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PARIS 8: LINDSAY’S 


ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN 4 f ES ES 
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SECRET FANTASY 
INTERVIEW 


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and author of the forthcoming book The 
Good Rat, argues in Land of the Free, 
Home of the Scared that the Bush ad. 
ministratlor's MeCarthyst tactics have 
frightened us, which Is exactly the inten- 
tion. "As long as we're afraid, they can 
do whatever they want "ho says. "We've 
had a war going on for five years. Patton 
Went tom Calais to Austria in 11 months. 
This administration sickens mo." 


Pulitzer Prize winner 


John Updike tells us that Blue Light, 
which is among his more intimate 
tales, “contains many of my personal 
truths.” It also illuminates his feelings 
about craft. “Short stories now seem 
to just end, as if the writer ran out of 
typewriter ink or paper or something,” 
he says. “| have this old-fashioned 
notion that stories should snap shut 
in the last line and throw light back 
to the first sentence." 


America's sexiest Top Model, Adrian 

y (ar lef, returns to our pages in a 
sulty pictorial, and this time she brought a 
friend, Andrea Brooks. The two posed for 
Cuny for Dessen, set at a delicious Eyes 
Wide Shut-style party. “А misconception 
about me is that | was a big slut growing 
up.” Adrianne says. “I hardly did anything, 
atleast not with guys. Fooling around with 
gittriends doesn't count, right? So Im 
‘damn near virginal." Adrianne and Andrea 
have been inseparable since they were 12 
years old. We can see why. “Adrianne and 
have been through so much together 
that | think you can see the deep respect 
ard love we have for each other in the pic- 
tures,” Andrea says. The shoot was 
steamy enough that Adrianne didn't let 
her husband (remember Peter Brady?) on 
the set. "He can look atthe pictures, but | 
dont want him getting any ideas. 


“Artie Lange makes tons of money and 
is much loved, but his appetites are 
getting the best of him,” says Mike 
Guy, who hung with the tragic comedi- 
an for Riding High With Artie Lange. 
“Like most comics, he has a bleak view 
of his situation. And in his case, | think 
he truly belleves he's not going to make 
it. He is very open about that fact, yet 
he uses his problems in his act. Though 
the joke is on him, its his joke. 


Last year investigative Journalist Chris 
tian Parenti attracted attention when 
he told interviewer Bill Moyers that his 
Afghan friend and translator had been 
murdered by the Taliban. For Our Bat- 
tles Joined, Parenti returned to the 
Hindu Kush to uncover the strange 
story of how and why his friend was 
killed. "Ajmal Naqshbandi was a very 
good journalist, interpreter and fixer," 
Parenti says. "By fixer | mean he would 
set up interviews with Taliban officials 
tor other journalists, and he was very 
aggressive in getting the story, no mat- 
ter how touchy the subject. He thought 
the Taliban wouldn't kill him because 
he was a Muslim, and | always felt rela- 
tively safe with him because he was 
careful about taking risks. But to some 
extent he became too proficient at the 
task, and that led to his temible end." 


seeing E. hearing Like never before 


features 


OUR BATTLES JOINED 
On his first visit to Afghanistan, in 2004, reporter befriended 
his translator, Ajmal Naqshbandi. Last year Parenti leamed Naqshbandi had been 
captured and beheaded by the Taliban. In this riveting first-person account, Parenti 
returns to Afghanistan to discover how and why his friend was killed. 


A TASTE OF PRIORAT 


Priorat is a sensational Spanish wine that is fast losing its status as a best-kept 
secret. Acclaimed novelist elegantly explains why. 


MIKE TYSON LAID BARE 
As Kid Dynamite prepares to return to jail, boxing writer 
presents a series of compelling interviews that add up to a portrait of an enigma, 
RIDING HIGH WITH ARTIE LANGE 
Explore the world of the actor, comedian and Howard Stern sidekick. Is being 
this funny worth risking your Ме? 
2008 CARS OF THE YEAR 

looks at the sweetest rides, from the best sport sedans, sports 
coupes and convertibles to the ultimate contender we crown Car of the Year, 


LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE SCARED. 
“A government can take fear and control everything with it," warns 
in this call for collective common sense. Since 9/11, he says, the government and 
the media have joined in panicking us. How did й get out of hand? 


PARTY OF THE YEAR 
Britney and Lindsay, Imus and Michael Vick, Becks, Marty, Peyton and Sanjaya— 
2007's most memorable names wrap up the year with one final blast. 


fiction 


BLUE LIGHT 
Peerless storyteller returns with a tale about Fritz Fleischer, 
а man who takes a blue-light treatment at his dermatologist' and finds his 
thoughts jumping from his aging skin to the fragility of intimacy. 


the playboy forum 


HOW THE WEST WAS RUINED. 
John Muir was the sainted godfather of the conservation movement, the co-founder 
of the Sierra Club and a champion for national parks, but his rhapsodic view 

of nature hurts the modern environmental movement. 


200 


HELENA BONHAM CARTER 
Director Tim Burton's companion and muse chats about who would get custody. 
of Johnny Depp if they ever split, her impressive orgasm scene in Fight Club and 
her twisted role in Sweeney Todd. 


interview. 


TINA FEY 
She's an alumna of Saturday Night Live and the creator of 30 Rock, but she still 
can't shake her image as the queen of the comedy nerds. The thinking-man's sex 
‘symbol explains her love for Star Wars, why she would be honored if Will Ferrell 
stabbed her and the reason she went off on Paris Hilton. 


vol. 55, no. 1—janvary 2008 


‘Adrianne Curry will say whatever she thinks, 
whenever she wants, and hor views are usu- 
ally as provocative as her looks. Now the 
‘opinionated blogger and star of VHT's My 
Fair Brady returns for her second өсі 


Top Model; our Rabbit lends a helping hand. 


>” 


Is 


tor 


pi 


CURRY FOR DESSERT 
In a much requested return 
appearance, Adrianne Curry enlists 
a girlfriend to tum up the heat. 


PLAYMAT! 
SANDRA NILSSON 
It's a sensuous Swedish encounter 
as Miss January takes Manhattan 


THE YEAR IN SEX 
А look back at the silliest, spici- 
est, most salacious sex-centered 
subjects of 2007. 


PLAYBOY'S PLAYMATE 
REVIEW 
‘Assess the positions of the dozen 
candidates and vote for Playmate 
of the Year 


notes and news 


WORLD OF PLAYBOY 
Hef and the Girls Next Door grace 
the Fox Reality Really Awards, 
and mixed martial arts come to 
Holmby Hills. 


HANGIN' WITH HEF 
Bridget gets caught up in a 
murder mystery, Kendra raps with 
the stars, and Holly and Hef do 
Disneyland. A new Playboy shop 
‘opens in London. 


PLAYMATE NEWS 
Sara Jean Underwood, Hiromi 
Oshima and Lauren Michelle Hill 
star with Anna Fari in | Know What 
Boys Like; Miss June 1969 Helena 
Antonaccio shares her Secret. 


departments 
PLAYBILL 
DEAR PLAYBOY 
AFTER HOURS 


vol. 55, по. 1—january 2008 


|. шиша 


REVIEWS 
MANTRACK 

THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES. 

WHERE AND HOW TO BUY 
GRAPEVINE 

POTPOURRI 


fashion 


THE FOUR 55 
Skin, scent, style and shave—we 
cover the top products in each 
category, while Sara Jean Under- 
wood, Kara Monaco and other 
Playmates discuss what they 
think makes a well-groomed тап, 


this month on playboy.com 


A little more off the top with 
Sweeney Todd's Helena Bonham 
Carter. playboy.com/21q 


Inside perspectives from pamor editors. 
playboy convblog. 


America's Sexiest Sportscaster I poll: the 
results. playboy.com/sexiestsportscaster 


Our roundup of scandalous and 
absurd news. playboy 
.com/sexnews. 


Get the facts 
оп every 2007 
Playmate from 
their Video Data 
Sheets. playboy 
.com/pmoy 


Whos abin? 


POWER, PRECISION 
AND STYLE. 


Tech Gear pushes forward In 
technology, endurance and style. 
Full-featured. Ful-powered. 

The perfect balance of precision. 
timekeeping and rugged 
sophistication. 


PULSAR 


Where substance meets style 


PulsarWatches.com 
peo 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
ROB WILSON art director 
CARY COLE photography director 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH executive editor 
JAMIE MALANOWSKI managing editor 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: Ay амм articles ator эму саса Lovo leary editor; си nowe senior editor 
FASHION: jostru pe acens dior Jom an очай FORUM: TIMOTHY won associate editor 
MODERN LIVING: сот At Xaxpux senior editor STAFF: RONERTA.DESANO, JOSH жонын 
associate edirs; navn тпвтүй assistans айд; uaea satne senior editorial assistant; VIVIAN COLON. 
armar мас editorial aisats; воск naxovic junior dior CARTOONS: JE THIELE (nav york), 
амам wannen (las angeles) editorial coomdnatos COPY wns ORMOND copy chif; Caunas cum 
achte copy диў. DAVID DEL уга rst, кжати WEST p copy айт RESEARCH: DAVID COMES 
earch diretor; esci солаам depu research ch коп мотт senior ESP a aan, 
 CoUDNLCUMMINS MATT LARSON MUCHA MATAS rauch; a DURAN research librarian EDITORIAL, 
PRODUCTION: MATT ос uza asian managing ltr; VALER THOMAS manager; KUSTIN cO dicite 
‘CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL. (re at large), KEVIN BUCKLEY, SIMON COOPER, GRETCHEN EDCREN, 
JONATAN LITMAN: JOE MORCINSTIRN, JAMES к. PETERSEN, STEEN REBELLO. DAVID LENS JES ROSEN, 
‘BAD SHEP DAVID STEVENS HOW TANNENBAUM, JONN THOMAS ALICE. TURNER 


ART 
том етика contributing art director; SCOTT ANDERSON, BRUCK MANSEN, CHET SUSKI. 
Lan WILLISJemior ап directors; PAUL CHAN senior art assistant; 
сотта was art services coordinator; MALINA EE senior ап administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 


assistans editors AR rayas THIEN wavn senior contributing photographers; CLONES сэшлов 
staff photographer; RICHARD п\л. MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, CEN NIsitINO, DAVID RAMS contributing 


Photographers; nua wuri studio manager (los angeles): вомхи Jo KENNY manager, photo library; 
мін CRAG manager imaging lab; PENNY EKKERT. KRYSTLE JOHNSON production coordinators 


LOUIS R. MOHN publisher 


ADVERTISING 
ө Essex associate publisher: ком srian advertising director: 
иил мамл direc response advertising director; маки плахо advertising operations dbmaor 
NEW YORK: Silk! mas southeast manager; Jom WHITE account manager LOS ANGELES: 
PETE AUERBACH, COREY SPIECHL west coast managers DETROIT: STEVE ROUSSEAU detroit manager 
SAN FRANCISCO: ко MEAGHER northwest manager 


MARKETING 
ин мати asociatepublisher/marketing: sTarieN MURRAY marketing services director; 
‘DANA ROSENTHAL events marketing director; cHRSTORER sHOOLIS research director; 
Donna Tavoso стан sercies director 


LIC RELATIONS 
Lauman ano vice president, public relations: титл м. монету вов nunca publicity directors 


PRODUCTION 
MARA ANDAS director; JOUYJURCIE production manager; CINDY RONTARILLU bramie TILLOU associate 
‘manager: CHAR KROWCZYK BARB TEKILLA аіли managers: ML RAY амын WILLIAMS repress 


CIRCULATION 
LARVA ojear newsstand sales director; vivus ROTUNNO subscription circulation director 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
sacra vexmones right i permissions director 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING 
son отом. managing director; олко жокк editorial director 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL ING. 
sra merser chairman, chief executive officer 
вов urvens president, media group 
JAMES P aaDTaz senior vice president and general manager 


THE L 


HEF SIGHTINGS, MANSION FROLICS AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES 


LONDON CALLING 
Lindsey Vuolo and Lauren An- 
derson joined Playboy chief 
Christie Hefner on Oxford 
Street in London to open the 
new Playboy store, sure to be 
a hit in the capital of posh. 


AND THE WINNER 
18...BRIDGET! 
All for one and one for 
! Hef, Holly and 
Kendra accompanied 
Bridget to the Fox Re- 
ty Channel Re: 
Awards (abovo), whore 
she was presented 
with the Favorite Hot- 
tie award (right) for 
her appearances on 
The Girls Next Door. 
Wo can only assume 
Holly and Kendra were 
close runners-up. 


GOING TO 

THE MAT 
Holmby Hills saw its 
first-ever mixed mar. 

1 arts event when 
Hof hosted a 12:1ght 
card headlined by top. 
freestyle fighters Tet- 
suji Kato and Gilbert 
Melendez (above) 
who battled each 
other. Such stars as 
Ethan Suplee and 
Jaime Pressly (right) 
came out for the 
show, which Melen- 
dez won by decision. 


RAPPIN' WITH THE STARS 
Girl Next Door Kendra Wilkinson, a ka. K Dub, rocked the тіке 
оп MTV's Celebrity Rap Superstar, working her way up to the 
finals against actress Shar Jackson. Go, Kendra! Go, Kendra! 9 


Silk 
Pajamas 


(Quite easy to slip into) 


Created just for Playboy, 
a sensual concoction that begins 
with 2 1/4 oz. Silk Vodka, 3/4 oz. 5 mnt 
Cointreau, 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice ШК..... 

and completes itself with 1 oz. cranberry 
juice and an orange wedge for garnish = 


Silk Vodka мт: ЗИ нода кою orta eS eh 


-4 
p 


І Do Blu. 


High Definition TV and Blu-ray... 


a picture perfect mar 


ШЫ о о: 


Р | 


о у 


KEITH OLBERMANN AT ВАТ 

‘The popularity of MSNBC's Keith 
Olbermann (Playboy Interview; October) 
illustrates the influence of the growing 
demographic of aging peaceniks and 
whiners who, after all these years, still 
have their thumb in their mouth. The 


‘Should Keith Olbermann stick to sports? 


only issues on which Olbermann has a 
responsible and sensible stance are ille- 
gel immigration and protecting Eng- 
ish as our primary language. 
Joe Payton 
‘Atlanta, Georgia 


Olbermann gives Rupert Murdoch 
far too much credit. Fox News isa cir- 
cus, and The O'Reilly Factor is simply 
its sideshow. 
‘Alan Weinstein 
Scottsdale, Arizona 


Olbermann says that if the Vietnam 
war had not ended before he reached 
draft age, he would have “found a way 
not to go,” and "the ones who didn't 
go are heroes as much as those who 
did." Guys like Olbermann fail to sep- 
arate the honor of military service 
from the dishonor of two Democratic 
administrations that escalated Vietnam 
to the disaster it became. The key dif- 
ference between Olbermann and Bill 
O'Reilly is that O'Reilly doesn't pre- 
tend he's a newscaster, 

Larry Hayward 

Santa Fe, New Mexico 


1 started watching Countdown long 
before K.O. became a media darling, 
because I liked his snarky attitude and 
pop-culture references. It was a bonus 
when he started letting go with the 


pointed, elegant rhetoric that gave voice 
to my political thoughts better than I 
could. It’s nice that he is now getting 
the attention he deserves, especially in a 
great interview like yours. I've enjoyed 
‘watching his Fox News-Al Qaeda quote 
(Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda— 
worse for our society"), taken out of 
context, rattle around the far-right echo 
chamber. It’s called hyperbole, kids. I's 
used to make a point. Lies and war don't 
get these people riled, but they seem to 
think Olbermann is Lucifer himself 
Becky Leibowitz 
Chicago, Illinois. 
Leibowitz runs bloggingolbermann com. 


Olbermann comes across as frus- 

trated, envious and unfocused. I'd say 

the score is ESPN 1, MSNBC 0. 
Robert Mirrielees 
Brownsville, Texas 


Somehow 1 doubt Keith “Hell no, 1 
won't go” Olbermann knows that his 
hero, Yankees great Jerry Coleman, 
gave up his best baseball years to serve 
as a Marine pilot in two wars. 

W.W. Dubbs 

‘Southern Pines, 


forth Cai 


‘The October issue went into my 
recycling bin— will not have anything 
near me with Olbermann in it. His 
tirades against Fox News are hilarious 
but also scary, in that some people may 
take him seriously. 


Kevin Hewicker 
Irvine, California 


Thank you for recycling. 


Your Olbermann interview rein- 

forces my belief that the only classy ex- 

Fox News personality is Tony Snow. 
Bart Schwartz 
Phoenix, Arizona 


Olbermann deserves his own Worst 
Person award for not allowing anyone 
on his show who disagrees with him. 

"Candace Serviss 
Loda, Illinois 


It’s interesting that the allegedly 
“buffoonish” O'Reilly consistently pulls 
in three times as many viewers as the 
supposedly erudite and witty Olber- 
mann. Its just a matter of time before 
he flames out at MSNBC. 

Julian Moseley 

San Francisco, California 


Olbermann has Bush derangement 
syndrome. George Bush killed those 
innocent Americans? Joe Biden is elo- 
quent? Fox News is worse than the 


Olbermann is the male equiva- 
lent of Rosie O'Donnell: not credible. 
Bill Morris 

Oil City, Louisiana, 


Ultimately, Olbermann is as angry 
and self-righteous as his nemesis 
O'Reilly. They're slightly different 
shades of the same color, 
‘Stephen Scott 
Tulsa, Oklahoma 


What liberal nut job. I'm a Navy avia- 
tor who has spent plenty of time in the 
Middle East. Olbermann presents the 
same lame opinions you hear all the time 
from the left concerning Fox News, the 
Bush administration, the Iraq occupation 
and why the U.S, entered the region, 
‘Atleast the magazine surrounding the 
interview is top-notch. Its good to show 
what type of people walk among us. 
J.C. Marlar 
ulf Breeze, Fl 


WHO'S THAT GIRL? 
Who is the amazing woman on 
pages 56 and 57 of the October issue 
(Students on Students)? We need more 
shots of her. 
Blake Shulsky 
Litle Rock, Arkansas 


Our mystery model: Cameron Haven. 


That's Cameron Haven of Florida State. 
The other women are Davin Lexen ofthe Uni- 
vers of Texas at Dallas, Reagan Yan of the 
University of Missouri and Anahi Casas of 
the University of Texas at El Paso with Ashlee 
Jac. See more of бет at oyberplaybaycom. 


BREWSKIS AMERICAN-STYLE 
Аза Colorado State alum, 1 can't com- 
prehend why your top 10 college-town 


1 


of products 
Const 


ntellig 


your opinion or 
from 


you could 


microbreweries list (Brew U, October) 
does not include New Belgium Brew- 
ing Company's Fat Tire beer. 

William Palmer 

West Palm Beach, Florida 


I'm a student at the University of 
Colorado and work at Baseline Liquor. 
Avery Brewing's brewmaster happens 
to be a customer. When I showed him 
the article, he was beside himself. You 
may have a new subscriber. 

Kevin Lucas 
Boulder, Colorado 


Bell's Brewery of Kalamazoo, home 
10 Western Michigan University and 
Kalamazoo College, deserves recog- 
nition, My personal favorite brew is 
Oberon, which has a slightly spicy 
wheat flavor. 

Luke McGlynn 

Detroit, Michigan 


After reading in Brew U that doctors 
have traditionally fed stout to blood 
donors because of its high iron con. 
tent, I became fascinated by the pos- 
sibility of enriching my diet with 
Guinness. Unfortunately, its iron con 
tent is just 0.113 milligrams a Мет. To 
reach ihe recommended daily dose of 
18 milligrams, you would need to con 
sume 160 liters, or about 450 12- 
ounce bottles. Bottoms up! 

Jonathan Stewart 

Newbury Park, California 


AU LARTER 
No disrespect to the stars of the 
October pictorials, but Ali Larter (200) 
the best-looking woman in the entire 
issue. She radiates sexuality. 
Tommy Pullman 
Bedford, Indiana 


SPENCER SCOTT 
ALIS, I'm one of the youngest read- 
ers of rLavnoy, so I was surprised to see 
that Miss October Spencer Scott (Scott 
Free) is even younger than 1 am, by a 
few months. She is stunning—casily 
the year’s sexiest Playmate. 
Christopher Kral 
Placerville, California 


FAN LETTER 

Tam a 29-year-old female subscriber 
who isn't sure you can still call the 
magazine “entertainment for men.” 
Every month 1 look forward to four 
of my favorite things: (1) Olivia's illus- 
tration, which I promptly tear out and 
hang on my wall, (2) nude celebrities 
and Grapevine, (3) photos of Hef and 
the girls at parties and events, and (4) 
the Playmate. Please keep up the hip, 
fresh taste. 


Jewels Willing 
Ukiah, California 


GIRLS OF THE SEC 
Ihave been a Pravnov reader and fan 
for 18 years, and Girls of the SEC (Octo- 
ber) is by far the best college-girls pic- 
torial Гуе seen. Thanks to all involved 
for a job well done. 
Michael Cole 
Gilbert, Arizona 


One girl steals the show: Whitney 
Leigh of LSU. She's gorgeous. One 
photo is not enough. Please bring her 
back for her own pictorial 

Cliff Ross 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvani 


Thank you for the perfect rear 
view of Maria Mills of the University 
of Mississippi. But you tease us with 


Maria Mills: the other side of the moon. 


the mention that she is a 30DD, while 
showing her only from be 
Larry Me 
Martinez, California 
Sorry about that; here's a bonus shot. We 
або want to correct two errors in the picto- 
rial. We switched the names under two pho- 
tos: The Florida student on the upper lft on 
page 112 is Neenah Dresin, while the Flor- 
ida student on the upper right on page 116 is 
Natasha Combs. Also, the photo in the middle 
of page 117 shows not Brittney Brookwood 
but Alsa ler You can see more photos of 
‘Neenah, Natasha, Britney, Alyssa and other 
of our SEC beauties inside the Cyber Club. 


Girls of the SEC is awesome, but 
where's the Vandy love? Vanderbilt 
has one of the most beautiful campuses 
anywhere, and it's not because of the 
trees. Surely we deserve more than 
one woman out of the 38 chosen. 
Erwin Yap. 
Nashville, Tennessee. 


Read more feedback at playboy.com/blog. 


Emi a бе web at LETTERS PLAYBOYCOM Or wräe: 730 FFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019 


SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking 
Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health. 


TWAT ---- 
BRENT 


| d "| 
= м —— 


SKECHERS -— 


"I'm grubby and dirty pretty 
much the entire film.” 


babe of the month. 


Tania Saulnier 


Vancouverite actress Tania Saulnier has a thing about cleanliness. It's not obsessive-compulsive disorder; she Just keeps playing char- 
acters who are bathing or in need of a bath (and for that, kudos to the screenwriters and casting directors). In the allen-zombie horror 
flick Slither, Tania plays a teen heroine who is attacked by evil slugs while taking a bubble bath and must battle them in the nude 一 an 
iconic sequence that is the basis for the film's poster and DVD cover. If you haven't seen it, don't get too excited: She's always covered 
by strategically placed bubbles and props. Prior to Siither Tania did a stretch on the kids’ series Caitlin Way, but her cameo on Small- 
ville, as the girlfriend of a supervillain whose touch causes victims to freeze to death, sounds more interesting. “He touches me in the 
shower,” she recalls, “and | 一 again I'm in the shower—shatter into a million pieces." Tania's latest film is In the Name of the King: А 
Dungeon Siege Tale, in which she plays the filthy peasant girl Tawiyn. “Claire Forlani and | are chained іп a dungeon,” she says. " 

grubby and dirty pretty much the entire film, and then in the last scene I'm cleaned up.” And as you can see, she cleans up nice. 


afterhours 


Five Ways 
to Midnight 


NEW YEAR'S EVE 
DESTINATIONS FOR 
ANY BUDGET 


For $150, in Los Angel 
Join the hallucinogenic circus | 
that is the New Year's Eve Ball at 
the Hollywood & Highland Center: 
aerial derring-do, fire dancers, 
burlesque shows for a touch of 
ass and food by Wolfgang Puck. 
‘And as if that weren't enough 
ladies and gents, Jeff Goldblum 
and the Mildred Snitzer Orches- 
tra! daskproductions.com 

For $250, in Washington, 
D.C... Get tuxed up at Euronet International's 007 License to Thrill 
‘Around the World Gala at the Sheraton National Hotel. This affair 
is all over the map, with themed areas, food and cocktails evok- 
ing the exotic settings of a dozen Bond films. Martinis are shaken, 
not—well, you know. euronetinternational.com/NewYearsEveDC 
For $300, in Las Vegas... Walk into the Playboy Club at the Palms 
‘on December 31 and you'll be greeted by Playmates and stunning 
Bunnies (see our November 2006 pictorial). The cocktails flow, the DJ 
spins, and Playmates get down. At midnight, toast with Perrier Joust 
bubbly and Playmates. By the way, there will be Playmates at the party. 
‘And did we mention the Playmates? paims.com/playboy_club_1.php 
For $6,000, in Miami Beach... Reserve a table for eight by 
the stage at the Miami Beach club Mansion. Sure, the music will 
be hip and current (last year's acts were DJ AM and Blink-182's 
Travis Barker), but the real attraction is the famous-for-being- 
famous element: Lothario without portfolio Wilmer Valderrama 
has played host for three years running. theopiumgroup.com 
For free, in Now York City... Stand in the freezing cold of Times 
‘Square among the very finest of New Jersey's drunken revelers. Like bun- 
gee jumping and light bondage, this is one of those activities you think 
you won't enjoy but try anyway just to be absolutely and forever sure. 
Don't be fooled by the free admission: A hotel room in Times Square can 
cost you $1,000 a night—and don’t expect to book just one night. 


(Some ticket prices and event details may be subject to change.) 


TWELVE STORIES THAT 
WILL SHOCK AND CONFUSE 
US IN THE YEAR AHEAD 


ExxonMobil makes 
enigmatic claim that all its oil 
derricks are “going green." 
EBRUARY: On eve of Super Tues- 
day, Hillary Clinton has Barack Obama deported, 
Dick Cheney changes name to IN =z. 

L: Yankees debut drastically revamped lineup— 
welcome back, Chuck Knoblauch! 

In desperate bid to look tough, House Demo- 
crats pass resolution condemning Mort and Greg 
Walker for antitroops themes in Beetle Bailey. 

Tom Sizemore hosts talent contest-reality series. 
American Sextape, on which untalented singers try to 
win fans by posting hard-core videos on the Internet. 

Top summer film is The InsurgAntz, a grim 
Pixar tale of red ant-vs.-black ant civil war, in 
which the two sides’ shared hatred of weevil осси- 
piers results in a flaming pile of ant and weevil 
death with no uplifting finale. Kids love it. 

Real estate lending crisis hits rock bot- 
tom and banks initiate mass foreclosures. Result is 
banks own a surplus of shitty houses and market has. 
a shortage of gullible poor people to buy them. 

Surprise hit series of new fall TV 
schedule is the plodding, existential Superhero 
Lady Beach Doctors. Special powers allow lead 
Characters to cure anyone of any iliness—but should 
they? Vida Guerra and Jessica Biel star. 

Paparazzi snap open-legged shot of 

Britney getting out of a car, and she's forgotten to 

not wear panties, 

E Dennis Kucinich defeats Ron Paul in 

presidential election. Republicans suspect voter 
fraud in Florida, where RuPaul finishes third. 

Lame-duck president George W. Bush 

launches Operation Kiss My Ass, bombing Sydney, 

Australia for no other reason than to create a giant 

mess for the next administration to clean up. ж 


Hare of the Dog That Bit You 
THE MORNING-AFTER DRINK, IMPROVED 


We gave up making resolutions years ago, and January 1 is no longer the day of reckon. 
ing in college football. But the New Year's Day tradition we never fail to observe is 
putting down a couple of bloody marys to ease the pain from the previous night's 
excesses. Something about the tomato flavor suggests the bloody is doing you some 


good even though it's Just as toxic (or more so, if made well) as the cocktails you drank 
the night before, Here's a slightly different, surprisingly tasty, possibly more nutritious 
variation on the drink that may or may not be doing you any good on New Year's Day. 


(And though we admit a fondness for all things /apin, we did not name it. 


It was 


invented by mixologist and former pLaraor researcher Andrew Bradbury.) 


The Hot Rabbit 
2 oz. vodka. 
6 oz. carrot juice (fresh is best, 


but store-bought will work) with celery stick. 


1 tsp. cayenne pepper 
3 dashes celery salt 
Shake well and serve over ic 


garnish 


ШІ 


DAMN RICHT YOUR DAD DRANK I 


J ^ 
d 


lA ` = 
Canadian Club. UA 


afterhours 


оду language 


VOLLEYBALL 
SIGNS AREN'T 
JUST GIRL TALK 


Pro beach volleyball 
kicks off 2008 with 
a Hot Winter Nights 
‘event in Oklahoma City 
оп January 10. Without 
a doubt, women in bi 
kinis are quality sports 
entertainment. But 
what's with all the hand 
jive? As we learned 
from the recently pub. 
lished trivia tome Take 
Me to Your Leader it's 
not nearly as sexual 
as we thought. 


“т т 


Line block. (Not 


M 


2m 


Crosscourblockline No blockline block. Line block right. Line block. 
block. (Not "He totally (Not "ГІ do my top (Not "Jesus, look at (Not "Me too, 
is. Should we take but not my bottom, Мт! What a stud. i'd both get naked and 
our bikinis off?")  l'maliestubbly") Ikea place of that.") 5 what happens.) 


dig doug 


Stand-Up Stanhope 


What should people bring with them to a Doug Stanhope show? A Christian friend. 
It's fun to watch them watching me. What shouldn't people bring? Bachelorette 
parties. What's the most painful thing you have ever done to yourself? Hosting The 
‘Man Show. How much did you pay for that haircut? My girlfriend did it for free. But 
accounting for the cost of having a girlfriend, I've paid quite a bit. What's your most 
prized possession? A letter the school psychologist sent my mother when 1 was in 
Seventh grade, saying | was "in serious need of professional help." What were you 
like as a child? Almost class clown, almost school shooter. What did your parents 
want you to be? Out of the house. What do they think of your act? My mother 
loves everything 1 do; my dad wishes he could hear it better from under six feet of 
earth. Have you ever been mistaken for anyone more famous? No, but once | was 
mistaken for my own opener and had a woman tell me at length how much the 
headliner sucked. When was the last time someone called you an asshole? Daily. 
Thanks, MySpace. How much porn do you keep in your house? I'm a 40-year-old 
рот addict, so that's like asking an elderly cat lady how many greeting cards she 
has in boxes in her basement. What material causes people to walk out of your 
‘shows? Good material. Unfortunately, people don't walk out on boring material often 
enough. What celebrity you thought would be cool turned out to be a dick when you 
‘met him? David Cross. But looking back, | can sympathize. What does the name 
Stanhope mean? Not much in show-business circles. 

Doug Stanhope's Showtime special, No Refunds, is available on DVD. 


Weird Sex in Cinema 
MORE MOVIES ABOUT 
UNCONVENTIONAL BELIEFS 


In the indie film Teeth, Dawn Is a 
young lady with a vagina dentata- 
erally, a vagina with teeth c 
unmanning any guy unl 
venture in. The vagina dentata may be 
the most famous bit of sexual folklore, 
but other, more obscure beliefs and 
customs could make good films too. 
We found a few in Edgar Gregersen's 
The World of Human Sexuality 
Behaviors, Customs and Beliefs. Are 
you listening, Hollywood? 
Dairy Me—Roger and Christine are 
best friends, but everyone can tell 
they're in love. Yet there's a problem: 
They have drunk milk together. Their 
people, the Dard of Afghanistan, con- 
sider them "milk relatives,” for whom. 
marriage would be incest. Don't tell 
them not to cry over swilled milk! 
Fares Teenager Cory is young, dumb 
and full of you know what. He's hav- 
ing nocturnal emissions, a sin in Ch 
nese folklore, for which there is one 
explanation: Evil fox spirits disguised 
as hot babes are sapping his precious 
bodily fluids as he sleeps. How can 
something so wrong feel so right? 
Baby Boom Pregnant, horny Sandra 
keeps having sex. It's a no-no for the 
Kubeo people of Brazil, who believe 
tinued intercourse will pile up 
fetuses within her, until one day she 
explodes. Now that’s a bad blow job! 
Mother Night—At his father's funeral, 
Danny is a wreck. Sure, he'll miss his 
ncerned 
about his seven stepmoms. Customs 
the Ch 
Africa 
sex with them all—in one night. Thank. 
you, Mom. May 1 have another? 


SONY 


Want Sony 
headphones 
this holiday? 
Make the hint 
loud and 


SONY 


Peal ona ploce тич 


Pool and place nint on a vosa 


Peel ond pioco hint 
on a Bor ol coton swabs 


Take good 
` сою of my ооп. 
Give he Sony ЕХ 
Series Stereo Earbud 
Headphones 
nis holiday. 


ED — 


[afterhours 


Baby, You Can Tune My Car 
A QUICK LOOK UNDER THE HOOD OF UNIVERSITY 
OF CENTRAL FLORIDA JUNIOR RACHEL LEE 


PLAYBOY: What's your favorite thing about school? 

RACHEL: The labs. I'm studying molecular biology and micro- 
biology. l'm working toward going to med school. 

PLAYBOY; That's new. Normally we hear "awesome parties." 
RACHEL: | used to attend frat parties every night, but then I got 
а wake-up call. Now | unwind by working on cars. 

PLAYBOY: Come again? 

RACHEL: I'l invite а bunch of people over to the garage, and we'll 
drink beer and work on our cars. Doing installs, tinting windows 
and even fabricating parts. I've also had work-on-car dates. 
PLAYBOY: Gearhead, eh? 

RACHEL: Very much so. My mom thought | was going through a 
phase when | was younger, but | really love the lifestyle. 
PLAYBOY: What do you drive? 

RACHEL: | have a customized 2003 Honda Accord. 1 bring it 
to car exhibitions, where | also work as a model. Guys go nuts 
when | tell them | have a car in the show. 

PLAYBOY: Did you lose your virginity in the back seat of a car? 
RACHEL: No, but that would have been fitting. | do have sex in 
cars pretty often. I've been caught by the cops plenty of times. 
PLAYBOY: What's your dream car in which to have sex? 
RACHEL: | guess an Aston Martin Vanquish. There are many 
cars | wouldn't want to mess up because | respect them. 
Want to be he nest Cona the Most? ——a(—— 


Love Los 
and Foun 
IT WAS SPECIAL 
TO SOMEONE 


Bill Shapiro has a fascination with love letters not writ- 
ten to him. In Other People's Love Letters he presents 
150 missives—the long and the short, the profound and 
the very stupid—trom his collection. Here are some of 
‘our favorite lines: 

"Do you want to be my girlfriend? __ Yes _ No 
“Then 1 dumped Jim for Aquaman.” 

"Somewhere amidst all that talk of genocide, rape and 
pillage, a piece of my heart gave itself to you," 

“You use too many adjectives." 

“Except for your insanity, you are one of the coolest/ 
funniest people I know.” 

“It does not seem that this relationship is made for 
anything other than what it is, and we have pretty 
much plumbed the depths of it." 

“1 miss you, Ben. You are never far from my thoughts. 
Now go fuck yourself.” 

“LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR.” 
“Ravage me with your wine-drenched mouth and car- 
penter hands." 

"On the occasion of my being made aware of the birth 
of our firstborn, a son, the biggest feeling within me 
was one of elation.” 

"You are charming, intense, challenging, and you have 
an excellent cock.” 

“Also, where do you stand on chains?" 


calendar girls 


366 Hot Dates 


We loved the 2007 Nerdcore 
calendar, which featured naked 
women and retro video gaming, 
but the 2008 version may be 
even better. Again photographed 
by Playboy model Cherie Roberts, 
this new edition has a comic: 
book theme, with the ladies in 
(or, more properly, out of) skin- 
tight superhero garb. Order it at 
totallynerdcore.com. 


2 


elsewhere at playboy 


pehi 


A 


PATIFE 


Bare-Assed in the Park 


A NEW PLAYBOY TV SERIES PLUMBS PORN'S INNATE ABSURDITY 


Playboy TV explores new territory with 
Canoga Park, a situation comedy 
about the fictional adult-film com- 
pany American Insertions. Filmed in 
а semi-documentary style, it's like 
The Office plus nudity, with a light- 
hearted tone that recalls the soft-core 
film farces of the 19705 and 19805. 
What you're looking at (left to right, 
top to bottom): 1. Porn starlets (Casey 
Parker, Andrea Lowell and Monique 
Alexander) in space-age garb lodge a 
complaint with Mitch Tanner (Bran- 
don Gibson), founder and CEO of 
American Insertions. 2. Mitch and 
the ubiquitous Ron Jeremy host the 
Booty Calls telethon. 3. The Twins 
(Erica and Rachelle Drummond) show 
Tanner they've got what it takes. 
4. Shorty Rossi pleads for more spe- 


cific direction (background by Mikayla 
and Emilianna). 5. Tanner's assistant, 
retired porn star Randi Meadows 
(Erika Jordan), tries to cheer up the 
boss. 6. James Bondage, played by 
house stud Dirk Reemer (Anton 
Michael), prepares to be room-serviced 
by Nikki Benz. 7. Jelena Jensen із 
not going to fall for the banana in the 

ilpipe. 8. A dance number from 
\merican Insertions's musical A Star 
ls Pom. 9. Jeremy coaches Randi back 
into shagging shape. 10. Randi 
reflects on her comeback. 11. Security 
arrives to rescue Jelena and her large. 
breasts from a snake. 12. A Star [s 
Рот star Samantha Ryan gets a lift. 
13. A young production assistant 
tries not to stare while sizing up a 
nude Christina Jordan. 


a night to remember 


Toga! Toga! Toga! 
HARD-PARTYING MEN AND WOMEN 
OF TROY, PLAYBOY U SALUTES YOU 


When the University of Southern California. 
threw its first Greek Week in nearly five years, 
Playboy U was there. We sent Cyber Girl Mal- 
югу Dylan and Playboy U Radio Show host 
Alisa Reyes to be emissaries of goodwill and 
general babeitude. Their report follows. 
MALLORY: The party was at Avalon, and the 
club was packed—at least 2,000 people. 
ALISA: They were decked out In togas or 
wearing mascot costumes, The track team 
showed up in spandex uniforms. 
MALLORY: You could see everything. 1 
thought, How can you go to a party іп that? 
What if you're talking to a hot girl and... 
ALISA: The boys were so excited. They 
were going crazy over Mallory and me. 
MALLORY: They were sweet—so young! The 
girls looked amazing. A lot of blondes in 
short skirts and low-cut tops. There меге 
definitely some who could be Playmates. 
ALISA: All those sexy outfits and C boobs. 
MALLORY: Alisa and 1 had to get onstage, 
which made me a little nervous. But a 
couple of tequila shots calmed me down. 


TWO WAYS TO VOTE IN 2008 


Its Playmate of 
the Year selec- 
tion time again; 
don't forget to 
cast your ballot. 
Method 1: Go to 


playboy.com/pmoy. 
Method 2: For 
$1.99, you can send. 
a text message with 
the two-digit code that 
appears under your favor- 
йез photo in Playboy's Play- 
mate Review (page 131) to 
PLBOY (75269). You'll get a wall- 
paper image and, if she wins, 
a full pictorial of her in June. 


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QA TO REQUEST A FREE DVD 
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Chivas Regal 
18¥? 


Af INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS 


On theantidrug.com, a website for par- 
ents, one of the arguments presented 
against smoking marijuana is that "teens 
who use drugs are 5 times more likely to 
have sex than teens who do not use 
drugs." Parents just don't understand. 


Islamists G 


Wild 


10% of the visitors to Domina, Israel's 
leading porn website, are Arabic 
speakers in Muslim countries. 


Need abetting edge 
for the Rose Bowi? 
Keep an eye on Law 
туз Beet Bowl. In 
the days leading up 
to the Granddaddy 
ol Them All, both 
of the competing | According to a study by the National Sexuality Research Center, 30% of women who 
feamsdineonprime | meet a man online have sex with him on the first date 

beef at Lawy s res- 

taurant, Last year 

USC, the eventual Hea 


sGo, Home, Sweet 


champion, con H : 
Shomp peas WEGEN) | Coug Home Page 
to Michigan's 612 pounds. In the 51 of Ameri- 3 ofwom- The Japanese government says 
Years ofthe contest 71% of the teams. | саз veterinary en over the | the nation has about 5,400 
That have won the Beef Bowi have gone | students are ae of 40 date | homeless who live primarily in 
on to win the Rose Bowl women. younger men, | 24-hour Interet cafes 
8,000 Pce pa tor a totns penis trom a species of varus extintor 12,000 years, At 4 teet Ing It ls 
y believed to be the largest fossilized mammal penis yet discovered 


Next Topic: ! 


In Spurts 


Jumping Jacks | Split A man ejaculates 
! 14 gallons of semen 

A British professor found ot men who first married | oves his feme. 

that when the average | in the 1950s were still wed 15 

woman jogs, her breasts fater Among men first 

Bounce a vertical distance | married in the late 19805, 

of about 8 inche 61% are still hitched. 


Prison Shells 


According to Marc Levin of the 


y^ ‘conservative Texas Public Policy 

Foundation, the number of activi- 

According to the State Department, North ties that are felonies in Texas: 

Korea has the largest submarine fleet е 2,324. Of those, the number that 
in the world, with 78 subs. involve or require oysters: 1 


25 


D 
Ф. 1-866- , 
GAINsc® 


Auto Insurance 


Sap, 


WHERE CHAMPIONS TEST THEIR 
METTLE AGAINST THE GREATEST 
DRIVERS IN THE WORLD. 


Over 75 champions from all facets of motorsports have competed against drivers from all comers 
of the globe In this grueling twice round-the-clock battle. When the ‘sR rode in 2007, it was still 
anyone's race with three cars nose to tail for the overall lead in the final hours of the Rolex 24. 
‘The rest of the seakon continued in the same vein, with niew chamipions cfowned after one of the 
closest Battles ih motorsports, leaving two past champions hungry for more. The Grand-Am Rolex 
Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Special Reserve 2008 season promises to be Just as 
thrilling with the Rolex 24 At Daytona thrusting the season into high gear. 


Check out, for TV airtimes ahd the most up-to-date list oPchampions 
centered in the Rolex 24 At Daytona. 


The racë for the 2008 Championship begins. Mark your «ейт January 26 27,2008 ШЕ, 


movie of the month 
CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR 


An impetuous congressman funds a rebel army 


Charlie Wäson's War arrives loaded with Oscar alt creder- 
tials, including high-powered cast members Tom Hanks, 
Айа Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, estimable direc 
тог Mike Nichols and an Aaron Sorkin screenplay based оп 
the nonfiction best-seller by former 60 Minutes producer 
George Crile. Hanks stars as the гезне Texas bachelor 
congressman fond of strippers, Vegas hot tubs and whis- 
‘key, who, in the early 1980s, worked his way into foreign 
policy by banding together with his wealthy commiehating 
muse (Roberts) and a rogue CIA man (Hoffman) to arm the 
Afghan mujahideen in a covert war against the Soviets, “I'l 
stop short of caling the movie a comedy, but i's definitely 
а caper, a fun ride,” says multiple 

Emmy winner Sorkin, best known. "The movie 
for The West Wing and A Few Good 

for Tha West Wing and A Рен Good is not a drag 
place in the Middle East and others | promise.” 

in a refugee camp, so its not Fra 

temity Spring Break. But nobody's asking people to eat 
their vegetables here. Tom is neurologically incapable of 
not being terrific. Philip is absolutely the real deal and deliv 
ers a great performance. Also its Julia as we have never 
seen her before, The toughest job belongs to the guy 
designing the poster. How do you get people to see a 
movie about the arming of the Afghan mujahideen and their 
struggle against the Soviet invaders 25 years ago? But the 
movie is not a drag. | promise.” —Stephen Rebello 


now showing 


Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Our cat: The unholy marriage of 
hr Tim | Burton's Goth sensibilities, Depp's 
Burton interprets the Broadway musical about a sprung-rom-prison | dazzling quirkiness and Stephen 
barber who teams with a diabolical landlady to slay his false accus- | Sondheim's musical brilliance 
'es. Notorious for seling “the worst pies in London," the landlady | makes this a welcome nightmare 
scores a hit with a new recipe featuring severed body parts. Just in бте for Christmas. 


Juno Our call: A whip-smart screen- 

In this clever gem | play by Diablo Cody, supersharp 
from director Jason Retman (Thank You for Smoking), a 16-year. | direction and a peak-performing 
old slacker gets pregnant her first time out with her best friend. She | cast ought to ensure this film- 
meets a керегесі childless couple after reading about their desire | festival favorite is the year's Litle 
to adopt in the PennySaver circular. Comic brllnce ensues. Miss Sunshine-size surprise. 


National Treasure: Book of Secrets Our call: One man's trash is 
In this | another's treasure, so Y the first 
sequel to the 2004 hit National Treasure, Cage retums to hunt for | flick was your idea of fun, your 
the buried “truth” behind Abraham Lincoln's assassination, chas- | hunt for colorful escapist thrills 
ing clues provided by 18 missing pages from John Wilkes Booth's | involving kidnapping and inter 
diary. The air is thick with Oscar-level stars in supporting roles. | national conspiracies ends here. 


There Will Be Blood Our call: Overpowering tension, 
Director Paul | Day-Lewis's blistering perfor. 
Thomas Anderson's strange and beautiful epic was inspired by | mance, knockout cinematography 
Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oi! Day-Lewis plays a blackchearted | andan impressive score add up to 
Texas prospector who becomes a tycoon after creating a boom- | a towering experience akin to the 
town, which leads to clashes with a dangerous young preacher. | works of Welles and Kubrick. 


т 


reviews [ dvds & games 


BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT 


“Al those moments wil be lost in time, Ike tears in rain,” says a Replicant 
(a synthetic being) in Ridley Scott's 1982 scifi classic. Tears may wash 
away, but reverence for this seminal noir about a blade runner (Harrison 
Ford) hunting Replicants in a dystopian L.A. has only grown. Scott's 
breathtaking final cut 
features restored foot- 
age and preserves the. 
film's core existential 
crisis, which stil elic- 
its tears of joy. Avail 
able boxed with four 
alternate versions and 
оп HD DVD and Blu- 
Tay. Best extra: The. 
Ultimate Collector's 
Edition has a replica 
spinner car, YY 
Robert B. DeSaho 


ner fans the flames of lust in hus- 


band Roman Polanskts The Ninth Gate (pictured). Wil 
she do the same in The Diving Bel and the Butterfly? 


3:10 TO YUMA Gallows-bound outlaw GOLDEN BOY inthis 1939 classic, Wiliam BIG LOVE: THE COMPLETE SECOND 
Russell Crowe battles with rancher Chris. Holden shines as a violinist who moon- SEASON HBO's polygamy drama nears 
tian Bale and his “Virtuous” posse in a hail lights in the lucrative boxing ring, nudged genius as Bil Paxtorís Mestyle jeopardizes 
of words and bullets along by sexy Bar- his hardware biz and 
in this hit Elmore bara Stanwyck father-in-law Harry 
Leonard adaptation Best extra: Kanga- Dean Stanton feeds. 
Best extra: А peek roo Kid (1938), a Paxton's dark side 
into outlaws of the cartoon spoof of Best extra: Too many 
Wild West. уух the story. үүө Wives, too few extras, 
—Bryan Reesman —Matt Stegbige! WON 一 Gmg Fagan 


game of the month 
MASSIVELY EFFECTIVE 


Roleplaying games can be a snooze if you're not ће D&D type. Thank: 
fully, the visionaries at BioWare have made a career out of reinventing 
the genre. Their latest, Mass Effect (360), blazes the boldest trail yet. 
This actionpacked scifi saga turns on strange monoliths that harbor 
ancient technological secrets and a plot to destroy the human race, 
which has now spread across the galaxy. Along the way, there are 
40 plus hours of galactic exploring to do, seasoned with alien political 
intrigue and heated shootouts. Combat styles are flexible enough that 
you can run and gun or use strategic squad commands to equal efect. 
But the real treats are its incredibly fluid conversation engine and how 
widely the game varies based on each choice you make. In this open- 
‘ended and graphically stunning masterpiece, a few loose words could 
touch off the next galactic war. YYYY — Damon Brown 


UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE КАМЕ & LYNCH: DEAD MEN (360, in brief” 
(PS3) Pretty, pulpy and packed with РС, PS3) What happens when a ‚games in brief 
surprises, this action-adventure professional criminal teams with a (360, PS3) Knock off 
has you dealing with pirates (the mediated psychopath for a series of | knights as a Crusades-era hit man. Gorgeously gory. 
modern kind), Soldiers and more audacious heiss? Depends on how 
in your quest to recover a massive good you are with а controler. This (360, PS3) Guide the legendary hero 
treasure cache. Bulethapoy romp » | to victory in this brutal movie adaptation. 
Strong writing ako features inter- - — 
nu پک ت‎ ES (Wii) Zombies! Shoot them! Quickly! 
ample charms. courage double. PA 
p crossing. vw 

—Chris Hudak Scott Alexander y 


(360, DS, PS3, Wii) Six movies, unlimited fun. 


"MASTERPIECE" 


“боле Informer 


"It's оле of those rare games that comes along eyerg five or ten years, sucks ШОШ Tn knocks 
% о Socks Off fand haunts you for ears Offer you've ployedit" 


5 
“One of EN 


thoughtprovoking, and just SoWnvight 
impressivegames to emerge oa оте 
console ol ever. Easily оп оғ 
the bestgämes of the year.” 


C GamePro 
“боле Informer 


+ 5 outof 5 


- Yahoo!® Games 


"spend my coreemond My gaming life, 

waiting for a momentwhen a game just 
astonishes me whenfenn t belle what 

l'm seeing, what ООо. BioSHBek hos 

five, An instanti dose" 1 


PC Gamer UK 


for Windows 


1Qout of 10 / 


4 > ¡Games 
It's ingenious, enthralling, and a 
mosterpiece of the most epic 
proportions. So without funflerdelau 
would you kindly enter об so thot 
you too can experiedee the best that 
video об ез have to offer?" 

- Gone Informer 


10 out of 10) 


- Wired.com 


5 out of 5 


- GamePro 


"More Кол any other game In recent 
memo BioShock is dripping with 
atmosphere Gnd intrigue, ond it’s one 
of those rore titles Where story dialogue 


‘and choracter devel Gent are just оз 
important os the о Оп sequences.” 
FUSA Todayı 


Agenetically enhanced shooter. 
bioshockgame.com / Available Now 


NVIDIA 
A 


EJ 


music 


reviews 


BUYING IN BULK 


Here's our year-end roundup of the year's best roundups 


As the album format further becomes a relic for today's music lover, one form of 
physical product endures and even thrives: Boxed sets continue to roll off the assem- 
bly line. This past year saw a bounty of fantastic ones, and thankfully there is no end 
іп sight. (Rhino) is a surprisingly vital four-disc survey of a 


musical form unfairly relegated to meatheads. From Blue Cheer to Hawkwind to 
Hanoi Rocks, this is thinking manis sludge. 

ions (Columbia/Legacy) presents more than six hours of Mies Davis's darkest, 
most impenetrable music in a manner that makes perfect sense. The fivedisc set 
of John Coltrane's work from the late 19505, 


(Prestige), reveals Trane's 
versatility as both а 
sideman and leader. 
In 1938 Mário de 
Andrade ventured 
into the wilds of 
northern Brazil to 
record traditional 
music, now brought 
together and lovingly 
restored on 


(SESC 
Säo Paulo). These 
six CDs capture a 
lost time in a magi 
cal place. 


(Tompkins Square), a three CD set of old-time sav- 
agery, serves to remind you that gunplay music didnt start with T Check out Furry 
Lewis. (Briliant Classics) is the 
perfect desertisland choice, with 155 CDs covering all the dvine composer's music 
at a reasonable price. (Rhino) is an extensive look at 
San Francisco-area bands in the era surrounding the Summer of Love, including hits 
(from the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & the Fish, Janis Joplin and Moby 
Grape), as well as experimental sounds (Fifty Foot Hose, the Warlocks and Notes 
From the Underground). For more recent sonic adventures from the region, check 
out (Crammed), a 30th anniversary boxed set from the seminal Bay Area 
postpunk group Tuxedomoon. (Rhino) collects all those great songs 
you know from 120 Minutes and college radio from the past two decades, including 
a nice cross section of shoegazing, Britpop and Madchester, as well as 1980s 
innovators such as Jesus & Mary Chain and the Smiths. The Rounder label has 
always had a strong Crescent City 
collection, and the four-CD survey 


Чем Ог} usic offers its 
best Louisiana R&B, from James 
Booker to Eddie Bo. 

initive Collection (Shout! Fac- 
tory) houses indescribably great 
blues sides, including Jimmy Reed, 
John Lee Hooker and Billy Boy 
Amok, Perl Jam is nothing if not 
completist: (Monkey Wrench) is a seven-CD recording of 
three of the bands concerts from 2005 and 2006. 

(ESP-Disk}—five discs of Lady Day, both Ive and on the 
radio traverses a remarkable career from her st recordings with Count Basie unti 
those made months before her death. 

(Epic/Legacy) gathers on seven discs Sy Stone's groundbreaking work for Epic in 
the 1960s and 1970s. Sly changed the face of music. If the remastered albums 
don't convince you, the extra tracks wil. 


1 


Half of the traiblazing Miami bass duo 
LTrimm, she's back with a boom 


When “Cars With the Boom" came out, 
in 1988, many wrote off the supercute 
girlie duo behind it as a likely one-hit 
wonder. But L'Trimm, which released 
three albums and then disbanded, іп 
1991, has stood the test of time. Infact, 
with the Miami bass sound continu: 
ing to enjoy a hipster revival, LTrimm 
has become a source of inspiration for 
‘countless new artist, from Fannypack, 
Peaches and M. 


ground ей 3 
Lady Tigra is bringing out an LP of her 
‘own, Please Mr. BoomBor. We talked 


ut the album, which recalls 
the playfulness of her Miami bass work 
and updates it to brilliant effec. 

It must be rewarding to hear so 
many new artists clearly influenced by 


your work with L'Trimm. 
lts humbling to think 
something 1 did so many years 


when 1 was so young is still in 
Ing really dope chicks. And seeing 
what they come 

up with. 


the way you 
write music are 
completely dit- 
ferent now— 
while keep 
Ing that pure 
LTrimmsound 
recognizable 


you realize 
back then that 
you were do- 
ing something. 


started innocently. We were just teenage 
irs who went to the mall and checked 
‘out dudes’ rides. There was no way | 
could have predicted at that age that we'd 
be having this conversation right now. 

Your new LP is refreshingly 
eclectic and song-oriented. Some of the 
‘racks are even sung or rapped in French. 
Are you bilingual? 

cana: I'm half French and half 
Haitian, but 1 was born in the United 
States. | grew up speaking French, Eng- 
lish and Creole. 

You lve in LA. now after a stint 
In New York. Do you ever worry you'll 
lose your taste for the bass? 

No, its one of those things. 

1 stil listen to each new song and say, 
“Yeah, this is dope, but can we throw a 
lite more bass on it? Can we get an 808. 
sound in there?” | like to fel the beat in 
my chest. I want that bass. 


‘DOWNLOAD A FREE EXCLUSIVE TRACK BY LADY TIGRA AT PLAYBOYCOM MAGAZINECCOS. 


FRIENDS. 
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. 


BESTENJOYED RESPONSIBLY. 


wanwjackdaniels com 


3 


reviews [ books 


Margaret Atwood 
Trespass by Valerie Martin 
What would Henry James write on the 
subject of blandly innocent 
Americans versus darkly 
experienced Europeans 
if he were alive today? 
Martin's gripping and 
powerful novel of tight 
lipped manners and 
horrific atrocities. 


Will Blythe 
Treo of Smoke by Denis Johnson 

A big American novel, line for line as 
beautiful as a lyric poem, peopled by the 
grieving, the murderous and the dead. 


Junot Diaz 
Dark Reflections by Samuel 
Delany is stil the greatest living writer 
in the U.S. and, lamentably, the most 
poet's life in 
ince to promise. This. 
novel is profound and gorgeous. 
Stuart Dybek 
ded Hn msi io 

teligion Poisons Everything by 
Christopher Hitchens 
Its erudite, and the context of the times 
in which we live, domi- 
nated by fundamental- 
ists of all stripes doing 
what fundamentalists 
do—fighting each other 
and taking the rest of so- 
ciety along for the mad- 
ness of it—makes the 
book not only necessary 
but courageous. 


Eric Foner 

ing Dixie: The Radical Roots 
of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 
by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore 
Gilmore takes us down previously hidden 
byways of Southern history, showing 
how the civil rights 
from a radical milieu in 
white socialists, communists and Social 
Gospelers mobilized to challenge jim 
crow and its injustices. 


Samantha Gillison 
The Savage Detectives 
by Roberto Bolaño 

Like Rabelais and Henry 
Miler, the late Bolaño holds 
up a magnifying glass to 
the human animal and lets 


us glimpse eternity. This 


[ THE BEST BOOKS OF 2007 ] 


Our favorite authors pick their favorites 


classic of Latin American literature is 
sexy, funny and sometimes terrifying but 
always a visceral pleasure. 

Laura Kipnis 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar 
Wao by Junot Diaz 

What an amazing voice, 

what a dazzling and vital. 

writer. These charac- — Li 
ters—Oscar, his family, 
the Dominican Republic. 
itself—worm their way 
into your thoughts and 
won't leave. 


Eric 

On the Make: The Hustle of Urban 
Nightlife by David Grazian 

Grazian, a professor at the University 
of Pennsylvania, asked undergraduates. 
in his pop-culture courses to write field 
notes about their nights on the town. 
On the Make assembles these accounts 
to form a dazzling and sometimes 
disturbing portrait of young adults in 
the urban glamour zone. No other book 
reveals as much about sex, drugs and 
money off campus. 

Jonathan Lethem 

Remainder by Tom 

1 liked this book so much, | blurbed 
it—and Г been telling everyone | was 
out of that dirty game forever. | couldn't 
keep from endorsing the obsessive and 
singular imagination behind the story of 
a man trying to re-create the world as 
he would like to see it. A masterpiece 
of amnesia It. 

Richard McCann 

Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcón 

A stunning, sobering 

debut novel. Alarcón's 
images of a country that 
has stripped its Indian 
villages of their original 
names and outlawed old 
maps are cleareyed, 
shattering and indelible. 


一 


A 


Walter Mosley 
Brother, Im Dying by Edwidge Danticat 
As in the case of the great patriot 
Thomas Paine, it sometimes takes a 
voice seasoned in another land to allow 
us to see our own hearts. A harrowing 
and beautiful memoir. 

Chuck Palahniuk 

Clown Giri by Monica Drake 

A debut novel about a parttime clown 


who is coerced into the tawdry world 
of clown sex work. 


Andrew Ross. 
Planet of Slums by Mike Davis 

We all grew up with the scifi depic- 
tion of cities of the 

future as gleaming 
steel-sheathed utopias. 

Shattering this vision, 


Davis shows us how and 
why the bulk of urban 
humanity is increasingly 
being warehoused in 


PLANET 


This exploration of the disastrous 
effects of free-market economics із 
well documented, logical and riveting. 
It will change your understanding of 
the past 50 years. 


Jess Walter. 
The Beautiful Things That Heaven 
Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. 

This lean, lovely novel follows Sepha, 
an Ethiopian immigrant 
Who runs a convenience 
store іп a gentrifying 
neighborhood of Wash- 
on, D.C. The 
tences never overt 
mirroring the quiet 
oism of Sepha and his 

immigrant friends, invisi- 

ble men who battle every indignity with 
brash, senseless hope. 

Garry Wills 

Touch and Go: 

А Memoir by Studs Terkel 

After more than 50 years of interviewing 
Americans of all ages, races and 
persuasions, Terkel tells his own story 
of immersion in American lives. This 
is the best book of the year because 
it sifts through all the other years of 
seeing America up close, savoring it, 
singing it, saving it. 


Tobias Wolff 
Leni: The Life and 

Work of Leni Riefenstahl 
by Steven Bach 

A terrific book about 
that very interesting 
monster and filmmaker 
to the Third Reich, Leni 
Riefenstahl. 


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Ciudad by the Sea 


A backpacker haven on the ! 


Aayan Riviera 


FOR SCRUFFY, SCUFFLING 20-somethings searching for the meaning of life, Tulum, Mexico has long played the part of paradise. The 
recent arrival of the sumptuous boutique resort Blue Tulum (rooms from $550, eurostarshotels.com) shows the region has evolved into 
a luxe destination with rustic roots. Tulum is where you come to unplug, literally: The entire hotel zone is off the electrical grid. Properties. 
in the region generate their own power, and some forgo it altogether. Two hours south of Cancün's airport, the hotel is bordered on the 
north by the Tulum ruins, a strikingly well-preserved pre-Columbian clif-side city (pictured above) hugged by a strip of dazzling white 
sand. You owe yourself at least one beach lunch at the iQue Fresco! restaurant at Zamas (dishes from $7, zamas.com), where you can curl 
your toes in the sand and drain a michelada (a spicy beer cocktail) or six. Set aside a day to venture inland to the jungle-covered ruins of 
Cobá (about $35 for a guided tour) and spend another diving the cenotes, freshwater limestone sinkholes, for an otherworldly aquatic 
‘experience (cavern dives from $60, cenotedive.com). Noctumally speaking, dinner by candlelight is a must at Posada Margherita 
(entrées about $30, posadamargherita.com), then get your ya-yas out at Mezzanine's bar (mezzanine.com.mx/bar), which holds the 
beach party of the week every Friday night. Trust us: After a few days off the grid, you'll be in no rush to climb back on. 


5 Super Cars Male Call 
AMONG THE HOTTEST vintage beauties BEFORE PLAYBOY MAD 
onthe block at Barrett- Jackson's Scotts- Playmates, Hef had the 
dale, Arizona auction from January 12 to Sweetheart of the Month, and 
20 (catch the action on the Speed Channel) 1963 Chevrolet Marilyn Monroe was the first 
Corvette Rondine (pictured, ot 1304) A one-and-oniy Vette Werl be forever grateful for those 
designed by the great Italian coach builder Pininfarina, of 37-23-36 curves. These novel cuff links 
Ferrar fame. 1963 Ford Thunderbird Italien Fastback Con- are made from actual 32-cent US. 
cept Car (lot 1306) The auction will be this one-of-a-kind Postal Service stamps mounted on 


automobile's first public appearance since it was shown at gold-plated clasps ($60, cufflinks 
the 1964 New York World's Fair. 1935 Rolls-Royce Phantom depot.com). Thanks to cancellation 
II Coupe (lot 1312) Only 19 of these stunners were made. marks and other variations, each 
1967 Shelby Mustang 67500 (lot 1318) Last year Carroll опе is unique, like Marilyn her- 


Shelby's personal 1966 Cobra Super Snake went for $5.5 mil- self. Just the thing to scratch that 
lion. This Stang was once owned by Shelby's son Mike. seven-year itch. 


зе 


a= MANTRACK 


Thought Bubbles 


IT'S NEW YEAR'S Eve. You say, 
“These are my three favorite cham- 
pagnes.” She says, "Why do we 
need three kinds?" You answer, "The 
Laurent-Perrier Brut Millésimé 1997 
[right, $60] is for our predinner 
aperitif. It's 52 percent chardon- 
пау and 48 percent pinot noir, with 
a silky texture and a long vanilla. 
finish. The rare Dom Ruinart 1996 
[below right, $170] is for toasting 
the fireworks. It's a blanc de blanc, 
100 percent chardonnay, with hints 
of honey and toasted almond." She 
asks, “What's the Moët & Chandon 
White Star [below left, $35] for?" 
You answer, "Bathing, naturally.” 


aa none 
di» 


MOET & CHANDON 


WHITE STAR 


Opening Statement 


SABRAGE, OPENING CHAMPAGNE with a saber, 
was popularized by Napoleon's cavalry, which cele- 
brated its triumphs by cracking open some bubbly— 
Ikeraly. Use this sword from Laguiole Rossignol ($325, 
broadwaypanhandlercom) to mark your own Auster- 
Mtz. Remove the foil and wire from а chilled bottle, 
grip the base and slide the blade quickly and firmly 
along the neck, striking the glass lip. The top will 
break away clean, taking the cork with it. Magnifique! 
For a tutorial, log on to playboy.com/magazine, 


Чате 


CAVIAR FROM THE Caspian Sea is banned in the 
US, but the American caviar industry has come of 
age in the nick of time. California's Tsar Nicoulal 
harvests from organically fed farm-raised native 
white sturgeon. Its California Estate Osetra (black, 
359 an ounce, tsamicoulai.com) rivals its vaunted 
European cousin in taste and texture, while its 
American Golden Whitefish is both delicious and 
shockingly reasonable at $10 for two ounces. 


THE BAD GUYS LOOK GOOD, 
BUT THAT'S JUST THE RESOLUTION. 


The First, Next-Generation Action Shooter 
High-def and hardcore meet to propel the 
premier arcade adventure into your living 
room. Featuring all new FPS stages 
revolutionary graphics and the most 
advanced light gun available, this 

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ү 


Шіге Playboy Advisor 


I came home from getting takeout to find 
my girlfriend at my desk, trying to crack 
my computer password. When I asked 
what she was doing, she replied casually 
that she wanted to see what was on my PC 
and would I please type іп my password. 
told her she was nuts, which prompted 
a well-rehearsed speech to the effect that 
Т could be a rapist, a terrorist or a serial 
killer. I told her a rapist, terrorist or 
serial killer would not leave evidence оп 
his computer for his girlfriend/victim to 
find, even if she knew the password. She 
felt that anything not in the open, from 
my bank accounts to my e-mails, meant 
Thad something to hide, which she said 
is a bad sign. She didn't stay for dinner, 
What is it with women and their snoop- 
ing? And what's the best way to establish 
boundaries?—].S, Columbus, Ohio 

Your girlfriend is cool under pressure but 
not particularly resourceful. Por less than 
$50 and from the privacy of her oun home, 
she could order an online background check 
that reveals your character. Bankruptcies, 
lawsuits, divorces, outstanding warrants, the 
ЕВГ, most wanted—it's all there for the tak- 
ing. You can? win here, because even if you 
opened up she would want continuing access 
to keep you in line. As you found, a good wa 
de excl boundaries plea Келелі 
‘on your computer Then find a girlfriend who 
has secrets of her oun. 


When my best friend and her baby 
come to my house, she sometimes takes 
a nursing break in the living room. This 
makes my boyfriend uncomfortable, 
even though my friend does her best to 
shield the view. 1 am wondering if the 
Advisor thinks my friend is committing 
a faux pas, or is my boyfriend being too 
traditional 

Your boyfriend will have to deal. Seeing a tit 


never hurt anyone. 


What should you do ifthe police pull you 
over and ask you to take a Breathalyzer 
test? Гуе heard you should refuse. Should 
you also refuse other sobriety tests, such 
as walking in a straight line? —A.K., New 
York, New York. 

The officer ізі! going to tell you this, but 
in nearly every state, field sobriety tsts—e.., 
finger to nose, one-leg stand—are optional. 
“Your chances of passing them are zero if the 
cop has already decided you're drunk,” says 
Lawrence Taylor, a California-based attorney 
hose firm specializes in defending against 
DUI charges (duicentercom). The officer may 
ask you to blow into a handheld device; in most 
states you can refuse this as well, although 
some require it of anyone under the age of 21. 
Finally, although it will annoy the officer, you 
should politely refuse to answer his questions 
about where you've been, where you're going, 
how much you've had to drink, dc. Once at the 


station, you willbe told you must take a breath, 
Blood or urine test. Refusing at this point has 
severe consequences. Every sale require you to 
Ga oa rath or Mond had aja condon 
of getting a driver's license, So if you refuse, 
your license will likely be suspended оп the spot. 
The prosecutor won't have test results as evi- 
dence, but he can argue that your refusal shows 
she fing mye pray 
after refusing, you may face a sti 

(eg. a license suspension of one year instead of 
four months). The best strategy, of course, is to 
‘avoid putting yourself in this situation. 


The other day my wife was telling me she 
has a “somewhat guilty” personality that 
often leads her to do things just to make 
other people happy. When 1 jokingly 
asked, "So would you cheat on me if a 
guy guilted you into it" she replied quite 
seriously, “I probably could." I glared at 
her and told her 1 found that response 
disturbing. She said I had misunder- 
stood. To clarify things, I asked, “If we 
lived next door to a single guy who made 
you feel guilty because you wouldn't have 
sex with him, would you give in to make 
him happy?" She said, “Em not in that 
situation, so don't worry about it.” We 
left it there, but sil feel uneasy. Is not 
that I think it will happen, but I could 
have done without hearing her deadpan 
response to what I considered a joke. 
Should this bother me, or am 1 overre- 
acting?—]S, Manhattan, Kansas 

Coulda, woulda, might, may, possibly, if 
This is a ridiculous argument. Why not fight 
about money like everyone le? 


n—— be 
heuer mere FADA sud bs den 
fading Inem res mati senal 


because “the world is changing” and 
‘women’s growing power has emasculated 
men. In reply you invited “a few of these 
exhausted men” to explain themselves. 
T'm one of those men, as are a number of 
my friends. One in particular used to be 
a wild man, but years of marital training 
under a demanding wife have diminished 
him. I wonder if this explains why our 
wives more often initiate sex. I am much 
more sedate than when my wife and I 
met, because it keeps the peace —W.B., 
Indianapolis, Indiana 

Are you sedate or bored? The letters in 
September and October prompted a number 
of passionate responses. You can read a sam- 
pling at playboycom/blog under The Advi- 
заң but her's a summary of the explanations 
they contain: (1) Husband is exhausted by 
domestic demands of postfeminist world; for 
example, instead of receiving a scotch, Ч 
pers and the paper when he gets home, now he 
must change diapers and do chores (2) Wife 
got fat and/or let herself go. (3) Husband 
өті ambivalent because wife isn't adventur- 
ous enough to satisfy his instinctive need for 
variety ie., wife may want sex more often, but 
ifs always the same sex, Notably, nearly every 
тап who wrote said he valued the relation- 
ship despite his frustration and had no plans 
e dnd m terete oii ша 


1 don't see why these women who want 
sex more than their hubbies don't rec- 
‘ognize the obvious: If your man wants it 
from you only once a month, he's cheat- 
ing on you.—L.M., Madison, Wisconsin 

‘On the contrary a cheater usually steps it up 
in the bedroom, partly out of guilt and partly 
because he doesn't want his wife to think he's 
getting it elsewhere. This sudden change of 
habit ss often what first makes the wife suspi- 
cious. In addition, аз a general rule, the more 
sex you're having, the more sex you want. 


For as long as I can remember, 1 have 
had a special interest in spanking and. 
being spanked. Is this normal? Also, I 
am going to my first spanking party. Any 
tips*—D.C., Lansing, Michigan 

‘An interest in spanking is unusual but 
hardly abnormal. There are spanking clubs in a 
frw cities, including Chicago (Crimson Moon), 
‘New York (Spanking Club of New York), Seattle 
(Chastenwood) and Tampa (Florida Moon- 
shine). Each chub has its own rules, but the basic 
tips to hoep in mind are (1) don't touch anyone 
without their okay, (2) if you need a break, just 
sit down, and (3) relax and have fun. 


ls there any way to jazz up the traditional 
opening of champagne on New Year's 
Eve?—J.M., Portland, Oregon 

Jf you want to go all ош, hire a sabreur 
Rick French has opened thousands of cham- 
pagne bottles by sliding a flat-edged saber 

up the neck and knocking off the top inch, 39 


PLAYBOY 


40 


with the cork intact. (See page 36 to get your 
‘own saber) French explains the trick, which 
he learned while hanging out in France 
with members of the Confrerie du Sabre 
d'Or (Brotherhood of the Golden Saber), at 
champagnesabering.com. Given that boiled 
champagne has about 100 pounds o pressure 
per square inch, French urges caution. “ was 
introducing a resort guest in Santa Barbara 
to sabering,” he says. “He defy sliced off the 
top of the bottle, which sailed across the room 
‘at 45 miles an hour and shattered а $3,000 
bottle of cognac.” That's why we keep our top- 
shelf booze in the fridge. Happy New Year. 


Tove my husband but feel I am not 
enough for him. At times he will ask me 
to blow him while he watches porn on his 
computer. I like to please him, but when 
Tagree to do this I feel he is being turned 
on by the women on-screen rather than 
by me. I guessall the threesomes and anal 
and blow jobs don't count. Plus, he goes 
down on me maybe three times a year. Не 
makes female friends everywhere, which 
drives me crazy; it's as if he wants to show 
me that other women like him. I have 
suggested marriage counseling, but he 
says he doesn't need to go. What should 1 
do?—M.M., Wilmington, North Carolina 

Go alone. When you find yourself serving 
аға fluffer for a guy watching porn, it's a 
Se hl e rer eror da 
you can do better 


Thave a stubborn case of athlete's foot. 
1 managed to get it under control by 
applying a spray each morning and 
changing my socks at least once dur- 
ing the day, but it keeps coming back. A 
friend told me the best way to get rid of 
athlete's foot is to urinate on the infected 
area while showering. Is he yanking my 
chain?—C.M., Martinez, California 

Fungus is a Bitch, Even afier the rash clears 
up, del return if you on Y continue to apply 
aisla or one or ey more werks 
Jf the infection hasn't cleared up within а 
month, visit a podiatrist to get a prescription 
ream or il The medica work much 
Better if you Мер your foet clean and 4 
die Reve fod ha he rah picas 
in 30 percent to 40 percent of people who 
have used оту a mild antifungal but washed 
their feet исе a day. Peeing on yourself is an 
old Army remedy; urine and many antifungal 
reams share an ingredient called urea, but 
your urine doesn't contain nearly enough to 
o any good. Let's save the golden showers for 
the bedroom, where they belong. 


1 there any way to kill a cat to make it 
look as though it died of natural causes? 
Fifteen years ago my girlfriend (now wife) 
and 1 moved in together. Soon after, she 
convinced me to let her adopt а cat she 
found abandoned in our apartment com- 
plex. Because I was still in the whipped 
phase of our relationship, 1 agreed. A 
year later she adopted a second cat. I fig- 
ured they would live a year or two, but 
they're stil with us. What would be the 


equivalent of teaching a cat to smoke 10 
packs of cigarettes, drink a gallon of whis- 
key and eat a quart of bacon grease every 
day:—D.L.. Spring Hill, Tennessee 

At this point you need to make peace with 
Ihe felines because even if they died tomorrow 
‘your wife would just find two more to rescue. 
No pussies for her, o pussy for you. 


М; girlfriend and 1 are trying to spice 
up our sex life. I told her 1 have a fan- 
tasy about watching her mess around 
with another guy, up to (but not includ- 

д) penetration: When he tries to go 
for it she refuses and makes him leave. 
Then she and I would have mad sex. She 
says she would be into experimenting as 
long as she doesn't have to fuck the other 
guys. Am La pervert for fantasizing about 
this?—TS,, Dallas, Texas 

Watching your partner have sex with some- 
one else is a common fantasy, although that 
last-second refusal is an interesting twist. The 
challenge will be finding a masochist willing 
to suffer blue balls for your benefi. 


In October you told a reader with arm- 

stains on his shirts to use “ammonia, 
white vinegar or, as a last resort, a bleach 
stick,” which could be dangerous. You 
should never mix bleach with ammonia 
(which creates chloramine) or vinegar 
(which creates chlorine gas).—D.S., Val- 
ley City, North Dakota ө 

That's a good thing to keep in mind. 

Mt Ver n MON MEM ter tar of he 
word “оқ” we meant for the reader to try 
cach method independently. 


1 work ata restaurant. Last week I slept 
with a co-worker. Earlier this week we 
were waiting around after our shifts 
ended, and T asked her out for a drink. 
She said she was waiting for one of the 
kitchen guys to finish because they had 
made plans. When I got upset she said 
1 had no right to act like a jealous boy- 
friend. Although 1 know we're not a 
couple, 1 feel its disrespectful for her to 
spend time with somebody else we both 
work with. How does the Advisor inter- 
pret the rules of dating here?—A.G., San 
Francisco, California. 

We're sorry to disappoint, but the rules of 
dating apply only if the woman agrees you're 
dating. She is free to work her way through 
the entire restaurant without consulting you. 


What is the legality of absinthe? I have 
heard you can't buy itin the U.S., but is it 
legal to have it shipped in from another 
country?—D.K., Tampa, Florida 
Although it is widely available in Europe, 
absinthe has been banned in the U.S. since 
1912 because it was thought to contain a 
potentially dangerous amount of a substance 
Called thujone, which is found in grand 
‘wormvood, а key ir of absinthe. But 
when demit Tel Bos re i 
absinthes distilled in the 19th century, he 
found they contained less thujone than was 
widely believed. At the request of Viridian 


Spirits, a newly formed importer, Breaux set 
about to re-create the famous green liquor 
with a minuscule (and legal) amount of thu- 
jone. The result is Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, 
which is distilled by hand in Saumur, France 
in antique copper sills. The 124-proof liquor 
wa nili only în the New Tork iy 
area and online but should now be stocked 
nationwide. Check drinklucid.com for avail- 
ability. Absinthe is best sipped after it has been 
diluted with water and a pinch of sugar. 


My husband thinks anyone who is in а 
relationship should not masturbate, He 
found my vibrator and freaked out, accus- 
ing me of cheating because I sometimes 
masturbate while he's at work, We have 
always had great sex, so I don’t see what 
the big deal is. My vibrator went into the 
trash, but I still have the urge. I'm not 
sure if I should deny myself or continue 
behind his back. I've tried talking to 
him, but he is firm in his beliefs; I can't 
even use my hand. Any advice? —H.S,, 
Paducah, Kentucky 

Does your husband also believe the earth 
is flat, NASA faked the moon landings and 

м should pee on athlete's foot? He is com- 
Ба мейе бі. aad fo och Mi 
we said so—unless he also doesn’t know you 
read PLAYBOY, Ask if you can use a vibra- 
tor when you're together, and tell him he can 
hold it. Once he sees the reaction it induces, 
maybe he'll chill. The only problem we see 
with masturbation in relationships 
is if ùt becomes a substitute for a shared sex 
life hen you are cheating your spouse. That 
doesn't seem to be the case, o your husband 
is crazy to discourage you. Besides, its impos- 
sible to resist these urges forever—we all have 
our needs. Get a mini vibe and hide itin your 
tampon box; he'll never look there. 


AA good friend and I have developed feel 
ings for each other, but she says she won't 
get involved unless I quit smoking pot. I 
think she is touchy because her sister is 
a recovering drug addict and she's wor- 
ried I'll get busted or become addicted. 
Is there any way to convince her it won't 
affect our relationship? I want to be hon- 
est; I'd never lie to her and smoke behind 
her back—ES., Washington, D.C. 

It sounds as if you must choose between 
your friend and Mary Jane. When was the 
last time your bong gave you a blow job? 


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- 
sewed in be pages cach month. Weide 
Playboy Advisor, 730 Fifth Avenue, New 
York, New York 10019, or send e-mail by vis- 
iting our website at playboyadvisorcom. 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 


BY JONATHAN RABAN 


ere in the West there's an ongoing war (with real 
shots sometimes fired from real guns) between the 
metropolitan cities and their outlying г 

From the perspective of the small t 

every environmental initiative—to 

mining nching on federal la 
vers like the Columbia, the Snake and the Colorado; 

roduce the 

buffalo, wolf and 

grizzly bear—as 

the work of wealthy 

big-city hobbyists 

who show up in 

the countryside 

on weekends in 

hybrid SUVs laden 

with backpacks, fly 

rods and climb 

ing ge 


of traditional rur 
livelihoods 
the perspe 
the city, the coun 
try dwellers are 
100 easily seen as 
lacking in educa 
tion and enlight 
enment, hapless 
dupes of the tim 
b d mining 
corporations, pro- 
letarian obstacles 
to the great mis 
sion of conserving 
what little is left 
of the American 
wildernes 
1 
те land use e iggravated by class 
resentment and class condescension. This isn’t just the 
result of the real disparity between rural and metropoli 
tan incomes in the region. Something nastier and deeper 
is going on, and it's embedded in the DNA of the lan 
guage in which we talk and think about wild nature. 
Not all that long ago the kind of landscape now so prized 
in the West struck civilized observers as merely ugly and 


Daniel 
at Britain and was repelled by the 
uch higher than 3,000 feet) he 
and Wales: “barren,” “impassible 
terrible," “horrid” and "desart 


useless heaps of geological rubbish. In the 
Defoe made a tour of 

modest mountains (none 
frightful, 
were his wo 
the 18th cen 

nd it became 

nable to see 

mountains, cas 

les, precipices 

and impenetrable 

forests as objects of 

transcendent won: 

der and beauty, By 

1805, when the 

Lewis and Clark 

expedition came 

within sight of the 

Rockies—which 

would soon prove 


Lewis was 
reet the 
mains as an 
august spectacle, 
sub 

"noble 
beautiful" and 
ajestically grand 
That vocabu. 
lary, still relatively 
fresh when Lewis 
was writing his 
journal, has had 
an astonishingly 
long and resilient 


of the conservation moi 
‘Club and prime mover in the establishment of the national 
parks system. AL a time when the cult of the sublime was all 
but dead, Muir (1838-1914) brought it back to 1 

ing it with his own brand of evangelical fervor. “Chris 
tianity and mountaininity are streams from the same 
fountain,” he wrote to a friend, and his work combines 
acute and precise botanical and geological observations 


with a Kind of shivering religious ecstasy 
in the presence of nature's “divine 
truth." Muir was part scientist, part mis 
ionary part hard-nosed salesman: Sell- 
ing the wonders of the West to railroad 
tourists from the East, he wrapped the 
landscape in an irresistible package of 
expert natural history, lofty s 
and old-fashioned poen 
Rhapsody was his natural medium. 
weling through the mountains with 
Muir, one is exhorted in almost every 
paragraph to thrill to their sublimity, 
grandeur, majesty and nobility—words 
that dot his prose like currants in 
bun, His message couldn't be more 
plain: In the craggy 
peaks and woods, 
we commune with 
majesty and nobil- 
ity and thereby 


ristocracy of the 


lands, the admi- 

ration and joy of 
world" spiri 

uplift g 

d in hand 

with social uplift: 

To hike through 


Yosemite is to 
enj iquely 
pi experi. 


ence in demo. 
cratic America. 

The distinct un- 
dercurrent of class 


and raci; m 
that runs through 


p 
appeal. In My First 
Summer in the Sierra he complains of the. 
Mono Indians polluting the purity of 
Yosemite with their "dirty and irregular 
life" in "this clean wilderness" and goes 
on to remark that "the worst thing about 
them is their uncleanliness. Nothing 
truly wild is unclean"—a sentiment 
worth dwelling on for its complicated 
tangle of implications. In A Thousand 
Mile Walk to the Gulf he sings the praises 
of Athens, Georgia, "a r 
tiful and aristocratic town, 
many classic and magnificent man- 
ters, who formerly 
owned large Negro-stocked plantations. 
Unmistakable marks of culture and re- 
were everywhere apparent. 
This is the most beautiful town I have 
seen on the journey so far and the only 


one in the South that I would like to 
revisit” (my italics). What impressed hi 
most was the deferential behavior of the 
blacks he encountered in Athens: “The 
Negroes here have been well trained 
and are extremely polite. When they 
come in sight of a white man on the 
road, off go their hats, even at a distance 
of 40 or 50 yards, and they walk bare- 
headed until he is out of sight. 


n between 
Muir's infatuation with a hierarchi 
cal, aristocratic society—in which the 
lower orders know their place and 
doff their cap to their betters, and the 
lords and ladies exhibit their culture 


and refin 
someone who was raised a Scottish 
Presbyterian)—and his rapturous exul- 
tation 

the moun 
Muir's bel 


the American city, where people live 
fed in disease and 
h places of the West 
he promised, and vacation like a king. 
Today Muir's language flourishes and. 
sometimes runs riot in guidebooks, 
the writing of outdoors columnists and, 
not surprisingly, in the newsletters put 
ош by local chapters of the Sierra Club, 
where hikers and mountaineers report 
their adventures: “The view from the 
aerie perch was sublime," "I stopped 


frequently to absorb the majesty,” and 

Whitney's regal profile towered over 
us.” The word noble is attached to trees 
(noble giants"), silence, summits, big. 
horn sheep, bald eagles and, mysteri- 
ously, snipe and Chinese bicycles. 

The words matter because they 
as it were, of 
ity dividing the 
nature tourists ionists 
from the majority of people who live 
and work in landscapes visitors cher 
ish for their grandeur. Anyone who has 
driven through the mountainous West 
оп twisting, unpaved forest roads and. 

inor state routes knows the shock of 
arrival at the next town. For hours you 
drive through 
the furniture of 
Muir's sublime; 
dense, pathless 
forest; lone pines 

'o needle. 

s; plung- 
ing cataracts; 
jagged, snow 
apped peaks; 
sheer thousand- 
foot drops from 
the edge of an 
ced gravel 
road—the land- 
scape of conven 
tional majesty. 
Then the gradi- 
ent of the river 


slows, and the 
speed-limit sign 

nto view. 
From the T junc- 
tion where the 
gravel meets the 
highw: get 
your f of 
the town, and the 
в of the brain go into overload as 


СЕ 


the eye tries to square what has gone 
before with what is to come. 
из 


generic Western town—wide 

ingle stoplight, a pair of 
competing motels, a pair of competing 

ations, a decaying mercantile block 
Of brick and stucco dating from the 
1920s, the off-pink cinder-block bulk. 
of a Kmart, a strip mall with the adult 
video store next to the Mexican restau- 
a Safeway, a drive-through bank, 
a tavern, a school, a church or two—all 
this set in a grid of bungalows that fills 
the narrow valley like a moraine. 

If there's an election on, yard signs 
in the side streets will supply you with 
the names of everyone running for 
sheriff, mayor or city councilman, for 


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N 


local democracy functions here with an 
thusiasm and informed knowledge 
of the issues and personalities that put 
national politics to shame. The bunga- 
lows—apparently identical when seen 
at a distance in close-up turn out to 
be entertainingly full of eccentricity 
and character. The town is well worth 
a wander, for it is, in its way, an Ameri- 
can classic, an example of expressive 
vernacular architecture as distinct — 
and certainly as recogni 
ofa Tuscan hill vil 
But if you approach it with your 
head full of Muir-speak, it's an eyesore, 
a blot on the landscape, a square mile 
of schlock, Its massive, boldly painted 
chain-saw sculptures, far from being 
marks of culture and refinement, 
pear as brutal the sacred 
nature of old-growth forest; its neon 
signs are an affront, its broad streets out 
of all proportion to the low homes that 
line them, The one-story (and largely 
one-class and one-industry) settlement, 
which got its start asa mining or 
logging camp or an arbitrary railroad 
stop, is a world away from Athens, Geor 
gia. In the elevated, quasi-aristocratic 
Tanguage of the decad 
there's no place for th 
cratic architecture of the working ru 
West, The casual visitor, fresh from his 
noble mount s its glaring lack 
of nobility, wealth, beauty, antiquity 
а height and disdainfully regrets its 
existence—or would, if only he weren't 
ing short of gas. Ghost towns, of 
e, ador ле by reminding the 
romantic tou mortal folly of all 
human enterprise when set against 
enduring grandeur of nature, but the 
living towns tend to ruin it. 


Consider Leavenworth, Washing 
ton, which in its heyday had a railroad. 
depot with a roundhouse and a big 


sawmill but lost both in the 1920s. In 
1965, after three decades of slow 
moldering and population loss, it did 
what Westerners are famed for doing 
and set out on a program of fantastic 
self-reinvention. Taking a cue from its 
setting on the eastern slopes of the 

ascade Range, a two-hour drive from 
Seattle, it became a Bavarian alpine 
resort, the Berchtesgaden of Chelan 
County. The town has a draconian 
building code that governs roof 
pitches, the extent of overhangs, 
scrolled lookout beams, shutters. 
balconies, flower boxes, the propor 
tion of timber to stucco and so forth 
ıd requires would-be developers to 
pore over such books as Bayern in Bil- 
dern, Häuser in den Alpen and Wohnen 
in Alpenland. There are cuckoo-clock 


shops, German Gothic street signs, 

estaurants serving Wiener schnitzel 
and sauerkraut and at least one hotel 
where guests are awakened for break. 
fast by а mädchen tolling on an alpen- 
horn. The Leavenworth year is 
punctuated Бу fests of accordions, 
wine and beer and, just in time for the 
holidays, the Christkindlmarkt. 

Kitsch, certainly, but not quite Dis. 
ney: Leavenworth is too earnest a rep- 
lica for that, saved from mere whimsy 


THE WEST’S 
HISTORY HAS 
ALWAYS BEEN ONE 
OF RANCOROUS 
BATTLES BETWEEN 
MUTUALLY INCOM- 
PATIBLE VISIONS. 
deal and material 
parent da h 
exiles because the place reeks alluringly 
of castles, kings and prince electors, s 


rchitecture in tune with the lust for 
ntiquity and nobility that goes with 


John Muir's rhapsodic view of nature has 


hurt the environmental movement. 


spending a weekend in the mountains. 
By artfully obliterating from view as 
much asit can of its own history, nation- 
ality, language and culture (there are no 
permitted exceptions; even McDonald's 
and Exxon have undergone Bavarian 
makeovers), Leavenworth has made 
itself acceptably picturesque. In the eye 
of the tourist focusing her camera on 
the conventionally grand alpine scene 


beyond the town, there's no incongruity 
between the streets in the foreground 
and all the majestic stuff in the middle 
and far distance. The usual problem in 
these parts has been ingeniously solved, 
though a litle forgiving myopia helps. 
‘One has to admire the town's enter: 
prise, and I've enjoyed my visits th 


but one Leavenworth is quite enough. 
115 time to retire the language of the 


and muddling togeth 
pleasure with social hierarchy, 
freshly at the relationship betwee 


the 
ungussied-up townships of the American 


il surroundings. 


You can't move around the rural West 
without bumping into the stereotype 
of the ntalist as someon 
who is ervious to argu 
ment and insufferably superior in his 
nners, with a lofty disregard for the 
jobs and communities of ordi. 
nary people. ARE YOU AN ENVIRONMEN 
favorite bumper sticker in the 1990s 
ber wars here in the Pacific North: 
west, As stereotypes go, it's crude bu 
not entirely baseless, The environmen- 
tal movement carries much antique 
rhetorical baggage, most of it directly 
traceable to Muir. Ther 
reasons to protect as best we 
ly owned forests and mo 
saw, drill 
not for their majesty and 
or the recreational opportu: 
nities they afford visitors from the city 
for their ecological necessity for 
everyone. It isn't a matter of me 
thetics: The West, once seen as li 
its myriad resources as th 


fr 
grazing. 


nitless 
able st to the lines of tourists 
trailing up its mountainsides, But the 
environmental case is lost, like the baby 
with the bathwater, as long as the coun- 
tryside can be perceived in terms of the 
ennobling spiritual benefits of roadless 
hiking and the snobbish taste for natu- 
ral beauty ofthe urban leisure class 


ilously delicate and vul 


The region's history has always been 
one of rancorous battles between mutu 
ally incompatible visions of its use and 
future, from whites vs. Indians and 
cattlemen vs, sodbusters to our pre: 
ent multifront conflict between exploi- 
tation and conservation. We should. 
least remove from that debate, which 
is fought with righteous fury on every 
side, the outworn, undemocratic 
issumptions that covertly underpin 
our long, unthinking, sentimental 
attachment to the sublime. 


READER RESPONSE 


LAW AND OUT OF ORDER 
Regarding “Prosecutors Gone Wild 
("Newsfront," October), the videotape 
that prosecutor David McDade is cir- 


Ethical questions dog David McDade. 


g in an apparent effort to keep 
Genarlow Wilson in jail is not the real 
concern. Because of the ages of the 
video's participants, McDade should 
e arrested for dist g child por- 
nography. That is the crime. Lam sure 
most of us did things as teens that we 
but let's be real: Distributing a 

tape of two minors engage 
ual act is against the law everywhere, 
Let McDade get a taste of what itis to 
be front and center on the criminal 

justice stage. 

Mic 
Fort L 


Corbitt 
uderdale, Florida 


ISRAEL, RIGHT OR WRONG 

Jonathan Tasini should be 
pläuded for standing up for peace in 
the Middle East ("Israel Shouldn't Get 
a Free Pass," October). I appreciate 
his pointing out that many Israelis do 
not agree with American Jews or the. 
U.S. government's policies regarding 
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have 
personally seen how one can be vili 
fied for expressing an opinion about 
Israel's occupation of Palestine. In 
a country that espouses freedom of 
speech, it is unfortunate that people 
have tried to prevent the publication 
of John Mearsheimer and Stephen 
Wales book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. 
Foreign Policy. 1 hope more politicians 
and members of the media will come 
ош for peace іп the Middle East and 
an end to the killing of innocent peo- 
ple in Palestine and Lebanon. 

Rachel Haynes 

iddlefield, Ohio 


As an American Jew keenly inter 
ested in the resolution of the Arab. 
Israeli conflict, I was disappointed 
with Tasini's commentary. When much 
criticism of Israel is laced with anti 
Semitism—including tired charges of 
li participation in жона: 
tion conspir nvolvement 
in the 9/11 attacks and deception of 
the American government and pub- 
lic in promoting the war with Iraq— 
parao does a disservice and panders 
to its readers by letting Tasini repeat 
former president Jimmy Carter's 
accusation that American Jews refuse 


Criticism of Israel draws heavy fire. 


to criticize Israel 
they hide behind th 
Holocaust to shield Israel from 
assessment. Most American Jews. 
with most Israeli citizens that Israel 
should ultimately abandon most of 
the West Bank settlements. Further: 
more, despite Tasini's insinuations to 
the contrary, most American Jews 
willing to publicly and unambiguously 
voice these opinions, though they dif- 
fer from the official pronouncements 
of the Israeli government. However 
Jews worldwide are not willing—and 
should not be willing—to ignore the 
reality that Israel alone cannot end 
the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite Tasi 
ni’s simplistic claims, abandoning the 
West Bank settlements will not bring 
peace any more than abandoning the 
Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon 
id. American Jews understand that 
Israel and the United States cannot 
impose peace on a region that will not 
cooperate and that peace will come 
only when the Arab world is willing 
to accept Israel as a permanent, legit- 
imate neighbor. rLavnoy and Tasini 
would be better citizens and do a 
more honorable job of contributing to 


that 
horrors of the 


the dialogue of peace by encouraging 
people to consider the transnational 
forces of fear, prop: and hatred 
that fuel and perpet b- 
Israeli conflict and too often color this 
important debate. 

Brett Locker 

Santa Barbara, California 


Has Tasini heard of the Carter Doc- 
trine, in which the then president 
stated we would protect our interests 
(read: oil) in the Persian Gulf region by 
any means necessary, “including mili- 
y force"? We import more than 60 
percent of our oil, and while domestic 
Production will remain about th 


our overall requirements are expected 
o increase significantly. If we are shut 
out of the Persian Gulf by radical Mus- 


lims, our economy will take a nosedive 
Israel is and must remain our foothold 
n the region. 
Burl Este 
Mission 


iejo, California 


WELCOME TO WHEREVER 
X What City Is 


This?” (Septet 
My favorite sı 
driven out by 
Starbucks would pay more for the 
space. I tell my friends I could blind. 
fold them and take them to any city 

the U.S. and, because of Starbucks, 
Borders, Taco Bell, Subway, КЕС, etc., 


This could be any town, anywhere. 


they would not be able to tell what city 
was. It's all part of the new America, 
contrary to what this country was about 
in the not too distant past 
Ken Clark 
Los Altos, California 


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


Saints on a Plane 
WASHINGTON. DC-With the Introduction of 
the Family Friendly Flight Act, in late Sep- 
tember, Congress is seeking to extend its 
reach into airline cabins in order to censor 
onboard entertainment. The bill, intro- 
‘duced by Democrat Heath Shuler and Re- 
publican Walter Jones, both of North Car- 
lina, essentially gives airlines a choice: 
4 tan movies originally rated PG-13, R, NC- 
17 or not rated (even if they have been 
edited for the airline) or create separate 
seating areas for children and their fami. 
lies, Currently, federal broadcast regula 
tions do not apply to aircraft, and airlines 
are under no obligation to adhere to movie 
ratings. The legislators gave a few exam. 
ples of complaints they had received. One 
was about a shooting scene іп Fracture 
(pictured), and another was about a scene 
in The Last Kiss in which an attractive stu- 
dent firts with a married architect 


STDs in the City 

NEW YORK CITY-A report from New York City’s 
Department of Health shows that during the 
past six years new cases of HIV among gay 
men under the age of 30 have Increased by a 
third and, worse still, doubled among gay men 
between the ages of 13 and 19, The distribu- 
tion of new cases shows a distinct color bias: 
Twice as many occur among blacks as among 
whites, The department found syphilis rates in 
the city increasing as well. 


Can You Hear Me Now? 
WASHINGTON, DC 一 Responding to a query from 
Congress in October, telecom company Veri- 
zon admitted it had shared phone and Intemet 
data with federal authorities without warrants 
or court orders. The company said in a letter 
1o investigators that it did not examine the le- 
al basis of these requests before tuming over 
records —which it did 720 times between Janu- 
ary 2005 and September 2007. Verizon also 
revealed that the FBI was seeking data not only 
оп specific persons but also on all the people 
those persons had called and all the people 
those people In turn had called. Verizon said, 
however, that it did not maintain such informa- 
tion, known as "two-generation community of 
Interest” data. “Тһе responses from these tele- 
communications companies highlight the need 
of Congress to continue pressing the Bush ad- 
ministration for answers," said representative 
Edward Markey (D-Mass), one of the invest 
gators. "The water is as murky as ever on this 
issue, and it's past time for the administration 
to come clean." The telecom companies, many 


of which—except Qwest, which refused on legal 
grounds—shared data with the National Secu- 
rity Agency, are seeking immunity from lawsuits 
alleging privacy violations. 


Mission Creep 
LONoN-In a disturbing trend, a number of U.S. 
allies are using the language and tactics applied 
to terrorism to address civil disobedience and 
peaceful protest. 
їп July authori- 
ties in El Salva 
dor arrested 13 
protesters at a 
demonstration 
against a plan to 
decentralize the 
water system 
and charged them under antiterrorism laws. 
In August British police used stop-and-search 
powers granted in antiterrorism legislation to 
control crowds at a huge peaceful global-warm- 
ing demonstration at Heathrow airport. 


The Dukakis Effect 

WASHINGTON, ос Despite ever-increasing data 
‘on wrongful convictions and the suspension of 
the death penalty in states such as Illinois af- 
ter starting DNA test results, every Democratic 
candidate for president except Dennis Kucinich 
and Mike Gravel is a supporter of capital pun- 
ishment. Hillary Clinton even helped expand the 
number of crimes subject to the death penalty. 
As a result the 2008 election looks likely to fol- 
low the previous four, in which both major-party 
Candidates favored death sentences. 


FROM A COM- 
MENT by Brad 

Dickson, a former 

writer for Jay Leno: 

When late-night shows are consid- 
cred influential enough for Arnold 
Schwarzenegger and Fred Thompson 
to announce their candidacies 

оп them, shouldn't these programs 
Tein in material labeling people 
accused of crimes as guy? 
Shouldn't thay at least stop calling 
most of them guilty after their 
acquitals Or perhaps we should 
do away with the Los Ang 

district attorneys office and in 
court present Leno's monologues, 
Which almost always do a far superior 
Job of convincing people of a 
elendants galt than prosecutors.” 


FROM A STATEMENT by 
Sdonka Silva, the co-founder ol tho 


production: "Everything has its 
Physical form, personal 
Spirit for indigenous 


is through 


sacred, With coca 
never alone, because you 
ways connected to the 
атата, or Mother Earth.” 


FROM THE BOOK me то 
Wih verso, by Walter Bonn 
Michaels, emplaiming how culture is 
usadas 3 stand-in for race: “Two 
things make the notion of cultu lok 
ia an atractivo aerate for ac, 


of паштет). The othar is that 
utu а оова concept than race; 
‘otal black people have to love The 
"Bock Alm In order oro be a part 
of Back culturo (and some white poo- 
ple can love it too), The problem ls hat 
{he minute we call lack culture black, 
both of бизе advantages disappear, 

since in order for a sentance Ike 

Some whit people are really into 

black culture’ to make sense, we have 
to havea definition of white and back. 
people that is completely independent 
& thoir culture. Culture cannot replace 


fare, then, is that 
ifs tly depen- 
dent on race. We 
can say what 
aunts as white 
or black or Jew. 
ish cultu оту 
we already 
know who the 
wes and backs 
and Jews are” 


Y 


шашы 


Lud 


JOSE CUERVO BLACK MEDALLION. 

A SIGNATURE BLEND OF OAK-AGED TEQUILA 
WITH A SMOOTHER, MORE MATURE TASTE 
THAT'S PERFECT WITH COLA. 


DON’T LET 60. VIVE(uervo a Drink responsibly. 


PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: TINA FEY 


A candid conversation with TV’s comic “goddess of the geeks” about 30 Rock 
versus SNL, having a filthy mouth and those disappearing sexy glasses 


Tina Fey can't seem to shake her image as 
queen of the comedy nerds. 

In the beginning it probably had something 
todo with the glasses. When she was co-anchor 
of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, 
her trademark black-rimmed glasses made her 
look like а cross between a naughty librarian 
‘and Velma from Scooby-Doo. But her geeky 
charm wasn't in appearance alone. Fey's 
caustic wit and wry delivery made it clear she 
wasn't another airhead comedienne willing 
to play dumb for laughs. If the world needed 
reminding that smart girls can be funny and 
sexy, Tina Fey proved i. 

While she has often been called the think 
ing man’s sex symbol, she would probably pre- 
fer something a little less pretentious. After 
all, this is a woman who frequently refers to 
herself as a supernerd. Time magazine came 
closest to summing up Fey's appeal when it 
crowned her "goddess of the geeks 

Fey rarely wears glasses since leaving 
SNL, but the nerd spirit remains. On the 
NBC sitcom 30 Rock, now in its second sea- 
son, she plays Liz Lemon, the head writer 
for a late-night comedy sketch show bearing 
‘more than a passing resemblance to Satur- 
day Night Live. Liz is the antithesis of а 
perky, self-confident leading woman. She's 
secure, Чим», voten a ros and, above 
all, dorky as hell 


“I wasn't really insecure. I was quiet and 
nerdy, and comedy was a way to ingratiate 
myself with people. I remember thinking, Oh 
yeah, I may not be superpreity. This comedy 
Thing may be my best move. 


И would be easy to dismiss Fey's geeky per- 
sona as a carefully calculated vencer designed 
to win over fans. But Fey the Emmy-uinning 
‘omic isn't all hat different from Fey the shy 
and gauky teenager who grew up in Upper 
Darby, Pennsylvania. Born Elizabeth Stama- 
tina Fey in 1970, she had а mostly sheltered 
upbringing with parents Donald and Jeanne 
and older brother (by eight years) Peter. By 
the time she got to high school she was already 
establishing herself as an outsider. Fey was a 
straight-A student and active in extracurricu- 
lar activities such as choir, drama club and 
co-eliting her high school newspaper. 

She was also fiercely opposed to her school's 
culture of drugs and sexual promiscu- 
йу——ийій, by her own admission, made her 
unpopular with the cool kids. So she and her 
social eirde—the AP.class brainiac nerds,” as 
she calls them—twould sit in the cafderia and 
make jokes about the more popular students 
from a safe distance. Although Fey admits she 
could be scathing and even cruel to her class- 
mates, she was just as hard on herself. In a 
caption accompanying her high school year- 
book photo, she predicted she would someday 
become “very. very fat." 

After graduating from the University of 
Virginia with a degree in drama, in 1992, she 
moved to Chicago to join the legendary Second 
City, where she performed sketch comedy six 


"Will Ferrell tried to stab me once. It was SNL, 


so we were all hopped up on goofball, out of 
‘our minds on quaaludes and horse antibiotic. 


1 remember thinking, This guy's a genius. It 
‘would be an honor to be Killed by him." 


nights a week and met her future husband, 
musician Jeff Richmond. in 1997 she was 
hired as a staff writer for Saturday Night Live 
and a few years later became the first female 
head writer in SNL’ then 25-year history. 

In 2000 executive producer Lorne Michaels 
plucked her out of obscurity to become co- 
‘anchor of Weekend Update, first with Jimmy 
Fallon and then, in 2004, with Amy Poehler 

Like every breakout star from Saturday 
Night Live before her, Fey made the leap to 
feature films, with 2004 Mean Girls, a bit- 
ing satire of teenage girls and the emotional 
violence they inflict on one another. Next up 
is Baby Mama, Fey's movie collaboration with 
her former Update co-anchor Poehler, about 
4 single career woman (played by Fey) who 
fetes semita Din] b lore 
her baby. And if that's not enough to keep Fey 
busy, there's 30 Rock, once marked for death 
but now one of NBC's том highly rated and 
‘award-winning shows. 

We sent writer Erie Spitanagel to inter- 
view Fey at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los 
Angeles, where they sipped coffee by the pool 
‘and talked for most of the day. He reports: 
“Tina is two very different women trapped 
in the same body, the yin and yang of com- 
«ду. Half her personality is what you would 
expect: She's intelligent and poised, like a 
feminist superhero. But the other half is an 


"What's unfair is when one woman tries to 
do comedy and isn't funny and it somehow 
reflects on all women. Nobody watches a 
terrible male stand-up comic and says, ‘God, 
теп just cannot do this ^ 


PLAYBOY 


40 


introverted underdog who makes up for her 
lack of confidence with a biting sense of 
humor, If life really does imitate high school, 
then she’s the hot cheerleader everybody 
wants to sleep with and the band geek who 
makes fun of you for being so shallow 


PLAYBOY: Did you want to be the star of 
30 Rock, or would you have preferred to 
remain behind the scenes? 
FEY: My original deal was to create a 
show for NBC as a writer only, but 
when we came up with this idea, 1 fig- 
ured, Why not? Let's take a shot. Well, 
not at first, Before I said yes, I talked 
to Amy Poehler and asked her, "Am. 
I getting too old for this? Do people 
want to see me anymore?" She helped 
me think like a male come 
dian. When Ray Romano 
and Jerry Seinfeld got their 
shows, I don't think they had 
a moment like, Am I good 
nough to do this? I need to 
stop worrying so much about 
what other people think. 
PLAYBOY: How much of 30 Rock 
is based on your experiences at 
Saturday Night Live? 
Fey: It depends. Some of 
personal to me, and some of it's 
personal to the other writers. I 
tried to remember what it felt 
like when I si 


aging people. It’s weird 
down with somebody my own 
age and tell them, "You need 
to try harder." 
PLAYBOY: Can you remember 
a particular moment at SNL 
when you had to be the boss 
and didn't like it? 
FEY God, yes. Tim Herlihy, 
who was my co-head writer, 
threw me to the wolves in the 
most hilarious way. We had 
had a string of bad shows, and 
he said to me, "Okay, we have 
the writers they're not 
cutting it.” So we called this 
big meeting, and I was already 
a little nervous because I had 
been co-head writer for only 
a couple of weeks, We walked in, and 
Tim turned to me and said, "All right, 
о ahead.” He made me scold the 
writers, who were essentially my peers. 
1 was like, "Me? Май, what?" 
PLAYBOY: Did you have a lot of conflicts 
with the other SNL writer: 
FEY Not really, but we did an episode оп 
30 Rock last year about Liz finding out a 
co-worker had called her the C word. 
PLAYBOY: You mean cunt? 
FEY. Yeah. That happened to me. Some- 
body at SNL called me that word, and my 
response was "No! My parents love me. 
T'm not some child of an alcoholic who 
will take that kind of verbal abuse!” It was 
such a strong out-of left-field reaction, so 
it was easy to turn that into comedy. 


PLAYBOY. Is it safe to assume Jack Поп- 
aghy, your fictional boss on 30 Rock, 
played by Alec Baldwin, is supposed to 
be Lome Michaels? 

FEX. I would say he's Lorne Michaels- 
esque. There's a whole other corporate 
end of Donaghy that's nothing at all like 
Lorne. But he was definitely the inspi 
ration. I may be the only SNL alumnus 
who has created a character based on 
Lorne who's not lying about it 
PLAYBOY: Who's been lying? 

нт: Well, maybe not lying but at least. 
not advertising it. Гуе always wanted to 
do a special for Turner Classic Movies, 
screening all the films with characters 
based on Lorne. There's Serooged, Brain 
Candy and the Austin Powers series. 1 


* 


re are two big differenc 
my chara and me. 
is that her jugs are a lot bigger. 


think there are a few more. When you 
work for SNL, Lorne is such a huge 
part of your life. It's like the movie The 
Paper Chase. The guy idolizes his pro- 
fessor and thinks the professor is mess- 
ing with him. At the end of the movie 
the student finally has the courage to 
talk to him, but the professor doesn't 
even know who he is. That's what 
like with Lorne. Everybody wants ti 
personal relationship with him. 
PLAYBOY. Did you have that? 

FEY: To an extent. We aren't best pals or 
anything, but I consider him a friend. 
Lorne always encourages you to enjoy 
the finer things in life. He's big on say- 
ing things like "You should buy a huge 
apartment because then you will come 


home and be like, "Wow, who lives 
here? Oh yeah, that's right. I do.” It's 
kind of sweet the way he wants every- 
one to get rich. 

PLAYBOY. Was Michaels intimidating to 
work with? 

FEY: Sometimes. We would do dress 
rehearsals for a live audience on Sat- 
urdays at eight ғ.м., and each writer 
would go under the bleachers and 
watch his or her sketch on the moni- 
tor with Lorne, He would stand next 
to you, and it was terrifying. You're 
accountable for everything. The worst 
was if the sketch was dirty or had a 


lot of fart jokes. He would say things 

like “You must be really proud" or 
ттт, call the Peabody board. 

PLAYBOY: Is he aware he's a 


character on 30 Rock? 
Fey: Oh yeah. He doesn't 
ent on it, but 


Boy, I was 
week's episode,” 
PLAYBOY: What about Liz 
Lemon? Is she basically anoth- 
er version of you? 
нек There are two big differ 

etween Liz and me. One 
‚pparently my charac- 
ter's jugs are a lot bigger. 
PLAYBOY: Really? We hadn't 
ved that. 


Yeah, whatever. I think 
our cc lesigner is try 
ing to draw the vi 


up until I lose the 
baby weight. I was doing a 
movie with Dax Shepard, 
and we were talking about 
30 Rock, and he said, “By the. 
way, th 
hot on your show. 
PLAYBOY: And the other differ- 
ence between you and Liz is...? 
FEY: She's not married. I was 
saved by having met my boy- 
friend before 1 worked on 
Saturday Night Live. 1 was 
already dating Jeff, who is 
now my husband, Many times 
when I was at SNL I would 
survey the writers’ room and 
think, Oh, thank God I'm not coming 
to this job single. 

PLAYBOY: The pickings were slim at SNL? 
нт. I could've gone on four weird dates 
with Colin Quinn. Or I could be mar- 
ried to Norm MacDonald and living 
in Arizona. 

PLAYBOY. Liz briefly considered quitting 
her plush TV job in New York and m 
ing to Cleveland. Have you ever been 
tempted to do the same thing? 

FEY. Oh sure. Sometimes the struggle 
to live in New York makes you think 
you're really living your life, but you're 
actually only struggling to get from 
place to place. You say things like “I 
did two errands, and I got home!” But 
is this my dream life? I think everybody 


occasionally has the fantasy of moving 
somewhere else. Sometimes New York 
gets Lo you. Some days I win, some days 
New York wins. 

PLAYBOY: What's with all the Star Wars 
references on the show? Are you a closet 
sci-fi geek? 
FEY: Not at all. I just think it's funny. For 
a while we tried to have at least one Star 
Wars reference in every episode, but 
somewhere along the way we dropped 
the ball. I think my character knows a 
little more about Star Wars than I do. 
1 have basic girl-nerd knowledge, but 
1 wouldn't be able to pull a name like 
Admiral Ackbar out of my butt the way 
Liz Lemon does, 

PLAYBOY: Liz once described her sex life 
as "fast and only on Saturdays." Does 


FEY: I think it’s an 


ude everybody 
And it's not one I've 
the post-Sex and the City 
world. Especially for married people 
with kids, there is a lot of fake-it-ull-you: 
make-it, "We're all exhausted. Let's just 
go ahead and do it.” And then you think, 
a great idea. 

PLAYBOY. You've done only a handful of kiss 
ing scenes on 30 Rock, and you've always 
looked uncomfortable. Why is that? 

FEY. I don't know, It wasn't a big deal 
with Jason Sudeikis, who plays Liz's 
boyfriend, because he's a buddy. We 
actually auditioned a lot of actors for 
that role. How can 1 say this so Jason 
won't be offended? The L.A. actors were 
what Amy and I call “L.A. tight.” They're 
all skinny and ripped and don't look 
like 

ask, "What 
work out more 
100 perfect about th 


has sometimes, 
seen reflected. 


hing 
m. I like to keep it 


big fan of sitcoms 
The late 1970 were a 
comedy. There 
week—I think it 
f, but I'm not sure 一 th 
had the best shows, There was The Bob 
Newhart Show leading into The Mary 
Tyler Moore Show, or the other way 
around, and then The Carol Burnett 
Show, That was a big night. I remem 
ber getting into trouble once as a kid, 
and the only threat my parents used 
was that I wouldn't be allowed to watch 
that lineup. It was all they had to say 
hholding quality television 
L was really sweating it 
PLAYBOY: Did you watch those sitcoms 
again when you were creating 30 Rock? 
FEY: Oh yeah. I tried to make Mary Tyler 
Moore the template for our show. I also 
atched a lot of That Girl, but mostly 
because there was a That Girl marathon 
on TV and my husband TiVoed all of 
PLAYBOY: Was he helping you with 
the research? 
FEY: I think he just has a crush on 
Marlo Thomas. 


PLAYBOY: Well, who doesn't? 
FEY. I know, right? Actually, every 
woman he's had a crush on has been 
a straight path to me. Marlo Thomas, 
Kristy McNichol and Julie Kavner when 
she played Rhoda's sister. It's a trajec- 
tory that leads right to me. The only one 
missing is Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie. 
PLAYBOY: Did your daughter, Alice, get 
your comedy genes? 

FEY: I think so. In our house the baby is 
the funniest, followed by husband Jeff, 
and I'm a distant third. I'm too tired. I'm 
funny, but I'm not room funny, 

PLAYBOY: How has Alice demonstrated 
her sense of humor? 

в started doing spit takes. She 
huge drink of water and let it 
dribble out. I guess it's not really a spi 
take, more ofa blerch take. Even before 
we noticed and laughed at it, she was 
doing it just to crack herself up. 
PLAYBOY: Does it 1o her if she has. 
an audience? 


more of rd kid who came home 
after school, put on my colonial-la 
costume from Halloween and did little 
skits for myself. 


PLAYBOY: How long did 


е before 


you realized you could make other 
people laugh? 
FEY. | think it was in middle school, I 


iber thinking, Oh yeah, I may not 
'etty. This comedy thing may 


PLAYBOY: Was comedy a way of hidi 
from your insecurities 
FEY: I wasn't really insecure. I was quiet 
and nerdy, and comedy was a way to 
е myself with people. I had a 
buddy named Jimmy McDonough who 
was the class clown; he was louder and 
ore outspoken than I was. I could 
never do that, put myself out there and 
be disruptive in class. I would sit on 
the sidelines, coming up with vicious 
burns about the popular kids, 
PLAYBOY. You did an independent-study 
project on comedy in eighth grade. Do 
you remember anything about it 

FEX. I remember the only book I could 
find as research was Joe Franklin's 
Encyclopedia of Comedians. It was about 
old vaudeville guys like Joe E. Brown 
and Rudy Vallee. But I was way into 
comedy. 1 would watch An Evening at 
the Improv every time it was on. I miss 
the golden age of stand-up. I miss the 
brick wall 

PLAYBOY: Did you dream of becor 
cast member of Saturday Night Live? 

FEY: Well, sure. But that's not a unique 
dream. Everybody wants to be famous 
when they re young. 

PLAYBOY: When did you decide being a 
writer would be enough? 

FEY: When I figured out it was an 


Е 


ga 


CHAMPION 


EVERY DAY 


IS RALLY DAY. 


MINIUSA СО! 


49 


so 


Need more proof that Tina Foy is t 
Wiltiost woman we know? Here aro 
‘some of her greatest bits 


SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, WEEKEND UPDATE 
Atthe request of the Catholic Church, a tee day 
sex orgy to be held near Rio de Janeiro was can- 
caled lost Fidoy So instead | spent he weekend 
fearing my apartment” 
“Oficial om бе National Re esci 
aon met wth a goup d 200 f shoo 
Student here were по sunto 
“In the wake of the successful rag 
lectins, President Bushs ob-approl 
Jang has jumped 57 percent o as 
gh School teachers cal fan F” 
*U2 lead singer Bono met with President Bush 
on Wednesday and urged he president to help 
the world's poor, while he president urged Bono. 
to get back with Ch 


“A now study Ands that men who smoke are les 


kay to make a woman pregnant then nonsmok- 
ers Especially they smoke pole: 
MEAN GIRLS 


Mc Duval: So, uh, how was your summer? 
Ме. Norbury gt divorced. 
Ме Dal Oh. Му carpal tunnel came back. 
Ms Norbury: I. 
Homoschooled Boy And on the third day God ere- 
sted the úBaltactn nf за that man 
ould ght the dinosaurs. Ала he homosexuals. 
Janis: What в that smell? 
оу: Oh, Regina gave me some 


pertume. 
Janis You amel Whe a baby pros, 
Cady: Thanks 


Coach Car: Don't have sex, because 


you wil gt pregnant and die! Don't 
have sex in he missionary position. 
Don't have sex standing up. Just dont 


do t okay. Promise? Okay, now everybody take 
some rubbers 


30 ROCK 
Jack lot. | was at a luncheon for Ann 
Coulter Bo birthday 


worked with Jack in plastics. He 
lends to approach everything that way. Locate 
the problem; folate the problem; set the prob- 
lem up with a lesbian. 


Lic You're not going to come to our crappy polar. 


3 
Jack: bed, lam coming 
Tracy: Here's some advice | wish | 
койда got when | was your age: ve 
every week le s Shark Wook. 
Jonna: Yeah, but this is different 


because know Jack Donaghy клон 
hat he йез. 

Liz ah So now you just hawe to male 
yourself 10 years younger and Adan. 


Lr Very funny you bought a page from Dennis. 
Wil you take I off пом please? 
Jack! Fm som. cant: Im expecting a call from 
1983, 

lir M. How did you gt in here? 

Jenna: Oh, Ш, f ou dress well and enter with 
confidence, you can get in anywhere. 

Uz You showed the securty guy your boobs, 
didnt you? 

Jenna: Just one. Is not the White House. 

Tracy: Гт gonna make you а mi tape. You like 
Ри Colins? 

Jock Pe got two ears and a heart, dont I? 


option. By the eighth or ninth grade 
a few English teachers were encourag- 
ing and helped me realize writing was 
something I could do. When I was in 
Chicago, doing improv at Second City 
and places like that, it seemed clear 
the closest I would get to SNL was 
writing for 

PLAYBOY: You became Saturday Night 
Live's first female head writer. Be- 
fore you, SNL had a reputation for 
being a boys club. Do you think you 
changed that 

FEY: Well, there are still more men on 
the writing staff than women. But it has 
never been a woman-haters club, at 
least not when I was there. The more 
women around, the more integrated 
the comedy will be. People like what 
they like, If mostly guys are writing the 
show, then the material will skew toward 
jokes that guys like. It's not malicious or 
‘intentional, It's what makes them laugh, 
so that's what they write. 

PLAYBOY: Saturday Night Live is notorious 
for being a competitive, cutthroat envi- 
ronment. Did you ever have a feud with 
anyone on the show? 

FEY: Will Ferrell tried to stab me once. 
We had been up all night writing skits 
for the guy from Dawson's Creek 
James Van Der Beek. And you know, 
it was SNL, so we were all hopped up 
on goofballs, out of our minds on quaa- 
ludes and horse antibiotics. I foolishly 
made a disparaging joke about Will's 
skit. I was like, “Really, dude? A hat 
salesman who's afraid of hats? That's 
the best you can come up with?" And 
he lunged at me with a letter opener. 
1 remember thinking, This guy's a 
genius. It would be an honor to be 
Killed by him. 

PLAYBOY: Other than the occasional 
stabbing, how did the writers and cast 
members let off steam? 

кек The usual ways. We tried to make 
one another laugh. There was a lot of 
same-sex fake rape. 

PLAYBOY. What's your happiest memory 
from SNL? 

FEX Besides the same-sex raping? 
PLAYBOY. Yes, besides the rape. 

FEY: Well, a few days before a show, 
every sketch is read out loud in front 
of all the writers and actors, and you 
live or die in that room. Making every- 
body else in the cast laugh was always 
more satisfying than having something 
on the show. It happened for me only 
once or twice 

PLAYBOY. What's your worst memory? 
FEY: The worst was probably in late 
2001. I was sitting in my dressing room 
on a Friday night, working on my jokes 
for Weekend Update, and Lester Holt 
came on the news and said anthrax 
had been discovered in 30 Rockefeller 
Plaza, and I was in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. 
I stood up, got my stuff and walked 
out, right past Drew Barrymore, who 
was hosting. I didn’t even tell her there 


was anthrax in the building. I went to 
the elevator, walked up Sixth Avenue. 
to Central Park West and went straight 
t0 my house, sobbing the whole way. 
Those were bad days. 

PLAYBOY: Were you reacting out of fear, 
or were you angry you had been put 
that situation? 

FEX. It was fear. There was a palpable 
feeling that we were probably all going. 
to die. That was before we knew, Oh, 
this is the kind of anthrax cats get 
PLAYBOY: Did you ever have a bad experi 
ence with a host that made you wish you 
were in another line of work? 

FEX. Well, in late 2005 Paula Abdul did 
a guest bit on the show, and she was 
awful. I was pregnant at the time and 
probably a little moody, but I remember 
thinking, She's a disaster! 1 gotta prop 
this lady up and get her on TV, 
PLAYBOY: How was she a disaster? 

FEY: In the ways she generally appears 
to be. It was an American Idol sketch, 
and she wanted to change parts. So 
Amy Poehler had to play her, A year 
later 1 saw her on a flight, We both 
looked at each other like, Do I know 
that girl? And then we both had the 
same moment of recognition, and she 
was like, Uuuggh. 1 saw it register on 
her face that she had had a terrible 
time with us. 

PLAYBOY Since leaving SNL permanently, 
іп 2006, you rarely wear glasses. What 
happened? 

FEX. 1 still wear them and occasionally 
need them to sec. They re not props, but 
1 don't wear them all the time. Som 
times I use contacts, When I was audi- 
tioning for Weekend Update, I tried 
doing it with and without the glasses. 
One of the writers on SNL, T. Sean 
Shannon, watched my audition and said 
[in a smarmy vaguely Southern voice], "You 
want the job, you oughta leave them 
glasses on." [laughs] So I followed his 
advice, and it kind of worked out for 
me. Getting rid of the glasses was rough. 
Even now | will go on a talk show and 
worry nobody will recognize me without 
the specs 

PLAYBOY: Which used to work to your 
advantage. It was like your Clark Kent 
disguise but in reverse. 

Н. Exactly. It helped for a while, but 1 
don't think it's fooling anybody anymore. 
PLAYBOY So losing the glasses wasn't a con- 
scious decision to change your image? 
FEY. Oh no, not at all. 

PLAYBOY: But you do know that by retir- 
ing the glasses, you're breaking a lot of 
nerd hearts? 

FEY: [Laughs] Yeah, 1 know it's a nerd 
fetish that should probably be respected. 
Just like Mr. T should never show up in 
public without his Mohawk. 

PLAYBOY: What do you think of your 
male fan following? There are websites 
devoted to you that verge on the obses- 
sive. Is that flattering or creepy? 

FEY: It’s all good, Î guess. As long as 


they don't try to kill me. Everyone 
around me gets upset by it occasion: 
ally. But I prefer not to think about it 
or question it. 

PLAYBOY: Why do you think your fans are 
so drawn to you? 

FEX: Maybe because I seem very attainable. 

PLAYBOY: Attainable? But you're married. 

FEY: Not in that way. Attainable as opposed 
to a supermodel. 

PLAYBOY: Some older male comics like 
Jerry Lewis have argued that women 
aren't funny. Does it piss you off, or is it 
easy to ignore? 

FEY: The only people I've heard say th: 
are Jerry Lewis and Richard Roeper. 
That's not a strong showing. Yeal 

Richard Roeper is hilarious. Remember 
his radio show? Me neither. It's irrel 


I'm not wr 


think I'm funny 
movie for Jerry Lewis; he's not run: 


ning a studio, It’s not a thing for me. 
t's not a burden I need to 
But what's unfair is when one woman 
tries to do comedy and isn't funny 
and it somehow reflects on all wom 
Nobody watches a terrible male sta 
up comic and says, "God, 
not do this.” There are just as mi 
awful coi is who are men. 
PLAYBOY. The late Michael O'Donoghue, 
the first head writer for Saturday Night 
nce said, "It does help when writ 
nor to have a big hunk of m 
between the legs. 
FEY: I do have one, bu 
open to a vagina, 
PLAYBOY, So you dor 
sentiment? 
FEY: Well, the thing is, he said it 
then he died. So I don't know. Maybe he 
was wrong, 
PLAYBOY. Was he just the product of a 
different era and a different way of think: 
ing about women and comedy? 
FEY. Probably, yeah. But if 1 had been at 
SNL during the 1970s, I think I woukl've 
gotten alon 
PLAYBOY. Really? You wouldn't have соте 
to blows? 
FEY: He liked to be shockin 
а filthy mouth. 
PLAYBOY. You do? Why a 
this now 
FEY: Probably because I try to filter all 
the filth before saying anything out 
loud, But backstage I have an incred. 
ibly foul mouth. I've noticed this pat 
tern, especially in comedy. There's a 
big difference between the men and 
women in the business. The guys prob: 
ably attended college but didn't finish. 
and they have a problem with author- 
ity. Almost all the women attended a 
very nice college, they graduated and 
were always obedient, good students, 
but comedy was their one outlet for 
expressing themselves and not being 
so prim and proper. 
PLAYBOY: Was that true for you? 
Fer: I think so. Growing up, I was a very 


it's been 


тес with that 


and I have 


re we learning 


good kid. I went to college. I didn't 
drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs. 
Comedy was the one place I was able 
(o misbehave. 
PLAYBOY: What's the secret to delivering a 
mean-spirited joke and making an audi- 
ence love you for it 
тек I know there's a secret, but I don't 
remember it anymore. It has some- 
thing to do with smiling a lot. I think 
you can't clamp down on a gag. There's 
mething you gotta do: You can't look 
like you love it too much. 
PLAYBOY: What about your comments 
about Paris Hilton on Howard Stern's 
radio show? 
те Oh right, that. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: One could say you we 
оп Ms. Hilton. You called her a 
d made fun of her hair. 
FE Okay, here's the thing. I went оп 
Stern, and they were very nice to me and, 
well, 1 think 
PLAYBOY: You were 
FEY: It was eight in the п 
always I was loooaded. No, I think w 
was going through my hea 
can Î protect myself? I d. 
talk to Howard too much about 
Iw 
That kicked in instinctively. I 
d such ter ge 
her. Even my mom Oh, that was 
awful." Not long after it happen 


e tough 
piece of 


1 was, How 


узе. 
nt to throw out some gossip steaks. 


about Paris Hilton 
at's very hostile. 
PLAYBOY: Now tha 
passed, do you 
about her? 

FEW 1 regret sinking down to th: 
of discourse, But Paris is a terrible 
model and a terrible young woman, 
She needs to be ignored, I work with 
people who have 12-, 13-, 14-у 

girls who are fascin: 
look up to her, 

You can buy videotapes in w! 
сап see her bejanis. 

PLAYBOY. Her what 

FEY: Her bejanis. You know, her lady bits. 
Her beholio. 

PLAYBOY: Those are the most adorable 
pet names for the vagina we have 
ever heard. 

FEY: Somebody told me that when she did 
Larry King she said she had never done 
drugs. Is that true? 

PLAYBOY; It is. She also said she isn't a 
big drinker. 

FER. I don't know if she drinks, but she 
has done some drugs, y'all! There's a 
generation of girls in Hollywood who 
think they can say stuff in the press and 
make it true. It's not only Paris; a whole 
bunch of them do. 

PLAYBOY: You don't seem to have much 
sympathy for the blonde Hollywood girls 
with bulimia. 

FEX: When I was in high school, bulimia 
didn't even exist yet. Remember the 


enough 
feel any different 


level 
ole 


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movie of the week Kate's Secret? It came 
out in 1985 or 1986. I think somebody 
famous was in it 
PLAYBOY: Meredith Baxter’ 
FEY: Yeah, that's the one. When it ca 
өш everybody was like, “Wait, you can 
do what now?" It was such a foreign 
thing to us. Nobody had anorexia or 
bulimia when I was in school. That 
movie and when Karen Carpenter 
died were the first times anybody had 
heard of those disorders. But now 
everybody knows, and they all give 
them a shot 
PLAYBOY: It's like marijuan 
tries it at least once 
FEY: Which, I would like to say for the 
record, I never did either. I never 
tried any drugs. I may as well get it 
in print, so years from now when my 
daughter is reading back issues of 
pLaynoy, which I'm sure she will do, 
she will know her mother was drug: 
free. And here's the other 
g- How can I articulate this prop 
ly? When I was growing up, to have 
a good body you actually had to have 
a good body. You know what I mean? 
You had your shape, and whatever 
your God-given shape was, that w 
your shape, But now—and this is wh. 
these young Hollywood ladies see 
to do—even if you don't have a gre: 
body, you can lose a lot of weight and 
t superskinny, get a 


Everybody 


t super-duper skinny, Some wome 
are the real deal, like Jessica Alba. She 
has an amazing, gorgeous body. But 
for so hese other chicks, the 
closest they can get to a body like that 
is to remove everything that's there 
and add a little something on top. It's 
like the ladies you see іп PLaynoY 
PLAYBOY. Wow. You really want to talk 
about this here 
FEY I don't want to seem like a bad 
guest, but I have a few gentle theori 
Tf you look back at old rtaynovs fror 
the 1960s and 1970s, the Playmates 
represented the girl next door, and 
some of them had maybe different-size 
boobies, perhaps with bı 
or large areolas. There were even 
ladies with their actual hair or with 
hair that wasn't blonde. 
PLAYBOY: Do you say this because you're 
a brunette? Are you lashing out 
blondes for the dark-haired sisterhood? 
FEY: I just take personal offense. Really 
you would be so disgusted to fuck a 
brunette? It would make you sick? 
[laughs] It's the Joyce DeWitt part of 
it. 1 remember as a little kid watching 
Three's Company and thinking, Oh man, 
that’s who is representing us? C'mon, 
can't Jaclyn Smith be the brunett 
Joyce DeWitt was cute, but they gave 
her a bowl cut and made her wear a 
football jersey and panty hose. That 
look was rough. So yeah, I guess you 
could write all this off as jealousy. 


PLAYBOY: Would i 
your hair? 

FEY: No, it goes deeper than that. It's 
this weird fetish with ladies who look 
like erasers. Holes is holes, as I like to 
say, but I don't understand the cultural 
obsession with these weird mental chil- 
dren with orange skin and bleached. 
out Barbie hair and boyish hips and 
big fake сһоррегз. They're so close to 
being trannies. I sometimes feel like. 
Who are these creatures? And they 
certainly don't exist only in this maga. 
zine. They re everywhere, and that's a 
reflection of our culture. It’s like the 
difference in our food since the 19708. 
as become overprocessed with all 
rans fats. Maybe we need to get 
organic with these ladies. 

PLAYBOY: You are a feminist role model 
fora lot of young girls. Do you feel quali 
fied to be that person? 

FEY Sure, why not? I could probably 
be a bett ied feminist. For 
gen all figuring it ош 
we go along. You have to follow yo 


help if you dyed 


gut. The line in the sand betwe 
what's okay and what's not keeps 
changing. You can have a strong. 


powered с like a € 
shaw on Sex and the City, 
mostly for ladies—and sometimes she's 
in her underpants. It's easy to forget 
you can be both, 

PLAYBOY. Yo 


were in your under 


powered sexuality, or did 
film needed some gra 


you jun feel 
Fin 1 don't think anybody wa 
aroused by it, зо I'm probably off the 
hook. But | will admit we didn't execute 
the joke the right way. It was better on 
paper. We should have curi 


PLAYBOY; Your Mean Girls со-а 
Lohan has bee 


r Lindsay 


struggling lately with 


out to her and offered advice? 
FEY. I haven't because I feel I know 
enough about addiction, from a dis. 
nly somebody who is 
ind intimately close with a per 
son should ever attempt to intervene 
I made a movie with Lindsay four 
years ago. I don't know her. I genu. 
inely like her, but you can't fix people 
from the outside. 
PLAYBOY: You saw addiction firsthand with 
Chris Farley. Не died a few months after 
you were hired for Saturday Night Live. 
FEE That's right. He hosted the show 
in October 1997, and he passed away 
in December. That was the only time 
I have ever been around someone and 
thought, This guy is gonna die. He 
looked really unwell. I guess that's a 
lesson learned. Sometimes if you see 
people who look like they might die, 
they might die. And again, it's not 
something you can do anything about. 
Because you have to be really close to 


‘aan 


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them even to attempt to help, and ulti- 
mately only they can help themselves. 
PLAYBOY. What about your 30 Rock co-star 
Alec Baldwin 

FEY: What about him? 

PLAYBOY: There was the scandal this past 
April when his irate voice-mail message 
1o his daughter was- 

нек That's separate from me. 

PLAYBOY. You never talked with him 
about it? 

FEY: Oh good lord, no. It's none of my 
business. 

PLAYBOY: Even as one parent to another? 
FEY. Oh my goodness. No, sir 

PLAYBOY: So you and Alec have a 
ship that’s 100 percent professional? 
FEY Absolutely. And I wouldn't want peo- 
ple in the office coming up to me and 


serting themselves into my bu: 
PLAYBOY. | guess there's a 
everybody in show business is fa 
кек I know, Isn't it insane? They think 
everyone knows everyone 
PLAYBOY: It's hard not to laugh at the red. 
carpet interviews when somebody like 
David Duchovny is asked if he has a 
advice for Britney Spears. 
FEY: It really is 
PLAYBOY. Has that ever happened to you 
FEY. Many times. I went to the open: 
ing of Martin Short's play in New York, 
and I was talking to a reporter on the 
red carpet. He said, “What brings you 
to the show?” And I ‘Oh, T think 
Martin Shorts really “That's 
reat. So anyway, do you think John 
Mark Karr killed JonBenet?” And I 
was like, What? I guess there must have 
been a development in the JonBenet 
Ramsey case or something. But what 
does it have to do with me? I am not 
going to answer that! Because if you 
well, not as much if you're me 
but if you're Ben Affleck and you s 
something—they're going to clip it on 
the news. “Ben Affleck thinks that guy 
killed JonBenet Ramsey!” And you're 
like, What the hell just happened? I've 
been sucked into answering those ques: 
ns, but thankfully nobody cares what 
1 have to sa) 
PLAYBOY, Being asked about JonBenet 
Ramsey is one thing. But Baldwin is 
someone you actually sce and spend time 
with, so it's not unreasonable to think 
you may have an opinion about him. 
FEY: But Alec and I have never really 
hung out. We've talked about trying 
> have dinner together for the better 
part of a year now, but we've never got 
ten around to it. And it's not only Alec 
1 don't have a social life with anyone 
on the show. There's no time. It's an 
unbelievably intense work environment. 
Sometimes I write for 10, 12 hours a 
day. Then at night I have huge amounts 
of homework: reading what everyone 
else is working on, going over 
lines and polishing my own scripts. It's 
thon. 
rathon, eh? So you need 


to drink a lot of water, and sometimes 
when you're getting close to the finish 
Tine you fall apart physically? 
FEX. Oh yes. And there's also vomiting 
and pooping in your pants. And the 
Ethiopians always win. 
PLAYBOY. In your new movie, Baby 
Mama, you play the straight person to 
Amy Poehler's wacky surrogate mom, 
Is it weird to let somebody else get all 
the funniest li 
FEY. Not at all. 1 love it. I'm not one 
of those actors with a big trunk filled 
with characters. I've got maybe two or 
three at most. I enjoy being the one who 
ppening 
around her. It's different when you're 
only an actor and you feel like, Oh, I 
have all the setups and everyone else 
the punch lines. For me it's just as satis: 
fying to write something for somebody 
else and watch them take it to another 
level and get the laugh, 
PLAYBOY: Baby Мата is a comedy about 
well, babies, Isn't there an old show 
business rule about not acting with chil 
dren or animals? 
Fer: That's right. They will upst 
because they re adorable, The sa 
be said of Amy Poehler. I shouldn't have 
acted with Pochler, She climbs every 
thing and curls up in your lap, and she's 
cuter than babies. 
PLAYBOY. That's a pretty bold stateme 
FEY: Amy Poehler is cuter than a baby 
a monkey combined. 
PLAYBOY. Now you're going toc 
FEY: I never should have done 
never should have agreed to do this 


movie with her 
PLAYBOY: Could you ever give 
st abandon the movies, TV 
Comedy career and never look back? 
FEY: I could definitely live a quieter, less 
work-filled life. It happens to everyone 
at some point. It doesn't matter if you' 
ready to give it up; it gives you up. No 
one stays this busy all the time, There's 
such a small window of time when I will 
be allowed to do this. Right now they fly 
me out to L.A., and I get to stay in nice 
hotels and get taken out to dinner. But 
in 10 years, and probably much sooner. 
1 will be flying on my own dime, and 
it will be coach and I will be staying at 
a hotel near the airport. At that point 
1 hope I realize it's over. 1 don't want 
to be on some horrible reality show just 
because I'm desperate to be on TV 
PLAYBOY. Will a small part of you be 
relieved when it's over? 
FEY It will be a sad day. Because the min- 
ute the camera stops and it’s not pointed 
at me anymore, I will probably gain a 
hundred pounds. 
PLAYBOY. Isn't this exactly what you pre. 
dicted in high school? That you would 
become “very, very fat"? 
FEX [Laughs] That's right. 1 still say it ай the 
time, so when it happens, I'm covered. 


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ІТ COULD JUST BE THE TAST 


WHEN AJMAL NAQSHBANDI WAS DECAPITATED LAST SPRING 
BY THE TALIBAN, HIS AMERICAN FRIEND FLEW BACK TO 
AFGHANISTAN TO FIND OUT WHY HE HAD BEEN MURDERED 


JOINED 


BY 
CHRISTIAN PARENTI 


"Ге killed Ajmal on Easter Sunday. I was at home in Brooklyn 


‘when it happened. My girlfriend was away, and I had slept in, 

awaking alone to the peaceful springtime view of the back- 
yards on my block. As I had for almost a month, the first thing 1 
did that morning was check online for news of Ajmal Naqshbandi, 
When the story came up that he had been murdered, 1 felt no shock 
or sadness or even disgust, just a sudden wave of nausea. 

Here it was, the latest receipt from a hopeless war. It had always 
been a distinct possibility, and now it was a reality: Ajmal, a bright 
young man destined for great things, had instead been abused, humili 
ated and then rubbed out, his family left shattered by grief, his col- 
leagues terrified, his best friends reduced to hollow shells. 

Ajmal and I had worked together over the past three years, reporting on 

| Afghan politics, corruption, the opium trade and the insurgency. During 

that time I had seen him mature from a good and ambitious young fixer to 
an ever more shrewd businessman and writer with a steady gig for a Japa- 
nese daily. He was about five-foot-cight with a stout build. His fashionable 
haircut was always moussed, but his goatee would be overtaken by a week's 
growth of stubble. He had bought a large Soviet-built apartment, was put- 
ting on weight and had married—all by the age of 25. But etiquette dictated 
that I not ask much about his wife or meet her or his mother. 


On my first trip to Afghanistan, in 2004, I had stayed at Ajmal's small 
lodge, the Everest Guesthouse, though its squalor and the interminably 
slow pace of everythiag eventually drove me to more expensive quarters 
Officially, the place had laundry service, but in reality you had to harass 
one of the cis ‚men Ajmal kept on retainer. All they did was sit on 
the filthy kitchen floor, drinking tea and playing cards. In about a week 
your clothes would show up in a heap on your bed, damp and not neces- 
sarily clean. Yet in certain ways 1 enjoyed the Everest’s anarchic mix of 
foreign reporters, contractors and other unidentified free agents. 


s 


“AJMAL COULD BE 
A BRAWLER 
THE NEAR 


HE LIKE 
MISSES.” 


us 


‘Ajmal Naqshbandi (above, on a road 
trip with the author in Afghanistan) 
had become a valuable facilitator for 
many foreign Journalists. 


Everything has a price in Afghani- 
stan, but the Everest was ruled by the. 
old British maxim “You can never buy 
an Afghan—you can only rent him for a 
short while at a very high sum." И was 
a place where a brigadier in the Afghan. 
National Police would slip in the front. 
door and go upstairs with a girlfriend and 
a bottle of whiskey while the guard at the. 
front gate did his afternoon supplications 
to Allah and oblivious European journal- 
ists watched Sky TV in the living room. 

One day a cabdriver quadruple 
charged a forcign guest for a ride from 
the airport. Ajmal was incensed and 
told the cabbie it was outrageous; d 
ble charging unsuspecting new arrivals 

|. The driver was mocking 
and dismissive, so Ajmal punched him 
in the face. The police soon arrived and 
dragged Ajmal off to jail. 

"It took a week to get out because they 
were demanding too much bribe money,” 
said Ajmal. Eventually a fair price was 
agreed on, and Ajmal's brother bailed him 
ош. But Ajmal was able to turn his stint in 
the clink into a networking opportunity, 
making friends with a hip young under- 
cover police officer who had been jailed 
for a minor indiscretion. Ajmal and I later 
тап into the cop, who was nice enough 
to answer my questions (anonymously) 
about corruption and police tolerance of 
Chinese brothels. 

The incident with the cabbie was not 
‘unusual; Ajmal could bea brawler. Once, 
high in the snow-covered mountains of 
the Hazarajat, a speeding jeep driven by 
locals clipped our truck in nearly a head- 
өп collision. We were creeping up a steep 
track of packed snow while they were 
barreling down. A showdown ensued. 


Soon the erew in the truck was joined by Hazara villagers who had been shoveling 
snow off the road. All of them wore small square sunglasses and cruel smiles, their 
heads and throats bundled in scarves. They had smashed our headlight while almost 
knocking us off the road, and now they wanted money. In his nasal voice, Ajmal 
excoriated the Hazara as thieves and liars. He was ready to throw down in what 
‘would have been a badly uneven fight. Finally I gave the head Hazara my business 
card and told him to have his boss get in touch with my boss to sort it all out. That 
seemed to save face for everyone. More important, it saved our asses. 

‘When needed, Ajmal could also be cool. This came in handy during another near 
brawl when he slowly and accidentally ran over a teenager who was in the middle of 
a curbside fistfight. The fight spilled suddenly into the street, and in an instant we had 
tolled over the kid's leg, k was badly broken. The crowd that had been watching the fight 
was now encircling us. A second or two more and all hel would have erupted. Ajmal 
immediately loaded the wounded youth into the truck, and we took him to a hospital. 

He liked the near misses. He told me that during one weekend in the Everest 
he had housed on one floor an American friend who was a former CIA agent 
turned Thailand-based contractor and on another floor—as a favor to a relative 
in Pakistan, no questions asked—a Chechen woman on a courier mission to Al 
Qaeda's safe haven in northwest Pakistan. “If either of them had known—can 
you imagine?” Ajmal asked me with a mischievous smirk. 

‘Working with Ajmal involved numerous long road trips. We had driven across 
windblasted deserts, repaired flat tires and snapped chains on Ajmal's truck as snow 
closed in on us at the 10,000-foot Shibar Pass. We had eaten sheep kidneys with 
opium-growing warlords, wrestled the Afghan army's bureaucracy and coaxed an 
‘ex-Taliban commander turned parliamentarian to confess to his role in destroying the 
giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan Valley. (The Buddha bomber, Mawlawi Mohammed 
Islam Mohammedi, was mysteriously gunned down a few months after the story came 
ош, but I suspect it had more to do with the opium trade in Samangan province than 
with desecrated statues.) We had joked, bickered and haggled with each other. We 
had traded humorous, boastful and embarrassing stories about our lives. In distant 
guesthouses we shared the haram, or religiously prohibited, pleasures of hashish 
and beer. On one afternoon, with our backs to a canyon wall in southern Afghani- 
stan, we had stared down the barrels of Taliban rifles while doing an interview. 

Although he was a journalist, Ajmal 
was apolitical. Perhaps because so much 
of Afghan politics has been reduced to 
‘simple criminality, he had a hard time see- 

эз as interesting. The programs and 
ideologies of various parties bored him. 
He answered my questions about these 
subjects as best he could, but ultimately 
he didn't care who won. He seemed to 
find my interest in historical and socio- 
logical matters taxing and let me know 
as much. His passion was dangerous and 
exclusive news. His approach to work 
was decidedly mercenary: He enjoyed the 
adventure, building his network of con- 
tacts, the status and making money. 

On long road trips our conversa- 
tion would frequently as it often docs 
among young people, turn to sex. This 
banter—private, frank and conducted 
somewhat absentmindedly—revealed 
more about the differences, similarities and misunderstandings between our two 
cultures than did much of my reporting. One time, on the way to Mazar-i-Sharif, 
Ajmal announced, “I am very interested in writing a book about the dancing 
boys in Afghanistan. One chapter for the different customs of each province.” In 
Afghanistan many “commanders” (read: warlords) have a taste for young boys and 
teenagers. “They maybe have two wives, but they keep these boys like girlfriends,” 
said Ajmal. “They buy them clothes, they take them to the wedding parties, and the 
boys dance for them.” (Wedding parties are а huge part of social life іп Afghani- 
stan, but like all else, they are strictly segregated along gender lines. A big wedding 
is really two simultaneous parties: one for men, the other for women.) 

“What if two men fall in love as equals?" I asked. 

“Hmm, no. That would not be good." He seemed to find the idea perverse. 

When Ajmal' strange business contacts passed through Kabul they often wanted 
to rampage in the big city. On one long drive he told me how а Kandahari he knew 
had picked up a young prostitute working the streets in а burka. 

“A prostitute in a burka?” I was dumbfounded. “Why (continued on page 161) 


When the Afghan government refused 
to free several insurgents in exchange 
for an Italian journalist, Naqshbandi 
paid the ultimate pric 


“Go to my room and come back without your clothes and your inhibitions.” 


urry for Dessert 


BY DAVID HOCHMAN 


[7 here's а reason God made Eve second," Adrianne Curry says with that mischievous super- 
model grin of hers. "He made Adam and went, ‘Aw, shit. | can do better than that!'" One 
thing we've come to count on when in Adrianne's company: She will say whatever she 
thinks whenever she wants. Just ask her husband, former Brady Bunch star Christopher 
Knight, her partner in reality on VH1's My Fair Brady, which kicks off its third season in January. 
As she says, "I don't care how rich and famous he is. l'm half his age, so I've got time on my side. 
Even when he's 70, ГЇ still be smokin’ hot, and that counts for something." 

certainly counts for us. Adrianne's second pLavso portfolio (the first was in the February 2006 
issue) is another opportunity for her to flaunt that independent streak of hers. We first saw it when Adri- 
anne won the inaugural season of America's Next Top Model and (text concluded on page 169) 


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he dermatologist was a 
tall and intelligent fair- 
haired man who gave the 


impression that of all 
the things that exist in the world 
the one that interested him least 
was human skin, Twice а 
inspected Fritz Fleischer's epi- 
dermis—plagued by psoriasis in 
childhood, then by sun damage 
lancingly, barely con- 
N 


new technology," he said at the 
end of one visit, "that flushes out 
precancerous cells, Before they 
turn cancerous. It might do well 
Blue light." 

spoke with a halting diffidence 
while averting his eyes from the 
Sight of his nearly nude patient. 

‘Blue light?" Fleischer echoed. 

"The same sort ordinary light- 
bulbs give off. No UVA, no infra- 
red. Blue, only brighter. The skin 
is cleansed with acetone and then 
painted with delta-aminolevulinic. 
acid, ALA. It sinks in and makes. 
the cells respond. They shatter. It 
destroys them." A certain enthu- 
siasm had entered his voice. 
His bills listed "destruction of 
lesion" and then some significant. 
charge—$290, say—tor spraying 
a spot with a second's worth of 
liquid nitrogen. 

“Destroys them?" 

"The bad ones," the dermatolo- 
gist insisted, defensively. 

“The immature ones?” 

Fleischer had learned the term 
from his previous dermatologist, 
ап older man who, before he in 
rapid succession retired and 
died, used to talk lingeringly, lov- 
ingly, about skin, tilting back in 
his swivel chair and closing his 
eyes as if peering into a mental 
microscope. Precancerous cells, 
he expiained, have simply failed 
to mature, and the reactive oint- 
ments—Efudex, Dovonex, Elo- 
‘con—that he prescribed helped 
them to mature. Maturing seemed 
to be a euphemism for death—an 
unsightly convulsion of cells that 
faded away eventually but not 
before making the patient look 
as spotty and insecure as a teen- 
ager. In his mental microscope, 
Fleischer's former doctor had seen 
a rosy future when the molecular. 
Secrets of skin lay all exposed for 
manipulation and cure. 

The old healer's successor 
resisted the word immature, 
with its implied teleology. "The 
damaged ones," he clarified. 
He manifested a faint, hurried 


т 


enthusiasm: “You'd be а new man. Look 
10 years younger.” 

“A new man?” Fleischer barked out a 
greedy laugh at the thought, and the other 
man winced at the sight of the patient's 
oral membranes. “I'I give it a try," he 
said, as if snatching at a bargain. 

The dermatologist bleakly nodded. “Let 
Sheela set it up. Mondays and Thursdays 
are the days we do it. Sixteen minutes 
and three quarters—that's the exposure 
time. Seems an odd time, but that's 
What's been worked out, Less doesn't do 
the job, and more doesn't seem to add 
anything. Good luck.” While Fleischer 
was still drawing breath to thank him, 
the tall, fair man loped around a corner 
of the hospital's labyrinthine dermatology 
department and vanished. 


Sheela wore a sari, advertising the depart- 
ment's diversity. She was short, with daz- 
zling round teeth and a skin of smooth Dravidian darkness. 
Towering awkwardly above her, Fleischer felt disgustingly 
‘mottled and leprously pale. "How undressed should | get?” 

“Not one bit,” she told him in her merry lilt. “Today it is 
Just your Using swabs of cotton that felt like a kitten's 
paws, she stroked Fleischer's face with one colorless fluid 
and then with another. Her nostril bead glinted in his periph- 
eral vision as she worked, moving around him as nimbly as 
an elephant trainer. “Now,” she announced, "you must wait. 
ап hour, for the skin to absorb, Sit with a magazine." There 
were others sitting and waiting, men and women mostly as 
Iderly as he, all of a northern European paleness and pink- 
ness but with nothing conspicuously wrong with what of their 
skin he could see, We are all, Fleischer thought, victims 
of the same advertisements, the same airbrushed photos of 
20-year-old models, the same absurd American dreams of 
self-perfection. He would become a new man. 
He picked up a tattered month-old edition of People and 
read of celebrities getting divorced, getting pregnant, confess- 
ing to unhappy childhoods, adopting an African child. Не had 
never heard of half these celebrities, but then he had been 
long locked in the financial world, poring over The Wall Street 
Journal and its columns of figures, its global rumors of col- 
lapse and merger. Now that he was retired from his Boston 
firm, he had begun to reread the classics of his college years 

1d discovered that his callow initial impression that they 
Were windy and boring was, surprisingly often, reinforced, with 
the difference that now he was under no academic obliga- 
tion to finish them. He spent hours a day walking, with other 
retirees, the sidewalk above the littered beach, lined with con- 
dominiums, from which the brown skyscrapers of Boston could 
be seen shimmering in the distance. 

The blue-light device, when he was ready for it, proved to 
be less elaborate than he had imagined. A large thick horse- 
shoe shape, it half encircled his head and bathed his face 
in a humming brightness. His eyes were covered with small 
cup-shaped goggles; Sheela's voice kept him company in his 
blindness. "People tell me,” she said, “the worst prickling is 
the first five minutes, and then the discomfort diminishes. 

‘An underemployed investment adviser who had lived near 
a beach for much of his life, and vainly desirous of the deep 
tan he could never quite acquire, Fleischer had done more 
than his share of sunbathing—Iying in the sheltering dunes in 
the windy spring, in the cool fall courting the dying slant rays, 
floating faceup in the soupy sea of high summer as bright 
buttons and sequins of reflected sun glittered and bounced 
all around him. Now, compressed into seconds, the sensations 
of those prolonged exposures to sun were revived and cruelly 


intensified. Light pressed through the 
‘substance of the goggles and his eyelids 
to register red on his retinas. Needles of 
heat were thrust deep into his face, He 
could feel, at the tip of each, immature 
cells bursting like tiny firecrackers, 

‘Sheela poured her lilting voice over his 
pain: "You've gone two minutes. How is it?” 

“Exciting,” Fleischer said. 

“1 can switch the machine off at any 
time and resume after а break," she said. 
“Many patients are grateful." 

“No, let's get on with it." Fleischer 
liked talking while blinded; his conver- 
sational partner, unseen, filled the room, 
giving the burning radiance a voice. 

“Му offer 15 good anytime,” the voice 
continued. "Many patients discover they 
cannot stand the sensations." 

“Tell me," Fleischer said, as the tire 
consuming his cheeks and brow boiled 
deeper beneath his skin, “about Hin- 
duism. Does it have a God, or not?" 

"It has many gods." 

^ mean," Fleischer said, as if his agony gave him the 
rights of a seeker—as if being blinded made him 
"beyond all that, Shiva and Shakti and so on, an ov 
God, a Ground of Being, as it were," In his mind's 
needles of light dug in like talons, each tipped with poison. 

"We call that Brahman,” Sheela's disembodied voice 
responded. "Not to be confused with Brahma. Brahma, with 
Vishnu and Shiva, is a major deity, though he has not gener- 
ated the legends and temples of the other two. People do not 
love Brahma as they love the other two. But behind them is 
Brahman. He is what you might call Godhead, beyond describ- 
ing. He is closest to your Christian concept of God. You have 
‘Bone now more than six minutes. Almost halfway." 

"Does anybody believe in Him? In It?" 

"Millions and millions," Sheela assured him, her soft voice 
stiffening a little. "There are no disbelieving Hindus.” 

"Does He ask you to feel guilty?" Cell after cell, it 
seemed to Fleischer, was igniting within him, one micro- 
scopic sun after another. 

Her voice became merry again. "No, we are not like Ameri- 
cans. We are stil too poor for guilt. 1 do not mean to be flip- 
pant. Each Hindu feels set down in a certain earthly place 
and tries to fill that role. Each person from the maharaja 
down to the crippled beggar is doing what is prescribed, 
That is what Krishna said to Arjuna on the battlefield in the 
Bhagavad Gita. “Be a warrior, he said, ‘and do not trouble 
yourself with the ethics of killing. You have done over eight 
minutes. From now on, most patients assure me, it becomes 
easier. It will be downhill. Can you feel that yet?" 

"At my age," Fleischer announced in his burning blind- 
ness, through lips numbed by his mask of inward-directed 
needles, "its all downhill." 


Each of Fleischer's three wives had borne one child-—girl boy, 
girl. They in turn had each produced two children, all boys, 
oddly. Odd too was the way they all, against the dispersive ten- 
dencies of American independence and enterprise, lived within 
an hours drive of the suburban condo to which he had retired. 
Guilty about his inadequate grandfathering unlike grandfathers 
in television commercials he never took his grandsons fishing 
or to a baseball game—he tried to visit each household once 
a month. In the weeks after his blue-light treatment, he would 
rather have hidden in his stuffy bachelor condo, its curtains 
drawn to keep out any further light, while in the comer the tele- 
vision set muttered and shuffled its electrons like a demented 
person playing solitaire. (continued on page 156) 


“Would you like a little something with your champagne?” 


"It's important for a man to take care of his 

skin. Nobody wants to rub up next to a guy 

with dry skin or kiss flaky lips. Besides, when 

1 see that a man's bathroom Is stocked with 

luxurious products, I can't resist getting into 

the shower with him." Playmate of the Year 
2007 Sara Jean Underwood 


When showering, men seem to fal into one of two opposing camps: soapers 


versus body washers. "With quality products that use natural ingredients 
whether you use soap or body wash comes dawn to personal preference? says 
Tony Sosick founder of Anthony Logistics for Men. While Sosnickrecommends 
exfoliating your face just once or twice a week to avoid imitation, youl want 
to exfoliate your body pretty much every ather day and follow with a mostur 
izer. Make friends with ip protection and eye cream while youre atit Clocianise 


SY EG RAN ONES 


from top: GAP MEN G7 WASH UP (5) BLISTEX LIP OINTMENT ($2) LACOSTE 
ESSENTIAL SHOWER GEL (524) ANTHONY LOGISTICS ASTRINGENT TONER 
PADS ($20). ANTHONY LOGISTICS MUD SCRUB EXFOLIATING BAR (512) 
BURT'S BEES BAR SOAP (54). LANCOME MEN HYDRIX ($30). SKINN FACE 
SCRUB 565). CO. BIGELOW BARBER HAIR AND BODY WASH ($10). BILLY 
JEALOUSY BAR NONE FACE WASH (51). REVIVE MOISTURIZING RENEWAL 
‘CREAM (5150) ELEMIS TIME DEFENCE EVE REVIVER ($55), 


| 


Perfumania fragrance consultant Jan Moran suggests selecting one scent 
from each of the four major fragrance categories: citrus, wood, Oriental 
and aromatic. “Citrus scents are fresh and brisk for warm weather and 
daytime wear. Wooded fragrances arewarmer and act as a ballast for cool 
Weather. Rich and spicy Oriental fragrances inspire passion for romantic 
evenings. Aromatics are balanced blends of citrus, wood, spice and lav- 
ender and are the most versatile? Moran explains. Other rules of thumb: 


INTENSE 


Use light scents for warm weather and daytime, heavier fragrances at 
night and in cooler weather. A scent is meant to draw someone in” says 
Moran. A spritz or splash on the neck and another on the wrists or fore- 
arms will usually suffice” Clockwise fram top: ISSEY MIYAKE INTENSE 
(554). HUGO XY ($65). BOND NO. 9 WALL STREET ($190). VALENTINO 
V POUR HOMME (547). LANVIN ARPEGE POUR HOMME (562). PIERRE 
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insen 
oti 


/ hair gel 


Matching goo to hair is an art in some quarters. Creams work for all hair 


types to creat 


softer look; pomade or wax works best on short to medium 


һай. A lightweight gel goes well with lang or thick hai, and a heavy holding 


cream can tame: 
andrunit evenly 


the curly stuff “Rub a small amount between your hands 
through your hair to the roots.” says Rebecca Stover, head 


stylist for Truman's Gentlemen's Groomers. “Start light. You can always add 


more if needed” 


lockwise from top lft: REDKEN FOR MEN THICKENING 


SPRAY (S11). LAB SERIES ROOT POWER HAIR TONIC (540). WOODY'S 
HEADWAX ($16). JOHN ALLAN'S THICK SHAMPOO (518). REDKEN FOR 
MEN DEFINING POMADE (514). GÓT2B MAGNETIK TEXTURIZING 
POMADE (56). PAUL MITCHELL TEA TREE SHAPING CREAM (515). AUBREY 
ORGANICS MEN'S STOCK GINSENG BIOTIN HAIR GEL (510). CLUBMAN 
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MATTE FOR MEN COMPLETE HEAD CARE LOTION (520) 


It's definitely a turn-on for me when a guy is clean shaven. Not only does it tell me he knows how to 
take care of himself, it feels awesome to kiss. But if kiss a guy who hasn't shaved in a couple of days, 
It's the worst. It feels as if Im getting rug burn on my face. 


^ 


Annet King rector of training and development for Dermalogica. recommends 
You start with face wash in the shower, hen apply a shaving gel. cream or soap 
and shave with the grain. (Preciing helps you hack through thick growth) Finish 
witha tone, baim or moisturizer "Get yourskin analyzed. Mast spas and salons 
With a professional aesthetician on staff wil give you a free skin mapping-a 
consultation to diagnose your facial skin-and prescribe the right products for 
your skin type” Cockwise from top left: KIEHES ULTIMATE BRUSHLESS SHAVE 


-Miss January 2007 Jayde Nicole 


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CREAM (S15) HOMMAGE MONACO SHAVE SET ($290). ANTHONY LOGISTICS 
INGROWN HAIR TREATMENT (525 BRUT REVOLUTION AFTER SHAVE ($20) 
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(S16). THE ART OF SHAVING PURE BADGER BRUSH ($50). DURANCE ГОМЕ 
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OIL (S12). GILLETTE FUSION POWER PHANTOM RAZOR ($12). ESHAVE 
AFTER SHAVE CREAM (522). DERMALOGICA POST-SHAVE BALM (526) 


‘SWEENEY TODD'S CUTUP REVEALS ALL ABOUT HER BEST FRIEND, TIM BURTON, 
HIS BEST FRIEND, JOHNNY DEPP, HER LIFE AS A WEIRD KID AND WHY WE SHOULD ALL 
ВЕ WATCHING HER BREASTS ON THE BIG SCREEN 


al 

PLAYBOY: Your companion, Tim Burton, 
directed you as Mrs. Lovett, a baker who 
makes ples out of human meat in Sweeney 
Todd. Did he make you audition for the part? 
CARTER: | auditioned and then there was 
five weeks of dead silence. It was hid- 
eous. All he said was "well done” at the 
end, and thatwas it. For five weeks I heard 
nothing-and we were living together. You 
сап Imagine the strain. Of course | should 
audition like anybody else, but we hadn't 
anticipated the strain it would put on our 
relationship. Luckily, Stephen Sondheim, 
the composer, had final approval, which 
took the pressure off Tim. Tim sald he 
couldn't have cast me otherwise. 


Q2 

PLAYBOY: Had you ever sung in front of 
Burton before your audition? 

CARTER: No. But literally from the day he 
said | could audition-with no preferential 
treatment-lwent to a singing teacher Then | 
was screeching every single day because | had 
to do these vocal exercises. Fortunately we 
lie in sort of separate houses. They're kind 
of joined now, but we have a good thick door 
thatwe kept closed while | did my exercises. 


оз 

PLAYBOY: You have joined houses but live on 
separate sides. If we were to walk in, would 
we be able to tell which side is yours? 

CARTER: Absolutely. It wouldn't take you 
long at all. Mine is the tasteful side, and 
his is his side. Mine looks like Beatrix Pot- 
ter. It couldn't be more country and tweed. 
Its very country cottage and very cozy 
‘and homey and welcoming. He has dead 
Oornpa-Loompas around and multicolored 
fiberglass alien lamps. But then he has 
some пісе red-button sofas from Sleepy 
Hollow. So it's a funny and good mix. 


a4 

PLAYBOY: Which side has the better 
Christmas tree? 

CARTER: We do just one. He decorates it 
with dead babies and slime balls and things. 
it's his alternative Christmas. It looks lovely 
and glittery from afar, and then as you get 
closer you realize it's rather gory. But he 
loves Christmas. We do Halloween and 
Christmas really well. Easter, not so much. 


as 
PLAYBOY: Does your son, Billy, share the 
‘same sense of humor as you two? 


CARTER: Billy and Tim are completely on 
par with their sense of humor because It's 
allpoo-poo jokes. Billy is four, so It's perfect. 
Tim is 49, Johnny Depp is 44, and all three 
have the same sense of humor. Billy may 
‘soon mature past them. Not may, will. 


6 

PLAYBOY: johnny Depp is Burton's best 
friend and your co-star in Sweeney Todd. 
Depp compared his own singing to the "mat: 
ing call of a rutting stag" How bad was 1? 
CARTER: That's not bad. Ifyou ve heard a rut- 
ting stag, it's a big self-compliment. [laughs] 
No, he's got a beautiful voice. He sounds like 
himself too. He's very cool Whatever johnny 
does, there's something cool about it. He's 
very hip. Its emotional and vulnerable, too, 
which makes it touching. 


Q7 

PLAYBOY: Depp is notorious for pulling 
pranks on set. Has he ever gotten you? 

CARTER: No. He was pretty good to me 
because he knew Га be in real trouble if | 
laughed. And tend to laugh anyway. He was 
very well behaved, very focused, very profes- 
sional. We had the usual poo-poo jokes and 


т 


PLAYBOY 


everything. I was also pregnant halfway 
through, so my brain went with the 
pregnancy. couldn't remember a thing. 
1 could remember my lines fine, but 1 
was so uncoordinated physically. And 
anything Tim told me to do Га kind of 
forget instantly, which I'm sure was 
deeply psychological. So Johnny was 
always helpful off camera, pointing in 
the direction I had to look or reminding 
me of anything I'd forgotten to do. 
Johnny knew he had to save me. 


Qs 

тлувоу. You met Burton on the Planet of 
‘the Apes set. What attracted you to him? 
carter: Hmm. Let me see if I can 
remember. [laughs] No, I do love him. 
То be honest, it took quite some time 
for our attraction to become apparent. 
We did a whole film together before we 
noticed each other, probably because 1 
was in an ape costume and he's very 
private, We didn't have a proper con- 
versation during Planet of the Apes. 


оз 
PuAvmow Were you a quirky kid? 
Carrer: My friend reminded me of 
something when I was auditioning for 
the part in Sweeney Todd. She said, "Of 
course you're going to get the part," 
and I said, "Yeah, everyone thinks that 
because I'm sleeping with the director.” 
She said, "No, because you wanted to 
be Mrs, Lovett when you were 11 you 
even made us call you Mrs. Lovett.” I 
true! I'd completely forgotten about 
1 didn't forget that I so loved Sweeney 
Todd 1 learned it by heart, but 1 didn't 
remember having the nickname Mrs. 
Lovett, I do remember going around 
with Mrs, Lovett hairdos. So 1 guess 
that is kind of similar to Tim. Most 
11-year-old girls don't want to be Mrs. 
Lovett. They would rather be on Char- 
lies Angels or in Beauty and the Beast. 


оо 

тлувоү. You won a poetry contest when 
you were 11 and used the money to 
place your photo іп a casting catalog. 
What was the poem? 

CARTER It was weirdly about rumors, 
which is funny, given that I ended. 
up becoming the subject of them. It 
was called "The Grapevine." It was 
a really crap poem. God knows how 
1 won something. Someone stubbed 
her toe and by the end she was dead. 
1 guess it was pretty grim. I probably 
had a pretty grim imagination. Maybe 
Tim and I are quite alike after all. 


an 
avtov. You play drug addict Marla 
Singer in Fight Club. When you were 
making it, did you realize what an 
impact the film would have ? 
‘carer: I thought it was а provocative 


script, but I wasn't entirely sure. My 
mother put the script out the door and 
said it маза pollutant. [laughs] Then when 
she saw й she said it was а genius film that 
was going to last for ages. She was right. 
The film was very much misunderstood. 
because it's essentially a black comedy. 
‘There's so much satire in it. They thought 
it was just about senselessly beating peo- 
ple up, but it was deeply intelligent and 
‘observant and socially responsible, So we 
got a bad reception, but my mom was 
Tight when she said not to worry that the 
film would last a long time. 


Q2 

тлүвоү, How many takes did you do of 
the orgasm scene in that film? 

carrer Millions. It came pretty easily. 
Most of the time I was off camera, so 1 
would literally be on set going, "Uh, uh, 
uh, uh, ий, uh.” It was like, just press the 
button. The scene is actually digitized, so 
Brad Pitt and 1 spent a whole day with 
no clothes on and strange white dots оп 
our bodies. It was weird. We laughed 
through the whole day. The director 
would say, “Annnnd orgasm!” It's quite 
amazing to orgasm on command. 


als 

nAmon: Some movie fans have put your 
orgasm up against Meg Ryan's in When 

How do you rank them? 
's really flattering! Well, 
thank you. I have to write that down. 
wish I had a certificate that said that 
for my wall. 


au 
тлүвох. You've played several drug 
addicts. Did you ever go through a 
drug phase? 
‘canter: People seem to see me as that 
type, but I never did drugs. One direc- 
tor suggested I take them just 10 see 
what it was like. Just how clever was he? 
Fm not going to tell you who it was. 
said no, thank you. I think 1 can use my 
imagination. The closest I ever came to 
drugs was postbaby, when they give you 
painkillers, Then I thought, Oh, I get 
it! It was so nice. 


a15 

avtov: Your version of Bellatrix 
Lestrange in Harry Pater and the Order of 
the Phoenix is pretty busty in the corset. 
Is that all you? You are pregnant as we 
speak, and that can confuse the issue, 

«carrer: 1 don't really have those. 1 felt 1 
had to make an impression somehow. I'm 
оп the screen for so іше time, I needed 
to establish Bellatrix. I thought, Okay, 
Tve got a little time. I have to be bold 
with my choices here. Il go with teeth 
and breasts, I then ГЇ stand out. 
‘And I did! Now a year later I have to do 
the next one. If my breasts stay as they 
are—because they suddenly popped out 


for this pregnancy—then I won't need 
to use any chicken fillets. [laughs] Any- 
‘one who watches Sweeney Tadd and pays 
attention to my breast size will see there's 
no continuity: The first half of filming 1 
wasn't pregnant and the second half was, 
and because we didn't shoot it in order T 
start off with huge breasts, and then I walk 
upstairs and suddenly I've got tangerines 
again, Its melons to tangerines. 


Q16 

navnov: We saw footage of an old Japa- 
nese beer commercial. Îs that really you? 
carrer: [Laughs] Its hilarious. 1 don't 
remember much. I think I end up in a 
haystack with Julian Sands, I'm wearing 
strange clothes, I was so young. I think 
that was in my monobrow phase when 
1 sil had just one eyebrow. For the first 
10 years of this career I was really con- 
fused. 1 had no idea what the hell was 
doing. It took a long time to grow up. 


017 

тлувоу, Did you have a lot of boy- 
friends during this awkward phase? 
caren: No. Г didn't have many boy- 
friends. I was a very late developer. I 
was practically a nun. 1 lived with my 
parents until I was 30. 1 did see some 
men in my 20s. A few. [laughs] They 
found it tough that they had to see me 
at the parents consistently. 


ais 
тлувоу, Have you ever appeared in a 
movie Burton hated? 
сакт Not any he's actually seen. When 
he was really in love with me he watched 
about three Merchant Ivory films back-to- 
back, It was an overdose for him because 
he'd never watched one in his life. 


ais 

тлүвоу, People have this conception of 
you and he as а dark couple. Do you 
have a goofy side? 

carrer: We're not that dark, All Tim's 
films have a great big tender heart. I'm 
definitely not dark. 'm fluffy, if anything. 
What 1 love about Tim is that he retains 
a certain innocence and a childlike qual- 
йу. He sort of forgot to grow up. 1 think. 
Гуе definitely forgotten to grow up, 
which is great. Great for Billy, probably. 
At some point he'll probably want parents. 
[laughs] He'll have to look elsewhere. 


Q20 
тахһоу: If you and Burton ever split 
up. who keeps Johnny Depp? 
carrer: Oh, Tim can have him! [laughs] 
They get the same poo jokes. Nothing. 
will separate them. 


Read the 21st question at playboy com/21g. 


"Steady, Mr. Birdsell—it’s my present you're supposed to be unwrapping.” 


тя SF PRIORAT 


A sojourn lo a small 
but significant wine 
region sends an 
acclaimed authors 
head, heart and 
glass swirling 


A he 1960s; Living in 
! ту bride's home- 
| town of Tarragona, 
| Spain, once—as 

Imperial Tarraco— 
the western capital 
of the Roman 
Empire. Occasional. 
trips up into the nearby mountains of 
Priorato (as Priorat was known in 
those days of the Franco dictatorship, 
when the Catalan language was for- 
bidden) for the mountain ай, the scen- 
ery, feasts of grilled lamb and rabbit 
with local artist friends, and the pow- 
erful, rough but mouth-filling local jug 
wine, drunk at meals by the rivulet 
from glass porrones lifted at arm's 
length and, at 18 percent alcohol, quite 
literally a back-country knockout. Best 
described perhaps as a kind of clumsy 
ripasso, tasty, dense, dark, with sour- 
sweet overtones, just about every- 
thing having gone into the vat. Always 
brought along gallon garrafas to be 
filled at the local bodega for a few 
pesetas, though back home in the 
lowlands the wine seemed to lose some 
ofits power and clarity, or perhaps our 

‘own clarity returned and we could bet- 

ter judge it for what it was. Took a 

professional photographer friend along 

‘on one occasion to the ancient village 

of Masroig, said to have Islamic ori- 

gins, though the area earlier had Ibe- 
rian and pre-Iberian inhabitants, and 
among his many photos of the day was 
опе taken in a small barren room 
with a tall window, a mirror on the 

wall and a wooden chair, on which I 

sat for the photo that appears on a 

couple of my early dust jackets. 


1989: Generally acknowledged 
to be year one of the great Priorat 
wine revolution. According to the 
prevailing legend, that was the year 
the five famous pioneers of the new 
wave, having gathered together in 
the tiny mountain village of Gratal- 
lops (it was a kind of commune back 
then, they say, with shared winemak- 
ing facilities and something of a hip- 
pie atmosphere), produced their first 
experimental vintage. In their devo- 
tion, they resembled somewhat those 
old 12th century Carthusian monks 
of the Scala Dei (Ladder of God”) 
priory—whence the region's name— 
who, praising their divinity, replanted 
the old Roman terraces, launching the 
“modern” era of winemaking in the 
area, The Gratallops Five managed to 
attach the same mystique to their wines 
that the monks enjoyed in their time, 
finding their divinity in the prehistoric 
convulsions that created their terroir. 
They would all very rapidly become 
international superstars: Alvaro Pala- 
cios of the Rioja Baja family (L’Ermita 
and Clos Dofi, later renamed Finca 
Dofi); René Barbier of the Barbier 
‘winemaking clan (Clos Mogador); 
‘Tarragona musician and journalist 
Carles Pastrana and his oenologist 
wife, Mariona 

Jarque (Clos 

de LObac) b 
Catalan viti- Y 
culturist and 

professor José Lluís Pérez and his 
philosopher-oenologist daughter Sara 
(Mas Martinet), Sara now married to 
René Barbier Jes and Paris-born Swiss 
winemaker Daphne Glorian (Clos 


Erasmus), drawn to the project by a 
chance encounter with Palacios and 
Barbier at an Orlando wine fair ear- 
lier in the decade. 

2007: We are back in Tarragona, vis- 
iting the family for a week after a long 
absence, and impulsively we decide to 
rent a car and visit Priorat for the frst 
time since the 1960s with the whimsi- 
cal ambition of trying to find that bar- 
теп room where the photo was taken. 
and se if the mirror and chair аге stil 
there, and along the way perhaps walk 
the hills and vineyards and taste a few 
of the new wines. By now of course 
Priorat is the talk of the wine world, 
prices per bottle can run into the hun- 
dreds of dollars, Robert Parker with his 
‘consistent upper-90s scores is predict- 
ing the Catalan area will surpass La 
Rioja and Ribera del Duero as Spain's 
top wine region, and new wineries are 
popping up weekly, the number of Pri- 
ога bodegas rising from 20 in 2000 
to more than 80 now, even though 
production of the entire 
district is smaller than that of some 
single Rioja growers, with many more 
wineries mushrooming at the more 
ample Montsant fringes. So this is not 
a journey of discovery but more one 
of personal inquiry—e.g, what makes 


rat wine 


obert er 


these opulent, full-bodied wines, made 
mostly of grenache and carignan, not 
the noblest of varietals, as good as they 
are? Why are they so expensive? Do 
they have aging potential? What has 


been the impact of big money and new. 
techniques on the locals?—and, as is 
always the case with wine, has been 
for millennia upon millennia, oldest 
story of the human race except that of 
story itself, one of pleasure. 

We decide to post ourselves at the 


heart of the uprising and book a room 
in Gratallops itself (pop. 250) at the 
little three-star country hotel perched 
high in the center, Cal Llop ("House of. 
the Wolf” or “Wolf's Den”). This tums 
out to be our most fortunate decision 
of the week. Not only is it an imagina- 
tively designed little inn, fondly hand- 
crafted from an ancient building whose 
origins are said to date back to the 13th 
century, looking out over the vineyards 
and the tumble of tiled roofs below, bur 
its generous, laid-back owners, Ci 
tina Jiménez and Waldo Bartolomé, 
refugees from the Madrid hurly-burly 
and the film-and-television world, are 
able to tum what was largely a flight of 
fancy into a more or less sensible proj- 
ect, organizing for us via their friends a 
two-day wine tour that ranges from the 
oldest to the newest, from community 
cooperatives and youthful garage-wine 


makers to the commercial hustlers and 
dedicated superstars, and including the 
which embraces the more privileged 
Priorar—as a Montsant winemaker 
puts it later—as the flesh of a peach 
embraces its pit. And while Cristina 
sets up our tastings, Waldo, amused 
by the whimsy of it, goes to work on 
finding that room with mirror and 
chair, the primary clue being that we 
‘were visiting that day the local painter 
Jaume Sabaté. 

At supper after our first day of vine- 
yard visits, we also discover that the 
Cal Llop chef Angel Lopez Bellot is as 
talented and imaginative as the hotel 
‘owners, the accompanying full-bodied 
wine list like a directory of the region's 
vineyards and itself an extension of our 
tastings. We are sharing the restaurant, 
originally the house stables, with the 
youngest of the serial René Barbiers and 
his guests from Chateau 
Mouton-Rothschild in 
Bordeaux, a dozen of 
them perched on a kind 
of platform just above 
us, and at the table 
beside us the romantic 
young garagist Fredi 
Torres (no relation to 
the well-known wine 
family), whose org 
Sao del Coster wines 


5 10 Coche: Only o hundred 
iles rom Barcelona, the Priorat 


Having apparently learned from Fredi 
that I may be writing something for 
this magazine, one of the two women, 
sisters as it turns out, comes over to 
introduce herself and, squatting seduc- 
tively at my feet, recites from memory 
the poem that che says won the 1988 
PLAYBOY poetry prize when she was 
16, Its called “Orange” and is about 
licking, sucking, sniffing, stroking, etc, 
the fruit, then rubbing it all over her 
body; a classic, as you might say. “And 
1 hadn't even had sex yet!" she says, 
somewhat in wonderment at her own 
precociousness. She goes on to tell me 
her life story, which is not a wonder- 
ful one, she has had her share of hard 
knocks, but she is a chin-up sort of kid 
and always looks on the bright side. 

In the line before Pliny the Elder 
comments in his Natural History on the 
choice qualities of the wines of Imperial 
Tarraco, much quoted by writers on 

these local wines today 

(Pliny also has exemplary 

coto I tales of erudite Roman 
entrepreneurs buying up 
land on the cheap, plant- 
ing modernized vineyards 
and raking in fortunes), 
he points out that the 
land and the soil are “of 
primary importance, and 
not the grape, and that it 
is quite superfluous to 


we have sampled calera al as e Gn AE to enumerate all 
in the day in his bodega — em international favorie for ts te varieties of every 


at the bottom of town, 
a beat-up old building 
buried in the hillside rock and inhab- 
ited by the nurturing ghosts of wine- 
makers past, the facility doubling as a 
location for disco parties, Fredi once 
having made a living as a DJ and still 
keeping his hand in. Tonight Fredi is 
entertaining a pair of voluptuous young, 
Americans, their décolletage the subject 
of much ogling and comment from the 
distinguished winemakers above us. 


amazingly robust 


+h kind, seeing that the same 
e vine, transplanted to scv- 
eral places, is productive of features 
ics of quite opposite 
its called in the 
trade, especially if restricted to the soil 
and weather, is indeed the secret to the 
peculiar power of the Priorat wines and 
is what distinguishes them from their 
Montsant neighbors and all others 
besides. The steep terraced hillsides, 
some of (continued on page 170) 


Едеси 
i itae moy be compara o 
КОРКАУ] 
introduction copie Pi: 
atat diat өк of oak (S35) 


$ 200) Copganes Montsant 


UN POCO DE VINO Eight of Playboy's preferred Priorats 


% 2005 Ls Brogueres 


Costes del Grove Now run by August Vicent, son of 
Nota Priorat—ne remarkable fnish A fine example of founder Cecio Vicent, his vineyard 
Vries here—but lla Қазы Prat et denne modo o viras eed se Pie- 
Jonian red. Full ond lush ( sity ofthe varietas (30) та wah frait ond ine (520) 


A rore white grenache from La 
wih amazin 


2 2005 Celler Cel Negre 


© 2004 Mas gees 
Vinyes de Coster 

An excellent example of new-style 
Priorat, using old and new vines. A 
union of rad ad block it (25). 


9.2004 Ardèvol Coma d'en Romeu 
A dense blend from the newcomer 
Celler Ardèvol, which makes the 


most ofa. Sur 
тт Аад 


өч го HON TO BUN PRG n. 


“This is what the holidays are all about. Reconnecting with old friends.” 


as 


MIKE 


TYSON 
—LAID BARE ~ 


HIS RISE WAS METEORIC 
& 
HIS FALL EQUALLY SO. 
WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN ORAL HISTORY 
OF THE TYSON YEARS 


PROVIDED BY THOSE 
WHO KNEW HIM WELL 


ARCH 1980, Mike Tyson sits in the passenger seat. Mr Stewart 
ir 


a уоп. She could 
his sister, Denise. She 
е says, "My brother is 


when they getto 
sc other guys: Be 
1 


BY JONATHAN RENDALL 


эв 


Mike looks out the car window at 
the Hudson. His thoughts go back to 
Brownsville and the view from the roof 
where he kept his pigeons. They've 
probably all been taken by now, bi 


hell get them back if he ever gets out. 
Most of all he thinks about the fear 
Denise doesn’t know about that. Being 
scared every minute he was out there 
Sometimes he would hide inside the 
walls of the derelict buildings. Inside 


them! That was pretty crazy too, 


¢ 


Michael Gerard son grew up in poverty in 
Brooklyn. Incarcerated at the age of 12, he 
discovered he had extraordinary physical 
power. Plucked from the borstal by Stewart, 
а former boxer, Tyson was introduced to the 
maverick septuagenarian basing trainer Cus 
D'Amato, who housed boxers in a remote 
Catskill Mountains home in the town of 
Catskill, New York, The house, like every 

thing else, was in the name of D'Amato's 
companion, Camille Ewald. D'Amato had 
trained Floyd Patterson, the then youngest 
ever heavyweight champion, nearly 30 
years before. D Amato's idiosyncratic meth- 
ods were based on an intricate series of 
numbers that denoted each punch an 


defensive movement, The idea was to leave 
the boxer free of independent thought 
D'Amato preferred his boxers to be as emo 
tionally empty and suggestible as possible 
so they could be rebuilt from scratch. 
KEVIN ROONEY (Iyson's future pro 
trainer): Tyson was a street punk 
Allegedly, he did all these crimes, but I 
don't believe that happened. I believe 
he ran around on the strect and got 
arrested, and they shipped him up to 
a boys home, His mother and father 
weren't together, and he was stumbling 
through the streets of Brooklyn, 
Bobby Stewart says, “I've 
you should check out." I was like 7-0 as 
a pro fighter at the time. I was the h 
honcho of the gym. So this kid Tyse 
going to spar with Bobby Stewart, an 
T thought ГА better check it out 
TEDDY ATLAS (Tyson's amateur trainer) 
derstood where Tyson was comin 
He was in prison; he had nothing 
JOHNNY BOS (future Tyson matchmaker): 
T thought he was a bad boy from the 
ig, but they made him out to be 
1 he was. He was bad but 
n a lot of pe 


come from, everyone got. 
DON MAJESKI (New York fight figure): 
T wouldn't be surprised if Tyson was 
sexually abused as a kid by people in 
the reformatories, When he was 11 or 
12, these 17- and 18-year-old kids may 
have raped him. 

ATLAS: He was 13 years old and 190 
pounds, so there was a force of nature 
there, as far as his physicality: He was 


MIKE TYSON WITH CUS D'AMATO IN CATSKILL, NEW 


RK IN JANU 


1985: D'AMATO MOLDED TYSON INTO A CHAMPION. 


raw, didn't know much, but he was 


strong. After the second round he comes 
back with a bloody nose. 1 take a towel 
and wipe it and say, “Thats it.” I didn't 
want to see him get abused. I knew we 


were buying, so I said, "That's it. 
ROONEY: After 1 won the Golden Gloves 
ed to turn pro, a friend said, 
Сик М So 1 talked 
Cus said, “Come live here, with 
free room and board. WEI set you chores 
around the house.” I painted, mowed the 
lawn. Exactly the same with Tyson. 
ng about food. 
ns when you have too 

and you ¢ 


work for a living. And because 
Tm half joking—all he did was it au 
while E was in the gym training fighters, 
he wore his robe all day. He watched 
Barney Miller ihat was one of his favor 
ite shows, and the other was MASH. C 
Tyson's first day at the house, we had 
all the food there, and Ca 
wanted serving spoons. There was only 
on the table. So she says, "Michael 
Well, he jumps 


nile said she 


ig spoon. 

pod boy 
the 
‚derpinnings. He picks up the whole 
able, and everything starts sliding olf it. 


so fast, to please and be a 


t his leg gets stuck under o 


Шс yelling, "Oh my God." because 
everything's going to smash on the floor, 

And Tyson's going, “Oh!” So I'm looking 
ing the table around as 

of melon. I look at 


What power! Th 
pion of the wordt 


next heavyweight chan 
My God, look at that 
He called him an 
ously. The truth w 
Tm watching Tso 
killed a family, wo 
ing, What a fucked-up place I'm in. 
STEVELOTT (Issonis former friend): Cus 
sees this kid and he knows he's bad, bu 


deep down that’s not what he wants to 
be, It's the junk that covers him from 
having lived in Brooklyn, Mike came to 
that house a fucking mess 
NAJESKI: D'Amato was a genius, A 
brilliant guy but crazy. That’s the prob- 
lem. Like this mad doctor who wen 
here and concocted stuff 
out with Floyd Patterson, And then 
octed Tyson, Tyson was a cunning, 
pody D'Amato got came out 
tories. I think Teddy Atlas 
'cformatory. Patterson, Iyson. 
So everybody there, there was some 
thing bent about them, 
ROONEY: For our roadwork we wen 
right out onto Highway 385, I was the 
best runner, I let Tyson beat me so he'd 
have confidence, but every once in a 
while I'd show him who the real boss 
was. E could whip his ass, but he was a 


«d future 
trainer for D'Amato): I was there the 
day they brought Mike in. He was 13 
years old. We all said to Cus, "He can't 
be that age,” and Cus said, "Well, I don't 
know. This man Stewart is my friend, so 
if he says he is, then he must be.” Mike 
didn't know how to act with people 
That was one of the things he never 
learned. He didn't have any social skills, 
But he was all right with us in the 


Саі 
didn’t know how to act, He didn't kn 
about deodorant. He didn't know how 
to take care of himself 
ATLAS: I had come home from the gy 
1 was putting my stuff away when 
llc came down the steps, It looked 
Tike she was hiding. She said, “Don’t 
say nothing to Cus." She was really cry 
ing. I said, “What's the matter?” She 
sand, "T just told Mike he smelled and 
to wash, and (continued on page 142) 


90 


мер ғам 


non this side 
of the pond 


Th 


and aquavit, The 
postcard scenery, the frozen 


are what kick the imagination 
Into high gear. Unforgettable 
Bond Girl bombshells Britt 
Ekland and Maud Adams and 
n sirens Ann-Margret 
and Ingrid Bergman all һай 
from this northern prom- 
ised land, Anyone who ever 
strode the streets of Malmö 
and Stockholm knows the 
women of this country live 
up to their rep. 

‘Allow us to introduce you 
to the next great Swedish import, Miss January San- 
dra Nilsson. The 21-year-old model grew up in the vil- 
lage of Ystad and lived in Sweden with her family for 
19 years before moving to New York City, where she 
resides today. Of course you know Ystad as the set- 
ting for crime writer Henning Mankell's novels featuring 
police inspector Kurt Wallander. (Mördare Utan Ansikte 
18 our fave.) “Му village has one traffic light,” Sandra 
says. “It has a very different pace, a completely different 
style of life than that of America." 

‘Sandra started modeling at the age of 18. She entered 
her first beauty competition and was soon working full 
time. A rising star, she knew it was time to go in search 
of bigger and better things. She left her Abba records 
behind and took the plunge, making her home in glam- 
orous Manhattan. She has since modeled swimsuits, 
walked the runway and worked as a spokesmodel for 
Hawaiian Tropic. (You'll notice the deeply tanned skin, so 


From the icy 
hinterlands comes 
steaming-hot 

Miss January 


healthy it glows.) "I was so 
scared when | first came to 
America, because my Eng- 
lish was basically limited to 
"Hello, my name is Sandra, 
and I'm from Sweden,” 
she tells us In her adorable. 
accent. "But l'm getting bet- 


Clearly. When you start 
chatting with Sandra, 


only gets hott 


plenty of brains behind all 
that beauty. When she's not 
working she likes to ride 


Keith Hef- 

credit for 
spotting Miss January, He 
discovered Sandra at the 
Cannes Film Festival and 
invited her to Los Angeles 
for a test shoot. Suffice it to 
say Sandra's session went 
well, She was a hit, Her Incredible sex appeal nearly 
melted our photographer's camera lens, “I'm very glad 
1 made the decision to pose," she says. "So far it has 
been the best thing that ever happened to me. It has 
already opened so many doors." 

Does Sandra plan to stick around the States forever? 
“My country is beautiful,” she says, "but | couldn't live 
there right now. I's too boring. For now I want to focus on 
‘modeling and charity work for homeless children here in 
America. Maybe when | get older Ill want to move back." 
Does she go for those famous Swedish meatballs? “I've 
been a vegetarian for 11 years," she tells us. Her taste 
in men? “It doesn't matter what country a man is from or 
what industry he' long as he has a good personal- 
ity and he trusts me,” Sandra says. "You need trust for a 
relationship to work. When | was younger I liked beautiful 
model-type guys, but | don't think that matters anymore. 
What is inside is Ihe most attractive." 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


LAYBOY'S. 3 OF THE MONTH 
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PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


mu: Sandra Nilsson 

wor BIC mist 26 mms: 3$ — 
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mera an: 2/2/96 қатал. Уос), Sweden 
warns, Ery to qek оъ much out of Ufe as T con 
mmos.L like a man uho has opock self-confidence, 
a unigue personality anot nie eyes. 

TURNOFFS: i N 


and when a man smells like olol sweat, 


WHAT I MISS ABOUT sumen: МЫ family one friends. 
mons 1 wn vor zar: All Kinds ОС meot becouse 


Ioma wegetarian, 
HOBBIES TD PURSUE IF I HAD MORE TIME: ex 
PREVIOUS MODELING EXPERIENCE: in 
5 iaMio's Next Top Model 
hvoRITE зоока отно Гое, Harry Potter Series ky J.K. ролун). 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


Two aliens out in space were looking down 
оп our planet. The first alien said, "It seems 
the dominant life-forms on Earth have devel- 
oped satellite-based weapons.” 

The second alien asked, “Are they an 
emerging intelligence?” 

“I don't think so,” the first responded. “They 
have the weapons aimed at themselves." 


А man on a business trip went to a singles 
bar, approached two ladies and offered each 
of them $200 to spend the night with him. 
One girl stormed out in a rage, but the other 
remained cool, calm and collected. 


1 have to come clean,” a guy said to his girl- 
friend. "While we've been dating, I've been 
secretly seeing a psychiatrist." 

"No worries," she said. “I've been secretly 
seeing a lawyer, a car salesman and two 
airline pilots.” 


When a man found out his rich father was 
on his deathbed, he went to a bar, hoping 
to find a beautiful woman he could begin 10 
spoil, "I may look like just an ordinary man." 
he said to a woman who could have passed as 
a model, "but in just a week or two my father 
will die and ТЇЇ inherit $20 million.” 

Impressed, the woman went home with 
him that evening. Three days later she 
became his stepmother, 


Doc, my 
his physi 
get it back? 

The doctor thought for a moment and 
then replied, "Try coming home drunk at 
three in the morning." 


ife has lost her voice," a man told 
. "What should I do to help her 


А litle boy hurt his finger and ran into the 
house to show his mother. 
she said, “let me get a Band-Aid 


“No!” cried the boy. “Cider!” 
“Cider?” the mother asked. “What on earth 
do you want cider for?” 
“Because,” he explained, “Sis says when- 
ever she gets a prick in her hand, she likes 
to put it in cider.” 


A cop pulled over a man who was driving a 
car filled with penguins. 

"Sir." the officer said to the driver, "you 
‘can’t have all these penguins in your car! You 
must take them to the zoo right now." 

The man agreed and the cop let him go. 

The next day the cop pulled over the same 
man with the same penguins in his car. When 
he approached the vehicle he noticed the 
penguins were wearing sunglasses, 

“Sir.” the officer said, “I distinctly remem- 
ber telling you yesterday to take these pen- 
guins to the zoo." 

“I did," the man said. 
to the beach.” 


oday we're going 


А man went to a doctor for a simple vasectomy, 
When he awoke after the procedure the doctor 
was standing over him with a worried look. 

“Y have some bad news," the doctor said. "I 
completely botched your surgery, and we had 
to go ahead and give you a full sex change. 
You now have a vagina.” 

“Oh my God,” the man said, “So you mean 
to tell me will never experience another erec- 
tion for as long as [ live?” 

“Oh, you will experience an erection,” the 
doctor said, “just not yours.” 


What's the difference between the govern- 
ment and the Mafia? 
One of them is organized. 


А man and a woman were arguing about which 
gender enjoys sex the most. “Men obviously 
enjoy sex more,” the man said. “Why do you 
think we're so obsessed with getting laid?" 

“Well,” replied the woman, “think about 
this: When your ear itches and you put your 
finger in it and wiggle it around, which feels 
better, your finger or your ear?” 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY, 
730 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, or 
by email through our website at jokes playboy com. 
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributors whose sub- 
missions are selected. 


2 ВЫ = 


= 
ЗААЛАА 


WHEN YOU'RE ON TOP IN NEW YORK, ITS A 


LONG WAY DOWN. THE DRUG-FUELED. 


BOOZE-SOAKED, LONELY WORLD OF A 


DANGEROUSLY FUNNY MAN 


BY MIKE GUY 


Times ke this are really hard," Artie Lange says Ina slow, tired, asthmatic 
rasp. "Now is when heroin really seems like a good idea. How else am | going 
to come down from this?" 

Lange is sitting in the back of a black stretch limousine parked in the load- 
Ing dock attached to Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh. Beads of sweat glisten in his 
thin corona of graying hair. e shifts all of his 305 pounds on the leather seat, 
trying to get comfortable. Not one to overdress, he's in loose Carhartts and 
a stained sweatshirt. He just headlined a stand-up comedy show in front of 
2,704 fans, who smothered him with love for close to an hour. Now there's a 
naar riot in the street just on the other side of the loading-dock door, which is 
about to open. Lange sparks a Marlboro Light and puts the pack into а satchel 
alongside a prescription vial of Subutex, an opiate-blocking medication that 
prevents symptoms of heroin withdrawal. 

The limo door opens. Lange's assistant, Teddy, hands him a $72,000 check. 

"Shit, man, I thought it was going to be a little more money," Lange says. 
“I mean, I'm not complaining. Seventy-two grand for an hour of work. It's 
really 20 years of work if you think about it. Anyway, I always have the 
feeling I'm getting fucked." 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES IMBROGNO 


Lange starts in about the night. “Being 
onstage; he says, “in the eye of that 
storm, is like a drug itself” The more he 
talks about the show ("the Paris Hilton 
bit went over okay”), the more it's obvious. 
he's nat thinking about the show. He's still 
thinking about junk. It would be so easy 
to score, For a few bucks he could take a 
magic carpet ride back to the hotel 

The loading-dock door opens onto the 
street, and fans block the way. A 10-year-old 
boy knacks on the limo window, holding a 
сору of Artie's stand-up DVD It's the Whis- 
key Talkin Artie signs it and hands it back. 
A stunner walks up. She's a blonde with 
long, strong stems and enough lipstick on 
to paint a house, 

“There's a possibility I'm your soul mate, 
Artie” she says, "and I hate you for it” 

"Well, wait a minute; Artie replies. “Let's 
talk more about the soul-mate thing” 

"Aw, Artie, you're too much of a man 
forme. 

Lange rolls his eyes as if to say, Sweetie, 
1 really doubt that. 

It'sa typical night nthe life of Artie Lange. 
He spends a lot of time on the road. He's one 
of the highest-paid comedians in America. 
When he landed the most coveted seat in 
the business In 2001-that of right-hand man 
өп The Howard Stern Show-he'd already 
starred on a network sitcom, ABC's Norm, 
and on Fox's improbably successful sketch 
show Mod TV. Since then he has appeared 
in the hit movies Elf and Old School. He has 
been a recurring character on Denis Leary's 
FX series, Rescue Me. In November 2006 he 
sold out Carnegie Hall in three hours, and this 
winter he sold out а night at the 1.500-seat 
Town Hall in Manhattan for a show called 


THE BELUSHI CURSE 


Artie Lange: Fully Looded and closed the 
New York Comedy Festiva as the headliner at 
Lincoln Center. He's building a7,000-square- 
foot weekend manse on the Jersey shore, and 
he's shopping fora yacht. He's a certifiable 
multimillionaire. 

Not bad for a 40-year-old former Newark 
dockworker who barely finished high school. 

But Lange's got problems. Big ones. They 
are, in descending order of immediacy: (1) 
Gross obesity. attained through eating 
everything but most notably cupcakes, Devil 
Dogs, pasta and Hawaiian Punch. He's put 
on a good hundred pounds in the past year. 
Q) Alcoholism. by means of Jack Daniel's 
and Patrón. (3) The aforementioned her- 
oin. (4) Cocaine, preferably snorted off the 
bosom of a Vegas hooker. (5) Loneliness. 
Lange shares a two-bedroom apartment in 
Hoboken, New Jersey with a plasma-screen 
TV. When talking about Artie Lange, people 
always bring up the Belushi curse. His career 
trajectory follows the path by which portly 
comedians (John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John. 
Candy, Chris Farley) take a tragic dirt nap 
at the peak of their career. There's even a 
website, artielangedeathwatch.com, about 
which Lange has remarked. “They're mak- 
ing a couple of very good points: 

Аз the limo rolls through the streets of 
downtown Pittsburgh, Lange looks out the 
window into the dark night. Somewhere out 
there is the wrong girl and a sleazy hotel 
room with his name on it. Nowis the time in 
Lange's career when he's supposed to wake 
up dead, and he knows it. 


""Hugs ore better than drugs. My mother 
used tosay that to me as eft the house. ond 
1 believed her. I believed everything she ever 
soid-until the first time I got high. I leaned 


back and went, "Wow, this is way better than 
when my Unde Perry hugs me. What else has 
my mother been lying to me about? Am! not 
the most handsomest boy in New Jersey?" 
Hugs are great, but better than drugs? Come 
оп. Let me put it this way: I never went to 
Harlem at four in the morning to pay some- 
‘one to hug me. ‘Hey Carlos, here's 20 bucks. 
Just put your arms around me:” 


Everyone loves Artie Lange. He's one of 
the guys. Other comics flock to him, and 
he helps them out when he can-getting 
them gigs, promoting them. He signs lots. 
of autographs. He's a big tipper, He knows 
everything about sports, celebrities, TV 
and movies. He wouldn't know an e-mail 
account from his bank card, but he reads 
several newspapers a day, dozens of maga- 
zines a week and the occasional book, He's 
renowned for his photographic memory, and 
he can recite the entire script of GoodFellos 
‘Ask Lange about an obscure Belushi bit and 
he'll deliver it word for word, beat for beat 

Lange likes to think he's one of the guys, 
but the truth is, he's not anymore. When. 
he's out in public-whether he’s in Hoboken, 
Brooklyn. Pittsburgh. Vegas or outside How- 
ard Stern's studio on 49th Street In Man- 
hattan-mooks yell out his name, cops stop 
him to shake his hand, chicks with boob 
jobs blow him kisses, 

"Yankees games are getting rough says 
Lange, a rabid pinstripes fan, "That's ground 
zero for Stern fans. They send over drinks that 
cost $12, and | feel obligated to drink ther 
Before long there are 40 drinks in front of me 
and a line of sh guys from Queens waiting 
to put me in a headlock. It's not fun for the 
people you're with” 

Lange's sensibility is north Jersey Italian, 
1958 vintage. A (continued on poge 152) 


2 

2 
JOHN BELUSHI (1949-1 ‘SAM KINISON JOHN CANDY, CHRIS FARLEY (1964-1 

The Saturday Night Live star be- An evangekcal preacher tumed Canadian table loser started on On SNL he played a blubbery 
ame a household rame with his pitch. | comic, he became а 1980s regular | SCTV.then hit the big time with Sres, | aspiring Chippendales dancer and a 
perfect imitations of Joe Cocker and | on the David Letterman and Howard | AbtimalLampaor' Vsatonand Planes, | motivational speaker who ives “navan 
Marlon Brando playing VtoCordeone. As | Stern shows. Known for his trademark | Fairs and Automobile in Supes^My | down by the iver” Starred in popular 
Bluto in National Lampoon’ Animal | bloodcurdling scream, his misogyny | fiends calme Ox. dont know fyouve | comedies Tommy Boy Black Sheepand 
House and Jake -oket" Bluesin The | and his bad wardrobe. rot bat got asit weight problem | Beverly Hils Ninja. 
Bes Brothers, Belushi became alegend. Killed by a drunk driver in Cali- Food and cigarettes were Candy's Found dead of a cocaine and 
FALL: Found dead on March 5 of a | formia on April 10. Toxicology reports | vices Не dedof aheat atack ийде | morphine overdose on the floor of his 
cocaine and heroin overdose at Holy- | found tracesof cocaine а his blood | ing Wagons Eastin Meca. Chicago apartment on December 18. 
woods Chateau Marmont. E AT DEATH: 38 CE AT DEATH: AS E E] 
3 shout 75 pounds Opa T DEATH 296 pounds 
DEATH: an estimated 222 


pounds according to the coroner’ report 


“I don't want to have sex with a complete stranger, either. So let's spend the next 
10 minutes getting to know each other.” 107 


Cars- of 


‘day's schizophrenic auto industry presents a dilemma. On one hand, 400 bhp, 500 bhp, even 600 bhp sports 

models are readily available. As one industry pundit put it, “The good old days are now.” On the other hand, 
high-performance hybrids, a resurgence of diesel technology and a conscious, even urgent desire to protect the 
environment have carmakers battling to come up with the cleanest, most efficient engineering ever. It's a time of 
change-when an Audi rivals a Porsche, when a Maserati is better and more affordable than any comparable Ferrari 
andwhen one of the cheapest, most fuel-efficient new models comes from luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz. Ameri- 
can automakers are fighting for their very lives, but there are encouraging signs from the Big Three as the Japanese 
grow stronger, the Koreans nip at their heels and the Chinese loom portentousty on the horizon. As we do each year, 
PLAYBOY's editors test-drove every new car you could possibly want, racking up miles, talking with engineers and 


separating the wanna-haves from the also-rans so you'll know what to buy when it comes time to write that 


big check. Go to playboy.com/caroftheyear for the criteria used to select these cars, an extended 


photo gallery and a chance to vote for your favorite machines of 2008. 


іһе Year 


BEST LUXURY SPORTS COUPE In ihe current marketplace, a $120,000, the new Maserati GranTurismo is a steal. Ifs a serious 242 in 
һе Maserati SODOGT tradition. Styled by Pininfarina, wih a luscious leather interior ony lions could create, ifs modem classic. We lore 
through Alpine passes from Balzano, holy o Innsbruck, Aviti, reveling in this elegant coupes abiliy to straighien the mos! challenging curves. 
Sexy cars deserve sexy engines: The Moser 405 bhp, 4.7 liter double overhead cam VB packs 339 foo pounds of torque. mated io 
а six-speed paddle-shifed manumatic with normal setings, the engine screams lo a 7,100 rpm redline, rocketing to 60 mph in 5.1 


second Rob nie 13-inch Bram diaca hod he GT dom реку Honore mann in is ogy gos lo bano 600 Ep Con 
finenial GT Speed. I's nearly a second faster to 60 mph but lacks that exquisite alion sensuousness, andi costs nearly $100,000 more. 


- = 
EM à = 

DET SPORTS SEDAN сыйл тө CTS io Ж тайман юл» nl doy eg Мә иту o ig ificanl General Motors 
proudly report the suspension was ned ct Nürburgring. Wer To Fetched ae poer oe a о 
{neath melding of mechanical punch and vial panache. The CIS base engine в а 3.6 ier V6 2 26 y еэ 
zero fo 60 is оз fast оз the upcoming high performance Caddy СТ5-У%. сү price is $33,000, but odes are available, 
A thowsand bucks more get you on ордоп] drect injection VS ihat ups the ponies to ps bt yon oe 
a six-speed culomali wih a manual shih feature, An оба опа 51,000 ges you a Bose sound system ond a 40-gig hord dive, among 

x icy clon. Runners-up in his etegory the Audi 9, BMW's 5 Saro ond Mercede Benes C. Clon and 


A DS prid Ты 2 ir iù 
Mpal ya aqua one rox 534700 Ba yos one sts lo qu Ba Techn Fecha (SS SOO, ng rer ae 
осиру o, Sis Sols Radio erd eel. Ramat op} Gier and Lan 01070 аі 


— / т 
zo; 
4 


"BEST CROSSOVER A Buick is he es! crossover? Did a pig just Ву past our window? No, nor has hell Коеп over. The luxurious Enclave 
CXL with 19-inch wheels stunned us when we climbed in. The more ime we spent in ion Missouri back roads north of St. louis —ihe more 
we were sure. The atenton io deal is immediately vide, down to he leather-wrapped steering wheel that puts һе audio and cruise controls 
al your fingertips. A base rontwheek-drive CX powered by a 3.6-her V (275 bhp] cost about $32,500 before you start licking your chops 
over options Ike all-wheel drive, a nav sym with а rear backup camera, a DVD player with 10 apecker Bose surround sound and а luxury 
package that includes articulated headlight. Even 20-inch chrome wheel ore available Buick is по longer the prefered cor of he sel that 
can’t drive at night. Runners-up: Acura MDX, lexus RX 400h, Volvo ХСЎО and the Mercedes-Benz R-Class vehicles, 


пвезт йш Ac ЖЕРЫ cometas wits Porcile, BMW designara ved o рабо, Tee yrs 
in the making, the 335% new three piece ight seal roof retracts in 22 seconds at he touch of a bution, then disappears under the 
trunk lid, which opens backward (ront o rear) when he top does its meticulous mating dance. The windshiekls carefully calculated rake mini- 
тіге wind rush on the rear sects when the юр is down. Аз for driving his hing, is direct injection three lier +6 pulls Ше а train (300 Бір, 
[Оберон of ergue, wih dell mund whi o inductor nd ue ein Thanks 1o а brace of ew neta oir, bos 
log is nonexistent. Zero to 60: 5.5 seconds. rivals have yet o master his degre of steering sensitivity. At $49,875, you'd expect an 
alphabet soup of acronyms: ABS, DSC ts al here. Honorable mention: For half бе pice, Mazda's МХ-5 Miata is a nil wo sealer. 


PLAYBOY'S 
CAR 
OFTHE 
YEAR 


A THING OF BEAUTY is a joy forever, wrote John Keats so gracefully, and he was talking about sheep 
and daffodils. Imagine the poetry he'd have spouted if he had gotten his mit on the Audi RS, raveor's Car 
ofthe Year. We knew it was a serious contender this post February when we drove one along Nevada's 
high-desert highways. On those stork roads he RB exhibited vost amounts of power and incredibly precise 
steering. Later in he year we turned an RB loose on Virginia's long and winding Blue Ridge Parkway, barely 
жеребе a hacken of би porfornonc is cradle engine son data Tot dive acid us. NOUS 

chance to urn the key ond listen o he 420 bhp, 4.2-lier V8 symphony playing jus behind your head. Thats 
right, а mid-engined Audi sports car. No wonder Porsche is nervously checking its rearview mirror. Move 
the six-speed gated shiher into first (ог opt for Audi's six-speed R tronic automatic trans) and experience a 
zero-lo-60 fime of 4.4 seconds, the quarter mile at 12.7 seconds and— if you can find the road—a top end 
of almost 190 mph. The RB's interior boosts polished leather and corbon-fiber trim, and the whole thing 
sits on 19-inch alloy wheels (go for the optional Pirelli PZero staggered tires). If you aren't quite sold, this 
technical info should do the trick: The RE is fitted, of course, wilh Audi’ quattro AWD, but you also gel ESP 
with Electronic Differential Lock, speed sensitive rock-and-pinion steering, double-wishbone front and rear 
suspensions and Audi magnetic ride. Some of the chassis tech is borrowed from the Lamborghini Gallardo 
(both Lambo and Audi are part of he VW Group), but the RB's sonically crahied exhaust is an Audi original, 
оз оге those unusual side panels behind the air intakes. The RB starts at $109,000. Good luck finding one. 


‘See more of our Cars of the Year at playboy com/caroftheyear, 


4 
иН, 


ere in the morning's start, | glance 
at the television, and there is the 
sudden notice: 

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, 

SAY SOMETHING, 

1,944 PEOPLE DID LAST YEAR. 

CALL 1-888-NYCSAFE. 


The Metropolitan Transit 
Authority put this ad. 
оп television. 
I'm standing in 
the bedroom, and 
I'm thinking of 
an ad you see 
on T-shirts 
in the neigh 


in Brooklyn 
SNITCHES GET 
smoes. 


Lam much more 
comfortable with 
the defense policy 
of Brownsville than 
1 am with this selling 
of fear by an official 
government agency. 

Nobody in the 
city transit system 
knows how many 
calls resulted іп 
arrests. Certainly 
there are no stories. 
in Brownsville of any 
carnage caused by 
stool pigeons. Which Is 
good, for the neighborhood 
is the historic district of the old 
Murder Inc. Things still happen. 

Оп this morning, we try to train spies 
оп our own streets, replacing the stan- 
dard with which we lived so long and 
so famously, the wonderful standard to 
assist one another. Always, on any given 
day in the city of New York, there are 
so many—a million or more—who say 
"excuse me" as they get on or off a sub- 
way car. Now they want these people to 
say "He looks like a terrorist." 

We gave so much of that away to this 
Bin Laden and his Saudi Arabian imbe- 
ciles. We did all our worrying about struc- 
tures. There was the day when there 
suddenly appeared on Broadway a line of 
police cars—100 of them—and they 
pulled in front of Lincoln Center and 
parked diagonally. This is called the Surge, 
in which a line of cars appears unexpect- 
edly at places around the city and parks, 
a river of metal, a warning to somebody 
who wants to blow up something, | was on 
Lenox Avenue in Harlem one day when 
the cars arrived. “It's the president,” a 
woman said. When there was no presi- 
dent, she went to the next possibility. 
"They got big World Trade Center bombers 
still around here." 


LAND 


OF THE FREE 


BY JIMMY BRESLIN 


PEARL HARBOR 
MADE US ANGRY. 
8/11 MADE US 
FRIGHTENED. AND 
DW WE'RE LIVIN 


Terrorism, the word, causes outright 
fear and also complete insanity from 
the center of New York to any town out- 
side it. This all started only a matter of 
hours after the fiery World Trade Center 
buildings collapsed in smoke that made 
streets black and filled them with 
body parts, computer insides, 
lightbulbs, window glass, 
desks, carpet and eleva- 
tor cables. Immedi- 
ately that brought 
these bright-red 
fire chiefs' cars 
from places 
like the Mas- 
sapequa, Long 
Island fire 
department 
and patrol cars 
from the Cliff- 
side Park, New 
‚Jersey police 
department, from 
everywhere In the 
towns around the 
great city, anywhere 
big fat guys with badges. 
jammed into official 
cars can rush to the 
scene in Manhattan, 
They sent up clouds 
of dust and made the 
sirens sound. Look 
out! Here we come 
E to the catastrophe, 
There was no need for 
them, but they stopped 
and jumped out and stood 
ready for anything. They wore. 

helmets and eager faces, 

After them came the federals and also 
a retired firefighter named Bob Beckwith, 
who came from Long Island on the third 
day because his family didn’t want him 
to go. But here he was standing atop a 
fire truck mostly submerged in dirt and 
wreckage. Karl Rove, a lackey in charge 
of lies, brought over George W. Bush, who 
was here on the third day because you 
could hardly get him out of the classroom 
in Florida where he froze on the day of the 
attack, He got up on that fire truck with 
a bullhorn and became the first cheer- 
leader ever to be at a terrorist event, 

If you worked, the day belonged to 
Local 40 of the Iron Workers and Locals 
14 and 15 of the Operating Engineers, 
That day | knew we were turning over 
everything to the uniforms. When we had 
Pearl Harbor the county got angry. The 
World Trade Center created fear. And a 
government can take fear and control 
everything with it. 

For instance, take the gum-ball machine 
in one comer of a store in Dover, New Jer- 
sey. People saw the glass puff up, and the 
gum balls inside became ominous. Small 
sounds made them seem threatening. 

This put fear into the town of Dover. 


ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF soro 


n7 


па 


There are perhaps 18,000 who live there, 
and a large number of them are Latino. 

Somebody brought the matter to the 
Dover Council, and Alderman Frank 
Poolas was quoted as saying the gum- 
ball machine might be something terror- 
ists could use to attack Dover. 

Why would anybody want to attack 
Dover with a gum-ball machine? 

Then Poolas and the Dover politicians 
said the Chinese could poison children with 
lead in the trinkets in the gum machine. Or 
they could outright put poison in the gum. 

"| mentioned the terrorism after | 
brought up the Chinese threat to the gum 
machines," Poolas said. 

He ended it sensibly by calling for 
licensing of the machines 50 we could 
monitor these terrible threats. 

These small examples like Dover go 
unnoticed at first, but then they are 
noticed because they occur too often. 
Not too long ago a lifeguard was snorkel- 
ing in the Atlantic about 300 yards off. 
Tobay Beach in Massapequa, when he 
spotted a metal cylinder sticking out of 
the sand. He picked it up and brought it 
to a policeman on the shore. He thought 
it was a bomb used by fishermen to 
knock blackfish and sea bass out of an 


years ago—and there seem to be years 
ahead of us. Nobody really differs. Any- 
body in or around government says, "We 
must stop the terrorists in Iraq because 
they can come to New York or Chicago 
or Los Angeles." 

Terrorists may come. What do they get 
if they bomb or destroy this place? You 
lose a beautiful building. Some people. 
Maybe even known ones. But there is 
по man or woman who is indispensable. 
Nothing stops. The subway under the 
sidewalk keeps rolling. 

Out of fear, we have troops running 
in the streets with their rifles pointing 
as they practice for terrorists. Go to the 
funeral of soldier Luis Moreno, 19, at St. 
Francis of Assisi Church in the Bronx. 
The general sent to the funeral was leav- 
ing church in the rain when Jessica Cor- 
poran, a small Latina, so beautiful, so 
young, only 18, came up to the general 
and said, “I want to know something.’ 

"Yes, ma'am.” 

“Why is my fiancé dead?” 

‘She looked at him with deep brown 
eyes. She looked and he sagged. He 
went back on his heels first and then 
half a step as she kept looking, and he 
could say nothing and half stumbled 


like? No matter. Giuliani had battalions 
ready to shoot them down like dogs. See 
the snipers! 


Now 1 see Giuliani himself looking up. I 
know it was in the moments before the 
World Trade Center towers collapsed on 
that September morning. | was walking 
toward the fiery towers, and here was 
Giuliani walking away from them. He had 
his staff of 一 believe me—stumblebums 
with him, and he was looking for some- 
thing only he could see: the future that 
was forming for him. This was the biggest 
disaster in America, and he was the only 
public official оп the scene, As the build- 
ings collapsed he was several blocks up. 
and safe in a building in front of a televi- 
sion camera. Then he moved to a studio 
with cameras. Only he had the badge 
10 speak for the city’s wounds, He then 
went on television a couple of hundred 
times, during which he became Amer- 
ica's Mayor, and now he's running for 
president on a platform that if you don't 
listen to him, your wife will get killed. 
Probably the first thing he did was to 
cheer any proposals for more govern- 
ment wiretaps and eavesdropping. What 
we hear on our wiretaps is the clear 


A government can take fear 


old shipwreck a few yards away and into 
waiting nets. Soon the bomb squad, the 
emergency-services unit and the marine 
and aviation units were on the scene, The 
bomb squad reported they had disabled 
the pipe bomb, which then was given 
to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and 
Firearms, which sent it to a laboratory in 
Maryland, The beach, one of the busiest 
оп Long Island, was closed. 

‘The bomb was at a historic site. In 
June 1942 a German submarine, the 
Innsbruck, rested on the sand just off- 
shore at Amagansett, just up from the 
Massapequa bomb site. Four Germans, 
sent here to sabotage, came off the sub 
and rowed to shore in a rubber lifeboat. A 
Coast Guardsman, John Cullen, 21, was 
patrolling the beach alone and unarmed; 
there were not enough rifles to be given 
to Coast Guardsmen at this time. For 
some weird reason, the Germans did 
not attack Cullen. One gave him $260 
and told him to forget what he saw. The 
Germans caught a train to Manhattan. 
Cullen ran to the Coast Guard station, 
but nobody believed him, particularly 
the FBI. Only when they combed the 
beach and found a crushed pack of Ger- 
тап cigarettes did they listen to Cullen. 
The Germans were caught. Two were 
executed. Two were sent to prison. 

You blame the World Trade Center 
attack on Saddam Hussein. That gave 
you an invasion of Iraq that was sup- 
posed to last 20 minutes, and that was 


away. He was afraid of her, and we are 
afraid of the subject: young death. 

The soldier died because his govern- 
ment was afraid. See the next big head- 
line: BUSH FEARS IRAN. 

1 am walking with a group of about 200. 
ragamuffins pushed into one lane on 
Broadway in 2001. They are demonstrat- 
ing for Housing Works, which tries to find 
homes for the homeless and people with 
virtually no income, all of whom have HIV 
or AIDS. The marchers look like bones 
that came rattling out of the American 
Museum of Natural History. They limp 
right against the curb. A line of cops, 
about 500 of them, is making sure nobody 
‘moves out into Broadway, because then 
they may try to get across the street to 
City Hall. The thought of this terrifies 
Rudy Giuliani, then the mayor in City 
Hall. Look up at the roof where the police 
department's best snipers, with rifles out- 
lined against a gray October sky, are ready 
to shoot and kill. What, am 1 crazy? 1 say 
to myself. No, you sure are not. Look at 
them. Those are real rifles. How marvel- 
ous! They are going to end AIDS. They are 
going to КІП everybody who has it. 

If possible, the march of taxi drivers 
looked worse. There were maybe 150 of 
them, and a thousand cops were herding. 
them along. Again Giuliani was terrified. 
He called them "taxi terrorists." The taxi 
drivers were small and looked like com- 
plete bums. Ever look into the front seat 
of a cab and see what the driver looks 


and control everything with it. 


sound of a terrorist's defeat, Nowhere. 
has anybody mentioned that the num- 
ber of people who mishear things Is 
astounding. People are in prison or out 
because the agent reporting the wire- 
taps had them saying "late" when they 
actually sald "snake." But the listening. 
went on because we are afraid even of 
writing on a T-shirt, Raed Jarrar was at 
Kennedy Airport in New York for a flight 
to Oakland, California on JetBlue. He 
was wearing a T-shirt with Arabic and 
English letters saying WE SHALL NOT BE 
SILENT. An airline security man asked 
him to change the T-shirt, He said peo- 
ple were feeling uncomfortable about 
the Arabic. Јатаг, who is an Iraqi con- 
sultant for the American Friends Ser- 
vice Committee and one of its bloggers, 
would not change the shirt, Finally, they 
bought him a new one and he wore that 
over the filthy Arabic script and flew 
to Oakland. He is in court to fight for 
his rights for the reasons that he is stil 
angry and feels he must fight for rights 
that are everyone's. 

This sounds a trifle romantic until 
you fly yourself. 1 don't even want to do 
it anymore. The day that did it was on 
a stormy morning at Kennedy Airport 
when all those going to the gate left 
puddles. 1 did not want to take off my 
shoes. “The floor's wet," | told the wom- 
an at the gate. Oh, a pushy, disdainful 
woman. “You must remove your shoes,” 
she said. (concluded on page 156) 


SM GIVE IT! 


Make someone happy this holiday season 
with a Gift Subscription to 


PLAYBOY 
(DIGITAL 


GET Z FREE GIFTS 


this holiday when you give 


European Style 


2 HECA TRENCH GUY 
їн A CHAT ReoH, 
JOHN. 


HE SENDS HE BEHS, TA! 
ABOUT His FEELINGS. We 
EXACT oprosirs or 

‘You, IN FACT. 


WON, THATS ENOUGH CHAT HAV 
WHERE: CAN WE CT A GEER AND 
WATCH SOME BASED AWE, 


ин iS DRINK 
BEER, AND WACH sas) 
BAN. So Yell AND 

T ARE HISTORY, 


Sus BOUGHT 
yell SCHE Flowers 
AND A Book’ of 


(22154 


тм. Jocks swap sad stories. Baseball's new king of clout, won- 

m, the quer America, can't stay on the 
is time over...who cores? 9:33 P.M. 
n chan, once tempting morsels of jailbait and now hard- 

slammer, while he admires the gripping jawline of 

jahua. 10:04 е.м. A round of Twisted Celebrity Twister breaks out, as addled shock jock Don Imus inserts 
his foot into his mouth, which using his extra-wide stance, takes as an invitation to play footsie. 
10:15 p.m. Hey, fellas, what's the rush? The night is young and the administration has a year to go, but Karl Rove, the 


erless resident genius, scampers for the parking lot, followed by Scooter “the Commuted” Libby 
vo Gonzales, who can't recall whom he came with or how he's getting home. 10:49 P.M. EXTRA! HEADLESS EXECU. 
TIVE IN TOPLESS BOARDROOMI Promising naked arbitrageurs on page 3, ребез his newly acquired Wall Street 
Joumal. 11:15 p.m. Is it better to flame out or fade to black? American Idol oddity Seniye turns on the TV only to find 
somebody has pulled the plug on the Sopranos finale, the most chewed-over piece of film since Zapruder's. 11:45 
Pm. Gushfest! ^ you waited so much longer for your Oscar." “Yes, but you had to spend all that time in 
Indianapolis waiting for your Lombardi." 11:57 ғ.м. Realizing her singing isn't getting her any attention, 
gives the world a wink. 11:59 р.м. Boom! Is that Ahmadinejad setting off fireworks? No, it’s Baby 2008, busting in. 


GIRLS GONE WILD 

What's a sure sign a sex symbol is headed for 
a fall? Flashing a bald beaver. In late 2006 (1) 
Britney Spears, (2) Paris Hiton and (3) Lindsay 
Lohan were all snapped going commando. 
Lindsay s 2007 was rehab-tastic. Belore going 
to jal, Paris was the subject of (4) sculptor Dan- 
lel Edwards's Paris Hiton Autopsy, cautioning 
teens against underage drinking. And Britney? 
Poor Britney: Once the alpha Lota, she has lost 
her sexual mojo and may lose her kids as well. 


Paternity suit 


THREATENS | EPDIEANDI | 
- pan THEBABY & 


| DNA paps 2 
| Larry Birkhead 
cheered when 
DNA testing 2-3 
Stem) had sired Anna Nicole 

Smith's baby, Dannielynn. 

ing when Mirela Rupic (inset) 
| claimed he had fathered her 

lab also fingered Eddie Murphy, 

new fiancé of Tracey Edmonds, 


proved he (and (4 2 

Croatian actor Goran Visnjic "Wr 
1393 

infant git, but then he falled to 

as the dad of Melanie "Scary 


not lawyer Howard K. 
(ЕН Dr Kovac) agreed to test- 

өс show up for the court date. The. 
Spice" Brown's daughter 


CELEBRITY SKIN 
This year's famous doffers 
included a bare-assed 
and curvaceous Heidi 
Klum, who lamented 
in Arena magazine 
that she can no lon- 
ger squeeze into sample 
sizes, and Alicia Silverstone, 
who took a carnal path to 
pushing vegetarianism in 
TV and print ads. 


HATE THE 
SIN, BE THE 
SINNER 
Bible-thumping, 
gay-bashing Rever 
end Ted Haggard was forced to resign as president of the National Asso- 
lation of Evangelicals afier Mike Jones claimed they had had a three-year 
айай. Three weeks of treatment for sexual addiction later, a board of four 
ministers pronounced Haggard "completely heterosexual." 


THE SPORTING LIFE 
Ayear for physical teats! From left To mark 
Barry Bonds's new home-run record, we 
connected you with his exgifiend Kim- 
berly Bel Alex Rodriguez and his MVP stats 
were often spotted with Playboy Casting 
Calis model Joslyn Noel Morse. The LA. 
Galaxy paid a fortune for David Beckham; 
months later aspring actress and alleged 
fing Rebecca Loos headed to Tinseltown. 


FIRST BABES CLUB 


Isiticky or okay to have a trophy wife in the White 
eee 

EUNT he rng аут» 
1-4) 


and third wives Jeri Kehn Thompson 
(below left, husband Fred's junior 
by 24 years) and Elizabeth 
Kucinich (below right, tuly 

half her spouse's ago). 


GIRL POWER 
The race is raci- 
est on the Inte 
net. Unofficial and 
semiserious video 


M salutes to candi- 


| dates were among 
the year's most watched clips on YouTube. The fad kicked off. 


with (1) Amber Lee 


"Obama Girl” Ettinger, then spread with 


, @) Giuliani Gir, Adelina Kristina, (3) Hyla “1 wanna have sex 
Й with Kucinich” Matthews and (4) Taryn “Ной 4 Hil” Southem. 


STRANGEST 
BEDFELLOWS 


you Rumsfeld is an ass. 


Fat-cat and union endorse- 
ments are so last election. 
Now porn stars are flash- 
ing their campaign colors. 
Jenna Jameson (left) says 
she'll vote for Clinton, while 
Savanna Samson's ballot 
box (right) belongs to Giu- 
liani. Samantha Sterlyng 
(above) uses her body as a 
Canvas to express contempt 
for all things Bushie—not 
that you needed her to tell 


u 40.000 blowjobs | 
| 
| 


| 


fi will give уо! 


My name ls Tania Derveatxe- 


EUROS DO IT BETTER 

For sexy stunts in the political arena, 

the Old World stil wins, Belgian fringe 

candidate Tania Derveaux offered blow 
jobs for votes, w 
a Polish magazine YOUR KISS IS ON MY LIST 
depicted Its country’ (1) With his wife standing awkwardly by, Louisiana 
leaders suckling at GOP senator David Vitter apologized when (2) his 
German chancellor пате showed up on the list of cents kept by alleged 
Angela Merkel. And D.C. madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey and (3) he was 
only in France could ID'd as a former client by ex-hooker Wendy Elis, (4) 
the president get away Bush administration abstinence advocate Randall 

ith copping a feel Tobias also fell victim to 

vie pring med = — Palfrey's bookkeeping, 


CAUGHT OUT 
OF UNIFORM 
Air Force staff sergeant 
Michelle Manhart resigned 
after losing her stripes over a 
PLAYBOY appearance. How ls 
that supporting the troops? 


STALLED CAREER 
Idaho Republican sena- 
tor Larry Craig, long an 
‘outspoken opponent of 
homosexual rights, was 
busted by officer Dave 
Karsnia after Craig sent suspi 
cious stall signals in a Minneapolis air- 
port men’s room. The john has since 
become a popular tourist attraction, 


NO FCC IN WAY 

Unhindered by government regulation, premium cable networks 
are airing the hottest dramatic series in TV history. These steamy 
tableaux are from (clockwise from top left) The Tudors (Show- 
time), Entourage (HBO) and Rome (HBO). 


OLD AND IN THE BUFF. 
First, TV censors banned 
Dove's spots featuring 
mature nudes; then 


branded the ad Д 
campaign as 
exploitative. 

C'mon, be 

rice to 


= | 


“proamiy” groups 5 


TITS AND 
MISSES 

The past year was a 
mixed bag for beauty 
contestants: Miss 
Nevada USA Katie 
Rees (far left) lost 
her ttle when breast- 
licking, ass-baring 
shots of her and her 
{  giritiends made the 
rounds; Amy Polumbo 
kept hers as Miss 
New Jersey despite 
the release of chest- 
chewing photos with 
her boyfriend (above). 
We take a different. 
Мен: Isn't this a great 
tool for promoting 


Pageants? 


BREAST TEST 2007 | 


ій talk is а turn-on, Giris talking about those. 
hypnotic glands we call hooters is better. And 
Hollywood sex symbols taking about their faw- 
ese fronts? Of the chart We re giving you si. 
Geavage shots, sic quotes and the names of 
the si stars who said these things about their 
tings. You know what to do. Perfect score? You 
watch too many awards shows. 
1. “lam so fascinated by breasts because 
my mother didn't have them elther” 
2. "Maybe aftr having kids, i! my boobs. 
dropped down to my belly button, | would 
get them it.” 

"Im proud of my breasts. | call them 
my giris.” 
4. "My breasts have a career oftheir own." 
5. "Td got realy, really large breasts, really 
big knockers.” 

was nervous to show my bits because, 
after two children, not everything is in the 
‘same place.” 


‚Jessica Simpson, B. Jennifer Love Hewitt, C. Sc 

Kate Beckinsale, E. Sandra Bullock, F. Kate Winsl 
ANSWERS: 
ЕРЕСЕКТЕРГЕ 


ГІ 


KISSED OFF 

By enthusiastically smooching Bollywood 
actress Shilpa Shetty at a Now Delhi 
AIDS-awareness event, Richard Gere 

'eamed an arrest warrant, which 

T India's Supreme Court later sus- 
G pended. Ifthe authorities found 
; this offensive, Gore can thank 


Î his lucky stars they never saw 
Runaway Bride. 


ALLAH BIG 7 
MISUNDERSTANDING 

Puvaov Indonesia editor Erwin 

Amada, facing 32 months in jail on x 

indecency charges, was cleared. \ 

The magazine, which is pictorialy X 

as racy as a Victoria's Secret cat- 7; 

alog, incensed radical Islamists 

when it launched in 2006. 


publication with. 
anissue featuring, 


among other ce- 

lebs, Serena Wil- 

lams (left) and 

Kate Dillon (be- 

low), taking it all | 

ott for charity. i Н 1 
К 1 

SMELL ME, I'M TOM 

We're shocked—shocked—at 

designer Tom Ford's over-th 

lop sexy advertisement for his 

own fragrance. After all, this із 

the guy who put pubes in an ad 


for Gucci and a real live schlong 
in one for Yves Saint Laurent. 
Ladies, don't let this image give 
you the wrong idea: The bottle 
does not take AA batteries 


E a ОН, WAS THAT CAMERA RUNNING? 
2 Kim Kardashian (below) insists she wasn't involved 


N n ] іп releasing the video of her and ex boyfriend Ray J's 
{ romantic exploits, but she reportedly got a big-bucks 
1 settlement. Top British pinup Keeley Hazell (righ) is 


ў more than just a perfect chest. As her unauthorized. 
Ж bedroom сір demonstrates, she gives pom-star quality 
fellatio. Dustin “Screech” Diamond, of Saved by the 
Bell fame, earned scathing reviews for 
his performance in Screeched (inset), 
Sorry a rumored sex tape of Eva 
Longoria turned out 

to bea hoax. 


"Party git ops, 


LAGER? WE 
HARDLY KNOW HER 
Belgian brewer Brouwerij 
Huyghe introduced its 
Rubbel Sexy Lager. The 
‘space-age label features 
a model whose swimsuit 
melts away when the 
Image Is rubbed. 


128 


JUSTAS 
AL GORE WARNED 
Bulgarian bordello owners 

have been forced to hire temps, and 
they're blaming global warming. Their 
“elite girls,” they say, are off working 
in ski resorts, where the lack of snow 
leaves tourists with ІШ else to do. 


GOOD VIBES 
The Talking Head vibrator has a built- 
in МРЗ player to play music or sweet 
nothings from an absent lover. 


BAD VIBES 

“Not for use in Cyprus” reads the ad 
for Love Bug 2, a vibrator from Ann 
‘Summers. The island's military is con- 
cerned the gadget's electronic wave 
will disrupt army radio frequencies. 


EARLY BIRD'S DELIGHT 

In Germany, the graying of the pop- 
ulace has inspired Kóln's famed 
whorehouse Pascha to offer pension- 
ors, age 66 and up, half off for sex 
from noon to five dally 


MASTER OF HIS DOMAIN 
After Conan O'Brien mentioned the 
fictional college-mascot website 


Hornymanatee.com on his 

show, NEC was forced to buy 

the domain's rights in order 
to avoid potential liabilities. 


GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS 
When Hugh Hefner donated money 
to animal shelters in the Florida Keys, 
where feral felines are killing rabbits 
of the species Syivilagus palustris het- 
neri—which was named after him—the 
shelters’ director dubbed her handsom- 
est cat Hef, then had him neutered. 


THE PRICE OF WRONGS 
The 0.8 

Catholic 
Church has 
paid victims 
of clergy sex- 
ual abuse at 
least an est- 
imated 52.3 
billion since 
1950—near- 
ly half of it in the past year. 


CALLING IT QUITS 

When a racy billboard (above) for a 
Chicago law firm's divorce services 
proved controversial, city officials 
ordered that it be taken down, citing a 
technicality: The attomeys reportedly 
hadn't applied for the proper permit. 


js vowed to ban the New- 
bery Medal-winning children's book 
The Higher Power of Lucky over the 
appearance of the word scrotum on 
its first page. 


SAFE SEX AND THE CITY 
New York City began distributing its 
‘own official condom. 


ARE YOU JELLIN’? 
An Asian men's health group issued a 
report classifying four diferent levels of 
rectle hardness: cucumber, banana, 
peeled banana and konjac jelly. 


REPTILE DYSFUNCTION 

Flora, a Komodo dragon at the Chos- 
tor Zoo in the United Kingdom, gave 
birth to five hatchlings without ha 
ing had any known contact with a 
malo partner. 


NO GOOD DEED 

GOES UNPUNISHED 

When Pakistan tourism minister Nilo- 
far Bakhtiar completed a parachute 
jump to raise money for victims of 
the country's 2005 earthquake, she 
celebrated by hugging her instructor. 
Her wanton behavior earned severe 
punishment: She became the target 
of a fatwa issued by Islamist clerics 
and resigned from her cabinet posi- 
tion. She was also sacked as head 
of the women's wing of the Pakistan 
Muslim League, 


KOCH OFF GUARD 

Time Out New York's Alison 
Rosen to ex-New York may- 
or Ed Koch: “Are you gay?” 
Koch: “When was the last 
time you performed oral sex 
on your boyfriend?" Rosen: 
"Well, I'm single now, so it 
was a long time ago." Koch: 
"See, 1 don't think you 
should answer that ques- 
tion. It's an improper question, and 


READ DAILY SEXNEWS UPDATES AT PLAYBOY.COM/SEXNEWS, 


tion is none of 
your business, 
and whether 
or not you 
performed 
oral sex on. 
your boyfriend is none of my business." 


TOO LITTLE SUPPORT 

In Heteren, the Netherlands, Fitworld 
gym's first Naked Sunday, when mem- 
bers can work out in the nude, was 
attended by just 12 people—all men. 


TINKER. 
MY BELL 
The Walt 
Disney 
Company is 
now off 
ing—we're 
not making 
this up— 
Fairy Tale 
Weddings 
for gay cou- 
ples at its 
resorts and on its cruise ships. 


LUST IN SPACE 

The embarrassing space-age love tangle 
that entangled Ar Force Captain Colleen 
Shipman and astronauts Lisa Nowak and 
Bil Oeleleln grabbed the nations attention 
mostly because the married Nowak (allog- 
‘edly wearing an adult diaper to avoid pit 
stops) drove from Houston to Orlando to 
spritz her rival with pepper spray. Charges 

are pending, 


so is yours. My 
sexual orienta- 


HEADED FOR A FALL 

On its website Us Weekly magazine 
issued the following warning to the 
often conspicuously braless Victoria 
Beckham: “Keep shunning that bra 
and in five years you'll end up with 
pendulums hanging off your clavicle 
that hubby David Beckham might 
mistake for soccer-ball bags." 


“...On Prancer, on Dancer, on Samantha!” 


и 


HEF'S PLAYMATE YOUR PLAYMATE 


SOME PERFECTION 15 DEBATABLE. 


SOME IS NOT. 


W AND PATRON-THE WORLD'S 


MIUM THQUILA-INVITE 
AST YOUR VOTE FOR YOUR 
PERFECT PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR, 


YOUR VOTE ON PLAYBOY.COMZPMOY 


SIMPLY PERFECT. 


| _ PLAYBOY'S 


REVIEW 


| Ys time again for you to vote. No, not for president—tor your favorite Š 


Playmate from the class of 2007. Go to ployboy.com/pmoy fo make your 
j Lvoice heard. or for a $1.99 charge, send a text message with the two- 
digit code that appears under your plck's pic to ғ.вот (75269) and receive а 

М wallpaper for your phone. That's democracy in action. Y 


Pick your Playmate of the Year at playboy.com/pmoy, у 
or text message your vote to riso. 
MISS FEBRUARY—02 


MISS MARCH—03 MSS APRIL—O4 


ay 


MISS SEPTEMBER—09 | MIS OCTOBER—10 MISS NOVEMBER—11 


Miss April 


Giuliana, 21, was already a Playmate 
іп Germany before she became 
Miss April and appeared on our 
October 2007 cover. She's a full- 
p blooded Italian born and raised in 
Germany, and now she has returned 
to Deutschland. She had planned to 
become a police profiler but changed 
her mind; it's a tough field to break 
| b into.” can't see very well she says 
Ne ^| need glasses, and in Germany 
that's reason enough to disqualify 
“ people. Now | want to study biology 
and specialize in human genetics. 
Td like eventually to get my doctor- 
ate” Can you picture this brainy 


^ 2 =, beauty In a white lab coat? We can. 


j Ж " Miss Movember 


| 1 
y 

As à ring giri for the Omaha Fight 

aa Club, this I2-yearold Nebraska 

Í knockout is used to roughhousing, 

۹ but she didn't anticipate taking some 

knocks while filming her Playmate 

video. I fell and sprained my ankle 

on the set,” she says, “but | kept 

оп filming: Take note, guys: Here Б 

a Playmate willing to suffer for her 

art. Show her some love! Lindsay. 

is currently taking a break from 

school in Nebraska so she can devote. 

more time to Playboy."l want to. 

move to Los Angeles eventually she. 

says. “I'm interested in modeling.” 

But first she's interested in 

becoming Playmate of the Year 


j 
3 


Miss. June 


This California transplant has a heart 
of gold to go with that sun-kissed 
skin. In addition to shooting an 
upcoming Playboy Special Editions 
cover and appearing on The Girls Next 
Door, Brittany, 20, has been focusing 
‘on charity work.“ did some events 
back home in Ohio,” she tells us." 
also sell my head shots on MySpace, 
and 100 percent of the proceeds go 
to a charity called School of Hope. 
Giving makes me feel so good!” 
Speaking of giving, will Brittany get 
your vote? "There are Il other beau- 
tiful girls to choose from,’ she says. 
"It would be a great honor!” 


Miss January 


Our Canadian Miss January has 
had a busy year on both sides 

of the border. "I'm filming a pilot 
for a reality-TV show, and I'm 

іп the finals for being cast on. 

Are You Smarter Than a Sth Grader?” 
the 2l-yearold tells us. "I've also 
teamed with a couple of other 
models to write a book about 
how to be the best you." We got 
bags of letters from readers about 
this small-town brunette’s sizzling 
pictorial, leading us to believe 
she's got a great shot at becoming 
Playmate of the Year. Tattooed just 
below her navel Is the word 
respect. She's won ours for sure. 


Misa February 


Miss February is still in school, doing 
a lot of homework in airports as she 
travels to do promotional work for 
Playboy. She has journeyed as far as 
Estonia and even Auckland, New 
Zealand, where she helped christen a 
new Playboy store. "I've gone to so 
many places | never thought | would 
go,” says the 20-year-old California 
goddess, who is a former competitive 
gymnast and can contort into pretzel- 
like shapes." My life is the same,” she 
giggles, “only now its а little more 
hectic” When she's not working, 
Heather likes to see live bands and. 
tinker with old cars. We're in love. 


Miss March 


The response to this Louisiana 
lovelys Cajun-flavored pictorial has 
overwhelmed her.“AlI my friends, 
say Im still me,” she says,"but other 
people are like, Wow, you've been 
to the Mansion! How are Hef, Holly, 
Bridget and Kendra? What have you 
been doing?’ Its been great.” The 
25-yearold divides her time between 
modeling for Shirley of Hollywood 
and numerous Playboy events you 
сап read about on her MySpace 
рәе. "1 handwrite a note to each 
person who sends me a fan letter” 
she says."I like to add that personal 
touch.” We're huge fans of Tyran. You 
dont see eyes апу bluer than these, 


Miss December 


Take a good look at this picture. 
What a world-class beauty. We're 
seeing stars. We couldn't help 
noticing Sasckya at last year's 
Playmate of the Year luncheon. 
Heads kept turning whenever this 
23-year-old Brazilian bombshell 
sauntered by. Will she be the one 
to step up to the podium this 
year? “I think all the women 

of 2007 are incredibly beauti- 
ful, and they're all waiting to get 
the title; Miss December says."l 
would be so happy to represent 
Playboy as Playmate of the Year. 
15 competitive, and it would 

be such an honor for me.” 


Miss July 
TIFFANY SELBY 
TIFFANY SELB 
Miss July knows her way around an 
airport—that’s where we caught up 
with the blonde model as she waited 
to board her next flight. "I've been 
going from city to city, attending 
‚such Playboy events as golf scrambles, 
a major league baseball party in San 
Francisco and a lot of club appear 
ances," Tiffany says. She has also worked 
for the SEMA carshow convention in 
Las Vegas and is now a spokesmodel 
for Budweiser. She's willing to devote 
more time to Playboy of course, if 
you shower her with votes for Play- 
mate of the Year The 2é-yearold 
Florida native loves rock and roll, 
and shes no fan of tan lines, 


Miss August 


TAMARA SKY 


Tamara ls going places. The 22- 
year-old native of Puerto Rico is a 
DJ with a skyrocketing career. She. 

is recording two albums. She was 
recently the headlining DJ at Donald 
Trump’ birthday party, hosted by 
Carmen Electra. She travels con- 
stantly. When 1 lived in Puerto. 
Rico; Miss August says,"l never 
traveled anywhere. Now I'm all over 
the place, and I love lt London Is 
her favorite. "In the US. everything, 
looks the same,” she says. “Latin 
America is a Іше different, but It 
all reminds me of Puerto Rico, 
where I'm from. When I'm in Lon- 
доп its like going to another world.” 


Miss May 


SHANNON JAMES 


Howard Stern fans will remember 
Shannon's debut. She appeared. 

оп his show to tell the world she 
wanted to be a Playmate. We gave. 
her a shot, and once in front of 
the camera, she blossomed. “Ive 
always been comfortable with my 
sexuality and my body,” she says. 
After becoming Miss May she 
returned to Stern's show.” They 
were all so sweet, and 1 was able 
to joke around more with them 
because | was more confident—and 
clothed,” she says. The 20-year-old 
beauty still lives outside Philly and 
travels as often as three times a 
week for Rabbit-related functions. 


Miss September 
р 
PATRICE HOLLIS 
MOE HULL 
Patrice says her family and friends 
have given her nothing but sup- 
en 
newsstands. During her excursions 
to places like South Dakota, Miami, 
New York and Russia, doing Playboy- 
related work, Miss September has 
gotten closer to her Playmate pals. 
^| would like to say good luck to all 
the girls,” says the 26-yearold Vegas 
native.“ ve made some great friends, 
like Tyran Richard and Sandra 
Hubby” Patrice has put her career 
as a child-development assistant on 
hold so she can focus on Playboy In 
ae 
of the Year. Will she snag your vote? 


Miss October 


SPENCER SCOTT 


Miss October is the youngest of the 
clas of 2007. After her nano issue 
сате out, the lé-yearold returned 
home to Georgia from Los Angeles, 
where she recently moved, to pro- 
mote the magazine.“I did a signing 
in Athens; she says, "which is close 
to where I'm from, and | got to see 
all my friends. The magazine had 
been out only two days at the time, 

and I started getting ай this апе 
tion on MySpace. | was like, Are 
you kidding? After two days? Thats 
insane!” And what if she becomes 
Playmate of the Year? Is she ready 
for that kind of spotlight? Her 
answer: “I'm so up for it" 


For more photos, go to 
yber.playboy.com. 


PLAYBOY 


12 


MIKE TYSON .......» page 53) 


He wanted to fight Spinks because he was so angry. 
Half the boxing writers thought Spinks would win. 


he said, "Fuck you, you piece of shit." 
ROONEY: That's bullshit. I never heard 
that Tyson called Camille that. And 
Atlas says Cus is in his robe and just 
watching TV? Get the fuck out of here. 
Atlas is trying to turn the whole thing 
around. Instead of paying tribute to 
Cus, he's stabbing him in the back. 
JOSÉ TORRES (former light-heavyweight 
champion trained by D'Amato): When. 
Cus told me this kid would become 
champion and explained why, it wasn't 
so surprising. Because Cus was a com- 
plex guy, I expected a convoluted 
explanation. He said when he found. 
out Tyson used to get on public buses 
and wait until the people were warned. 
about pickpockets before he would 
pickpocket them, he knew Tyson could 
transfer that into the ring. He knew it 
Would be easy for Tyson because he was 
an intelligent kid. I boxed with Ali in 
1971, in a gym in Miami. Tyson would 
have been a dangerous fight for Ali. 
Tyson was a smart, fast puncher. But if 
Thad to bet, I would have bet on Ali. 
RUJTTN: Mike is a child. He wanted 
à whole life he never had. He tried to 
find a way to re-create it, but you can't. 
He wanted a mother and father and the 
right home life. Mike often used to sleep 
оп the couch in the living room, not 
in his room. I remember lots of times. 
going over to the house to watch the 
fights, and he'd say, "Would you tuck 
me in before you go?” That's where he 
slept, the back of the couch. It was the 
closeness around him. Very childlike. 1 
think it was because he never had it as 
a child and was desperate for it. 
1982: D'Amato asks Atlas to leave the Catskill 
Jos fr Aaa holdt a genio Белі hod 
‘as Wha To has ae lad 

ifie Tym 


ere green 
i scoring Alan from war oe 
ger id returned there for his 
idiom pen hoi fam 
the Olympics, prepares to turn professional. 
Dia ai Je Mar 150% 
ЖАКТЫ Mie меме o certain 
things Cus thought cler put ii 
uns ron bd Fe a arid. 
Kroner. When yon йерей made 
a pass at Teddy Atlas's relative, Teddy 
Meroe i D CURE ТЫ 
een 
going to be okay, and then Teddy put 
ee 
er think Тш ae 
ding?" That's when he shot the gun 
Wd uei e we Cart 


house and tells Cus, “I'm going down 
to Brooklyn. I'm going to get my boys 
to come up here and kill him." Cus 
shipped Tyson back down to Bobby 
Stewart in Tryon to simmer down. Cus. 
really helped Teddy, because Tyson was 
going to get his boys. 

HUJTYN: Teddy did hold the gun to 
Mike's head, but Mike didn't do any- 
thing that bad. Don't get me wrong. 
Mike is terrible in regard to women, 
but at the time, he wasn't that bad. And 
Teddy was weird. He was a head case. 
even back then. He tried to kill himself 
several times, Nobody knows that. You 
have to put up with this great respect. 
for this individual. I know him. I know 
what he did to me. 1 know what he did. 
to Cus. I know what he did to Kevin 
Rooney. As much as I don't approve of 
Kevin's behavior now, the only reason 
Teddy was here, the only reason he has 
the job he has now, is because he was 
Kevin's best friend. Teddy was in Rik- 
ers Island for armed robbery. Kevin 
begged Cus to intervene and get Teddy 
up here so he could fight and train at 
the gym. You had to watch Teddy all 
the time because you never knew what 
Kind of mood he was going to be in. 
JAY BRIONT: (nonboxing resident of 
the Catskill house and future Tyson 
cornerman): Cus had a whole bunch 
of Jimmy Jacobs's fight films up there, 
and Mike's job later on, when 1 was at 
college, was the films. You had to get 
the pieces and glue them together and 
splice them, basically. Certain nights 
everyone would sit around and watch 
the fights. We had a bedsheet on the 
wall, and then Cus eventually got a pro- 
jection screen. 

ROONEY: Me and Mike were like broth- 
ers. Jimmy Jacobs was the guy he looked. 
up to, and Bill Cayton, Jacobs's partner, 
was the brains behind the whole oper: 
tion, Bill was brilliant. Mike was loser 
to Jimmy. Jimmy came from Cus. 
PRANK MALONEY (Lennox Lewis's for- 
mer manager): I was intrigued by it all. 
1 thought it was clever matchmaking. 
‘The way it was done—taking him up to 
the Catskills, taking him out of society, 
really. Ifyou can develop a heavyweight 
who's the biggest draw in boxing, 
you have a license to print money. He 
was brilliantly marketed and brilliantly 
matched. He never fought another 
fighter who was in his prime, except 
for maybe Michael Spinks, who was 
terrified of Tyson anyway. 

NOVEMBER 4. 1985: Cus D'Amato dies, 


officially of pneumonia. His death, how- 
ever, is shrouded in secrecy. Tyson is said. 
to be distraught but goes back into action 
almost dedicating his victories 
to D'Amato's memory. After 27 consecutive 
wins Троп signs on to fight Trevor Berbick, 
a tough Jamaican. If Tyson wins, he will 
become the youngest ight champion 
in history, at the age of 20. On November 
22, 1986 Tyson beats Berbick in a second- 
round technical knockout for the World Box- 
ing Council ight championship. 
ROONEY: Jimmy and Bill were at a 
meeting with the TV executives. They 
offered $12 million to fight in this title- 
unification tournament, and Jimmy 
jumped at it. Bill said, "Hold on. We've 
(ot to think about that.” And that 
12 million became $26 million, 
LOTT: Months and years went by, and 
Mike was a six-round fighter and then 
an eight-round fighter and then a 10- 
round fighter, 
ATLAS: You know, I always thought you 
couldn't win the title without character, 
but I had to stand corrected after Tyson 
won it. I was wrong. You can win it, but 
you can't keep it for long. 
BUJTYN: He knew the right thing to 
do, because Cus had a plan for every 
ation. It’s not like we didn't tell 
„ The Tony Tucker fight in 1987 
маз scary. Mike didn't look good in 
that fight. He was already losing 
desire. He never figured out what he 
was supposed to do. He didn't really 
want to fight. He hasn't wanted to 
fight for almost 20 years. The only 
reason he wanted to fight Spinks was 
because he was so angry, At least half 
the boxing writers thought Spinks 
would win, Mike was furious because 
anybody with a brain and an eye 
could see that shouldn't be possible. 
Spinks is a small man, He can't hurt 
ike. How was he going to win? 
ROONEY: Spinks was scared. Cus always 
used to talk about that, He said, “Fear is 
your friend if you can control 
А feu months before the Ton 
marries Robin Givens. He is clearly besotted 
and belirves her to be pregnant wilh his child. 
The witness to the wedding is Tyson's biogra- 
pher and friend José Torres. As Ton prepares 
to defend his tiles against Tony Tubs im Tokyo 
in March 1988 in another multimillion dollar 
bout, the marriage descends into recrimina- 
tions and turmoil, mainly centered on money. 
Even when living at their new mansion in 
Bernardsville, New Jersey, Givens is almost 
always accompanied by her mother, Ruth 
Roper. As the marriage begins to disintegrate, 
Givens goes on national TV with allegations 
that Tyson is а violent manic-depressive, 
Boon, who is 
LOTT: Robin Givens was the moment, 
She sprang that wedge. Around Octo- 
ber 1987 Mike told me he was seeing 
her. In January 1988 she said, “I'm 
pregnant by Mike.” I didn't even know 


“Now I must go and bring joy to the rest of the world.” 


PLAYBOY 


this. He asked me what would I think if 
he married Robin. I said, "Great, terrific,” 
because at that stage she seemed kind and 
caring. But she’s been called a liar now 
for 20 years. Right after they got mar- 
ried Robin went to the offices of Merrill 
Lynch while Mike and I were in Tokyo. 
She was with her mother, demanding 
money. José Torres came over about two 
weeks after we were there, and the first 
thing he said was “Steve, we got trouble.” 
1 said, “What? Everything's great. Mike 
training well.” He said, “Robin is driv- 
ing me crazy. She's going to the bank.” 
1 knew something was amiss. One time 
in Tokyo, maybe a week before the Tubbs 
fight—Robin was there for a couple of 
weeks but then went back—Mike came 
into my room, He had just gotten off the 
phone with her or something, and he was 
sitting on the bed and said, “I don't feel 
so good.” I said, “What's up?” He said, 
"It’s Robin,” He was defending the title 
in three days, and I had to decide what 
to do, He said, “I should never have got 
married." I said, "Mike, I guarantee you 
everything will be fine.” Fle said, “You 
really mean that?” 
TORRES: I was the best man at the wed- 
ding. E was one of the guys telling him 
to marry this girl. I thought she would 
straighten him out, but then 1 found 
out he was overwhelming her. He would 
push her around and slap her. I called 
him up and said, “If I'm sitting next to 
you and Robin, and I see you abusing 
her, I will hit you with a baseball bat. And 
if Till you, Í kill you, and Im not kid- 
ding. You hitting that дігі is so embar- 
rassing for me. You're the heavyweight 


champion. Are you crazy?” But Tyson 
was very cooperative with the biography, 
and I liked everyone in his group. The 
only one I didn't like was his mother- 

law, Ruth Roper. She loved the atten- 
tion. I thought Tyson really loved Robin. 
It was one of his first experiences. But 
then he also started to lose control in 
the ring. Without that fault he would 
have been the perfect champion of the 
world. I didn't see Robin as a gold dig- 
ger. 1 thought she meant well for Mike. 1 
hate to say this, but I thought it was her 
mother's influence on her, not Robin. I 
thought she would put some control on 


‘Tyson's lack of control. 
BOS: I thought Torres's book, Fire & Fear 
was basically Torres. iding a lot. 


MAJESKI: All of a sudden Robin Givens 
comes in and Tyson falls apart. Its the 
virgin-whore syndrome. She's a whore 
and a virgin at the same time. You look 
at her as some kind of angelic figure, and 
at the same time you want to have sex 
with her. So you're trapped. That's what 
happened with Tyson. And boxing-wise 
he climaxed with Spinks. It was like Joe 
Frazier. After Frazier beat Ali, that was it. 
Physically, emotionally, psychologically, 
he reached the point where he couldn't 

go any further. With Tyson, he beat 
Spinks and he could never be better. The 
fame gets overwhelming. It's insanity. 

You talk about Hemingway, Fitzgerald or 
Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley—they 
reached a point where that iconic fame 
got to them. It makes you crazy. 

1988: Fon is involved in a series of violent 
incidents. He crashes his Bentley in New York 
after Givens reaches into his pocket and finds 


condoms. He has a street fight with а former 
opponent, Mitch "Blood" Green. He drives 
‘another car into a tre outside the Catskill house 
and is knocked unconscious—an event por- 
trayed in the media as a suicide attempt. Police 
are called to Bernardsville after son smashes 
up the house, believing Givens to have had a 
sexual dalliance with Donald Trump. 
HUJTYN: Robin was such an obnoxious 
bitch. Flat-out. She didn't like Mike, 
not one iota. Obviously, it wasn't worth 
the money. If it was really worth the 
money, she would have had a child, 
That's the general route to get the money. 
So it wasn't worth that much to her, 
And yes, she would have liked to see 
him dead because of the thing with the 
car and the tree. But Mike was gaga 
over her. Before that he was “No girls 
will ever like me." So he was in awe of 
her. Givens and her mother were worse 
than Don King. They went to Camille 
and said to her, “You've left the house 
to Mike, haven't you? You really 
should, you know. He's like your son." 
And she said, “Oh no, this is my house. 
This house is going to my sister.” But 
they had the gall to approach her. They 
were horrible people, 
ROONEY: On the plane on the way back 
from the Tubbs fight, 1 saw Robin had a 
tight belly, but she was supposed to be 
four or five months pregnant. When my 
ex-wife got pregnant, You could see it 
almost right away. So 1 said, “Robin, you 
look great! Your stomach looks great.” 
And she said, “What do you mean?” She 
isa bitch. Ruth was a little warmer, but 
she was still playing the game. They were 
both chasing Mike's money, but Bill Cay- 
ton had hooked it up so Mike was the 
only person who could get the money. 
After the Tubbs fight—with his mother, 
Lorna, long gone and the death of D'Amato 
still recent Bison is bereaved again. This 
time itis Jimmy Jacobs, the co-manager he 
‘apparently cherished. The official reason for 
Jacobs's death is given as lymphocytic leuke- 
‘mia, but rumors abound relating to D'Amato 
and Jacobs having lived together for years in 
New rk poto br D Anat ached 
up with Camille and Jacobs та his wife, Lor- 
raine. The only remaining members of the 
team D'Amato put in place are Kevin Rooney, 
Jacobs's partner Bill Cayton—who expects 
to take over the reins—and Tyson's aide-de- 
camp and friend Steve Lott. Aware of Bison's 
lack of fondness for Cayton, however, Don 
King is now hovering. Although uninvited, 
King somehow inveigles his way into Jacobs's 
funeral. In a shock move, Tyson then sacks 
Rooney, Cayton and Lott. Lawsuits ensue, but 
King now has control of Tyson's career. 
ATLAS: The truth is far from what you 
get with a lot of people who have agen- 
das, and you could say I have mine. But 
Cus died under strange circumstances. 
He died of pneumonia. Jimmy died 
afterward. They said it was leukemia, 
but nobody ever documented that. They 
both died in the same hospital. Pneumo- 
nia nowadays usually accompanies the 


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last stages of AIDS. АП I know is their 
records were kept confidential and hid. 
den. They took no visitors. The hospital 
staff was very closed and secretive. 

HUJTYN: I definitely thought Jimmy was 
homosexual. I thought the wife, Lor- 
raine, was just a front and that he actu- 
ally died of AIDS. I never thought that 
about Cus, though. But 
kissing Mike on the lips after fights, I 
don't think that has anything to do with 


PLAYBOY 


it. Mike wanted that. He's a baby. He 
never grew up. He wanted all the love 
and affection. 


Tyson conned everybody— 
yton, D'Amato and the people 
in prison, But when he got to King 
he met his match. Nobody plays Don 
King except maybe 
the devil, King 
played Tyson 
King knew how to 
dle him, and 
ped him at 
his own game, 
ROONEY: Cus and 
Jimmy were not 
lovers. That's total 


ried Lorraine. 
She was his wom: 
But yeah, when 
Tyson fired m 
was shocked. I had 


тау Mike was stupid, 
but he wasn't. He 
was smart. What 
got into bed with 
King 
HUSTEN: Everybody 
behaved in a certain 
vay for Cus. 1 don't 
think Jimmy was 
the person every 
body thinks he was 
T don't think he 
was a good, ideal 
istic guy. Cayton 
had the money, for 
sure. Jimmy acted 
in a certain way because he thought he 
should, and I think he cared more than 
Cayton, who treated you like a posses 
sion, nota person. But they didn't rip off 
Mike. They showed him the books, they 
tried to explain what they were doing, 
but Mike said, "That your job, not my 
job. ГЇ do my job, and you do yours. 1 
don't need to know about iL. 
LOTT: Then Mike had an about-face. 
He broke up with Robin Givens over 
the Barbara Walters show, and then he 
came back to the office and apologized 
to Bill Cayton about having said those 
things with King. Bill said, “Forget that 
Is history. What's important now, Mike 
146 is you.” And Bill said he was going to 


www.playboy.com/pmib. 


get him some fights while he got his life 
together after Robin. That was where 
1 made my big mistake. I wasn't smart 
enough to stick with him and say, "Mike, 
life is gonna be great again." Instead he 
iid, "See you guys later," and walked 
out the door. Don grabbed him the next 
day, and that was iL 
HUJTYN: Brian Kenny, who now works 
for ESPN? with Teddy Atlas, interviewed 
me after Mike left us. He asked, “What's 
going to happen?” I said, "Mike is going 
to lose.” He had just fought Spinks. And 
Kenny said, “Well, because 1 know you 
and respect you I won't l 
body else is 
re the Bruno fight. And Kenny said, 
"Why do you say that?” I said, "Because 


en 


BUY THESE ISSUES AT NEWSSTANDS NOW 


Cus said it. And Mike knows Cus said 
it, and he knows what Cus said is tru 
Cus said, А person who compromises 
his principles, who compromises what he 
believes in, cannot succeed.’ So therefore 
he has to lose.” Mike knew it, just like he 
knew everything else Cus said was true. 

Following a shaky display against the lim- 
ited Frank Bruno, Tyson's 10th-round defeat 
to Buster Douglas on February 11, 1990 
is catastrophic. It is made worse by King’s 
attempt to have the result reversed on the 
grounds that when Douglas was floored in 
the eighth round, the count was long. Dur- 
ing the fight Tyson's corner work is shambolic. 
King has brought in a new trainer, the inexpe- 
rienced Aaron Snowell. Presumably at Bson's 


request the chief second is Jay Bright, a friend 


from the Catskill house not ташт for his bos- 
ing expertise. When Tyson's eyes begin to swell 
from Douglas's jabs, the appropriate equip- 
ment isn't in the corner, and Snouell attempts 
to reduce the swelling by applying а condom 
filled with cold water. 

LAS: Along came а guy called Buster 
Douglas, who didn’t sign on the dotted 
line. For once it was "He's going to have 
to vanquish me.” You see, Tyson never 
really vanquished people, They van 
quished themselves. 

BRIGHT: I've taken the heat for the 
fight for years, Basically, the 
misconception most people have is that I 
was the cut man. I wasn't. Unfortunately, 
the cut man didn't have the endswell [a 
small ironlike con. 
ption to treat 
abrasions] and 
was needed to 
trol the cut and 
the swelling. But I 
Take the heat, and. 

that’s it 
ROONEY: Jay Bright 
a Чор, He 


was dead and 
e. Aaron 
Snowell came from 
He was 


and said, “Write 
a check for $100,000 
so I can take him 
down to Brazil for 
a couple of weeks. 
1 should have said, 


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www playboy.com/cg 


Let's 

down to Rio, let 
him get laid about 
66 times a day, 
after fo 


Buster 
Douglas in Tokyo, 
E Don got him when 

he was an emotional 
wreck, took him up to Cleveland, and 
then it was “Mike, let's take a look at those 
contracts.” It's very difficult for the pub- 
lic, even the boxing public, to understand 
that he was emotionally drained when he 
went in against Douglas. All that stuff was 
reverberating around in his brain. And 
Douglas was the most relaxed opponent he 
had faced. By round two Mike was totally 
drained. It was the Robin Givens-Don 
King one-two, followed literally by the 
Buster Douglas one-two. 


ONEY: If Mike had still been with me, 


he would have knocked Douglas out in 
a round or two. 


LOTT: If Kevin Rooney was still his 
trainer when Mike went to Don King, һе 


would still have lost to Buster Douglas. 
If Mike thinks he's hated or despised, һе 
won't be able to fight. He's so sensitive to 
how people think about him, he will not 
produce in the ring. 


tto ge he big TV flit King has o math 
him withthe dangerous Donovan "Razor" Rud- 
dock. They square off twice in Las Vegas, with 

winning each ime but absorbing plenty of | 
punishment. On the way back from the second 
Radek fign m 1991, son stops 


тар star B Angie В, 
temporarily unavail- 


As far as the rape is concerned, Mike is 
what you call a coercer. He isn't going 
to grab you and forcefully throw you 
down on a bed or whatever, and if he 
did, you would have bruises. You would 
have marks. He's like, "Oh, come on. 
You know you want to." He's not mean 
and vicious. Way back when, he didn't 
want you to get mad at him. He never 
wanted anybody to be mad. He wanted 
everybody to like him. 

While in prison at the Indiana Youth Cen- 
ter, from September 1993 to March 1995, 
Tyson converts to llam. A few days before 
his release, in a move that surprises many, 
he agrees to re-sign with King. King assigns 
fuo "friends" of son's, Rory Holloway and 
John Horne, to be his managers of record. 


The Complete Centerfolds 


able, Tsson, who has 
en drinking all 
day, invites one of the 
nl contestants, 
pagean "1 


that Tyson has raped 


Лек Ton is tried, con- 
bk and sica 
10 years in jail, four 


ears 
HUJTYN: I have a 
theory about the 
women, With box- 
ing you get an 
adrenaline high, 
and there's only 
one other place to 
get it. You're look- 
ing t0 feel better, 
but that lasts only 
50 long. You have. 
to do it again so you 
feel better again. 
Mike is all about 
how he feels. You 


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can talk to him, you. 
think he's very sen- 
sible, and then he goes out the door and 
something happens and he gets upset. 
He does whatever it takes to make him- 
self feel better and completely forgets 
what you were talking about. It was all 
about money. If you watch the case, 
you'll see Mike's body language. He was 
trying to get away from Don King. King 
had to control the heavyweight division. 
If Mike left him and continued to fight, 
there would be all that money not under 
King’s control. Of course Mike went back 
to King when he came out of jail—he 
had no money, and King had power 
of attorney. King had two choices: Kill 
him or put him in jail so he can't fight 
and can't make money for anyone else. 


MALONEY: When ‘Tyson was in jail, you 
Һай to feel sorry for him in a жау. You 
had to wonder if some stuff was maneu- 
vered to get him into jail. I think certain 
people wanted him locked up. Maybe he 
was becoming uncontrollable. 

As Tyson begins his comeback, his appear- 
ances become characterized by antihite vitriol 
Led by Holloway, Horne and a character named 
Crocodile, who dresses in combat fatigues and 
“foes a at pei To t 
dlrs aul ter alo lt чүс 
takes recreational drugs. At press conferences 
to promote fights Tyson is surly and uncommu- 
nicative, allowing Holloway, Horne and King 
to do the talking. He gets married again, to 


Dr. Monica Turner. Portrayed in the media as 
а respectable and benign influence on Tn, 
Turner was previously involved with a notori- 
ous drug dealer and crime figure. Neverthe- 
less, Ton, under King's aegis, reunites with 
the heavyweight title in 1996, even if it carries 
omiy a glimmer of his first meteoric rise. Beating 
а series of fighters regarded as “cheese cham- 
pions,” som is once again the man. He com- 
Жі $30 ilio a fa. There oe only two 
bouts left for ison to prove his mettle: against 
the teak-tough Georgian Evander Holyfield, 
who had been due to square off against him 
before the rape trial, and Lennox Lewis, the 
towering, li former Olympic champion 
from Canada, nou based in the 
MAJESKI: I lived through the 1960s and 
the Muhammad Ali era, and we now 
have made Ali into 
America’s secu- 
lar saint, Tyson is 
America's secular 
demon. Neither one 
deserves the title 
imposed on him. 
T think Ali is a far 
greater person than 
‘Tyson, but we've 
changed him into 
something he never 
wanted to be, never 
said he was, We just 
invented this image 
of Ali, like he's 
Mahatma Gandhi 
or something, How 
religious a Muslim 
is Mike Tyson? He's 
got Mao Tse-tung 
tattooed on him, a 
communist, as bad 
a killer as Hitler, 
He'salso got Arthur 
Ashe tattooed on 
him, I don't think 
‘Tyson knows what 
he wants to do. 
He's in search of an 
identity; that's the. 
problem. 
ATLAS: I ran into 
Tyson a couple of 
times later on. We 
had a couple of 
situations, He was 
shooting a Japanese beer comme! 
at Gleason's Gym, in Brooklyn, while I 
was training a fighter there, I'm not a 
genius, but I do know the time of day, 
and I kept a steel bar in my locker. I 
just had a feeling—the hair on the back 
of my neck, whatever you want to say. I 
was at my locker, about to turn around, 
and at the last second 1 took the bar 
and put it right against the door of the 
locker, where it was easy to grab. Just 
as I turned, Tyson was there, and he'd 
gotten as close to me as he could with- 
‘out my turning. I turned around, there 
was nobody else in the place, and he 
was the heavyweight champion of the 


world. I stared at him. He stopped, 147 


PLAYBOY 


and he stared at me. I had to assume 
he saw me walk in. But maybe he was 
going to the bathroom. I don't know. 
We didn't have much chatter. 
LOTT: There's been nothing, no con. 
tact, It was brilliant of King to put 
those people around Mike when he 
came out of jail. The more Mike was 
around them, the more he acted like 
Шет: “White people are no good.” 
Don is brilliant at it 
ROONEY: Tyson in some respects became 
an asshole; that’s what happened. So for 
me it was like, "Fuck you. If you м: 
be an asshole, be an asshole.” King had 
Holloway and Horne for his Tyson plan. 
and then it was totally downhill 
MAJESKI: Really, decadence set in. Horne 
and Holloway were cruds, Money didn't 
mean anything to Tyson. If he wanted 
to give these guys half a million a year, 
so what? It was insanity. King cut Tyson 
0 percent, King put his daughter, the 
wife, the whole family on the payroll. 
Tyson was just a cash cow to exploit. And 
because Tyson was the most famous and 
the most affluent, King was able to do it 
оге so than with anyone else. 
Tyson fights Evander Holyfield in Las 
Vegas on November 9, 1996. Despite being 


a huge underdog, Holyfield hands Tyson a 
sustained boxing lesson. However, such is 
the money generated that a rematch is imme- 
diately ordained. This time what ensues is 
sensational. Tyson, again being outboxed, 
bites both of Holyfeld’s ears in third-round 
clinches, on one occasion spitting a piece of 
«ат to the canvas, and is disqualified. 
ROONEY: If the referee hadn't stopped 
the first Holyfield fight, Mike would 
have been knocked cold. He was stag- 
gering, and the referee jumped in. 
Then they had the rematch, and he got 
in better shape. 
ATLAS: With Holyfield he became a 
game-quitter. He stopped trying to win. 
The second time against Holyfield he 
knew he would actually have to be a 
fighter. Two nights before the fight, 1 
said he would have to foul to get out of 
it. Tyson was a fractured, scared, incom- 
ріне person who could not face a man, 
He would not have entered that room 
against Holyfi 
where the exit was. 
With his career apparently in a downward 
spiral and his aura evaporating, Tyson faces 
other problems. His second wife has left him, 
ig he is impossible to live with. Tyson 


them for millions of what he believes to be 
embezzled earnings. The case is settled out 
of court. Tyson hooks up with Shelly Fin- 
kel, a veteran boxing manager. He has more 
run-ins with the law, precipitated by a 1998 
road-rage incident that lands him back in 
jail. He serves additional time for violating 
his parole. One big fight is left for him: a 
showdown with Lennox Lewis. In the mean- 
time Tyson goes on the road, boxing a series 
of mediocrities in Europe. 
LOTT: When he got out, in about 1999 
when he was still in Vegas, I went to 
visit Mike, to pitch him about coming 
back. He had called me out of the blue, 
so I called him and said I was going 
out there to see my uncle and could 1 
stop by to see him? Н, Sure, stop 
by.” 1 picked up every picture I had 
of him and us from the good days— 
every press conference, a 
stack like that—to get his mind back, 
I showed up at the house and showed 
him these wonderful photographs. 
1 was there for an hour, and he had 
n the house, The guy 
who fixed the gloves, na Lewis, 
was there. [Lewis was 
from boxing for removi 


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PLAYBOY 


Luis Resto. Resto's opponent, Billy Col- 
lins Jr., was maimed and had to retire. 
Many believe his drunk-driving death 
to be suicide] 

HUJTYN: Don King took all the money 
while Mike was in jail, Plus, Mike wasn't 
smart with any of it. There were ex- 
wives and children, and he had to pay 
for all these children. I wouldn't know 
if he stays in touch with them. I know 
he liked the last two, and he brought 
them to Camille's house on occasion. He 
used to make comments that he ought 
to do better things because he has these 
children, but it didn't last longer than 
saying it, unfortunately. 

ROONEY: He's trying to make out as if 
he's a family man, I'm sure he loves 
his kids, but he ain't no family man. 
He likes fooling around with girls. 
Horne and Holloway fucked the 
money out of Tyson. All he had to do 
was resist them. And Monica Turner 
was no Goody Two-shoes. She got a 
couple of million. She's set. 

LOTT: When I was in Vegas visiting Mike, 
1 get this call, and as soon as I pick it 
up I know who it is: “Hi, Shelly.” So 
1 know what happened. Someone in 
Mike's house called Shelly Finkel to tell 
him Steve Lott was out there in Mike's 
room, talking to him. Shelly says, "Steve, 
what are you doing in Vegas?” I said, 
“I'm talking to Mike.” Не says, "What 
about?” So 1 said, "I'm talking about 
him coming back to Bill, Kevin and me.” 
And he goes, “No, I have a contract.” 1 
said, "Shelly it has nothing to do with 
you. Lets do what's best for Mike.” "No, 
по, no! [have a contract!” I said, “Shelly, 


contracts are easy. We can work that out.” 
It was somebody in the house, the same 
way Don always had someone around, 
reporting back to him. 

Tsson fights Lennox Lewis in Memphis 
оп June 8, 2002. During a prefight press 
conference, a brawl breaks out between the 
fuo camps. Lewis throws a punch at Tyson, 
and in the ensuing melee Tyson bites Lew- 
i's leg. In the fight itself Tyson receives a 
sustained beating and is knocked out in the 
eighth round. 

MALONEY: When we got to the Len- 
nox Lewis weigh-in, Tyson was sitting 
there twirling his hair between his 
finger and thumb like a lost little girl. 
He wasn’t paying any attention. Croc- 
odile was shouting and screaming, and 
‘Tyson didn't pay any attention to him, 
either. It was as if he was on a differ- 
ent planet. It seemed to me either he 
was still on the pills—although I don't 
know if he was—or he was hypno- 
tized. He was sort of in a semi-trance, 
and everyone around him was trying 
to keep him calm and make sure he 
didn’t blow his fuse. 

ROONEY: In my opinion he just laid down 
against Lewis. 

MALONEY: Before the fight, 1 wanted 
Lennox to get beaten because of the 
bitchiness in me after the fallout 1 had 
with the new Lewis team. That fight 
would have been my pension. I didn't 
make any money at all out of that fight 
Iwas watching Tyson on the TV monitor, 
getting ready in his dressing room, and 
his crazy antics, smashing the wall like 
а mad raging bull again. Then I looked 
at Lewis getting ready, and I went, “You 


“Take this pill and shave it.” 


know what? I would put my house on 
Lennox Lewis winning this fight.” 

JUNE 2005: After two fights against the 
journeymen Danny Williams and Kevin 
"McBride result in abject defeats, Tyson 
‘announces his retirement from boxing. 
Arrested for possession of cocaine, which 
he freely admits, Tyson faces more jail time. 
He is also said to be some $30 million in 
debt, mainly to the IRS but also to various 
Las Vegas jewelry stores, He embarks on a 
‘peaking four ofthe UK. but it is nol a 
success. Meanwhile, on Broadway, Robin 
Givens is cast in the musical Chicago as 
Roxie Hart, a glamorous murderess 
evades the death penalty by falsely cl 
ing she is pregnant. 

ROONEY: He just laid down again in the 
McBride fight when he was ahead on the 
scorecards. He quit like a pig. He took 
the money and ran, 

ATLAS: The last two fights were just 
more of him being exposed. They were 
just ordinary kids. The Irish kid was 
‘more ordinary. Tyson doesn't have char- 
acter. He would be a comet that maybe 
flashes for a moment but whose future 
was always going to be short and incon- 
sequential. Budd Schulberg said any- 
‘one who stayed with Cus had to be an 
incomplete individual and would never 
develop a complete personality or an 
identity for himself. 

MALONEY: I don't think Tyson's a sym- 
pathetic character. I don't know what 
to make of him. A man who earns all 
that money and loses i 
feel sorry for him. He's 
disturbed or just doesn’t put any value 
on anything. 

MAJESKI: All D'Amato's boys wound up 
broke or in debt, so maybe money did 
mean nothing to them. That unconscious 
thing he put in their heads: Money is 
something you use when you have it, 
HUJTYN: Cus used to say, “I will have suc- 
ceeded when he becomes independent of 
me.” But Mike needed guidance much 
longer. 1 would actually say forever. To 
те, Mike will always be a hurt child. Не 
never wanted the responsibility of being 
‘champion of the world. 

TORRES: Now, I feel sorry for Tyson, 
1 don't want to get involved with him, 
because he can bring trouble. But if I can 
help him, 1 will, 

ATLAS: Cus had a story from when he was 
a boy: A monster lived near his school. 
People believed this. They would walk 
home a different way to avoid it, even 
though going past the monster was the 
quickest way. Then one day Cus is ше 
and he knows he's going to get a beat- 
ing from his father, so he goes the quick 
way. He's scared. He turns the corner. As 
he does so, he sees the first claw. Then 
he sees the second claw. And there it is: 
nothing but an old tree swinging in the 
wind. Tyson was just the tree in the end. 
Cuss guy ended up being the tree, 


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When | asked him what was going on — what brought about the change — he. 
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о | was relieved to find he was using something topical without any systemic side 
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what's going on at our place — ALL the timet 

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oar 
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ШІСІ 
sensations 
Ға never felt 

before 
in places 
I forgot 


existed. 33 


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) (continued from page 58) 
did he stop for that pale-blue sheet and 
not another pale-blue sheet?” 

“She was moving her leg somehow 
abnormally, shaking it, putting it forward 
alittle. It was a sign. 

Only in Afghanistan. 


‘The last time I saw Ajmal, in autumn 
2006, he was evidently commanding 
more respect among the Afghan press 
corps. It was also apparent that he was 
getting more involved in the dangerous 
business of fixing high-risk interviews. 
When the Taliban regrouped after the 
2001 invasion it was difficult to make 
contact with them. For several years 
access 10 the insurgents was controlled 
by a handful of rival fixers, most of 
whom were themselves ex-Taliban. One 
of these men, Nawab Moman, traded in 
his turban and robes for dark tailored 
suits and became a journalist for Tolo 
TV, Afghanistan's first private televi- 
n station. Tolo's studios were across 
from the Everest, and true to form, 
Ajmal made friends with Moman and 
did special favors for him, such as scor- 
ing whiskey through NATO connections 
and allowing the short-term afternoon 
use of empty rooms at the guesthouse. 
In turn Moman began to let Ajmal in on. 
the Taliban-access trade. 

In the Middle East conflict zones, 
one of war reporting’s dirty secrets is 
that access to insurgents is often sold 
for cash. Sometimes the price is low. 
To interview and film Taliban fighters, 
1 paid $800 to cover transportation, 
police bribes and fees to Moman and 
Ajmal, But ambitious and flush BBC 
and Korean TV crews, among others, 
regularly dished out thousands of dol- 
lars for face time with the bad guys. 

In addition to seeking interviews, 
journalists also look to buy video, On 
my most recent trip to Afghanistan, 
my colleague filmmaker Ian Olds and 
1 reviewed exclusive footage from the. 
guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar 
of Hezb-e-Islami, as well as some Al 
Qaeda-shot combat footage showing the 
corpses of U.S. Navy Seals along with 
war booty such as American GPS devices 
and M4 rifles. And though it rarely 
makes it on the air, footage of brutally 
slow beheadings is always for sale. Some- 
one even offered to sell me the video of 
Ajmal's decapitation. They said his killer 
Wore a gray tunic and Ajmal struggled 
to the very end. I declined. 

In Afghanistan this is how much of 
the news is made—like sausage from 
grisly floor scraps collected during back- 
Toom deals wherein the spectacle of war 
is bartered for cash over glasses of 
Johnnie Walker. It was just such a deal 
that led Ajmal into the heart of Taliban 
country. When it all went bad it was easy 


to blame him as a fool. But it wasn't 
quite that simple. 


The first indication that something ter- 
rible had happened was a text message 
from my girlfriend: 7A translator named 
Ajmal has been kidnapped in Afghani- 
stan, Hope that's not your guy” Around 
the Hindu Kush the name Ajmal is as 
common as the name Jason із around 
the Rockies. So it seemed unlikely that 
the kidnapped person was my friend 
‘Ajmal Naqshbandi. I sent him an e-mail, 
but he didn't write back. 

As the story evolved, things began to 
look worse: The Taliban had captured 
an alleged British spy traveling with 
1wo locals in the southern Afghan prov- 
ince of Helmand. But the alleged spy 
turned out to be Daniele Mastrogia- 
como, a stocky 52-year-old correspon- 
dent for the Italian daily La Repubblica, 
I had met Mastrogiacomo over morn- 
ing cornflakes several years back at the 
Everest. Ajmal frequently worked with 
him; months before the abduction Ajmal 
had told me he had new and important 
Taliban contacts in Helmand, 

La Repubblica soon confirmed that 
Mastrogiacomo and Ajmal had gone 
south to interview Taliban commanders, 
most likely Mullah Mohammed Dadul- 
lah, who was then the insurgents’ chief 
military leader. Ajmal and Ї had done 
a similar interview with Taliban fighters 
only two hours from where Mastrogia- 
сото had disappeared. This was all too 
close for comfort. 

About a week and a halfinto the drama 
the Taliban released a video of Mastro- 
giacomo calmly but intensely imploring 
‘Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the 
Italian government for help. Off camera, 
someone prompted Mastrogiacomo to say 
more. Ajmal's unmistakably nasal voice 
was translating. The person I knew best 
in Afghanistan was shackled in a mud hut 
somewhere near the Pakistan border. 

Next came news that the third man, 
Mastrogiacomo's local guide and driver, 
Sayed Agha, had been peremptorily 
Killed. Soon thereafter another video was 
released. It shows Mastrogiacomo and 
Ajmal kneeling, bound and blindfolded. 
‘Around them stand a dozen Taliban 
fighters. The camera pans over to Agha 
ashe is forced down and decapitated on 
the rough desert ground. Then Mastro- 
giacomo stands weeping in front of the 
Camera, begging for his life. 

The Taliban demanded an exchange of 
five of their imprisoned commanders for 
the two remaining captives. An interna- 
tional crisis began to unfold. Italy's center- 
left government, which had already 
pulled its troops from Iraq, was on the 
brink of collapse. If Mastrogiacomo and 
Ajmal could not be freed, Italy's prime 
minister, Romano Prodi, could face a no- 
confidence vote over the increasingly 
‘unpopular war in Afghanistan. If the gov- 


ernment fell, Italy's 2,000 troops in 
Afghanistan could be pulled out and its 
development projects stopped. The 
whole NATO mission in Afghanistan, the 
government of Afghanistan and, by exten- 
sion, the international war on Islamic 
radicalism would take a major hit. 

But all that was avoided, and two 
weeks later Mastrogiacomo stepped off 
a plane in Rome, flashing the victory 
sign as if he'd just won a cycling race. 
He had been swapped for five Taliban. A 
prominent left-wing Italian nongovern- 
mental organization called Emergency 
had managed the delicate negotiations 
and prisoner swap; the first images of a 
liberated Mastrogiacomo were taken at 
Emergency s hospital in Lashkar Gar, the 
capital of Helmand province. 

But Ajmal—who was supposed to be 
part of the deal—was still being held by 
the Taliban. Surprisingly, the man who 
brokered Mastrogiacomo's release— 
Ramatullah Hanefi, the director of Emer- 
gency's hospital in Helmand—was now in 
the custody of the Afghan secret police, 
accused of being a Taliban operative, 

Two weeks after Mastrogiacomo's 
release the Taliban decapitated Ajmal, 
Shortly after that, Emergency, which 
had demanded Hanefi's release, closed 
its entire Afghan operation: three major 
surgical hospitals, each with scores of 
beds and multiple operating theaters, 
a major maternity ward and 25 fully 
equipped health clinics. Over seven 
years Emergency had treated 1.5 million 
Afghans with free high-quality health 
care. In war-ravaged Afghanistan these 
resources were desperately needed. 


‘To understand this debacle and to bid my 
friend good-bye, returned to Afghanistan, 
The story I discovered there, the story of 
his murder and the incompetence that sur- 
rounded it, embodies everything wrong. 
with this famously forgotten war and for- 
gotten country. The truth is never easy to 
ріп down, particularly in Afghanistan, The 
last time I had worked with Ajmal he men- 
tioned his new contacts in Helmand. They 
were, he said, facilitated by “Emengency, 
the Italian hospital,” in Lashkar Gar. Then, 
іп October 2006, Emergency negotiated 
the release of Gabriele Torsello, an Italian 
photojournalist and Muslim convert who 
had been kidnapped by the Taliban. 
‘Ajmal had never been to Helmand and 
had no family or friends there. Accord- 
ing to his younger brother Munir, whom 
Т met several times in Kabul, the interview 
in Helmand was supposed to be with Tal- 
bon supreme military commander Dadul- 
lah. The rendezvous was reportedly set 
up by Sami Sharaf, one of those Taliban- 
‘connected fixers at the top of the Afghan 
press-corps food chain. Ajmal' main con- 
tact in Helmand was Hanefi, the adminis- 
trator at Emergencys hospital. This set of 
‘connections would bridge the infinite politi- 
‘al distance between Kabul and Helmand. 


161 


PLAYBOY 


162 


1 meet Sharaf at the Gandamack, a 
Kabul lodge named for the fictional 
19th century address of author George 
MacDonald Fraser's literary hero Harry 
Flashman, Sharaf’s manner is agitated. 
He refuses to be videotaped or to com- 
ment directly about Ajmal. In fact, he 
agrees to the interview only because sus- 
picions about his possible role іп Ajmal's 
death are steadily mounting among 
Ajmal's male relatives. Sharaf has missed 
the important ras che, a ceremony on the 
40th day of mourning. It was Sharaf who 
first told Ajmal's family about the kidnap- 
ping, even before it was in the press. 
Sharaf got his start in reporting during 
the last days of the Soviet-backed regime 
of Dr. Mohammad Najibullah. When 
Najibullah fell to the U.S.-backed muja- 
hideen, civil war broke out among the 
victors, From the ensuing chaos em 
the millenarian zealotry of the Taliban. Ву 
1996 these insurgents controlled most of 
southern Afghanistan, Made up of poor 
rural Pashtuns—the largest ethnic group 
Afghanistan—the Taliban have always 
been as much an ethnic movement asa reli 
gious one. They see as their enemies мўз 


"You're right, Miss Hopkins—t 
РТИ "the min tho has eurghing. 


(nonbelievers) and foreigners but also the 
Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara and other ethnic 
groups populating Afghanistan's northern 
half. From their first days to the present the 
‘Taliban have received covert suppor from 
elements in Inter-Services Intelligence, the 
Pakistan intelligence agency. Pakistan uses 
them to keep its neighbor weak. 

“Iwas the only one who could report 
from Kandahar,” brags Sharaf between 
hurried gulps of tea. As a freelancer in 
and out of Taliban-controlled southern 
Afghanistan, he did a thriving business 
selling footage to CNN and other net- 
works during the Taliban regime. This 
was a time and place in which photog- 
raphy was largely illegal, but Sharaf 
was allowed to sell video. He tells me 
he split his time between Pashtun areas 
of Pakistan and Taliban country across 
the border. In Pakistan he studied jour- 
nalism and then went to study sharia, 
Islamic law. To survive, says Sharaf, 
“you needed good connections. Any- 
thing is possible with connections.” 

That's what Ajmal was always after, 
particularly new connections with the 
Taliban, He had done well building links 


here is something you can give to 


with Taliban commanders in eastern 
Afghanistan, but Helmand was the deep 
south, the tribal Pashtun heartland. 

Many of Ajmal's friends see Sharaf's 
shifty behavior as proof that he set up 
Ajmal and the high-priced Italian to be 
Kidnapped. After all, only the Italians 
pay. Kidnap an American and all you 
get is a corpse and a Taliban snuff film. 
But an Italian could be a useful chip 
for the Taliban, or so go the conspiracy 
theories circulating in Kabul, Although 
1 dislike the beady-cyed Sharaf, that sce- 
nario doesn't make sense, nor is there 
much evidence to support it. To plan so 
elaborately would have been too risky for 
Sharaf and unnecessary for the Taliban. 

‘On the morning of March 5—with the 
interview in Helmand arranged—Mas- 
trogiacomo and Naqshbandi set ош. 
Just before leaving, Ajmal told his father 
“and wife that he was going 10 research 
women's rights in Herat, a relatively 
safe сиу in western Afghanistan. But to 
his younger brother Munir, he gave the 
real details of his trip: They were meet- 
ing a trustworthy Taliban commander 
in Helmand; everything would be fine, 
Te was Ajmal's custom to tell his wife and 
father a cover story but to call Munir at 
the last minute with the truth, 

Reached by phone in Rome, Mastro- 
giacomo recounts the story as he expe- 
Tienced it. He knew nothing about how 
the interview was arranged and simply 
trusted Ajmal. (Ajmal and I had often 
rubbed each other the wrong way over this 
issue: I would demand to know exactly 
how everything worked, and he would 
testily push back when he felt 1 was pry- 
ing too much.) At dawn Mastrogiacomo 
and Ajmal flew from Kabul to Kandahar. 
There they met Sayed Agha, a local man 
from Lashkar Gar, Helmand, the next 
province over. The three of them drove 
to Lashkar Gar, where Mastrogiacomo 
and Ajmal waited two hours in the offices 
of an Afghan NGO while Agha went to fix 
the final details for the interview, Then all 
of them drove into the desert. 

Just outside town, in Nad Ali, they picked 
up a boy. As Mastrogiacomo later put it, 
“Agha seemed to know him." They trav- 
led a short way over a bridge and turned 
right, through poppy fields, Then the 
road dead-ended. Realizing their mistake, 
they turned back, whereupon they met six 
armed Taliban riding three motorbikes. 

“Immediately they arrested us,” says 
Mastrogiacomo in his thick Italian accent. 
"They tied our hands with weak rope and 
blindfolded us. We are so confused. I am 
demanding, "What is this? It is a mistake! 

it Iris normal, 
" In his indignation he broke 
free. “The rope was weak. I demanded to 
speak with someone in charge. And then 
they just beat us with Kalashnikovs. My 
head is cut bad. And now Ajmal is say- 
ing, “They are serious. Daniele, be quiet. 
They think we are spies At that point he 
becomes very scared.” 


After five hours in one house the three 
captives were moved for several hours 
through the desert, with Mastrogiacomo 
locked in the trunk of Agha's car. Next 
they meta truck filled with Taliban. “Like 
15 or 16, and from there we travel many 
hours through the desert down toward 
the Pakistani border," Mastrogiacomo 
says, Afer that the hostages were moved 
every night. 

Just afier the three men went missing, 
Sharaf found Munir and explained that 
‘Ajmal had been kidnapped. Sharaf said 
he had learned this through Samiullah 
Yousoufzai, a Pakistani journalist close 
to Dadullah. The news broke the next 
day when the Taliban issued a statement 
from somewhere in Pakistan. 

As Mastrogiacomo explains to me, for 
the first eight days of their captivity he 
was together with Ajmal and Agha. "But 
it was hard to talk,” he says. “Every time 
we spoke English the Taliban would 
demand to know what we were speak- 
ing about. Ajmal would say, ‘Shut up. 
Don't talk. They really think you a 
spy.’ He was like, "I don't understand. 
Something has changed in the Taliban 
policy.” Though chained togeth 
теп were psychologically isolated. 
Taliban were always soft, then strong, 
then soft.” 

The Taliban occasionally beat their 
hostages with hoses. During the first 
days the Taliban accused them all of 
being spies. But then other commanders 
showed up, among them На 
close lieutenant of Dadullah's. The Tal- 
iban finally seemed to accept that their 
hostages really were journalists. "They 

1, 712% okay. We know you are not a 
British spy. You're a journalist, and many 
Taliban have called to say that Ajmal is 
okay, he is not a spy," recounts Mastro- 
giacomo. But suspicion continued to turn 
оп Agha. “Ajmal kept saying, “It's not us, 
but they don't know about him. 

In fact, Agha had worked briefly with 
the British. A Western intelligence con- 
tractor with regular oversight respon- 
у for the National Directorate of 
Security, or NDS, part of the Afghan 
secret police, told me he was under the 
impression Agha had passed information 
to Afghan government agents. 

Оп March 13 the Taliban separated 
Agha from the other two. А day later 
they brought in a young Taliban with 
а video camera to record a statement 
from Mastrogiacomo. “He was a nice 
guy who spoke a little English,” says 
Mastrogiacomo. “When it was over we 
chatted, and then they said, "Wai 
other people are coming. We w: 
make another video. We have to tie you 
up again.’ Then they brought out Agha, 
and someone read a paper. Ajmal started 
to cry, saying, “They have condemned 
us to death. They will kill Sayed today, 
me tomorrow, you the next day." The 
Taliban had given Italy and Karzai three 
days to make a deal. 


To Mastrogiacomo’s horror his captors 
proceeded to decapitate Agha. The video 
of his murder was later sold to journalists 
and broadcast on Italian television. In it 
опе sees Ajmal looking down into the rag 
across his eyes while Mastrogiacomo tips 
his head back to peer under his blindfold 
toward Agha. The Taliban tied Agha's 
head to his body and dumped his corpse 
in the Helmand River. News of the mur- 
der caused Agha's pregnant young wife 
to lose her unborn child, 


1 meet Sayed Agha's brother and brother- 
in-law when they come to Kabul to visit 
ў old mujahideen 
julam Haidar Naqshbandi. 
We sit in the second-story guest room of 
the Naqshbandi home, a small walled 
compound on the dusty plains of south- 
west Kabul. Yellow afternoon light filters 
through the room's high square windows 
while the shadows of pigeons circling 
outside flitter across the guests. As the 
light fades, Agha's family tell their story, 

As soon as Mastrogiacomo's party di 
appeared in southern Helmand, Agha's 
family sent out several uncles and cous- 
ins to search for their relative. Once 
it was clear that Agha was dead, they 
looked for his body, eventually find- 
ing their headless kinsman in a shallow 
grave by the river. 

“In one of the villages where they were 
held, people saw Ramatullah Hanefi,” 
says Agha's brother-in-law Khan Zaman, 
referring to the administrator from 
Emergency who fixed the interview and 
managed the negotiations. "Ramatul- 
lah went to where they were held, and 
the villagers saw Sayed and Ramatullah 
argue. After that the Taliban separated 
Sayed from Ajmal and Daniele. Then, 
a day later, they killed him because he 
knew too much.” This account seems 
implausible. When I run it past Mas- 
trogiacomo, he dismisses it. Perhaps the 
elders in southern Helmand told Арһа% 
relatives what they wanted to hear: Their 
relative died defiantly, confronting the 
‘man who had allegedly sold him out. 

. 
Оп Monday, March 19, five days after 
Agha's murder, the Taliban 


trogiacomo and Ajmal they 
freed. “They broke our chains, 


Mastrogiacomo. “Ajmal washed and got 


new clothes. Then I washed and got 
new clothes. We were put in a car and 
brought to the Helmand River. We got 
there maybe about noon or one, but it 
took several hours of moving and stop- 
ping. Then we found a big group of Tal- 
iban and local elders, maybe 50 or 60 
people. The Taliban were shooting their 
guns in the air to celebrate. When Ajmal 
and I were separated we said, “Okay, 
We'll be arrested by the NDS when we 
get back, but that is normal. They will 
need to talk to us, but then we will be 


PLAYBOY 


164 


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Wy re e New N NU 
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Kor uper rors Parc 


Playboy's Privacy Notice 
We ocean make porsona lu 
омота lat vato cr er 
compan that ofer produc or sericea 
we believe you may enjoy. ! you do not 
‘nto rocove hete arc raton 


"ray mn a yt 


Playboy, date of production: 
November 2007. Custodian 
of Records is Ben Taylor. All 
records required by law to be 
maintained by publisher are 
located at 680 North Lake 
Shore Drive, Chicago, 
Illinois 60611. 

Contents copyright © 2007 
by Playboy. 


free. We talked about how I would help 
Ajmal get to Italy, because after this it 
would be impossible for him to do his 
work. And we hugged. We were like, See 
you tonight in Lashkar Gar or maybe 
the next day in Kabul.” Ajmal went off 
one way. I met Ramatullah Hanefi. He 
seemed anxious to go, like maybe another 
group might kidnap us again. And we go 
off in the other direction in two cars full 
of elders, for protection. In maybe two 
hours we are in the hospital" 

Around five or six that evening Mas- 
trogiacomo and Hanefi reached the 
Emergency compound in Lashkar Gar 
and were greeted by Gino Strada, a 
surgeon and Emergency's founder and 
executive director. Mastrogiacomo was 
checked by medical staff, took phone 
calls from his family and several Italian 
politicians and then began to write an 
account of his capture. The next morn- 
ing he would fly to Kabul. 

While writing, Mastrogiacomo asked 
Strada about Ajmal. Strada explained he 
was safe in another room, taking pho- 
tographs for the Emergency website. 
Another Emergency staff member subse- 
quently told Mastrogiacomo that Strada 
had misspoken; Ajmal was somewhere 
else, maybe on his way to Kabul but not at 
the hospital. Later, on Italian television, 
Strada explained that he had wrongly 
assumed a young driver was Ajmal. In 
reality Ajmal was either still under Tal- 
iban control or soon to be retaken by 
them. The infuriated Agha and Naqsh- 
bandi families are convinced Ajmal was 
at the hospital. Its unclear whether he 
was retaken from the hospital or never 
released at the Helmand River, bui 
seems likely he was never released. 

The next day at dawn Hanefi—the 
man who had set up the interview 
turned kidnapping—was picked up by 
the NDS. A few days later Munir and 
Ajmal's father received a phone call from 
the Taliban. They put Ajmal on. He told 
his father that he was “in the same place 
as before” and that the family needed to 
Jean on Karzai. In a few days the Taliban 
released another video. “You have forgot- 
ten the Afghan journalist,” said Ajmal in 
an angry appeal to Karzai. "You are wor- 
ried only for the foreigners, and you are 
not worried for Afghans.” Again, Ajmal's 
back was to a mud wall. Then, on April 8, 
Easter, after two more weeks in Taliban 
custody, he was killed, a full day before 
his captors’ own deadline. 


What happened at the Helmand River? 
What was the plan for the prisoner 
exchange? Was Ajmal supposed to be 
at the hospital? Emergency and Strada 
refuse to say. Instead, Emergency spokes- 
people give vague, legalistic, often 
implausible answers. When I press for an 
interview with Strada, I am told he is too 
upset to talk to the media. According to 
Emergency, its involvement in the Mas- 


trogiacomo case began only on March 
6, when Italian prime minister Romano 
Prodi asked Strada to facilitate nego- 
tiations with the Taliban. Strada in turn 
asked Напей to contact the insurgents. 
Emergency denies that either the orga- 
nization or Hanefi had relations with the 
Taliban before the kidnapping, 

То anyone familiar with Afghanistan, 
that assertion doesn’t ring true. Emer- 
gency had already managed negotia- 
tions for the release of another Italian 
‚journalist, in November 2006, Elements 
of the NGO's local staff certainly had a 
modus vivendi with the insurgents, who, 
after all, control most of Helmand prov- 
ince and have networks of spies and sup- 
porters in Lashkar Gar. On at least one 
‘occasion U.S. forces raided the hospital 
to extract wounded Taliban, 

“To understand this story one must 
grasp something of Emergencys ori- 
gins and the charismatic nature of Gino 
Strada. In 1989 Strada began working in 
Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia and Bos- 
nia. In 1994 he founded Emergency; his 
eloquent, down-to-earth lectures were 
widely broadcast, and money flowed 
in, Since then the organization has per- 
formed thousands of lifesaving operations 
free of charge on civilian war victims, 

‘Over the past 14 years Emergency has 
become a more political version of Doc- 
tors Without Borders. Rather than just 
rendering humanitarian service in War 
zones, it actively protests war, Strada's 
tale of adventure and altruism has been 
the subject of several documentaries, 
memoir, Green Parrots, sold almost half a 
million copies. 

Emergency's lifeblood is public rela- 
tions. But spinning complicated bad news 
is not its strength. It prefers the simpler 
‘moral tale: photos of smiling Afghan chil- 
dren maimed by old Soviet mines but 
regaining their lives thanks to your dona- 
tions and Emergency's hard work, The 
murder of Sayed Agha and Ajmal Naqsh- 
bandi—and the apparent connection in 
these crimes of Emergency's representa- 
tive Hanefi—sent the organization into a 
panic. Strada and Emergency professed 
Haneti's innocence, They demanded 
his immediate release and attacked the 
‘Afghan government. After staging pro- 
tests in Rome and Milan, Emergency 
even suggested it might have to leave 
Afghanistan and accused the Karzai gov- 
‘ernment of managing a secret campaign 
to drive it ош. 

Afghan pride, nationalism and revenge 
culture being what they are, the govern- 
ment did not bend to the great su 
will, In fact, the Afghan president's office 
felt betrayed. The two sides dug in, and 
things went from bad to worse. 

‘On April 10, two days after Ajmal's 
murder, the normally reticent head of 
the NDS, Amirullah Saleh, told an Italian 
daily that Emergency was an organization 
that “supports terrorists and also Al Queda 
men in Afghanistan,” which Emergency 


has denied. The next day, Emergency 
pulled its international staff except for a 
Skeleton crew of five. A series of increas- 
ingly bitter press releases charged that 
for-profit medical clinics in Helmand 
were pushing for Emergencys ouster so 
as to scoop up its clients (never mind that 
many of those patients have nothing with 
which to pay). Emergency later claimed 
the Afghan government had intention- 
ally driven out the group so Karzai could 
better cover up the fact that British and 
American forces were killing civilians dur 
ing their bombing offensives against the 
Taliban in Helmand and Kandahar. But 
other NGOs also report civilian casual- 
ties, and Karzai himself has repeatedly 
condemned NATO's killing of civilians. 
The war of words 
finally got so hot 
that the Afghan 
police raided Emer 
gency's Kabul hos 
pital, demanding 
ports of the 


five Europeans were 
extracted under dip- 


lomatic imm 
the Ita 
dor and taken to the 
airport. Emergency 
then suspended its 
Afghanistan oper: 
tions. In late May the 
nent told the 
was free to 
stay if it was willing 
to obey Afgh 
otherwise En 
суз facilities would 
be given to othe 
ncies, Emergency 
dispatched a few 
more press releases, 
and then Strad 
lapsed into a strange 
self-imposed silence. 


nity by 


In the end, what 
seems to have hap- бере 
pened is this: The 

Taliban wanted the 
government to release five high-profile 
prisoners; key among them was a top 
Taliban spokesman known by his nom 
de guerre, Dr. Mohamed Hanif. Hanif 
had recently been captured while cross- 
ing from Pakistan. The Afghan govern. 
ment, under intense pressure from the 
alians, was ready to make a deal. But 
when the day of exchange came, one of 
the prisoners, believed to be Hanif, 
refused to be freed. Why? 

When pressed about what had hap. 
pened, the head of the NDS said one 
prisoner had “refused to go.” The truth 
was already apparent 10 those who looked 
closely: Hanif had broken under inter- 
rogation and given the NDS and NATO 


sens 


lots of information. This had been briefly 
reported in the press in January, but 
until Hanif refused to leave his cell the 
news of his confessions was largely dis- 
missed as Afghan government lies. Had 
the reported snitch Hanif been liberated 
at the Helmand River, the reunion with 
his robed and bearded brethren would 
not have been a happy one. 

By all reports the negotiations were 
chaotic. The Italians and Karzai were 
poorly coordinated. In consideration of 
frequent assassination attempts, Karzai 
lives as a prisoner in the presidential 
palace. He didn't check with the rest of 
his government or with the NDS. Every- 
thing had to be kept secret and in par 
ticular hidden from the Americans, who 


Tis edat ital ceci, es 


пуз Macar P Package 

ве. eating Ma Mone 

1958 Ау Coe b Cover The Sos Dig Colection 900 
эз ыл а ватан nam RE ора, 


adamantly oppose deals for hostages. 

Apparently the Karzai government, 
notoriously corrupt as well as incompe- 
tent and disorganized, overlooked Hanif’s 
‘cooperation. When at the last moment the 
NDS was confronted by the dilemma of 
a cooperative high-value prisoner who 
didn't want to be freed, it decided to punt. 
“1 think they said, "Oh fuck, what do we 
do now? Carry on and hope nobody 
notices, " says the Western contractor who 
works regularly with the NDS. 

The strategy had been that the five 
imprisoned Taliban would be freed and 
their identities verified. Then Mastrogi- 
acomo and Ajmal would be released. So 
the NDS—short one top Taliban infor- 


mant—went ahead with the plan, or a 
version of it. It had five other prisoners, 
In place of the missing Hanif the NDS 
offered Mansoor Ahmad Dadullah, 
Mullah Dadullah’s younger brother. 
The man who had to explain all this, 
to the Taliban at the final moment was 
Emergency's director, the very unlucky 
Ramatullah Hanefi. 

Left holding the bag, Hanefi did his 
best. Since Karzai and the Italians came 
through with most of their pr 
Taliban gave up their most valuable 
Mastrogiacomo. Perhaps this exp! 
why Mastrogiacomo spent so much 
time waiting at the river before he was 
released, to allow for last-minute nego- 
tations between Hanefi and the Taliban 


the exchange 
dullah sent to an Af 
ghan news agency 
an audio recording 
in which he ex 
plained that he had 
demanded Hanif 
but got his brother 
Mansoor Ahmad 
instead, Thus, he 
would continue to 
hold Mastrogi 

como’ interpret 


One last question. 
remains: Why did 
the Taliban kill 
Ajmal 24 hours be- 
fore their own 
deadl 
weeks aft 
trogiacomo’s re 
lease two Fi 


Afghans were kid. 
pped while 
ig aid work in 


— 


ing the deal 
and making a for 
mal complaint to 
Rome. Chastened, 
Karzai told journalists he "regrette 
the deal. Shortly thereafter Karzai held 
a press conference in which he said 
such prisoner exchanges “will never be 
repeated." The Afghan foreign minis- 
ter, Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta, told 
journalists that even if he himself were 
kidnapped, he would not want any Tal- 
iban exchanged for his liberty. The 
message was clear: no more deals. 

But other pressures were building 
behind the scenes. The double standard— 
"You are worried only for the foreigners, 
and you are not worried for Afghans, 
as Ajmal had put it—was untenable. The 
two main Afghan journalist associations 
and several prominent politicians were 165 


PLAYBOY 


mounting a campaign; supporters of 
Ajmal camped in front of the presidential 
palace, The Committee to Protect Jour- 
nalists beat the bushes, and soon faxes, 
e-mails and letters from around the world 
poured in on the Afghan government. 

Shortly after Karzai's no-deal pledge, 
the Taliban called Munir, telling him they 
would kill his brother on Monday if the 
government didn't come through. And 
because Ajmal was now a cause célebre, 
the Taliban wanted three prisoners. Des- 
perate, Ajmal's father demanded and 
received a meeting with Karzai on Satur- 
day, April 7. He recounts the meeting to 
me in his living room one late afternoon. 

Ghulam Haidar Naqshbandi had served 
with the famous mujahideen commander 
‘Ahmed Shah Masoud and had been one of 
his main urban operatives during the anti- 
Soviet jihad, That struggle cost Ghulam 
his right leg. Squinty, weathered and with 
close-cropped hair and a beard, he is an 
‘Afghan nationalist and Sufi fundamental- 
ist who runs a traditional family. 1 never 
met or even saw any of the Naqshbandi 
family's many female members. Munir or 
another young male relative would shoo 
them away before male guests entered or 
exited the inner sanctum of the mehman 
Мата, or living room. About a year ago 1 
had asked to interview Ghulam about his 
view of the current situation in Afghani- 
stan, but he declined. 

Sorry,” explained Ajmal, who had 
acted as the go-between, “My father says, 
“One spy in the family is enough.’ He told 
me, "You work with the foreigners, but 
not тег" In the wake of Ajmal's death 


Ghulam is more open to his son's foreign 
friends. Between stifled tears and under- 
stated tirades against the Italians and the 
government, he tells his story. 

“After the Taliban called I told Karzai 
about the new deadline," Ajmal' father 
says as I listen and sip green tea. “He 
had been out of the country, and when 
he came back I went to the palace. I 
told Karzai he was just a tool of the for- 
eigners. He cleared everyone out of the 
room and said, "You are right. 1 do not 
have much power.” The father's grief 
seemed to have an effect on Karzai. The 
Afghan president called the governor of 
Helmand to try to open channels to the 
Taliban, demanding that the NDS find 
out who and where the requested Tal- 
iban were. Ajmal' father left under the 
impression that the insurgents’ demands 
would be met and his son's life spared. 

But the next morning, the Taliban put 
Ajmal into a truck and drove him to meet 
a man with a knife and another with a 
video camera. When they were done they 
dumped his body in the desert. They 
simply said the government was not talk- 
ing so they killed Ajmal a day early. 

My friend Nawab Moman, the ex Taliban 
turned Tolo TV reporter, had another 
explanation. Moman had introduced Ajmal 
tothe Taliban and had fixed and accompa- 
nied Ajmal and me on the Taliban interview 
we had done a year before the Mastrogia- 
como kidnapping. He had been a Taliban 
‘commander on the Shomali plain north of 
Kabul and had worked in the Taliban Min- 
istry of Information. When the Taliban fell 
he reemerged as one of free Afghanistan's 


Awe 


“It’s not even midnight and I've already blown five 
peser wed half the band” f 


TV journalists, but he has maintained con- 
tact with the insurgents. 

1 meet with Moman several times in 
Kabul. In a quiet shaded corner of a 
hotel garden he explains what happened. 
“Pakistani intelligence called Dadullah 
and told him, "No deal. Just kill the pris- 
oner now.” Moman had heard this from 
a spokesman linked to Taliban leader 
Mullah Omar and the Taliban leader- 
ship in Quetta, Pakistan. "The Taliban 
and Pakistani intelligence saw the big 
problems this was creating for Karzai. 
He would end up looking worse if Ajmal 
was killed, It was worth more—a bigger 
victory than getting three Taliban. That's 
why they killed him." 

Ultimately, what really killed Ajmal 
was a perfect storm of political chaos that 
took the form the various interests gave 
it, The entire debacle is an example of 
what my friend the intelligence contrac- 
tor calls "the fuck-up theory of history.” It 
is the inverse of the conspiracy theory of 
history and explains much of what goes 
on in Afghanistan—a place, a war, where 
incompetence rules the day. The layers of 
error upon error have multiple causes, 
If it isnt а basic language barrier, it’s the 
short-term thinking of foreign powers, If 
it is't the factionalism of the Afghan gov- 
ernment or the profound corruption of 
all its institutions (which means nothing 
ever gets done), it's the rosy-eyed foolish- 
ness of NGOs that want radio stations for 
women before anyone in isolated valley 
А or B even knows what journalism is. 
In that regard it’s the reason Afghani- 
stan under NATO is a failure, just as it 
was under the Soviets and the British 
before them. As always, the Afghan peo- 
ple—32 million of them, the Naqshbandi 
clan among them—pay the price, stuck 
in underdevelopment, their politics ruled 
by criminal networks, religious funda- 
‘mentalism and foreign powers. 

The last time I visit the Nagshbandis 
on the outskirts of Kabul, Munir takes 
me and two other friends to see Ajmal's 
grave. We cross a wide dusty boulevard 
and walk up a low hill into a dense neigh- 
borhood, where we find a small grave- 
yard. The ground is barren and penned 
in by mud-brick homes, A pack of grimy 
litte boys flies kites nearby. Cheap green 
cloth and plastic cover his grave. At the 
head some ragged prayer flags whip in 
the wind. “One of the journalist asso- 
ciations said they would build a cement 
monument on the grave,” says Munir 
somewhat absently. “It will be in the form 
‘of a notebook and pen because he was a 
journalist.” We stand at the grave, then 
Munir kneels in prayer. I bow my head 
and think of my departed friend and of 
other friends who died young. But I don't 
feel Ajmal's presence, and the mound of 
dirt over his corpse looks strange: It isn't 
wide and short like Ajmal Naqshbandi. It 
looks too narrow, too cramped. 


In the upcomi vie I Know What Boys 
Like Anna Faris plays а Playboy Bunny, 
Shelley, who lives at the Playboy 

sion with Hef, Holly, Bridget and Kend 
until she is kicked out. Sticklers will note 
that Bunnies don't live in the Mansion, 
but we're willing to grant artistic license 


n with the help 
Hef, his girlfriends and several Play 
es, including Sara Jean Underwood, 
Hiromi Oshima and Lauren Michelle 
Hill. “The movie is an exaggeration of 
what people think the Playmates and life 


From lett: Tif 
Concert Hall in LA; 


indulges at Eatin LA. 
West Hollywood; o winning 


in the Mansion are lik 
t was hilarious to see Anna portray us. 
In addition to meeting Faris and апае) 
the girls got to log time on the set wi 
actress Monet Mazur and Arizona Cardi. 
nals QB Matt Leinart, who also appear in 
the film. “The most fun part was being 


Lauren relates, 


ith Saro, Lou 


able to work with all my Playmate friends,” 
Hiromi enthuses. Director Fred Wolf 
was rly grateful for the uni 
opportunity. “If we had been unabl 
work with Playboy,” he says, “we'd 
Һай to invent something 
azine, run by Rue Cefner." Look for the 
film in theaters later this year. 


LES BELLES DE NUIT 


Miss January 1998 Heath 
grew up in a mod- 

est Christian family in 
‘Ohio. Appear- 
ing nude in 

AYBOY was 
а shocking 
move for the ] 
21-year-old. It 
paid out divi- 
dends when 
she became 4% ( 
Playmate of - 
the Year in 
1999 and 
later booked 
gigs with St 
Pauli Girl 
and BM 
broken into TV, notably as 
a Barker's Beauty on The 
Price Is Right, 


"Sex is nothing to shy away 


and pretend. == \ 
ing it doesn't | | 
exist a) 


ın rallies at the Americon Idol: Idol Gives Back event at the Walt Disney 


hangs at the Financially Hung party at Vice in LA; 


heats up the Bench Warmer fele at Area. 
‘ot the MTV VMAs at the Palms in Vegas. 


МҮ FAVORITE PLAYMATE 


“For me # was Miss September 
1980 Li I wasn’t the 
most advanced teenager 
when it come to 
sex, but loved. 
looking at pictures of 
naked women. She 
wos the kind of girl 
who would be 
really nice o my 
parents but who 
would also be cool 
enough to help o 
dork like me lose 
his virginity. Sadly, 
we never met, and 
1 hod to wait.” 


QUESTIONS: HELENA ANTONACC! 


а: You recently published a book called keeps me looking young. 1 guess it 
Whats Your Secret? So what is it? makes me feel good, too. 
А: The book is mostly about health and @z That makes perfect sense. What 
ne about was it like to write 
your first bool 


nude and people A: Well, I just sat at 
ularly ask n computer and 
your secret?" when typed away. Each time 
they hear Im 58, I ot an idea 1 would 
clude pinup pic turn it into a section 


tures, tips and exer 

ut the most 
nportant subject is. 

healthy eating. 

О: Why did it become 

a priority for you to 

take such good c 

of yourself? 


The hard part was 
finding a literary 
gent. Finally, I read 
about iUniverse, a 
self-publishing с 
pany, and I wer 

route. It took е 
years altoget 


A: When you're a Playmate you're пом my book is available at barn 
light. I have always liked noble.com, amazon.com and my web- 
tention, and I found eating well site, helenaantonaccio.com. 


0/5 META MOMENT 


Catching everyone by surprise, Miss 
February 1990 Pamela Anderson 
wed Rick Salomon in Las Vegas this 
past October... Miss January | 


Тон Colleen Shannan con- 
eh) 
word, but ahe wa тесеу 
poled coser to home, wark 
fag the ternabler at the 
Inne pany for the NBC se- 

Miss November 


Ties Chuck. 
2001 Lindsey 
Vuolo, Miss 
July 2002 Lau- ( 
теп Anderson р 
and Miss Ос- 
tober 2001 
Stephanie 
Heinrich all 
appear in 
segments on 
Reality Rox 
„TV... Play- 
‘mates were stationed at Guitar Cen- 
ter stores across the country to sign 
new Playboy limited-edition guitars 
Miss May 2007 Shannon James cov- 
ered the 
Manhattan 
location, 
while Miss 
February 
2005 Am- 
ber Cam. 
isi, PMOY 
iara Jean 
Under- 
wood and 
Miss August 2001 Jennifer Walcott 
were stationed in ihe Dallas, Holly- 
wood and Chicago locations, respec- 
tively.... Los Angeles A-listers 
including Jim Carrey and PMOY 
1994 Jenny McCarthy attended a 
party to welcome David and Victoria 
Beckham to Los 
Angeles... Catch 
Miss January 
2001 Irina Voro- 
nina in the DVD. 
releases of Reno 
911: Miami, Ez 
Moie and Bell f 
Fry... Miss May 
1996 Shauna 
Sand appeared 
оп an episode of 
Sunset Tan and is 
auctioning some 
of her sexy 
sonal items like panty hose and 
shoes at giganticauctions.com. 


Colleen Shannon deo- 
faye NBC launch party 


Miss May 2007 Shannon 
Jomes rock out. 


Carrey and Jenny 
ot the Beckhams” 
welcome porty. 


MORE PLAYMATES 
prctonl in he буре Club" 


Adrianne Curry 
(continued from Page 61) 
called out host Tyra Banks for not giving 
fere prize se mid she mas owed ates 
the wert public wih her bisexual and 
her battle with drugs. Most recently Adri- 
fue eniad à Ab hate VOR OM Bar 
Myspace blog that Back sory Month 
shoul be abolished Her point vas tol 
Таши she chim? Our counts 
down the drain if we have to set apart time 
1 honor black people,” she says. “We're 
Al decended fim he sume or rl 
Africa. We should celebrate Black History 
Month every freakin’ day of the year!” 

At our meeting in an upscale Los 
жане КЫ. Misa estt 
Sutchy Sg Piper nk top and jean, 
and she sports that inviting grin of hers. 
Why velar she be sealing Brought up 
in cübuten Chicago, ше arci юг 
ied che would late a modelo cures 
ie alone a TY tow. Ths mond ses the 

remote of Giri Y Aarons Hots Juas 

fith Love, а documentary-style account on 
WE tv of the vodka-fueled adventures she 
and Knight shared while hosting the 2007 
Mrs. World beauty pageant in the king- 
dom ofthe Kalashriko How a giri from 
Joliet ended up on the Black Sea in front 
‘ofa bunch of mobster types who look like 
they want to kil you, 1 fave o den? the 
Highs Ruan guy dont know how to 
talk to women. They addressed only my 
husband and my manager. They wouldn't. 
sven Dok Iwan 

Getting people's attention isn't usually an. 
issue for her. In another new eye grabber, 
d кошке a жоу ati Comat 
called Nowlive.com. It allows users to host. 
their own call-in shows via a combination 
of hat rooms, ee radio broudent and. 
webcam views. Adrianne runs a couple of 
provocative programs on the site; she calls 
it "social networking on crack.” As for her 
own social network, Adrianne definitely 
ies hanging with ende -and not jet 
the 120.000 Biends on her MySpace page. 
Асылын e b lere hoa E 
her best girlfriend, model Andrea Brooks, 
Mio Adrianne Боов into the spread 
Andrea is the blonde in the pictures. “It 
was really hot for me because we've done 
а doce we wer 12 sod 
ths ust topped k all” Adrianne says -MY 
chemistry with her is out of control. Peo- 
ple in the room got all hot and bothered. 
watching us together." To answer the obvi- 
‘ous question: “Andrea's a men-only girl,” 
she says. “I was obviously interested in her 
because atest uz hot, btt never 
append: Shes the ode hat ра away T 
Nabe witha oof her gc bot mot 
ec" Our love e ona much higher ewe,” 
Brooks explains. "This doesn't represent a 
pia sleepover back ia Jet 

Берк ену leve new look 
for Adrianne. “I've always wanted bigger 
Barbs and nal got them she сад 
Ding toa bacon шыяр My doc 
tor was really kind because he made them. 


so versatile. I can go out and make them 
look all sophisticated in a dress, or сап 
wear a big padded push-up bra like I'm 
sporting DDs. Thanks, Doc!” The road to 
boobville is just one of the new adventures 
this season on My Fair Brady, but mostly 
it's the same old story: “Chris and 1 fight 
and fight and fight, and then we make 
up.” she says. The secret to surviving the 
first year of marriage? Twice-a-weck ses- 
sions with a couples counselor. "Mostly it's 
about learning to communicate, because 
my husband's from another generation,” 
she says. “I'll say something people my 
әде won't blink at and he'll get offended, 
Like I'I call my close gay friends fags and 
Chris will go crazy on me. He doesn't get 
that it's just talk. Now we try to laugh at 
how different we are.” 

Speaking of laughs, Adrianne and 
Knight thought it was hilarious when 
Tumors started swirling last fall about 


the actresses who played Jan and Marcia 
Brady having a lesbian fling back in the 
Brady Bunch days. “Where do people get 
their sources? Sam the butcher?” Adri- 
anne says, laughing. “ГИ put my money 
‘on my husband screwing Jan. Don't get me 
wrong. I wish Jan and Marcia were doing 
it, because that would be superhot, but 1 
think we're all fucking dreaming here.” 
There's that sly smile again. Adrianne 
knows she’s being provocative. She can't 
help herself. As she puts it, “I'm offensive, 
but at least I know my heart. So many 
people out there try to be politically cor- 
rect, but then they get behind closed doors 
and say what they really feel. I think that's 
retarded. I've been through too much shit 
not to say exactly what 1 think. I want to 
enjoy this life, Every moment. I want to 
die knowing I have no apologies for being 
‘exactly who God wanted me to be.” 


PLAYBOY 


PRIORAT 


(continued from page 84) 
them originally created by the Romans, if 
not the Greeks before them, are composed 
almost entirely of layered gray slate known 
locally as lieorella, most of what we think of 
as dirt—the organic stuff—having long 
since been blown or washed away. Virtually 
nothing but grapes can grow here, and they, 
аз one grower said, "are made to suffer.” 
Rainfall averages about 24 inches a year, 
which is enough, but the summers are dry 
and hot (though often cool at night), and 
Slate's good drainage means that vines have 
to reach deep to find the pooled water, their 
roots lile tendrils meanwhile nibbling at 
the slate all the way down, picking up those 
trace elements that have made these wines 
зо famous. Which in turn means that old 
vines with deeper roots have the edge here, 
and these are the plantings, mostly aban- 
doned over the years because of low pro- 
duction, that the Big Five and their 
bandwagon successors have been snapping 
up and reviving, Grenache typically makes a 
soft, fruity wine often lacking color, tannin 
and acid. Саптап, though meatier, is 
responsible for some of the worst wines on 
the market, But both varietals seem to 
achieve real stature when grown on the 
very old low-yiekling vines planted long ago 


in these mountainous slate soils of Priorat, 
their marriage in the vats bringing on the 
final epiphany that has so enriched their 
matchmakers and delighted the wedding 
guests. In all the wines we tasted, if not 


ted intensity of old-vine 


grapes, that distinguished them. 


changed too, and that’s what makes these. 
wines different from the “Priorato” of old, 
and also more expensive to produce. These 
people are not local farmers fermenting 
age-stained caskfuls of squashed grape juice 
in the family manner, they are university- 
trained oenologists using modern equip- 
ment and scientific methods, and though i 

may be less fun drinking with them, they 
are creating quality site-specific sins de terres 
as they say in these hills, unlike any grown 
elsewhere in the world. They sometimes 
make judicious use of recently planted “for- 
ign’ grapes like syrah, merlot and cabernet 
sauvignon for added structure and aging 
potential, cach with their own recipes, and 
they each have their own individual philos- 
ophies about fermentation and barrel-aging 
time, etc, but they ай focus on low-yield old 
vines of native varietals (both the grenache 
and carignan, now common everywhere, 
originated in Spain), letting the grapes 


"I think Ms. Milford could use a break.” 


тіреп to full maturity and then laboriously 
hhand-selecting them at the further expense 
of quantity. Many also adhere to organic 
methods, eschewing chemical fertilizers, 
herbicides and pesticides, their vineyards 
delightfully alive then with poppies and 
asters and other wildflowers, insects and 
small creatures, but also requiring more 
personal attention. And the more саге they 
take, of course, the higher the production 
costs probably at leat double that, per bot- 
tle, of, say, Bordeaux, Burgundy or Napa, 
Piedmont or the Rhône, and vastly more 
than lowland high-yield plonk. Quality Pri- 
orat, whether or not it’s the equal of other 
prestige wines, will always be, necessarily, 
relatively expensive. 

‘And is it the equal? Well, these wines are 
truly delicous and strikingly distinctive, but 
their impact on the palate, while intense, 
tends so far to be up-front and fairly short- 
lived, е ly mouth-filling but lacking 
bback-of-the-throat complexity and a long 
finish. Which may in the future mean more 
syrah and cab in the mix when those new 
plantings grow longer beards, Older wines 
from the 1990s tasted on other occasions 
seem not to have matured into something 
new but merely to have decorousy declined, 
though I'd be pleased to be offered a sip 
of an exception, and am well aware that 
these winemakers, committed to craft and 
Jealous of their fame, are working on this 
On the other hand, middle- and lower- 
priced Priorats uniformly outclass their 
‘equivalents in Bordeaux or Burgundy—or 
Rioja, for that matter—which are often 
these days massively disappointing, Wines 
made from grapes grown in this terroir, if 
carefully made, are from first flowering 
something special and, if affordable, are 
virtually guaranteed to gratify. As demand 
increases and more new vines are planted 
‘on irrigated terraces, the quality difference 
between the original blockbuster wines and 
lesser newcomers will increase, but for now 
the staggering cost of the big-name botlings 
will probably not seem justifiable to any but 
the very rich, willing and able ike emperors 
of old to т fortunes on nuance. For 
the rest of us: We sample what we find on 
the shelvesat the lower price ranges a bottle 
at a time and hope for big surprises, grab- 
bing a bunch of it when we find one. 

‘On our final night, while pontificating 
about all this in the little Cal Llop hotel 


bar in company with others, includ- 
ing Cristina and Waldo and Angel and 
Fredi and his girls (more poetry), Waldo 


tells me that, through his own doctor in 
Masroig, the only one in Mastoig, he has 
earned that the painter Jaume Sabaté has 
died ( Yes, eccentric fellow, said he never 
needed doctors, and I buried him..."), 
but his niece Carmen, whom we recall as 
an effervescent teenager with a youthful 
artistic talent of her own, is still in town, 
and she remembers well our visit of 40 
years ago and would love to see us again. 

So, the following day, before dropping 
down out of the mountains, we meet up 
with Waldo at the doctor's Masroig office 


during his lunch break and walk over to 
the niece's house, discovering en route that 
the doctor went to med school with the son. 
of my wife's cousin, and so there are more 
stories to be traded before the doctor leaves 
us in the niece's hands. As it happens, we 
cannot see the room with chair and mirror 
(anyway, Carmen says, it is all different 
now) because the deceased painter's 
brother, alive still but in his late 80s and 
quite dotty is having his siesta and it would 
be a major mistake to disturb it, but we all 
enjoy a beer at her kitchen table, sur- 
rounded by her own occasional artworks 
on the walls, and she fills us in on the years 
that have passed and gives an account of 
her uncle's final years, and those of others 
whom we met and are gone as well. She 
tells us that once, some years ago, the pres- 
ident ofthe United States came here to her 
house in Masroig and she showed him my 
book and he said that, yes, Bob Coover (he 
called me Bob!) is ап important American 
writer, She was very impressed. The pres- 
ident's name, she says, was Peter. 

Her husband, Felip, turns up, a wine- 
maker himself with the Masroig coopera- 
tive, and over a glass of his nephew's own 
unlabeled bottling, the last of our mountain 

we talk about the downside of the. 
fasion of the big-time wine entrepre- 
neurs, how it may be improving the wine 
but, as the lands are bought up by strang- 
ers and the wine transformed into a high- 
end product for the international market, 
itis also bringing an end to the Priorat of 
old and is impoverishing as many as it is 
enriching, Among the wineries we have 
Visited is the cooperative of Capçanes (best 
known for its special sideline of kosher 
wines), whose members decided a decade 
or so ago to band together and hang on to 
their lands and winery rather than sell out 
to the intruders, To survive, they had to 
expand and modernize, and that costa lot 
of money in the form of a steep bank loan, 
‘meaning they all had to mortgage their 
property, houses, cars, whatever they had, 
a great risk, and only three months ago was 
that loan at last paid off, so we found them 
in a celebrative mood, doing well, and able 
stil to sell many oftheir authentic if modest 
Priorat wines at supermarket prices. Felip 
says yes, they are to be congratulated and 
they serve as a model for others, but one 
not easy to follow, for they went through 
some very painful times and there were 
years of bitter disputes and deep unhealable 
vii, provoked by the fear of losing every- 
thing. Few others will go that hard route. 
“The corporate wine giants are headed this 
way, and the landgrab is on. Most will either 
sell up or become small producers for the 
big wineries. But, he shrugs, what can you 
do, life moves on. The only thing that never 
changes, we all agree, is change itself, and 
‘we lft a glass to that—or maybe, because all 
change, even as something new is born, isa 
kind of death, to be mocked maybe but not 
tobe cheered, just to the lifting of glasses. 


WHERE 
پک‎ 


HOW TO BUY 


Mene ia lat of retailers and 
mcr ou can contact 
eleme m vi o, 
[^ merchandise. I 

ihe apparel und cqui 
Ex 


shown em. T 


77.82.84 and 174-173, check 
{he listings Below to find the 


‘Goa ies fod, drug 


and mass-market retailers 


roscado com, 
‘Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, ams, skinn 
таяп nna, saa at Sak Pih Ave and 
‘Nordstrom. Hod, mugoninecom. 

A puer QE PRIORAT, 

ТЕШЕМ m ec 
(BE сот Clo Mogador, 


um 
nique eisex into La Conrad 
princi Ма gman murine com. 


FOUR 55 


inborn ein, Gat, DER) 
ET Oda, an ca 
ES rca, eme certo. M. 


aile liquor wore. 


m 


T-Shirt, Paint- 
brush, etc., 
Not Pictured 
How does TRISHA 
LURIE do it? She 
Paints, plays punk 
Tock and designs her 
Lurie Lurie T-shirts yet 
sil makes the me to 
ok this gest naked. 


@ 2; 
1606546 


Dr. Filigree 
You jus saw her in this space in November, but here's ШИМЕ 
agua, wearing tic mor был a tne and an incl 


ONDRADE 
latex doodle. This could become a habit. A 


Begg on Bended Knee 
“Speed-skating pictures are always the 
sáme:skale skates and айный," says 

word inline champion NICOLE BEGG 

of New Zealand. 4 just made it a little 

Шо ис by removine he al 

the equation.” No doubt Begg ing to 

172. be dilereni wl win her sport more ne 


Get Ahold of Yourselves 
Here's a question every guy has pondered: How would it feel to be a woma 
you feel different about relationships and sext Would y 
and Kate Spade handbags? Probably not—you'd be 


day? Would 
feel pangs of lust for Jimmy Choo shoes. 

sts. As JODIE 
r own Charmin, 


She Is the 


we don't believe in 
labels. Whatever's in 
there, t's all god. 


That's Right, We Said It 
What's the use of risqué couture 
when the models wearingit are bony 
waiís only gay designers find sexy? 
Boy George was having none of that 
with his B-Rude collection—if you're 
‘gonna flash a boob, flash a boob. 


otpourri 


PALBOT 9000 


According to futurists from the 20th century, 
by this point in the 21st, robots should be either 
serving us dinner or hunting us for sport. 
Somehow no one anticipated the urbane robot. 
Programmed with hundreds of actions, words 
and phrases and fitted with fully articulated joints, 
the i-Sobot ($300, isobotrobot.com) can jam on 
air guitar, throw martial arts moves and latter 
you with compliments. In short, he’s more fun 
to be around than a lot of your friends. 


GET THE SKINNY 


Never underestimate the power of thin. The 
Х-5880 ($250, casio.com), Casio's latest pocket 
\t-and-shoot camera, packs a powerful eight 
rapixel snapper into an impossibly slim ch 
that slips easily into a shirt pocket. Numerous 
presets let you instantly adjust to shooting 
conditions, and effortless video recording 
(including a new You Tube mode) means the 
best moments of your New Year's Eve party will 
be ready for broadcast the minute they happen. 


т 


А SLIPPERY SLOPE 


Like another Native 
American сопуеу- 
ance, the canoe, the 
toboggan is simple, 
beautiful and damn 
near perfect. Once 
used to cart supplies. 
across snowy 
meadows, it is more 
associated today 
with blasting down 
white slopes with 
whoever is mad 
enough to accon 
pany you. Camden 
Toboggan Company 
of Maine hand- 
crafts authentic 
toboggans out of 
native ash in six-, 
eight- and 10-foot 
sizes (from $250, 
camdentobogganco 
com). And when 
you're not sledding 
they add a rustic 
touch to the walls of 
your country cal 


NO GIFT WRAP REQUIRED 


I's holiday tradition: When buying a gif for a male friend, you 
shop at the last minute. In a liquor store. Apart from а car, motorcyde 
or plasma TV, nothing beats good whiskey anyway. New to stores 
this winter: Cask No. 16 from Canada's most acclaimed distillery, 
Grown Royal, is well worth the $100 price tag. It's Crown as you 
know and love it but finished in rare cognac barrels from France. 
A nutty opening leads to spicy fruit and a long butterscotch finish. 
Тһе Balvenie's new SherryOak 17-year-okl single malt ($90) is like all 
of this Scottish ditilery s output—complex, perfectly balanced and 
great for one dram or 10. Finished in Spanish sherry barrels, the. 
liquid offers hints of spiced apple and pear, almond and orange peel. 


THE IN SOUND FROM WAY OUT 


One reason many computer speakers 
sound bad is that they usually sit on 
desks whose hard surfaces bounce sound 
around and create interference. THX 
and Razer teamed to address this with 
their Razer Mako speaker system ($400, 
razerzone.com), which uses downward- 
g speakers to turn the entire desk 
ice into a resonating board that 
es rich, enveloping sound. 


e of passage: A man picks up the magazine, 
| turns it 90 degrees and falls in love. Playboy: 
The Complete Centerfolds ($500, playboystore.com) collects more than 50 
years of this magic. Every Centerfold is here, with text by Rober 
Coover (on the 1950s), Paul Theroux (19609, Robert Stone (19709), 
McInerney (1980s), Daphne Merkin (19909) and Maureen Gibbon 
(20009). The book weighs 32 pounds and is the size of a guitar case, 
We'll never forget the first time we laid eyes on Miss September 1967 
Angela Dorian. Or Bebe Buell in November 1974. Or Colleen Shannon 
the 50th Anniversary issue. They re all here, beauties for the ages. 


ODOR EATER 
Shrewd move, cooking for her, But seduc 
tion is a hard sell when your hands smell 
like garlic and fish guts. Soap doesn't 
always get rid of strong odors, plus it can 
chap your skin (bark hands—now that 
sexy). The answer: Orka Deos steel soap 
(810, amazon.com) neutralizes the stink 
through a process called oxidoreduction 
Just run under water and rub. Then rub. 


TOUGHER THAN LEATHER 


Remember when a man could fix his own dislocated shoulder while 
guzzling a beer between plays? Those were the days. Revive a bygone 

a with Orviss hand-sewn replicas, made to the exact specs of old 
time sports collectibles (from $40, orvis.com). Bonus: Orvis donates 
five percent ofits annual profits to environmental preservation efforts, 
so you can keep a dean conscience while playing with your ball. 


175 


ШиИйехі Month 


SEX IN AMERICA—READ THE RESULTS OF A FASCINATING NEW 
POLL THAT DISSECTS SEXUAL ATTITUDES ACROSS POLITICAL 
LUNES, WHICH PARTY IS THE MOST SEXUALLY ADVENTUROUS? 
WHICH CANDIDATE MOST DESERVES THE NICKNAME "TIGER"? 
WHICH STATES, RED OR BLUE, ARE THE UNIONS HOTTEST? 


‘THE WOMEN OF HOOTERS 2008—AFTER ALL THESE YEARS 
ОР MENTALLY UNDRESSING THE HOOTERS GIRLS OVER MOZ- 
ZARELLA STICKS, PLAYBOY GETS THE SAUCIEST ONES TO SUP 
‘OUT OF THOSE TRADEMARK SHORT SHORTS. CHECK, PLEASE! 


RACHEL BILSON—SHE PINES FOR THE PARTS OFFERED TO. 
GIRLS NAMED SCARLETT AND NATALIE. WILL HER FIRST FILM 
PROJECT SINCE THE О.С. NOW TURN HER INTO A BONA FIDE 
MOVIE STAR? 200 BY STEPHEN REBELLO 


THE FORCE OF THE FUTURE—LAPO CHIEF BILL BRATTON IS 
A NO-NONSENSE REFORMER, BUT WHEN JOE DOMANICK HITS 
BRATTON'S HOME TURF, HE DISCOVERS AMERICA'S TOP COP 
RECOVERING FROM THE TOUGHEST INCIDENT OF HIS CAREER. 


MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY-- THE MAVERICK TEXAN IS AMONG. 
THE BESTLIKED AND MOST BANKABLE STARS IN THE BUSI- 
NESS. IN THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW MCCONAUGHEY EXPLAINS 
WHY, NOW MORE THAN EVER, HE JUST HAS TO KEEP LIVIN", 
MAN: LN. BY MICHAEL FLEMING 


PEACE THROUGH POLE DANCING WRITER AND COME- 
DIAN PATTON OSWALT ADVANCES THE REVOLUTIONARY 
THEORY THAT THE SUREST PATH TO MARITAL HARMONY LIES 
IN HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH A STRIPPER. 


‘THE SEXIEST COMMERCIALS OF ALL TIME—TO CELEBRATE 
THE BEST PART OF THE SUPER BOWL—THE COMMERCIALS — 
HERE ARE THE FRISKIEST 15-SECOND BLOCKS IN TELEVI- 
SION HISTORY, FROM BROOKE AND HER CALVINS TO PARIS 
АМО HER BURGER. 


ОР THE YEAR--PLAYBOY IDENTIFIES THE FASH- 
ION VISIONARY EVERYONE WILL FOLLOW IN 2008. 


HOLY MAN—WHAT KEEPS MOTIVATING A PERPETUALLY DOWN: 
AND-OUT BOXING TRAINER? THE PROMISE THAT SOMEWHERE 
THERE IS AN UNFORMED CHAMP WHO CAN LEAD HIM TO THE 
TITLE. A POSTHUMOUS MASTERPIECE FROM FX. TOOLE, THE 
TRAINER AND WRITER BEHIND MILLION DOLLAR BABY. 


CIGARS- THAT'S A WRAP: WE SELECT THE BEST STOGIES 
AND PUFFING ACCESSORIES THIS SIDE OF HAVANA. 


PLUS: MISS FEBRUARY MICHELLE MCLAUGHLIN WARMS 
YOUR WINTER, AND SEXY ATTORNEY CORRI FETMAN MAKES 
A COMPELLING CASE FOR DIVORCE. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), January 2008, volume 53, number 1. Published monthly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 680 
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Ilinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Ilinois and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Cana- 
dian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for 12 issues, Postmaster: Send address change to 


176 Playboy, PO. Box 2007, Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. For subscription related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail circ@ny-playboy.com. 


That special woman hos given you her heart. This Valentine's Day, 
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Presenting... The Key to My Heart Pendant, 


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A superb value; 
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ж Фо, Mick 


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“FOR TOO LONG OUR Ci 
00D, DO IT 


AMERICAN T 
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DOING 
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ж ж EVERYONE CAN DO SOMETHING. ж ж 


: Unlock 
[ her love with.. 
T 
83:5 220 
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8 < 
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> 
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ж ж EVERYONE CAN DO SOMETHING. ж ж 


огеп 


OSES 
DIAMOND 
PIN 


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BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


А unique twist оп the Valentine's Day gift all women love... 


оге 
OSOS 
DIAMOND PIN 


There's nothing like receiving o dozen long-stemmed roses. 
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you can give her roses that will lost forever! Presenting... A Dozen. 
Ross Diamond Pin, a cleverly designed work of ort featuring red 
enameled, long-stemmed roses and o genuine diamond! 


The elegant long stems ore foshioned in rich 24kt gold-plated 
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Nome 5 


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ң E 

А ope PAT 2) 
WHISKEY BLE = 

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ut 
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5 ESOS pes 2552 peor 


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al REFINED, OR REDEFINED? 


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WOODFORD Reserve = d 


DisTILLER'S SELECT 


a 


HANDCRAFTED IN SMALL BATCHES, AS ARRIVED: 


WOODFORD RESERVE Boumon" 
— U U 2” 


Enjoy your bourbon responsibly. 


Woodford Reserve Distiller’ Selec Kencucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45.2% АК. by Vol. The Woodford Reserve Distillery. Маайа, КҮ ©2007,