He seems resolute. He
seems as if he knows what he thinks, Peo-
ple like it when he says, “I don't follow
the polls.”
course they forgot that his ideas are stu-
pid and he's a moron. Finally they woke
up to that in 2006. Resolute became
stubborn. But by standing their ground,
Republicans brought the country way to
the right. It's why you had John Kerry
closing out the election in a goose-
hunting outfit and why Hillary Clinton
talks about a flag-burning amendment.
Hillary Clinton, valedictorian at Welles-
ley, doesn’t think we should be able to
burn the flag? That's hard for me to
believe. But they have put the idea into
the Democrats’ heads that to win you
better move closer to where they are. As

130 a result, nobody in Washington is sug-

То them it says leadership. Of

gesting programs and policies I would
consider left-wing. Nancy Pelosi is not
going to say we should legalize drugs.
She's not for socialized medicine. She's
not for a gasoline tax. Part of the genius
of Karl Rove and the far right is they
have convinced the rest of America that
the center is way over to the right. It's
one reason so many people don't vote.
In the 2004 election 78 million people
who could have voted did not. My guess
is most of those 78 million would have
voted liberal. Meanwhile conservatives
vote. They re organized. They re squares.
They get up in the morning.

PLAYBOY: As opposed to...?

MAHER: Us. We're sleeping it off from last
night's clubs. If there were a draft and
the Supreme Court outlawed abortion,
you might see liberals set the alarm clock
that Tuesday.

PLAYBOY: Did the most recent election
indicate that the religious right has been
discredited?

MAHER: No. From what I read they came
out in about the same numbers as previous
elections. This time, however, indepen-
dents who were energized by Republican
ineptitude outvoted them. The religious
right is still there. The election just taught
us that there is a counterweight to it.
PLAYBOY: Do you agree that the election
was a referendum on the war?

MAHER: Mostly on the war but also on
corruption. Also it was about Bush giving
most of the treasury to his rich friends.
People finally realized our money could
be going to better things than Paris Hil-
ton so she can gargle with diamonds after
she blows a guy. The Democrats won this
time only because people were fed up.
The challenge now is for Democrats to
see if they can win an election when the
other party has not completely disgraced
itself in every conceivable manner.
PLAYBOY: People have said the results
might have been different had Donald
Rumsfeld been fired before the election
rather than after. Do you agree?

MAHER: People were looking for the pres:
ident to make a change, to show he could
be flexible. Rumsfeld was the face of a
failed program. Bush had done nothing
but stand by him, In fact, the week before
the election he said Rumsfeld was going
to be there until the end of his term. 1
think people just rolled their eyes at that.
It was a political blunder

PLAYBOY: Have we heard the last from
Karl Rove?

MAHER: | don't know if people in the
party blame him for that election. I
think they blame Bush. Rove has proved
he could win with a weak hand, but this

was pretty much the weakest hand any-
опе had ever been asked to play in mod-
ern politics. Add up the war, Hurricane
Katrina, Mark Foley, the debt—there
was very little he could run on. Mostly.
Bush lost the war. Mr. Kick Ass and Take
Names lost. I'm sure Bush prayed a lot
about Iraq, but he never learned about
Iraq. Everybody in this country thinks
praying is great, which to me is child-
ish. But even if it isn’t, it doesn't replace
knowledge. [impersonating Bush] "Saddam
bad. Freedom good." Well, the Iraqis saw
something else. Sunnis out, Shiites in. In
most of the Muslim world, Shiites are
close to apostates. [n the minds of most
Muslims, it was impossible to imagine
Shiites in power. That's what threatens
them now. They see America enabling
this impossible event. We went into
their country without knowing anything
about them. Half the people they origi-
nally got to go over there thought, We've
sprinkled the freedom dust on them,
and now everything's going to be cool.
We don't need troops; we don't need a
plan. Another problem is something we
seem never to learn: You can't just instill
democracy. You can't just graft it onto a
society that has no institutions of public
law. As I said, Saddam was a secularist.
Now we have these crazy fundamental-
ists warring—a model democracy.
PLAYBOY: How many of the problems
in the Middle East are due to religious
fundamentalism?

MAHER: Religious fundamentalism is the
root of problems everywhere. 1 could just
as easily go on about the crazy Christian
God-hates-fags types who have killed
abortion doctors. I don't know if any reli-
gion has the monopoly on crazy factions.
I've been brushing up on my Eastern
religions, and they're crazy too. Their
big superiority is supposed to be that
they're peaceful, but Japan was Buddhist
before World War II, and that didn't
stop it from raping Nanking and bomb-
ing Pearl Harbor. People use religion to
justify what they want to do. Some Mor-
mons use biblical passages to justify the
genocide of the Indians, as well as their
longtime prejudice against blacks.
PLAYBOY: Your views about religion have
gotten you into trouble.

MAHER: Like the old saying goes, the
two things you shouldn't talk about in
a polite dinner conversation arc politics
and religion—the two things I love to
talk about. [laughs] At my dinner parties
we talk about them.

PLAYBOY: Have you been affected by religious
organizations’ angry reactions to you?
MAHER: When ABC canned me for my
9/11 comments, a lot of it was because of
what 1 had said about religion.

PLAYBOY: But your show was canceled not
because of anything you had said about
religion but your comment that the U.S.,
not the terrorists, was cowardly.

MAHER: A Houston disc jockey started all
the mob action against me, but he had

been trying to get me fired for 10 years
because of my position on religion.
PLAYBOY: Do you regret your remarks?
MAHER: | was sorry it upset people at a
time when they were traumatized any-
way, but what I said wasn't wrong. Lis-
ten, after 9/11 Bush said the terrorists
win unless we continue to do exactly
what we've been doing. So go shop. Go
back to work. Well, 1 went back to work.
I was host of a show called Politically
Incorrect, which prided itself on pulling
no punches and saying the truth, The
terrorists did not win with me.

PLAYBOY: Did the reaction surprise you?
MAHER: Oh my God. 1 don't think most
people, even people in show business,
will ever know what it feels like when that
super-white-hot light gets turned right
onto you in a negative way. I thought 1
was headed to Abu Ghraib. I was afraid
to go out. I thought people were going to
punch me or something. It was as though
all of America was enraged about what
had happened to us, but because the
enemy was amorphous, people had noth-
ing to turn their rage on until I stepped
up. I provided a service for America. I
gave people a target for their rage for a
while. You're welcome, America.
PLAYBOY: Were the sponsors who pulled
out offended or just succumbing to your
critics’ reaction?

MAHER: They reacted to money. They
got letters saying, “We will boycott your
product if you advertise on this show.”
PLAYBOY: Did you worry that the damage
was irreparable?

MAHER: At first, yes, absolutely.

PLAYBOY: You have been at the heart of
many controversies. Have any of the
others compared?

MAHER: No. None. And nothing ever will,
which is kind of good. It's as if I've been
inoculated. I know what it feels like to
have people try to make me disappear.
PLAYBOY: After that experience, were
you bothered by the flak about your
Halloween costume of Steve Irwin
pierced by a stingray?

MAHER: I didn't even flinch. I defend that,
by the way. If you get killed by an animal,
it means you were doing something to
an animal that you shouldn't have been
doing. Steve Irwin loved animals the way
child molesters love children. They really
do love them, but they also go too far.
PLAYBOY: Who will you dress up as next
Halloween?

MAHER: I'll have to see what tragedy
has struck the heart of most Americans.
That's what Halloween is for. I don't
understand why people don't get that.
PLAYBOY: Clearly your political incorrect-
ness still pushes many people's buttons.
MAHER: Yes, America is still a place that
wants to make people disappear if they
make someone the least bit uncomfort-
able. What 9/11 should have done was
toughen America up, but it didn't. We
just absorbed it into our vast web of nar-
Gssism and general softness. I see things

WHERE

HOW

Below is a list of retailers and
manufacturers you can contact
for information on where to
find this month's merchandise.
To buy the apparel and equip-
ment shown on 34, 39-
42, 104-111 and 158-159,
check the listings below to find
the stores nearest уди.

GAMES

Page 34: Bullet Witch, atari

‚com. Def Jam: Icon. ea.com.

God of War II, playstation

-com. MotorStorm, play
station.com. Virtua Fighter 5, sega.com.

MANTRACK

Pages 39-42: Aspen Mountain Pow-
der Tours, aspensnowmass.com. Belly
Up Aspen, bellyupaspen.com. Chess set,
zontikgames.com. Elevation, elevation
aspen.com. Eric's Bar; 970-920-6707. Fuego,
fuegoliving.com. Hickory House Ribs, hickory
houseribs.com. Merkur, nashvilleknife
shop.com. MotoArt, motoart.com. Moun-
tain Valley Retreat, mc-cartneyprop.com.
Nike, nikegolf.com. Nikon, nikonusa.com.
Nobu Matsuhisa, nobumatsuhisa.com.
Sky Hotel, theskyhotel.com. Summit
Creek, summitcreeklamb.com. Tesla,
teslamotors.com. Tommy’s Honor, avail-
able at bookstores nationwide.

SPRING AND SUMMER

FASHION FORECAST

Pages 104-111: Alessandro Dell'Acqua,
212-253-6861. Android, android-usa
«com. Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons,
available by special order at 212-
391-9443. Barbara Bui, 212-625-1938.
BOSS Black, 800-HUGO-BOSS. Calvin
Klein Collection, 877-256-7373. Canali,

то

BUY

www.canali
Bucherer, carl-
«com. Chaiken, 888-339-
3301. Ernenegildo Zegna,
K J | available at Ermenegildo
Zegna boutiques and
Barneys New York. Gran
Sasso, www.gransasso.it.
Isaia, available at Neiman
Marcus. Jasper Conran,
jasperconran.com. John
Lobb, johnlobb.com. John-
ston & Murphy, johnston
andmurphy.com. Jovovich-
Hawk, available at select
Nordstrom locations. Locman, available
at Bloomingdale's. Lorenzini, available at
Wilkes Bashford in San Francisco and
Stanley Korshak in Dallas. Loris Diran,
212-675-4055. Luigi Borrelli Napoli, avail-
able at Luigi Borrelli boutiques and
Bergdorf Goodman. Mark Nason,
marknason.com. Massimo Bizzocchi, avail-
able at Saks Fifth Avenue. Richmond X
Uomo, 212-505-9725. Robert Talbott, 800-
747-8778. Salvatore Ferragamo, fer-
ragamo.com. TAG Heuer, tagheuer.com.
Tissot, tissot.ch. Valentino, available at
Valentino boutiques. Versace, available
at Versace boutiques nationwide. VPL
by Victoria Bartlett, vplnyc.com. Y's,
yohjiyamamoto.co.jp.

POTPOURRI

Pages 158-159: CarMD, carmd.com.
Elemis, timetospa.com. ExceptionLab,
Inc., weareha] u.com. Hanky
Panky, available at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Peerflix, peerflix com. Photo by Sammy
Davis, Jr, reganbooks.com. Self Shelf,
firebox.com. , skystreamenergy
.com. Tanqueray, available at liquor
stores nationwide.

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131

PLAY R O Y

132

all the time that offend me or that I don't.
like. I turn the page or change the chan-
nel. I don't need to hear an apology. I'm
like, "What an asshole. Fuck you. Next."
But instead, I dress up like the Crocodile
Hunter and people want me to apolo-
gize. At least 1 piss off Democrats as well
as Republicans. I'm bipartisan.

PLAYBOY: Arc you a registered Democrat?
MAHER: I'm an independent.

PLAYBOY: In 2000 you supported Nader.
Many people blame his supporters for
getting Bush elected.

MAHER: In 2000 a lot of us supported
Nader. He represented more of what
we were thinking. He still does, but in
2004 we felt it would be better to go the
practical route, and this Kerry fellow was
a decent man who had a chance of win-
ning. We got fucked both ways.
PLAYBOY: Will an independent candidate
ever have a chance of winning?

MAHER: No. It's ironic. This is a country
that insists on 28 flavors of ice cream. You
go down the aisle in the supermarket: Do
you want Pellegrino or still water? Lemon?
I'm just trying to get some fucking water,
and there's a questionnaire I have to fill
out. Christ, I don't care. I'll die of thirst
before I get it. But somehow in politics it's
always the same two choices.

PLAYBOY: One issue on which you and
the left disagree is the death penalty. You
support it. Why?

MAHER: I don't believe life is necessarily
precious, 1 don't believe everything hap-
pens for a reason, and I don't think peo-
ple necessarily have goodness in them.
Most people in this country believe those
three things. Life is precious? It can be.
It can also be a waste of protoplasm. I
certainly don't think everything happens
for a reason.

PLAYBOY: At least you're consistent. You
support abortion, which some people
also believe is killing.

MAHER: I'm like the antipope. The pope
is very consistent about life: Don't fuck
with it. I'm that way about death. I'm
pro-death. I'm for the death penalty. I'm
pro-choice. I'm pro-assisted suicide, and
I'm pro-regular suicide. Whatever gets
the freeway moving.

PLAYBOY: How about some other issues.
What's your view of the poisoning of for-
mer Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko?
Do you think Russian president Vladimir
Putin was behind it?

MAHER: Would it surprise you if ex-KGB
Putin did that? It was priceless when Bush
said, “I looked the man in the eye. I was
able to get a sense of his soul.” 1 looked
into his eyes and saw Satan. Bush's idiocy
is amazing. How embarrassing. Like the
G8 summit—a graphic illustration of a
clown on the world stage. He and Laura
arrived like the Duke and Duchess of
Hazzard. He was spitting food, grabbing
the German chancellor. When he called
to the British prime minister, “Yo, Blair,”
even Fox News had to gasp.

PLAYBOY: How important a force is
Fox News?

MAHER: It's peaked. And 1 think the rat-
ings back that up. The American public
has caught on, just the way it caught on to
the Bush administration. “Oh, just because
they're saying it on TV doesn't mean it's
not complete bullshit.” Now everyone
knows it's not really a news organization.
PLAYBOY: But Fox has a sizeable audience.
MAHER: A loyal audience not interested i
the truth. For Fox, “fair and balanced”
means all the news that’s shit we print.
The audience turns to Sean Hannity and
Bill O'Reilly and hears one side.

w si

“It's just the Mirage."

PLAYBOY: On your side, many liberals
turn to comedians: you, Stephen Colbert
and Jon Stewart.

MAHER: We mostly preach to the converted.
though on my show we try to mix it up.
PLAYBOY: You have claimed to be the god-
father of political humor. Are you proud
to have Stewart and Colbert as progeny?
MAHER: Absolutely. They're good at what
they do.

PLAYBOY: The New Yorker once called you a
brainy bully. Are you?

MAHER: Yeah, I guess. I can get over-
excited. Sometimes I don't realize I'm
being as impassioned as I am, and that
can probably come across as bullying—
especially since it's my show and 1 have
home-court advantage. I should watch
that. The real bullies are O'Reilly and
Hannity, though. They never let you fin-
ish a sentence.

PLAYBOY: Where do you get your news?
MAHER: I read The New York Times,
Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the
newsmagazines

PLAYBOY: Any blogs?

MAHER: I go to The Huffington Post. I
watch the evening news—all three net-
works. I flip between the three news-
casts, but all you get is about six or seven
minutes of news and then segments like
“Your Money,” “Focus on the Family”
and “How to Carve a Pumpkin.”
PLAYBOY: How has the Internet changed
politics?

МАНЕВ: It’s a bathroom wall. You can read
great wisdom on a bathroom wall, and
you can read, “Here I sit brokenhearted.
Something, something and only farted.”
PLAYBOY: Growing up, did you read the
newspaper and watch TV news?

MAHER: Much more so than in the nor-
mal American family, because my father
was in news as a rai staff announcer
and then an editor. 1 can be a silly
comedian one minute and then talk to
Madeleine Albright the next because
I've been reading the paper for 36
years. We had a Republican operative
on one of our shows—I won't say who.
Afterward we were discussing whether
the Democrats would try to impeach
Bush. I said, “I think what's impeach-
able is the fact that he went to war in
Iraq without knowing Islam is divided
between Sunnis and Shiites.” This per-
son said, “Well, five years ago did you?”
Yes, I did. It’s something you learn
from reading the newspapers starting
at 15. The people in this administra-
tion, however, know only that freedom's
good and the other guys are bad.
PLAYBOY: How did having a Jewish mother
and a Catholic father impact your life?
MAHER: My mother's Jewish, but 1 was
raised very much a Catholic.

PLAYBOY: Were you a believer?

MAHER: Kids always buy everything. They
have no power to resist. It's a form of child
abuse. When kids аге abused, very often
they don't say much because they just fig-
ure, Oh well, that's what creepy uncles do.

PLAYBOYonline

| read it for
TheArticles.com

PLAYBOY

134

‘They touch you. I was traumatized even
though I wasn't abused by a priest—and
Tm a little insulted, because I was cute.
Maybe I was just too sensitive as a kid, but
I always dreaded going to church. The
nuns would scare the hell out of you. 1
was slumping over once, and a nun said,
“The boy who's slumping is going to go
to hell.” When you're a little kid, you take
that seriously. One of the main differences
with Eastern religions is that you get more
than one shot. You can come back. In
Western religions, you're up to the plate
once, and you'd better fucking get a hit or
you're going to burn in hell forever.
PLAYBOY: Between your Jewish mom and
Catholic dad, you must be very experi-
enced with guilt.

MAHER: On my first Tonight Show I said
1 was half Jewish and half Catholic, so I
used to bring a lawyer into confession.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I
think you know Mr. Cohen.” Johnny
Carson loved that.

PLAYBOY: In clips from those early days,
you have a mullet. Does that embarrass
you now?

MAHER: Hair was pretty awful in the
1980s. There was something in the water.
It wasn't really a mullet, though. I had
a big squirrel on my shoulder from this
giant flock of hair behind my ear.
PLAYBOY: Now you have a stripper's
pole in your home. Has anyone famous
used it well?

MAHER: It's amazing the way a woman
of a certain age cannot pass a stripper's
pole without at least wanting to try it. It's
like a man picking up a baseball bat. You
just want to take a few cuts.

PLAYBOY: Has Paris Hilton tried it?
MAHER: No, but if she ever comes over,
she would be more than welcome.
PLAYBOY: At the age of 51 are you a con-
firmed bachelor?

MAHER: I know I have that reputation.
Marriage never called to me, but 1
understand it works for a lot of people.
You're a different person every decade. 1
don’t know what's going to happen now
that Pm 51

PLAYBOY: You're not pretty much the same
guy you were when you were younger?
MAHER: In my 20s I was a loser. High

“How sweet. We just met and you've already given me a pet name.
TU always cherish the name Creepy.”

school, college—not much. 1 didn't
have the college experience we see
on MTV. I went to Cornell. There
weren't very many girls, the ones who
were there weren't very cute, and
I wasn't very good at getting girls. 1
was in New York in my early 20s and
was desperately poor trying to be a
comedian. That formula didn't make
me a big player. 1 lived in a horrible
roach-infested studio over a bus stop
on Eighth Avenue. I came out here to
L.A. when I was 27. I felt as though
I'd found paradise, because I lived
in a nicer place for the same amount
of money. I had a little car. I had just
enough to be dangerous. That was the
era of girlfriends—steady girlfriends,
one at a Ume, some more serious than
others. 1 had а very serious relation-
ship in my mid-30s. When I got out of
that I became a real bachelor, a player.
I had a good time in my 40s. I had
learned a lot about women by then.
PLAYBOY: What did you learn?

MAHER: To talk to them as you would talk
to anyone you aren't trying to fuck.
PLAYBOY: And then?

MAHER: Then you'll get laid.

PLAYBOY: Do you have a girlfriend now?
MAHER: Yes, I do. I try to keep it pri-
vate. What will happen? Who knows?
They always say life begins at 40. I
understand what that means, especially
for someone ambitious and driven. It
takes a couple of decades to set up your
life. By 40 you've laid the groundwork.
You've got your own business or what-
ever it is. But what they don't tell you
about life beginning at 40 is that the
next step is 50. 1 think my 50s are going
to be good, but you're always looking
ahead. Fifty seems old when you're 40,
but at 50 you're looking at 60. Now
that seems really old. I'm still having
fun, though, and when I get bored,
well, thank God for George Bush. He
may be the worst president we've ever
had, but he’s been good for me.
PLAYBOY: Will Bush leaving office be bad
for your business?

MAHER: Well, there will never be any-
body as good as Bush. He provided
everything except sex, and dumbness is
probably even better than sex. There's
a contradiction between what's good
for my country and what's good for my
living. Between Bush and Clinton, I've
been lucky. Since I've been doing this
we've had a horndog and an idiot.
PLAYBOY: Which is worse?

MAHER: No question. I'd rather have a horn-
dog any day. I can relate to a horndog.
PLAYBOY: And when there's no more
George Bush to kick around?

MAHER: I hope I'm wrong, but sadly, and
given our recent history, there's a better
than even chance some other idiot will
come along, screw up miserably and pro-
vide me with endless opportunities.

ADVERSE

Ask Steffanie:

Dr. Steffanie Seaver PSY.D is an expert in the area
of interpersonal relationships. Researcher, author
and accomplished public speaker, she has lectured
nationwide for over a decade. Dr. Seaver has also
been involved with several publications covering
relationship and Mestyle issues.

Penalty for Early Withdrawal?

Hey Fellas - If YOUR “Timing” issues are keeping HER from scoring the BIG O - then read this letter
that reveals the sex secret that keeps you out of the penalty box and in the pleasure zone!

know a lot of men read your column and could
really benefit from this important STAMINA secret
my boyfriend and! recently discovered,

‘As much as hate to throw him under the bus. my
boyfriend's sexual performance was less than
adequate when it came to his "timing". He tried hard
to please me and! can tell that he believed he was
doing a great job, which is why it was difficult forme
to tell him the truth

We've been together for about a year but last month,
after what he thought was a “strong effort’ fora
Saturday afternoon, | couldn't help but be disappointed
and | let him know there could be a bit of a gap
between his perception of his sexual performance and
our SEXUAL REALITY.

Hold him that | love him but when it came to the

‘duration’ of our lovemaking, | was often left feeling
extremely frustrated - he always “got his" and that if
he could "hold out’ just a little longer. maybe I could
дет mine.

He said he always thought that when he “punched the
clock’, he was pulling a “full shift.” Of course, he was
shockedby this huge blow to his ego but after some
serious sulking and a whole lot of denial, he realized
his sexual stamina really could use some improvement.

He was serious about improving his performance so
he @ some research and spoke to a doctor friend of
his His friend told him about a number of cheap.
desensitizing lubricants on the market that might
help his stamina and performance but were known to
possibly hurt erection quality and worse, they tend to
numb a woman - which as far asl'm concerned,
defeats the whole purpose! Great, so now he'd be
able to last longer but [d be numb too! That was the
last thing our relationship needed!

His doctor friend also told him that if he really wanted
to improve his control and performance and still
maintain maximum firmness, he should try a new
product called Vivaxa from the makers of
Maxoderm (the #1 topical male enhancement
product that's recommended by Leading Physician,
Michael A. Savino, M.D., F.A.C.
improving erection quality). The ingredients in this
new “sex stamina secret” make it different from
other products becaus
tested ingredient that is unlike anything else on

DERI

Male Enhancement Formula,

the planet! It actually HELPS erection quality and
firmness. And best of all, the formula absorbs
super fast upon application so it won't numba
woman! Improved erection quality AND enhanced
stamina - it seemed too good to be true!

My boyfriend got a sample and that weekend we tried
it. From the very first application, he felt more firm and
full than ever before - Бу the time we'd finished.
making love, ГО GOTTEN MINE TWICE! Needless to say,
this has been a record breaking month for us. | know
he feels great knowing that 'm completely satisfied
and he's the reason why. And trust me, his confidence
wasn't the only thing that shot through the roof!

So Steffanie, please print this letter - Im sure there's
a ton of women out there wishing their men used
Vivaxa, a quality control and performance enhancing
product that lets him put in the extra time
without numbing Fer! | know they re still offering
a ifyou call

Or visit their website at

Tell your

readers to hurry because supplies were limited
when I called

Pamela B, Nashville, TN

iVaxal

= m соон

NT up
ALL RIGHT

Ph A TB OX

LA Confidential conina from page 74)

“The problem is they often put stuff up with no fact-
checking. The amount of untruth is unbelievable.”

Lavandeira often gets photos by being
invited to a party and posing with celebri-
ties. He has become an Internet celebrity
himself, complete with a failed reality-
television show that never made it onto the
air and lawsuits by paparazzi who claim
he steals the photos on his site. “I'm on the
Z-list,” he says of his party invites, “Maybe
опе day I'll be on the S-list.” Still, he counts
Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and Courtney
Love among his friends and says about 50
percent of publicists get the joke. Tara Reid,
however, once tried to get him kicked out
of a party. (A recent post mentioned her
“porn-star hair" and ridiculed the company
that paid $100,000 for her to make an
appearance.) He certainly has enough
friends to keep getting big scoops. In Janu-
ary he broke the news of Britney spending
the night at the W hotel in Westwood, Cal-
ifornia with a new guy, later identified as
model Isaac Cohen. The next day People's
and Us Weekly's websites followed Lavan-
deira's scoop; Gawker did too but didn't
credit him. wker hates me because I
threaten its existence,” he says.

Lavandeira may be branding
as the Paris Hilton of gossip bloggers, but
Levin of TMZ thinks bloggers shouldn't
be stars. “I don't think people are into
the personality of who gives them infor-
mation,” says Levin. "They're into the
information.” That's a far cry from what
was once true of the Hedda Hoppers
and Walter Winchells of the world, who
leveraged their colorful personalities and
exclusive perches to break news. The
decreasing importance of having a bold-
faced name writing a gossip column has
also made the job less enticing. It used
to be easy for Page Six to hire fresh tal-
ent willing to work cheap for experience,
exposure and endless invitations.

When I started my writing career at
The New York Observer, in 1
the big publications in town
sip and society column
the Observer, New York magazine, Us Weekly
and the Times had a boldfaced-name col-
umnist chronicling the rich and famous
Now most of them have abolished their
gossip sections entirely. Only the fiercely
competitive Daily News and Post still have
established columnists cranking out daily
copy—olien lifted from websites.
sip blogs have certainly undermined
s,” says Gawker found-
beth Spiers, who now
edits Dealbreaker, a Wall Street gossip
blog. ssip blogs are threatening to
traditional columns inasmuch as they
can break news or have access to their
celebrity subjects. And some of them do.

186 If you're used to writing what's basically

self.

a fluffy society column and you're not
really breaking anything, it's going to
be increasingly hard for you to compete
because there are far more people who
can and want to scoop you."

Lavandeira may get into some parties,
but his presence is hardly coveted the way
that of print gossip columnists has been
in the past. For decades publicists have
sucked up to those columnists enough for
them to start feeling as if they're celebri-
ties too. If you've ever read about a celeb-
rity working out with a certain trainer,
you'd better believe that trainer is also
whipping the gossip columnist into shape.
Arandom sighting of a celebrity at a store
you never heard of? Not an act of char-
ity. A table of B-list celebrities mentioned
as dining at a mediocre restaurant? That
came with a free meal—or five.

I wrote the gossip column for New
York for two years, and 1 still get bins of
ions to exclusive events, even from
ists who would call me on publi-
cation day to scream about an unflatter-
ing item I'd written. During those two
years I don't think I ever waited for one
minute outside a red velvet rope or paid
for a drink at a new club. One event
planner sent an orchid every time I ran
a picture from one of his movie screen-
ings, so | usually had a fresh supply of
flowers on my desk. A venerable publicist
once called to beg—"I'm on my hands
and knees!" she shrieked—for me to
include a picture from her event, and 1
did because I liked attending her movie
screenings and she could be a useful
source. We all needed each other, and 1
was pretty popular—until I wasn't. But
we'll get back to that.

Blogs have made it hard for publicists
to play nice and get what they want. It has
never been easy for a publicist to kill an
unflattering item about a client, but there
are ways. The best tactic is to trade: offer
g better, preferably about a com-
works well with the romantic
lives of starlets, since someone is always
hooking up or breaking up in a big soap
opera that warrants endless coverage.
(See Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Lindsay
Lohan.) Another old strategy is to an-
nounce something sensitive on a holiday
when the public is too distracied to
the big columnists are on vacati
most magazines are closed. Mike Myers
announced divorce on С
Eve, and Jessica Simpson announced her
und Thanksgiving. Publi-
so like to release exclusive photos
of their clients looking perfect exiting a
store or working on a set.

But it all went bust with the blogs

“Enough of these staged photos with
perfect hair and perfect makeup." say
Levin, who has provoked the ire of
paparazzi agencies for hiring his own pho-
tographers. “It’s not real. We show celebri-
ties in real life. People are into that.”

And if the celebrities aren't into that,
they're in for even more trouble. When
Woody Harrelson choked one of TMZ's
photographers, the video image of the
assault was immediately posted online.
His publicist couldn't use the traditional
tactic of refusing ever to give TMZ an
exclusive interview with Harrelson or
any of her other clients—a risk most
glossy magazines can't afford to take.
Blogs, however, don't need any gilded
access. “My feeling is the rules have
changed,” says Levin. “It used to be
publicists could bludgeon the traditional
media, but I don't give a shit about get-
ting a sit-down interview. They don't
have that bargain with us.”

Sunshine wishes bloggers would regu-
larly call more for comment, confirma-
tion or denial—as is protocol for most
old-media gossip columnists with whom
he has worked for decades. “The prob-
lem is they often put stuff up with no
basis of fact-checking," he says. “We may
not tell them what they want and we
may not answer their questions, but we
can be guides about whether or not it's
true. The amount of unuuth is kind of
unbelievable.”

Instead of tips from publicists and
celebrity friends, new-media gossip
sites thrive on intelligence from loyal
readers. Gawker gets about 500 e-mails
a day from readers, many anonymous,
though only 10 percent of those end
up being useful. However, readers love
writing in about celebrity sightings for
the Gawker Stalker feature and even
use old gossip-column lingo, such as
"canoodling" for a couple making out.
"Now everyone is a self-appointed jour-
nalist," says Gould. (Back when I was a
gossip columnist, I rarely got anything
but spam and press releases e-mailed to
the address printed at the bottom of my
column. Only crazies called in tips.)
Bloggers also have the luxury of hurl-
g a rumor into cyberspace and seeing
sticks. They can often figure out
if it’s true based on readers’ e-mailed
comments. If it’s bullshit, there's often
silence—never a good thing. In contrast,
at New York magazine, I had to get each
item I wrote fact-checked, confirmed by
two sources and reviewed by a lawyer
before going to press. 1 often had a hot
tip I couldn't use because I couldn't get it
through all that red tape, and I increas-
ingly saw it pop up on the blogs. The
result was a fairly boring, albeit accurate
column of about six items a week. Gould,
meanwhile, writes 12 pi

Besides getting tips
gers can instantly correct something if
they get it wrong. Print columns, how-
ever, have to wait at least а day before

running a correction. Even worse, when
a glossy screws up, the gaffe is on news-
stands for a week. Last August Us Weekly
ran a cover story about Jennifer Aniston
and Vince Vaughn getting engaged, and
the magazine's editor touted the “exclu-
sive” on the Today show. Aniston quickly
rebutied the engagement claim to gold-
standard People magazine (which along
with every other celebrity title has beefed
up its website in the past year). Bloggers,
however, just update their mistakes, mak-
ing them part of the commentary—which
brings us back to my brush with unpopu-
larity in the gossip industry.

Last spring Random House pub-
ished my first novel, 4% Famous. It's a
fictional account of my experiences as a
gossip columnist, and it didn't win me
any friends in the industry. Right before
it was published, Jared Paul Stern was
fired from his longtime gig at Page Six
for his alleged shakedown of super-
market tycoon Ron Burkle, which had
been caught on videotape. The fedora-
sporting Stern allegedly proposed a
deal with the much-covered billionaire:
Burkle would invest in Stern’s clothing
line in exchange for friendlier coverage
in the Post. As soon as the scandal broke
online, almost all the major television
networks and newspapers started calling
me for commentary. (They didn’t want to
interview anyone at the Daily News or the
Post, and not many other gossip colum-
nists were left, for the aforementioned
reasons.) I told pretty much anyone
who asked that I thought Stern, whom I
had known socially for years, was guilty
of unethical behavior. 1 also said some
bitchy stuff about how Page Six reporters
think they're invincible—stuff I probably
shouldn't have said out of professional
courtesy to my former peers. "Anytime
you want to stop trashing me is fine by
me,” Stern e-mailed me. I considered it a
fair enough request and told him 1 would
heed it. Needless to say he didn't show
up for my press lunch at Le Bernardin
Stern got the last laugh in January when,
for lack of evidence, the government
refused to press charges.

The Los Angeles Times incorrectly
referred to me as a “former Page Six
reporter” in a story about the scandal
because 1 had worked in the features
department at the Post for a year before
going to New York, during which time
I wrote about a dozen Page Six items.
‘This perceived capitalizing on the Page
Six reputation to promote my book pro-
voked the ire of a Page Six reporter with
whom 1 had been off-and-on friendly
for years. (I'll call her Jane because if
1 use her real name she'll probably kill
me.) We have a history of miscommu-
nication, competition and fighting, a
particularly volatile cocktail considering
our profession.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for our
fight to hit the blogs, and it wasn't pretty.

It all started when Jane sent me a slew

of threatening e-mails accusing me of mis-
representing my ties to Page Six and call-
ing me pathetic and shameless. She had
always been tough-talking, but I found her
tone particularly terrifying and even lost
sleep over it. 1 forwarded the messages to
the Post's publicist, who happened to be
an old friend, and to Jane's editor, who
knew about our rocky relationship. Jane
didn't like that much, either. “May your
climb up the social ladder of New York
not have you shed so many friends—or
‘frenemies’ as you so proudly call most
everyone—as this opportunistic stunt
did,” Jane e-mailed me.

Soon afier, a reporter from Women's
Wear Daily's media column called to get
the scoop and wanted the e-mails, too.
I wouldn't give them up, but he ran an
item about the spat anyway. He men-
tioned 1 had taken a catty swipe at Jane
regarding her book deal a ycar earlier
it may have been a kickback for
s favorable coverage of the pub-
lisher. Did I really say that? Yes. Was it
wise? No. Karma's a bitch.

I gave WWD a quote saying I felt com-
passion (a word I learned in yoga) for
Jane because she had a lot of anger and
Jealousy. Jane thought I had planted that
item, but 1 hadn't. I also hadn't given
her threatening e-mails to Gawker, even
though Denton had repeatedly asked
me to. I thought it was time to act like a
lady and let it die down. But of course it
didn't. Jane declared me her archenemy,
which I have to admit | consider a bit
of an honor, considering her long and
illustrious list of enemies.

It got only more dramatic. Last June
1 organized a “Gossip Lit” reading with
other former gossip columnists at a
downtown bar. A publishing gossip site,
GalleyCat (part of Mediabistro.com), ran
an item about how one of the writers,
whose book party Jane was hosting, had
pulled out. GalleyCat remarked that
Jane's “anti-Schoenemania is perhaps
the worst-kept secret in New York.” Fair
enough. But then it got weird.

Early the next morning Gawker posted
an item about how I hadn't shown up
for the reading. 1 quickly e-mailed to
say that item—which had already been
linked on Jossip—was false: 1 had read
from my book to about 100 people.
Instead of deleting the item, the site ran
an update: “Contrary to linkage below
and elsewhere, Deborah e-mails to clarify
that she did not cancel but actually read
in front of a large crowd last x

It was hardly a c
was friendly with a previous Gawker edi-
tor who had written that post, as well as
with Hauslaib of Jossip. I e-mailed Haus-
laib, and he called me back right away.
He alluded to Jane's hostility toward me
being at the root of his nasty coverage
of me and also posted an update about
the reading. Still, it didn’t stop him from
taking a swipe at me months later in an
e-mail about the swanky launch party for

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Culture & Travel magazine. “We under-
stand Deborah Schoeneman RSVPs to
Diet Coke bottles opening," he wrote in a
post blasted out to his entire mailing list
1 e-mailed Hauslaib in protest (1 went as
a friend's plus one!), and he responded
right away, saying it wasn't personal.
Riiighi. He didn't change a word

I decided to meet with him to ask
about his tactics and was surprised at how
sweet he seemed. At 23, he's the baby of.
the blogger group, having started his
site while studying journalism at Syra-
cuse University. "If someone is going to
take the effort to reach out to me, I'm
more than happy to hear their case,” said
Hauslaib over snacks near his downtown
apartment. “If we did something wrong,
I'll own up to it." But still, his nasty items
about me (and there are a bunch) pop
up at the top of a Google search of my
name. Thanks, Jossip.

We didn't speak about Jane at all, but

she was clearly on both our minds, and
1 suspect she remains one of his best
sources. “At the end of the day,” he said,
sipping a Diet Coke, “I'm a firm believer
that all press is good press. I understand
what 1 do for a living. If you dish it out,
you have to be able to take it.”

Hauslaib broke the news about con-
troversial book publisher Judith Regan
being fired at the end of last year after
the failed launch of O.J. Simpson's
book /f 1 Did It. He was heading home
around seven r.m. on a Friday (the
tabloid gossip columns for Saturday,
Sunday and Monday had already been
written) when a source e-mailed the
information to Hauslaib's BlackBerry,
perhaps the most important tool for
any blogger. He quickly posted the
news from his computer. “It was the
timing,” he said, shrugging. “I got
lucky.” He claimed it as an exclusive,
but soon after his post the Times ran a

— an белл Ff

"I just don't know why you gynecologists bother coming

in here during your conventions... .

more thorough story. In the next week
the news was constantly updated and
dissected—pure blog candy

In the tradition of print gossip colum-
nist feuding, Gawker's Shafrir is quick
to discredit Hauslaib's big Regan break.
“Jossip claims exclusives, but it's just an
exclusive for 10 seconds,
We don't want to claim anything as an
exclusive,” adds Gould. Unlike print col-
umns, however, blogs need each other.
One of the biggest pains of writing a
weekly column is getting scooped by a
daily one, “Readership and ad dollars
don't rise and fall if another gossip blog
has a big break,” Hauslaib says. “When
it comes to a blog, it's more crucial to
have a distinct voice.”

One link Jossip didn't pick up was a
recent Gawker post about Jane. She had
introduced a reading of famous authors
on the topic of sex with a diatribe about
her dismal dating history. “A concerned
member of the community” transcribed
Jane's candid speech and e-mailed
Gawker the next morning. I read it with
train-wreck fascination, feeling simultane
ously giddy and guilty. “You know it's not
going well,” she said, “when 14 minutes
into dinner you ask your date, who's a
well-known Wall Streeter—you all know
him; I just can't say his name—who's been
going on and on about homosexuality,
Excuse me, are you homosexual? and he
looks at you and goes, "Not right now.”
The dating dispatches got worse. “It’s also
not going well when you notice your boy-
friend of several months—a well-known
TV personality—can only get off if he’s
having sex with you from behind while
watching himself on TV. It's kind of like
getting spit-roasted by the same guy

After I read the post first thing in the
morning, I went to yoga. On the walk
back home I was gossiping about Jane's
dating diatribe with another media friend
on my cell phone. 1 was just gabbing away,
talking trash with my friend as if we were
in Mean Girls. | stopped on astreet corner,
waiting for the light to turn. That's when
I noticed Jane walking her dog on the
other side of the street. I quickly hung up
the phone—when I looked back up, she
was gone. Part of me wanted to run and
catch her, to say 1 would help her get that
post taken down. I wanted to ask why she
hadn't responded to my two e-mails ask-
ing her out for drinks to try to smooth
things over. 1 wanted to assure her we
would both fall in love one day, despite
our checkered past romances with ego
centric men who wanted to date a gossip
columnist. I wanted to say we weren't
really all that different. Maybe there
wasn't room in this big city for the two of
us back when we were both gossip colum-
nists, but I had moved on. I was out of her
way. The nature of the beast had changed,
and it would never be the same.

I wanted to say I'm sorry.

hafrir says.

b. d

-- ALL THE ! | ас

on
+

39. Mexico tL
» € Pacifico

Please drink responsibly. &
„Г

BIG TUNA

(continued from page 80)
from anything he had seen in the Big
Apple. “At least in New York you had
the families, so you could identify who
was working with who,” he says, “but
Chicago was just a mess.”

PLAYBOY

No caper typifies the crazy-quilt nature of
Chicago crime more than the Levinson's
jewelry burglary, one of the biggest Chi-
cago scores of the 1970s. Stuck on a blod
with an adult bookstore and seedy bars,
Levinson's didn't look like a good target for
a high-value heist. Although Harry Levin-
son insisted on being called a jeweler in the
press, the word loans was prominently dis-
played on the sign over his store. Like any
other pawnshop's, his windows were clut-
tered with the faded and tacky.

But there was treasure buried inside.
A relentless showman, Levinson had
purchased one of the world’s largest dia-
monds, the 70.2-carat Idol's Eye, and
every so often trotted it out for auctions,
claiming he would accept only bids of
more than $1 million. Although he had no
takers by December 1977. he did attract
another sort of unwanted attention. The
Saturday night before Christmas, a crew
of what police later described as highly
skilled technicians made their own bid
for Levinson’s jewels. From the roof they
threw a tarpaulin over the alley side of the
building and used an acetylene torch un-
der the shroud to cut through the bars on
a second-floor bathroom window.

Once inside they found five differ-
ent vaults to crack, a diabolical challenge.
They came away with a haul worth more
than $1 million in jewels and fur bur didn't
open the largest safe, which held the Idol's
Eye. Not that they didn't try. They stayed
through the day on Sunday and into the
early hours of Monday morning. By the
time they left, the water they had used to
cool the metal their torches had cut stood
inches deep on the showroom floor.

Some investigators now believe two dil-
ferent crews may have teamed for the op-
eration—one mostly Mob connected, the
other independent. One thing was certain:
Only Mendell could have engineered the
elaborate setup that overcame the five dif-
ferent alarm systems supposedly making
Levinson's burglarproof. To maintain a
continuous circuit Mendell trailed cables—
camouflaged with garbage 100 yards
down the alley, up the side ofan apartment
building and into a black box that sat in the
middle of a vacant first-floor apartment.

After opening his doors that Monday,
80-year-old Levinson sloshed dumbstruck
through the store. In 60 years of business
he had never suffered as much as a robbery,
letalone a heist of this magnitude. He called
the police, but according to Roemer, in Gen-
uine Godfather, he also called Tony Accardo,

140 who was soon seen lunching with Levinson

at Chez Paul, a restaurant not far from the
store. Roemer writes that Spilotro (by this
time based in Vegas) had fingered Mendell.
In days, he asserts, the loot was coughed up
and dutifully returned to Levinson.

‘Today no one intimately familiar with
the Levinson's burglary or the Outfit be-
lieves Roemer's rosy scenario is true. First,
since Mob burglars were involved, Accardo
wouldn't have needed Spilotro’s help to
identify the wire man. In addition, Accardo
would probably have felt no obligation to
return anything to Levinson other than a
finder’s fee. The jeweler had already filed
a police report, which forced him to make
an insurance claim, so he was likely to get
something back for his loss.

As for the burglars, Accardo made them
learn their place in the Outfit food chain.
They were told to fork over Levinson's loot
to Mob fences, who would charge far more
in commission than independents.

Although Mendell’s crew complied
with these edicts, they regretted it im-
mediately and let others know of their
unhappiness. FBI agent Zack Shelton
investigated their deaths and today has
no doubt Mendell and some members of
his crew went on to burglarize Accardo's
house. “Obviously, it was a stupid thing
to do, but it could have been a ‘Screw
you, Mob' sort of thing,” he says.

The thought that Accardo would have
kept the jewels in River Forest has always
seemed the most preposterous part of the
break-in story. But in the world of the Out-
fita little knowledge was a dangerous thing,
and for anyone familiar with the history of
Accardo's house, the notion of a hiding
place would not have seemed far-fetched.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote that his
hometown, Oak Park, was a neighbor-
hood of “wide lawns and narrow minds.
In that case, River Forest—Oak Park's
neighbor—had even wider lawns if not
narrower minds. The village is contigu-
ous with Oak Park but almost exclusively
residential, an enclave for a few thousand
families. By the middle part of the 20th
century it was home to industrial mag-
nates, executives and professionals. As late
as 1967 the village still required a mini-
mum home-construction cost to “maintain
a high-standard residential town.”

Despite those standards, River Forest
had another reputation—for housing the
royalty of the Outfit. No doubt its proximity
to downtown Chicago was a plus. It wasalso
surrounded by gritty blue-collar suburbs
where the crew leaders and their soldiers
lived. Paul Ricca, Accardo's best friend, was
among the first River Forest mobsters. A di-
rect heir to Capone, Ricca nevertheless set
a subdued tone with his stately Pr
home. When a Hollyw оой extortion ı
he was involved in went a
prison became Ricca's pri
In his absence Accardo took the Outfit reins
and never released them.

At five-foot-11, with broad shoulders,

Accardo was a big man by Outfit standards
То much of the world he was known as
Топу. But to those who knew him best,
he was Joe, as in Joe Batters, a nickname
that harked back to his days in Al Capone's
crew when he brought the great American
pastime down on the head of anyone who
dared defy his boss. If he made his bones
with brute strength, he later made his mark
with cunning: first when he organized С
cago's five Mafia groups into one clenched
fist and next when he extended its reach
all the way to California. His hammerlock
on unions, the Teamsters in particular, gave
him access to the pension funds that built
the Las Vegas strip for the Mob.

lo's River Forest lifestyle expanded
inal empire did. In 1951 he
moved into a Roaring Twenties m:
built by the flamboyant manufactu;
of Majestic radios. A monstrous English
Tudor, it had 22 rooms, an indoor swim-
ming pool and a bowling alley. Unlike
some of the other kingpins in town, Ac-
cardo was no recluse. He sent his two
sons and two daughters to local schools
and threw open his doors to their friends
and parents. On Fridays in his study he
and his understated wife, Clarice, hosted
movie night, showing firserun features
direct from downtown theaters (supplied
brother, who ran the projection
union). Joe Batters himself would carry
trays of hot dogs for the kiddies.

Such overtures went unreciprocated
by his neighbors. The children were
rarely invited to birthday parties. In
a town where the country club was an
important part of society, Accardo was
blackballed when he applied for mem-
bership. He finally gave up and bought
his own golf course іп a nearby town. Yet
despite the snubs, his oldest daughter
chose to live in River Forest and enrolled
her children in the public schools

Maybe to keep close to their grandchil-
dren, the elder Accardos decided toremain
in River Forest when they became empty
nesters. In 1963 they purchased a corner
lot on Ashland Avenue, down the street
from where they had first lived in town,
and commenced to build their retirement
home. Accardo reportedly paid careful at-
tention to the design, and to oversee con-
struction he picked a local contractor who
was also a neighbor: Van Corbin, who had
changed his name from Sam Panveno and
whose cousin ran the rackets in the south-
ern suburbs. With this pedigree, Corbin
was someone Accardo must have felt could
be trusted, but his faith likely wavered two
years later, after Corbi
cial reverses. During negot
IRS Corbin was encouraged to share the
blueprints of 1407 Ashland, something he
made the mistake of divulging to Accardo.
Soon after, Corbin decided to downsize
himselí—from a house to an apartment—
and checked his family into a courtyard
motel the night before the move. The
next morning, as another motel guest was
shaving with his door open, he saw Corbin

being cornered їп the parking lot by two
tanned, muscular men wearing sunglasses.
He watched as they pulled out .22.
pistols with silencers and gunned Corbin
down—as professional a hit as you could
see outside the movies.

The murder was never solved, and
no further Accardo connection has been
proved, but with death 1407 Ash-
land was born in blood and clouded with
rumor, like a pirate’s buried treasure. On
the street, Outfit wiseguys would always
wonder what was so special about the house
that Accardo would kill to keep it hidden.

Vincent Moretti, the wisest wiseguy ever,
was probably well acquainted with the
Corbin story. He lived in Elmwood Park,
the working-class suburb just across the
road from River Forest and near both
Accardo's house and the motel where
the contractor was killed. Any effort to
ake sense of the break-in story must
back to Moretti. By stomping him,
the Mob had singled him out for special
punishment, perhaps because he should
have known better. He was as much as
20 years older than the others and was,
obviously, Italian.

But he could also have been beaten
for playing a more pivotal role in the
burglary plot than previously thought.
There's some debate about whether
he was given up by Mendell or his
nephew, a burglar who worked with
Mendell and also snitched to the Mob.
But there is no doubt Moretti was in-
volved with the break-in. When po-
lice searched his possessions after his
death, they found boxes of cuff links
Accardo used to send out as Chrisunas
gifts, items that could have come only
from Big Tuna's home.

Moretti was no longer a burglar when
he was killed but a fence for indepen-
dents like Mendell, Garcia and Ryan.
He had the most to lose when the bur-
glars were forced to use Mob fences for
the Levinson's loot. But could he have
been blamed for encouraging Mendell
and the others to steal it again? Could
he have been so reckless as to challenge
Accardo? Those who knew him answer
with an unqualified yes.

Born into a large brawling family,
Moretti and two of his brothers started
out as policemen but showed no in-
dination for law enforcement. They
killed and were killed. All were eventu-
ally ousted from the force, and in 1968,
after his conviction for burglary, the
papers referred to Vincent as a hood.
Although the Outfit always had its share
of renegade cx-coppers, it wanted no
part of Moretti. He worked as an inde-
pendent and graduated to loan-shark-
ing and fencing. Big and burly with a
shaved bullet head, he terrorized Chi-
cago's swank bars and clubs, making
obscene comments to attractive women
and threatening to fight their men.

Vice cop Andy Murcia had an un-
nerving brush Moretti when he
was moonlighting asa security detective
for the Ambassador East Hotel, then a
Chicago hangout for visiting celebri-
ties. He was summoned to the disco by
the hotel's owner, who was appalled by
Moretti's behavior at his bar. Describ-
ing the incident for the website The
Columnists.com, he writes, “All 1 saw
was a tough-looking guy with a half-
crazed look on his face. He was wear-
ing an unbuttoned shirt that exposed
his gorilla-hairy chest and too many
gold chains.” Coming up from behind,
Murcia stuck his pistol in Morctti's
back, identified himself as a policeman
and escorted him out of the hotel. Left
on the curb, Moretti swore revenge.
Marshall Caifano, then an Outfit under-
boss and mutual acquaintance of Moretti
and Murcia, attempted to intercede. He
commanded Moretti to stay away from
the Ambassador East but warned the cop
to watch his ba Caifano told Murcia
that Moretti was “his own worst enemy.”
Even to an underboss Moretti could be
“at times uncontrollable.”

At this point Caifano, a tiny former
enforcer, was in his late 60s. Like the
septuagenarians Accardo and Joey Ai-
uppa, his longtime right-hand man, he
no longer had the physical presence to

а.

strike fear in а mindless thug. But if
Moretti thought the old men who ran
the Outfit were literally toothless, he
would soon be surprised.

Through spring and summer 1978, FBI
agents Pecoraro and Shelton continued to
make important breaks in the burglar case.
The two were unlikely partners: Shelton
was dapper with a neatly trimmed mus-
tache, brushed-back hair and a distinctive
Louisiana accent (one agents wife called
him the Cajun Casanova); short, dark and
intense, Pecoraro was often confused by the
mobsters with one of their own.

Between the two of them, they could
disarm or intimidate just about anyone. In
а chance meeting with Accardo's son-in-
law, they got him to volunteer that there
had been а burglary at 1407 Ashland and
that the old man was so “pissed,” he had
rushed back from Palm Springs. In an-
other break they tracked a low-level par-
ticipant in the Levinson's burglary to a
‘Texas campground, where he confirmed
that the thieves were forced to give the loot
back to the Outfit. Most important, they
subpoenaed mobster phone records for
the times prior to each murder. Although
the records listed only the numbers that
were dialed, they revealed a chain of calls,
starting with Accardo and then branching

“It is tiny, but it’s got a great view into

the bedroom of a beautiful blonde who never pulls
down her shades.”

141

PETS TOT

out to his underbosses (in particular to
Aiuppa, then 71), the suspected hit men
and ultimately to the victims. In each case
it appeared that the burglars were being
set up by someone they knew—perhaps on
the ruse of participating in a juicy score.

Steve Garcia had already fled to Miami
when another burglar lured him back to
Chicago. Phone records show Mendell last
talked to Ron Jarrett, his violent South Side
buddy from the aspirin heist. FBI agents
are convinced Jarrett assisted
murder along with John "Little Tony" Bor-
sellino, another, much slicker crew leader.

According to FBI agent O' Rourke, who
had an informant who was friendly with

i y. the hit man later had qualms
about what he'd done, especially when
the informant told him Mendell had been
real good kid.” Borsellino replied,
hat kid went through hell. We tortured
him pretty bad. I feel like tearing up my
union card now."

Borsellino went on to say the whole af-
fair had gotten out of hand. He believed
some burglars were killed who had noth-
ing to do with the Accardo break-in, but
when he suggested that to Aiuppa, the
old man replied, “Kill all the burglars.
They re all beefers [informants] anyway.”
Borsellino would be killed a year later but
more mercifully, with a couple of .22s to
the back of his head.

Before long Shelton and Pecoraro had
enough evidence to empanel a grand
jury. In October 1978 Michael Volpe, the
elderly caretaker who had discovered
the break-in, came to give his testimony.
His lawyer did not arrive in time to brief
him before he was called into the grand
jury room. Even in his broken English.
the caretaker blurted out more than his
employer expected. Five days later he
disappeared, never to be seen again.

While this was an unfortunate devel-
opment for Volpe, it was no setback for
the investigation, Shelton could then go

before a magistrate and request a search
warrant for Accardo’s home, claiming
there was absolutely nowhere else to
search for the missing witness. After three
tries he got his warrant.

On November 11, 1978, with no warn-
ing, Shelton, Pecoraro and a team of two
dozen other agents assembled in the
driveway of 1407 Ashland Avenue. As the
Tribune reported, “The raid was believed
to be the first time law enforcement au-
thorities have entered and searched the
crime lord's home."

Accardo had already left for California,
so the agents summoned his 39-year-old
daughter, Marie Kumerow, who lived a
few blocks away, and asked her to open the
door. At the sight of the agents, she balked.
Shelton recalls, “She said, ‘I don't think I
can, Daddy will be really mad at me.’ Then
I said, “You don't understand. I have a
search ant. You can let u: r we'll
have to tear the door down. 1 think your
dad would be madder if we have to tear
down his front door"

Kumerow opened the door, but her sis-
ter, 37-year-old Linda Palermo, soon ar-
rived with Bernard Bruno, their father's
obstreperous pint-size lawyer. “She was
cussing us out, and he kept asking every-
one for their name and number,” Shelton
says. The agents proceeded as delicately
as possible through the house. Two agents
were assigned to a room, and a Hoor leader
would consult with a government lawyer
before anything could be seized.

Once inside, Pecoraro could see that
the first floor sprawled farther than he
would have thought from the street, but
aside from gold faucets in the bathroom he
found nothing especially opulent. Plaques
from churches and other charitable institu-
tions hung on the wall, offering gratitude
for Accardo's contributions. Pecoraro was
assigned to the master bedroom, where
he discovered a little black notebook in the
nightstand. “It was filled with an amazing

BUT... BOT I
DUST DID A

amount of stock transactions in blue-chip
companies," he says. "Hundreds and thou-
sands of shares. It looked like he was trading
in other names, too, but I wasn't allowed to
take it.” Among the few items they did take

the cryptic notation “Harry—Jewele

Oddly enough the day's most impor-
tant finds were in the basement. But the
basement at 1407 Ashland was not just any
basement. It was accessed through one of
the mirrored panels in the foyer. Once
down the stairs and past the restaurant-
size stainless-steel kitchen. the agents saw
а cavernous room more than 50 feet long
that amazed everyone present. “You could
fit the entire upstairs in that one room,”
Pecoraro says. It held a round conference
table with 34 chairs and a movie screen,

‘To one side was Accardo's office. “When
we opened the door,” Shelton recalls, “the
daughters were more interested to see the
inside than we were. You could tell there
were places in that house where they
were not allowed." The heads of stuffed
animals were mounted on the walls. The
agents also remember several pictures of
Accardo the angler, holding up big fish to
make light of his nickname

More disturbing was the furnace room
with an array of open incinerators. They
found a pair of glasses in one. "We couldn't
get a prescription out of them because they
were burned so badly,” Shelton says. “But
we all think they were Volpe's and that they
burned him in there.”

O'Rourke made the biggest discovery,
behind an oversize door next to the walk-
in cooler. It was pulled open to reveal a

walk-in safe. This could have explained

Accardo's secrecy about the hou
struction; it may also have been what Men-
dell and the other burglars were looking
for. Afier a few more hours of negotiation
the safe too was opened, revealing a vault
10 feet wide and 15 feet long. Levinson's
jewels were not there, but something that

con-

seemed almost as rew:
bundles of $5,000 stacked
box—a total of $275,000. Two Smith &
Wesson .38s sat on another shelf.

Since Palermo had testified for the
grand jury that her parents’ house held
nothing of value, Shelton seized the money
on the slim pretext that it was “the fruits of
a crime—the crime of perjury.”

‘Theagents knew the source ofthe money.
Other investigations had started to uncover
the Outfits methods for skimming casino
cash. Working with the Federal Reserve,
Pecoraro and Shelton could track most of
the bills back to Las Vegas banks. The serial
numbers in some bundles were still in the
order they were printed at the mint.

As the grand jury investigation went
into 1979, Pecoraro and Shelton thought
they had the final piece to link Accardo to
the killings. They were turning up the heat
on Gerald Carusiello, a well-liked Outfit
thief. Phone records showed him talking
to both the Mob bosses and some of the
burglars. He could have provided the bait
that drew his friends to their death. Then,
one night in September, Carusiello fell for
such a trap himself. He was found dead
outside a condo complex in the black
dothes, gloves and hat of a booster. “We
probably caused his death,” Shelton says.
“We were just about to revoke his parole
to convince him to talk.”

There was no one left alive—or willing
to talk—who could tie the deaths to Levin-
son's, the break-in or the Mob bosses. Even-
tually even the cash went back to Accardo:
An appeals court ruled it could not be seized
unless it was tied to a criminal investigation.
In his de the judge had fun with the
case's "strange" facts. In one footnote, he
writes, “An interesting question arises as to
whom a ‘known burglar’ is known. If the
government's theory is correct in this case,
the occupation of the deceased persons in-
volved must have been knownto some large
segment of the population. Such a reputa-
tion could not have been advantageous and
indeed must sometimes be fatal.

It was no laughing matter for the FBI
agents who had worked on the burglar case.
“It would have been nice if we could have
seized that money,” Shelton says, “but at
least we kept it from him for 18 months.”

Just a few years later the skim investi
gations would bear fruit with Operation
Strawman, which won the conviction of Ai
uppa and other major Outfit underbosses.
If the feds had had the cash from the safe,
they would have snared Accardo, too, but
he dodged another bullet, as he would do
until he died, in 1992, at the age of 86.

If nothing else, the case spoiled the house
for Accardo. In 1979, just months after the
feds executed the search warrant, he put
1407 Ashland on the block. It has passed
through only a few hands since. The incin-
erators have been removed and a hot tub
installed. A real estate agent says one owner
used the safe to store her wrapping paper.

(continued from page 102)

wait for those additional studies, appro-
stead and declaring
it proof, for all intents and purposes, that
HGH was the fountain of youth
husband was shocked by what the anti-
aging people did with his studies,” Inge
Rudman says. “He had no idea. He was
flabbergasted by the attention, which he
didn’t demand and didn't enjoy.”

In the early 1990s Robert Goldman and
Ronald Klatz were searching for a big idea
which made them the perfect audience for
Rudman's study. Goldman, a short, mus-
cular, reticent man from a tough Brooklyn
neighborhood, once had pretensions of
becoming an Olympic athlete, though he
won't say in what sport. Instead he has had
to settle for those curious athletic achieve-
ments that warrant mention only in the
Guinness World Records book. He holds the
record for most consecutive sit-ups (13,500)
and most consecutive handstand push-ups
(321). “I always wanted to see how far I
could push the envelope,” he says.

Klatz was not an athletic youth. He
was a portly, brash, combative man who
had always been interested in “futuristic
science-fiction comic books, technology,
the future of mankind, stuff that,” he
says. At 18 he became the “у
spiratory therapist in the country,” partly
because he was interested in health care
and partly so he could be a caregiver to his
father after his stroke. Klatz saw medicine
as divided into three segments: infectious
diseases, trauma and degenerative dis-
eases related to aging. When he learned
that 90 percent of all medical dollars are
spent on degenerative disease, he decided
to make that his specialty. That's when he
and Goldman read Rudman's article in
The New England Journal of Medicine. To say
that a lightbulb turned on over both their
craniums is an understatement. It was a
nuclear glow of worldwide significance.

‘Two years later Klatz and Goldman
founded A4M. They held their first anti-
aging conference in 1993, attended by only
a handful of doctors and delegates. Today
they hold more than 30 conferences a year
in locations across the globe: Bali, Bangkok,
Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Bucharest,
Istanbul, Zurich, Dubai, Caracas, London,
nd Las Vegas. At any given con-
ference they can expect a good percentage
of their 18,000 A4M delegates and 11,500
AdM-certified antiaging doctors to attend.

In fact, Goldman and Klatz make
much of their money hosting antiaging
conferences and certifying doctors as
antiaging specialists, since the field is not
ed by the American Board of

p: ties. It costs from $900 to
$1,800 to attend one of their conferences.
A4M does not transcribe and distribute
its conference lectures on paper; instead,
each of a conference's 25 lectures are re-
corded on CDs that sell for $99 to $149.
Doctors who attend a convention and

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want antiaging certification are charged
a few thousand dollars for their degrees
after they pass exams.

Goldman and Klatz, both 51, are the
Scrooge and Marley of the antiaging move-
ment. They are experts at making money
by credentialing doctors in their chosen
medical field, despite their own suspect
credentials. In fact, they didn’t get their
medical degrees until 1998, six years after
they founded A4M, and those degrees are
dubious at best. Goldman and Klatz claim
they received their osteopathic medical de-
grees from the Central American Health
Sciences University in Belize two years after
the school opened. They explain that they
got their degrees so quickly because they
had done a lot of dinical work outside of
Belizc. The American Medical Association
refuses to recognize those degrees, and in
2000 the Illinois Department of Profes-
sional Regulation fined Klatz and Gold-
man $5,000 each for claiming to be M.D.s
and prohibited them from using those
letters after their names in that state, Yet
in all the A4M literature, Klatz and Gold-
man have M.D. and D.O. after their names
because, as Goldman once claimed, they
are recognized as doctors on the island of
St. Vincent. Both men are given to gran-
diose proclamations. “You can always tell
the pioneers by the arrows in their back,”
Goldman says. And Klatz has repeated nu-
expect to live to be 150.”

Dr. Thomas Perls, an associate pro-
fessor of medicine at Boston University
Medical School, is the Simon Legree of
the antiaging movement. Klatz has al-
ready sued him once for defamation.
(The suit was settled out of court, and
neither party will discuss it.) When I talk
to Perls before going to the A4M confer-

ence in Las Vegas, he practically foams at
the mouth with indignation at the anti-
aging movement. He calls it hucksterism,
quackery—an organization of snake-oil
salesmen. I ask him to tell me what he
really feels. He says, "I wouldn't trust
anything anyone in the antiaging move-
ment said.” (Dr. T says of Perls, “He's the
quack. He's been ignoring thousands
of studies in hormone replacement for
years. He's just trying to make a name
for himself with his stuff on TV.")

Perls claims the antiaging movement's
doctors don't operate like mainstream
doctors. “They have no clinical trials to
support their claims,” he says. “There isa
substantial concern that growth-hormone
therapies can promote the growth of dor-
mant cancer cells. As we get older, our
bodies’ decrease in growth hormones is
nature's way of keeping those cancer cells
dormant.” He adds that “maybe there
will be a role for HGH in the future, but
it's too soon to tell. It’s a lazy way out to
take it to look younger. It all smacks of
the Mafia and RICO stuff.”

Dr. Mary Lee Vance, an aging special-
ist at the University of Virginia Medical
Center, is not as rabid as Perls. She admits
that if the claims for HGH therapy were
proven someday, she might take HGH
too. But she tells me that the way the anti-
aging industry currently prescribes HGH

wrong, immoral, probably illegal, and
it could be harmful.” Vance says there are
medically approved reasons for prescrib-
ing HGH to patients who are severely
growth-hormone deficient, but many of
the reasons antiaging doctors pre
HGH are not medically approved
doesn't affect libido, for example,
says. “Testosterone docs.”

“We could have done without the Viagra demonstration.”

A few years ago the National Institutes
of Health called hormone-replacement
therapy hot news but then added that
the “reality is no one has yet to show that
supplements of these hormones prevent
frailty or add years to people's
"They can also cause harmful side effects.”

The medical term for HGH is somatotro-
pin. It’s an anabolic protein secreted by
the anterior pituitary gland that stimu-
lates growth and cell production in hu-
mans, causing the body to build up tissue,
muscles, skin, bone, organs and the heart.
Somatotropin secretion is at its highest
during puberty, and it decreases rapidly
after the age of 30. (The same is true of
testosterone.) A deficiency of somatotropin
in children can lead to dwarfism, and in
adults it leads to extreme and premature
frailty, diabetes and reduced sexual func-
tion. An excess of somatotropin, however,
can lead to a host of dangerous and some-
times fatal conditions. The crux of the
debate concerning the efficacy of HGH
therapies hinges on what exactly makes
up an HGH deficiency in adults. The
antiaging movement takes a liberal view of
what the word deficiency means, while the
mainstream medical community is much
more conservative. All adults are deficient
in HGH in relation to the amounts they
had as children, teens and young adults,
but the mainstream medical community
claims this is a normal deficiency brought
on by the nature of aging.

In an experiment with rats, those given
growth hormone tended to be bigger, more
muscular and more active than rats with
hormone deficiencies, but the bigger rats
died sooner (they were also dumber), which
has led many mainstream doctors to claim
growth-hormone therapies are merely cos-
metic. They simply mask aging, with no
benefits and with potentially dangerous side
effects. As proof they point tothe fact that in-
creased muscle size in rats receiving growth
hormone brought no increase in strength,
and to another study in which a dying dog
was given growth hormone, frolicked like a
puppy for a few days and then died.

It has been proven that excessive HGH
in humans can cause acromegaly, or
gigantism. Acromegaly thickens the bones
of the feet, hands, jaw and forehead, pro-
ducing a Neanderthal look. It has also
been proven that excessive HGH causes
enlargement of the organs, especially the

can be dangero

i tion usually occurs
in athletes who have taken massive doses
of HGH to enhance their performance.
HGH has been the supplement of choice
for athletes since the mid-1980s because
the antidoping community has yet to for-
mulate a usable test to detect it. Shortly
before he died of brain cancer, in 1991,
former NFL
he had taken HGH for 16 weeks. Flor-
ence Gi ing of the
track world in the 1990s and an Olympic

medal winner, never tested positive for
illegal drugs during her career, yet she
died in 1998 at the age of 38 from a brain
abnormality. Flo-Jo had the visible signs
of acromegaly and the facial hair of a tes-
tosterone user when she died. Apparently
she never heeded the warnings passed
along by those who took steroids in the
1990s: “Athletes with excessive HGH
rarely live past 60."

In 1981 the pharmaceutical company
Genentech discovered the recombinant
DNA of HGH ina laboratory. The FDA
approved it for treating dwarfism in
children, and 11 years later it was ap-
proved for treating healthy children
considered abnor-
mally short. By 1996
nearly half of all
the HGH in use was
being prescribed to
short, healthy chil-
dren under the
premise that short
children grow to
be short adults who
are less happy and
successful than tall
adults. Shortness
had become a kind
of disease

By then most of
the big pharmaceu-
tical companies had
patented their own
versions of Genen
tech's HGH, and
prescribing HGH
had become a big
busines—but not
big enough for Big
Pharma. Growth-
hormone therapies
for children cost be-
tween $20,000 and
$30,000 a year and
were covered by in-
surance companies,
but Big Pharma
sought new “dis-
eases” for which it
could market HGH,
which had cost it
hundreds of millions of dollars to discover.

After the NEJM published Rudman's
study about using HGH as a therapy for
old-age frailty, Big Pharma, along with
Goldman and Klatz, perked up. Almost
simultaneously they all found a new dis-
ease for HGH to treat: aging, a “disease”
that has never been recognized by the
mainstream medical community, which is
why to this day insurance companies re-
fuse to cover HGH therapies for it

Rudman died of a pulmonary em-
bolus in 1994, at the age of 67, after
having only glimpsed what the anti-
aging industry was doing with his HGH
study. Before he died Rudman pleaded
that people understand HGH “is not

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a fountain of youth." The NEJM saw
how the antiaging industry was using
Rudman's studies, however, and was
horrified. It didn't distance itself from
Rudman's studies, but it did distance
itself from how the antiaging industry
was using them. In 2003 Vance wrote
an article in the NEJM that claimed
the “long-term effect of HGH could be
potentially harmful with regard to the
risk of cancer.” She added that people
who believed HGH was a magic bullet
that “retards or reverses” aging were
“whistling in the wind.”

1 flew to Las Vegas to attend the six
day A4M antiaging convention and spent
those six days interviewing doctors, pa-
tients and delegates about their antiaging

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therapies. 1 wanted to learn for myself
exactly what tune they were whistling.

On the morning of my first day at A4M,
I sat in the lobby where the convention's
lectures and workshops were held and
watched delegates and doctors register
They were a diverse lot: Euro types with
Freudian beards and strange clothes;
Birkenstock types with full beards and
ponytails; women who looked like Wic-
cans (or maybe Morticia Addams), with
black headbands, black-rimmed eyes
and long black cloaks; older bald muscle-
men with jutting jaws and the angry de-
meanor of Marine drill instructors who

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shipped te NY add 8.975%, IL add 7.25%,
СА add 825%. ("NY assesses salas tax on shipping &

hadn't had a platoon in years; women in
their 20s wearing low-slung miniskirts
and jeans that exposed their navel rings;
older women with taut, shiny facial skin,
stretched-back eyes and trout lips, who
looked as if they had been preserved in
aspic. I saw a Japanese person of inde-
terminate sex who kept smoothing back
his or her upswept, pomaded hair.

Three old scholarly-looking men,
dressed identically in navy blazers, sat
hunched over on a bench, perusing
through bifocals the A4M program of
lectures. І studied my program too and
marked off certain lectures. "Bre
News for Doctors, Clinics and Pharmaci
The Latest Legal ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of HG
and ‘Testosterone Replacement Therapy,”
by Rick Collins, Esq.,
J-D. “How to Open
a Successful Anti-
Aging Practice—The
New Cash-Only Spe-
cialty of Anti-Aging
Medicine.” “Testos-
terone Replacement
Therapy: A Recipe
for Success,” by John
Crisler, D.O. “Hor-
mone Balance to In-
timacy Health [i.c.,
sex] and Quality of
Life," by Thierry
Hertoghe.

That afternoon 1
took a cab to the
Cenegenics Medical
Institute on the out-
skirtsof the Las Vegas
desert. Cenegenics
bills itself as the
largest antiaging in-
stitute in the world,
with branches in Las
Vegas; Boca Raton,
Florida; Charleston,
South Carolina; and
Tokyo, Hong Kong
and Seoul. Asians, it
seems, are very
sionate about the
antiaging movement

Cenegenics was
founded in 1997
by Alan Mintz, a
Chicago-area radiologist and amateur
bodybuilder. He won the 1996 Amateur
Athletic Union Mr. Illinois bodybuilding
contest in the Grand Masters division at
the age of 60. His Cenegenics brochures
feature photographs of him in bodybuild-
ing poses, alongside pictures of other
doctor-bodybuilders such as 67-year-old
Jeffry Life, a Cenegen:, : physician; Mitch-
ell Wagner, a 44-year-old orthopedic sur-
geon; and Bob Jones, 76, who “keeps
company with a 33-year-old.”

Cenegenics, it seems, is about looking
buff and having sex with a lot of young
women. A 45-year-old patient of Mintz's
crowed that he now has “a big-time libi-

do.” Still, like most people in the antiaging 145

PLAYBOY

industry, Mintz likes to gloss over the
muscle and libido gains from his thera-
pies with a patina of health benefits. He
claims his therapies have eliminated the
symptoms of Parkinson's disease in one
patient and allowed another paralyzed
patient to move his toes.

Mintz has been profiled in GQ and on
Today, 60 Minutes and Geraldo. What he
does not promote in those profiles is the
cost of his therapies, upwards of $12,000
a year for a typical patient. (Mary Lee
Vance says of Mintz, “He's a good sales-
man.") A typical patient visits Cenegenics
for a day and is subjected to a battery of
tests: hopscotching on a floor pad to mea-
sure agility, a little light weight lifting to
gauge muscle tone, a blood test and a few
other tests. At the end of the day Mintz
writes out his therapies, which usually in-
clude HGH, testosterone, vitamins, sup-
plements and a workout routine, and the
patient is sent home to await the arrival of
his medications in the mail. Mintz won't
see that patient again, though the patient
can consult with him over the phone.

1 met Mintz after a brief tour of his
facilities, which are housed in a faux
Greek neoclassical building that looked
like a small Parthenon. He sat behind his
desk in his office, surrounded by pho-
tographs of his children and grandchil-
dren and many antiaging certificates. 1

asked him a question. “Not yet!” he said.
“Here, take this.” He handed me a sheaf
of papers: articles on HGH accompanied
by scientific-looking graphs and symbols.
I started reading the first article.

“Don't do that!” he shouted. “Don't
look until [ tell you to!” 1 glanced down
at the pap “Behave!” he shouted. I
felt like a first-grader. "Now, Cenegenics
is more about aesthetics than longevity,”
he began. “We call it age management
Our goal is the highest possible quality of
life and sexual function and then a quick
death of a heart attack at 94. We don't
make outrageous claims about longevity
like Klatz. Look at him, He's fat! A4M has
no proof people can live much beyond
100. There's no way you can affect aging
ata cellular level. That Frenchwoman who
lived to 122—she was just one! What's that
tell you? Cenegenics is about a productive
older population, the quality of life. Ener-
gy sexual function, cognitive issues. Okay,
now you can look at page one.”

While Mintz read from the papers in
front of him, гапипр and raving like a
mad scientist about how HGH and testos-
terone therapies are misunderstood by the
mainstream medical community, 1 stared
at him. He was a strange-looking man. His
thinning hair could not conceal the hear
ing aid behind his ear: (He said cryptically,
“I'm 95 percent functional.") He wore

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glasses with Coke-bottle lenses that mag
nified his froglike eyes. When I described
them to Vance later, she wondered if they
were a sign of hyperthyroidism. His skin
was a bluish red and his swollen lips a
strange blue, He was physically fit, except
for his stomach. It was distended but not
with fat. It was like a hard barrel, similar
to the distended bellies of starving babies
in Darfur—possibly a sign of acromegaly
from too much HGH, Vance told me.
“Are you paying attention?” Mintz
shouted at me. 1 nodded. (Vance also
told me hyperactivity was another sign
of excessive HGH.) Mintz went on and
on and on about IGF-I, somatic growth
metabolic dysfunction and apoptosis, and
how no medical studies have found any
proof that HGH causes cancer or diabe-
tes. “None!” he shouted. “Kids have been
using it for 50 years! What do you want?
"That's a bullshit response that it hasn't
been studied enough. Not onc single kid
got cancer." He explained, "Insurance
companies don't want to pay for HGH
therapies because they say it may cause
cancer. That way they don't have to pay.”
Growing up, Mintz was a fat Jewish kid
in Chicago. He described his father as the
worst Jewish businessman ever, "the only
Jewish businessman to go broke owning a
liquor store." In his 20s Mintz visited Isra-
el, got dysentery, lost about 50 pounds and

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became a health-and-fitness nut. He ran
marathons to keep his weight down. Then
in 1990, after reading Rudman's study in
the NE/M, he began to take HGH

When Mintz's monologue finally ran
its course, I asked him if I could inter-
view one of his patients. He gave me the
name and number of Richard Weisman,
an exotic-car dealer at the Forum, a high-
end shopping center in Caesars Palace. I
thanked Mintz for his lecture. He stood up
and shook my hand, his big belly hanging
over his belt. He sai Лу greatest gift as
a doctor is to give people a better quality
of life and then a quick end.”

The following morning 1 had break-
fast in the Venetian's Grand Luxe Cafe
with Belgian antiaging doctor Thierry
Hertoghe, president of the World Soci-
ety of Anti-Aging Medicine and author
of The Hormone Handbook. Hertoghe was
boyishly handsome and looked much
younger than his 49 years. He wore a
peach summer sports coat, a lime-green
shirt, a patterned peach tie and peach
slacks. He seemed dressed for an outing
оп а luxury yacht floating down the Nile
in a Hercule Poirot novel. Hertoghe be-
gan his medical career as a psychiatrist,
then branched off into endocrinology.
In the late 1980s he began treating de-
pression patients with hormone therapy.
“At first it was controversial,” he told me.
“The majority in Europe was suspicious
of it.” By 1995 he was prescr g HGH
for depression, symptoms of fatigue, sex-
ual problems and longevity. “They say in
the Bible that 120 years is the limit, but
it's never been proven. I believe we can
live to 200, maybe 500 years. I have been
taking HGH since the age of 30. It got rid
of my saggy cheeks. My fat is down seven
percent. here were no negatives.”

Hertoghe said the typical HGH user is
“more intelligent than normal, a striver,
goal oriented. When 1 run on the tread-
mill, I run a book to learn German.
Activities invigorate me. HGH gives you
insight, and it makes you calmer, too.
Like with my wife: She's very fearful, so
I have to be a leveling influence for the
children. If 1 don't take HGH, I have
anxiety, and I can't afford that." I told
him I try to control my anxiety through
an act of will. He smiled at me. “Lam not
a hero like you,” he said. “Your effort to
control your stress is admirable, but it
prevents you from doing other things.
When you have an HGH defi
you're polluted by para
for me, I will take HGH for the rest of my
life. Га like to live at least 130 years.” 1
asked him how old his father lived to be.
He said, “He died at the age of 62."

‘That afternoon I walked across the Strip
to the Forum to see Richard Weisman. At
45, he had unnaturally black hair and a
round face with chipmunk-like checks, a

pronounced jawline and a thick neck. He
told me that as an adolescent in Queens
he was fat but grew out of it in his teens. I
asked him what his aspirations were as a
teenager. He gave me an enigmatic smile
and said, “I wanted to grow up and be an
international playboy.”

Weisman moved to Las Vegas from
south Florida in 2004 to open his exotic-
car business. After a year or so he put on
weight. "I hadn't worked out in years,"
he said. In Vegas he had become a short,
plump man; he had always thought of
himself as a player and had grown fear-
ful of what he was becoming. “I was
overweight, tired, with no libido," he
said. "A friend told me about HGH and
Cenegenics, so I did some research. It
was all positive. The only negative was a
fear of the unknown. So 1 did it."

He didn't begin to notice changes
until after 90 days. "I lost weight and
gained muscle and energy, and I was
horny all the time. 1 went from having a
45-year-old's libido to having a 25-year-
old's. I felt younger, that I was getting
back my youthful potential. I could run
around with my kids and stay up all
night drinking. It changed my temper-
ament, too. I didn't get as hot anymore.
HGH breeds confidence.”

Weisman said the only downside to
HGH was it caused problems in his mar-
riage. He chased his wife around the
bedroom so often, “bothering her every
night,” that she got sick of it. He saved
his marriage by getting his wife on HGH
which increased her libido to match his
own, “Now there’s no problem,” he said
Then he got his 70-year-old father to
take HGH and noticed he began to have
more energy as well.

Weisman and most other HGH users
don't talk much about longevity, unlike
Klatz, who claims he'll live to be 150.

“Longevity in my family i is not spectacu-
“Both my grandfa-
thers died in their 60s. I have three young
kids. ГЇЇ be 57 when my son is 15. 1 want
to be able to throw a football with him.
‘That's why I'll stay on HGH for the rest
of my life or as long as 1 can afford it.”

Weisman's motivations for taking
HGH are not much different from
those of most HGH users I interviewed
or read about: vanity and vitality. One
A4M delegate who used to work in the
high-fashion industry told me that “most
fashion models are on HGH. It allows
them to eat and party and still | keep their
weight down. You can see it in their
faces, that chiseled look." Philly Brom-
berg, 57, said, “Vanity took me to Cene-
genics.” Dr. Cecilia Tregan, 50, said she
wanted to look 30. A pugnacious man of
74 said he wanted to reclaim the vigor
of his youth, when “if you annoyed me,
I'd punch you in the nose.” The wife of a
rock st id she went on HGH because
she was afraid of losing her husband to
younger groupies.

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specialist in New York City. She is vague
about her age, sometimes admitting to
being in her 40s, sometimes admitting
to 50. She never got married because,
she says, “1 couldn't bother with mar-
riage, relationships. I’m a true worka-
holic.” Denese started taking HGH to
circumvent the aging process and im-
mediately noticed profound increases in
her memory, stamina and muscles. "I'm
an anomaly,” she says. "I look at least 10
years younger than 50. I mean 40."

Denese says her patients are gener-
ally 40- to 50-year-old men with high-
pressure jobs on Wall Street who want to
get rid of their bellies and regain their
energy. Some of her other clients are
celebrities, rock stars or designers, but
not athletes. "I send athletes home," she
says. "Athletes take high doses of HGH
when they're young and already have
high levels."

According to Denese, the jury is still
out on what the downside of HGH may
be, but that doesn't worry her. She's not
concerned with a long life span. "The
quality of my life is so superior," she says,
“ГЇЇ take the good with the bad. I think
it’s irresponsible to say someone is going
to live 120 years.” [f HGH is adminis-
tered in the proper doses, she adds, there
should be no negative side effects. When
1 ask her what the proper doses are, she
says, “250 to 300." I ask, 250 to 300 what?
Exasperated, she replies, "I don't recall
right now. ГЇЇ have to look it up.”

"Two days into the conference, 1 sat in a
large hall filled with A4M delegates and
listened to a lecture by Klatz and Gold-
man. Goldman introduced Klatz as “the
guru of antiaging medicine,” as he was
described by BusinessWeek
In a dark business suit, Klatz wel-
comed the delegates from more than
90 countries who had “come together
to enhance the quality of the human
life span.” He looked as if he could use
some life enhancement himself. He had
a jowly face with the up-slanting eyes
man who either has had a too-taut

mer Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev.
He also had a big, soft belly.

Dr. Seuss: “The golden years have come
at last; the golden years can kiss my
ss." The audience laughed. He said
the human life span was expanding
not because of the medical community
but in spite of it. This is the antiaging
movements mantra. The mainstream
medical community treats diseases; the
antiaging movement prevents diseases.
Then Klatz used a PowerPoint slide
show to display the average life spans
in different countries. Andorra had the
longest average life span, at 83. The
U.S. was 48th, with citizens having an
average life span of 77. Then he asked,

148 “What is your life span worth to you?

Remember, aging is 100 percent fatal.”
More laughter, Then he concluded,
“Thank you for making it possible for
me to enjoy my 120th birthday in the
near future.” I wondered what hap-
pened to his expectations of 150.

Klatz introduced his partner by read-
ing off a list of Goldman's Guinness world
records. Goldman took the microphone
and began talking about “merging the
field of sports medicine with antiaging
medicine.” He showed slides of body-
builders in their 70s and 80s and of the
104-year-old 100-meter champion, who
was a champion because “everyone else
his age is dead.” More laughter. Gold-
man said, "I'm just a dumb jock trying
to go through walls.” He finished his
talk by saying that Sophia Loren at 72 is
going to “pose for a magazine wearing
only earrings.” His audience clapped
and cheered.

After their lecture 1 went up to Klatz
and Goldman's suite to interview them.
We sat across from each other on sofas.

“A4M is an umbrella,” said Goldman.
"It's the next generation of sports medi-
cine." I asked him if he had ever taken

The jury is still out on what
the downside of HGH may
be. If HGH is administered
in the proper doses, says one
doctor, there should be no
negative side effects.

drugs to improve his sports performance.
“I never took steroids or hormones,” he
said. “I'll probably take them someday.”

Klatz seemed annoyed at the tack our
conversation was taking. He shifted the
conversation to his favorite topic, hu-
man longevity. “In the next 15 years the
antiaging movement will change reli-
gion, science, politics, work. People will
be able to have a second career at 75 if
they can live to 150. They can live two or
three life spans. Parallel life spans. They
might be a minstrel in their first 20 years
and travel the world before they go to
college.” He leaned toward me and said
seriously, “Nobody has broached that
subject in the mainstream media yet.
You can be the first. It could make your
career.” 1 nodded gratefully.

Early that evening I stopped in at the
“Anti-Aging Is the New Cash-Only Spe-
cialty” lecture, given by pharmacist
John Grasela and antiaging doctor Ron
Rothenberg. Grasela had the slanting
eyes and still-fresh scars behind the ears
of a man who'd had a recent face-lift, and

both he and Rothenberg had the reddish
glow of HGH users. Grasela spoke first
about marketing an antiaging practice.
He said if doctors buy quantities of HGH
for $185, they can charge their patients
$300 or even $350 for it, though `
pushing it,” he said. “But the nice thing
is Costco and Walgreen's don't have it,
so you can pretty much charge what you
want. Patients can't shop around.”

Rothenberg, a little man with
chestnut hair and a colorful Haw
shirt, reminded doctors to tell patients
that this therapy is not covered by their
insurance and that even if patients
say they feel great without HGH, they
should be told that doctors can keep
them feeling that way with HGH. I left
before the lecture was over and went
upstairs to the suite where the cocktail
party was being held.

The skinny blonde with the too-short
dress was pressed close to the ex-porn
star, looking up into his eyes. The man
with the villain's mustache had finished
his lecture on pomegranate capsules and
was havinga cocktail. The Chinese woman
from Boston was still grazing at the hors
d'oeuvres table. The lawyer in the muscle
“T-shirt was talking to a very buxom, very
short woman who looked like Maria Bar-
tiromo. I was talking to John Crisler, the
infamous Dr. Testosterone.

Crisler said that as a kid he was a "sci-
ence nut" who at 15 built an electron mi-
croscope. Then he went to college for a
“little bit" but dropped out to wander for
20 years. He worked on an assembly line
for Oldsmobile, sold insurance door-to-
door, painted houses, was a prison guard
and then went back to college in his 30s.
He got his doctor’s degree in osteopathy
at Michigan State. Most antiaging doctors
are osteopaths, he said, because “osteo-
paths are more holistic and open-minded
than the mainstream.” As an osteopath
Crisler worked on a lot of athletes, which
brought him in contact with testoster-
one. This became his specialty in his 40s,
when he developed the Crisler protocol,
a weekly injection of testosterone and
human chorionic gonadotrophin. “It
worked magic on my patients and made
me famous in my field overnight,” he
said. Crisler doesn't prescribe anything

with other physicians who prescribe him
testosterone, say, as a treatment strategy

At his Man Cav
treats mostly men in their 40s.
ured all the time,” he said, “with the ‘usta’
syndrome—ialking about all the things
they има do. They've lost their edge.
They look at girls in млүвоү and wish
they could have them. It’s sex that brings
them to me. They'll tell me they're tired,
and then when their hands are on the
doorknob they'll say, "By the way, doc
Sometimes their wives bring them in.
One guy hadn't had sex with his wife in a
year. 1 rubbed a little testosterone on his

arms at 2:30 р.м. and by 6:30 Һе and his
wife were having sex." (Mary Lee Vance
says this is impossible: “It takes a day or
two for testosterone to work.")

A few days later I sat in a Florida restau-
rant with Victor Shabanah, an Egyptian-
born doctor who had attended the
conference. “Most of my patients complain
of low sex drive,” he said. “Sometimes their
drive is not bad, but their performance
needs help. They go to a mainstream doc-
tor, and he says, "You're getting old." That's
rubbish. Then they come to see me. They
can't discuss it with their wile or friends,
but when their libido is low they get de-
pressed. Your manhood is the biggest
thing in your life. Sometimes the wife asks,
"What's wrong with me? He's not turned
on by me? They
either settle for less
sex or go out and
fool around. I have
a city councilmar
his mid-40s who was
going crazy because
his wife was screw-
ing around.”

Shabanah says he
doesn't treat men
who want to be Su-
perman, with big
muscles. "I treat
people who just want
to be normal again,”
he said. “I based my
practice on health,
not cosmetic

The waitress
brought our bill.
Shabanah paid it,
but he had no inten-
tion of leaving until
he got something
off his chest. After a
moment he blurted
out his distaste for
ААМ. “A4M accred-
its antiaging doc-
tors,” he said, “but
е de-
grees aren't worth
a shit and aren't
accredited by any
recognized medical
board. Klatz and
Goldman are brutal, money-grabbing
men. It’s all about money with them.
Something s wrong with them. You can't
get reports of the meetings on paper. You
have to buy the CDs, which are always
defective. I sent my CDs back and never
saw my money again. | have no use for
people like Klatz. Look at him! He's fat,
with a gut! What kind of advertisement
is he for the antiaging movement? He
should take HGH! He is like Scrooge,
except Scrooge got the lesson. Those
two will never get the lesson until they
di аһ calmed himself for a mo-
ment, then said, “I see so much suflering
in men. My main mission in life is to do
something for them.

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The problem with the antiaging
movement is that its huge umbrella
covers not only the quacks and quí
buck scammers but also sincere men
like Shabanah and Crisler, doctors who
truly believe their purpose is to im-
prove the quality of life for men and
women through HGH and testosterone
therapies. Everyone in the antiaging
movement, it seems, gets painted with
the same brush as far as the mainstream
medical community is concerned.

During the weeks leading up to the A4M
conference and a few days after it, 1 had
been tying to find Inge Rudman, Dan-
iel Rudman's widow. Finally I found a

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telephone number for her in California
and called. A tremulous voice answered
the phone. I asked if 1 could talk to her
about her husband. She was silent for a
moment and then said, “How do I know
is isn't some kind of identity theft?" I
told her she could check my credentials
on my website. 1 hung up, waited 20
minutes, then called her back. She was
more relaxed, so I asked her to tell me
about her husband.

“Oh, Dan was interested in every-
thing,” she said. “Reading, classical mu-
i ball, tennis. Tennis was the love
fe. He went to Boston Latin, then
nd Yale Medical School. 1 met
him in 1952 when he was a resident at

Brooklyn Jewish hospital. He was about
five-foot-eight апа wore glasses, but he
, a great guy. But he
e sighed. ^He had
no money, and he was not a fast worker.
It took him two years to marry me. I
wasn't able to prod him if he didn't want
to do something. After we married we set
up an apartment on 168th Street across
from Columbia-Presbyterian Medi
cal Center. As a doctor Dan was alw;
thinking how he could contribute. He
made young doctors aware that there
was more to people than their disease.
He'd ask the doctors, ‘How many chil-
dren does that patient have? What does
he do for work? He tried to make a hu-
man being out of the patient in a bed
having blood work.

“Dan was happiest
when doing his re-
search. That's why
that NEJM artide on
HGH made him so
happy.” Inge went
silent for a moment.
When she began
talking again her
voice was flat, with-
out inflection, almost
cold. "Dan wasn't
aware of the anti-
aging movement
before he died. It
would have been
awful for him to see
how they were mis-

using his studies. Do
you know that Klatz
and Goldman of
A4M asked me to
accept an award for
Dan posthumously

I was getting into. 1
sat there, listening
to speakers talk
about how HGH did
this and that. They
showed slides of pic-
tures taken out of
magazines of people
with beautiful bodies.
Then one of them said, ЛЕ Dr. Rudman
had taken HGH, he'd be alive today."
Inge's voice broke, and she began to sob.
softly. I waited for her to compose her-
self—a 78-year-old widow talking about
her beloved husband to a s
the telephone. Finally she said, *
it was all a charlatan thing. I
myself from them and tricd desperately to
stop these people. But it was too late."
After I got off the phone with Inge Rud-
man, I realized why she was concerned
about my being an identity-theft scam-
mer. She and her husband had already
been the victims of identity theft once.

149

PLAYBOY

WILL ARNETT

(continued from page 113)
in Hollywood for two comedy superstars
named Will?

ARNETT: There's no way you're gonna
crush Will Ferrell. You can't destroy him.
He's indestructible. I'm flattered that any-
body would compare me to him, but I
don't know how to respond to something
like that. Will is so fucking hilarious, and
he's got to be onc of the swectest people
on the planet. But just between you and
me, off the record: 1 would love to see
him go motherfucking down. And if it's
at my hand, all the sweeter. Believe me, I
will not look twice when I put my foot on
his head to step up.

PLAYBOY: Ferrell shot to fame after show-
ing his naked ass in movies like Old
School. Do you have any plans to expose
yourself on film?

ARNETT: I don't think a lot of people want
to see me nude. But there's a scene in my
next film, The Brothers Solomon, in which
I'm naked. I'm hugging Will Forte, and
he asks me to put on a towel. I turn
around, right at the camera, and you
can see the top half of my pubes. People

love pubic hair. You show an audience
the short and curlies and they go nuts.

оз

PLAYBOY: Speaking of The Brothers Solo-
mon, the plot involves your trying to sire
a child as quickly as possible. Do you
have any interest in becoming a father?
ARNETT: You have moments when you real
ize everybody around you is having kids.
A lot of the gals on Saturday Night Live
have had kids recently. And from Arrested
Development, it turns out Jason Bateman's
sperm work. Who knew? I gotta be hon-
est: I always thought he was born with an
extra-big clitoris and they just decided to
call him a man. But his wife gave birth not
Jong ago, so I guess that proves something.
So yeah, when all your friends are getting
pregnant, you start thinking about it

PLAYBOY: Most people know you best as
Gob, the lovably inept magician from the
now-canceled Fox sitcom Arrested Devel-
opment. Gob has become urban slang for
“making an error or mistake, particularly
of great magnitude.” Is that flattering, or
do you feel bad that Gob has become the
cultural equivalent of failure?

ARNETT: No, that seems pretty accurate. Gob

is an egomaniac with an inferiority complex
He's a sellish, self-pitying, self-aggrandizing
jackass. Not long ago a guy came up to me
and said, “My friends call me Gob because
I'm so much like him." And I said, “You
know they're not complimenting you. right?
Because Gob is a fucking idiot

Q10

PLAYBOY: You were nominated for an
Emmy for Arrested Development. If you
had won, would you be more or less
obnoxious than you are now?

ARNETI: Oh, definitely more obnox-
ious. But I neyer had a chance. I was
happy just to be nominated. But if I'd
won? I would've shoved that Emmy in
so many faces. You would've seen that
shit from satellite images. Instead 1
just lost graciously.

PLAYBOY: Were you a Gob-like kid
growing up?

ARNETT: Í grew up in fear of authority but
with a general dislike for it as well. 1 was at
odds with my keepers in any sort of scho-
lastic environment. I never did anything
all that bad, except for, you know, moving
a tremendous amount of white horse from
Colombia for some dudes. I was a mule for
a while. I got involved in some human traf-
ficking during college. But we've all done
that, right? We've all laundered money out
of the former Soviet Union, right?

Q12

PLAYBOY: All kidding aside, are you telling
us you've never done anything illegal, or
just that you've never been caught?
АКМЕТТ I was a bad kid for a while. Га
break curfew, smoke bud, drink booze, all
the usual stuff. My parents sent me to an
all-boys boarding school when I was 12—a
school designed го even out uneven boys—
and I was constantly caught smoking. You
had to chop wood if you got caught smok-
ing, so I was always chopping wood. It was
a very outdoorsy school. You got graded on
white-water canoeing, or they'd send you
out into the woods with a pack of matches
and you had to build a quinzhee and survive
out there for a few days. I liked that aspect
of it. When I was 16 they asked me not to
return. I technically wasn't kicked out, but
1 guess they caught me smoking and drin
ing one too many times. I still look back at it
fondly as the place I learned to smoke. I can
kill butts with the best of them.

Q13

PLAYBOY. In the past five years you've had
Il supporting roles on TV

from comedy to drama?

ARNETT: Not really, because I'm very good

at what I do. [laughs] The Sopranos was par-

ticularly challenging. In one scene | held a

baby. In another scene the woman playing
(continued on page 153)

No wonder Hollywood casting directors
tap the Playmate talent pool so frequently;
it is as deep as it is alluring. Recently a
special connection has been established
with CBS's runaway hit CSI: Miami. The
show has featured appearances by Cen
terfold after Centerfold, including Qiana
Chase, Jillian Grace, Marketa Janska,
Monica Leigh, Amanda Paige, Christi
Shake and Alison Waite.

“We try to do a show that emph
how beautiful Miami is, so it makes
of sense to cast Centerfolds.” producer Don
Tardino remarks. “They come to work pre-
pared and willing to do what we ask them
to. Mostly, that's to be beautiful."

15
a ton

Qiana, Monica and Christi participated
in one of the more memorable scenes in the
series. “We were acting ош а high-fashion
photo shoot with live tigers,” Qiana says. “1
was standing right next to them. 1 was so
scared." Agrees Monica, “They're cute but
a liule frightening.” Marketa, Jillian and
Amanda had a tamer experience, playing
members of the entourage of Omar Good-
ing's character in the “Death Pool 100” epi-
sode. “He kept us in stitches throughout
the day,” Jillian reports. Perfectly suited
for her part was Alison. “I was essentially a
body double in a bil he says. “1 hope
in the coming months I'll have more to
tell.” Fire up the TiVo, baby!

When we met the petite
Linda Rhys Vaughn, the five-
foot, 98-pound Miss April
1982 was a dedi- т

cated equestri- y^
enne. After her
pictorial Linda's
life took an
unusual turn
when a smit-

ten fan tracked

her down and

won her heart,
an event that
inspired the
TV movie I
Married a Cen-
terfold, starring
Teri Copley.

“In my 20s I was one of
those people who nev-
er dated. I always

had a boy- ў
friend. And AS
then when I >
got divorced

I was dating

all the time,

going out

with all these different

guys, making up for lost time.
I was like some kind of crazy
person.” —Tina Bockrath

CARRIE,STEVENS

You are often praised for your Medi-
terranean looks, but in fact you are of

northern European ancestry.

1 am Mediterranean only
by virtue of my married
name. My great-great-great-
grandmother and her sister
on my mother's side were
ladies-in-waiting to Queen
Victoria, and on my mater-
nal great-grandfather's
side we were Quakers who
arrived in America in the
18th century.

: How did expectations
affect your acting career?

I got terribly typecast

for a long time after the Centerfold
nted me to play topless
Latinas, Italians or Greeks. It was frus-

; CENTERFOLD Q

They all w

trainin,
late 1950s and early 1960s, and I have

MY FAVORITE PLAYMATE
Derek Fisher

My favorite Playmate
is Miss July 1997
Daphnee Duplaix
Samuel because she
represents beauty, charisma and style.

trating and did not reflect my years of

1 studied in New York in the

been a Screen Actors Guild
member since 1966.

How did your family
react to your decision to
pose in PLAYBOY?

A: Not positively. All my
family members were in
the arts. My stepfather
was a background artist
who worked on all the old
Disney classics, and he was
a member of the Academy.
They were horrified that
their daughter, who was

supposed to become a Broadway star,
wound up in a pinup magazine. They
didn't speak to me for years!

ANSWERS: V5 OT IE "OZ BL

Here's a shocker: Miss July Sara Jean
Underwood was spotted working the
‘Taser display at the Consumer Elec-
tronics Show in Las Vegas...
Miss December 1982 Char- A
lotte Kemp and Miss August

1971 Cathy Rowland have a

fitness video for women over q
40 called Beautiful Body Beauti- < ^
ful Life... Miss August 2005 —
Tamara Witmer appeared in a
national print ad for Dodge... Miss
January Jayde Nicole returned to
her hometown of Port Perry, Ontario
to sign her
Centerfold
issue... Miss
December
2001 Shanna
Moakler
earned a two-
page profile in
Star maga-
zine.... Sara
Jean Under-
wood, Miss
July 2005
Qiana Chase,
Miss March 2005 Jillian Grace, Miss
October 2003 Audra Lynn and Miss
January 2001 Irina Voronina have
audiences howling in the comedic
farce Epic Movie, by the zany minds
behind Scary Movie.... Miss February
2001 Lauren Michelle Hill appeared
on the cover of Women's Health...
‘Tamara Witmer, Miss July 2002 Lau-
ren Anderson, PMOY
1997 Victoria Silvstedt
and Miss May

Joyde breaks hearts
back home.

It's better in slow motion.

2003 Laurie Jo Fetter appeared in
Vanity Fair for the magazine's cover-
age of Borat... Miss January 2006
Athena Lundberg tested her mettle
on the second season of The Janice

Dickinson Modeling Agency.

— MORE PLAYMATES `

See your favorite Playmate's
pictorial їп the Cyber Club

at cyber.playboy.com, or
download her fo your phone
at ployboymobile.com.

WILL ARNETT

(continued from page 150)
my wife was on the phone and 1 was in the
background. So those were tough scenes.

a14

PLAYBOY. You portrayed a pedophile on
the crime drama Law & Order: SVU. Did
you play pedophilia for laughs?

ARNETT: Well, I didn't technically play a
pedophile. I was a pedophile enabler 1 was a
travel agent to pedophiles, leading them to
countries where the laws against such things
area little more lenient than in this country.
It was definitely an unsavory character. The

going to watch the show, and when
it ended she called my cell phone. Right
away 1 could sense something w her
voice. She just said, “Is your sister there?”
And I said, “Yeah. Hey, did you sce Law €
Order?" There was this long s
said, “Yes. Yes, 1 did.” Nothing else. That
was it. Oookay. We never discussed it again.

a15

PLAYBOY: You also provided the voice-over
for a series of GMC truck commercials in
which you made the memorable announce-
ment, “It’s not more than you need, just
more than you're used to." Have you used
this same linc to hit on the ladies?

ARNETT: [ usually say, “It's not more than
you're used to, just more than you need
‘That seems to be more accurate. But you
know, it's not as if people are clamoring to
hear the tagline for GMC trucks. I some-
times get recognized for my voice, which is
always surprising. People come up to me
and say, “Hey, will you leave your voice on
my outgoing message?" Uh, I don't know,
man. Гус never been comfortable with stuff

like that. But I guess it’s kind of cool.
G16

PLAYBOY: You're starring in a remarkable
five films this year. How long before the
inevitable Arnett backlash?

ane: I don't know. When do you think?
Arc a lot of people talking about the back-
lash already? Who told you about it? It
was my publicist, wasn't it? Goddamn it,
why does he keep putting that out there?
You're the eighth person who has men-
tioned it to me. He keeps telling people,
“Ask Arnett about the backlash.” God, I
need to fire that prick. Goddamn him! It's
good, though. I was lucky enough to be
on a show that wasn't highly rated, so I
think the bulk of the country has no fuck-
ing clue who I am. So people haven't been
inundated with me yet, which is the exact
opposite of how I'd like it

Q17
PLAYBOY: How does a guy
Amy Poehler off her feet?
АкхЕГТ. Amy and I were introduced by
a mutual friend, but Га actually known

ke you sweep

about her for a few years prior to that. 1
went to see her when she was performing
in the Upright Citizens Brigade in New
York. I used to live around the corner
from the UCB Theatre, and I'd go see her
do improv all the time. That sounds a lot
creepier than it was. 1 mean, I never cut up.
letters from assorted magazines in order to
create a note for her. But I eventually won
her over with sex—I'm not going to lie.
And the fact that we're both in comedy was
just icing on that cake. [His cell phone rings]
Hey, look, Amy's calling now. [He picks
up.] Hey, babe, I'm just finishing up here.
Are you gonna be up for a few minutes?
[pause] Really? [long pause] Really? [long
pause] Okay, ГИ call you soon. [He hangs
up.] Bitch. God, what a ballbuster.

a18

PLAYBOY: In addition to Blades of Glory, you
and Amy are performing together in the
upcoming movies On Broadway and Spring
Breakdoum. Who is riding whose coattails?

ARNETE We don't like to think of it that way.
[whispers] I'm definitely riding her coattails.
Prior to Arrested Development, Amy was obvi-
ously a more known entity, and 1 was just
Amy's husband. When we came out to L.A.
because she was working on Mean Girls, we
stayed at a fancy hotel. 1 called room service
to ask for some coffee, and the concierge
said, “Very good, Mr. Poehler.” I told Amy,
and we had a good laugh about it, though
she laughed a little harder than I did. We've
been asked to do a romantic comedy to-
gether, but we're just not interested. [pause]
Unless we're talking big money. Then fuck
yeah, ГЇ sell my relationship out.

Q19

PLAYBOY: A lot of comics are supersti-
tious and wear lucky clothing or follow
strange preshow rituals. Do you have
any superstitions?

ARNETE: 1 kill a baby before every perfor-
mance. Its dangerous, especially in this age
of DNA and all that crap. You have to stay
one step ahead of those forensic patholo-
gists. Oh, just so we're clear, when I say
"baby" I mean cigarette. You know that,
right? In Canada, we refer to cigarettes
as babies. They're my little babies. Twenty
fresh babies every day. You didn’t think 1
meant an actual baby, did you? Oh God,
no. That would just be awful. (long, thought-
ful pause] But you know, if that worked, I'd
probably do that, too. Yeah, I'd kill a baby
if it meant I might get an Oscar.

Q20

PLAYBOY: You speak fluent French. Will you
teach us a few dirty words in French?
ARNETT: | know nothing that would
impress you. The best French Canadian
swearwords are tabarnak, which means
tabernacle, and cälisse, which is chal-
ice. All the French Canadian swears are
based on religious artifacts. It's like the
worst thing you can say. "Oh, cälisse!”
See, 1 told you it wasn't that impressive.
French cursing is hilarious, Eventually
they just defer to English. I don't think
you could say anything in French that
would compete with cocksucker

Read the 214 Question at playboy com/magazine.

“Tell me again how to recognize girls, Dad.”

153

= Z
PALMS) 72

A MALOOF CASINO RESORT
WWW.PALMS.COM

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

INTRODUCING THE WORLD'S ONLY PLAYBOY CLUB
AT THE PALMS LAS VEGAS. PALMS.COM

Miayboy

WHAT'S HAPPENING, WHERE IT'S HAPPENING AND WHO'S MAKING IT HAPPEN

п 2008 a team of 10 adventurers called Drive Around the
World will attempt to travel from the coast of Antarctica to the
South Pole in four specially modified vehicles: one electric,
опе powered by hydrogen, one by biodiesel and one by lean
gasoline. That's 1,000 miles over the most unforgiving terrain
on earth—across a three-mile crevasse-ridden zone with 42
natural ice bridges and over the Transantarctic Mountains.
There are no roads. The team members include 77-year-old
Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 became the second man to stand on
the moon, and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. How cold

Where the Road Ends and Beyond

You think you have a road-trip story? Try driving to the South Pole

will it be at the South Pole when they get there? About 30
degrees below zero at noon. Sponsored by a variety of compa-
nies including K&N Engineering, the project will be shot for a
3-D documentary film and will raise money for Parkinson's
research. If you wish to tag along, tune in to team leader Nick
Baggarly's blog at drivearoundtheworld.com. Baggarly previ-
ously journeyed around the globe in a Land Rover, starting and
finishing in Sunnyvale, California—44,000 miles, 16 months, 30
countries (pictured above: Australia’s Gunbarrel Highway).
Yup, this gritty trekker means business. Godspeed.

Ghost in the Machine

The new art sensation Banksy is a true unknown

| obody ever listened to me until they didn't know who I was."
| That statement comes from the recently published Wall and

| Piece, a portfolio of work by the artist known as Banksy. The

mysterious "art terrorist" —who has never revealed his identity—
debuted six years ago, posting politically charged graffiti and paint-
ings throughout London, including the one pictured here being
removed by police. In 2005 he began hanging his own bizarre paint-
ings inside the world's top museums—the Louvre, the Met. Last fall
he mounted a sculpture of a tortured Guantánamo Bay prisoner
inside Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The opposite
of an art thief, he's a master of nihilistic humor. When (and if) he
reveals his identity, will he be celebrated or arrested?

155

Santa Boobies

Want to be invited to the next Christmas
party thrown by randy U.K. tabloid Daily
Sport? Here's a tip: Be a stripper who will
get ‘em out while feigning lesbianism.

E Cu! - ке

Sorry, Miss Jackson
Itwasn'ta crisis when TONI BRAXTON
popped out at a sporting event; after
ай, it's not as if anyone was watch-
yg" ing—it was just the World Cup.

You Сап
All Just
Kiss Off
Earlier this year
gossip pages re-
z ч ported that KIM
Our Favorite Martina KARDASHIAN
How does a just God allow bad things was shopping
to happen to good people? We guess a sex lape to
He gets cranking on His more perfect adult DVD pub-
creations (| ‘natural model MISS lishers. (The
! MARTINA), loses track of time and lets a leading man?
few things slide. Cut the Guy a break. Ex-boyfriend

Ray J, brother
of R&B singer
Brandy.) At press
time the tale
was looking like
an unfounded
rumor. Damn.

Slap and Tickle

What happens at the Playboy Mansion stays at the Mansion, but what you do
in your limousine on the way home from the party is fair game—particularly
if you invite paparazzi in for a look, as NICKY and PARIS HILTON did

Just a Runner-Up? That's Criminological

Criminology major ANDREA VARGO made the finals of Maxim's
Hometown Hotties contest but didn't win, Tough luck, Maxim readers,
As this picture shows, PLAYBOY is where she belongs.

157

MWotpourri

LOVE THONGS
While Mama always SAVING FACE
said, “Life is like a Once, a man's grooming regimen com-
box of chocolates; prised a bar of Dial, a can of Barbasol and
you never know the cool brutality of Aqua Velva. Now
what you're gonna artisanal grooming options are abundant

get," Pa was fond of

Elemis (timetospa.com) began in the U.K.
the lesser-known

with gente, botanically derived spa products

maxim “Life is like and later branched out with a line specifically
a tin of pantie for men. The Deep Cleanse Facial Wash
everything comes ($28) and recently released Daily Moisture
in threes.” Ah, folk Boost ($45) are fantastic for everyday
wisdom. True to use, and the fine Energising Skin Scrub
the saying, Hanky ($46) and Post Shave Recovery Mask

Panky's limited
edition tin ($55,
available at Saks
Fifth Avenue) is

| packed with three

| С thongs that, thanks
| to the wonders of

modern science, are
one size fits most.

: Р 4 M. Concerned about the

\ [ШИ Don't be. A random
ha NN / survey conducted
ANNE by eLavsov's editors

> found hot women
universally love
ы: Hanky Panky thongs
= You can't go wrong

($46) are best
used a few times
a week to get the
deep-down crud.
Lovely, mate.

BOOK 'EM

Your choices in literature say as much
about you as your choices in design. Now
you can say something about both at once
with the Self Shelf ($30, firebox.com).
This clever optical illusion makes it look
as though you're holding up your books
with mind power alone. Of course, the
title of the brilliant work on the bottom
slyly gives it away: It's not a book at all
but a shelf holding the rest of them up.

mem

Gui atents

250 BUYING GUIDE 2005 -5

CAR, TALK!
Your car knows a lot about itself. Problem is, the two of you aren't н — ,
really on speaking terms (and that damn CHECK ENGINE light seriously TESTOSTERWE PLANET,
lacks nuance). Now instead of paying $150 for a crooked mechanic Ee
to tell you it's your alternator when it's just your wiper fluid, you can
get a CarMD ($90, carmd.com) and plug it into your car's diagnostic
port (if your car is a 1996 or later). It'll kibitz with your car's brain and
immediately tell you how severe things are in general. Afterward hook
the CarMD up to your PC to get a full report on what's going on with

158 your darling, from basic statistics to diagnoses of serious problems.

POWER PLAY

Whatever your stance on
global warming, we all dig a
lower electric bill. A Skystream
3.7 windmill ($9,000 to $12,000
installed, skystreamenergy
сот) in your backyard could
save half your kilowatt-hours
each month. Simple to
operate and maintain, the
generator hooks directly into
your electrical system. When
it makes more power than
your house needs (say, at

four AM.), your meter will
run backward as you upload
power to the grid (if you live
in one of the more than 3?
states where that's allowed).

CELLULOID HERO

When he wasn't singing, danc
ing, acting, playing musical
instruments, doing stand-up,
drinking with the Rat Pack

or bedding beautiful women,
Sammy Davis Jr. was taking
photographs. “Sammy never
went anywhere without a
camera,” says Burt Boyar,
Davis's longtime friend and the
author of the new coffee-table
book Photo by Sammy Davis,

Jr. (850, ReganBooks). From
Bogie to Bacall, James Dean to
Dean Martin, Sammy captured
them all on film. No one else

n away with pho-
natra in his PJs.

ra
PHOTO OY

man Sh

ا >=

THE LATEST BUZZ

lanqueray's new Rangpur
gin ($22, in liquor stores)
is made with rare Rangpur
limes (Citrus x limonia
Osbeck), strange and juicy
orange-colored spheres
grown in India, Unlike any
other gin we've ever tried,
it is a touch sweet and
citrusy, best served in the
sun over ice, with a dash
of tonic or cranberry if you
like. Do not mix it with
vermouth. For a Rangpur
dirty martini, pour two
shots of chilled Tanqueray
Rangpur into a cocktail
glass, then drop in a naked
woman named Olive.

GRECIAN FORMULA

When New York was down and dirty—like,
before Starbucks—locals took their coffee in
classic blue-and-white “Greek” cups. Even if the
burned deli swill that came in them looked and
tasted like the nearby East River, it cost little and
furthered New York's reputation as the city that
never sleeps. Those paper cups are quickly disap-
pearing, but ExceptionLab, Inc. has immortalized
them in reusable ceramic ($12, wearehappyto
serveyou com). Smart, huh? Fuhgeddaboudit!

THE MOVIE TRADE

Peerflix (peerflix.com) is a smart new alternative
to DVD rent-by-mail services. You list the DVDs
you want, along with ones you own but don't
want anymore. When someone requests one of
yours, print a postage-paid mailer on regular
paper, tape it up and send. That earns you
credits you can use to order DVDs on your
want list. Discs you get are yours to keep, and
you can cash out at any timc. Very clever.

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY ON PAGE 121

Шох! Month

RUBBER MAID.

AMERICAN BEAUTIES: THE GIRLS OF CONFERENCE USA—
OUR TALENT SCOUTS SWEPT THROUGH THE SOUTH IN SEARCH
OF BEAUTY AND A PERFECT SMILE. OUR PHOTO TEAM HIT MAR-
SHALL, RICE, TULANE AND THE OTHER UNIVERSITIES THAT
COMPRISE THE CONFERENCE. A BRAND-NEW REASON TO FEEL
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN.

STEVE NASH—ONLY TWO POINT GUARDS HAVE EVER BEEN
NAMED THE NBA'S MOST VALUABLE PLAYER IN CONSECUTIVE
SEASONS: MAGIC JOHNSON AND THE SUNS’ STEVE NASH.
EVEN MORE NOTABLY, THE UNASSUMING CANADIAN IS JUST
NOW HITTING HIS PEAK, AT THE AGE OF 33. KEVIN COOK NETS
A REVEALING INTERVIEW.

SEX IN IRAN--PARI ESFANDIARI AND RICHARD BUSKIN
REVEAL HOW A SEX TAPE FEATURING A FAMOUS ACTRESS
IS SHAKING IRAN'S CONSERVATIVE ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT.
ONCE AGAIN, AN AUTHORITARIAN REGIME IS HAVING TROU-
BLE WITH SEXUAL FREEDOM.

FERGIE—THE SEXY BLACK EYED PEA REVEALS THE ESSENCE OF
FERGALICIOUSNESS, THE KEY TO HER SOLO SUCCESS AND WHAT
BRINGS HER TO GRINDHOUSE. 200 BY JASON BUHRMESTER

PLAYBOY'S 2007 BASEBALL PREVIEW —-AFTER AN OFF-
SEASON MARKED BY RECORD-BREAKING DEALS. OUR HALL

THE 2007 PLAYBOY BASEBALL PREVIEW.

OF FAME PROGNOSTICATOR TRACY RINGOLSBY SENDS YOU
OUT TO THE BALL GAME WITH HIS ANNUAL ANALYSIS OF
AMERICA’S NATIONAL PASTIME.

А STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION —BRITISH GLAMOUR PHOTOG-
RAPHER AND LONGTIME PLAYBOY CONTRIBUTOR BYRON NEWMAN
TURNS HIS LENS ON VINYL-CLAD VIXENS FOR A VIVID PICTORIAL.

Fo m

THE GIRLS OF CONFERENCE USA.

WINTER STORMS—A LONELY MAN ANGUISHES OVER THE FATE
OF HIS DAUGHTER, A WAR CORRESPONDENT, AS A NOR'EASTER
RAGES OUTSIDE HIS HOME. FICTION BY EDWARD FALCO

TO THE BAD GIRLS GO THE SPOILS—ANGLING FOR A SPOT
AS REALITY TV'S NEXT SEXY VILLAIN, MICHELLE RICHMOND
CELEBRATES THE HIGHLIGHTS OF HER WILD PAST WITH AN
EYE TO AN ADVENTUROUS FUTURE, IN AN OPEN LETTER TO
PRODUCER MARK BURNETT.

THE NEW URBAN WARDROBE— MOVING BEYOND HIPSTERS,
HIP-HOPPERS AND HYPE, PLAYBOY HELPS REDEFINE THE WAY
COSMOPOLITAN SOPHISTICATES WANT TO LOOK. THE KEY. A
FEW CHOICE PIECES AND YOU'RE GOOD TO GO.

PLUS: AUDI'S NEW R8 AND HOW ANNA-MARIE GODDARD
STARTS HER DAY. ALSO, HOWARD STERN DISCOVERY MISS MAY
SHANNON JAMES PUTS A SPRING IN YOUR STEP.

Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), April
Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Hlini
dian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Sul

160 Playboy, РО. Box 2007, Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-44:

2007, volume 54, number 4. Published.
60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and at additional mailing off

nthly by Playboy in national and regional editi

n the U.S.,

97 for 12 issues. Postmaster:

end address change to
‚ or e-mail circ@ ny. playboy.com,

MOJO NOW 44
GOMES FLAVÍ

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sm, 29 Dod уфа کے‎
rico Jose ure sm Orano —

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— d

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