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iologically men havent changed 
much in a thousand years. We eat, 
‘drink, sleep, screw.... That said, in 

the past two decades we've seen huge 
shifts in the cultural forces that influence 
our daily lives and shape who we are. To 
find out where we stand, we tasked the 
distinguished polling service Harris with 
surveying 1,000 men on how they see 29165 
themselves—their finances, their sex 
lives, etc. Then we had Chip Rowe, our 
longtime expert on all things manly, make 
sense of the statistics for us. The results: 
State of Man 2012. Also this month, one 
of our favorite chroniclers of big- and 
little-screen history, Neal Gabler, details 
the riveting story of the rise and fall of 
troubled TV infomercial personality ean 
rn in Heath of a Salesman. | 
rc tt knows a few things about 
шнш. үш first appeared on the little 
screen at the age of six before debuting 
on the big one five years later. In 200 he С 
reveals why, in his words, “right 
now is without a doubt the 
most px. time in human 
history." K: g offers 
one more reason to make this 
issue of PLAvBOY a keepsake. 
The British beauty, who shines 
in her own burlesque show, 
God Save the Queen, reveals 
all in our pictorial of the same 
name diis Бу photographer 


пг linska), includ- 
ing haw e learned she was | 
related to the royal family. мамла DE ng win 
God save the queen, indeed. 
For lots of people, Septem- MEA 


ber means football. We kick 
off another exciting season with our dis- 
Aisha! new college football writer, 
исе Feldman—former ESPN scribe, 
current CBS ae and co-author, with 
former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, of 
the new book Swing Your Sword: Lead- 
ing the Charge in Football and Life. Which 
team do we pick to go all the way in 
2012-2013? Find out in Playboy's Pigskin 
Preview 2012. Question: What would you 
do if you received a surprise e-mail with a 
video of your wife having sex with another 
man? Now there's a heavy-duty question. 
One of the great Shan story writers of our 
time, T.C. B , tackles it in The Way 
You Laok Taniaht, Finally, we're offering 
not one but two Playboy Interviews: an 
excerpt from our 2003 talk with Jay-Z, 
part of our series celebrating 50 years of 
the Playboy Interview; and this month: 5 
canversation with genius Richard 
N 5, author of such best- sellers: as 
The Selfish Gene (1976) and The Magic of 
Reality (2011), who will shock you with 
his insight on, among other things, why 
the pope should be arrested. Shall we get 
rolling? Turn the page.... 


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VOL. 59, NO. 7-SEPTEMBER 2012 


PLAYBOY 


CONTENTS 


172 
= SS 


STATE OF ew 
MAN 2012 P E 
2) 
16 
P, 


In 1992 Clinton had the votes, Los Angeles was a war zone, and we polled Ameri- 
can men on salary, sex and life. Two decades later we take stock again, and the 
results are in. Where do you stand? PLAYBOY deconstructs the state of man. 


PIGSKIN PREVIEW 2012 
A total of 120 teams, six bowl champion- 
ships and one national title: For 
: ‚back to school means back to 
the gridiron. Who will reign supreme? 
We have your top 25. 


PLAYBOY CLASSIC: JAY-Z 
Our 50 Years of the Playboy Interview 
series turns to Shawn Carter. 
sat down with the CEO of 
rap before he watched the throne. 


DEATH OF A SALESMAN 
Don Lapre was television's infomercial 
king, a self- made millionaire living and 
selling the American dream. His best 
qualities, however, would end up kill- 
ing him. R chronicles Lapre's 
meteoric rise and tragic fall. 


RICHARD DAWKINS 
The iconoclastic atheist is the man people 
who believe in God love to hate. 
talks to the skeptical scientist. 


JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT 
=| gets the indie heart- 
throb to open up about Zooey Deschanel, 
life after Third Rock and the extreme 
method acting of Daniel Day-Lewis. 


THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT 


Another e-mail, another link to click. You 
think nothing of it—until it reveals a sex 
tape starring none other than your wife. 
, LE lays bare the aftermath when 
a hidden past is brought to light. 


It's not unusual to find our Rabbit in bed— 
and his good nose naturally led him to the 
charms of British burlesque queen Katrina 
Darling, who gained fame when it was dis- 
covered she's related to the wife of the future 
king of England. Can you blame our Rabbit 
for wanting the royal treatment? 


VOL. 59, МО. 7-SEPTEMBER 2012 


PLAYBOY 


HOME ALONE WITH BEAU 


Forget the cafés and Heinekens. 
Beau Hesling is the only attraction in 
Amsterdam you need to know. 


PLAYMATE: ALANA CAMPOS 


From the beaches of Brazil, where 
amazing women are standard, comes 
a beauty who rises above the rest. 


GOD SAVE THE QUEEN 


Sultry British burlesque star Katrina 
Darling is a bloody knockout. She per- 
forms a private dance in our pages. 


[9 TALKING WITH 
HARMONY KORINE 


What fuels the controversial director? 
gets some answers. 


A GUY'S GUIDE TO 
MOMMY PORN 


reveals why women's erot- 
ica is best left to women. 


LOCATION, LOCATION, 
LOCATION 


champions the joys 
of public sex. Oh, the places you'll go! 


From actors to athletes, our sartorial 
icons demonstrate how to trim, tailor, 
accent and groom like the best-dressed 
guys around. By 


CONTENTS 
92 


ALANA CAMPOS 


WORLD OF PLAYBOY 


Bill Cosby hosts his last Jazz Fest; London Cries 
rocks the Mansion; Hef is honored by Hollywood 
and reunites with Crystal Harris. 


HOT FUN IN THE SUN 


The Mansion hosts a star-spangled Fourth of 
July: Crystal deejays as Jon Lovitz, Bill Maher, 
Corey Feldman and others frolic with our patri- 
otic Playmates. Just another reason to say "God 
bless America." 


PLAYMATE NEWS 


Hope Dworaczyk prefers a mama's boy; Crystal 
McCahill is poised (and posed) for romance; a 
Playmate's eye turns to gold. 


PLAYBILL 
EDITORIAL 

DEAR PLAYBOY 
AFTER HOURS 
REVIEWS 
MANTRACK 
PLAYBOY ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES 


DEMOGRAPHY IS 
DESTINY 
America's changing population may 
spell doom for the GOP. 
details what it means for you. 
WE’RE ALL HOOKERS 
What differentiates a hand job 
from a massage? : argues 
for prostitution, our vaguest vice. 
OUR CORPORATE 
MASTERS 
exposes how corporate 
cash strangles democracy. 
READER RESPONSE 
The touchy-feely TSA; Uncle Sam's 
commerce clause; the fundamen- 
tals of fuck. 
NEWSFRONT 
"Rifle polishing" for dummies; his 
holiness on Yelp; STD payback; hot- 
button Playmate politics. 


PLAYBOY ON 
FACEBOOK 


PLAYBOY ON 
TWITTER 


Keep up with all things 


Playboy at facebook.com/playboy and 
twitter.com/playboy. 


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 9346 CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, 
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210. PLAYBOY ASSUMES 
NO RESPONSIBILITY TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITO- 
RIAL OR GRAPHIC OR OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN 
LETTERS AND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC 
MATERIAL WILL BE TREATED AS UNCONDITIONALLY 
ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT PUR- 
POSES, AND MATERIAL WILL BE SUBJECT TO PLAYBOY'S 
UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND TO COMMENT EDI- 
TORIALLY. CONTENTS COPYRIGHT @ 2012 BY PLAYBOY. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE AND RAB- 
BIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REGISTERED 
U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY 
BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM 
OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELECTRONIC, 
MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR RECORDING MEANS 
OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION 
OF THE PUBLISHER. ANY SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE 
PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMI-FICTION 
IN THIS MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL PEOPLE AND PLACES 
IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE PAGE 132. 
DANBURY MINT AND DIRECTV ONSERTS IN DOMESTIC 
SUBSCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED COPIES. DIRECT WINES 
INSERT IN DOMESTIC NEWSSTAND AND SUBSCRIPTION 
COPIES BETWEEN PAGES 52-53. CERTIFICADO DE LICI- 
TUD DE TÍTULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993, 
Y CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO NO. 5108 
DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS POR LA 
COMISÍON CALIFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVIS- 
TAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE LA SECRETARIA 
DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO. RESERVA DE DERECHOS 
O4-2000-071710332800-102. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


^ 

| RI 

у А s 
6“ SH313d PM 1 


PLAYBOY 


ears 
y of the 


Playboy 
Bunny 


When Hugh Hefner founded the 
first Playboy Club in Chicago, 
he wanted a female waitstaff 
that would embody the Playboy 
fantasy. The Playboy Bunny was 
born, and 50 years later she lives 
on in our imaginations. With 
more than 200 amazing pho- 
tos of classic Bunnies—along 
with many never-before-seen 
images—50 Years of the Playboy 
Bunny is the definitive work on 
a cultural icon. Go to playboy 
store.com to order. (176 pages, $35, 
Chronicle Books) 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


JIMMY JELLINEK 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
ROB WILSON art director 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH managing editor 


A.J. BAIME, JOSH SCHOLLMEYER executive editors 
PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCES deputy photography director 
HUGH GARVEY articles editor 
TOM STAEBLER contributing art director 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: JASON BUHRMESTER senior editor FASHION: JENNIFER RYAN JONES editor 
STAFF: JARED EVANS assistant managing editor; CHERIE BRADLEY executive assistant; GILBERT MACIAS 
senior editorial assistant; TYLER TRYKOWSKI editorial assistant CARTOONS: AMANDA WARREN associate 
cartoon editor COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; BRADLEY LINCOLN senior copy editor; 

CAT AUER copy editor RESEARCH: NORA O'DONNELL senior research editor; SHANE MICHAEL SINGH 
research editor CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: BRANTLEY BARDIN, MARK BOAL, ROBERT B. DE SALVO, 
GRETCHEN EDGREN, JAMES FRANCO, PAULA FROELICH, J.C. GABEL, KEN GROSS, GEORGE GURLEY, DAVID HOCHMAN, 
ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), LISA LAMPANELLI (special correspondent), CHRISTIAN PARENTI, 
JAMES R. PETERSEN, ROCKY RAKOVIC, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, CHIP ROWE, WILL SELF, DAVID SHEFF, 
JOEL STEIN, DAVID STEVENS, ROB TANNENBAUM, CHRISTOPHER TENNANT, ALICE K. TURNER 


ART 
SCOTT ANDERSON, BRUCE HANSEN, JUSTIN PAGE senior art directors; CRISTELA P. TSCHUMY associate art 
director; ROBERT HARKNESS assistant art director; MATT STEIGBIGEL photo researcher; 


AARON LUCAS art coordinator; LISA TCHAKMAKIAN senior art administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 

STEPHANIE MORRIS west coast editor; KRYSTLE JOHNSON managing photo director; BARBARA LEIGH 
assistant editor; ARNY FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; SASHA EISENMAN, 

JAMES IMBROGNO, RICHARD IZUI, ZACHARY JAMES JOHNSTON, MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, GEN NISHINO, 
JARMO POHJANIEMI, DAVID RAMS contributing photographers; KEVIN MURPHY manager, photo library; 

CHRISTIE HARTMANN archivist, photo library; KARLA GOTCHER, CARMEN ORDONEZ assistants, photo library; 
CRAIG SCHRIBER manager, prepress and imaging; AMY KASTNER-DROWN, LIANA RIOS digital imaging 
specialists; OSCAR RODRIGUEZ prepress operator; KEVIN CRAIG manager, imaging lab 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 
THERESA M. HENNESSEY vice president; TERI THOMERSON director 


PRODUCTION 
LESLEY K. JOHNSON production director; KATHY L. CONRAD production services manager 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
MARCIA TERRONES rights & permissions director 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING 
MARKUS GRINDEL Managing director 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
SCOTT FLANDERS Chief executive officer 


PLAYBOY INTEGRATED SALES 
JOHN LUMPKIN senior vice president, publisher; MARIE FIRNENO vice president, advertising director; 
AMANDA CIVITELLO senior marketing director 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: AMERICAN MEDIA INC. 

DAVID PECKER chairman and chief executive officer; KEVIN HYSON chief marketing officer; 
HELEN BIANCULLI executive director, direct-response advertising; BRIAN HOAR national spirits director 
NEW YORK: BRIAN VRABEL entertainment and gaming director; MIKE BOYKA automotive, 
consumer electronics and consumer products director; ANTHONY GIANNOCCORA 
fashion and grooming manager; KENJI TROYER digital sales planner; 

KEVIN FALATKO senior marketing manager; MATT CASEY marketing manager; JOHN KITSES art director 
LOS ANGELES: LORI KESSLER west coast director; VALERIE TOVAR digital sales planner 


Sexual 


Freedom 


Editorial by Hugh M. Hefner 


Charles Cotner and charged him 

with an “abominable and detest- 
able crime against nature.” His of- 
fense? Consensual anal sex with his 
wife. He faced 14 years in prison. 
When I first learned about Cotner's 
case—his attorney wrote to PLAYBOY 
to seek our assistance—I was ap- 
palled. His wife, who signed the 
complaint after the couple had ar- 
gued, changed her mind and asked 
to have the charges dropped. But 
the judge refused, and Cotner 
served nearly three years in prison 
before the Playboy Foundation was 
able to free him. 

While working to strike down ab- 
surd sex laws like the one that landed 
Cotner behind bars, I learned a lot 
about the people who want to control 
what goes on in American bedrooms. 
Those who oppose us have always had 
one thing in common: They are on a 
crusade to eliminate sex not intended 
for the purpose of procreation. 

You might think this story has 
nothing to do with you or your life 
in America in 2012. But sadly you 
would be wrong. The forces that 
put Charles Cotner in jail are the 
same forces at work right now. If 
you want a perfect example, take a 
look at the controversy that contin- 
ues to dog the rights of gay men and 
women to marry. The fight for gay 
marriage is, in reality, a fight for all 
of our rights. Without it, we will turn 
back the sexual revolution and return 
to an earlier, puritanical time. 

I remember that time. When I 
wrote The Playboy Philosophy in the 
early 1960s, both oral and anal sex 
were illegal in 49 of the 50 states. In 
10 of those states, sodomy—which was 
variously defined but could, in some 
states, include oral sex—carried a 
maximum sentence of 20 years. Citi- 
zens in Connecticut who engaged in 
oral sex faced 30 years in prison—60 
years for people who lived in North 


] n 1965 Indiana police arrested 


Carolina. In Nevada it could mean 
life behind bars. It was a time when 
37 states outlawed sex between 
unmarried people and 45 criminal- 
ized adultery. Two states even banned 
heavy petting. 


"md 


This is the oppressive world some 
would have us return to. These moral- 
ists say that if sex doesn't beget chil- 
dren, it's a sin. Your sex life, your 
privacy rights and the rights of men 
and women everywhere are casual- 
ties of this belief. In Arizona, under 
a proposed bill women who hoped to 
have their health insurer cover birth 
control would have been forced to 
provide their employer with proof 
they were taking the pill for a medi- 
cal condition—not just for the purpose 
of avoiding pregnancy. A new Kansas 
law allows a pharmacist to refuse to sell 
someone contraception on the grounds 


that such a sale could violate the phar- 
macist's religious beliefs. Similar laws 
already exist in Arkansas, Georgia, 
Mississippi and South Dakota. Law- 
makers in Michigan are pushing one 
of the most restrictive anti-abortion 
bills in decades, while in Texas and 
Pennsylvania people continue to 
demand the defunding of Planned 
Parenthood centers, which provide 
health care to countless women. 
Across America these conservatives 
continue to assault the rights of 
gays, whether by denying them the 
right to marry or, as in Kansas, by 
attempting to empower landlords, 
business owners and employers to 
discriminate against gays on reli- 
gious grounds. And earlier this year, 
when a Republican legislator in Vir- 
ginia told CNN "sodomy is not a civil 
right," I thought of Charles Cotner 
and wondered how much time we 
have left before we lose all the ad- 
vances of the sexual revolution. 
Nearly 50 years ago in the pages of 
this magazine I warned that “when 
religion rather than reason dic- 
tates legislation, do not expect logic 
with your law." Today, in every in- 
stance of sexual rights falling under 
attack, you'll find legislation forced 
into place by people who practice 
discrimination disguised as religious 
freedom. Their goal is to dehuman- 
ize everyone's sexuality and reduce us 
to using sex for the sole purpose of per- 
petuating our species. То that end, they 
will criminalize your entire sex life. 
This is a religious nation, but it is 
also a secular one. For decades the 
American people have found a way to 
balance religious beliefs with secular 
freedoms. We have enjoyed freedom 
of religion as well as freedom from 
religion. These need not be incompat- 
ible. No one should have to subjugate 
their religious freedom, and no one 
should have their personal freedoms 
infringed. This is America and we must 
protect the rights of all Americans. 


PLAYBOY 


HEF SIGHTINGS, MANSION FROLICS AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES 


PLAYBOY’S 34TH ANNUAL JAZZ FESTIVAL 

Hef and Playmates enjoyed the sweet sounds of 
Ramsey Lewis, Robin Thicke and other cool cats dur- 
ing this summer's Playboy Jazz Festival. Prior to the 
festivities, Bill Cosby, master of ceremonies since 1979, 
announced that this would be his last time hosting. 
Along with girlfriends Trisha Frick and Chelsea Ryan, 
Hef met with Cos backstage. "It's been a real pleasure 
for me to have him play such an integral part in what 
makes this festival so special,” Hef said. 


CHRISTIE HEFNER AND NORMAN LEAR AT HUGH M. HEFNER AWARDS 
LONDON CRIES 


ROCKS THE 
MANSION 

{ Pride of Melbourne, 
Australia alt-rock 
band London Cries 
' (formerly known as 
Juke Kartel) capped 
off its successful 
West Coast swing 
with a private eve- 
ning concert at the 
Mansion in June. 


Christie Hefner presided over the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment 
Awards. While introducing Norman Lear, Christie called his All in the Family 
a “cultural earthquake.” Lear presented Stanley Sheinbaum, co-founder 
of People for the American Way, with an award. Below left: Hef with his 
award from the L.A. Central City Association for his role as a media pioneer. 


LIVING THE HOLLYWOOD LIFESTYLE 

Hef was honored with the Hollywood Distinguished Service Award in Mem- 
ory of Johnny Grant for his “lasting positive impact on the city, the people 
and the dream that is Hollywood.” In another celebration of Hollywood, 
Hef's friends photographer Austin Young, PMOY 1982 Shannon Tweed, 
Gene Simmons and actress Cis Rundle came over for a Movie Night. 


т к > | 
Er eis EM 
HEF AND CRYSTAL ARE BACK! 
Î The runaway bride has returned repentant. After a year's separation, 


Crystal Harris wrote to Hef about how miserable she was without him. 
Hef welcomed her back with open arms. “I love the girl," he says. 13 


ercalvinklein.com 


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For the Mansion's Fourth of July = 

celebration there were fireworks and firecrack- 
ers as we celebrated America's independence. 
(1) Hef with star-spangled beauties Chelsea 
Ryan, Trisha Frick and Crystal Harris in front 
of the Mansion’s waterslide. (2) Jon Lovitz with 
the patriotic Miss May 2012 Nikki Leigh. (3) 
Explosion aficionado Michael Bay with Chanel 


5 Ly and Alex Nicol. (4) Flag-wavers Sean Patrick 


Flanery of The Boondock Saints and Miss Febru- 


> ary 2001 Lauren Michelle Hill. (5) Actor Kato 


Kaelin and HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher. (6) 
Chelsea and Trisha being bubbly. (7) The appro- 
priately attired Carly Champagne celebrates 
July 4 the American way. (8) DJ Crystal keeps 
things lively on the decks. (9) Hef and young- 
est son Cooper. (10) Comedian Pauly Shore with 
Emily Leonard. (11) Beautiful backyard fire- 
works close the evening festivities. (12) Согеу 
Feldman with bikini-clad beauties poolside. (13) 
Miss September 2009 Kimberly Phillips and 
rocker Todd Morse defend the PMW pool. (14) 
Playful Playmates are one big reason America 
is the greatest country on earth. 


MONEY RULES 
The article by former influence ped- 

dler Jack Abramoff is an eye-opener 
(So You Want to Hire a Lobbyist, May). It 
should give pause to all those who tout 
campaign-finance reform and term limits 
as the answer to our legislative problems. 
The only way to lessen the influence of 
lobbyists is to send smarter people to 
Washington and our state capitals. 

Alvin Howard 

Santa Cruz, California 


It is no surprise that a criminal trying to 
rehabilitate his image would portray him- 
self and his cronies as noble champions 
of oppressed small businesses. It is also 
no surprise that he would repeat tired, 
Теа Party-esque antigovernment rheto- 
ric, deliberately mischaracterizing how 
government works. It is a surprise that 
PLAYBOY would print it. 

Tim Benner 
Silver Spring, Maryland 


I suspect PLAYBOY readers already 
understand that our national government 
is responsive only to the bottom-feeders. 
What Abramoff does not address is how 
this dysfunctional model has crept into 
state and local politics. 

Rick Shriver 
McConnelsville, Ohio 


BETTER THAN NOTHING 
In his intriguing Thy Neighbor's Life 

(June), Slavoj Zizek stops short of 
taking his insights to their logical con- 
clusion: The ubiquity of "lite" pleasures 
such as fat-free chocolate is simply a 
result of the application of the principles 
of masturbation to the nonsexual realm. 
Masturbation is ersatz intercourse devoid 
of risks. Although, like Diet Coke, it's not 
as enjoyable as the real thing, as Edmond 
O’Brien’s character observes in The Wild 
Bunch, “It'll do." 

Michael Pastorkovich 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 


SMELLS LIKE... 

In your review of summer fragrances, 
Message in a Bottle (June), you describe 
various scents as vetiver, bergamot, ver- 
bena, tonka bean and coumarin. Thanks 
for clearing that up! 

Ron Ryden 
Riverview, Florida 


DAVID BROOKS 

New York Times columnist David Brooks 
claims that George W. Bush is a voracious 
reader of great books (Playboy Interview, 
May). That's hard to believe but may 
explain why Bush blew off shorter reports 
of an imminent attack soon after his cor- 
onation by the Supreme Court. At first I 
was annoyed you gave Brooks so much 
space, but as I read his blather about "the 
difficulty [CEOs] have finding employees 
with technical skills" (who will work for $9 
an hour), I realized what you were up to: 


DEAR PLAYBOY 


Gun for Cover 
Thanks for the insight into the 

twisted mind of a gun nut (Armed and 
Dangerous?, June). There's an episode of 
All in the Family in which Archie Bunker 
suggests we could prevent airline 
hijackings by giving every passenger a 
gun as they board and collecting them 
as they leave. That seems to be Pat Jor- 
dan's idea of utopia. Imagine the scene 
inside a Waffle House when the first 
wannabe Clint Eastwood draws his 
weapon on a bad guy and a dozen other 
people follow suit. Let's hope everyone 
knows who the bad guy is. 

Philip Weber 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 


The interview is a splendid exposé of an 
apologist for the status quo. 

Michael Henry 

St. Petersburg, Florida 


I'm a fan of Brooks and appreciate his 
candor. But when he says he is "not good 
at moments of intimacy with family and 
friends," you have to wonder: Who is? 

Тот Todoroff 
Cold Spring, New York 


JACLYN IN CHARGE 
Not since PMOY 1964 Donna Michelle 
or PMOY 1991 Lisa Matthews has anyone 


PMOY Jaclyn Swedberg: our force of nature. 


dominated her Playmate of the Year issue 
like Jaclyn Swedberg (June). 
Leo Doroschenko 


West Orange, New Jersey 


COVER BOYS 
In June's Dear Playboy you show 10 
covers with men. But you overlooked 


two—Phillip Anderson in May 1984 and 
Timothy Dalton in September 1987. 
Robert Little 

Anthem, Arizona 
Sorry. You know, needles in a haystack. 


NAYSAYERS 
What makes Hef think liberals are 
better at protecting our freedoms (The 
War Against Sex, May)? Rush Limbaugh 
is right: The government shouldn't be 
paying for birth control. We are broke! 
Washington needs to go back to the 
basics—keep the country safe with strong 
military and police forces and build more 
bridges and roads. 
Mark Hunter 
Lincoln, Nebraska 


Thank goodness for your Playboy 
Interview with David Brooks. It offsets 
the lunacy of your Editor-in-Chief. Hef 
claims to be pro-choice and for Obama- 
care but fails to mention that women who 
have abortions and use birth control have 
a higher risk of cancer, or that countries 
with federal health care have much higher 
rates of women dying from breast and 
cervical cancers. It seems PLAYBOY needs 
to rethink its antiwomen stance. 

R.J. Blair 
Tampa, Florida 

Hef didn't mention the Affordable Care Act, 
but whatever your view of mandated coverage, 
assessing the quality of health сате based on sur- 
vival rates is a tricky proposition because so much 
depends on when the diagnosis is made. As to 
your other claim, the science isn't that simple. A 
few studies have suggested a link between certain 
cancers and extended use of the pill, especially 
among women over 45, which may be due to the 
fact that older birth control pills had more hor- 
mones. At the same time, its well documented 
that the pill reduces the risk of ovarian cancer. 


I expected Hef to defend the George- 
town student whom Limbaugh called a 


TAVIS COBURN 


17 


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the stuff of legend. This illustrat- 
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amazing journey. In six hard-cov- 
er volumes housed in a Plexiglas 
case, Hugh Нетег 5 Playboy is the 
definitive collectible survey of an 
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slut and a prostitute, but I’m surprised he 
turned that lightning-rod event into a dia- 
tribe about “a desperate minority clinging 
to a fading ideology.” 
Paul Farley 
Danville, California 


OUTLAW ECONOMISTS 
What a great article by Tim Schultz 
(Outlaw Economists, June). It’s amazing 
how money can blind the most intelli- 
gent professionals. Please assign Schultz 
to investigate the federal government’s 
$51.3 trillion in “unfunded liabilities"— 
future payouts, mostly for pensions, Social 
Security and Medicare—that no one has 
figured out how to pay for. Talk about the 
elephant in the bathtub. 
Mike Haycox 
Palmdale, California 


If people were rational, they wouldn't 
believe that a god created mankind. The 
fact that most people do believe this con- 
firms that people, and therefore markets, 
are not rational, and the policies being 
pushed by mainstream economists should 
not be trusted. The challenge is how to get 
people to believe in their own irrationality. 

Stu Luttich 
Geneva, Nebraska 


HIP CHECK 
Kudos for Armed and Dangerous?, a 
balanced story on a controversial topic. 
Citizens who are licensed to carry are the 
most mentally and emotionally stable peo- 
ple you'll ever meet. But open carry, in 
my opinion, is designed to call attention 
to the fact that a person should be pre- 
sumed dangerous. I prefer to keep the 
bad guys guessing. 
Gregory Schroeder 
Warsaw, Indiana 


Jordan misquotes the Second Amend- 
ment by excising the comma before “shall 
not be infringed.” The comma creates two 
nonessential phrases. The Bill of Rights, 
at least in a grammatical sense, protects 
only the right to a well-regulated militia. 

Jeff Cox 
Shawnee, Oklahoma 

The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights 
approved by Congress in 1789 has three com- 
mas, while the versions ratified by the states 
over the next two years to put the amendment 
into force have no commas or one, two or three. 
Everybody has their favorite. 


If open carry deters criminals, why do 
so many still confront police officers and 
security guards or other criminals who 
are clearly armed? Even if you agree with 
the notion that “guns don’t kill people, 
people kill people,” guns sure make the 
killing easier. 

Erin Hoffman 
St. Paul, Minnesota 


The Second Amendment has noth- 
ing to do with home defense, hunting, 


gun collecting or toting your gun 
about town. Its purpose is to ensure 
that the government fears and respects 
the citizenry. I imagine the founding 
fathers would consider us failures on 
that point. I could open carry, but my 
penis is of sufficient size that I do not 
need the attention. 

Blaine Clark 

Gold Hill, Oregon 


Why would anybody take Pat Jordan 
seriously when he can’t take a piss 
without dropping his gun and wetting 
himself? No wonder people who don’t 
own guns are wary of those who do. 

Fredric Ferris 


Woodstock, Georgia 


I carry a concealed gun but don’t 
feel superior. However, I do feel calmer 
knowing I can protect myself. 

Tom Bougie 
Grand Forks, North Dakota 


The best hand ever: five aces and a pair. 


ACE IN THE HOLE 
I enjoyed your short history of strip 
poker (“Wild Cards,” After Hours, June), 
but I can’t figure out where your model 
was hiding that fifth ace. 
Matt Hertel 
St. Louis, Missouri 
Hard to say. Even with five aces she doesn’t 
appear to be doing too well. 


PLAYMATE REVIEWS 
As I took in the gorgeous photos of 
Playmate Amelia Talon (Summer Flame), 
I realized your June issue features both 
the 2012 and 2013 PMOYs. 
Jim Hayes 
Westminster, Colorado 


I almost wish you hadn’t discovered 
Miss May Nikki Leigh (On the Road). 1 
think I might be in love, and there’s noth- 
ing I can do about it. 

Charles Burke 
Andover, Connecticut 


Y 


2 


E-mail LETTERS@PLAYBOY.COM Or write 9346 СІМС CENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210 


TOM. 


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Е 


BECOMING ATTRACTION 


GABRIELA 


DIAS 


"Because I'm 
Brazilian, curves 
have been a big 
part of my Life,” 
says model- 
designer Gabriela 
Dias. She recently 
wrapped an 
appearance in 
Emanuel and 

the Iruth About 
Fishes with 
Jessica Biel and 
is working on her 
next bikini Line. 
"Nothing looks 
better than a 
woman in the 
right bikini" We 
wouldn't disagree. 


[7 


-a 
— 


21 


TALK | WHAT MATTERS NOW 


22 


E A Plea for the 


Has the football lothario been sidelined forever? 


It started when a dancer for the Broad- 
way production of Rock of Ages posted a 
photo online of Tim Tebow surrounded by 
female cast members. His handlers, worried 
about the image of God's chosen quarter- 
back, allegedly ordered the dancer to take it 
down. But the photo showed more than the 
virginal New York Jet with a pack of women; 
it captured the death of the unabashed 
bachelor quarterback. Gone are the star 
players who would party on Saturday—Joe 
Namath squiring Raquel Welch to the Acad- 
emy Awards or Tom Brady dating a string 
of supermodels and actresses—and win on 
Sunday. Where are the QBs we can envy 
for their football skills as well as for their 
swinging social life? Take notice, Andrew 
Luck: We're watching your game—both on 
and off the field. 


Joe Namath with 
singer Suzy Storm 


CUBA LIBRE 


Your permanent holiday in Havana moves closer 


ART GIANT 


From collectors to members of Green 
Day, the world focuses on China 


» Forthe first time since Castro's revolution, 
some foreigners can finally buy classic cars and 
apartments in Cuba, thanks to recent revisions 
to the law. Only permanent residents can do so 
for now, but that's likely to change soon. Shop 
for your 1953 Ford convertible and $50,000 
Havana studio at revolico.com. 


> China has conquered the art 
world. For years, experts have 
pointed to the country as the best 
investment for artwork, and last 
year collectors spent $17.4 billion 
there thanks in part to an explo- 
sion of new talent. Our favorite? 
Wang Niandong, a Sichuan-born 
artist who creates six-foot-tall 
paintings of lingerie-clad women 
towering over skylines. Green Day 
bassist Mike Dirntis a fan. “To me 
they are powerful, sexy and dream- 
like, set among chaotic backdrops. 
Ilove the playfulness and longing 
they evoke,” Dirnt explains. “My 
friends can't believe my wife let 
me hang such a giant, sexy paint- 
ingin our hallway.” 


Neo 
NAI 


МУ 
m 
» XX * ^ +. " 


TALK | WHAT MATTERS NOW 


WRITERS 
ON THE RUN 


What happens when wordsmiths go underground 


» When the Iranian government put atarget on 
Salman Rushdie's back, the British author did the 
only thing he could do. He disappeared. It was 1989, 
and Muslims everywhere were angered by the publi- 
cation of Rushdie's Satanic Verses—specifically, the 
novel's portrayal of Muhammad and its references 
to verses omitted from the Koran that are consid- 
ered blasphemous. Ayatollah Khomeini, outraged 
by these perceived slights against Islam, issued a 
fatwa (or order) calling for “all brave Muslims of the 
world” to locate anyone associated with the book 


and “kill them without delay” and offered a reward 
for the author's death. Bookstores were firebombed, 
the Japanese translator of the novel was stabbed 

to death and a man building a bomb intended for 
Rushdie blew himself up, taking out two floors of 

a London hotel. Rushdie spent nine years in hid- 

ing. This month Random House will publish Joseph 
Anton: A Memoir, detailing the years Rushdie and his 
family spent on the run, surrounded by armed guards 
and moving from house to house. We take a look at 
Rushdie and two other authors who took flight. 


Ug 


3 Bus RUSHDIE 


Security forces protecting Salman 
Rushdie from would-be assassins asked 
the author to choose an alias. Rushdie 
chose the name Joseph Anton, a tribute to 
two of his favorite writers: Joseph Conrad 
and Anton Chekhov. 


У BURROUGHS اف‎ 


Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs 
fled to Mexico after police in Louisiana 
raided his home looking for drugs. He later 
absconded to South America from Mexico 
after he accidentally shot and killed 
his wife. 


, KESEY — 


After police arrested him for marijuana pos- 
session in 1965, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's 
Nest author Ken Kesey faked his death by 
leaving his truck and a suicide note near a cliff 
in northern California. He hid in Mexico but 
returned to the U.S. to spend six months in jail. 


MEAT 
THE FUTURE 


The laboratory race to create the next great meal 


> Are engineers making your next dinner? Beyond 
Meat, a start-up launched with investment money from 
the co-founders of Twitter, is developing a new non- 
meat product made from a mix of soy and pea protein 
that retains the taste and mouthfeel of real chicken. 
Meanwhile in Japan, researchers created three clones 
using cells extracted from Yasufuku, a steer renowned 
for siring more than 40,000 wagyu cattle, the breed 
used for Japan's exceptional Kobe beef. Don't fire up 
the grill just yet. The Japanese have not approved the 
sale of cloned beef. —Chauncey Hollingsworth 


24 


У TRAVEL 


= 


26 


NEVER 
SLEEP 


> BERLIN 


BERLIN 


Edgy, arty and perpetually in flux, Berlin is not merely a spec- 
tator city. A postwar consciousness pervades here as creative 
minds push the boundaries of public and private, replacing Soviet 
drabness with parks, municipal buildings with nightclubs and 
graffitied city streets with catwalks. Sure, you could just look, but 


you're encouraged to touch. 


> DAWN 


Check in to the Dude, a simul- 
taneously design-minded and 
masculine boutique hotel in 
the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 
neighborhood. The Dude 
himself (a German business- 
man cum hotelier) has a 
fondness for New York steak- 
houses, so he opened his 

own on-site: the Brooklyn 
Beef Club, tricked out with a 
whiskey bar that serves 150 
varieties of the brown stuff. 
Berliners go crazy for the adja- 
cent Schmidt’s Deli, where you 
can order a rejuvenating post- 
flight pastrami sandwich. 


—Jeralyn Gerba 


> DAY 

Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof, 
the city’s defunct commercial 
airport and site of the Berlin 
airlift, is now one of the larg- 
est unconventional playgrounds 
in Europe. Its motto is “Free- 
dom of movement,” and visitors 
have the run of the place. Bike 
or take the U-Bahn, sling beers 
near the terminal, grill sau- 
sages on former airstrips and 
watch skateboarders tear up the 
runway.... In this city of galler- 
ies and museums immemorial, 
the hottest is Hamburger Bahn- 
hof, a contemporary art space 
in a former railway station.... 


Thirsty for more culture? 
Drinking in one of Berlin’s 
many beer gardens will give you 
insight into how the locals live 
to the fullest. Do yourself а favor 
and visit at least two: Prater 
Garten in the Prenzlauerberg 
neighborhood is the city’s old- 
est; the canalside beer garden in 
the Tiergarten, Berlin’s central 
park, is by far its most bucolic. 


» DUSK 


Photographer Helmut Newton 
was born in Berlin, and his nude 
portraits (which have graced 

the pages of many a PLAYBOY) 
are celebrated at Newton 

Bar. Sophisticated patrons, 
Cohibas balanced between 

their lips, mingle among leather 
chairs, marble walls and 


larger-than-life photographs of 
supermodels (below).... Get din- 
ner, then dance at Cookies, the 
club to beat, where the Cookies 
Cream restaurant swings late 
into the night. 


> DAWN 


Holy shit, you're starving. 
Currywurst (sliced pork sau- 
sage served hot with fries and 
curried ketchup) is the Berlin 
stoner-food staple. Happily, 
24-hour kiosks are all over the 
place.... You could use a good 
schvitz. Recoup at Badeschiff 
(translation: “bathing ship”), 
aswimming pool in a recycled 
cargo ship floating on the river 
Spree. To keep things social, 
there's a DJ, a bar and—come 
winter—a coed naked sauna. 


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Trainspotting's pre- 
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before the drugs. 


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THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM HANDWRITTEN 


\ 


| THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM, 


Jersey rockers mix the 
Boss and the Clash on 
their new album. 


| THE WALKING DEAD , 


The zombie series 
really finds its bite in 
the second season. 


BMW Motorrad 
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THE DISH 
e d 


MARY'S VINEGAR CHICKEN 


THE SPOT 
em m 


THE PIKEY 


» Nightlife impresarios 
Sean MacPherson and Jared 
Meisler are behind many of 
L.A.s most enduring high- 
concept restaurants and bars, 
from mod diner Swingers to 
tequila temple El Carmen to 
constructivist vodka mill Bar 
Lubitsch. They went across 
the pond for the inspiration 
for their latest venture, trans- 
forming Hollywood watering 
hole Ye Coach and Horses into 
a hipster fantasy of a Brit- 
style gastropub. The interior 
is straight out of a Guy Ritchie 
movie (the name is Brit slang 


for gypsy, a la Brad Pitt's 
character in Snatch), and 
the wood-paneled space is 
loaded with photos of Brit- 
ish baddies and paintings 
of maharajas. MacPherson 
and Meisler have installed 
a Michelin-starred English 
chef (formerly of New York's 
Spotted Pig) behind the 
stoves and stocked the two 
bars with top-shelfbooze and 
beer. Reserve a table for din- 
ner, and afterward make your 
way to the back bar before the 
crowds start lining up at the 
velvet rope outside. 


> America’s most popular protein just might be its blandest. 
Which is why it's our duty to share with you a simple trick invented 
in France and recently perfected at L.A. gastropub the Pikey. Here, 
chef Ralph Johnson sears the bird until it's a crispy golden brown 


and then spikes it with a bracing, buttery, sweet-tart sauce. 


Ingredients 


• 2tbsp. olive oil 

* 1 chicken, 3% lbs., 
quartered 

• salt 

• freshly ground black 
pepper 

• 2105р. butter 

* 4cloves garlic, 


peeled and halved 


Cooking Instructions 


i Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a 
| large ovenproof skillet, heat olive oil 


over medium-high heat until smoking. 


: Season chicken with salt and pepper. 
: Place chicken pieces skin-side down in 
: thepanand sear until golden brown, about 
: five minutes. Add butter and garlic cloves 


and cook two minutes more. Add vinegar 
(carefully). Turn chicken over and put pan 


: in oven. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes or until 
: aninstant-read thermometer indicates 
| 160 degrees. Garnish with basil. Serve 
i with french fries or mashed potatoes. 


• 1сир sherry vinegar 


* fresh basil leaves 


DINNER | | The globe-trotting Atlanta-born singer-songwriter 
WITH CAT POW E R dishes on her favorite foods in Paris 
» "When you grow up eating barbecue from kinder- 


garten on, you develop quite an affection for food, 
and I love eating in Paris. When I was recording 


It's simple, pure, clean, delicious. Go to Le Res- 
taurant at L'Hotel if you have money to burn. The 
frog-leg balls are a lit- 


there I ate at L'Homme Tranquille almost every е too much for me ` t sucks Café de Flore 
other day for a year. Louise, the owner's daughter, but a nice trick to play + 9951 have onions 
plays the best garage music, and her beau is the on a hater. At Café de : OF Capers, but fuck it, 
chef. Order the chicken with honey and coriander. Flore I always get. !fyou’re having cham- 
Enishi in Montmartre has a female sushi chef who caviar and a glass of. Pagneand caviar in 

: France, life’s pretty 


gives love to every plate, every slice, every flavor. champagne. 


damn good. Period." 


The latest album from Cat Power, a.k.a. Chan Marshall, is Sun 
(Matador), her first release in four years. 


! ۱ 
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THE NEW 
HIGHBALL 


» The highball is one category of 
cocktail you don't need a dog-eared 
copy of Jerry Thomas's 1862 Bar- 
tenders Guide to master. Essentially 
booze and a mixer over ice in a tall 
glass, it doesn't get much easier. 

(If you've made a rum and Coke, 
you can make any highball.) Bet- 

ter bartenders across the country 
are taking the highball higher, with 
excellent booze and just a bit more 
thought. We turned to Jason Kosmas, 
co-founder of New York's mixologi- 
cal mecca Employees Only, author 
of Speakeasy and now beverage 
director of Marquee Grill in Dallas, 
to school us on new and improved 
classics he serves at his bars. 


Ыы ; 
|" 


DARK & 
STORMY 


The addition of gin- 
ger liqueur doubles 
the spicy punch of 
this classic Carib- 
bean cocktail. 


2 oz. Gosling's Black 
Seal rum 


2 oz. ginger beer 


за oz. freshly squeezed 
lime juice 

3/4 oz. ginger liqueur such 
as Domaine de Canton 


Garnish with a sprig of 
mint and a lime wedge. 


2| TIFOSI 


Campari and sweet 
vermouth make an 
americano. Kosmas 
adds orange soda to 
create the tifosi, Ital- 
ian slang for "rabid 
soccer fan.” 


loz. Campari 
loz.sweet vermouth 


2-3 oz. San Pellegrino 
Aranciata orange 
soda 


Garnish with an 
orange slice. 


PRESBYTERIAN 


Kosmas switches 
in rye in this wryly 
named drink typically 
made with scotch. 


2 oz. 100-proof rye 
whiskey 


2 oz. ginger beer 


34 oz. freshly squeezed 
lime juice 

3402. simple syrup 
Garnish with a lime 


wheel and а sprig of 
mint. 


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what to wear 


THE NEW 
POWER SUIT 


The double-breasted 
suit is back, and no, you 
don't have to be a 1930s 

mobster or Pau Gasol 

to look good in one. It 
used to be that verti- 
cally challenged guys 
were dissuaded from 
donning the dapper 

cut, but designers from 
Burberry to Tom Ford to 
Zegna are playing fast 
and loose with that rule. 
With a slimmer—but not 
too slim—fit, the modern 
double-breasted suit 

-y | now comes in styles 


appropriate for men 

who fall into the cate- "e 

"А gory between Hipster in expert opinion 
> а Skinny Suit and Roch- 


ester Big and Tall. With A DESIGNER 
exaggerated lapels and DECONSTRUCTS THE 


an all-around rakish 
R ocal the new DÊ ê DOUBLE-BREASTED 
the suit to put on when SUIT 
you want to stand out 
from the pack. > Florence, Alabama-based menswear 
—Adam Tschorn designer Billy Reid is a dude's designer, 
making handsome clothes with exact- 
ing American craftsmanship. He has 
also garnered a handful of design awards 
and has collaborated with K-Swiss on 
a sneaker line. And he has a thing for 
double-breasted suits. He not only loves 
wearing them but also makes updated ver- 
sions that take the eye-catching cut from 
old-school to modern cool. Here he breaks 
down the new double breasted. 


INSPIRATION 
“I've got an old photograph of [Louisiana 
governor and U.S. senator] Huey Long in 
a double-breasted suit on my inspiration 
board. Му great-grandfather was Long's 
personal attorney." 


PROPORTION DISTORTION 
"There used to be so much extra fabric 
that if you wore the jacket unbuttoned 
it looked as though you were wearing a 
tent. We play with the length of the jacket, 
which is going to be a bit higher on a 
younger guy, and we raise the armholes.” 


SIZE DOESN'T MATTER 
“It's a flattering cut for someone who is 
tall. But if it's cut simmer, your height 


Heirloom tailored Anderson doesn't matter. 


double-breasted suit, $1,595, 
Avery shirt, $225, thin tie, 
$95, and Gulch loafer, $350, 
all by Billy Reid. 


GBXshoe com 


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У STYLE 


34 


classic look 


THE ART 
SCHOOL COOL 
OF JACKSON 
POLLOCK 


> Of all the badass, hard-drinking 
abstract expressionists, Jackson 
Pollock was the most concrete 
about his personal style: stripped 
down, working class and unabash- 
edly virile. He's the reason you'll 
find art students the world over— 
not to mention superstars such as 
contemporary conceptual artist 
Matthew Barney—wearing well- 
worn boots, sturdy denim jeans 
and a T-shirt. A work shirt acces- 
sorized with a filterless cigarette 
was about as dressed up as Pollock 
got. While the cigarette is by no 
means essential, his aesthetic is 
right for any guy who wants to 
dress casually—and artfully. 


JEANS 
Waxed straight-leg jeans, 
$175, by David Bitton. 


SHIRT 
Cotton tee, $34, 
by Alternative Apparel. 


SHOES 


Loop distressed boots, 
$135, by Bed Stü. 


MODERN SHOES 
FOR MODERN МЕМ 


u =з ООШ T 


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+ 
4 


4 v A W щш» —— $41 
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Y ENTERTAINMENT 


-— 


36 


movie of the month 
GANGSTER SQUAD 


By Stephen Rebello 


» Gangster Squad, the all-star crime flick 
setin 1940s and 1950s L.A., features Ryan 
Gosling, Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie 
and Giovanni Ribisi as a secret team of 
cops doing bloody battle with power- 
ful East Coast mobster Mickey Cohen, 
played by Sean Penn. Don't confuse the 
new gangland movie with a gritty, noir- 
ish period thriller along the lines of 
L.A. Confidential. “It's just a fun, super- 
entertaining movie with tons of laughs,” 
says director Ruben Fleischer. “The style 
is a fresh take on a classic genre. It feels 
like the Western The Magnificent Seven, 
not your father’s gangster movie.” The 
Zombieland director assures us his new 
movie is also bloody and action-packed. 
“The gangsters are bad, tough, formi- 
dable dudes who could take out anyone 
or anything, including zombies,” says 
Fleischer. “Sean’s the heavyweight, and 
his intensity is really something. Our 
working relationship ended up being bet- 
ter than I could ever imagine.” 


(~ 


Wn 


RICHARD JENKINS BRAD PITT JAMES GANDOLFINI RAY LIOTTA 


| 
/ICUMS at 


IAI L 


na 


DVD of the month 


AMERICAN HORROR 
STORY: THE COMPLETE 
FIRST SEASON 


» The scary good debut of FX's hit horror-drama 
anthology series focuses on infidelity as we 
follow the Harmon family—Ben, Vivien and their 
teen daughter—after they move into a restored L.A. 
mansion for a fresh start. The freak show awaiting 
them includes an entity in a black bondage suit who 
impregnates Vivien, and Jessica Lange as a twisted, 
meddling neighbor. (BD) Best extra: A guided tour of 
this haunting house. YY Y! — Robert B. DeSalvo 


CRIMINAL CRED 


» Oneofthe harder acting jobs is play- 
ingathug. Why? Because, to be honest, 
most actors are girlie men. They wear 
makeup and pretty clothes and they 
can't change a tire without a stuntman. 
And yet actors love pretending to be bad. 
In Killing Them Softly, set during 2008's 
financial meltdown, two lowlifes stick 
up a Mob-protected poker game. The 
movie's big-name stars thrive on tough- 
guy roles, but which one will be the most 
convincing? We grade the thuggish- 
ness of four actors who have made their 
bones being something they're not. 


urn 


, 


- "ee 
EE Y 
tease frame 


SIENNA GUILLORY 


> Sienna Guillory stripped down for 
the unconventional The Principles 

of Lust (pictured). Will fanboys be so 
lucky when she reprises her role as Jill 
Valentine in Resident Evil: Retribution? 


must-watch TV 


FIVE MOST 
INTRIGUING 
NEW SHOWS 


By Josef Adalian 


> Like tributes in The Hunger 
Games, most of this fall’s flood 
of new series will quickly perish. 
But for now, let’s stay hope- 
ful: We've found five intriguing 
freshmen worth keeping an eye 
on. The year’s best new drama 
may be CBS’s Elementary, a 
radical retelling of the Sherlock 
Holmes legend that imports the 
famed detective to 21st century 
New York City, turns him into 
a recovering druggie and gives 
him afemale Watson (Lucy Liu). 
Sounds cheesy, but snappy writ- 
ing and a riveting performance 
from Jonny Lee Miller (Dexter) 
make this the most interesting 
new CBS crime drama since CSI. 
Reboot aficionados should also 
keep an eye on Arrow, about 
DC Comics crime fighter Green 
Arrow. It’s on the CW, so expect 
our hero's love life to get as much 


book of the month 


© LYNN QUAYLE 


LeRoy Neiman: 
ALL TOLD 


> The late artist was one of PLAYBOYS 
greatest contributors, having graced 
these pages with thousands of paint- 
ings and illustrations. Neiman’s life 
was as colorful as his art, as this rol- 
licking memoir confirms. As anyone 
who met him could tell you, he was 
a gifted raconteur, and his wry voice 
comesthrough in his anecdotes about 
Muhammad Ali and Andy Warhol. 
The images aren't bad either. Y Y Y Y 


THE MINDY PROJECT 


attention as his villain vanquish- 
ing. For great acting, ABC's 
riveting thriller Last Resort 
gives us the always amazing 
Andre Braugher as a nuclear- 
sub captain who goes rogue after 
sensing a government conspir- 
acy. Also thick with paranoia is 
NBO's J.J. Abrams- produced 


REVOLUTION 


Revolution, set in the dys- 
topian world that emerges 15 
years after a global blackout 
renders most mechanical things 
obsolete. It's a great premise 
but, based on the pilot, shak- 
ily executed. Not everything's 
deadly serious this season. 
Fox's The Mindy Project lets 


video game of the month 


а 
5$ 
u,» 


ELEMENTARY 


Mindy Kaling (who quit The 
Office to headline her own show) 
play doctor—specifically, an ob- 
gyn whose pathetic personal 
life provides endless comic fod- 
der; think Bridget Jones meets 
New Girl. Sadly, it's alousy year 
for new comedies, but Kaling’s 
show is a very funny exception. 


BORDERLANDS 2 


By Jason Buhrmester 


» Part Mad Max, part Saturday morning 
cartoon and part LSD trip, Borderlands is 
the most fun world in video games today. 
The biggest laughs in Borderlands 2 (360, 
PS3) come from the characters, an odd gal- 
lery of mutants and jive-talking robots, and 
from the wild action, delivered through an 
arsenal bigger than any previous game's. 
(The game's creators claim the official 


weapon count is “870 gajillion.”) Those 
weapons come in handy as you cross the 
postapocalyptic planet battling packs of 
bloodthirsty bandits and bizarre creatures 
on your mission to defeat Handsome Jack, 
boss of the Hyperion Corporation. Take 
on the fight solo or enlist a friend to join 
in co-op mode. Don't worry—there аге 
enough guns for everyone. YY Y Y 


37 


38 


У RAW DATA | 


lo 


PERCENTAGE 

OF PEOPLE WHO 
WOULD RATHER 
GIVE UP SEX 

FOR A WEEKEND 
THAN SPEND IT 

- WITHOUT THEIR- 
> IPHONE. 


SIGNIFICA, INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS 


DO N J 1 9 HARB E Increase in the 
average cost of 
MEN WHO DRINK | ۳ | 5 WI i H a college degree 
9 105 over the past 
~ e 
cups уд“ АМ | О n E 30 

coffee 

re ` | Ofthe 112 messages a corporate e-mail TIMES YEARS. 


user sends and receivesin atypical 
workday, about 17 contain gossip. 


of New York’s 

911 calls are 
accidental 
“POCKET DIALS.” 


Time it Number of 
CO takes a 90 
C mph pitch 
to travel the 


attempts 
needed to 


crack the 


ве ee u 60.5 feet to average- Employees who ` MORE 
Percentage of U.S. home plate. ie | exercise earn Up tO THAN 
adults who have strength ; THOSE 
sleepwalked. MILLISECONDS password. | da 


HUGH HEFNER 


— THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 


BUY IT NOW! 


CALL 1-800-423-9494 OR GO TO PLAYBOYSTORE.COM TO ORDER. 
$29.95. DVD. 124 MINUTES. RATED R. www.hughhefnerplayboyactivistrebel.com 


=MANTRACK 


Kan THE BEST OF EVERYTHING 


AUTO — 


General 
Motors 
debuts the 
Corvette at its 
Motorama on 
January 17, 


The Vette ushers in a 
new road-racing golden 
age in America. 


oe 


» More than any other auto- 
mobile, Chevrolet's Corvette has 
mirrored the spirit of American 
rebellion over the years. When it 
appearedinthe 1950s it signified 
the birth ofanew adventurism. In 
the 1960s it stood for sex, speed 
and danger. The 1970s: success 
and style. The 1980s: excess and 
bad style. And so on. To find 
out what the 60th-anniversary 


9 
VS ul 


cv T gus 


Ro 


Chevy offers all 
four crewmen of 
Apollo 12 gold 
Corvettes 


The third- 
gen Stingray 
sets the 
19705 styling 
standard 


convertible Vette (pictured 
above right, along with an origi- 
nal 1953 model) is all about, we 
snagged an exclusive first drive. 
On the road the car handled like 
a sturdy everyday commuter with 
secret powers lurking underneath 
the hood. On Autobahn Country 
Club's 3.6-mile, 19-turn race- 
track south of Chicago, we cutthis 
baby loose: crisp steering, furious 


q^ feo" 


gi 
тте 


gue 


"Faceman” Peck 
drives a Vette on 
The A-Team. 


torque, hair-raising velocity. The 
stats: 427 V8, 505 hp, 190 mph top 
speed. A retro-cool manual is the 
only option. Like its predeces- 
sors, this Corvette comes loaded 
with cultural significance: We 
are a nation obsessed with toys, 
and this is the best toy $75,925 
can buy—the most powerful con- 
vertible Corvette ever, hitting 
showrooms now. 


ee ее 


0 i 


Still the Amer- 
ican sports 

car to beat, 
the Vette wins 
its class at Le 
Mans in June 


John Goodman tire 
irons a Vette in The Big 
Lebowski 


41 


SEE IT ALL! 


FOR THE FIRST TIME, you can join your favorite Girls Next Door for a wild time 
at the Playboy Mansion. See all six fun-filled seasons on 17 DVDs. Includes bonus 
scenes and commentary. VISIT amazon.com 


© 2012 Playboy 


iPLAYB OY Playmates, celebrities and articles 


EVERY PLAYBOY EVER 
FROM ISSUE #1 10 NOW 


ON YOUR IPAD, MAC OR WINDOWS PC. 


" m G e ET ди 
B Kcd 


RD 
GEORGE PELECANOS 


2 2197 q 
PLAYBO 7 


ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN Y 


, ANNIVERSARY 


f 
FEATURING , 
, THE INTERVIEW. “CHRIS WALLACE 


_ SEX IN CINEMA: MORE STARS GONE NAKED 


FOR YOUR GALA “ HOLLYWOOD'S 
ATTENTION 
PLUS " KARDASHIAN 
ISSUE Д TAKES IT ALL OFF 
0) STEPHEN NORMAN 
од ЈЕ а МЕН 
NEW FICTION | 
Ben ) JIMMY KIMMEL 
OPEFUL AND 
BICHARDSON A LOVE STORY 


PLUS: 
IN PHOENIX 


/ 200: К 
| NT HARRISON 
b CLASSIC XMAS CARTOONS 


А 


j MAUREEN GIBBON 
۵ COLLEGE BASKETBALL 


E MANTRACK 


Bi THE BEST OF EVERYTHING 


AUTO — 


TRUCKIN’ 


SUVS GO LUXURY A O 


frontman Brian 
Johnson “was 


JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE absolutely 


fixated on 


> Ever since Jeep released its first drive) and can option up to $61K with MOONE 
Grand Cherokee, in 1992, once rough- the all-wheel-drive, hemi-powered 

and-rugged trucks have continued to SRT8 (zero to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds, 

go luxe. The finely appointed 2012 top speed of 155 mph). Below you'll find 

Grand Cherokee is greatly improved. the latest SUV concepts from the most 

It starts as low as $27K (rear-wheel exotic names in motoring. 


u _‏ کے 


HIGHWAY ТО HELL 


» Fresh off the highest-grossing 
rock tour ever, AC/DC vocalist Brian 
Johnson is indulging his second 
love—speed. Johnson's first ride: a 
1959 Ford. “It wasn't exactly a chick 
magnet,” he recalls. Today his garage 
holds, among other autos, a Rolls- 
Royce Phantom, a 1928 Bentley, a 
Ferrari 458 and the 1965 Lola racer 
pictured below. For more stars and 
cars, pick up Rockin' Garages, out in 
November ($35, Motorbooks). 


Lamborghini's Urus shares architec- 
ture with the next-gen Audi Q7. Should 
this raging bull go into production, it's 
likely to pack 600 hp. A hybrid is also 
rumored. When: possibly 2016. Price: 
an estimated $200,000. 


Maser's Kubang, based on a future 
Grand Cherokee platform (а Jeeperati!), 
is likely to hit in 2014. Expect luscious 
Italian leather and a gorgeous exhaust 
note. Power: 425-plus hp V8. Price: an 
estimated $100,000. 


Britain's most esteemed carmaker 
unveiled its big bruiser, the EXP 9F con- 
cept, last spring. “Slightly smaller than a 
Manhattan apartment,” said one critic. 
When: possibly 2016. Power: 600 hp 
W412. Price: an estimated $175,000. 


LAMBO SUV 


MASERATI SUV 
BENTLEY SUV 


THE FREEDOM TO RIDE 
IS MORE IMPORTANT 
THAN ANY BIKE WE 


COULD EVER BUILD. 


IN SUPPORT OF OUR NATION'S MILITARY, VICTORY" IS AUCTIONING AN 
AUTOGRAPHED VICTORY CROSS COUNTRY; USED IN THE 2013 VICTORY 
PHOTO SHOOT. ALL PROCEEDS BENEFIT OPERATION GRATITUDE: 


_ > 
OPERATION GRATITUDE 


SENDING CARE PACKAGES TO U.S. MILITARY 


Victory Motorcycle 


PROMOTION 


RAQUEL POMPLUN 


Miss April 2012 


Originally from San Diego, 
Raquel became a Victory” Girl 
after winning our 2013 Cover 
Model Contest. She is an aspiring 
biochemist and an accomplished 
ballerina who is a self-proclaimed 
“freak for classical ballet” She's 
proud to support Operation 
Gratitude and adds, “truly, from 
the bottom of my heart, I want to 
say thank you 一 for being the heart 


and soul of our country” 


和 人 MOLLDTIA 


NOILOWOUd 


PROMOTION 


NE 


XN 
57 


— 


2. MANTRACK 
Ml rue sest or svssvreme ouorFrrER 一 


BRAKE 
LOOSE 


Everything you need to 
know to get fast and furi- 
ous on a fixed-gear bike 


* CUT THE BRAKES 


Fixed-gear bikes are a 
study in simplicity—and 
steely nerves. Built with no 
brakes or gears, these bikes 
come with the entire drive- 
train connected, including 
therear wheel, crank set 
and pedals, meaning there 
is no free wheel and no 
coasting. As long as you're 
moving, so are the pedals. 


» RIDE HARD 


The lack of gears and 
brakes makes a fixed-gear 
bike easy to maintain, but 
count on alearning curve 
to ride one. You'll use your 
legs and body weight to 
slow down, stand to pedal 
uphill and slide to a stop at 
busy intersections—white 
knuckles and all. 


* FRAME UP 


There are three ways to 
buy a fixed-gear bike, says 
John McDonell of San 
Francisco's Market Street 
Cycles. “You can buy а 
complete bike, you can buy 
aframe and fork and build 
itup, or you can find 

a vintage frame, paint it 
and put it together with 
top-notch parts." 


* STARTING LINE 


McDonell suggests going 
with a prebuilt bike such 
as the Jamis Sputnik (pic- 
tured). At $700, it's in the 
mid- to high-price range 
for fixed-gear bikes, but its 
welded steel frame is 
tough enough to take on 
potholes and sewer grates. 
“It's a solid, quality bike 
that will last along time,” 
says McDonell. —Wil O'Neal 


MANTRACK 


` THE BEST OF EVERYTHING 


TECH — 


SHOOT TO THRILL 


» The 81 seals inside 

the Pentax K-30 ($899, 
pentaxwebstore.com) keep 
the mechanics safe from 

rain and dust on your 

outdoor adventures. With 
improved autofocus and 
shake-reduction technology, as 
well as a 16-megapixel image 
sensor and 20 shooting modes, 
it's the camera your iPhone 
wants to be. 


LISTEN UP 


» Chances are you're using 
the wrong headphones. 
Those hefty models are 
designed to be worn ina 
recording studio, not on the 
subway. Switch to Incase's 
Sonic ($149, goincase.com), 
a lightweight version that 
uses 40-millimeter drivers 
to deliver superb audio and 
includes a built-in micro- 
phone and controls foriPhone, 
iPad and iPod. Memory-foam 
ear cups seal out noise while 
remaining breathable. 


SMALL WONDER 


> Our rule: A man’s cell phone samsung.com) runs the latest version 
should fit in his pocket and neverbe ofAndroid and crams an eight-mega- 

clipped to his belt. The Samsung Gal- pixel camera and 4.8-inch HD display 
аху S III (about $200 with contract, into a device just 8.6 millimeters thick. 


| EARTH 
| SHAKERS 


» Most speakers look like dull, plastic cubes. Well 
Rounded Sound builds its gorgeous Corgi line 
($799, wellroundedsound.com) from eco-friendly 
| Finnish birch. The lightweight speaker cones 

| have helpful sound-dampening properties, and 
the cylindrical shape reduces distortion. 


MEMORY 
MONSTER 


» Fall marks the arrival ofthe new TV 
season and with itthe death of our social 
life. To keep up with every episode, TiVo's 
Premiere XL4 DVR ($399, tivo.com) can 
record four shows at once. All those hours of 
Breaking Bad are stored in two terabytes of 
memory capable of holding 300 hours of HD 
programming. The XL4 also streams video 
from Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon, giving 
you more reasons to stay on the couch. 


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FRANCOFILE 


Talking With 
Harmony 
Korine 


by James Franco 


Considered by many to be a master of cutting- 
edge cinema, Harmony Korine first shocked 
audiences and the film industry when he wrote 
the screenplay for Kids, which Larry Clark 
directed and which launched the careers of 
Chloé Sevigny and Rosario Dawson in 1995. 
He followed that with the unconventional and 
controversial Gummo, earning the respect of 
fellow filmmakers Werner Herzog and Gus Van 
Sant while alienating many theatergoers with 
graphically violent and sometimes incomprehen- 
sible scenes. Korine has continued to confound 
Hollywood by making movies and documen- 
taries meant to please himself, with a blissful 
ignorance of the box-office consequences. 


FRANCO: We're doing this movie Spring 
Breakers together, about a group of col- 
lege girls who rob a restaurant to fund 
their spring break. Where did the idea 
come from? 
KORINE: I saw pictures of these girls, 
spring break girls or something, and I 
imagined what it would be like seeing 
girls in bikinis with ski masks and guns. 
I thought, Wow, that's a cool image. How 
could that be a reality? I thought spring 
break would be the only place. Really 
quickly, over maybe just one or two days, 
I started writing the outline. I thought to 
send it to you—which I never, ever do. I 
never send anybody something before it's 
actually written—but it was just the idea. 
FRANCO: I loved the world of it. I just 
wanted one level of it to feel real. I loved 
the gloss and everything on the top, but 
make the murders real. Then you went 
off and wrote it. 
KORINE: I jumped on an airplane, and 
it was spring break. I checked into a hotel 
and wrote it in 10 days or something 
ILLUSTRATION BY RAÚL ALLÉN 


while teenagers were listening to Taylor 
Swift and vomiting on my front door. I'd 
gone to the wrong place, Daytona Beach, 
because when I was a kid that's where 
they all went. It was just fat bikers and 
lesbians everywhere. Some woman in a 
stationery shop or whatever—she was like 
a bodybuilder—said, "Spring break hasn't 
been here since the 1980s or the early 
1990s. It's in Panama City." So I jumped 
on an airplane, went to Panama City and 
checked in to the Holiday Inn. It was like 
ground zero for spring break. It was may- 
hem. It was so disgusting—people fucking 
everywhere and puking, music all night. 
It was impossible for me to write or focus. 
It was like living in hell. 

FRANCO: Tell me about the specifics of 
Kids, your first movie. 

KORINE: That one is such a fluke. I was 
straight out of high school when I wrote it. 
When I met the director Larry Clark, I was 
going to NYU. It was my first semester. I'd 
moved up from Nashville and was living in 
my grandma's house. I was in a dramatic- 
writing program. I used to make short films 
in high school, but I didn't want to go to 
film school because I understood the basic 
technical ideas. I knew how to make films. 
FRANCO: Blockbuster refused to carry Kids. 
KORINE: That was exciting to me. I 
loved it. I was happy because people were 
talking about it. Honestly, the whole thing 
with Kids was that I was excited it made 
so much noise because then 1 could make 
my own movies; I got to make Gummo. To 
this day I feel the same way. I don't care 
all that much if you like what 1 do. I want 
people to love what 1 do; I want an audi- 
ence. You always hope that people like it 
more than they dislike it, but 1 don't really 
sit around and think about it. 

FRANCO: Because your movies are unusual 
you've said, “I make it and I want people to 
like it, but I'm also in a place where my idea 
of success is not if the biggest number of peo- 
ple like it." Why make movies for theatrical 
audiences if that's your attitude? You're con- 
nected to the art world, and you've shown 
movies at the Whitney Museum. 


KORINE: I always make movies, all of 
them, for the theater because all my 
greatest experiences in life were in movie 
theaters. All my most profound moments 
came from being in a theater and seeing 
things projected. 1 always start with that, 
because that, for me, is the best. 
FRANCO: If it ever became really hard to 
make movies for the theaters, would you 
just say fuck it? 

KORINE: I never wanted to be part of a 
film world. It's all the same to me, the art- 
work, the writing, the books, whatever it is, 
the movies—it's all part of the same idea, 
and it always has been. It's part of a uni- 
fied aesthetic or a unified idea that even a 
scribble on a piece of paper 15 connected in 
some way. There's a relationship between 
them. I want to be able to just do it. I never 
cared about being the best writer or the 
best artist or the best director. I wanted to 
be the best me. 

FRANCO: That relates to what you told 
me about Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 
KORINE: I remembered reading some- 
thing Fassbinder talked about that made 
a huge impression. He mentioned that he 
didn't care about making masterpieces. 
What he was really concerned about was 
making films like emotions, films for dif- 
ferent reasons at different times in his life 
that correspond with emotions or things 
he was going through. He compared it to 
a house. He said some of his films were 
like the floorboards, some were like the 
chimney, some were the kitchen, some the 
front door and some the bathroom. The 
idea was that at the end of your life you've 
amassed enough work that you've built a 
house you can live in and in some way be 
comfortable inside. I remember that hav- 
ing an impact on me, because I understood 
what he was saying. A lot of times people 
are just chasing this one thing. For me, it 
is important that at the end of my life I've 
put enough stuff out there that it has some 
type of meaning and some type of an effect. 
It all says everything and it all says noth- 
ing. That's the thing. What does your work 
mean? It means everything and nothing. 


49 


ни 54 


50 


thought, after 40 years, I 
finally understood women. 
Then 1 started reading 
Fifty Shades of Grey, the first 
in a trilogy of S&M novels 
that has sold more than 
10 million copies, mostly 
to suburban housewives. I was not 
shocked by the rough sex. I was not 
shocked by the flogging, the collars 
or the chains. I was surprised that the 
characters didn't have intercourse 
until chapter eight. I have no idea how 
many chapters there are, since I didn't 
finish the book, but the only way a porn 
novel should wait until chapter eight 
for sex is if the previous chapters are 
titled “Blow Job One,” "Blow Job Two," 
"Blow Job Three," "Blow Job Four," 
"Blow Job Five," "Blow Job Six" and 
"Blow Job Seven." 

They are not. Instead, there is no 
significant physical contact until chapter 
three, when Christian Grey and Anastasia 
Steele hold hands. In chapter five they 
kiss. I talked to Angie Rowntree, founder 
and chief executive of Sssh.com, who 
told me that the women-friendly porn 
she shoots for her site is heavy on plot 
and dialogue. Women, I was discovering, 
have way too much free time. If men had 
to wait that long to get to the good parts 
in our porn, none of us would have time 
to even make porn. 

I feel bad for women. In order to get 
off, they have to weed through some 
terrible writing. We men can watch 
three minutes on YouJizz.com and 
then use the rest of the hour to read 
Ulysses. Do women lack imagination? 
Do they really need to be told that 
the 21-year-old virgin in Fifty Shades 
of Grey has an inner goddess that's 
brought out by a moody billionaire 
who is damaged from having a crack- 
whore mom? I can do all that fantasy 
math in my head without help. I can 
fantasize that after a porn star has 
sex with me, she loses my number 
and never tells anyone about it. Any 
fantasy you believe would be fun in 
real life, even after your orgasm is 
over, is not a fantasy worth having. 

Also, I didn’t realize how much women 
get off on the idea of powerful men 
becoming obsessed with them because 
the men realize how special they are. In 
our fantasies, women don’t care about 
us. In mommy porn we spend a lot of 
time finding out everything about the 
woman, such as the fact that Anastasia 
Steele likes Twinings English Breakfast 
tea. In our porn we care so little about 
the guy that we often don’t see his face. 

ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL BLOW 


GUY'S GUIDE 


Our fantasy is that some women are 
nymphos who need sex from anyone 
and if we are in the right place at the 
right time, we'll get a chance. We do 
not kid ourselves that we’re special. In 
mommy porn there are a lot of guys 
saying, “What I love about you is that 
you don’t know how beautiful you are.” 
In guy porn there are a lot of women 
saying, “I need cock.” 

You would think that with all those 
precoital pages the female 
sexual ideal would be 
more complicated and 
nuanced than our two-dimensional sex 
dolls in three-minute videos. But no. 
There’s a scene in Fifty Shades of Grey 
in which the billionaire has sex with 
the virgin, after which she falls asleep. 
He promptly plays Bach on the piano 
while wearing only pajama pants. 
Women, it seems, want to have sex with 
a supergay man. 

But for all that is wrong with 
mommy porn, there is something 
unbelievably right. The one thing 
men and women completely agree on 
is the one thing we thought we felt 
differently about: sex itself. Women 
may need a lot of crappy backstory, 
but once the sex gets going it’s the 
exact same kind we like. During their 
first sexual encounter, Grey tells the 
virgin, “I want to fuck your mouth.” 
And it works. Yes, it takes a number 
of long, boring chapters to get there, 
but then he is indeed fucking her 


JOEL STEIN 


— 


MOMMY PORN 


mouth. Sure, I'd let a billionaire who 
gave me clothes, laptops and cars fuck 
my mouth too, but Steele really enjoys 
it. The lesson of Fifty Shades of Grey 15 
that chicks will be into kinky sex if we 
make sure the only thing we ever say 
to them is either how hot they are or 
that we want to fuck their mouths. 

Of course we both like the same 
kind of sex—if not, our species would 
have died out long ago. It's a lesson 
we should have learned 
from all those women 
who saw 975 Weeks and 
read Nancy Friday books. Now that 
mommy porn has taught me that the 
only difference in what the genders 
want involves storytelling technique, 
everything is easy. All I have to do to 
get women to watch porn with me is to 
press PAUSE before it starts and make 
up stories about the actors: "Honey, 
the one in the fishnet body stocking 
has never kissed a man before, and 
she's been invited to the mansion of 
one of southern California's most 
eligible bachelors, Sir Topham Hatt, 
who is having a tea party for his 10 
best naked male buddies, all of whom 
think she’s their soul mate.” Next 
thing you know, my computer is under 
the bed and I’m restraining her with 
neckties and nipple clamps. All it takes 
to get what you want is to slow down 
and pretend to be interested. Come 
to think of it, I'm pretty sure women 
have told me that before. 


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52 


Lampanelli 


ike most couples, when Jimmy Big Balls and I first 
got together, we had only three things on our mind: 
sex, sex and more sex. But as anyone in a relation- 
ship of more than five minutes knows, one of the most 
difficult things a couple can do—besides not running 
away to a deserted island around the holidays—is 
keeping the sexual spark alive. That's when it's time 
to start thinking like a real estate agent. You guessed it: 
location, location, location. 

One of the best ways to take the boredom out of the bed- 
room is to take the sex out of the bedroom. But where do 
you go to get a new pubic perspective on things? No, not 
a hot tub, Ashton. The first and easiest answer is another 
part of the house. Hey, you're paying for the place, why 
not use each room to its full ho-tential? For example, a lit- 
tle bit of spontaneous foreplay against the dishwasher can 
turn your kitchen into an impromptu sex palace. Just hit 
the oN button with her ass and you're getting chores done 
at the same time. However, make sure the two of you are 
alone before you start your lovemaking. Trust me, it's hard 
to explain to Granny why you and your lady of the mo- 
ment were 69-ing on the kitchen table when all she wanted 
was a can of Ensure. 

Some people get their kicks having sex in public places 
like parks, alleyways or, if you're George Michael, the near- 
est men's room. So out you go into the big wide world to 
find a suitable spot for your erotic adventures. You imag- 
ine your penis is Bear Grylls and you want to put him in as 
many exotic locales as possible. 


But public sex ain't what it used to 
be. With modern technology, getting 
busy outside the bedroom presents 
more challenges than ever before. 
There are cameras everywhere, so 
there's always the risk that the quickie 
you and your gal have in the ATM 
vestibule today could become the 
YouTube viral clip of tomorrow. And 
while getting a discreet handy in the 
bleachers at the ball game is great, 
what's not so great is looking up and 
seeing the whole act being broadcast 
on the stadium's JumboTron. 

There are other risks as well. As much fun as public sex is, 
it's also illegal. So choose your locale wisely. Getting banged 
on a Bourbon Street balcony during Mardi Gras will earn 
you a few strands of beads and a possible case of the Cajun 
crabs, but playing "honey and cream" on the teacup ride 
at Disney World will get you a police record and some very 
dirty looks from a guy in a giant mouse suit. 

One terrific, titillating option is the great outdoors. There's 
something undeniably primal about blowing your load before 
God and Smokey the Bear. From the second you step into the 
woods, the sights and sounds of the forest horn you up like a 
coyote in heat. The bees are ready to pollinate, and so are you. 
Why not make the great outdoors the really great outdoors? 
But be careful, Survivorman. Just because you love nature 
docsn't mcan naturc lovcs you. Roll around in thc wrong bush 
while you're getting some bush and you could end up with a 
nasty case of poison ivy in all the wrong places. 

Women love the idea of sex on the beach, but it's usually 
good only in theory and the movies. You think getting sand 
out of your tennis shoes is tough, try getting it out of the 
crack of your ass. Sex in a swimming pool is infinitely bet- 
ter, especially on a hot day when the umbrella drinks are 
flowing. But do yourself a favor: Make it fast, because unless 
your lube is SPF 500, your dick will look like an overcooked 
Dodger Dog in the 11th inning. 

Sometimes you need look no further than your own drive- 
way. No, not in the UPS truck—I'm talking about your car. 
Everyone who went to high school has had sex, been rear- 
ended or at least touched something fun in a parked car. 
Even more exciting is sex in a moving car. There's nothing 
quite as intense as finishing big and slamming on the brakes 
at the same time. But remember, Andretti: Keep both eyes 
on the road. You don't want to pull a Nick Hogan and have 
the car explode before you do. 

Even a run-of-the-mill dinner date can turn into a 
passion-filled public romp. Food can be an amazing aph- 
rodisiac, and if the champagne and oysters don't get her 
loins burning, flashing your American Express black card 
will. When she's ready for a helping of your special brand 
of créme brúlée, pull the oh-so-subtle move of going to the 
bathroom two minutes apart to do the deed. Before you 
grab a stall, though, lock the men's room door. It's a real 
mood killer to have a guy with a case of explosive diarrhea 
on one side of you and a randy senator trying to tap your 
foot with his on the other. 

As for Jimmy and me, we're not the type to take our sexual 
exploits too far outside the home. The closest we come to hav- 
ing sex in an exotic locale is doing it with the "Travel Channel 
on. Let's face it: With our girth, the only nooks and crannies 
we're interested in are the ones in our English muffins. 


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[ thought my girlfriend was too 
fat when we met, but her per- 
sonality and kindness helped me 
overlook her weight. She’s great, 
but after nine months together it 
has become a chore to have sex 
with her. I have to smoke mari- 
juana to get aroused. She tries to 
work out and eat more healthily 
but then gives up. I’ve considered 
ending the relationship. Is there 
a way to stop wanting a more 
attractive woman and settle for 
one who’s pretty on the inside? 
I feel selfish and shallow.—J.B., 
Detroit, Michigan 

Even if your girlfriend lost 
weight, you'd eventually break up 
with her. The relationship has run 
its course; it happens. Continuing to 
feign interest is selfish—“girlfriend” 
is not a job title. And who wants to 
be with someone who has "settled" 
for you? Don’t tell her you're leaving 
because she’s overweight; if that were 
true, you wouldn't have dated her. 


When 1 go out I usually get 
an amaretto sour or a Midori 
sour. My friends make fun of 
me for ordering "girlie drinks." 
I don't like beer, and I've sam- 
pled vodka, gin and whiskey 
and dislike them all. Is there 
a drink that's not as strong as 
those but also not girlie?—W.B., 
St. Louis, Missouri 

Drink what you like; your bud- 
dies will always find something to rib 
you about. But you should challenge 
your palate. There are so many great 
microbrews with such a variety of 
tastes, it's hard to imagine you won't 
find one to your liking. If a bar offers 
flights (samples of a handful of beers, 
usually from light to dark), start there. 
Another suggestion: a margarita in a 
rocks glass. Like your favorites, it's 
sour but not too strong. A simple home 
recipe: Pour two parts 100 percent 
agave silver tequila, one part Coin- 
treau and the juice of half a lime in a 
shaker with ice. Shake, pour over ice 
and garnish with а lime wheel. If it's 
too strong, add a dash of water. 


Napoleon valued the odor of 
unbathed women, and so do 
I. Has a chemist managed to capture or 
synthesize the odoriferous essences? Do 
women find male odor as enticing?—R.W. 
Seattle, Washington 

As the story goes, Napoleon wrote Josephine to 
say, "I will be home in three days. Don't bathe." 
While we recognize the power of scent in bring- 
ing bodies together, there's a fine line between 
sensual and stinky. We suspect most men react to 
body odor the same way women do—sweat can 
be sexy but not so much when it's up your nose. 
In a reality check called The Smell Report (sirc 
.org/publik/smell.html), Kate Fox of the Social 


PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR 


bumped into a former college classmate at a football 
game and we became best buds. He played quarterback 
for our college team, and in sharing war stories, we 
discovered 1 later slept with a girl he’d dated, a cheer- 
leader. 1 don't think he cares, but the three of us are still 
in the same circle. Now another cheerleader he dated is 
flirting with me. We’ve been on a few dates, and though 
I never brought up his name, she asked me how I knew 
him. The thing is, in college he was caught sleeping 
with both girls at the same time. I know this woman 
wants to sleep with me, but it's probably for revenge, so 
I don't know what to do.—T.M., Houston, Texas 

Let's call a time-out, because you're making this play too com- 
plicated. If this woman wanted to sleep with you for “revenge,” 
she’d have sacked you already. Given your friend's justified 
indifference, we doubt that's on her mind. You must have some 
quality that ex-cheerleaders find attractive. 


Issues Research Center in Oxford notes that 
men who think their sweat is an aphrodisiac 
are deluding themselves. They are confusing 
two odors—that of androstenol, which women 
like and is produced by freshly produced male 
sweat, and that of androstenone, which women 
find gross and is produced by male sweat as soon 
as it's exposed to oxygen. The best you can hope 
for is a neutral response to androstenone if the 
woman happens to be ovulating (and not on the 
pill). So the only way guys can rely on BO to get 
laid, Fox writes, is if they are "constantly produc- 
ing fresh sweat and either naked or changing 


their clothes every 20 minutes”—all 
of which could be arranged. You often 
see ads for cologne additives that 
contain androstenol or other phero- 
mones, but studies have found that 
if a woman is close enough to get а 
whiff she's probably already making 
out with you. Notably, neuroscientists 
have documented that a different part 
of the female brain processes the scent 
of a man's sweat produced when he 
was aroused, which may be how your 
girlfriend always seems to know when 
you've been masturbating. 


After the girl I dated in college 
became a widow, we got together 
again. On the two occasions we 
had sex, my penis went limp after 
two thrusts. She dumped me for 
another man. Several years later 
the same thing happened with 
another widow. I’d never met 
the husband of the first woman; 
the husband of the second was 
an acquaintance. I’ve slept with 
two other women (nonwidows) 
without problems. Do men leave 
some sort of phallus-repelling 
substance inside their wives’ vagi- 
nas? If so, what's the antidote»— 
W.K., Los Angeles, California 
Do you expect to meet more wid- 
ows? You don’t give your age, but we 
suppose some men do well with this 
demographic. (Nearly 60 percent of 
< women 65 and older are widowed, 
divorced or otherwise single, versus 
29 percent of men, so hang in there, 
guys.) Because you perform okay with 
women who aren’t widows, we sus- 
pect your anxiety was caused by the 
feeling that you were being watched. 
Let’s hope there are more entertaining 
things to do in the afterlife than that. 


TOMER HANUK. 


| belong to a family-history site 
that offers genetic mapping ofthe 
Y chromosome. What info can I 
expect to glean? Is it a bad idea 
to have your DNA on file?—M.B., 
Austin, Arkansas 

There are no laws regulating what 
companies that collect DNA can do 
with the data, so it comes down to 
trusting their privacy policies. How- 
ever, DNA collected for genealogy 
does not have a documented “chain 
of custody" (i.e., a witness to its collection), so it 
can't legally be connected to you. You can also 
submit your sample under an invented name 
or ask that the sample be destroyed. The Y test 
documents a part of the male sex chromosome 
that is passed from father to son over many gen- 
erations with minor mutations, if any. This can 
be useful in finding your genetic roots because 
it establishes a link to a paternal grandfather 
who lived hundreds of years ago, as well as any 
link to male contemporaries who share your sur- 
name. But it can also wreak havoc by disproving 
а biological connection if a male child along the 


93 


PLAYBOY 


54 


way (including, perhaps, you) was unwittingly 
adopted, such as when a man is the victim of a 
“non-paternity event,” 1.e., adultery. 


Which penis type do women prefer? 
I'm of average length and above-average 
girth and worry about it. I haven't had 
any complaints, but what is the truth?— 
R.R., Bay City, Michigan 

They prefer a penis attached to a guy who 
doesn't worry about what type of penis they prefer. 
Girth is more important than length to stimulate 
the clitoris during intercourse, so you're doing 
well in that department. But no competent lover 
relies on his erection alone. If she likes the entire 
package, she'll like the one between your legs. 


In May you heard from two readers in 
Missouri who were being deprived of 
time with their grandchild; you agreed 
with their assumption that they had no 
legal standing to petition for visitation. 
This is not true, at least not in Missouri, 
and I'm guessing other states have similar 
statutes.—D.Z., St. Louis, Missouri 

Thanks for writing. We should clarify: 
Grandparents who have been cut off can peti- 
tion for visitation rights in nearly every state, 
though 18 require that the parents be unfit and 
19 require the grandparents to prove the visits 
would be in the best interest of the child despite 
parental opposition. Earlier this year the U.S. 
Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from 
an Alabama couple who have been estranged 
from their granddaughters since their son and 
daughter-in-law broke off contact following a 
business dispute. The Alabama Supreme Court, 
in deciding the case, also struck down a statute 
that allowed grandparents to petition for visits. 
It said the law violated parents’ right to decide 
whom their kids socialize with. 


Á female friend says she's been having 
weird dreams about me for a week. She 
dreams she's fucking this guy she likes, 
but during the sex he morphs into me. 
She says she's confused. What does it 
mean? We've been friends for 13 years, 
and she's always said she likes me only as 
a friend.—D.J., Norfolk, Virginia 

She wants to sleep with the guy but is ambiva- 
lent about having a conversation with him. That's 
where you come in. The tell here isn't that she's 
having these dreams but that she's sharing them 
with you. Although it's taken awhile, apparently 
you've grown on her. What should you do? Ask 
her on a date. Do something novel, such as roller- 
skating or visiting an amusement park. Give her 
a chance to see how much fun you have together. 
It may sound contrived, but calling it a (first) date 
can provide a demarcation point if the friendship 
matures into something more complicated. When 
longtime friends fall into relationships, one of 
them usually has an epiphany, while the other 
knew it all along. If she rejects the idea of a date, 
don't worry. She already knows your position, 
and yow're only responding as any interested male 
would. At the very least, it may get her thinking 
about what she wants—and what she needs. 


A guy I've been seeing is a nudist. I'm 
no prude, but I am totally against this. I 


told him I would be uncomfortable going 
places where he knows people. I would, 
however, be open to visiting a nude beach 
where he can enjoy his nakedness and I 
can keep my bathing suit on. What are 
the chances he'll give up this lifestyle for 
me»—B.T., Peoria, Illinois 
Why should he? 


You told a reader in April that it's hard 
to get a "football-player jaw and a square 
face" because you can't "bench-press 
with your face." That's true, but you 
can modify your features. As a former 
college player, I know from experience 
that exercises such as power cleans, jerks, 
snatches and squats force you to stabilize 
every part of the body, including your 
head. By consistently contracting the 
neck muscles, you get a thicker neck; 
combined with fat loss around and below 
the chin, this creates the appearance ofa 
square jaw.—M.C., Knoxville, Tennessee 
We stand corrected on one point: Apparently 
you сат bench-press with your face, on purpose. 
We found a trainer who suggests strengthening 
your neck by lying on your back on a bench, 
steadying a dumbbell on your forehead and 
slowly dropping your head back before pushing 
it upward. Turn over and do the same with the 
weight held against the back of your head. Iso- 
metric exercises can be done anywhere and don't 
require а spotter. Press your palms against your 
forehead and slowly push forward with your 
head against the resistance for a few seconds at 
a time. You can also do this side to side. Football 
players strengthen their necks to absorb blows to 
the head, but neck exercises can also prevent or 
alleviate pain caused by poor posture or tightness 
in the shoulders and back. Further, shoulder 
shrugs and upright rows help strengthen the 
upper back, which adds stability to the base of 
the neck. Always do neck exercises at low speed. 


Р.лувоу has a history of defending 
sexual freedom. However, I share the 
disappointment of other readers with 
your refusal to recognize bisexuality as 
a legitimate sexual orientation. Bisexu- 
als are often marginalized within gay 
and lesbian social spheres, and hetero- 
sexuals can also feel threatened. I’m not 
suggesting anyone responds equally to 
straight or gay erotic stimuli, but bisexu- 
als deserve the same respect and support 
you offer your straight, gay and lesbian 
audience.—B.S., Pooler, Georgia 

The argument is not about freedom or respect 
but science and semantics. We suspect most if 
not all people who consider themselves bisexual 
are mostly homosexual or mostly heterosexual, 
distinctions suggested by two researchers who 
study sexual identity. We have doubts only about 
the existence of a truly bisexual brain. And we 
may be wrong. In an intriguing study pub- 
lished late last year, scientists reported finding 
a few men who display a “bisexual pattern of 
genital arousal” when shown straight and gay 
porn. That 15, both types sent the same amount 
of blood to their genitals, as measured by penale- 
strain gauges. More research 1s needed, but it 
appears some men may actually live on the edge. 


М, master апа І have һаа а BDSM rela- 
tionship for nine years. A few years ago 
my teenage sister visited and brought a 
friend. I had to use the bathroom dur- 
ing a late-night session, and the friend 
came out just as my master was taking 
me in. He and I were both naked. I had 
my hands tied behind my back and was 
gagged. I had welts on my arms, legs, 
torso and butt. The girl saw all this. My 
master apologized then and again in the 
morning. As far as we can tell, she never 
told my sister or anyone else. She is now 
in college and has asked to join us. She 
said seeing me that way made her want to 
live out what 1 did. She says she has kept 
herself “pure” for my master to “use and 
despoil as he chooses.” What I want, aside 
from pleasing my master, doesn't matter. I 
worry we imprinted this girl with a fantasy 
when she was too young. What should we 
do?—J.L., Sacramento, California 

The best way to learn to be a good bottom 
is to spend time on top. Assuming your letter 
isn’t a fantasy (since you don’t mention getting 
permission to write it), tell this young woman 
your safe word and prepare to serve two masters 
until she learns the ropes. 


Every time my friends and I play poker, 
one or two players verbalize what they 
think another player is holding and sort 
through the logic, e.g., “He can’t have 
four of a kind because the case card has 
already been folded.” I have complained 
that this is poor table etiquette because it 
gives an unfair advantage to a player who 
isn’t following the flow. But one friend 
who has played in tournaments says this 
kind of chatter is allowed. What does the 
Advisor say?—R.W., Boca Raton, Florida 

That’s no good. Speculating out loud about 
a hand in progress isn’t allowed in tourna- 
ments, and it’s bad form in private games. 
“Poker isn’t a team sport,” says Blair Rodman, 
co-author of the poker strategy guide Kill Phil 
(lvapoker.com). “How would you like it if you 
were running a bluff on a player who you 
knew would never see through it, and other 
players told him what you were doing?” Play- 
ers are also not allowed to reveal the contents 
of their own hands, ostensibly to prevent cheat- 
ing by collusion. The definition of “reveal” is 
open to interpretation, given that a bluff can 
include hinting at the strength of your hand. 
The World Series of Poker allows players to 
discuss their own hands only if they're the last 
to act during heads-up play. 


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 inter- 
esting, pertinent questions will be presented in 
these pages. Write the Playboy Advisor, 9346 
Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 
90210, or send e-mail to advisor @playboy.com. 
For updates, follow @playboyadvisor on Twitter. 


Y 


2 


When Hugh Hefner founded the 
first Playboy Club in Chicago, he 
wanted a female waitstaff that 
would embody the Playboy fan- 
tasy. The Playboy Bunny was 
born, and 50 years later she lives 
on in our imaginations. With 
more than 200 amazing pho- 
tos of classic Bunnies—along 
with many never-before-seen 
images—50 Years of the Playboy 
Bunny is the definitive work on 
a cultural icon. Go to amazon. 
com to order. (176 pages, $35, 
Chronicle Books) 


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THE PLAYBOY FORUM 


electoral-vote landslide and with the largest popular- 

vote margin of any presidential candidate in 20 years. 
But for all the rhetoric and talk of hope and change, 
Obama became the nation's 44th president because of 
the numbers: He raised more money, registered more 
voters, recruited more volunteers and engendered more 
passion and enthusiasm among his supporters. 

The president faces a dramatically different landscape in 
2012, and many 
of the numbers 
seem to be work- 
ing against him. 

Unemployment 
hovers around 
eight percent, 
and Mitt Romney 
raised $16 mil- 
lion more in May 
than Obama did. 
Billionaires in- 
cluding Sheldon 
Adelson and the 
Koch brothers 
have promised to 
spend hundreds 
of millions to 
defeat the presi- 
dent. But Obama 
has one number 
in his favor that 
could trump ev- 
erything in the 
GOP’s arsenal: 
28, which is the 
projected  per- 
centage of mi- 
norities in the 
2012 electorate. 

Obama cruised to victory with a supermajority among 
minorities and 43 percent of the white vote—the high- 
est since Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection. If his support 
among people of color remains the same, the president 
could shed several points among white voters and still 
win a second term. 

According to the 2010 census, minorities make up 
36 percent of the U.S. population and account for 92 
percent of this nation's population growth. For the first 
time, more black, Hispanic and other minority babies 
are being born in the U.S. than white babies. But as 
the country becomes more diverse, the GOP does not. 
A Pew Research Center poll found that the Republican 
Party is 87 percent white—the same as it was 30 years 
ago. That worked fine in 1976, when 88 percent of 


| п 2008 Barack Obama defeated John McCain in ап 


voters were white. In 2008 that number was 74 percent 
and shrinking. It's estimated that 72 percent of the vot- 
ers in November will be white. 

Long before Barack Obama became the nominee, 
African Americans were the Democratic Party’s most 
loyal constituency, with roughly 90 percent supporting 
the party's nominee in presidential elections. Asians 
currently exceed Hispanics as the country's largest 
group of new immigrants. The bad news for the GOP 

is that half our 
Asian popula- 
tion is or leans 
Democratic, 
compared with 
28 percent who 
lean Republi- 
can. But the 
worse news for 
the GOP is 
among Hispan- 
ics, the nation’s 
largest and fast- 
est-growing 
minority. 
“Every month 
about 50,000 
Latino Ameri- 
can citizens turn 
18 and become 
eligible to vote, 
and the major- 
ity of them vote 
Democrat,” says 
Sylvia Manzano 
of the opinion- 
polling firm La- 
tino Decisions. 
While Latinos 
are expected to 
constitute roughly 10 percent of the 2012 electorate, 
their concentration in swing states gives them outsize 
influence. “The Latino vote is more influential in the 
presidential election than it is in overall American poli- 
tics,” says Simon Rosenberg, president of the progres- 
sive think tank New Democrat Network. “About half 
the states in play have a Latino population big enough 
to make the difference.” 

“It's no secret that Latinos will be the deciding factor 
in this election, and the outcome will have an impact 
on the Latino community for years to come,” Obama 
campaign manager Jim Messina said on a conference 
call with reporters. 

A decade ago Nevada and Colorado tilted Re- 
publican, and New Mexico was a pure toss-up state. 


Now New Mexico is so blue Repub- 
licans aren't even contesting there, 
and Nevada and Colorado lean 
Democratic—thanks almost exclu- 
sively to the Latino vote. Even dur- 
ing the Republican midterm wave of 
2010, the GOP failed to unseat un- 
popular incumbent senators Harry 
Reid in Nevada and Michael Bennet 
in Colorado. 

“The Hispanic vote is a slumbering 
giant that’s been awakened in recent 
cycles,” says Jon Ralston, political col- 
umnist for the Las Vegas Sun. “That 
vote was critical to Obama winning 
the state by 12 points in 2008 and 
even more so for Harry Reid winning 
by five points in 2010.” 

Sylvia Manzano says Florida’s 29 
electoral votes are up for grabs be- 
cause it has the third-largest Latino 
population in the country. Romney 
is expected to do well among Сиђап 
Americans, who account for one 
third of the state’s eligible Hispanic 
voters, but even that is no longer 
a given. Prominent 
Cuban Americans 
such as Gloria Estefan 
and Cristina Saralegui 
have announced their 
support for Obama 
and will likely be cam- 
paign surrogates in 
the Sunshine State. 

Other swing states 
including North Саго- 
lina, Virginia and In- 
diana have new and 
growing Latino pop- 
ulations that, if they 
turn out and vote co- 
hesively, can put these 
states in Obama’s col- 
umn once again. In fact, if Obama 
carries Nevada, Colorado and Vir- 
ginia (where he currently leads in the 
polls), he could lose Florida and Ohio 
and still rack up the 270 electoral 
votes needed to win reelection. 

To be clear, Romney doesn't need 
a majority of Latino votes to win, but 
he has to beat John McCain's 31 per- 
cent. “A Republican probably can't 
win without about 40 percent, mini- 
mum, of the Hispanic and Latino 
vote,” says Larry Sabato, director of 
the University of Virginia's Center 
for Politics. Most independent ana- 
lysts agree. Bush's 44 percent of the 
Latino vote in 2004 helped him carry 
New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and 
Florida. Romney is currently polling 
in the low to mid-20s. 

Romney’s dismal numbers are due, 
in large measure, to his primary cam- 
paign strategy. He called Arizona’s 


FORUM 


harsh new immigration policies a 
model for the nation and made im- 
migration hard-liner Kris Kobach 
one of his top advisors. He not only 
promised to veto the Development, 
Relief and Education for Alien Mi- 
nors Act, he castigated Texas gov- 


ROMNEY DOESN'T NEED 
A MAJORITY OF LATINO 
VOTES TO WIN, BUT 
HE HAS TO BEAT JOHN 
MCCAIN’S 31 PERCENT. 


ernor Rick Perry for giving in-state 
tuition to young undocumented im- 
migrants. Perhaps his biggest insult 
to the Latino community was his full 
embrace of Joe Arpaio, the birther 
and media-hungry sheriff of Mari- 


Has the GOP 
painted itself 


into a corner 
with its harsh 
stance on immi- 
gration? Student 
José Machado 


(left) reacts to 
news of President 
Obama's new 
immigration law, 
while Arizona 
governor Jan 
Brewer (right) 
still talks tough. 


copa County currently under federal 
investigation for racially profiling 
Latinos in Arizona. 

“It's going to be difficult for Rom- 
ney to claw his way back to a respect- 
able showing,” says Simon Rosenberg. 
“He wants to cut public education, get 
rid of health insurance for tens of mil- 
lions of Latinos and pursue an eco- 
nomic agenda that puts rich people's 
interests over those of workers. He's 
also the worst on immigration reform 
that we've seen in the modern era of 
American politics.” 

At a high-roller Palm Beach fund- 
raiser in April, the GOP nominee ac- 
knowledged the problem. “We have 
to get Hispanic voters to vote for our 
party,” Romney said, warning that 
Obama's huge lead among Latinos 
“spells doom for us.” 

The RNC has been doing Hispanic 
outreach, often with laughable re- 


sults. The RNCLatinos.com website 
got off to a rocky start by using a 
picture of Asian children for its main 
image. When visitors were asked to 
register their disappointment with 
the president, Obama won the unsci- 
entific survey 55 percent to 45 per- 
cent. The site came down a day later. 
(It is now active.) 

In mid-June Obama announced 
an executive order that would stop 
the deportation of young undocu- 
mented immigrants brought to the 
U.S. through no fault of their own. A 
Bloomberg poll found that 64 percent 
of likely voters and 65 percent of inde- 
pendents approved of the measure. In 
response to a Latino Decisions survey, 
49 percent of Latinos said the policy 
made them more excited about voting 
for Obama in November. 

Since wrapping up the nomina- 
поп, Romney has toned down his 
over-the-top rhetoric and gener- 
ally steered clear of immigration 15- 
sues. But Obama's move forces his 
hand. Romney can't 
embrace the policy 
without angering his 
base, and he can't 
denounce it without 
further alienating 
Latinos. 

Romney struck 
a conciliatory note 
during a June 21 
speech to the Nation- 
al Association of La- 
tino Elected and Ap- 
pointed Officials and 
made vague promises 
of pushing for the 
comprehensive im- 
migration reform he 
rejected months earlier. “Some peo- 
ple have asked if I will let stand the 
president’s executive action,” Rom- 
ney said. “The answer is that I will 
put in place my own long-term solu- 
tion that will replace and supersede 
the president’s temporary measure.” 

GOP strategist Ed Rollins says Re- 
publicans have to find a way out of 
this mess of their own making or face 
extinction. “If we ever lose the His- 
panic vote the way we’ve lost the Af- 
rican American vote, there’s no way 
we'll win in presidential politics," he 
told The Washington Post. 

If Romney ultimately concludes that 
the Latino vote is a lost cause, he has 
another option: Hold Obama to 35 
percent of the white vote. Considering 
that Walter Mondale pulled roughly 
35 percent of the white vote during 
Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide, 
that’s going to be a pretty steep climb. 


FORUM 


WE’RE ALL HOOKERS 


SHOULD PROSTITUTION BE LEGAL? ISN'T IT ALREADY? 


n Illinois attorney who was moon- 

lighting as a call girl has revived 
discussion about why renting your geni- 
tals is illegal. Reema Bajaj, 26, pleaded 
guilty to a misdemeanor charge of 
prostitution to avoid a felony conviction 
that would have ended her legal career. 
She was busted after police discovered 
e-mails that discussed prices with a cli- 
ent and contained the digital photos 
cops used to identify her. 

Those who advocate for legalization 
often rely on an argument that could 
be called the “universal whore” defense. 
In 2008, for example, after New York 
governor Eliot Spitzer was caught hir- 
ing call girls, University of Chicago law 
professor Martha Nussbaum wrote that 
“all of us, with the exception of the inde- 
pendently wealthy and the unemployed, 
take money for the use of our body. Pro- 
fessors, factory workers, opera singers, 
sex workers, doctors, legislators—all 
do things with parts of their bodies for 
which others offer them a fee.” 

Prostitution is often viewed as good 
girl vs. bad girl, Nussbaum wrote, but 
better explained as educated, profes- 
sional girl with options vs. poor girl 
with few. (The internet has allowed for 
exceptions such as Bajaj and other in- 
dependents who can advertise online 
for clients without the complication of a 


OUR 


© the days of President Reagan 
it has been fashionable to complain 
about the tyranny of our government. 
Advocates of laissez-faire decry state in- 
tervention in our lives—especially as it 
relates to personal freedoms and the func- 
tion of business. But this concern has be- 
come misguided: The federal government 
is now merely an adjunct of money, as it 
is controlled by corporate power. (This is 
true of most state and local governments 
as well.) As a result of the Supreme Court's 
Citizens United decision—which upheld 
corporations' right to unlimited campaign 
spending under the rubric of freedom of 
speech—corporate entities have become 
even more powerful. These giants domi- 
nate and control our lives. Cash rules in 
Washington and in our statehouses. We 
now all dance to the tune of our corporate 
masters. Over the next several issues we 
will profile a few of the corporations that 
have come to dominate our lives. 

One of the ways corporations assert 
their power is through crony capitalism, 
in which markets are neither free nor nec- 
essarily based on competition. As the U.S. 
governments  sixth-largest contractor, 
the McLean, Virginia-based Science Ap- 
plications International Corporation re- 
ceives corporate welfare in several ways. 


pimp.) The conservative columnist Ross 
Douthat handled the counterargument, 
suggesting that “renting out your body 
to satisfy another person's sexual needs 
is a form of self-inflicted violence serious 
enough to merit legal sanction.” 


“ALL OF US, WITH 
THE EXCEPTION OF 
THE INDEPENDENTLY 
WEALTHY AND THE 
UNEMPLOYED, TAKE 
MONEY FOR THE USE 
OF OUR BODY.” 


The comparison of blue- and white- 
collar work to prostitution doesn't reso- 
nate with most Americans, observed 
Will Wilkinson, a political blogger 
for The Economist, because female sex 
workers specifically rent their vaginas 
(although, he observed, it's not illegal 
to lease your uterus). But what about 


hiring out your hand, as a typist might? 
“Could using your hand to give another 
person an orgasm possibly be a form of 
self-inflicted violence?” he asked before 
answering his own question: “Sweet 
charity cannot be transformed into self- 
inflicted violence by a $20 bill.” 

This is all a parlor game, of course, be- 
cause prostitution is unlikely to be legal- 
ized in the United States anytime soon, 
no matter how intelligent the arguments 
or the people arrested for the crime. If 
anything, progressive cities and coun- 
ties might relax their laws, as was done 
decades ago in Nevada. After studying 
the regulation of red-light districts in 
Antwerp, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, 
Ronald Weitzer, a sociology professor at 
George Washington University and au- 
thor of Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit 
Vice to Lawful Business, came up with 
best practices that could make it work. 
They include giving prostitutes the same 
legal rights as other workers, isolating 
the business indoors, licensing brothels 
(but not individuals) and encouraging 
STD tests, as well as forgiving unpaid 
back taxes and purging the criminal re- 
cords of anyone previously convicted of 
the crime, to erase any lingering stigma. 

It's all a little complicated. Anyone know 
a good prostitute lawyer? | —Chip Rowe 


CORPORATE MASTERS 


Ninety-three percent of its revenue is de- 
rived from federal and state contracts. It's 
a business model that's basically recession- 
proof, as government makes up for the 
collapse in private demand with counter- 
cyclical spending. That's how SAIC has 
managed to increase its revenue by nearly 
40 percent since 2007—otherwise known 
as the starting point of the worst economic 
collapse in 80 years. 


'There are also earmarks, $22.7 million 
worth of them since 2007. Almost a third 
of that amount—$6.8 million—came at 
the request of Representative Bill Young 
(R-Fla), whose son just happened to be 
employed by SAIC. 

In the early 2000s, New York City may- 
or Michael Bloomberg's administration 


tasked SAIC with installing CityTime, a 
program that would modernize payroll 
and time-keeping systems for city employ- 
ees. Despite early warnings from the city's 
retiring executive in charge of payroll that 
SAIC was delaying the project to increase 
its billing, the city ended up restructuring 
its contract with the company from a fixed- 
price to an hourly one. That change saw 
CityTime's cost increase from $224 million 
in 2006 to $628 million by 2010. 

The complex scam—which involved 
shell companies, money laundering, kick- 
backs and outright bribery, according to 
prosecutors—finally fell apart last year 
when the first of several federal indict- 
ments were handed down. In March, to 
avoid criminal prosecution that would 
have banned it from working as a govern- 
ment contractor—thus destroying its en- 
tire business model—SAIC agreed to re- 
pay $500 million of the $635 million it had 
received from New York City. 

Don't count on many politicians com- 
plaining about SAIC's business mod- 
el. The corporation doles out plenty of 
campaign contributions (nearly $1.3 mil- 
lion in the last election cycle, split almost 
evenly between both parties) and spent 
$6.4 million on lobbyists in the 2009- 
2010 cycle. —Brian Cook 


FORUM 


READER RESPONSE 


TOUCHY-FEELY 
The groping and ass grabbing of airline 
patrons is the same treatment audiences 


Guards frisk Guns N' Roses fans, 2002. 


at rock concerts have been subjected to at 
major venues since the 1970s (“Prepare 
to Be Groped,” May). It's surprising the 
promoters who initiated these frisks did 
not have to deal with crowds of angry fans. 
But no significant legal action was taken, 
and “security” measures have since spread 
throughout the public and private sectors. 
It's notable that while rock concert attend- 
ees are routinely frisked, you rarely see this 
at folk concerts or other "family" events. 

Allen Kracalik 

Elk Grove Village, Illinois 


I hate the Transportation Security 
Administration almost as much as Jennifer 
Abel does, so this summer I drove 1,200 
miles from Illinois to Florida to attend a 
convention. I wasn't thrilled about the 
road trip, but it was better than being 
treated like a criminal at the airport. 

Steve Irannel 
Naperville, Illinois 


CROP BUSTERS 

'Thank you for your timely piece on Ros- 
coe Filburn, the farmer fined in the early 
1940s for growing too much wheat (“The 
Long Arm of Uncle Sam,” June). The case 
did indeed start a federalism chain reaction 
that has led to Obamacare. If readers want 
to see how the federal government uses the 
commerce clause to supersede state law 
and punish confused citizens, consider how 
the 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich has 
been applied in Montana and elsewhere. 
In Gonzales, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 
that the commerce clause gives the federal 
government the power to prosecute people 
for growing or consuming marijuana even 


ifthe state has legalized it. In 2004 voters in 


Montana legalized medical marijuana, yet 
the feds have not only been busting peo- 
ple who dispense it, they've even charged 
a landlord for renting his property to a 
dispensary. He was sentenced in May to a 
year in federal prison for "maintaining a 
drug-involved premises." 

Alan Ludwig 

Helena, Montana 


Why didn't the court dismiss the case 
against Filburn? By November 1942 the 
United States had been at war for nearly 
a year. We needed all the wheat we could 
raise to feed our troops. Filburn should 
have been rewarded, not punished. 

Jack Driggers 
Indian Trail, North Carolina 

The court was taking the long view in an 
ongoing debate over New Deal programs that 
regulated agriculture. Notably, in May 1941, 
shortly before Filburn harvested his crop, Secre- 
tary of Agriculture Claude Wickard reported in 
a radio address that because of the “uncertain 
world situation, we deliberately planted several 
million extra acres of wheat this year. Farmers 
should not be penalized because they have pro- 
vided insurance against shortages of food.” He 
failed to mention a pending bill that would tri- 
ple the fines for growing surplus wheat. Seven 
days later, Congress approved it. 


Our founders created a federal govern- 
ment with specified and limited authority. 
The commerce clause was inserted to 
keep the states from engaging in trade 
wars with one another, not to dictate what 
type of lightbulb or shower nozzle we аге 


Where does it say "universal coverage"? 


allowed to own. Obamacare commands 
that we engage in government-approved 
and government-mandated commerce. 
Now we have a decree that insurance 
companies provide "free" contraception. 
Yet, according to the Supreme Court, a 
president cannot conscript private busi- 
nesses. During the Korean War, Harry 


Truman issued an executive order to take 
over most of the country's steel mills to 
prevent a strike. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube 
Co. v. Sawyer, the court ruled 6-3 that his 
powers didn't include being able to seize 
and control private property. 

Joseph Kutch 

Pineville, Louisiana 


YOU CAN'T SAY THAT 

I enjoyed Paul Krassner's commentary 
on that so-called horrible expletive fuck 
(“Reversals Galore,” May). I was a court 
reporter in the early 19705 when Judge 
Charles Halleck of the D.C. Superior 
Court heard a case involving the word. It 
was fun to hang around Halleck's chambers 


APR 


A poster from Krassner's The Realist, 1963. 


because of his liberal attitude. He would kid 
his secretary, “Do you have the fuck deci- 
sion finished yet?” She would usually reply, 
“If you didn't give me so much fucking 
work 1 could have the fuck decision done.” 
In his decision Halleck claimed the word 
was not obscene but an acronym that origi- 
nated with British police officers who would 
use FUCK in their reports as shorthand for 
“forced unlawful carnal knowledge,” i.e. 
rape. If that's true, I suggest Bono, Dick 
Cheney and any of us who would never 
want to be accused of using offensive lan- 
guage revert to the original phrase. Thus, 
an informed person could say, “Со forced 
unlawful carnal knowledge yourself.” 
James Palmer 
Lumberton, North Carolina 
Might work, though the лава that “fuck” was 
an acronym is a fallacy. The earliest example 
of the word in English dates to 1475; the more 
common vulgarism for sex at the time was 
“swive,” which is okay to say now. 


The fuss over fuck is a tempest in a 
teapot. Wars kill millions, but one titty over- 
whelms some. Thank you, Hugh Hefner, 
for your contribution to putting sex where 
it belongs, as a natural part of our lives. 

Robert Jacober 
Miami, Florida 


E-mail letters@playboy.com. Or write: 
9346 Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, 
California 90210. 


\ 


Super Fly 


JOHANNESBURG—Vandals defaced a gallery 
painting that shows South African presi- 
dent Jacob Zuma posed like Lenin with 
a large penis hanging from his pants. 
The ruling African | 
National Congress 
denounced Brett 
Murray’s The Spear 
as “rude, crude and 
disrespectful” and 
called for it to be 
censored. Zuma, 
who has four wives 
and 20 children, 
was accused in 2005 of raping a friend’s 
daughter but was acquitted. 


Ejaculation Drill 


HARTLAND, MICHIGAN—Administrators shut 
down the local high school for a day after a 
student sent text messages saying he was 
“polishing his rifle” and mentioning that spe- 
cific date. Police identified a suspect, but 
prosecutors declined to file charges after they 
determined he was referring to masturbation. 


FOR THE 


HERPES. 


Paper Trail 


WASHINGTON, D.c.—In 2010, after then Sec- 
retary of Defense Robert Gates complained 
that the Pentagon conducts too many 
costly studies, officials commissioned a 
study to calculate how much the stud- 
ies cost. Two years later, the Government 
Accountability Office has issued a study 
of the study of studies, finding that the 
defense reviewers had managed to analyze 
just nine studies, could find only three of 
their reports and had not included the cost 
of manpower in their calculations. 


One-Star Sermons 


BEAVERTON, OREGON—A minister sued 
a former parishioner for defamation 
after she posted negative reviews of 
his church. Julie Anne Smith said she 
had seen restaurant reviews online and 
thought, Why not? She accused Bea- 
verton Grace Bible Church and Pastor 
Charles O’Neal of “spiritual abuse” 
and, more seriously, of turning a blind 
eye to “known sex offenders,” accord- 
ing to court papers. O’Neal, who wants 


Parting Gift 

PORTLAND—A jury ordered a retired den- 
tist to pay $900,000 in damages to a 
woman he infected with genital herpes. 
The two met online and had sex on their 
fourth date. Afterward, as they lay in bed 
talking, he revealed he had the virus. 
As part of his defense, the dentist said 
he did not realize he could be conta- 
gious without lesions and that he told the 
woman only as a courtesy. Her attorney 
responded that in a “civilized society” 
partners reveal sexually transmitted 
diseases before sex so relationships are 
not “governed by the law of the jungle.” 
Although courts have ruled repeatedly 
that a person must tell potential partners 
about STDs, relatively few cases go to 
trial, in part because both parties would 
face public scrutiny of their sex lives. Yet 
this is far from the largest punitive award 
for a herpes infection: In 2010 a Los 
Angeles jury ordered a cheating husband 
to pay his estranged wife $2.49 million, 
and in 2009 another L.A. jury awarded 
$6.75 million to a woman infected by a 
wealthy businessman. That same year in 
New York, a husband infected by his wife 
sued the psychiatrist who had been sleep- 
ing with her. Lawsuits typically involve 
herpes because it has a relatively short 
incubation period, while other STDs can 
lie dormant for years. 


$500,000 in damages, said Smith and 
her supporters have shown “their willing- 
ness to discredit God.” 


Opening Night 

MEXICO CITY 一 Four candidates hoping to win 
Mexico’s next presidential election gathered 
for a debate, but Playmate Julia Orayen 
stole the show. Working as an edecan, or 
hostess, the 
PLAYBOY Mexico 
model deliv- 
ered the box 
used to draw 
lots to see 
which candi- 
date would 
speak first. 
The politi- 
cians kept 
their cool, 
but her attire caused jour- 

nalists to gasp and jeer. Orayen expressed 
surprise at the reaction, saying she had 
been told only what time to arrive and to 
wear a white dress. 


TOTALLY AGAVE. | 
TOTALLY SMOOTH: 


UNAZUL 


SACRIFICE NOTHING 


. _ 
Think Wisely. 
Drink Wisely. 


| unazul® Tequila. Imported by Premium Imports, Ltd., Bardstown, KY 40004 40% Alc/Vol. © 2012 lu nazultequila.com + 


„n RICHARD DAWKINS 


A candid conversation with the controversial atheist about the simple beauty 


of evolution, the improbability of God and why the pope should be arrested 


Richard Dawkins, the patron saint of non- 
believers, caused a stir earlier this year during 
a debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
who noted that his opponent is often described 
as the world's most famous atheist. "Not by 
me," Dawkins replied before providing his 
standard explanation—a supreme being is 
possible but highly improbable—which led a 
London newspaper to proclaim that the world's 
most notorious skeptic was hedging his bets. Far 
from it. Dawkins, at 71, remains an unbending 
ата sharp-tongued critic of religious dogma- 
tism. Like any scientist who challenges the Bible 
and из lyrical version of creation, he spends a 
great deal of time defending Charles Darwin's 
theory that all life, including humans, evolved 
over eons through natural selection, rather than 
being molded 10,000 years ago by an intelli- 
gent but unseen hand. 

Dawkins, who retired from Oxford. University 
in 2008 after 13 years as a professor of public 
understanding of science (meaning he lectured 
and wrote books), stepped into the limelight in 
1976, at the age of 35, with the publication 
of The Selfish Gene. The book, which has sold 
more than a million copies, argues persuasively 
that evolution takes place at the genetic level; 
individuals die, but the fittest genes survive. 
Dawkins has since written 10 more best-sellers, 
including most recently The Magic of Reality: 


oa Cu 7 


“We are apes. We descend from extinct ami- 
mals that would have been classified as apes. 
We are a unique ape. We have language. 
Other animals have systems of communica- 
tion that fall far short of that." 


How We Know What's Really True. Since 
9/11 he has become more outspoken about his 
skepticism, culminating in The God Delusion, 
which provides the foundation for his continu- 
ing debates with believers. Published in 2006, 
the book has become Dawkins’s most popular, 
available in 31 languages with 2 million copies 
sold. That same year he founded the Richard 
Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science 
"to support scientific education, critical think- 
ing and. evidence-based understanding of the 
natural world in the quest to overcome religious 
fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and 
suffering." His books have made Dawkins a 
popular speaker and champion of critical think- 
ing. In March he spoke to 20,000 people at the 
Reason Rally on the National Mall in Wash- 
ington, D.C.; a week later he was at Fort Bragg 
in North Carolina, offering encouragement to 
the first gathering of atheistic and agnostic sol- 
diers ever allowed on a U.S. military base. 
Dawkins lives in Oxford with his third 
wife, Lalla Ward, best known for her role 
as Romana on Doctor Who. But he 15 rarely 
home for long, and Contributing Editor Chip 
Rowe had to travel to three cities to complete 
their conversation. He reports: “Dawkins is 
a careful speaker with little patience for fool- 
ishness (which is everywhere, especially among 
the faithful and the occasional journalist), but 


7 e5 


“Hitler wasn't an atheist; he was a Roman 
Catholic. But I don’t care what he was. There 
is no logical connection between atheism and 
doing bad things, nor good things for that 
matter. I'd rather be good for moral reasons.” 


he straightens and his eyes dance when ће is 
asked to explain an evolutionary principle. 
We met for the first time in Las Vegas at 
a convention for skeptics. We talked again 
when he visited New York to lecture at Cooper 
Union and in Washington, where he spoke 
at Howard University, checked in with the 
director of his foundation, thanked its vol- 
unteers and visited the impressive human 
origins exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National 
Museum of Natural History. During a tour 
with the exhibit’s curator, Dawkins looked 
pained anytime he was compelled to chat, 
glancing furtively at the fossilized eye candy 
in every direction, including a wall of pro- 
gressively modern skulls. At one point two 
young women арртоасћеа. “This is Richard 
Dawkins!” one told the other, wide-eyed. I sup- 
pose it's like bumping into Bono at the Rock 
and Roll Hall ој Fame.” 


PLAYBOY: What is the A pin you're wearing? 
DAWKINS: It stands for “atheist.” 
PLAYBOY: Like a scarlet letter? 

DAWKINS: It's not meant to reflect that. 
It's part of my foundation's Out Cam- 
paign. It means stand out and reach out, 
as well as come out for the beliefs you 
hold, and give the reasons. It's a bit anal- 
ogous to gay people coming out. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIZUNO 


“If you count up the number of Jews, certainly 
observant Jews, it's much smaller than the 
number of nonbelievers. Yet Jews have tremen- 
dous influence. I'm not criticizing that—bully 
for them. But we could do the same." 


63 


PLAYBOY 


64 


PLAYBOY: Although atheists can marry 
one another. 

DAWKINS: ‘True. 

PLAYBOY: Is there a better word for a non- 
believer than atheist? Darwin preferred 
agnostic. Some have suggested humanist, 
naturalist, nontheist. 

DAWKINS: Darwin chose agnostic for tactical 
reasons. He said the common man was not 
ready for atheism. There's a lovely story 
the comedian Julia Sweeney tells about 
her own journey from devout Catholicism 
to atheism. After she'd finally decided she 
was an atheist, something appeared about 
it in the newspaper. Her mother phoned 
her in hysterics and said something like "I 
don't mind you not believing in God, but 
an atheist?" [laughs] The word bright was 
suggested by a California couple. I think 
it's rather a good word, though most of 
my atheist friends think it suggests reli- 
gious people are dims. I say, "What's 
wrong with that?" [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: You've described yourself as a 
"tooth fairy" agnostic. What is that? 
DAWKINS: Rather than say he's an atheist, 
a friend of mine says, "I'm a tooth fairy 
agnostic," meaning he can't disprove God 
but thinks God is about as likely as the 
tooth fairy. 

PLAYBOY: So you don't completely rule out 
the idea of a supreme being. Critics see 
that as leaving an opening. 

DAWKINS: You can think so, if you think 
there's an opening for the tooth fairy. 
PLAYBOY: It sounds like the argument 
made by Bertrand Russell, who said that 
while he could claim a teapot orbited the 
sun between Earth and Mars, he couldn't 
expect anyone to believe him just because 
they couldn't prove him wrong. 
DAWKINS: It's the same idea. It's a little 
unfair to say it's like the tooth fairy. I 
think a particular god like Zeus or Jeho- 
vah is as unlikely as the tooth fairy, but the 
idea of some kind of creative intelligence 
is not quite so ridiculous. 

PLAYBOY: So you aren't taking Pascal up 
on his wager. He was the 17th century 
philosopher who argued it's a smarter 
bet to believe in God, because if you're 
wrong 
DAWKINS: The cost of failure is very high. 
But what if you choose the wrong god to 
believe in? What if you get up there and 
it's not Jehovah but Baal? [laughs] And 
even if you pick the right god, why should 
God be so obsessive about you believing in 
him? Plus, any god worth its salt is going 
to realize you're feigning. The odds are 
extremely low, but nevertheless it's worth 
it because the reward is extremely high. 
But you may also be wasting your life. 
You go to church every Sunday, you do 
penance, you wear sackcloth and ashes. 
You have a horrible life, and then you die 
and that's it. 

PLAYBOY: Assume there is a god and you 
were given the chance to ask him one 
question. What would it be? 

DAWKINS: I'd ask, "Sir, why did you go to 
such lengths to hide yourself?" 


PLAYBOY: Do you have any deeply reli- 
gious friends? 

DAWKINS: No. It's not that I shun them; 
it's that the circles I move in tend to be 
educated, intelligent circles, and there 
aren't any religious people among them 
that I know of. I'm friendly with some 
bishops and vicars who kind of believe in 
something and enjoy the music and the 
stained glass. 

PLAYBOY: Albert Einstein and Stephen 
Hawking reference God in their writings. 
Are they using the word in the sense of 
an intelligent designer? 

DAWKINS: Certainly not. They use god 
in a poetic, metaphorical sense. Ein- 
stein in particular loved using the word 
to convey an idea of mystery, which I 
think all decent scientists do. But now- 
adays we've learned better than to use 
the word god because it will be willfully 
misunderstood, as Einstein was. And 
poor Einstein got quite cross about it. 
“I do not believe in a personal god," 
he said over and over again. In a way 
he was asking for it. Hawking uses it 
in a similar way in A Brief History of 
Time. In his famous last line he says that 


Rather than say he's an 
atheist, a friend says, Гта 
tooth fairy agnostic," meaning 
he can't disprove God but 
thinks God is about as likely 
as the tooth fairy. 


if we understood the universe, "then 
we would know the mind of God." Once 
again he is using god in the Einsteinian, 
not the religious sense. And so Hawking's 
The Grand Design, in which he says the 
universe could have come from nothing, 
is not him turning away from God; his 
beliefs are exactly the same. 

PLAYBOY: You've had a lot of fun decon- 
structing the idea of the intelligent 
designer. You point out that God made 
a cheetah fast enough to catch a gazelle 
and a gazelle fast enough to outrun a 
cheetah 
DAWKINS: Yes. Is God a sadist? 

PLAYBOY: And bad design such as the fact 
we breathe and eat through the same 
tube, making it easy to choke to death. 
DAWKINS: Or the laryngeal nerve, which 
loops around an artery in the chest and 
then goes back up to the larynx. 
PLAYBOY: Not very efficient. 

DAWKINS: Not in a giraffe, anyway. 
PLAYBOY: You argue Christians worship a 
"created God." Some Christians respond 
that their God isn't created; he's eternal. 
DAWKINS: You could say the same of the 
universe. You could say elephants support 


the world on their backs. There have 
always been elephants. I declare it by fiat. 
PLAYBOY: The attacks of 9/11 seemed to 
make you more militant about your athe- 
ism, as if you had finally lost patience. 
DAWKINS: There was a certain amount of 
that. A lot of people in the world felt a 
desire to stand up and be counted. Any 
suggestion of anti-Americanism in my 
mind vanished. Ich bin ein Amerikaner. 
Then George W. Bush destroyed that. 
But it was also an anti-Islamic and an 
antireligious moment for me because I 
was nauseated by the way the response 
to “Allahu Akbar” was “God is with us,” or 
whatever the Christians said—the sound 
of Christian leaders in America uniting in 
support of the force that led to the crisis 
in the first place. 

PLAYBOY: You blame 9/11 on belief in 
the afterlife. 

DAWKINS: Yes. Normally when an aircraft 
is hijacked, there's an assumption that the 
hijackers want to go on living. It changes 
the game if the hijackers look forward to 
death because it will get them into the best 
part of paradise. 

PLAYBOY: You mean the part with the 72 
virgins the Koran says await martyrs. 
DAWKINS: Right. Young men who are too 
unattractive to get a woman in the real 
world go for the ones in paradise. But my 
point is these people really believe what 
they say they believe, whereas most Chris- 
tians don't. If you talk to dying Christians, 
they aren't looking forward to it. 
PLAYBOY: What will happen when you die? 
DAWKINS: Well, I shall either be buried or 
be cremated. 

PLAYBOY: Funny. But without faith in an 
afterlife, in what do you take comfort in 
times of despair? 

DAWKINS: Human love and companion- 
ship. But in more thoughtful, cerebral 
moments, I take —comfort is not quite the 
right word, but I draw strength from 
reflecting on what a privilege it is to be 
alive and what a privilege it is to have a 
brain that's capable in its limited way of 
understanding why I exist and of reveling 
in the beauty of the world and the beauty 
of the products of evolution. The mag- 
nificence of the universe and the sense 
of smallness that gives us in space and in 
geologically deep time is humbling but 
in a strangely comforting way. It's nice to 
feel you're part of a hugely bigger picture. 
PLAYBOY: Are you concerned that your 
opponents might fake a deathbed con- 
version, as creationists have tried to do 
with Darwin? 

DAWKINS: What's slightly more worry- 
ing is the Antony Flew effect. Flew was 
an atheistic British philosopher who had 
an Old-age conversion. It seems he went 
gaga. You can't guard against that. 
PLAYBOY: So if it happens we should 
assume you've lost it. 

DAWKINS: Yes. After my friend Christo- 
pher Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer, 
he was asked if he might have a conver- 
sion. He said that if he did, it wouldn't 


be the real him. What's rather wicked is 
when religious apologists exploit that, as 
they did in the case of Flew, who in his old 
age was persuaded to put his name to a 
book saying that he'd been converted to a 
form of deism. Not only did he not write 
the book, he didn't even read it. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: Your call for militant atheism is 
one reason you were featured as a char- 
acter on an episode of South Park. The 
show's creators, Ттеу Parker and Matt 
Stone, had been accused of being athe- 
ists, so they thought of the most militant 
atheist they could skewer. 

DAWKINS: It's the only South Park episode 
I've seen. There was an attempt at some- 
thing approaching satire in the idea of an 
imagined future in which different sects 
of atheists are fighting each other. But 
most of that episode was ridiculous in the 
sense that what they had the cartoon fig- 
ure of me doing, like buggering the bald 
transvestite 
PLAYBOY: ‘Transsexual, actually. 

DAWKINS: ‘Transsexual, okay. That isn’t 
satire because it has nothing to do with 
what I stand for. And the scatological part, 
where they had somebody throwing shit, 
which stuck to my forehead—that’s not 
even funny. I don’t understand why they 
couldn’t go straight to the atheists fighting 
each other, which has a certain amount 
of truth in it. It reminded me of the bit 
from Monty Python’s Life of Brian with the 
Judean People’s Front and the People’s 
Front of Judea. 

PLAYBOY: President Obama acknowl- 
edged “nonbelievers” in his inaugural 
address, which caused a fuss. But when 
you consider religious belief, one of the 
largest groups in the U.S. is atheists and 
agnostics. Why do they get overlooked in 
political discussions? 

DAWKINS: It’s a good point. Of course, it 
depends how you slice it. Christians are 
by far the largest group. If you divide 
Christians into denominations, agnostics 
and atheists come in third, behind Catho- 
lics and Baptists. That’s interesting when 
you contrast it with the lack of influence 
of nonbelievers. And if you count up the 
number of Jews, certainly observant Jews, 
it’s much smaller than the number of 
nonbelievers. Yet Jews have tremendous 
influence. I’m not criticizing that—bully 
for them. But we could do the same. 
PLAYBOY: You're not hopeful about peace 
between Israel and the Palestinians. 
DAWKINS: There's not much hope to 
the extent that the most influential pro- 
tagonists both base their hostility on 
2,000-year-old books that they believe 
give them title to the land. 

PLAYBOY: What is your view of Jesus? 
DAWKINS: The evidence he existed is sur- 
prisingly shaky. The earliest books in the 
New Testament to be written were the 
Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as 
though Saint Paul and others who wrote 
the Epistles weren’t that interested in 
whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fic- 
tional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead 


of his time in terms of moral philosophy. 
PLAYBOY: You've read the Bible. 
DAWKINS: I haven't read it all, but my 
knowledge of the Bible is a lot better than 
most fundamentalist Christians”. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have a favorite verse? 
DAWKINS: My favorite book is Ecclesiastes. 
It's wonderful poetry in 17th century 
English, and I'm told it's very good in 
the Hebrew. "Vanity of vanities, saith the 
Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is van- 
ity." The Song of Songs is terrific, and 
it's more bawdy in the Hebrew, almost a 
drinking song. 

PLAYBOY: You've made the point that if 
Jesus existed and went to his death as 
described in the Bible, it was, as you put 
it, "barking mad." 

DAWKINS: There's no evidence Jesus him- 
self was barking mad, but the doctrine 
invented later by Paul that Jesus died for 
our sins surely is. It's a truly disgusting 
idea that the creator of the universe— 
capable of inventing the laws of physics 
and designing the evolutionary process— 
that this protégé of supernatural intellect 
couldn't think of a better way to forgive 
our sins than to have himself tortured to 


If what you're trying to do 
is win the tactical battle in 
U.S. schools, you're better off 
lying and saying evolution 
is religion-friendly. I don't 
want to do that. 


death. And what a terrible lesson to say 
we're born in sin because of the original 
sin of Adam, a man even the Catholic 
Church now says never existed. 

PLAYBOY: We hear constantly that America 
is a Christian nation and that the found- 
ing fathers were all Christians. 

DAWKINS: They were deists. They didn't 
believe in a personal god, or one who 
interferes in human affairs. And they were 
adamant that they did not want to found 
the United States as a Christian nation. 
PLAYBOY: But you hear quite often that 
if you let atheists run things you end up 
with Hitler and Stalin. 

DAWKINS: Hitler wasn't an atheist; he 
was a Roman Catholic. But I don't care 
what he was. There is no logical con- 
nection between atheism and doing bad 
things, nor good things for that mat- 
ter. It's a philosophical belief about the 
absence of a creative intelligence in the 
world. Anybody who thinks you need 
religion in order to be good is being 
good for the wrong reason. I'd rather 
be good for moral reasons. Morals 
were here before religion, and mor- 
als change rather rapidly in spite of 


religion. Even people who rely on the 
Bible use nonbiblical criteria. If your 
criteria are scriptural, you have no 
basis for choosing the verse that says 
turn the other cheek rather than the 
verse that says stone people to death. 
So you pick and choose without guid- 
ance from the Bible. 

PLAYBOY: You've said that science is losing 
the war with religion. 

DAWKINS: Did I say we were losing? I was 
just having an off day. 

PLAYBOY: You are surprised science is still 
being challenged. 

DAWKINS: I am surprised, but I'm not 
sure it's a losing battle. If you take the 
long view of centuries, there's an upward 
trend. Religious people like to point out 
that Isaac Newton was religious. Well, of 
course he was—he lived before Darwin. It 
would have been difficult to be an atheist 
before Darwin. 

PLAYBOY: You might have been the guy 
who didn't believe in Zeus. 

DAWKINS: I would have been skeptical 
of the details of Zeus hurling thunder- 
bolts, but I probably would have believed 
in some supernatural being. When you 
look around at the living world and see 
the complexity of a cell and the elegance 
of a tree—^I think that I shall never зее/ А 
poem lovely as a tree./Poems are made by 
fools like me,/But only God can make a 
tree"—I would have been moved by that. 
Darwin changed all that. He provided a 
simple, explicable, workable story about 
how you can get the complexity not just of 
a tree but of a human by physics working 
through the rather special process of evo- 
lution by natural selection. Ifonly Newton 
had been alive to be told about that. 
PLAYBOY: The evolutionary biologist 
Stephen Jay Gould viewed science and 
religion as 
DAWKINS: Non-overlapping magisteria, 
or NOMA. 

PLAYBOY: Completely separate. 

DAWKINS: That's pure politics. Gould 
was trying to win battles in the creation- 
evolution debate by saying to religious 
people, “You don't have to worry. Evo- 
lution is religion-friendly.” And the 
only way he could think to do that was 
to say they occupy separate domains. 
But he overgenerously handed the 
domains of morals and fundamental 
questions to religion, which is the last 
thing you should do. Science cannot 
at present—maybe never—answer the 
deep questions about existence and 
the origins of the fundamental laws of 
nature. But what on earth makes you 
think religion can? If science can't pro- 
vide an answer, nothing can. 

PLAYBOY: Some scientists say that you 
should stop talking about atheism 
because it muddies the waters in the 
debate over evolution. 

DAWKINS: If what you're trying to do is 
win the tactical battle in U.S. schools, 
you're better off lying and saying evolu- 
tion is religion-friendly. I don't wish to 


65 


PLAYBOY 


66 


condemn people who lie for tactical rea- 
sons, but 1 don't want to do that. For me, 
this is only a skirmish in the larger war 
against irrationality. 

PLAYBOY: You've said that if science and 
religion are truly NOMA, Christians must 
give up their belief in miracles. 
DAWKINS: Absolutely. Miracles are a 
naked encroachment on science's turf. 
If you ask people in the pew or on the 
prayer mat why they believe in God, it 
will always involve miracles, including 
the miracle of creation. If you don't allow 
religion to have that, you've removed the 
reason just about everybody who is reli- 
gious is religious. 

PLAYBOY: Do you get discouraged by the 
continuing attacks on reason? 

DAWKINS: No. I go on the internet quite 
a lot and read what young people are 
saying. I see a great upsurge of good 
sense, rationality, irreverence. America 
is split into halves. There's the Sarah 
Palin know-nothing idiots on the one 
hand, and then there's a huge number 
of intellectual, intelligent, educated peo- 
ple on the other. I find it hard to believe 
that the Stone Age types are going to 
win in the end. An awful lot of people 
who call themselves religious simply 
don't know there's any alternative. If 
you probe what they believe, it turns 
out to be pretty much the same—we all 
have a sense of wonder and reverence 
at the majesty of the universe. 
PLAYBOY: You're of the mind that reli- 
gious belief probably evolved as an 
"accidental by-product." 

DAWKINS: Whenever something is wide- 
spread in a species, you have to reckon 
it has some sort of survival value. 
There's probably no survival value in 
religion itself—though there might 
be—but value in lots of rather separate 
psychological predispositions such as 
obedience to authority. That has strong 
survival value for children. Because 
they're helpless and don't know their 
way around the world, they rely on 
parental wisdom. But they don't have 
the means of distinguishing wisdom 
that is wise for survival from wisdom 
that is nonsense. 

PLAYBOY: Your parents raised you in the 
Anglican church. 

DAWKINS: I wouldn't wish to malign 
my parents by suggesting they fed me 
religion. I was sent to some of the best 
schools, and as most such schools in 
England were at the time, they were 
Anglican schools. So I got daily prayers 
and Bible readings. I was confirmed at 13. 
PLAYBOY: When did you first read Darwin's 
On the Origin of Species? 

DAWKINS: "Iwo years later. 

PLAYBOY: And it blew your mind. 
DAWKINS: Yes. That such a simple idea 
could explain the complexities of a 
peacock's tail, a bounding antelope, 
a sprinting cheetah, a flying swift, a 
thinking human. These are immensely 
complicated machines, and yet we 


understand why they're here. 
PLAYBOY: Your parents were naturalists 
who you've said could identify every plant 
in Britain. 

DAWKINS: My father read botany at 
Oxford. 1 read zoology there. 1 wasn't a 
naturalist in the way he was, but I loved 
going around the jungle with somebody 
who knew about it. 

PLAYBOY: Is there any particular way he 
influenced you? 

DAWKINS: Curiosity, scientific curiosity. 
PLAYBOY: How about your mother? 
DAWKINS: She didn't do a degree in sci- 
ence, but she had a very good knowledge 
of plants as well. I guess that's one of the 
things they did together. She educated 
me as a child, and I learned a great deal 
from her. 

PLAYBOY: You were born in Nairobi. Why 
were your parents there? 

DAWKINS: Because of his botanical 
background, my father joined the 
agricultural department of the Colo- 
nial Civil Service and was sent to East 
Africa, to what was then Nyasaland and 
is now Malawi. Then he was called up 
to join the King's African Rifles, which 


I go on the internet quite 
a lot and read what 
young people are sayıng. 
I see a great upsurge of 
good sense, rationalıty, 
irreverence. 


was the British regiment headquar- 
tered in Nairobi. So he went up north 
to Kenya and my mother followed. She 
had a certain amount of trouble. Since 
she wasn't in Kenya legally, it was quite 
difficult getting out. [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: What do you remember about 
that time? 

DAWKINS: I remember a lot about Nyasa- 
land. 1 remember the smells and sights 
and colors. It was a privileged existence, 
with servants. It was like setting the clock 
back 100 years; it was a strange paternal- 
istic society we lived in. 

PLAYBOY: When you were eight you moved 
with your parents to England. 

DAWKINS: My father was left the Dawkins 
estate, which had been in the family 
since 1723, by a very distant cousin—so 
distant we’d never heard of him. This 
cousin wanted the farm to stay with 
a Dawkins, but everyone had daugh- 
ters. It was a brilliant choice because 
my father was qualified in agriculture, 
albeit tropical, and had the right kind 
of enterprising mind to turn what had 
been a country gentleman's estate into 
a working farm. 


PLAYBOY: What did he grow? 

DAWKINS: We had Jersey cows, which as 
you know make a lot of cream. He sup- 
plied all the local hotels and the Oxford 
colleges with cream. And pigs. The acre- 
age isn't that great. An eccentric Dawkins 
of the 19th century sold off most of the 
land to pay for lawsuits, so most of the 
family wealth disappeared. 

PLAYBOY: Decades after moving to Eng- 
land, you wrote your first book during 
a blackout. 

DAWKINS: In 1972 there was major indus- 
trial unrest in Britain, and for whole days 
there would be no power. 1 couldn't do 
my research, so I started writing The Self- 
ish Gene. 

PLAYBOY: You're a great fan of science fic- 
tion. What do you like about it? 
DAWKINS: I prefer science fiction that 
takes some aspect of science and modi- 
fies it. There's a lovely novel by Daniel 
Galouye called Dark Universe, about a 
group of people who live in total dark- 
ness and know nothing about light. And 
so light has become a mythology. They 
use phrases like “Great Light Almighty” 
and have ceremonies when they feel a 
sacred lightbulb. Galouye changed one 
thing—he removed light—and looked at 
all the consequences. 

PLAYBOY: As opposed to creating a 
fairyland. 

DAWKINS: Princesses riding unicorns isn't 
science fiction. 

PLAYBOY: The Playboy Advisor received 
this question from a reader: ^I feel 
uncomfortable when a person I just met 
asks me whether I go to church, because I 
don't. Is there an etiquette to answering?" 
DAWKINS: I would reply, “Мо, I do not go 
to church. Do you, and if so, why?" 
PLAYBOY: That's what you advised your 
daughter in a letter you wrote her when 
she was 10. 

DAWKINS: What I did, and what I would 
tell other parents to do, is encourage her 
to think for herself. As an illustration, for 
Santa I said, "Well, let's work out how 
many chimneys there are." I mean, it 
would be a fun game where we calculate 
that he would have to be traveling faster 
than the speed of light. 

PLAYBOY: What if the child bursts into 
tears? 

DAWKINS: Oh, that would be a shame. 
PLAYBOY: Did having a child change your 
outlook in any way? 

DAWKINS: I don't think so, though I'm 
interested in the evolutionary origins of 
subjective feelings. I became palpably 
more nervous about things like heights. 
PLAYBOY: You saw danger everywhere. 
DAWKINS: That's right. 

PLAYBOY: You advised her that anytime 
someone presented her with a claim, she 
should ask, ^What is the evidence?" Was 
she popular with her teachers? 
DAWKINS: I don't know about her, but I 
have heard horror stories about children 
who asked too many questions of teachers 
of religion. (continued on page 135) 


一 一 


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IT'S BEEN 20YEARS SINCE WE 
LAST SURVEYED MEN ABOUT 
THEIR LIVES.TIME TO CATCH 
UP WITH THE AMERICAN MALE 


Like women, men are a mystery. But we are a mystery that can be solved. 
We have simple, direct needs. We express those needs in simple, direct 
ways. And yet, according to the self-proclaimed experts, all is not well in 
Testosterone Town. Some 40 years ago, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 
asked, “What has happened to the American male? Men are more and 
more conscious of maleness not as a fact but a problem.” In her 1999 
book, Stiffed, Susan Faludi documented what she said was a sense of loss 
among men for the days when they had a role in public life, a way to earn 
a decent living and appreciation at home. In fact, men have been adjust- 
ing to these and other challenges for centuries. It has been two decades 
since PLAY8OY last polled American males, so we asked Harris Interactive 
to survey 1,000 men online and weight the results to reflect the demo- 
graphics of the larger population. We hoped to find out who you are, 
what you do and how you see 
life. How do you measure up? 

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK MATCHO 


Whatever their income, men 
typically have a complicated 
relationship with money. They 
feel pressure to provide, which 
causes them to equate money 
with security. Unfortunately, 
living below your means isn't an 
American trait. The past six years 
have not been easy: The wealth 
of middle-class households has 
fallen to levels last seen in the 
early 19905 (mostly due to the 
drop in home values), and many 
men have faced the stress of los- 
ing a job. We asked men to tell 
us about their finances and how 
those numbers add up in terms 
of personal identity. Does money 
buy happiness? Or delay it? 


| 


| 


Do you trust the American 
financial system? 


Percentage of Republican 
males who say they trust the 
system: BSD; of Democrats: 
2845; of independents: M fes; 
of Libertarians: 284; of 
Tea Party supporters: BE. 


Percentage of men who say they 
never take a week off for vacation 


Percentage of men who are stay-at-home dads: e home: 


own 
their 


ве 26 


Who take two 
weeks or more: 


Who take Ж 
Week а уеаг: 


Percentage of men аде 25 to 34 who 
say they work at least 60 hours а week: 


35 to 44: SB 


45 to 54: B 


rar = | 


Who зау they have по extra топеу 
for eating out, travel or hobbies: 


$200K OR MORE 


$150K TO $200K 


$100K TO $150K 


Who have defaulted on a debt, filed for 
bankruptcy or had a lien against them: 


a who say 
they work at least 50 


hours a 
week: IT years: 


Who have been 
unemployed in 
the past four 


aS 


DECLINED 
TO ANSWER: 
12% 


1590 


510510 НИ == o 


$25K TO $50K 


We asked, “At this point in your 
life, do you feel you are doing 

better, about the same or worse 
than you would have expected?” 


|| a 


Percentage of men who say 
e e e 2 e е © ec they are obsessed 27 
90° 90 60 with: == ~ 
2000000000 | a2 14 ~ 
| севесесесе „Io SZ 
oeceocoocee 6 жх | х2 
© BETTER: 2222960 e se 2 es М. ~ 
— THE SAME: SBE o = a MLS MMA’ AUTO NHL NBA MLB NFL 
= 00006067 © RACING 
© worse: BS% eeeeeeeeee 
NOT SURE: 5 eb -I+I=XI-I=I-I=I-I-I- 
Percentage Percentage Percentage of irj Бу ышы do you work out 
among men among men Republican males who E 


ZERO: МО 


ONCE OR 
TWICE: i 18% 


FOURTO 
SIX TIMES: Ht 31% 
SEVEN OR 
"UL oL 19% 


How often do you 


age 25 to 34: age 35 to 44: feel they're doing 
BETTER: BOY) BETTER: MA better than expected: 
ac >a} H S; of Democrats: 
WORSE: BOY) WORSE: SS54 ЕФ; of Tea Party 
supporters: б. 


We а кей men to Imagine the y nad smoke marijuana? NEVER = $ m | 
von $50,000 in a contest. What 
would they do with the money? ACOUPLE OFTIMESAYEAR = a => 
А COUPLE OF TIMES A MONTH = D a 
2012 
VACATIO A COUPLE OF TIMES AWEEK d * i 
HOME IMPROVEMENT 
'D os 
NEW CLOTHES 22% iss = 
PAY OFF BILLS SE Фа» 


DOWN PAYMENT ON HOU 


GIVE TO FAMILY/FRIENDS ЖЕ» 


How much 9% 220, 
1992 alcohol do one ONEOR THREE FIVE SEVEN 
you consume TWO OR FOUR OR SIX ОК MORE 
Mw NEW CLOTHES each week? “em DRINKS DRINKS DRINKS DRINKS 
ч 
F BILLSAND DEBTS 


Percentage of men who 55 
have used the following 
substances recreationally AM eg 


SSD OD INVEST 


in the past six months: © 


NEW CAR ADO GIVE SOME A 


CRYSTAL ECSTASY COCAINE PRESCRIPTION 
METH DRUGS 


Percentage of 
men who say 
they never 


watch 

television: "i 
Percentage who say they Who 
never play video games: watch at 

least four 

Who spend at least an hour a day playing: ЈЕ "ар ШУ а 
Who never go online: 4# 
Who spend at least four hours a day online: 13 1 


Asking men what they would rather be doing than work 


doesn't require a multiple-choice response. “Anything” Percentage of Percentage of men | Percentage of 
covers it. We love our work, but we save our devotion for men who say they | who say marijuana | men who say 
our mistress, leisure. The challenge for the modern man is never speak on should be legalized: | they're careful 
carving out time to hit all his interests. the phone: ҮН; about what they 
eat: 
Who say they talk 
on the phone about 
Who say they eat 


an hour a day or ~~ ho 

more: In whatever: 
DD 9: 1 ever: 23 

Percentage Who read for 


who say they | | A more than about 
never read: an hour a day: 
Percent- 
age of 
percent of men men age 


4 


Tm 
| 


LER 


~ drugs to 
inu get high 
n in the 
Percentage of married past six 
WAN | UN men who do chores 2012 percent chose months: 


some or all of the time: ee for | | 6 percent say it's not 
ГА 


spent more than 25 to 34 percent of men say 
S35K who have personal style is an 
used pre- important part of 
ili, on their current car. | Seription their lives. 


that important. 


1s Cocaine: Ecstasy: @ Crystal meth: 4 


percent for gas 


1990 


1975 e 


mileage and 
D 3 Percentage of males age 18 to 34 who 
MI 13 say they smoke weed every day: 
NAS | percent for 
MTS == @ регїогтапсе. Of males 65 and older: ES 
co 
маме o) aa | Percentage of men who are fans of each genre of music: 
y e 7 15 24 за 27 27 28 49 
LEUR EST S Dat P ИКЕ Рм ES ДА ду VC I АСТИ EET 
ANP PUNK HEAVY НІР- ALT CLASSICAL COUNTRY POP CLASSIC 
OUS METAL HOP ROCK ROCK 
Average time spent — WATCHINGTV SURFING THE READING WATCHING PLAYING TALKING ON TEXTING 
daily by men: INTERNET MOVIES VIDEO THE PHONE 


GAMES 


We were concerned, when comparing a 
survey we conducted in 1992 with cur- 
rent numbers, to find a noticeable drop in 
men who said they were “very satisfied” 
with their sex lives. And yet nearly half are 
getting laid at least once a week, a figure 
that could be more robust but is no reason 
to complain (especially to the men on a 
monthly or annual schedule). At the same 
time, the percentage of men who consider 
themselves “fairly satisfied” has jumped, 
which could just mean they have fantasies 
left to fulfill. Who can't say that? 


Percentage of men 
|| || (Шр 41 who lost their virginity 
before the age of 18: 
percent of men 
o have suspected 4 
320% s 


> сћеа па; 
of all men claim they've 3 Before the age of 23: 


had sex with a person 
within 24 hours of being 
introduced. percent could 


forgive a part- 
About Bin &B men claim | ner they caught | Before the age of 26: 


to have had a threesome. cheating. 
Percentage of men who 
say they masturbate at 


percent of men least daily: 


have slept with At least once 
a co-worker; a week: 


Percentage of men who say 
they have sex every day: AL 


Which sexual activity 
produces the most 
intense orgasm? 


== سے 


NS At least once a month: At least once AG 
a week: 

percent with GOT 

a person of a At least $» 3 

percent with 


different race; Percentage who claim they | Mea 
: men lost their virginity | | 1 | 
neighbor; } А 
a Reno; 1.5 during a one-night stand. 


eB oe have never masturbated: $B month: 
=== | men claim they've 


са 
о 
ES 
a 
= 
< 
= 


ANAL o» 
uasrursarion W 


percent with Percentage of men who 29 had more than 50 а 
their boss. say they've cheated: partners. 25 S 
z5 = 
So 3 
se © 
ы 
[7 > 
| “>, = 
What is your 
favorite position? 
> 
= - 
~ ul = 5 
NS o 
We asked men «Ў A ч = Е. 2 
in long-term A ыё = = < = 
relationships, NOT AT ALL ш E E Z © 5 = 
“How happy = = Es 2 8 三 
are you with = 5 Ws 
your sex life?” 1992 ü 


Percentage of men who: 
Y M Use social-media sites 
| = OFTEN: MM; RARELY OR NEVER: SB SD 


or ort Stream music or TV 
rsa р о = ~ OFTEN: BE; RARELY OR NEVER: DY 


Stream movies 


OFTEN: SSB; RARELY OR NEVER: SS 
Shop online 

OFTEN: ISS; RARELY OR NEVER: SBI 
Use an online dating service 

OFTEN: АЕ; RARELY OR NEVER: fes P 


Percentage of men who 
spend more than 30 hours 
a week on the internet: 


someone they met online 
AGE 1870 24: BO 


Percentage of men 
who have slept with 
AGE 25 TO 34: SE SP 


M SE; of Republicans: ANI || | AGE 35 TO 44: 23 

®; of Democrats: MAL; AGE 45 TO 54: ZB ZR 

of Libertarians: B®; АСЕ 5570 64: 4 
of Tea Party supporters: ПНЕ AGE 65 AND OVER: ® 

20. 

Percentage of men 
erage guy spends surfing the who spend less than 

et: S202. Number of four hours a week 


hours a day a single male spends online: M => 


surfing: BEBA. M © percent of men 


spend more than 30 
hours a week online. 


Nothing has changed life more for men 
in the past 20 years than technology. Our 


cars, phones, televisions, tools, even the Percentage of men who say they watch porn on a computer: 

lawn mower and the lights in our homes ONCE A DAY OR MORE: ПИ Штит 

are digital. We meet partners on the com- 

puter or, failing that, store our porn there. MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK: ШИ ШИ ПИПИН НННП ASS 
We can be reached anywhere, at any time, ABOUT ONCE A WEEK: W E E Ml Ml E ll AO 

for any reason. We are more connected 

and more isolated, walking, talking, eat- ABOUT ONCE A MONTH: Ml ll BEN 

ing and driving with our heads down so as А FEWTIMES AYEAR: DUB BB BB BB eee ИСЕ 
not to miss the e-mail, text or tweet of the 

moment. And yet men forget that though we NEVER: ар пи и и ки и ни к кји о ки и ој 
are being led on a straight and narrow path EHEHHBHHHHHHHEHHHEHHEHEBEHENHENBNENH:244. 


by a series of pings and beeps, the best- 
lived life has unexpected detours. Refusing 
to ask for directions was one of the great 


character-building qualities of our fathers About ЖШ / 2% of men who have used an online dating 999099090900 

and grandfathers. We don't get lost enough. site have done so while already in a relationship. eo өө 00 
percent of SEM Percentage of men who say they | 
теп get most percen have secretly read a partner s social- 
of their news of men network messages or e-mail: M M; 
online. have of women: 

_ E _ tried to 
3 percent get most of their news from social-networking sites. contact [><] [>< 
ап ех 


online. = 
percent have percent DI 
been a victim of have ><] = Ба 
а cybercrime. paid bills E Ба 
online. Ба 


© 
2 
“Wy > 
Kp 


“e Percentage 
of men extremely 


e or very satisfied 
e with: 


What is the 
greatest threat 
to humankind? 


As with sex, "fairly satisfied" seems to describe the average man’s view 
of life. Less than 4096 of men believe anyone in the U.S. will be blown 
up by a nuclear device before 2022. Nearly 4096 attend religious ser- 
vices more frequently than the oil should be changed in a car. More than 
6096 are hopeful or unconcerned about the future. More men today say 
they are satisfied with their education, though in other areas we claim 
to be less satisfied—or as the optimists would say, more demanding. 


339% 


i qp 5290 of men say «9 FSB ® for an Asian 


they would vote for a female ww» 39% for a gay man or lesbian 
presidential candidate 
w Эй for a Hispanic 


1979 2012 


"MM 


Percentage of men who say they're 
not religious: 2822; who say 
they're very religious: M S. 


Ф bo (о! a physically 
disabled person 


WAR/ 
TERRORISM 


19% 


How often do you attend services? 
ONCE A YEAR OR LESS: ES % 
ONCE OR TWICE A MONTH: 4% 
ONCE A WEEK: ЈЕ Es ар 
MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK: 7 ©» 


[SEN 


POPULATION 
GROWTH 


WHO IS THE AVERAGE 
AMERICAN MALE? WE CULLED 
STATISTICS FROM A VARIETY 
OF RELIABLE SOURCES TO 
PROVIDE A SNAPSHOT 


M 


LACK OF 
percent of men believe Joe is 37 years old and earns maintenance (17%) or produc- RESOURCES 
NUMBER | a nuclear device bd $48,387 at his full-time job. (That's tion and transportation (18%). At 
=== "US. sometime in the median; half of all men make the age of 50 he will have $44,000 9% 
Percentage the next M«P the next MOD years. more and half less.) He married іп savings—far from enough. If he's 6,00 
of men who for the first time at the age of 29. — in reasonably good shape at 50, he 4 64 
believe the U.S. He stands five-nine and weighs 180 should be able to run a nine-minute 4% 4 % 
is headed in the pounds. If you're shopping for him, mile. For a guy his age and weight, GLOBAL 
right direction: he has a 16-inch collar, а 38-inch Joe should manage 24 push-ups and WARMING 
Of Republicans: 32» waist, and he wears a size 10.5 а single bench press of about 240 
Of Democrats: shoe. If you're sleeping with him, pounds. He's most likely married 29% 
his erection is 6.21 inches long апа (51%) and living with his spouse 
4.85 inches around. He probably (73% of households) but may 
has a high school diploma (85%) be divorced (9.6%) and a single 
and perhaps a bache- father (796). If all goes DISASTER 
lor's degree (28%). He's well, he'll live to see his 
Percentage of men who say most most likely employed in Jl | 75th birthday. If all goes 
politicians are trustworthy: E» management, business, very well, he has about a 59 
percent of men аге science or the arts but 15% chance of living to 2. 
m3 very hopeful about may be in service (15%), 100—and after the age of 
the future. sales or administration 95, there are four women EPIDEMIC 
7 percent are very pessimistic. (18%), construction or for every man. DISEASE 


FOR COMPLETE RESULTS AND METHODOLOGY, 
E-MAIL LETTERS@PLAYBOY.COM. 


“Toure a Taurus? I'm a Sagittarius. Well, that’s enough foreplay.” 


75 


НОМЕ АГОМЕ 


1 


m 


A sojourn in 
Amsterdam with 


model Beau Hesling 
— ———— — | 


Stroll the cobbled streets of Am- 
sterdam and you'll be mesmer- 
ized by its beauty. Footbridges 
wrought with Beaux Arts ironwork 
arch above glittering canals. Cafés 
reek of hand-rolled cigarettes and 
clink with the sound of kissing 
Heinekens (the local brew). What 
will strike you most, however, is 
the women. Over these six pages, 
we invite you for a private date 
with one such beauty—25-year- 
old Dutch model Beau Hesling. 
Born in Amsterdam, Beau grew up 
a tree-climbing tomboy, but she's 
a tomboy no more. She thinks of 
herself today as something of a 
girlie girl. We couldn't agree more. 
Stand near her and you'll swear 
you can smell the flowers of the 
Keukenhof Gardens. People tell 
Beau she's a good kisser. "Prac- 
tice makes perfect," she says, her 
sumptuous mouth stretching into 
a smile. Sex is best, Beau reveals, 
when you think about nothing, 
when you surrender to the experi- 
ence, though she prefers it in tra- 
ditional places (such as a bedroom 
like the one you see here). She also 
says she likes sex with women as 
well as men. Every woman, she 
thinks, is a bit bisexual. So surren- 
der to the experience with Beau 
in Amsterdam. Something tells us 
you'll want to come back. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RENÉ DE HAAN 
AND PATRICK KAAS 


A |: 


~ 
3 
~ 
~ 
~ 
« 


, 


e was in the teachers’ lounge, 7:15 A.M., sipping 
the latte he'd picked up on his way to work and 
checking his e-mail before classes started, when 
he clicked on a message from his brother Rob 
and a porno filled the screen. His first reaction 
was annoyance, shading rapidly through puzzle- 
ment to fear—in the instant he recognized what it was 
(a blur of color, harsh light, movement) he hit the exit 
button and shot a look around the room to see if any- 
one had noticed. No one had. The lounge was sparsely 
populated at this hour, and those who were there were 
sunk deep inside themselves, staring into their own 
laptops and looking as ifthey’d been drained of blood 


overnight. It was Monday. The windows were dark with the 
drizzle that had started just before dawn. The only sound 
was the faint clicking of keys. 

All ofa sudden he was angry. What had Rob been think- 
ing? He could be fired. Would be. In a heartbeat. The 
campus was drug-free, alcohol-free, tobacco-free, and each 
teacher, each year, was required to take a two-hour online 
sexual harassment course, just to square up the param- 
eters. Downloading porn? At your workplace? That was 
so far beyond the pale the course didn't even mention it. 
His fingers trembled over the keys, his heart thumped. He 
clicked on the next message—some asinine joke his college 
roommate had sent out to everybody he'd ever known, all 
30 or so of them with their e-mail addresses bunched at 
the top of the screen—and 
deleted it before getting 
to the punch line. Then 
there was a reminder from 
the dentist about his ap- 
pointment at 3:30, after 
school let out, and a whole 
long string of the usual 
sort of crap—orphans in 
Haiti, Viagra, An Oppor- 
tunity Too Unique to Miss 
Out On— which he ham- 
mered with the delete key, 
one after another, with a 
mounting irascibility that 
made Eugenie McCaffrey, 
the math teacher, look up 
vaguely and then shift her 
eyes back to her own screen. 
Rob had left no message, 
just the video. And the sub- 
ject heading: I Thought You’d 
Want to Know. 

By lunch he’d forgot- 
ten all about it, but when 
he checked his phone mes- 
sages there was a text from 


Rob, which read only: 


the noontime buzz of the 
lounge reverberating round 
him—food, caffeine, two pe- 
riods to go—he called Rob's 
number, but there was no 
answer and the message box 
was full. Of course. He sum- 
moned his brother's face, 
the hipster haircut, the goof- 
ball grin, eyes surfing the 
crest of some private joke— 
when was he going to grow up?—then dialed Laurie at work 
because it came to him suddenly that they were supposed to 
go out to dinner tonight with one of her co-workers and her 
husband, whom he'd never met, and he was wondering how 
that might or might not interfere with the football game on 
TV, but she didn't answer either. 

Then the day was over and he was in his car, heading to 
the dentist's. The drizzle had given way to a drifting haze 
that admitted the odd column of sunlight so that the last he 
saw of the school, for today at least, was a brightly lit shot 
of glowing white stucco and orange-tile roof rapidly dwin- 
dling in the rearview mirror. Traffic was light and he was 
15 minutes early for the dentist, whose office was on the 
second floor of a vaguely Tudorish building that anchored 
an open-air mall—bank below, Italian restaurant with out- 
door seating bottom-floor left, then real estate and a sand- 


HE SAW AN ANONYMOUS ROOM, 
A BED, THE INCANDESCENCE 
OF TOO-WHITE FLESH AND 
THE SUDDEN THRUST OF BODIES 
COHERING AS THE SCENE 
CAME INTO FOCUS. 


wich shop and on and on all the way round the U-shaped 
perimeter. A patch of lawn divided the parking lot. There 
were the usual shrubs and a pair of long-necked palms ris- 
ing out of the grass to let you know you weren’t in Kansas, 
appearances to the contrary. 

He debated whether to drift over to the sandwich shop 
for a bite of something, but thought better of it, remember- 
ing the time the dentist had chastised him in a high sing- 
song voice because he hadn’t brushed after lunch, the point 
of which had escaped him, since he’d been coming in to get 
his teeth cleaned in any case. The thought made him shift 
the rearview and pull back his lips in a grimace to study his 
gums and then work a fingernail between his front teeth, 
after which he took a swig of bottled water and swished it 
around in his mouth before 
rolling down the window 
and spitting it out. That 
was just the way he was, he 
supposed—the kind of per- 
son who did what was ex- 
pected of him, who wanted 
to smooth things out and 
take the path of least resis- 
tance. Unlike Rob. 

It was then that he 
thought of the video. He 
looked round him, his 
blood quickening, but no 
one was paying any atten- 
tion to him. The cars on 
either side were empty, and 
the only movement was at 
the door of the bank, where 
every few minutes someone 
would come in or out and 
the guard stationed there 
(slab-faced, heavy in the 
haunches, older—40, 45, it 
was hard to say) would ca- 
sually nod his head in rec- 
ognition. Shielding the lap- 
top with the back of the seat 
and the baffle of his own 
torso, he brought up the 
video—porn, he was watch- 
ing porn right there in the 
dentist’s parking lot where 
anybody could see, and he 
wasn’t thinking about stu- 
dents or students’ parents 
or the rent-a-cop at the 
bank or the real thing ei- 
ther, because all at once the 
world had been reduced to 
the dimensions of the screen on the seat beside him. 

He saw an anonymous room, a bed, the incandescence of 
too-white flesh and the sudden thrust of bodies cohering as 
the scene came into focus. In the center of the bed was the 
woman, on all fours, the man standing behind her and work- 
ing at her, his eyes closed and his face drawn tight with con- 
centration. The woman had her head down so that her own 
face was hidden by the spill of her hair, red-gold hair parted 
in the middle and swaying rhythmically as she rocked back 
into him. He saw her shoulders flex and release, her fingers 
spread and wrists stiffen against the white field of the sheets, 
and then she lifted her head and he saw her face and the 
shock of it made something surge up and beat inside of him 
with a fierce sudden clangor that was like the pounding of a 
mallet on a steel rail. He watched as she stared into the cam- 
era, her eyes receding beneath (continued on page 126) 


“Tell me the truth, Tex...is there someone else?” 


85 


THE STARS, THE SPOILERS THE TOP 25 


AND THE DARK HORSES 


; TAKE AIM FOR THE 
NATIONAL TITLE КҮЛ 14–0 
12-2 
11-2 
4 OREGON 12-2 


(з OKLAHOMA т; 


6 FLORIDA STATE 12-2 


7 WEST VIRGINIA т? 


8 GEORGIA 12-2 
8 MICHIGAN STATE 122 
10 TCU 10-3 


12 SOUTH CAROLINA 10-3 


з ARKANSAS 0 


14 WISCONSIN 10-4 
16 OHIO STATE 9-3 
18 MICHIGAN 10-3 
9-4 
20 NEBRASKA 9-4 


s usual, the eggheads who run college sports—the same scholars who EN ME 3-4 


gave us a Big Ten with 12 teams, a Big 12 with 10 teams and a Big East 


that will soon include San Diego State and Boise State—have been hard 2 TEXAS 9—4 
at work this off-season trying to improve the game, or more accurately, 
squeeze more money out of student athletes. More conference realignment is in 23 NOTRE DAME 8-5 
the works. At least ће power brokers finally signed off on a championship playoff. = 


Unfortunately, that four-team playoff (with teams chosen by a selection commit- i 
tee) won't begin until 2014. So for two more years we'll have the convoluted Bowl 
Championship Series system—the one the Southeastern Conference has domi- 

, winning a staggering six national titles in a row. Maybe this is the season 
reak ends. Vegas thinks so, making USC roe pek favorite. It’s doubtful 


24 BYU 9-4 


the Trojans would have been better than a 25-to-one pick had quarterback Matt 
Barkley jumped to the NFL early. Barkley says he has “serious unfinished busi- 
ness” left in college. Translation: It's national title or bust around Los Angeles. ILLUSTRATION BY JON FOSTER 


that it would be like getting а Maserati when 
you turn 16. Word of caution, Zach: Don't 
drive it into a ditch like Jefferson did last Jan- 
џагу. PREDICTION: 12-2 


Alabama: At 60, Nick Saban has 

clearly established himself as the best 

coach in the college game. Bama had 
gone 13-19 the previous four seasons in SEC 
play when he arrived. Under Saban the past 
four years, the Tide has won two national 
titles, with a 48-6 record, playing in the rough- 
est conference. The team plays smart and 
physical and, led by the nation's best offensive 
line, will continue to do so this fall. Quarter- 
back A.J. McCarron, who shredded LSU's 
vaunted defense in the title game, is also back. 
The downside? Saban has to replace four of 
his top five tacklers. PREDICTION: 11-2 


БЕКИ УЗ 
¥V¥¥¥¥¥VY 
V¥¥¥¥¥¥¥! 
V¥¥¥¥¥¥¥ 


Oregon: The Oregon football brand 


РА 


| USC: After two seasons in NCAA jail 
(thanks to Reggie Bush and his rule 
infractions) the Trojans are now free 

to play in the postseason and are primed to 
end the SEC's six-year run of national titles. 
The team was liberated at a perfect time: 
Golden boy Matt Barkley—the most polished 
player in the Long line of star Trojan QBs— 
bypassed the NFL for one more year of 
college. Barkley has the country's best 
receiving tandem (Robert Woods and Marqise 
Lee), a 1,UUU-yard rusher (Curtis McNeal) 
and four returning starters on the offensive 
line. The defense also returns its top four 
tacklers. And no team will be hungrier than 
this one. That's a good thing, because the 
Trojans' 37-year-old coach, Lane Kiffin, has 
never won a bowl game and is just 3-6 all- 
time against top-25 teams. PREDICTION: 14-0 


LSU: The Tigers beat eight el 

ranked teams last year, and only 

one of those opponents got within 
12 points of them. Of course it was that 
opponent, Alabama, that came back to 
thump LSU in the BCS title game. LSU 
is still Loaded on defense (as 
usual). The Tigers lost two first- 
rounders, but their defense 
may be even better 
since the rest of the = 
unit was so young ї 
last year. The big 
question is whether 
coach Les Miles can 
get some decent 
quarterback play. 
Tigers fans won't 
miss former starter 
Jordan Jefferson, 
but we'll see how 
sharp Georgia castoff ] 
Zach Mettenberger is. He Р 
ѕаіа he couldnt wait for 
Miles to flip him the keys 
to the offense, adding 


4 has soared in the past five years 
thanks to edgy uniforms courtesy of 
Nike king Phil Knight (a proud alum) and the 
frenetic offensive system run by coach Chip 
Kelly. (Think a no-huddle offense on Red 
Bull.) These Duckies are no fluke. They have 
to replace their quarterback and starting tail- 
back, but Kelly has two triggermen (Bryan 
Bennett and Marcus Mariota) who are faster 
and have better arms than Darron Thomas. 
Kelly also has De’Anthony Thomas, a dazzling 
sophomore running back-wideout-return 
man who averaged a touchdown every eighth 
time he touched the ball last season. The 
Ducks also return most of their defense, 
including top tackler John Boyett. The bad 
news? They have to play at USC this year. 
PREDICTION: 12-2 


FE Oklahoma: Last year's preseason 
` number one pick in both the coaches 
and AP polls proved to be a bigger flop 

than The Hangover Part II. The Sooners lost 
at home to a Texas Tech team that didn't 
even make a bowl, lost to Baylor and got 
whupped 44-10 by Oklahoma State. It 
has been eight years since coach Bob 


West Virginia running back Shawne Alston breaks free. 


Star Trojan receiver Marqise Lee against UCLA. 


Stoops had a team finish in the top four, but 
he does have standout OB Landry Jones back 
and a more seasoned offensive line. Better 
still, Stoops's brother Mike returns to run the 
defense. The Stoopses have a lot of speed to 
work with on defense, and they're going to 
need it: The Sooners have to visit West 
Virginia and TCU, the Big 12's two most explo- 
sive teams. PREDICTION: 11-2 


Florida State: It has been nine years 

since the Seminoles finished in the 

top 10, but that doesn't stop the poll- 
sters from fawning over them in the 
off-season. FSU always looks the part, but 
the Noles have lacked discipline and leader- 
ship. So why might things be different this 
year? Quarterback EJ Manuel, a fifth-year 
senior, is a respected leader who has a 
dynamic group of receivers. The team also 
has arguably the fastest defense in the 
nation, with nine starters returning from what 
was the fourth-ranked defense in 2011. Oh, 
and the Noles' two archrivals, Miami and 
Florida, are in rebuilding mode. If third-year 
coach Jimbo Fisher can't have a break- 
through season now, he'll probably never 
have one with FSU. PREDICTION: 12-2 


West Virginia: The Mountaineers' 

first year under offensive mastermind 

Dana Holgorsen was сћао с. But it 
ended in spectacular fashion. The team 
blasted Clemson 70-33 in the Orange Bowl, 
and it looks as though Holgorsen is just 
warming up. WVU dumped the Big East 
for the tougher Big 12, and the timing of 
the move is good. Holgorsen overhauled 
the defensive staff, which settled 
some rocky team chemistry. “The 
biggest change is that everyone's 
getting along with each other,” 

said QB Geno Smith. Keep an 
eye on Smith, a Heisman 
candidate with stud 


Z. 


E 
" PLAYBOY'S PRESEASON 
receivers Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey. 
If the defense, which has six starters back, 
can be decent, this is a good dark-horse Jim 
Ni | 


national-title pick. At least they won't be bor- 
ing. PREDICTION: 11-2 


Georgia: Longtime coach Mark Richt > 
got himself offthe hot seat last fall by MATT BARKLEY, USC. Of allthe Trojan OBs over the years, lo. 


winning 10 games though the Dawgs none has ever had a six-touchdown game. He had two in November. 
didn't beat anyone good. They faced four top- MONTEE BALL, Wisconsin. Ball tied Barry Sanders's single-season TD record | e 
15 teams and lost to all of them. NFL scouts 
love Georgia's personnel, especially on 
defense, where they ranked fifth in the coun- 
try. Their best player on defense—All-American TAVON AUSTIN, West Virginia. He led the nation in all-purpose 
linebacker Jarvis Jones, a USC transfer—is a yards in 2011 with 198 yards per game. 
potential top-10 pick. The team's leader is SAMMY WATKINS, Clemson. As a freshman in 2011, his play 
Aaron Murray, UGAS starting quarterback for heroics probably helped save coach Dabo Swinney's job. 
the third year. He doesn't have ideal size, but 
he can move and makes good decisions. He 
also has a few gifted young tailbacks to lean 


KNILE DAVIS, Arkansas. A 1,300-yard rusherin 2010, 
injury, but he has his wheels back, clocking a team-best 4.33 sei 


TYLER EIFERT, Notre Dame. His 63 catches for 803 yards led the nation’s tight ends in both 
categories and set school records. Not bad, considering Notre Dame's quarterbacks were horrible. — 


on, but the offensive line is green. The best KHALED HOLMES, USC. The Trojans' 305-pounder had the highest percentage of knockdown blocks 
news in Athens? The schedule is as favorable on the team, topping even Matt Kalil, the left tackle who was the fourth overall pick in April's NFL draft. 
as you can get in the SEC, meaning they avoid BARRETT JONES, Alabama. The 2011 Outland Trophy winner, Jones graded out higher than any 
LSU, Alabama and Arkansas. The only top-20 Tide lineman in almost every game, which is really saying something with this group. 
team they' likely face in the regular season жен: | 
s Ашны | 9 : RICKY WAGNER, Wisconsin. The six-foot-six, 322-pound left tackle Е Y m 
is South Carolina. PREDICTION: 12-2 | 一 

is the latest model off the Badgers' assembly line of road-graders. o BF 


Michigan State: Гће Big Ten doesnt CHANCE МАВМАСК, Alabama. Tide running backs rushed for more than 
have a legit national-title contender 100 yards 12 times last year. Often they ran behind this 320-pound bruiser. 


this year, but there аге а handful of : D.J. FLUKER, Alabama. So wonderfully imposing and agile at ® 
good teams. The Spartans—with eight of their six-foot-six and 335 pounds, he makes even Nick Saban get mushy. Ж | 
top nine tacklers returning, including tower- А 


ing defensive end William Gholston—are the 
best of the bunch. And they have some 
momentum, coming off an Outback Bowl win WILLIAM GHOLSTON, Michigan State. Cousin Vernon was a first- 


over Georgia—MSU's first postseason win in round bust ог the Jets. This six-foot-seven, 275-pound junior is a lot better. 
a decade. The Spartans are a traditional 
grind-it-out Big Ten offense, led by 238- 
pound sledgehammer tailback Le'Veon Bell 
and an experienced offensive line. Junior : KAWANN SHORT, Purdue. It's rare to see a defensive lineman 

quarterback Andrew Maxwell replaces Kirk lead his team in passes broken up. This 310-pounder is pretty special. 


Cousins. Maxwell, a six-foot-three former JADEVEON CLOWHEY, South Carolina. The nation's top 
high jumper, is a better athlete than Cousins. forcing five fumbles, and he didn't really know what he was 
We'll find out midseason if he has the same 
poise when MSU plays a three-game stretch 
with back-to-back road trips to Michigan and в 
Wisconsin before facing off against Мебгазка. MANTI ТЕ'0, Notre Dame. The Irish have had seven Heisman Trophy winni 


STAR LOTULELEI, Utah. The 320-pound Tongan lived up to his first 
name in 2011 by winning the Pac 12's award for best defensive lineman. 


JARVIS JONES, Georgia. This USC transfer arrived in the SEC with a bang, sacking quarter 
backs 13.5 times in 2011. 


PREDICTION: 12-2 of the Butkus Award (which honors the country's top linebacker). That should chat 
= CHASE THOMAS, Stanford. He chases—and catches—everybod 
| TCU: The Horned Frogs have won 47 thanks to his terrific pass-rushing moves. He had 17.5 tackles for lo: 


games in the past four seasons, one 
fewer than Alabama, But with TCUS TYRANN MATHIEU, LSU. Nicknamed "Honey Badger," Mathieu took 


everything but the national title last season. Now he's really pissed. 


move from the Mountain West Conference to 
the Big 12, it has officially made the big time. : DAVID AMERSON, NC State. At six-foot-three and 194 pounds, he has 
The bad news: In February, four key players, size. With 13 interceptions, he had five more than anyone else in the nation. 


including Tanner Brock, the linebacker pegged : ERIC REID, LSU. He's the brains of the Tigers' defense. Reid's interception г | 
to be the leader of the defense, were snagged on what appeared to be a sure TD for Alabama was the play of the 2011 season. FF Hd 
in a drug bust. Coach Gary Patterson immedi- EE => 


ately booted them. Three were defensive 
starters. Now only five starters return on 
defense. The offense, though, should be even CALEB STURGIS, Florida. Made three field goals of 50 yards or longer ә 
more explosive than it was іп 2011, when ТСО and was perfect on extra points in the 2011 season, 


ranked ninth 网 Scoring. Quarterback Casey BRAD WING, LSU. This Australian import averaged more than 44 E | 3 
Pachall and his crew of ed have yards per punt with almost half his boots going down inside the 20. (a Au * 
some experience. Good thing. The Horned -—— d 


Frogs close the season playing Texas and then 
Oklahoma, against whom they are a combined 
3-33 since 1968. PREDICTION: 10-3 NICK SABAN, Alabama. The best in the college game. The Tide had five players drafted in 


| the top 35 and faces a brutal road schedule. But Saban will still produce а top-five team 
AAA 


: NICKELL ROBEY, USC. At five-foot-eight, he doesn't have ideal size, but that didn't stop him from 
locking up Notre Dame's towering star receiver Michael Floyd (an eventual first-rounder). 


LÀ Í 
DE'ANTHONY THOMAS, Oregon. The nation's most explosive player, у 
the 173-pound sophomore ran two kickoffs back for TDs in 2011. * 


ee ud 
“me ? E 


29 


BY STEPHEN REBELLO 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN STEPHENS 


01 f 


PEAYEOY: We're about to see you play a 
bike messenger chased by a twisted cop in 
the big-screen action thriller Premium Rush. 
Meanwhile, audiences are still arguing about 
whether The Dark Knight Rises is the best- 
ever Batman flick, and your profile has kept 
rising since you did /nception and (500) 
Days of Summer. Having acted in commer- 
cials and TV shows such as 3rd Rock From 
the Sun since you were six and having made 
your 1992 movie debut at the age of 11 as 
Student #1 in Beethoven, do you look back 
on your childhood as a bit skewed? 

GORDON-LEVITT: | wouldn't say | was a nor- 
mal kid. I'd say I was a lucky little kid, because 
unfortunately it's not normal to have extraor- 
dinarily good parents who love and support 
you. 1 played baseball, did gymnastics, took 
piano lessons and started acting as just an- 
other one of the things I did. 1 wasn't pres- 
sured into it. But it was acting | loved. | had a 


really cool acting teacher who taught us how 
to become a character, to be realistic and feel 
those feelings, so | hated being expected to 
behave like an idiot in TV commercials be- 
cause they seem to think that's what sells 
toys or whatever. | remember on Beethoven 
we weren't allowed to pet the dog because 
it would have distracted him. For a dog lover 
that was disappointing and weird. 


02 

PLAYBOY: Back then, just as now, you never 
seemed to get caught up in any of the mis- 
steps that have turned many promising 
young actors into tabloid fodder. How? 

GORDON-LEVITT: Being on TV when | was 
a teenager in high school was way harder 
than anything l've experienced since. It pre- 
pared me for what it is to work in pop cul- 
ture. I’ve learned | have basically two different 
interactions with (continued on page 146) 


92 


lana Campos сате of age in the 

Brazilian city of Florianópolis, 

a subtropical paradise so spell- 

binding that it's called the Island 

of Magic. Among its enchanting 

qualities: 42 pristine beaches 
where dolphins and sea turtles 
swim and pro surfers converge 
to ride world-renowned waves. 
“It's beautiful there,” Alana says. 
“You're completely surrounded by 
the ocean. Plus everybody is always 
smiling. 1 try to take that happy 
energy with me wherever I go.” 
There is, however, one problem 
with Florianópolis. “All the girls are 
gorgeous,” Alana says. “When you go 
out at night, you become just another 
pretty face. It's very annoying.” 
Nevertheless, Alana’s unforgettable 
visage caught the attention of Ford 
Models after she won a series of 
local beauty pageants, including 
one sponsored by her favorite 
soccer club, Avai. “I never dreamed 
of becoming a model,” she says. “I 
actually wanted to become a flight 
attendant so I could travel for free. 
But now I love modeling because 
I'm always having fun and looking 
good.” On a lark, she decided to 
submit photos to PLAYBOY.“I had 
never shot nude before or even 
gone topless on a beach,” she says. 
“To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a 
response.” But within three months 
of her submission, Hef had selected 
her as Miss September. “I feel lucky,” 
she says, beaming. Then with giddy 
spontaneity, Alana bursts into a 
torrent of Portuguese. “Estou muito 
feliz por estar aqui representando a beleza 
do meu país Brasil. Estou amando ser 
uma Playmate!” The translation: “Pm 
very happy to be here representing 
the beauty of my country, Brazil. 
And I love being a Playmate!” 


THRILL 
BRAZIL 


Surrender to the samba beat 
of Miss September 


a > LM 
"RE 
| $7 de * uw >» Г 


7 


DETER ATT BER 
АИ 2» 


ИУ 全 
(il? A 
Ir. ЖУ, T 
My Bie , 


MISS SEPTEMBER 


PLAYBOY'S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


NAME: — Alana Campos ____ 
т y 


Roc DE PET: О RN ups. 220 _ 
| o" 
HEIGHT: -SF WEIGHT: EET | _ 3 
、 ? t А 
BIRTH DATE: 41-5-90 _ BIRTHPLACE: | амо olo aL 


AMBITIONS: IN 
TURN-ONS: Byood shoulders , strong legs and , most _ 
\mpor i 5 : 


TURNOFFS : LM) iL у XXbYessiQN 
7, 


10 Ме. 
WHAT ALWAYS MAKES ME LAUGH: 


MY PHILOSOPHY: 


ДЕ a soccer Bua Misses 
Garne, To m fovet Y 


See more of Miss September at 
playboy.com. ~ 


` 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


А frustrated wife bought а pair of crotchless 
panties in an attempt to spice up her sex life. 
She put them on and sat on the sofa opposite 
her husband. 

“Get up!” the husband screamed. “Get up!” 

She jumped up from the couch and asked, 
“What's wrong?” 

“Oh, you're wearing crotchless panties,” 
the husband said, relieved. “1 thought you 
sat on the cat.” 


А Catholic boy and a Jewish boy were talking. 
The Catholic boy said, “Му priest knows more 
than your rabbi.” 

“Of course he does, dipshit,” the Jewish boy 
said.“You tell him everything!” 


| hate that your mother doesn't like me,” a girl 
told her boyfriend. 

“Don't take it personally,” he assured her. 
“She's never liked anyone Гуе dated. 1 once 
dated someone exactly like her, and that didn't 
work out at all.” 

“What happened?" the girl asked. 

He replied, “My father couldn't stand her.” 


bi get it,” a wife said to her husband when the 
phone rang. 
On the line a pervert, breathing heavily, said, 
“I bet you have a tight asshole with no hair.” 
“Yes,” she responded. "He's watching TV." 


А man went to a palm reader on a whim. 
“You are a very lonely man,” she told him. 
“You can tell that just from my love lines?” 

he asked. 

“No,” she responded, “from the calluses on 
your hand.” 


Life is like a cock: Simple, straight and 
relaxed—it’s the women who make it hard. 


Му doctor says that if I don't give up sex, I'll 
be dead in a week," a man told his friend. 
“Why is that?" the friend asked. 
The first replied, "I'm fucking his wife." 


How was your first day as a masseur?" a man 
asked his male roommate. 

“I was fired," the roommate replied. “Appar- 
ently the instruction 'finish off on her face' 
doesn't mean what I thought it did." 


On the eve of a couple's 10th wedding anni- 
versary, the still-slim wife was looking in the 
mirror and bragging about her figure. "You 
know, I can still get into the skirts I had before 
we were married," she said. 

"Oh yeah?" the husband replied. "I wish I 


could too." 


Ir a female sex addict is called a nymphoma- 
niac, what’s a male sex addict called? 
A man. 


Expecting an important letter, а man went 
home during his lunch hour to check the mail. 
“Has the mailman come yet?” he shouted to his 
wife as he walked through the door. 

“Almost there,” a man's voice answered back. 


What seems to be the problem?” a doctor 
asked his elderly patient. 

“Td like my sex drive lowered,” the man 
responded. 

“Sir,” the doctor said, “at your age I think 
your sex drive is allin your head.” 

“I know,” the man replied. “That's why I 
want it lowered.” 


A very large and surly woman took a man's 
order in a restaurant during a busy lunch 
hour. “Sorry about the wait,” she told him in 
an insincere tone. 

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “Hopefully 
you'll lose it someday." 


Send your jokes to Playboy Party Jokes, 9346 
Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 
90210, or by e-mail to jokes@playboy.com. 
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributors whose 
submissions are selected. 


“Did you ask for groom service?” 


103 


PLAYBOY 


— — FASHION BY JENNIFER RYAN JONES =- 


A NEW BREED OF GENTLEMAN IS SETTING 
THE STANDARD FOR HOW TO DRESS: HE'S 


BEST. HERE ARE THE NEW STYLE 
OW TO GET THEIR LOOK. 


Suit Yourself 


Not all 42 regulars are 
created equal, especially 
when body types run the 
gamut from gym-toned to 
supersized. Getting the right 
fit is a multistep process that's 
well worth the investment. 


Y 


These men have two things in 
common: They're perfectly 
fit, and their suits fit 
perfectly. (No point put- 
ting in time at the gym 4 
if you're not going to у 
show it off.) While the | ~ = |J 
average guy doesn't ‘ 
have a wardrobe styl- 
ist at his disposal like wa 
A-list actors and ath- 

letes do, we're fortunate 
enough to live in an era 
when designers are cutting 
their suits slimmer. And a 
leaner, meaner look can 
come in handy at 
the office or 
on the 
town. 


SHOULDERS FIRST 
The point where the padding 
neets the sleeve seam 
should end where you 
S houlder ends Get th IS 
ght in the store, and 


( Ire on vour wav 


SLIM THE SLEEVES 


| iere s W he re the tallo 


mes in. The sleeve 


ilf an inch of shirt cuff 


exposed. Slightl y taper 


GET WAISTED 


Alter the jacket to nip 


n slightly at the waist 


for a cleaner, leaneı 
silhouette 
COVER YOUR ASS 
Pick a jacket that hanas 
1. Daniel Craig: The broad „по lower than your bal 
shoulders and slim waist Your lec | ger 
say “Craig. Daniel Craig.’ ou'll look taller. 
2. Ct ng Ti You 
= Bi 3 CHOP TROU 
Take in the trousers to fit 
comfortably at the waist 
without a belt 
ne BREAK IT DOWN 
Hem the pants so they just 
hit the top of the shoe. Slightly 
taper the legs so they don't flap 


aroung пке Hamn er pants. 


105 


A the 


Specs Appeal 
E=] LOOK SMART IN 
RETRO GLASSES 
HIGH PERFORMANCE 
MEETS а STYLE 
Take a cue from these athletes, 2x уу. 
who know the дате of life is TORTOISESHELL 
as much about fashion as it is "$350. 


about action. Whether you're 
a pro or a joe, you should 
look smart off the court or the 
field. A crisp collared shirt, а 
fitted sweater and above all 

a pair of plastic-frame eye- 
glasses will do the trick. 


Cologne Ranger 


SMELL LIKE A WINNER 
WITH THESE INVIGORAT- 
ING, FRESH AND CITRUSY 
SPORT COLOGNES 


ISSEY MIYAKE L'EAU 

D'ISSEY POUR 

HOMME SPORT, 
$79. 


REAL 
ROCKSTARS — s 


THEY OWN THE STREETS E n 
THE WAY THEY OWN THE STAGE а ROCK otar 


Menswear designer, Fashion 
Star mentor and hard-core 
audiophile John Varvatos 
designs clothes that help 


рг а теге mortals channel their 
3 


Over the years, “rock and roll” has been used to describe 
a look that often veered a bit too costumey (Cee Lo 
Green channeling Mad Max; Elton John channeling him- 
self). Today it means wearing some- 
thing with a little attitude (leather, „ша 
dark sunglasses and a well- 
chosen hat)-a performance 
these musicians have 
mastered and anyone 
can pull off. 


~ inner rock god and actual 
Е rock gods achieve sartorial 
۱ splendor. (Artists from Iggy 
Pop to ZZ Top have appeared 
in his ad campaigns.) Here 
are his rules for dressing like 
a rock star. 


EMBODY IT 
"Not everybody has а rock- 
god body—most rockers were 
rail thin 一 So the most impor- 
tant thing to think about is 
whats going to look good on 
y you. You need to be comfort- 
able with what you're wearing. 
Not a lot of guys can show up 
in a top hat like Slash does 
and not have everybody laugh 
at them. Swagger is key” 


Bruno Mars: With super- 
black shades and a vivid cap, he 
uses attitude as an accessory. 

Adam Levine: When in doubt, 
he mixes business with leather to 
great success. 3. Kanye West: The 
gold standard for wearing just the 
right amount of bling. 


INVEST IN A CLASSIC 
LEATHER JACKET 
"The best leather jackets are 
the ones that feel as if they 
have a history to them, like 
they've been around 
forever. You want one 
that will feel just as 
relevant when you 
pull it out of the 
closet 10 years 
from now. " 


How to 
Rock a Scarf 


Nothing takes an outfit 
from run-of-the-mill to 
rock royalty more than a 
rakishly tied scarf. Of all 
the ways to tie one, the 
"fake knot" hits that sweet 
Spot between intentional 
and casual. 


3 DON'T SKIP 
THE SHADES 
"Sunglasses 
give an air of 
intrigue and in- 
accessibility. I'm 
writing a book 
for HarperCollins 

about rock and 
roll in fashion, and 
there's a quote 
from Patti Smith 
where she says her 
sunglasses are such 
an important part 

of her look that she 
couldn't conceive of going 
onstage without them any 
more than she'd go onstage 
without her guitar” 


У sti 


У Drape the scarf around 
the back of your neck and tie 
а loose knot at one end. 


Pass the other end 
through the knot. 


9 Tighten the knot until 
it comes up just to your 
Adam's apple. 


FA 


107 


Nn 
| 


зе ЫТ” 


Th 
Fr. 


EA 
423 (6 


j Pr: 


1. Guy Pearce: A skinny 
tie and chunky glasses do 
nothing to detract from the 
actor's luxe tux. 2. 
Balazs: The h 


t 


FORWARD 


ORMALISTS 


We're living in the golden 
age of the tuxedo: The 
mobster black-on-black 
look is out and the Sina- 
tra traditional look is 
back—but not so much 
that you can’t tweak 
tradition. These gentle- 
men grace the red car- 
pet with a style that’s 
the perfect balance of 
formal and personal. 


Linked In 


ENAMEL 


The New Rules 
of Black Tie 


Although tuxedos have got- 
ten more casual in recent 
years, that doesn't mean 
you should coordinate your 
bow tie with your date's 
gown. A tuxedo should be 
black. The shirt should be 
white. And yes, you should 
buy one, Here's the new 


formal formula. 


DO THE MATH 
Factor in the rental cost 
plus the time spent on fit- 
ting, picking up and then 
returning the tuxedo, and 
you might as well buy. The 
Italian-made Ludlow tuxedo 
from J. Crew costs about 
$700 and will serve you at 


all three of your weddings. 


BOW TIE NOT 
REQUIRED 
You can wear a normal tie 
with a tuxedo that's cut on 


the slim side 


PASS ON THE PLEATS 
A crisp white dress shirt 
looks sharp and can be 
worn with a regular suit the 
rest of the year. Nothing 
says senior prom like tuxedo 
studs in a pleated shirt 


COPY CLOONEY 
Wheiher you rent or buy, 
emulate George Clooney for 
that classic old-Hollywood 
look: single-button jacket 
with a notch lapel, bow tie, 


no cummerbund. 


TURNSTILE 


i 


the 
Al P H A i in 


ARTISTS 


CASUAL, CREATIVE, 
IN CONTROL 


A true artist tells a story even 

when he's not on-screen. These 
actors wear classic clothes 4 > 
with a weathered look that 
speaks of experience and 
a life well lived. 


4 , 


BUTTON-FRONT VEST 
BY JOHN VARVATOS, 
$498. 


ARKANSAS 
BOOTS BY FRYE, 
$298. 


~ 
иш 


ап (елы 


© 
ro em [Ir 
~ 


— E 
= 


50 YEARS 


of the 
PLAYBOY 
INTERVIEW 


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4 у LU 


= А look 
back at our 
classic 2003 
interview with 
hip-hop's 
most enduring 
and respected 
artist 


a 


When PLAYBOY interviewed rapper, producer 
and entrepreneur Jay-Z in 2003, we dubbed 
him “the Don Corleone of rap...a street- 
hardened former drug dealer who drinks 
Cristal, smokes cigars and trusts almost 
no one. Especially women.” Others have 
described him as “the hip-hop Sinatra,” hip- 
hop’s “reigning kingpin” and, contradicting 
his often-reported-on swagger, “a grown-up, 
levelheaded, career-minded adult who has 
stayed at the top of the charts.” 

The last is indisputable. Jay-Z has sold 
more than 50 million albums and has a net 
worth of more than $450 million. He holds 
the record for the most number-one albums 
by a solo artist, has won 14 Grammys and 
founded a successful record label. His 
ventures transcend music. Jay-Z is part 
owner of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team, has 
a line of clothing (Rocawear) and last year 
launched Life + Times, a popular website. 

Almost a decade after our interview, 
Jay-Z remains one of the most successful 
and relevant artists in music. Last year’s 
Watch the Throne, a collaboration with 
Kanye West, debuted at number one and 
has sold 1.5 million copies to date. He 
has also remained newsworthy for his life 
outside music. He’s been lambasted for 
his ego—he’s called himself Hova, god 
of the microphone. Bill O’Reilly accused 
him of damaging children with cursing and 
“corrosive lyrics,” to which Jay-Z replied, 
“Fuck Bill O’Reilly.” 

When our interviewer, Contributing Editor 
Rob Tannenbaum, asked Jay-Z about a 
rumor that he was dating Beyoncé, the 
rapper was coy, admitting that yes, he’d like 
her to be his girlfriend. He usually seems to 
get what he wants; they married in 2008, and 
this year they had a child, Blue Ivy Carter. 
Jay-Z, now 42, has repeatedly announced 
his retirement and claimed that “you can’t 
be a rapper at 50,” but there's no sign he’ll 
be disappearing anytime soon. 


Excerpted from the April 2003 issue 


PLAYBOY: Rap careers are usually over 
fast: one or two hits, then styles change 
and a new guy comes along. Why have 
you endured while other rappers haven’t? 
JAY-Z: | would say that it’s from still being 
able to relate to people. It’s natural to lose 
yourself when you have success, to start 
surrounding yourself with fake people. In 
The 48 Laws of Power, it says the worst 
thing you can do is build a fortress around 
yourself. I still got the people who grew 
up with me, my cousin and my childhood 
friends. This guy right here [gestures to the 
studio manager], he’s my friend, and he told 
me that one of my records, Volume 3, was 
wack. People set higher standards for me, 
and I love it. 

PLAYBOY: But we were just in a chauffeured 
car, on our way to free courtside seats at a 
Nets game, and we saw your new music 
video playing on BET. 

JAY-Z: Yeah. [laughs] I’m still separated. You 


111 


PLAYBOY 


112 happen for you. 


told me to separate—Im still looking in on 
that guy. Like, Wow, that guy's doing it! 
PLAYBOY: So how can people relate to you when 
you possess so many things they don't have? 
JAY-Z: Гуе been through a lot of things, so 1 could 
write songs off memory for another four years. 
PLAYBOY: You refer to yourself as “the $40 million 
boy” on Blueprint 2. 15 that an accurate number? 
JAY-Z: | don’t know the math. How’d I get that 
number? I might be past that by now. 
PLAYBOY: We bet you know exactly how much 
you have at any given moment. 

JAY-Z: Everyone should, don't you think? 
Especially in rap music. There's nothing 
worse than putting in all this work and waking 
up broke. Pve seen it happen, and I vowed it 
won't happen to me. 

PLAYBOY: Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC died 
broke. How does that happen? 

JAY-Z: 1 always have to blame it on the 
accountants. They have to be tough; they have 
to be willing to quit if a guy calls up and says, 
“I want to buy a new car.” 

PLAYBOY: Have any of your accountants ever 
said no to you? 

JAY-Z: | fire my accountant every year. Every 
time Грау taxes, he's fired. Uncle Sam did not 
go in that recording booth with me. He didn't 
bang his head against the wall until he came 
up with the hook for *Hovi Baby.” It’s crazy, 
the checks that I send to the government, for 
nothing. And then my accountant says, “Be 
happy that you're fortunate enough to cut this 
check." Oh yeah? Fuck you! You're fucking 
fired! That's my response. Then I hired him 
back, because he's right. 

PLAYBOY: All that money, and you still release 
records more often than any other rapper. Why 
work so hard? Is it just for the money? 

JAY-Z: I’m doing it for the artistry. Pm doing it 
to try new things, to create, to invent. Tm a guy 
who wants to see rap go further, even after me. I 
want people to open their minds, start making 
different types of music. Don't follow what's going 
on. That's what hip-hop is about. It's a rebellious 
voice. You're going left? Then Pm going right. 
But say it like this: [sneers] Pm going right. 
PLAYBOY: How did growing up in the Marcy 
Projects shape you? 

JAY-Z: lt was a poor neighborhood, but you 
learned loyalty and integrity. You learned to 
respect other people, because it was a minefield. 
If you disrespect somebody or act dishonorable, 
you get hurt. Somebody puts you in your place. 
So I learned integrity. Its a beautiful place to 
grow up, as far as having honor. 

PLAYBOY: Was it dangerous? 

JAY-Z: lt wasn't safe. Everyone there was poor 
and trying to get ahead. There was not much 
hope. Everyone's on top of everybody else. 
Thats a powder keg. Then crack hit around 
1985. You had so many people strung out. I 
mean, everybody. It was an epidemic. 
PLAYBOY: And have those projects changed 
since you were a kid? 

JAY-Z: [Shakes his head | There's no lawyers, по 
doctors, no psychiatrists. Everyone that makes 
money moves out. They just go. 1 want to tell 
kids, “Yo, Pm Jay-Z....” Not even Jay-Z. “Pm 
Shawn Carter, from 5C. I lived in that building 
right there, the one you live in now. And it can 


(continued on page 130) 


/ 
JAY-Z 


ИЙ: 
EVALUTION 


Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of 
fashion and impeccable style, Jay-Z is hip- 
hop's resident sartorialist. The man can rock 
a four-in-hand cravat and a pin-striped Savile 
Row suit one day and a plain black T-shirt with 
a $25,000 ostrich-skin backpack the next— 
all while avoiding looking like (a) a banker 
or (b) a tool. But the mogul isn't merely 
dressing for the paparazzi. Jay-Z's lyrics are 
peppered with more knowing references to 
Prada, Gucci and Maison Martin Margiela 
than a lecture at Parsons School of Design. 
Forthwith, a time line of Jay-Z's ever-evolving 
personal style and obsession with fashion. 


/ 


"| moved from LEVI'S to 
GUESS to VERSACE. Now it's 
diamonds like LIBERACE.” 


“Coming of Age” 


Releases his platinum-selling debut album 
Reasonable Doubt. His lyrics are fashion forward 


"Say bye to REEBOK, say 


— "Get Your Mind Right Mami” 


“FRESH to death. Head to toe till the 
day | rest. And | don't wear JERSEYS, I'm 
30 plus. Give me a crisp pair of JEANS, 
nigga, button-ups." 


—“What More Can I Say" 


hi to CHANEL. Say hi to Си 
GUCCI, PRADA as well." 1 М 


Launches his own fashion line, Rocawear, 
with partner Damon Dash. 


Becomes president of Def Jam Recordings, where he helps launch 
the careers of Rihanna and Kanye West. Amps up his CEO style 


Blogs a picture of his $925 Maison 
Martin Margiela high-tops 


“NORTH BEACH LEATHERS, 
matching GUCCI SWEATER. 
GUCCI SNEAKS on to keep my 
outfit together.” 


"| know you riding with a nigga through 
the GUCCI store, all through PRADA, but 
what if | had nada?" 


— “When the Money Goes” 


"New watch alert, 
HUBLOTS. Orthe big-face 
Roley, | got two of those." 


“Blue Magic” 


Sells Rocawear to Iconix for 
$204 million cash, 


— "Ово" 


15 rumored to be working on a deal with 
Swiss luxury watchmaker Hublot. 


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DON LAPRE WAS ONCE THE KING OF INFOMERCIALS, THE MAN WHO 
CONVINCED VIEWERS HE COULD MAKE THEM RICH. HE CONVINCED 
HIMSELF TOO, AND THAT'S ONE REASON HE'S DEAD 


BY NEAL GABLER 


likely to remember Don Lapre, if at all, from the mid- 

1990s, standing on a beach in an open-collared sport 
shirt, the waves lapping gently behind him, his hair black 
and gel-slicked, his face baby smooth, his body leaning con- 
spiratorially toward the camera, his hands, fingers splayed, 
semaphoring nonstop, his eyes widening and squinting in 
punctuation, his mouth taking small gulps of air before each 
sally as if he needed an oxygen boost to fuel his excitement 
and his tone, as his voice rose into its higher register, halfway 
between beseeching and wheedling. In those days he was a 
phenomenon—maybe the most visible and imitable pitchman 
on late-night ТУ. “The sssssecret is learning how to take one 
tiny classified ad [gulp] that made $30 to $40 profit in a week 
[gulp] and to realize that you could now take that same exact 
ad [gulp] and place it in up to 3,000 other newspapers around 
the country,” he told his viewers. “That's how I generated 
over $50,000 a week out of my one-bedroom apartment!” 
And he added in the same cheery, high-pitched delivery, 
“You may start making so much money you may not want 
to do anything else!” And there were the testimonials: the 
bearded man who was making so much money he couldn't 
stop smiling in shy disbelief (“It don't even sound right”); the 
gaunt, triangular-faced man in the cranberry shirt who called 


R efore the tragedy that resulted in his death, you were 


ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTELA TSCHUMY 


it “phenomenal”; the doughy young man with hair piled 
high atop his head who testified that he had visited Don 
Lapre's office and had seen with his own eyes “stacks and 
stacks and stacks and stacks” of tracking sheets for the 
classified ads Lapre had placed. 

This was the half-hour program called The Money Making 
Show With Don Lapre (pronounced la-PREE), and according 
to Jordan Whitney, Inc., a company that monitors info- 
mercials, back in the 1990s it consistently ranked in the 
top 10 in number of viewers and frequency of airings. It 
also seemed to do its job. Lapre once claimed to have sold 
500,000 “Money Making” kits in a five-year period, and one 
source estimated that at one point his company was gross- 
ing $60 million a year. But money wasn’t the only measure 
of his success. Lapre became a minor pop culture icon. 
David Spade imitated him on Saturday Night Live. David 
Letterman invited him 
on his show to spoof 
himself. He appeared 
on the MTV Video Mu- 
sic Awards. He became 
friends with Mike Tyson. 

If Lapre made an 
impression, it was no 
doubt because he was 
different from most of 
the TV hucksters selling 
magic real estate plans 
or miracle diets or slice- 
and-dice machines or 
exercise contraptions. 
For one thing, he was 
young—only in his 205 
when he began. For an- 
other, he didn't act as if he was out to pick your pocket. 
He had a personal story he always shared in his broad- 
casts, and that gave him a patina of sincerity. He had been 
poor. He didn't have a high school diploma. He lived in a 
one-bedroom apartment. He was going nowhere fast. And 
then...and then, he learned the key to success—the way to 
make money fast and easy, which he was now passing on 
to his viewers. Lapre wasn't selling just a scheme. As one 
of his attorneys later put it, “Don was selling opportunity.” 
He was selling the American dream in no small measure 
because Lapre, the very personification of 1990s exuber- 
ance, seemed to be living the American dream himself. 


DON LAPRE\ 


SELF-MADE MILLIONA 
AT THE AGE OF 29 


Don Lapre's rise began, as Lapre would enunciate it in 
his infomercials, in “а ONE [pause] BEDROOM [pause] 
APARTMENT” situated in a large bi-level, red-tile-roofed, 
tan stucco complex called Woodstone in Phoenix, just off 
Interstate 17 on Cactus Road, not far from where Lapre 
had grown up. At the time he moved in, Lapre was a house- 
painter, like his father, and he was doing well enough, but 
his dreams always exceeded his paycheck. He would spend 
his nights at his desk scribbling ideas on a yellow legal 
pad—ideas he hoped would make him rich. At 23 he got a 
sudden inspiration that young singles had a difficult time 
meeting one another outside the bar scene. His remedy 
was what he called the 1828 Club, named after the age 
range of his prospective clients. The way Lapre imagined 
it, he would advertise and host a huge party with food and 
kegs of beer at a Phoenix park where singles could mingle 
for a nominal admission fee. 

Like many of Lapre's ideas, it wasn't exactly bad. But 
when the big day of the party arrived, almost no one 
showed up. Lapre lost everything. Ever resilient, he began 
a credit-repair service that was quickly closed by the Ari- 
zona attorney general for overpromising customers. Still 


undeterred, he found another opportunity the same way 
his customers would: by watching an infomercial late one 
night on his old black-and-white T'V with tinfoil crimped 
around the antennas. The ad extolled the money one 
could make by searching for uncollected Federal Housing 
Administration insurance refunds. Lapre discovered there 
was nothing in the kit he couldn't produce himself, which 
is exactly what he did. It cost him $4 to print. He sold it for 
$75. He called it MIP, Mortgage Insurance Premium, and it 
constituted Lapre's crossover moment—the realization that 
he could make more money by telling other people how to 
make money than by doing what he was telling them to do. 

With MIB, he crossed another line too—the fateful line 
to television. He had come to the attention of an info- 
mercial entrepreneur named Bobby Singer, who pitched 
how to win at blackjack. As a child, Lapre had dreamed 
of being an entertainer, 
and Singer, recogniz- 
ing Lapre's sales talent, 
hired him to pitch one 
of Singer's own schemes 
in exchange for a royalty 
on the kits sold. When 
Lapre feared that Singer 
was shortchanging him, 
he decided to produce 
his own infomercial. 

All this time Lapre 
had continued painting 
houses, until another en- 
trepreneur introduced 
him to 900 lines. People 
would call the numbers, 
pay a fee to chat or to 
get a psychic reading, and a bureau in Las Vegas, which 
set up the lines and provided the folks to answer them, 
would give the owner a kickback. In 1989 Lapre bought a 
chat line for lonely people who just wanted someone to talk 
to, then advertised it in "tiny classified ads" in newspapers 
across the country. (One line could have hundreds of ex- 
tensions.) This time he hit pay dirt. “Debbie, oh my God!” 
he told his sister, sounding like one of his own testimoni- 
als. “Pm making $1,800 in my sleep.” But that was only 
a drop in the bucket. In no time his ads drove thousands 
of callers to his lines. When he later said he was making 
$50,000 a week from his one-bedroom apartment, he actu- 
ally was making $50,000 from his one-bedroom apartment. 
His sister Debbie says that some weeks he made as much as 
$90,000. And he was barely 25 years old. 

But it was never really about the money. It was about the 
thrill, Debbie says, the challenge of seeing how many more 
things you could do, how much further you could extend 
your vision. Since he was making so much money with his 
own 900 numbers, he decided to sell 900 numbers to other 
people like him, or rather, since it cost $1,800 to buy a line, 
he would sell extensions to them at the cut-rate price of $99 
and take a percentage of each call. The idea was that the 
customers could advertise their extensions in "tiny classified 
ads" just as Lapre had. Then he decided he would sell them 
the "tiny classified ads" himself and charge them $79 for 
the service. Then he began selling them a full package that 
told them how they could do exactly what he had done: buy 
lines and advertise. That was The Money Making Show With 
Don Гарте, which began airing its infomercials early in 1992. 

And that was what made Don Lapre a star. 


WHAT MADE HIM 
SUCCESSFUL WAS 
THAT HE WAS A 
TRUE BELIEVER 

IN ATV WORLD 
OF CYNICAL 

| MANIPULATORS. 


But it wasn't what made Don Lapre successful. What made 
him successful was that he was a true believer in a TV world of 
cynical manipulators. He would (continued on page 139) 


As an old-fashioned dad, I would have liked it better if you'd asked 
for her hand before you took everything else." 


117 


А 


PRIVATE DANCE 
with 
BRITISH BURLESQUE SENSATION 


KA'PRINA 
DARLING 


~ | 


»- ji PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARLENA BIELINSKA 


here is no telling where 
the engines of fate will 
' lead you. Take Katrina 
Darling. Early last year 
Kat was a 20-year-old burlesque 
dancer with a show called God Save 
the Queen, living in a coastal Eng- 
lish city. By night she performed 
in small local clubs for fun, work- 
ing day jobs in retail and finance 
to make ends meet and not think- 
ing too much about tomorrow. 
Then one day in April, while she 
was in Glasgow to perform a show, 
an unfamiliar number appeared 
on her cell phone. A reporter 
was calling to ask Kat about her 
second cousin Kate Middleton— 
Prince William's fiancée. Kat 
Darling, related to the royal fam- 
ily? ^It was the most ridiculous 
thing I ever heard," she says, 
laughing. Turns out Kat was the 
second cousin of Ms. Middleton, 
the future Duchess of Cambridge, 
a bona fide royal. 

Suddenly this sensuous young 
burlesque dancer's face was all 
over the worldwide press, from 
the New York Post to endless tab- 
loids in Britain. Her cell phone 
wouldn't stop ringing. “At first 
I thought it was hilarious," she 
says. "It's not every day some- 
thing like that happens. It got 
completely out of control, how- 
ever. It brought a lot of scary 
things to my doorstep." Lines 
now formed outside the under- 
ground clubs and cabarets where 
Kat performed God Save the Queen 
(the name of the show taking on 
a wonderful irony). What did Kat 
Darling do? You bet: She went 
on stage and knocked 'em dead. 
"Burlesque 15 a platform for me 
to explore these kinds of things," 
she says. Is the show meant to be 
political? “Not really,” she says. "It 
plays on the whole thing in a Brit- 
ish satirical way, just poking fun." 
The show has taken off, gather- 
ing big audiences all over Britain. 
Kat brought her stage show across 
the pond to New York, where she 
wowed audiences with her sar- 
donic brand of sexiness. 

For your enjoyment, Kat has 
offered us a private dance, a taste 
of burlesque the likes of which 
you'll find nowhere else, here in 
the pages of this magazine. What 
goes through her mind when she's 
performing on stage or in front of 
the camera lens? "I try to keep as 
in the moment as I can,” she says 
with a sultry British accent. "The 
more into it the audience is, the 
more into it I am." We're loving it, 
Kat. Long live the queen. 


ZZ EEE £6: c0! 


See more of Katrinavat CÁM 2 ' . 
playboy.com.. ™ ‚ CADA 7 ~ o : 1 / 


# sr | 
РЕД Г 
pr” | 


» * R ~ - 1 / — ге ^ ; 
TA A (= X. E - a C QW У da / 4 a at 


ч Tm o E 


“THE MORE INTO IT 
THE AUDIENCE IS, 


THE MORE INTO IT TAM.” 


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— = m ~ ~ си - “ - lx سے س‎ ы 
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PLAYBOY 


126 


THE WAY YOU LOOK 


(continued from page 84) 


the weight of the moment—Laurie’s eyes, 
his wife’s—and then he slapped the screen 
shut. I Thought You'd Want to Know. 


For a long moment he sat there fro- 
zen, unable to move, unable to think, 
the laptop like a defused bomb on the 
seat beside him. He wanted to look 
again, wanted to be sure, wanted to feel 
the surge of shock and fear and hate 
pulse through him all over again, but 
not now, not here. He had to get home, 
that was all he could think. But what of 
the dentist? Here he was in the parking 
lot, staring up at the bank of windows 
where Dr. Sedgwick would be bent over 
his current patient, finishing up with 
the pads and the amalgam and all the 
rest in anticipation of his 3:30 appoint- 
ment. But he couldn’t face the dentist 
now, couldn’t face anybody. He was 
punching in the dentist’s number, the 
excuse already forming on his lips (food 
poisoning; he was right out there in the 
lot, but he was so sick all of a sudden 
he didn’t think he could, or should... 
and maybe he’d better make another 
appointment?), when he became aware 
that there was someone standing there 
beside the car window. A girl. In her 20s. 
All made up and in a pair of tight blue 
pants of some shiny material that caught 
the light and held it as she bent to the 
door of the car next to his while another 
girl clicked the remote on the far side 
and the locks chirped in response. She 
didn’t look at him, not even a glance, 
but she was bending over to slip some- 
thing off the seat, on full display, every 
swell and cleft and crease—inches from 
him, right in his face—and all at once he 
was so infuriated that when the dentist’s 
secretary answered in her bland profes- 
sional tone he all but shouted into the 
phone, “I can’t make it. I’m sick.” 

There was a pause. Then the secretary: 
“Who is this? Who’s speaking, please?” 

He pictured her, a squat woman with 
enormous breasts who doubled as hy- 
gienist and sometimes took over the sim- 
pler procedures when Dr. Sedgwick was 
busy with an emergency. “Todd,” he said. 
“Todd Jameson?” 

Another pause. “But you're the 3:30 一 

“Yeah, I know, but something’s come 
up. I’m sick. All of a sudden, and I E 
The car beside him started up, the long 
gleaming tube of the chassis sliding back 
and away from him, and there was the 
lawn, there were the palm trees, but all 
he could see was Laurie, the way her fin- 
gers stiffened on the sheets and her eyes 
went on gazing into the camera but didn't 
register a thing. 

"Our policy is for a 24-hour cancel- 
lation or else we have no choice but to 
charge you." 

"I'm sick. I told you." 

"I'm sorry." 


The moment burst on him like one of 
those rogue waves at the beach and he 
came within a hair of shouting an obscen- 
ity into the receiver but he caught him- 
self. "I'm sorry too," he said. 

At home, he found he was shaking 
so hard he could barely get the key in 
the door, and though he didn't want to, 
though it wasn't even four yet, he went 
straight to the kitchen and poured him- 
self a shot of the tequila they kept on 
hand for margaritas when people came 
over. He didn't bother with salt or lime 
but just threw it back neat and if this 
was the cliché—your wife has sex with 
another man and you go straight for the 
sauce—then so be it. The tequila tasted 
like soap. No matter. He poured an- 
other, downed it, and still he was trem- 
bling. Then he sat down at the kitchen 
table, opened the laptop, clicked on 
Rob's e-mail and watched the video all 
the way through. 

This time the blow was even harsher, 
a quick hot jolt that seared his eyes and 
shot through him from his fingertips to 
his groin. The whole thing lasted less 
than 60 seconds, in medias res, and 
what had preceded it—disrobing, a kiss, 
foreplay—remained hidden. The act it- 
self was straightforward as far as it went, 
no acrobatics, no oral sex, just him be- 
hind her and the rhythmic swaying that 
was as earnest and inevitable as when 
any two mammals went at it. Dogs. Apes. 
Husbands and wives. At the moment of 
release, she looked back at the guy doing 
it to her and as if at a signal rolled over 
and here were his knees in the frame 
now and his torso looming as he covered 
her with his own body and they kissed, 
their two heads bobbing briefly in the 
foreground before the screen went dark. 
The second time through, details began 
to emerge. The setting, for one thing. 
Clearly, it was a dorm room—there was 
the generic desk to the left of the bed, 
a stack of books, the swivel chair with 
the ghosts of their uninhabited clothes 
thrown over it, Levi's, a belt buckle, the 
silken sheen of her panties. And Laurie. 
'This was Laurie before she'd cut her hair, 
before her implants, before he'd even 
met her. Laurie in college. Fucking. 

The tequila burned in his stomach. 
There was no sound but for the hum 
of the refrigerator as it started up and 
clicked off again. Very gradually, the 
light began to swell round him as the 
sun searched through the haze to fill the 
kitchen and infuse the walls with color 
a cheery daffodil yellow, the shade she'd 
picked out when they bought the condo 
two years ago on her 29th birthday. "This 
is the best birthday present I ever had," 
she'd said, her voice soft and steady, and 
she'd leaned in to kiss him in the lifeless 
office where the escrow woman sat be- 
hind her blocklike desk and took their 
signatures on one form after another as if 
she'd been made of steel and the factory 
had run out of movable parts. 

They'd celebrated that night with a 


bottle of champagne and dinner out and 
sex in their old apartment on their old 
bed that had come from Goodwill in a 
time when neither of them had a steady 
job. He looked round the room now— 
the most familiar room in the world, the 
place where they had breakfast together 
and dinner most nights, sharing the 
cooking and the TV news and a bottle 
of wine—and it seemed alien to him, as 
if he'd been snatched out of his life and 
set down here in this overbright echo- 
ing space with its view of blacktop and 
wires and the inescapable palm with its 
ascending pineapple ridges and ragged 
windblown fronds. 

The next thing he knew it was five 
o'clock and he heard her key turn in the 
lock and the faint sigh of the door as 
she pushed it shut behind her and then 
the drumbeat of her heels on the glazed 
Saltillo tile in the front hall. “Todd?” 
she called. “Todd, you home?" He felt 
his jaws clench. He didn't answer. Her 
footsteps came down the hall, beating, 
beating. "Todd?" 

He liked her in heels. Had liked her 
in heels, that is. She was a surgical nurse, 
working for a pair of plastic surgeons 
who'd partnered to open the San Roque 
Aesthetics Institute five years back, and 
she changed to flats while assisting at 
surgery but otherwise wore heels to show 
off her legs beneath the short skirts and 
calibrated tops she wore when consulting 
with prospective patients. "Advertising," 
she called it. The breast implants—about 
which he'd been very vocal and very 
pleased—had come at a discount. 

He was still at the table when she 
walked into the kitchen, the bottle on 
the counter, the shot glass beside him, 
the laptop just barely cracked. “What's 
this?" she said, lifting the bottle from the 
counter and giving it a shake. "You're 
drinking?" She came across the room to 
him, laid a hand on his shoulder and ran 
it up the back of his neck, then bent for- 
ward to lift the empty glass to her nose 
and take a theatrical sniff. 

"Yeah," he said, but he didn't lift his eyes. 

“That's not like you. Tough day?" 

* Yeah," he said. 

“Well, if you're partying"—and here 
her voice fluted above him, light and face- 
tious, as if the world were still on its track 
and nothing had changed— "then I hope 
you won't mind if I pour myself a glass 
of wine. Do we have any wine left?" Her 
hand dropped away and he felt a chill 
on the back of his neck where her palm 
had been. He heard her heels tapping 
like typewriter keys, then the wheeze of 
the vacuum seal on the refrigerator door, 
the cabinet working on its hinges, the 
sharp clink as the base of the wineglass 
came into contact with the granite coun- 
ter, and finally the raucous celebratory 
splash of the wine. Still he didn't look 
up. Her attitude—this sunniness, this 
self-possession, this blindness and bland- 
ness and business-as-usual crap—savaged 
him. Didn't she know what was coming? 


“Well, if you insist, but remember what happened last time.” 


127 


PLAYBOY 


128 


Couldn’t she feel it the way animals do just 
before an earthquake strikes? 

“That guy you used to date in college,” 
he said, his voice choked in his throat, 
“what was his name?” 

He looked up now and she was poised 
there at the counter, leaning back into it, 
the glass of wine—sauvignon blanc, filled 
to the top—glowing with reflected light. 
She let out a little laugh. “What brought 
that up?” 

“What color hair did he have? Was it 
short, long, what?” 

“Jared,” she said, her eyes gone distant 
a moment. “Jared Reed. From New Joisey.” 
She lifted the glass to her lips, took a sip, 
the gold chain she wore at her throat pick- 
ing up the light now too. She was wearing 
a blue silk blouse open to the third but- 
ton down. She put a hand there, to her 
collarbone. Sipped again. “I don't know,” 
she said. “Brown. Black, maybe? He wore 
it short, like Justin Timberlake. But why? 
Don’t tell me you're jealous 一 the face- 


“My wife says I'm boring in bed...I need a second opinion.’ 


tious note again when all he could think 
of was leaping up from the table and slap- 
ping every shred of facetiousness out of 
her—“after all these years? Is that it? I 
mean, what do you care?” 

“Rob sent me a video today.” 

“Rob?” 

“My brother. Remember my brother? 
Rob?” His voice got away from him. He 
hadn’t meant to shout, hadn’t meant to 
be accusatory or confrontational—he just 
wanted answers, that was all. 

She said nothing. Her face was cold, her 
eyes colder still. 

“Maybe 一 and here he flipped open the 
laptop— "maybe you ought to have a look 
at it and then you tell me what it is.” He 
was up out of the chair now, the tequila 
pitching him forward, and he didn't care 
about the look on her face or the way she 
cradled the wine and held out her hands 
to him and he didn't touch her—wouldn't 
touch her, wouldn't touch her ever again. 
The kitchen door was a slab of nothing, 


2 


but it slammed behind him and the whole 
house shook under the weight of it. 


Later, as faces wheeled round him and 
the flatscreen TV behind the bar blinked 
and shifted over the game that was utterly 
meaningless to him now, he had the lei- 
sure to let his mind go free. School didn't 
exist—lesson plans, papers to grade, 
none of it. Laurie didn't exist either. And 
Jared Reed was just a ghost. And whether 
he had brown hair or black or muscles on 
top of muscles or a dick two feet long, it 
didn't matter because he was just a ghost 
on a screen. Nothing. He was nothing. 
Less than nothing. 

But here was the bartender (30s, with a 
haircut like Rob’s and dressed in a cowboy 
shirt with embroidery round the pockets 
like icing on a cake) looming over him 
with the Jameson bottle held aloft. “Yeah,” 
he said, and he would have clarified by 
adding, Hit me again, but that would have 
been too much like being in a movie, a 
bad movie, bad and sad and pathetic. He 
wasn't a drinker, not really, and he hadn't 
wanted the tequila except that it was there 
because they didn't keep anything in the 
house beyond that and a couple bottles 
of wine they got when it was on sale, but 
when they went out, he always ordered 
Jameson. Jameson was all he ever drank, 
aside from maybe a beer chaser, which he 
wasn't having tonight, definitely wasn't 
having. Rob drank it too. And their father, 
when he was alive. It was a family tradition, 
and how many times had they sat at din- 
ner when they were kids and their father 
would say, Just wait till old man Jameson kicks 
off, then we'll be rich, and they would chime, 
Who's Jameson?, and he'd say, Who's Jame- 
son? The Whiskey King, of course. And their 
mother: Don't hold your breath. 

And then the drink was there and he was 
sipping it, thinking of the last thing Rob 
had sent him as an attachment, and when 
was it? A week ago? "Iwo? It was an article 
he'd downloaded from some obscure web- 
site and he’d forwarded it under the head- 
ing, Look What Our Glorious Ancestor Was 
Up To. The ancestor in question—if he was 
an ancestor, of course, and there was the 
joke—was James Jameson, heir to the whis- 
key fortune. In 1888 Jameson was 31 years 
old, same age as Todd was now, and he was 
a wastrel and an adventurer, and because 
he was limp with boredom and had done 
all the damage he could in the clubs and 
parlors of Ireland, England and the Con- 
tinent, he signed on for an African expedi- 
tion under Henry Morton Stanley, of Liv- 
ingstone fame. They were in the Congo, in 
the heart of the heart of darkness, stuck on 
some river Todd had forgotten the name of 
though he’d read the article over and over 
with a kind of sick fascination—stuck there 
and going nowhere. One morning when 
Stanley was away from camp, Jameson got 
the idea that he might like to visit one of 
the cannibal tribes to see how they went 
about their business and make a record of 
it in his sketchbook. From the beginning of 
the expedition, he'd made detailed draw- 
ings of tribesmen, game animals, erratic 
vegetation and crude villages scattered 


along the banks of the rivers, and now he 
was going to draw cannibals. At work. For 
six handkerchiefs—not a dozen or two doz- 
en, just six—he bought a 10-year-old slave 
girl and gave her as a gift to the cannibals, 
then sat there on a stump or maybe a camp 
chair, one leg crossed over the other, and 
focused his concentration. He drew the 
figure of the girl as she was stripped and 
bound to a tree, drew her as the knife went 
in under the breastbone and sliced down- 
ward. She never struggled or pleaded or 
cried out but just stood there bearing it all 
till her legs gave way, and he drew that too, 
his hand flashing and the pencil growing 
duller while the mosquitoes hummed and 
the smoke of the cook fire rose greasily 
through the overhanging leaves. 

Was there a theme here? Was he miss- 
ing something? Laurie had run out the 
door shouting, You don't own me! as he'd 
backed the car out of the drive, the win- 
dows up and the motor racing. And Rob 
had sent him the video. And the article too. 
Just then, a groan went up from a booth 
in the corner behind him and he glanced 
vaguely at the screen before digging out 
his phone and hitting Rob's number. The 
referee on the screen waved his arms, 
music pounded, the bottles behind the bar 
glittered in all their facets. He got a record- 
ing. The message box was full. 

The strangest thing, the worst thing, 
had been those first few minutes when he 
had to struggle with himself to keep from 
bulling his way back into the kitchen to see 
the look on her face, to see her shame, to 
see tears. He'd slammed the door so hard 
the cheap windows vibrated in their cheap 
frames and one of Laurie's pictures—the 
silhouette of a couple on a moonlit beach 
he'd always hated—crashed to the floor, 
glass shattering on the tiles. He didn't 
stoop to clean it up. Didn't move, not even 
to shift his feet. He just stood there rigid 
on the other side ofthe door, picturing her 
bent over the screen, her face stricken, the 
wine gone sour in her throat. But then the 
thought came to him that maybe she liked 
it, maybe it turned her on, maybe she was 
proud of it, and that froze him inside. 

When she did come through the door— 
and she'd had enough time to watch the 
thing three or four times over—she didn't 
look contrite or aroused or whatever else 
he'd expected, only angry. “Jared is such 
an asshole," she hissed, glaring at him. 
"And so's your brother, so's Rob. What was 
he thinking?" 

“What was he thinking? What were you 
thinking? You're the one on the sex tape." 

"So? So what? Did you think I was a vir- 
gin when we got married?" 

“You tell me—how many men did you 
have? Fifty? A hundred?" 

^How many women did you have?" 

"I'm not the one putting out sex tapes.” 

She stood her ground, tall on her heels, 
her face flushed and her arms folded de- 
fensively across her chest. "You want to 
know something—you're an asshole too.” 

If ever he was going to hit her, here was 
the moment. He took a step toward her. 
She never even flinched. 

"Listen, Todd, I swear I didn't know 
that creep was making a video—he must 


have had a hidden camera going or some- 
thing, I don't know. I was in college. He 
was my boyfriend." 

“What about the lights?" 

She shrugged. An abortive smile flick- 
ered across her lips. "He always liked to do 
it with the lights on. He said it was sexier 
that way. He was an artist, I told you that, 
really visual y 

Everybody had past lovers, of course 
they did, but they were conveniently re- 
duced to shadows, memories, a photo or 
two, not this, not this hurtful flashing res- 
urrection in the flesh, the past come home 
in living color. An artist. All he knew was 
that he hated her in that moment. 

“How was I to know? Really, I'm sorry, 
I am. То put that tape up—where is it, on 
the net somewhere?—I mean it’s really dis- 
gusting and stupid. He's a shit, a real shit." 

“You're the shit," he said. “You're 
disgusting." 

"I can't believe you. I mean, really— 
what does it have to do with you?" 

"You're my wife." 

"It's my body." 

“Yeah? Well, you can have it. I'm out 
of here." 

And that was when she chased him 
down the drive and put on a show for the 
neighbors, her voice honed to a shriek like 
something out of the bell of an instrument, 
a clarinet, an oboe, abuse of the reed, the 
pads: You don't own me! 


It was getting late. The game was over, 
long over, and he was sitting there in a 
kind of delirium, waiting for his phone 
to ring, waiting for Rob—or maybe her, 
maybe she'd call and pour her soul out to 
him and they could go back to the way they 
were before—when he noticed the couple 
siting at the end of the bar. They were 
kissing, long and slow, clinging fast to one 
another as if they were out in a windstorm, 
as if all the contravening forces of the uni- 
verse were trying to tear them apart, two 
untouched drinks standing sentinel on the 
bar before them and the bartender in his 
cowboy shirt steering round them as he 
poured and wiped and polished. The girl's 
arms were bare, her jacket—blue suede, 
with a fake-fur collar—draped over the 
chair behind her. He couldn't see her face, 
only the back of her head, her shoulders, 
her arms, beautiful arms, stunning actu- 
ally, every muscle and tendon gently flexed 
to hold her lover to her, and he looked till 
he had to look away. 

He became aware of the music then, 
some syrupy love song seeping out of the 
speakers, and what was it? Rod Stewart. 
Rod Stewart at his worst, hyperinflated 
love delivered in a whisper, as manufac- 
tured as a pair of shoes or a box of dough- 
nuts, and here was this couple sucking the 
breath out of one another, and what was 
he doing here, what was he thinking? He 
was drunk, that was what it was. And he 
hadn't had anything to eat, had he? Eating 
was important. Vital. He had to eat, had to 
put something in his stomach to absorb the 
alcohol—how else could he get behind the 
wheel? Drunken driving on top of every- 
thing else. He pictured it: the cuffs, the cell, 


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PLAYBOY 


130 


his corner in the teachers” lounge deserted 
and Ed Jacobsen, the principal, wondering 
where he was—not a phone call? Couldn't 
he even have called? 

The thought propelled him up off the 
stool, down the length of the bar past the 
stupefied sports fans and the clinging 
couple and the bartender with the haircut 
like Rob's, You have a good night now, 
and out onto the street. He stood there a 
moment outside the door, patting down 
his pockets, wallet, keys, cell phone, 
taking stock. The air was dense and moist, 
fog working its way up the streets as if the 
streets were rivers and the fog a thing you 
could float on. He could smell the ocean, 
the rankness of it. He thought he'd go to 
the next place, get a burger and coffee, 
black coffee—wasn't that how it was done? 
Wasn't that taking the cliché full circle? 
That was how it had been in college after 
he’d gone out cruising the bars with his 
dorm mates, lonely, aching, repressed, 
gaping at the girls as they took command 
of the dance floor and never knowing 
what to do about it. A burger. Black coffee. 

He started down the street, everything 
vague before him, trying to think where to 
go, who would be open at this hour. Things 
glittered in the half-light, the pavement 
wet, trash strewn at the curbs. A single car 
eased down the street, headlights muted, 
taillights bleeding out into the night. He 
made a left on the main street, heading 
toward a place he thought might be open 
still, a place he and Laurie sometimes went 
to after a late movie, focused now, or as 
focused as he could be considering the 
whiskey and the hammer beating inside 
him, reverberating still, when a woman's 
voice cut through the night. She was 
cursing, her delivery harsh, guttural, as if 
the words were being torn from her, and 
then there was the wet clap of flesh on flesh 
and a man's voice, cursing back at her— 
figures there, contending in the shadows. 

He wanted to call out, wanted to defy 
them, bark at them, split them apart, get 
angry, get furious—there they were, just 
ahead of him, the woman lurching into the 
man, the man's arms in dark rapid motion, 
their curses propulsive, shoes shuffling on 
the concrete in a metastasized dance—but 
he didn't. There was a suspended moment 
when they felt him there and they switched 
it off, in league against him, and then he 
was past them, his footsteps echoing and 
the curses starting up behind him in a low 
seething growl of antipathy. 

How he made it home he couldn't say, 
but he remembered standing at the door 
of the car fumbling with his keys on a 
street so dark it might as well have been 
underground and feeling the cell buzz in 
his pocket. Or thinking he felt it. He kept 
it on vibrate because of teaching, because of 
class—the embarrassment factor—but half 
the time he never felt it there against his 
skin and wound up missing his calls. Which 
was why he had to check messages all the 
time...but it was buzzing and he had it in 
his hand and flipped it open, the only light 
on the street and a dim light at that. Rob. 
Rob calling. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, Todd, hey, bro—you okay? 1 mean 


I been calling for like three hours now and 
I'm worried about you, because I mean, it's 
tough, I know, but it's not like the end of 
the world or anything——" 

“Rob,” he said, his voice ground down so 
that he barely recognized it himself. “Rob, 
can you hear me?” 

“Yeah, yeah, 1 can hear you.” 

"Good. Because screw you. That's my 
message: Screw you." And then he turned 
the phone off and thrust it deep in his pocket. 


When he came in the door the house was 
silent. There was a lamp on in the hallway 
and the night-light in the kitchen was on 
too, but Laurie, in her meticulous way, 
had turned off all the rest and gone to 
bed. Or so it seemed. He moved slowly, 
heavily, his breath coming hard and his 
feet working as if independent of him, far 
away, down there in the shadows where the 
baseboard ran the length of the hall and 
conjoined with the frame of the bedroom 
door. If she had a light on in there—if she 
was up, waiting for him, waiting for what 
came next—he would have seen it in the 
crack at the bottom of the door, the tile 
uneven there, treacherous even, shoddy 
workmanship like everything else in the 
place. Very slowly, he turned the handle 
and eased the door open, wincing at the 
metallic protest of the hinges that needed a 
shot of WD-40, definitely needed WD-40, 
and then he was in the room and looking 
down at the shadow of her where she lay in 
bed, on her side, her back to him. It took 
him a moment to see her there, his eyes 
adjusting to the dark and the stripes of 
pale trembling light the streetlamp outside 
the window forced through the shades, but 
very gradually she began to take on shape 
and presence. Laurie. His wife. 

He saw the way she'd tucked her 
shoulder beneath her, saw the rise there, 
the declivity of her waist and the sharp 
definition of her upthrust hip. He'd 
always loved her hips. And her legs. The 
indentation of her knees. The way she 
walked as if carrying a very special prize 
for someone she hadn't quite discovered 
yet. He was remembering the first time 
he'd ever seen her, a hot summer day with 
the sun arching overhead and her walking 
toward him with a guy from school he 
liked to hang out with on weekends, and 
he didn't know a thing about her, didn't 
know her name or where she came from 
or that they liked the same books and 
bands and movies or that her whole being 
would open up to his and his to hers as if 
they had the same key and the key fit just 
exactly right. What he saw was the sun 
behind her and the shape of her revealed 
in silhouette, all form and grace and the 
light like poured gold. What he saw was 
the sway of her hips against the fierce 
brightness of the sun and the shadow 
of her legs caught in the grip of a long 
diaphanous dress, her legs, sweet and 
firm and purposeful, coming toward him. 

He remembered that. Held that vision. 
And then, as quietly as he could, he pulled 
back the covers and got into bed beside her. 


Y 


d 


JAY-Z 


(continued from page 112) 
PLAYBOY: Like you, most of the kids you 
grew up with didn't have fathers. 
JAY-Z: I could name the ones who did. 
[laughs] There were about three in the 
whole project. 
PLAYBOY: Your dad split when you were 
11. What happens when a boy grows up 
without a dad? 
JAY-Z: He learns how to be a man in the 
streets. Everyone needs that role model, 
that blueprint, to guide you through. 
Depending on your environment, it could 
be a bad thing. 
PLAYBOY: You've talked about your dad 
in a few songs, especially "Where Have 
You Been." 
JAY-Z: In hindsight, I was hard on the guy 
in a lot of songs. At that time, everyone was 
leaving. They were leaving before the kid 
was born. He wasn't totally a scumbag—not 
totally. After those songs, I told my mom I 
wanted to talk to him. I can't keep living in the 
past. My mom got in touch with him. The first 
time he was supposed to come to my house, 
he didn't come. I figured it was embarrassing 
for him, going to his son's house. I got mad 
again. Like, “All right, forget it, then! I ain't 
reaching out no more!" Then my mom told 
me he was finally ready to come over, and we 
just kicked it—I told him everything that was 
on my mind. And we shook hands, like men. 
PLAYBOY: You went to high school with 
Notorious B.I.G. How did you end up 
recording together? 
JAY-Z: Wc always said we was going to do 
something together, and I was doing my 
first album, so we went into the studio and 
did "Brooklyn's Finest.” He was sitting 
there, trying to memorize. After that, we 
spoke every day. 
PLAYBOY: Who do you think killed Biggie? 
JAY-Z: I don't know, man. I have no idea. 
[pause] I don't want to further that. I don't 
want to talk about what I think. 
PLAYBOY: Did Biggie's death, and Tupac's, 
make you more cautious about starting 
beefs with people? 
JAY-Z: No, because I don't believe either 
one of them got killed over rap music. 
That was just something to help the media 
sell magazines. 
PLAYBOY: They were both rappers. They 
both got shot. So obviously they pissed 
off someone. 
JAY-Z: Not rapping. 
PLAYBOY: What did you think of the Los 
Angeles Times story last year that said Biggie 
paid gang members to kill Tupac? 
JAY-Z: That was irresponsible-journalism 
bullshit. It's terrible to throw dirt on a 
guy's name who's not here. Ifit would have 
been about a politician, or somebody else 
powerful, there would be lawsuits. There 
would be hell to pay. It's a lack of respect 
when they deal with rappers. 
PLAYBOY: The guy who has cornered the 
market on disrespecting rap music is 
Bill O'Reilly. 
JAY-Z: He's just doing shock TV. Now he 
knows, “Oh shit, the power of hip-hop—if 
I say something about them, my ratings go 
right up.” 


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PLAYBOY 


132 


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PLAYBOY: Would you ever go on his show 
and explain your point of view? 

JAY-Z: Why? He don't care. He's doing 
what he do 一 he's feeding his family. It's not 
about his understanding. 1 don't believe he 
wants to understand. It's obvious he's not 
researching the truth. 

PLAYBOY: You say that you're going to 
record only one more album, but you 
have been talking about retiring since 
your first record. 

JAY-Z: You don't understand. When I said 
Reasonable Doubt was going to be my first 
and only album, 1 meant it. “He made one 
album, then, puff, he's gone with the wind." 
But now I really mean it. Write the book, 
release The Black Album, go head Universal. 
PLAYBOY: And maybe do a guest spot on 
other people’s records? 

JAY-Z: Not a guest spot at 50. That’s 
disrespectful. That’s just embarrassing. 
PLAYBOY: You can't be a rapper at 50? 
JAY-Z: No, forget it. Just a guru. 

PLAYBOY: Only one rapper has sold more 
records than you: Eminem. Is that because 
he’s white? 

JAY-Z: He’s an extraordinary talent. He’s a 
genius, bottom line. But race has something 
to do with it. If you listen to his record 
“White America,” he addresses that topic. 
PLAYBOY: He says if he were black, he’d 
have sold half as many records. 

JAY-Z: Right. It might be less than that. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: So who are your peers? Who do 
you compete with? 

JAY-Z: There was one person: Big. If I 
heard “Who Shot Ya” in a club, I would 
leave and go make some music. That's not 
to take anything away from Eminem or 
Nas, I just don't look at them as that. 
PLAYBOY: Something else that's new on 
Blueprint 2—your mistrust of women has 
softened. 

JAY-Z: Right. People already know my 
paranoia about women. Before I was a 
rapper who didn't know who his friends 
were, I was a hustler who didn't know who 
his friends were. When it's a song about 
women, it's usually the single, which makes 
people say, This guy is dissing women 
on every fucking record. [laughs] “Big 
Pimpin”,” “Can I Get a Fuck You,” those 
are the hits. But the slower ones are usually 
more meaningful and serious. 

PLAYBOY: Do you think women are less 
trustworthy than men? 

JAY-Z: No. But guys don't want to date me 
for my money, so 1 don't have to worry 
about them. 

PLAYBOY: If you're going to have kids, you 
have to get over that paranoia. 

JAY-Z: Yeah, I’m learning. I'm growing. I'm 
growing slow. 

PLAYBOY: You tell a story in "This Can't 
Be Life" that you were almost a father. 
True story? 

JAY-Z: Yeah. The girl I was seeing about four 
years ago had a miscarriage. But I wasn't 
sad. I didn't even grieve. Maybe it happened 
because I wasn't ready to be a dad. 
PLAYBOY: And now you're dating a woman 
who doesn't need your money, either. 
JAY-Z: Is that right? 

PLAYBOY: How did you meet Beyoncé 
Knowles? 

JAY-Z: I used to see her all the time. 


[quickly] We're not engaged or anything, 
by the way. We're just cool. We're just 
friends. We don't really, ah, know each 
other like that yet. 

PLAYBOY: Do you wish she was your girlfriend? 
JAY-Z: She's beautiful. Who wouldn't wish she 
was their girlfriend? Maybe one day. [smiles] 
PLAYBOY: We're not quite convinced. We 
know you like to keep parts of your life 
private. If she were your girlfriend, would 
you tell us? 

JAY-Z: Probably not. 

PLAYBOY: Well, you're pretty cool—hard to 
read at times. 

JAY-Z: Thank you, brother. [raises a glass of 
Cristal] Toast to that. 

PLAYBOY: Does that create problems in 
relationships? 

JAY-Z: Yeah, it could. Pm not the most 
I-love-you guy. That's one of my problems. 
“What, you want me to tell you? Those are 
just words—everyone is going to tell you. 
Look at what I do." I have to change that. 
PLAYBOY: How are you going to change that? 
JAY-Z: I know it. That's half the battle. 
PLAYBOY: But only half. 

JAY-Z: But half! Shit. It was zero before— 
be happy. 

PLAYBOY: If we were going to play amateur 
psychiatrist 
JAY-Z: That's what this feels like. 

PLAYBOY: Here's what we would say: As a 
kid, you loved your dad. But he left and 
you felt rejected, and that hurt so much, 
you don't want to love anyone else the 
same way. 

JAY-Z: Definitely. That could ђе 100 percent 
true. There's no worse pain. That's why a 
lot of things didn't affect me growing up. 
PLAYBOY: For instance, you had a fight 
with your own brother, when you were 
12, and shot him. He lived, but it was an 
intense experience. 

JAY-Z: Yeah. [pause] You know what? Let's 
not. ГЇЇ tell you that one day, you as a 
person. Does he have to relive it every time 
someone talks to me about it? Is that fair 
to him? 

PLAYBOY: Where did you get the gun? 
JAY-Z: 'That story's even worse. I was 12. I 
didn't know better. The person who gave 
me the gun had to be 20 or 21—you're an 
adult. Damn, why would you do that? How 
could you even...I don't understand. But I 
can't blame nobody but myself. 

PLAYBOY: Someone gave you a gun so you 
could shoot your brother? 

JAY-Z: [Pauses] Yeah. Terrible. That's the 
one thing to this day I regret. 

PLAYBOY: Why did you shoot him? 

JAY-Z: My brother was a really, really, really 
tough person to get along with. He was 
messed up on drugs really bad. 

PLAYBOY: Then a few years later, when you 
were selling drugs, someone shot at you 
three times on the street. 

JAY-Z: It was a little bit farther than me to you. 
PLAYBOY: Who shot at you? 

JAY-Z: I ain't going into that. I know who 
it was. He was a friend of mine. It was a 
misunderstanding. We've talked about it 
and laughed. 

PLAYBOY: On "Dead Presidents IL," you talk 
about being shot at and say it was "divine 
intervention" you weren't killed. Do you 
think God protects drug dealers? 


JAY-Z: I think God protects anyone with a 
good heart. People say, “That's a comfort 
blanket so you can do whatever the fuck 
you want.” But my intention was good. I 
was in a place where there's no hope. It was 
like, Fuck, man, I ain't going to continue 
to live like this. Tve got to do something. 
Then I got addicted to that life. It was fun. 
It helped my situation, helped everyone 
around me. 

PLAYBOY: When you were dealing, did you 
use drugs? 

JAY-Z: No. Never. Га seen my brother. 
After my father, that was the next person 
I looked up to. He had all the girls, he 
played basketball. Then he was a whole 
different person. 

PLAYBOY: We've heard you only recently 
started smoking pot. 

JAY-Z: [Laughs] There would be 10 of us, out 
in the Hamptons, and we won't finish one 
joint. “Ooh, we high!” "That's too strong! 
Put that out!" I don't smoke pot no more. 
PLAYBOY: From listening to your songs, 
people might believe that you're always 
drinking 
JAY-Z: Cristal at 10 in the morning, right. 
Although I was drinking champagne and 
eating caviar this afternoon. 

PLAYBOY: Where? 

JAY-Z: I went shopping today, at Jacob the 
Jeweler. Had champagne and Beluga caviar. 
PLAYBOY: Were you buying a present for 
Beyoncé? 

JAY-Z: Ha-ha. No. 

PLAYBOY: We heard you have a wristwatch 
worth so much money, you won't wear it 
outside your house. 

JAY-Z: What kind of silly shit is that? Then 
why would I get it? I got a one-of-one, an 
Audemars Piguet. There's no other watch 
like it in the world. It's like a piece of art. 
PLAYBOY: How much did it cost? 

JAY-Z: A little bit. I’m trying to get grown 
up and not talk about figures anymore. I'm 
learning that the big cats don't talk about 
money, only us ignorant rappers. I have to 
get sophisticated with my paper. I'm not 
nouveau money. 

PLAYBOY: Let's talk about sex. Which have 
you done more often, turned down sex or 
accepted it? 

JAY-Z: I think every artist has turned it 
down more. I hope. Shit. [laughs] If the 
place is filled with 20,000 people, 10,000 
of them are screaming women. I never got 
carried away. I have always been a person 
who's more interested in business first. 
PLAYBOY: If there's a beautiful woman on 
one side of the room, and a business deal 
on the other 
JAY-Z: Га take the business deal. Sorry. I 
know people will be like, “You fucking 
asshole! You dummy!" 

PLAYBOY: You rapped with Eminem and 
DMX and Biggie, all of whom are highly 
respected. You also rapped with Puff 
Daddy and Ja Rule, who aren't respected. 
Does it make a difference to you who you 
rap with? 

JAY-Z: I rap with people for different reasons. 
Sometimes I like them, sometimes I respect 
them. I was on a Juvenile remix because I 
liked this record he had, called *Ha." He 
did something new. So I called him and said 
that I would love to do the remix. 


PLAYBOY: So why rap with Puffy? 

JAY-Z: I respect Puff on a creative level. As 
a rapper, you ain't got to respect him. As a 
producer, he gave "Juicy" to Biggie. Biggie 
didn't want to do it. [The song made Biggie 
a star.] “That beat is soft. I ain't doing that.” 
As a rapper, I can't say I want to hear him. 
He's not a rapper. 

PLAYBOY: Do you want to follow Puffy 
into movies? 

JAY-Z: I do. I have a bunch of scripts, 
from Wesley Snipes, Denzel. Chris Rock 
said, "Boy, you better take these movies. 
There ain't no telling if you're going to be 
hot tomorrow." 

PLAYBOY: How about female rappers? Years 
ago, you had Queen Latifah, MC Lyte. 
Now all the top female rappers—Foxy 
Brown, Lil' Kim—have to be sexy and 
trashy, wearing fur bikinis. Why is that? 
JAY-Z: Maybe it's because rap is so angry. 
"Breakin' off on a motherfucker like that!" 


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A girl don't have no street credibility. You 
don't believe a girl when she's saying, "I'm 
holding a gat to the motherfucker." 
PLAYBOY: Especially if she's wearing a fur 
bikini when she says it. 

JAY-Z: [Laughs] You're like, You can't run 
fast in those stilettos. 

PLAYBOY: Last year you made a record 
with R. Kelly, The Best of Both Worlds. 
Just before it came out, he was arrested 
on 21 counts of child pornography, over 
a videotape that seems to show him 
having sex with an underage girl. The 
music video you were going to make 
was canceled, the tour was canceled, the 
record didn't sell. Was that your biggest 
disappointment in music? 

JAY-Z: 1 would say so. I had such high 
expectations for it. I made the album with 
somebody I think is the greatest writer of 
our time. And we didn't finish the story, 
with the videos and performing. 


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PLAYBOY 


134 


PLAYBOY: Do you think that Kelly's career 
15 Over? 

JAY-Z: I have no idea. It's going to be 
really tough. 

PLAYBOY: Do you think that he might be 
guilty? 

JAY-Z: I don’t want to speculate, man. I 
don’t know what half of America is doing 
behind closed doors. 

PLAYBOY: You’ve said before that rap is like 
wrestling. What do you mean? 

JAY-Z: When I say that, I'm talking about 
all the beefs going on. Everybody is from a 
place where they had nothing. Now they’re 
getting a little bit of something—they're 
not going to risk that over “I rhyme better 
than you.” All that muscling up, all that 
sticking out your chest, it's all wrestling. 
“Come here, boy!” Nobody is gonna do 
nothing to nobody. It's all just a show. 
PLAYBOY: Just hype? 

JAY-Z: There you go. A lot of attention to 
your record. 

PLAYBOY: And yet rappers are always 
saying, "I'm keepin’ it real." 

JAY-Z: Someone recently told me, "Real is just 
a foundation for a great fantasy." That's deep. 
PLAYBOY: You've had a big battle with Nas— 
he made a song about you, you made a song 


about him, back and forth. If it was just 
wrestling, does that mean you never got mad? 
JAY-Z: You get angry, but at the end of the 
day, I'm not going to do nothing. It just 
pushes you to make better records. I got 
mad and went into the studio. 

PLAYBOY: Which got you angrier: When 
he called you ugly or when he implied 
you're gay? 

JAY-Z: Ugly? A guy's not supposed to 
judge another guy. So that didn't bother 
me. But there's an imaginary line in the 
sand, and most people cross it when they 
are off balance. You don't say things about 
another guy's genitalia. 

PLAYBOY: He said that you should suck 
his dick. 

JAY-Z: Yeah. You can't say that to a man. 
PLAYBOY: You offered to settle the fight in a 
boxing ring. Was there ever a chance that 
would happen? 

JAY-Z: No, too much to lose. Especially in 
rap. People get knocked out, they lose that 
image. When you're listening to a record, 
"Im the illest!” I don't know, man, I just 
saw you get knocked out. [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: On “The Ruler's Back,” you liken 
yourself to Martin Luther King Jr. and 
Rosa Parks. 


"Then it's the car! It must be the car! You must have 
done something to the car!” 


JAY-Z: What did 1 say? 

PLAYBOY: We have to tell you? You've written 
so many songs, you can't remember your 
own lyrics? 

JAY-Z: Word up. Friends have to tell me my 
rhymes all the time. 

PLAYBOY: "I'm representing....” 

JAY-Z: "I'm representing for the seat where 
Rosa Parks sat/ Where Malcolm X was shot, 
where Martin Luther was popped." Yeah. 
I believe that every black person has a 
responsibility. When you do good, everyone 
is looking at you—every black person. So 
you're the same person as Rosa Parks and 
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I’m 
not just representing the hood and Roc- 
A-Fella Records. I'm representing for the 
whole culture. A lot of people look at me 
like they looked at Martin Luther King. 
PLAYBOY: Some people might say, “What's 
a rapper who used to deal drugs doing 
comparing himself to Dr. King?" 

JAY-Z: Pm not like a politician who says 
he never did nothing wrong. I'm not a 
saint—I did bad things. I fucked up. But 
I'm a very legit person. I try not to do bad 
things anymore. I try to be a decent citizen. 
PLAYBOY: But you're not always so level- 
headed and orderly In December 1999 
you were arrested for stabbing Lance "Un" 
Rivera in a nightclub and pleaded guilty 
to misdemeanor assault. What happened 
that night? 

JAY-Z: A fight got out of hand. 

PLAYBOY: Why did you have a knife on you 
that night? 

JAY-Z: I don't want to talk about the knives. 
Just leave that one alone. 

PLAYBOY: Let's put it this way: At any given 
time, do you have protection on you? 
JAY-Z: No. One time I heard Russell 
Simmons say, "I don't even want to see a 
gun. I don't want no friends with guns." 
I was like, He's crazy. But now I feel the 
same way. What's wrong with me? I'm a 
gangsta rapper. [makes a mean face] From 
the hood. 

PLAYBOY: From your first album to the last, you 
use the word fag a lot. Are you homophobic? 
JAY-Z: Um, I think rap is homophobic. T 
don't know. I could be. My friends and I play 
а game called Pause—if you say something 
that sounds gay, like, ^I was with the dude 
the other day," you have to say, "Pause." 
That could be viewed as homophobic. I 
stopped playing Pause this year—I'm too 
grown. So maybe I'm getting better. 
PLAYBOY: But not playing Pause doesn't 
mean you're no longer homophobic. 
JAY-Z: I mean, its a start, man. Shit. 
Goddamn. [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: Could there ever be a successful 
gay rapper? 

JAY-Z: That would be extremely tough. Rap 
is all, “Pickin’ off a motherfucker like that. 
[makes a mean face] Y'm from the hood.” 
PLAYBOY: Every time you say, “I’m from 
the hood,” you screw up your face like a 
cartoon villain. 

JAY-Z: Because it’s funny. “I’m from the 
hood.” It’s a joke. You can’t take that 
seriously. Rappers, we aint from the 
hood. We got nice homes and nice cars. 
We from the mansion. 


Y 


2 


RICHARD DAWKINS 


(continued from page 66) 
PLAYBOY: All the atheists we met at the 
skeptics convention in Las Vegas seemed 
to have a story about being kicked out of 
Sunday school. 
DAWKINS: Yes, that's terribly funny. What a 
Sunday school teacher should say is “Let's 
look at the evidence.” Instead they get cross. 
And the reason they get cross is that there 
isn't any evidence. 
PLAYBOY: They get cross with you as well. 
You are asking a religious person to change 
his or her worldview. 
DAWKINS: I want people to change their 
worldview such that they demand evidence 
for something they're going to believe. It's 
not a good reason to believe because “our 
people have always believed that.” If you'd 
been born in Afghanistan or India, you'd 
believe something else. Another lousy rea- 
son is because you have an inner feeling 
it must be true, or you've been told by a 
priest it's true. 
PLAYBOY: Ken Miller, author of Finding 
Darwin's God, once scolded you by saying 
atheists and agnostics are more evangelical 
than religious people. Is that your experi- 
ence with atheists? 
DAWKINS: You can be passionate about the 
need to look at the evidence and passion- 
ately angry at people who won't do that. 
That's not evangelical; that's just angry. 
PLAYBOY: You like Miller's book, though. 
DAWKINS: It may well be the best refuta- 
tion of creationism, though it goes off the 
rails when it tries to justify Christianity. One 
of the reasons I recommend it is not just 
because it's good but because it is written by 
a Christian. Unfortunately it's written by a 
Catholic, and many of the people we're talk- 
ing about think Catholics are worse than 
atheists. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: In 2010 you spoke at a rally in 
London to protest a state visit by Pope 
Benedict XVI. 
DAWKINS: Only about 2,000 people were 
expected, and 15,000 turned up. 
PLAYBOY: You dismissed the pope as an 
enemy of children, gay people, women, 
truth, poor people, science and humanity. 
DAWKINS: It was a speech at a rally, so I 
used rhetoric. 
PLAYBOY: Do you believe, as Christopher 
Hitchens did, that the pope should be 
arrested? 
DAWKINS: Hitchens wrote me suggesting 
we should arrest him, but we soon gave 
up on the idea of literally making a citi- 
zen's arrest by creeping up with handcuffs 
or something. Instead we asked Geof- 
frey Robertson, a distinguished human 
rights lawyer, to speak about the legal 
case against the pope for covering up 
pedophilia. He also looked at the alleged 
immunity of the pope from prosecution as 
the head of a state, calling into question 
the notion of the Vatican as a legitimate 
sovereign state. I responded to the pope's 
uncalled-for truculence when he landed in 
Edinburgh. The first thing he said was to 
blame atheists for Hitler. Although I don't 
blame the pope for being a member of the 


Hitler Youth, as he was very young, I felt 
this was pretty cheeky, really. If I were 
him I'd keep my head down over Hitler. 
PLAYBOY: You were impressed by a few of 
the signs at the rally. 

DAWKINS: Two of my favorites were KEEP 
YOUR ROSARIES OFF MY OVARIES and HANDS OFF 
MY EGGS, BENEDICT. [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: The pope apologized for the sex- 
ual abuse of children in the Catholic church. 
Isn't that enough? 

DAWKINS: Oh, big deal. He hasn't handed 
over any records to the police. He apolo- 
gized with great reluctance after enormous 
pressure was brought to bear. 

PLAYBOY: You gave a speech in Dublin in 
which you argued that sexual abuse is less 
damaging to a child than the psychological 
damage of bringing him up Catholic. What 
was the response? 

DAWKINS: I got an ovation. I want to make 
clear I was not talking about the sort of vio- 
lent sexual abuse we've now learned had 
been repeatedly going on. I was talking 
about mild caressing, which is bad enough, 
but bringing up a child to believe in hell- 
fire is worse. 

PLAYBOY: Let's turn to evolution, which 
many people misunderstand, such as believ- 
ing we descend from apes. 

DAWKINS: We are apes. We descend from 
extinct animals that would have been clas- 
sified as apes. We are not descended from 
modern chimps or bonobos or gorillas. 
They've been evolving for exactly the same 
length of time as we have. 

PLAYBOY: So what makes us human? 
DAWKINS: We are a unique ape. We have 
language. Other animals have systems 
of communication that fall far short of 
that. They don't have the same ability to 
communicate complicated conditionals 
and what-ifs and talk about things that 
are not present. These are all unique 
manifestations of our evolved ape brain, 
which some evidence suggests came 
about through a rather limited number 
of mutations. 

PLAYBOY: Peter Singer, who co-founded the 
Great Ape Project, suggests apes deserve 
basic rights. Do you agree? 

DAWKINS: Why stop at apes? Why not pigs? 
PLAYBOY: But apes are our cousins. 
DAWKINS: So what? We're all cousins. What 
if octopuses, which are much more distant 
cousins, had evolved an intelligence equiv- 
alent to ours? 

PLAYBOY: But they didn't. 

DAWKINS: You can base your morals on 
kinship if you want, but why should you? 
I'd prefer to go with Jeremy Bentham 
and base my morals on the question, Can 
they suffer? Singer's rather keen on the 
word speciesism. We have a common ances- 
tor with chimps who lived 6 million years 
ago. If you imagine holding the hand 
of your mother, who holds the hand of 
her mother, who holds the hand of her 
mother, and you go on and on to the com- 
mon ancestor, the line would stretch a few 
hundred miles. And in its other hand the 
grand ancestor holds her daughter's hand 
who holds her daughter's hand, and you 
go forward to modern chimps. As you go 
back, every one of those mother-daughter 


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135 


PLAYBOY 


136 


relationships would include members of 
the same species. 

PLAYBOY: So there was no first human. 
DAWKINS: No, never. But suppose an 
intermediate species hadn't gone extinct. 
Suppose relict populations are discovered 
in the African jungle. In order to deny 
chimpanzees rights, you would have to 
set up apartheid-like courts to decide 
whether this individual counts as human. 
Because it's a continuum. As a practical 
matter, the intermediates haven't sur- 
vived, so it's possible to give humans basic 
rights and give chimpanzees none. But I 
think it's a worthwhile argument. 
PLAYBOY: Are you pro-life? 

DAWKINS: People who say they're pro-life 
mean they are pro-human life. A four-cell 
embryo or a 64-cell embryo, or indeed 
one much larger than that, has no ner- 
vous system. You should have rather less 
compunction in killing such a creature 
than you would in killing an earthworm, 
because an earthworm has a nervous 


system and very likely can suffer. So object- 
ing to the abortion of very young human 
embryos is utter nonsense. Objecting to 
older human embryos being killed is not 
utter nonsense. There's no reason to sup- 
pose that their capacity to suffer is any 
greater than the capacity of an adult pig 
or cow to suffer. 

PLAYBOY: Do we know which came first— 
bigger brains or bipedalism? 

DAWKINS: Bipedalism came first. 

PLAYBOY: How do we know that? 

DAWKINS: Fossils. That's one place the fos- 
sils are extremely clear. Three million years 
ago Australopithecus afarensis were bipedal, 
but their brains were no bigger than a 
chimpanzee's. The best example we have 
is Lucy [a partial skeleton found in 1974 
in Ethiopia]. In a way, she was an upright- 
walking chimpanzee. 

PLAYBOY: You like Lucy. 

DAWKINS: Yes. [smiles] 

PLAYBOY: You've said you expect mankind 


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will have a genetic book of the dead by 2050. 
How would that be helpful? 

DAWKINS: Because we contain within us 
the genes that have survived through gen- 
erations, you could theoretically read off a 
creature's evolutionary history. “Ah, yes, this 
animal lived in the sea. This is the time when 
it lived in deserts. This bit shows it must 
have lived up mountains. And this shows it 
used to burrow.” 

PLAYBOY: Could that help us bring back a 
dinosaur? You have suggested crossing a 
bird and a crocodile and maybe putting it 
in an ostrich egg. 

DAWKINS: It would have to be more sophisti- 
cated than a cross. It'd have to be a merging. 
PLAYBOY: Could we re-create Lucy? 
DAWKINS: We already know the human 
genome and the chimpanzee genome, so 
you could make a sophisticated guess as to 
what the genome of the common ancestor 
might have been like. From that you might 
be able to grow an animal that was close 
to the common ancestor. And from that 
you might split the difference between that 
ancestral animal you re-created and a mod- 
ern human and get Lucy. 

PLAYBOY: You've accused creationists of 
fighting dirty. 

DAWKINS: Sure they do. 

PLAYBOY: Is that why you and other evolu- 
tionary biologists won't debate them? 
DAWKINS: Partly. It also gives them a respect- 
ability they don't deserve. A colleague of 
mine likes to respond, "That would look 
great on your CV, not so good on mine." 
PLAYBOY: What arguments do creationists 
typically hit you with? 

DAWKINS: Ignorant nonsense. They say 
things like “Well, if we're descended from 
chimpanzees, how come chimpanzees are 
still around?" It isn't difficult. 

PLAYBOY: You often hear evolution described 


- as “just a theory." Is it? 


DAWKINS: The word theory can mean a 
hypothesis. But the word is also used in 
a more serious sense as a body of knowl- 
edge. It's better to use the word fact. 
Evolution is a fact in the same sense that 
the earth orbits the sun. 

PLAYBOY: There is disagreement about what 
drives evolution. 

DAWKINS: Natural selection is the driv- 
ing force, but there is disagreement about 
what the selection pressure was. For 
example, we know the human brain grew 
bigger. Was it because the more ingenious 
individuals were the best at finding food 
or evading predators? Or was it because 
they were the most sexually attractive? 
It's possible an enlarged brain is rather 
like a peacock's tail. Darwin proposed 
a second version of natural selection, 
which he called sexual selection. If pea- 
hens choose peacocks for the brightness 
of their finery, then never mind about 
surviving. The ones with the biggest 
tails survive less well, because the tail is 
a burden. Nevertheless if they're more 
attractive to females, then the genes for 
making big tails are more likely to end up 
in the next generation. It is quite possi- 
ble the human brain also got bigger due 
to sexual selection. Intelligence is sexy. 


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138 


Maybe the most intelligent males had the 
gift of the gab. They may have been good 
talkers, good at remembering the sagas 
and myths of the tribe, or dance steps. 
PLAYBOY: Or that she likes antelope. 
DAWKINS: Something like that. If a pea- 
hen chooses a male with a long tail, it’s 
because she knows he couldn't have sur- 
vived with a tail like that unless he had 
something going for him. It's all about 
showing females you are resistant to dis- 
ease. There's a dual selection—females 
become better diagnostic doctors, and 
males become better at being diagnosed, 
even if they're actually ill. 

PLAYBOY: What role does chance play in 
evolution? 

DAWKINS: Mutation, the raw material for 
natural selection, is random in the sense 
that it is not systematically directed toward 
improvement. But natural selection is 
highly nonrandom, because it's choosing 
improvements from that pool of varia- 
tion that mutation throws up. There's also 
an awful lot of chance in which species go 
extinct. When a comet hit the earth, all the 
dinosaurs went extinct except birds. A few 
mammals survived, and we're descended 
from those few mammals, perhaps those that 
were hibernating underground. 

PLAYBOY: You've described life as a “repli- 
cation bomb." 

DAWKINS: If you look around the universe, 
there's dead world after dead world. Physics 
goes on and chemistry goes on, but nothing 
else happens. And suddenly in one place 
there's an explosion, which comes about 


because of replication. For some reason, 
the laws of chemistry give rise to a mole- 
cule that self-replicates. Maybe this planet 
is the only time it's ever happened. But the 
arising through some accident of chemistry 
of a molecule that makes copies of itself has 
momentous consequences. 

PLAYBOY: Creationists often try to ambush 
you, such as the Australian film crew that 
hit you with "Can you give me an example 
of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary 
process that can be seen to increase the 
information in the genome?" and then, 
because you paused, portrayed you as not 
having an answer. 

DAWKINS: The way it happens is through 
gene duplication. You have lengths of the 
genome that do some useful thing, and 
then a chunk gets copied and pasted some- 
where else, where it's free to evolve in a 
different direction. 

PLAYBOY: So why didn't you respond? 
DAWKINS: I was thinking, Am I going to 
throw these people out? This is a question 
only a creationist would ask, and they hadn't 
told me they were creationists. What they 
did was splice the question and the long 
pause with my answer to a different ques- 
tion, so it looked as though I was being 
evasive. It was an absolutely scandalous 
piece of mendacity. 

PLAYBOY: Most objections to evolution seem 
to come down to complexity. People can't 
understand how something like an eye 
could have evolved. 

DAWKINS: No matter how complex the eye 
may be, it's not as complicated as a god. 


"Oh, just looking at the ceiling. And you?" 


PLAYBOY: Creationists love to cite gaps in the 
fossil record, such as the large one that pre- 
cedes the Cambrian explosion, the period 
about 530 million years ago during which 
there was exponential growth in complex 
life-forms. How can you explain it? 
DAWKINS: Of course there are gaps; fos- 
silization is a rare event. But if we didn't 
have a single fossil, the evidence for evo- 
lution would be absolutely secure because 
of comparative anatomy, comparative bio- 
chemistry, geographical distribution. The 
gap before the Cambrian explosion is inter- 
esting because it's a big one. But if you think 
about it, there are major groups of animals 
that have no fossils. For example, today 
we saw in the natural history museum an 
almost microscopic creature called a tardi- 
grade. They don't fossilize because they're 
soft. Presumably before the Cambrian, most 
of the ancestors of the Cambrian creatures 
were soft and small. 

PLAYBOY: How do we know they existed if 
there are no fossils? 

DAWKINS: That's not quite the right ques- 
tion, is it? Their descendants existed in the 
Cambrian, so unless you seriously think they 
were created in the Cambrian, they must 
have existed. You may say that's not evi- 
dence, and I'm saying you could say the 
same of any soft creature for which we have 
no fossils. How do we know it wasn't created 
in 1800? It doesn't make sense. 

PLAYBOY: What about this one, another 
favorite of creationists: If modern animals 
such as monkeys evolved from frogs, why 
haven't we found any fossils from a transi- 
tional creature such as a fronkey? 
DAWKINS: The fallacy is thinking of modern 
animals as descended from other modern 
animals. If you take that seriously, there 
should be not just fronkey fossils but croco- 
duck or octocow fossils. Why on earth would 
you expect you could take any pair of ani- 
mals and look for a combination of them? 
We're looking at the tips of the twigs of the 
tree. The ancestors are buried deep in the 
middle, in the crown of the tree. There are 
no fronkeys because the common ancestor 
of a frog and a monkey would be some kind 
of fishy, salamandery thing that looks like 
neither a frog nor a monkey. 

PLAYBOY: Creationists are fond of arguing that 
if you remove one part and it doesn't work, 
then there's no way it could have evolved. 
DAWKINS: Quite a good analogy here is 
an arch, where you have stone, stone, 
stone, and then it meets in the middle 
and stands up. But take away any one 
part and it collapses. You might think it's 
difficult to build an arch until you have 
the whole thing in place, but you're not 
considering that they used scaffolding, 
which has since been taken down. That's 
one answer. Another is to point out that 
you don't need all the bits of an eye in 
order to see. You can have a very imper- 
fect eye that can see only the difference 
between light and dark. That's still useful 
if you can see the shadow of a predator. 
So it's not true that half an eye is not use- 
ful. Half an eye is half as good as a whole 
eye, and it's better than nothing. 


Y 


2 


SALESMAN 


(continued from page 116) 
be accused of preying on poor innocents 
who didn't know any better, on losers and 
dreamers, on aimless young insomniacs 
hoping for a first score and on retirees 
hoping for a last one, on recent immigrants 
who thought America would reward them 
and on working-class families who thought 
their ship had finally come in. Eventu- 
ally his life would come apart for seeming 
to have scammed them. But his biggest 
moneymaking secret was that he could sell 
to them because he was one of them. His 
belief was their belief, his faith their faith. 
You can talk to the people who knew Don 
well, and you will hear the same thing re- 
peatedly. He thought he was providing 
his customers a service by teaching them 
what he had discovered himself. As one 
longtime employee put it, “His passion 
was for success.” 

This was practically part of Don Lapre's 
DNA. The Lapres—the name is French 
Canadian—had moved from Massachu- 
setts to Phoenix when Don was seven. As 
Don's older brother Michael remembers 
it, theirs was a poverty-stricken childhood, 
especially after their father suffered a back 
injury and couldn't work for two years and 
their mother had to take a job as a cashier 
at Safeway. On weekends Mrs. Lapre 
would drive the children in her white sta- 
tion wagon to the Goodwill bin outside the 
supermarket, where Michael would lower 
Don through the opening and Don would 
pull out the most promising articles for his 
mother to scrutinize and then toss away or 
keep to sell at a swap meet. 

Still, of all the children, Don seemed 
unaffected by the strife. He was always 
upbeat—“always in a good mood,” his sis- 
ter Debbie says. In childhood, as in later 
life, he would sit for hours with pens and 
a pad of paper, concocting schemes that 
would make him rich. By the time he was 
in the third or fourth grade he was buy- 
ing value packs of Bubble Yum and selling 
individual pieces to his classmates for a 
profit. They called him Candy Boy. 

The Lapres knew there wasn't enough 
money for college, and Don left high 
school one half-credit short of gradua- 
tion. At 16 he had gone to work for the 
department store chain Gemco, which 
now offered him a managerial position 
in Bakersfield, California. He took it, but 
Don was too ambitious for Gemco, and ће 
soon returned to Phoenix, found his one- 
bedroom apartment, began house painting 
and schemed furiously at night on his yel- 
low pads, impatient to score. He was even 
impatient romantically. It was at this time 
that Lapre, then 24, met Sally Redondo, a 
darkly complected, petite, pretty 20-year- 
old student, one night in Tempe at the 
dance club Devil House, named after the 
Arizona State University Sun Devils. Lapre 
asked her for a dance, and they exchanged 
numbers. Then he called persistently. 

A little over a week after they met, he 
invited her to a friend's wedding and, af- 
ter the ceremony, blurted, “We should get 
married.” Lapre wasn't drunk. He never 
drank alcohol or took drugs. It was just 


his impulsiveness. He and Sally spent the 
rest of the evening hunting for a wed- 
ding chapel, to no avail. They resolved to 
meet the next day and drive to Las Vegas, 
where they were wed at the Silver Bell 
Wedding Chapel. “There was something 
about him that intrigued me,” Sally says 
now, but she was so terrified about how 
her mother would react to the sudden 
marriage that she had Don break the news 
over the phone. 

He took his bride back to the one- 
bedroom apartment at Woodstone, where 
he promptly announced he was $35,000 in 
debt thanks to the 1828 Club and that he 
would have to declare personal bankruptcy. 
Sally was astonished, especially when Don 
told her to shove their unpaid bills in a 
drawer. Don didn't seem fazed by it. “He was 
so confident in his ability to make money, 
and he believed in these ideas so much,” 
Sally recalls, “that there was no way to fail.” 

Roaring optimism was Lapre's natural 
state. He hated when Sally’s enthusiasm 
didn't match his, and Sally once insisted on 
marriage counseling to get him to under- 
stand that she didn't have to be as ebullient 
as he was all the time. But Lapre told the 
counselor that he couldn't fathom mood 
swings. “I'm always happy,” he said. The 
zeal viewers saw on the infomercials was 
no act. “Exactly the way he was on TV was 
how he would be,” Sally says. “He was al- 
ways on a high.” 


The manifestation of Don Lapre's em- 
pire of happiness and of his enormous 
success was his headquarters at 3255 El- 
wood Street, a modern building sheathed 
in reflective glass in southeast Phoenix 
in a quiet grove of office parks where he 
had moved in November 1993, when The 
Money Making Show was soaring. One mea- 
sured Suite 100, his headquarters, not in 
square footage but in acreage. The sell- 
ing floor was a bright, cavernous expanse 
of white linoleum with high ceilings and 
endless windows. There were no cubicles, 
just rows of small desks, and even Lapre's 
office, right off the floor, had glass parti- 
tions so people could see him at all times, 
usually pacing, seldom in repose. The 
walls were decorated with murals of tropi- 
cal scenes because the beach was Lapre's 
idea of nirvana, and he placed trays of co- 
conut suntan lotion around the room to 
add a tropical scent. He named his parent 
company Tropical Beaches, though it had 
no connection to a beach. 

Within this faux tropical cavern hous- 
ing his 400 employees were amenities: 
everything from free catered lunches and 
a Cinnabon wagon to a basketball half- 
court outside his office to incentives that 
included down payments on a home. The 
atmosphere was loose, like Don; employees 
could take breaks whenever they chose. 
Lapre himself wore a “uniform” of cargo 
shorts, running shoes, a Ralph Lauren 
polo shirt and a yellow baseball hat turned 
backward. At the Monday morning pep 
talks he held on the sales floor to motivate 
his staff, he would say, ^I want everybody to 
want to come to work." They would often 
explode in cheers. 


And then there was the money. The 
telemarketers who made the sales calls 
often earned between $100,000 and 
$200,000 a year. "The commission split 
for them was way in excess of practical," 
says Michael Lapre, a successful insur- 
ance broker who occasionally advised his 
brother on business. But then, Michael 
also observes, “What he was selling was 
making a lot of money.... Get everybody 
believing in the same hype." 

Yet people who knew him insist it wasn't 
just business that caused Lapre to overpay 
his employees. He was naturally generous, 
which may have been the real propulsion 
behind his entire enterprise. Lapre liked to 
give people things, liked to see them happy, 
liked to be the benefactor. One longtime 
employee calls him "the most generous 
person I've ever known in my life." He 
bought his parents and his in-laws homes 
and gave Sally's sister a down payment for 
one. He would take prized employees and 
their families with him, at his expense, on 
trips to Honolulu or to a ski resort. For one 
employee's father who had suffered a heart 
attack, he secured a top-rated cardiologist 
and paid for an experimental treatment. 

In doing so, he was always mindful that 
if he was luckier than most, he was never- 
theless no different from most. He had a 
Christmas Eve ritual, a kind of reversal 
of his own childhood ritual at the Good- 
will bins, in which he took his two young 
daughters to an ATM, withdrew a large 
amount of money, drove around town 
looking for unfortunates who needed aid 
and then had his girls give them the cash. 
In a line that would later carry a haunting 
irony, he would tell them, "Don't believe 
because we are not hurting that we are bet- 
ter than they are." 

He wasn't hurting then. He drew a sal- 
ary of roughly $500,000 a year, but he 
eschewed extravagance. He lived in a 
handsome but not ostentatious house in the 
Ahwatukee section of Phoenix. Though he 
bought a red Mercedes SL500 convertible, 
he gave it away to an investment partner 
when the partner admired it. Sally briefly 
had a Range Rover, which was financed, 
then gave it up too. He trimmed his own hair 
over the sink. Dressing up meant clothes 
from the Gap. His only indulgences besides 
his largesse were the vacations on which he 
frequently took his extended family. 

Extravagant or not, Lapre was the "King 
of Infomercials." He had added a National 
Lifetime Reminder Service that, for $390, 
provided customers with 100 kits they 
could then sell for $39 apiece, allowing 
those who bought them to keep track of 
friends’ and relatives’ birthdays and other 
special anniversaries and have gift baskets 
automatically sent to them. He teamed up 
with television personality Alan Thicke for 
a new infomercial hawking the Incredible 
Products Store, which was a store to be set 
up in malls across the country where any- 
one with an incredible product could buy 
a screen on which Lapre would show ads 
he produced for the products. Money was 
pouring in—$80,000 a day, Lapre claimed, 
on the National Lifetime Reminder Ser- 
vice alone. He was writing checks for up 


to $1 million a week for media buys for 139 


PLAYBOY 


140 


his infomercials, which were playing more 
than 300 times a week on stations across 
the country. And “one-bedroom apart- 
ment” and “tiny classified ads” had become 
national catchphrases. 


But as the decade drew to a close there were 
already signs of trouble in the beach para- 
dise. The entire operation was predicated 
on aggressive telemarketers who would get 
lists of “leads,” people who had called in to 
order the moneymaking kits. The telemar- 
keters would then make follow-up calls to 
try to sell them additional services—what 
telemarketers call “reloading.” Would you 
like to buy more lines, more ads, even 
more secrets? The full treatment could cost 
as much as $5,000. Lapre was cautious that 
his telemarketers not overpromise. He had 
his attorneys vet a script for the market- 
ers to read that suggested customers could 
make money without coming right out and 
telling them they would, and he recorded 
calls to make sure his telemarketers stuck 
to the script. Lapre was adamant that his 
intention in having lawyers scrutinize the 
pitch wasn't to find ways to skirt the law; 
his intention was to operate fully within it. 

Still, some telemarketers had twinges 
of conscience. “Anyone who is buying this 
idea either does not have the highest men- 
tal capacity of a regular person,” says Elliot 


Storch, who worked for Lapre in the 1990s, 
“or they're desperate and they really want 
something, so of course they're going to be- 
lieve what they want to hear, and they want 
to hear that they can make it. In either 
situation, you're taking advantage of some- 
body.” Storch wouldn't sell the most ex- 
pensive packages, though he didn't believe 
Lapre was a con artist. On the contrary, he 
thought Lapre had actually conned himself 
into believing his own pitch that anyone 
could make money if he worked at it. 

That self-delusion turned out to be a 
problem. Lapre was intoxicated by his 
own irrational exuberance. As Sally puts 
it, he had “ADD with his business plans. 
Something would work, and it would 
be successful and it would be good and 
it should have just stayed that way. But 
he’d tweak it, he’d tweak it, he’d tweak 
it.” Sometimes he would tweak it into 
oblivion. The Incredible Products Store 
bombed. Then he switched out his origi- 
nal Money Making Show infomercial for a 
new infomercial promoting websites that 
promised three new ways to make money. 
That bombed too. 

And there was worse to come—much 
worse. After deciding to take his family 
on a vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 
he suddenly hatched a new idea: to build 
a nine-acre resort complex of 18 villas 
and 56 condominiums that he called La 


“Did I come?! Are you kidding? Didn’t you, like, 
read all those OMGs I sent?” 


Playa Estates. He thought of it as a place 
where his staff could vacation. 

Michael Lapre had warned Don not to 
invest in Mexican real estate. “And every- 
thing I said would go wrong did,” Michael 
says. The plan was to fast-track the con- 
struction, so Don pulled money—$4 mil- 
lion in total—out ofthe company to finance 
it on the assumption that it would soon be 
up and running and generating income. It 
wasn’t, and it didn’t. The complex was too 
far from Puerto Vallarta to attract buyers, 
and the construction dragged on and 
went over budget. When the time came 
for Lapre to pay his income taxes on the 
money he had drawn from the company, 
he had no proceeds. Meanwhile, he had 
fallen weeks behind on his media buys, 
which were the lifeblood of his operation. 

By June 1999, Storch noticed that 
Lapre’s pep talks had lost some of their 
confidence and that Lapre was less visible 
behind the glass partitions. As the pressure 
mounted, Tempa Brown, who had worked 
as an executive for Lapre since he was 
headquartered in his one-bedroom apart- 
ment, says that he had “sort of a break- 
down. He sort of checked out a little bit,” 
leaving decisions to others and no longer 
coming to the office. Things began reeling. 
One day Brown arrived at work to find that 
the lights had been turned off and was told 
that they weren’t selling that day. As anxi- 
ety rippled across the selling floor, Lapre 
was privately in a panic, but he kept reas- 
suring his employees that whatever rumors 
they were hearing were untrue. 

This was Lapre duping himself, trying 
to talk his way into averting disaster as he 
had talked his way into a fortune. On Mon- 
day, June 28, 1999, at 5:05 p.m., he took to 
the selling floor to announce that the next 
morning he was going to launch a new 
company. Instead, on Tuesday he glumly 
announced he was declaring bankruptcy 
and that the company would close its doors 
temporarily. As he made the announce- 
ment, he began to weep, apologizing to the 
employees and telling them that if he could 
shoot himself, he would. He said he had 
let them down. No one had ever seen him 
like this. For himself, he had lost the entire 
$4 million he’d invested in La Playa Estates 
and, as Sally puts it, didn't even get a time 
share. Whatever he had made from his 
company was gone too, since he had rein- 
vested most of it and the rest went to taxes. 

Two weeks later the company reopened 
under the command of a bankruptcy 
trustee named Vern Schweigert—a beefy, 
balding, bespectacled business veteran 
who, according to one employee, resented 
Lapre for his youth and his fortune. 
Lapre, eager to get his company out of 
bankruptcy, had gotten Carleton Sheets, 
the real estate infomercial giant, to agree to 
buy the company and pay off its creditors. 
As Sandy Cercone, one of Lapre's clos- 
est associates, remembers it, Schweigert 
nixed the deal, insinuating that Sheets's 
outfit could be Mafia (for which there was 
absolutely no basis); Lapre groused that 
Schweigert just didn't want to give up his 
$10,000-a-week salary. At two A.M. one day, 
Lapre, utterly frustrated, sent Schweigert 
an e-mail that he was resigning. Schweigert 


readily accepted. Later Schweigert sold 
the company to a cagey entrepreneur 
named Joseph Deihl, who continued to 
run Lapre's infomercials. Deihl also sold 
clearly fraudulent products, according 
to the FDA, including a spray that pur- 
ported to protect the thyroid gland in case 
of nuclear attack. Lapre was so incensed 
when he was told that Deihl was scamming 
customers that he rebuked Deihl on his 
website and disassociated himself from the 
company he had started. 
So ended Don Lapre's heyday. 


“If you want to know the truth, my brother 
died back then,” says his sister Debbie. “He 
was never the same 
after that.” But as 
downcast as he was, 
Lapre refused to 
put away his yel- 
low pad. “He was 
still an idea guy,” 
recalls Brown. “He 
was going to light 
the world on fire. 
He always had an- 
other idea he want- 
ed to try.” Working 
out of his home, he 
began day-trading 
stocks during the 
Nasdaq boom and 
then got the idea 
of showing people 
how they could 
night trade. As he 
described it to the 
Phoenix New Times, 
night-trading was 
“for people who 
work all day and 
don't have time 
during the normal 
business hours” to 
play the market. 
But Lapre wasn't 
nimble enough to 
beat the market. 
“If its down, he'd 
double down or tri- 
ple down on things, 
and it didn't work 
out," says his broth- 
er Michael of Don's 
strategy. "And he 
went on to the next thing and the next 
thing and the next thing." 

The next thing was farming himself out 
to other infomercial entrepreneurs. Set up 
in his garage, he worked for Dean Graziosi, 
who ran a real estate tutorial called “Think 
a Little Different" about cashing in on fore- 
closures. Then he partnered with another 
get-rich-quick guru, Russ Dalbey, who spe- 
cialized in selling kits on how to make com- 
missions on banknotes with an infomercial 
titled Winning in the Cash Flow Business. 'The 
problem was that Lapre wasn't accustomed 
to sharing power. He and Dalbey eventu- 
ally had a falling-out, which led to Dalbey 
buying Lapre's share of the business. 

But if Lapre now had a grubstake for a 
new venture, his belief in the dream had 
been shaken, and having had that belief 


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shaken, he lost his fire—the fire that had 
made him Don Lapre. He kept moping 
that he had let everyone down, that his 
staff had lost their jobs because of him, 
and he was clearly despondent that he 
couldn't do what he had always done, 
what had made him happiest, which 
was support his extended family and his 
friends. The man who had always been 
happy, the man who couldn't understand 
why everyone else wasn't happy like him, 
the man who was the very personifica- 
tion of the American dream was suddenly 
enveloped in gloom and pessimism. “We 
were really concerned about him," says his 
sister Michelle, “because I had never seen 
him that despondent before." 


ANTOONS, AND ИПИ М 


Edited by 
HUGH HEFNER 


As it turned out, they had reason 
to be concerned. One night after the 
bankruptcy he called Debbie from his cell 
phone. He was standing on the railroad 
tracks waiting for the train to mow him 
down, and Debbie frantically had to talk 
him out of it. Afterward, he was hospital- 
ized for depression, and it was then that 
a doctor made a startling diagnosis: He 
believed that Lapre was bipolar. (Lapre 
himself denied it.) The wild enthusiasm 
that had been his trademark may not have 
been so much an unshakable devotion to 
American opportunity as it was a neurosis 
stemming from genetic demons. The fam- 
ily had a long history of mental illness. 

But once Lapre was released from the 
hospital, Michelle says, he "snapped back 
quickly," as he always had after adversity, 


and began looking for another idea. Ac- 
cording to Sally, it was Tylene Megley 
who approached Lapre in the summer of 
2002 with a new business venture. Meg- 
ley, an attractive, youthful 33-year-old fit- 
ness enthusiast with long brown hair and 
generous cleavage, had some credibility, 
having worked with local athletes includ- 
ing Phoenix Suns star Steve Nash. She had 
teamed with Doug Grant, a health entre- 
preneur who claimed to be a "nutritionist 
by degree"—the degree was granted by a 
correspondence school—and who had fab- 
ricated a new vitamin of "natural" ingredi- 
ents only. Megley took the vitamin to Lapre 
knowing he was something of a health nut; 
he wouldn't even take a Tylenol. Lapre was 
smitten with the 
vitamin—so smit- 
ten that in January 
2003 he formed 
GVW, "The Great- 
est Vitamin in the 
World," and intro- 
duced an infomer- 
cial that declared, 
"Nothing like this 
has ever been seen 
before in the his- 
tory of the world!" 

For Lapre this 
wasn't just hokum. 
Sally said he was 
"passionate" about 
these vitamins, 
sending bottles of 
them to his sib- 
lings with enco- 
miums about all 
the ills they would 
cure and taking 
them himself re- 
ligiously, even 
though the dosage 
ran to eight large 
tablets a day. But 
as he had with his 
earlier businesses, 
Lapre didn't just 
sell the vitamins, 
which were priced 
at $39.95 a bottle. 
He sold the op- 
portunity to sell 
the vitamins. The 
idea was that one 
could become an 
independent advertiser, or IA, by buying 
the vitamins from Lapre. The IA would 
then set up websites—which could also be 
provided by Lapre for a fee—on which 
the IA would advertise the vitamins. And 
Lapre gave the IA an inducement to buy. 
For every 20 customers the IA got, Lapre 
promised him a $1,000 check. On the face 
of it, it sounded like a good deal for the 
IAs, perhaps too good. Lapre hooked hun- 
dreds of thousands of them, and it seemed 
as if he was back in business after the set- 
backs, though not without one major con- 
cession: Megley, in a low-cut top, was the 
primary spokesperson for GVW because, 
as Don told Sally when she protested that 
buxom women cheapened the product, 
you need a "channel stopper." Lapre real- 
ized he was no longer that stopper. 


, $8.98. 


141 


Still, Lapre had always been better at 
selling than at conducting actual business. 
His brother Michael was amazed when 
Don would ask how the company could 
be generating such huge revenue and yet 
making such meager profits. Michael tried 
to explain to him that the math didn't 
work: You couldn't have IAs sell vitamins 
to 20 customers at $39.95 a bottle and 
then give them a $1,000 premium. Even 
Debbie, who was very close to Don, told 
him that he had to state specifically that 
it was 20 customers, not 20 bottles, since 
many customers would buy more than 
one bottle, and that he should give IAs the 
option of continuing to sell on their own 
or handing their customer list to Lapre 
and cashing out. Don wouldn't listen. He 
even added diet and arthritis remedies. 
He felt it was just a matter of time. 

But time wasn't kind. As Lapre fell be- 
hind on his $1,000 premiums and on re- 
funds to dissatisfied customers, IAs began 
lodging complaints—more than 473 filed 
with the Phoenix Better Business Bureau 
between 2004 and 2007. Meanwhile, 
in 2005 the FDA filed its own warning 
against GVW, asking Lapre to desist from 
making extravagant claims in his info- 
mercial about the diseases the pill could 
treat, including cancer. According to crit- 


PLAYBOY 


ics, the vitamin was no different from 
those one could buy in any drugstore. As 
if that weren't bad enough, Doug Grant, 
who made the vitamins, was arrested for 
killing his wife by drugging her and put- 
ting her in a bathtub to drown. Lapre was 
shocked. “Of all the people in the world I 
get to create my vitamin," he told Debbie, 
“it has to be someone accused of murder- 
ing his wife." 

And bad as it was, even that wasn't the 
worst of it. Postal inspectors went under- 
cover both as prospective IAs and as pro- 
spective telemarketers and concluded that 
GVW was defrauding its customers by lur- 
ing them into adding services such as ads 
and websites and the promise of 12,000 
targeted potential buyers, which they said 
were just 12,000 "junk" hits from pop-up 
ads. In any case, no one was buying the 
vitamins Lapre loved. 

In fact, Lapre didn't have the money to 
pay the premiums or the refunds in large 
part because he kept reinvesting what he 
collected into the company in hopes of re- 
viving it. He told Sally that after Grant's 
indictment, he should have seen the writ- 
ing on the wall and declared bankruptcy 
again, but instead he reluctantly found 
a buyer in Los Angeles for the company 
who promised to make good on every- 


thing he owed. It was his concession that 
it was finally over—the dream dead and 
buried once and for all. 


Lapre wasn't prepared for what happened 
next. Early on the morning of August 
8, 2007, Sally was getting her daughters 
ready for school when she heard a pound- 
ing at the door. She opened it to find a 
SWAT team and a crew of FBI agents with 
guns drawn—about half a dozen men in 
all—yelling at the top of their lungs, "Don 
Lapre! Don Lapre! Are you in this house?" 
Lapre, in fact, was still upstairs in bed in his 
pajamas, and when he heard the commo- 
tion, he thought the police might be doing 
a house-to-house search for a murderer. 
He pulled on his pants and scrambled 
down the stairs to find the group in his 
house and asked why they were there. 
"You know why," snapped one agent dis- 
missively. “You know what kind of busi- 
ness you were running." Another agent 
asked to see his boat, as if he owned a 
yacht, which of course he didn't. At the 
same time agents were raiding his office, 
a storage facility, even his cars. 

Lapre was bewildered. He assumed 
there was some misunderstanding, since 
he had always had those attorneys making 


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certain he was operating within the ljaw. He 
admitted he may have made mistakes, but 
he had never intended to swindle anyone. 
He believed that those who didn't make 
money from his operation were people 
who didn't work hard enough at it. And 
he was going to pay back everyone anyway 
once he sold the company. But the raid 
scared off the buyer. 

The old Lapre might have gotten up 
from the mat, shaken off the dust and be- 
gun anew. The Lapre who had been bat- 
tered by bankruptcy spiraled into depres- 
sion. There were days when he couldn't 
get out of bed. Obviously he couldn't find 
work—what work was there for a TV pitch- 
man under investigation?—and there was 
no rainy-day fund, since Lapre never had 
any investments. Of the $2.5 million he 
had made from GVW over its four years, 
almost all of it had gone right back into the 
company, and what little remained he used 
for legal bills. There was nothing left. He 
and Sally were forced to hold yard sales to 
raise money. Their cars were repossessed, 
and 18 months after the raid, they lost their 
home to foreclosure. Sally had to talk her 
way into a waitressing job at a restaurant. 

Meanwhile, Lapre tried to pacify the 
federal prosecutors, hoping to stave off 
an indictment, even if he wasn’t sure what 
he would be indicted for. He prepared big 
three-ring binders with copies of checks 
he had paid out and said that if he could 
just show the prosecutors the notebook 
and explain his business to them, they 
would realize they had made a mistake. 
Talked out of doing that, he hired two 
highly regarded criminal attorneys to 
meet with the federal prosecutors, and he 
asked Wayne Little, a former prosecutor 
with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s 
Office and a business law expert, to comb 
his records for any hints of criminal ac- 
tivity. All three attorneys concluded that 
there was no case against him 一 that while 
he may have been delinquent in making 
payments, he had certainly had no inten- 
tion to defraud anyone and that he was 
selling a viable product and system. The 
prosecutors countered, not altogether 
implausibly, that he should have known 
there wasn't a big enough vitamin market 
for so many sellers. Disheartened, Lapre 
told everyone that they were going to 
prosecute him no matter what he did. 

But he still had his yellow pads, and 
he made a few feeble attempts to restart 
his career, opening a website aptly titled 
imgoingbananas.com on which he pitched 
his personal consulting services to busi- 
nesses in return for three percent of the 
company's profits. It was an absurd offer, 
and the webmercials, with Lapre sitting in 
his study photographed in close-up by his 
webcam, are a sad contrast to the peppy 
old infomercials. The energy has evapo- 
rated and so has the exuberance. He is 
subdued. He is begging. “It was like a thor- 
oughbred who has been broken,” observes 
his old telemarketer Elliot Storch. 

He stopped seeing his extended family. 
He would tell people, “I’m such a loser. 
I'm worthless. I feel like nothing.” When 
friends visited, he would remain upstairs. 
And there was something else: He had be- 


gun disappearing, leaving home without 
telling Sally, sometimes going missing for 
days at a stretch. One time she used his 
debit card to trace him to a hotel where he 
had taken pills—the man who had previ- 
ously taken nothing but vitamins—and 
had a friend fetch him. Another time she 
called the police because that was the only 
way she could find him. A third time she 
filed a missing-person report. During 
these absences, Sally in desperation would 
sometimes ask friends to text him. "It's all 
good," he would text back. 

Of course it wasn't. As the investigation 
dragged into its fourth year with still no 
indictment, and with Lapre unemployed, 
broke and living on handouts from friends 
and family, the infomercial world came to 
his rescue one last time. Jim Piccolo had run 
a real estate investment school called Nou- 
veau Riche. In December 2010 he launched 
a new company called BizziBiz that would 
franchise digital marketing to local busi- 
nesses, and he hired Lapre as a consultant. 
"That was the first time I saw a little bit 
of happiness in him," says his sister Deb- 
bie. It even got him to thinking about new 
schemes of his own, which he would pitch to 
his siblings as he had in the old days. They 
didn't have the heart to discourage him. 

It was a time of reevaluation. Sally used 
to lament that Don was always at the of- 
fice, but she says she came to realize "that 
was what made him happy." Lapre him- 
self had come to the opposite conclusion. 
His quest for the dream had come at the 
expense of the things that really mat- 
tered. He told his young nephew, “When 
you are in your first one-bedroom apart- 
ment and you're having the time of your 
life, just stay there." 


All along Lapre had said the feds were 
never going to let him rest, and he was 
right. On June 8, 2011, as the statute of 
limitations was about to expire, he was in- 
dicted on charges of defrauding 226,794 
people out of $51.8 million—the total 
number of GVW independent advertis- 
ers and the total amount of money GVW 
took in. In other words, the prosecutors 
were saying he had defrauded everyone. 
The government claimed that only 5,000 
IAs ever received any funds, $6.3 million 
in all. Even so, the fraud amounted to 
roughly $200 per person—not exactly a 
Madoff-size scandal. Lapre had no money 
for an attorney, so the court appointed 
one, but he insisted he didn't want to go to 
trial because, he said, "People aren't going 
to believe us." He had stopped taking the 
medication prescribed for his depression, 
and the week before the indictment was 
handed down he told Debbie he had been 
thinking of some "really, really bad things." 

By the time of a scheduled court appear- 
ance on June 22, he was utterly hopeless. 
He left that morning for the Sandra Day 
O'Connor U.S. Courthouse in downtown 
Phoenix, dropping off his younger daugh- 
ter at school on the way. But he never ar- 
rived, and the judge issued a bench war- 
rant for his arrest. By the next evening the 
federal marshals had gotten a tip that he 


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143 


PLAYBOY 


144 


was holed up at the Lifetime Fitness cen- 
ter in Tempe. Half a dozen cars from the 
U.S. Marshals Service staked out the cen- 
ter from the parking lot. Meanwhile, Lapre 
had phoned both Sally and Debbie from 
his cell. Debbie arrived first and found her 
brother staggering outside, dressed in his 
usual outfit: long tan shorts, a yellow Ralph 
Lauren polo shirt and his yellow baseball 
cap turned backward. And she saw five 
spreading circles of blood on his torso and 
leg, as if he had been shot. She hustled him 
into her car just as his court-appointed at- 
torney and her private investigator pulled 
up, the first of whom had been notified by 
Sally. When the attorney saw Lapre in the 
back of the car she told Debbie to drive to 
the hospital. As Lapre sank into the back- 
seat, he mumbled, “1 don't want to die." 
As it was later pieced together, Lapre 
had headed for Lifetime Fitness after the 
school drop-off to kill himself. He had ac- 
quired a hunting knife in the same mall. 
Then he had gone into a shower stall in a 
family room at the health club (Debbie said 
his hands were "white and pruney" from 
the water) and stabbed himself five times 
in the stomach and groin—one wound so 
severe it had practically severed his femo- 
ral artery, which apparently was his intent, 
though in phoning Sally and Debbie he 
had obviously had second thoughts. At 
7:30 P.M., on Warner Road, about half a 
mile from Lifetime Fitness and just before 
the entrance ramp to I-10, where Debbie 
was heading to get to the hospital, the mar- 
shals swarmed the car and removed Lapre. 


He underwent surgery and spent the 
next three weeks convalescing. His arraign- 
ment took place in his hospital room. He 
was then transferred to a federal holding 
facility in Florence, Arizona. Lapre played 
cards, met with a psychologist weekly and 
phoned his family daily—occasionally five 
to 10 times a day—but he absolutely for- 
bade them to visit him there. He said it 
would "crush" him. 

He did visit with Pat Gitre—his court- 
appointed attorney—or her investiga- 
tor six or seven times during his incar- 
ceration, and he kept vacillating over 
whether to plead guilty to something he 
still insisted he didn't do or go to trial 
and risk getting 20 years in prison. Gitre 
was tough, a single woman who drove a 
Dodge pickup, wore five-inch heels in 
the courtroom to tower over her oppos- 
ing counsel and had successfully defended 
a Hells Angel accused of murder and a 
Jamaican drug dealer accused of murder- 
ing another drug dealer. She had also de- 
fended many white-collar criminals, and 
she wasn't given to painting rosy pictures. 
But she fervently believed that Lapre was 
innocent. Whether or not he was naive in 
his business operations, she thought he 
was different from her other clients. “He 
had no greed," she says. “He was looking 
to make money, but he wanted to share 
that with everybody else. We don't have a 
guy who had 15 vehicles and 20 Rolexes. 
That is what is so unique about this case.” 
Moreover, the government admitted that 
Lapre plowed 95 percent of the money 


"You're like the son I never had. Now I remember why 
I had the vasectomy.” 


right back into the company to pay his IAs 
and creditors, which, Gitre asserts, isn't 
the modus operandi of a crook. 

Lapre, however, had decided what he 
wanted to do. While he was at Florence, 
his brother Michael and his sister Debbie 
would take turns depositing money into 
his prison account for coffee, candy, phone 
calls and incidentals. (Generous as always, 
he would share his money with his fellow 
inmates.) But at one point he began buying 
sweatshirts. He told Michael it was because 
his bed was uncomfortable and he needed 
them as padding. At the time Michael 
didn't give it much thought. 

Nor did anyone at the prison. To his 
prison psychologist Lapre talked about his 
children and about going to trial. What 
he never talked about, according to U.S. 
Marshal David Gonzales, was taking his 
life. Gonzales says this was his last and best 
sales job. But Lapre's family had their sus- 
picions. He was calling them now often 
in tears. And he had sent Sally a note ex- 
pressing his hopes for the rest of his family 
and his apologies to her—a note that Sally 
saw as his valedictory. It was the morn- 
ing of October 2, just two days before his 
next scheduled court appearance, when 
Sally, on her way to pick up breakfast bur- 
ritos for her children, got a call on her cell 
phone. It was a prison officer: Don had 
been found dead in his cell. Sometime 
after the last bed check, he had swathed 
himself in his sweatshirts and slit his throat 
with the blade from a Bic disposable razor. 
The sweatshirts absorbed the blood so he 
wouldn't be discovered and saved before 
he expired. He was 47 years old. 

Most of the public had long forgotten 
Don Lapre, but there was a reaction none- 
theless. On the internet, many cheered his 
death. "Rot in Hell, Don Lapre," read one 
comment. "Another slithering snake con 
artist bites the dust," read a second. And 
yet there were others who defended him 
and mourned his passing, many of them 
former employees or customers. One of 
them, a Phoenix printer named David 
Salinas who had once bought a Lapre 
kit and was inspired by it, had created a 
website during Lapre's imprisonment, 
freedonlapre.com, which now became an 
online eulogy. Tens of thousands visited 
the site. Similarly, hundreds showed up to 
Lapre's funeral. The procession from the 
church to the grave site, which would ordi- 
narily have taken 10 minutes, took 45. 

But whether he was being vilified or 
deified, and whether in the end he was a 
shrewd scammer or a naif, Don Lapre was a 
quintessential American entrepreneur. His 
life had reflected his faith in the American 
gospel of success, for which he was an evan- 
gelist who seemed genuinely convinced 
that anyone in this country could make a 
fortune as he had. And his death reflected 
the doubts that shaded this proposition— 
that in America success always belonged 
to the rich and powerful and that aggres- 
sive upstarts like him would ultimately be 
punished. And when he died, it wasn't for 
guilt or release. It was for the failure of the 
dream he had once so devoutly held. 


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PLAYBOY 


146 


GORDON-LEVITT 


(continued from page 90) 


people. I love when someone approaches 
me and tells me they've seen me in some- 
thing that made them feel something and 
that they connected to it. That's part of why 
I do it. The other interaction is with people 
who really don't care about the movies or 
anything like that. They just sort of buy into 
the fame thing, and that feels icky to me. 


03 

PLAYBOY: Have you followed the political tra- 
ditions of your grandfather Michael Gordon, 
a director who survived the 19508 blacklists; 
your father, who was news director of a po- 
litically progressive radio station; and your 
mother, who in 1970 ran for Congress on 
the Peace and Freedom Party ticket? 
GORDON-LEVITT: My parents are political in 
that they're well read and as up on the news 
as anybody 1 know. То me that is political 
activism, choosing to stay informed and 
not just watching CNN or some bullshit 
entertainment show. Every time I sit down 
and watch television news, I think, This is 
show business. That's what I do. I say, go 
on the internet and find news from all over 
the world through the BBC, the Pacifica 
stations, newspapers, people's blogs and 
tweets. It's so funny when people say Fox 
is bad. Sure Fox is bad, but I don't think 
CNN and MSNBC are really any better. 


(4 
PLAYBOY: You've shot a number of short films, 
including one last year documenting Occu- 
py Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park in 
New York. How closely does the mainstream 


media's coverage of that movement relate to 
what you filmed and experienced? 
GORDON-LEVITT: Very little. What I've seen on 
TV focuses on the superficial stuff. It's a pretty 
simple notion: People who have lots of mon- 
ey—people in corporations who have tons 
of money—are malevolently manipulating 
the system to keep their money. And the rest 
of the world suffers for it. You could show 
a trillion examples of how Goldman Sachs, 
McDonald's, Walmart and Monsanto are 
clearly fucking over everybody, but CNN, 
Fox and MSNBC are owned by Fortune 500 
companies, so they never show any of it. 


05 


PLAYBOY: Couldn't а detractor accuse you, 
a famous, privileged actor, of being one of 
the elites? 

GORDON-LEVITT: I grew up in the 1990s, 
when it was considered cool to be exces- 
sively rich. That's what rappers rapped 
about, and later that's what Paris Hilton 
had a TV show about and what MTV Cribs 
was about. The Occupy movement is a pop 
culture happening that's saying money is 
not what's cool. What's cool is doing some- 
thing worthwhile. If your goal is to make 
money in the movie industry, you make 
crappy movies, not good ones. 


06 


PLAYBOY: How did you make the rough transi- 
tion from kid ТУ star to grown-up movie star? 
GORDON-LEVITT: As a teenager in the 19905 1 
loved the spike ofindie films coming through 
Sundance, and films like Pulp Fiction, Big 
Night, Sling Blade, Trees Lounge and Swingers. 
Had 1 said to my agents at the time that 1 


FOEN 


“If you've enjoyed our evening together, I hope you'll stop by ту 
website for T Dated Larry’ T-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers!” 


wanted to do that stuff, they would have said, 
“You're making a ton of money doing TV, 
and that's what you're going to do.” 1 went 
to school, quit acting for a while, and when 1 
came back everyone wanted me to do anoth- 
er TV show and make more money. 1 didn't 
want to. I made a decision that I was going to 
do only work that inspired me creatively, not 
what was supposed to be good for my career. 


07 


PLAYBOY Yet the work that inspires can also 
be commercial. The sweet, upbeat indie ro- 
mance (500) Days ој Summer was а hit and 
turned you into a heartthrob. 
GORDON-LEVITT: The (500) Days ој Summer 
attitude of “He wants you so bad” seems 
attractive to some women and men, espe- 
cially younger ones, but 1 would encourage 
anyone who has a crush on my character 
to watch it again and examine how selfish 
he is. He develops a mildly delusional ob- 
session over a girl onto whom he projects 
all these fantasies. He thinks she'll give his 
life meaning because he doesn't care about 
much else going on in his life. A lot of boys 
and girls think their lives will have mean- 
ing if they find a partner who wants noth- 
ing else in life but them. That's not healthy. 
That's falling in love with the idea of a per- 
son, not the actual person. 


08 


PLAYBOY Are you actually slagging a mov- 
ie that landed you on people's radar and 
made many of them fall in love with you 
and Zooey Deschanel as a screen couple? 
GORDON-LEVITT: No, I really liked that 
movie. The coming-of-age story is subtly 
done, and that's great, because nothing’s 
worse than an over-the-top, cheesy, hitting- 
you-over-the-head-with-a-hammer, moral- 
of-the-story sort of thing. But a part of the 
movie that's less talked about is that once 
Zooey's character dumps the guy, he builds 
himself up without the crutch of a fantasy 
relationship, and he meets a new girl. 


09 

PLAYBOY: Your character in (500) Days made 
extravagant gestures in the name of love. 
What kind of woman could make you do that? 
GORDON-LEVITT: Making checklists of things 
you're looking for in a person is the nume- 
ro uno thing you can do to guarantee you'll 
be alone forever. You can't meet someone 
and think, Do they have everything I want 
in a person? You just have to pay attention, 
keep your eyes open, listen to people and 
be present. I guess what I look for in a girl 
is someone who's doing that too. Beyond 
that there's not much more I would specify, 
because you never fucking know, man. 


010 

PLAYBOY: You and Deschanel also made 
the music video “Why Do You Let Me Stay 
Here?” and a homemade one of you two 
singing the 1947 classic “What Are You 
Doing New Year's Eve?” How do you re- 
act when so many people—judging from 
comments on the internet—want the two 
of you to get together romantically? 

GORDON-LEVITT: It's awkward when people 
say that. Whatever. (concluded on page 149) 


¿PLAYMATE NEWS 


MARILYN MONROE 
PLAYBOY’S FIRST CENTERFOLD 
ТОМУ CURTIS IS AU COURANT 


Fifty years after her death and almost 60 since becom- 


JACK LEMMON ing Miss December 1953, Marilyn Monroe remains a 


timeless sex symbol. In June, Grauman's Chinese The- 

- atre was the site of the weeklong Marilyn Monroe Film 

> XA 4 y Festival, which kicked off with everybody's favorite, 
y 4 Some Like It Hot. When director Billy Wilder was hon- 


y | ored with a postage stamp this spring, it prominently 


| featured Marilyn’s image. Vanity Fair also thought 
if so much of Marilyn that it put her on its June cover 


E with the promise 
VN i — of “Lost Nudes.” 
| ++ м A But the nudes 
A had not been lost: 


They were out- 


takes from a photo 
BILY WILDER shoot Marilyn had 
3 personally sent 
SOME LIKE IT. HOT PLAYBOY and we 
had published— 
twice. Sorry, Vanity 
Fair. Sometimes 
when something 
sounds too good to 
be true, it really is 
too good to be true. 


HOPE’S CHOICE IS THE MAMA’S BOY 

PMOY 2010 Hope Dworaczyk appeared on Fox's Voice-like dating show The 
Choice, on which bachelorettes choose their dates and then swivel around to 
see them. After sifting through suitors, Hope selected Brant, a Southern gent, 
saying, “I love my mom a lot, and when you told те you're а mama's boy I 
know that if you're good to your mom, уон? probably be good to me.” 


А Thirty-five уеагѕ 
— ago this month Miss 
j September 1977 


Е graced our pages. 
| The Beaumont, 
Texas blonde, with 
hair that flowed 
y down her 35-24-36 
N frame, so enchanted 
us that we named 

E her PMOY 1978. 
Hollywood was 
also taken with the 
X shapely siren, who 
went on to appear 

on Mork & Mindy, 

Fantasy Island and 

Knots Landing, 

as well as in the 

film Spitfire. Hav- 


l ка » ing returned to the 
x l ~ 
1 Que Lone Star State, 
NVA \ == Debra Jo currently 


is an aesthetics 
'_ instructor at the 
М Southeast Texas 
Career Institute. 


DID V0U Miss May 2007 Shannon James Miss May 1998 Deanna Brooks has Miss February 1990 Pamela Anderson 
KNOW launched the new Playboy slot been tapped as a special correspon- told The Sun that everyone in her fam- 
ш machines at Harrah's in Atlantic City. dent for RadarOnline.com. ily except her is a member of Mensa. 


GOLDEN GIRL 


MY FAVORITE PLAYMATE 


BY RAPHAEL SBARGE € 


—actor, ABC's Once Upon a Time 


“My favorite Playmate is Miss 
December 2005 Christine Smith. 
And this comes after a lifetime En 
of comparison. I had а 
а Subscription to PLAYBOY at 
the age of 13，with my 
mother's blessing. I grew 
up on a commune, so it 
wasn't all that outra- 
geous. I loved them all 
until I wore the pages 
out. But the redheads 
have always been my 
favorites. I couldn't say 
why. I probably came 
that way—electrically 
hardwired, prepro- 
grammed at the factory.” 


ГА 


Diamonds may be а girls best friend, but Miss April 1999 Natalia Sokolova рге- 


fers gold or tungsten. As founder and managing partner of SGG World, an 


international consulting firm in energy sectors, and VP of investor relations for 
mining company Colt Resources, Natalia advises clients around the world. “Pm 


always traveling,” she says. “My main office is my BlackBerry.” On a recent one- 


day vacation, 
Natalia stopped 
by Cannes 
decked out in 
Marina B jewelry 
and a Catherine 
Malandrino 
gown. “I want to 
set up resource 
ventures in the 
next two or three 
years so 1 can be 
financially secure 
to focus most of 
my energy on 
charity work and 
raising my son.” 


50 SHADES OF CRYSTAL 


“The difference between posing 
for the cover of a romance novel 
and posing for the Centerfold is 
the clothes,” says Miss May 2009 
Crystal McCahill with a wink. “You 
also get to play someone else for a 
day and have a chance to shoot with 
some hot guys. In a Playmate shoot 
you play yourself by yourself.” 
Crystal will be on the covers of 
three romance novels this fall, start- 
ing with A Lady and Her Magic 


know how to drive а AÑ 
stick shift you may УУ : 
recognize PMOY 


2000 
who ® | ' ai 


Even if you don't Ф 
4 


is married to Y | 


IndyCar legend e- “ ES 
and Celebrity = T 
Apprentice contestant Michael Andretti. The 
couple, along with friend and PLAYBoY photogra- 
pher Arny Freytag, took in the Toyota Grand Prix 
of Long Beach in April to cheer on Andretti's son 
Marco, who was driving for Andretti Autosports. 
As Marco tried to make a move, his car hit another 
and went airborne; fortunately he wasn't injured in 
the crash.... Miss August 2000 
and Miss January 
2001 met up 
with actor David Koechner 
atthe Piranha 3DD premiere 
at the Mann Chinese 6 The- 
atres. In the fun summer 
flick, Koechner's charac- 
ter takes a long look at Kiki 
(played by Irina) enjoying a 
| / skinny-dip in 
lla pool. What 
happens next? We haven't a clue, 
because we just keep rewinding.... 
If Miss August 2003 
looks very pregnant in this picture 
it's because she was about to give 
birth to her 10-pound son. The 
tyke, named Cooper, came into the 
world on March 1.... For a tongue- 
in-cheek behind-the-scenes look at 
American Idol, Steven Tyler invited 
cameras into his bungalow so viewers could wit- 
ness how the rock star lives. Among the amenities 
the Aerosmith lead singer showed off were his 
pet Bunnies: Miss October 2011 
Miss September 2009 Miss 
November 2011 Miss 
June 2004 Miss September 2004 
and PMOY 2009 


> 


J 


this month. Independent publisher Or more of these 
Sourcebooks has also enlisted Miss Ш A N 1 T 0 5 E E Playmates? You can 
November 2001 Lindsey Vuolo, | MORE PLAYMATES? check out every one of 


who adorns Luscious and the | them in the full magazine archives at iplayboy.com. 
upcoming Waltz With a Stranger. 


GORDON-LEVITT 


(continued from page 146) 
Zooey and I just think it's funny. It is funny. 
We've been friends for 10 years. She loves 
movies, music and art, and she's incred- 
ibly knowledgeable about that stuff. She's 
turned me on to so many good movies and 
so much good music. It's fun just to have 
conversations, watch movies with her and 
stuff like that. 


011 


PLAYBOY: You've used YouTube and the in- 
ternet a lot to express yourself. Is it as satis- 
fying and creative an outlet as film? 
GORDON-LEVITT: The internet's a fascinat- 
ing thing because you can express yourself 
anonymously without any of the conse- 
quences. Гуе developed a lot of meaning- 
ful, creatively collaborative relationships 
with all sorts of people on the internet. I 
use Twitter a lot, and 1 have an open collab- 
orative production company, hitRECord, 
where I make art with people. 


012 


PLAYBOY: Are there any film genres you 
haven't done that you'd like to tackle? 
You're reportedly attached to a remake of 
Little Shop of Horrors. 

GORDON-LEVITT: 1 would like to do a musi- 
cal, if I could find a cool one. When Zooey 
and I danced in that video it was just us 
having a great time, just being ourselves. 
A song-and-dance role is closer to me per- 
sonally than other characters I play. 


013 

PLAYBOY: Your grandfather Michael 
Gordon directed some of the most popular 
romantic comedies and tearjerkers of the 
1960s, with Doris Day, Rock Hudson and 
James Garner. Do you ever wish you were 
working in old-time Hollywood? 

GORDON-LEVITT: No. Right now is without 
a doubt the most exciting time in human 
history. The ability to connect with one an- 
other, the technology of the internet and all 
that it’s spawning, is doubtlessly the most 
fascinating thing that’s ever happened. It’s 
an incredibly exciting time to be alive, as a 
human being and especially as an artist. In 
the 20th century making movies, music or 
anything was a one-way thing, but creativity 
is always more of an interactive, back-and- 
forth, organic and progressive thing. We’re 
going to get away from “Oh, I just get to lis- 
ten to stories; I don’t tell them” and “I just 
listen to music; I don’t play or sing it.” No, 
man! That’s a terrible way to think about 
yourself. I think art is going to become 
more conversational, more of a dialogue, 
and a better, healthier thing for everybody. 


014 


PLAYBOY: Why do you think your Dark 
Knight Rises co-star Christian Bale called 
you an “intriguing guy”? 

GORDON-LEVITT: We had a fucking great 
time every day working on that movie. 1 
felt as though Га transferred in for senior 
year and had a graduation celebration. 
You felt a huge sense of accomplishment 
and closure. Everyone on that movie did 


such good, dignified work. No one came to 
phone it in or just cash a check. 


015 

PLAYBOY: Are you enough of a daredevil to 
tear through Manhattan traffic on a fixed- 
gear brakeless bicycle the way your ter- 
rorized bike messenger character does in 
Premium Rush? 

GORDON-LEVITT: I'm really into bikes, ac- 
tually, because I was paying attention to 
them doing Premium Rush. So when some- 
one rides by with a cool setup that really 
fits them, I think, Oh wow, that looks nice. 
I live in a part of L.A. with quite a bike cul- 
ture, and I bought a great bike, but I don't 
ride it as much as Га like. 


016 


PLAYBOY: Does being an internet-savvy guy 
who has acted in a few high-tech, futuristic 
movies translate into being a cutting-edge, 
gadget-buying guy offscreen? 
GORDON-LEVITT: Га say no. 1 will admit 1 
like cameras. 1 have some that are really 
nice. I like a beautiful guitar or piano, 
because I love music and musical instru- 
ments. I guess I do as much fetishizing as 
the average guy. Cars do not impress me. 
Whenever 1 see somebody with an ex- 
tremely nice car, I'm like, What an idiot. It 
just looks so stupid. 


017 


PLAYBOY: You play Abraham Lincoln's son 
in Steven Spielberg's upcoming historical 
epic Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. 

GORDON-LEVITT: It's a ridiculously excit- 
ing movie to be part of. Daniel Day-Lewis 
has a unique, enormously inspiring pro- 
cess that's very immersive. 1 never heard 
his real voice or saw him out of costume. 
I met the president, I met my dad, but I 
never met Day-Lewis until we wrapped. As 


excited as І am about Lincoln, though, I'm 
honestly most excited about Looper. 


018 

PLAYBOY: That's the time-travel movie in 
which you're an assassin assigned to kill 
your future self, played by Bruce Willis. 
What personal or professional transgres- 
51005 would you travel through time to fix? 
GORDON-LEVITT: I wouldn't do that, but I’m 
a sucker for Rian Johnson's thing. He's the 
writer-director of Looper and 1 also made 
Brick with him. He's a dear friend and a 
brilliant filmmaker—a great writer, a great 
mind. Looper brings all the exhilaration and 
chemical feelings you hope to get from an ac- 
tion sci-fi movie. But Rian has also come up 
with a concept that will tickle your intellect 
while he tells a sincere story about the cyclical 
nature of violence and how violence begets 
violence. I love going to a good movie more 
than anything, and this movie just hits it. 


019 

PLAYBOY: What's the best night out you've 
had recently? 

GORDON-LEVITT: Questlove is a great drum- 
mer, but I saw him deejay recently. He 
could put on any record at all, but the art 
is in the sequence, reading the crowd and 
thinking, I know exactly the song to put 
on right now. To me that's the art form of 
the 21st century and creativity in general— 
being able to pick and choose from any- 
thing and make the right choice. 


020 
PLAYBOY: You replaced James Franco in In- 
ception and James McAvoy in 50/50. Which 
other famous Jameses are you out to replace? 
GORDON-LEVITT: [Laughs] That's funny. 
LeBron better look out. 


“Why can't you be more like the men I'm sneaking around with?” 


149 


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DAX SHEPARD—THE STAR OF H/T 8 RUN AND PARENTHOOD 
ASSESSES THE TOLL OF A DECADE OF SMOKING, DRINKING AND 
PHILANDERING, IN A 200 WITH DAVID HOCHMAN. HE'S OKAY NOW, 
ESPECIALLY SINCE HIS ENGAGEMENT TO KRISTEN BELL, WHICH 
HE SAYS SHOULD GIVE ALL AVERAGE-LOOKING MEN HOPE. 


EMOTIONAL RESCUE—FOUR MILLION PEOPLE HAVE ATTENDED 
HIS SELF-HELP SEMINARS, AND 50 MILLION HAVE BOUGHT HIS 
BOOKS, TAPES AND DVDS. WHAT MAKES TONY ROBBINS'S INSPI- 
RATIONAL SHTICK SO POPULAR THAT IT EARNS HIM $30 MILLION 
ANNUALLY? “IT’S NOT CONDITIONS, IT'S DECISIONS THAT SHAPE 
YOUR LIFE,” HE TELLS GLENN PLASKIN IN A PLAYBOY INTERVIEW 
THAT MAY JUST GET YOU OFF YOUR ASS. 


GEEK ELITE 一 THE AMERICAN DREAM ISN'T DEAD—IT'S ON YOUR 
PHONE. MOBILE DESIGNERS ARE CREATING GAMES THEY HOPE 
WILL CATCH THE PUBLIC IMAGINATION AND MAKE THEM RICH, 99 


SONNY VACCARO PLAYS HARDBALL. 


NEXT MONTH 


LI UD H ' 


111 


1711711719171. 


CAN THIS MAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE? 


CENTS AT A TIME. ANGRY BIRDS IS THE MODEL, BUT APPS SUCH AS 
DRAW SOMETHING HAVE ALSO STRUCK GOLD. WHO ARE THESE 
DREAMERS, AND WHAT MAKES A HIT? DAVID KUSHNER EXPLAINS. 


TAILGATING IN STYLE 一 IN OUR GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO MAKING 
LUNCH IN A PARKING LOT, WE SHARE A SURF-AND-TURF MENU, 
COOL GEAR AND WINNING COCKTAILS. GAME? WHAT GAME? 


THE CIRCUIT BUILDERS—AFTER RAND ARRIVED AT REHAB, THE 
FIRST ADVICE A COUNSELOR OFFERED WAS TO IMBIBE. THE 
CLINIC EVEN PROVIDED THE WEED—AND BOOZE, PILLS AND 
COCAINE. WHAT KIND OF CURE IS THAT? IT'S A SHOCKING TALE 
FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI'S DON PETEROY, WIN- 
NER OF OUR ANNUAL COLLEGE FICTION CONTEST. 


WOMEN OF THE BIG TEN—IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS SINCE WE VIS- 
ITED THE CONFERENCE CAMPUSES IN SEARCH OF BREATHTAKING 
COEDS, AND THEY'VE MULTIPLIED. SEVERAL FEMALE CORN- 
HUSKERS JOIN THE ILLINI, HOOSIERS, HAWKEYES, WOLVERINES, 
SPARTANS, GOLDEN GOPHERS, WILDCATS, BUCKEYES, BOILER- 
MAKERS, BADGERS AND NITTANY LIONS IN AN A* PICTORIAL. 


PLUS—PARTY SCHOOLS, OUR INFALLIBLE NFL PREVIEW, MISS 
OCTOBER PAMELA HORTON AND MORE. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), September 2012, volume 59, number 7. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August issues by Playboy in national and regional 
editions, Playboy, 9346 Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210. Periodicals postage paid at Beverly Hills, California and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Canadian Publica- 
tions Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $32.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send address change to Playboy, PO. Box 37489, Boone, Iowa 50037-0489. From 
time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings, 
150 please send your current mailing label to: Playboy, PO. Box 37489, Boone, IA, 50037-0489. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail plycustserv@cdsfulfillment.com. 


THE MEN'S 


DIAMOND 


OVATION 


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The inside of 
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RESERVATION APPLICATION 


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The Men's Diamond 
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Supplement to Playboy Magazine 


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THE MEN'S 
DIAMOND. 
OVATION 4 

RING 


Genuine diamonds and onyx 
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For the man who exudes a truly sophisticated 
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RESPONSIBILITY MATTERS 
22010 Anheuser-Busch. Inc., Bud Light® Beer, St. Louis, МО 


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