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he first 14 drafts of this introduction 
to our spectacular June issue were 
rejected by Hef (a man who has lit- 
tle experience with rejection) because they 
were allegedly no good. But we spit out the 
hemlock after reading the kiss-offs to far 
more talented auteurs collected by 
in Rejected, from his latest book, 
Other People's Rejection Letters (Clarkson 
Potter). To ease the pain, we follow with 
Playmate of the Year 
Both her stunning April 2009 pictorial 
(she also appeared on the cover, dodging 
Seth Rogen's attempt to lift her skirt with 
a fan) and this month's all-new images 
were crafted by our man 
From there we catch up with 
the independent thinker who dreamed up 
the film Pink Flamingos. In Baltimore 
Heroes—our preview of his new book, Role 
Models—Waters writes fondly of the drag 
queens, barflies and strippers of his youth. 
You won't find many more fascinating char- 
acters than Pierre Bernard, the 
first American yogi and subject of 
The Great Oom and His Mysterious 
Tantrik Love Cult. a 
former ۶۱۸۷۵۵۷ editor and author of 
the new book The Great Oom, tells 
the story of a rapid rise to glory 
that was interrupted only briefly 
by sex scandals and tales of three- 
somes. The fact that this occurred 
a century ago makes the tale all 
the more compelling. In The Late 
Shaft another friend and regular, 
takes us behind the 
scenes of NBC's June-to-January 
romance with Conan O'Brien to 
reveal what actually happened 
during the Tonight Show blowup. 
You'll be surprised and not surprised at the 
same time. The same can be said about 
our 20Q with comedian F 
who speaks candidly about his 11 arrests, 
his past sex and heroin addictions and the 
infamous incident when he stuck a Bar- 
bie up his butt. Being flamboyantly funny 
and engaged to Katy Perry has bright- 
ened his point of view, we're sure. You'll 
either hurl this issue at the wall or join the 
Tea Party after reading our aggravating/ 
brilliant Playboy Interview with 
the talk-show host whose daily 
radio show has an estimated 10 million 
listeners. There's no argument about his 
ability to engage and provoke. Remember, 
don't shoot the messenger (that would be 
us). Finally, in The Sexual Life of Savages, 
new fiction from 1, 2 
war photographer fresh from Iraq takes a 
plum assignment in Papua New Guinea and 
soon finds himself caught in a love triangle 
that proves deadlier than combat. You'll see 
why the talented Gillison, like Hef, has little 
experience with rejection. 


AM PLAYBILL 


Bill Shapiro 


Stephen Wayda 


Robert Love JE. 


Michael Savage Samantha Gillison Russell Brand 


“е реа” 
2B 3 +. NT N 


French-made vodka. 


PinnacleVodka.com 620 och, PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. 


VOL. 57, NO. 5-JUNE 2010 


96 
THE LATE 
SHAFT 


The Conan O'Brien vs. Jay Leno talk show war was the biggest screwup in TV his- 
tory. Behind the scenes it was even messier. reveals what went on 
among all the combatants, including David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel. 


A 
am 

HO 
WORACZYI š 


THE GREAT OOM 
Yoga wasn't always the trendy, enlight- 
ened lifestyle we know today. 
recounts the sex scandals that 
haunted Pierre Bernard when he intro- 
duced Eastern philosophy to the U.S. 
OLD SCHOOL 
's refresher course on the 
classics—cocktails that fueled heroes of 
yore, from Churchill to Dino. 
REJECTED 
collects missives from peo- 
ple who overlooked genius. See Dear 
John letters sent to Gertrude Stein, Andy 
Warhol and Jimi Hendrix. 
BALTIMORE HEROES 
The city fathers won't erect monuments 
to the people who truly made it Charm 
City, so does it for them. Visit 
with the real characters in his dreamland 


MICHAEL SAVAGE 
If you thought our John Mayer interview 
was controversial, wait till you devour 
"5 conversation with the 
outspoken talk radio host. 


RUSSELL BRAND 
This Brit's got no stiff upper lip.He chats 
with about prostitutes, 
rehab and his girl, Katy Perry. 


THE SEXUAL LIFE OF SAVAGES 


A war photographer thought he had 
seen the worst of humankind. Then he 
visited a prison in Papua New Guinea. 
By 


Hope. It was magical for Barack Obama, 
and it's magical for us when it comes to our 
Playmate of the Year. Hope Dworaczyk landed 
the title and her second rLAvaov cover (pho- 
tographed by Stephen Wayda) since April of 
last year. We and our Rabbit think she's a lock 
to be the biggest sex symbol of 2010. 


11 


deserve. Claim your MAZDA 


Zoom-Zoom. Forever. 
MazdaUSA.com 


14 


JULIANA 
Check out Brazilian model Juliana 
Goes’s world cups. 


REARVIEW 
After looking through images from 
photographers across the globe, we 
realized we were sitting on a gold 
mine. No longer. 

PLAYMATE: KATIE 
VERNOLA 
We wish they all could be California 
girls like Katie. 

PMOY: HOPE 

DWORACZYK 
The voluptuous Hope is back. See our 
first-ever 3-D Centerfold on page 139! 


THE\SPOR 
ING LIFE 


Taking a cue from the classic American 
story The Great Gatsby and the sports 
of its time—motoring, tennis and golf— 
we are dressing to the "205. 


VOL. 57, NO. 5-JUNE 2010 


76 


PLAYMATE 


KATIE VERNOLA 


P. 


THE WORLD OF PLAYBOY 
Kendra Wilkinson and Hank Baskett bring Little 
Hank to meet Hef; Bill Cosby adds some humor 
when announcing the Playboy Jazz Festival lineup; 
The Hurt Locker, inspired by Mark Boal's PLAYBOY 
story, cleans up at the Oscars. 

HANGIN’ WITH HEF 
Ah, life at the Mansion: a masquerade, a screening 
of a documentary about Hef and a Golden Globes 
(this time don't think Painted Ladies) party. 

PLAYMATE NEWS 

Anna Nicole Smith's life is being turned into an 
opera; Playmates endorse full-bodied wines; Lind- 
sey Vuolo models for Badcock Apparel. 


PLAYBILL 

DEAR PLAYBOY 
AFTER HOURS 
REVIEWS 
MANTRACK 
PLAYBOY ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES 
GRAPEVINE 


HOW MUCH WILL 
YOU PAY? 
You may not know, but marketers 
surely do. They've enlisted price con- 
sultants to determine to the penny ($1 
or 99 cents, anyone?) what you're will- 
ing to spend. 
tells us everybody has a price. 


PLAYBOY.COM 


More sexy shots and hot videos of our 
PMOY—our one and only Hope. 

It's sort of 
like a hall of fame for our best. 

Just as the 
government likes to take the census 
every 1O years, we like to take the sex- 
ual temperature of the country. Log in 
and be counted. 

The San Fer- 
nando Valley either ruins classic television 
or enhances it, depending on whether 
you had a thing for George Costanza. 


Facebook.com/ 
Playboy and @Playboy on Twitter. 


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 680 NORTH LAKE SHORE 
DRIVE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611. PLAYBOY ASSUMES NO 
RESPONSIBILITY TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR 
GRAPHIC OR OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN LETTERS AND 
UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC MATERIAL WILL BE. 
TREATED AS UNCONDITIONALLY ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICA. 
TION AND COPYRIGHT PURPOSES, AND MATERIAL WILL BE 
SUBJECT TO PLAYBOY'S UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND. 
TO COMMENT EDITORIALLY. CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 0 2010 
BY PLAYBOY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE, 
AND RABBIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REG. 
ISTERED U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE. NO PART OF THIS BOOK 
MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR 
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELECTRONIC, MECHANI- 
CAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR RECORDING MEANS OR OTHERWISE. 
WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. 
ANY SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE 
FICTION AND SEMIFICTION IN THIS MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL 
PEOPLE AND PLACES IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CRED. 
ITS SEE PAGE 134. DANBURY MINT AND DIRECTV ONSERT 
IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED COPIES. AXE 
TWIST INSERT BETWEEN PAGES 32-33 AND SELECT COM 
FORT SLEEP BRC BETWEEN PAGES 118-119, IN DOMESTIC 
SUBSCRIPTION COPIES. RED STAR WORLDWEAR BETWEEN 
PAGES 122-123, IN DOMESTIC NEWSSTAND AND SUBSCRIP- 
TION COPIES. НВО TRUE BLOOD INSERT BETWEEN PAGES 
138-139, IN ALL COPIES. CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE 
TÍTULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993, Y CERTIFI 
CADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO NO. 5108 DE FECHA 29 DE 
JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS POR LA COMISION CALIFICADORA 
DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE 
DE LA SECRETARIA DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO, RESERVA 
DE DERECHOS 04-2000-071710332800-102. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


Jean Dani ЭШ 
۳ A | 


۵ 


LIGHTERS AS CLASSIC 
AS THE LINE 
“1 READ THE ARTICLES.” 


ZIPPO 


For the complete line of Zippo 
Playboy lighters, visit Zippo.com 


© 2010 Playboy. PLAYBOY and iconic Rabbit Head 
PLAYBOYY Design ara marts o Py and se under ae 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


JIMMY JELLINEK 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
ROB WILSON art director 
GARY COLE, MATT DOYLE photography directors 
A.J. BAIME, LEOPOLD FROEHLICH executive editors 
AMY GRACE LOYD executive literary editor 
STEVE GARBARINO writer at large 


EDITORIAL 
TIM MC CORMICK editorial manager FEATURES: CHIP ROWE senior editor FASHION: JENNIFER RYAN JONES 
editor STAFF: ROCKY RAKOVIC associate editor; ARANYA TOMSETH assistant editor; 
s editorial assistant 


CHERIE BRADLEY senior assistant; GILBERT МАС 


CARTOONS: AMANDA WARREN editorial coordinator COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; 
BRADLEY LINCOLN, SANHITA SINHAROY copy editors RESEARCH: BRIAN COOK, LING MA, 
ма. OSTROWSKI research editors CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL, KEVIN BUCKLEY, 
SIMON COOPER, ROBERT B. DE SALVO, GRETCHEN EDGREN, KEN GROSS, DAVID HOCHMAN, WARREN KALBACKER, 
ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), JONATHAN LITTMAN, SPENCER MORGAN, JOE MORGENSTERN 


CHRISTIAN PARENTI, JAMES R. PETERSEN, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, JAMES ROSEN, DAVID SHEFF, 


DAVID STEVENS, ROB TANNENBAUM, ALICE К. TURNER 


CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO editor at large 


ART 
SCOTT ANDERSON, BRUCE HANSEN senior art directors; CODY TILSON associate art director; 
CRISTELA в тзсному digital designer; BILL VAN WERDEN photo researcher; 
PAUL CHAN senior art assistant; STEFANI COLE senior art administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
STEPHANIE MORRIS west coast editor; JIM LARSON managing editor; PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCES senior editor, 
entertainment; KEVIN KUSTER senior editor, playboy.com; KRYSTLE JOHNSON, RENAY LARSON 
BARBARA LEIGH assistant editors; a FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; 
GEORGE GEORGIOU staff photographer; JAMES IMBROGNO, RICHARD IZUI, MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, 
GEN NISHINO, JARMO POHJANIEMI, DAVID RAMS contributing photographers; BONNIE JEAN KENNY manager, 
photo archives; KEVIN CRAIG manager, imaging lab; MARIA HAGEN stylist 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 
THERESA M. HENNESSEY vice president; ROB HILBURGER vice president, media relations 


PRODUCTION 
JODY J. JURGETO production director; DEBBIE TILLOU associate manager; 
CHAR KROWCZYK, BARB TEKIELA assistant managers; BILL BENWAY, 
RICH CRUBAUGH, CHERYL TJARDES, SIMMIE WILLIAMS prepress 


CIRCULATION 
SHANTHI SREENIVASAN single-copy director 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
MARCIA TERRONES rights & permissions director 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING 
DAVID WALKER editorial director; MARKUS GRINDEL marketing manager 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
SCOTT FLANDERS chief executive officer 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: AMERICAN MEDIA INC. 

DAVID PECKER chairman and chief executive officer; KEVIN HYsoN chief marketing officer; 
МАКС RICHARDS group publisher; JOHN LUMPKIN vice president, publisher; HELEN BIANGULLI executive 
director, direct-response advertising; MARIE FIRNENO advertising operations director NEW YORK: BRIAN 
HOAR spirits, gaming and entertainment manager; DAVID LEVENSON consumer products manager; PAUL 
зоитн integrated sales director; ANTOINETTE FORTE national sports nutrition director; KENJI ТКОУЕК ad- 
vertising coordinator. JULIA LIGHT vice president, marketing; NEAL LYNCH senior marketing manager; 
CARYN HAMMER marketing manager; ANDREW GARBARINO merchandising manager; JOHN KITSES art direc- 
tor; CHARLES ROMANO promotions coordinator CHICAGO: SCOTT 1155 midwest director; TIFFANY SPARKS 
ABBOTT midwest manager DETROIT: JEFF VOGEL national automotive director LOS ANGELES: 
TAMI PRINS SIMON northwest director; LEXI BUDGE west coast account manager. 


TV'S MOST F>CKED UP SERIES... 


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HANK IV GOES TO HOLLYWOOD 

After the football season wrapped up, Hank Baskett and Kendra 
Wilkinson returned to California with their little bundle of joy, Hank 
Baskett IV. Little Hank met Hef, who took him on a tour of the Man- 
Sion. Bridget Marquardt threw a party for the Basketts so they 
could reconnect with West Coast friends such as rapper Too Short. 
To make them feel at home, it was a Hollywood party. Crystal Har- 
ris and Anna Berglund sported shades, and Hef topped it off with 
a cap from famous L.A. hot dog purveyor Pink's. 


PLAYBOY STORY TURNED OSCAR GOLD 
In 2005 we sent Contributing Editor Mark Boal to Iraq to 
write The Man in the Bomb Suit. He and director Kath- 
ryn Bigelow took that ۴۸۲۵0۷ story, spun it into The Hurt 
Locker and won six Academy Awards, including best 
original screenplay, best director and best picture. 


TRUMPETING THE PLAYBOY JAZZ FESTIVAL 

MC Bill Cosby announced the lineup of the annual Playboy Jazz Festival that 
gets into full swing with cool acts like the Manhattan Transfer and George 
Benson June 12 at the Hollywood Bowl. “It’s a party with the greatest ambi- 
ence and sound,” Hef said. “Given the downturn in the economy and in the 


HANGI 


, 


Life is a party for Hugh Hefner: hosting masquer- 
ades with beautiful women, welcoming world-class 
athletes and having great friends over to watch 
movie awards and a documentary based on his life. 
No wonder the Los Angeles Times placed the Mansion 
first on its list of “L.A.’s most desirable addresses." (1) 
Hef with Crystal Harris and other PMW favorites at 
the Kandyland Masquerade. (2) Hefner with Painted 
Ladies. (3) From golden girls to a Golden Globes 
party, Hef with Steve Bing. (4) Hef with Miss August 
2004 Pilar Lastra and рг лувоү Germany's Red Bull 
Air Race team Kelly Brow and Matthias Dolderer. 
(5) Director Brigitte Berman and Bill Maher at a 
Mansion screening of Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activ- 
ist and Rebel. (6) Hef and PLAYBOY cover girl Ashley 
Dupré. (7) Mary O'Connor with Playmates Crystal 
Harris and Kimberly Phillips. (8) PMOY 1976 Lil- 
lian Müller and her daughter Alice visit. (9) Lorenzo 
Lamas and fiancée Shawna at PMW for the Acad- 
emy Awards party. (10) PMOY 1979 Monique St. 
Pierre would like to thank the Academy. (11) Actor 
Franco Nero with Miss December 1958 Joyce Niz- 
zari. (12) Who needs an Oscar when Hef 

and Crystal have a Charlie? 


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50TH ANNIVERSARY 


WHERE WILL YOU BE FOR THE SEXIEST: PARTY OF THE YEAR? 


A 50 parties. 50 cities. One night. Worldwide 
www.playboyclub50.com 
PALMS. 


www.pälms.com Kick-off party at the Playboy Club Las Vegas 
June 10th, 2010 


THE GREAT ESCAPE 

I hope Paul Theroux hasn't damp- 
ened PLAYBOY readers’ enthusiasm for 
striking out in pursuit of their dreams 
(The Other Side of the Dream, April). I've 
met and written about two dozen indi- 
viduals and families who have restarted 
their lives. Mark Lockley walked away 
from his mortgage and his roofing busi- 
ness for a scuba diving job paying $70 
a week on the Greek island of Corfu. 
Steve Dewey, a native of Pittsburgh, told 
me he was never particularly enamored 
with living in the U.S., where "people 
are obsessively career oriented and not 
terribly friendly." So, after being down- 
sized twice, he landed a job in Singapore, 
where his life is “10 times better." Others 
have tried life among Trappist monks, 
at a Zen monastery or at the Twin Oaks 
commune in central Virginia. You can 
change your life, but you have to do your 
research. The Internet can be helpful but 
often paints too rosy a picture of a region 
and its real estate. Always rent before you 
buy, and live there at least a month each 
season. It takes guts and a bit of madness 
to leave a secure job—assuming there is 
such a thing anymore—and head into 
the uncharted waters of entrepreneur- 
ship and a dream lifestyle. 

A] Louis Ripskis 
Rockville, Maryland 

Ripskis is a career counselor and author of 

Cutting Loose (unlockyourlife.com). 


THE ANTIDOTE 
Your 15 steps for recovering from a 
hangover (The Playboy Cure, April) can 
be reduced to four: (1) Have the girl 
you brought home get you your favor- 
ite greasy food and soda. (2) Smoke a 
joint while you wait for her to return. 
(3) Eat the food while reading the Sun- 
day paper. (4) Take a nap. You'll wake up 
feeling great and ready to party. 
Matthew Lee 
Boise, Idaho 


Your cure gets in the way of re-engaging 
the next day. I have a simpler process: 
Consume up to three tablespoons of raw 
honey or eight ounces of fresh orange 
juice before you go to sleep. 

Donald Lovett 
Sugar Land, Texas 


My personal remedy: (1) Drink some 
Gatorade. (2) Take an antacid. (3) Take an 
opioid pain reliever (Vicodin, Percocet). 
(4) When you feel ready, follow Charles 
Bukowski's lead and eat a couple of hard- 
boiled eggs. Follow with ibuprofen. Keep 
sipping Gatorade. (5) In the late afternoon 
try mashed potatoes or a cheese omelet. 
(6) Fire up the jet tub with ultrahot water 
and crack open a smooth stout, porter or 
cream ale. (7) Get a good night's sleep. 

Soren Rounds 
Eugene, Oregon 

We're glad to hear this works for you, but 

the doctors we consulted for our report warn 


Perry to Silverman: WTF? 

I am shocked and disappointed 
that Sarah Silverman claims in her 
Playboy Interview (April) that I used 
a racial epithet while talking with 
her backstage about her show. Sarah 
was very friendly and nice, so I don't 
understand why she would say or 
imply such a thing. It's bizarre. What 
Isaid was "I can't believe you some- 
how seem to be getting away with 
all these slurs. I just can't under- 
stand how you're doing this." Sarah 
looked at me and kind of smiled. It 
wasn't as though I was condemning 
or condoning her act. It was just that 
she somehow made everybody—of 
all backgrounds—in that club laugh. 
In her show she uses racial and eth- 
nic slurs that have historically been 
unforgivable. My background is 
Portuguese, which is one of the few 
ethnic groups she left out of her act. 


against dehydrating yourself further in a hot 
whirlpool (especially while drinking) or tak- 
ing prescription painkillers, which can be 
brutal on the stomach. 


GUESS WHO 
Your April cover with Candice Boucher 
is by far the most gorgeous since I became 


The new Guess girl grew up in South Africa. 


a subscriber in 1997. And thank you for a 
remarkable pictorial (Naked Prey). 
Brian Martin 
Houston, Texas 


HEART OF GOLD 
After reading Richard Stratton's rever- 
ential piece (Godfather and Son, April) about 


But after she reads this letter maybe 
she'll come after us, too. 
Steve Perry 
San Diego, California 
Perry is a singer and songwriter and the for- 
mer lead vocalist for the rock band Journey. 


John Gotti Jr.’s dysfunctional families—the 
one he swore an oath to and the one at 
home—I have to wonder how much pop- 
ular fiction such as The Sopranos and the 
Godfather trilogy has skewed common sense. 
The article is written as though it describes 
some noble feudal clan instead of blood- 
thirsty, cowardly, amoral gangsters. Gotti Sr. 
is presented in glowing terms as a grieving 
father who coincidentally went out of town 
the weekend neighbor John Favara, who 
had accidentally killed Gotti's son, was mur- 
dered. Gotti Jr. is presented as a family man 
who walked away from the mob to live the 
rest of his life in Oyster Bay Cove, where 
home values average $1.5 million. Neither 
Stratton nor the hung juries that sent Gotti 
Jr. home asked themselves how an admit- 
ted thug with only a high school education, 
who has never done an honest day's work, 
can afford to live in that community. 

Brad Morris 

New York, New York 


SHARP-TONGUED WOMAN 

There is nothing in itself provocative 
about Sarah Silverman's material, which is 
standard fare in Australian workingmen's 
clubs. What is unusual is to see it coming 
from a nice Jewish girl whose audience is 
largely upper middle class. Her success is 
another American triumph for the equality 
ofthe sexes and the classes. Comedy ought 
to be antagonistic. It plays with aggres- 
sion rather than deploying it. It can't give 
offense any more than nudity can give 
offense. People choose to take offense. Sil- 
verman’s critics say she rarely winks at the 
audience to let us know what's meant to be 
ironic, but why should she? Irony is meant 


23 


PLAYBOY 


24 


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From his early days in Chicago to 
his party days atthe Playboy Man- 
sion, Hugh Hefner's life has been 
the stuff of legend. This illustrat- 
ed autobiography surveys Hef’s 
amazing journey. In six hard-cov- 
er volumes housed in a Plexiglas 
case, Hugh Hefner's Playboy is the 
definitive collectible survey of an 
American master. Also includes 
a facsimile of the first issue of 
Playboy and an original piece of 
Hef's silk pajamas. This edition is 
limited to 1,500 signed and num- 
bered sets. 3,506 pages. 


GO TO PLAYBOYSTORE.COM 
TO ORDER 


XLIMITED EDITION OF 1,500% 
$1,300 


to be ambiguous, not “nudge, nudge.” The 
context and her reputation as a funny- 
woman are all the clues you need. When 
that context was taken away on Politically 
Incorrect, the rabble booed because that is 
what they had been set up to do. Silver- 
man has nothing to apologize for. 
Christie Davies 
Reading, U.K. 
Davies, a sociologist, is author of The Mirth 
of Nations and the forthcoming Jokes and Tar- 
gets, which examines sexual humor. 


The funniest part of Silverman's excel- 
lent interview is learning Late Night With 
Conan O'Brien producers allegedly judged 
the word nigger to be over-the-top but 
thought spic worked just fine. 

Gus Chappory 
Greenlawn, New York 


How could you let the sexiest woman in 
the April issue keep her clothes on? 
Rick Jerome 

Denver, Colorado 


Silverman disses Andrew Dice Clay but 
will never be as funny as the Diceman. 
She uses his shtick (“Hey, look at me—I'm 
an uncultured moron!”), but Dice does it 
without being racial. 

Chuck Taylor 
Moraine, Ohio 


Whenever Sarah Silverman discusses 
our infamous confrontation on Politically 
Incorrect, she tells half-truths. After my 
organization, the Media Action Network 
for Asian Americans, complained about 
her gratuitous use of the word Chinks in 
а joke on Late Night, she wrote me what 
she describes in the interview as a “long, 
thoughtful letter” but claims it had no effect 
because I was “too jazzed about having a 
fight.” In fact, I was encouraged by the let- 
ter. She apologized for any hurt she had 
caused and said our difference of opinion 
didn’t have to make us enemies. I agreed 
to lunch, but she didn’t respond and two 
days later blasted me on Bill Maher's show. 
She was forced to debate me a month later 
after I demanded equal time. Only 23 Asian 
Americans whom I knew were in the audi- 
ence, not 60. You can watch our showdown 
at manaa.org/politicallyincorrect.html. 

Guy Aoki 
Glendale, California 


OPPOSITES ATTRACT 
Jennifer Henschel (Fine German Engi- 
neering, April) is a wonderful departure 
from the blonde bombshells. 
Scott Shuffler 
Asheville, North Carolina 


There has to be a better phrase than itty 
bitty titty committee (maybe it sounds bet- 
ter in German), but with most Playmates 
having C or D cups, it’s refreshing to see 
gorgeous women with smaller bust sizes. 

Oliver Bernard 
Bridgeport, Connecticut 


The German pictorial is nice (one 
of my favorite Playmates is Miss April 
2008 Regina Deutinger, from Munich), 
but there are too many small-breasted 
women in your pages. Let’s see more 
big-breasted beauties like Playmate Amy 
Leigh Andrews (Chasing Amy, April). 

Troy Franklin 
Nokomis, Florida 


A NEW VISION 

Steven Kotler’s well-informed report 
The New Psychedelic Renaissance (April) 
catches the shift from the 20th century’s 
razzmatazz approach to psychedel- 
ics to the 21st century’s science-based 
view. However, early findings are not 
confirmed treatments, and this is not 
something to try at home. With the 
exception of relieving cluster headaches, 
the beneficial effects are not pharmaco- 
logical. The condition that results in 
cures and improvement is an in-session, 
temporary shift to unitive consciousness 
(mystical experience, religious trans- 


Can psychedelics cure what ails us? 


formation, transcending ego-centered 
cognition). Psychedelics are one way to 
make this shift more likely, as are medita- 
tion, contemplative prayer, exercise and 
breathing routines. 
Thomas Roberts 
DeKalb, Illinois 
Roberts, a professor at Northern Illinois 
University, is co-editor of the two-volume 
Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hal- 
lucinogenic Substances as Treatments. 


Sacred plants have been used for thou- 
sands of years as tools for guidance, so 
it's inaccurate to describe this latest inter- 
est as a "renaissance." The renaissance is 
realizing we are not separate from nature 
but part of it. As Terence McKenna once 
said, "If the truth can be told so as to be 
understood, it will be believed." 

Fernando Paternostro 
Barcelona, Spain 

Paternostro runs the Psychedelic Medicine 

Neus (psychointegrator.com). 


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BECOMING ATTRACTION 


Cup this month, Francoise Boufhal will be on the front line, 
tape recorder in hand. Francoise is a modeling sensation 
out of the U.K. and a celebrity interviewer for soccer games. 
Among her greatest on-camera assets: a pair of bountiful 
breasts, nicknamed "the ladies." She's part German, part N 
French but claims she'd love to have "some American in me- 
hold the jokes!" At 21 she's graced the pages of countless ۲ 1 
mags, but she does not pose topless. Not yet at least. She 
has her sights on a 2۸۷۵۵۷ pictorial sometime in the future 
Stay tuned for the USA's first World Cup matchup on June 
12—against Francoise's formidable U.K. squad. Bring it on, š 


UE 27 


Classic Look of the Month 
Fast Eddie Felson 


Few big-screen one-liners stack up to this one, delivered 
by Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961): "Fat man, you 
shoot a great game of pool.” This spring 20th Century Fox 
offers up another reason to watch Paul Newman in one 
of his finest roles by including The Hustler in a DVD col- 
lection (with The French Connection and Butch Cassidy 
and the Sundance Kid, $23). Aiming to hustle a pool hall? 
Here's how to work the Fast Eddie look below: suit with 
skinny lapels ($795) by John Varvatos Star USA; slim-fit 
French cuff shirt (580) by Banana Republic. 


2 


E ROBERT ROSSENS | 
“TRUE eg 


MYRON 4% 
۱۵ 7-3 
ROBERT ROSSEN 

SIDNEY CARROLL „„ ROBERT ROSSEN 


You could eat and quaff some of the richest fare in New York without ever 
leaving Grand Central Terminal. You know about the Oyster Bar and Michael 
Jordan's steakhouse, but you've probably never heard of the Campbell Apart- 
ment. In 1923 a financier named John W. Campbell rented a vast space in 
the train station and transformed it into a Florentine palace of an office-party 
space with a safe in the fireplace and a pipe organ. When Campbell died in 
1957 the space became a jail and then a place for cops to store guns. Today 
it's a terrific bar. Go on a weekend so you miss the commuters. 


Bitter Pill 


China's news service Xinhua: BIT- 
TERS SHORTAGE CAUSES PANIC IN NEW 
YORK BARS. The Guardian: BITTERS 
PILL TO TAKE! Apparently when 
you keep people from their man- 
hattan cocktails it's global news 
and cause for rioting. Trinidad's 
House of Angostura had pro- 
duction problems and stopped 
making bitters. Our sources 
tell us the problems are solved 
and Angostura is shipping again. 
Phew! We need a drink. 


Love Story 


An anonymous patron purchased 
Giovanni Casanova's original manu- 
script for The Story of My Life, 3,700 
pages that have never been pub- 
lished in full, detailing the Venetian 
adventurer's 18th century sexual 
conquests of countless women, some 
men and at least one nun. Even with- 
outthe sexthe story is like a Harrison 
Ford adventure movie, prison break 
and all. The manuscript's price: about 
59.5 million, making it the most valu- 
able in the world. 


freshly ground beef—half prime brisket, 


half prime tenderloin 
2 strips crispy wild boar bacon 
2 slices American cheese 

1 sunny-side-up quail egg 
shredded lettuce 


bun, toasted 
LOVE SAUCE 

2 tbsp. ketchup 

1 2tbsp. mayonnaise 

x 1 tsp. homemade chopped spicy pickles 
rub (equal parts chopped rosemary, thyme, salt, 
pepper, cumin, garlic powder, chili pepper) 


Meat the Press 


"Five months of research went into making this burger," says Texan Tim Love, 
chef-auteur of the Dirty Love Burger and the man behind Fort Worth's Love Shack 
and his flagship, the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, specializing in wild game. 
“We came up with the grind, which is half prime brisket and half prime tenderloin. 
Then we started building the burger, incorporating the love." Can't make it to Fort 
Worth? Here's how to make this masterpiece at home. Serve with a stiff margarita. 


: Dream Boat «eee ы 


: When Your Ship Comes In 


Behold the concept renderings for the most absurdly decadent super-yacht ever—the 
58-meter-long WHY. The concept is the collaborative fantasy of Luca Bassani Antivari, 
head of Monaco-based Wally, and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermes 
(thus the name WHY: Wally Hermes Yachts). Antivari calls it a "moving island." It has 
3,900 square meters of living area and a max speed of 14 knots. It's also laden with 
green tech: a rainwater-collection system, 960 square meters of solar panels and a 
2,400 kilowatt diesel-electric engine. We can only imagine the launch party. 


— 


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License to Thrill 


m AL А 


М 


Fear! Suspense! Money! We admire the 
creative bravado of one Georges Cexus, 
a Frenchman who started the company 
Ultime Réalité, which offers customers 
the chance to be kidnapped. Pay 900 
euros (about $1,200) and operatives will 
abduct you without warning, then bind, 
gag and incarcerate you for hours. But 
that's just the base abduction package. 
For more cash, you can strengthen your 
fantasy with an escape, a helicopter 
chase.... "Basically anything is possible," 
Cexus says. Can we pay to be flogged 
by Agent Provocateur models wearing 
nothing but stilettos in the Louvre in 
broad daylight? We want Bobby De Niro 
in on it too. How much would that cost? 
Info at ultimerealite.fr. 


The study of Jack Kerouac 
(right) should be manda- 
tory for schoolkids. So we're 
thrilled to see a resurgence 
of all things Beat: the movie 
Howl starring James Franco 
as Allen Ginsberg, two new 
books—Beat Memories: The 
Photographs of Allen Gins- 
berg and Jack Kerouac and 
Allen Ginsberg: The Letters— 
plus a recent exhibit at the 
Gagosian Gallery of the artist 
Ed Ruscha's own illustrated 
On the Road. Cool, baby, cool. 


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ТОР 2009 MOVIES BY DOMESTIC GROSS* 
1. Avatar | $742,721,098 


2. Transformers: 
Revenge of the Fallen 


3. Harry Potter and $301,959,197 
the Half-Blood Prince 


4. New Moon $296,623,634 
5. Up $293,004,164 


$402,111,870 


Screen Play 
Money Never Sleeps 


More proof stock exchanges are no 
different from Reno casinos: Barring 
a last-minute kibosh, two new futures 
exchanges are set to open that'll allow 
movie junkies to bet real cash on the suc- 
cess of new films. The idea: Six months 
before a film is released the exchanges 
set a figure it's likely to gross in its first 
four weeks in theaters. You bet $1 for 
every Hollywood million. Say the Wall 
Street sequel, opening in September, is 
expected to earn $100 million in ticket 
sales. If the film makes $110 million, 
you earn $10. If it earns $90 million, 
you lose $10 (not including fees). Check 
out the Hollywood Stock Exchange 
(hsx.com), run by Cantor Fitzgerald. 
And remember: Greed is good. 


ПОВОД AAAS 


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INFUSIONS 


ALL NATURAL 
all 


VODKA INFUSED WITH NATURAL 
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REVIEWS 


Movie of the Month 
Jonah Hex 


“А phantasmagoria of insanity" is how Josh Brolin 
has described the movie version of the 1970s-era 
DC comic series Jonah Hex, in which the actor plays 
the title character, a disfigured ex-Confederate 
soldier turned bounty hunter. Megan Fox plays 
his longtime prostitute love interest, and John 
Malkovich is the wacko terrorist obsessed with 
how badly the Civil War turned out. The 
supernatural-tinged action movie is directed by 
former animator Jimmy Hayward, features a musi- 
cal score by Mastodon and sports an off-center 
supporting cast that includes Will Arnett as a Union 
soldier, Michael Shannon as a snake-oil-selling 
carny, Michael Fassbender as Malkovich's tattooed 
henchman and Aidan Quinn as President William 
McKinley. Brolin, who spent three hours daily in 
makeup to perfect his badly scarred spaghetti 
Western look, has praised the project's "absurd ele- 
ments." "The sex scene is pretty risqué and nerve- 
racking," he told The New York Times of his scene 
with Fox. "It's hard to act when you're naked." 


HILLE 
ЕЕ FECT 


Look for controversy when The Killer Inside Me opens. Jim Thompson's 
brutal 1952 noir novel was already adapted into a much tamer 1976 mov- 
ie, but director Michael Winterbottom’s new version is a rough ride. Casey 
Affleck’s psycho sheriff beats so brutally some audience 
members—and Alba herself—walked out of a screening at Sundance. 


In the latest sequel to 
HBO's estrogen-driven phenomenon 
expect Sarah Jessica Parker to go through 
another relationship upheaval, Kim 
Cattrall to juggle boy toys and the woman 
in your life to see it with or without you. 


Things get gnarly for rebel genet- 


Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t the first guy you'd 
think of to play a swashbuckling Middle 
Eastern prince. But this desert-and- 
scimitars epic is directed by the sharp 
Mike Newell, so we say roll with it. 


Bradley mem Quinton 
"Rampage" Jackson, Sharlto Copley 
and Liam Neeson storm the screen in 
this king-size blowup of the cheesy 
19805 TV series. Expect lots of action, 
ССТ explosions and Jessica Biel. 


Russell Brand stars 
as the wild man rock star he plays in For- 
getting Sarah Marshall, and Jonah Hill is 
a record company intern frantic to get 
Brand to a gig in L.A. Cameos by Christina 
Aguilera and Pink keep things popping. 


ic engineers Adrien Brody and Sarah 
Polley in this sci-fi thriller. Their forbid- 
den experiments with splicing human 
and animal DNA create a deformed baby 
that morphs into a deadly new life-form. 


In Neil Jordan's wee bit o' Irish 
whimsy, Colin Farrell plays a fisher- 
man who falls for a mysterious half- 
naked stranger he accidentally scoops 
up in his nets. Farrell's young daughter 
insists her father's catch is a mermaid. 


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In this cynical 
age it's difficult 
to imagine there 
lives a man who 
fought for repro- 
ductive rights, 
drug law reform, 
free speech, ra- 
cial equality and 
Sexual tolerance—and not only made it 
look cool but turned it into the never-ending 
party we now know as ۴۱۸۷۵۵۷۰ Trying to 
capture all the reflected facets of Hugh 
Hefner in one go is like trying to read every 
issue of PLAYBOY in a single sitting, but docu- 
mentarian Brigitte Berman comes close to 
accomplishing the impossible in Hugh Hef- 
ner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. After its 
premiere last fall at the Toronto Interna- 
tional Film Festival and critically acclaimed 
screenings at New York's Museum of Mod- 
ern Art and the Miami International Film 
Festival, viewers walked away with the 
undeniable feeling that, pound for pound, 
Hef may just be the all-time champ 
among individuals who influenced social 
progress in the 20th century. And it's clear 
he had a great time doing it. (The film is 
about to be released in theaters, with the 


Kim Cattrall shot to stardom playing a store prop that 
comes to life in 1987's Mannequin, but her subsequent on- 
screen antics have been anything but stiff. Just ask Rob 
Lowe, who seems sweaty and satisfied after a roll with Cat- 
trall in Masquerade (pictured). This summer she reprises 
the role of insatiable cougar Samantha Jones when she re- 
unites with her NYC gal pals in Sex and the City 2. 


Documentary of the Month 


Hef the Activist 


DVD available later this year.) 
As Gene Simmons says on 
camera, Hef is one of the most 
envied men in America, and 
for good reason. The founder 
of PLAYBOY will always be asso- 
ciated with his Playmates, but 
as Berman shows, his social 
mission is no less important. 
In the 1950s Hef responded to 
the House Un-American Ac- 
tivities Committee hearings by 
publishing the work of black- 
listed writers and featuring 
blacklisted performers on 
Playboy's Penthouse. With his 
magazine Hefner sought to 
challenge the prevailing stan- 
dards of a repressive time. His unwavering 
commitment to racial equality—well 
before such a stance was socially 
acceptable—deserves greater recognition. 
This is a man who, while best known for his 
hedonistic lifestyle, has never confined 
himself to the pursuit of pleasure. Hefner 
remains steadfastly committed to his so- 
cial and cultural values, from free speech 
to all that jazz. And Berman makes it all 
look like a blast. УУУУ —Al Clarke 


DVD of the Month 


True Blood: The Complete Second Season 


The supernatural shenanigans of 
Bon Temps, Louisiana in True Blood: 
The Complete Second Season still 
deliver a Southern Gothic treat with 
Skinemax sizzle, murderous may- 
hem and gory horror chic. Tele- 
pathic Sookie Stackhouse (Anna 
Paquin) immerses herself deeper 
into the vampire realm; her half- 
wit brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), 
becomes a mercenary of God; 
and maenad Maryann's (Michelle 


Forbes) seductive sway over the 
town leads to eerie orgiastic ecstasy 
and the wildest wedding this side 
of The Wicker Man. Being dead has 
never been livelier. Best extras: 
Both the DVD and Blu-ray contain 
"The Vampire Report: Special Edi- 
tion,’ which highlights the year's big- 
gest bloodsucker headlines, while 
the BD adds enhanced picture-in- 
picture functionality on every epi- 
sode. YY Y^ —Bryan Reesman 


REVIEWS 


Game of the Month 


Most Western-themed video games 
deserve to be dragged into the street and 
shot. It took the outlaws behind Grand 
Theft Auto to get it right with Red Dead 
Redemption (360, PS3). Reformed rene- 
gade John Marston is strong-armed by 
the government into hunting down the 
double-crossing rats from his former 
posse or risk losing his wife and child. 
Marston hits the trail through Mexico and 
the Pacific Northwest as he looks for 
members of his old gang, with stops for 
seeking treasure, dealing with Mexican 
banditos and the occasional saloon brawl. 
Activate the Dead Eye feature during 
frenzied shoot-outs to throw the action 
into slow motion, giving Marston a better 
chance of putting a bullet between the 
eyes of any four-flusher brave enough to 
draw on him. Y — —Jason Buhrmester 


= Also in gaming 


(360, PC, 
PS3) With realism 
chucked by the 
roadside, this racer 
is about nitro boosts 
and road-clearing 
weapons as you 
floor it through 
such cities as Bar- 
celona and San 
Francisco. You can 
eventweet from the 
game before being 
wiped out in brutal 
collisions. YY Y 


Summer Sequels and Stunners 


Writing a se- 
quel is a chal- 
lenging act of 
honoring the 
past and re- 
inventing it. It's 
time travel, and 
it's all the more 
daunting if the 
original work 
became a critical darling, best-seller or 
Hollywood film. In Bret Easton Ellis's 
case, his 1985 novel, 
became all of the above, including a movie 
that now watches like a parody of 1980s 
debauchery. The novel, 25 years old and 
celebrating with a reissue, has aged far 
better and retains much of its appeal: a 
blithe nightmarishness and a cast of privi- 
leged teenagers for whom coming-of-age 
means moral suicide. The sequel, 
revisits these characters 
in middle age. Their L.A. hasn't changed, 


but the city's players are at once more flu- 
ent in its depravities and more disoriented 
by them. There is a murder, and the nar- 
rator, Clay, who's now a screenwriter, is 
being stalked. The atmosphere of para- 
noia and shifting realities owes more to 
Nathanael West or Kafka than to Chan- 
dler, but its dirty charms are indisputable 
and make for a smart if elliptical follow- 
up. Scott Turow suffered all the success 
Ellis did, with his blockbuster 

As courtroom dramas go, it set 
a standard for balancing legal know-how, 
psychological acuity and narrative drive. 


its sequel, 
finds Rusty Sabich 
again on 
trial for — НарР 
murder, 5 
with Tom- TERR 
my Molto 
leading the 
charge 


PREsy 
ща 


(360,PS3) 
My Name Is Earl 
star (and former 
pro skateboarder) 
Jason Lee appears 
as Coach Frank, 
your skateboarding 
sensei. When you're 
ready to shred, you 
can hit the streets 
in a sprawling con- 
crete paradise or 
join your friends 
and head online to 
rip together. YY YY 


against him. 
The rematch 
between the 
two men is as 
clever about 
asserting dis- 
tinctions be- 
tween right and 
wrong as it is about sub- 
verting them. There are no heroes here; 
it's the contest and its strategies that make 
for superlative entertainment. 

by Tim O'Brien needs no se- 
quel, though every novel written about Viet- 
nam is necessarily compared against it, 
most unflatteringly. But holds 
its own. Like O'Brien, author Karl Marlantes 
served in Vietnam, and while he hasn't 
O'Brien's poetry, he has an epic and inti- 
mate sense of the bureaucracy and the 
battle scenes, of the men who survive but 
often wish they hadn't. It has the mak- 
ings of another classic. —Amy Grace Loyd 


By Rob Tannenbaum 


Wayne Coyne, leader of the Flaming 
Lips, discusses the band's new album, a 
smoking remake of a Pink Floyd classic 
called—brace yourself—The Flaming 
Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs 
With Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing 
the Dark Side of the Moon. 

Why did you decide to cover Dark 
Side of the Moon? 

We got a call saying iTunes wanted us 
to record some exclusive tracks. I just 
said, "Let's cover Dark Side ofthe Moon." 
I don't know why I said it. But it was a 
cheaper, better way out than coming up 
with seven or eight original songs. My 
best ideas happen in a panic. 

Let's talk about drugs. 

Awesome! 

Is Dark Side a drug album? 

When it came out, in 1973, my friends 
in Oklahoma City were smoking pot all 
the time and taking quaaludes. Most re- 
cords in the early 1970s were bought 
by people in the most decadent section 
of the drug upswing, and obviously 
that's why America took to Pink Floyd. 

You weren't exactly true to the origi- 
nal version, were you? 

We purposely made ours freakier 
and more aggressive—there was no 


reason to play it safe. "Money" is a 
song I never need to hear again, but 
it's the most popular because it's cyni- 
cal. And the lyrics say "bullshit," and 
kids love to hear that. 

Have you heard from any of the 
members of Pink Floyd? 


LO 

No, but their merchandising camp 
wants to do a Pink Floyd-Flaming 
Lips shirt. To me that’s a sure sign 
[Pink Floyd mastermind] Roger Wa- 
ters is saying, "Even though I don't 
like them, I think I can make some 
money off them." 


MARTIN ANSIN 


The Classics 


The Stones' Exile 
on Main Street 


Exile on Main Street is one of the few records as 
great as its reputation (Sgt. Pepper, we're look- 
ing at you), but its appeal has always been 
inscrutability: An excursion across gospel and 

country record- 


Album of the Month 


His life sounds like the pitch for a Showtime series: A tattooed Mormon of 42, 
Gary Allan has had three wives (not simultaneously—he's not that kind of Mor- 
mon), was singing with his dad in California honky-tonks before puberty, 
served in the Army and moved to Nashville when a wealthy couple wrote him 
a no- strings check for $12,000 after hearing a 
CD accidentally left in the glove box of a truck 


ed by "drunks they'd bought. His second wife was a 2 
апа junkies"— Versace model. His third, who was never n EA “. 
Mick Jagger's properly treated for depression, killed `» ж 


words—largely herself in 2004, using his pistol in their 4 N . 


іп the humid, bedroom while their kids slept and he X е? 
labyrinthine was in the kitchen getting her a soda. ۱1 £ 
basement of a Given all this, it's no surprise Allan // ۱ ۸ * H 
former Nazi believes there are too many happy Ë 1 
headquarters, songs in country music today. He's 2 p" ۱ 
Exile is coated right, and if you agree, he's your anti- ух 2? 


іп brown murk 77 


and jagged bar- 

nacles. The 

words can't be 
excavated, the music can't be understood. The 
Rolling Stones, with their ever-present eye on 
your wallet, are reissuing this 1972 record in 
three formats, including a "super deluxe edi- 
tion" listed at $179.98. The new remastering 
heightens Mick Taylor's wild slide guitar, but 
the music remains as mazelike as the bunker 
in which the band toiled. YYYY 


dote. His terrific eighth album, Get Off on 
the Pain, is tough and intense, with hints 
of Chris Isaak's blue-light brooding and 
plenty of classic-rock heft in the guitars 
(in one song Allan mentions Led Zeppe- 
lin). Don't come looking for "happy songs": 
Inhigh points such as "Kiss Me When I'm 
Down" and "I Think I've Had Enough," 
Allan's voice presses into disappoint- 
ment and hard memories like a tongue 
pushing against a loose tooth. Y Y YY 


a 
= 


| ELSEWHERE АТ PLAYBOY 


Naked Ambition on 
Playboy TV 


Held annually in Las Vegas and dubbed "the Oscars of porn" by 
everyone in the industry, the Adult Video News Awards honor the 
most talented people in the adult-entertainment business. The 
event is also a notoriously good time. Naked Ambition: An R Rated 
Look at an X Rated Industry, a documentary co-produced by Playboy 
TV, offers a glimpse in- 
side this anything-goes 
affair and the sex indus- 
try that spawned it. To 
create this candid, often 
hilarious film, celebrity. 
photographer Michael 
Grecco was given an all- 
access backstage pass 
to the 2006 and 2007 
АУМ Awards. "It was like 
a Fellini movie because 
it mixes this idea of a 
gala event with the rock 
and roll of the adult 
world," Grecco says. 
Naked Ambition pre- 
mieres on Playboy TV on 
Wednesday, June 2 at 
nine р.м. and is also 
available on DVD. 


Playboy Loves 
Beer Pong 


There are those who think beer pong is fun, 
and there are those who consider it a sport. 
For the latter, Playboy has created the per- 
fect piece of party equipment. Crafted to 
meet the needs of true pong enthusi- 
asts, the Playboy Beer Pong Table is 
durable, built to ideal specifications 
(two and a half feet by two feet 
by eight feet) and comes with 
Rabbit Head balls. It also 
folds easily into a portable 
case, so pong devotees 
never have to leave 
home without their 
game. Available 
at partypong 
tables.com 
for $150. 


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evidence of said hookups, an elec- 
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hot water. By all outward appear- 
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opened), after which they disap- 
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name's similarity to a prominent 
golfer is merely a coincidence. 


Rolling 
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company's shtick: cool design with 

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M, husband uses Facebook to 
contact old high school friends, 
including ex-girlfriends. A few 
weeks ago he let slip that he had 
phoned one of these women. I 
grabbed his phone and looked 
for the number, only to learn, 
after dragging it out of him, 
that he had listed it under a 
male name. I'm concerned his 
untruthfulness may lead to 
bigger problems. What do you 
think?—G.W., Elyria, Ohio 

Your husband is playing with fire. 
Psychologist Nancy Kalish, author 
of Lost & Found Lovers (lostlovers 
.com), has for years studied men and 
women who reconnect with past loves. 
The Internet didn’t create the situa- 
tion, but it has made it easier. One 
man who contacted Kalish looking for 
a support group said his wife left him 
and their two children for a guy she 
had a crush on when she was 12, after 
she'd found him on Facebook. Because 
so few reunions that involve cheat- 
ing have happy endings, Kalish rec- 
ommends married people not contact 
old flames unless they are prepared 
to damage even a strong marriage. 
If you're beyond that and are getting 
divorced, it's also wise to stay offline. 
A survey of its members by the Ameri- 
can Academy of Matrimonial Lauyers 
found 81 percent are seeing more use 
of social-media posts as evidence in 
divorce cases, with Facebook by far the 
most popular source. An estranged 
spouse doesn't have to find evidence 
of cheating but of "contradictions to 
previously made statements and prom- 
ises,” as the АА МЕЗ president puts it. 


| watched at my local watering 
hole as one bartender demon- 
strated to another how to make a 
bloody mary. When I said, "Don't 
forget the beer chaser,” they 
looked at me as if I was crazy. Am 
Imissing something?—R.H., Ok- 
lee, Minnesota 

You're not crazy. We can only 
guess the bartenders were new to the 
Midwest because we've never been 
served a bloody mary in Minnesota 
or Wisconsin without a beer chaser 
of at least four ounces and sometimes 
12. "Captain" Ken Michaelchuck of 
Cedarburg, Wisconsin, who has chronicled 
online his search for the perfect bloody mary 
(which includes the chaser), found the best 
recipe at a local tavern called Morton's, which 
he then modified "to make it even better." You 
will need one and a half ounces of vodka or 
peppered vodka, a half teaspoon of horserad- 
ish, a dash of celery salt, two dashes of ground 
black pepper, a half teaspoon of Worcestershire 
sauce, a half teaspoon of lemon juice, one to 
three drops of Tabasco, six ounces of tomato 
juice and two ounces of clam juice. “Use a 
big glass,” says Captain Ken. “This is a lot of 
beverage.” For the rim coating, mix a table- 


PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR 


always take the initiative when my girlfriend and I have 
sex, with one exception: She makes sure we have sex on 
the nights, and sometimes mornings, when my mother 
stays over. This gives me an incentive to have my mother 
visit, but it’s weird when my girlfriend takes charge. Any 
idea what’s going on? As far as I can tell there’s no animos- 
ity between them.—L.A., San Diego, California 
What happens at family reunions? If you’re not getting any 
“TU show that bitch” vibes, this sounds like the equivalent of 
screwing in your parents’ bed. Your girlfriend is turned on by 
being naughty right under the nose of presumably judgmen- 
tal authority and perhaps equally so by the possibility of being 
discovered or at least overheard. It's too bad you can't get this 
treatment when your mother isn’t visiting by saying, “Shhh! My 
mom’s in the other room.” Or maybe you can. 


spoon of celery salt, a quarter teaspoon of Old 
Bay Seasoning (used by Marylanders to season 
crabs) and a pinch of ground black pepper on 
a plate, and spread in a doughnut shape about 
the diameter of the glass. Rub the rim with a 
lemon wedge and place the glass upside down 
in the mix. Turn it back over and mix the liquid 
ingredients and horseradish. Add ice cubes and 
sprinkle with celery salt, Old Bay and pepper. 
Throw in the squeezed lemon wedge and add a 
stick of celery and “a mini-meal on a skewer”—a 
large cooked, peeled shrimp, a quarter spear of 
kosher pickle, a green olive stuffed with pimento 
and a small square of beef jerky. This lies across 


the top of the glass, with the pickle 
in the drink. 


s it unusual to be more attracted 
to a woman after you break up 
because you know she is fucking 
other men?—C.M., Vancouver, 
British Columbia 

No, but it's unfortunate. 


My ex-wife and I have two teen- 
age children. My son looks like 
me, but my daughter does not. 
She also has a different blood 
type. I am O+ and my daughter 
is O-. My ex is A+. She claims it's 
not unusual for a child to be neg- 
ative if both parents are positive. 
Even though it wouldn't change 
how I feel about my daughter, 
should I get a DNA test to find 
out if I must continue to pay child 
support?—].M., Longview, Texas 

The blood types don't exclude you 
as the father. Although there are rare 
exceptions caused by gene mutations, 
parents who are A and O can only 
produce a child who is A or O. In fact, 
the most famous case involving pater- 
nity blood typing also involved this 
combination. In 1943 an unknoum 
actress sued Charlie Chaplin for child 
support. She was A and Chaplin was 
O, but tests showed the baby was B. 
However, the jury ignored that evi- 
dence and ordered the exasperated 
Chaplin to pay. The plus/negative 
(Rh) factor is inherited separately, and 
two positive parents can have a nega- 
tive child. If a DNA test confirms your 
suspicion, we're not sure announc- 
ing you still love your daughter but 
want to pay only for her brother will 
strengthen your relationship. At this 
‚point she's your daughter whatever 
the genetics. 


As I understand it, genital 
herpes is spread through skin- 
to-skin contact. This can occur 
even if no symptoms are pres- 
ent. І also understand condoms 
provide some protection but do 
not cover all the skin that can be 
affected. Given those facts, her- 
pes must be widespread in the 
porn industry, yet you never 
read about performers having 
STDs except when they quit because 
they have HIV. Why is that?—R.R., 
Columbus, Ohio 

It's not good for business. Porn is about cre- 
ating fantasies, and few people fantasize about 
STDs or condoms. Some industry insiders esti- 
mate at least half if not nearly all adult per- 
formers have herpes (compared with 16 percent 
of all Americans under 50), although a study of 
115 British performers found only three. What- 
ever the tally, there are plenty of other STDs to 
contend with. Data collected by a clinic that 
serves the Los Angeles industry found perform- 
ers under the age of 25 suffer from five to seven 


43 


PLAYBOY 


44 


times the number of STDs as the general popu- 
lation of the same age. That figure is probably 
conservative, health officials say, because the 
clinic doesn't check the mouth or anus, which 
are common reservoirs for repeat infections. 
One concern is that performers spread disease to 
the public by infecting nonperformers they date. 
The L.A. County Department of Public Health 
and others have called for a state worker protec- 
tion law that would mandate condoms, suggest- 
ing camera angles could limit their visibility or 
they could be digitally erased in postproduction 
to preserve the fantasy of safe, unprotected sex. 
But there's no big drive among legislators to 
stand up for sex workers. 


l like to cook waffles for a woman after 
a night of fun, but I've never found an 
easy way to clean my electric iron. It's 
covered in burnt butter and batter and 
is becoming unpresentable. I am afraid 
to immerse it in water, and sponges can't 
reach into the grooves. Any tips?—N.L., 
Washington, D.C. 

First, if your waffles stick, don't use cook- 
ing spray but add more oil to the batter. Also, 
neuer clean the iron with soap, which can 
damage the nonstick surface. After the sur- 
face has cooled, use a dry paper towel to soak 
up any oil and a soft-bristle toothbrush and/ 
or a rubber spatula to loosen any remaining 
batter. For stubborn batter, apply cooking oil, 
let it soak for a few minutes, then hit it with a 
paper towel. At this point, depending on how 
often you get laid, you may need to start over 
with a new iron. 


Му daughter's fiancé introduced us to 
his parents, who, it turns out, we had 
met many years before—at a swingers” 
club. We didn't just meet them, we had 
sex with them. Should we speak to them 
about this or treat it as we view it, i.e., an- 
cient history?—K.C., St. Louis, Missouri 

We would speak to them about it to make sure. 
they agree it's ancient history. 


Should your suit jacket be unbuttoned 
when you sit (а la David Letterman) or 
buttoned (à la Keith Olbermann)?—S.C., 
Lawrence, Kansas 

Either approach is fine, though your clothes 
should be cut so you can sit comfortably with your 
coat buttoned. "If you watch President Obama, 
you'll see he often sits down without unbuttoning 
his jacket,” says custom clothier Alan Flusser, 
author of Dressing the Man: Mastering the 
Art of Permanent Fashion. "He's thin enough 
and his clothes are cut generously enough that 
he can do it. If you can't, your clothes are too 
tight." (This may not always have been the case, 
but that's a different problem.) Flusser notes 
the bottom button of a jacket should be undone 
"when you sit because it shouldn't be buttoned in 
the first place. “You'll see people on television 
wearing two-button coats with both buttons fas- 
tened,” he says. "I don't know where people got 
that from. It's strange to have a button you don't 
button, but the fact is the coat opens." They were 
originally designed that way, he says, to make it 
easier for men to ride horses. 


Why is sex referred to as “the birds and 
the bees"?—W.H., Lucasville, Ohio 

For centuries the birds and bees (and butterflies 
and trees) were symbols of the wonders of nature, 
but the phrase's meaning was likely corrupted 
by the 1928 Cole Porter hit “Let's Do It”: And 
that's why birds do it, bees do it/Even educated 
fleas do it/ Let's do it, let's fall in love.” Some say 
birds symbolize the female, since they lay eggs (rep- 
resenting ovulation and the womb), while bees, 
which spread pollen (semen), are the male. 


А reader wrote in March because he is 
unsure how to tell his new girlfriend he's 
a cross-dresser. In college I stumbled 
across my boyfriend's lingerie and tapes 
and had all the questions you mentioned 
in your response. I thought he must be 
gay, and it crushed me. I went to therapy 
and dropped out of school for a semes- 
ter. I became the dominatrix he wanted, 
but the relationship ended for reasons 
other than his fetish. Always tell your 
partner about your habit. She may de- 
cide to leave, but if she finds out any 
other way, it will hurt.—R.K., Little 
Rock, Arkansas 

That's wise counsel. You know you're in a 
mature relationship when you dump your cross- 
dressing boyfriend for some other reason. 


Im 23 and have had one serious rela- 
tionship. This may be because I tell guys 
up front I'm saving myself for marriage. 
When they ask what that means, I explain 
it includes anything involving the touch- 
ing of genitalia. I will buy porn and sex 
toys or masturbate close to him while he 
does the same. In this day and age is it 
reasonable to expect a man to remain mo- 
nogamous without premarital sex?—R.S., 
Dayton, Ohio 

This is a slope slippery with lube. The sexual 
revolution gives you the freedom to remain a 
virgin for as long as you can stand it, but we 
doubt you are going to remain in this state for 
long with such lax standards. The aroused 
mind has a powerful hunger. Also keep in mind 
you may be saving yourself (barely) for someone 
"who doesn't want to be your one and only. 


Last year a reader wrote about being 
spanked by his wife as punishment for 
his misdeeds. I'm in the same boat. Our 
agreement is that spankings never occur 
where children or relatives might see or 
where it is illegal to bare your buttocks. 
I have been spanked in dressing rooms, 
the men’s room at bars, the locker room 
at a golf club and a manager's office at an 
airport after explaining to him why we 
needed a few minutes of privacy. Pain, 
humiliation and embarrassment are 
excellent teachers, and I have become 
a better partner and citizen. Everything 
else about our relationship is normal. For 
example, we make decisions together 
about major purchases and vacations. I 
hope this reassures other men they are 
not alone. —W.S., Key Largo, Florida 
Why do we suspect you’re provoking her? 


M, girlfriend, who is a bit of a daredevil 
in and out of the bedroom, wants to take 
me skydiving. She says not to worry, but if 
my chute fails, is it possible to survive the 
fall? —H.M., Memphis, Tennessee 

Do you love this woman? Because this won't 
be the last time she asks you to take a flying 
leap. As a novice skydiver you will be attached 
to an instructor who also doesn't want to die 
and will know how best to avoid it. That should 
take some worry out of the equation. Millions 
of people have dropped from the sky and sur- 
vived, including at least 200 who didn't have 
chutes, according to Jim Hamilton, curator of 
the Free Fall Research Page (greenharbor.com) 
and author of Long-Fall Survival: Analysis 
of the Collected Accounts. The exclusive club 
includes World War II gunners who lived after 
falling as far as four miles and airline pas- 
sengers who rode down in the wreckage. If you 
euer find yourself in this unusual situation, 
look for trees, snow, mud or a hill you can roll 
down on impact. Aim feetfirst for water, but 
from anything higher than 10 stories it's going 
to be like hitting concrete. Have a good time. 


| know this doesn't qualify as a great 
dilemma, but I'm perplexed. A friend 
told me to help myself to anything in his 
fridge. While pouring some homemade 
lemonade, I was forced to make a deci- 
sion: Do I take an exceptionally large 
amount and kill the pitcher, or do I take 
a reasonable amount but leave a less-than- 
average-size serving behind?—J.A., Chi- 
cago, Illinois 

When life gives you lemonade, pour every- 
thing in excess of a reasonable amount into the 
glass, down it and then pour the rest. Before 
you go, wash the pitcher and leave it in the 
drying rack. 


M, boyfriend has a relationship with 
his ex-wife that has me feeling insecure 
and jealous. They talk on the phone 
(sometimes about topics other than their 
children), she calls him when she has 
problems, he helps her fix her car, etc. 
Before I came along they were "friends" 
and took vacations together. When I tell 
my boyfriend I feel hurt, he says to move 
out if I don't trust him. Am I being too 
sensitive?—].F., Warren, Michigan 

Yes. Count your blessings. It would be far 
worse if they had a bad relationship. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, food 
and drink, stereos and sports cars to dating 
dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be per- 
sonally answered if the writer includes a 
self-addressed, stamped envelope. The most 
interesting, pertinent questions will be pre- 
sented in these pages. Write the Playboy Advi- 
sor, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, 
Illinois 60611, or send e-mail by visiting 
playboyadvisor.com. Our greatest-hits collec- 
tion, Dear Playboy Advisor, is available in 
bookstores and online; listen to the Advisor 
each week on Sirius/XM 99. 


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штаттан MICHAEL SAVAGE 


А candid conversation with conservative talk radio's most extreme voice about 
those damn Muslims, those damn Democrats and those damn homosexuals 


Two kinds of people listen to talk radio in 2010: 
those who think Michael Savage is a nut job and 
those who think he's right. The Savage Nation, 
his daily broadcast, reaches an estimated 8 mil- 
lion to 10 million listeners a week, and even his 
haters admit the show is like radio crack—and 
wildly unpredictable. One minute Savage is тай- 
ing against illegal immigration or advocating work 
camps for the homeless, the next he's getting misty 
over a Walt Whitman couplet or cuddling his poo- 
dle, Teddy. Savage abhors whiny liberalism and 
the Prius elite, even as he plays up his lefty creds: 
a Ph.D. from Berkeley, years of association with 
tree huggers, gays and beatniks, and a home base 
in—huh?—the San Francisco Bay area. But he's 
Just as hard on conservatives. Ask him, if you dare, 
about Dubya or Glenn Beck. Savage likes to call 
himself an independent-minded individualist. 
Born Michael Alan Weiner in 1942 in the 
Bronx of yore (read: immigrant Jews, not blacks 
and Latinos), he grew up Jewish, poor and more 
than a little discontent. His father ran an antiques 
store on the Lower East Side, and young Michael 
was dispatched to the basement to clean patina 
off bronze statues with various cyanides. "One 
cleaned, one killed, but my father never said which 
was which," he says. A younger brother, Jerome, 
was born with brain damage and eventually died 
in an institution, a tragedy that pushed Savage 


"I'm Hitler because I'm against illegal immi- 
gration? It makes me a racist? I would say the 
racists are the people who come into a country 
that isn't theirs and take it over and tell me I 
should speak their language." 


to study alternative medicine in faraway islands. 
Writing under the name Weiner, and with degrees 
in anthropology and medical botany, he became 
one of America's most prominent herbalists and 
author of such books as Plant a Tree: A Work- 
ing Guide to Regreening America and Secrets 
of Fijian Medicine. But after working at a San 
Francisco health clinic in the early 19805, when 
AIDS uas just surfacing, he published Maximum 
Immunity, a book that took a hard line against “the 
homosexual lobby." It was part of a turnaround 
that prompted the name change—a nod to 19th 
century sailor Charles Savage, who introduced. 
guns to Fiji—and soon a new career. In 1995 
Savage sent a demo tape to hundreds of stations, 
and he landed "to the right of Rush and to the 
left of God" on the radio dial. Controversy has 
followed him ever since. In 2008 Savage was 
banned from the United Kingdom for “fomenting 
hatred" on the air and in best-selling books such 
as Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder. 

Today Savage has three homes, an array of 
flashy cars and а 63-foot yacht in prosperous 
Marin County, California, where his show orig- 
inates. He also oums a mansion in Florida. He 
and his wife, Janet, have been married more than 
40 years, and they have two children, including 
a son, Russell, who founded the company behind 
Rockstar energy drinks. 


"We are going to face this Hobson's choice. Peo- 
ре kept saying the extremists represent only 10 
percent of 900 million Muslims. That's when I 
asked, "Would you rather see 100 million of us 
fried or 100 million of them fried?” 


Contributing Editor David Hochman spent 
more than 16 hours interviewing Savage. Says 
Hochman, "I can't remember а more difficult 
interview. Savage was a fine host, but his opin- 
ions are extreme to the point of being poison. 
Much of the time I hated him. He's maddeningly 
bullheaded and closed-minded. But he was just as 
leery of me. Even when we were laughing I knew 
he was thinking, Liberal vermin media." 


PLAYBOY: Why are you so angry? 

SAVAGE: Do I look angry? 

PLAYBOY: A little. You definitely sound angry. 
SAVAGE: Well, I get worked up. First of all, I 
get angry because I can't believe I live in a 
country that's so fucking stupid it lets every 
group in the world come here. "Please let 
us in because our country is a shit hole." 
Fine! "Let us come in on asylum because 
our country will kill us." No problem! Then 
the minute they fucking get here they turn 
around and sue the fucking country, make 
demands on the country, won't learn the 
language, won't salute the flag, and all they 
do is disparage the country. 

PLAYBOY: You've neatly boiled it down to 
a problem of borders, language and cul- 
ture, correct? 

SAVAGE: It's my definition of how our nation 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIZUNO 


“Pm not teaching my children how to fuck. 
There's no need for that. And I don't want the 
government teaching my kids how to fuck. Do 
I want a bunch of whack jobs at school teach- 
ing it to our kids? No fucking way!" 


PLAYBOY 


48 


is defined and why it's unraveling. It's also 
a framework. Here are our borders, here 
is our language, here is our culture. If you 
want to live in America, wonderful. But 
become one of us. If you want to practice 
your home language, do it at home or in 
your own community. 

PLAYBOY: That sort of rabid nationalism can 
quickly lead to xenophobia, which in turn 
can...well, remember what happened in 
the 1930s in Germany? 

SAVAGE: Ah, bullshit! That's typical left- 
wing horseshit. I don't even understand 
what they're talking about. What? I'm Hit- 
ler because I'm against illegal immigration? 
It makes me a racist? I would say the rac- 
ists are the people who come into a country 
that isn't theirs and take it over and tell me 
I should speak their language. You go to 
a sporting event and they're waving the 
Mexican flag, not an American flag. What 
if my grandfather had waved a Russian flag? 
They would have killed him. 

PLAYBOY: You wouldn’t be here speaking 
freely on the radio every day if it weren't 
for your immigrant grandparents and so 
many millions more. 

SAVAGE: Not all waves of immigration 
are the same. Not all immigrants are the 
same. Not all nations of origin are the same. 
The times are different. My grandparents 
wanted to become Americans. Maybe they 
spoke Yiddish at home, but when they went 
outside, they wanted to be Americans. So I 
don't know what that has to do with race. I 
think it has to do with attitude. 

And by the way, I'm not talking about all 
immigrants, not even all the illegal immi- 
grants. I'm talking about 30 percent. I've 
seen data that one third of all prisoners in 
America happen to be illegal aliens, most 
of them from Mexico. We can't survive as 
a nation if we keep letting this large swath 
of people come across the border. There 
are countries that put up barriers that say, 
"You can come into the country if you have 
a profession we need or if you have a cer- 
tain amount of money to start a business, 
but we can't afford to support you." We 
don't do that here. We say, "Come on in." 
Now, how in the world can we take in an 
unlimited number of people? Who's going 
to pay for their health care? Who's going to 
pay for their jail care? Who's going to pay 
for their legal care? Who's going to pay for 
their housing? The answer is the rest of us 
are. And that's why we're going broke. 

My principle—you want to help health 
care? Okay, two things. Let's take California. 
Put a highway patrol officer in every hos- 
pital. And I'm sorry, no tickee, no washee. 
You're not a citizen, you can't get care. Of 
course, if it's catastrophic, such as an auto 
accident, you give them what they need. 
But you can't get care if you're not a citizen. 
I'm sorry; we can't do it anymore. 

On a macro scale you can see where a 
society is the same as a household. And if 
politicians started to listen to the people 
who are screaming and saying, "Treat the 
nation like a household, not like a piggy 
bank you can keep hitting," we'd all be 


better off. We can't keep raiding the piggy 
bank because all these outsiders want some- 
thing from us. I'm just using logic. 
PLAYBOY: Is it logical to call for an outright ban 
on Muslim immigration, as you've done? 
SAVAGE: I'm very worried about the num- 
ber of mosques being built, where they're 
being built, why they have to be so dom- 
inant. I'm also worried about what type 
of Islam is being promulgated in America 
today. I've talked about Ше Wahhabi sect of 
Islam, which is very violent, very aggressive 
and very unaccepting of any other religion. 
We should consider what's being taught 
in any house of worship. I don't know of 
a church or synagogue in America that 
teaches people to go out and kill anybody 
or to go back to the homeland and learn 
how to strap a bomb on their dick and 
blow it up on an airplane. There may be 
some fringe churches—I don't know—but 
quite a few mosques are doing it. Just ask 
the FBI. Look at the Somali community 
of Wahhabis in Minneapolis. Why are so 
many young men going back to Somalia 
and being radicalized? Why are so many 
Pakistani men going back to Pakistan and 
being radicalized? Well, let's look at the 


A lot of vitamin C and a 
good long bike ride will gen- 
erate far more antidepressive 

qualities than an hour of 

therapy. But people don't 
understand that. 


fucking imams and what they're teaching 
these kids. But I don't know. It's not my job 
to solve these problems. It's the FBI's job. 
I'm supposed to be protected from this. 
PLAYBOY: But what is your responsibility? 
How responsible was it to say we should kill 
100 million Muslims, as you did in 2006? 
SAVAGE: Oh, come on! That was in the con- 
text of a whole longer conversation. But 
again, that's the sort of bullshit question I 
would expect from liberal vermin media. 
I don't know anybody who would actually 
say, "Go ahead and randomly start killing 
people." That comment came right after a 
bunch of Islamo-fascists blew up the subways 
in Spain, which was followed soon thereafter 
by the London bombing. There was talk of 
them getting control of a nuclear weapon. 
What if they take over Pakistan with nukes? 
Then what? We are going to face this Hob- 
son's choice. People kept saying the extremists 
represent only 10 percent of 900 million Mus- 
lims. That's when I asked, "Would you rather 
see 100 million of us fried or 100 million of 
them fried?" Nobody says this stuff, so I say it. 
I'm screaming out from the wilderness. 
PLAYBOY: So you're doing it to be pro- 
vocative? 


SAVAGE: If I were not a controversial figure, 
you wouldn't be here. My job is to make 
people listen. ГІ do it any way I have to. 
"What did he say? Fuck, that's outrageous!" 
Well, yeah, but listen to what I'm saying. See 
it in the bigger picture. Of course, people 
love to twist what I say, take it out of con- 
text, make me a monster. 

PLAYBOY: You sound like a monster some- 
times, like when you said last year that 
autistic children are just "brats who haven't 
been told to cut the act out." 

SAVAGE: Of course there are autistic children. 
But try to define it. Every goddamn thing a 
child does is now thrown into the autism spec- 
trum. How is that possible? Where did this 
illness come from? There are children who 
are genuinely autistic but not to the extent 
the medical establishment has claimed. The 
same with ADD and ADHD. A kid whines 
and the medical-pharmaceutical establish- 
ment says, "Medicate, medicate. Treat, treat. 
Your child is sick, poor baby." These kids 
aren't sick! It's the system that's sick. It's the 
same with adults. Psychotherapy has great 
value for people up to a point, but it doesn't 
mean that much to me. A lot of vitamin C 
and a good long bike ride will generate far 
more antidepressive qualities than an hour 
of therapy. But people don't understand that 
because they can't see it in context. 
PLAYBOY: In practically every context, you've 
come out against gay marriage, gay adop- 
tion and the gay lifestyle in general. It's 
2010. What's the problem with being gay? 
SAVAGE: I do accept gays. I don't know 
where it came up that I'm Mr. Anti-Gay. 
I still don't. [laughs] Well, I know where 
it came from. 

PLAYBOY: You were fired from MSNBC 
after telling an anonymous gay caller to 
"eat a sausage and choke on it" and "get 
AIDS and die." 

SAVAGE: Let's talk about that, all right? 
You know the guy wasn't gay, right? 
PLAYBOY: Does that excuse the comments? 
SAVAGE: Well, what you don't hear if you 
play the thing on YouTube is that he was 
insulting me and insulting my mother. 
This fucker was a prank caller. He started 
to ridicule me personally, so I basically got 
into a street fight with him and used the 
rhetoric of the streets to go for his guts. 
But all anyone heard was me berating the 
guy. It didn't come out of nowhere. 
PLAYBOY: Right. 

SAVAGE: But let's talk about the gays for a 
moment. First of all, I've had gay friends all 
my life. Currently I don't because I don't 
have a lot of friends to begin with. But 
one of my best friends all through my chil- 
dren's early childhood was a gay man—a 
good friend of ours who would come to 
the house, babysit. We didn't care. 
PLAYBOY: Isn't that the oldest line in the 
bigot's handbook? Some of my best friends 
are gay, black, Jewish, whatever? 
SAVAGE: My point is that many, many gay 
people are wonderful people. 

PLAYBOY: So why shouldn't they be allowed 
to get married? 

SAVAGE: [Laughs] It's funny. Most of the gay 


۱ 
WARNING: This product can cause 
Qum disease and tooth loss. 


PLAYBO!Y 


50 


people I know would say, "The whole rea- 
son I became gay was so I didn't have to 
fucking wind up like my mother and father. 
I want an interesting, wild life. I just want 
to fuck whomever I want and have a good 
time." Now, all ofa sudden there's this whole 
concept of living like Ozzie and Ozzie? They 
want to have the picket fence? 

PLAYBOY: So are you saying gay people 
choose to be gay? 

SAVAGE: How can you generalize about 
this? It's a nature-nurture argument. My 
point is, the people I knew who chose this 
way did so because they were so-directed, 
yes, but also because they did not want the 
picket-fence life. I am a sexual libertarian. 
Why should I care what people do to stimu- 
late themselves as long as children are not 
affected? Gay marriage confuses children. 
It all comes back to the survival of a soci- 
ety. To me marriage has always been the 
brick foundation of every society. You start 
tampering with the definition of marriage 
and you spread that idea to children, you're 
tampering with the whole structure. Hon- 
estly, this whole thing about gay marriage 
has become so damn important for reasons 
Ican’t even understand. I don't understand 
why anyone would want it so badly. 
PLAYBOY: Let's see: equal access to benefits, 
adoption rights, civil rights, the basic human 
right to live happily ever after- 
SAVAGE: I don't know of a society in the 
history of the world—Buddhist, Hindu, 
Muslim, Jewish, Christian—that recognizes 
a marriage between anyone other than a 
man and a woman. Beyond that, every time 
this issue has appeared on a state ballot gay 
marriage has been overwhelmingly voted 
down. In California, even African Ameri- 
can Obama supporters voted nine to one 
against gay marriage. So you have thou- 
sands of years of evolved social history that 
cannot be overturned simply because there 
isa screaming demand for it in one country 
at one time. I'm almost Rabelaisian in my 
view of sex. Do whatever the fuck you want 
ifit feels good. Like a psychiatrist wrote, “I 
don't care what people do, with what ori- 
fices, nor with whom, to get pleasure." Just 
leave the children alone. That's been my 
view on gay sex and marriage. 

PLAYBOY: Gay people aren't having sex 
with children. 

SAVAGE: But the children are being prose- 
lytized. If gay marriage becomes legal, the 
children see this and they get a false sense 
of what marriage is. 

PLAYBOY: Wait. Explain how children are 
being proselytized. 

SAVAGE: [Shouts] Oh! Oh! Let's go into the 
schools with the brainwashing. Johnny has 
two daddies! Put a condom on a cucumber 
so you don't get AIDS! Why do they have to 
teach children sexuality at all? Is that what 
schools are for? Aren't there parents for that? 
All ofa sudden the government has to teach 
sex? Why should we assume the schools are 
giving out healthy, honest information? If 
you look at some of the shit that's put into 
the school curriculum today, there are things 
on fisting. Have you seen any of this? Like 


fisting can be fun? You want to teach that to 
children? This is like a cult. I say leave the 
children out of it when it comes to sex. In 
that way I guess I'm not Swedish. 
PLAYBOY: So we shouldn't be teaching 
safe sex? 

SAVAGE: It should be up to parents to tell 
their kids about sex. 

PLAYBOY: Did your parents tell you 
about sex? 

SAVAGE: Never! [laughs] And I didn't have 
the sex talk with my children. It would have 
been very uncomfortable. "Son, daughter, 
I'm now going to tell you about fucking." 
Oh, fuck! They don't want to hear this. 
PLAYBOY: So children should just learn 
about sex from: 
SAVAGE: Where they always have! The gut- 
ter! Trial and error! You meet a girl, you 
make mistakes, you learn. Гт not teach- 
ing my children how to fuck. There’s no 
need for that. And I don’t want the gov- 
ernment teaching my kids how to fuck. 
Do I want a bunch of whack jobs at school 
with cucumbers and dolls teaching it to 
our kids? No fucking way! 

PLAYBOY: Is your family ever embarrassed 
by what you say? 


Let’s talk about global 
warming. Have you heard 
about Glaciergate? This is 
one of the greatest scientific 

frauds of our time. Let's put 
common sense out there. 


SAVAGE: No, no, no. [pauses] Well, I can't 
speak for them. I mean, I suspect there 
are certain issues we disagree on, but we 
generally don't argue politics. They know 
this is what I do for a living, and we tend 
not to talk about issues in which we have 
conflict. We get along better that way. 
PLAYBOY: Like what? 

SAVAGE: My wife and I disagree on the 
gay thing. She's in favor of gay marriage. 
It's not as though it's her life's mission, 
but she says it's good; if they want to get 
married, fine, and if they have children, 
it's better for the children. She'd rather 
have a gay couple—a nice gay couple— 
raise children than half of these fucking 
white trash Cops-type couples. 

PLAYBOY: Is it true your son's company, which 
makes Rockstar energy drinks, has to make 
asizable contribution to gay causes each year 
to balance out his connection with you? 
SAVAGE: I can't comment on anything my 
family does. 

PLAYBOY: Not even on Rockstar? 

SAVAGE: I do drink Rockstar. You have a bad 
hangover, try Rockstar Zero Carb. Instant 
cure. And you want to hear an interest- 
ing story about that? My dad was not an 


educated man, but he had an antiques 
store on the Lower East Side, right near 
the Bowery, with bums just crapped out in 
the gutter. Horrible. I'd say, "Dad, why are 
they in the street? Why are they allowed to 
be so sick? Why doesn't the city take care 
of them?" And he said, “Well, most of them 
want to be in the streets. They like it. And 
the shame of it all is,” he said to me, “if those 
goddamn alcohol manufacturers put in a 
few cents for B vitamins in the alcohol, most 
ofthe bums wouldn't get so sick." I told that 
story to my son when he was a little boy. As 
a result my son's interest in vitamins was 
provoked, and it had a tremendous positive 
influence on his formulations for Rockstar. 
You wouldn't believe it, but vitamins have 
a profound role in people's health. 
PLAYBOY: The first half of your career—as 
Michael Weiner, globe-trotting ethnobota- 
nist and author—was devoted to advocating 
vitamins and healthy living. You were a 
regular tree hugger. What changed? 
SAVAGE: I still like trees. In fact, that's what 
gets me so much about these so-called envi- 
ronmentalists. They drive their Priuses and 
whine about lightbulbs, but do they actually 
do anything? No! These Obama eco-warriors 
up here have turned beautiful Marin County 
into industrial England with all the smoke 
from their fireplaces at night. But how many 
of them have been out there and saved a tree 
or a forest? I spent years documenting the 
indigenous plants of various island nations 
and how they're used in medicine. But I 
call myself a conservationist rather than an 
environmentalist, because the word environ- 
mentalist is too loaded. Who wants to pollute 
the land? Who wants to pollute the water? 
Conservatives are more environmental than 
liberals in the sense that, who is it that goes 
hunting? Who is it that goes fishing? Who 
goes boating? A large group of them are 
conservative politically. Do they want to poi- 
son the earth and the water and the fowl? 
Idon'tthink so. They're the natural Teddy 
Roosevelt conservation type. 

PLAYBOY: Many conservatives also say 
global warming is a lie. 

SAVAGE: Let's talk about global warming. 
Did you hear about the computer files 
leaked out ofthe University of Fast Anglia 
that revealed how so-called climate scientists 
were cooking the data on climate change? 
Have you heard about Glaciergate? The 
chief proponent of this climate scam, Phil 
Jones, admitted this past February that 
the climate data are bogus. [Editor's note: 
Jones never said his data were bogus, but 
he did confess to sloppy record keeping. 
The British government exonerated him in 
April, saying his research did not contradict 
scientific studies that show global warming 
is real.] He admitted there hasn't been any 
statistically significant global warming for 
15 years. The head ofthe UN Committee 
on Glaciers had said glaciers would be gone 
by the year 2035, even though he admitted 
he knew the data were inconclusive when 
he was told about it two years ago. This is 
one of the greatest scientific frauds of our 
time. Let's put common sense out there. 


WARNING: This product can cause 
Qum disease and tooth loss. 


PLAYBOY 


52 


PLAYBOY: So you’re saying nearly 50 
major scientific societies, including every 
national academy of science on earth, are 
making this stuff up? Why would they? 
SAVAGE: Control. Money. You know how 
many billions of dollars are invested now 
in green technology? And you know how 
many hundreds of millions were given to 
these scientists to prove this shit? And if 
anyone didn't go along with it they were 
cast out of the whole scientific establish- 
ment. They were the heretics. No funding, 
no research, you're fired. 
PLAYBOY: You must be a joy to sit with at 
dinner parties. 
SAVAGE: [Laughs] I don't go to them. Or if 
I do, I'm miserable. When I was in Florida 
recently, a conservative woman we know 
invited Janet and me to Trump's Mar-a- 
Lago Club. The food was good. The people 
were nice. But when Donald Trump was 
introduced to us, he was cold to me. I sup- 
pose he heard I'd mentioned something 
once about his hair, which I thought was 
fake. And I still don't know what it is. But 
no, mostly at social gatherings I'm morose. 
I sometimes crave people, but then I get 
there and it's chaotic and unfocused and I 
want to leave. I get rattled around people. 
TIl be frank with you. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have any friends? 
SAVAGE: Friends? What is that? What does 
it mean? We all end up alone. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have any neighbors you 
could borrow butter from? 
SAVAGE: It would be nice to have friends on 
the block, but that's not the case. I'm basi- 
cally a communal person in my heart, so it's 
an interesting question. I was a kid who had 
hundreds of friends. I was like the neighbor- 
hood mascot, the shortstop. Everyone loved 
me. I never thought I'd wind up isolated and 
alone in a house on a hill in Marin County. I 
was joking about it on the radio yesterday. I 
said I always thought I'd end up owning an 
inn in New England, like on The Sopranos. 
You know, where the fat guy who was outed 
as gay goes before he gets whacked? 
Henry Miller wrote it best, I think, in Black 
Spring: "Every morning I awake to a thou- 
sand paths to take." Right? It's life. What are 
you going to do? You go down a road and 
you live with it. And you gotta thank God 
for what you have, because compared with 
what our ancestors had, I don't care who the 
American is, you don't have to go back too 
many generations to realize we're all living 
оп easy street. As poor as we are, as compli- 
cated as things are in America right now, the 
poorest man is living on easy street compared 
with what went on two or three generations 
ago in Europe. So I don't complain. 
PLAYBOY: What made you leave America to 
go to Fiji as a young man in 1969? 
SAVAGE: It made no rational sense at all, but 
T've looked back and self-analyzed it. Part 
ofit was trying to find cures for my brother 
Jerome, who was born brain damaged. 
When I was a kid, my mother cried over 
and over again to me about Jerome. And 
Td say, "Ma, if God could come down"—I'd 
say this to her when I was a little boy—"what 


would you ask God to do?" "I'd ask him 
to fix Jerome, make him better." Now what 
does a little boy want to do more than please 
his mother? "I'm going to give Mommy what 
she wants." There's no God in the room, so 
ГІ help her. ГП fix Jerome. So I looked for 
all these cures in the oddest places, because 
I knew traditional medicine didn't have 
answers. That's what led me outside the nor- 
mal Jewish medical school thing and on the 
long journey to Fiji. But what the fuck did I 
know? I'm living there on these godforsaken 
islands, working with folk healers. I've left a 
young wife and children behind. I've spent 
most of my money because nobody would 
fund it. What the fuck was I trying to prove? 
I'm Schweitzer? I'm a wild man? I wouldn't 
do it again today. 

PLAYBOY: Do you regret inviting Allen 
Ginsberg, the famous Beat poet, to visit 
you there after you and he exchanged a 
series of letters? 

SAVAGE: Who knows? I've definitely thought 
about it. I pretty much know what it was. 
Young Jewish boy—me—deracinated from 
his Judaism, didn't really think rabbis were 
worth much. Still don't. Ginsberg comes 
along and presents himself as a holy man. 


I was a kid who had 
hundreds of friends. 
Everyone loved me. I never 
thought Га wind up isolated 
and alone in a house on a 
hill in Marin County. 


The beard, the chanting, the poetry. So 
to a deracinated, searching Jew he looks 
like a prophet. And I wanted to know this 
prophet. When I was in New York I even 
wrote a little piece on him for the World Book 
Encyclopedia. Do you know about that? 
PLAYBOY: That's interesting. 

SAVAGE: Yeah. They paid me 50 bucks or 
something. I got to interview him. I saw the 
squalor he lived in. Didn't matter to me. We 
kept up a sort of letter-writing thing after 
I moved out here. I didn't know him well, 
though I got a little friendly with Lawrence 
Ferlinghetti, [angrily] the despicable, horren- 
dous, jealous, phony, communist capitalist 
that he is. And we all, you know, knew each 
other, and through that relationship of 
knowing each other from North Beach in 
San Francisco, I invited him and Ginsberg to 
Hawaii, where we were living, and I think on 
another trip, to Fiji. It's a blur to me now. 
PLAYBOY: What remains is a photograph 
of you swimming naked with Ginsberg, 
who was sort of the poster child for gay 
America at the time. 

SAVAGE: [Laughs] Now, have you seen 
the picture? 

PLAYBOY: No. Can you show it to us? 


SAVAGE: I don't have it, but I know the pic- 
ture. There's me, ethnobotanist, jumping in 
a cold river. There's Allen Ginsberg. There's 
Lawrence. Now open the frame and there's 
about 20 other people with us. All naked. 
But that's how people went swimming [in 
the South Pacific] at that time. 

PLAYBOY: But given your stance on gay 
politics, do you understand why that pho- 
tograph would be confusing now? 
SAVAGE: [Angrily] What does it mean? You 
hang around with a gay man, you're gay? I 
mean, what are they, nuts? Don't you see the 
hate that comes out of people when they try 
to pervert this? Who the fuck would sleep 
with Ginsberg even if they were gay? He was 
a horrendous man, horrible. An old, fucking 
disgusting queen. Communist NAMBLA 
[North American Man/Boy Love Associa- 
tion] member. There were a lot of reasons to 
not like the man, and he wasn't my friend. 
PLAYBOY: Were you ever confused about 
your sexuality? 

SAVAGE: No. Hello? Why is this? I mean, 
I can't understand this. 

PLAYBOY: Well, your vitriol toward them 
makes us think of something a teacher once 
said: When we hate others it's because we 
recognize something of ourselves in them. 
SAVAGE: So in other words I want to be 
a radical Muslim who blows up people 
in a schoolyard? 

PLAYBOY: Or perhaps you feel like an out- 
sider. Or you were confused. 

SAVAGE: Wrong! I hate radical Islam because 
I hate radical Islam, not because I want to 
put a bomb in a schoolyard. That's the logic 
of what you just said. And again, you're 
assuming I hate gays. It goes back to the 
same misinterpretation. You're coming at 
it from the wrong perspective. I've said it, 
ГІ say it again. I hope the interview is about 
more than this. I really do. This obsession, 
I don't understand. You're a sex magazine, 
okay, so you want to know about sex. As I 
said before, I'm a sexual libertarian! 
PLAYBOY: When did you lose your virginity? 
SAVAGE: Oh, Jesus, how old was I—19, 18? 
Idon't remember. But I did date a Playboy 
Bunny when I was 17 or 18. 

PLAYBOY: You did? 

SAVAGE: Yes. I was in college, and she was 
the sister of a girl I knew. She was ancient. 
She was 23. And we were all hanging out 
once, and everyone wanted this Playboy 
Bunny. It wasn't that she was so beautiful. 
She was pretty enough, but for fuck's sake, 
she was a Playboy Bunny! That was the epit- 
ome. A living goddess! And she chose me. 
Ispentthe time with her that afternoon in 
the apartment. I don't know whether we 
actually completed the circuit. I think we 
must have. I don't remember. But I glowed 
for a week as a result. I was like, Thank you, 
Hugh Hefner! Although now she probably 
has a transfusion tree somewhere if she's 
still living. Or living with a butcher some- 
where in Boca Raton. [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: That's funny. How did you meet 
your wife? 

SAVAGE: We're married, by the way, 
43 years. 


WARNING: This product can cause 
gum disease and tooth loss. 


PLAYBOY 


54 


PLAYBOY: She must be a saint! 

SAVAGE: Watch it! She loves me. She loves 
my genius, and she loves my passion. She 
knows I get excited and yell sometimes, 
and she loves that it's “what you see is 
what you get” with me. Anyway, I met 
her when 1 was promoting a film festival 
in the Lower East Side called the Be-In 
Again Film Festival. It was 1967. 
PLAYBOY: You were a hippie! 

SAVAGE: Who can remember? But any- 
way, the Human Be-In had just occurred 
in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and I 
had collected as many 16-millimeter mov- 
ies of the event as I could through an ad 
in The Village Voice. Oh, this is a fucking 
great story! So I put together this verkakte 
film festival in a back lot between some shit 
nightclubs, and about 30 people showed 
up. I remember some Polish lady upstairs 
yelling, “You fuckin’ hippie bastards!" 
And she threw water on the projectors. 
That was the end of the festival. [laughs] 
No, I swear to you. But in promoting the 
thing around the Lower East Side, I ran 
into Janet. She was beautiful and friendly. 
We started to date, lived together, went to 
Hawaii together, had children together, 
and here we are, in a blink of an eye. 
PLAYBOY: All that lefty counterculture 
rabble-rousing and you're the king of con- 
servatives now? Again, we have to ask: 
What the hell happened? 

SAVAGE: It all goes back to being a social 
worker in the fucking most liberal place 
of all—the Upper West Side of New York 
fucking City. I was making $5,300 a year. 
I couldn't afford furniture, so I had a mat- 
tress on the floor and a coffee table with two 
bricks, like everyone did in those days. So 
here I am a social worker, and the fucking 
bums on welfare come into the city depart- 
ment of welfare. My supervisor says, “All 
right, get out your book. You're going to 
have to give this bum $300 for a couch, $150 
for end tables, $150 for a coffee table, two 
end chairs, another $65 and the other..." 
Blah, blah, blah. “Write him a check for 
$4,922 to furnish his state-financed welfare 
home.” I said, “How can you do that?” She 
said, "Well, everyone who's civilized needs 
those furniture items." I said, "But I don't 
have them!" She said, "Well, you're not on 
welfare." So that's when it started to dawn on 
me that the system was totally corrupt and 
upside down. Then I would catch these wel- 
fare cheats. "Oh, hello, Mrs. Smith. How are 
you today?" And ГА see a pair of men's shoes 
under the bed. She was supposed to have 
been living alone. Or I'd hear her phone 
ring under the bed. They weren't supposed 
to have a phone. She put it under the bed. 
Everyone was working the system. 
PLAYBOY: That explains the radical change? 
SAVAGE: I don't see myself as having had a 
radical shift. I'm not much different than 
I was 30 years ago in my worldview. I'm 
still the same person who wants to be left 
the fuck alone. I don't want the govern- 
ment intruding in my life. I don't want it 
telling me what to do. I resent it telling 
me what I can say, what I can't say. What 


Ican't think. I don't like it controlling my 
food. I don't like it controlling my water. 
I don't like it controlling everything I do, 
and I don't like it giving handouts to peo- 
ple who don't want to work for a living. 
Yet look at what's happened. You go on 
an airplane, you give up all your civil rights. 
Why? Because you fucking moronic Mus- 
lims blew up a plane? So the whole world 
now went into a tilt. And they still can't 
stop them. Look at the underwear bomber. 
With all this shit, the guy could still get on 
and set his dick on fire on an airplane. If it 
weren't for the flying Dutchman [passen- 
ger Jasper Schuringa, a Dutch film director 
who subdued suspect Umar Farouk Abdul- 
mutallab], he would have blown up the 
plane. We should have given him a medal 
for saving the people. But no! That would 
have made government officials look like 
the incompetent idiots they are. [Secretary 
of Homeland Security] Janet Napolitano 
would have been in a barrel. 
PLAYBOY: Is the Obama administration 
doing right in your opinion? 
SAVAGE: I agree with Obama on regulat- 
ing banks. They're out of control. Even the 
bankers will tell you that. But in general 


I think there's going to be 
more voter remorse with 
Obama than with any other 
‚president in history. He’s 
leading the country down the 
road of socialism. 


I think there's going to be more voter 
remorse with Obama than with any other 
president in history, especially since so many 
conservative Republicans voted for him in 
opposition to McCain and Bush. I heard 
the idiots. They said, "Oh, it's better to elect 
Obama and teach the Republicans a lesson." 
Look what we ended up with. I mean, 
Obama's a great package—good-looking 
guy, very appealing. But you find out it's 
all fury and sound and nothing else. And 
he's leading the country down the road of 
socialism and left-wing morass. 

Do you realize Obama couldn't have 
been cleared to be his own Secret Service 
agent? As you know, to become an FBI or 
a Secret Service agent there's a very strict 
set of rules, one of which is based on your 
past associations. Let's forget the birthing 
issue. I won't go there. His association with 
Bill Ayers alone would have disqualified 
him. His association for 20 years in Rever- 
end Wright's church, the Reverend Wright 
who said the government gave AIDS to the 
black man? End of interview. 

PLAYBOY: What are your thoughts on the 
Теа Party movement? 
SAVAGE: I've always liked tea. But this 


movement is largely composed of middle- 
class business owners who know the 
government, Republicans and Dems, are 
bankrupting the nation. They see the threat 
from this Marxist-oriented president, his 
drive to nationalize many aspects of the 
private sector—from GM and AIG to our 
banks and health care. They know global 
warming and the associated cap-and-trade 
legislation are gigantic Ponzi schemes built 
on false science. And they know this hasn't 
stopped Obama from heating up his plan 
to expand federal funding of global warm- 
ing research, already pegged at $2 billion. 
The tea parties and the town halls are all 
saying what I've been saying on the radio. 
It's the true voice of America, not the left- 
wing "rent a mobs" we've seen for the past 
three decades. That's why they both shock 
and frighten the left-wing media. These are 
real people, really angry. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have a solution? You recently 
toyed with the idea of running for office. 
SAVAGE: I have toyed with it because 
Ithink I could win. I could win a con- 
gressional seat. But I don't want to be a 
politician. Ever. I don't have the nature for 
it. Let's say you win, okay? One, forget the 
hard campaign. You have to live in Wash- 
ington. I hate flying. I hate Washington. 
Ilike living here. I'd have to sit through 
meetings. I don't have the patience for 
meetings. I can't do groupthink. I'm not 
good in circles where I listen to everyone's 
opinion and go, "Um, um, um, um, uh." 
It wasn't running that scared me; it was 
winning. I'd rather sit home and talk to 
my dog and my listeners. 
PLAYBOY: You have an audience in the mil- 
lions. How do you explain your appeal? 
SAVAGE: I don't know. First of all I have 
a cantor's voice. I have a magnetic voice. 
I know that because if I'm walking the 
dog and I'm talking, people look up and 
respond to the resonance of my voice. It 
has a command, a stopping power. And 
Ibelieve I'm extremely capable of taking 
complex ideas and throwing a lightning 
bolt of connections in one phrase. People 
love that. Combine that with the down- 
to-earth guy-on-the-street, let's-talk-food, 
I-got-a-headache and here's-my-dog ordi- 
nary guy stuff, and that's the mix. Plus, 
I'm a party of one. I'm not a Republi- 
can; I'm not a Democrat. My parents 
were Democrats because they were poor 
Jews who thought FDR was God. Okay, 
he created the WPA and my father had 
a job. Had I joined the Republican Party 
it would have been like joining the Nazi 
Party. A lot of Jews today still feel the same 
way, even rich Jews. Republicans are still 
Nazis to them. Me? I’m not a Republi- 
can because I don't like their politics, 
and I know they're a bunch of crooks. 
Look at what Bush did. He was an embar- 
rassment. The man couldn't complete a 
sentence without mangling words. Not 
that being articulate is the end-all. Look at 
Obama. My listeners appreciate that I'm 
not a mouthpiece for either party. 
(concluded on page 126) 


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id you hear about this?, Have 
Dr seen this? Okay, maybe 

that would be impossible since 
you’ve only just landed on this page, 
but—anyway, true story! Absolutely 
true. I'm not making any of this up, 
Kev, or whoever you are. I'm just glad 
you're in a good mood tonight, or 


۳1 ین‎ s Ami ‚right, peo- 
e? Bec ecaüsé I heed te J aK you this: 
Ar d ag by у feel like a 
little*s s 


Ри not sites story so much as 
a full- -di: е spill and mid- 
night eite lot probe into the rotten 
(but thrilioà) events that not too long 


295,25 


P 


ago befell the sacred Fraternal Order 
of Late Night Talk Show Hosts: Befell 
them like a Hi-DEFCON nuclear strike, 
no less! You did hear about all that, I'm 
sure: the Cuckoo Coup upon Coco's 
Stillborn Empire? The Great Toadying 
Chin-Surrection and Double-Cross 
Grab-Back in Burbank? The Giddy 


58 


Dance of the Hoosier King’s Spite Demons on Broadway? 
Oh, it was a time of atrocity, yes, but also of sweet adrenaline 
rush for those of us who patrol the deep after-dark side of the 
TV moonscape. Me, Pm never far from the sleepless front 
lines; such is my curse and professional lodestone (which 
we'll get to). But damned if it wasn't wartime all over again, 


evening taping, he explained, *I love my wars! They energize me." 
He did look stronger and more formidable than when I saw him a 
few months prior—but that could have just been his new fascination 
with Man Spanx starting to pay off. Of course, the fine Kimmel fief- 
dom at ABC had never been in any real peril, whereas just a few miles 
away in Burbank, rape and pillaging (NBC style) had vanquished 


and for certain, each major combatant rattled onstage nightly 


with a manic righteousness; 
ruled. Whether getting fired, 


efiance and swagger roiled and 
getting even, getting personal, 


the redheaded prince-who-would-be- 
eventually if he'd gotten decent prim 
or so to finish ridding his smart jang 


king (or something like king, 
e-time lead-ins and a full year 
y pants of a few more ants). 


getting shifted or unequivocally shafted—these boys were 
having almost too much fun, especially amongst themselves. 
(Gallows glee is just one of their job requisites—and so had 
commenced this black-hearted pile-on most exuberant.) 

Somewhere near the thick of it I wandered into the Holly- 
wood command post of noble rogue Jimmy Kimmel, whose 
notably in the realm of 


merry rampages during the fray: 


Big Jaw-busting—had already won him the admiring sobri- 
quet of Robin Hood from comedy hepcats Paul Shaffer and 
Martin Short. Buoyant an: 


still twinkling after a Friday 


Ousted two Fridays earlier from his blip of a Tonight Show tenure, 
Conan O'Brien had last been seen flapping off toward purgatory 
unknown on the wings of a “Freebird” guitar jam, twanging along 
and Ben Harper, et al., while Will Ferrell crooned, “This 


with Вес 
bird you cannot change....” It made for a feisty final glimpse and 
heroic lingering image of a fall guy who never knew what hit him. 

Anyway, downstairs in the warren of Jimmy Kimmel Live! 
dressing rooms, I happened upon guest Barry Manilow, who had 
on the next-to-last Conan broadcast to perform, sans 


appeare 
irony, the retro-swoony *Where Do I Begin? (Theme From Love 
Story)“ despite the rising stench of hostile takeover curdling the 
studio ions. Recalling the experience God, that staff of his is 


crazy about him!?—the pop legend mentioned that somebody he 
knew had randomly snapped a photo during rehearsal on that day, 
which caught a forlorn O’Brien in civvies parked at his onstage 
desk, lost in reverie and more than a little misty-eyed. Others in the 


Manilow retinue confirmed seeing the *bittersweet picture" before 


it was deleted (*out of respect") from its owner's camera phone. 
But by most accounts Coco had endured his foul comeuppance 
with shifting gusts of stoicism and indignation, always managing 


to find the funny in his sneak-up shit storm. *You can't blame a 
shark for being a shark," he matter-of-factly told colleagues who 
implicitly understood the shark to be that great white hammerhead 
of comedy James Douglas Muir Leno—once and future (ad infini- 
tum) host of the hallowed institution that had been handed over 
to O’Brien not quite eight months earlier. It was an unprecedented 
transition of power, in that Conan's job promotion from his Late 
Night graveyard domain had been announced a tad precipitously— 
as in way back in autumn 2004 (when George W. Bush was still in 
his first term of office). At that point he had followed Leno onto 
NBC air nightly for 11 increasingly itchy if madcap years; the 
network could keep him from bolting elsewhere only by promis- 
ing the venerable Tonight Show would become his...one distant 
day. 
later reflect 
packs and our dinners would be in pill form.”) But the deal was 
struck, and Leno (secretly hating it with all of his strange and 
unknowable heart) agreed to the switchover, and finally the time 


five years down the pipeline. (Of the waiting period he would 
“I thought in 2009 we'd be flying around with jet 


was nigh. So last year, on the Friday before Conan’s Monday debut 
on June 1—during what were believed to be Leno’s waning min- 
utes of Tonight Show sovereignty—there was the lame-duck host 
(le, Magnanimous Mandible) proclaiming to his lanky successor 
seated in the guest chair, “I just want (continued on page 118) 


“Ronald has one great passion. Shells.” 


FOREIGN EXCHANGE 


ULIANA 


A sweet samba with Brazilian beauty Juliana Goes 


mamas Adriana Lima, Gisele Bündchen and Alessandra Ambrosio. There must be something in the coffee. 


razil is a favorite to win the World Cup, and it's our favorite place to find exotic women, such as samba 
And now, from pLaysoy Brazil, we present a dance with this senhorita from Sao Paulo—Pelé country. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY VALÉRIO TRABANCO 


21 


See more of Juliana at 
club.playboy.com. 


THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS YOGA IN AMERICA 
HAD A TASTE FOR MONEY, CONTROL AND 
IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG WOMEN 


ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX GROSS 


w 
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9 
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É 
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ER 


ғ 


— 


PIPA نی‎ 


7 
“/” 
Dn. 


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Te 
ж” 


64 


was January 26, 1898, 
five days into San Fran- 
cisco's party of the century. 
The city had been buffed to 
a glow for its golden jubilee, 
the 50th anniversary of the 
discovery of gold in Califor- 
nia. The streets were awash 
in gold bunting; Ше city's parks 
were illuminated by strings of electric 
lights and Chinese lanterns. In the 
drunken shivaree that went on around 
the clock, frequent booms and blasts 
shattered the air—from naval cannons 
and 21-gun salutes to elaborate fire- 
works that contributed to the wildest 
week San Francisco had ever known. 

But on this cool winter evening a 
more dignified assembly had gathered 
at a quiet location a few blocks away 
from the festivities. The San Francisco 
College of Suggestive Therapeutics 
had invited some 40 doctors and oth- 
ers to witness a groundbreaking dem- 
onstration. As gentlemen of science, 
the guests were dressed formally for 
the occasion in wing collars and frock 
coats, and they hushed themselves as 
they turned their attention to the thin 
young man seated before them. 

Professor Pierre Arnold Bernard 
was 22 years old and looked it: 
Sandy-haired and pink-skinned, he 
could nearly be described as boyish, 
save for a lush reddish mustache and 
intense gray blue eyes that defied his 
elders to doubt him. He informed the 
gallery that they were about to see 
a rare simulation of death by men- 
tal power, a self-imposed anesthetic 
trance that he, Professor Bernard, 
called the Kali Mudra in honor of the 
fierce Hindu goddess. Two reporters 
took down his words and witnessed 
the feat as it unfolded. A sketch art- 
ist and a photographer, authorized 
to make "flashlight portraits" of the 
proceedings in the darkened room, 
worked quietly. 

"Ready," said the subject. He closed 
his eyes as an elderly man named Dr. 
D. McMillan prepared the surgical 
tools. Dr. McMillan knew it would take 
three minutes before he could begin. 
His subject had even now fled the 
realm of sensation and was drawing his 
thoughts inward, following the path 
laid out for him years before by his 
Indian guru Sylvais Hamati, who was 
there that night only in spirit. Bernard 
lengthened his respiration, slowed it, 
stretched it, thinned it to a near noth- 
ing. His chest gradually stopped mov- 
ing, and he slid his eyes up beneath the 
lids. He burrowed his consciousness 
down, down, down—deep inside the 
muck and thud of his pulsing blood 
and organs—and shrank it to a pin- 
point less than the size of a cell before 
he pushed it out through this portal 


into a vast undulating etherlike peace 
the yogis call samadhi. He was gone. 
McMillan and Dr. Semple Turman 
of the college turned to the onlook- 
ers, who watched with intense curios- 
ity. Bernard now appeared to be as 
still as a corpse. McMillan then bran- 
dished for the gallery a steel surgical 
needle nearly a foot in length. He 
approached his subject and pushed 
the needle slowly through Bernard's 


HE SLEPT 

¿AS A HAT 

> PIN CUT 
THROUGH 


н TONGUE 


THROUGH A 
BEEFSTEAK. 


Bernard hardly looked like the 
swami mocked in the press. 
PAA 


\ 


earlobe. The doctors watched as he 
pushed another needle through the 
young man’s cheek. He inserted a 
third through Bernard’s upper lip and 
then ran a fourth through his nostril, 
sewing the ends of the metal togeth- 
er with thread. A bit of blood began 
to run into the swaddling wrapped 
around the subject’s neck. 

The surgery continued, but there 
was no movement from the patient, 
whose rosy features had turned white. 
His hands were cold and clammy to 


McMillan’s touch. The surgeons finished 
their work and stepped back. The assem- 
bled group was invited to come close for 
a better look, but.... “Wait,” they were 
told. This was not yet the culmination 
of the demonstration. McMillan gently 
opened Bernard’s mouth. In one hand 
he brandished a large ladies’ hat pin and 
ran it slowly through the center of Ber- 
nard’s tongue, which no doubt caused a 
few in the room to wince but produced 
not even a flutter of reaction from the 
tongue’s owner. The assembled doc- 
tors were beckoned to come close once 
again to inspect the man in the trance, 
and they did. 

The doubters among them were 
convinced by their own eyes. This was 
not a carnival sideshow or a magician’s 
trick. The young American yogi had 
successfully put himself in a trance 
state deep enough to induce anesthe- 
sia to the degree that he slept when an 
instrument cut through his tongue like 
a fork through a beefsteak. McMillan 
snipped the threads and removed the 
needles and pins from Bernard's flesh; 
the towel around his neck had turned 
dark with his blood. Though Bernard 
appeared to be somewhat dazed when 
he came to, he quickly regained him- 
self and assured the crowd he was per- 
fectly fine. In fact, he felt well enough 
to stand up and demonstrate his own 
powers of suggestion on a professional 
subject named E. Mansfield Williams, 
whose head dropped into a trance 
without Bernard employing any of the 
objects and hocus-pocus of a perform- 
ing hypnotist. 

Bernard, the reporter noted with 
awe, did it "telepathically" Most im- 
portant, Bernard's techniques could 
be passed along to anyone who wished 
to enroll at the College of Suggestive 
"Therapeutics and learn the secrets of 
what he called "trained occultism." 


Pierre Arnold Bernard was the first 


N American yogi and a spiritual hero to 


members of the Lost Generation. He 
endured—as a man, a teacher and a 
philosopher—for more than half a 
century. Due to his efforts and energy, 
yoga morphed from an ascetic practice 
to the healthy, vital activity we know to- 
day. He was a general in the campaign 
to defend yoga, and he lived to see it 
become tolerated, then accepted and 
finally praised. 

While Bernard may have been one of 
the more celebrated Americans of the 
1920s and 1930s, early in the century 
he bore the burden of notoriety as the 
Omnipotent Oom, Loving Guru of the 
Tantriks, the very model of the licen- 
tious, greedy Svengali. In those days he 
was labeled a big-city charlatan, a fraud, 
a seducer of (continued on page 127) 


“Tough break.” 


BEEFEATER 


LONDON 


— سب‎ М 


u 


E 


۳ 


SCHOOL 


BY A.J. BAIME 


n recent years we've watched the nightlife world kneel at the altar of 

the mixologist. The modern mixologist had his own Twitter feeds. The 

modern mixologist could make foam out of a cucumber. Today, however, 
the trend is shifting from the newfangled back to the classics that fortified 
our heroes of yore, when a cucumber foam was a lady's soap and gentle- 
men spent their evenings courting danger while holding a rocks glass and 
wearing a tie. We think of Richard Burton, who filmed the most expensive 
movie ever made at the time (Cleopatra) half in the bag. He stole the show, 
not to mention its leading lady (Liz Taylor). F. Scott Fitzgerald, a gin drinker, 
was known to show up at society parties in his pajamas. The world fell at 
his feet. Dean Martin, Winston Churchill...as the saying goes, we'll have 
what they were having. Over the next two pages we'll examine a few pil- 
lars in the drinking canon. Top yours off and come along for the ride. 

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROY KNIPE 


his gin gem caught on after Raymond 

Chandler mentioned it in The Long Good- 
bye. One of Hollywood's great booze stories: 
As a young man Chandler was a world-class 
elbow bender, but he later quit drinking. In 
1946 he was penning the script for The Blue 
Dahlia, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica 
Lake, and couldn't come up with an ending. 
Paramount execs flipped; they were weeks 
and many thousands of dollars into filming. 
Chandler admitted the only way he could fin- 
ish the script was if he relapsed completely. 
The studio arranged for six secretaries (i.e., 
barmaids), a doctor to give Chandler vitamin 
shots and limos to wait outside his house, 
ready to run pages. Sloshed to the gills, 
Chandler produced an Academy Award- 
nominated script, arguably his best. The 
gimlet, as Philip Marlowe liked it 

2 oz. gin 
. Rose’s lime juice 


Shake gin and juice with ice and strain 
into a chilled cocktail glass. 


MANHATTAN 
A nyone can make 

good cocktails," 
David Embury wrote 
in The Fine Art of Mix- 
ing Drinks (1948). 
“Тһе art of mixing 
drinks is no deep and 
jealously guarded 
secret." Embury's ——————————— 
book is one of the most time-honored bar- 
tender bibles. In it he lists six standards every 
man should have in his repertoire. While the 
Jack Rose has fallen out of favor, the martini, 
old fashioned, sidecar, daiquiri and manhat- 
tan have not. If the martini is the queen of 
cocktails, the manhattan is the benevolent but 
temperamental king. The drink is believed to 
have been invented at the Manhattan Club in 
the 1870s. Embury lists four recipes sweet, 
medium, dry and, our fave, deluxe: 


1 part Cinzano sweet vermouth 

5 parts rye whiskey 

1 dash Angostura bitters 

1 maraschino cherry 

Stir vermouth, whiskey and bitters 
with ice and strain into a chilled cock- 
tail glass; garnish with a cherry. 


*GOD PUT ME ON 
THIS EARTH TO 
RAISE SHEER HELL.” 
—RICHARD BURTON 


ШТ 
ІШІ) 


һе square-jawed granddaddy of all bar drinks (апа very likely the first 

cocktail], the old fashioned dates back nearly to the days of George Wash- 
ington, himself a prodigious whiskey distiller. It also exemplifies the basic 
idea of what a cocktail should be: a base spirit with added ingredients that 
create a balance of sweet and sour. The old fashioned reached the height of 
its fame as the standby at the Waldorf in Manhattan during its heyday, early 
in the 20th century. This recipe comes from Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert 
Stevens Crockett— published, curiously, during Prohibition. 


4 lump sugar 

2 bar spoons water 

1 dash Angostura bitters 

1 jigger whiskey (rye 
recommended) 

1 lemon peel 


SIDECAR 
ou could 
make an 

argument that 

the Ritz Hotel in 

Paris is the most 

romantic place 

to die. Coco 

Chanel took herr 

final breath there. So too did U.S. ambas- 

sador Pamela Churchill Harriman. Silent 
movie queen Olive Thomas OD'd at the 

Ritz. In Bret Easton Ellis's Glamorama a 

group of supermodel terrorists blows the 

place to rubble with TNT. Just be sure to 
drop by the Bar Hemingway before you 
make your exit. One of the most storied 
gin joints in the world, it gave birth to the 
bloody mary and this little number, the 
sidecar. Here's the original recipe from 
The Cocktails of the Ritz Paris: 
5 parts brandy 
3 parts Cointreau 
2 parts fresh lemon juice 


Shake ingredients with ice and 
strain into a chilled cocktail glass 
rimmed with sugar erystals. 


1 lump ice 
Muddle sugar, water and 
bitters in a rocks glass; add the 
remaining ingredients and stir. 
Let it lie down, as Sinatra used 
to say, then serve. 


NEGRONI 

n every piazza 
in every town 
in Italy, at about 
three Р.м. you'll 
find cafés filled 
with men sipping 
negronis, conduct- 
ing business or 
sweettalking the top off women half 
their age. The drink was invented in 
1919 at the Caffé Casoni. A count 
named Negroni asked the bartender 
to stiffen his americano, so the bar- 
man added gin in place of soda. The 
negroni is easy to make at home, but 
for the ultimate experience, venture 
to the café where it was invented. 
Though it's now called Caffe Gia- 
cosa, it's still in the same place on 
Via della Spada in Firenze. 


Тоз. gin 
1 oz. Campari 
% oz. sweet Italian vermouth 
Thin slice of orange 
Pour the liquids over ice in a 
rocks glass. Stir and sip. 


FRENCH 75 


his statuesque beauty is named after the 75-millimeter howit- 

zer that French gunners used in World War I. It has the kick 
of an automatic weapon, and if you drink too many you'll wake 
vp feeling as though you've been shot with one. The cocktail 
was the signature drink of Manhattan's Stork Club, a scene as 
moneyed as it was ribald. Mobsters (Frank Costello, a.k.a. the 
prime minister of the underworld) rubbed elbows with celebs 
(Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe) and politicians (the Kennedys). 
This recipe comes from The Stork Club Bar Book. 

2 оз. gin 

1 tsp. powdered sugar 

Juice of half a lemon 

Brut champagne 

Cracked ice 


Pour all ingredients 
except the wine into a 
flute. Top with cham- 
pagne and serve. 


RUM PUNCH 
Bi sailors in the 17th 
century had to make do 
with crude rum they called 
kill devil (because it cured 
disease by killing the devil 
in you) or red-eye (because 
it gave you a nasty hang- 
over]. One pirate, Captain 
Low, liked to hand his prisoners a mug of rum and a pistol. 
They could either drink the mug or shoot themselves. To make 
the rum palatable, sailors made punch using whatever ingre- 
dients they could get their hands on. Here's a recipe adapted 
from the original rum punch created in 1599 by Sir Edward 
Kennel, commander of the British navy, who would throw roar- 
ing parties for 6,000 sailors. He would make lakes of punch 
using 80 casks of liquor; ship's boys floated around in little 
boats to serve the stuff. Make a smaller batch and you've got 
a delicious summer party punch. 


2 cups gold rum 
2 cups dark rum 

2 cups simple syrup 

2 cups pineapple juice 
3 cups water 

Juice of 1 lime 

Juice of 1 lemon 


% tsp. nutmeg 

Mix all ingredients in a 
serving bowl with lots of 
ice cubes. (The nutmeg 
won't dissolve, but that's 
okay.) Garnish with 
slices of lemon and lime. 


L 


“THIS IS THE FEMALE FORM," WALT WHITMÄN 
WROTE. “A DIVINE NIMBUS EXHALES FROM IT 
FROM HEAD TO FOOT.” 


` HEREW ny A CELEBRATION OF THE INBETWEEN" 
^ STARRING'A COLLECTION OF OUR BEAUTIFUL” = 
7 INTERNATI 


y 
- = 
ای‎ 425 


MAGDA KRÓLIKOWSKA .-` 


OLGA SAVINSKAYA .. UKRAINE 


DOREEN SEIDEL ... GERMANY 


| 


p 
, b. ч 
e ` 
- 
. 


ashamed, women... You are the 


rates of the body, and you are the 9 7 
gates of the soul. 


ickie Bernbaum arrived in Pap- 
ua New Guinea in the middle 


of the rainy season апа Нем up 

to the Highlands. He had come 

straight from an embed in Iraq 

and his duffel bag was stuffed with 

three months’ worth of clothes and books 

and video games, sunblock, antimalarials, 

72 Skin-So-Soft, water-purification tablets, 


his Kevlar vest, two cartons of Marlboro 
Reds and a Lonely Planet guide. He had 
come on assignment to photograph a 
jail. The Highlands rain pounded down 
every day, aggressive and unrelenting, 
then all of a sudden cleared to reveal 
a low equatorial sun lighting up rain- 
forest-covered mountains and orange 
earth roads that crisscrossed the small 


ILLUSTRATION BY CYRIL VAN DER HAEGEN 


EON 


town of Gehuku. Dickie had never expe- 
rienced anything like it. 

After the rain stopped the place had 
a slowed-down out-of-time feeling, too, 
almost like being underwater. It was 


surreal, a little, for Dickie, who’d just 
been in the sped-up world of night- 
time house-to-house patrols in Mosul, 
ear-popping gunfire and bombs and 


adrenaline. When he got to the High- 
lands he slept through the night for 
the first time in wecks, slept in a way he 
hadn't in years, as though he had slipped 
inside the quiet and rain and smell of wet 
earth. It was like being on another planet 
after the blaring, dry heat of Iraq. 

On his third day in the Highlands, 
Dickie hired a driver to pick him up 


from the hotel and take him to the jail, 
which was 10 miles outside of Gehuku. 


The driver, Peter, a taciturn man with 
cinnamon-colored skin and a thick 
black beard, waited in his van smoking 
and listening to the radio while Dickie 
wandered outside Ше prison gate: 

Neat rows of coffee trees grew on either 
side of the road, their small dark leaves 


reaching up to the sun, throwing shad- 
ows on the packed earth. A few young 
New Guinean soldiers with AK-47s 
strapped across their chests who were 
guarding the entrance ignored him. 
But then, when he approached, friendly 
and smiling, offering to share his pack 
of Marlboros they grinned and started 


ng around. The: six-foot-four Dickie 


74 


with his gleaming gold hoop earrings 
and arms covered in tattoos was unlike 
any white man they had ever seen. They 
were curious and, at the same time, re- 
laxed by his almost fraternal attitude; 
it seemed as though he must be an old 
soldier. Eventually they posed, smiling 
into his camera, their lips and gums 
and teeth stained a deep crimson color 
from all the betel nut they chewed. 

“You can’t get into the jail without 
the governor's permission," Peter told 
him scornfully. "Those boys with their 
guns can't do anything for you." 

“That's okay,” Dickie said. "I like hang- 
ing out with them." 

As they drove back into town the sun 
began to sink behind the mountains and 
the clouds were orange and pink. The 
air smelled of wood smoke and deep- 
fat frying oil, blooming frangipani and 
cut grass. Dickie closed his eyes happily 
and breathed in. The thought of his 
wife, Tricia, her soft black hair and full 
lips, flickered across his mind. They had 
fought about him taking the assignment 
instead of coming home after the em- 
bed in Iraq. He would call her when he 
got back to the hotel and tell her about 
this landscape. It was like Hawaii, which 
she loved, but so much more intense 
and hidden and ancient-feeling. 

The Gehuku Hotel was owned by the 
governor of the province, Sir Norman 
Barnett, a white Australian business- 
man who'd lived in New Guinea since 
1974, before the country gained its 
independence from Australia. Dickie had 
wandered around the hotel that morn- 
ing, waiting for Peter to arrive, look- 
ing at the series of framed photos and 
laminated captions that told the story of 
Barnett in the Highlands over the de- 
cades: the governor flying his helicopter, 
campaigning out in the rural villages, 
dressed in a traditional tribal chieftain's 
getup surrounded by bare-breasted 
women, standing in front of a school, 
then a clinic, then his fleet of helicopters 
at Barnett Air Freight. The governor 
looked immense and pink-skinned and 
bald surrounded by the diminutive New 
Guineans. The photos seemed absurd 
to Dickie, laughably politically incorrect 
and self-mythologizing. What a strangely 
backward and unconscious place it was, 
Dickie thought. No wonder his editor 
had sent him here for the series on the 
infamous jails of the world. 

He had a small cheap room down 
the hallway from the hotel’s open-air 
restaurant, which also served as a mess 
for the Barnett Helicopter pilots. Dickie 
had heard the pilots at their meals in his 
sleep; the nasal tones of their Australian 
accents floated through his dreams. 
The hotel manager, a pretty Canadian 
woman named Mally, worked in the din- 
ing room during the pilots’ meals, wip- 
ing tables and helping set up the buffet, 


then bringing out press pots steaming 
with fragrant coffee, and plates of but- 
ter cookies. Dickie had flirted with her 
from the first moment he saw her, fol- 
lowing her as she worked, teasing her, 
showing off, telling her stories about 
Iraq. She was almost six feet tall and 
they were like two giraffes, wandering 
around the dining room and the front 
office, chatting and smoking. 

One of the pilots, a round, sun- 
burned Australian named Ed, pulled 
Dickie aside. 

“Careful, mate,” he said. “She may 
not act like it, but that’s Caesar’s wife.” 

But Sir Norman was in Port Moresby, 
the capital, where parliament was in 


session. And Dickie couldn't believe 
that the bald, ugly man in the framed 
photos—who had to be 60 by now— 
was the lithe, young Mally’s boyfriend. 

“So, what is that? A beauty and the 
beast thing?” 

“Tt is what it is. The governor is mas- 
ter and commander here. Don’t think 
he isn't. And that's his woman." 

“1 just appreciate pretty girls," Dickie 
said, laughing. "I'm harmless, Ed. Any- 
way, she doesn't take me seriously." 


Which was why he was surprised that 
night when Mally knocked at his door a 
little after nine o'clock, holding a bottle 
of Bundaberg rum and a bag of weed. 
Dickie turned down the MTV-Asia he'd 
been watching while he fiddled around 
on Photoshop. He hadn't been able to 
call Tricia or upload his photos when he 
got back from the jail. The phone lines 
were down, which was ordinary accord- 
ing to a shy New Guinean woman with 
her hair in tight cornrows who sat at 
the front desk. "No Internet, no phone 
for the next day or so, Mr. Bernbaum," 
she had said. "Sorry-true." So Dickie 
spent the evening going through the 


photos on his own, editing, touching, 
color-correcting, working on a series of 
the prison guards. 

Mally smiled at Dickie, who was in his 
boxers, sat down on the bed and started 
rolling a joint. He could tell she was ner- 
vous, and she started talking quickly; 
her life story came tumbling out, confus- 
ingly, into the small, messy hotel room. 
She told him that she was originally from 
Alberta, that she had been running the 
governor's hotel for the past three years. 

Mally hated Papua New Guinea, she 
said, she hated Gehuku and the hotel, 
but most of all she loathed the New Guin- 
eans she had to supervise every day. 

“T used to like it," she said. “I used to 


take tons of pictures and buy all these 
handicrafts and stuff and send them to 
my mum and sister. But I don't even go to 
the market anymore. They slit your pock- 
ets with razor blades to get your wallet." 
They were a nation of small-time con 
artists; they smelled, were riddled with 
disease and worms and bedbugs and 
lice. Gang rape was routine, and practi- 
cally everyone under 30 had AIDS. The 
hotel cleaning staff stole toilet paper, 
soap, lightbulbs, sheets, towels, pillows, 
blankets, shower curtains, and once she 
had even caught them sneaking a mat- 
tress and a box spring out the back gate. 
And they were crazy, too. Only the day 
before she had had to give the head 
maintenance man a live rooster because 
she had inadvertently insulted him. 
"Why are you laughing?" she asked. 
“I don't know; isn't it kind of funny?" 
"Not at all," she said. "Not if you under- 
stood this place. Not even a little." 
Mally watched him with brown eyes 
that were the color of milk chocolate. She 
was big-boned and strong-looking and 
wore her dark hair in two thick braids. 
Her short blue-painted fingernails 
flashed as she gestured and smoked. 
This stuff is (continued on page 108) 


“Hi, everyone—Wilma and I have just arrived here on 
the beautiful Riviera....” 


75 


76 


ike a blast of walking sun- 

shine, 18-year-old Katie 

Vernola is everything the 

Beach Boys promised a 

southern California girl 
would be. You want a woman who 
loves sun, surf and sand? Katie, a vet- 
eran of 11 years ofcheerleading by her 
senior year in San Clemente, is not only 
an avid wakeboarder, snorkeler and 
bodyboarder, she even got up on a 
surfboard for her Miss June shoot. "I'm 
still pinching myself about becoming a 
Playmate!" Katie laughs with her capti- 
vating Goldie Hawn/Kate Hudson-like 
giggle. Moving on to the world of little 
deuce coupes, Katie pines for her ulti- 
mate dream ride, a pink Lamborghini 
Gallardo. “I love whipping my head 
back and riding in fast, exotic cars!" Not 
just a front seat ornament, she's also a 
grease monkey. "Yep, I can put on rims 
and tires, balance them and change 
your oil, too," she boasts. "So if you ever 
have any car trouble, call me." Will do, 
Katie. But what if we're looking for a 
girl in an itty-bitty polka-dot bikini... 
or less? No problem. “I always wanted 
to be a model and be in PLAYBOY, and 
now it's all happening so quickly. Pm 
like, ‘Okay, let's go!’ And as far as pos- 
ing nude goes, I just thought, Everyone 
has boobs and a butt, so it's not that big 
a deal. And anyway, during the shoot I 
felt like, I'm free—yippee!" 


Photography by 
Stephen Wayda 


MEET OUR BLUE 
CRUSH, MISS JUNE 
KATIE VERNOLA 


See more of Miss June 
at club.playboy.com. 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


и Кайда Махир 

вт. HD _ mist: ao __ HIPS zer 

. NE е L ad от — di | 

BIRTH DATE: 0121 а. BIRTHPLACE: Миа illa CA - 

awertioys: 19 OL Ma best Ploymo | can be, 
callao ond hoya o healthy, happy family. 


TURN-ONS: 
TURNOFTS : 5 9 \ 0 = \ 
2 5 WIM Слооке а. 


m 
За Svo wo - No 
MY FAVORITE күш LOO Boys 2. V Wwe, Cars, and ús _ 
Filed With yacina, explosivas ond Killer Cyashas. 
I'M HAPPIEST: avin nin the un ok Man 
wim my Maltese, Madison, ond my family. 
MY FINEST колы РАДИЧ non, being Miss June! Thanks, Herb 


Eiarth-grade 
\pavbook picture. 


WATCH MISS JUNE'S VIDEO DATA SHEET АТ PLAYBOY.COM/DATASHEET. 


vi lue A 


* 
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PLAYBOY'S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH 


5 
2 
= P 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


The owner оҒа golf course was confused 
about paying an invoice, so he decided to ask 
his secretary for some assistance. “You took 
math in college,” he said. “I need some help. 
If I were to give you $20,000 minus 14 per- 
cent, how much would you take off?” 

The secretary considered the question 
for a moment and replied, “Everything but 
my earrings.” 


There should be an all-steroid sports competi- 
tion called the Olympdicks. 


What is one of the most expensive things in 
the world? 
A woman who is free for the evening. 


А man went into a confessional booth and 
discovered a fully equipped bar with beer on 
tap and a wall stocked with a dazzling array 
of the finest Cuban cigars. When the priest 
walked into the room the man said, “Father, 
forgive me, for it has been a long time since 
Гуе been to confession, but I must say the 
confessional box is much more inviting than 
I remember.” 

“Get out,” the priest ordered. “You’re on 
my side.” 


What do you call a virgin on a water bed? 
А cherry float. 


| don't know what to do," a man said to his 
pal one night in their favorite bar. "Whenever 
I go home after a night out with the boys, I 
turn off the headlights before I get to my 
driveway, shut off the car engine and coast 
into the garage. I take off my shoes before 
I go inside. I sneak up the stairs, undress in 
the bathroom and then ease into bed—but my 
wife still wakes up and yells at me for staying 
out so late." 

"You're taking the wrong approach," his 
friend replied. ^I make a lot of noise getting 
out of the car, slam the door, storm up the 
steps, throw my shoes into the closet, jump 
into bed, rub my hands on my wife's ass and 
say, 'How about a blow job?' and she's always 
sound asleep." 


What's the worst thing about the growing 
unemployment problem? 

It's harder to screw your girlfriend with her 
husband home. 


A man was sitting quietly and reading the 
paper one morning when his wife walked up 
behind him and hit him on the back of his head 
with a frying pan. 

“What was that for?” he yelled. 

“Tell me about that piece of paper in your 
pocket with the name Heather written on it,” 
his wife exclaimed angrily. 

“Oh, honey,” he said. “Heather was the name 
of one of the horses I bet on when I went to the 
races two weeks ago." 

Satisfied with his answer, the wife apologized 
and left him alone. Three days later the man 
was sitting in his chair reading when his wife 
again walked up and hit him on the head with 
a frying pan. 

"Now what the hell was that for?" he 
demanded indignantly. 

"Your horse called," she replied. 


ln California there is a six-month waiting 
period for filing for divorce but only a 15-day 
waiting period for buying a handgun. It's nice 
to know the government is giving us advice on 
how to work out our problems. 


One night a man and his wife were discussing 
their sex life. 

"Use your imagination so we can spice things 
up," the man said. 

"Oh," his wife replied. "So I should imagine 
that it's good?" 


Children in the dark cause accidents. Accidents 
in the dark cause children. 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY, 680 
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611, 
or by e-mail through our website at jokes.playboy.com. 
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributors whose sub- 
missions are selected. 


EE 
LE 
z| 
6۱ 
2 || 
El 
ш 


II. 


“Okay, I give up!” 


BY ERIC SPITZNAGEL 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ART STREIBER 


FUSSELL 


TER 


01 

PLAYBOY: You've starred іп several stand-up comedy specials, you 
hosted the MTV Music Video Awards, and you're appearing in your 
second Judd Apatow- produced movie this summer. Why aren't 
you a household name yet? 

BRAND: | haven't been here long enough. Aside from the bits you 
just mentioned, I've spent most of the past few years in England 
I've actually been focusing on becoming a household name іп 
Russia and China, because that's the future. | hope 
you enjoy this innocent era before your 
empire collapses. 


PLAYBOY: In your memoir, My Booky Wook, you describe a childhood 
and early adulthood filled with heroin addiction, bulimia and sex 
with prostitutes. While you were living it, were you thinking, Oh 
man, this is going to make great fodder for comedy someday? 
BRAND: | sort of did, yeah. | had enough foresight at the time to 
think, This is pretty horrible, but it'll make for a good story. That was 
the only thing that made it tolerable, to have a bemused detach- 
ment about it. | think finding the humor in your life is sometimes 
the only thing that makes it bearable. You can contend with that 
sense of sadness by opposing it, by overwhelming it with comedy. 
It's a useful method for navigating through sadness and misery. 


03 
PLAYBOY: Your father bought a prostitute for you during a trip to 
Hong Kong when you were just 16 years old. Was that experience 
terrifying or exhilarating? 

BRAND: It wasn't as irresponsible as it sounds. It was just the con- 
sequence of a night of drinking. | was in no way coerced. It was 
actually one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me. 
I can still recall everything about that night-the women in their 
high heels clinking across the floor and the smell of perfume and 
booze. ме had a strange attraction to prostitutes ever since. | just 
liked hanging out with them and talking to them. Prostitutes are 
some of the most fascinating women I've met in the world. 


04 
PLAYBOY: At least until recently you had а tremendous 
appetite for groupie sex. What are the reasons 
you wouldn't sleep with a fan? 


BRAND: It's just aesthetics. When | 
was at my most promiscuous, I was like a 
charging locomotive. My selection process was 
outsourced. | had a team of experts who took care of finding 
women for me. They had very specific instructions. It was as if | 
was talking to a wine steward. "I'm looking for something French, a 


bit fruity, smells of oak” [laughs] I've (continued on page 114) 


89 


BMT SHAPIRO, | 


۳ 


E 
| 
x 
x 
5 
| 
| 
: 
Ñ 
: 


— 
A NEW BOOK, DELIGHTS IN THE THRILL OF LARGER-THAN-LIFE FIGURES GETTING CUT DOWN TO SIZE * 


© TOO SEXY 


THE DRAFT FOR CASABLANCA UNFIT FOR THE SCREEN 


Nr. J, L, Warner, 
Warner Brothers, 
Burbank, Californie 


Dear Wr, Warner: 


Че nave received Part II, also ра 
changes dated Мау 10th, for your proposed picture 
CASABLANCA, Ав we indicated before, we cannot, об 
course, give you m final opinion until we receive 
the complete soript. 


However, tho present materie) contains cer- 
tain elements which seem to be unacceptable from the 
standpoint of the *romobion Codo. Spealficslly, w 
cannot approve the present suggestion that Capt. 
Renault makes a practice of sedusing the women to 
whom he grants visas. Any moh inference of 1114016 
aer could not bs approved in the finished picture, 


Going through this now materiei, we 0811 
your attention to the following: 

P 
125 end 126 1 


70 and 71: Tho dialogue in scenes 
unecoepteble by reason of its sex sug- 


geativoners. 

Paro 76: The following dielogue is un- 
acceptable for the above reasons "Ву the way - another Casablanca 
visa problem has come ор") "Show her in". 

Page 85: ‘the line "You'll find it worth 


unacceptably sex suggestive. "UNACCEPTABLY 
SEX SUGGESTIVE” 


your while” íi 


Page 86: The sugg: 
ried all the time she was having her love 
Riok in Paris seems unacceptable, and cou 


approved in the finished picturi 
the а 


tion of Ilsa's line ۷ 


вгпог - page 2 May 21, 1942 


Же will be happy to read the balance of the 
end to report further, whenever you have it 


Cordially yours, 


Joseph I. Breen 


RETURN TO SENDER 
PUBLISHER REPULSED BY GERTRUDE STEIN'S INNOVATIVE WRITING 


FROM ARTHUR C. FIFIELD, PUBLISHER, 
13, CLIFFORD'S INN, LONDON, E.C. 
TELEPHONE 14430 CENTRAL 
April 19 1912, 


- : Ж X Е - 
x X 


е LOUSY S.O.B. (6) OFF THE WALL 
HARRY TRUMAN LAMBASTES SENATOR JOSEPH McCARTI MOMA HAS NO NEED FOR ANDY WARHOL'S SHOE 


Doer 


THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 
NEW YORK 19 yr wear sara sreeer 


My dear Senator; 
I read your telegram of February eleventh from Keno, Nevada. 


with a gr 


t deal of interest and this is the first tiyê in my experience, тиг MUSEUM COLLECTIONS 


td of a Senator trying to wer 18, 1956 
4. You know that isn't done 


and I was ten years in the Senate, that I ever 


discredit his own Government before the wı 


by honest public officials. Your telegraf is not only not true and an a 


insolent approach to a situation that ¿fould have been worked out between Last week our Committee on the Museum Collections 
hold its first meeting of the fall season and had a chance to 
ely that you are not even fit to have a study your drawing entitled Shoe which you so generously of- 


5 fered as a gift to the Museum. 


man and man but it shows conclu: 
hand in the operation of the Со) 


I regret that I must report to yov that the Committee 
decided, after careful consideration, that they ought not to 
accept it for our Collection, 


Lam very sure that the/people of Wisconsin are extremely sorry 


that they are repr 


entedy a person who has as little sense of responsibility 
را‎ ваха, let пе explain that because of our severely limited 
gallery and storage space we must turn down many gifts offered, 
since we feel it is not fair to accept as a gift a work which 
may be shown only !nfrequently, 


Nevertheless, the Committee has asked me to pass on 
to you their thanks for your generous expression of interest 
in our Collection, 


Sincerely youra, 


۳ 


Sincerely, 


fd, 


Е. Barr, Jr, 
Director of the Museum Collections 


o THANKS, BUT NO THANKS 
ROSEANNE PRODUCER WOULD RATHER BE IN A WAR ZONE % P.S. Тһе drawing may be picked up from the Miseum at your 
"onvenience, 


March 27, 1990 


To my friends at Carsey-Werner Company, ABC, to the (7) THE АХ 


cast, crew and staff of Roseanne 


7 PVT. JIMI HENDRIX IS NOT ARMY MATERIAL 
My sincere and heartfelt thanks to all of you. سب‎ — REJECTED 


I have chosen not to return to the show next season. STATEMENT 
Instead, my wife and I have decided to share a vacation in jon. If deponent In accused or жездесіне of 


7 


the relative peace and quiet of Beirut. 7 


First Nane ee Тете) 


JEFF HARRIS 


EEE a ne 


е HANDS OFF МУ DAUGHTER 
. PRESIDENT CLINTON SAYS CHELSEA ISN'T ON THE MENU 


E هن‎ aid 
7 


ber of the Armed Forces) (has) O BEE! 
| UNDERSTAND THAT | DO NOT NAVE TO MAKE ANY 


Orneror MAY BE USED AS EVIDENCE AGAINST ис." 
WII LIAN JEPPERSON CUNTON I have known Pvt James M Hendrix, НА 777993 532, since he was assigned to the 
September 18, 2007 Unit in Nov 61. He was assigned to the Repair Parte Section for duty as a supply 
= clerk. Shortly after his assignment his section Sgt, Sgt Bouman, cane Бо me and 
indicated that Hendrix was going to be а problem. І have since then found that 
Nino Selimaj Hendrix is poorly motivated for the military, has no regerd for regulations, re- 
One Boro quires excessive supervision while performing his duties, peys ne heed to counsel- 
38 University Pl 1 ing from his supervisors as to his shortcomings. He із a habitual offender when it 
New York, NY 10003 comas to making bod check, having missed bed check in Karch, April and May, 
Hendrix has been counseled regarding his shortconings at extreme lengths by 
Dear Nino, ^ Capt Gilbert В Batchnan, to по avail. At tines Hendrix isn't able to carry on an 


intelligent conversation, paying little attention to having been spoken to. At 
= о " я one point it was thought perhaps Hendrix was taking dope and was sent to be ex- 
esee dete amen ماب‎ nenn ng cus ی سا‎ i Es ined by a mdical officer with negative results. He has been undergoing group 
Chelsea Clinton in your front window. As yow know, Ма. Clinton, a private cinzen, wns not e De Mental Бураш» Mtn онеге Sant 
consulted prior to this picture being displayed, and thus, bez permission was not given for Pvt Hendrix plays a musical instrument during his off duty hours, or so he 
you ro do so. While she may have dined at your restaurant, this docs not serve as an says. This is one of his faults, because his mind apparently cannot function 
endorsement while performing duties ani thinking about his guitar. 
On 23 May 62, Hendrix missed bed check, also at that tine his pass privileges 
were withdrawn by the оо прапу commander. However Hendrix will readily admit, to be- 


Thetcfore, we ask that you immediately remove thor picture and any and 


la. Clintan. We reserve ncaa prio | | img off post without а pass, showing no regerd for regulations. 
een: NIEREN еи мо 1 recommend with out hesitancy that hendrix be eliminated fi je service 
93 under the provisions of AR 635-208 as expeditious as possible. 


Please confirm this understanding by чаце, return enerespondence. We appreciate your 
cooperation. | 


2 E аз mer 1 or Ду тоз 


TAKEN = a 
the starazent and be identilied an "PAGE OF- PAGES." 


DA. „19-24 PREVIOUS EDITION OF THIS PORN 15 OBSOLETE. 


Sincerely, 


Bb f bl 


Additional poge mast bear che initials of the person sob 


Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby in the 
1974 film of the Fitzgerald classic. 


“CAN'T REPEAT THE PAST?" wrote Е. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1925 


A = A, classic The Great Gatsby. “Why of course you can!” Taking inspiration 
,. — b Ea from the gentlemanly pursuits of an era when men knew how to relax— 


by, say, taking a bath in gin—while never looking more comfortable 


= = 
in our own skin, PLAYBOY puts an updated spin on those classic looks 
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whether three-time winner 


95 


BARROOMS AND 


An alcoholic one night ofthe week, 
а workaholic the other six. Only 
m I'm better these days. Now I don't 


work either day of the weekend unless I have a speaking 
engagement. And I still drink too much only on Fridays. 
“Was it fun making your movies?” people always ask. “No!” 
I respond. “Fun is being home in Baltimore and going 
out to scary bars." 

Bars have always been a big part of living in Baltimore, 
and the good ones have no irony about them. They're not 
"faux" anything. They're real and alarming. True, Baltimore 
is changing, but what I make movies about is still there, 
lurking on the backstreets. When I was a teenager I hung 
around outside of bars. My mom used to drive me downtown 
to Martick's, a bar known (at the time) for its bohemian cus- 
tomers. “Well,” she'd sigh as she dropped me off, knowing I 
couldn't get in because the owner was aware I wasn't 21, "at 
least here you might meet some people you could get along 
with." I sure wasn't having much luck elsewhere. I didn't 
realize this at the time, but what a brave chance my mother 
took by doing that. She knew that Maelcum Soul was the 
barmaid there and that my best friend, Pat Moran (we met 
because we had the same boyfriend), sometimes joined her 
behind the counter. I hung out in the alley, or as we started 

96 calling it, the "alley-a-go-go." Pretty soon other lunatic bar 


WAVE A WAYS BEEN 
— 


N BALTIM IRE, 


AND THE GOOD ONES HAVE 


NO 
— 
IRONY ABOUT THEN, 
RE NOT’ 


^ THEY'RE REAL AND 


ALAR RMING. 


98 


customers would come outside to talk 
to this skinny underage long-haired 
kid who wanted to make movies. I was 
in seventh heaven. 

My mom didn't know it, but I had 
already gotten into a Baltimore bar 
with a fake ID. Pepper Hill was a semi- 
legal gay club located next door to 
the main police station. Who wouldn't 
wonder about payoffs? There I saw 
Pencil, my first other-side-of-the- 
tracks drag freak. He was Baltimore's 
male Tralala, and I used to see him 
in the daytime too, when I'd hook 
school and eat at the awful, aptly 
named Little Restaurant on Howard 
Street. Pencil was tall, weighed about 
100 pounds and wore black skintight 
girls' jeans, an angel blouse and his 
own bleached hair in some kind of 
makeshift beehive. He would screech 
and sashay up and down the street, 
having nell fits and mincing to horri- 
fied truck drivers, who would shout 
insults back. I was shocked. 

I had heard Pencil lived with his 
parents in East Baltimore, way out 
near the streetcar barn. I also used to see Pencil with his 
best friend, Cleopatra, who at six-foot-six hardly "passed." 
"Together they would cause a ruckus when they showed up 
at municipal band concerts in Mount Vernon Park, which 
were attended mostly by little old blue-haired ladies. For 


LADY ZORRO WAS A LESBIAN STRIPPER ON THE 
BLOCK. "TO THIS DAY," WRITES JOHN WATERS, 
“ZORRO IS MY INSPIRATION." 


Imagine my sadness when I saw in 
The Baltimore Sun the 2001 obituary 
for Sheila Alberta Bowater, 63 years 
of age. Since part of the headline read 
“Dancer on the Block," I scanned 
down, and there it was: "Appearing 
as Lady Zorro...she danced at the 
Oasis and the Two O'Clock Club." I 
couldn't believe it. Lady Zorro was 
dead! But then the real shock came. 
The obituary mentioned her daughter, 
who lived in Tigard, Oregon. Zorro 
had a daughter? I immediately wrote 
Eileen Murche to express my sympa- 
thies, and she wrote back, "Dear John, 
How bizarre that you should contact 
me regarding my mother Zorro.... My 
mother spoke of you many times. She 
loved how outrageous you are." 

I was speechless. Zorro knew who 
I was? She had actually followed my 
career later in her life? Eileen confided 
to me that she had gone to Catholic 
school as a child, and she enclosed great 
glamour photos of her late mom. 

“How could Zorro's daughter possi- 
bly be like other little Catholic girls?" 
Eileen wondered in her letter, adding, "My childhood mem- 
ories are of strippers, drag queens, drugs, the racetrack, the 
Block and the many faces that passed through the doorway 
of [her family's downtown row house on] East 28th Street." 
In other words, the exact opposite of how I grew up in an 


YOU COULDN'T EVEN GET BUZZED IN AT THE FRONT DOOR 
OF THE WIGWAM UNLESS YOU WERE A BUM. A REAL ONE. 


some reason Pencil always made an appearance just to hor- 
rify the crowd. I watched his every move. 

Later in life Pencil seemed to vanish from the streets. 
Once, Pat Moran and I were in my car and saw him. I told 
Pat to yell “Hey, Pencil!" and she did, but he just gave us a 
dirty look. We had heard he hissed to others that he "wasn't 
Pencil anymore but Miss Streisand." I later tried to locate 
Pencil but at first had little luck. “I know someone who 
saw him on the bus once" was about as close as I could get 
until I found Doris, the beloved and retired longtime bar- 
maid at Leon's, Baltimore's oldest gay bar. She filled me 
in: Pencil had graduated to serious drag, become a hair- 
dresser and gained weight. He drank too much but had 
good friends right up to when "he had stomach problems," 
moved with his mother and sister to Startex, South Carolina 
and died in the late 1990s. Pencil was erased for good, but 
not from my memory. I never once in my life had so much 
as a conversation with Pencil, but he was a great influence 
on me—defiantly courageous in the face of hatred, rabidly 
enticing despite his repellent packaging and so happy to be 
living a life totally against the laws of the time. 

Of course, before Pencil there was Zorro—Lady Zorro. 
I have written elsewhere about this lesbian stripper from 
Baltimore's red-light district the Block whom Divine and 
I used to go see at the very end of her burlesque career in 
the 1960s. Zorro was so butch, so scary, so Johnny Cash. No 
actual stripping for her at that point; she just came out nude 
and snarled at her fans, "What the fuck are you looking at?" 
To this day Zorro is my inspiration. She gives me courage to 
go onstage with no props for my spoken-word act. Brave. 
Without makeup. Like Tilda Swinton at the Oscars. 


upper-middle-class family on Morris Avenue in Lutherville, 
Maryland. What could it possibly be like to have Zorro, the 
lesbian stripper, as your mom? 

I hopped on a plane to find out. Eileen lives in a lovely 
suburban home outside Portland. She was going through 
a trial separation from her husband of 11 years (whom I 
met). Her two small children were in school the day I vis- 
ited. Eileen was down-to-earth, pretty and full of gallows 
humor. She had quite a story. 

Lady Zorro was born out of wedlock on May 23, 1937 in 
New York City to a mother who wanted to avoid the disgrace 
of being pregnant in her hometown of Providence, Rhode 
Island. The child was raised in three different orphanages, 
environments that were later described as “hellish.” The 
grandparents somehow found out about the baby, took her 
home and legally adopted little Sheila when she was nine 
years old. She was a hellion from the beginning, butch once 
she got to high school, with the added problem of having 
very large breasts. Sheila briefly tried to be a stewardess, but 
as Eileen remembers hearing from her mom, "a passenger 
grabbed her ass, and she threw a drink in his face and told 
him to fuck himself." So much for the friendly skies. Sheila 
somehow ended up in Baltimore, working as a stripper with 
the name of Lady Zorro. The reason for the new moniker, 
her daughter explains, was she needed a costume with a 
mask "because she had a crooked nose and they wanted 
to cover it up." Sheila also got her first girlfriend, fellow 
stripper Rachel, better known as Ray. Ray designed Lady 
Zorro's costume, and suddenly a star was born. Z (as she was 
known to people in the life, right up to the end) brought a 
real rage to the stage, which added (continued on page 132) 


99 


9» 


“Is tonight formal or what...? 


100 


HOPE DWORACZYK IS 


LAY 


AS THE 2010 PLAYMATE OF 
THE YEAR, HOPE RIDES OFF 
INTO THE SUNSET ON A 
NEW BMW S 1000 RR, THE 
GERMAN BRAND’S ULTI- 
MATE SUPERBIKE. IMAGINE 
THIS BEAUTY MOVING AT 
130 MPH ОМ TWO WHEELS. 


MAI 


“| FEEL AS THOUGH I'M LOOK- 
ING IN AND WATCHING 
SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE," SAYS 
THE 25-YEAR-OLD MODEL 
AND TELEVISION PERSON- 
ALITY, HER TEXAS ACCENT 
CREEPING IN. 71 FEEL LIKE THIS 
IS ALL A DREAM." 


BY BRANTLEY BARDIN 


hen Hope Dworaczyk wound up not only as Miss 

April 2009 but also on that month's cover with 

Seth Rogen (who, you'll recall, was cheekily blow- 

ing a fan up her skirt), she thought, Oh, my goodness, once 

yov're on he cover of PLAYBOY you automatically become а 

sex symbol, and I absolutely do not feel like a sex symbol. I 
mean, who the hell am 12 

A little more than a year later, thanks to Hef and your votes, 

the five-foot-10 brunette has become much more than a sex 


symbol. She's the one and only Playmate of the Year 2010. 

But guess what. The 25-year-old still can't accept her sta- 
tus. “No, I still don'+ feel like a sex symbol,” she insists. Then 
she relents a bit. “Well, at least not unless I’m in bed....” So 
who is a sex symbol? "I think iconic," says Hope. “Like Sophia 
Loren and Brigitte Bardot." There's another reason she fits so 
well in this magazine. Hope is a woman of today, yet she's in 
touch with the glamour and inventiveness of the past. 

Hope started modeling when she was 16 years old. She 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN WAYDA 


--.. 
" 

" 

- © 


has walked runways in America and 
Europe, modeling the wares of Ver- 
sace, Agent Provocateur, La Perla and 
Balenciaga. For the past three years she 
has hosted a Canadian television show 
called Inside Fashion. There is an ele- 
ment of fate to her rise with РГАУВОУ. 
Hope’s adventure began two years 
ago when she was having lunch with a 
friend in Dallas. Her friend said she was 
headed to a 55th Anniversary Playmate 
casting nearby that afternoon. 

“Do you want to come with me?” her 
friend asked. 

Hope agreed, planning only to go 
along for the ride. Once she was at the 
casting, though, a PLAYBOY staffer spot- 
ted her in the crowd, sitting on a chair 
in а hallway 

“Tm not here to pose,” Hope said. "My 
girlfriend is changing into her robe." 

The next thing Hope knew, she was in 
a thong and bra and posing in front of 
television cameras for an episode of The 
Girls Next Door. Now she is your choice 
for PMOY 2010. 

Hope's grandmother gave the for- 
mer Miss Teen Texas (she was raised 
in a little beach town on the Gulf) the 
encouraging push she needed to pose 
nude for the magazine the first time last 
year. “Му nana said, ‘Are you kidding? 
If I was your age and had the oppor- 
tunity, Га go for it!” remembers Hope 
with her ever-present full-bodied laugh. 


“I was like, ‘Great! ГЇЇ just make that 
call to PLAYBOY now and worry about 


what everyone else thinks later." 

Hope's successes have helped open 
plenty of doors in show business. She 
has appeared on CSI and Ugly Betty 
and will soon be seen in a role written 
expressly for her on Curb Your Enthu- 
siasm. She's also developing a new TV 
show she'll produce herself. “I think 
PLAYBOY and I will be great for each 
other," says Hope, "because I'm a very 
ambitious girl who is always creating 
new projects, keeping my name out 
there. I'm a yes person; I don't say 
no very much." Her ultimate goal? To 
work behind the camera and to become 
a Bond girl. "Put a gun in my hand 
and I turn from this sweetheart into a 
badass woman." 

Hope's most important work occurs 
when she's not working. She's a dedi- 
cated volunteer with children's charities. 
"I'm so passionate about that, I wish 
I had the funds to not work, because 
that's what I would do full time if I 
could." After a pause she says, "Listen, 
I'm totally serious when I say I some- 
times have to stop and think, Is this 
really my life? I feel as though I'm look- 
ing in and watching someone else's life. 
I can't believe I'm Playmate of the Year. 
What an amazing honor. I still feel as if 
someone is going to come and take it 
away. I feel like this is all a dream." 


108 


SAVAGES 


(continued from page 74) 
total ditch weed,” she said, shrugging her 
shoulders, “but it's better than nothing.” 

Dickie showed her some of his pictures 
from Iraq. The images flashed and faded 
and bled into each other on his computer 
screen; house-to-house in Mosul, a cramped 
apartment full of frightened-looking Iraqi 
women and children, a young marine, bulg- 
ing with gear, looking down at two dead 
Mahdi militiamen. Sometimes he thought 
that if he didn't photograph a thing he 
didn't really experience it, but right then, 
looking at the photos with Mally sitting next 
to him it seemed as though someone else 
had taken them. And he was glad to be so 
far away from that world. Dickie breathed 
in the oil in Mally’s hair and her rich, musky 
skin smell. She radiated a slowed-down sad- 
ness that felt deeply erotic. 

“God, they're hot,” she said. “I love a 
man in a uniform.” 

“They would love you, too,” Dickie said, 
thinking of the U.S. soldiers with their 
endless porn and loneliness. He put his 
hand up her shirt tentatively, waiting to get 
brushed away. Mally wasn't wearing a bra 
and her small breasts were soft and warm, 
her nipples erect as soon as he touched 
her. She acted like she didn't notice what 
he was doing. She told him that she'd been 
adopted and when she was 18 had found 
out that her biological mother was a full- 
blooded Inuit. 

“You mean you're an Eskimo?” Dickie 
asked, stoned and happy, drawing light 
circles around her nipples with his fingers. 
“Like the dudes that live in igloos?” 

“Yeah, I guess.” 

“That's very, very cool.” 

He lifted up her shirt and kissed each of 
her breasts slowly and then her belly. 

“So, how are you planning on actually 
getting inside the jail?” she asked. 

“Гуе put a request in with your boss to 
get permission.” 

"He'll give you permission if I ask him 
to,” Mally said. 

The television screen lit up the small 
room, flashing blue shadows. 

“Really?” Dickie asked. “That d be 
swell.” He decided that she was much 
more beautiful up close than from a dis- 
tance; her full mouth and olive skin, her 
high cheekbones, impenetrable brown 
eyes. He wanted to take Mally's long hair 
out of her braids. In Iraq he had been 
sleeping with a pretty blonde staff sergeant 
who was sweet but blandly muscular and 
scentless. He liked women like Mally, like 
Tricia. Dark and full of feeling; sexual to 
their core and musky and sweaty. 

"Yeah, he'll do it. He's my boyfriend. 
He's totally crazy about me. He does any- 
thing I want.” 

Dickie had a habit of feeling things in 
his body before he understood them. He 
pulled back from her and tried to read 
her expression. 

Norman Il be back tomorrow," Mally said. 
She lit the roach and held it out to him. 


“I don't think so,” he said. "Thanks." 

“Yeah, this weed is bunk. I don't even 
know why I'm smoking it." 

Mally gazed at the television. Her lips 
were open and he could see the tip of her 
tongue. Rain began splashing on the roof. 
Without really meaning to, Dickie put his 
hand back up her shirt to feel her lovely 
breasts, and she turned to face him. Her 
eyes loomed, enormous in the glow from the 
television. She leaned over and kissed him 
deeply, as though they knew each other. But 
when they started having sex she seemed to 
disappear; he felt her blocking him out of 
the room. He started to regret what he was 
doing and tried to stop, twice, but she held 
on to him and pushed him back into her. 

After Mally left Dickie turned the lights 
on and sat, unable to sleep or work on his 
photos. He wished he hadn't gotten high. 
He thought about Tricia. They had been 
arguing about a baby for the past year. All 
of a sudden lying there, so far away, with 
another woman's taste in his mouth, Tri- 
cia was more vivid than the whole time 
he'd been in Iraq, when they had talked 
on the phone every day. He could feel her 
small, smooth hands and feet, her thick 
black hair, the sound of her voice in his 
ear, whispering while they fucked. 

The rain, hammering down on the roof, 
kept him awake until dawn, and then he 
floated into a dream of being back in his 
bed in New York with his wife lying next 
to him, in his arms. 


The next morning when they arrived at 
the jail, the soldiers waved Dickie and 
Peter inside the gates. A heavyset Papua 
New Guinean official, wearing an immac- 
ulately pressed uniform, with faded blue 
tribal tattoos on his face slowly walked over 
to Peter's van. 

"You the man who wants a tour?" he 
asked, his gold-and-brown eyes taking in 
Peter and Dickie, the rusted-out inside 
of the van, the camera bags, Dickie's red 
Converses. 

"I am," Dickie said, smiling, and slid 
open the van door, holding out his hand. 
When he stood up, he towered over the 
New Guinean. 

"Are you the warden? I'm Richard 
Bernbaum." 

"No," he said, "I am the assistant 
warden." 

When the assistant warden went to take 
his hand Dickie clapped the man's shoul- 
der and pulled him, almost enfolding him 
in an embrace. It was a trick he learned 
watching a young American lieutenant on 
street patrol in Mosul. As quickly as pos- 
sible show you are physically vulnerable, 
friendly, on the same side. 

“How you doing, buddy?" 

The New Guinean looked up, unsmil- 
ing, into Dickie's face. “I am not your 
buddy," he said. 

The reply made Dickie more unhappy 
than he knew it should. He nodded and 
smiled. "Oh, okay," he said. "That's okay— 
that's cool too." 


He followed the assistant warden along 
the wide dirt road that led into the prison 
grounds. They passed a chicken coop and 
a grove of banana trees. In the distance the 
mountains that lead east spread out, their 
peaks obscured by cloud and mist. The 
immense mountains felt alive to Dickie, 
like beings that were aware. This country 
is time travel, he thought, looking around 
him. It's like seeing the primeval world 
before humans existed. 

The road curved up a steep hill, and 
then, as it flattened out, a series of con- 
nected, low blue-painted cement-brick 
buildings with corrugated aluminum roofs 
appeared. A Christian hymn being sung in 
the Melanesian patois floated over the day. 
Fenced-in gardens of sweet-potato ivy cov- 
ered the hills, and a black goat stood on 
the side of the road, chewing grass. 

Dickie took photos of the assistant war- 
den looking straight into his lens, his 
tiger-colored eyes and tawny skin and facial 
tattoos striking in the mid-morning light, 
silhouetted by loops of razor wire. They 
walked over to the first building in the 
compound. As they stepped inside, Dickie 
thought the assistant warden had brought 
him to see the morgue; the place was one 
open-air room full of close-together rows of 
cots with motionless, emaciated men lying 
on them. The only discernible movement 
was flies circling and buzzing over the bod- 
ies. The sweet rank stink of human shit and 
piss and unwashed skin, mold and ammo- 
nia engulfed them. 

“This is our sick ward," the assistant 
warden said. Dickie began photograph- 
ing; close-ups of slack-jawed faces, flies 
clustered on sores that were weeping puss, 
ashy skin stretched over bone. 

“Do they all have AIDS?" Dickie asked. 
He couldn't help himself; waves of excite- 
ment were washing over him. The grotesque 
images were superb. Even the tropical 
mountain light filtering through the win- 
dows saturated everything with a rich, 
textured glow. 

“This is all AIDS, right?” Dickie asked 
again from behind the viewfinder. 

But the assistant warden didn't respond. 
Dickie wandered among the rows of cots, 
over to a wide-open window. A cross, 
painted the black and red and yellow and 
white of the Papua New Guinea flag, hung 
on the wall above a man who lay staring up 
at the ceiling with eyes that were unseeing 
from cataracts. 

Dickie photographed the man's ema- 
ciated face and sunken, opaque eyes, a 
dog-eared Bible next to his hand. 

He shot him in black and white, in color 
digital and film, finally two rolls with his 
Holga. 

“To him who overcometh will I give to 
eat of the tree of life," the body lying below 
him said quietly. 

'The assistant warden, who had walked 
over to observe Dickie, said, "This man is 
a New Tribes pastor." 

Dickie kept photographing; compos- 
ing shapes, with light and rows of empty 
plastic water bottles under the cot, a 


= 


hi 


S) 


DT 
ОДАН) 


"It's the first time Гое ever seen this happen!” 


PLAYBO!Y 


110 


fire-blackened pot of rice, the colorfully 
painted cross on the wall. 

“A mighty angel took up a stone and cast 
it into the sea,” the pastor continued, but his 
voice was so low that Dickie only heard him 
when he bent down. It occurred to him that 
the pastor, wandering somewhere in his hal- 
lucinations, had heard him and the assistant 
warden and mistakenly imagined he was in 
front of his congregation and had started 
preaching. Dickie knelt on the floor and shot 
the rows of beds at eye level. 

"Wow," he said. "Just, wow." 

“Tour is over,” the assistant warden said. 

"But this can't be the whole tour,” Dickie said, 
annoyed, from behind his camera. "This was 
hardly anything. This is just one building." 

There was a pause while Dickie kept 
shooting. 

"I should say that you are lucky to have got 
in here at all." 

Dickie glanced up at the assistant war- 
den. The New Guinean was looking back 
at him with contempt shot through with a 
kind of contained, hard violence. The assis- 
tant warden was standing, perched, on the 
balls of his feet with his fingers clenched into 
loose fists. Something like danger or threat 
slithered up from the floor into Dickie's 
awareness and became a heavy, tightening 
pressure in his chest. 

"Well, okay. If that's how you say it," Dickie 
said brightly, slowly standing up. "No prob- 
lem. Let's go." 

"They walked out ofthe sick ward and along 
the road in silence. Dickie still felt afraid, and 
his heart was pounding. What can this man 
do to me? Dickie thought. He has a job to 
worry about. Barnett would fire him, at least, 
if something happened to me here. As they 
passed the sweet-potato garden the singing 
started up again. The sound of the hymns 


floating in the sunshine soothed Dickie. 

"May I ask why you are taking these pic- 
tures?" the assistant warden asked when they 
reached the gate. 

"It's just my job," Dickie said, calculating 
what would be the best answer. “My boss told 
me to do it.” 

The assistant warden looked up at him, still 
hostile, but his eyes full of something else that 
Dickie couldn't read. 

As the man turned away and walked up the 
hill Dickie watched his retreating figure until 
it disappeared and realized, too late, that it 
would have made a great shot. 


The phone still wasn't working when they got 
back to the hotel. The woman in cornrows 
smiled. “This is truly an impossible country, 
Mr. Bernbaum. But don't worry. The lines will 
be back up later tonight. Or tomorrow morn- 
ing, I should think." 

Dickie stayed in his room through dinner 
so he wouldn't have to see Mally. He chewed 
two Ativans and played Grand Theft Auto on 
his PSP At 10 the rain lulled him into a shal- 
low, fitful sleep. Mally woke him around 11, 
knocking on the door and calling his name. 
She had been drinking and she stood in the 
hall, smoking, grinning lewdly at him. 

"Come on!" she said, pulling so hard on 
his T-shirt that he stumbled, a little, into the 
hallway. “Come and meet Norman. We're all 
having fun and drinking." 

Dickie followed her to the open-air din- 
ing room where the governor, his bald head 
gleaming in the restaurant's fluorescent light, 
sat at a table surrounded by a group of Aus- 
tralian men Dickie had seen around the hotel. 
The governor was a strange-looking man, 
much more so than in his photos—he didn't 
have eyebrows or eyelashes, and his skin was 


“I met this really great guy on my honeymoon." 


pitted with acne scars. There was a chill in the 
air, and the insects and birds throbbed in the 
distance. Dickie felt them all gazing at him. 
He rubbed his eyes and smiled. 

"Hey, how you guys doing?" he asked. 
"Sorry I'm a bit ofa mess. I had already sacked 
out for the night." 

"You the seppo who's been crawling around 
me jail?" the governor asked, his intensely blue 
eyes looking at Dickie, then Mally, then off at 
a point in the distant night. Barnett had the 
strongest, most nasal Australian accent Dickie 
had ever heard. 

"Yes, sir," Dickie said. "I really appreciate 
all your help with the permission." 

"Appreciate it, do ya? Y'gonna put ya pic- 
tures in Time magazine so the punters can go 
Boo hoo hoo, look at those poor savages all 
locked up and the key thrown away by that 
nasty old whitey'?" 

Dickie smiled. "Something like that, sir." 

Mally carried a chair over for Dickie and 
then stood standing, smoking, watching him. 

"Want a drink?" she asked him. 

“No, thanks," Dickie said. 

“Ah, Jesus, and he’s a poof,” Barnett said, 
and the table erupted in laughter. 

“No, по, no, ГЇЇ have a beer, ГЇЇ have a beer," 
Dickie said, chuckling along with the men at 
himself. "Please." 

The governor watched Mally walk behind 
the bar and unlock the refrigerator. He turned 
and stared at Dickie, taking him in. Then he 
shook his head. 

“ТП tell ya something ya may not have 
figured out yet, my fine young American 
friend. Yanks are bloody cowards in battle. 
I flew combat missions in a RAAF chopper 
during Vietnam. You've never seen a bunch 
of jelly-kneed bastards hide from a fight like 
the Yanks." 

"Is that right?" Dickie said, grinning, open- 
ing the beer that Mally put in front of him. 

"Yeah, that's right. Seppos're always run- 
ning from a fight. I mean, bloody fucking 
hell, what are they doing mucking about in 
Saddam's old bullshit when the real fight's in 
Afghanistan, ay?" 

Dickie smiled at the governor. "I just take 
pictures. I don't know anything. I don't even 
write my own captions." 

"Iraq's a right fucking mess, isn't it? It's all 
Just filthy lucre and oil money for Bush's best 
mates at Halliburton, ay? I'm a businessman. 
I get it. I wouldn't do it, but I get it. The only 
country in the world more corrupt than Papua 
New Guinea is the United States of America.” 

Dickie looked around the table at the men, 
heavyset and burnt from the equatorial sun, 
flushed from drinking, who were nodding 
along with Sir Norman. Mally was standing, 
watching from the bar. Behind her intricately 
carved shields and masks were lit up by the 
flickering bulbs hanging from the roof. 

“The fucking Yanks are the most destruc- 
tive, bullying force in the history of the 
world, by far.” 

"No doubt," Dickie said, laughing. "Except 
when we’re all knock-kneed and hiding from 
a fight” 

Barnett, searching Dickie’s face, caught 
a glimpse inside him. Or at least he under- 
stood enough to realize that he was being 
dismissed as so much insignificant bleating 
from an insignificant blip of a country. 

Truth was, Dickie was intensely patriotic. If 


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he believed in God, he would have believed 
that America was God's own country, but he 
knew his work, especially his war photogra- 
phy, would be taken much less seriously if he 
let his patriotism slip. Not even Tricia knew 
the extent of his feelings, and it wouldn't occur 
to him to argue with the Norman Barnetts of 
the world. He didn't care what anyone else 
thought or said on the subject. 

"You seppos really are a bunch of smug 
wankers, aren't ya?" 

"Well, honestly, that's one of the kindest 
things I've heard said about us in a long time, 
governor." But again, Dickie was smiling. He 
didn't care. 

Mally emerged from the kitchen's swinging 
doors carrying a plate piled high with french 
fries and a hamburger and brought it over 
to Dickie. “I thought you might be hungry," 
she said with a kind of coy shyness. "Since you 
missed dinner and everything." 

Dickie glanced down at the plate of greasy, 
delicious-looking food and felt himself blush, 
deeply, with embarrassment. Mally had just 
exposed him—had exposed them—to Bar- 
nett. It hadn't occurred to him that she 
wouldn't understand the governor, that Mally 
wouldn't realize how clear-sighted he was. 
From the moment he walked into the dining 
room Dickie had felt Barnett's intelligence like 
a distinct physical presence, sharp and alert, 
prying, watching everything. The governor 
seemed like the most calculating man he had 
ever met, as cunning and suspicious as the 
old warlords he had photographed last year 
in Afghanistan who had evaded generations 
of the Soviets, Taliban and then Americans. 
The men around the table were disinterest- 
edly watching the governor for his reaction. 
Only Mally, smiling at Dickie as he slowly 
looked up at her, was oblivious. 

“Hey, thanks a lot, Mally," he said. “But I’m 
not really hungry." 

“I just warmed it up for you. Come on, 
you must be hungry, Dickie. You didn't eat 
anything." 

"Don't be rude," Barnett said, watching 
Mally. “The lady was kind enough to bring 
you dinner." 

Dickie nodded and smiled. He saw Mally 
start, all of a sudden hesitant, maybe a little 
afraid. 

"You're right. Thanks very much, Mally,” 
Dickie said. 

And it wasn't until he started eating that he 
realized how hungry he was. Mally brought 
him another beer, and he half listened to the 
conversation and watched fat moths flutter- 
ing around the light fixtures. A New Guinean 
man came out of the kitchen with a bucket 
and began mopping the dining room floor. 
Dickie got up to leave. He was careful, casually 
thanking Barnett, who was by now danger- 
ously drunk, saying a distant good night to 
Mally, walking slowly, behaving the way an 
innocent man might. 


It was cool and green, and the sun hadn't bro- 
ken through the early morning clouds yet. The 
smell of coffee and toast and wet earth filled the 
air. The dining room was empty, and Dickie 
looked out at the small creek that flowed past 
a little open thatch-roof hut that had been 
built as a folly for the hotel guests. Peter had 


112 driven him up to the jail that morning, but 


they couldn't get past the gates. The guards 
had only laughed and asked him for Marl- 
boros. And the phone lines were still down. 

Dickie sipped his coffee and tried to sort 
through the jumble of thoughts in his head. 
He wanted to leave. He had two more assign- 
ments lined up before the end of the month 
in the States. Even if he couldn't get through 
to the magazine by noon he was changing his 
ticket. He'd leave for Port Moresby on the 
afternoon flight. The magazine would still 
have to pay his expenses, and he could enter 
some of the jail photos into contests. He had 
decided the trip wouldn't be a total loss. 

Mally walked out of the kitchen toward him, 
carrying a press pot of coffee. 

“Hey,” she said. She was wearing a bright, 
aqua-colored Patagonia jacket. 

"Hey," he said, smiling. 

She looked very pretty in the morning 
light. 

"You want to go for a helicopter ride?" she 
asked him and set the pot down. "Norman's 
flying out to one of the villages." 

"Right now?" 

"Well, after I have my coffee." 

He didn't want to go. He sipped his coffee, 
waiting for a sense of calm reality. His editor 
would want him to go. He could almost hear 


There was something 
thrilling and larger-than-life 
about Mally in the morning 

light, and he saw how, at a 
different moment, he might 
have fallen in love with her. 


her telling him to get aerial shots. And maybe, 
after spending the day together, Barnett would 
relent and let him go back to the jail. If he 
could get inside the Gehuku jail, inside the real 
Дай, the trip would be a success. And anyway, 
looking out at the sun, which was finally break- 
ing through this mist, Dickie realized that he 
was curious to really see the place. 

As they got into the hotel's beat-up pickup 
truck Dickie thought there was something 
thrilling and larger-than-life about Mally in 
the morning light and saw how, at a different 
moment, he might have fallen in love with 
her. He took a photo of her in her Expos cap 
and huge sunglasses as she stuck a Joan Arma- 
trading tape in the stereo and started to sing 
along, her freckled arm shifting the gears. She 
sucked down on a cigarette and smiled at him, 
her blue fingernails sparkling in the sun. 

"They stopped at the top ofa hill in front ofa 
rotted wood fence that was covered with loop- 
ing circles of razor wire. A guard appeared and 
opened the gates. They drove past an electri- 
fied chain-link fence and through a second set 
of gates. An immaculately manicured tarmac 
spread like a wide obsidian platter in front of 
the amphitheater of mountains, proffering up 
dozens of gleaming helicopters to the equato- 
rial sky. New Guinean men in brown coveralls 
drifted around in the bright sunlight. Forklifts 


loaded with barrels and boxes whizzed by, and 
strains of Metallica floated out from the main 
hangar where the mechanics were working. 

Barnett emerged from the hangar, strid- 
ing toward them, his whole being focused on 
Mally. The governor glanced at Dickie, his 
blue eyes flickering over the younger man's 
earrings and cameras, his tattoos. 

"Thank you very much for inviting me 
along, Sir Norman. I appreciate it." 

"Thank me girl here. She wants you to 
come along, not me. Just try not to make a 
bloody nuisance of yourself.” But the gover- 
nor was smiling and shook his hand. 

Dickie followed them across the tarmac to a 
jet helicopter. Barnett had just bought it, Mally 
said. The inside was luxurious: comfortable 
black-leather seats, the floor and ceiling cov- 
ered in soft gray carpeting. 

"Not like flying around Iraq, shoved in a 
Chinook with a bunch of shit-scared kids, is 
it?" Barnett said. 

"No drink holders in Sadr City, that's for 
sure,” Dickie said, strapping himself into the 
backseat. Barnett grunted through the head- 
set to the control tower, and the whole world 
became the thudding rotor blades vibrating 
as the helicopter picked itself off the ground 
and crawled up into the sky. And then, all 
of a sudden, Barnett swooped and rushed 
forward, the helicopter's nose down as they 
raced toward the mountains. 

They flew over dried-out grassland and 
sleepy-looking settlements of round, thatch- 
roofed houses scattered along the foothills. 
Ribbons of white smoke rose up from where 
people were working in their gardens. A 
truck, loaded down with burlap sacks of 
coffee, bounced along a road. Then they 
were in a cloud, and the helicopter started 
climbing again, groaning with effort, until 
they burst over a sea of dark green waves. 
Rain forest and blue equatorial sky spread 
out into the distance. 

Dickie had a perfect vantage of Barnett 
and Mally, like a child in the backseat of a 
car, watching his parents. He could see their 
faces behind their sunglasses, their hands and 
arms, every expression and movement they 
made. Barnett with the stick in his hands, 
Mally glancing from him to the instrument 
panel, out the window, lighting a cigarette. 

Dickie photographed immense water- 
falls that gushed out of rocky gashes in the 
mountains and fell hundreds of feet into 
oblivion. Barnett swooped down into a 
canyon and followed a swollen brown river, 
almost touching the whitecaps of its rush- 
ing surface. Then they were climbing again, 
passing over a mountain wall. 

"Would ya look at the bloody savages. Don't 
fucking cut the grass and they're bitching and 
moaning that the missos won't fly out here to 
pick up their coffee," Barnett muttered into 
the headset. "Can't land a bloody fixed-wing 
on this shit." 

They circled over an overgrown grassy land- 
ing strip next to a village that had appeared in 
the midst of the rain forest. A church with a 
corrugated aluminum roof and a huge cross 
made out of white-painted rocks sat in the cen- 
ter ofa dozen thatch-roofed huts. 

A group of people stood and stared as the 
helicopter landed. “Гуе got to fix things up 
with a Big Man here, but then I want to get 
out quick-hurry-up, so don't you wander off. 


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TIl leave you for the savages to roast for din- 
ner,” Barnett said. “Don’t think I won’t.” 

“Got it,” Dickie said. 

The governor, sunglasses flashing, walked 
over to a group of grim-looking men and 
began holding forth in the Melanesian patois. 
Looking around, Dickie thought he had never 
been in a human habitation as lovely as this 
village, surrounded by vast mountains drip- 
ping with clouds, the whole place full of a kind 
of soft, green-tinged sunshine. He breathed 
in the wet smell ofthe earth and grass. A bird 
was calling, an eerie high-pitched ka-caw-caw 
from far off. He turned to Mally. 

“This is so fucking amazing," he said. 
“Thanks for bringing me out here." 

"Yeah," she said, gazing out at the moun- 
tains. “1 guess it is." 

A group of children, barefoot and dressed in 
filthy, falling-apart rags, ran through the over- 
grown grass to Dickie and Mally. He shook 
hands with them, and they broke into giggles 
and beamed into his camera as he took their 
photo. They followed him and Mally down the 
airstrip as he shot the village's thatch-roofed 
houses that were up on stilts, the pandanus 
trees, a sleeping pig, a group of women sitting 
together sifting through tan-colored coffee 
beans, a crashing river in the distance. 

"Look," Mally said. "I'm really sorry if I was 
weird, the other night when we—you know, the 
whole thing—I just really like you. I've been out 
here for so long, you know? I feel so isolated 
here and lonely and I don't know what." 

"You weren't weird," Dickie lied. "I really 
like you, too." 

Dickie photographed her as she looked at 
him, her sunglasses pushed back on her head, 
her huge brown eyes staring into his lens. 

She took his right hand and turned it over 
and kissed his palm, slowly. "Do you really 
like me, Dickie? You don't have to say you 
do. It's okay. But I really do like you. Like, 
I've been fantasizing about coming to New 
York with you. I mean that's crazy, isn't it? 
You're married, right?" 

Right then he saw that she was pushing 
a kind of nervous urgency at him, that she 
wanted him to take her on. He felt, remotely, 
a kind of pity for her but disdain, too, at her 
helplessness. Did she have no agency at all? 

"Hey," he said, laughing, gently pulling 
his hand back, aware of the crowd of vil- 
lage kids staring up at them. "What are you 
doing? Trying to get me in trouble?" 

"No, what? These kids? They don't under- 
stand English." 

"No. Not these kids." 

"You mean Norman? He's oblivious." 

"That, I actually don't think," Dickie said. 
"I don't think anybody in this place is oblivi- 
ous about anything." 

The helicopter's engine started up and the 
two of them walked back over the length of 
the airstrip with the children shouting and 
laughing behind them. In the distance a 
woman emerged from behind a woven- 
bamboo and thatch-roofed hut, carrying a 
weighed-down net bag and firewood on her 
head. She turned to look at the chopper, and 
as the light fell on her Dickie saw that she was 
heavily pregnant; he took her photo. 

“Let Mr. Pictures here sit in the front, 
Mahala,” the governor said. “Не can have a 
geez from up here." 

"Thanks, governor," Dickie said. 


"You want the door back?" 

"That'd be awesome," Dickie said. 

Barnett slid the front door back, latching it 
against the rear window. With the door gone 
the unobstructed view was breathtaking, as 
exquisite as anything Dickie had ever seen. 
The clouds draped across the mountains 
constantly shifted in shape and size, thick 
vertical columns reaching up, flat and rip- 
pled, golden and puffy like an expanse of 
cotton. Dickie leaned out and photographed 
a canyon full of trees that threw fat black 
roots straight up in the air. It looked like 
something out of Dr. Seuss to him. 

"Are we going over the prison by any 
chance?" Dickie asked through the headset. 

"Nope. But we can do if you'd like." 

The monotonous chatter through the 
headset of distant pilots and control tower 
operators induced a kind of thoughtless focus 
in Dickie. He became absorbed in the rain for- 
est beneath them, picking out colorful birds 
that fluttered in the treetops, crashing rivers, 
the thick, vine-draped canopy. He didn't feel 
dizzy looking down; the governor was a much 


WZ 


better pilot than any he had flown with in Iraq 
or Afghanistan. Dickie could just feel it, how 
much the machine was under the governor’s 
control, how smooth the ride was. 

“How old are ya, then, Dickie?” Barnett 
asked him absently. 

“Twenty-eight next month.” 

“I was 25 when I first arrived in PNG. 
Came straight from Vietnam, more or less. 
Never really left, did 1?” 

“Do you think you'll ever leave?” Dickie 
asked, looking at a crashing river winding 
through a valley below them. 

“Well, Гуе got me condo in Sydney,” the 
governor said and tugged at his harness. 
“But PNG’s in me blood. Can’t live any- 
where else for very long.” 

“It is so beautiful here. I guess beauti- 
ful isn't even the word, is it?” Dickie had 
а twinge of missing Tricia, of wishing she 
could see this with him. Barnett began talk- 
ing to the air traffic controller, announcing 
rapid-fire his flight plans. 

The sun got blocked by the clouds and the 
light turned gray and hazy. The rain forest 


"How was I to know he wouldn't take a check?" 


113 


PLAYBOY 


114 


seemed endless; it was like being in the mid- 
dle of the sea. Dickie changed the film in 
his camera. Without thinking he glanced 
back at Mally and as he saw her, with her 
headphones on, looking out the window, 
it was as though all of a sudden everything 
was a long way away. It was almost like he was 
looking at a memory: He could see the heli- 
copter's rotors thudding and the instrument 
panel. Just then the governor glanced over at 
him with a strangely intent expression on his 
face. Dickie smiled, but Barnett didn't seem. 
to notice. Suddenly, Dickie became unreason- 
ably terrified, sure that the governor was 
going to try to kill him. 

Don't be ridiculous, he thought. 

"My editor will be thrilled when I tell her 
about these photos," Dickie said out loud. 
“This is superb." 

The governor didn't respond, and the 
flat, calculating expression on his face didn't 
change. Dickie tried to reassure himself with 
the thought of how he'd been afraid the 
assistant warden at the jail was going to poke 
him with an AIDS-contaminated needle and 
how that had been less than nothing, a cul- 
tural misunderstanding. And as a blister of 
brittle, paralyzing agitation burst inside him 
he decided that it must be post-traumatic 
stress from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from all 
of it. He wasn't right in the head. 

Without thinking he fingered the buckle 
on his harness, the zipper on his camera bag. 
The staticky sounds in his headset of faraway 
voices made him nauseous. Dickie wanted to 
look in the back, to see Mally and say some- 
thing to her—but all at once he understood 
there was nothing she could say. Barnett 
knew they had slept together. And right then 
the man seemed like a kind of brooding ani- 
mal to Dickie, beyond reason. 

Dickie felt how stupid—how sorry he was. 
The whole thing seemed as inevitable and 
fatal as sleepwalking onto a highway. He saw 


his death, how Tricia would feel. The shock 
ofloss, the eventual forgetting. Right then it 
occurred to him that his death was a small 
thing, minute. How could he not have under- 
stood how small death was before, even when 
he was in Iraq, around it every day? It was 
only being alive that meant anything. 

Barnett's rage was like a smell, filling up 
the chopper. He swooped down, flying close 
to the tree canopy, pitching a little to the 
side so that Dickie was beneath him. The 
chopper jerked violently and Dickie's Holga, 
which had been in his lap, flew out the open 
door. He realized that if he hadn't strapped 
in, he would have fallen out too. Dickie felt 
for his camera bag and began, shaking, put- 
ting the telephoto lens on his other camera, 
imagining how pathetic it was to think that 
he could use it as a weapon; as though he 
could fight back against this man. 

"I don't," he said out loud, surprised at 
his voice echoing through his headset, "I 
don't want this. Please." He took a breath 
and said, loudly, "I'm sorry." Without mean- 
ing to, Dickie shook his head. Trembling, 
feeling the tears in his eyes, he repeated, 
"I'm so sorry. I'm just really so sorry." 

The governor didn't reply. He just sat 
grim and silent as they made their way over 
the mountains toward Gehuku. By the time 
they flew over the Bena-Bena mission Dickie 
became aware in some distant part of himself 
that the danger had passed. The afternoon 
rains started to come in from the south. The 
clouds were churning in the Chimbu gap, 
but there was a clear flight path all the way 
to town. The governor radioed the tower, 
telling them his position. 

And then all that was there was the thud- 
ding helicopter and the dense green rain 
forest beneath them, pulsing with barely 
contained life. 


"Oh, sorry, she looked just like you in the elevator." 


russell brand 


(continued from page 89) 
reached a point in my life where I under- 
stand empirically that this is not the answer. 
When you sleep with loads of women, it 
becomes a bit pointless and futile. 


Q5 
PLAYBOY: You went to rehab for sex addic- 
tion. Weren't you just surrounded by 
nymphomaniacs? 

BRAND: Not at all! The majority of people 
in sex rehab are just disgusting men. There 
aren't hot blondes ripping off their clothes 
and saying, "I'm gorgeous, and I just can't 
get enough cock!" It's just sleazy men wank- 
ing off in dark corners. Let's not shy away 
from it: They're pedophiles. Pedophiles and 
perverts. I'm sorry if I burst your bubble 
and took some of the magic out of it, but you 
had to think about it for only 10 seconds. I 
was there for a month. 


06 
PLAYBOY: You’re engaged to рор singer Katy 
Perry of“I Kissed a Girl” fame, and you’ve 
talked about your relationship with her in 
your stand-up comedy. Does that mean she 
has free license to write songs about you? 
BRAND: I don't like to speculate on her cre- 
ative process. That’s not my jurisdiction. 
God knows what she gets up to in that lab- 
oratory. I suppose if I talk about her a lot, 
it's going to be odd if I decide at some point 
to go, "Listen, I changed my mind. This is 
private.” ТЇЇ make jokes about it, but the rest 
ofthe time I try to keep my relationship with 
her close to the chest. It's the first time in 
my life I've had something I've cared about 
this much and wanted to protect. 


07 
PLAYBOY: You’re starring in а new movie 
called Get Him to the Greek, in which you play 
a rock star who's also a drug addict and a sex 
fiend. Aside from the rock star part, how is 
this character not based on you? 

BRAND: Admittedly, we do have some similar 
characteristics. We have the same face, voice 
and body, for instance. We were both drug 
addicts, and as you pointed out, we both 
enjoy sex a great deal. But Aldous Snow, 
my character, is actually markedly different 
from me. While we were shooting the film, 
the director was constantly stopping me 
and saying, "No, no, no, not like that. Stop 
playing yourself." I'm very verbose and fast; 
Aldous is much more cool and laconic. 


Q8 
PLAYBOY: While making this movie you got 
to perform as a musician in front of 20,000 
people in London. At any point did you 
think, I'm in the wrong business? 

BRAND: I've always wanted to be a rock star, if 
just because of the sexiness of it. But I'm far 
too self-conscious. I'm much happier being 
a comedian who's sexy and a bit rock-and- 
roll rather than the most gauche, awkwardly 
embarrassing rock star in history. You can't 
be a rock star if you're too aware of how 
ridiculous it is. You can't be ironic about 
it. When we did that concert I felt legiti- 
mately sexy in that moment. It was only later 
I thought, What was I thinking, thrusting 
my hips in that way and snarling? 


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PLAYBOY 


09 
PLAYBOY: You first portrayed Aldous Snow 
in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Mar- 
shall, in which he is just a minor character. 
Are you ready for the pressures of being a 
leading man? 

BRAND: Absolutely. To tell you the truth, once 
you're in a film, you have to be on the set an 
awful lot regardless of how much you're in 
the script. I'd much rather be acting than. 
sitting around in my trailer, thinking of new 
ways to masturbate. 


10 

PLAYBOY: This is е. second movie playing 
the same character. Would you mind if Aldous 
Snow becomes more famous than you? 
BRAND: If that happens ГП destroy him. 
[laughs] Honestly, no, Га be fine with that. 
My ego is big enough to compete with an 
alter ego. I actually like the idea. I can just 
pin all my bad behavior and poor decisions 
on him. "Oh goodness no, that was Aldous 
who was caught drunk driving. I never 
would have agreed to be in those terrible 
commercials. That was entirely Aldous idea. 
He must value money more than integrity." 
Ican remain in the Van Gogh school of tor- 
tured genius, and he can deal solely with the 
commerce and the tabloids. 


011 

PLAYBOY: There’s a scene in Get Him to the 
Greek in which Aldous admits that being 
famous is essentially lonely and empty. Do 
you feel the same way? 

BRAND: Yeah, I do. And I wish more peo- 
ple would understand that. I certainly don't 
mean that fame is all about sitting atop your 
mansion and feeling sorry for yourself, 
because obviously loads of it is really good. 
But fame is in no way a solution for being 
a bit sad or lonely. It's mostly unfulfilling 
unless you're very careful about yourself. 
The courage and determination it takes to 
become famous can be a detriment if not 
balanced with some kind of spirituality or 
self-awareness. I've been lucky to be sur- 
rounded by people who've known me for 
quite some time, and they are resolutely, pig- 
headedly, obstinately determined not to let 
me lose myself in the illusion of fame. [pauses] 
I'm thinking about firing those people. 


Q12 

PLAYBOY: Many Americans have preconceived 
notions about British people. We think of 
them as overly polite and dreadfully afraid 
of embarrassment. You're not any of those 
things. Are we wrong about the British? 

BRAND: I don't know that you can define a 
people by a landmass. I suppose there are 
characteristics that all British people have 
in common, but you could say the same of 
Americans. I'm surprised when [Forgetting 
Sarah Marshall co-star] Jason Segel talks about 
me and says, "Oh, he's just this wild, free- 
spirited person and doesn't give a fuck what 
anybody thinks." I do care what people think. 
I care that you think British people are all 
repressed, for a start. So I guess in that way 
I have constructed a comedy personality 
that's partly a reaction to the very stereotypes 
you've mentioned. But it's not as though I’m 
deliberately trying to address this stereotype 
or that I feel as if English people are being 


116 unfairly judged. I just desperately don't want 


to be one of those people who is awkward, 
embarrassed and slightly repressed. 


13 

PLAYBOY: For most pd the past decade you 
dressed like a cross between a Victorian 
jester and Willy Wonka with a leather fetish. 
But lately your fashion sense has become 
more conservative. Why the change? 
BRAND: When I was just getting started as a 
comic in England, having a very recognizable 
look gave me a head start. Wearing that sort of 
superhero bondage outfit probably made me a 
little more memorable. It gave me an identity 
that was clear, identifiable and recognizable 
and also not me. Now, granted, this is all high- 
falutin retrospective analysis, because I didn't 
think about it at the time. I wasn't so aware of 
iconography and imagery that I could con- 
struct such an idea. But I feel I've reached a 
point where I don't have to wear those clothes 
anymore. Now I'm thinking about the next 
step. What kind of identity do I want tomor- 
row? Avatar blue, maybe? 


14 

PLAYBOY: You once н a Barbie up your 
ass during a show in London, claiming it was 
a protest against consumerism. Is it possible 
Шеге a less personally invasive and painful 
way to protest consumerism? 

BRAND: If there is, I haven't found it. [laughs] 
If I remember correctly, I chose the Barbie 
doll because it represents the oppression 
of women, the stereotype of femininity, the 
commercialization of sexuality, blah blah blah. 
But what I learned from the experience, 
at least in hindsight, is that if you're going 
to make a satirical point involving putting 
things in your rectum, be selective. Don't 
take requests from the audience. I ultimately 
went with a Barbie doll because of the shape. 
It goes in easier, if you know what I mean. 


915 

PLAYBOY: When you hosted MTV’s Video 
Music Awards a few years ago, you called 
President George Bush “that retarded cowboy 
fella.” Were you surprised by the backlash? 
BRAND: When I said it, I thought, Well, this 
is a statement nobody can possibly have a 
problem with. I thought it was a very populist 
thing to do. It was meant as а compliment. 
I wasn't remarking on Bush's mental retar- 
dation but the fact that Americans are so 
forward thinking they wouldn't object to 
putting a man with his limited intellectual 
capabilities into political office. It's quite a 
compliment that you let Bush run things for 
as long as you did. In my country he wouldn't 
have been trusted with a pair of scissors. 


Q16 

PLAYBOY: Didn't you get death threats 
because of the joke? 

BRAND: I did, yeah. I was surprised my agency 
forwarded them along to me. It was like, 
"Look at all these death threats you've been 
getting!" I was also getting sexy letters with 
messages like "Hello, Russell. Here are pho- 
tos of my tits. I wish you'd come around and 
fuck me." But they never passed those along 
to me. Those letters they just burned. All I got 
were the death threats. I never took any of it 
seriously. If you think about it, a death threat 
is really futile, given the nature of mortality. If 
you want somebody to die, just wait. 


917 
PLAYBOY: You also made some jokes at the 
VMAs about the Jonas Brothers and their 
vow of premarital abstinence. Is it safe to 
assume you’re not a big proponent of vir- 
ginity under any circumstances? 
BRAND: I’m not morally opposed to the idea 
of sexual abstinence. It's just not practical for 
me, because I’ve got to have sex. I do think 
legitimate abstinence can be a good thing. I 
abstain from drugs and alcohol, so I under- 
stand the impulse. It's the public nature of it 
that I find interesting. Michel Foucault, the 
poststructuralist French philosopher, said that 
in Victorian society, the preeminence and cel- 
ebration of chastity was in fact the mirror 
of hedonism. In other words, if you're con- 
stantly drawing attention to your abstinence 
from sex, you're also drawing attention lo sex. 
With somebody like Mick Jagger, it's all about 
sex, sex, sex. But with the Jonas Brothers, it's 
no sex, no sex, no sex. You see what I mean? 
"Тһе emphasis is still on sex. 


Q18 
PLAYBOY: You had a short-lived cult TV show 
in England called RE:Brand, which featured 
some pretty outrageous stunts, such as when 
you took a bath with a homeless man with 
an ulcerating leg and jerked off an older gay 
man in a bathroom. When did it stop being 
funny and become a cry for help? 
BRAND: That entire show was probably a cry 
for help. I was a junkie when that show was 
on the air. Within two or three months of it 
ending, I was in rehab. That was the last dice 
throw of a desperate man. It was less a cry 
for help than a mental breakdown on film. 
Jackass was a popular TV show at the time, 
and I was trying to do a psychological ver- 
sion of Jackass. When I watch it now, I still 
can't believe half of what I was doing. 


919 
PLAYBOY: You’ve been arrested 11 times thus 
far in your life. When you reach double digits, 
does getting arrested lose some of its magic? 
BRAND: It definitely does. It becomes routine 
and a little humdrum. You start unthinkingly 
raising your wrists to be cuffed. And you bow 
your head automatically as they put you into 
the back of a police car. Occasionally you'll 
encounter an overly vicious policeman who 
perhaps gets a bit rough with you, and that's 
when it gets exciting again. It's quite similar 
to promiscuity. You take pleasure in small 
details, the shape of an ankle or a distinctive 
eyebrow. Everyone has something magical. 
Every police officer has something unique 
about him or her, some part ofthe arresting 
technique that makes it special. 


Q20 
PLAYBOY: You've twice been voted PETA's 
celebrity Sexiest Vegetarian Alive. Please 
explain how being a vegetarian is sexy. 
BRAND: Being the world's sexiest vegetar- 
lan is akin to being the world's most lovable 
pedophile. In a way it's as much a condem- 
nation as it is an endorsement. But I'm 
proud to be considered sexy, let alone the 
world's sexiest in any category. If I were nom- 
inated to be the sexiest man on this sofa, I 
would happily accept that title. 


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PLAYBOY 


SHAFT 
(continued from page 58) 


to say I couldn't be happier. You were the 
only choice. You were the perfect choice. 
You have been an absolute gentleman 
Three nights later came the successor's 
warm but savvy reciprocation, imploring 
to his curious new viewership that “this is 
very important—I want to acknowledge 
somebody...a very good friend of mine... 
a very gracious man, a man who hosted this 
show for 17 years.... Let's all give it up for 
Mr. Jay Leno! He did a nice job! Yes!” Then: 
“And he is going to be coming back on the 
air, I think, in two days, three days maybe, 
tops! [imitating the Leno whinny] “Yeah, let 
me get back in there, come on!’” 

Which is to say the gingered prince had 
known everything from the get-go, without 
knowing anything. But then prescience and 
doggedness are two more key traits hard- 
wired into the genetic makeup of these 
Night Boys (the authentic ones, that is). Just 
as intrinsically, they can also flout obvious 
absurdity (wherever they may find it) with 
a subtle but majestic wallop. Thus, when he 
reemerged in public a month after his Janu- 
ary 22 network banishment, Coco did so via 
tweet, cheerily introducing himself to a new 
medium in 57 characters: “I had a show. 
Then I had a different show. Now I have a 
Twitter account.” 


So, to be clear, here is how the saga 
unfolded: 

Brand-new Tonight Show host—a 
remarkably accomplished funnyman, no 
question—shakily makes it through seven- 
plus months of truly awkward, nearly 
unwatchable program steerage. (The rat- 
ings, while on a slight uptick, are much 
weaker than expected.) Whereupon the 
NBC suits, egg-facedly, decide to own their 
apparently idiotic mistake and pull the 
rug out from under the new guy. Franti- 
cally they offer their storied franchise to 
the elder, proven stalwart host—still on the 
network payroll, thank God!—whose long 
exultant track record in late night should 
have prompted greater foresight and con- 
sideration before they promised the throne 
to this noisy new palooka. But since this 
happens to be late December 1992 and the 
floundering incumbent host is named Leno 
and the proven commodity who is suddenly 
bidden to unseat him (after serving for a 
decade in the hour adjacent to The Tonight 
Show with his postmodern Late Night enter- 
prise, which merely recast the template of 
talk-comedy and American Humor itself) 
is named Letterman—well, things play out 
rather differently. 

For one thing, honor would prevail. But 
not before hell broke loose and the media 
fizzily declared the bristling Dave-ver- 
sus-Jay phenomenon a “Late Night War” 
(further immortalized by New York Times 
reporter Bill Carter’s battle account turned 
HBO film The Late Shift). And as goes irony, 
here was Leno, seemingly the glass-jawed 
imperiled party—at least for a couple of 
weeks, three maybe, tops!—whereas Letter- 


118 man had already been lionized in smart 


circles as the true injured party for not get- 
ting The Tonight Show in the first place (due 
in large part to Leno's supreme and argu- 
ably insidious network politicking). And so 
there, in desperate thrash, was Jay uncork- 
ing the wounded bravado, giggle-snorting 
about how NBC stood for Never Believe 
your Contract—the same soggy chestnut 
he would deploy again 17 years later to 
evince an all-new victimhood for himself 
(fooling nobody). “It’s a tricky situation,” 
he said during that famous first go-round 
(tricky being the preferred Leno term for 
anything emotionally unpleasant). “Dave 
is truly a star and terrific, and this is a 
terrible position NBC is in. But fragging 
your own soldier doesn’t make any sense to 
me.” He also said that he’d “obviously leave 
NBC immediately” before electing to move 
back an hour should Letterman consent to 
uproot him from the golden 11:35 р.м. time 
slot. He added (via native gearhead par- 
lance), “I feel like a guy who bought a car 
from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and 
made it look nice, and then the guy comes 
back and says he promised to sell the car 
to his brother-in-law.” 

Okay...in principle, maybe that’s not 
the most delusional Leno metaphor ever, 
but even he knows his early Tonight Shows 
looked far from fixed up and nice. Almost 
uniformly they simply sucked in ways no 
redheaded future insurgent would be 
capable of matching—not counting the red- 
head’s early work on NBC’s post-Letterman 
Late Night program, since no new host can 
ever be instant dynamite. Leno himself told 
me in 1995 that he had erased every single 
show broadcast during his first four months 
on the job—"practice shows,” he flippantly 
called them—assuring they would never 
be seen again. (Cops might regard this as 
destroying incriminating evidence.) "They 
don't exist," he pronounced with the final- 
ity of a mob capo. "Never happened." Not 
coincidentally, those same debut months 
of awful Leno shows had been executive- 
produced by his longtime manager, the late 
and notoriously abrasive Helen Gorman 
Kushnick, whom NBC then ripped from 
his side (regarding it nothing less than an 
intervention) and fired for her professional 
thug tactics. (That Kathy Bates played 
her in the HBO movie ought to explain 
enough.) “I look at that whole relation- 
ship as like a bad two weeks out of my life,” 
Leno told me, erasing their 15-plus years 
of cahoots from his personal history as well 
and moving onward. “Never happened.” As 
for the analogy about that car he bought, 
truth did resonate there, for good or ill, 
except that he (and Kushnick) had relent- 
lessly done the hard-core selling of Leno/ 
Tonight to network affiliates across the land, 
market by market, offering up any and all 
favors so as to cinch ownership of the most 
desirable and sleek set of wheels extant. 
And of course—lest we forget, because 
no Night Boy ever will—the sole reason 
for such fierce vehicular lust was that the 
previous driver (and legal owner until he 
turned in the keys after three decades of 
silky handling) was the impeccably fine 
John William Carson, silver-haired King 
Eternal of All Things Late Night. But then, 
as per inscrutable NBC tradition, the king's 


royal carriage had been sold right out from 
under him when he wasn't looking (which 
didn't surprise him)—and sold to the wrong 
guy (ditto), not that anyone had bothered 
to ask the sagacious Carson for his choice in 
successor (Letterman, but certainly). 
"Johnny was not even consulted," Leno 
later said to me, sounding actually incred- 
ulous. "Why wouldn't you ask him?" And 
just like that, from the safety of his trium- 
phant fait accompli, Leno demonstrated 
his great skill for guilt evasion—suggest- 
ing what had happened never should 
have—while somehow projecting Boy 
Scout altruism and fair-play values. This 
would be the Leno in which his nation 
placed its faith and also, within a few years 
of just adequate on-air improvement, its 
bulk share of Nielsen ratings evermore 
unwavering. At least, that is, until recent 
history barreled forth and NBC (coveting 
those dependable Leno numbers) finally 
cajoled him to stay close by slipping into 
the luxurious nightly 10 o’clock time slot 
last September, once Conan O’Brien had 
gotten a few months of decent Tonight Show 
stewardship under his belt (and, not insig- 
nificantly, lowering that hour’s median age 
by 10 demographically seducible years). 
But Prime-Time Leno, with his Ameri- 
can flag lapel pin still glinting bright and 
blatant, looked stunningly worse—bored, 
impatient, ill at ease, distracted, denuded 
of desk—than even the early “never- 
happened” Tonight Show Leno. Mostly he 
just projected something akin to an affa- 
ble pout, his helium seemingly deflated 
by half—as though he was tapping his 
foot (which in fact he does quite madly— 
more like a jackhammer knee jangle, to 
be honest—whenever he sits still) and just 
biding time until this misbegotten folly 
died of neglect. Ratings blew, thus gut- 
ting lead-in momentum for local affiliate 
newscasts, which resultantly began tanking 
hard (despite Leno’s appalling crossover 
shill: “Your local news starts now!”), which 
ultimately destroyed the valiant Coco 
smack in the middle of freshman curricu- 
lum. And yet Leno—the Leaden Toppling 
Domino of Doom—would whinny and 
rise anew, and the great critic Tom Shales 
would postulate (echoing suspicions fly- 
ing up and down the late-night corridor), 
“Here is a theory: He did a lousy show at 
10 o’clock on purpose, knowing eventually 
NBC would want to undo the deal and put 
him back at 11:35. So the whole thing was 
a nasty, calculated Machiavellian scheme 
with Conan the hapless victim.” 
Meanwhile, Brother Letterman in the 
East—who had gotten himself blissfully 
snockered on vicarious-thrill overload— 
was well under way attempting nightly to 
make convoluted sense of the mayhem, the 
allegations and the potential consequences 
for all involved but especially for Jay “Big 
Jaw” Leno (the reductive new pet name 
he’d lately hung on his old nemesis). In 
one mock public-service message—and 
there would be many of them beamed from 
his Ed Sullivan Theater, i.e., Broadway 
Battlestar—he introduced a patriotic mon- 
tage in defense of that besieged prime-time 
host “with a fantastic variety show...a won- 
derful program!” Across floating pastoral 


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PLAYBOY 


imagery of happy children eating water- 
melon and playing baseball and of Big 
Jaw himself smiling goofily, the voice-over 
explained, “Jay Leno is Middle America. He 
represents traditional American values— 
the things this country was built on. Like 
killing Indians because you want their land. 
Jay Leno. America's standing up for Jay!" 
е 


So here is where I might as well tell you Itend 
to know way too much about most of these 
poor crazy rich beautiful bastards. I will tell 
you they can't help being the way they аге, 
nor can they help doing the peculiar night 
work they do. (It swallows their lives whole, 
quite joyously, despite attendant mania.) The 
ones who prevail are, without exception, con- 
genitally possessed of an urgent unsettling 
brilliance, born of vulnerabilities sunk deep, 
nontransferable to fellow mortals. "Yeah," 
David Letterman concurred in a surprising 
Rolling Stone interview two summers ago. "It's 
a pretty small group of folks, and only the 
people who do it know how difficult it can 
be." Rarely had Letterman availed himself 
to any journalist since early 1997, but back 
when he used to talk more, he and I talked 
lots—and in those fine dervish sessions his 
conversational dexterity would shimmer like 
quicksilver performance art: rich in heartfelt 
candor, arcane knowledge and perfect comic 
nuance. (Never have I encountered brain 
waves more pleasurable to download.) He 
made you understand the innate difficulties 
of his racket and of his own existential plight 
therein—which inevitably meant nonstop. 
shadowboxing with the magnificent exem- 
plar of J.W. Carson, his idol and decade-long 
lead-in propeller. "I always feel like, Man, I’m 
struggling. I’m like a drowning man in quick- 
sand!” he once told me. “And then you turn 
on Johnny's show and say [beaten], Oh, it's 
fuckin’ Johnny!’ He's just easy, cool, funny. 
He looks good, he’s got babes hanging on 
him, he’s saying witty things...and it’s like, 
How can it be that easy?” (Years later, Conan 
actually articulated as much to Carson in one 
of their few friendly phone summits: “I’m a 
little angry with you,” he pluckily informed 
the retired king, “because when I grew up 


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watching you, you made it look like the great- 
est job in the world. You made it look much 
easier than it is." Carson just laughed, beyond 
knowingly.) Even back during that fractious 
juncture when NBC had proposed dumping 
Leno from The Tonight Show to make Dave's 
most fervent dream graspable at last (and thus 
derail his lucrative, if half-hearted, notion to 
open new business at CBS), Letterman admit- 
ted to me, "I look at this mess I'm in now and 
Ithink [in dumb guy voice], What the hell am. 
Igonna do now? I have no clue. But Carson 
just figures it out and carries it off with great 
skill, grace and aplomb." Of course, history 
reminds us that Carson's solicited advice to 
Dave in that particular pickle was to get gone: 
“I would probably walk," quoth the king, 
indelibly. Which Letterman did, straightaway 
from his holy grail, not least because Leno's 
clumsy caress had quickly devalued it (i. e., it 
wasn't Johnny's anymore)—and also because 
Dave saw no moral victory in snatching back 
something so meaningful that had already 
been given to somebody else. 

Leno, I promise, would've gotten the same 
advice last January via any spiritual medium 
intrepid enough to flush Carson out of astral 
hiding. (He was, after all, hard enough to find 
once he disappeared from television.) But as 
go poetics, the king had departed the mortal 
coil five years to the day after Conan departed 
his nicely fixed-up and repossessed Tonight 
Show. (Had the new paint job even dried yet?) 
When Letterman, in a monologue, wryly cited 
the coincidental anniversary of Carson's unex- 
pected death, he stressed, "But don't worry; 
Jay has an alibi.” He added, "You've gotta love 
Jay. He's like a Whac-A-Mole. You think you've 
canceled him and he pops up from another 
darn hole." But that—as Dave noted a few 
nights earlier—was and is Leno all over: "I've 
known Jay Leno for, I don't know, 35 years. 
We used to buddy around in the old days, and 
what we're seeing now is kind of vintage Jay. 
And it's enjoyable for me to see this. It's like, 
‘Hey, there he is! There's the guy I know!” 
By which he specifically meant this guy: Born 
when his mother was 40 (eons before in vitro 
fertilization), Leno has ever since turned up 
when and where he was not supposed to. Fif- 
teen years ago I wrote more or less that same 


sentence, never guessing its shelf life had no 
earthly expiration date. (Where else could he 
possibly turn up after his indefatigable slog to 
seize Carson's throne and then, since 1995, 
consistently rank number one in the ratings 
over Letterman's Late Show?) Then again, I 
also said Leno lives to be counted out because 
he knows he never can be. By then I'd known 
him as long as I'd known Letterman, going 
back to late summer 1982, when Dave's Late 
Night cavalcade was at its first-year midterm 
and Leno's booming semimonthly guest shots 
had become the postmodern equivalent of 
Don Rickles bulldozing onto Carson's set. Pit- 
ted together, their mutual familiarity bred a 
slaphappy faux contempt that was perhaps 
truer than either of them wished to believe. 
One such smackdown—findable on You- 
‘Tube—captures them a year and a half into 
Late Night's march, with Leno determined to 
elude actual conversation (never his strong 
suit, alas, as well evidenced during any given 
Tonight Show broadcast) so as to plow through 
his prepared litany of absurdities. Finally 
Letterman heaved a sigh and said, "I don't 
really need to be on here, do I?" And Leno 
jabbed back, "No, we don't need you here. I've 
been telling the network that for 18 months." 
Big Jaw, you see, was never not omnivorous. 

Carson, the omniscient sage and soothsayer 
(even minus Carnac turban), had of course 
been onto Leno early on. Never a huge fan 
of the Jaw's stand-up stylings, the king was 
later mainly bemused by “poor old” Helen 
Kushnick's transparent plot to expedite 
his ever-looming retirement and by Leno's 
shrugging "who me?" complicity throughout. 
Months after he stepped down—on his own 
goddamn regal terms, thanks—Carson came 
face-to-face with Leno in late 1992, behind 
the scenes at a teachers' awards function, 
and offered up unexpected pleasantries to 
his abashed successor (who was by then free 
from Kushnick's grip and suddenly fighting 
to keep The Tonight Show from being shoe- 
horned to Letterman). Leno later showed me 
the earnest, contrite letter he sent to Carson 
after that meeting, which read, in part, "Dear 
Johnny: Just a little note to wish you good 
luck on your trip to Africa. I'm sure what- 
ever dangerous situations or wild beasts you 


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encounter couldn't possibly be any stranger 
than what is going on at NBC. Have you 
heard the latest idea? Simulcast live: Dave 
on one side of the screen, me on the other.” 
(As these parallels never cease, we might note 
that at the outset of Operation Coco-Coup, 
when NBC made rumblings about delaying 
The Tonight Show for a nightly half hour of 
Leno's joke-a-palooza, O'Brien floated the 
same split-screen concept as a rumored res- 
olution to the madness—as well as this one: 
“Jay and I will be joining the cast of Jersey 
Shore as a new character called the Awkward 
Situation.” Letterman, meanwhile, suggested 
they work as co-hosts: "It'll be Conan and 
Jay! Conan comes out, says, Welcome to The 
Tonight Show—and now here's Jay with his 
little jokes.’ Then Jay goes and works on his 
truck. It's a great show. It's genius!") 

But wait—also in his letter to Carson, 
Leno went on to self-flagellate (quite unprec- 
edented!) and to eat much crow regarding 
all ugliness surrounding his ascension to the 
Burbank throne: "I was extremely touched 
by your graciousness, considering how poorly 
everything at my end was handled. I was 
stupid and naive and will never again allow 
anyone to handle my affairs for me. If you 
remember the story I told you backstage, I 
would like to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger's 
words to me: Leno, you asshole." (Indeed, 
Leno has since flown without formal repre- 
sentation, which may partly explain why he 
rolled over so easily—and in the long run 
so stupidly—in 2004 when NBC foisted the 
five-year exit plan on him. No professional 
showbiz guard dog would've let that happen.) 
As for the future Governator's reproach, any 
number of early Team Leno transgressions 
might've incited such consternation, but one 
in particular glared and glared. Leno, quite 
correctly, told me that "the biggest mistake 
of my entire life" was to intentionally refrain 
from acknowledging Carson—at all—on his 
inaugural Tonight Show, just 72 hours after the 
king's momentous last hurrah. (He claimed 
Mrs. Kushnick forbade it, and as their toxic 
dynamic dictated, he did as she told.) Never- 
theless, I will tell you that Carson was far 
from totally sold on Jay's obeisant pledge of 
redemption. After Leno bade me out of the 
blue to co-author his 1996 memoir, Leading 
With My Chin, a roustabout pastiche of favor- 
ite stand-up tales from the road—frankly, he 
knew I had heard most of them, endlessly, 
over years of covering his runaway career 
climb Carson dropped me a devilish note 
in which he wryly questioned Leno's spirit 
of generosity by pointing out my name had 
somehow been left off the book's cover. 
(Frankly, I was fine with that omission—since 
always in the back of my head lurked the 
winking words of Leno's excellent post-Kush- 
nick executive producer Debbie Vickers, who 
asked me before the writing commenced, 
"Does it matter if any of it's true?") 

I should add that four years later—after 
Letterman's emergency quintuple heart 
bypass shook both the late-night firmament 
and the culture to its core (which tells you 
more about him than his ratings might) 
I was assigned to write a long candid think 
piece about the Meaning of Dave (and thus 
of Jay, as they are that inextricable), which 
in the end did not please Leno for various 


122 reasons. (About that I remain sorry, since I 


will always hold certain affection for him.) He 
phoned me immediately to pronounce, "This 
friendship is over and has since gone on to 
release a couple of books aimed at children. 
T've noticed that whenever celebrity authors 
guest on his show and ask him about his own 
literary output, he quickly mentions the kids" 
books—and then softly mutters, "And there 
was another one before those." In that way 
I'm reminded that I too never happened. 


The eyes of Leno began spooking Conan by 
midsummer last year, following him all over 
Los Angeles. From billboards, from MTA com- 
muter shelters, even splashed onto the side 
of the bus idling in the next lane—Jeeeeesus! 
That anvil-like mug was everywhere, herald- 
ing its owner’s imminent debut in prime time, 
which ultimately became the crime scene 
wherein The Jay Leno Show’s weakest-link fail- 
ure triggered the murder of O'Brien's loftiest 
achievement. Of course Coco could not have 
known that at the time, so he just blithely 
reported the odd phenomena to Tonight 
Show viewers, chuckling about this “giant 
face that pulls up alongside your car...and 
it's him leaning like this.... “Hi there! How ya 
doin’? How are уа? I'll pull up at a light and 


“You call ABC. You call Fox. 
You try to get my job. It’s 
Darwin,” said Dave. “You 
get fired: Get another gig! 
Don't hang around waiting 
for somebody to drop dead!” 


he'll be Ше, ‘Peek-a-booooo, Conan.“ True 
story—and also decent ominous metaphor 
for the Leno Skulk (as in, to loiter darkly, to 
never leave, to lay in wait), which may well 
be remembered as the hinkiest aspect in this 
whole lost moot case against Big Jaw. 

Letterman, in fact, had masterfully called 
the Skulk modus into question a few nights 
before Conan closed shop, unleashing per- 
haps his most stirring and plainspoken 
argument throughout the frenzy—“And I 
don’t even have a dog in this race!” With 
all his hard-won fraternal gravitas, he threw 
down: “So five years ago when NBC said 
to Jay, “You know what? Conan is going to 
take over your job in five years that's when 
you say, ‘Okay, fine, no hard feelings.’ You 
call ABC. You call Fox. You try to get my job. 
You leave. You don't say [in Leno whinny], 
"Yeahhhhh, okay, buddy. ГП be in the lobby 
if you need me!’ You don’t hang around. 
You go across the street and you punish 
NBC. And you make them eat their words.... 
That's the way these things are supposed to 
work. It's just part of evolution. It's Darwin. 
You get fired: Get another gig! Don't hang 
around waiting for somebody to drop dead!" 
Then he added, as only he could, after a 
short self-reflective giggle, "Well...I feel I've 
gone too far yet again tonight." 


Clearly, however, the intuitive great white 
Jaw had tasted traces of pale Irishman night- 
blood in the water since early on. Only two 
months into his prime-time Skulk, Leno gave 
asort of uncharacteristically raw Q&A to the 
trade weekly Broadcasting & Cable, published 
November 2, in which his resolve of amicable 
tongue biting appeared to have worn thin. 
Asked whether he would be thrilled if magi- 
cally reinstalled tomorrow at his old 11:35 
post, he hemmed and hawed in a manner 
that sent chills through Conan's base camp: 
"Oh, I don't know," Leno replied, ellipti- 
cally. "Are you married? Whatever you want, 
honey." Then he kept circling back toward 
prey: "If it were offered to me, would I take 
it? If that's what they wanted to do, sure. 
That would be fine if they wanted to." Would 
that be his preference? "I don't know.... I 
guess. But it's not my decision to make. It's 
really not. I don't know." If this wasn't quite 
schadenfreude aimed at the new Tonight 
Show regime, it nevertheless felt threatening 
enough to prompt interoffice firestorms. 
For one thing, according to a privy high- 
ranking source, Leno neglected to forewarn 
anyone of his slip. "Usually he'd always call 
Conan and say, 'Ehhhh, I didn't mean that 
or whatever, but he never called. Nothing." 
Quite conversely, it was Leno who actu- 
ally flaunted the role of wounded sparrow 
to NBC brass a few weeks later, after Andy 
Richter—America's last great sidekick (and 
Conan jangle-softener supreme)—stated dur- 
ingan interview with the website TV Squad 
that the Jaw's sinister B&C remarks sorely 
lacked professional courtesy. Said Richter, 
“The classy answer [that Leno might have 
given] is, 'Oh well, that's a silly question to 
ask, because somebody already has that job." 
That's what you say. If you're classy." One 
network exec frantically informed Coco's 
people that Jay (who reportedly scours all 
media for inbound negativity) "flipped out," 
strongly suggesting Andy call the deposed 
Tonight Show host to smooth things over. (Such 
had been NBC's staunchly embedded cod- 
dling of the faltering Leno over the striving 
O'Brien—even then.) Conan's crew opted to 
"take the high road" (albeit grudgingly), and 
Richter followed orders—to a point, accord- 
ing to the source: "I apologize for saying it 
publicly," Andy told Leno, "but I do feel that 
way." As for his own offending media gaffe, 
Leno could only weakly insinuate that he'd 
been browbeaten into his inarguably honest 
admission. "And from that day onward,” said 
one O'Brien confidante as late as mid-April, 
"we have never heard from Leno." 

And so the Skulk would loom onward, 
perhaps even more portentously. "I never 
say no más," he also informed the B&C inter- 
rogator, despite his indisputable power to 
do whatever he wished anywhere on TV 
(or off) and his untouched mountains of 
fuck-you money with which to keep his 
large staff secure. (He notoriously brags 
of having banked every million ever paid 
to him by NBC while subsisting solely off 
personal-appearance fees.) "I've never 
walked away from anything in my life," he 
added. "This is what I do. You keep plow- 
ing ahead. If someone wants to take you 
out, I'm out." Less than three months later 
and a mere handful of days after Conan 
had been taken out and plucked clean of 


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peacock feathers, Leno would bring his 
urgent quest for image reparation to the 
High Court of Oprah. (Certainly he needed 
to improve on his interim blurt—vis-à-vis 
freshly tarnished image—during a week- 
end TMZ ambush: "You know what's good 
for tarnish?" he joshed, all cavalier. "A mix- 
ture of vinegar and ammonia. That'll bring 
it right back.") Before the magisterial O, 
however, he shrugged, squirmed, whined, 
lamented, rationalized and referred to 
the grand hostess cum savior as "doll" and 
"baby." My favorite part was his insistence 
Oprah would never, ever be pried loose 
from television: "You'll be there, baby.... 
You and I will go down together. You and I 
will hold hands and walk out into the sunset 
together. You're not going anywhere; I'm. 
not going anywhere." 

But Madam Winfrey proved to be a firm and 
relatively immovable force of conscience—on 
camera, at least—throughout the deposition. 
Perhaps to fortify her demeanor, an Oprah 
.com poll taken before the show had indicated 
sympathies for Conan over Leno ran, quite 
stunningly, in the 96th percentile—which, 
let's face it, could've been the techno-geek 
wizardry of riled Team Coco revolutionaries 
at work. (Which further begged the question, 
Where were they when Conan was hurting 
for ratings?) Still, some testimony from the 
inquisition bears minor excerpting: 

0: Do you feel any personal responsibility 
for Conan's disappointment? 

J: No. It had nothing to do with me. I mean, 
as I say, there's always someone waiting in 
the wings in this business to take your job. 
If you're not doing the numbers, they move 
on. It's pretty simple. 

0: Mm-hmm.... But do you think now you 
could have done what Conan did? When 
they came in and said your prime-time 
show's canceled, you say, ‘Okay, you owe 
me two years.... Pay me out, pay out my 
staff.’ You could have done that. 

J: I could have done that, but I didn't. They 
offered me my old job back. 

о: Right, I get that. 

J: Which is the dream job. I said okay. 

Which was the foregone conclusion— 
truest true story! —that Conan had served up 
in a monologue once it was certain his own 
fleet "fulfillment of a lifelong dream" had 
been lynched: “I just want to say to the kids 
out there watching: You can do anything 
you want in life—unless Jay Leno wants to 
do it too." Then came his Leno-voiced punc- 
tuation, because there's something about 
emulating its familiar nattering sibilance that 
always makes unfathomable truth cut that 
much deeper: "Ehhhhh, you still using that? 
Can I have it now?" 


If there was a singular shining moment in 
those January weeks of Night Boy tussle, 
it arrived on Tuesday the 12th when Coco 
the Conscientious Objector dropped his 
perfectly crafted "People of Earth" letter 
on the populace. He'd also read it aloud— 
betwixt intermittent quaky pauses—to his 
staff assembled on the cavernous $50 mil- 
lion soundstage NBC had built for him 
along the Universal back lot. Beneath the 
fine foolish sci-fi salutation, of course, he 
had effectively "told the network to go fuck 


themselves in a very elegant way," as one of 
his top producers put it to me. At crux, he 
declared that his Tonight Show would not be 
shoved five minutes into the next day so as 
to follow even a half hour of Leno, Conan's 
ever inescapable warm-up act. As such, the 
redheaded prince fell on his sword for a 
broadcast legacy owned by a conglomer- 
ate that gave not one shit about legacy. (Big 
Jaw, conveniently enough, had also cheer- 
fully stated in that November hot-potato 
interview, "I'm not a legacy guy." Hey, per- 
fect!) Conan concluded, "Some people will 
make the argument that with DVRs and 
the Internet, a time slot doesn't matter. 
But with The Tonight Show, I believe noth- 
ing could matter more." (Actually, after that 
last part, this is how he concluded: "For the 
record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it's 
always been that way." But still.) 


Anyway, he made no mention of the 
Earth People letter on air that night, but 
his brethren rejoiced in a stoked solidar- 
ity, if individually: The fearless Jimmy 
Kimmel performed his entire hour pro- 
gram as Leno in full Big Jaw prosthetics, 
entering to a fake Leno-zealot swarm of 
mindless high-fivers and lisp-yapping out, 
"My name is Jay Leno, and as you prob- 
ably know, I’m taking over all the shows 
in late night.” He also cited Conan's letter, 
"released [earlier] today that said, 1 won't 
participate in the destruction of The Tonight 
Show.' Fortunately, though, I will!” Mean- 
while, Letterman's vicarious delirium knew 
no bounds—righteously pumping his fist in 
the air and embellishing on Conan's I-ain’t- 
budging throw-down, he hollered over and 
over (like maybe Coco on steroids?), "Oh 
yeah? What are you gonna do about it?” (Guest 


"And then I say to the audience, Т could have sworn I had а 
rabbit in here someplace! " 


123 


PLAYBO!Y 


124 


Whoopi Goldberg wryly indulged him 
moments thereafter: "It's really nice when 
you're vindicated, isn't it?") In his mono- 
logue he delivered this thinly veiled aside, 
based on the denouement to his own 1992 
NBC quandary: "Conan said he made the 
decision not to follow Leno at 12:05 after 
he talked to Johnny Carson." 

This much I know for certain: Carson, 
who endured three decades of NBC's 
corporate bungling, would have led all 
applause for Conan's gutsy stand (just as 
he would have been proud of Letterman's 
miraculous head-on defusing of the messy 
sextortion case that befell the veteran host 
last October). Eight years ago, when the 
king permitted me to profile him a decade 
after vanishing into civilian life, he repeat- 
edly told me (and anyone within his insular 
circle), “I left at the right time." For sure, 
the garish deterioration of late-night tele- 
vision and of society itself was not his thrill. 
In a previous chance encounter, I recall his 
palpable chagrin over the prospect of the 
Leno-Letterman travail being dissected as 
a strange cable movie: "Can you believe 
that awful shit?" he said woefully. "It's just 
ridiculous. I mean, give me a break!" As it 
happened, I began work on a thorough- 
going (and ongoing) Carson biography 
not long after his 2005 death, which led 
me to the 30 Rock office of the recently 
anointed next-in-line—hilarious, right?— 
who happily recounted for me all of his 
(mostly telephonic) brushes with the great 
man. Indeed, in their last chat shortly after 
Conan had been named Leno's eventual 
successor, Carson cracked, “It sure is a long 
engagement before the wedding, kiddo.” 

But, as during the other couple of times 
they had spoken, Carson was warm and 
encouraging: “He was great,” recalled 
O'Brien, "because I said, Listen, I just 


want you to know that I'm going to do my 
best to take care of this franchise.’ And he 
said, “That's quite a franchise, isn't it?’ And 
you could almost hear his eyes roll. Kind of 
like [sarcastically], ‘Pretty good, huh?’ I’m 
like, 'Yeahhhh....' But when I got off the 
phone, I thought whatever happens now— 
even if by some twist of fate, for whatever 
reason, I didn't get to actually have The 
Tonight Show and ended up on Skid Row—I 
talked to Johnny about taking over that 
program, and he gave me a little advice. 
And I thought, Well, I've always got that. 
What beats that in show business?" 


Of course the epilogue to all this made anti- 
climax feel like gross understatement. On 
the night before Super Bowl Sunday, I hap- 
pened to be in the social midst of comrade 
Kimmel, whose radar misses nothing. Thus 
he just learned of the top-secret Letterman 
Late Show promo to be unveiled during the 
game: "And guess who's starring in it with 
Dave,” he said, more than a little crest- 
fallen. (It had been Kimmel, after all, who 
climbed directly into the ring with Leno— 
heroically rope-a-doping Big Jaw two nights 
after playing him on his own show—by sub- 
mitting to Leno's hoary prime-time Q&A 
segment “10 @ 10," wherein he starkly 
implored, "Listen, Jay, Conan and I have 
children—all you have to take care of is 
cars. I mean, we have lives to lead here. 
You've got $800 million! For God's sakes, 
leave our shows alone!") And so the largest 
viewing audience in TV history beheld the 
15-second spectacle of Leno-Oprah-Dave 
sandwiched together on a sofa with snacks 
as Dave moans, "This is the worst Super 
Bowl party ever!" and Oprah admonishes, 
"Oh, Dave, be nice!" and a forlorn Leno 
whimpers, "He's just saying that because 


"Our attorneys say it's highly illegal and we should 
only do it this once." 


I'm here," which Dave then parrots back in 
his mocking Leno-voice, prompting Oprah 
to toss up her hands in hopeless dismay, 
while Leno looks even more sunken and 
desperately deserving of a hug. And just 
like that—what, all was forgiven? The pub- 
lic could only guess—if it cared to guess at 
all, which it mostly didn't. Late-night insid- 
ers, meanwhile, were either entertained, 
disheartened or quite certain Letterman 
knew what he was doing—i.e., turning 
Leno into his personal lackey-buffoon after 
nearly two decades of zero contact between 
them. Letterman's longtime producer Rob. 
Burnett instantly tried quelling speculation: 
It's not like we all went out to dinner,” һе 
said. “Dave had a funny idea, Jay recog- 
nized that, and they both came together." 

Leno, being Leno—and, at this point, 
why shouldn't he be?—played it to full 
advantage the following night on his next- 
to-last-ever broadcast of The Jay Leno Show, 
which had plowed forth (naturally) for two 
awkward weeks in post-Conan aftermath. 
"No matter what animosity there is among 
comedians," he merrily informed his audi- 
ence, "a good joke is a good joke. And I 
thought, ya know, it just makes it all go 
away." Which, from his point of view, it 
did—beginning with the seismic moment 
he and Letterman greeted each other at 
the clandestine shoot above Dave's studio. 
"You know," he went on, "whatever hap- 
pened in the last 18 years disappeared. It 
was great to see my old friend again. It 
was wonderful." That same night, on the 
other hand, Letterman said almost nothing 
about the promo spot—perhaps distanc- 
ing himself from its meaning any way he 
could. He did, however, acknowledge that 
"people really thought this was big-time 
stuff. So I just wanted to take a second 
here now to thank the actors who played 
Oprah and Jay Leno. They did a tremen- 
dous job." Word circulated, accurately, that 
Conan had also been asked to appear in 
the promo but declined out of fealty to his 
reported $40ish million exit settlement with 
NBC. But according to one close Coco col- 
league, that wasn't exactly the case; instead, 
when the premise was described to him— 
the whole everybody-on-a-couch-with-Leno 
thing—his pale face went much paler. And 
his verbal response was thus: "No fucking 
way will I ever do that!" 

Anyway, have you heard this? Leno 
reclaimed his show at the start of March 
and instantly began killing Dave again in 
the ratings. True story. I think it was on. 
his third night back that he turned to his 
bandleader and said, *Kev, I know this is 
gonna sound weird, but it feels like we've 
been doing this for years!" Later on that 
same show, his guest Chelsea Handler 
referred to some stupid running bit she 
once withstood on his prime-time pro- 
gram. Leno quickly bouldered across 
whatever she was saying—almost like he 
couldn't hear her—and affected a big bari- 
tone swagger: "Those days are over, baby," 
he practically bellowed. “That never hap- 
pened!” By the way, just to be clear again: 
I didn't make any of this up. 


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PLAYBOY 


MICHAEL SAVAGE 


(continued from page 54) 
PLAYBOY: Are the people who listen to your 
show people you'd like to hang out with? 
SAVAGE: No, no. A couple rules of radio: 
Never accept listener food. “Dear Mike, We 
love you. That is why we baked you this lasa- 
gna.” You know it's poison. My first program 
director taught me that. For the same reason 
never accept listener wine, even though I 
love wine. And try never to socialize with lis- 
teners. Maybe they're nice people. Some of 
them look like people Га like to know. But I 
really don't have time to get involved. 
PLAYBOY: Is it true you had your friends and 
family pretend to be callers on your first 
radio show? 
SAVAGE: Yeah, when 1 made my first demo 
tape 15 years ago. I was alone in my house in 
Sausalito and had them call in. I sent that tape 
to 500 stations. One in Boston said, "You're 
pretty good.” The strangest response was 
from KGO, the big liberal talk station in San 
Francisco. They said, “Come and do a fill-in,” 
which I did for Ray Taliaferro's show. He's a 
really fanatic left-wing America hater. Off the 
air he's a great guy. I actually like him. 
PLAYBOY: What did you talk about on that 
first show? 
SAVAGE: I talked about affirmative action and 
how bad it was because it wasn't built on fair- 
ness. And remember, this is San Francisco, 
on a liberal station, so the phones went abso- 
lutely fucking crazy. The hate came pouring 
in. This was in the middle of the night, but 
the ratings were through the roof. I drove 
home looking in the rearview mirror, posi- 
tive someone was following me. I came home 
shaking at five in the morning and told Janet, 
“ГЇЇ never do radio again.” Next thing, ring 
ring. "Hey, you were pretty damn good. 
Would you like to do it again?" I said sure. 
From then on, I basically drove the station. 
PLAYBOY: Do you still look in your rearview 
mirror? What if an angry listener climbs the 
gate and comes after you? 
SAVAGE: They won't climb the gate because 
they'll be shot before they get to the front 
door. But I have had many death threats 
over the years. I take them quite seriously. 
But there's a phrase in the business that says 
“The flashers don't rape." It's the ones who 
don't say anything you worry about. That's 
why I have a conceal-and-carry permit. No, 
I'm not armed, but it's in the house, and 
when I go out I always have a weapon. I'm 
allowed to. It's legal. And I'm prepared to 
use it because I'm not going to beg on my 
hands and knees, “Please don't shoot me." 
They better have really good fucking aim 
because they're going to die first. 
PLAYBOY: Let's shift gears and play the name 
game with your media cohorts. Bill O'Reilly. 
SAVAGE: I think O'Reilly is a phony. He has 
a background in entertainment. He's very 
smart. He has a good education and I give 
him that. He does a good job in his delivery, 
but he is very one-dimensional. It's either 
black or white with him, and there's no in- 
between. Also, O'Reilly failed at radio, which 
shows you how hard this is to do. 
PLAYBOY: Rush Limbaugh. 
SAVAGE: I don't know how Rush Limbaugh 
has an audience. I just don't know. I don't 


126 like anyone who was a water carrier for Bush 


all those years and now pretends he wasn't. 
I know he was deeply enmeshed in the 
Republican Party and George Bush. I mean, 
he has a right to do that, but don't pretend 
you're not a mouthpiece for them. 
PLAYBOY: Glenn Beck. 

SAVAGE: Glenn Beck is a laughingstock. 
The mark of the uneducated man? Не has 
a blackboard; he plays professor half the 
time. What's with the chalk? He didn't go 
to college so he's making up for it by play- 
ing professor on television? 

PLAYBOY: What's your biggest complaint 
about him? 

SAVAGE: That he's fucking stupid. That's all. 
Other than that, nothing. 

PLAYBOY: What about Rachel Maddow? 
SAVAGE: Oh, oh! [clutches heart] Aside from 
being physically unappealing, she thinks an 
ironic statement is intelligent. Her statements 
all have an ironic ending, like "You know?" 
As though she's still in a sorority house or a 
college beer bust where every statement ends 
with irony. There's a reason she has the lowest 
ratings of all the people on cable. Now ask me 
about the brain-damaged Keith Olbermann. 
PLAYBOY: Go for it. 

SAVAGE: He's a sad man. He's totally crazy. I 
think there's actually something wrong with 


Glenn Beck is a laughing- 
stock. What's with the chalk? 
He didn't go to college so 
he's making up for it by play- 
ing professor on television? 
He's fucking stupid. 


the guy. I mean he gets so worked up in 
ways that are inappropriate for the situation. 
With the hatred! The world's worst person 
is me? Or Sean Hannity or O'Reilly? Not 
Osama bin Laden? Not a guy who just blew 
up 50 people in Iraq? It's a media competi- 
tor? That's the world's worst person? How 
do they let him get away with it? 

But there's actually someone worse than 
him. The fraud of frauds, Chris Matthews. 
He's been a Democratic operative all his life. 
He worked for Tip O'Neill. He should have 
a warning label like "This cigarette is known 
to cause cancer." He should have a label like 
“This spokesman worked for the Democratic 
National Committee." 

PLAYBOY: Okay. Two more. Jon Stewart and 
Stephen Colbert. 

SAVAGE: ГП answer that simply. If it weren't for 
the smart guys with the curly hair and the big 
eyeglasses writing for them behind the scenes, 
they'd be nothing. Let them try three hours of 
improvisational radio every day for 15 years. 
We'll see how smart and how sharp they are. 
Anyone can take great lines and deliver them 
if they have a good delivery system. Do they 
write their stuff? I doubt it. Oh, and the Col- 
bert Nation? Where'd he get that from? 
PLAYBOY: By the way, does talk radio have 
a bright future? 


SAVAGE: I'm surprised it's still surviving given 
all the media options. It's probably still the best 
vehicle for people to feel connected while com- 
muting in a car. This friendly voice, he's joking. 
One minute he's railing against the political 
structure, the next minute he's playing with 
his dog. That's me. A little science, poetry, art. 
And for conservatives, Obama's making the 
radio business very easy. Even morons can do 
it. Again, take a look at Glenn Beck. 
PLAYBOY: Did you cry when you heard Air 
America died? 

SAVAGE: Ha! It was never born. It was a 
bunch of liberals preaching to other liber- 
als. Nobody cared. 

PLAYBOY: Aren't you preaching to the 
choir too? 

SAVAGE: One would assume that's true, but I 
was off the air in the Bay area for a few months 
this year, and the feedback from industry 
people was that liberals missed me! That 
may sound crazy, but I offer an alternative 
to what they see or hear in their own world. 
Sure, maybe they listened and said, "Ah, he's 
wrong," and shut it off. But the next day they 
couldn't wait to turn me on again. A lot of it 
has to do with the variants I throw at them. ГЇЇ 
go from politics to tonight's meal to kvetching 
about a heart attack [cuddles his poodle] to old 
"Ted here. Teddy, you're a good stunt! 
PLAYBOY: Will you still be doing radio five 
years from now? 

SAVAGE: [Sighs] I should have been dead by 
now by my family history. It frightens me to 
think about life five years down the line. Pm a 
germaphobe, a health neurotic. What Jew isn't? 
Every Jew isa doctor and a patient. [laughs] And 
I'm getting older. Will I still be doing radio? 
I don't know. It's like the eternal question of 
life. Why am I here? Why am I working? I 
don't need the money, so I'm doing it purely 
for ego's sake. Or am I doing it because I love 
the excitement of using my mind, which I do. 
Ilove making connections flow. 

PLAYBOY: You've achieved financial success. 
Would you say you are happy? 

SAVAGE: No, I'm a morose person. I shake 
off the moroseness on the radio. I fly. Then 
I come back to earth and go back to my 
basic worldview, which is grim. It's like an 
old Russian's worldview. Life is grim. If you 
really look at it straight in the eye, it's just 
two Indians pulling a sled over the ice. You 
have children; you fend off enemies. To me 
the world is like Lord of the Flies. Am I happy? 
I wouldn't say that, but that doesn't mean. 
I'm not optimistic. I think America's going 
to have a phenomenal renaissance. I really 
feel it. And it's going to come from a lot of 
the young people who've thrown out—you 
call it political correctness, I call it political 
cowardice. This whole sovietization of afraid 
to talk, afraid to think outside the realm of 
groupthink. I believe a tremendous counter- 
movement is going on in this country, and I 
hear it every single day from listeners call- 
ing in to my radio show. It's what gets me 
up in the morning. It's what makes me feel 
good for those three hours of nonstop talk 
so I can go back to feeling morose the other 
21 hours. That optimism is what keeps me 
going. It's what saves me. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever run out of things to say? 
SAVAGE: [Laughs] Not so far! 


оом 
(continued from page 64) 


young girls, a spiritual con artist. He was 
accused of orchestrating sexual orgies, per- 
forming abortions, hypnotizing wealthy fe- 
male benefactors (and beautiful poor ones, 
too) and fleecing veterans of their savings. 
Some ofthese accusations were utterly false, 
others not far from the truth. 


By 1904 Bernard was engaged in the grand 
work of his life: to spread the knowledge 
of yoga in his native land, organizing devo- 
tees and initiates into an ambitious national 
network of lodges. He traveled to St. Louis, 
Chicago and New York City, where he estab- 
lished a fledgling publishing firm called the 
Tantrik Press. During his New York jour- 
neys he cultivated writers and editors for 
the press and had begun to personally min- 
ister to Broadway actresses, a practice that 
would become a mainstay of his business in 
the years to come. 

Bernard labored to build his Tantrik 
Order into an influential secret society akin 
to the Freemasons, of which he himself was 
a rising member. If the TO seems exotic 
by today's social standards, it was not far 
from the mainstream of American life at the 
time. Every night in American cities large 
and small, bewhiskered fraternal brothers 
and their sisters in veils and gloves scur- 
ried across the cobblestones from meeting 


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to meeting, carrying rule books, manuals, 
pins, badges and feathers. During the first 
decade of the century, membership in all 
such societies ran in the millions, so most 
Americans were familiar with—and even 
drawn to—the ideas of inner and outer 
circles, passwords, tests of allegiance and 
degrees of initiation. 

In his use of symbols, codes and rituals, 
Bernard borrowed liberally from the Free- 
masons, the Theosophists and other groups, 
religious as well as secular. Beneath the 
pomp and plumes, however, he detected a 
genuine hunger for mystical experience—a 
direct connection to the divine—that many 
Americans failed to find at church. This 
was a time of great spiritual upheaval in 
the nation, what has been called alternately 
the Third Great Awakening or the first New 
Age, depending on your point of view. 

Bernard's system was an American adap- 
tation of Hindu Tantrism, a mix of religious 
rituals, beliefs and practices based on sacred 
scriptures called tantras that teach follow- 
ers the material world is an expression of 
the divine. Linking the many diverse sects 
of Tantrism is the worship of the feminine 
power of procreation, and Hindu tantric 
ritual revolves around the worship of the 
goddess Shakti (sometimes spelled Sakti), 
the female principle of regeneration. From 
this platform the tantric masters later 
arrived at the idea of the human body as 
potentially pure and godlike, and in India's 
10th century Tantrism gave birth to hatha 


yoga, the science of postures and breathing 
that Bernard taught and that is familiar to 
21st century Americans. In Bernard's time 
Tantrism had been suppressed for centuries 
in its mother country, functioning as a kind 
of underground in the Westernized Hindu 
society imposed on India by British rulers 
and Western missionaries. 

Tantrikas divide themselves along two 
very different paths. The right-hand path 
takes a conservative approach, interpreting 
the tantric texts symbolically. A right-hand 
Tantrist, for example, could pursue the wor- 
ship of Shakti through reverence for his 
wife and without violating the bonds of his 
marriage. Those taking the left-hand path, 
however, are willing to flout society’s norms 
and revel in mixing the sacred and the 
so-called profane. This path uses taboos— 
drugs, alcohol and extramarital sex—and 
engages in the ritual known in India as the 
five Ms, which refer to the Sanskrit words 
for wine, meat, fish, parched grain (perhaps 
a psychotropic substance or drug) and sex- 
ual intercourse. 

The first four are used to rouse the sexual 
instinct, which is then channeled to rouse the 
serpent power, the kundalini, granting the 
adept great powers and knowledge. In the 
ascetic traditions of Indian religion, all of the 
five Ms are forbidden fruit, so a left-handed 
tantric ritual could be a shameful, heart- 
pounding excursion into outlaw behavior. 

The ritual of sacramental sexual inter- 
course has forever captured the human 


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PLAYBOY 


128 


imagination. Often a high priest choreo- 
graphs two young initiates as they perform 
the act in the midst of a solemn circle of 
chanting devotees. The ritual harkens back 
to Ice Age female fertility worship and the 
Eleusinian Mysteries of the Greeks, and it 
has found its way into the plot of the mod- 
ern best-seller The Da Vinci Code. 

Bernard's group reserved secret rooms for 
such worship in several cities, according to 
witnesses, and he gave many hints that sex 
as a sacrament was part of the tantric prac- 
tices he taught. In San Francisco, Bernard 
and the young Tantrikas were at least dab- 
bling with the hard-core left-handed stuff. 
The evidence for this lies in the group's clas- 
sified newspaper ad beckoning members to a 
Kaula ceremony, generally considered one of 
the most extreme forms of tantra. In Kaula 
rites, the sexual act is performed in a chakra 
circle of worshippers, always late at night in a 
deserted place in order to maintain the pri- 
vacy necessary to perform the five Ms. 

And just so there was no confusion about 
who was licensed to be at the center of the 
sacred sex, Bernard quoted to his follow- 
ers from a translation of the Mahanirvana 
Tantra, which notes only a worshipper who 
possesses a seventh-degree certification in 
the Tantrik Order—in this case Bernard 
himself—"may marry by mutual choice 
another, in the assemblage of the Shakti 
worshipers, when a circle is formed.” Ber- 
nard could choose his own partner for 
sacred sex, or he could act as a matchmaker 
for willing initiates. 


Much of what we know about Bernard's 
thinking is contained in a remarkable 
book-length document called Vira Sadhana: 
the International Journal of the Tantrik Order 


(American edition). In the debut publica- 
tion of the Tantrik Press, the book makes the 
case for tantric yoga, as Bernard sometimes 
called his practice, proclaiming it to be the 
most scientific and up-to-date way to wor- 
ship and live. In an essay called “The Basis 
of Religion,” he calls for a more elevated 
discussion of love and sex. 

This erotic manifesto, which Bernard 
left unsigned for legal protection, was writ- 
ten with the kind of linguistic assurance 
displayed in his lectures. “The animat- 
ing impulse of all organic life is the sexual 
instinct," he writes. “It is that which under- 
lies the struggle for existence in the 
animal world and is the source of all human 
endeavor and emotion.” Sex, Bernard goes 
on to attest, “is the most powerful factor in 
all that pertains to the human race and has 
ever been the cause and the subject of man's 
most exalted thought.” 


To the Tantrikas, discussion of the sex 
instinct was not merely theoretical. The suc- 
cess of the club relied on initiates like Florin 
Jones and Winfield Nicholls, who drummed 
up new customers to come to meetings and 
take courses. The tall, blue-eyed Nicholls 
was the band's preferred bait for women. 
He was so handsome and devastatingly soul- 
ful of nature, admirers said, that his sexual 
magnetism was legendary. 

In time the San Francisco police took 
an interest in the Tantrikas, especially the 
bawdy gatherings Bernard called the Bac- 
chante Club. An undercover police officer 
infiltrated the group and later told report- 
ers that at a meeting he attended he found 
"men dressed in long black gowns, sitting 
on the floor smoking Turkish water pipes 
while girls danced before them." 


"Hurry it up. We'll miss our bus." 


In a city rife with crime and vice, the 
youthful Tantrikas stood apart for their 
upper- and middle-class origins. These 
were not reviled Chinese opium addicts or 
prostitutes who could be herded into slums, 
harassed and prosecuted at will; they were 
mainly well-off white kids, acting up in the 
better parts of the city and embarrassing 
their parents on the front pages of the dai- 
lies. And they showed no signs of stopping 
their activities. Something had to give. As 
the police made it more and more apparent 
that the group's presence was unwelcome, 
Bernard and his Tantrikas began scouting 
for friendlier climes. By April 18, 1906, the 
day of the great San Francisco earthquake, 
they had already left, heading north up the 
Pacific coast in search of their next home. 

By 1908 membership had grown in the 
Pacific Northwest—Bernard ultimately 
opened four lodges in Seattle and one in 
Portland. As happened in San Francisco, 
some members mingled romantically with 
locals, and a few had affairs that came back 
to haunt them. Jennie Leo made the mis- 
take of giving her heart to Nicholls, who 
had never in his young life been known 
to settle down with one woman. In fact, 
at the time he was also seeing a woman 
named Daisy Mix, who was stuck in an 
unhappy common-law marriage with a 
wealthy Seattle businessman. 

Watching from the sidelines was Jennie's 
younger sister, Gertrude, who was living 
with her in Seattle. Seeing her big sister dip 
in and out of this circle of wealthy and well- 
connected people, Gertrude wanted very 
much to be part of it. In January 1909, when 
she turned 18, she applied for member- 
ship, and Bernard accepted her. Gertrude, 
a stenographer with a sweet open face and 
blonde curly hair, had recently been hospital- 
ized for a vaguely diagnosed heart condition. 
Bernard proposed to restore her to health 
with a series of yoga postures and breathing 
exercises that would slow her metabolism 
and strengthen her heart. Both sisters con- 
sented, and soon Gertrude was living among 
the Tantrikas in one of their lodges. 

Bernard, meanwhile, was anxious to get 
back to New York, and he proposed that 
the others in the group move with him for 
good. He asked Gertrude to come along, 
suggesting she'd be a good companion for 
his stepsister, 17-year-old Ora Ray. Ger- 
trude could continue her studies and work 
for the organization as a stenographer and 
teacher of hatha yoga. The young woman 
agreed to the move, leaving her sister 
Jennie behind in the Pacific Northwest to 
nurse her heartbreak over Nicholls. 


Gertrude Leo arrived in New York on Mon- 
day, June 7, 1909. After she dropped her 
bags at the West 171st Street apartment 
Bernard had rented for everyone, the two 
made their way to Battery Park at Manhat- 
tan's southern tip. The day grew sultry as 
it stretched on, and they sat for hours in 
a shady intersection of lawns, gardens and 
promenades, watching boats rounding the 
seawall: steamers, ferries and sailing craft 
coming and going in the busiest harbor in 
the world. Battery Park was where New York 
had started its life, so it made a perfect spot 


to talk about new beginnings in their new 
home in the greatest city in the world. 

Bernard told his blonde initiate about his 
vision for the Tantrik Order and the role he 
envisioned for her. She was to be a nautch 
girl, he said, like the girls in India who 
live at Hindu temples and devote them- 
selves to priests. Gertrude probably knew 
what he was talking about. The idea of a 
sacred, sensual temple dancer, wrapped in 
precious jewels and worshipped by men, 
was fixed in the popular imagination in 
1909. The nautch girl had been Western- 
ized and glamorized by dancer Ruth St. 
Denis, who had become a raging success— 
critical as well as popular—on vaudeville 
stages across the United States and Europe. 
St. Denis performed solo and barefoot, 
her writhing yoga-inspired choreography 
accompanied by visiting Asian musicians. 
Moving across the stage through clouds 
of incense, St. Denis rippled her arms like 
cobras and swirled her sinewy abdomen 
in costumes that scandalously exposed 
four inches of bare midriff. Her choreog- 
raphy evoked a startling combination of 
spirituality and sensuousness that stunned 
audiences into respectful silence at the end 
of her performance. 

Bernard presented the nautch girl role 
as a new and modern means of feminine 
empowerment. “All priests," he told Ger- 
trude, "have nautch girls. In my sacred 
capacity I cannot marry, but our nautch girls 
serve us as wives. It is the duty ofthe priest 
to give her all the world's best goods. She is 
looked upon as sacred." 

Bernard impressed upon Gertrude his 
knowledge of psychic powers, real and 
imaginary, and of the difference between 
simulative and real phenomena. The ability 
to produce deceptive appearances was a sim- 
ulative phenomenon, he explained, common 
enough among occultists and magicians— 
Bernard himself was a talented magician who 
specialized in Hindu disappearing tricks. 
But the ability to influence others' bodies 
and souls with his mind was a real phenom- 
enon and proof of his power. "I am not a real 
man," he told her, quoting ancient Hindu 
texts about yoga and supernatural powers. 
“I am a god, but I have condescended to put 
on the habit of a man that I may perform 
the duties of a yogi and reveal true religion. 
to the elect of America." 

It was a pretty hard sell, and Gertrude 
told him she needed to think it over. That 
night she went back uptown and stayed with 
Ora Ray at the flat. 

The next day she announced her decision 
to move to the next level of commitment. 
"I became a novitiate," she later said, just 
as her sister had before her. "The ends of 
my fingers were slit open, and the blood 
was poured upon a pen. Then I signed my 
name on the document." This document, 
"the Tantrik Oath," begins with a fearsome 
warning: "As lightning from the womb of the 
clouds rends in twain the mighty oak, I pray 
that the relentless and exacting justice of the 
law of Brahma, which is as inexorable and 
all consuming as his love is inexhaustible, 
may shatter and torture me in agonizing 
pain beyond the power of speech to describe 
should I ever deviate from the following 
affirmations and declarations." 


Then followed a call to fellowship and 
secrecy, vows to value education and trust 
in the hierarchy of the order, to submit to 
the teachers and to their ancient wisdom. 
Time and again, though, the oath cautions 
all who sign in their blood to "guard my 
speech and seal my mouth forever to those 
outside our ranks." Gertrude, assured of her 
special place in Bernard's life, became his 
nautch girl and his lover. 

By July the Tantrikas had moved to a 
beautiful new home in a posh neighbor- 
hood, an ivy-covered brownstone at 258 
West 74th Street. Once Bernard's growing 
spiritual library from the West Coast had 
arrived from Seattle, he opened the doors 
of this well-kept townhouse as a yoga school 
and sanitarium. 


Nicholls, Jones and others from Bernard's 
core group fanned out across New York in 
search of well-heeled, interested parties— 
doctors, patients, the sickly, occultists, 
spiritual seekers and health-fad enthusiasts. 
The tantric heralds spread the news: There 
was a new guru in town. Come try our hatha 
yoga classes, offered several times a week in 
the evenings, along with instruction in yogic 
breathing, meditation and philosophy. Or 
drop by on the weekends during bacchante 
evenings, when food and drink would be 
offered and the house would be opened to 
respectful, curious seekers. 

One of Bernard's first clients was a shy, 
dreamy young woman named Zelia Hopp, 
who lived with her parents in the Bronx. 
Zelia was a sickly girl—a worry to her par- 
ents, who trundled her off to a succession of 
physicians, praying she would get well and 
find a husband like her older sister had. In 
fact it was Zelia's older sister, Esther Betts, 
who had heard about a famous and pow- 
erful healer named Dr. Warren who had 
just arrived from San Francisco. Thus Zelia 
and the Hopp family were introduced to 
this talented doctor, who was actually Pierre 
Bernard, a specialist in the cure of heart 
troubles, what was called neurasthenia. 

In fall 1909 Bernard visited the family 
for the first time, and he impressed Zelia's 
mother and father with his obvious erudi- 
tion, his intentions and the soundness of his 
methods. His fees were another matter. Zelia 
held a job as a milliner, but she likely worked 
for subsistence wages and would never be 
able to move from her parents' home until 
she married—which was unlikely to happen 
if she remained ill. Surely her parents had 
this in mind when they scraped together the 
$40 initiation fee—a hefty sum considering 
the average American worker at that time 
made $13 a week for 59 hours of labor. 

The next day, with her parents’ approval, 
Zelia traveled alone to Manhattan and 
arrived at the brownstone, where Bernard, 
cigar in hand, ushered her into a back room 
and conducted a physical exam. He con- 
cluded that yes, he could help her; yes, she 
could regain her vitality and even flourish 
under his care. But it would take extreme 
measures and individual attention. He 
sent one of his associates to find a suitable 
place, and in November he installed her in 
his new sanitarium, a rented apartment at 
70 West 109th Street, near Central Park. 


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Before allowing his daughter to move in, 
Zelia's father visited the apartment to make 
sure it was on the up-and-up. 

Beneath the cloak of therapy, however, 
a powerful attraction developed between 
the worldly 33-year-old Bernard and the 
19-year-old Zelia. During her first night 
at the flat Bernard paid her a visit, and 
between boasts of his knowledge of spiritual 
domains he kissed her until she said her 
breath gave out. She was a lucky woman, 
he told her—he was very powerful, very 
wealthy. He assured her of his commit- 
ment and his honorable intentions. She 
felt herself fall completely under his power, 
hypnotized to obey him. Several nights later 
she surrendered to the most pressing of 


Tom Lewis 


his wishes, and the couple made love. Zelia 
stayed at the apartment for months, enter- 
taining Bernard's visits until he could no 
longer manage the rent. She then returned 
home, cured of her heart trouble and in 
fine spirits, to her parents’ great relief. 


Zelia Hopp was very much in love with Ber- 
nard and visited the busy West 74th Street 
townhouse whenever she could. That spring 
she realized parts of the house were kept 
off-limits to her. She also discovered other 
young women were on the premises—one of 
whom also had claims on her lover's heart. 
Her jealousy flaring, Zelia cornered Bernard 
and demanded they marry immediately. 


“I lost my powder puff!” 


Gertrude Leo, meanwhile, was living unhap- 
pily in one of those cloistered upper rooms, 
teaching and helping to take care of the 
house but receiving nothing for it but room 
and board. Soon enough she and Zelia met, 
and a triangle of sorts formed. 

This was not entirely to Bernard's dislik- 
ing. He persuaded both women to put aside 
their jealousies—at least temporarily—and 
share a bed with him, an arrangement they 
carried out on at least a few occasions. But 
the women were in love with their guru, and 
he simply did not account for the chilling 
effect his broken promises would have on 
his fortunes. Several times that spring Ger- 
trude traveled to the Bronx and visited the 
Hopp family home, and in early April stayed. 
there for two weeks, both women no doubt 
counting up their grievances. Gertrude had 
never been paid for her efforts after trav- 
eling cross-country to become Bernard's 
nautch girl, and Zelia was being thwarted 
in her attempts to marry him. 

Finally suspecting that in Gertrude's 
absence lurked rebellion, Bernard sent Florin 
Jones to the Bronx to patch things up, insist- 
ing that Gertrude's presence was urgently 
required at the 74th Street house—on busi- 
ness matters, Jones told her. Though she 
agreed to return to Manhattan with Jones, 
she promised Zelia she would be back. 

When days passed with no word from 
Gertrude, Zelia became worried. She wrote 
to the girl's sister in Seattle. By now Jennie 
had married but still harbored resentment 
against Nicholls for dumping her. So when 
Zelia suggested Gertrude was being held 
at Bernard's house against her will, Jennie 
decided to go East immediately. 

On May 2, Jennie Miller disembarked 
from her transcontinental train at Pennsyl- 
vania Station and hurried to her destination, 
the Hopp apartment in the Bronx—not the 
apartment where her sister was staying. 
There she and Zelia finalized their elabo- 
rate extraction plan for Gertrude. They 
knew they had to be as swift and silent as 
Bernard was quick, canny and persuasive. 
They dressed to go out and made their way 
downtown to the west side of Manhattan to 
meet detectives at the 28th Precinct. 


Bernard's students and staff were gathered 
at the house on that mild spring evening, a 
typical weekday in the life of the Tantrikas. 
In a dimly lit room on the second floor, 
Gertrude Leo was leading a class of mostly 
older people, women and men, under the 
watchful eye of Bernard. The male stu- 
dents wore gym clothes; the women were 
in loose divided skirts or bloomers. All 
were diligently following her directions, 
moving through yoga postures. When 
they needed a breather, Bernard stepped 
in and answered a question or two: Yes, he 
said, it was beneficial to bathe every day 
despite what some doctors said, and yes, 
there were strong and important connec- 
tions between the body and mind. 

Outside on West 74th Street the police and 
the two women stole up to the brownstone. 
It was close to midnight when Zelia rang 
the doorbell in the secret code: “a long, two 
short, a long and a short ring, three times," 
she told detectives in her statement. 


The lock snapped and the door opened 
a crack. With the two women following, 
the detectives rushed past the butler. The 
parlor floor was deserted, they deter- 
mined, but the sounds of chanting could 
be heard upstairs. The men bounded 
up the staircase and into the darkened 
second-floor parlor, where they encoun- 
tered a scene Detective T.J. Callanan later 
described as “a young man clad in filmy 
garments and squatting as a sort of pre- 
siding demigod among a dozen men and 
women strangely garbed in tight-fitting 
gowns of one piece." 

"What means this intrusion?" Bernard 
boomed. Zelia and Jennie rushed in behind 
the policemen, looking for Gertrude, whom. 
they found dressed in a scanty swimsuit-like 
garment and in a highly emotional state. 
She fell into the arms 
of her sister, weeping. 
"For God's sake, take 
me away. Get me out 
of this place." 

Bernard surveyed 
the scene and glared 
coldly at Zelia. "So 
this is your revenge," 
he snapped. “You're 
sore because you're 
jealous of Gertrude." 

One of the tantric 
women focused a 
menacing glare on 
Gertrude and began 
chanting ominously, 
“Zim-zim-zim—Zee- 
zee-zee.” 

Gertrude, who had 
been around these 
other women for 
some time, was obvi- 
ously spooked. “She 
is putting a curse on 
me!” she screamed. 

In the midst of all 
this, someone doused 
the lights, but it was 
clear even in the 
confusion and dark- 
ness that the young 
man in the filmy gar- 
ments was the person 
the police were look- 
ing for. 

“You’re under 
arrest,” said Callanan 
to Bernard. 

Detective Joseph Leonard, the wise guy 
of the two partners, pointed at the symbols 
on Bernard's robe. "What are those things 
on your chest?" he demanded. When Ber- 
nard filled him in, the cop replied, "So that's 
the bunk." 

After his initial indignation, Bernard stood 
calmly before the police. He confirmed his 
identity and that ofthe quivering girl in tights, 
Gertrude Leo. Then the detectives rousted 
the entire party and moved them down the 
steps of the brownstone and into the spring 
night: the officers, the irate witnesses, the 
young women in bathing suits, the others 
hissing curses and finally Bernard, wearing 
the elaborate ceremonial robe of a seventh- 
degree tantric priest bearing the ancient 
symbols of birth, death and regeneration. 


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"Together they set off from the brownstone 
in a comical-looking perp parade, headed for 
the West 68th Street police station. 


As New York awoke on Tuesday, May 3, 
1910 the morning papers carried the first 
news of the midnight raid. ARREST HINDU 
SEER, The New York Times proclaimed. says 
HE'S A SWAMI, the Herald wrote. HIS STUDENTS 
IN TIGHTS, added the Tribune. The night- 
desk editors had done their job, and now 
a fresh set of reporters arrived for work, 
reinterviewing the young women complain- 
ants, who in turn delivered a delicious new 
detail: Bernard had often referred to him- 
self as the Great Om. 

Somewhere between notebook and news- 
print an extra o made its way onto that 


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already foreign-sounding name—rendering 
it "Oom" in the afternoon editions. By the 
time newsboys were hawking the Evening 
Sun, the story had migrated to the front 
page. GREAT GOD ООМ was in jail, read the 
banner headline. The appellation would 
stick to him till the end of his days. That 
Bernard looked nothing like what report- 
ers thought a swami should look like only 
fueled their fire. They made fun of his 
worn suit, receding hairline and wispy 
"sideboards." The city editors, in a spirit 
of one-upsmanship—and gleefully aware 


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Oriental," "the great God Oom," "Hindoo 
Mystic," "Yogi Priest," "Head of Queer 
School" or just plain "the Oom." 

Overnight, Pierre "the Omnipotent 

Oom" Bernard had become the creation 
of the powerful print media, and he was 
one of the first 20th century examples of 
instant celebrity. In May 1910 there were 13 
daily newspapers in New York—publishing 
morning, afternoon and special editions 
along with Sunday magazines—and their 
stories were picked up and syndicated 
nationally by news services. Juicy scandals 
sold tens of thousands of extra copies a 
day, and the biggest dailies, Joseph Pulit- 
zer's New York World and William Randolph 
Hearst's New York Journal, fought savagely 
to get them first. 
For Bernard, however, the woeful tale 
of Oom and his 
women—complete 
with Svengali, hapless 
heroines and aveng- 
ing angel—coincided 
with a moral panic 
sweeping through 
New York City and 
the rest of the nation 
in spring 1910. The 
press had joined 
forces with police, 
purity reformers 
and the state's vice 
commission to whip 
up the public's fear 
that a conspiracy of 
international car- 
tels was selling white 
American women 
into sexual slavery 
with the willing coop- 
eration of corrupt 
government officials. 
Even moguls such as 
John D. Rockefeller 
Jr. lent their names 
to the efforts, and 
that spring the U.S. 
Congress passed, 
nearly unanimously, 
the Mann Act, 
still known as the 
"White-Slave Traf- 
fic Act," which made 
it a federal crime to 
transport an unmar- 
ried woman across 
state lines for "immoral purposes." 

Oom looked like the scapegoat everyone 
had been waiting for. 

Bernard was charged with abduction 
and spent 104 stifling summer days in the 
‘Tombs, New York's infamous prison. Не was 
ultimately released, due to the witnesses’ 
unwillingness to testify against him at trial. 
It would take a decade for him to fully reha- 
bilitate his reputation, but all the while he 
carried on his mission of teaching Ameri- 
cans the practice of hatha yoga. He just did 
it more carefully. 


©2010 Playboy 


a hot one had landed on their desks 
couldn’t help heaping on the defendant 
all the snide irony and condescension they 
could fit beneath the headlines. Before he 
had even faced a judge, Bernard was recast 
as "Oom, the self-styled god,” “Oom the 


From The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of 
Yoga in America, by Robert Love, now available 
Лот Viking. 


131 


PLAYBOY 


132 


HEROES 
(continued from page 98) 


a demented hostile sex appeal. An angry 
stripper with a great body, the face of a 
man and a history of physical and sexual 
abuse. Now there’s a lethal combination. 
Lady Zorro, this alternative Blaze Starr, was 
my kind of burlesque queen. 

Z hung with a tough crowd on the Block. 
The Oasis Nite Club's owner, Julius Salsbury, 
and his stripper girlfriend Pam Gail—both 
Baltimore icons—were her close friends. 
When Julius's gambling empire got him in 
trouble in 1970, he fled the country and a 
15-year sentence, never to be heard from 
again. "My mother told me the story," Eileen 
remembers, “how she drove him dressed in 
drag because she wore size 11 shoes [which 
he could get into] and dropped him off at 
Friendship Airport for a flight to Miami." 

The height of Lady Zorro's career was 
between 1956 and 1962, and by the end she 


gave up even pretending to be a sexpot. And 
then Zorro surprised everybody by doing 
something way ahead of her time. This les- 
bian stripper got pregnant and wanted to 
have the child. In 1966, when Lady Z was 
29 years old, she had a baby girl, Eileen, 
named after Z's new girlfriend, who, despite 
being straight, stayed with Zorro for 18 years 
before breaking her heart by running off 
with a male bookie who "sometimes used 
their phone.” "And your dad?” I pry. “His 
name was J.C., and he wanted to marry Mom 
even though she was a lesbian. At one point 
my mother met his mother with her family 
in Delaware, and the future mother-in-law 
was just horrified. I saw my father only eight 
times. At Christmas and on my birthday he 
would show up with a gift. But then he went 
to Florida and I never saw him again." 
Eileen's first memories? "The racket 
of drunk people coming in downstairs 
after Mom's work, the loudness of their 
voices, the smell of marijuana, the smell of 


"Excuse me, but would you and your thumbs prefer to be alone?" 


alcohol." "When did you begin to realize 
this wasn't normal?" I ask, remembering 
sitting at the top of the stairs in our family 
home, feeling safe, listening to my par- 
ents and their friends singing show tunes 
around our piano. "When I went to Catho- 
lic school and some of the other kids invited 
me over to their houses and I saw that their 
moms stayed home and picked them up 
from school. I had two mommies, Eileen 
and Zorro." Of course there were benefits 
of having these two mommies the other kids 
didn't have, such as "making $1,000 a night 
when I was eight years old. They had poker 
parties and would take bennies and stay up 
for days playing cards." Eileen recalls the 
job title I have heard many times in Balti- 
more: the "hey girl," who waits on illegal 
gamblers at clandestine dens. As in "Hey, 
girl, bring me a beer!" “I served drinks, 
and they would throw quarters in a big box, 
then dollars, then later in the night it was 
$10s and $20s.” "But how did you get up 
to go to school?" I worry, like a good dad. 
"I didn't," she says, shrugging. 

Yet little Eileen was a straight A student. 
Zorro had her daughter baptized and went 
through her first communion with her and 
"wanted to give me everything she never 
had." "You're nothing without a college 
education," Z would rant as she taught her 
daughter to sift marijuana seeds. “I smoked 
pot and drank at 11," Eileen says, chuck- 
ling. "Rather than play with Barbie dolls, 
I had a little joint-rolling machine. I rolled 
a mean joint. My mother’s friends thought 
it was funny. I started to drive then, too.” 
“What? You drove at 11 years old?” Yep, 
Zorro had a Lincoln Continental, “and I 
used to pick her up at the bar because I 
was worried about her drinking and driv- 
ing. She was an obnoxious, mean-spirited 
drunk. She would pick fights with anyone. 
Men, women—she'd kick their asses!" 

Eileen remembers being included on Sun- 
days, which all the strippers had off, when 
they would come over and talk about "what 
sick fucks men were." The girls were always 
nice to Eileen and gave her money. Instead 
of bedtime stories she heard about a guy 
who would pay a hundred bucks to a girl “to 
walk barefoot around the dirty floor of the 
bar and then let him lick her toes," or a guy 
from Hampden "who used to have sex with 
his mother." “Motherfucker,” they'd curse at 
him, but as the strippers explained to the 
child, he liked that. "I'd walk by people hav- 
ing sex in the house," Eileen remembers 
with little trace of anger. She was abused by 
a prominent Baltimore businessman who, 
though he died last year, should still feel 
guilty in his casket. Starting to feel bad for 
holding Zorro in high esteem, I realize les- 
bian mothers have the same right as straight 
ones to be bad parents. 

Then it got worse. Eileen's other mother 
left and Zorro “had a nervous breakdown 
and things went downhill after that. Z never 
had sex again," her daughter remembers. 
"She never recovered." Little Eileen would 
call big Eileen and beg, "Please take me with 
you," but her other mother was ill-equipped 
to deal with the situation. "I can't," she sadly 
responded. "You're not my daughter." Big 
Eileen would call sometimes, Zorro's daugh- 
ter says, trying to give her the benefit of the 


doubt. “Mostly when she was drunk. I saw 
her only once or twice after that.” 

Zorro went on welfare and was in and 
out of mental institutions. When she was 
released “they had her on chloral hydrate 
and Elavil, and she just lay on the couch for 
years.” Zorro tried to commit suicide, and 
little Eileen pulled the gun from her hand. 
Eileen was raped when some psycho at a bar 
stole Zorro's wallet, looked at the address 
on the ID, went to the house and attacked 
the youngster. Zorro's reaction? "Why didn't 
you fight back?" 

Yet Eileen continued to excel in school. 
"My friends thought my mom was cool 
because they could come over and smoke 
pot at my house and drink. I didn't care 
what she was; I just didn't want her to be 
fucked-up all the time." When Zorro was 
committed for long periods, Eileen tried 
to keep it a secret. She walked to school 
every day, and the nuns never suspected 
their honor student was living completely 
unsupervised in the ghetto. 

But then Eileen got caught. The electric- 
ity at home was cut off for nonpayment and 
she overslept and was late for school, so she 
forged her mother's signature on a note. 
The nuns spotted the fake and told Eileen 
her mother needed to call. "She's gone," 
Eileen blurted out. *But when will she be 
back?" the nuns asked, startled. "I started 
crying and told them what happened," 
Eileen remembers matter-of-factly. “They 
called Child Protective Services, but the 
people across the street lied for me and said 
Icould stay with them. I did stay with them. 
sometimes, but I wanted to be by myself." 
"You never said 'Help me'?" I ask. "Never," 
Eileen answers proudly. 

Eileen never seemed judgmental about 
her unconventional mom. Lady Z read 
the newspapers every day, liked classical 
music and, much to my thrill, loved Johnny 
Mathis. Z was always incredibly proud of 
her daughter's academic success. "The roof 
caved in on our house,” Eileen recalls with 
a grin. "The nuns called the St. Vincent 
de Paul Society to come fix it. Sister Mary 
Francis, principal of my school, showed up," 
and Zorro "only had a small buzz. She knew 
how important this was for me." Zorro, the 
good mom, "went to turn on the oven, and 
a thousand cockroaches started walking 
up all over the wall." And people wonder 
where I get my movie ideas? Could there 
be a better scene than this? 

Eileen continued on to the College of 
Notre Dame, moved out of her mother's 
house and into the dorms and finally got a 
boyfriend who "was always there for me— 
until he slept with my best friend, and that 
was that." When Eileen graduated from col- 
lege, Zorro went with a cooler full of beer 
and some of her friends from the bar. "So she 
did get drunk," Eileen admits. By then Zorro 
had had all her teeth pulled, so there was no 
possibility anyone could imagine she had at 
one time been a stripper. “Amazingly,” Eileen 
remembers with a laugh, "even though my 
mother got welfare, she was a Republican." 

Zorro started hanging out at the Port- 
hole, a local gay men's bar. Suddenly Z 
was a fag hag! "She could draw a crowd," 
Eileen remembers with a shudder, “her 
voice was so loud." Eileen would show up 


every other weekend and say, "Please don't 
be fucked-up," but Z would announce, "I'm 
a fuckup! After you are six years old you 
are a child of the world." "So I'd drive her 
to the Rite Aid for cigarettes," says Eileen 
(Z smoked four packs of Benson & Hedges 
a day), "and buy her a couple of beers." An 
enabler? "I never bought her hard alco- 
hol," she argues with a shrug. "Did you 
ever try to get your mom to AA?" I ask. 
"Always tried!" Eileen laughs. "She had a 
couple DWI convictions and was supposed 
to go, but she traded pot with someone 
who would sign in for her at meetings." 

Eileen moved to the West Coast. "I flew 
her out to my wedding here." Eileen had 
warned her future in-laws, and they had 
politely said, “All families have issues.” You 
have no fucking idea, she remembers think- 
ing. "Zorro would ask people, “You got any 
good shit to smoke?' and I'm like, 'Mom, 
these people do not smoke pot. Stop asking 
every person that walks through the receiv- 
ing line!’ Then I went on my honeymoon," 
Eileen says with a forbidding pause. Her 
mom said to the new mother-in-law, “Га 
like to have you and your husband over, and 
your next-door neighbors who were so nice 
in helping my daughter plan the wedding." 
So they came, and the hostess with the least- 
est tried to do her best, but as Eileen later 
heard the story, Z "had this big jug of red 
wine she said she needed for spaghetti sauce, 
but she drank the entire gallon and took a 
Xanax, forgot, took two more and smoked 
pot, so by the time people showed up she 
was completely fucked-up. The guests just 
ran." "Did Zorro ever apologize?" I wonder. 
“Never,” Eileen answers. “I didn't talk to her 
for six months after that." 

But then Z fell, broke her hip and got a 
staph infection and pneumonia. Eileen went 
back to Baltimore and broke in the door. 
Her mother was almost dead. “Had she 
called you?" I ask. And then Eileen responds 
with the only answer from our interview 
about her mom that shocks me: "She never 
wanted to be a burden to me." 

Eileen moved Zorro, who by then looked 
like a haggard old man from Baltimore, into 
her house in Oregon. "People had died of 
AIDS in my mother's old place; everything 
was ruined. I sold the house to the crack- 
dealing neighbor lady who liked Mom." 
When Zorro moved in with her daughter 
on the West Coast, it was "just hell. I told 
my husband, ‘I know it's going to be hard. 
She doesn't like you. You don't like her." 
Zorro was allowed two cases of beer a week, 
an ounce of pot a month and whatever pills 
the doctor would give her. But “she would 
go crazy—the neighbors across the street 
told me that while I was at work my mother 
would knock on people's doors and say she 
had DD Is, meaning the D Ts.” 

“Did Zorro mellow as her last days 
approached?” I wonder, hoping for a lit- 
tle good news. When doctors told Zorro 
she had 12 weeks to live, Eileen recalls, her 
mother wasn't fazed (she lasted 13). “When 
it's your time to go, it's your time to go,” 
was Z’s response. “I was crying,” Eileen 
remembers, dry-eyed, “and she looked at 
me and sang Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.“ 
“Was Zorro ever nice to you?" I ask tactfully. 
Eileen pauses and answers without rancor, 


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“No, she made me dinner. She showed me 
her love by feeding me." 

"Could you ever see the comedy in your 
situation when Zorro was alive?" I ask. "Not 
at all" she answers emphatically. Zorro "tor- 
mented and abused me, and it wasn't until 
after she died that I started to appreciate 
her." But Zorro obviously did something 
right, I argue. "She raised a daughter who 
is reasonably happy and well-adjusted, and 
isn't that the best you can say about any 
mother?" "I always hoped I could have a 
relationship with her," Eileen says quietly. 
"But you did," I plead. "You were always 
the bright spot in her life." Can living in a 
real John Waters movie ever bring any kind 
of joy? "I spoke at my mom's memorial ser- 
vice and said, 'I spent my whole life trying 
to not be like her, only to find out, at the age 
of 35, L am like her. I can walk into a room 
and within 10 minutes everybody is stand- 
ing around те.” 

A sad story? Maybe not. Months later 
Eileen wrote, asking, “Would you please save 
the tape we did together for me? It would be 
a great way for my children to learn about 
their grandmother after they are 21. They 
ask me about her all the time. I smile and 
tell them she was a piece of work.” 


Boy, I need a drink after the Zorro saga! 
But where to go? All my favorite Baltimore 
monster bars are gone. Like Hard Times, 
the aptly named blue-collar or no-collar bar 
at the corner of 28th Street and Huntingdon 
Avenue in the Remington neighborhood, 
which was closed down in 2002 as neighbors 
"breathed a sigh of relief," according to the 
press reports. City inspectors had found no 
running water on the premises while it was 
still open to the public. So what? I mean, I 
guess you had to piss in the alley out back, 
but at least there were cute Baltimoreans 
inside. Dirty drinking glasses? What's the big 
deal? Just rinse them out when it rains. 

I wish Morgan's was still there. І had a 
real soft spot for this obviously illegal after- 
hours club in Hampden, which somehow 
stayed open for years. I think cops went 
there themselves when they were off duty. 
This was the only bar in my life that refused 
me admittance. And for a long time, too. 
“But he made a lot of movies,” I even 
heard a friendly mutant stick up for me to 
the mean, handicapped doorman. “Never 
heard of them,” he sniffed. “Besides, he 
don't live in the neighborhood.” Hampden 
had yet to be discovered by homesteaders, 
yuppies and starter families, so my celeb- 
rity was meaningless there. 1 could waltz 
into Studio 54, the Mudd Club or any New 
York “in” restaurant but not Morgan's. 
Finally, after months of my showing up 
and pleading, the owner, who looked like 
a weirdly handsome Robert Mitchum on 
a bummer, came down. I guess a couple 
of locals had vouched I wasn't undercover. 
“Go ahead up,” he snarled with a subtle 
hint of pride in his establishment. Once 
I climbed those long steps up to the fully 
operating bar (with booths, for Christ's 
sake!), I wasn't one bit disappointed. The 
local dealers, alcoholics and hillbilly chicks 
were partying big-time, and some of them 
looked great. Here, I realized, was the 


“upper lower class,” a segment of society 1 
had never heard described properly in any 
sociological studies. Not only were they high 
on drugs, but the bar was also open and 
ready to serve beer, at rock-bottom prices! 
Believe me, not one hipster would dare go 
in this joint. Even I, a veteran extreme-bar 
cultist, was frightened there. I avoided eye 
contact and tried to watch people in the 
mirrors on the walls so they didn't notice 
me. I started to take friends from New 
York there, and they really seemed to like 
it. Especially some of the stylish women I 
know who had mostly gay male friends at 
home. Here they got cruised by real het- 
erosexual men who definitely weren't closet 
queens. I still laugh with one of my women 
friends who went home with a really cute 
guy she met at Morgan's when she was vis- 
iting me. When she complimented him on 
his accidentally cool, wildly patterned thrift- 
store shirt, he answered sexily, “It's made 
of rayon. And I'm a rayon fool!” 

“Isn't going to these places dangerous?” 
many of my friends ask me, and they have 
a point. My notoriety usually protects me 
in the beginning, but if no one is friendly, 
especially the bartenders or barmaids, 
I leave immediately. It's a slow process 
getting accepted, and pretty often my judg- 
ment has been solid. Maybe it comes from 
teaching filmmaking to convicts. I mean, 
what is prison, really, except a good bar 
without the liquor? 

For many years I went to the now-defunct 
Atlantis, a male strip club next to the Mary- 
land Penitentiary. I called it the Fudge Palace 
in my movie Pecker. I always took out-of-town 
guests there, everybody from Gus Van Sant 
to many of the New York art dealers (both 
gay and straight) who were participating in 
the print fair at the Baltimore Museum of 
Art. Even my friend Judge Elsbeth Bothe 
went with me one night after a long day on 
the bench. When I told her that sometimes 
you get tea-bagged by the naked dancers if 
you sit too close, she didn't chicken out; she 
just wore a hat for protection. God, how I 
miss that place. 

But I like girl strip bars, too, as long as 
they're bad ones. No thanks to the high-end 
gentlemen's clubs that want to give you a lap 
dance while reminding you there is an ATM 
in the lobby. Boot's was a favorite go-go-girl 
place. Located on Eastern Avenue between 
Fells Point and Highlandtown, it may have 
been the lowliest strip club ever. So nat- 
urally, for about a year, I hung out there 
every weekend. The "talent" was definitely 
unnerving. One we called the Moose. She 
was a big ox and a lazy stripper. One night, 
when it was her turn to dance, she was still 
in the bathroom next to the stage. When she 
heard her musical cue she kicked open the 
bathroom door as she sat on the toilet and 
shook her tits for the audience. Boot's was 
very David Lynch. One regular, a woman 
customer with a greasy ponytail, jitterbugged 
with the valve of the radiator every night 
for hours and nobody questioned it. The 
barmaid had a hair-trigger temper, but I 
liked to get her talking. She used to tell me 
to bring Johnny Depp in as she thrust top- 
less photos of her legal-age go-go daughters 
in my hands for me to give him. I stupidly 
invited her to my Christmas party one year, 


and she brought her boyfriend, who entered 
with a bad attitude and would stop in front 
of any male guest, glare scarily and snarl, 
“Are you a faggot?” Many weren’t but didn’t 
quite know how to respond. Everybody com- 
plained to the bouncer, who had to throw 
the barmaid and her boyfriend out. Boot's 
closed not long after, and when the Atlan- 
tis sadly shut its doors (the location became 
yet another swanky men's club), the gay 
strip club reopened in the old Boot's space 
under the name of Spectrum, which imme- 
diately became known as the Rectum. Due 
to the hideously nelly go-go boys with awful 
Baltimore accents that some obviously unsea- 
soned manager hired, it closed quickly. 

I guess I could go to the Bloody Bucket; 
it's still open. That's not the bar's real name, 
but locals call it that. It's situated at 1619 
Union Avenue, across from the Pepsi plant 
in the area of Hampden commonly referred 
to as the Bottom. I wish I owned this place. 
T'd rename it the Pelt Room, but otherwise 
I wouldn't change a thing. The crowd that 
hangs there is not one you'd bring home to 
Mom (unless she's Zorro). I love Blanche, 
the bartender, a woman ofa certain age who 
is an R. Crumb comic come to life. A big, 
big girl with giant thighs who looks so sexy 
and powerful in her micro cutoff denim 
skirt. Cellulite is, in this case, a true beauty 
mark. Having her serve you a drink while 
you listen to the customers' amazing sto- 
ries is a great way to start the weekend. "I 
was in this terrible car accident," a drinking 
buddy there once told me. “Some China- 
man [as all blue-collar guys in Baltimore call 
any type of Asian] ran through a red light 
and smashed into the car I was riding in. 
My head went partially through the wind- 
shield; there was glass everywhere. I was so 
pissed off I wanted to beat up the China- 
man. So I got out of our car, went over to 
him to punch him out, but when I opened 
his car door I saw his head was part cut 
off and he was dead. So I stole his wallet." 
"How much did you get?" I asked, excitedly 
picturing the movie scene. "Twenty bucks," 
he said, sighing. 


The only guzzling events I've never had 
the nerve to attend in Baltimore are "blow 
roasts." Blow roasts are even more excessive 
than the scariest straight bars, but they 
are a local one-night tradition, and some- 
times even the cops organize them. Tickets 
are secretly and selectively sold weeks in 
advance to working-class men at their 
neighborhood bars, and the location (union 
hall or biker clubhouse) is revealed right 
before the big night. A blow roast is just 
like a bull roast: oyster shuckers, pit beef 
sandwiches, gambling, kegs of beer and 
medleys of mayonnaise-based dishes. But 
at a blow roast there are also blow jobs. 
A "two-tier level of hookers works these 
events," explains a friend who has attended. 
"The good-looking ones are the strippers 
who specialize in acts such as dildo shows, 
where they penetrate each other for your 
enjoyment while you eat. One of the girls’ 
specialties was she could shoot a banana 
from her vagina." Before I can stop him 
from telling me more details, he adds, "I 
saw one guy pick it up off the dirty floor 


and eat it." But the real horrors are the BJ 
girls, the "rank ones" who give blow jobs 
to men who win them in a raffle. "Biker 
types escort them from table to table," my 
friend continues, "and sell the raffle tick- 
ets. When they sell $100 worth they draw a 
number and the winner goes into this dirty 
little side room where they've set up parti- 
tions with blankets or sheets, and you get 
blown." "But what kinds of girls work blow 
roasts?" I ask, thinking this job is surely the 
lowest one in show business. "Pretty ugly 
ones," he remembers when he is forced to 
picture their faces. Imagine—just imagine— 
waking up and knowing your job for the day 
is working a blow roast! "Suppose a blow- 
roast girl runs into her father's friends," I 
wail, “or even her father.” "I don't know,” 
my friend begs off. "I only went a couple 
times." "You went back?" I marvel, trying 
to imagine the horror of these events. "Did 
you get blown?" I finally demand. "No!" he 
shrieks, wishing he had never told me about 
blow roasts in the first place. 


There's only one place left to go: the Club 
Charles, the hipster hangout I have been 
frequenting for the past 30 years. It's right 
across the street from the Charles, the best 
movie theater in town, and it's still, weirdly, 
the coolest bar. But it used to be even better. 
In the 1970s it was called the Wigwam, апа 
it was known as the scariest bar in Baltimore. 
You couldn't even get buzzed in at the front. 

door unless you were a bum. A real one. 
The owner was a Native American woman 
named Esther Martin, and I lived in awe 
of her. Born in Oklahoma in 1923, she ran 
away as a teenager to New York and got a 
job as a hatcheck girl at the Stork Club. 
Moving to Baltimore in hopes of studying 
to be a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospi- 
tal, she ended up working in nightclubs 
until 1951, when she bought a bar and 
got married to Kent Martin. The Wigwam 
was the politically incorrect name of their 
new nightspot, and the tepee-shaped sign 
advertising GRUB AND FIREWATER immedi- 
ately attracted a good clientele. By the 
time I met Esther, in 1980, the neighbor- 
hood had changed drastically and she was 
a hardworking divorced mother of four. 
She ran the joint like an ironfisted Elaine's, 
though her clients weren't celebrities; they 
were alcoholics, mental patients and vets. 
If you received any kind of government 
check, you were eligible to drink in the 
Wigwam. If not, get out. Esther would cash. 
the checks, keep all the money and dole it 
out to her collection of lunatics because, as 
one of her daughters remembers her mom 
explaining, "If they had all their money, 
they'd just drink it up." She kept "tickets," 
or IOUs, on scraps of paper only Esther 
knew how to decipher. For some reason 
Esther let me and Pat Moran inside her 
secret society. It was like being cast in the 
banquet scene in Buñuel's Viridiana, when 
the bums take over the mansion and wreck 
it (except nobody froze in the tableau of 
the Last Supper the way they do in the 
film). No, Esther was watching. And you 
were allowed to go wild. I saw one homeless 
guy bite off the nose of another and spit it 
(concluded on page 138) 


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ANNA NICOLE: THE OPERA 


ас. | 1 
Left: Anna Nicole а! her most glamorous. 
Above: Dutch soprano Eva-Maria West- 


broek is cast as the PMOY in the opera Anna 
Nicole—she'll hit all the highs and lows. 


PMOY 1993 Anna Nicole Smith's life played out in the pages of this magazine, on her reality show and in the press. Now the British Royal 


Opera House is turning her story into a production for next Februa 


Guardian. 


WINE RACK 

; Musco of Vintage Wine Estates is a wine, women 
and song kind of guy. Thus, for his Vintage Centerfold 
Signature Collection, he has Playmates sample his wines 
and pick ones they feel represent them best. First up: Miss 
August 1982 Cathy St. George, who selected a 2007 cab- 
ernet, saying it *has a nice body." Look to drink in other 
Playmates in the future, such as Miss June 1969 Helena 
Antonaccio and Miss March 1984 Dona Speir. 


2007 
Cabernet ¢ Sauvignon 


A 


— 


The winner of Playboy TV’s Playboy 
Shootout will not only get a pictorial 
but will also become a Playmate. 


Miss January 2001 


DID YOU 
KNOW 


Appropriately, Anna Nicole: The Opera will be a tragicomedy. 
not just a documentary about her but a parable about celebrity and what it does to people,” 


performed in a humorous skit with 
Garry Marshall on Lopez Tonight. 


Elaine Padmore, director of the opera, | old the 


“Tt can be moving, it can be funny, and it tells universal truths about human fr ailty. It’s a larger-than-life American story.” 


Five years ago this 
month we introduced 
$i you to Miss June 2005 
| but that 
wasn't the first time the 
beautiful blonde had 
caught our eye. We had 
already crowned the 
Florida native Playboy 
4 -com's sexiest bartender 
in America. In 2006 Kara 
added another PLAYBOY 
title to her list when she 
became Playmate of the 
Year. Since her Center- 
fold she has been seen 
in the Playmates at Play 
swimsuit calendar, on 
The Girls Next Door 
and as co-host of MTV's 
Scarred Live. 


Mss une 


7 9 


Want to SEE MORE PLAYMATES—or more of 
these Playmates? You can check outthe Club at 


club.playboy.com and access the mobile-optimized 
site wap.playboy.com from your phone. 


PMOY 2000 
her cherry-red wheels were written up 
in Vette magazine. 


“ив 


апа 


kane ane 
SNAM oer egg PLAYMATE GOSSIP 


E Se Tre Wakas зр ^ PMOY 2005 Tiffany‏ ارات فتاه 


pairs up strangers— 
she had to exit from “My favorite Playmate is Miss Fallon and husband Joe 


several IMs with 1977 Sheila Mullen. I Don Rooney are expect- 
nude men. She accidentally stumbled across ing their second child in 
later tweeted that the magazine i September. The Rascal 
this gives a whole neighbor’s Flatts rocker told Peo- 
new meaning to box, saw her ple, "We're a little more 
cock block. and thought she prepared, but the same 
was the most exotic, ethereal excitement is there.” 
vision. For The Nature of Tiffany revealed the 
tence, one of the people I pregnancy to Rooney 
st David at the same Los Ange- \ 
> Man's pur- les hotel where she told \\ 
pose is to chase women.’ I him they were expect- 
immediately flashed back р tu Е 
to Shella: Who knew i ing their first, Jagger Donovan, who is now one and 
had already figured out a half years old. “There's such 
the meaning of lif fulfillment in being a father,” 
such a young age?” Rooney continued, “and it’s 
going to be twofold now, which 
is so cool.” We're overjoyed to 
4 hear about Ті#апу'ѕ пем lit- 
ег 2001 Lindsey Vuolo h. a cock tle rascal and equally happy 
We thought the world was ready for a li - ashion,” for Miss August 2003 Colleen 
co-founder Seth Marie, who wrote to tell us 
Harris, “so we de- she’s due this month—on the 


signed T-shirts with 24th, to be exact. She’s expect- 
‚humor and am S. Su 


boy and 
sent us a bikini shot of herself 
on vacation in Hawaii in Febru- 
ary.... Miss January 1987 Luann 
Lee shined on the red carpet for 
the 20th annual Night of 100 
Stars Oscar gala in the Crystal 
Ballroom at the Beverly Hills 
Hotel. Luann also sparkled in 
front of the paparazzi on the 
way to the season finale party 
for Seducing Cindy.... What's 
the best part about having a ТЕРЕ 
host a party at your club? She invites her friends. 
Miss June 2004 Hiromi Oshima (second from left) 
hosted a party atthe Palms and brought gal pals 
Miss March 2009 Jennifer Pershing, Bridget Mar- 
quardt and PMOY 2006 Kara Monaco. 


PALMS мо 


the hot girlfriend in the 
of "Til Death. The Play 
а rett (of Everybody 
Raymond fame) and Joely 
Fisher. Word on the set is that Garrett 
was made marble mouthed by Heather 
Rae's luminescence and sweetness. 


Miss July 1989 Erika Eleniak headlined Miss May 1996 Shauna Sand will DID VOU 
the 30th Annual Hot Rod and Custom Car appear as a sexy muse in a new Zak ENOU 
Show in Ocean City, Maryland. Ambrose music video. 


PLAYBOY 


HEROES 
(continued from page 135) 


on the bar. If you left a cash tip, withered 
hands would appear from all sides and try 
to grab it away, but Esther didn't care. She 
wasn’t interested in chump change. She 
wanted your very soul. 

Through the years Esther and I became 
friends. In 1980, when the Wigwam 
became the Club Charles, Esther was okay 
about artsy hillbillies, gay outcasts and cool 
gearheads taking over from the bums. 
She still owned the joint, but neighbors 
and police were giving her such a hard 
time over her clientele that she was afraid 
they’d take away her liquor license. It was 
time to retire from behind the bar and go 
down to her little cubbyhole in the base- 
ment, count the money and watch over her 
kingdom. Long before Esther died from 
diabetes, in 2003, she instructed her staff 
and future staff never to charge me for a 
drink. Somehow, to this day, even new kids 
who just recently started working behind 
the bar honor her request. 

But the real reason I loved Esther right 
from the beginning was her mouth. No one 
in the world cussed more. “That mother- 
fucking cocksucking son of a bitch” was 
used as a prefix to almost every name she 
uttered. When Esther died I went to the 
funeral home to pay my respects. I had 
heard that Esther’s last words were “Move 
your coat, asshole,” but even though I had 
gotten to know her four children, Kim, Joy, 
Dick and Battle, I felt this wasn't the time 
to set the record straight. So years later I 
invited her family to my house to talk. They 
knew I had a great respect for their mom, 
and like all children of insane mothers they 
had learned to view their upbringing with 
a certain bemused detachment. 

"Don't put your fucking on the fucking 
table, asshole!" was her actual last message 
to her kids, written on a Post-it note, her 
favorite method of communication. None 
of the kids are exactly sure what the missing 
word was, but they agree it could have been 
coat. “Cocksucker!” they immediately shout 
in unison when I ask what their mother's 
favorite cussword was. Sometimes, Kim 
remembers, Esther would leave notes that 
read, "Fuck you! Shit! Shit! Shit!" "Mom's 
father paid her to cuss as a kid," explains 
Dick. “He was a mean asshole," Kim adds, 
remembering her mom's words. “He beat 
her till she pissed herself." Just a mention 
of Esther's foul language makes each sibling 
go into hilarious imitations of their moth- 
er's tirades. "As my dear sainted mother 
would say," Dick laughs and then mimics 
Esther's voice, “You're as worthless as a 
cunt full of cold piss.’” “Shit and fall back 
in it!" Battle hollers out in loving imitation. 
Kim remembers fondly her mother telling 
her and her sister, "A cunt hair will pull a 
20-mule team!” “Fuck! Shit! Piss! Mother- 
fucker!” they all start barking, laughing and 
missing their mother's cussing. 

All Esther’s children worked at the bar 
at one time or another, and they get misty- 
eyed remembering the bum clientele, or 
“smoke hounds,” as their mother used to 


138 call her customers. “Esther felt love for 


these people,” Dick remembers. “She’d 
visit them in the hospital,” Kim adds, and 
Dick continues, “She’d go to Social Secu- 
rity, the VA hospital. She’d look for their 
veteran’s papers.” “When they died,” Bat- 
tle remembers proudly, “she’d bury them.” 
Esther took photographs of them, too. “All 
around the house,” Kim remembers. “ Oh, 
there's Mary in her coffin.’ Mom always 
thought she would get a big payoff, and as 
kids we'd see the suitcases." 

Ah yes. The mythical suitcases of the 
dead bums whose souls Esther owned. Up 
in the attic, still there in the family house 
where Joy continues to live. A kind ofbum 
burial ground for Esther's subjects. A car- 
nival of lost souls that shines in the dark 
of a forgotten harsh kindness. As Esther's 
children got older, they had to help their 
mother go through what was left of the 
bums' stuff. "You got to help us clean the 
Captain's apartment," Kim remembers her 
mother saying. "He had a massive artery 
blow, and his bed was soaked in blood. Mom 
had me go down there and dig through 
all his shit!" Did he have a diamond in his 
pocket? Esther always wondered. "Well, did 
you ever get left anything of value?" I ask, 
knowing Esther had somehow amassed a 
home for her family and five other prop- 
erties she rented out. Joy remembers, 
“Earl—a customer, not a real bum—told 
Mom, 'I'm leaving you everything.' He 
lived a month. And then Mayflower trucks 
pull up—not one, not two, there's a whole 
block taken up. And they started unloading 
the most unbelievable antiques. His entire 
estate was left to Mom." 

You didn't want to be on Esther's bad 
side. Her clientele was "all alcoholics or 
mentally ill, and Mom was keeper of the 
asylum," Battle remembers correctly. "She 
would punch somebody full in the face 
with her fist," Kim remembers with awe. 
When one of her bum ladies got hassled by 
another patron, Esther was there to pro- 
tect her. Dick recalls, "She coldcocked that 
son of a bitch." Battle laughs. Dick con- 
tinues, "And when the fool reached out 
and kicked at Esther, she went off. She 
was kicking his guts and saying, "This is 
Esther. You don't fuck with Esther!’ She 
worked on the element of surprise," he 
marvels, remembering his mom's fight- 
ing methods. “She’d pull out a slapper she 
carried, a rubber hose with lead in it and 
taped up. I saw her use it on some guy in 
Rite Aid once. He wouldn't get out of the 
way. She walked up and said “Excuse me,’ 
but he just looked back. She just beat this 
guy," Dick explains, whacking an imagi- 
nary slapper in the air. "He just went down 
on the ground cowering." 

I try to picture my very proper mom 
beating the shit out of somebody as we 
shopped for back-to-school clothes, but 
I come up blank. It's hard to imagine a 
slapper done in tweed. But I would have 
been excited if my mom had punched out 
my junior-high math teacher, who signed 
my yearbook, "To someone who can, but 
doesn't." Maybe Esther was a real inspira- 
tion for Serial Mom. I mean, as one of the ad 
lines for the film read, SHE MEANT WELL. 

Esther worked every single day. Kim says, 
"She loved being behind that bar." Esther 


didn't drink except maybe a beer or cr&me 
de menthe. She was old school, her kids 
tactfully try to explain. She loved Nixon 
and hated John Kennedy, they remember, 
acknowledging the irony. She also had 
a gun, but for good reason. "She had to 
pay off the cops," Joy recalls. “They’d be 
in there every day playing pinball. She'd 
get them beer. 'So-and-so needs a case for 
a bull roast.' Then they'd come in with a 
list—"This is for the sergeant.’ Old Crow 
liquor, 400, 500 bottles, and then she said, 
‘Fuck the sergeant!' and stopped." "I'd 
rather have a daughter in a whorehouse 
than a son in the police force,” Esther used 
to rage to anyone who would listen. 

In her own way, Esther believed in law 
and order. When she heard two custom- 
ers complaining about Judy Garland's live 
performance in Baltimore—the notorious 
one where Judy was drunk and staggered 
around the stage—Esther threw the cou- 
ple out of the bar. "Here goes Mom," Joy 
remembers the tirade, "'You're fucking 
barred! Get out of my fucking bar! If she 
didn't do another motherfucking thing but 
The Wizard of Oz, you cocksuckers!' " 

AII Esther's children have great affec- 
tion for her. “My mom was a beautiful 
woman," Battle says. "She made us very 
independent," Kim says, laughing good- 
naturedly. "She was very pro-education," 
Joy says. And like Eileen, Zorro's daughter, 
all Esther's kids loved school. “It was away 
from the madness," as Joy puts it without a 
hint of sadness. None of them seem overly 
angry about their alternative upbringing. 
"It was so much better than the boring 
childhoods I hear about from my girl- 
friends. There never was a dull moment," 
says Joy, the one who all the siblings agree 
is the most like Esther and who still runs 
the Club Charles from the same downstairs 
cubbyhole her mother did. Maybe that's 
why I interview Joy alone, away from the 
other family members. She married a cop 
(“He's an honest one”) and has left all of 
Esther's belongings as they were in the 
house. "Her nightgown is still hanging in 
the bathroom," Joy admits. 

"You could have asked Esther the day 
before she died what we did for a living," 
Kim remembers with a shrug, “and she 
wouldn't know." "Because you were no 
longer working in the bar, it wasn't real?" 
Iask. "Right!" Kim, Battle and Dick agree 
instantly. "She would say she was so proud 
of us to other people but never to us," Kim 
remembers. "She also never wanted to get 
involved in our personal lives. 'Don't bring 
that shit in here!' she'd yell if you were 
moaning about a boyfriend." Before Dick 
got married, he says, "We went out with 
Esther, and she started to tell my future 
wife stories. We were driving cross-coun- 
try, and an in-law in the car was sick as 
could be. Mom turned to my fiancée and 
said, ‘Honey, her breath smells like your 
asshole.' I only knew Robin a couple of 
weeks then..." he trails off. “Nobody lived 
a Ше like we had,” Battle says proudly with 
a warm grin. 

Га buy you another drink, but didn't 
somebody just yell "Last call"? 


TURN THE PAGE AND FEED YOUR CURIOSITY IN 3D. 


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A) THINGS. 


PLAYBOY FORUM 


BY WILLIAM POUNDSTONE 


Amos Tversky conducted one of the most influential 

experiments in consumer decision making. They spun 
a wheel of fortune for their subjects. Marked with num- 
bers from one to 100, the wheel had been rigged to stop 
on either 10 or 65. The psychologists then posed a sim- 
ple, two-part question: 

(a) Is the percentage of African nations in the United 
Nations less than or 
greater than the num- 
ber that just came up 
on the wheel? 

(b) Whatisthe actual 
percentage of African 
members in the UN? 

Little heralded at 
the time, this experi- 
ment has much to do 
with the prices we pay 
for almost everything. 

The psychologists 
suspected people are 
subject to the power 
of suggestion when 
estimating an un- 
known quantity, and 
indeed the subjects 
were. When the wheel 
landed on 10, the aver- 
age answer to (b) was 
25 percent, but when 
it landed on 65, the 
average answer was 45 
percent. Guesses were 
strongly influenced by 
the random number 
even though everyone 
thought it could have 
no bearing. 

Kahneman and 
Tversky christened 
this phenomenon 
“anchoring.” Their 
study was partly re- 
sponsible for Kahne- 
man winning the 
2002 Nobel Prize in 
economics. (Tversky surely would have shared the 
honor had he lived.) What does this game have to 
do with economics? The answer is simple: Anchoring 
works with all numbers, including those with a dollar 
sign in front of them. 

In 1993 Tversky noted that Williams-Sonoma had 
introduced a bread-making machine for $279. It sold 
poorly because consumers thought it was too expensive. 
Then the company offered a bigger bread maker for 


| n the early 1970s psychologists Daniel Kahneman and 


$429, and sales of the cheaper model almost doubled. 
Exposure to the $429 “anchor” price had a hypnotic 
effect, boosting what customers were willing to pay for 
the original model. This was despite the fact that hardly 
anyone bought the $429 model. 

Its now commonly observed that Ше second-most- 
expensive wine on a wine list is a popular choice. When 
uncertain which price point to choose (most diners don't 

know much about 
wine) buyers tend to 
avoid the highest, but 
hosts who seek to im- 
press still want a pric- 
ey wine. Restaurants 
exploit this by mak- 
ing sure the second- 
most-expensive wine 
has a high markup. 
The most expensive 
wine is often an over- 
priced decoy bottle 
they don't expect will 
sell well. 

Subsequent studies 
have shown that real- 
world professionals, 
from car mechanics 
to real estate agents, 
can be punked by an- 
choring. As we walk 
the aisles of big-box 
stores we all play a 
guessing game not un- 
like Kahneman and 
Tversky’s experiment. 
Is that flat-screen TV 
worth more or less 
than the $1,299 price? 
How much is it really 
worth to me? In order 
to survive in our con- 
sumer society, we gen- 

| š erate a stream of buy- 
or-don't-buy decisions, 
unaware of how fluid 
those decisions are. 

A relatively new 
profession, price consulting, advises retailers on how to 
use sales data and psychology to extract the most dollars 
from consumer wallets. The German-headquartered firm 
of Simon-Kucher & Partners pioneered the field. Its cli- 
ent list reads like the Fortune 500 and includes Procter & 
Gamble, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Goldman Sachs. 
Much of the same psychology behind pricing applies 
whether one is selling convertibles or chocolate bars. 

Anchoring is now also a part of tech-product pricing. 


During the secretive gestation of 
Apple's iPad, a stream of "leaks" and 
blogosphere speculation warned 
gadget fetishists to expect a price be- 
tween $800 and $1,000. This allowed 
Steve Jobs to shock and awe the tech 
world by announcing the iPad would 
retail for as little as $499. 

Smart negotiators also use an- 
choring. In bargaining experi- 
ments, the first price mentioned 
has a strong statistical influence on 
the final negotiated price. This has 
implications for job seekers, who 
often don't know how much to ask 
for salary. They typically figure the 
employer will make the first move, 
but chances are they'd be better 
off naming a number first. It should 


be on the high 

HOW end ofreasonable: 

They won't get 

MUCH that, but they'll 

likely end up with 

IS THAT more than they 
would have. 

FLAT- Anchoring is 

a scary concept. 

SCREEN The part of cur 

minds that guess- 

TV timates numeri- 

cal quantities can 

be duped as eas- 


REALLY 


ily as children 

WORTH at a magic show. 
TO ME? Thats по trifle 
` in our money- 


obsessed society. 
The hard question is, Why are our 
value judgments so readily manipu- 
lated? A popular hypothesis argues 
that attention and logic are precious 
commodities. We would not get far 
in this complex and cruel world if 
every decision had to be justified 
with the rigor of Mr. Spock. Instead 
the human mind has evolved to 
process certain information uncon- 
sciously, forming gut instincts that 
guide most of our actions. A dark 
alley feels dangerous; a price seems 
too good to pass up. 

You can't will yourself to ignore an 
anchor price any more than you can 
obey the command not to think of 
an elephant. For the most part that's 
okay, but never before have we had 
to deal with the wiles of price consul- 
tants who can hack the mental soft- 
ware that makes our price decisions. 
This is a heady new world for smart 
marketers. The rest of us are belat- 
edly coming to terms with that. 


William Poundstone is author of Priceless: 
The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take 
Advantage of It). 


BY MARK FRAUENFELDER 


hen it became clear the econ- 
omy was sputtering, George 
W. Bush went on TV in late 


2006 and said, "I encourage you all to 
go shopping more." He said the same 
thing right after 9/11, as if shopping 
were some kind of cure-all. In the days 
following the terrorist attacks, New York 


City mayor Rudy Giuliani called upon 
"the best shoppers in the world" to ful- 
fill their civic duty by spending money 
in stores and restaurants. At a press con- 
ference, Miami-Dade County mayor 
Alex Penelas said, “It has never been 
more patriotic to go shopping." 

A new generation of do-it-yourselfers 
rejects the idea that recreational shop- 
ping is the answer. Spurred on by the 
recession, the trend of making, modify- 
ing and repairing things is gaining ap- 
peal among people still smarting from 
years of credit-busting overconsump- 
tion. Young consumers embrace a phi- 
losophy associated with earlier times: 
the belief that frugality and resource- 
fulness are good for people, communi- 
ties and the economy. 


On a winter morning in Los Angeles, 
not far from malls and big-box stores, 
Erik Knutzen lets his chickens out of 
their coop, tends to his vegetables and 
inspects the beehives in his backyard. 
Meanwhile, in the house, his partner, 
Kelly Coyne, takes a shower with her 
homemade soap and shampoo. After- 


ward he and Kelly settle down to a 
breakfast of fresh eggs and just-made 
bread and jam. When the couple take 
walks they keep an eye out for ripe fruit 
growing on trees, wild greens that can 
be used for cooking or herbal medicine, 
and other "foraging opportunities." 

In an age when everything from hot 
meals to prefab housing can be ordered 
with the click of a mouse, the idea of 
making things—clothes, furniture, food 
and vehicles—is revolutionary. "What 
holds us is an ongoing enchantment 
with the natural world," Coyne says of 
their lifestyle. “DIY makes us amateur 
chemists, entomologists, botanists, even 
alchemists.” Knutzen and Coyne rep- 
resent a growing movement of people 
who have rediscovered the joy of DIY 


living, an experience they chronicle on 
their blog, Homegrown Evolution. 

The rise of the DIY movement can 
largely be attributed to the Internet, 
where people post step-by-step 
instructions on how to make 
things, swap ideas and form 
online clubs such as CigarBox 
Nation.com and DIYdrones 
.com. Instructables.com has 
thousands of user-written proj- 
ect articles, such as a treadmill 
computer desk that lets you 
work while you walk and a 
spare house key made from a 
plastic soda bottle. 

In its recent market-research 
report on the millennial gen- 
eration, the Hartman Group 
found adults under the age of 
30 consider themselves “со- 
creators" who "customize a 
lifestyle on their own terms," 
enroll in *hip craft or sewing 
classes at urban sewing shops" 
and "read Make and attend the 
magazine's events." That means 
big-box products and pack- 
aged experiences designed 
to appeal to the widest possible 
market aren't good enough 
for younger generations. 

While it's unlikely most peo- 
ple will become full-time do-it- 
yourselfers like Knutzen and 
Coyne, the signs of increased 
interestin DIY are everywhere. 
The National Gardening As- 
sociation reported the num- 
ber of U.S. households growing their 
own fruits, vegetables, herbs or berries 
increased by 7 million between 2008 
and 2009. The world’s largest online 
crafts fair, Etsy.com, has seen phenom- 
enal growth since its inception in 2005. 
Its community of buyers and sellers 


ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE Design 
major Tom Miceli built the lon Elec- 
tric Sportbike for his senior project. 
We'd give it an A. 


has since expanded to 150 countries. 
In 2009 its sales of handmade goods 
totaled $181 million, doubling the pre- 
vious year's receipts. 


Since 2006 Make magazine has held 
an annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, 
California, where crafters and DIYers 
from around the world congregate to 
show off creations ranging from bam- 
boo bicycles to self-watering indoor 
gardens. The first Maker Faire had 


STEAMPUNK HOUSE The cre- 
ators of Neverwas Haul cite Jules 
Verne as an influence. That's one 
reason to build a three-story 
Victorian 
house on 

* wheels. 


20,000 attendees; attendance increased 
to 75,000 people by 2009. Mega crafts 
fairs such as Bazaar Bizarre, Renegade 
and Felt Club attract thousands of 
DIYers who sell, swap and buy 
handmade products. 

In most major cities you 
can pay a monthly fee to be- 
come a member of a “hacker 
space," which gives you access 
to power tools, electronic test 
equipment, laser cutters, sew- 
ing machines and classes that 
teach the basics of making 
things. Other businesses such 
as Ponoko.com and Shapeways 
.com manufacture short runs 
of maker-designed products 
on three-dimensional printers. 

The world is catching up 
to what DIYers have known 
all along: Increased spending 
is not the answer. At a 2009 
press conference President 
Obama stated, “If all we're 
doing is spending and we're 
not making things, then over 
time other countries are go- 
ing to get tired of lending us 
money, and eventually the 
party's going to be over. Well, 
in fact, the party now is over." 
But that doesn't necessarily 
mean we have to stop party- 
ing. We can just throw a dif- 
ferent kind of party, one that 
doesn't involve buying stuff 
to stimulate a global economy 
that depends on ever-growing 
consumption to sustain itself. 


Mark Frauenfelder is editor-in-chief of 
Make, a technology project magazine, and 
co-editor of Boing Boing. His latest book is 
Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in 
a Throwaway World. 


s minimalist 
masterpiece is 
constructed of 
brass pipes and 
hardware-store 
staples. Find 
instructions at 
[угаап 


F 
ار‎ 
p ub 


READER RESPONSE 


REBEL WITH A CAUSE 
In your interview with historian 
Howard Zinn (“Where Are the Jobs?” 
April), he unfortunately pays no heed 
to Thomas Jefferson’s warning that “the 


Zinn: What’s wrong with big government? 


natural progress of things is for liberty to 
yield and government to gain ground.” 
Even more baffling is Zinn's assertion 
that the Constitution was designed to 
establish big government. The Con- 
stitution did create a more unified 
and centralized government, but the 
founders remained deeply suspicious 
of centralized power. Even the vaunted 
"general welfare" clause, used by liberals 
and conservatives alike to justify govern- 
ment intervention, was intended to limit 
federal power by applying its enumer- 
ated powers only to the general welfare 
rather than special interests (which the 
founders called "factions"). Whether 
used by Democrats who want to confis- 
cate our money and regulate the way 
we do business or by Republicans who 
want to control our personal lives and 
interfere overseas, big government is, in 
the words of another founder, George 
Washington, “a dangerous servant and 
a fearsome master." 
Michael Tanner 
Washington, D.C. 
Tanner is author of Leviathan on the 
Right: How Big-Government Conservatism 
Brought Down the Republican Revolution. 


THE DYING CITY 

Sharon Zukin is dead-on when she 
writes in “How the City Lost Its Soul" 
(April) that New York has been “homog- 
enized, suburbanized and domesticated." 
While she mentions 9/11 as a time when 
our "leaders' preoccupations turned to 
shopping and security," I want to push it 
further and say 9/11 struck the last nail 
in the coffin of New York's soul. Prior 
to 9/11 the city had been a separate, 


special place outside the faux-Puritan 
purity that dictates the rules in much 
of the nation. As Woody Allen jokes in 
Annie Hall, "Don't you see the rest of the 
country looks upon New York like we're 
left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosex- 
ual pornographers?" After 9/11 we heard 
"We are all New Yorkers." Suddenly New 
York was as American as apple pie. Over 
the past decade a main line has opened 
from middling America to Manhattan. 
People used to migrate here to be radi- 
cal, queer, creative, countercultural and, 
yes, pornographic. Now they come to re- 
create their small-town milieus. Above all 
they long for safety, cleanliness and con- 
venience, for poolside grills, Applebee's 
and shopping-mall sports bars. 
Jeremiah Moss 
New York, New York 
Moss blogs at Jeremiah's Vanishing New 
York (vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com). 


Zukin documents some of the unfor- 
tunate cultural effects of treating the city 
as a commodity; under Mayor Michael 
Bloomberg this notion has been supple- 
mented by the construal of the mayor as 
a CEO, the city government as a corpora- 
tion, companies as clients and citizens as 
customers. The idea that cities, like cor- 
porations, have a single end, a unitary 
bottom line, is inherently undemocratic: 
It seeks to delegitimize political conflict 
and elide the fact that the city is a place 
of deep social, economic, cultural—and 
therefore political—division. New York's 
historical acknowledgment of not just 


The CEO of New York City Inc. 


the reality of political difference but its 

indispensability to the pursuit of justice 

has been one of its great contributions. 

Julian Brash 

'Toledo, Ohio 

Brash, a professor of anthropology at the 

University of Toledo, is author of the forth- 

coming Bloomberg's New York: Class and 
Governance in the Luxury City. 


American cities have been losing their 
souls for some time. In a review of an 
anthology I co-edited called The Sub- 
urbanization of New York an architecture 
critic on the opposite coast called it "this 
year's best book on contemporary San 
Francisco." New York is on its way to 
becoming a theme park city where peo- 
ple get only the illusion of the urban 
experience. Chain stores are pricing out 
independents and their entrepreneurial 
energy, rent controls are disappearing, 
and development is geared only to the 
wealthy. Like the suburbs that New York- 


San Francisco has lost its soul. 


ers once snubbed, the city is becoming 
more private, more predictable and 
more homogenized. And sadly, the work- 
ing class that built and sustains the city 
no longer has a place within it. 

Jerilou Hammett 

Santa Fe, New Mexico 

Hammett is co-editor with Maggie Wrig- 

ley of the forthcoming book The Architecture 
of Change. 


MORE PLAYBOY ON THE TRAIN 

The letter in April from the reader 
who was hassled on a Boston commuter 
train for reading PLAYBOY reminded 
me of a ride I took on Amtrak in Janu- 
ary 1977 from New York to St. Louis. I 
had never seen РІ.АҮВОҮ, so my husband 
bought an issue at a newsstand. When 
the train was slowed by a blizzard, we 
snuggled under a blanket and read the 
magazine together. I was 19 and quite 
naive, so my husband patiently explained 
alotto me. A few months later I bought 
him a subscription for our first anniver- 
sary, and now, 33 years later, I still renew 
it every year. PLAYBOY has profoundly 
affected our attitudes. I'm glad we picked 

up that issue to read on the train. 

Marla Dean 
Seaside, California 


E-mail via the web at letters.playboy.com. 
Or write: 680 North Lake Shore Drive, 
Chicago, Illinois 60611. 


Rap on the Wrist 


Moscow— The muckraking newspa- 
per Vedomosti took notice last year 
when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 
twice gave away the $10,500 Blanc- 
pain watch he was wearing, first to a 
shepherd's son after sharing tea with 
the man's father and a month later 
to a factory worker who suggested 
he leave a memento of his visit. This 
prompted the paper to examine the 
wrists of 32 other powerful Rus- 
sians. The most expensive watches 
belonged to Vladimir Resin, the first 
deputy mayor of Moscow, who has 
overseen a construction boom. He has 
been photographed wearing a DeWitt 
Pressy Grande Complication that can 
sell for $1 million, a Greubel Forsey 
Double Tourbillon 30° that retails for at 
least $360,000 and, at left, a Roger 
Dubuis Excalibur Double Tourbillon 
Retrograde worth about $180,000. 
Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of 
Chechnya, owns a white-gold Bovet 
Fleurier Minute Repeater worth 
$300,000. Russia’s president, Dmitri 
Medvedev, is discreet by comparison. 
His Breguet Classique Moon Phase 
is worth only $32,000. Vedomosti 
noted in a separate editorial that offi- 
cials who receive luxury items as gifts 
should pay income taxes on them. 


The Ring of Heaven 

CAIRO—Egypt's top cleric has issued а 
fatwa calling for a ban on ringtones that 
recite verses of the Koran and the call to 
prayer. Cutting off a verse when the phone 
is answered could distort its meaning, he 
says, and a call to prayer that doesn't come 
during the five scheduled times each day 
may confuse fellow believers. 


One Size Fits Small 


GENEVA—After one study found an increase 
in the number of adolescents having sex 
and another showed teens often don't wear 
condoms because they slip off, a Swiss 
firm introduced an extra-small condom for 
12- to 14-year-old boys. It is a third of an 
inch narrower than standard condoms. 


False Positive 


cairo—Outraged legislators have called for 
a ban on an artificial hymen that ensures 
a new bride will stain the sheets. Sold for 
$40 by the Chinese company Gigimo.com, 
the product is a soluble plastic bag filled 


with fake blood that the woman inserts 
15 minutes before sex. The firm suggests 
women "add in a few moans and groans" 
for full effect. Despite the fact that many, if 
not most, virgins don't bleed during inter- 
course because any number of nonsexual 
activities could have already broken their 
hymen, women are still killed in the Mid- 
dle East by relatives who feel the family's 
honor has been damaged when no "evi- 
dence" of virginity is produced. 


Boys and Girls Together 

Forty years after many U.S. colleges first 
allowed male and female students to share 
dormitory buildings, at least 50 schools 
now permit men and women to room 
together. The National Student Gender- 
blind Campaign (genderblind.org) argues 
that mandating same-gender rooms dis- 
criminates against gay, bisexual and 
transgender students. Many of the straight 
men and women who room together claim 
to be just friends. Said a 19-year-old UC 
Berkeley coed of her male roommate, 
"|t's not sexual. It's just not." Notably, the 


reporter neglected to ask her bunk mate 
for his view of the situation. 


The Strength of Conviction 


IMPHAL, INDIA—In 2000, after a paramilitary 
group in the state of Manipur allegedly shot 
and killed 10 people, the army refused to 
investigate, citing a 1958 law that gives 
the military in certain rebellious states 
the power to 
shoot to kill. 
Social worker 
Irom Chanu 
Sharmila 
began a 
hunger strike 
in protest, 
prompting 
officials to 
arrest her for "attempted suicide," which 
carries a one-year jail term. A decade 
later the military act remains in force, and 
Sharmila's fast continues. The Iron Lady 
of Manipur is released for a few days each 
year, then rearrested so prison officials can 
keep her alive with a feeding tube. 


The Hurley Show 
Here's ELIZABETH 
HURLEY at the Love Ball 
London. The party was 
thrown by supermodel 
Natalia Vodianova with 
proceeds going to her 
Naked Heart Foun- 
dation, which 

builds play- 

grounds in 

Russia and 

has the word 

naked in 

its name. 


Laetitia 
Titillates 
Remember 
LAETITIA 
CASTA from Vic- 
toria's Secret с; 
alogs and Sports 
Illustrated swim- 
suit issues years 
back? As of late 
she has been 
acting in France, 
most recently as 
igitte Bardot in 
Gainsbourg (Vi 
héroique). This 
is what she wore 
to the César 
Awards (their 
Oscars). Con- 
sider us Franco- 


cinephiles. 
150 


One Sexy Tele- 


phone Number 
LADY GAGA releases have 
become events, and when 
she put out the music vid- 
eo for "Telephone" it lived 
up to the hype. The singer 
entices while nearly nude 
in a jail cell and wearing 
Betsy Ross's pattern in a 
diner with Beyoncé. 


Amber's 
Back 
(and 
Front) 


More than 
15 years 
ago AMBER 
SMITH 
Scorched our 
cover. After 
facing her 
demons with 
а. Dr. Drew 
on Celeb- 

rity Rehab, 
Sober House 
dnd Sex 
Rehab, she's 
still giving 
off heat. 


Golden Girl 


When we picture Australian girls we доп? envision 
snow bunnies, except for LYDIA LASSILA. Ameri- 
cans Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso were the post- 
er women for the winter games, but Lydia caught our 
eye when she won the gold medal in women's free- 
style aerials. Her beauty and grace have already put The bloom is 
her on a podium, and now we put her on a pedestal. offthe American 
Idol rose. Simon 
Cowell has 
checked out, 
Ellen Degen- 
eres is lame, 
and we miss 
Paula Abdul. 
Our wish: Bring 
on MICHELLE 
HUNZIKER, 
onetime host 
of World 

Idol. See ya, 
Seacrest! 


Face paint isn't only for sports fanatics. 
and clowns anymore; beautiful women 
are enhancing their look with a coat. 
Russian pop starlet NADEEA either is part 
of this movement or just tried to peek through 

a hole їп a fence before the paint on it had dried. 


ne ROVER/STARTRAKSPHOTOEOH 


come across a model, such as BIANCA ВАТ, who has washed ashore. 
“What should you do with a beached model? First, do not throw her back. 


CONCEPT CARS OF THE FUTURE. 


CAMERON DIAZ—SHE IS ONE ОҒ HOLLYWOOD'S HIGHEST-PAID 
ACTRESSES—AND QUITE POSSIBLY A GUY TRAPPED IN THE 
BODY OF A SUPERMODEL. IN A SIZZLING PLAYBOY INTERVIEW 
DIAZ OPENS UP TO STEPHEN REBELLO ABOUT ADRENALINE 
RUSHES, HER FAMOUS EX-BOYFRIENDS AND PRIMAL SEX IN 
THE GREAT OUTDOORS. 


REINVENTING THE WHEEL—THE LUXURY SUPERCARS OF 
TOMORROW ARE ARTISTIC SCULPTURES EQUIPPED WITH GREEN 
TECHNOLOGY. THEY'RE ALSO FAST AS HELL. 


NATASHA ALAM—WHAT'S IT LIKE TO LOCK LIPS WITH JADA PINKETT 
SMITH, EVA MENDES, THE SHAH OF IRAN'S GRANDSON AND 
ALEXANDER SKARSGÄRD? MEET THE WOMAN WHO KNOWS. 


THE ROGUES OF K STREET—AS IN FIGHT CLUB, THE NUMBER 
ONE RULE OF THE TEA PARTY IS “YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT 
CONSULTING FOR THE TEA PARTY." BUT OUR INSIDE OPERA- 
TIVE REVEALS THE INNER WORKINGS AND DIRTY TRICKS OF 
AMERICA'S LATEST POLITICAL INITIATIVE. 


FIFTY YEARS OF THE PLAYBOY ВИММҮ--ІТ HAS BEEN FIVE 
DECADES SINCE THE FIRST PLAYBOY CLUB OPENED ITS DOORS, 
TURNING THE BUNNY INTO AN ICON. NEAL GABLER EXAMINES 
THE MOST FAMOUS NIGHTCLUB CHAIN IN HISTORY. 


INTERNATIONAL BEAUTIES: GIRLS OF THE WORLD CUP. 


DRINKING IN PAKISTAN—AMERICANS CAN STRAP ON A BUZZ 
WHENEVER THE FANCY STRIKES, BUT IN PAKISTAN, GETTING 
AN ADULT BEVERAGE REQUIRES A PERMIT AND SHADY CON- 
NECTIONS. LAWRENCE OSBORNE EXPLORES THE WORLD OF 
ILLEGAL DRINKING IN THIS DIVIDED MUSLIM COUNTRY. 


STEPHEN MOYER—THE THEATRICALLY TRAINED BRITISH ACTOR 
FOUND FAME AND LOVE AS ANNA PAQUIN’S BROODING BOYFRIEND 
ON TRUE BLOOD. HE TELLS ALL IN A 20Q THAT DOESN'T SUCK. 


SLEEP ۱5 ABATTLEFIELD—SLUMBER SHAPES OUR LIVES AND IDEN- 
TITIES IN WAYS WE NEVER IMAGINED. KEVIN COOK EXPLORES 
HOW THE LATEST FINDINGS IN SLEEP SCIENCE AFFECT YOU. 


JOANNA SILVESTRI—IN NEW FICTION BY INTERNATIONAL 
LITERARY SENSATION ROBERTO BOLANO, A SUCCESSFUL 
EUROPEAN PORN STAR FONDLY RECALLS A LONG-AGO VISIT 
TO LOS ANGELES. DURING THE TRIP SHE SHOOTS FOUR ADULT 
FILMS, AND IN BETWEEN TAKES SHE ENJOYS BITTERSWEET 
INTIMATE MOMENTS WITH A LOVER AND FORMER CO-STAR 
WHO IS DYING OF A MYSTERIOUS DISEASE. 


PLUS—GIRLS OF THE WORLD CUP, ELEGANT WATCHES AND 
THE WINNER OF PLAYBOY TV'S PLAYBOY SHOOTOUT, MISS 
JULY SHANNA MCLAUGHLIN. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), June 2010, volume 57, number 5. Published monthly except a combined January/February issue by Playboy in national and regional 

editions, Playboy, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post 

Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send address change to Playboy, PO. 
152 Вох 8597, Red Oak, Iowa 51591-1597. For subscription related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail plycustserv@cdsfulfillment.com. 


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