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from the first time some cave- 
Шш man smacked a stick against a 
tree to celebrate the rhythm of 

his own beating heart, music has capti- 
vated humanity, inspired us, inflamed our 
emotions like nothing else could. Except 
perhaps the sight of the opposite sex at 
its most erotic. This month we combine 
those two subjects for our annual Sex & 
Music issue. It starts with veteran music 
journalist Rob Tannenbaum, whom we 
can thank for The 38 Best Songs About 
Sex and our 2013 Music Guide. To pro- 
vide visual stimulation to go with all 
that sound, we hired brilliant photogra- 
pher Tony Kelly to dream up a montage 
of lusciousness for our cover and for 
the pictorial that leads off this year's 
celebration of beauties and the beats. For 
the Playboy Interview we turn to Clive 
Davis, the most influential music exec- 
utive who has ever lived. Davis takes us 
down memory lane—discovering Bruce 
Springsteen, memorializing Janis Joplin 
and Whitney Houston, and more. Lena 
Dunham appears in our 20Q this month. 


The creator and star of the hit 
HBO comedy Girls talks about 
having sex in a drainpipe. Yes, 
you read that right. While we're 
big fans of nudity, we also like 
to get dressed now and again. 
Star DJ Diplo models spring 
wares in Diplo-matic Mission. 
When it comes to hip-hop, 
few can drum up rhymes like 
the D.O.C., the subject of our 
story Ghost in the Machine. The 
genre's most prolific writer— 
he has written for N.W.A, Dr. 
Dre, Eazy-E and Snoop Dogg, 
among others—is reinventing 
himself after a tragic acci- 
dent. We have the inside story. 
From music we move to inter- 
national and even interreality 


diplomacy. When the U.S. consulate in 
Benghazi, Libya was attacked, Ameri- 
can Sean Smith lost his life. In a weird 
twist, it turns out Smith had lived a dou- 
ble life—in the State Department and 
also in the cult online galaxy Eve, where 
he was known as Vile Rat. In his final 
moments, Smith's real life and his fantasy 
life collided, as David Kushner reports. 
For our fiction we offer the talented Jake 
Arnott. The Hierophant, an excerpt from 
Arnott's new novel, The House of Rumor, 
takes us to southern California in the 
1940s, where a scientist working on jet- 
propulsion systems finds strange, erotic 
ways of cutting loose after work. Finally, 
we bring you Dancing Off the Edge by the 
great Irvine Welsh. The Scottish writer 
famous for Trainspotting outlines the 
evolution of dance music from an under- 
ground European phenomenon to the 
electronic dance music craze in America 
today. How far we have come since cave- 
men beat out crude rhythms with sticks! 
Now slip on a favorite tune and turn the 


page. More surprises await. 


Clive Davis 


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VOL. 60, NO. 3-APRIL 2013 


PLAYBOY _ 


60 


72 


78 


100 


104 


CONTENTS 


VILE RAT 106 
Sean Smith led two lives: 

oneat the U.S. consul- 

ate in Benghazi, Libya 

and another command- 

ing virtual troops online, 

DAVID KUSHNER recounts 

the day those 
cally collided. 


PLAYBOY'S 2013 
MUSIC GUIDE 
Who sa 
ROB TANNENBAUM runs 
down the people who will 
rock you this year and 
beyond. 


GHOST IN 
THE MACHINE 
Wher 
hop pioneer the D.O.C. 
speechless, he found anew 


116 


в music is dead? 


ident left hip- 


voice as the most prolific 
ghostwriter in rap history. 
By ALEX PAPPADEMAS 


THE 38 BEST 
SONGS ABOUT SEX 
From blue balls to 
blow-up dolls, ROB 
TANNENBAUM lists the 
greatest tributes to a sub 
ject musicians truly 
know best 


PLAYBOY CLASSIC: 
DAVID BOWIE 

In this 1976 conversa: 

tion with CAMERON 
CROWE, the ever-evolving 
musician discusses 


his sexuality, drug use 
and family. 


DANCING OFF 
THE EDGE f 
Trainspotting author 
IRVINE WELSH explores 
America's embrace of 
electronic dance music and 
the good, bad and sweaty 
that it brings. 


POT AND 
CIRCUMSTANCE 
With luxe stra 
ing legality 

n cannabis 


and 


incre 
Americ: 
is bette 
Our guide to ће 
bestways to get 
your fill. 


an ever. 


INTERVI 


55 CLIVE DAVIS 
The most influential man 
in music talks with DAVID 
SHEFF about wh 
learned and what's next 
aft 
decade: 


he's 


r five tumultuous 
in the industry. 


82 LENA DUNHAM 
The girl behind Girls 
takes on her critics and 


86 THE HIEROPHANT 
When Larry's crush is 
bewitched by a handsome 
rocket scientist and his 
swinging occultist friends, 


would-be suitors, discuss- 
ingsex, feminismand 


becoming a legend at 26. 
By DAVID RENSIN 


canhe win her over? 
By JAKE ARNOTT 


PAGE 64 


COVERSTORY 
This month you'll find our 
Rabbit keeping the music 
alive on our gorgeous 
Playmates' turntable, 
where good vibrations are 
never in short supply. 


Photography, this page and cover, by TONY KELLY 


49 


88 


110 


PLAYMATE: Jaslyn Ome 


ATHEISM WARS 
British philosopher 
JOHN GRAY takes his 
fellow nonbelievers to 
task for their zealous 
ness and intolerance in 
dealing with their 
opposition. 


TALKING WITH 
SAM RAIMI 

JAMES FRANCO and his 
Spider-Man director 
swap gossip, memories 
and lessons learned from 
the set of their latest, Oz. 


YOU ARE WHAT 
YOU EAT 

Is JOEL STEIN a wuss for 
preferring Sicilian 
primitivo over frat 
punch? Yes—but he says 
he'sa better man for it. 


MAN UP! 

LISA LAMPANELLI thinks 
hairy chests are always in 

style and lends no man her 
makeup without a fight. 


49 


120 


FORUM 


READER 
RESPONSE 
Anincome-tax primer; 
readers push back against 
the criticism of corpora- 
tions; debate continues 
over the future of the 
American suburb. 


12 


DIPLO-MATIC 
MISSION 

The best-dressed pro- 
ducer alive rocks spring’s 
finest threads. Fashion by 
JENNIFER RYAN JONES 


VOL. 60, NO. 3-APRIL 2013 


PLAYBOY 


CONTENTS 


SEX & MUSIC 
Playmates Britany Nola, 
Raquel Pomplun and 
Ciara Price bare all for 
our irresistible tribute to 
sex, music and the 
women who love both 


PLAYMATE: 
JASLYN OME 

Miss April shows us 
what's so special about 
the special of the day. 


OBRIGADO BRAZIL 
Brazilian goddess 
Gabriela Milagre hails 
from Divinópolis, which 
translates as "divine. 
One glimpse and you'll 
see why. 


IOTES | 


NEWS & 


WORLD OF 
PLAYBOY 
Morethan 30 beauties 
gather for our Playmate 
Summit; we replay the LUXE SMOKES 
Playboy frolics at the Super 

Bowl in New Orleans. | 


HANGIN' WITH НЕЕ = 


RTMENTS | 


The Golden Globes at the 5 PLAYBILL 
Playboy Mansion; a 13 DEAR PLAYBOY 
formal visit from a 19 AFTER HOURS 
pajama-clad canine, 30 REVIEWS 
PLAYMATE NEWS ЗА] MANTRACK 
Victoria Silvstedt shows 45 PLAYBOY 

off her sultry lingerie; Pilar ADVISOR 
Lastrarevs our engines. 98 PARTY JOKES 
Oise Omer O mear 


GET SOCIAL Keep up with all things Playboy at 
facebook.com/playboy, twitter.com/playboy 
and instagram.com/playboy 


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY. 9346 
PLAYBOY ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBIL 
OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN LETTERS 


ENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210 
RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR GRAPHIC OR 
ID 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 EDITORIALLY. CONTENTS COPYRIGHT © 2013 BY PLAYBOY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE AND RABBIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REGISTERED US. 
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 Ой 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 
128. DANBURY MINT AND DIRECTV ONSERTS IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED COPIES. 
COTY CALVIN KLEIN SCENT STRIP IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION COPIES BETWEEN PAGES 24-25, 
CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE TITULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1995, Y CERTIFICADO DE 
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CAUFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE LA SECRETARÍA 
DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO. RESERVA DE DERECHOS 04-2000-071710332800-102. 


PRINTED IN USA. 


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M. o on M gts Ber 


Y 


WHAT TO DRINK. 
WHAT TO WEAR. 


WHERE TO GO. 


(and where to find a 
Playmate or two.) 


THE NEW PLAYBOY FOR iPhone APP 


Download on the 


a AppStore 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


JIMMY JELLINEK 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
MAC LEWIS art director 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH managing editor 
A.J. BAIME executive editor 
REBECCA H. BLACK ‚photo editor 
HUGH GARVEY articles editor 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: JASON BUHRMESTER senior editor FASHION: 
STAFF: JARED EVANS assistant managing editor; GILBERT MACIAS editorial coordinator; 


ENNIFER RYAN JONES editor 


CHERIE BRADLEY executive assistant; TYLER TRYKOWSKI editorial assistant 
CARTOON: 
COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; BRADLEY LINCOLN senior copy editor; CAT AUER copy editor 


AMANDA WARREN associate cartoon 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, KARL TARO GREENFELD, KEN GROSS, GEORGE GURLEY, 
DAVID HOCHMAN, ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), LISA LAMPANELLI (special correspondent), 
SEAN MCCUSKER, CHRISTIAN PARENTI, JAMES R. PETERSEN, ROCKY RAKOVIC, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, 
CHIP ROWE, TIMOTHY SCHULTZ, WILL SELF, DAVID SHEFF, ROB MAGNUSON SMITH, JOEL STEIN, DAVID STEVENS, 


ROB TANNENBAUM, CHRISTOPHER TENNAN 


ALICE К. TURNER 


ART 
JUSTIN PAGE Senior art director; ROBERT HARKNESS assistant art director; MATT S 
AARON LUCAS art coordinator; LISA TCHAKMAKIAN senior art administrator; 


EIGBIGEL photo researcher; 
art assistant 


LAUREL LEWIS 


STEPHANIE MORRIS west coast editor; BARBARA LEIGH assistant editor; PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCES 


contributing photography editor; GAVIN BOND, SASHA EISENMAN, TONY KELLY senior contributing 
photographers; DAVID BELLEMERE, MICHAEL BERNARD, MICHAEL EDWARDS, ELAYNE LODGE, SATOSHI, 
Јоѕерн su contributing photographers; ANDREW J. BROZ casting; KEVIN MURPHY manager, photo library; 
CHRISTIE HARTMANN archivist, photo library; KARLA GOTCHER, CARMEN ORDOÑEZ assistants, 
photo library; CRAIG SCHRIBER manager, prepress and imaging; AMY KASTNER-DROWN 


digital imaging specialist; OSCAR RODRIGUEZ prepress operator 


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


PRODUCTION 
LESLEY к. JOHNSON Production director; HELEN YEOMAN production services manager 


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 


PLAYBOY PRINT OPERATIONS 
DAVID с. ISRAEL president, playboy media; том FLORES business manager 


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; KEVIN FALATKO senior marketing manager; 

ZOHRAY BRENNAN marketing manager; JOHN KITSES art director 
LOS ANGELES: LORI KESSLER west coast director; VALERIE TOVAR digital sales planner 


THE WORLD | ^: 


MANSION FROLICS 


ОЕ PLAYBOY AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES 


"Playmates are more than 
images on a page. You are 
what brings the magazine to 
life, touching the hearts and 
minds of our readers; Crystal 
Hefner delivered these words 
from Hef at the Playmate 
Summit, the first in a series of 
workshops to keep Playboy the 
best brand on the planet as we 
near our 60th anniversary. 


If the Super Bowl 
is now considered 
a national holiday, 

we like to think of 
Playboy's preceding 
party as the new 
Mardi Gras. This 
year's celebration 

in New Orleans— 
sponsored by Crown 
Royal, Mini USA and 
Tabasco—was thrown 
on the banks of the 
Mississippi River at 
the Jackson Brewery 
Bistro Bar, where 
spirited revelers 
rubbed elbows with 
the likes of Daniel 
Dae Kim and David 
Arquette. Trombone 
Shorty and rapper 
B.o.B. did their jobs 
getting the Playmates’ 
hips moving 


HANGIN?’ 
WITH 
HEF 


One of Hef's greatest 
loves is film. "My 
childhood dreams and 
fantasies came from 
the movies,” he has 
said, "and the images 
created in Hollywood 
had a major influence 
on my life and pLAYBov" 
Hef has appeared in 
movies and on TV 
shows, has his own 

star on the Hollywood 
alk of Fame and even 
helped save the famous 
Hollywood sign—twice. 
It's no wonder that 
screenings and award 
shows are special to 
him. At his Golden 
Globes gala, Hef hosted 
family and friends 

such as Jon Lovitz, the 
Tweed-Simmons clan 
and Keith and Kaya 
Hefner. Playmates 
aplenty also attended 
the party, including 
Raquel Pomplun, Irina 
Voronina, Alana Campos, 
Miriam Gonzalez, 
Summer Altice anı 
Jaslyn Ome. 


A lover of dogs, Crystal Hefner 
hosted the Guinness World Records 
fastest skateboarding bulldog, 
Tillman, at the Playboy Mansion. 
Tillman met Cooper Hefner and 
sniffed around the grounds. Then 

he and Crystal had an epic skating 
session for the Hallmark Channel's 
Who Let the Dogs Out? As for 
Crystal and Hef's dog Charlie getting 
on a board...well, he's past the age of 
learning new tricks. 


GRACE UNDER FIRE 
Salman Rushdie's comments about one 

of his critics, the writer Roald Dahl (“The 
only thing worse than being attacked by 
Dahl would be to be his friend"), are hilar- 
iously spot-on (Playboy Classic, January/ 
February). I met Rushdie about three 
years after that 1996 Playboy Interview 
appeared. I was working at a New York 
bookstore and he was promoting The 
Ground Beneath Her Feet. He was gracious 
and, even with people flowing around him 
аз he sat signing books in full view of the 
street, seemed quite at ease for a man bear- 
ing the hatred of the Muslim world on his 
back. Serving chai to Pamela Anderson was 
also cool but not quite the same. 

Shell Scott Bush 

Villa Rica, Georgia 


EARLY VOTING 
There are too many excellent choices 

for Playmate of the Year (Playmate Review, 
January/February). After much delibera- 
tion, I managed to narrow my list to Raquel 
Pomplun (April), Amelia Talon (June) 
and Pamela Horton (October). Pomplun, 
like PMOY 2012 Jaclyn Swedberg, has а 
divine quality. Talon is a video gamer, so 
she gets bonus points for that. Horton is 
also a gamer and smoking hot. Thank God 
Miss January 2013 Karina Marie doesn't 
qualify. Holy hell—those eyes. 

John Heusler 

New York, New York 


Over the past three years the PMOY 
honor has gone to the Playmate who 
appears on the last page of the Playmate 
Review (Hope Dworaczyk in 2010, Claire 
Sinclair in 2011 and Jaclyn Swedberg in 
2012). If that tradition continues, Miss 
May Nikki Leigh will be the 2013 PMOY, 
though my vote is for Amelia Talon. 

Shayne Cowell 
Los Angeles, California 


MISSING PLUG 
I'm surprised you didn't include the 
Tesla Model S in Cars of the Year 2013 
(January/February). In your description 
of the electric Honda Fit EV, you men- 
tion the Chinese CODA and its 125-mile 
range. But the Model S has ranges of 160 
to 300 miles, depending on the version. 
Bruce Johnson 
Kalamazoo, Michigan 
The first Model S rolled off the line too late 
in the year and in too few numbers (five per 
week) for us to arrange a test-drive before our 
deadline. We'll consider it next year. 


FAN MAIL 
Month after month PLAYBOY is the most 
interesting, informative, entertaining 
magazine on the newsstand and in my 
mailbox. Thanks, Heft 
Lauren Freeland 
Seattle, Washington 


You've outdone yourselves with the 
December and January/February issues, 


The Mighty Paz 
Kudos for the stunning cover 
image of Paz de la Huerta (January/ 
February)! It's delicious and direct. 
R. Gabriel 
Denver, Colorado 


As you show in your cover shot, a 

woman's hands complete her beauty. 
Steve Carcieri 

Tamarac, Florida 


Like Bettie Page, Paz de la Huerta 
makes female nudity look fun, natural, 
free and practically spiritual. 

Sarah Root 
San Jose, California 


which also feature two of the best Playmates 

ever, Amanda Streich and Karina Marie. 
Edward Janca 
Lyons, Illinois 


The December issue has claimed a 
spot among my all-time favorites. Every 
element is perfect, cover to cover. I am 
impressed with how Hef and his staff raise 
the bar time and again. 

Sam Wrobel 
Chicago, Illinois 


DEVILS IN THE DETAILS 
I enjoyed your article on the Univer- 
sity of Nevada, Las Vegas and its former 


Tark the Shark took the 1990 Rebels on a run. 


head basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian 
(Rebel Nation, December). In 1991 the 
NCAA was not going to let Tarkanian 
and UNLV win two championships in 
a row. This was evident during the fi- 
nal five minutes of the semifinal game 
when every call went Duke's way. Every 
person I know who roots against Duke 
traces his or her dislike to that game. 
The collection of players on that 1991 


UNLV team was one of the best ever. It 
is a shame the NCAA did not allow them 
and Tarkanian to fulfill their destiny. 
"Todd Crandal 
Bossier City, Louisiana 


WHITEY'S DEFENSE 
In The Secret Life of Whitey Bulger 
(December), Richard Stratton notes the 
83-year-old accused killer has a court- 
appointed lawyer. I presume this means 
a public defender, i.e., a lawyer provided 
at no charge to Bulger, despite the fact 
that police found $800,000 in cash in his 
Santa Monica apartment. As his trial will 
likely last many months and the legal fees 
will be enormous, how destitute does a 
person have to be to be eligible for court- 
appointed counsel? 
John Martin 
Norfolk, Virginia 
A judge ruled Bulger to be indigent after 
authorities seized all his assets, ng they 
had been earned through illegal activity. 


THE DARK SIDE 
I know Hef prefers blondes, but have 

you ever noticed the women who bring 
powerful men to their knees usually have 
brown hair? Think Cleopatra, Josephine, 
Wallis Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Sarah 
Palin and the sirens of Eliot Spitzer and 
General Petraeus. In fact, the only lady 
love of Hef's who he stated was "trou- 
ble, but I was smitten" was raven-haired 
Carrie Leigh (Hef's Girlfriends, Novem- 
ber). Well-behaved blondes may have 
more fun and stand by their man, but 
we brunettes seem to be making history, 
headaches and headlines. 

Regina Carter 

South Attleboro, Massachusetts 


BONDING OVER BOND 

The 1970s and 1980s were not the 
best time for James Bond fans (Being 
Bond, November). For those of us reared 


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on Ian Fleming's novels and/or the early 
Bonds of Sean Connery, the film series 
took a turn for the silly. Yet after each 
new release fans convinced themselves the 
producers would fulfill their promise to 
return the series to its roots. (To this day, 
several Fleming plots have never been 
adapted.) I was a film journalist at the 
time, so four to six months before each 
new movie I would get a chance to look 
over hundreds of photos taken during 
filming. If your subconscious was steeped 
in the work of Fleming and early Bond 
director Terence Young, as mine was, you 
could easily envision the latest movie as 
a worthy continuation of the series' most 
thrilling entries. The best part of the job 
may well have been the 007 films that 
played only in my brain. 

James Burns 

Valley Stream, New York 


INSPIRING STORIES 

Michael Fleming has interviewed 
director Quentin Tarantino twice for 
the Playboy Interview—in November 
2003 and December 2012—but both 
times neglected to ask (or Tarantino 
neglected to answer) the holy grail of 
movie-geek questions: Which came first, 
Ringo Lam's City on Fire or Tarantino's 
Reservoir Dogs? 


Michael Vronsky 
Clairton, Pennsylvania 
Tougher question: Which is better? 


CURVE APPEAL 
PLAYBOY has featured many beautiful 
r, lately most of them 
What happened to 
women with curves, such as Rosemarie 
Hillcrest, Cynthia Myers and Janet Lupo? 
Martin Roberts 
Richmond Hill, Georgia 


All Hefs girlfriends are beautiful, but 
PMOY 1976 Lillian Müller is amazing. 
Richard Rowland 
Polo, Illinois 


I stumbled across the November 1972 
issue of РГАҮВОҮ and was blown away by 
Playmate Lenna Sjóóblom. In this age of 
plastic surgery, it's always nice to see true 
beauty in its natural form. 

Trevor Coffee 
Portland, Oregon 


HOT TALK 
I mixed my own hot sauce ("DIY Hot 
Sauce," After Hours, January/February) 
and now all my friends want a bottle. If 
I don't let the jar sit overnight, will that 
change the flavor? How long will the 
sauce last in the fridge? And why is it nec- 
essary to seed the chilies? 
Courtney Smith 
Birmingham, Alabama 
Letting the chilies luxuriate in salt over- 
night kills other bacteria that might compete 
with lactobacilli, the flavorful friends of fer- 
menters. We wouldn't go much over a month 


in a properly calibrated (i.e., 38 degrees Fahr- 
enheit) fridge. Remove the seeds because they 
can be bitter and their heat may overwhelm 
the flavor of the chilies. 


Although you call them buffalo wings 
("Haute Wings," After Hours, January/ 
February), the b is always capitalized. Buf- 
faloes don't have wings. 

Bob Silvestri 
Buffalo, New York 

According to Mr. Webster, buffalo wings 
now belong to all mankind, though he does 
cite their origin in Buffalo. As the story goes, 
they were first prepared in 1964 at the city's 
landmark Anchor Bar. 


CLASSIC SCHLOCK 

How can you discuss sexploitation 
films without mentioning Joseph W. 
Sarno, whom many consider the father 
of the genre (“Labor of Lust,” After Hours, 
December)? As Sarno said, "When I make 
movies, they're made with the story built 
around the sex, unlike today's movies, 


This 1964 Sarno epic failed to win an Oscar. 


with the sex built around the story." If 
you haven't seen his work, I recommend 
All the Sins of Sodom (1968). 

Larry Steck 

Council Grove, Kansas 


BIG EASY LIVING 
I'm a new subscriber, and "Uptown 
New Orleans" (After Hours, January/ 
February) is a perfect start. Your fresh 
look at eating and drinking outside the 
French Quarter makes me itch to go back. 
Will Franklin 
Wilmington, North Carolina 


SHE'S AN EIGHT 
Despite the constant negative com- 
ments about Octomom Nadya Suleman, 
she isa very sexy woman (The Year in Sex, 
January/February), as are the Colombian 
party girls who got those Secret Service 
agents in trouble. Who can blame them? 
James Donis 
Riverside, California 


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


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BECOMING 
ATTRACTION 


* "COLOMBIAN 
women are just 
different," says 
Hollywood's latest 
import, the fiery 
Sandra Vergara, 
actress (Nip/Tuck, 
Fright Night) and 
cousin of Modern 
Family's Sofía Ver- 
gara. "It's not the 
accent or the way 
we move. We're 
taught to embrace 
and love ourselves. 
Sexy is good, 

but | have more 

to offer." Sandra 
recently starred on 
CSI as a pop star 
caught in a mur- 
der case. “I sang 
and threw in some 
dance moves," 
she says. “I could 
be a triple threat." 
Gentlemen, you've 
been warned. 


Photography by MICHAEL EDWARDS/ 
MEINMYPLACE.COM 


19 


TALK | WHAT MATTERS NOW 


represents the anti- asonlineandterrestrial rock band?’ Is anyone 

model of “band.” Sure, radio shows. “You can looking for it?” The real 

there's a small craft- make music on a com- question is: Do your 

guitar subculture. puter now, so why pick preferences grow, or 

Bon Iver designed an up aguitar?” Fewer are, do you stop exploring 
R O С K R E LI c old-timey acoustic as which has left Fender music as you get older? 

an advertising stunt fretting financially as Thetruly open-minded 
WHO KILLED THE GUITAR GOD, AND moredecerationthan  schoelmusioprograms.  moremusieistjles 

H music-making tool: a But there's a bright online than ever before. 


sign that people would B-side. The structure You just have to want to 
+ Slash is 47, Tom store. You'll see fewer rather hanga guitar of bands has evolved. hear them. So while Van 
Morellois 48, and Jack guitar wonks noodling on the wall than wail a Ukes, MacBooks, banjos Halen-esque shredders 


White is 37 (older than Strats than kids play- solo. “Guitar Center's and horns are playing may not be breeding 
two college freshmen ingwith sequencers research shows that together better, creat- as they once did, new 
combined)—and they're and mixing boards kids aren't picking up ing new layers of sound. musical models are 
the young ones. It's no toreprocess sounds physical instruments," “It's an exciting time being tested, The guitar 
secret that the virtuoso tappedontablets. Today says Nic Harcourt, a to be a young musi- hero could well be laid 
rock guitar god is dying. anactlike Radiohead, tastemaking DJ who cian; it just may not be to rest, but maybe we're 
Revising Page or Hen- which boasts talented hosts DirecTV’s Guitar exciting to bea middle- seeing the rise ofa new 
drix is now a rarefied instrumentalists but Center Sessions, aswell agedmusiclover,’says musical paradigm that 
activity attractive only is mostly electronic, Harcourt. "People ask, will make us feel the 
toaniche audience. "Where's the next great way we felt when we 
How did it happen? first heard Hendrix. 
Walk through a music —Adam Baer 


«People ask, "Where's 
the next great rock 
band?’ Is anyone 
looking for it??? 


Switzerland's Cyril Torrent to 
the raw power of the Czech 
Republic's Jan Hronsky, as well 
as photographers in Japan, 
EROTICPHOTOGRAPHY Spain, Russia and elsewhere. 
HITSANEW WAVE Women photographers make 
the most exciting contributions 


STIMULATING 
READ 


We never to this volume, particularly the 
tire of looking porn-star-at-rest work of adult 
at beautiful actress Kimberly Kane and the 


women. Lucky California vibes of Los Angeles 
for us, photog- photographer Magdalena 
raphers never Wosinska. One eye-catcher: 
stop finding Celebrated lowbrow street art- 
exciting new ist Coop makes his debut with 
ways to capture shots of curvaceous models. 


{Sasha Grey 


their images. The New Erotic 
Photography 2 ($60, taschen 
com) collects 50 of today's 
most intriguing sexy shoot- 
ers, from the sensual art of 


Credit editor Dian Hanson for 
curating a mix of styles ranging 
from elaborate to stripped 
down to simply stripped. We 
appreciate them all. 


THAT'S THE SPIRIT 


WHY RIGHT NOW IS THE PERFECT TIME TO 
START YOUR OWN LIQUOR COMPANY 


* By day, Ron Dolin is an engineer at 
the Los Alamos National Laboratory 
in New Mexico. After hours, however, 
hetoys with a sweeter science. With 
his wife, Olha, Dolin runs the Don 
Quixote Distillery, making blue-corn 
bourbon and vodka and selling it on his 
website (dqdistillery.com). Licensed 

in 2004, Dolin became New Mexico's 

t legal distiller. 

Paul Hletko, a lawyer by trade, now 
makes drinks for a living. Hletko 
opened FEW Distillery (fewspirits 
.com) in Evanston, Illinois in 2011. He 
hawks fine bourbons and gins in 11 
states, two Canadian provinces and 
throughout Europe. His is the first legal 
distillery in Evanston. 

Thirsty for a job change? Consider 
this: Small craft distillers such as 
Dolin and Hletko are behind the hot- 
test movement in liquor. “From 24 craft 


distillers in 2001, there are now easily 
more than 250," says Frank Coleman 
ofthe Distilled Spirits Council, a D.C.- 
based advocacy group. 

Ifyou want to thank someone for this 
river of booze, send a card to your state 
representative. For the past 20 years 
small distillers have lobbied to change 
liquor laws left over from Prohibition. 
Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois and 
New York now allow people like you to 
apply for a license and brew strong stuff 
that you can sell directly to consumers. 

How to get started? “First, look at 
the laws—federal, state and local,” says 
Hletko. A commercial still can run you 
upward of $150,000. Finally, *have a 
plan for what you're going to make and 
how you're going to make it,” advises 
Hletko. Just think: All those years you 
spent drinking in the name of research 
can finally pay off. 


LAW & ZOMBIES 


THE APOCALYPSE DOESN'T START 
UNTIL THE COURT SAYS SO 


» When The 
Walking Dead's 
Rick Grimes guns 
down zombies, is 


without so-called 
stand your ground 
laws—one might 
have an obligation 
he enforcing the to retreat instead 
law or breaking it? of using lethal force 
That depends on if it could be done 
the zombie, says safely. With slow- 
James Daily, an moving, mindless 
attorney at Stanford zombies, that might 
University's Hoover mean a lot of run- 
Institution and co- ning and not much 
author of The Law shooting." If a cure 
of Superheroes. is found, zombie 

If a zombie pres- hunters like Grimes 
ents an immediate ^ could be arrested 
danger and lethal "Since there's no 
force is necessary, statute of limita- 
then the zombie tions on murder, 
could be killed," it could be prose- 
says Daily. “In some cuted long after the 
jurisdictions zombie apocalypse 
particularly those was over." 


© 
2 
ES 


REBIRTH OF THE 
MIXTAPE 


TECHNOLOGY REVIVES ONE OF 
ROMANCE'S GREATEST WEAPONS 


> The digital-music age destroyed many 
things—the CD, the record store, heck, the 
music industry—but we miss the mixtape 
the most. Crafting a track list and handing 
it off to a crush was a rite of passage chil- 
dren of the digital age didn't get to enjoy. 
Until now. Thanks to 3-D printing, a tech- 
nology that builds shapes by layering plas- 
tic or other materials, MakerBot has created 
the MakerBot Mixtape, a two-gigabyte 
device that can be connected to a com- 
puter or headphones. Buy one for $39, or 
make your own with a MakerBot 3-D printer 
($1,749-$2,799) and Mixtape Kit ($25). 


21 


AND PIRATE- WORTHYR 
IT'STIME TO BELIEVEIN BEI 
ы MES 


* We're thrilled 
the Mayans were 
dead wrong about 
the world end- 
inglast year, 

but there would 
have been worse 
places to experi- 
ence Armageddon 
than this Central 
American hedonist 
retreat. Belize's 
Pantone-blue seas 
and sandy beaches 
are still largely 
untouched by the. 
rush of plus-size 


tourists slowly world. The Mayans 
souring “hip” Costa also believed ina 
Rica, but asthe spirit called the 


cruise: 


ship indus- ^ Melon Lady, who 


try threatens to smothered men 

muscle further in. to deathin their 

tick tock. sleep—with her 
FlyintoBelize ^ breast 

City and hop a Yowrein the 


puddlejumperto jungle, baby, but 
San Ignacio, near that doesn’t mean 
the Mountain roughingit. The 
Pine Ridge Forest thatched-roof 
Reserve-ahangout cabanasatthe 

for jaguars, toucans just-renovated 


and howlermon- GaiaRiverlodge 
keys. Then drive or the luxe villas at 
on dirt “roads” to Francis Ford Cop- 
the Actun Tunichil — pola's Blancaneaux 
Muknal Cave, Lodge (1) are 
which the Mayans ^ welcome places to 
believed was а unplug. Be warned: 


portaltotheunder- Cellserviceis 


so minimal, the 
iPhone should just 
display an icon ofa 
middle finger. 
Hitthe Carib- 
bean coastline 
and easygoing 
Placencia, a hip- 
pie fishing village 
known for deep-sea 
diving on the larg- 
estcoralreefin 

the western hemi- 
sphere. It helps 
that English is the 
nationallanguage. 
(Belize was a Brit- 
ish colony until 
1981) Did we 
mention Vicodin 
and Ambien 

are available at 

the pharmacy, 


GO PUBBING IN PLACENCIA 


RUMFISH Y 


BAREFOOT 
в, 


TIPSY TUNA 


usually without a 
prescription? 


therustic-cool 
Turtle Inn (where 
Charlie Sheen 

hid out during his 
recent meltdown) or 
at Chabil Mar (for 
AC and flatscreen 
TVs). Speedboat 

to Silk Cayes (2), 
atrio of micro- 


| Francis 


Ford 
Coppola's 
Secret 
Rum 
Stash 


islands where your 
guide will grill 
fresh snapper while 
yousip Belikin 
beer. On your way 
out, pick up a bottle 
of Marie Sharp's 
local hot sauce. The 
"mild" will raise an 
eyebrow. The “hot” 
will burn as beauti- 
fully as your tan. 
—Mickey Rapkin 


XQ 


WHISKY STARTED. 
MAPLE ш 


thebnr.com 
CROWNROYAL.COM 


STYLE 


SOLE 
POWER 


DRESS SHOES 
GETDANDY 
WITH VIVIDLY 
COLORED SOLES 


*Itwasonlya 
matter oftime 
before the sarto- 
rial craze for all 
things saturated 
(flashy pocket 
squares, electric 
blue jeans) made 
its way to our 
shoes. And we 
have to say it's 
kind of cool to be 
able to brighten 
upthe workday 
with a pumped-up 
buck or wingtip. If 
Carl Perkins were 
alive today he just 
might have writ- 
ten "lay offof my 
blue-soled shoes." 


COLE HAAN WOLVERINE ALDO STIREWALT 
GREAT JONES NO. 1883 HORACE BUCKS 

SADDLE SHOES WINGTIP BROGUES m 

556 к= — Few теп can get 

= Swap out the blue > Leave it to American away with blue suede 
laces with brown onesto ^ work-boot company shoes, and even fewer 
turn down the intensity Wolverine to put hazard with blue suede and red 
on the flash. yellow on a wingtip. soles. Go boldly. 


Photography by CHARLES MASTERS 


M STYLE 


SPREAD 'EM 


THE NEW 
DRESS SHIRT 


IT'SLESS DRESSY. IT FITS BETTER. HERE'S 
WHAT TOLOOK FOR AND HOW TO WEARIT 


HAVE KNOTS 


+ Unless you're a politician or a Hollywood agent, 
chances are you don't need to dress textbook white 
collar. And you likely don't have to wear a blazer or 
suit jacket all day long. Enter the new slimmer-cut, 
less-dressy dress shirt. Often tricked out with bright 
colors and subtle graphic patterns, it looks good 
enough to wear all on its own. With Brooks Brothers, 
Thomas Pink, J. Crew and others offering more 
slim-cut options, you'll have no excuse if you still 


HIGH FIDELITY 


m " 
RAISE THE BAR 
> ۲ t 
27 NCC t сап тг 
77 EFF, NA төре чада, 
DT А М ul or 
DRESS OUTSIDE 


THE BOX 


Get Over the 
Undershirt 


Photography by CHARLES MASTERS 


FOOD 


E Crispy Lamb Chops 
Serves two olive oil; it should smoke. 


cut — 2. Pat chops dry, sprinkle 
with salt and sear until 


NICE RAC a ive ajî "P^ well browned, crisp and 
= medium rare (two to 
c É ANDRES SCHO N three minutes per side) 
/TO 1. Heat a skillet over 3. Serve with romesco 


medium-high heat. Add sauce. 
* Ofallthe cuts of meat available to modern man, 
lamb chops reign supreme. The intense wild flavor 
isareminder ofa time when man had to take to the 
woods to find dinner, the bone an invitation to eat 
inakingly manner, with no cutting implements 
but your teeth. To maximize this traditional spring 
ingredient we turned to José Andrés, chef-owner 
of Jaleo and other lauded restaurants and host of 
PBS's Made in Spain, to give us his best Iberian spin 
onlamb. “Lamb ribs can be both juicy and crispy if 
you do it right," he says. Andrés slow roasts them in 
his restaurants; here we offer a quicker alternative. 
Serve the ribs with his Catalonian romesco sauce 
and it’s game on.—Adam Baer 


Romesco Sauce 
Makes two cups 


cup Spanish ex 
1 red bell pepper 
6 plum tomatoe 
head garlic, halved 
T 


3 dried ancho chili рер 
% cup almond 


1 slice white bread 


p. sherry vir 
1tsp. pimen 
et paprika) 


1. Heat oven to 350 
degrees. Brush a thin film 
of olive oil over the bell 
pepper, tomatoes, garlic 
and onion. Roast for 40 
minutes in a medium-size 
roasting pan. Remove 
from oven and allow to 


cool before peeling off almonds and set aside. 


skins of the pepper, to- 4. Raise heat to medium; 
matoes, garlic and onion. place bread slice in pan. 
Seed the pepper and Toast about 30 seconds 
tomatoes. on each side or until 


brown. Remove from pan 


2. While the vegetable: 
j рне; and set aside. 


roast, soak ancho chilies 


ina bowl of hot water 5. Pour ancho puree 
for 15 minutes. Strain into frying pan and cook 
and remove seeds. Puree for 30 seconds; remove 
chilies in a blender until ^ from heat. 


smooth; pass the puree 
through'a’fine-mash etables in blender, along 
sieve and set aside. with almonds, bread, 

3. Heat one tablespoon ancho puree, vinegar, 
olive oil in a frying pan pimentón and the remain- 


6. Place roasted veg- 


over a low flame; add ing oil. Blend into a thick 
almonds and toast about sauce; add salt to taste. 
one minute, Remove Serve with lamb chops. 


CHOP TO IT 


Lamb rib ra 


FOOD STYLING BY VICTORIA GRANOF AT 
TUSTRATION BV ROBERT HARKNESS 


Photography by KANG KIM 


THE WORLD'S ONLY SELF ENERGY DRINK 
WESTCOAST .COM 


DRINK 


RUSSIAN 
REDUX 


THE ORIGINAL 
VODKA MAKESA 
COMEBACK 


+ Inthe face of the 
ongoing boutique- 
vodka boom, Russian 
distillers are respond- 
ing with homegrown 
high-end offerings. 
(Legend has it Russian 
vodka was first dis- 
tilled as early as 1430, 
in a monastery labora- 
tory by an imprisoned 
monk hoping to lull his 
captors to sleep.) Join 
the revolution like a 
purist and drink your 
vodka ice-cold and 
neat, or make this tra- 
ditional lemon-infused 
concoction from 

New York's Russian 
Samovar restaurant. 
—Nicholas Tamarin 


L а 


A TROIKA 
TO TRY 


4 RUSSIAN 
г ЅТАМОАВО 
$21 
This classic 
bargain 
bottling has 
the slightest 
hint of winter 
wheat grown 
on the Russian 
Fe steppes. 


ELIT 
$60 
Stolichnaya's 
9" top-shelf 
[7 offering tastes 
em Of toasted 
= wheat with 


notes of sweet 
aniseed and 
E pepper. 


[ BELUGA 
NOBLE 
$39 
Distilled in 
Siberia, this 
pleasantly 
piney vodka 
gets additional 
flavor from 
honey and milk- 
thistle extract. 


Photography by KANG KIM 


Moscow 
onthe 


Hudson 


. Place 10 quar- 


tered lemons in 
a glass jar large 
enough to also 
hold two liters 

of vodka, 


. Top lemons: 


with two cups. 
of brown sugar. 
Cover and 
refrigerate for 
two weeks. 


. Wipe excess 


sugar off the. 
lemons and add 
two liters of 
vodka; cover. 


. Store in a cool, 


dry place 


еек». 


| Strain vodka 


through 


THE 
PLAYBOY 
PARTY 


presented by 


The Playboy Party presented by Crown Royal brought 
New Orleans swagger to Jackson Brewery Bistro Bar 
on Friday, February Ist for the biggest weekend in pro 
football. The MINI Main Line parade kicked off the evening's 
festivities, delivering Bunnies to the red carpet in style. 


Once inside, guests donned Mardi Gras masks as they 
sipped Crown Royal cocktails, had their palms read in 
the MINI Cooper S Countryman, spiced up the night with 
delicious hors d'oeuvres seasoned with Tabasco Original 
Red Sauce, from celebrity chef John Besh, kept cool on 
the dance floor with AQUAhydrate water, and snapped pics 
with over 20 Playboy Playmates. Celebrities and athletes 
also stuffed bags for the troops by participating in The 
Crown Royal Heroes Project. DJs Devin Lucien and Jesse 
Marco commanded the DJ booth and special performances 
by Trombone Shorty and B.o.B fueled the night. 


боз» /AQUA 


Adrian Peterson with Playmates 


Playmates Amanda 
Jessa Hinton & Amy Leigh Andrews 


Cerny & Tiffany Toth 


Warren: Sep with Play wit ‚Heather 
|| Rae Young & Shelby 


Neil Patrick Harris with Playmates 
Heather Rae Young & Shelby Chesnes. 


Playmates Pilar Lastra 
тбепу Philips 


12013 Playboy. AII rights reserved. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE, and RABBIT HEAD DESIGN are trademarks of Playboy Enterprises International inc., and used with permission. 


30 


ENTERTAINMENT 


MOVIE OF THE MONTH 


THE 
INCREDIBLE 
BURT 
WONDER- 
STONE 


By Stephen Rebello 


* Steve Carell's new comedy 
casts him asa vain Las Vegas 
magician whose Siegfried and 
Roy-style swagger, mile-high 
back-comb, sequin-studded 
velour jumpsuits and massive 
ego are seriously threatened 
by a rock star street magician 
played by Jim Carrey. Co- 
starring Steve Buscemi, Alan 
Arkin, James Gandolfini and 
Olivia Wilde, the flick should 
work its magic on Carell fans 
who prefer him clowning in, 
say, The 40-Year-Old Virgin 
mode rather than in Crazy, 
Stupid, Love mode. "I just 
wanted to do something that 
was fun, funny and really 
silly," Carell has said about 
Wonderstone. Although the 
movie hits a wide range of 
satiric targets thanks to direc- 
tor Don Scardino (30 Rock) 


TEASE FRAME 


The director's cut of Troy 
y the world 
pla 


and screenwriters Jonathan 
Goldstein and John Francis 
Daley (Horrible Bosses), real- 
life illusionists are spared 
the dirty tricks. In fact, David 


Copperfield acted as technical 
advisor and contributed a jaw- 
dropping stage illusion that, 
according to Scardino, "looks 
phenomenal on the screen." 


BOOKOF THE MONTH 


AN ACTOR 
TELLS ALL 


By Paul Krassner 


+ In By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There, his memoir about 
recovering from his days as a drug addict, Tom Sizemore blurs 
the line between lust and love (“My whole body got hard—not 
just my dick"), and he's murky about the distinction between 
reporting and boasting (“Robert De Niro said, “Ро you know 
what a wonderful actor you are?’”). Some might complain that he 
tellstoo much—he's led a gritty life and spares nobody, including 
familiar names—but no one can accuse him of holding back. ¥¥¥ 


A CUP OF JOE 


Director Jon M. Chu 
leaves the world of 
music (he directed 
Step Up 3D and Justin 
Bieber's Never Say 
Never) to try his hand 
in the action arena with 
G.I. Joe: Retaliation, 
the sequel to 2009's 
Rise of the Cobra 


А: l'm a huge G.I. Joe fan, 
and | know the mythol- 
оду. | recently found 

all my toys from when 

I was a kid; they were 
scuffed up, beaten up, 
arms torn off. | wanted 
that badass feeling. 


A: All of them, The Rock 
was the worst. He and 
Channing were sitting on 
a couch, and the Rock 
goes, "Come on over 
and sit between us and 
grab that pink ball over 
there.” | did it without 
even thinking about it, 
and suddenly there's this 
Instagram pic of them 
looking tough and me 
looking like the world's 
biggest dweeb. 


A: It's hard to deny the 
Rock. He approaches a 
movie the same way he 
approaches anything 
he does, whether it's 
wrestling or football 
back in the day. He 
trains. He's focused 


A: He's in the movie, 
What happens to his 
character is something | 
don't want to spoil, but 
it's very cool 


GAMEOF THE MONTH 


TOMB RAIDER 


By Jason Buhrmester 


* After years of 
video games popu- 


three years since 
the last escapade 


ajungle island off 
the coast of Japan. 


lated by generic with Lara Croft, Gamers guide Croft, 
buzz-cut and any mention ofa surrounded by dan- 
muscle-bound new Tomb Raider gerous wildlife and 
heroes, the original gets gamers excited. pursued by violent 


Tomb Raider blessed 
us with gaming's 
first badass heroine 
and areason for 
Angelina Jolie to 


militia members, on 
ajourney of survival 
in which she must 
scrounge for food 
and weapons. A new 


The newest in the 
series, simply titled 
Tomb Raider (360, 
PC, PS3), explores 
Croft's origins, 


ACTION PACK 
CYBORG NINJAS, SPACE 
ZOMBIES AND MORE IN 
SPRING'S WILDEST GAMES 


E Crysis 3 (360, PC, PS3) 

> New York City in 2047 is a jungle 
encased in a dome; players don 
powerful nanosuits and seek 
revenge on an evil corporation. 


B Metal Gear Risin: 
Revengeance (360, PS3) 


> A deadly soldier equipped with 
a cyborg ninja suit and a high-tech 
katana faces a robot takeover. 


a bow anda savage 
climbing ax. She'll 
need these tools to 
solve challenging 
puzzles, escape traps 
set by the men hunt- 
ing her and traverse 
tightropes, zip lines 
andother dangers 
asshetransforms 
into a hardened and 


El Dead Space 3 (360, 
PC, PS3) 


squeeze into a pair beginning with the upgrade system beloved adventurer mA н? 4 

ofskintightcargo ^ — newcollegegradu- improves Croft's capable, one day, of de pedet coa ө Котеп 

ar д E pro A planet find themselves hunted by 

shorts. So even ate shipwrecked abilities and gear, surviving treacher- intergalactic undead. Blood, guts 

though it’s been and stranded on including pistols, ous tombs. and zero gravity are involved. 
MUST-WATCH TV 


DVD OF THE MONTH 


LIFE OF Р! 


+ Yann Martel's mystical tale of how a young Indian man anda 
Bengal tiger share a lifeboat at sea in order to survive gets a dazzling 
visual rendering from director Ang Lee. This Oscar-nominated 
drama takes viewers ona surreal journey that emphasizes the won- 
ders of the world and the resilience of the human spirit. Evenin 2-D, 
Lee’s triumph is breathtaking. Best extras: The Blu-ray 3D has five 
deleted scenes and two VFX progressions. ¥¥¥ Y 


BATES MOTEL 


* The world wasn't 
clamoring for a prequel 
to Psycho, yet A&E’s 
Bates Motel, about how 
young Norman Bates 
(Freddie Highmore) 
got so fucked-up, is 
more promising than 
pathetic. Producers 
(including Lost’s 
Carlton Cuse) smartly 
set the show in the present day, helping it step out of 
Hitchcock’s enormous shadow. They also give equal time 

to Vera Farmiga, whose chilling performance as Norman’s 
smothering mess of a mom is reason enough to keep watch- 

ing as you try to solve the riddle of Norman: Did Mom make 

hima psycho, or was he born that way? ¥¥¥¥ 31 


Y RAW DATA SIGNIFICA, INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS 


Amount 
Seinfeld has 
earned since 
going off the air, 
an average of 


Gallons of БЫ PLACE 


beer con- 
sumed in 


NEW HAMPSHIRE 
(43 gallons per person) 


n OTHER 


SAS vU, WOMEN VS. WOMEN 


AST PLACE 


"MEINE 


6.3 BILLION |: 


4 
15.1 o 19.3 
° age at first e. 
intercourse: 
aes | 
UTAH 74.8 total sex: е 
(19.2 gallons per i partners: | 
world leaders are on Twitter. person) 


Studies find that office : Getting back on 
workers get sidetracked track can take about 
and distracted about 


ONCE 


i Average | 
e io numberof | e 


sex partners : 
in past year: : 


enjoy 
sex 


MINUTES 


In a survey of 500 financial 
services professionals 


Americans has gone online to 
diagnose a medical condition, 
according to a Pew Research study. 


Y MU ug 
PLAYBOY INTERVIEWS 


DAAAAAAANNN DN aaa 


Since 1962, Playboy has published 
the greatest interviews in history, 
Now you can buy 50 of the most 

(in)famous exclusively at Amazon.com- 
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"Hinter S. Th 
m 0 


F Gp 


x MANTRACK 


LORD OF 
THE RINGS 


AUDI'S REBORN R8 SUPERCAR TAKES 
AMERICA BY STORM 


+ Fifty years from now, autophiles will 

look back on our generation of rides and 
point to Audi's R8 as an era-defining 

model. Launched in 2006, it set a styling 
benchmark, with performance to match: a 
mid-engine all-wheel-drive two-seat rocket. 
Even the door handles were beautifully 


AUDI R8 V1O PLUS 
Engine: 5.2-liter VIO. 


Zero to 60: 3.5 seconds 


Tag: TBA 


Horsepower: 550 


MPG: TBA 


designed. The bodywork? It belonged in 
MOMA. This month, the R8 returns to 

our shores reborn, a fresh iteration that's 
quicker, lighter and cosmetically nuanced. 
Designers reworked the front and rear ends 
and added slick new headlights. But the 

real news is under the skin: a dual-clutch 

S tronic seven-speed paddle-shift trans- 
mission that cuts about a quarter second off 
acceleration sprints. Like last year, there’s 
a4.2-liter V8 ($115,000) and a 5.2-liter V10 
(price TBA), but newis the 550 hp, near- 
200 mph V10 Plus (stats above). And yes, 
those gorgeous door handles come standard. 


HYBRID SUPERCARS 
> The batteries 
aren't to save fuel; 
they're for added 
power. Google the 
Porsche 918 and 
Audi e-tron. Whoa! 


PHONE 
INTEGRATION 

Soon your cell 
phone will unlock 
your car, start it, 
tell it where to go 
and more. 


* In the past decade, drivers have enjoyed an auto-technology renaissance. Your average new car 
can practically split atoms. Traction control has saved innumerable lives; navigation systems have 
saved even more marriages. Engine cylinder deactivators, voice commands—what's next, Jetsons- 
style jet packs? Actually, yes. Here's some transportation tech you'll see more of soon. 


x 


DRIVERLESS CAR 


Cars will drive 
themselves using 
lasers, cameras 
and radar. 


TOUCHSCREEN 
Tesla’s new 
Model S features a 
touchscreen dash; 
the instrument panel 
is like a big iPad 
That's the future. 


» 
JET PACKS 
The first usable 
jet pack has arrived, 
thanks to Swiss 
inventor Yves 
"Jetman" Rossy. 


ADVANCED NAV 


= Soon cars will talk 
not just to the driver 
but to one another, 

immensely improving 
real-time traffic data. 


о DETWILER 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY т 


PAINT YOUR WAGON 


ONCE THE BLACK SHEEP OF THE HIGHWAYS, THE STATION 
WAGON MAKES A COMEBACK 


+ Who doesn't have a fond memory of a station wagon? It was like the 
family dog-tireless, always up for an adventure. Ten years ago, the mini- 
van and SUV made the wagon passé. Now it's making a comeback. Below 
are our picks ofthe litter. At the top of the list: the trusty all-wheel-drive 
(optional) Volvo XC70. Affordable, with just enough luxury that you don't 
mind getting it muddy, it will haul five pals and a keg across a mountain 
range, then beg for more. It should come with a standard month's vaca- 
tion so you can hit the road heading anywhere. 


VOLVO XC70 


Engine: 3.2-liter 1-6 


Horsepower: 240 


Zeroto 60: 7.1 seconds AMERICAN 
MPG: 19 city/25 hwy ICON 


Tag: $33,600 


When the tarp was 
pulled off the car, pho- 
tographers swarmed. 
You would have thought 
Scarlett Johansson 
was onstage, revealing 
her glorious money- 
maker. The scene: the 
global unveiling of the 
seventh-generation 
Chevy Corvette in 
Detroit. Standing 
nearby was the man 
responsible for the 
car's performance, 
chief engineer Tadge 
Juechter. "The 2014 
Corvette delivers the 
fastest acceleration," 


PORSCHE PANAMERA SPORT TURISMO Go I Ae moit 
+ "There is no contradiction between sportiness and track capability, the best. 
functionality," says Porsche design chief Michael braking performance 
Mauer. Case in point: his estate car (as wagons are and what we expect to 
called in Europe), which debuted as a concept in 2012 be the best fuel econ- 


and will likely make it to U.S. showrooms. Price: TBA. re 
To back them up, 
Chevy has branded 
this Vette a Stingray, a 
moniker given only to 
"special" generations. 
Under the hood: an all- 
new 450 hp, 6.2-liter 
CADILLAC CTS-V WAGON V8. Price: in the neigh- 
* When Caddy unleashed the 556 hp CTS-V in 2010, the borhood of $55,000. 
Look for yours in show- 
sheer power amazed. Then the company dressed up that ee etal 
same V8 engine in wagon garb. There you have it: a fam- 
ily truckster that has more power than a Lamborghini 
Gallardo and can hit nearly 200 mph. Price: $64,515. 


engineer 


FERRARI FF 

Technically this car, which went into production in 
2011, isa “shooting brake,” a kind of two-door wagon. “FF” 
stands for four seats and four-wheel drive. At 208 mph, 
it's the fastest four-seater in the world and the only four- 
wheel drive Ferrari has ever made. Price: about $300,000. 


MANTRACK 


OUTFITTER 


THAT'S A WRAP 
— Protect your 
hands with an 
old-school wrap. 
"There's really no 
GLOVE UP wrong or right 

> "Heavy way to wrap your 
gloves are hands," Quillin 
more of a says. "Go online 
muscle builder; and watch some 
lighter gloves videos, and then 
are for work- just do what 
ing on speed." works for you." 
Quillin spars in 
16-ounce gloves 
but hits the bag 
with 10-ouncers 
to simulate 
what he'll wear 
ina fight. 


SCIENCE 


к A 
PE TERRE 


- "Itrainhard to make 


the fight easy," explains 
JUMP AROUND Peter "Kid Chocolate" 
I MA eU gj Quillin, the reigning 
ave passed an ii i 
boxers still jump World Boxing Ог 
rope, “sometimes zation middleweight 


up to 30 minutes, 
no stopping,” 
says Quillin. "It 


champion. The fight 
isn’t always easy, as any- 


10 ounces 


Reins vou cut one who saw Quillin's 
Mean end ae recent six-knockdown 
warmed up, and + brawl with Hassan 

it's also a good N'dam can attest, but 


cooldown.” training hard certainly 


makes it easier. And 
even for those with no 
intention of throwing 
down in the profes- 
sional prize ring, train- 
ing ina boxing gym is 
an amazing way to tone 
up—and work on some 
self-defense savvy in 
the process. Quillin, 


POWER SHOT 
> With the 
heavy bag, "try 
to think of it as 
а person and 
move around 
it realistically, 
punching cor- 
rectly," Quillin 
advises. As for 


ee +" undefeated through 
end bag, "take 28 pro fights with 

your time and be 20 knockouts, offers 
ngo ead his advice to get you 
RER \ started down the Rocky 
the patience N road.—Eric Raskin 


to develop a 
rhythm, all you'll 
get out of it is 
frustration.” 


SOLED OUT 
=> Float like a 
butterfly? Not in 
D thick-soled run- 
Na ning shoes. Box- 
ing shoes have 
a Y thin soles that 
4 grip the canvas. 
e "| like feeling: 

Da almost bare- - 
footed. | like to 
be like an animal," 
says Quillin: 


- Photography by DUSTIN SNIPES _ 
Location: Wild Gard West 


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40 


Talking 
With 

Sam Raimi 
by James Franco 


From cult horror films including The Evil 
Dead to his blockbuster Spider-Man trilogy, 
Sam Raimi is а filmmaker who is hard to 
pigeonhole. His horror films are simultane- 
ously vicious and humorous, and he invents 
entire grandiose worlds from his imagination — 
for example, Oz the Great and Powerful, which 
stars the great and powerful PLAYBOY Contrib- 
uling Editor James Franco in the title role. The 
two recently got together to chat about what 
went on behind the scenes of Spider-Man and 
how the director's messy style of filmmaking has 
turned into a huge advantage. 


FRANCO: What does a director do when 
faced with developing effects and a story 
on the scale of Spider-Man or Oz? How do 
you figure it out? 

RAIMI: Experiment, research, talk to 
experts. You try to explain to artists 
what you see. The process of directing 
is one of communication, explaining to 
the writer and cinematographer how it's 
supposed to feel. You communicate with 
actors about what they want and why. 
They then lend insight to the characters, 
because they're living them inside out. 
Your vision gradually becomes clearer. 
FRANCO: I was a supporting character 
in all three of your Spider-Man films, and 
we've just finished Oz, in which I play 
the lead. I felt you gave Tobey Maguire 
so much attention during Spider-Man 
because of your feelings for his charac- 
ter, Peter Parker, that I didn't get as much 
of your love as he did. On Oz, for the first 
time I felt your full love as a director. 
RAIMI: Yeah, I felt our communication 
went deeper with this picture. 


ILLUSTRATION BY RAUL ALLEN 


FRANCO: There was one moment at the 
end of Spider-Man when we were in a cem- 
etery in New York. 

RAIMI: You always mention this. 
FRANCO: Maybe I'm wrong about it. It 
was the last shot of the film, when the 
characters are burying Norman Osborn, 
my character's father. You wanted me to 
try a couple of different lines. 

ГЇЇ have to check the film. 
FRANCO: You said, “Say to Parker, 
‘You'll help me avenge my father; we'll 
do it together.'” It's not a bad line, but it 
so I didn't say it. 

That's a mild way of putting it. 
said, “I’m not saying that stupid line!” 
FRANCO: In front of everybody. 

But it's fine. I thought to myself, 
He knows who this character is. Maybe he 
realizes he would have more self-control 
than that and wouldn't make such a dra- 
matic gesture. I never know why people 
say the things they do on set, but if an actor 
I respect doesn't want to do something, 
I try to find the truth behind it. You see 
that as a moment of disrespect, but I see 
it as being in touch with something. It was 
an emotional place. You were suffering, 
feeling anger toward your father, and you 
weren't about to say, "Sam, I don't know 
why, but this feels wrong." And that's okay. 
FRANCO: Tobey and Kirsten Dunst 
became a couple around that time. I had a 
crush on Kirsten, and I think I was upset 
about that as well. 

RAIMI: Oh, I didn't know that. Gee, 
that's just like the movie. 

FRANCO: Exactly. Tobey was mad at me 
for a while. By the second film we were 
cool, but that's another reason I felt hurt, 
with you giving Tobey all the attention. 
RAL And he was getting Kirsten, like 
the script said he should. 

FRANCO: Yes. You were the father who 
wouldn't give me the love I needed. 
RAI! Maybe I had to play Norman, 
the father, a bit. And you had to play your 
character, without that father. 


FRANCO: Yeah, that's weird. Let's talk 
about Oz. When you were given the 
script, what did you think you needed 
to accomplish? 

RAIMI: I thought, How does this car- 
al magician, this charlatan, become 
great? What seeds are here? I boiled it 
down to the story of a selfish man who 
becomes a selfless man and therefore a 
great wizard, someone who starts caring 
about other people more than himself. 
Then I knew how to handle it. I found 
what I loved about the movie and then 
enhanced the drama in every scene I 
could. On set I'd say, “James, how can 
we keep this struggle of selfishness ver- 
sus selflessness alive?" How can we keep it. 
realistic and do what the story asks, then 
go to that next level and keep his con- 
science alive so the ultimate moment is 
one the audience has been wrestling with, 
in the big and small, throughout the jour- 
ney? If you can do that, it works for me. 
It's in the fabric of everything. 
FRANOO: I've found your working style 
is free-flowing, at least with actors. But 
there's another side of you that's incredi- 
bly meticulous. How do you balance those 
different approaches? 

RAIMI: The best performances happen 
when you let actors follow their instincts, 
which is absolutely counter to my job asa 
director to tell a concise story. I'm always 
at odds with myself. I need the brilliance 
of actors without constraints, but I need 
the formal structure of a well-told narra- 
tive. When actors run wild, it yields great 
performances but destroys structure. 
What I'm left with is a beautiful thing that 
needs help. I have to repair that structure 
afterward, usually more than most direc- 
tors, because I let it get crazier on set than 
most. But I'm not afraid of outrageous 
expressions from actors anymore. It's the 
seed of greatness. And I don't want to 
see how brilliant that performance will be 
ahead of time. I want it to be more bril- 
liant than I could ever imagine. = 


THE NEXT NEW CONCEPT 
BY 


TEQUILA 


LAUNCH PARTY 


Playboy, special guests Sunny Garcia 
(Surfing World Champion) and 
Bill Walton (NBA Legend), and 


Playmates Pilar Lastra, Nikki Leigh, 
and Raquel Pomplun gathered to 
host an exclusive new bottle launch 
party for Jim Riley, CEO of Azuñia 
Tequila, at Beso in Hollywood, CA on 
January léth. DJ Stellar set the stage 
for an unforgettable evening as guests 
indulged in world-class hors d'oeuvres, 
sipped on specialty cocktails by 
mixologist Joe Valdovinos, and mingled 
with Playmates. 


©2013 Playboy. All rights reserved. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE, and RABBIT HEAD DESIGN are trademarks of Playboy Enterprises International Inc. and used with permission. 


42 


here was no way I was going to 

mess with that prissy, leather- 

bound wine list. I was having 

dinner with a guy I've known 

since high school—and I went 
to high school in New Jersey. But since 
we weren't eating hot wings and our 
waitress wasn't wearing polyester shorts, 
1 figured instead of getting beer I'd just 
tell our server to bring us a bottle of 
something cheap and interesting, as long 
asit wasn't New World. My friend looked 
at me and said, "Don't ever fucking say 
that again." Say what? “New World. Or I'll 
punch you. In your old testicles." 

This was just a few months after I was 
invited to a friend's house for pizza and 
poker and brought a bottle of simple 
Sicilian primitivo. I was mocked so hard 
for bringing wine instead of beer that 
I wound up drinking most of it myself, 
then having a tall glass of rye to prove 
something that only a guy drunk on 
primitivo would understand. As far as I 
know, they stopped having poker games 
after that. At least I didn't hear about 
them anymore. 

None of this is my fault. I live in a time 
when people are invited to Top Chef view- 
ing parties, meet girls at farmers markets 
and go on dates to cooking classes. A time 
when I can't go to a restaurant without 
seeing at least one dude carefully arrang- 
ing his appetizer so he can shoot it for 
his food blog. When I know the names of 
15 current world leaders, six artists, four 
poets, two philosophers and more than 
100 chefs. When men make time to eat 
long meals while in Las Vegas. 

I know that this is not the way a man 
should act. I know that the only time I 
should think of eating as entertainment is 


when the word contest is involved. That I 
should not be able to identify field greens 
unless I made it to Eagle Scout. I know 
these are descriptors that should not 
be important to me: "organic," "local," 
"artisanal," "grass-fed," "heirloom." I 
know these are descriptors that should 
be: "fried," "smoked," "bacon-y," "cool 
ranch" and "ass-in-the-tub hot." 

And yet I keep choosing food over life. 
I go out to long dinners, which means I 
never have time for a movie after. I cook 
elaborate meals for friends and then sit 
around talking about the elaborate meal 
I cooked. Those really expensive, suppos- 
edly romantic prix-fixe meals I've been 
to? It turns out nothing makes a woman 
want to have sex less than 16 courses and 
3,500 calories. My odds were 20 times 
better with dorm food and frat punch. 

But I'm not the only man who has given 
up so much for bottarga. Baseball games— 
where for generations men got peanuts, 


By fiel 


hot dogs, beer and, if they were feeling 
culinarily adventurous, Cracker Jacks— 
are now mini-Vegases with food courts 
where chefs! names are more prominent 
than middle relievers. When I went to 
AT&T Park last season to see the world 
champion Giants play, I didn't want to eat. 
a fresh Dungeness crab sandwich served 
on warm slices of garlic-butter-brushed 
sourdough, but it was right there. So was 
the organic strawberry shortcake. And if T 
had found the California wine cart before 
the Gordon Biersch beer stand, I might 
have been an even worse role model for 
my friend's 11-year-old son. 

But it is too late to go back. In the 
globalized information age, a man who 


tein 


eats just meat and potatoes is no longer 
rugged but fearful. A man now has to 
have a bit of Anthony Bourdain and a 
dash of Andrew Zimmern, daring to eat 
fermented shark, fertilized duck egg or 
salted tuna sperm. A man has to take the 
bull by the balls, fry them, dip them in 
cocktail sauce and pretend to like them. 
Eating disgusting food is yet one more 
area where we cannot afford to keep get- 
ting beaten by the Chinese. 

Women are impressed with guys’ 
knowledge of northern versus southern 
"Thai cuisine, as long as we don't talk too 
much about history. Our worldliness, 
even though it's restricted to restaurant 
meals, makes us look sophisticated and 
daring, which makes us more likely to 
get away with doing weird sex stuff with 
them. It's the same logic that led us to 
name all the good sex acts with French 
words. If I'm willing to eat salted tuna 
sperm, she should be willing to try going 
down on her friend in front of me. If I 
eat only hot dogs, well, you can see how 
her argument might go. Men who don't 
know about food will be viewed as not 
being sensual enough. As they say, jerky 
eaters are often jerky doers. 

It helps to be able to cook too. I spent 
a 24-hour shift in a firehouse once, and I 
couldn't believe how seriously those guys 
took food. Men were valorized for their 
chimichangas nearly as much as for sav- 
ing lives. And flouting every stereotype 
of masculinity ever promulgated, they 
ate dessert. Chocolate dessert. 

So Гт going to keep bringing my rus- 
tic, Old World wines to card games. I’m 
dropping truffle salt on my popcorn at the 
next Super Bowl party. I'll put Gruyére, 
onion confit and bacon jam on my burger. 
And far more manly, when I see you ГЇ 
bore you with every tiny detail I've re- 
searched about each of those dishes. Ш 


vince MENDOE 


‚ Lisa Lampanelli, ат a life- 
long fan of men. Ever since 
I was a sophomore in high 
school and found myself 
wishing Peter Frampton was 
fingering me like he fingered 
his Les Paul, I have loved 
the male gender. So I'm sure 
you'll understand why I am 
worried about a current trend—a trend 
more disturbing than hipsters, T 
programming and Juggalos combined. I 
am, of cou ng to the demascu- 
linization of the American male. 

Men, I hate to be the one to tell you 
this, but you've turned into women. 
How? You now have style, and that 
needs to change. Style used to be the ex- 
clusive domain of women and gays. Go 
into any men's store today and you'll see 
rows of skinny jeans, shelf after shelf of 
ornate, shiny accessories and racks full 
of shirts so brightly colored and form- 
fitting that Richard Simmons wouldn't 
be caught dead in them. Even worse, 
look behind the counters and you'll see 
enough facial scrubs, body lotions and 
hair products to make Charles Bronson 
rise from the dead and beat his own ass 
with a sock full of quarters in disgust. 

How, oh how, did we get here? Men 
who used to barely scrub the dirt from 
under their fingernails now buy scrubs to 
cleanse their pores. Eyebrow shaping, ex- 
foliating, capri pants—really, gentlemen? 
You "guys" may as well walk around 
wearing a scrunchie and a maxipad. 

Body hair, like Mel Gibson, has some- 
ow become the enemy. A man’s hairy 
chest used to be a turn-on. In the 1970s 
Burt Reynolds was the ultimate sex sym- 
bol, with his shirt unbuttoned and that 


o 


little tuft of hair sticking out. Now guys 
shave their chests so much, every time you 
touch one, it has more tiny pricks than the 
continent of Asia. 

I, for one, don't like it. I don't want a 
man who's prettier than I am any more 
than I want a personal trainer with a sag- 
gier ass or a pet dog with better breath. 

Perhaps this feminization of men has 
its roots in the rise of “gym culture." 
Once guys started obsessing over how 
every inch of their body looked, vanity 
began running rampant, and the diva 
dude—the "duva," if you will—was born. 

You've all seen that guy at the gym, 
dressed in his color-coordinated de- 
signer spandex workout clothes that 


LISA LAMPANELLI 


are tighter than Bruce Jenner's face. He 
gazes at himselfin the mirror, and by that 
enamored look on his freshly facialed 
mug, you can just tell he's dreaming of 
the day when science perfects cloning so 
he can put a roofie in his own drink and 
fuck himself silly. 

Even worse are the guys with the skin- 
tight yoga pants. If you wear yoga pants, 
you may not be gay, but you're definitely 
on the waiting list. 

Maybe that's what upsets me about 
these guys. They're straight, but they dress 
and groom like gay men. It seems dishon- 
est. What you're seeing is not what you're 
getting. It's like putting a nun's habit on 
Lindsay Lohan. It's like putting running 
shoes on Stephen Hawking. It's like put- 
ting a football uniform on Mark Sanchez. 

Ilike a guy who's low maintenance. 
One of the perks of living with a man is 


IAN 


THE CASE AGAINST SKINNY JEANS, 
EXFOLIATING AND BEING A "DUVA" 


UP! 


that when we're getting dressed to go to 
a party, he can be ready in three minutes. 
But duvas need hours to get ready, and 
worse yet, they need an abundance of bath- 
room counter space. Beauty products for 
men are a lot like banjo music: A little goes 
a long way. And the last thing I need when 
I'm trying to put on mascara is to get cl- 
bowed by a duva trying to remove his exfo- 
liating mask without ruining his manicure. 
his isn't to say there's no happy medi- 
um when it comes to grooming. Do ladies 
want guys to keep themselves up a little 
better? Of course we do. Do we want a guy 
who looks like Nick Nolte's mug shot? Of 
se we don't. Certain grooming habits 
are essential. Definitely wax your back and 
trim your balls—I do. Seriously, if you pull 
down your pants and it looks like Troy 
Polamalu is stuck between your legs, we've 
got a problem. But don't go too far. No- 
body needs bald junk. Your penis already 
looks like it belongs to a baby. 
And, guys, please dress like a man. Your 
jeans should not be so tight I know your 


religion, and they shouldn't cost more 


than a laptop. If it's not snowing, you 
should not be wearing a scarf. It's not 1963 
and you're not Art Garfunkel. Also, if you 
must wear a bracelet, make sure it's made 
out of a precious metal. Rubber bracelets 
went out with Lance Armstrong's Tour de 
France victories, and thread bracelets are 
for girls going to a Dave Matthews concert. 

So cancel your subscription to Details, 
throw away your Nair for Men and kick 
those mandals to the curb. We need to 
get back to the days of manly men. Now, 
if you'll excuse me I have to go pluck my 
husband Jimmy's eyebrows. I don't want 
the neighbors to think I'm having an 
affair with Sam Donaldson. a 


43 


CONSIDER IT EVIDENCE 


(of a gift well received.) 


FIND YOUR PERFECT GIFT FROM THE PLAYBOY INTIMATES COLLECTION 
ONLY ON PLAYBOYSTORE.COM 


My girlfriend and I are Chris- 
tians, and we've grown together 
in our faith. However, we un- 
derstandably have reservations 
about premarital sex. She in 
particular feels super guilty af- 
ter we have intercourse or oral 
sex. She wants us to be "pure" 
in the eyes of God if we get mar- 
ried. She also told me she rarely 
masturbates, even though I 
bought her a vibrator. I told her 
I understand the faith thing but 
that she will need to embrace 
her sexuality at some point. I 
worry she's not a sexual per- 
son. What should I do?—R.M., 
Tulsa, Oklahoma 

There aren't many people who 
wouldn't benefit from more masturba- 
tion, but don't lay a guilt trip of your 
own by assigning your girlfriend some 
phantom sexual dysfunction. Her 
guilt is unfortunate; if God judges a 
person to be impure for having sex in 
а committed relationship, there's no 
pleasing the guy. You're asking us to 
predict if she would somehow blossom 
once the two of you got married. Who 
knows? The fact that she considers 
premarital sex to be sinful may make 
it the hottest action you'll ever get. Or 
she may cast off her chains and suck 
you dry. Sex works in mysterious ways. 


I notice р.лувоу has great articles 
оп wines and spirits and even has 
a wine club. I'm partial to scotch, 
but few are available in sample 
packages (20 milliliters or so) 


PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR 


and the number 1. Would it be 
horrible to draw attention to 
this infraction by sending an 
etiquette book as a wedding 
gift? My husband has known 
the groom for several years and 
wants to attend the wedding. 
What do you think?—A.B., 
Arlington, Virginia 

We would be far more gracious. 
Ideally they should invite couples, but 
maybe they hit a limit. You don't know 
her and the groom is not a mutual 
friend, so why take it personally? 


Who invented belly dancing? 1 
find it incredibly stimulating.— 
M.C., San Francisco, California 

Hard to say. И an ancient art 
that, according to the International 
Academy of Middle Eastern Dance, 
was not performed in the U.S. until 
the late 19th century and not pop- 
ular here until a Turkish dancer 
stole the show in a 1954 Broadway 
production. The most entertaining 
hypothesis we could find about its 
origins comes from the anthropolo- 
gist Desmond Morris, who claims in 
one of his many books that it began 
when members of harems performed 
pelvis thrusts on masters who had 
grown too fat to thrust. The women 
would insert their master's penis into 
their vaginas and “undulate and 
jolt their pelvises to stimulate it to 
climax." We don't believe a word of 
it, but we have a great idea for some 
kinky role-playing. Where can we get 
those little cymbals? 


and there are few local tastings. 
It's an expensive passion. Trying 
а scotch means rolling the dice 
and buying a bottle. Macallan 
19-year-old sherry oak is a great 
deal for under $100, but I didn't 
care for Glenlivet 18 and was 
stuck with a pricey bottle. Maybe 
PLAYBOY could start a scotch club. 
I'd serve on the selection com- 
mittee at no charge.—K.L., 
Anchorage, Alaska 

We appreciate the offer. You'll 
like Master of Malt, a U.K. retailer 
that addresses this issue by offering 
sample-size 30-milliliter bottles for 
$5 to $10 each. It accepts orders 
from North America online at 


My wife is amazing in bed, but she doesn't like the 
lights on during sex. Our bedroom gets pitch-black, 
and I have a hard time staying aroused. Is this nor- 
mal? What can 1 do?—B.F., Springfield, Missouri 
Men spend their days imagining what women look like 
naked; lo turn off the lights when we finally have a nude 
woman within reach is a crime against our nature. Continue 
to reassure her that you find her ravishing, but also suggest a 
practical compromise. Place a book light on a nightstand, a 
low-watt colored bulb in a bedroom lamp or a dimmable bulb 
in an overhead light, ideally with a remote she can control (but, 
by mutual agreement, not turn off). You may never enjoy sex at 
high noon, but after your wife sees your reaction to seeing her, 
she may have a moment of enlightenment. If she still insists on 
complete darkness, provide it. Dim the lights, blindfold her and 
keep her guessing what comes next. 


My wife and I were talking 
about having a threesome. She 
said she wants to feel two cocks 
inside her, with one a lot bigger 
than mine. And she wants to pick 
the guy. What do I say?—W.T., 
Paterson, New Jersey 

Ouch—talk about deflating a trial 
balloon. We appreciate your wife's 
honesty, but she could have said she 
wanted to pick the guy and left it at 
that. You now have reason for sus- 
picion if she selects a co-worker or 
friend —she'll have to explain how 
she knows so much. We suggest you 
explore this fantasy initially with a 
dildo. She can pick that out. 


masterofmalt.com or toll free at 866- 

569-5053. It also offers dram bottles of rum, 
vodka, mezcal and gin, each with handmade 
paper labels and wax seals. Samples allow 
you to experiment, but you can narrow your 
choices by considering your taste profile. For 
example, Macallan is à Speyside malt, mean- 
ing it comes from the area around the River 
Spey. Whiskeys from this region are known 
for their smoothness and balance, as opposed 
to, say, Island malts, which are known for 
their smoky flavor. If you like Macallan, 
you'll probably also enjoy other Speysides such 
as Cragganmore and the Glenrothes. Then 


try an Islay (super smoky), and if you like 
it, dive deeper into that family (Lagavulin, 
Laphroaig, etc.). Eventually you'll run out of 
choices, though perhaps not in this life. 


М, husband was invited to a co-worker's 
wedding. I thought it was odd that the 
save-the-date card was addressed only 
to him but figured the bride didn't 
know he was married. (Neither of us 
has met her.) But the invitation was also 
addressed only to him, and the response 
card was already filled out with his name 


Before my girlfriend and I started 
dating, we would just mess around. 
Around this time one of her guy friends 
crashed at her apartment. According to 
her he tried to sneak into her bed. She 
mentioned recently that he had started 
texting her. Curious, I went through her 
phone. In one message she told him she 
had wanted to fuck him that night but 
he was drunk and had startled her. Since 
this happened about a year ago, am I 
getting upset over nothing? I want to ask 
her about it, but then she would know I 


45 


PLAYBOY 


46 


went through her phone. She says she 
loves me, but if she wanted to fuck him 
I doubt anything has changed. What 
should I do?—M.M., Iowa City, Iowa 

Find out what's going on. It's not strange 
that she wanted to have sex with him, but it 
is strange to tell him that a year later, when 
she's dating someone else. Your relationship is 
already damaged, and you'll damage it more by 
revealing your betrayal, but you need to hash 
out whether you're wasting each other's time. 
Better that than to find out this friend spent the 
night at her place when he was sober. 


I read with interest the letter in Novem- 
ber from a college student who likes to 
carry a polished gold cigarette case. 
My wife uses a 1930s sterling silver 
engraved case she inherited from her 
mother to pack her driver's license, 
a credit card and a little cash for par- 
ties. I can easily carry it in my pocket, 
and I never mind showing it off.—C.E., 
Lafayette, Louisiana 
It beats holding her purse. 


Your answer in December їо a reader 
who asked how to prepare his car for a 
road trip is right on target. My wife and I 
have traveled for many years, and we've 
had some of the best times in small, over- 
looked towns. Meandering is the best 
way to understand the greatness of our 
country and its people. You can learn 
a lot about an area's unwritten history 
at a corner bar, especially if you buy a 
round.—R.R., Fort Worth, Texas 
Thanks for writing. Everybody in a small 
town loves to tell their story to visitors, because 
everybody else in town has already heard it. 


I started a new job, and my wife came to 
the office to have lunch. We were in line 
to pay when someone I work with but 
barely know said hello and asked some 
questions. I didn't care for the conversa- 
tion and brushed him off. My wife was 
offended that I hadn't introduced her. 
I feel it's necessary to make introduc- 
tions only to people who influence my 
life—family, friends, bosses, co-workers 
and the like. What is your take?—A.M., 
Albuquerque, New Mexico 
Don't you want to show her off? 


1 am about to purchase an engage- 
ment ring for my girlfriend. Is there 
any difference between EGL and GIA 
certifications?—F.L., Akron, Ohio 

The nonprofit Gemological Institute of 
America is thought to be stricter and more 
uniform in its judgments, so GIA gems tend to 
cost more. One jeweler says you should expect 
the rival European Gemological Laboratory 
to rate a diamond two color grades and one 
clarity grade higher than what the GIA would 
assign. The EGL is a franchise, with different 
owners at each location, so its grading can 
also vary by city and country. Does certifica- 
tion тайет to your girlfriend? Probably not. 
She may prefer a larger EGL-certified rock. 
But you can ask her when you're shopping for 


the ring, because of course you've discussed 
marriage with her. The only surprise should 
be when you pop the question. 


Му wife wants to have sex in a semi- 
public place. I’m in the Navy, and a pub- 
lic indecency charge could have lasting 
effects on my career. If I'm going to do 
this, I want to make sure I find a bal- 
ance between risk and security. Гуе been 
with several women who had this fantasy. 
In one case, we had sex in a movie the- 
ater. What do you think the appeal is 
for the woman? Is it the thrill of getting 
caught?—M.T., Norfolk, Virginia 

That's part of it. There's also the idea that 
you are so out of your mind with lust you can't 
control yourself, even on the subway or in a res- 
taurant. Or simply that strangers are watching. 
Or some combo. In this situation, the compro- 
mise is a one-way mirror. Hire a limo to drive 
you around toum. 


Му vite has never been good at giving 
head. Now, all of a sudden, she has tre- 
mendous technique. I have to wonder if 
she had this skill all along and was with- 
holding from me. What gives?—A.]., 
Cleveland, Ohio 

You suspect a blow-job conspiracy? So do 
we. It’s more likely your wife has been reading, 
listening, watching or wandering. Given the 
number of books with oral-sex tips (Lip Ser- 
vice, Tickle His Pickle, The Ultimate Guide to 
Fellatio, etc.), the preponderance of chatty girl- 
friends and the ease with which one can study 
professional cocksuckers online, we wouldn't 
jump to any conclusions. You could tell her 
how much you enjoy her newfound enthusiasm, 
but it’s probably apparent. Does she have any 
complaints about your technique? 


1 nave noticed there are different styles 
of pussies. One is a slit, the other is what 
1 call a duck bill. Is there an official 
term for it? The duck bill is particularly 
sexy.—D.P., Dallas, Texas 

You're talking about the labia minora, or 
inner lips. They come in all shapes and sizes, all 
of which are normal. In part because so many 
women (and their lovers) don't realize this and 
women sometimes resort to "corrective" surgery, 
in 2005 a team of female scientists took care- 
ful measurements of the genitalia of 50 British 
women ages 18 to 50. They found incredible 
variation. For instance, the length of the labia 
minora in this small sample ranged from just 
under an inch to nearly four inches, and the 
vaginal opening from 2.5 to five inches. Make 
sure a woman knows how beautiful her vulva 
is; she may not have heard it before. 


Im almost certain I have an unattract- 
ive face. Would cheek implants make 
me more appealing? You folks are in the 
business of attraction and nearly always 
provide sound advice.—R.C., Little 
Rock, Arkansas 

Nearly always? You don't need new cheek- 
bones. You need patience. If you're judging your 
face by a universal standard, measuring angles 
and symmetry, you probably fall short. Most 


people do. Specialists in “facialmetrics” say the 
most alluring faces are balanced, which our 
brains interpret as a sign of good genes. Others 
have concluded it’s perfectly “average” faces that 
catch our eye—no parts too big or small. Or per- 
haps it’s those that deviate slightly from average, 
still comfortable but unique. In experiments, 
women go for rugged features such as a square 
jaw, especially when they're ovulating. Other 
times they choose rounder, softer faces. So who 
knows? The point is, science can't predict with 
accuracy what an individual will find appeal- 
ing; there are too many variables. That's why 
you ате as likely to meet someone after an instant 
spark as with the long burn. Consider this in 
your own life: The better you get to know and 
like a woman, the more attractive she becomes. 


How do I ask my wife if she would be 
interested in swinging? She has always 
been accommodating, so my fear is that 
she would agree just to please me. If 
she’s not totally into it, I don’t want to 
do it.—H.S., Honolulu, Hawaii 

Ask if she has any interest in attending a 
party if you both agree not to do anything but 
observe. (Visit nasca.com to find a club.) Watch 
her body la: and interactions. You know 
her well enough to read how she's feeling. If you 
have doubts, let her suggest a return visit. Once 
she realizes women hold all the power in the 
lifestyle, you may be the one accommodating her. 


girlfriend told me she vajazzled herself 
and her boyfriend loved it. What is she 
talking about?—H.D., Orlando, Florida 

She applied stick-on Swarovski crystals to cre- 
ate a pattern—for example, a heart shape—on 
her mons pubis, just above the vulva. The pat- 
tern is most easily applied using a stencil after the 
hair has been waxed or shaved. While promoting 
her book The Day I Shot Cupid, Jennifer Love 
Hewitt revealed that a girlfriend had vajazzled 
her and "it shined like a disco ball!” If you want 
to be helpful, apply an arrow pointing down. 


Why does pulling a woman's hair while 
entering her from behind excite her? 
Does the same explanation apply to 
spanking?—].O., Fayetteville, Arkansas 

We can't speak for women who like to 
have their hair firmly held during doggy style 
(though we'll ask the next time we have the 
chance), but it likely has to do with the idea 
that they are being "taken." Spanking doesn't 
have that dynamic; in that case, the woman has 
been naughty. Regardless, we fulfill all such 
requests without questions. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, food 
and drink, stereos and sports cars to dat- 
ing dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be 
personally answered if the writer includes 
a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The 
most interesting, 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. 


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EJFORUME 


Darwinism Atheism Scientism 


hil 


5 “il 


ATHEISM WARS 


There's little reason to think our world would be a better 
place if no one believed in God 


BY JOHN GRAY 


hen in 1931 the pop- 

ular historian of phi- 

losophy Will Durant 

sent a number of fa- 

mous contemporaries 
a letter asking about the meaning of life, 
H.L. Mencken replied, 
“What the meaning of hu- 
man life may be I don’t 
know: I incline to sus- 
pect that it has none. All 
I know about it is that, to 
me at least, it is very amus- 
ing while it lasts.... When 
1 die I shall be content to 
vanish into nothingness. 
No show, however good, 
could conceivably be good forever." 


A lifelong unbeliever, Mencken 
mocked religion in all its forms as a vice 
of weak minds. Atheists such as Chris- 


Mencken never 


imagined 


humans could 


berational. 


topher Hitchens have attacked religion 
as an enemy of democracy and equality 
and cited Mencken in support of their at- 
tacks. Yet for Mencken the modern faith 
in human equality was as much a delu- 
sion as any religion. He rejected religion 
as an insult to reason, but 
he never imagined hu- 
man beings could be ra- 
tional. Convinced of the 
irredeemable stupidity of 
the mass of humankind, 
he expected nothing of 
the species apart from the 
endless entertainment it 
gives an impartial observ- 
er of human folly. 

It would be hard to find any echo of 
Mencken's cavalier atheism among to- 
day's evangelical unbelievers. Twenty- 
first century irreligion comes in several 


READER 
RESPONSE 


TAXING ARGUMENTS 

Your chart “Who's Buying?” 
(December), which compares 
individual and corporate income 
tax rates since 1950, is mislead- 
ing. After noting the share of 
revenue from corporate taxes 

has dropped from 26 percent to 
less than 10 percent today, you 
ask rhetorically, “Wonder why?” 
Here's why: Subchapter S corpo- 
rations, introduced in 1958, allow 
business owners to move from a 
combined individual-corporate tax 
bracket of what was effectively 96 
percent to a somewhat manage- 
able single taxation of 35 percent. 
"This has encouraged the creation 
of millions of small businesses. 
Because S corporation owners 
now pay only individual taxes and 


i 


ET 


БИ ИНЕТ 


no federal corporate taxes (i.e., 
they're no longer subject to double 
taxation), the percentage of reve- 
nue collected from individuals has 
risen. Owners of limited-liability 
corporations are taxed in the 
same way. Playboy Enterprises is a 
limited partnership, which is a cor- 
poration that gives distributions 
to partners, so they pay individual 
but not corporate taxes. Your lack 
of an explanation paints corpora- 
tions as the evil rich. 
Spencer Atkins 
Pelham, Alabama 


49 


ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN PAGE 


50 


FORUM 


Y 


READER RESPONSE 


Brian Cook claims Apple is not 
only indifferent to the well-being 
of its American employees but 
also displays contempt by “avoid- 
ing billions in taxes each year" 
via domiciling a U.S. office in 
Nevada and incorporating in 
foreign countries with lower 

tax rates ("How Apple Rules 
America," October). Cook either 
is misguided or lacks an under- 
standing of the shareholder 
model. As Milton Friedman 

has written, "There is one and 
only one social responsibility of 
business—to use its resources and 


engage in activities designed to 
increase its profits so long as it... 
engages in open and free com- 
petition, without deception or 
fraud." Apple's loyalty is not to 
the U.S. public but to the com- 
pany's global shareholders. To 
believe that a company should 
pay excessively high taxes out. 
of some false sense of loyalty to 
a particular state or based on a 
nation's "need" is naive at best. 
A more profitable company 
produces greater returns, which 
in turn enhances the wealth of 
shareholders, who will then have 
more cash to spend to stimulate 
the economy. 

Mark Lazar 

Sandy, Utah 
Socially conscious investment funds 
in the U.S. and the U.K. are begin- 
ning to exclude from their portfolios 
companies with overly aggressive lax- 
reduction policies. 


In the 1960s you published ап 
article suggesting the nation's 
financial burden could be eased 
if we taxed three entities. I 


varieties, each engaged in furious con- 
troversy with the rest, but these sects 
have one thing in common: They are 
all made up of missionaries. "I like to 
think that most of my ideas have been 
sound ones," Mencken wrote in his reply 
to Durant, “but I really 
don't care. The world 
may take them or leave 
them. I have had my fun 
hatching them." In con- 
trast, atheism is nowadays 
essentially a project of 
conversion. Universal un- 
belief, today's atheists are 
unshakably convinced, 
will bring about a new 
world of rationality and 
progress. There the con- 
sensus ends, however. For 
just as most of the world's 
religions have fought over 
the central tenets of their faith, so these 
evangelists for godlessness are locked in 
contention as to what atheism means for 
ethics and politics. Now, as in the past, 
unbelievers are as much at war with one 
another as they are with believers. 

At present the most influential atheists 
are liberal humanists. It would no more 
occur to Richard Dawkins that an athe- 
ist would reject liberal values of freedom 
and equality than that he or she would 
take up witchcraft. A world that had 
abandoned religion would be far from 
perfect, he would admit, but it would 
surely realize liberal ideals more fully 
than the one we live in. For Dawkins, as 
for most well-known unbelievers today, 
atheism and liberal humanism are sides 
ofa single coin. 

In historical terms this is an extremely 
parochial view. Many atheist thinkers 
have been critics or outright opponents 
of liberal values, while a campaigning 
form of atheism was an integral part of 
some of the last century's most despotic 
regimes. In believing that religion could 
be relegated to the past, Lenin and 
Trotsky were unquestionably secular hu- 
manists; they were also virulently anti- 
liberal. An incessant war against religion 
has been integral to communist regimes 
everywhere in the world. The intellectual 
founder of French fascism, Charles 
Maurras, was a convinced atheist, but he 
also favored the church as a buttress of 
state power. Most of the leading Nazis— 
atheists whose worldview was shaped 
by a vulgarized version of Friedrich 
Nietzsche's ideas and a distorted form of 
Darwinism—looked to a future in which 
Christianity and Judaism would be exter- 
minated and replaced by a revamped ver- 
sion of paganism. If fascism and Nazism 
had triumphed in Europe, any religion 
that remained would have done so only 
asa state cult. In much of the past centu- 
ry, it was militant atheism and totalitarian- 
ism that were sides of the same coin. 


Evangelists for 


godlessness are 
locked in con- 
tention as to 
what atheism 
means for eth- 


ics and politics. 


Evangelical atheism's links with illiber- 
al values are not only a matter of history. 
"Today in America, an atheist faction has 
joined forces with Christian fundamen- 
talists in the Tea Party. The churchgoing 
habits of libertarian former congressman 
Ron Paul did not stop him 
from professing his ad- 
miration for the rabidly 
atheist novelist Ayn Rand. 
In an improbable-looking 
alliance with Christian 
evangelicals, Rand's dis- 
ciples have promoted a 
fantastical vision of the 
{тее market. Happily, 
there is as much prospect 
that laissez-faire capital- 
ism will ever come into 
being as there is of real- 
izing Lenin's hideous uto- 
pia. For the most part, the 
free market invoked by Rand is a mythic 
version of an American past that never 
existed. After all, the American economy 
was founded on federal subsidy, pro- 
tectionism and, for a time, slavery—not 
the free market. Even so the appeal 
of Rand's ideas will persist, since, like 
many supposedly secular belief systems, 


CHARLES DARWIN SHORTLY BEFORE HIS 
DEATH IN 1882; HIS THEORIES DON'T PROVIDE 
THE ONLY RATIONAL VIEW OF THE WORLD. 


Rand's philosophy offers the comforts of 
faith while insisting it is based on reason. 

Atheism today is mostly a cult of sci- 
ence. For Dawkins and others who attack 
religion, science—particularly Darwin's 
theory of evolution—provides the only 
rational view of the world. Scientific in- 
quiry is not for these atheists simply the 
most reliable tool humans have invent- 
ed for getting to know the world; it is a 
means to salvation, the only way through 


BELIEVERS AND ATHEISTS AT THE REASON 
RALLY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.: DO ATHEISTS 
NEED TO BE SO INTOLERANT? 


which humankind can find deliverance 
from immemorial evils of ignorance and 
on. There have been many vari- 
ants of this kind of atheism, but in each 
case a type of pseudoscience was used 
to give intellectual legitimacy to a po- 
litical program—a development rightly 
cribed as scientism. A version of evo- 
lutionary theory shaped the thinking of 
Ernst Haeckel, the “German Darwin." 
Giving scientific authority to the idea 
of racial hierarchy and founding a new, 
anti-Christian and anti-Semitic religion 
of monism that attracted 
a significant following in 
German-speaking cen- 
tral Europe, Haeckel was 
one of the thinkers who 
formed the intellectual 
climate from which Nazi 
"scientific racism" devel- 
oped. Aiming at a new 
world of another kind, So- 
viet "scientific atheism" ex- 
emplified a similar pattern 
of thinking. Though its 
adherents profess liberal 
values, the "new" Darwin- 
jan atheism is not much more than a re- 
cycled version of 19th century scientism. 

Rand was unusual in basing her system 
on an ersatz brand of philosophy rather 
than pseudoscience, but she too recycled 
the ideas of an earlier time. Growing up 
in Russia, from which she emigrated in 
1926 at the age of 20, she (like many 
other young Russians) was steeped in 
the writings of Nietzsche. In the first edi- 
tion of her earliest published novel, We 
the Living (1936), the heroine—a stand- 
in for Rand herself—tells her Bolshevik 


There is noth- 
ing new in 
the fusion of 
atheism with 


worship of the 


market. 


lover that the masses are nothing but 
“mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to 
be burned.” These and similar passages 
were prudently removed from later edi- 
tions of the book, but there can be no 
doubt that they illustrate a Nietzschean 


strand in Rand (even if it was a crudely 


simplified version of Nietzsche's think- 
ing that she drew on). What Rand did 
was Americanize Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, 
turning the German thinker's fantasy 
into an embodiment of intransigent 
italism. In a bold exercise in syncre- 

a superhuman elite became the 
heroic entrepreneurs of right-wing folk 
lore. If he could have known what was 
to become of the myth he had created, 
Nietzsche—who, along 
with nearly all German 
intellectuals of the period, 
hated capitalism—would 
have turned in his grave. 
Yet thereis nothing new 
in the fusion of atheism 
with worship of the mar- 
ket. The idea of "the sur- 
vival of the fittest” origi- 
nates not with Darwin but 
with the Victorian soci- 
ologist Herbert Spencer, 
who used it to promote 
laissez-faire capitalism. 
Rand's thought has no serious intellectu- 
al content, but that has not prevented it 
from being taken seriously by people ig- 
norant of the history of ideas. Famously, 
former chair of the Federal Reserve Alan 
Greenspan was a youthful devotee. In 
later years he strayed from the faith, but 
he never lost Rand's certainty that free 
market capitalism is the only rational eco- 
nomic system. While the economy over 
which he presided for nearly 20 years 
could never have matched that dream, 
he seemed to have been genuinely 


FORUM 


Y 
READER RESPONSE 


remember two—oil companies 
and churches. What was the third? 
Michael Marder 
Suffern, New York 
Organized crime. The article was 
"How to Abolish the Personal Income 
Tax" (April 1967). 


PLAYBOY ON THE PLANE 

I read the letters in December from 
readers who had been asked on 
Southwest flights to put away their 
PLAYBOYS. I had the same experi- 
ence in 2006 on a Delta flight from 
Atlanta to Seattle. An hour into the 
flight an attendant knelt beside me 


in the front row and politely said, 
“The lady in row thre bothered 
by your reading mate: After a 
moment's thought, I replied, “Аз 
long as the First Amendment is in 
force, tell her I will continue to read 
my magazine." The attendant whis- 
pered, "I agree.” Soon after, I went 
to the lavatory and caught sight of 
what the woman was reading—the 
National Enquirer! Y would love to 
see airline lawyers convince a jury 
that reading a magazine somehow 
interferes with a flight crew. 

Mark Merchant 

Snellville, Georgia 


KEYNESIAN PUSHBACK 


I thought a near-trillion-dollar 
giveaway—a.k.a. "stimulus 
package"—plus a trillion dol- 

lars a year in welfare payments 
that led to a trillion-dollar-a-year 
deficit was Keynesian economics 
("We're All Animals," November). 
Deficit spending can stimulate the 
economy, but spending that does 
not create jobs is futile. Strong, 
business is required for all these 
humanitarian programs to exist. 


Mike Stevens 
Dayton, Ohio 


CUTTING THE FAT 


I applaud Mayor Michael Bloom- 
berg's efforts to ban supersize sodas 


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READER RESPONSE 


in New York City ("Hands Off My 
Big Gulp," October). As someone 
who exercises and doesn't smoke 
or consume soda and fast food, 

I don't appreciate having my tax 


dollars pay the medical bills of the 
physically irresponsible. To eat well 
can be costly, and that is where I 
would like to see efforts focused— 
on healthy food that's affordable. 
Bloomberg's proposal is a first step 
toward reeling in portion sizes. 
Now if he would just impose restric- 
tions on the size of SUV gas tanks. 


Lesley Merkle 
Hudson, Massachusetts 


FLEEING THE BURBS 

Eric Klinenberg, in his analysis of 

the sprawl of the U.S. over the past. 

60 years ("The Suburbs Are Dead," 

January/February), notes there will 

be a huge surplus of “large-lot” 

houses, which he defines as those 

built on a sixth ofan acre or more. 

But the definition varies; some say 

a "large lot" is an acre or more, 

the minimum needed for a septic 

system. "Urban" development does 

not occur until you have about 

12 dwellings per acre, which is 

when there is enough ridership 

to support public transit. Thus, 

the detached single-family home 

is the father of suburbia because 

it increases dependence on autos. 

Young people today may start 

families later, but when they do, 

they will want single-family homes. 

The suburbs will continue to grow, 

just slightly closer together. 
Jeramiah Yeksavich 
Vernon Hills, Illinois 


baffled when the system came close to 
collapse in the financial crisis. 

The meltdown helps explain the alli- 
ance of Christian evangelicals and mili- 
tant atheists on the American right. The 
apocalyptic mood that many have ob- 
served on the Republican right express- 
es a crisis of faith. Whatever its flaws, the 
American capitalism that melted down 
in the crash of 2007-2009 was for these 
true believers—religious and secular—a 
model that would ultimately be adopt- 
ed everywhere. Leaving the U.S. just 
one country among many struggling to 
adapt to the bursting of a global debt 


bubble, the crisis shattered this view of 
the world. In the disorientation that fol- 
lowed, opposed ideas and beliefs came 
together in some curious mixes. 
Republican vice presidential candi- 
date Paul Ryan's flirtation with Friedrich 
Hayek is a case in point. Unlike Rand, 
Hayek was a serious think- 
er; he produced the most. 
compelling account of why 
central economic planning 
fails. However, when Ryan 
claimed to have imbibed 
Hayek’s ideas and handed 
out copies of The Road to 
Serfdom to staffers, he can- 
not have known what the 
Austrian thinker believed 
about the role of govern- 
ment. Certainly, as his po- 
lemical tract attests, Hayek 
was a strong critic of the postwar expan- 
sion of government. But, as his fiery writ- 
ing shows, he also favored a state-funded 
welfare system that Ryan and his Tea 
Party followers would regard with hor- 
ror. A product of the final years of the 
Habsburg Empire, Hayek, a Nobel Prize- 
winning economist, was no doctrinaire 
antistatist. Talking with Hayek at length 
when I knew him in the 1980s, I found 
that a common joke about him—that for 
him minimum government meant the 
army, the justice system and the state 


“Darwinian” 
atheists think 
of religion asa 


primitive kind 


of scientific 
theory. 


opera—accurately encapsulated his out- 
look. It is only Hayek’s disciples who are 
fanatics for minimum government. 

А devout Catholic, Ryan would have 
been even more horrified had he known 
Hayek’s views on religion. Much influ- 
enced by the physicist and philosopher 
Ernst Mach, a supporter of Haeckel's 
monism who believed science to be the 
only source of human knowledge, Hayck 
viewed religion in quasi-Darwinian 
terms. Holding to a theory of group evo- 
lution that has more in common with 
Spencer than with anything Darwin 
proposed, Hayek speculated that there 


might be something akin to natural se- 
lection among religions, in which those 
that advocated social order prevailed 
over the rest. Far from supposing with 
Dawkins that science renders religion re- 
dundant, Hayek believed science could 
show religion to be humanly indispens- 
able. Whatever the merits 
of Hayek's theory, it is ап 
important insight. "Dar- 
winian" atheists imagine 
that evolution and reli- 
gion are bound to be at 
odds because they think 
of religion as a primitive 
kind of scientific theory. 
But if you think of it as 
a set of human practices, 
religion must itself have 
an evolutionary function 
and explanation. Recog- 
nizing this did not make Hayek any kind 
of believer, since rather than showing re- 
ligion to be true, his account renders the 
idea of any divine power redundant. 
Though their alignment in the Tea 
Party may seem anomalous, evangeli- 
cal Christians and militant atheists have 
more in common than appears at first 
glance. In the context of the contempo- 
тагу American right, both are versions 
of fundamentalism. The fundamental- 
ist mind-set is not confined to those 
who obey what they regard as the divine 


authority of scripture. It shows itself 
wherever human beings seek safety in a 
text or a doctrine. Fundamentalist athe- 
ism and evangelical religion are alike in 
offering the peace of mind that goes with 
freedom from thought. 

In fact, atheism has little to offer 
anybody. Contemporary unbelief is a 
hollowed-out version of monotheism— 
a cult of human deliverance lacking 
the beauty and flashes 
of wisdom of traditional 
faiths. Yet defined prop- 
erly, atheism is an en- 
tirely negative position. 
An atheist is anyone who 
has no use for the con- 
cepts and doctrines of 
theism—and there have 
always been people who 
fit that description with- 
out wanting to turn un- 
belief into a missionary 
enterprise. Atheism is one 
thing, secular humanism another. Some 
atheists, such as Mencken, reject religion 
with contempt while having little interest 
in persuading others to adopt their view 
of things. Others, such as the sadly little- 
read Spanish American philosopher and 
novelist George Santayana, have been 
notably friendly to religion, whose sym- 
bols and images they see as composing 
a kind of transcendent poetry—an at- 


HERBERT SPENCER: HIS "SURVIVAL OF THE 
FITTEST" PROVED CONVENIENT TO THOSE 
WHO WANTED A LAISSEZ-FAIRE SOCIETY. 


titude that, as an atheist myself in the 
proper meaning of the term, I admire 
and share. Atheists have loved democ- 
racy and despised it; some atheists ex- 
coriate the free market, while others 
adore it. The fact is that nothing much 
follows—either historically or as a matter 
of logic—from rejecting theism. 


Imagining that 


rationalism 

could change 
humannature 
isthe height of 


unreason. 


The confusion that results when this 
fact isn't grasped is illustrated in “Atheism 
Plus," a recent internet-based movement 
that seeks to align evangelical unbeliev- 
ers with strong liberal positions on issues 
of sex and justice. Despite the aura of. 
political correctness that surrounds the 
movement, these are mostly good causes, 
but they have nothing to do with athe- 
ism. Religious believers have often been 

homophobic, but there 
are gays who are believers 
and believers who are not 
gay who actively reject dis- 
crimination on grounds of 
sexual orientation. Again, 
religious believers have of- 
ten been misogynistic, but 
the churches are divided 
today because significant 
numbers of believers re- 
ject past misogyny. It is 
only a willful simplicity 
of mind that turns these 
many-sided conflicts into contests be- 
tween belief and unbelief. 

Fleeting ripples on the surface of 
events, each of the currently contend- 
ing versions of proselytizing atheism has 
come and gone many times in the past. 
Even where they have gained control of 
government and wreaked immense de- 
struction they have in the end left reli- 
gion as strong as it has always been, as can 
be seen in postcommunist Russia. More 
than any in the past, the current genera- 
tion of atheists is ignorant of history. But 
their lack of knowledge is the result not 
only of an inadequate education; like 
the invincible ignorance described by 
medieval theologians, their disregard of 
the past is an act of will. If they allowed 
themselves a sense of history, their lives 
would be emptied of meaning. 

Unwittingly, evangelical atheists dem- 
onstrate the enduring power of faith. 
Imagining that a new wave of rationalism 
could change the nature of human beings 
is the height of unreason. More than the 
passing beliefs through which human- 
kind seeks to escape its insignificance, it is 
unchanging needs—for food and water, 
security and power—that are the chief 
drivers of human conflict. In thinking 
that a shift of belief systems could trans- 
form the human scene, these atheists are 
possessed by a myth. Yet there need be 
nothing dispiriting in their stilted poses 
of righteous rationality. The pretense of 
reason is part of the human comedy, and 
for those who understand and accept this 
fact the spectacle will evoke a smile. The 
atheist wars will pass and soon be forgot- 
ten. As long as they last, however, 25 
are absurdly amusing. 


John Gray is professor emeritus at the Lon- 
don School of Economics and author of The 
Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other 
Modern Myths. 


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READER RESPONSE 


While the poverty rate may have 
grown faster in the suburbs than 
in the cities, there are far fewer 
people in the suburbs, so the over- 
all number of poor people there 
is still far smaller than in urban 
areas. Klinenberg uses deroga- 
tory language and analogies to 
describe suburbia and its vacant. 
office parks, implying that cor- 
porations are fleeing to the cities. 
In fact, a lot of office space is not 
needed because we have become 
telecommuters. In addition, cities 
are offering corporations sweet- 
heart deals to relocate, yet most 
corporations still eschew the cities. 
Klinenberg asserts the only salva- 
tion for the suburbs is to be incor- 
porated. He should have simply 


said he would like the wealth of 
the suburbs redistributed to bol- 
ster the dwindling tax base of the 
cities. Instead he demands that 
readers feel guilty about being 
anything other than urbanites. 
Michael Morran 
Tampa, Florida 


Population growth is going to 
drive the integration of the sub- 
urbs. Soon enough, living in a 
“rural” community may mean 
living in the burbs of a megacity- 
center complex. I have yet to 
see a vision of a futuristic city 
that isn't littered with businesses 
mixed with housing. Personally, 
ГЇЇ take the suburbs. 


Cain Sands 
Concord, California 


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


53 


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nos CLIVE DAVIS 


A candid conversation with music's most successful exec about Whitney Hous- 
ton's death, Janis Joplin’s come-on and teaching Bruce Springsteen to dance 


When the first CD was released in 1982, 
it wasn't named after Clive Davis, but it 
wouldn't be surprising if it had been. Davis 
is the most influential and successful record 
company executive in the history of the music 
business. It's difficult to think of a megastar 
or band he hasn't worked with. He discov- 
ered, nurtured, produced and/or promoted 
Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, the Grate- 
ful Dead, Billy Joel, Simon & Garfunkel, 
Santana, Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart, Barry 
Manilow, Puff Daddy, Loggins and Messina, 
Pink Floyd, Kenny G, Christina Aguilera, 
Harry Connick Jr., Patti Smith, American 
Idol singers Clay Aiken and Kelly Clark- 
son, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews Band, the 
Kinks, Luther Vandross and many others. 
Whitney Houston, one of the stars with whom 
he was closest, called him her industry father. 

Davis grew up in a middle-class family in 
Brooklyn. His parents died when he was a 
teenager. Orphaned and poor, he went on to 
receive full scholarships to NYU and then Har- 
vard Law School. After graduating he became 
an attorney at CBS, which owned Columbia 
Records. Before long, he was running the label. 
The first act he acquired for Columbia was the 
legendary Janis Joplin, who, after the deal was 
signed, famously propositioned him, “You and 
I are connected... We are an intimate part of 


each other’s life now.” And, as Davis once put 
it, “she used the common four-letter street term 
for us to get together more intimately than the 
signing of a contract.” 

Over the years, other prominent music- 
business executives fell by the wayside as the 
industry went through seismic changes—LPs, 
eight-track tapes, cassettes, CDs, iTunes and 
the internet. Piracy cut into sales, and compa- 
nies merged, bought one another and, often, 
disappeared. Davis, however, thrived. He ran 
Columbia, founded Arista and J Records, 
partnered with Puff Daddy on Bad Boy Re- 
cords, collected four Grammys and two hon- 
orary awards from the Recording Academy, 
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of 
Fame and endowed the Clive Davis Institute 
of Recorded Music at NYU. Each year for al- 
most 40 years, Davis, who has four children, 
has thrown a now-legendary pre-Grammy 
Awards party, which almost every name star 
has attended. This year he released his second 
autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life. 
In an industry that would seem to be a young 
man's game, 80-year-old Davis is chief cre- 
ative officer of Sony Music, which is produc- 
ing new albums by Jennifer Hudson, Aretha 
Franklin and X Factor winner Melanie 
Amaro, among others. He's also working on a 
Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. 


Contributing Editor David Sheft, who has 
conducted Playboy Interviews with musicians 
including John Lennon, Sting, Frank Zappa 
and Billy Joel, met Davis at his penthouse of- 
fice in the Manhattan Sony building. Sheff 
reports: “At 80, Davis seems in better shape 


than the music business, which is struggling 
to reinvent itself in the era of iTunes, Spotify 


and profligate illegal downloading. Though 
he’s worked with countless artists—the biggest 
names of our time—he clearly had a particu- 
larly close relationship with Houston. When 
he spoke about her, he became wistful.” 


PLAYBOY: By all accounts you were more 
than colleagues with Whitney Houston. 
You were friends. Where were you when 
you heard that she'd died? 

was in Los Angeles. It was before 
the Grammys and my annual party. 
PLAYBOY: Were you blindsided? 

DAVIS: It was a complete shock, shattering. 
PLAYBOY: In 2009 Houston appeared 
on Oprah and admitted she had a drug 
problem—she was addicted to marijuana 
and freebase cocaine—but she'd gone 
through rehab and was clean. When you 
saw her prior to the Grammys, did you 
detect that she was using agai 
DAVIS: I've read there was behavior that 


“Pue always been bothered by the image of the 
record executive as the gold-chain-wearing, 
finger-snapping, almost shady character. The 
real leaders of the music industry have been 
incredibly bright, talented minds.” 


“I am very clear on this. Piracy is illegal, and 
whatever is needed to protect our creative art- 
ists must be done. In no way is anyone entitled 
to someone else's creativity for free. It's not 
fair. It's not right.” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID ROSE 
“With fewer rock stations, how do you find the 
next Dylan? Where is the next Springsteen? The 
artists who broke in the past few years came out of 
the singles world —out of electronic dance music— 
and they don't show the artistry of a Dylan." 


55 


PLAYBOY 


56 


hinted there was a problem, but she was 
quite coherent with me that whole week. 
Her spirits were great. She was very 
much looking forward to coming to the 
party. There was no indication of drugs. 
PLAYBOY: Were there no red flags at all? 
DAVIS: As I said, she was coherent and 
there was no indication of drugs, but 
of course she did have a problem with 
cigarettes. We were trying to get her to 
stop smoking. We were working with 
her on that. 

PLAYBOY: Cigarettes would seem to be a 
trivial concern for someone with a his- 
tory of serious drug problems. 

DAVIS: It was a serious problem because 
it affected her singing—the upper range 
of her singing. She would say, “I kicked 
the drug habit, but this is more difficult." 
She had cut back on cigarettes, but the 
week she died she came to my bungalow 
and said, “I understand I can't just cut 
back. Гуе got to stop. I promise I will.” 
PLAYBOY: Earlier, when she admitted her 
addiction, had you been aware ofthe ex- 
tent ofher drug use? 

DAVIS: I signed her in 1983 but only be- 
came aware ofany problem in maybe the 
mid-1990s. By that time we had quite a 
successful collaboration going. We were 
very close. Many artists come with their 
songs, and you might steer them, help 
them find a producer, suggest songs, but 
when you’re more involved, producing 
the albums, supervising them, and you 
spend much more time on the firing line 
with them, it does lead to a close relation- 
ship. In spite of that, I didn't know she 
was in trouble. I didn't know how bad 
her problem was. It was after a Michael 
Jackson concert at Madison Square Gar- 
den in the late 1990s when I knew. She 
showed up ghastly thin. I met with her. I 
did what I could. 

PLAYBOY: Which was? 

DAVIS: She called me her industry father, 
and I felt like that. We talked about the 
drugs she was using, but that doesn't 
mean she could respond to my con- 
cerns, because you can't deal with drugs 
in a logical way—you can't just talk to a 
person and ask them to stop. It doesn't 
work that way. A person has to get an 
awareness of their problem. 

PLAYBOY: Was she aware? 

DAVIS: Not then, or maybe she didn't 
want to admit it to me. They say a per- 
son has to sink to the bottom. Whether 
they do or not, I don't know. But I tried 
to help her. I tried to work with the fam- 
ily to help her. She did better for a long 
time, at least as far as I knew. 

PLAYBOY: Your annual Grammy party 
was scheduled to begin hours after you 
learned that she'd died. Did you consid- 
er canceling it? 

DAVIS: It didn't occur to me. She loved 
that evening. She had come to the party 
every year for I don't know how long. 
She performed or was a guest at it. An 
evening devoted to music was something 
she loved. 


PLAYBOY: Was it difficult for you to fulfill 
your role as host? 

DAVIS: Yes. The challenge for me as MC 
was to muster the energy to do what I 
had to do. I was stunned, but I had to 
do it. I knew everything had changed, 
of course. We turned the evening into a 
tribute to her. And it went on. The show 
must go on, right? You've got to do 
what's appropriate in her memory, and 
that is what we did. 

PLAYBOY: Houston is one of many per- 
formers who died young, many of them 
because of drugs. In fact, the first act 
you signed, Janis Joplin, overdosed and 
died. Were you aware of her drug and 
alcohol problems? 

DAVIS: No. That degree of closeness 
was never there with Janis. I knew she 
drank Jack Daniel's, but it never dawned 
on me that there was a serious drug 
problem. I think the only artist during 
that era whose problem I knew about 
was Sly [of Sly and the Family Stone]. I 
knew him as an industrious, energetic 
guy who called me at home on weck- 
ends, and when he'd make plans to go 
to the studio, he wouldn't show up. But 


I didn't know how bad 
Whitney's problem was. It 
was after a Michael Jackson 
concert in the late 1990s when 
I knew. She showed up ghastly 
thin. I did what I could. 


I was so green when it came to drugs. 
I didn't really know about them then. 
When people visit the head of a record 
company, they're usually on their best 
behavior, even artists. They would keep 
that away from me, so I never saw that 
side. There was nothing in my relation- 
ship with Janis or with Sly that prepared 
me for the severity of her death or for 
his ultimate involuntary retirement. 
PLAYBOY: More recently, Michael Jackson 
and Amy Winehouse both died because 
of substance abuse. Earlier there was 
Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix and many 
others. Is there a particular kind of pres- 
sure in the music business that has led 
so many stars to self-destruct? Is it the 
fame or the scrutiny they're under? Is it 
a false sense of invulnerability? Entitle- 
ment? Or are artists in general more 
sensitive and therefore more prone to 
use drugs to cope? 

DAVIS: I don't know if it’s harder for 
people in the music business than in any 
other business. I don't know what the 
statistics would show. Do more people 
in this business struggle in life? Do they 
have more problems with drugs? I don't 


know. Yes, there are people who died, 
but there are many who live long lives 
and have careers that extend over their 
lives. People like Bruce Springsteen. 
There are many. I don't think the music 
business has more casualties compared 
with film or TV. I'm reading these stories 
about Macaulay Culkin. There was Judy 
Garland, Marilyn Monroe. What about 
writers? There are certainly great writ- 
ers who had alcohol problems—Eugene 
O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. 
PLAYBOY: Do some stars have a harder 
time handling fame than others? 

DAVIS: Yes, and I have seen the extra 
pressure that comes with fame, which 
can be seductive and corrupting. If fame 
is added to the equation, maybe it be- 
comes difficult for some people to cope. 
PLAYBOY: There are many stories about 
fame and rock stars—their excesses, and 
not only in relation to drugs. They've fa- 
mously destroyed hotel rooms. Some in- 
sist on only red M&M's in their dressing 
rooms. Have you had to deal with that 
kind of behavior? 

DAVIS: My experience with all the hotel- 
room stuff is limited to what I read in the 
magazines. The biggest argument I had 
was probably with Ray Davies and his 
brother of the Kinks. I'm not trying to 
be lily-white. I just didn't see it. Maybe I 
was lucky with the artists I worked with. 
Patti Smith would occasionally urinate 
onstage, though never when I was there. 
I don't know exactly how she pulled it 
off or what it meant. 

PLAYBOY: Was it sometimes hard to get 
artists to take the business side seriously? 
Rock stars are often portrayed as treat- 
ing the business executives—the "suits," 
as they refer to them—dismissively. 
DAVIS: If you're saying they're disdain- 
ful of the business side, I would take 
issue with that. It might not have been 
fashionable for them to admit that busi- 
ness entered their thinking, but the ma- 
jor artists always made sure they had 
the best lawyers and the best business 
negotiators to get the best deals possible. 
"They all did think about it. Most of the 
artists Гуе worked with were very astute. 
PLAYBOY: It takes more than a good busi- 
ness sense for someone to discover art- 
ists of the caliber of the musicians with 
whom you've worked. Do you attribute 
your track record to an ear for hits? 
DAVIS: I was unaware at first that I might. 
have an ear for music. I never thought 
about it. But just trusting my instinct, 
I started signing. It’s common sense, 
knowing a hit. 

PLAYBOY: How do you know a hit? 

DAVIS: Part of it is hard work. I still to 
this day take home tapes of all the hits 
in every genre to listen to, because mu- 
sic keeps changing. Many of my peers, 
and many artists, will deliver songs that 
could have been a hit five or 10 years 
ago, but they're not at all aware that mu- 
sic has changed. So a lot of it is prepara- 
tion. It's hard work. I study what people 


are listening to. I've always listened to 
every hit in the Top 40—to every record 
that makes the chart, whether it's a hit or 
not. I don't mean the top 10 hits of the 
"Top 40. I always listen to the new entries 
and R&B, hip-hop and rock so I keep 
my ears current. 

PLAYBOY: But listening to a lot of music 
isn't enough. If it were, there would 
be countless successes in your business, 
when in fact there are few. 

DAVIS: I didn't necessarily have an ear, 
but I think I developed one. Wheth- 
er there was a natural ear that was 
triggered, I don't know the answer to 
that. But when you see a Joplin or a 
Springsteen, you know. And the statistics 
start mounting and give you confidence. 
You think, My God, yeah, I did say yes 
to Santana. 

PLAYBOY: Did you listen to music when 
you were growing up? 

DAVIS: I didn't collect records, but I lis- 
tened to the radio. I always listened to 
[1940s and 1950s DJ] Martin Block. I 
would listen, but I was not an avid music 
fan to the point that there was any sign 
music was going to become the passion 
of my life. It was not a calling I knew ex- 
isted within me. It was something I dis- 
covered later. 

PLAYBOY: Did you become a fan of any 
particular artist? 

DAVIS: Sinatra was one. At first he 
just seemed like a pop craze—women 
screaming and the teenyboppers and 
bobby-soxers—but it became clear that 
he was unique. He combined pop mu- 
sic and jazz. He crossed every barrier. 
Beyond him, my background was much 
more in the theatrical tradition. I was 
bowled over when I saw Oklahoma! and 
Carousel. My respect for songwriting 
came from the tradition of Rodgers and 
Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, and 
Cole Porter. I think America's greatest 
contribution to music has been, along- 
side jazz, the great American songwriters 
in the theatrical tradition. 

PLAYBOY: When did you first begin to 
think about signing musicians? 

DAVIS: I had finished my freshman year 
of college and lost both parents within 
10 months of each other. I had a sup- 
port group with a sister and an aunt with 
whom I was close, but that was a tough 
time. I was in a Jewish family and grew 
up in the public school system of New 
York, and there was a work ethic that I 
was left with that said the way you rise 
above your station is to become either a 
doctor or a lawyer. I never loved science, 
but I did love politics and government, 
зо I became an attorney. By some acci- 
dent, the company I worked for owned a 
record company. Soon I was running it. 
"That's when I went to the Monterey Pop 
Festival. It was the 1960s and the time of 
Haight-Ashbury, but I had no idea what 
awaited me. I thought the Monterey Pop 
Festival was a social event where I would 
see Simon & Garfunkel and the Mamas 


and the Papas and be with my friend [the 
producer] Lou Adler. My life changed 
there. I sensed a total social, cultural, 
musical revolution, and my peers in the 
music business had no idea. They didn't 
see it; they just were not there. That's 
probably the epiphany that changed my 
life. Janis Joplin was performing there, 
and I went on to sign her. 

PLAYBOY: There's a legendary story that 
Janis Joplin propositioned you. What 
happened? 

DAVIS: She volunteered. Let's just say that. 
PLAYBOY: And? 

DAVIS: I declined. But in spite of that, I 
knew she was brilliant. When she sang 
you just felt something. It's hard to de- 
scribe it when you hear it, but you know. 
It happened with Whitney, Patti Smith. 
There are the clichés—yes, you feel a 
tingle in your spine. 

PLAYBOY: Did you feel it when you first 
heard Bruce Springsteen? 

DAVIS: The Bruce Springsteen we know 
now isn't the one I saw that first time. 
I was impressed by his lyrics but not 
by him as a performer. I never knew 
Springsteen would develop into a rock- 


I didn't necessarily have an 
ear, but I think I developed 
one. But when you see a 
Joplin or a Springsteen, you 
know. And the statistics give 
you confidence. 


and-roll performer second to none. He 
started out as a folksinger standing qui- 
etly onstage, singing his songs. 

In 1971, when Bill Graham closed the 
Fillmore East and Fillmore West, jour- 
nalists were saying, "Is this the death of 
rock and roll?" Of course it wasn't. In 
1973 I decided to take over the Ahman- 
son Theater in Los Angeles for seven 
consecutive nights. Every night I put 
on shows that paired artists, mixing and 
matching classical, rock, pop and jazz. 
I put on Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Or- 
chestra, New Riders of the Purple Sage, 
Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Mathis, 
Loudon Wainwright. I did it to show the 
vitality and variation of rock. Three acts 
each night. It became clear the music 
was not dead. 

For one of these shows, Bruce per- 
formed. His career had just begun. He 
gets on the stage with his guitar and 
just stands there. He plays and sings his 
songs and does nothing else. Embold- 
ened by the confidence I was gaining 
from my signings, afterward I said to 
him, "Bruce, when you're onstage like 
that you can't just stand there. You've 


got to move." He was listening, but I 
didn't think he was really absorbing 
what I was saying. Two years later, still 
before he had broken big, he was play- 
ing the Bottom Line in New York. It had 
maybe 500 seats. Га started Arista Re- 
cords by then. Га signed Bruce when I 
was still at Columbia, so I wasn't working 
with him at the time, but his manager, 
Jon Landau, said, “You’ve got to come. 
Bruce very badly wants you to come." 

I went down to the Bottom Line and 
was astonished. This was not the Bruce 
Springsteen I had signed. He was not 
sitting quietly on the stage. He was not 
walking around the stage. He was jump- 
ing on tables, literally jumping off the 
stage. After the concert I went backstage, 
and he looked up and said, “Did I move 
around enough for you?" He became 
a great performer, one of the best. But 
that's not why I had signed him. I signed 
him for his lyrics. 

PLAYBOY: How do you sell an artist to the 
public based on his lyrics? 

DAVIS: I went on closed-circuit TV to 
speak to all the Columbia branches. The 
employees were in their offices, and I 
read every lyric to every song on the 
album. I said, "This is not another Bob 
Dylan." There were too many of those. 
If you ask me who American music's 
poet laureate for these past decades has 
been, it would be very tough to decide 
whether it's Dylan or Springsteen. The 
two of them are in a rarefied category 
together, but they're very different. I 
was trying to show that this new artist's 
imagery was like nothing anyone had 
ever heard before. But even though I 
knew he was a brilliant songwriter, at 
that time I didn't know where he was 
going as a live performer. 

PLAYBOY: Was there a particular Spring- 
steen song that sold you on him as a 
songwriter? 

DAVIS: When Bruce sent me what was 
to be Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., 
I said, “You know, the quality of what 
you're doing is great, and I love it, but 
let me just draw your attention to the 
fact that we need, in my opinion, one or 
two more songs for this to have a com- 
mercial impact." I said, "You've got to 
be very careful when you do those. You 
are capable of writing great melodies as 
well as lyrics, but would you consider 
doing one or two additional songs that 
might be more radio-friendly, because 
we're going to need them to help spread 
the word about you?" He took it in the 
right spirit. He immediately went back 
to the drawing board and came up with 
"Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the 
Night." I vividly remember listening to 
those two songs and being thrilled that 
they were being added to the album. 
PLAYBOY: What artists did you have the 
greatest influence on as they developed? 
DAVIS: Barry Manilow is one. I had just 
formed Arista Records when he was 
brought to my attention. Barry was 


PLAYBOY 


58 


unknown. He'd had one album that 
might have sold 10,000 copies. He was 
mainly an arranger and a piano player 
for Bette Midler. My appraisal of him 
came when he was opening for Dionne 
Warwick in Central Park. He was a 
gifted entertainer. I could see that. A 
gifted showman. I signed him because 
I thought he was unusual in his cha- 
risma and in his delivery. My plan 
was that I would find songs for him to 
record—hit songs. What I didn't know 
was that the most important thing for 
him was songwriting. Since he consid- 
ered himself a songwriter, he didn't 
necessarily want to hear “You write 
good songs, but they aren't hits, and 
you need hits—a continuity of hits." 
PLAYBOY: How did you convince him to 
record songs he hadn't written? 

DAVIS: He was resistant, but I was head 
of this brand-new company, and he had 
the insecurity of not knowing whether 
his contract would be picked up. And so 
he agreed. 

PLAYBOY: Who else besides Manilow did 
you choose songs for? 

DAVIS: I found so many songs that Barry 
couldn't use them all. I thought, I've 
got to look for a female singer. I found 
Melissa Manchester. I gave her hit songs, 
but like Barry she also considered her- 
self a songwriter. Her resistance to my 
advice led to her separating from Arista. 
Next I signed Dionne Warwick. That led 
to Aretha, and Aretha led to Whitney. 
PLAYBOY: How did you begin working 
with Houston? 

DAVIS: I signed Whitney nine years af- 
ter I'd started Arista Records. She and 
I formed a creative partnership. I'd find 
90 songs and bring them to her and to- 
gether we'd narrow them down to 12 
or so that she would record. From the 
beginning we worked like that. When 
you're involved like that, you work very 
closely and become close—it's an inti- 
mate relationship. I would pick the pro- 
ducers, supervise the albums. 

PLAYBOY: As trends changed—folk rock, 
rock, disco, hip-hop, whatever it was— 
did you look for specific genres of music? 
DAVIS: You follow what's happening. 
You are constantly trying to determine 
what's radio-friendly. 

PLAYBOY: What's the most radio-friendly 
music today? 

DAVIS: You don't have to be a rocket 
scientist to know that today's Top 40 is 
dominated by electronic dance music. 
PLAYBOY: It's followed years when hip- 
hop and rap emerged. What did you 
think when you first heard them? 

DAVIS: I knew hip-hop was coming and 
that urban music was changing. I signed 
Gil Scott-Heron, who was very influen- 
tial on rap. I started LaFace Records 
with L.A. Reid and Babyface [Kenneth 
Edmonds], who wrote for TLC, Usher 
and Outkast, which became a real hip- 
hop breakthrough. 

PLAYBOY: You had LaFace, so why did 


you next enter into a relationship with 
Sean Combs, forming a new rap label, 
Bad Boy Records? 

DAVIS: His mission was really to develop 
the creative hip-hop revolution, and 
he did that. When we met, all of what 
he played for me was unique and spe- 
cial. He had Craig Mack's single "Flava 
in Ya Ear" that he played for me, and 
he had about four or five cuts from the 
Notorious B.I.G. He also had this vi- 
sion for hip-hop to become the music 
of our time. I like ambition. I liked the 
largeness of his perspective. I was work- 
ing with someone who was close to the 
streets, far closer than I was and closer 
than anything I had as part of my arse- 
nal. Both L.A. and I knew we needed to 
get to the streets, and partnering with 
Puffy was the best way to do that. 
PLAYBOY: As violence broke out between 
the East Coast label Bad Boy Records and 
the West Coast-based Death Row Re- 
cords, were you ever threatened? There 
were casualties on both sides, including 
Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. 
DAVIS: The tragedy of the killings and 
the violence were horrifying. But I 


I never spent any time in the 
lechnological world. I've con- 
centrated only on the music. 
The format didn't matter. You 
can't fight change, nor should 
you. You embrace it. 


never had a bodyguard. Looking back, 
it shocks me that I was not aware of any 
lurking danger. 

PLAYBOY: Whether at Columbia, Arista, 
J Records—another label you created— 
and then Sony, though you kept on top 
of new music, you continued to work 
with older stars such as Aretha Franklin, 
Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow. Was it 
for nostalgia's sake? 

DAVIS: Aretha is a national treasure and 
has the greatest voice in the world. Some 
talents transcend a given moment. Why 
shouldn't Aretha continue on the radio? 
Radio was not hospitable to a song like 
"Respect," but I was able to extend her 
many, many years, and we're now work- 
ing on an album. You find a way to do 
something different with them to make 
them relevant. It happened with Rod 
Stewart and Santana too. 

PLAYBOY: You've managed to keep some 
older artists relevant but not necessar- 
ily the older technology. When you 
started out, music was on vinyl. Vinyl 
is making a minor retro comeback, but 
it was essentially pushed aside by eight- 
track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs and then 


digital music. How do you stay ahead of 
these evolving technologies, and how do 
you know which ones to bet on? 

DAVIS: I never spent any time in the 
technological world. Гуе concentrated 
only on the music. The demand had 
to be there for your music. The format 
didn't matter. 

PLAYBOY: When Apple launched iTunes, 
some record companies wouldn't sign 
on at first. It was years before the Beatles 
allowed their music to be sold on iTunes. 
Were you resistant when it launched? 
DAVIS: No, because you can't fight 
change, nor should you. You embrace it. 
PLAYBOY: How concerned are you about 
illegal downloading of records? The in- 
dustry has fought pirating since it went 
after and eventually shut down Napster, 
yet people download billions of dollars 
worth of music a year. 

DAVIS: It's damaging. There's a public 
perception that you should get music for 
free. That perception is tremendously 
threatening. I just read that even with 
the availability of iTunes, more music 
than ever is pirated. The New York Times 
said there's more piracy through file- 
sharing networks than what is sold legiti- 
mately. That is scary, a major concern. 
PLAYBOY: Is it stoppable? 

DAVIS: We've made progress. In 2011 
we ended up selling more digital, CDs 
and records combined than we had the 
previous year. Last year it was level. One 
hopes the decline is over and that we're 
now overcoming it. 

PLAYBOY: Should kids be arrested if they 
pirate music? 

DAVIS: I am very clear on this. Piracy is 
illegal, and whatever is needed to pro- 
tect our creative artists must be done. 
In no way is anyone entitled to someone 
else's creativity for free. It’s like going 
to the theater and feeling you should Ье 
able to see A Streetcar Named. Desire for 
nothing. We must all protect our musi- 
cians. It's terrible that technology has 
allowed a segment of the public to feel 
they should get music free. It's not fair. 
It's not right. We have to legally enforce 
these laws. Are you going to accept it if. 
a 17-year-old robs a bank? If a person is 
not law-abiding at 15, 16, 17—whatever 
age—they have to be, and should be, 
held accountable. Creativity must be 
protected, and people should not be al- 
lowed to steal music any more than they 
should be allowed to steal anything else. 
PLAYBOY: Is the solution to shut down 
file-sharing sites and prosecute those 
who illegally download, or is it to con- 
vince kids and others that piracy is steal- 
ing and they should pay for music? 
DAVIS: It requires all of that. 

PLAYBOY: But if, after years of attempting 
to solve the problem, more music is pirat- 
ed than sold, the efforts aren't working. 
DAVIS: New technology may help. Some 
of what is changing is the way people get 
music, so maybe they'll be less inclined 
to download (continued on page 129) 


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Sean Smith lived a double life—one as an American envoy at the U.S. 
consulate in Benghazi, Libya and.another in a cult online fantasy world 
peopled by real spies, hackers and government agents, where he was 
known as Vile Rat. On September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the 
consulate, Smith's two worlds converged in one final, harrowing moment 


BY DAVID —À ILLUSTRATION BY TRAN NGUYEN 


62 


Sean leaves behind a loving wife, Heather, 
two young children, Samantha and Nathan, 
and scores of grieving family, friends and col- 
leagues. And that's just in this world. Because 
online, in the virtual worlds that Sean helped 
create, he is also being mourned by countless 
competitors, collaborators and gamers who 
shared his passion.—Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton, September 14, 2012 


Sean Smith lived in two worlds, but 
he died in one. His death came in the 
world where he worked. It was Sep- 
tember 11, 2012, and Smith was inside 


FOR SMITH, THIS 
WASN'T ABOUT 

DIPLOMACY ANYMORE. 
IT WAS A STRUGGLE 
FOR SURVIVAL. 


the United States Special Mission Com- 
pound in Benghazi, Libya. A scruffy, 
bald 34-year-old with a warm smile and 
dark wit, Smith had spent the past de- 
cade as a globe-trotting operative for the 
U.S. Department of State, with stints in 
Montreal, Pretoria, Baghdad and, most 
recently, the Hague, where his wife and 
children awaited his return. 

As a foreign service information man- 
agement officer, Smith was the consul- 
ate's one-man geek squad, ensuring the 
electronics ran smoothly and securely. 
When he wasn't fixing modems, he 


1. AN ARMED MAN INSIDE THE U.S. CONSULATE COMPOUND IN BENGHAZI, LIBYA ON 
SEPTEMBER 11, 2012. 2. INSIDE THE CONSULATE TWO DAYS LATER. 3. U.S. ENVOY SEAN SMITH, 
WHO PERISHED IN THE ATTACK. 4. SMITH'S AVATAR IN THE ONLINE WORLD EVE. 5. THE 
BODIES OF SMITH AND U.S. AMBASSADOR J. CHRISTOPHER STEVENS RETURN HOME. 

6. A SCENE FROM INSIDE EVE, WHERE SMITH LIVED A SECOND LIFE AS A SPACE DIPLOMAT. 


would help manage staff and deal with 
locals. But like most wartime operatives, 
he was prohibited from revealing any 
more details of his job to friends and 
family. When his mother, Pat, asked him 
what he did, he'd joke, "Mom, if I told 
you, I'd have to shoot you." 

The State Department had been in 
Benghazi since April 2011 as part of its 
diplomatic mission in a country in the 
throes of civil war. Tensions and vio- 
lence grew in the wake of Muammar el- 
Qaddafi's death in October of that year, 
and the U.S. took to upgrading security 
at the compound where the American 
diplomats lived. The outer wall had been 
extended to 12 feet high and lined with 


barbed wire and razor wire. A steel gate 
and drop-bar traffic barriers reinforced 
entrances to the complex, and large con- 
crete blocks were placed farther outside 
to keep cars from ramming their way in. 
Five armed security agents patrolled out- 
le. Some windows were covered with 
grilles and doubled as escape hatches. 
For Smith, who had arrived at the com- 
pound about a weck before it was attacked, 
being in such a hostile environment was 
a necessary but unsettling part of his ca- 
reer. “He wasn't happy in those stressful 
situations," his friend Kristoffer Touborg 
recalls. “Не wanted to go back to his wife 
and kids. He was uncomfortable. But he'd 
try to make light (continued on page 134) 


DNA 


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Props designed by Steve Halterman 
Props built by Jet Sets 


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Hair by Stephanie Hobgood for 
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ABOU | 


© MAYA VIK 


This glamorous, leggy Norwegian singer and bass player is some- 
how unknown in the U.S., which is odd because her best songs, 
including “Bummer Gun" and “On It (Kapow!)," have a funky 
electronic eccentricity that recalls the 1980s smashes Jimmy Jam 
and Terry Lewis concocted for the S.O.S. Band, Alexander O'Neal 
and Janet Jackson. And Vik's cover of Ready for the World's “Oh 
Sheila" is so spot-on, it's no wonder she has a Jheri curl. 


O Vijay Iyer 
KEY PLAYER 


> It's easy to admire the range of 

music and musicians this South Indian 
American pianist explores, including, on 
his wonderful recent album Accelerando, 
Michael Jackson and Duke Ellington. 
But what distinguishes him is his storm- 
ing groove, which falls in rapid clusters 
of notes and gales of chords. Iyer plays as 
though he thinks his piano is a drum kit. 


© MY BLOODY VALENTINE 


GREATEST EXPECTATIONS 


On the band’s Facebook page, a 
follower from Chicago recently 
likened being a My Bloody 
Valentine fan to rooting for the 
Cubs. That's not fair: Cubs fans 
have been waiting since 1908, 
and MBV took a mere 22 years 
to follow up Loveless, a shim- 
mering landmark of noise and 
overtones, a kind of Sgt. Pepper's 
for hipsters. The new release, 

m b v, is small by comparison 
but still distorted and gor- 
geously mysterious. Another 
great development: The band 
has resumed touring, and its 
shows are not to be missed. 
The one time we saw MBV, the 
volume was so loud we had an 
auditory hallucination. 


O Јоле James 
THE COOL REBORN 


> Black music never sits still for long, 
so to call José James a traditionalist 
means he’s conversant with more 
than 50 years of influences, including 
dim-the-lights jazz, the minimalist 
funk of Gil Scott-Heron and the kind 
of soft-falling hip-hop beats used by 
D'Angelo and A Tribe Called Quest. 
It’s a rebirth of cool: On No Begin- 
ning No End, this son of a Panamanian 
sax player uses his voice like a horn, 
murmuring oblique lyrics about 
separation and desire. 


O Caitlin Rare 
COUNTRY ADJACENT 


> Here's the Nashville they don't 

show you on Nashville. Caitlin Rose is 
the daughter of a successful country 
songwriter, but at the age of 16 she pre- 
ferred the Ramones. Now 25, she writes 
graceful, tender songs at the outskirts 
of the country tradition—Patsy Cline 
never sang "Let's move this fucking 
jet" But it's not the cursing (or the 
banjo and slide guitars) that elevates 
her second album, The Stand-In; it's 
how Rose finds sensational new ways 
to describe loneliness and regret. 


73 


STREAM OF DREAMS. 


7 All blogs have strong opinions, but few have the expertise and 
imagination of Any Major Dude With Half a Heart. A champion of 
the championless, the Dude puts together thematic MP3 playlists. 
The best posts at HalfheartedDude.com are the R&B compilations 
from the 1960s, 1970s and 19805, which resurrect great songs that 
should never have been forgotten. 


@ KENDRICK LAMAR 


Kendrick I born 25 years ago in 
Compton, California, the same time and 
city in which N.W.A introduced the fuck- 
tha-police code of gan ap. Guided by 
N.W.A producer Dr. Dre, Lamar recounts ә 
his adolescent delight in drugs, women 

and crime. But he's not a gangsta—he 3 
caught between gangs and cops, neither 
of whom he likes. He calls his album good 


ard Hell (no, it's not his real 
name) was a founding member of 


^ 9 Ee S three momentous mid-1970s New 
kid, m.A.A.d city "a short film," and the York bands: Television, the Heart- 
striking narrative may remind you of The breakers, and Richard Hell and the 


Wire. We won't spoil the ending. N Voidoids. His memoir / Dreamed 

I Was a Very Clean Tramp fear- 
lessly recounts the social, musical 
and narcotic history of downtown 
culture and punk rock: poverty, 
ennui, safety pins, foreign films, 
misanthropes and a dead turtle 
Hell kept in a glass jar "as a sort of 
decoration or artwork." 


Qi 


WHITE NOISE 


> Lots of white boys in T-shirts can 
make a guitar ruckus, but these 
mangy Cleveland hair balls steer 
through the skids as they mix astrin- 
gent guitars with bristling lyrics about 
postcollege frustration, harnessing 
mayhem to keep moving forward. 
Singer Dylan Baldi has said Attack on 
Memory's eight songs are “all sort of 
depressing," but depression is rarely 
this exhilarating. 


© CHVRCHES 


ghties el. 
sounded th 
1980s. Amid 


Portman, 


Tautou) calmly coos 
as “ТЇЇ be 
you die. 
and “ 


his 


ne our 
favorite new band of 2013, as they 


would have been in 1983. 


HAIR TODAY 


The traditions of AC/DC and Led 
Zeppelin have gone awry: It’s more 
difficult than ever to find headbangers 
who don't sing about Satan’s cock or 
howl as though they're surrounded 
by zombies. Baroness, a quartet out of 
Georgia, achieves twisted catharsis in 
heavy, complex ruminations that never 
sound ludicrous. The band has toured 
with Metallica, but its songs "Little 
Things" and "Cocainium" also show a 
curiosity about funk music. 


@ DEAP VALLY 


p 
the White Stripes. Vally pla: 
distorted blues rock, and it's 


"s no way around the com- 


: Deap Vally sounds a lot like 
loopy, 
à duo. 
a duo of women, which is 


a crucial difference. When singe 


3 
Y 


guitarist Lindsey 
gonna make my o O 
reprimands an unfaithful man, she 


roy Crows 
wn money 


and drummer Julie Edwards claim an 


ight to defiance and autonomy. 


DOCUMENTARIES 
WORTH 
LISTENING TO 


OCCULT FOLLOW! 


They look like they escaped from 
the pawnshop basement scene in Pulp 
Fiction. Masked, mysterious and often 
bare-chested, Goat claims a backstory 
that sounds like bunk: Supposedly the 
band lives in a commune in Korpi- 
lombolo, a small town in northern 
Sweden with an ancient history of 
voodoo worship. On World Music, 
Goat combines 1960s psychedelic 
guitars, tribal village percussion and 
organ drones with simple, ominous 
chants (“Boy, you better run to your 
mama now"). It's an evil yet joyful 
din, like a pagan cult having an orgy 
under a solstice moon. 


TRUE BRIT 


> He has been making records since 
1968 and has won a couple lifetime- 
achievement awards, yet 314 million 
Americans have never heard this sensa- 
tional British rock guitarist. Thompson's 
new album, Electric, adds plenty of or- 
nery, braying solos to grimly funny songs 
about conflict and betrayal. The uniniti- 
ated could start with earlier records: 
Amnesia, Hand of Kindness or Shoot Out the 
Lights, about the collapse of a marriage. 


THE LITTLE LABEL THAT COULD 


> Launching a jazz label in the 21st century seems like an in- 
sane idea. Yet since it started in 2001, Pi Recordings has released 
vibrant, daring records, often dominating critics’ polls despite 
issuing only three to five releases a year. David Virelles, Henry 
Threadgill and other Pi artists all “aim for some edge that hasn't 
been reached out to before,” says Yulun Wang, a former invest- 
ment banker who runs the label with founder Seth Rosner. 


l'a = = 


O ELLE VARNER 


R&B singers should do one song about sex for every two songs 
about love, and this personable NYU grad caught our ear with 
"Sound Proof Room," a bouncy, commanding request for a noise- 
making tryst. Her debut album, Perfectly Imperfect, has a hint of 
throwback (cla oul fans won't be disappointed), as well as a 
winning sense of humor: "I can't help being depressed/When I 
look down at my chest," Varner sings amiably. 


77 


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80 


One of the few things you can Бе sure of 
in this world is that rapper-producer Dr. 
Dre is not finished with his third and pos- 
sibly final solo album, Detox. 

Dre has been working on it off and 
on for a decade. There are indications it 
may come out sometime soon—but then 
again, there always are. It happens over 
and over. Somebody from Dre's camp 
lets slip a speculative release date in the 
press, the anticipation starts up again, 
and then Dre sees his shadow and dis- 
appears back into the studio. 

Detox has become one of those mythi- 
cally unfinished records—like the third 
My Bloody Valentine album, which took 
more than 20 years to see release, or 
Chinese Democracy before Axl Rose finally 
deigned to crap it out into the world 
The conundrum of its perpetual immi- 
nence is just something you live with as 
a fan of rap music. When the rising I 
MC Schoolboy Q rapped, "Word to Dr. 
Dre/Detox is like a mix away” on his 2012 
album Habits & Contradictions, he may as 
well have been stating a constant truth, 
a fact about the landscape: Detox is just a 
mix away. Crenshaw High School is 30 
minutes from the Hollywood Hills. That 
mountain is 10,064 feet high. 

And yet people haven't stopped caring. 
So last summer, when British hip-hop 
DJ Tim Westwood had Snoop Dogg 
on his BBC Radio show, he asked the 
question everybody asks people close to 
Dre, namely, “What's up with Detox? Is 
it ever coming out?" This time, though, 
instead of saying what Dre's associates 
usually say—that Dre's a genius who'll 
serve no wine before its time, but, man, 
is this record going to knock your fucking 
socks off when Dre's ready to let people 
hear it, which will be soon—Snoop said 


point-blank that Detox wouldn't get done 
until Dre called in two people to work on 
it: himself and the D.O.C. 

*D.O.C. and Snoop Dogg is the back- 
bone," he told Westwood. “When you 
take them out of the equation, it's not 
gonna work." 

Uninformed hip-hop fans would have 
reason to ask, Who the hell is the D.O. 
It's been nearly 25 years since the rap- 
per released his astoundingly great debut 
album, No One Can Do It Better. It was pro- 
duced by Dr. Dre when Dre was churning 
out hot product at an ironic-in-retrospect 
pace: In a single year Dre made the 
D.O.C.'s album, as well as N.W.A's Straight 
ompton and N.W.A co-founder 
s solo debut, Duz-It. The 
D.O.C. was a cocky, charismatic young 
rapper with a knotty, complex flow—his 
delivery had more bob-and-weave than 
your average West Coast rapper's, and he 
reminded people of East Coast guys like 


Rakim. The kid with the golden voice, he 
called himself. Within three months he'd 
sold half a million records—until injuries 
to his vocal cords sustained in a car acci- 
dent rendered him barely able to speak 
and totally unable to rap. 

After that, the D.O.C. was a living 
ghost. He made two would-be comeback 
albums, but his real career existed behind 
the scenes. It became an open secret that 
he'd ghostwritten rhymes for Dre on The 
Chronic and 1999's 2001 and polished 
lines for Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle. The 
D.O.C. was a fixer, a problem solver, a 
hip-hop Winston Wolf. Once a breakout 
star, he now existed in hip-hop as a leg- 
end in the background of other people's 
rhymes. Dre shouted him out ("Like my 
nigga D.O.C., no one can do it better") at 
the end of “Nuthin’ but a G Thang," the 
first single from The Chronic. More than 10 
years later, so did Brooklyn-born Jay-Z on 
“Public Service Announcement" —"HOV, 


jam called 


“THE WHOLE WEST CDAST 
HIP-HOP MDVEMENT CHANGED 
DIRECTION THE NIGHT I HAD 
THAT ACCIDENT.”- н 


not D.O.C./ But similar to the letters, no 
one can do it better." 

Tips of the hat to a rapper's rapper. 
But the Westwood thing was different. 
The Westwood thing was Snoop calling 
out Dr. Dre, telling him and the world 
that only the D.O.C. could save Detox. 
"That yes, in fact, no one can do it better. 


Late one Thursday night, in the con- 
trol room of a recording studio in an 


office park somewhere in South Dallas, 
the D.O.C.—whose real name is Tracy 
Curry, though his Dallas friends all call 
him Doc—pushes the talk-back button 
on the mixing console and addresses the 
kid on the other side of the glass. 

Doc is 44 now, tall with a little weight 
on him, hair in tw he kid on the 
other side ofthe glass is 24-year-old Dal- 
las rapper Chad Bailey, whose rap name, 
I swear, is Plaboi. He's just finished a 
run-through ofa new song—a midtempo 


Rick Ros: 


'yle come-kick-it-with-a-boss 
So Amazing"—and now Doc 
iving Plaboi some notes. 

You sounded like a 17-year-old guy 
who's happy to get some pussy," Doc says. 
“I want you to sound like a 30-year-old 
guy who likes to fuck." 

He's been doing this with rappers for 
years. When he started out here in Dal- 
las, with the Fila Fresh Crew, he would 
write all the lyrics, then teach his part- 
ner Curtis “ -K" Benjamin how to 
say them. He did it with Eazy-E in the 
early days of N.W.A, with Dr. Dre, with 
Snoop Dogg. It's not that these guys, on 
their own, didn't have talent, presence 
and persona to burn—especially Snoop, 
Doc says; Snoop could rap his ass off. But 
Doc understood song structure. He had 
a feel for form; he knew how to make an 
artist think like a craftsman. 

The first few lines of “So Amazing," 
which Doc wrote, are “Let me paint you 
this picture. /1 got you naked, we rollin’ 
out by the Bonaventure./Couple shots of 
Patrón, so you know it's official." I can't 
tell you how the rest of the song goes, 
because Doc spends the next 45 minutes 
making Plaboi—who has raw talent and 
takes constructive criticism like a champ 
but has clearly never been directed like 
this before—do the first few bars over 
and over, seldom letting him get past 
“Patrón” before cutting him off. 

"It's a conversation," Doc tells him. 
"Don't rap it. Just conversate. When a 
female hears this, (continued on page 137) 


81 


BY David Rensin | PHOTOGRAPHY BY Autumn de Wilde 


a 


Dunham 


The woman behind HBO's Girls tells the naked truth about making viewers 
squirm, her troubles with men and how porn screws up sex 


Playboy: on one episode of Girls a guy 
tells Hannah's hot roommate, Marnie, "I want 
you to know, the first time I fuck you I might 
scare you a little, because I'm a man and I 
know how to do things." No doubt many 
would-be lotharios have added this come-on 
to their repertoires—but some of us still want 
to know what it means. 


Dunham: someone once said something 
like that to me—with the immediate caveat 
“I, uh, learned that from my friend who 
works at Vice magazine." That made the line 
a lot less sexy. American men always have 
to go for the laugh or the excuse. A French- 
man would say that with a straight face. I 
think the line is meant to be a warning, in 
the sense of “You can't have me right now, 
but when you do, it will take away any sense 
of you being a modern woman in control." 


Playboy: Last summer The New York 
Review of Books ran an essay about you 
that described a now-notorious sex scene 
in episode two between your character, 


o 


Hannah, and Adam, the guy she likes, in 
which his sexual routine seems inspired by 

a porn scene and Hannah gamely tries to 
play along. The writer praised the scene's 
edgy emotional realism, saying, "So there 
you до: A dose of porn, judiciously applied 
by an extremely intelligent director, can save 
cinematic sex. | wouldn't have believed it 

if | hadn't seen it on Girls.” What were you 
trying to accomplish? 


Dunham: му goal is to have a sexual 
verisimilitude that has heretofore not been 
seen on television. I did it because I felt that 
the depictions of sex | had seen on televi- 
sion weren't totally fair to young women 
trying to wrap their brains around this stuff. 
1 didn't do it to be provocative. | did it to 
be educational. Personally, I've been lucky 
enough not to date the Porn Guy. There 
have been weirdos, but not him. I think you 
can identify the porny guys early on, based 
on their behavior: They try to force you into 
unnatural cinematic sexual positions, or 
they just seem to have learned a lot of their 
moves from people who do sex acts for a 


themselves 


thing to the 
gender divide and say, "Well, that's just a male 
thing." 1 hate the conventional wisdom that men 
are supposedly complete pieces of shit and it's 
our job as women to put up with them. Men are 
just as sensitive and easily victimized as women 
are, but there's not as much of an infrastructure 
for expressing it. That drives me nuts. We're 
all humans and doing human stuff. We'd have 
à better world if everyone had someone they 
could pay for talk therapy. 


a4 
How much do you enjoy making 
viewers uncomfortable? 


Dunham: it's not interesting for me to 
make art about things we're all okay with. I 
make art to explore our darker areas. When 
what I’m doing begins to feel old and tired and 
socially acceptable, maybe I'll move on to other 
topics. Maybe future interviewers will ask me 
about "the time you made an action movie" or 


"the time you explored Renaissance life." But 
right now I feel I could say something about 
women forever. Each stage of being female 
and human brings new fodder—and there are 
parallels to be drawn to the male experience. 


Q5 
3 Male writers are often criticized 
for how they write female roles. How careful do 
you have to be about writing your men, Adam, 
Ray, Charlie and the rest? 


Dunham: Just as careful as when writing 
female roles. Saying that women have been 
written as sassy best friends or slutty girl- 
friends since the beginning of time so now 
guys deserve whatever comes to them is 

not an acceptable excuse—even though it's 
amazing to me that Hollywood persists in writ- 
ing these two-dimensional female characters 
who don't really exist. No wonder it's hard for 
actresses to find. (continued on page 146) 


"For future reference, think about spelling Lana backwards." 


THE MAÑANA LITERARY SOCIETY. THERE WAS AN 


impressive group of writers at Robert and Leslyn Heinlein's 
t fateful night when Mary 


house in Laurel Canyon on t 
Lou and I attended. Jack Williamson, my great idol, shy 
the few 


and diffident in person; Leigh Br. 
back then and a great inspiration for 
"artmill, a newspaperman crippled with 
polio who had just started writing for Astounding; Anthony 
Boucher, who was more of a mystery writer; and L. Ron 
Hubbard, a prodigious jack-of-all-trades of the pulps who, 
it was said, could write 2,000 words an hour without revi- 
sions. Looking back, I'm liable to put aside the sense of how 
starstruck I was in the presence of all this talent. Me, Larry 
Zagorski, a 19-year-old kid (continued on page 124) 


«есіл 


۵ Ж 


A lunch date with delicious Miss April 


O h me, oh my!” says Jaslyn Оте, sitting in a booth 


ata Los Angeles diner. You're sitting across from 
her, and she's describing how to pronounce her last 
name. OH-me, oh my. You get it. Jaslyn is a fantastically 
beautiful woman; that much you know instantly. Here's 
what else you learn about her over lunch: She is 21 years 
old, a mix of East Indian, black and Caucasian. She's a 
wild outdoorsy type who has been modeling profession- 
ally since she was a little girl. She has set her sights on an 
acting career; with a face like that and a brain to back it 
up, you have no doubt she'll make it. Though she's from 
a small northern California town, she currently lives in the 
Playboy Bunny House in Los Angeles. She's crazy about 
the beach—the ocean, the sea life, the tide pools. She's 
also an online shopaholic. "I have a problem with order- 
ing things from Victoria's Secret," she confesses, smiling 
deviously. Sure, she likes swimsuits and lingerie. But 
Jaslyn loves to be naked too. “Pm always walking around 
my house nude,” she says, “and cleaning my room naked. 
It feels зо natural." So, she explains, she had no prob- 
lem showing off in front of the camera and was thrilled to 
become Miss April 2013. It's all come as a wonderful sur- 
prise. "It's kind of surreal," she says. "A year ago I never 
would have believed I would be a Playmate. It's awesome. 
T love it. Pm coming into my own." Oh me, oh my! 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN WAYDA 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


wu. JAslyn Ome 

BUST: 32C WAIST: 25" HIPS: 35" 

HEIGHT: SE WEIGHT: — M 

BIRTH DATE: 7/21/91 BIRTHPLACE: Hayward, CA 

amerrions: /D have a Successful Modeling and acting Greer, 
Create my own beauty products and be a famous Playmate! 

tumn-ons AN intelligent MAN with a great sense ОЁ humor and 
Smile. I LOVE surfers. Catch a wave and Catch my heart! 

rurnorrs: Laziness, Wars and Cocky pretty boys who 
Spend more time іп front of фе mirror than Т do. 

MY NICKNAME AND HOW 1 GOT ır: Z lived on Folsom Lake and 
fode Stand-up Jet Skis and went boating. Every fime T took of 
ту life Vest, ту bikini top would be off ! I earned the wonderful 
nickname “J Ms." I guess U Мод gets to live on now! 

MY GUILTY PLEASURES: Reality TV. IFS бо awful but so addichng. 

I also cant buy cereal because I Il cat the whole box at once. 

MY LOVE FOR THE OCEAN: We know less about the ocean than 

we know About space. T love its beauty, diversity and mystery. 


A 


Ín Oregon wit 
Angus. 'S like a hase! 


On the st oF m 
First commercial. 


Pretending +o have 
a Vee Secret Shoot. 


PLAYBOY'S PAHTY JOKES 


А fourth-grader was sitting at dinner with his 
parents. “Pop,” he said, “today one of the kids 
in my class called me gay." 

"Well, son,” his father said, “tomorrow I 
want you to walk up to that boy on the play- 
ground and punch him right in the nose." 

“Do I have to?" the boy responded. "He's 
really cute." 


A creepy guy approached a beautiful woman 
at a bar with this pickup line: "They should 
have a sign on my dick that says “Warning: 
Choking Hazard.'* 

She shot back, “Isn't that the label they put 
on small objects?” 


Four guys had been going on an annual fish- 
ing trip for many years. Two days before the 
group was to leave, one of the men's wives 
threw the book Fifty Shades of Grey at him and 
said, “Гуе been reading about kinky sex, and 
I'd much rather you stayed home and had 
some naughty fun with me." 

Conflicted, the man read the book, and 
when he came home from work on the day of 
the trip, he was ready for his wife. 

"What are you going to do to me?" she 
cooed excitedly. 

*Get on the bed. I am going to tie you up," 
he said. 

"Yes! Yes!" she screamed as he secured her 
to the bedpost. "And now what?" 

He looked her in the eyes and said, “Now 
I'm going fishing." 


Three words that ruin a man's ego: “Is it in?” 
And three words that ruin a woman's ego: 
“I don't know.” 


When a newlywed woman told her girlfriend 
that marriage was a pain in the ass, her girl- 
friend replied, "Then you must be doing it 
all wrong." 


What's the difference between а new wife and 
a new dog? 
After a year, the dog is still excited to see you. 


A man stormed into a bar with a gun in his 
hand and yelled, “Who the hell has been fuck- 
ing my sister?" 

A voice from the back shouted in response, 
“You don't have enough bullets!" 


What do guys and bras have in common? 
They both hook up behind women's backs. 


What's the difference between light and hard? 
You can sleep with a light on. 


А woman visited her obstetrician. "Doctor, 
I'm pregnant again," she said. “1 really need 
a hearing aid." 

"I thought we decided at your last visit 
that your seven children were more than you 
could handle and that you were not going to 
have any more,” the doctor said. “Did you not 
hear that?" 

“I did,” she said. “I’m hard of hearing, but I 
can read lips in the light of day." 

“So how will a hearing aid stop you from 
becoming pregnant?" he asked. 

“Well, you see,” she said, “at night when my 
husband and I turn off the lights, he asks me, 
‘Do you want to go to sleep or what?’ And I 
always say, What?” 


Any woman who thinks the way to a man's 
heart is through his stomach is aiming just a 
little too high. 


A youngster came home and told his father 
they'd had a spelling bee at school, but he had 
missed the very first word. 

“What was the word?" the father asked. 

"Posse," the boy responded. 

“Hell, no wonder you can't spell it," his father 
remarked. "You can't even pronounce it." 


Condoms don't guarantee 100 percent safe 
sex. A friend of ours was wearing one when he 
was shot by the woman's husband. 


Ic Rob is short for Robert and you get Willy out 
of William, how do you get Dick from Richard? 
Ask him nicely. 


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. 


"So now you know what a nice girl like me is doing in a place like this." 


BEST SONGS 


About 


FORGET ALL THOSE SAPPY 
LOVE SONGS. HERE'S THE TOP 
MUSIC ABOUT THE ACT ITSELF 


By Rob Tannenbaum 


Best Song About a 
Girl Rejuvenated by 


a Big Dick 
«€ Madonna, “Like a Virgin,” 1984 


As the film Reservoir Dogs begins, 
Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino) 
announces, t me tell you what 
"Like a Virgin’ is about." The song's 
ator, he says, is a hussy who: 
man h n enormous rod, and when 
the two of them copulate, "it hurts 
just like it did the first time. Henc 
"Like a Virgin оппа later 
Tarantino a signed CD, on which she 
had written, "To Quentin—It’s about 
love, not dic 


Best Song About VD 


€ Procol Harum, “A Souvenir of London,” 1973 


Lots of musicians hı ing about 
venereal disease, even in the operetta 
Candide, which includes two songs 

on the topic. In this oddly cheer- 

ful ditty, the British group describes 
an unlucky tourist who returns from 
London with the pox. The word 
leaking creates a disturbing image; the 
BBC banned the song. 


З. Second-Best Song About VD 
* 


Did you think the song was about 
poison ivy? Hint: It's about a girl 
named I 

h 


4. Third-Best Song About VD 
* 


A rapper takes a girl home soon after 
meeting her, bi о his friends and 


three days later, while "drip drip dr 
ping," howls in pain. It's both explicit 
and comic and ends with an endorse- 
ment of condoms. 


Best Prince Song 
About Sex 


4 Prince, “Darling Nikki," 1984 


Prince has recorded dozens of great 
songs about sex, and it pains us not 

to include “Head,” about staining the 
gown of a bride on her way to the 
altar. But we'll praise this Purple Rain 
track about a girl sitting "in a hotel 
lobby, masturbating with a magazine," 
because it outraged Tipper Gore and 
caused her to form the Parents Music 
Resource Center after she found her 
11-year-old daughter listening to it. 


6. Best Imitation of a 
Prince Song About Sex 


4 Ween, "LM.LY.P.," 1990 


The title? It stands for “Let Me Lick 
Your Pussy,” and some of the lyrics are 
borrowed from Prince songs. In con- 
cert, the twisted cult act Ween often 
ended shows with a 30-minute ver- 


sion of this funk jam. It was the band's 
Stairway to Heaven.” 


Best Pedophile Song to 
Get Radio Airplay 
4 The Knack, “My Sharona,” 1979 


How could a fantasy about statutory 
rape make it to number one? The great 
guitar riff bounces like a braless prom 
queen and obscures the panting pro- 
nouncement “I always get it up for the 
touch of the younger kind.” Blues- 
men have long sung about lusting for 
schoolgirls, but “My Sharona" is the 
only paean to underage sex to make it 
onto President George W. Bush’s iPod. 


+ * Deep Purple, “Knocking at Your Back Door,” 1984 


і Best Song About 


Blue Balls 


4 The Beatles, “Please Please Me,” 1963 


In this ecstatic tale of heavy petting 
and discontent, John Lennon pleads 
with his girl for... maybe a blow job, 
maybe a hand job, but release of some 
kind. Comically, this is the song that 
lit the flame of Beatlemania and set 
girls screaming and eager to please a 
Beatle, ог even all four of them. (By 


basically about pedophi 
Beatles: perverts?) 


1 9. Best Song About 
} Masturbation 
4 Buzzcocks, “Orgasm Addict," 1977 


Best Song About 
Anal Sex 


4 Toni Basil, “Mickey,” 1982 


Achirpy New Wave track about a 
club girl pining for a vain guy who 
won't take her home because he's busy 
posing in the mirror. Horny and impa- 
ent, Basil resorts to a promise that's 
also a taunt: "Anyway you want to do 
it/T'Il take it like a man." Mickey's chief 
interest, apparently, is not women. 


11. Second-Best Song About 
Anal Sex 


4 Ween, “Chocolate Town,” 2003 


12. Third-Best Song About 
Anal Sex 


: 13. Best Song About 
Sex Between an Elderly Couple 


Howard Tate, “Look at Granny Run Run,” 1966 
— 


14. Best Song That 
Brags About Premature 
Ejaculation 

4 Mötley Crüe, “Ten Seconds to Love,” 1983 
ت‎ Eos 


15. Best Song That 
Complains About 
Premature Ejaculation 

4 BWP, “Two Minute Brother,” 1991 
Т 


Best Dancehall Duet 
About Rough Sex 


4 Vybz Kartel featuring Spice, "Ramping Shop," 2008 


Dancehall songs are way filthier than 
American hip-hop, if you understand 
the patois. Here, over a thrilling elec- 
tronic beat, two Jamaican rappers bond 
over their massive egos: Spice brags 
about the tightness of her pussy, and 
Kartel counters, "Me cocky longer dan 
me Nike/Tell me wuh yuh like/Yuh 
waan me drive or yuh waan ride it like 
a bike?" Clever and oddly tender, it led 
Jamaica's an commission to 
ban songs about sex. 


: Best Sex Song That 

; Doesn't Bother With 
і Metaphor 

“€ Notorious B.1.6., “Fuck You Tonight,” 1997 


The slow, sleazy R&B groove evokes 
Barry White, Hennessy and a water 
bed. But Biggie, the obese Brooklyn 
rapper, doesn't have seduction on his 
mind. "I'm fuckin' you tonight," he 
announces plainly. This song would 
make a great playlist with Akon's 

“1 Wanna Fuck You," Noreaga 
Wanna Fuck You," N.W.A's " 


"I 


'4 
Rather Fuck You" and Beenie Man's 
"I'm Gonna Fuck You." 


18. Best Song About Having 
Sex With a Hooker (and Not 


Liking It) 
Bruce Springsteen, “Reno,” 2005 


Best Song About 
Impotence 


4 Freda Payne, “Band of Gold,” 1970 


The narrator of this glorious R&B 
melodrama is an unhappy newly- 
wed. On her wedding night she 
and her husband "stayed in sepa- 
and she implores him 
to return "and love me like you 
tried before." Tried? WTF? Maybe 
the bride had a case of vaginismus. 
(Look it up.) More likely the groom 
was incapable—Cialis didn’t exist 
in 1970. 


20. Second-Best Song About 
Impotence 
4 Kid Creole and the Coconuts, “Mister Softee,” 1980 


There's nothing subtle or mysterious 
about this one. It's not about an ice 
cream truck. 


21. Third-Best Song About 
Impotence 


4 Elastica, “Stutter,” 1993 


A taunting, unsympathetic sneer 
from this female-fronted British 
quartet: “Is it something you 
lack/ When I'm flat on my back?” 
Elastica’s great first album added 
endorsements of lube (“Vaseline”) 
and sex in and on top of automo- 
biles (“Саг Song"). 


i which likely inspired Mick Jagger’s 
i similar lyric in “Start Me Up 


{ 4 Sparks, “Tryouts for the Human Race,” 1979 


22. Fourth-Best Song About 
Impotence 


Dead Kennedys, “Too Drunk to Fuck,” 1981 


102 Beer isn't always your friend, guys. 


PN 


AV S 


23 


and so is Rod Stewart. In this bubble- 
h booze, guilt, pressure and metaphor ( 
i me come inside"). The gist is this: “Just let me put the tip in." 


і Best Song About Seducing a Virgin 


{ 4 Rod Stewart, "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” 1976 


Í Seduction i 
| sexual novice wi 


ath ballad, Stewart plies a 
pread your wings and let 


Lucille Bogan, "Shave "Em Dry," 1935 


$ In this filthy Depression-era blues 
і song, Bogan alternately brags about 
1 her skills (“I would fuck you, baby, 
| honey, I would make you cry") and 
i tells her lover he has crabs in his ass. 


I got somethin’ between my legs'll 
make a dead man come,” she boasts, 


Best Song About 
Ejaculation 


і 26. Best Song About Trying 


y. né 


: Best Song About Sex 
: Recorded When Your 
і Grandma Was Young 


to Get Your Girlfriend to Have 
Sex With Another Woman 
While You Film It 


NERD, “Tape You,” 2002 


Best Song About a 
Blow-Up Sex Doll 


Roxy Music, "In Every Dream Home a 
Heartache,” 1973 


Bryan Ferry has had one ofthe most 
enviable sex lives of any musician, but 
in this haunted dirge he imagines an 
inflatable doll is “the perfect compan- 
ion.” He yearns to serve her, brings 
her to his mansion, changes her clothes 
every day, pledges eternal love—but 
like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, she 
betrays him. “I blew up your body/But 
you blew my mind,” he sobs, and the 
track explodes into psychedelic tor- 
ment. Doll and man can never mate. 


28. Second-Best Song About a 
Blow-Up Sex Doll 


4 The Police, “Be My Girl-Sally,” 1978 


Best R. Kelly Song 
About Sex 


4 R. Kelly, "In the Kitchen,” 2005 


The single-minded Kelly recorded 
songs with the titles "Bump n’ 
Grind," "Freak Dat Body" and 

“I Like the Crotch on You" all 

on the same album. (“Feelin' on 
Yo Booty" came later.) His R&B 
romps often have a streak of out- 
rageous comedy, and his tallest 
tale, "In the Kitchen," isn't about 
Guy Fieri. Risking a grease fire, R 
freaks his girl near the stove, “on 
the counter/ By buttered rolls." 
He even shouts, , I'm ready to 
toss your salad." Every healthy diet 
needs some roughage. 


30. Best Song About 
Being a Deranged Male 
Prostitute 


¢ Ramones, “S3rd and 3rd," 1976 


Best Song About Two 
Guys Having Sex 
4 Jeff Stryker, “Pop You in the Pooper,” 2003 


"This Adult Video News Hall of Famer 
is unlikely to ever join the Rock and 
Roll Hall of Fame; but no gay-porn 
star has ever recorded a funnier or 
franker country song about butt- 
boning a straight guy. 


Best Song About the 
Absurdity of Sex Songs 


€ Tenacious D, "F*** Her Gently,” 2001 


Jack Black is a master of the amorous 
science, and he offers this acous- 

tic ballad as a tutorial to lesser men: 
Sometimes you have to woo your girl 


before you penetrate her. Don't always 


fuck her hard, he says; occasionally 


you can fuck her gently. And after that 
courtliness? "And then I'm gonna love 
you completely /And then ГЇЇ fuckin’ 
fuck you 
fuckin' bo: 
I'm gonna fuck you hard." Mrs. Jack 
Black is a lucky lady! 


reetly / And then ГІ 
you completely/ But then 


\ 
x2 m MM A 
Best Song About Two 


Teen Girls 


Valeria featuring Aria, “Girl | Told Ya," 2007 


Two girls have a sleepover that leads 
to explorations and gasping. Dad gets 
suspicious; the girls tell him nothing's 
going on. They're lying. 


¦ 34.-36. Three Best 

! Songs by Women 
Demanding Cunnilingus 
4 SWV, “Downtown,” 1992 

< Lil’ Kim, “Not Tonight," 1996 


i 4 Trina, "Tongue Song,” 2000 


| 37. Best Song by a 
Woman Demanding 
Cunnilingus and 
Anilingus 

+ Khia, “My Neck, My Back,” 2002 


Best Song About 

Fucking the Police 
(Literally) 

+ 4 Lil Wayne, “Mrs. Officer,” 2008 103 


DAVID BOWIE 


When he wasn't 
redefining music 
and bending 
gender perceptions, 
the 29-year-old 
rock star was 
effortlessly 
manipulating 

the media 


ost influential rock musi- 
story. David Bowie has 


mong th 


cians in 


changed musical genres almost as often 


as he's changed his fashion—and sexu- 


ality. Bowie's greatest albums, from Hunky Dory 
to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the 
Spiders From Mars, from Young Americans to Sta- 
tion to Station, are indisputably some of the most 


important rock recordings of the past four decades. 
He was the diva of glam rock, inspiring everyone 
Stones to Elton John to Queen 
to T. Rex—but he also released soul, traditional 
rock-and-roll and disco hits. Lady Gaga, Madonna 
and Michael Jackson leamed from his outrageous 
And he kept 
the public guessing about his sexuality. Was he 
ht? Gay? Bi? All of the above? 


Bowie, whose real name is David Jones, is now 


from the Rolli 


makeup, wardrobe and stage person 


66 years old and still making music—his new 
„ The Next Day, is his first in 10 years. He 
was 29 when he did the Playboy Interview with 
Cameron Crowe, the rock journalist who went on 
ту Maguire 
year after the 


albu 


to write and direct such movi 


and Almost Famous. It was 1 


ar had announced that he'd given up on rock 
ve rocked my roll the way he put it. “It 
ak dead end, The last thing I want to be 


me useless fucking rock singer.” Crowe quickly 
learned that Bowie had lied, and in fact there was 
les. At 


the time of the interview, Crowe reported: "Bowie 


по letup in recordin, 


or touring for de 


is expertly charming, whether in the company of 


a stuffy film another musician or a 


complete strar fully aware that he is 
a sensational quote machine. The more shock- 


revelation...the wider his grin. He knows 


exactly what interviewers consider good copy, and 
he gives them precisely that. The truth is prob- 
ably inconsequential 


PLAYBOY: Let's start with the one question you've 
always seemed to hedge: How much of your bisexu- 
ick? 


Us true—I am a bisexual. But I can't deny 


ality is fact and how much is gir 
BOWIE: 
that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it’s the 
best thing that ever happened to me. Fun too. 

PLAYBOY: Why do you say it's the best thing that 
ever happened to you? 

BOWIE: Well. for one thing. 
suming that I've kept my heterosexual vi 


girls are always pre- 


ity for 


some reason. So I've had all these girls try to get me 
over to the other side again: “C'mon, David, it isn't 
all that bad. ГЇЇ show you.” Or better yet, “We'll 
always play dumb. 


show you.” 
On the other hand—I'm sure you want to know 
about the other hand as well—when I was 14, sex 


suddenly became all-important to me. It didn’t 


really matter who or what it was with, as long as 
nce. So it was some very 
that I 


airs. 


it was a sexual expe 


pretty boy in class in some school or othe 


took home and neatly fucked on my bed up 
And that was it. My first thought was, Well, if I ever 
get sent to prison. I'll know how to keep happy 

PLAYBOY: Which wouldn't give much slack to your 


BOWIE: I've always been very chauvinistic, even 


in my boy-ob: ed days. But I was always a 


leman. I always treated my boys like real 


ladies. Always escorted them properly 


40 or 


—I'd be a wonderful sugar daddy to some little 


t, I suppose if I were a lot older—lik 


queen down in (continued on page 142) 


ла e 


A DRUG, A BEAT 
AND THOUSANDS 
OF SWEATY BODIES. 


LOOKS AT 
AMERICA’S GROWING 
ADDICTION TO ELEC- 
TRONIC DANCE MUSIC 


rom being very much 
a minority taste, the 
beat-laden, drug-fueled 
behemoth of electronic 
dance music is now 
the USA's mainstream 
entertainment, with the 
repercussions of its infiltra- 
tion into American culture 
yet to become manifest. 
EDM's explosion is a fascinating phe- 
nomenon for seasoned observers of 
the dance-music scene. At last year' 
Ultra Music Festival in Miami I felt 
as though I were stepping back 
in time, reminded of Edinburgh's 
Rezerection raves in the 1990s. The 
exception being, of course, that the 
seminaked people were dancing 
under a blistering sun rather than 
turning blue from exposure. 

I've been attending raves (now a 
taboo word, replaced by the prosaic 
title “dance-music festivals") all over 
America for 20 years, mainly in the 
house-music stronghold of California 
but also everywhere from Chicago to 
New Orleans to New York City. At 
events like Ultra and Electric Daisy 
Carnival in Las Vegas, the crowd is, 
in the old British parlance, "mad for 
it," and for crusty veterans like myself 
there is something both uplifting and 
oddly disquieting about this. It would 
be nonsense to claim that the modern 
dance-music experience is inferior to 
the old-school one just because my 
50-something legs and constitution 
mean I'm pretty much done with all- 
nighter-all-dayers and the chemicals 
that fuel them. That would be like 
a recently castrated eunuch argu- 
ing that they don't make orgies like 107 


they used to. But we wanted dance 
music to take over the world, and 
now it has pretty much happened. So 
why all the skepticism? After all, dance 
music, or house or techno, lest we for- 
get, is not strictly a European invention. 
It might have been redefined for mass 
consumption in the Old World, but it's 
as American as apple pie, forged in the 
great musical cities of Chicago, Detroit 
and New York. Only now it has been 
successfully rebranded for the Ameri- 
can mainstream. 

If you like spectacle, EDM is hard 
to beat, taking the traditional rave 
staples of eye-popping lasers, brain- 
frying strobes, mind-blowing lights 
and cyber projections to new levels. As 
the doyen of U.K. dance-music com- 
mentators Simon Reynolds observed 
in a recent Guardian feature: "This 
AV glitz-blitz costs a lot, but then art- 
ists at the Deadmaus5 level earn а lot, 
as much as $1 million for a festi 
while hardest-gigging 
M Skrillex is reportedly 
million. With day tickets 
selling at around $125 and well over 
300,000 attending over three days, 
the Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carni- 
val must have grossed in the region of 
$40 million. The big money is attract- 
ing even bigger money: The mogul 
Robert F.X. Sillerman declared his 
intent to spend $1 billion acquiring 
companies in the EDM field, while 
Live Nation, America's leading concert 
promotions company, recently pur- 
chased outright Hard Events." 

Therein lies the rub: Acts are now 
defined purely in terms of their commer- 
cial success; depending on which article 
you read you'll find Skrillex, Deadmau5 
or Tiesto touted as the biggest/most 
lucrative/highest-earning act in EDM. 
The music seems to be posted missing 
in all of this. Was Derrick May's busi- 
ness portfolio ever compared with that 
of Frankie Knuckles? 


The new EDM artists are no longer 
old-school DJs responding to changes in 
the mood of the crowd, leading the party 
from the front. As a breed they are gen- 
erally straight, business-oriented music 
producers who preprogram their sets to 
tie in with the mind-boggling visual and 
lighting systems. The comment made by 
Deadmaus that today's EDM stars basi- 
cally just press р.г Осацѕей some hackles 
to rise, but it was an honest statement. 
Deadmau5 contends that the real art- 
istry is in the recording studio, not in 
the performance. 

Perhaps old dogs like myself need to 
get real about EDM. After all, Simon 
Cowell's overproduced throwaways sell 
more than the hip young guitar bands 
of the day, just as a Jerry Bruckheimer 
production will generally have more view- 
ers than the coolest HBO drama. It was 
always thus. Perhaps we just take EDM 
a bit too seriously. So then why does its 
popularity explosion fill so many old 
house-heads with concern? To answer this 
question, we need to consider where the 
scene started, and where it’s ended up. 


It’s hard to think of two more divergent 
landscapes than the glitzy playground of 
Las Vegas, rising out of the desert, and 


the "magic island" of Ibiza, Europe's 
house-music capital. I wasn’t introduced 
to house music and ecstasy at either. 
That moment took place in the more 
prosaic surrounds of an Edinburgh 

city council works Christmas party. I 
reluctantly popped a pill, gun-shy of all 
drugs due to previous bad form with 
heroin. To my surprise, I found that I 
couldn't listen to Slade's “Merry Christ- 
mas Everybody.” I craved the beats of 
house music while I was on ecstasy, just 
as much as I'd been ambivalent to them 
while on alcohol. I was delighted when 
my friend Susan, who had given me 
the pill, suggested we move on to Edin- 
burgh’s legendary Pure club. I got it. I 
was a convert. It was year zero. 

Ibiza came later, those hedonistic 
summers of supreme decadence culmi- 
nating in my gig deejaying to 10,000 
crazed ravers in the Balearic institution 
that is the club night Manumission. I 
wasn’t a great DJ, but it didn’t matter. I 
had the tunes in my bag and everybody 
was mashed out of their heads on E 
and adrenaline, so the place went crazy. 
So did I. I had immersed myself in a 
scene that was just sheer, rapturous, 
euphoric enjoyment. I'd been in Lon- 
don as a teenager when punk was at its 
height and had supposed that was my 
zenith. It had been only the warm-up 
act. Yes, it also had its downside— 
drugs and (continued on page 132) 


"Td like you to update this—I've had implants." 


109 


Obrigado > 


Brazii 


THE HUMAN BODY AS ART PIECE, WITH 
BOMBSHELL GABRIELA MILAGRE: " 


There is so much beauty in this hotograph, it's hard to know where to 

start. The inert black lava rock brings outthe vibrancy of the flesh. The 

delicate composition uses the fabric of the bathing suit as brushstrokes 

to create a visual rhythm. And then there's the model herself—Gabriela 4 
Milagré, who hails from Divinópolis, Brazil (yes, a city thattakes its 
name from the word divine). Austrian photographer Irene Schaur 

captured this image and the following ones in the wilds of Spain. But 
it's Brazil we must thank most of all. Gabriela is divine indeed. 


` PHOTOGRAPHY BY IRENE SCHAUR - 


ITH 25 STATES AND COUNTING 
either decriminalizing or legal- 
izing marijuana for medicinal 
or recreational use, this is the 
dawning of the age of cannabis. 
It's a reality rLAvBov anticipated 
some 50 years ago (in 1962 we 
reported on the medicinal uses 
of marijuana; in 1969 we pub- 
lished a manifesto calling for the legalization 
of the drug). What we couldn't predict was the 
boutique boom in all things bud. Today some 
of the best chefs in the country are cooking 
multicourse weed-tasting menus at secret pop- 
up dinners, doctors are prescribing strains of 
marijuana to patients with ailment-specific pre- 
cision, the tacky dorm room bong has been 
supplanted by beautifully designed electronic 
vaporizers, and marijuana dispensaries that 
look more like gourmet food markets than 
old-school head shops are opening in tony 
neighborhoods. If you haven't partaken 
recently, be warned: The modern strains 
are extremely potent. So tread lightly, 
responsibly and, of course, legally. 
Herewith survey of the high end of 
the marijuana revolution. 


THE REVOLUTION 
WILL BE VAPORIZED 


Bongs are déclassé. These vaporizers 
let you inhale smoke-free-and put the 
highin high design 


$250, iolite.com 


5719-9149, $250, ploom.com 
magic-flight.com 


» If Steve Jobs had 2» Available in Dwell 
»» Super portable at designed a vaporizer, magazine-worthy 
only two inches long, it would have looked colors like espresso 7 
this bohemian-chic like this. The pen-ike | brown, pistachio green $ 
vaporizer is handmade rechargeable model and pumpkin orange, TE 
from walnut, cherry is sleek, smart and a this mod butane- BER 
or maple wood in, marvel of ergonomics. powered machine E 
appropriately, southern An LED glows green gently heats ground SÉ 
California. It runs when it's hot and ready marijuana leaves to 
on rechargeable AA to inhale and glows release cannabis 
batteries and comes blue when its idle and | vapor before the herb 


with a lifetime warranty. cooling down. combusts. 


—y ALA 


UN - mE 


ШШШ]. AN 


THE STONED AGE 


With a dizzying array of marijuana strains on the market 
(Grape Ape, Purple Kush and Sour Diesel, to name a 
few), ask the sativa sommelier at your local dispensary to 
suggest a specific variety for your needs. In general, 
sativas are energizing, indicas are relaxing—and both are 
extremely potent. Edibles often list the THC content in 
milligrams, but it's best to start slow and low to determine 
your personal tolerance for a product. 


SUPERFINE 
1 


= Leaving no part of the 
plant to waste, growers 
harvest the nearly micro- 
scopic resin glands of the 
marijuana plant. They're 
loaded with THC and can 
be vaporized, smoked or 
made into hash. In Arabic, 
kief means "pleasure or 
well-being." 


CANDY LAND 
THC lollipops 


з» Lollipops and other 
cannabis hard candies 
are made with cannabis 
tincture and generally 
have a less lasting effect 
than edibles made with 
THC-infused fats. Need- 
less to say, as with all 
edibles, keep out of reach 
of children. 


CHILL PILLS 


GoldCaps 


»» Gel caps aren't just 
for vitamins anymore. 
(Just don't store them with 
your omega 3s.) These 
are the closest thing to a 
traditional dose. GoldCaps 
come in 10-, 25- and 
35-milligram strengths, 
are intense and have long- 
lasting effects. 


Cannabis chocolate 


»+ Venice Cookie 
Company's 4.20 chocolate. 
bars come in artisanal 
flavors such as milk 
chocolate with toffee 
and dark chocolate with 
sea salt. Loaded with 180 
milligrams of THC per Баг, 
one of these provides at 
least six servings. 


б 


SPREAD 'EM 


Peanut cannabutter 


э» THC is fat soluble, 
which is why you'll often 
see it in lipid-rich foods 
such as butter, baked 
goods and, yes, crunchy 
peanut butter. Due to its 
Potency, if you use it think 
in terms of little peanut 
butter crackers, not PB&J- 
sandwich portions. 


\ 


HIGH, HONEY 
Kief honey sticks 


= The earthy taste of 
marijuana plays nicely 
with intensely sweet 
honey you can eat 
straight or mix into tea. 
With 60 milligrams of 
kief in each stick, this 
stuff is extremely 
potent, so a little dab 
will do you. 


Weed Eaters 


Chefs across the country are 
hosting clandestine pop-up 

dinners at which weed is the 

starring ingredient (witness 

last spring’s feasts hosted by 

Roberta’s in Brooklyn and 

Starry Kitchen in Los Angeles). 

The most outspoken pro-pot chef 

is probably Eddie Huang, chef at 
Baohaus New York and author of 

the new food memoir Fresh Off the 

Boat. Here he shares his Asian-themed 
recipe for Diesel Tea Salmon. “My go-to 
weed-butter recipe is "The Best Can- 
nabutter Weed-Butter Recipe Ever’ on 
YouTube,” says Huang. “I used Sour 
Diesel, but that's because I couldn't find 
any backyard boogie. If you can get 
your hands on high school poops, use 
that because there's no difference when 
you're cooking it." 


1 Ib. salmon (preferably skin-on, 
wild-caught, cut into 4 oz. fillets) 

Canola oil 

2 oz. weed butter, melted 

6 ог. enoki mushrooms 

2% cups of water 

2 tbsp. loose-leaf green tea 

4 cups cooked 

% cup chopped scallions 
1 tbsp. wasabi paste 

М cup soy sauce 

Nori komi furikake (rice seasoning) to taste 


Place oven rack approximately five inches 
from roof of oven and preheat broiler. 
Place salmon pieces skin-side down on 
oiled baking sheet and brush with weed 
butter. Broil for five minutes, until lightly 
browned and just cooked through. While 
salmon is cooking, wash enoki mush- 
rooms, discard the roots and separate 
enoki into bunches of five or six stems. 
Bring water to boil in a pot. Drop mush- 
rooms in and turn heat off. After one 
minute, remove mushrooms and set aside. 
Next, steep green tea in mushroom water 
with a strainer. Put a cup of rice in each 
of four large bowls, then top with salmon, 
mushrooms and brewed tea. Garnish 
with scallions, wasabi paste, soy sauce 
and furikake. Evenly distribute the butter 
from the baking sheet among the bowls. 
"If you want to get faced," says Huang, 
"this is the most important step." 


HEF 


Eddie Huang 
BAOHAUS RESTAURANT 
238 E. 14TH STREET 
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 
з» Before he became а 
chef and an outspoken 
Twitter personality, 


THE STYLISH 
DJ AND 
PRODUCER 
ROCKS THE 
COOLEST 
SPRING 
FASHION 


By Rob 
Tannenbaum 


Photography by 


Kenneth 
Cappello 


© 


Fashion by 


Jennifer Ryan 
Jones 


Styling by 
Mark Но! 


you're anything like 
us, you've wondered, 
What the hell does a 
DJ do? In Diplo's case, 
the answer is a lot. He 
runs the record label 
Mad Decent, which is 
practically Motown 

for clubbers. The 
Grammy-nominated 
producer has worked 
with artists as dis- 
parate as M.LA., Lil 
Wayne, Justin Bieber, 
Usher, Beyoncé, Radio- 
head, Britney Spears 
and Skrillex. (If you 


don't like at least two 
of those acts, you 
don't like music.) 

As the mastermind 
behind modern 
dancehall act Major 
Lazer, he inspires 
young women to 
dance, sweat and strip 
off their clothes. And 
Diplo may be the most 
stylish DJ on the cir- 
cuit, dressing up while 
his fans get down. 


Opposite: 
Sunglasses, 
$210, by 
Mosley Tribes 
for Oliver 
Peoples. 


This page: 
Suit, $1,495, 
by Burberry 

London. 
Shirt, $395, 
by Marc 
Jacobs. 
Pocket 
square, $12, 
by Topman 
Watch, 
Artix GT 
chronograph, 
$3,450, by 
Oris. 121 


——— 


——— e (!' 


Is style as important 
for a DJ as it is for 
someone in a rock band? 


A: DJs are sort of the 
Mick Jaggers of this 
generation. We should 
try to have some kind of 
trendsetting and taste- 
making vibes, but | don't 
think a lot of DJs do. They 
don't even care. 


Do you give fashion 
advice to other DJs? 


A: | tell all the guys they 
need to dress better. 
They wear baggy jeans, 
hoodies, old sneakers. 
Some will even wear flip- 
flops to a club. They're 
deejaying parties at clubs 
that are making upward 
of a million dollars a night 
from bottle service, and 
the DJs are getting paid 
out the ass. | don't know 
why they dress like hobos 
when they're making 
millions of dollars a year. 
Were you a well- 
dressed kid? 
A: [Laughs] We didn't 
really have money to buy 
good clothes. When | was 
a kid in Florida, my mom 
and dad used to take me 


o 

Trench coat, 
$1,740, by 
Marc Jacobs. 
Sports jacket, 
$860, by Paul 
Smith. Shirt, 
$150, by Won 
Hundred. 
Trousers (part 
of a suit), 
$3,695, by 
Marc Jacobs. 
Sunglasses, 
$210, by 
Mosley Tribes 
for Oliver 
Peoples. 
Shoes, $248, 
by Cole Haan. 


to Marshalls and Ross 
Dress for Less to get the 
discounted clothes. These 
stores had British Knights 
from five years before 
and off-brand Nike Airs— 
sneakers you couldn't 
find anywhere else. 


So can you dress well 
at Marshalls? 


A: My mom's budget 
was about $100, and | 
could make 10 outfits 
from that. Marshalls 
always had some weird 
shit, like year-old Roca- 
wear, and you could get it 
for one tenth the original 
price. It was almost like 
going to a thrift store. I 
had a $50 pair of UFO 
pants, and my mom. was 
like, "It's crazy to spend 
that much money on a 
pair of jeans!" 


Your music has a lot of 
global influences. From the 


way you dress, it's hard to 
tell where you're from. 

A: Nobody thinks I'm 
American—everybody 
thinks I'm German or 


English. | don't know why; 


1 have a Florida tattoo, 
and I'm actually kind of 
a hillbilly. But I'm try- 
ing to pull off a James 
Bond kind of swagger. 
Even when 1 deejay in 
Cambodia, where it's 100 
degrees and there are 
mosquitoes everywhere, | 
still rock a suit. You have 
to look cooler than the 
fans who come to see 
you perform. 


”7 


© 
Jacket, 
$730, 
by PS by 
Paul Smith, 
available at 
MrPorter.com. 
T-shirt, $130. 
and pocket 
square, price 
on request, by 
Sandro. Jeans, $185, 
by Rag & Bone. 
Sunglasses, $210, 
by Mosley Tribes 
for Oliver Peoples. 
Shoes by Maison 
Martin Margiela, 
Diplo's own. 


123 


PLAYBOY 


124 


HIEROPHANT 


(continued from page 86) 


who had just sold his first full-length story 
to Fabulous Tales. 1 even tend conveniently 
to forget the miserable way (for me at least) 
the evening eventually concluded. Now 
I'm inclined to remember it as the first 
time I ever met Nemesio Carvajal. 

He was a young and very earnest Latin 
American science-fiction writer who had 
just come from Mexico. He had contacts 
with the radical circle that Robert Hein- 
lein was still part of in those days. Tony 
Boucher was fluent in Spanish and able 
to translate for us, but I recall Nemesio 
Carvajal as having pretty good working 
English even then. 

“Nemesio?” L. Ron Hubbard asked 
when they were introduced. “That's a 
hell of a name, kid. But then you Lati- 
nos have a bit of a flair when it comes to 
baptism, don't you? You know the joke? 
If Jesus is Jewish, how come he's got a 
Mexican name?" 

"Well, you're one to talk," Hein- 
lein interjected. "Isn't your first name 
Lafayette?" 

"Yeah." Hubbard sighed. "That's why 
I use Ron." 

Glasses were poured of cheap white 
sherry, which I soon discovered was the 
propulsion fuel for those evenings. A toast. 
was proposed. 

“То all the stories that will be written 
tomorrow." 

“Then this is the Tomorrow Literary 
Society?" asked Nemesio. 

"No, kid," Hubbard told him. 
“Mañana, no translation needed. As you 
know, the word has another meaning. A 
lot of these hacks aren't as good as me at 
meeting deadlines." 

Nemesio frowned. Boucher tried to 
explain that English speakers used the 
word more to mean "procrastination." 

"It's a bit of a gringo thing, Ron,” he 
added. “You know, this easygoing Latin, 
always putting off today what he can do 
tomorrow.” 

“Well, excuse me,” Hubbard said. “You 
know, I once tried to explain mañana, 
in my own gringo way as you have it, to 
an Irishman. He told me that there was 
nothing in the Gaelic that conveyed the 
urgency of such a term!” 

Hubbard paused for some sporadic 
laughter and then tried to continue to hold 
the room by launching into an improba- 
ble story of a recent expedition of his to 
Alaska. It was clear that he liked to domi- 
nate any assembly and to portray himself 
as an adventurer, a fearless explorer. He 
had written so much outlandish pulp fic- 
tion that he was already finding it hard to 
distinguish it from fact. 

But he wasn't allowed to get away with 
it for long. The imaginative competition 
was far too much for him. The conver- 
sation turned to the concept of parallel 
worlds and alternate futures, the notion 
of time being nonlinear, the possibilities of 
precognition. The world was ripe for the 


speculative genre with all the uncertainties 
of war, the bewildering potential of new 
discoveries in science and technology. But 
amid all these great events I couldn't help 
thinking that my personal life was on the 
brink of something, that this was a crucial 
night in my own history. 

Heinlein began to hold forth on the cur- 
vature of space-time, of world lines and 
points of divergence. Nemesio intervened 
to speak of an Argentine writer who had 
just published a collection of stories. In 
one, a character is described as attempt- 
ing a novel that would describe a world 
where all possible outcomes of an event 
occur simultaneously, with each one lead- 
ing to further proliferation. 

"It is titled ‘El jardín de senderos que se 
bifurcan,'” he explained. 

Boucher offered a swift translation. 
"The garden of paths that bisect?" 

"Yes. You see, in the story there is a 
novel and a labyrinth. It turns out that 
the novel is the labyrinth and the labyrinth 
is the novel." 

"Sounds interesting," Boucher said. 
“What's this writer called?" 

"Borges," Nemesio replied. It was the 
first time any of us had heard that name. 

*So what's his genre?" Hubbard 
demanded. "Mystery or fantasy, or what?" 

“Those things, yes," said Nemesio with 
a smile. "And more. He is also an impor- 
tant poet." 

Hubbard huffed indignantly. 

“We're definitely at a place where the 
paths are diverging," said Cartmill. 

"But surely," Brackett interjected, "in 
the world, in our world, whatever that 
is, there will be one reality if totalitarian- 
ism goes on unchecked and another if it 
is defeated." 

“Not necessari " Heinlein argued. "It 
could be that different worlds can coex- 
ist. In the past as well as the future. That's 
why this kid's story is so important.” He 
nodded over at me. "'Lords of the Black 
Sun' shows us the worst that will happen. 
By imagining it petant we can avoid it in 
our own real 

Feeling foolishly pleased with myself, I 
caught Mary-Lou’s eye across the room. 
She smiled at me, and in that moment I 
imagined our future together. Then Jack 
Parsons walked in. 

There are many images that can attest 
to the dark and passionate features of the 
glamorous rocket scientist. Parsons was 
undeniably photogenic, so one can still 
appreciate those deep-set eyes, that quiz- 
zical mouth, the thick curls swept up into 
a crowning mane. But none of these por- 
traits can ever do justice to his charisma, 
that delicately soulful presence one felt 
when he entered a room. 

His voice was soft and slow, his man- 
ner hesitant. His gaze was open, searching. 
He looked romantically disheveled in a 
fine flannel suit that needed pressing and 
an open-necked shirt ringed with grime. 
There was a light sheen of sweat on his 
brow. With scant introduction and a gentle 
insistence, he joined in the conversation. 


“We're certainly approaching a crucial 
moment,” he said. 

“In your rocket experiments?” asked 
Heinlein. 

“In that, yes,” Parsons replied. “But in 
the greater work too.” 

“You mean this mystical stuff?” Jack 
Williamson demanded. 

“Look, I know you think it's all a bit 
far-fetched, but didn't you say once that 
science is magic made real?” 

“I did, yes,” Williamson conceded. 

“There must be any number of ways 
to break through the space-time contin- 
uum. We should experiment with them all. 
Soon there will be a chance to test some of 
this unseen wisdom. The hierophant has 
ordered a special mass that might just help 
change the course of the war." 

“Wow,” Mary-Lou murmured, her eyes 
wide and bright. 

I realize now, of course, that he was 
talking about Aleister Crowley and that 
perhaps Jack had some knowledge of 
Operation Mistletoe. All I noticed then 
was the way Mary-Lou looked at him. 

“What's a hierophant?” asked Leigh 
Brackett. 

"It's a fancy name for a high priest," 
Hubbard explained. 

“So you've finally joined this Order,” 
said Heinlein. "I hope you haven't given 
up on the science." 

"Oh no," Parsons replied with a smile. 
"I'm following both paths now." 

"The fact that Jack Parsons was actu- 
ally quite shy and nervous only seemed 
to add to his charm. He appeared to be 
channeling an enchantment from another 
dimension. And there was a reticence in 
how he described his experiments that 
was intriguing for all us fantasists. He had 
to be discreet, he explained. The U.S. 
military had become interested in missiles 
and jet propulsion and was now funding 
the California Institute of Technology's 
rocket group, which was testing secret 
prototypes out in the desert. He gave a 
vague account of the group's activities 
that conjured visions of mystics raising 
fire demons in the wilderness. The des- 
ert as an empty stage beneath a theater 
of stars, a limitless temple of research. 
He was equally obscure about this occult 
sect of his, the Ordo Templi Orientis. He 
was living a strange double life, one of 
wild asceticism and divine exhaustion, 
toiling beneath the harsh sun by day, 
enacting sacramental rites at the Agape 
Lodge of the OTO by night. He embod- 
ied a weird fusion of modern science and 
ancient wisdom, part hip technocrat, part 
Renaissance wizard. 

He certainly cast some sort of spell 
over the room that night. It was an 
energy that seemed to split the discus- 
sion into waves and particles. No one 
voice could hold all the attention after 
that point. The party began to frac- 
ture and oscillate. Hubbard was in one 
corner detailing an improbable jungle 
adventure to Cleve Cartmill. Anthony 
Boucher was exchanging rapid Spanish 


"Hey, boy! You take us number one fella, we give you plenty nice stuff!" 


PLAYBOY 


126 


with Nemesio. Heinlein and Williamson 
were circulating. Leslyn Heinlein went 
into the kitchen for olives and more sherry. 
I had already noticed a buzz of attraction 
between Parsons and Mary-Lou. I watched 
with dread as she slowly, inexorably began 
to gravitate toward him. 

They were in deep discussion about 
astronomy and astrology when Heinlein 
pulled me into his orbit. He announced 
he was going up to his study to show Jack 
Williamson his “Timeline of Future His- 
tory" and insisted I join them. We went 
upstairs. Heinlein had on his wall a chart 
that mapped out a chronology of all the 
futuristic stories he had written and was 
planning to write. I stared at it blankly as 
Williamson made enthusiastic comments. 
When I think of it now I see the strange 
comment "The Crazy Years—mass psychosis 
in the sixth decade" next to the 1960s, but 
perhaps that's because it was the one predic- 
tion Heinlein really did get right. At the time 
I'm sure I simply looked dumbfounded by 
the imagined course of the next two centu- 
ries as if searching for some clue as to what 
was going to happen that evening. 

I excused myself and went back down- 
stairs. I was beginning to feel the effects of 
the sherry. I took a wrong turn and found 
myself in a utility room. I felt as if I were 
trapped in the labyrinthine tesseract of. 
Heinlein's story. I eventually found my way 
back to the lounge and looked around like a 
lost child. Hubbard caught my eye. 

"She's outside, kid," he drawled with a 
cruel smile. 

I went to the door and spied Mary- 
Lou by the front porch, standing close to 
Parsons. He was pointing up at the sky, 
tracing a constellation as he talked in a 
low, intense drone. I felt as if I was losing 


my footing and I held on to the door for 
support. I went back inside, walking in an 
absurd crouching posture. Leslyn frowned 
as she handed me another glass of sherry 
and asked Nemesio about Mexico. He said 
that he was actually from Cuba. I tried 
hard to concentrate as he told me his story. 
Like many young men he insisted on a pat- 
tern to his as yet unformed life. He was 
always late, he concluded. He had planned 
to go to Spain to fight with an anarchist 
militia. Two days before he was due to 
embark from Havana, Franco marched 
into Madrid. He then went to Mexico to 
study, with the intention of meeting Leon 
Trotsky. He finally obtained a letter of 
introduction, only to arrive at Coyoacán 
four days after Trotsky was assassinated 
by Ramón Mercader. 

“I think this is why I started writing about 
the future, so as not to be late," he explained 
with a grin. "But 1 am also interested in 
technological utopianism." 

He had come to L.A., making contact 
with a disparate group of American radi- 
cals: Trotskyists, members of the technocracy 
movement and libertarians like Heinlein, 
who had been involved in Upton Sinclair's 
End Poverty in California campaign back 
in the 1930s. 

The party was beginning to break up. 
Mary-Lou came back into the lounge. 

"Larry," she said, somewhat breathlessly, 
"I'm getting a ride with Jack." 

“But—but, Mary-Lou," I slurred. “I 
thought I was driving you home." 

"It'sokay, Larry. You'll want to talk some 
more." I remember the way her eyes spar- 

s she said, “Hasn't it been a wonder- 
ful evening?" 

Then she was gone. My recollection 
of the evening after that begins to jump 


"Why can't you use regular sex toys like everybody else?" 


around. Leaps in time and space. I was 
in the kitchen helping myself to another 
drink. Joining in with a dirty limerick 
recitation. (“There once was a fellow 
McSweeney / Who spilled some gin on 
his weenie./Just to be couth/ He added 
vermouth/And slipped his girlfriend the 
martini.") Throwing up in a plant pot. Col- 
lapsing onto the couch in the lounge. 


The following morning's hangover was 
ghastly, augmented by wretched feelings 
of guilt and humiliation. I apologized to 
the Heinleins for my behavior. Leslyn was 
certainly annoyed with me, but Robert just 
laughed it off and plied me with strong 
black coffee. Nemesio had also stayed 
over, sleeping in the spare room in a more 
planned and civilized fashion. I gave him. 
а ride downtown to where he was staying 
with an elderly couple who worked for the 
League for Industrial Democracy. 

When I confided to him about Mary- 
Lou, he gave a long sigh. 

"Siempre," he declared. "With love it is 
always hard." 

Nemesio always seemed older than 
his years. He was actually a few months 
younger than me, but from the start he as- 
sumed a sense of seniority in our friend- 
ship. I never minded this. He was, after 
all, far more mature than me in so many 
ways. He gave me a political awareness and 
something of a sentimental education. We 
had experiences in common that acted as 
а kind of emotional bond: We had both 
grown up without fathers. We agreed that 
we would see each other at the next Los 
Angeles Science Fantasy Society meeting at 
Clifton's Cafeteria. 

After dropping him off I went home 
and spent the rest of the day trying to 
ease a blinding headache and to placate 
my mother, who, having waited up for 
me in vain, had spent the previous night 
phoning hospitals and police stations, cer- 
tain that I had become the victim of some 
gruesome incident. 

For the next few days I stayed indoors, 
struggling to write but mostly brood- 
ing about Mary-Lou and Jack Parsons. I 
found myself rereading an article on his 
rocket experiments that had appeared in 
Popular Mechanics the previous fall. His 
handsome face taunted me as it stared 
out of photographs between illustrations 
of test sites and diagrams of launch tra- 
jectories. Thursday came around and I 
went along to Clifton's. I tried to clear my 
mind of it all, but before long I was talk- 
ing about Parsons. And there was plenty 
of gossip about him. It was said that he 
was married, though he and his wife took 
other lovers; that he was actively recruit- 
ing for the Ordo Templi Orientis, hosting 
discussion groups on literature and mysti- 
cism at his home in Pasadena. There were 
stories too of parties at the Agape Lodge, 
tales of spiked punch, near-orgies and in- 
vitations for all to join in the gnostic mass 
in the attic temple. 

Luckily Nemesio turned up and man- 
aged to distract me from my wild imagin- 
ings. He had already acquired the nickname 


Nemo from the LASFS crowd, and it would 
become his name from then on. 

“It’s a good one," I told him. “Like 
Verne's submariner in Twenty Thousand 
Leagues Under the Sea." 

“It also means ‘по опе,” he replied with 
a shrug. 

He then went on to recount his theory of 
how Verne had based his Captain Nemo on 
the 19th century submarine inventor from 
Barcelona, Narcís Monturiol. 

“Narcís?” I retorted. “Hubbard's 
right, you know. What is it with these 
Spanish names?” 

“Well, he was Catalan, actually. But you 
know, Monturiol was a visionary, a true 
exponent of liberational technology. He 
had written many pamphlets on socialism, 
pacifism, feminism 
even. He supported 
the setting up of 
utopian communes 
in the New World. 
When that failed he 
became interested 
in science and tech- 
nology. His was the 
first fully functional 
submarine." 

"Well, a lot of 
guys on the Atlantic 
convoys won't thank 
him for that." 

"Yes, but his was 
a craft for explora- 
tion." Nemesio be- 
gan to sketch the 
design of an under- 
water craft on a nap- 
kin. "A pilot ship for 
mankind's journey 
into the unknown. 
And his ideas then 
were still in advance 
of what the Nazis 
have now. He devel- 
oped an indepen- 
dent underwater 
propulsion system, 
with a chemical fuel 
that could generate 
enough energy to = 
power the vessel and L- - 
produce oxygen asa 
side product. It was 
truly remarkable.” 


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Iknow now that this was meant tender- 
ly, but at the time it was like a jab in the 
gut. I made my call and then we found 
a quiet booth. Mary-Lou looked differ- 
ent, her face pale and ethereal, her eyes 
intense. All at once she began telling me 
of the strange new things she had learned, 
about the Ordo Templi Orientis and its 
peculiar English hierophant, Aleister 
Crowley. She spoke of the power of the 
will and the gaining of universal knowl- 
edge through symbolic ritual. 

"Remember that night when I said that 
I wanted to know everything?" she said, 
her eyes burning beneath the neon light. 
“Well, now I think I can." 

“But that’s crazy, Mary-Lou." 

"You see, every man and every woman 


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come to the Lodge, you know. It would be 
зо good for you." 

“Er, I don't think so, Mary-Lou." 

“Well,” she said with a curious smile, 
"think about it." 

And then the conversation turned to 
more or less small talk. We asked each 
other about our writing, of course. She 
told me that she had outlined the whole 
of her space opera Zodiac Empire for Su- 
perlative Stories. She was working through 
the planets toward a final installment that 
would center on the sun. Nemo had told 
her about a Renaissance heretic and revo- 
lutionary called Tommaso Campanella 
who had written a utopian book titled The 
City of the Sun, and she planned to base 
it on that. We finished our drinks, and I 
dropped her off on 
my way home. 


99* 


(1157 value) 


I hadn't exactly 
been looking for- 
ward to my next ap- 
pointment with my 
psychoanalyst, Dr. 
Furedi, but even I 
could not have fore- 
seen such a difficult 
session. I tried to 


explain what had 
happened in the 
previous week, but 
such was my agi- 
tated state, I must 


they did seem a little 
too much like the 
demented fantasy of 
someone who read 
too many pulp mag- 
azines. It soon be- 
came clear that my 
analyst was treating 
it all as the delusion- 
al ravings of some 
paranoid condition. 
The good-looking, 
diabolical scientist 
was, of course, mere- 
ly a symptom of my 
hysteria. Dr. Furedi 


Pls 4* shipping and handing. 


Nemo showed me 
his drawing. It was of a fish-shaped craft 
with a row of portholes along its side. 

“It looks like a spaceship,” I remarked. 

"Yes," Nemo agreed. "Maybe that's what 
it was. Maybe that is the answer. If you can't 
change the world, build a spaceship.” 

When I walked out of Clifton's that 
night, Mary-Lou was waiting for me. She 
was wearing slacks and a windbreaker 
with the collar turned up. She looked like 
a fugitive. 

“Hi, Larry," she said. "Can we talk?” 

We found a bar on South Broadway. We 
ordered beer and I went to the pay phone 
to call Mother. 

"She gets worried if I'm late home," I 
explained. 

“You're such a good boy, Larry,” she said. 


is а star. Everyone has to find their own 
destiny. The law of the strong is our law 
and the joy of the world." 

“The law?" 

"Love is the law." 

"Love? Is that how you feel about Jack 
Parsons?" 

She sighed. 

“Oh, Larry” 

“But he's married, Mary-Lou." 

"That's just a superficial institution, 
Larry. We're living in a new age. Monog- 
amy is redundant. If we get rid of jealousy 
we can really set ourselves free. 1 mean, 


look at you." 
“Me?” 
“Yes, you. You’re so goddamn 


buttoned-up and neurotic. You should 


became particularly 
interested in my reference to “rockets,” 
obviously interpreting them as the phallic 
objects of my repressed imagination. I left 
his consulting room a gibbering wreck. 

And the worst thing was that there was an 
element of truth in his distorted perception 
of my problem. I was irrationally obsessed 
with Parsons. And though I was jealous of 
him for having taken away the presumed 
object of my affections, I was also jealous of 
Mary-Lou, in that she had become the focus 
of his attentions. I was pretty sure this was 
not sexual jealousy, but with scant practical 
experience in these matters, I felt in serious 
danger of having some kind of breakdown. 
It was with a sense of desperation that I de- 
cided to face my anxieties head-on. 


The Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi 127 


PLAYBOY 


128 


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Orientis was in a large wooden house on 
Winona Boulevard. I persuaded Nemo to 
come along to an open meeting with me. I 
was a little scared, to tell you the truth, but 
I wanted to find out what all this was about. 
The first part of the meeting was very in- 
formal. We were shown into an upstairs 
lounge buzzing with a bohemian crowd, a 
mix of young and old, some flamboyantly 
dressed, others theatrically solemn. I spot- 
ted an ancient silent-movie actress chatting 
with a man whose catlike face was dusted 
with powder and rouge. We were offered 
punch. I'd already decided that if this stuff 
was drugged, well, it would all be part of 
the experiment. I took a tentative sip. It 
tasted dark and sweet with a licorice after- 
taste. Suddenly Mary-Lou was next to me. 

“Glad you could come, Larry. Go easy 
with that stuff," she said, nodding at the 
cup in my hand. “It's got a kick to it." 

I stared at her for a second and then 
drained the rest of the punch in one gulp. 

"I'm feeling adventurous." She laughed. 

“That's good. Because if you come up to 
the mass, you've got to take communion. 
"That's the rule." 

A gong sounded and the party began 
to make its way up a wooden staircase 
through a trapdoor. As Mary-Lou went on 
ahead she turned back to me. 

“See you later, Larry. Stick around. 
We're going to Pasadena later. There's go- 
ing to be a special party." 

The attic temple was small and gloomy. 
Wooden benches faced a raised dais where 
two obelisks flanked a tiered altar lined 
with candles. There was a hushing of voices 
as the congregation settled. A trill of soft 
laughter ran along the pews and a sharp 
scent of incense filled the air. There came 
a low drone of a harmonium playing the 
slow chords ofa prelude, though I'm sure I 
heard in counterpoint the melody of "Bar- 
nacle Bill the Sailor.” At the time I thought 
this was my febrile imagination, but I later 
found out that the organist liked to im- 
provise around a jaunty tune slowed to a 
funereal pace. 

The priest and the priestess entered and 
the ceremony began. It was not what I had 
expected. I had imagined some brooding 
satanic ritual, but this seemed almost light- 
hearted. There was certainly nothing de- 
monic about it. The ceremony had much 
medieval symbolism: swords parting veils, 
lances and chalices—Freud knows what 
Dr. Furedi would have made of it all. My 
mind began to spin very slowly. The drug 
was taking hold. It was not an unpleasant 
feeling. The mass became a long, monoto- 
nous chant punctuated by sudden mo- 
ments of exuberant gesture or astonishing 
verse. Images of burning incense beneath 
the night stars of the desert, of the serpent 
flames of rocket launches. Alien dialogue in 
some far-flung adventure. And I was some- 
how part of it. I felt relief flood through 
my usually anxious self. I figure now that 
it was probably mescaline that had spiced 
up the punch. 

At times I found myself enthralled by 
the drama in the temple and at others 
almost oblivious to the proceedings. The 
priest and the priestess appeared to show 


real passion for each other as they en- 
acted a strange, sensual fertility rite. The 
woman spoke urgently of pleasure, pale 
or purple, veiled or voluptuous, of a song 
of rapture to arouse the coiled splendor 
within, and for a moment I was utterly en- 
chanted. Then the priest began to chant 
an unintelligible dirge and my thoughts 
diffused. I drifted into a trancelike state, 
and before I knew it the mass was at an 
end and we were all summoned to a com- 
munion of wine and rust-colored wafers. 
As we filed out the organ played a reces- 
sional of ominous chords with a slow ditty 
over it that sounded a lot like "Yes! We 
Have No Bananas." 

Back in the lounge I was talking with 
Nemo. The conversation seemed urgently 
heightened and languidly casual at the 
same time. There were moments when we 
seemed to be having the same thoughts 
simultaneously. We felt sophisticated, 
wildly intellectual. 

Our eyes locked and I noticed that his 
pupils were as sharp as pencil leads. We 
both agreed that this mass would not seem 
out of place in a pulp fantasy, that so many 
of the stories we had been exposed to ap- 
peared to hark back to a warped idea of the 
Middle Ages, with knights, maidens, quests 
and supernatural revelation. Nemo spoke 
of how so much space opera seemed to be 
a rendition of some interstellar Holy Ro- 
man Empire. We had begun to speculate 
on what kind of religion a science-fiction 
writer would come up with when Mary- 
Lou came over to join us. 

"You took the host then," she said to 
me. "You know they're prepared with ani- 
mal blood." 

I shrugged, not knowing what to say 
but determined not to be as shocked as 
she thought I would be. I noticed Parsons 
at the far end of the room, holding court 
amid a small circle of people. The priest 
and priestess stood near him, touching 
each other with a casual intimacy. 

"The priestess seems to be in love with 
the priest," I said to Mary-Lou. 

"Oh, that's Helen Parsons," she retorted. 
* Jack's wife." 

"You mean...?" 

“I told you, Larry. We have to reject hyp- 
ocritical social standards." 

1 felt my face flush at the thought of it. I 
let out a peculiar giggle. 

"Larry?" said Mary-Lou. 

*Mary-Lou," I replied. 

I wanted to say that I loved her. Love! To 
call it out just as the celebrants had done in 
the gnostic mass. 

"Are you coming to Pasadena with us?" 
she asked. 

I nodded and my teeth clenched in a 
manic grin. My head raced with curiosity 
and delirious expectation. 

The May evening was warm when we 
reached the Arroyo Seco, the dry ravine 
that cuts through the San Gabriel Moun- 
tains. The scrubland at the edge of Pasa- 
dena was then a suburban wilderness, a 
homely arcadia thick with chaparral, syca- 
more and tangled thickets of wild grape. 
The Caltech rocket group had the lease 
on three acres that had been cleared as a 


launch site. There was a group of согги- 
gated sheet-metal huts, a sandbag bunker 
and an arcane assembly of test apparatus. 
These were the beginnings of the famous 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Some kind of party had already begun. 
There was wine and beer and a sense of 
pagan revelry. I was passed a thin, hand- 
rolled cigarette. Marijuana, I thought with 
an exuberant sense of sinfulness. I took a 
puff and broke into a spluttering spasm. 
Nemo took it from me and inhaled the 
drug with casual expertise. He had tried it 
in Mexico, he confided to me. Mary-Lou 
explained to us that tonight was a ritual to 
influence the space-time continuum. This 
was the special mass that Jack Parsons had 
spoken of that night at the Heinleins', the 
one ordered by the hierophant to change 
the course of the war. 

Parsons arrived in white robes, clutch- 
ing a spray of mistletoe in one hand, a 
sickle in the other. The party started to 
form itself into a circle around him. It was 
then that I saw the rocket on its stand. 
Taller than he was, it seemed to tower 
above us, a totem, a faceless idol. On the 
ground around it were scorch marks and 
what looked like runic markings. Parsons 
began an ululating invocation to the god 
Pan. Drunk and drugged, my mind reeled 
but my body assumed its tranquilized 
equilibrium. I felt a wonderful balance: 
my weight on the earth, my head in the 
sky. I turned to Nemo and he nodded to 
me, wide-eyed and smiling. 

"Yeah," he said. *We're going to make 
contact, man." 

I nodded back. I had no idea what he 
meant, but at that moment it all seemed 
to make sense. The sky darkened and Par- 
sons motioned for the circle to widen. At 
nightfall the rocket was launched. There 
was an explosion of thrust, an exultant 
rush of energy into the heavens. The 
crowd gasped as one. 

"Yes, Nemo hissed as the vehicle 
reached its zenith. 

The rocket released its payload, a 
parachute flare that floated like an an- 
gel of grace over the Arroyo Seco. As it 
descended, Nemesio pointed to something 
beyond it high up in the firmament. 

"See?" he implored. "They're here, man!" 

I couldn't tell what he was gesturing at. 
АП I could see were some dim stars that 
were just making themselves visible. 

"Come on," he said and began to make 
his way toward the San Gabriel Mountains. 
"They're coming in to land!" 

I went after him for a while, but he 
moved like a man possessed, following a 
track up into the canyon. I called after him. 
as he began to climb the hillside. Then he 
was gone. 

I went back to the party. A bonfire had 
been lit and shadow figures danced in the 
convulsive firelight. My once-benign mood 
of narcosis began to fade and the evening's 
saturnalia now seemed harsh and sinis- 
ter. My anxiety returned, unwelcome but 
familiar. I wandered about, trying to find 
Mary-Lou. I thought I caught a glimpse of 
a wild goat gamboling in a darkened glade. 
I followed and found myself in a clearing. 


There was a trickle of laughter and by the 
flickering light I could make out bodies ca- 
vorting in this sacramental grove. Yellow 
flames licked at the pitched gloom, and 
here and there naked flesh glowed amber 
or albescent. A bright flare from the pyre 
lit up a face, which turned and caught my 
gaze. It was Mary-Lou. She smiled as she 
saw me, her eyes brimstone, her mouth a 
lewd grimace. 

“Come on, Larry,” she implored in a 
harsh whisper. “Join us!” 

I froze. My whole body clenched into an 
apoplectic spasm but for a heart that ham- 
mered away in a wild palpitation. I felt a 
terrible sadness. The image of the twisted 
bodies was already seared on my memory, 
my timid desire overwhelmed by a dread- 
ful sense of loss. This was the death of love, 
I suddenly thought. 

Perhaps Mary-Lou caught my look of 
dismay. I don’t know. Her face went blank 
for a second and then she turned away 
from me, into the embrace of Jack Parsons 
and two or three others. 

I stumbled away unsteadily and out of 
joint, coldly sober but reeling about like a 
drunken fool. I lay down in the dust and 
felt the world spin against my back. Look- 
ing down at the starry depths, I felt the 
lonely vertigo of the universe. My own 
sorry little space opera stretched out into 
infinity. Eventually I regained enough bal- 
ance to pick myself up and walk to my car. 
I clambered onto the backseat and fell into 
a troubled sleep. 

I woke to Nemo gently shaking my 
shoulder. I got out of the car and adjusted 
my eyes to the powdery haze of morning. 

“What happened to you?” I asked him. 

He shrugged and stared back at me with 
dead eyes. He looked as if he had been 
dragged through a forest. 

“It's hard to explain, Larry,” he said. “I 
saw something.” 

I never got the whole story of what he 
witnessed that night. Over the years he 
would refer to the time when he had seen 
“something from another world,” but he 
always seemed reluctant to elaborate fur- 
ther. For a while I thought he worried that 
I might think he was crazy. But maybe he 
just wanted to keep it to himself. To save 
it for his fiction. And the influence of 
this experience can certainly be found in 
his work, in stories such as “Interstellar 
Epiphany” and “The Uninvited Guest.” At 
the time neither of us really wanted to talk 
about the previous night, so we drove back 
to L.A. mostly in silence. 

Mother was predictably upset when I 
turned up at the house looking wild-eyed 
and disheveled, and I was unnecessarily 
blunt with her when she asked after my 
whereabouts, loudly declaring that I had 
been at an orgy. 

“Larry!” she chided me. 

“Oh, don’t worry, Mother,” I called out 
as I went up to my room, “your precious 
son is still a virgin.” 


Excerpted from The House of Rumor, to be pub- 
lished by Amazon Publishing/New Harvest. 


CLIVE DAVIS 


(continued from page 58) 
it. Spotify and streaming are generating 
revenue. But the most important fact in all 
this is that we're dealing with something 
that is still a basic need. I know that music 
is a need. We're not dealing with a product 
that is dated. Now it’s a matter of finding 
a solution as to how to get music in a com- 
mercial, profitable way—fair to the origi- 
nators and satisfying to the consumers—so 
it can continue to grow. But the need for 
music is still there. 

PLAYBOY: Because it’s now harder for art- 
ists to make money selling records, does 
the lion's share of their income come 
from performing? 

DAVIS: That's accurate for established 
artists, for veteran headliners, whether 
it’s Madonna, Springsteen, Elton John 
or Rod Stewart. They fill arenas all over 
the world, which makes a fortune com- 
pared with their record sales. Lady Gaga 
isa big breakthrough, so she still probably 
makes more from live performances, but 
her albums sell 2 million, 3 million, 4 mil- 
lion copies. That was pretty significant as 
a breakthrough. The biggest-selling rap 
artist is probably Lil Wayne at 2.5 million. 
Eminem does some touring, but his al- 
bums are major sellers. Others are Kanye 
West and Jay-Z. 

PLAYBOY: Are they on your iPod? 

DAVIS: I don't have an iPod. I have an 
iPhone and an iPad. 

PLAYBOY: Is that what you use to listen 
to music? 

DAVIS: I listen on CDs. I have a home in 
Westchester, about an hour away, and I go 
there on weekends. I'll listen in the car go- 
ing there and coming back. I also use Spotify 
on occasion. I watch videos to see what com- 
petitive artists look like as they break. 
PLAYBOY: Do you go to clubs? 

DAVIS: That was a long ago thing. Now 
you get videos, though for established art- 
ists, or an artist on your roster who is per- 
forming, you go. Barbra Streisand goes 
back so many years that I have to go to 
the Hollywood Bowl when she performs 
there. Alicia Keys is touring, and I'll see 
her. I just saw Sting and Tony Bennett at 
a charity dinner. 

PLAYBOY: You've worked with the biggest 
stars in the world by now. You're about to 
turn 81. Do you think about retiring? 
DAVIS: Look, your health has to be good 
to enable you to come to an office every 
day. I am still at the office a minimum 
of eight hours every day. Besides, you 
can work in this job as long as your track 
record is good. You get report cards ev- 
ery Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday 
is radio, when they release the Top 40; 
Wednesday they release the SoundScan 
results, which track sales. 

PLAYBOY: Is it harder to break records 
these days, when radio stations have 
such formulaic playlists? On most sta- 
tions, DJs have little opportunity to play 
what they want. 

DAVIS: Actually, the size of the playlist has 
always been pretty much the same. What 


you do miss is the free-form album stations. 129 


PLAYBOY 


130 


There are definitely fewer rock stations. 
With fewer rock and free-form stations, 
how do you find the next Dylan? Where 
is the next Springsteen? The artists who 
broke in the past few years primarily came 
out of the singles world—out of electronic 
dance music—and they don't show the 
artistry of a Dylan or a Springsteen. Also, 
albums aren't what they used to be. The 
public will buy 5 million copies of a single 
but only a few hundred thousand albums 
at most. There's not the curiosity to hear 
more of the artist. People buy only the 
particular song they like. There are ex- 
ceptions, but it's a serious problem when 
it comes to developing careers, not just 
breakthrough singles. I'm trying to think 
of the last solo folk-rock artist to break. 
It might be harder to break a Patti Smith 
now—someone completely new. 

PLAYBOY: Has anything replaced radio as а 
way to break artists? 

DAVIS: Yes. Online is one way. The web 
gives people an opportunity to hear and 
see an artist, but not too many artists break 
off the web, at least so far. Besides online, 
a lot of new artists have come from reality- 
ТУ competitions. No one has developed 
meaningfully from the competitions in the 
past two or three years, but before that we 
found Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood 
and Chris Daughtry. I did The X Factor 


Leona Lewis for her debut album. Still, it's 
not easy to break artists who don't fit in the 
mainstream. It's not easy to break a rock 
artist; reality shows are pop music. But 
like I said, people want music. That hasn't 
changed. Music is as vital as ever, which is 
why I'm encouraging students to go into 
this industry by starting the Clive Davis In- 
stitute of Recorded Music at NYU. I want 
the best people to go into this business, and 
I want them to understand its potential. 

Popular music has a remarkable history. 
It's tied with the culture's development, yet it. 
hasn't been treated with the same seriousness 
as other music forms. There was no place to 
study music—except for very elitist music, 
maybe classical or jazz at Berklee or the con- 
servatories. Mainstream contemporary mu- 
sic, however, which has so much of an impact 
around the world, wasn't taken seriously as 
an art form. There was no place to seriously 
study it, to be trained so you could push this 
industry further. Now there's a school of 
popular music where the future of the music 
business is learning and collaborating. 

I endowed the institute for another 
reason. I've always been bothered by the 
image of the record executive as the gold- 
chain-wearing, finger-snapping, almost 
shady character. Well, that's not what it’s 
like. It has always bothered me that the 
profession I chose has that stereotype. I 


“I don’t have a spare tire or a flashlight. My emer; kit contains 
condoms, a bottle of wine and a blanket.” 


look back at the people who have shaped 
this business: Warner Bros. Records un- 
der Mo Ostin and Joe Smith, A&M Re- 
cords with Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert. 
Going back years before me there was 
Alan Livingston of Capitol Records and, 
more recently, Richard Branson of Vir- 
gin, Chris Blackwell of Island, and David 
Geffen. I can go on and on. These execu- 
tives were behind music that we still lis- 
ten to and that changed the culture. You 
can argue that the history of music is far 
more in-depth than that of film. The real 
leaders of the music industry have been 
incredibly bright, talented minds, and en- 
trepreneurial. The future leaders should 
know that tradition, and they should 
have more opportunities at an early age 
to learn more, digest more, put their tal- 
ents to use. They should know they can 
be part of what comes next, the most 
exciting next thing. 

PLAYBOY: What excites you now? 

DAVIS: I was very glad to see the arrival of 
Mumford & Sons. And Adele—I was very 
glad to see how she soared over everybody 
else. I have nothing to do with those art- 
ists, but it's encouraging for the future of 
music that art outside electronic dance 
music are finding success. Brittany How- 
ard, the lead singer of Alabama Shakes, is 
also strong. 

PLAYBOY: When you're li 
d songs come on by arti 
with—Aretha, Bruc 
you feel a particular pride? 

DAVIS: The answer honestly is yes. 1 do have 
a definite sen: i 
and the Papas; lifornia Drea- 
min'" comes on. A song like that or a Simon 
& Garfunkel song. I'm reminded that what 
Paul Simon did was incredible. Paul Simon 
should always be considered in the same 
breath as Lennon and McCartney. And 
there's a thrill when I hear Bruce Spring- 
steen. There's an extra thrill when you're 
involved with them personally, when you 
were there from the beginning. 

PLAYBOY: Are you as excited as when you 
discover something new? 

DAVIS: Hearing the old music is not nec- 
essarily better than the feeling of finding 
someone new, working with someone 
great coming up. Over the past three or 
four years I did "Bleeding Love" and "Bet- 
ter in Time," which broke Leona Lewis 
after she won The X Factor. I worked with 
Kelly Clarkson with “Му Life Would Suck 
Without You" and "Already Gone." I did 
"Spotlight" with Jennifer Hudson. I did 
Whitney's final album, and I supervised 
her recent greatest hits album. I did a 
network-TV special, A Grammy Salute to 
Whitney Houston. I've just signed Aretha to 
do another album. I signed Rod Stewart. 
I'd never worked with him before, and 
then I did five volumes of The Great Ameri- 
can Songbook, which sold almost 20 million 
copies. I'm still working with Santana. I'm 
just locking up the rights to bring My Fair 
Lady back to Broadway. I've written my au- 
tobiography. It remains exciting. I'm still 
looking for the next thing, the next artist. 


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132 


OFF THE EDGE 


(continued from page 108) 
intoxication generally do—but I wouldn't 
have missed it for the universe. 

Now it's strange to think of Vegas, which 
I associate with Tom Jones and boxing, in 
the same way as those old days in Ibiza. Yet 
the isolation and anything-goes ethos the 
two places share have made Vegas the per- 
fect site as the dance-music center of the 
Americas. Even the suited Talibanites of the 
Christian fundamentalist right tacitly accept 
that monument to capitalist excess, though 
perhaps with the old caveat “What happens 
in Vegas stays in Vegas." 

Spring break in America, no longer lim- 
ited to spring or to college kids, provided 
the mainstream cultural raison d'étre for 
EDM by throwing a lot of bodies together 
under a four-by-four beat and a strobe light. 
For some time the young (and the not so 
young) have been flooding spots like Las 
Vegas and Miami Beach, looking for the 
party. With the staple acts long in the tooth 
and as stale as old bread, and the audience 
either dying, incontinent or suffering fore- 
closure, the gap in the Vegas market was 
yawning. And this party also had to be about 
more than being in a club or bar, listening 
to the latest mainstream pop records given 
the four-by-four treatment. It's hard to see 
youth flocking to these spots to enjoy the 
Cowell-esque conveyor belt of bland, dis- 
posable flunkies or synthetic "country" and 
teen stars. There's not a whole lot of fun in 
that game once puberty kicks in. 

The issue of how to get young people, 
who will spend money whether they have it 
or not, into city stadiums and parks has been 
an ongoing one. What will they come for? 
EDM has provided the spectacle. It’s unde- 
niably crass to say that EDM equals house 
and techno plus spring-break culture, but 
the first two brought the beat, the other the 


bodies in search of fun. And they have quite 
possibly revitalized Las Vegas. 

More crucially, the internet has demol- 
ished the old walls between cultures, 
ending the time lag that prevented the 
North American spread of U.K.-based 
dance genres such as jungle. By the time 
U.S. DJs got their hands on the latest U.K. 
sounds as imports, they were out of date 
and no longer essential. Now dubstep, the 
original completely networked dance scene, 
enjoys global synchronization, with a rel- 
atively free trade in sound files and new 
track edits of DJ mixes on pirate radio sta- 
tions, which fans then post on YouTube. 
EDM spread like a virus once major acts 
began to tour U.S. soil, and it wasn't long 
before American producers got in on the 
act, both at home and abroad. 

The genesis of this rise can arguably 
be charted through American R&B and 
hip-hop acts going to Ibiza, doing pills, dis- 
covering David Guetta and his Fuck Me I'm 
Famous party, and being moved to collab- 
orate with him to make big club and pop 
hits. Acts such as P. Diddy, Chris Brown, 
the Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West then 
made dance music cool in America by mar- 
ginalizing the gay factor. This, Boston-born 
dance-music luminary Arthur Baker argues, 
paved the way for the takeover of Las Vegas 
by dance giants "like Paul Oakenfold, who 
upped things through his touring with 
Madonna, and then the new-school home- 
grown acts such as Deadmau5 and Skrillex, 
who gave the kids their own stars." 

Indivisible from the artistic side of the 
the scene's commercial rebrand- 
ing. This was basically about finding a new 
terminology to disassociate raves and house 
and techno music from the traditional con- 
cerns authorities and parents had about 
them, with their sexy vibe of near-naked 
bodies and, most of all, almost every par- 
ticipant on mind-bending chemicals. The 


"You idiot! You’re gonna ruin it for the rest of us!” 


game changer was the 2010 Electric Daisy 
Carnival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coli- 
seum. Advertising rave culture as EDM is 
one thing, but the past wasn't so easily air- 
brushed. A 15-year-old girl who managed to 
bypass the event's age restrictions and gain 
entry became the scene's first high-profile 
ecstasy-associated fatality. 

The justifiable outcry that followed this 
tragedy might have been a blow but in fact. 
became a huge leg up for EDM in America. 
Electric Daisy Carnival was forced out of Los 
Angeles but, fortuitously for the burgeoning 
scene, relocated to Las Vegas. Moreover, the 
incident advertised the fact that such huge 
events actually did exist in the States. 


What we traditionally know as raves appeal 
not just to the public but also to entertain- 
ment entrepreneurs. Cheaper to put on 
than rock-and-roll festivals, they involve 
fewer people to deal with and less equip- 
ment to worry about. Ironically, due to 
ecstasy (now also rebranded as the pow- 
dered “molly”) the crowds are generally 
far better behaved than at alcohol-soaked 
rock-and-roll festivals. And then there is 
the one thing America has in spades: space. 
Huge parking lots and giant sports stadi- 
ums abound, along with a ready-made 
events culture of people who are accus- 
tomed to filling them. The biggest factor 
quite possibly lies in those three little let- 
ters: EDM. Americans are not the most 
difficult people in the world to market 
things to—that's what comes of being the 
oldest mass consumer society on the planet. 
It's an unwritten law that for any big partic- 
ipatory event to be successful, it must, like 
the USA, be hung on three letters: UFC, 
NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. Thus, EDM. 

ing EDM to the musical mainstream 
requires financial viability, meaning elec- 
tronic music on this side of the Atlantic has 
to pitch to the masses, and the ubiquitous 
four-four beats of house music need to 
infect almost every stream of popular music. 
The problem with this lowest-common- 
denominator effect is that it can often 
mean that much of the music isn't very 
good (“soulless shit,” in Baker's words). It's 
hard to escape the contention that EDM is 
catering largely to people who simply want 
entertainment and have minimal immersion 
or emotional investment in the scene. When 
The Wall Street Journal is moved to complain 
about “The Dumbing Down of Electronic 
Dance Music," something is clearly awry. 

Yet a counterargument runs that the older 
rave generations are on shaky ground com- 
plaining about the commercialization of 
dance music. We were the ones, after all, 
who, having had our fill of cold fields and 
disused factories, started to pine for proper 
toilets and bars. You can't have enough in 
the capitalist world of entertainment, only 
too much. So then came the VIP lounge and 
the velvet ropes of the superclub, another 
precedent of EDM. 

The good and bad aspects of EDM were 
summed up by Chicago house legend and 
articulate observer of the American dance- 
music scene Tommie Sunshine: “1 love the 
fact that this music is where it is. If you 


зау differently, you're either lying or you 
never got it in the first place. House music 
to me was always inclusive: 1 always wanted 
everyone to come to the party. We lost a 
lot of that inclusiveness when the whole 
bottle-service and dickhead-doorman 
thing became a cliché. But this subculture 
wasn't made up of people playing by the 
rules. And now people want to put rules 
on it. It's showbiz, and the love of music 
has been tragically lost." 

Kids need their heroes, and as an old 
anti-house purist who grumbled about DJs 
stealing music before I succumbed to the 
power of the beat (and the pill), I'm in no 
position to bemoan the rise of musicianship 
and technological spectacle over DJ per- 
formance in dance music. But I also want 
people to know about the history and spirit 
of the rave. As Baker says, "No one is edu- 
cating the kids on its underground ethnic 
roots, the forefathers of the old school, the 
gay DJs who were wiped out by AIDS. The 
cycle of history on dance music is about five 
to 10 years—before that the kids are clue- 
less for the most part." 

Here in America, Larry Levan is long 
gone, but some of the giants of techno and 
house such as Derrick May, Kevin Saun- 
derson, Juan Atkins and Frankie Knuckles 
ing their stuff. It would be 
¿DM kids were checking 
them out. If you are investing heavily in 
something in terms of your time, money 
and social life, you should know about it. 
Why? Because it's yours: It's your culture 
and your history. If you don't, you're just 
another passive consumer in the supermar- 
ket line, waiting for the next tune before 
doing the hamster-on-the-wheel routine. 
And yes, since we put our own spin on it 
over in Europe, I also want people to know 
about Shoom, the Hacienda, Ibiza and the 
free party scene, culminating in Castlemor- 
ton and the Blackburn arrests 

Worryingly, there are signs of an immi- 
nent U.S. crackdown. The swaggering 
machismo of spring-break frat-boy culture 
has moved dubstep toward the harder sound 
of "brostep," which has been embraced 
in the States. There's no doubt the EDM 
experience is heavily packaged, less about 
music or even dancing than just about being 
a face in this huge extravaganza, partying 
hard and getting as fucked-up as possible. 
Another element of contemporary American 
EDM, one it shares with some of the harsher 
European techno scenes, is that under the 
veil of celebration there is often a tangible 
sense of anger and alienation. Members of 
the EDM generation are the first Americans 
who will be poorer than their parents, and 
they often carry a palpable sense of frustra- 
tion associated with that status. 

While the tragic ecstasy-related death 
of the teenager in 2010 illustrates that 
the scene perversely grows on notoriety, 
in the long run such incidents can only 
make it more visible to the authorities. The 
event illustrated the unavoidably symbi- 
otic link between EDM and ecstasy. The 
Los Angeles Times, reporting on the Elec- 
tric Daisy Carnival, stated that “about 120 
attendees were taken to hospitals, mostly 
for drug intoxication." 


There are only so many ways you can san- 
itize an experience that is, in essence, largely 
about the interface between a sound and a 
drug, whether you are celebrating or hid- 
ing by doing so. There will be people who 
say that drugs are irrelevant, that it's all 
about the music and they can dance them- 
selves into a transcendental state. But with 
a few new-age nerdish or rehab-case excep- 
tions, this is bullshit. If there'sa party in the 
penthouse of a tower block, 90 percent of 
people, or more, will opt for the express ele- 
vator rather than 60 flights of stairs. Ecstasy, 
by increasing sensitivity to light, touch and 
above all beat, made the U.K. and European 
rave explosion, just as a more generic cock- 
tail of drugs, led by MDMA, is now doing 
for dance music in America. 

As I write this, there are moves by the 
city of Miami to restrict the Ultra festival, 
a magnificent three-day party that turns a 
sterile downtown into a tropical carnival. 
Inevitably drug use has been cited. Never 


mind that every single weekend, in every 
city in America, just as many drugs will be 
consumed by unsupervised people who will 
then likely come into contact with sober 
citizens going about their business. An 
EDM festival packed with dancing, drug- 
fueled, sexually liberated youth is a soft 
target for a reactionary politician trying. 
to hog headlines. 

So, sadly, EDM seems almost custom- 
made to be shunted into the firing line, 
contested in an America increasingly divided 
by age and ideology. The threat to Ultra 
shows that right-wing, Tea Party-driven 
legislators, with their seemingly relentless 
quest to control the uterus and to proscribe 
through certification where the penis can 
and cannot be inserted, now have such 
events conclusively on their radar. EDM 
has changed America and is changing it still. 
Hang on tight; it could be a bumpy ride. 


PLAYBOY 


VILE RAT 


(continued from page 62) 


ofit.” When friends worried about his safe- 
ty, he'd joke, “I'll try not to die this time.” 

On this afternoon in Libya, Smith 
noticed suspicious activity outside the 
compound. Attacks by extremist Islamic 
militiamen had been growing in Benghazi 
in recent months—rocket grenades fired 
at the Red Cross building in May, an IED 
explosion outside the U.S. compound 
in June. Now this was the onset of what 
would become the most controversial at- 
tack yet, a messy scandal for the Obama 
administration and a dark stain on Hillary 
Clinton's career. 

But for Smith, it wasn't about diplomacy 
anymore; it was a struggle for survival. He 
took to his computer and fired up a chat 
window. He began urgently trying to de- 
scribe the scene as it unfolded, “assuming 
we don't die tonight." 

“We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard 
the compound taking pictures," he wrote. 

Soon after he wrote “Fuck.” 

Then *Gunfire." 

And then, nothing at all. 


Smith's last messages didn't go to the White 
House. They went to the world where he 
lived a double life of diplomacy, a massively 
multiplayer online role-playing game 
called Eve Online. Run by CCP Games, an 
independent developer in Iceland, Eve pits 
players against one another in futuristic 
space wars. Though wildly complicated, 
it has become one of the most successful 
games on the internet, with more than 
400,000 subscribers paying $15 a month to 
battle for hours a day. It has also become 
an underground cultural phenomenon. 
There are Eve podcasts, online radio sta- 
tions, blogs and fan festivals from Las 
Vegas to Moscow. 

Yes, it's geeky, but it's also surprisingly 
influential and unique: a virtual world of 
geopolitical intrigue that attracts real-life 
spies, hackers and emissaries from across 
the globe. And in this parallel universe, no 
one was more influential than Sean Smith, 
who went by the name Vile Rat. As one of 
his Eve allies blogged after his death, "If you 
play this stupid game, you may not realize 
it, but you play in a galaxy created in large 
part by Vile Rat's talent as a diplomat.” 

Diplomacy is a game, and to understand 
the mind of this diplomat—and what was 
going through it the moment the consul- 
ate was attacked—you have to understand 
the game of Eve. Launched in 2003, it was 
created by a group of buddies in Reykjavik 
who wanted to put more balls and brains 
in computer-game warfare by making 
it more like real life. “Eve is a mirror of 
real-world geopolitics," says Alexander 
Gianturco, Smith's best friend in the game. 
“Territory is scarce, resources are scarce, 
and there are massive wars of people fight- 
ing over them." 

The game takes place in New Eden, 
a galaxy of more than 7,500 star systems 
controlled by four warring factions. After 


134 logging on and creating your avatar—from 


its shoes to its eyebrows—you join one of 
the competing races. 

But that's where the similarities with 
other games end. Unlike in, say, Call of 
Duty, you don't have a required set of mis- 
sions to complete or enemies to slaughter. 
Once you create a ship to pilot, you're off 
to explore the galaxy as you see fit. Flying 
a ship through Eve is like gliding through 
a dreamy sequence of Star Trek, with in- 
candescent white supernovas and spiraling 
wormholes. But despite the beauty, Eve is a 
ruthless Wild West. As in reality, the battles 
center on making cash. To fuel this, Eve 
boasts one of the most complicated virtual 
economies on the internet, with its own 
currency. The game's builder employs a 
full-time staffer with a Ph.D. in economics. 

Almost every item inside Eve—from the 
spaceships to the towers—is created, dis- 
tributed and sold by the players. To earn 
money, players work at in-game jobs— 
seemingly menial tasks such as smashing 
rocks or driving a delivery truck. For hours 
a day. As in reality, sex can be a currency. 
One of the game's most notorious players, 
a busty blonde avatar named Tigerlily, is 
a self-described "sexpionage agent." She 
plies her trade in Pleasure Hubs, sections 
of Eve devoted to gambling and sex. She 
waits for high-profile pilots to fly through 
and then flirts with them in chat—hoping 
to lure them into a private chat session 
where they can have full-blown cybersex. 
"When you're presented with a sex slave 
and all she wants to do is suck your cock, it 
works out quite well," she says. 

In real life Tigerlily works in national 
security for the Canadian government. 

For added gravitas, Eve has a unique el- 
ement of mortality. In the game, death is 
real. “The idea,” says CCP spokesman Ned 
Coker, “was to have a massive universe 
where the core principles were that death 
has to mean something and everyone lives 
in the same game world." This is a radical 
departure from hit online games such as 
World of Warcraft, in which players can die 
and respawn without much consequence. 
By limiting itself to a one-game world and 
making losses permanent, Eve raises the 
stakes for gamers. 

As in real life, evil is part of the game. 
"We don't regulate what players do," says 
Touborg, the game's lead designer. "We 
accept that people don't want to play good 
guy all the time." 

Fora player like Sean Smith—who would 
encounter his share of bad guys from Iraq 
to Libya—Eve was something remarkable: 
a political minefield with high stakes, just 
like the world he lived in day to day. 


Smith grew up in a middle-class suburb of 
San Diego, an only child raised by a sin- 
gle mom. Despite his technical chops and 
ham radio hobby, he was no pencil-necked 
geek. He had a passion for Chargers foot- 
ball and motorcycles, eventually getting 
himself a Harley Sportster. After gradu- 
ating from high school, he joined the Air 
Force, where he worked on ground radio 
maintenance and, during his six-year stint, 
became a staff sergeant. 


It was during this time that he found his 
other home, online, at SomethingAwful.com, 
a comedy website that lampoons pop culture 
(featuring, for example, а series of titles for 
the porn versions of film classics, such as 
Rear Windhole). He hung out with other die- 
hard fans of the site in the Something Awful 
forums, where they called themselves Goons. 

But the Goons didn't just sharpen their 
spears for goofy websites. They were seri- 
ous gamers. And as Smith soon learned, 
few games seemed riper for conquest than 
a new one called Eve Online. The Goons be- 
gan to trickle into the game, and soon they 
numbered in the thousands. As their power 
grew, the game began to trickle into their 
lives away from their computers. When one 
early leader left the Goons, rumors flew 
that he had stolen currency from his team- 
mates. In retaliation they hacked into his 
e-mail. They found nude pictures of him 
and faxed photos of his penis to his office. 

Goons also began to organize off-line 
meet-ups. During one, Smith met with 
some of the guys in Washington, D.C. 
They drank, talked politics and ribbed 
one another as most men do. *He was 
soft-spoken but a guy you would listen to," 
remembers Touborg. 

"There was a reason for Smith's quiet 
resolve. One day he let slip that when 
he wasn't fighting wars in Eve, he was 
working as a State operative in real life. 
To prove it, “I'd make him show me his 
diplomatic-immunity badge," recalls Sean 
Conover, a fellow Goon and the security 
director at CCP. But that was as much 
as he'd get from Smith. "He was pretty 
hush-hush," Conover says. "For him to 
tell me details while sitting in the Green 
Zone would be a pretty big deal. He had 
rockets lobbed at him every day. He 
plugged into a video game to not have to 
deal with that." 


"Fuck mortars," Smith typed to his buddies 
in Eve. “Sirens again God dammit.” 

Smith was in Iraq, in his fifth year work- 
ing with the State Department. Hearing 
the bombs fall around him was becoming 
routine. It was also wearing on his family. 
One day while talking with his mother, he 
suddenly went silent, then came back some 
minutes later. 

"What's happening over there?" she asked. 

“Listen,” he replied and held out his phone. 

His mother could hear explosions in 
the distance. As hard as it was, she tried 
to accept the dangers he faced in the line 
of service. “I can’t spend my life worrying 
about it,” she later recalled. “I accepted 
what he wanted to do.” 

Smith tried to make the most of his 
time in the war zone despite the 11-hour 
days. The situation in Iraq was beyond 
tense. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion had 
toppled Saddam Hussein’s government, 
leaving a power vacuum in the region. 
Tribal warfare raged. The State Depart- 
ment in Baghdad had the unenviable task 
of steering political negotiations toward a 
peaceful regime that would work accord- 
ing to Washington's interests in the region. 
Meanwhile the death toll mounted by the 


day. Suicide bombers killed hundreds in 
the first half of 2008 alone, and it seemed 
only a matter of time before someone tar- 
geted the U.S. consulate. 

“We lived in shitty trailers and ate some 
kickass food," Smith later recalled. "This is 
the best job I can even dream up," he said 
on another occasion. “You do things every 
day, then you see it on CNN later." And an- 
other time: "Places are unimportant; peo- 
ple make the place in this line of work," he 
wrote. "The best post could be a living hell 
if your Ambassador/DCM/MGMT are bad, 
but the worst hellhole on the planet could 
be the place you always remember as your 
favorite post if the community is awesome." 

A huge Obama supporter, Smith was 
known to go around slapping Obama stick- 
ers on Republicans' desks. For fun, the guys 
would grab a jeep and joyride into Baghdad 
to hit up the shops and restaurants. "It's а 
college party atmosphere," as he put it. 
you're spending that much time in your 
apartment, you'll b 
Don't be that guy (it’s not healthy! 

To help survive the insanity o 
war zone, he escaped into battles in Е; 
where he could apply what he was learn- 
ing in real-life diplomacy to fueling the 
Goons’ conquests. In Iraq he was observ- 
ing firsthand how the . was handling 
diplomatic efforts in the wake of Saddam 
Hussein's removal: increasing security 

Baghdad, engaging in talks with Syria and 
Iran, joining forces with 
to fight militants 

The Iraq war was directly mirroring 


year grudge fuck between two blocs"— 
the and a group called the Band 
of Brothers. As nerdy as an online war 
sounds, it's addictive for the players. The 
Great War was all about conquest, about 
which alliance would become the most 
powerful in the game. 

Vile Rat sought peace where others 
sought war. "A lot of people think space- 
ships drew him to Eve," recalls his friend 
James Lohman, a 36-year-old computer- 
security specialist known in Eve as Digi. 
"But it was the politics, the espionage.” And 
as a leader of the Goons, Smith decided to 
apply his real-life skills to the problems. 
“Не created his own diplomatic section 
that was modeled on what he'd learned in 
ate Department," says Gianturco. 
With more than 10,000 Goons to man- 
‚ Smith spent hours a day communicat- 
ing with his fellow online diplomats, ana- 
lyzing chat logs, examining intelligence. He 
created the Corps Diplomatique, based on 
his experience in the State Department. It 
was structured asa group consisting ofchief 
and junior representatives. Getting into the 
Corps wasn't easy. Smith made prospective 
diplomats go through a demanding ap- 
plication process. They had to write essays 
and analyze political history. They had re- 
quired reading: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 
The 48 Laws of Power, How to Win Friends 
and Influence People. They also had to pass 
tests on solving diplomatic challenges. 

Eve's reputation for attracting real-life 


300) 


aj 


hackers, diplomats and military personnel 
extends deep into the game's subculture. 
While Smith was negotiating for greater 
democracy within the virtual world, he was 
also recruiting the brightest gamers for 
real-life jobs with the State Department. 

*He was one of State's best advocates for 
getting people onboard," Lohman says. 
“If he liked you and knew you decently 
enough, he'd do everything he could to 
talk you through the application process. 
The thing about Sean is that he loved 
his job very, very much. He loved the 
people and believed in the mission—the 
diplomatic mission, bringing democracy to 
people who don't have it but want it, keep- 
ing foreign relations intact." 


San I offer a dissenting opinion on this on 
It was March 2012 and Smith was tak- 
ing his turn at the microphone alongside 
eight other leaders on a stage in Iceland. 
He wore a black Fanfest T-shirt pulled over 
a white one and had a bottle of beer before 
him. Smith had no idea, of course, that he 
had less than six months to live. 

The occasion was the annual Eve Online 
Fanfest, a gathering for hundreds of the 
most hard-core players from around the 
world, none more hard-core than Smith 
and the other guys on the dais. They were 
the elected representatives of the Council 
of Stellar Management, a group of play 
responsible for conveying the concerns of 
the Eve community to the developers at 
CCP in Iceland 

The group was discussing whether there 
should be the equivalent of political par- 
ties within their online world. "The party 
system is a good way to get ideas coalesced 
around a particular candidate," Smith said, 
despite others’ reservations. He suggested 
using the American system of democratic 
primaries as a model. "All the different 
candidates go in there and say, ‘Okay, 
we're going to have our ideas clash, and 
the best person is going to get the votes of 
the communi 

Meanwhile, a storm was brewing in 
Libya around similar issues: party sys- 
tems, candidates, control, power. People 
were fighting over some of the same values 
Smith was lobbying for in Eve. And as he 
discovered to his horror just five months 
after the Fanfest, they were willing to kill 
for what they believed in. 

Through the summer of 2012 а series of 
violent episodes in Libya heightened anxi- 
ety among Americans there—kidnappings, 
assassination attempts, attacks perpetrated 
by Al Qaeda operatives. The American dip- 
lomats, led by Ambassador J. Christopher 
Stevens, continued their work. Then on 
the evening of September 11 the situation 
exploded in a crescendo of terror outside 
Sean Smith's room in the consulate. 

It began at 9:42 P.M., when mobs of 
armed men launched their assault. Seven- 
teen minutes later a U.S. surveillance drone 
was dispatched to fly overhead. Less than 
90 minutes after the initial assault, Presi- 
dent Obama was alerted to the situation by 
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

By that time Smith had already typed his 


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last words online from his desk. As he heard. 
the security alarm sound over the gunfire, a 
security agent tried desperately to lead him. 
and Ambassador Stevens toward safety. But 
there was no safety to be found. The build- 
ing burst into flames, and asphyxiating 
black smoke choked the air. By the time the 
three reached an escape window, the smoke 
was so thick they could barely breathe. 

On the brink of passing out, the security 
agent leaped out a window, gulping in air. 
Then he tore back inside. Frantically, he 
peered through the conflagration for Smith 
and Stevens, only to feel his lungs dam up 
with hellish darkness. Desperate to stay 
alive, the agent bolted for the roof to alert 
backup. An armored car arrived, and a 
team of agents stormed the building, scan- 
ning for Smith and Stevens in the flames. 

In the online world that Smith called 
home, Goons were reeling. Smith had 
abruptly logged off mid-chat. Was he alive 
or dead? This wasn't the first time Smith 


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had been caught in crossfire, and his fel- 
low Goons figured he was okay. "Sean, as 
long as Goons have known him, has been 
in some tough spots where places were hot 
and getting attacked," Lohman says. *He 
drops and says, ‘Gotta go, gotta go,’ and ev- 
eryone laughs about it. There's a dark hu- 
mor element. This was one of those times.” 

But as news of the attack hit the internet, 
Lohman began to feel increasingly ner- 
vous. With contacts from his job in govern- 
ment security and the spy world, he tapped 
his channels for information but kept com- 
ing up empty. “No one had anything, and 
the State operations center wasn't talking,” 
he recalls. Finally another government- 
employed Goon tipped him off that Vile 
Rat was likely inside the consulate at the 
time. Casualties were being reported. "It's 
probably Sean,” he told Lohman, “but I 
don’t know for sure.” 

Over at CCP in Iceland, Conover 
reached out to Gianturco to see if he knew 


anything. The news wasn’t good. “Oh 
no, the attack on the Libyan consulate,” 
Gianturco said. “Oh no, he's in there." 

“Relax,” Conover replied, trying to re- 
assure himself against the unimaginable. 
“He's fine, no way." 

In Eve, as in any other video game, 
there's one large difference from life 
off-line. In a video game, you have con- 
trol. You can sit down and escape into a 
pixelated universe of friends and fun. Yes, 
you can die, but you can always come back. 
Even in Eve, where mortality is part of the 
game, if you die you can always enter the 
game again as a clone of your former self. 
You can live forever, fix your mistakes, 
find community and solace. And if any- 
thing goes wrong, all you have to do is hit 
a few buttons on your keyboard and start 
all over. That's what made this game such 
a haven for Smith and everyone else who 
found a home in Eve. 

There was just one problem: It wasn't real. 

The next day, Gianturco took to the Eve 
Online community to tell them that, this 
time, real war, real flames, real smoke, the 
awful and uncontrollable reality of reality, 
had beaten their friend. "My people, I have 
grievous news," he wrote. "Vile Rat has been 
confirmed to be KIA in Benghazi; his family 
has been informed and the news is likely to 
break out on the wire services soon. Need- 
less to say, we are in shock, have no words 
and have nothing but sympathy for his 
family and children. I have known Vile Rat 
since 2006; he was one of the oldest of old- 
guard Goons and one of the best and most 
effective diplomats this game has ever seen. 
His family is in our thoughts and prayers." 

Smith, Stevens and two American secu- 
rity agents had been killed in the attack. 
The news sent shock waves through the 
community online and at CCP. "It's just 
fucking odd," Touborg recalls. “ОЁ all the 
people in Africa, four Americans die and 
you knew one of them—it was like getting. 
struck by lightning." 

"This is a man who was doing good 
work in Libya, trying to help people, and 
for this to happen was a terrible way to 
go,” Conover says. "And the flip side was 
that Sean touched a lot of people in the 
game. As a diplomat, he was the guy peo- 
ple would talk to, he was the guy making 
sure we had friends. After seven years the 
people you touch and the ripples you cre- 
ate are tremendous. That's what makes it 
such a terrible thing." 

It wasn't the first time a gamer in Eve 
died in real life, and there was some hesi- 
tancy to treat Smith's death differently 
from others. But the pilots of Eve knew this 
was unique given the awful nature of the 
attack and Smith's legendary status in the 
game. He was their greatest diplomat, on- 
line and off, and they would give him the 
send-off he deserved. 


In addition to being memorialized in news 
pages and broadcasts across the world, 
Sean Smith became an unlikely lightning 
rod of outrage. 

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck 
accused Smith of being a CIA operative. 


Smith's mother briefly took to the air- 
waves, pleading for answers from the gov- 
ernment. “1 begged them to tell me what 
happened," she said. "I look at TV and I 
see bloody handprints on walls, thinking, 
My God, is that my son's? I don't know if 
he was shot. I don't know—I don't know. 
They haven't told me anything. They are 
still studying it. And the things that they 
are telling me are just outright lies." 

"The deaths of Smith and the other Amer- 
icans have continued to plague the Obama 
administration. Despite high-profile hear- 
ings, the entire truth about what happened 
in Benghazi may never be known. 

In death as in life, Sean Smith was hon- 
ored in the two worlds he inhabited. In the 
real world the tribute came on Septem- 
ber 14 at Andrews Air Force Base outside 
Washington, D.C. A Marine procession 
carried the coffins of those killed in Libya 
onto the tarmac, draped in American flags. 
А somber crowd, including Smith's family, 
gathered as President Obama and Hillary 
Clinton took the podium to address them. 

"Sean Smith, it seems, lived to serve," 
Obama said. "First in the Air Force, then 
with you at the State Department. He knew 
the perils of this calling from his time in 
Baghdad. There in Benghazi, far from 
home, he surely thought of Heather and 
Samantha and Nathan, and he laid down his 
life in service to us all. Today Sean is home." 

Clinton also cited the friends, family and 
colleagues Smith left behind but added 
"and that's just in this world. Because on- 
line, in the virtual worlds that Sean helped 
create, he is also being mourned by count- 
less competitors, collaborators and gamers 
who shared his passion." 

For Smith and the others, after all, Eve 
was more than just a way to merge his on- 
line and off-line worlds of war games. It 
was a community. As a real-life envoy he 
was often on the move, far from his family, 
his friends and the safety of suburban life. 
Whether he was in Pretoria or Baghdad, 
he could sit down, press a few buttons and 
tap into a world of players who knew him 
better than anyone at his temporary posts. 
"At the end of three years he's off to some- 
where else," says Lohman. “Не didn't have 
time to get to know anybody. The internet 
is always on, so he put his time there." 

Gamers took to Twitter to honor his 
memory. “Sean Smith had it right,” tweeted 
one. "Use diplomacy in real life and only 
fight wars with other gamers online." Some 
posted YouTube videos. "To the rest of the 
world, his name was Sean Smith," reads the 
text overlay of one as it fades into dreamy 
space clouds. "To us, his name was Vile 
Rat." But the most elaborate honor came 
inside the game itself. Dozens of players 
steered their ships into outer space, position- 
ing themselves over a patch of deep black 
darkness and flickering white stars. There, 
they ignited spherical defense fields that. 
emitted a purplish glow. From a distance, 
the lights of the individual purple spheres 
blurred together to spell a phrase, one that 
burned indelibly in their hearts and minds: 


"RIP Vile Rat." 


GHOST 


(continued from page 81 
she's supposed to wanna fuck you.” 

Ever since the accident, Doc's speak- 
ing voice has been a flat, crackly growl. He 
makes a weird Cyrano, coaching Plaboi 
through what's supposed to be a seduc- 
tion song. Another take. Doc listens with 
his head down on the console. Plaboi's still 
putting too much mustard on it—too much 
Lil Wayne, not enough Drake. Or think of 
"Nuthin' but a G Thang," how what grabbed 
people about it was the matter-of-fact way 
Dre and Snoop delivered their rhymes, just 
a few degrees of swagger away from normal 
speech. Doc and Snoop wrote that. 

"You got too much comedy on it," Doc 
tells Plaboi. "This is a song about fucking. 
You ain't gonna walk in the club with a rub- 
ber nose hangin' off your dick. You wanna 
be swangin'. This is Colt 45 malt liquor." 

Finally, after a couple more takes, Doc 
gets on the talk-back and says to Plaboi, "I'm 
gonna need you to take this song home and 
learn it, kinfolk. Because you learned it, but 
you learned it the way you do it." 

"Then he says, "I gotta blow," and looks 
around the room for Duke. 

Duke's real name is Steven Blackmon. 
He's married to Doc's sister, but Doc calls 
him his brother. Duke has a goatee, box- 
fresh Converses, a little gold in his teeth 
and a white iPhone earbud always dangling 
from one ear. He doesn't talk, but he's silent 
in a not-unfriendly way, like he's just sav- 
ing battery life or paying attention to things 
that aren't you. 

Duke has two jobs: He drives Doc around 
all day, and he makes sure Doc blows into 
a GPS-equipped wireless portable Breatha- 
lyzer called a Soberlink every day at 10 A.M., 
two P.M., six P.M. and 11 р.м. Condition of 
his parole. If he tests positive for alcohol, 
he goes to jail. 

“You supposed to blow at two," Doc 
explains. "You got until 2:30. At 2:31, you're 
late. And if the president didn't call and tell 
you not to do it, your excuse won't wash." 

He's learned that the hard way. In 2011, 
on Thanksgiving Day, Doc—who was on 
probation for DWI at the time—was at home 
with family and figured he'd have a beer. 
One turned into a six-pack; he blew dirty the 
next morning and ended up staring across 
the desk at a new probation officer, who 
looked at Doc's file and said, "You've got a 
drinking problem." Doc, with that tone he 
can take with people sometimes, said, "No, 
T've got an authority problem." 

She violated him back right then and 
there. Doc lucked out, though: He landed 
in front of a Dallas felony court judge named 
John C. Creuzot, who was near the end of 
his 20 years on the bench and had lately 
become a stalwart proponent of diversion 
programs, in which repeat offenders facing 
jail time are instead steered into rigorously 
supervised treatment and counseling. 

Doc spent January through March 2012 
in county jail—the Lew Sterrett Justice Cen- 
ter, here in Dallas—and then did seven 
months in rehab. He didn't see his eight- 
year-old daughter, Puma, whose mother is 
the singer Erykah Badu, whom he's known 


since they were both aspiring rappers hang- 
ing out in the same Dallas teen clubs. Didn't. 
see his own mother. Saw his manager, John 
Huffman, exactly once. But he got sober. 
On November 6, 2012 he was released from. 
rehab; now, after 30 days of enforced cur- 
few, he has started to rebuild his life. 

He goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meet- 
ings where the older gentlemen in their 
slacks and good shoes remind him of Rudy 
Ray Moore in Dolemite, as though any min- 
ute Queen Bee herself is going to kick 
down the door. There are four things on 
the backseat of Doc's car: Alcoholics Anon- 
ymous Big Book, a copy of The 50th Law (a 
Machiavelli-for-managers textbook co- 
authored by Robert Greene and 50 Cent), a 
three-disc bootleg mixtape entitled Love Jus- 
tice: 90s Street Romance Music and a laptop bag 
that could keep a hot-air balloon anchored. 

This morning, Duke drives him and 
Huffman out to a middle school in Cedar 
Hill, southwest of Dallas, so he can talk to 
a classroom full of at-risk kids about the 
importance of not squandering their poten- 
tial, about how jail "ain't where you want 
to be." It's the first time he's ever done a 
speaking gig like this; afterward he tells 
me, "What you just witnessed was the first 
moment of my adult life." 

The next phase of his adult life, in the 
manner of many modern bids for redemp- 
tion, involves a reality-TV show. A pilot 
has been shot, laying the groundwork for a 
show on which Doc coaches a handpicked 
cast of local Dallas rappers—Plaboi is one 
of them—and teaches them to deliver lyr- 
ics he's written. They're calling it / Got My 
Voice Back. Maybe it will be a premium-cable 
series. Maybe it will come out in snippets 
online. They're keeping the concept loose 
as Doc figures out what to do next. 

Surgery is now available that can fix what 
happened to Doc in that accident, surgery 
that didn't exist back then. Surgery that 
doesn't actually, technically, exist as an option 
in this country. There's a doctor in Spain who, 
using stem cells, grew a whole new trachea 
for a woman who'd lost hers in an accident. 
Maybe the show will be about Doc exploring 
those options. He's not sure yet. The surgery's 
no joke, and he would do it only if he thought 
it could help change the laws regarding stem- 
cell research in this country. 

“At this point, at 44, it's gotta be for some 
other reason than for me to fuckin’ rap 
again," he says. "It's gotta be a bigger cause." 

What's important right now is that he do 
something positive with this second chance 
he's been given—even if it's just putting Dal- 
las's hip-hop scene on the map a little bit. 

"Houston had their chance," he tells the 
kids. "Atlanta had their chance. Them boys 
in Louisiana had their chance. L.A., New 
York, Chicago— Dallas, we're the only ones 
that haven't had our shot yet. We've got 
some of the best young producers, some of 
the best young singers—everything they got, 
we got. Matter of fact, we might be better 
than them. I was.” 


This is a story about two men who have 
enormous power over each other because 


they need each other. Doc has made two 137 


PLAYBOY 


138 


comeback albums since the accident, 1996's 
Helter Skelter and 2003's Deuce. Both of them 
have their moments, but neither featured 
Dre as producer, neither got his endorse- 
ment, and neither sold. And Dre has never 
finished a solo record without Doc's help— 
whether Dre needs him as a lyricist, a 
sounding board or a good-luck charm is 
hard to say, but he needs Doc as much as 
Doc needs him. 

"Their creative lives have been entangled 
since the moment they met in Dallas in the 
late 1980s, sometime after N.W.A released 
their first single, the epochal outlaw mani- 
festo “Boyz-n-the Hood." 

Doc and the Fila Fresh Crew had made a 
few records by then. When DJ Jazzy Jeff and 
the Fresh Prince's ingratiating novelty-rap 
act started catching on, Doc wrote his own 
Will Smith-style goofy everyman song, "I 
Hate to Go to Work." In the video he's in a 
shirt and tie, groaning through a case of the 
Mondays, uttering no epithet stronger than 
sheesh. A few months later, when they heard 
“Boyz-n-the Hood" for the first time, they 
felt embarrassed. "Boyz-n-the Hood" wasn't 
shirt-and-tie rap. It wasn't put-upon-nice- 
guy music. It was matter-of-fact menace, 
realness über alles. 

"The world was changing," Doc says, 
"from ‘Parents Just Don't Understand' to 
kids just don't give a fuck." 

Not long after that, Dre comes through 
Dallas. As a favor to Fila Fresh Crew man- 
ager Dr. Rock—they were both in the L.A. 
electro-funk group World Class Wreckin" 
Cru for a minute—he agrees to produce 
some tracks for the group. In the studio, 
he sees Doc rapping, sees Doc coming ир 
with rhymes and feeding them to Fresh-K, 
sees potential for him as a solo act—but he 
also sees a guy who could potentially help 
put words in Eazy's mouth. 


He takes Doc aside and says, “Come to 
California. We'll both get rich." 


Nobody thought of L.A. as any kind of 
hip-hop mecca back then. Growing up in 
Dallas, Doc absorbed mostly East Coast 
influences. When he first heard rap music, 
it was Run-DMC, Fat Boys, LL Cool J. He 
had his mind blown the first time he heard 
Rakim and Slick Rick, rap's first master of 
linear narrative. 

Doc learned to love words by reading to 
his paternal grandmother—big books, way 
over his head. He'd sung at the arts mag- 
net school. He loved Richard Pryor, wanted 
to be a comedian. His sixth-grade teacher, 
Mrs. Stevens, would let him do five minutes 
of stand-up at the end of class on Fridays if 
he had refrained from being a fuckup the 
rest of the week. 

This was probably the best year of his life, 
he says. His parents were together, living in 
the suburbs. The next year they split. Doc 
moved back into the projects in Dallas with 
his maternal grandmother. "She was a lov- 
ing woman," he says, "but her love was stern 
love. Her love had knuckle prints on it." 

Now for school Doc was bused way out to 
Highland Park, where the white kids threw 
the N word around freely and the imported 
ghetto kids ran in self-protecting packs. "I 
spent a lot of time inside," Doc says. “It kept 
me alone, imagining the future, contemplat- 
ing what I wanted to be." 


АП the contradictions, all the ontologi- 
cal slipperiness concerning realness and 
criminality and theater that have shaped 
and undone hip-hop from the gangsta 
era forward—it's all encoded in N.W.A's 
DNA from the jump. They deal in painful, 


"It's my husband! Think, where did I put the handcuff keys?!" 


unvarnished truth and violent exploitation- 
flick fantasy. They're black music's Sex 
Pistols, simultaneously a scourge of hypoc- 
risy and a world-class con job. In addition 
to being the bank, Eazy is a street dude 
with unassailable cred, but he can't write 
rhymes—his "reality raps" are scripted by 
Ice Cube and MC Ren. They've succeeded 
in turning Eazy into an icon—the Ruthless 
Villain. But now they need somebody to get 
him on the radio, to write him lyrics whose 
every other word isn't bitch or motherfucker. 
Cube is already writing for Eazy, but he isn't 
going to smooth Eazy's edges. Doc says that 
back then *Cube was always Cube. He was 
going to say, ‘I’m going to cut your throat 
and leave you in the Dumpster.’ That’s just 
what it is." That's where Doc comes in. 

"I've always known how to talk to white 
people," Doc says. "I knew if you made it 
funny and clever, it would be less threaten- 
ing. You could say whatever you wanted as 
long as you let 'em know it's a joke. Don't 
take it to heart; I'm not really going to cut 
your heart out. But I might." 

A few days after Doc arrives in California, 
Dre drives him to a recording studio in Tor- 
rance, where most of N.W.A is waiting. Doc 
meets MC Ren and DJ Yella, and he meets 
Eazy. Eazy's one of those guys. Not a star 
quite yet, but he already has a magnetism. 
"When Eazy was in the room," Doc says, 
"you knew it. Even if you didn't see him 
walk in. It would spread. That's what kind 
of person he was." 

But even a matinee idol needs a script. 
Dre puts on a drum track—a big rubbery 
funk loop from the title track of Bootsy 
Collins's 1977 sophomore album, АЛЛ... 
The Name Is Bootsy, Baby!—and says to Doc, 
"Can you write Eazy something to this?" 
In 10, maybe 15 minutes Doc has a lyric, 
and "We Want Eazy" ends up being the 
highest-charting single off Eazy's solo debut, 
Eazy-Duz-It. 

There's а “We Want Eazy” video. Nobody 
asks Doc to be in it. He's pissed, like “Damn, I 
wrote this fuckin' song" pissed, but he doesn't 
say anything, worried if he does they'll tell 
him to fuck off back to Dallas. At N.W.A 
shows he'll be out in the lobby, hearing peo- 
ple talking about Eazy, about how Eazy’s 
the greatest, off some songs Doc wrote. But 
there's not much he can do. He isn't a full- 
fledged member of the band. He's a fifth 
Beatle. Around this time he starts going by 
“the D.O.C.” instead of “Doc-T.” He wants 
to associate his brand more closely with 
N.W.A's. The letters in “D.O.C.” don't stand 
foranything. He just wants his own acronym. 

It didn't help matters that his name doesn't 
appear in the album credits. Sometime after 
“We Want Eazy" blew up, Doc gave Eazy 
the publishing rights to the song, accepting 
a gold chain as payment. He never officially 
signed anything, he says, but he also says he 
was never much of a businessman, that he 
would have signed whatever Eazy put in front 
of him. He didn't expect Eazy to claim later 
that the gold-chain deal entitled him to all 
the songs Doc wrote during his tenure with. 
Ruthless Records, from Eazy-Duz-It all the way 
through N.W.A's second album, Niggaz4Life— 
but today he admits he probably should have. 

“It’s not that Eric was a bad person,” 


Doc says. "But he was а dope man. Taking 
advantage of people is part of that territory. 
You can't feel any kind of way about it." 

The chain has a gold nameplate with dia- 
monds in it, just like the ones the guys in 
N.W.A were starting to buy, but smaller. I 
ask him to ballpark the chain's retail value. 

"About three grand," Doc says with a 
tight, weary smile. “1 don't know if Eric 
knew he'd just fucked the shit out of me, 
but I imagine he did." 

There wasn't time to worry about it. 
Things were moving too fast. N.W.A was 
going somewhere every weekend, doing 
shows. "It was nuts, on some Beatles kind of 
shit," Doc says. "A zillion kids fuckin' shaking 
the van because you sitting inside. Eazy-E 
fans, man. They wanted that little dude. And 
he was loving it. He took full advantage of 
the perks. Ended up costing him, though." 
(Eazy died of AIDS in 1995, at the age of 31, 
after running through groupies as though 
he were keeping score by the pound.) 

The shine finally started to trickle down. 
N.W.A's first national tour opened in Nash- 
ville in the spring of 1989, with Doc doing 
eight minutes a night as an opening act. 
"The crowds dug him. No One Can Do It Bet- 
ter dropped that June; within three months 
it sold 500,000 copies. By the end of the 
tour he was doing 30-minute sets. Radio 
picked up on "It's Funky Enough," a Dre 


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production with way more commercial 
reach than, say, “Fuck tha Police.” Years 
later, when Rolling Stone asked Chris Rock 
to make a list of the greatest rap albums of 
all time, the comedian put No One Can Do It 
Better at number 11. “I was going to school 
in Brooklyn,” he wrote, “and the only time 
you could see rap videos was on a weekend 
show with Ralph McDaniels called Video 
Music Box. D.O.C.'s video for ‘It's Funky 
Enough' premiered, and D.O.C. had an 
L.A. Kings hat on. When I came to school 
on Monday, half the kids in Brooklyn had 
L.A. Kings hats on. It was official." 


By the fall of 1989, Doc is feeling like a star. 
He's partying and drinking. At his side is 
Suge Knight. биде had played college foot- 
bali, had suited up for the Rams a couple of 
times. Suge has ties to the Bloods, or finds 
it expedient to let people think he does. 
Suge is either a concert promoter or a secu- 
rity guy or a record executive on the rise, 
depending on who asks, and in the mean- 
time he deals in physical intimidation. 

“A lot of people called him my body- 
guard," Doc says, "because he was a 
300-pound dude who beat people up after I 
made a mess. But no—he was just a buddy." 
After a while no club in Hollywood would 
have them, Doc says, "because invariably 


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T'd get drunk, slap some woman on her ass 
and start a fight. And he'd beat up a bunch 
of people, and then I'd get the girl and go 
home. He loved it. He's a bruiser; that's 
what he did." 

But Suge has ideas and connections. 
Suge and Doc talk about starting a label 
together. Suge knows Dick Griffey, founder 
of SOLAR Records—an old-school industry 
dude, one of those guys "who's got enough 
nuts to get it done by any means necessary," 
Doc says. “Griffey packed a gun every day 
in his little office. He'd pull it out and sit it 
on the table." 

The label is still coming together that 
fall when Doc celebrates the completion 
of principal photography on two music 
videos—including “The Formula," in which 
Dre plays Frankenstein and Doc is the mon- 
ster he's bringing to life—by spending the 
following day driving around partying and 
chasing girls. Around 3:30 л.м. he leaves 
a girlfriend's home in Beverly Hills. On 
Wilshire Boulevard a cop car flashes its 
lights at him. Doc tries to get away; he hits 
a couple of right turns, parks his Honda 
Prelude on a side street and gets low. A few 
seconds later, a cop taps Doc's window with 
a billy club. Maybe because he's still wasted, 
Doc jumps out of the car and starts perform- 
ing for the cops right then and there, like 
the famous rapper he is. The cops laugh and 


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PLAYBOY 


give him a ticket. Doc has all his gold and 
platinum records in the trunk of the car; 
he takes them out and poses for pictures 
with the cops. 

Thirty minutes later on the freeway, he 
falls asleep at the wheel and hits a concrete 
divider. He's thrown through the window 
and smashes into a tree face-first. The cops 
have to pry his teeth out of the tree bark. 


"Rap musician Tracy Lynn Curry of the D.O. 
was in stable condition after losing control of his 
car on the Ventura Freeway, authorities said. 

"Curry, 21, suffered injuries to his face, 
including damage to one eye and his nose, 
said California Highway Patrol Officer David 
Grajeda. He was in stable condition Thursday 
at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said spokesman 
Ron Wise. 

"Grajeda said Curry had alcohol on his breath 
after the accident Tuesday and was arrested but 
released before being booked so he could get med- 
ical attention."—Los Angeles Times, "Rapper 
Injured in Car Wreck," November 17, 1989 


"The whole West Coast hip-hop move- 
ment changed direction the night I had that 
accident," Doc sa: erybody's fortunes 
changed that night. 

When he arrives at Cedars-Sinai, Doc 
has so much stuff in his system the doctors 
can't sedate him. When they try to intu- 
bate him, he thrashes around and the tube 
s his vocal cords. He endures 20 
of reconstructive surgery on his face. 
zingly, he comes through the accident 
without a single broken bone—but after the 
intubation his voice is destroyed. He can 
speak, but the golden voice is now a rav- 
aged croak. Half his gift gone, just like that. 


There's psychological fallout too. His hits 
become a curse. “1 couldn't stand to listen to 
myself," he says. "IF I went to a club and they 
played my song, I'd have to leave." 

People tell him he should retire, go out on 
top instead of trying to make another record 
with his fucked-up voice; Dre is one of them. 
Dre still has work for him behind the scenes. 
In January 1990, Ice Cube quits N.W.A to 
go solo, and Doc becomes the group's princi- 
pal songwriter, supplying lyrics for “Alwayz 
Into Somethin',” “Appetite for Destruction" 
and other songs on Niggaz4Life, N.W.A's 
final full-length album, and for the EP 700 
Miles and Runnin’. 

At Suge's urging, Doc starts whispering 
to Dre, urging him to let Suge take a look 
at Dre's contract. You may know how the 
story goes from here. Suge convinces Dre 
to leave Ruthless Records and sign with his 
new company, which he and Doc are call- 
ing Funky Enough Records. Suge convinces 
N.W.A manager Jerry Heller and Eazy-E to 
let Dre and Doc out of their Ruthless con- 
tracts; he allegedly brings two large men 
toting lead pipes and Louisville Sluggers to 
the meeting to set the mood. With Dre in 
the fold as house producer, Suge proceeds 
to build Funky Enough into one of the big- 
gest rap labels in the country. Except he’s no 
longer calling it Funky Enough. The label 
is now called Death Row. 

Doc helps talk Dre into making a solo 
album, promising to write lyrics for it. Dre's 
stepbrother, the rapper Warren G, brings a 
charismatic 20-year-old rapper from Long 
Beach into the fold, Calvin Broadus, who 
goes by Snoop Doggy Dogg. When they s 
making The Chronic, Doc still has money, а 
Benz and a place near Agoura Hills. Snoop 


and Warren G move in. Snoop can rap, but 
Doc works with him on turning rhymes into 
actual songs. He sends Snoop upstairs to 
a spare bedroom, makes him write for an 
hour. Doc goes over what Snoop's written, 
like an editor, saying, “This line’s really cool. 
Let's cut this one out. This one is dope, but 
it would sound better if you put it here.” 

“Td smooth out the rough edges,” Doc says. 

At some point it’s made clear to Doc that 
despite having been a founding partner in 
Funky Enough, he no longer owns a piece 
of Death Row. There's not much he can 
do. And you eat well when you're mak- 
ing records with Dre. Even when Doc has 
to cut his overhead and move into a one- 
bedroom apartment with Snoop and six 
or seven other guys, it's exciting enough 
not to feel like privation. They're party- 
ing, but they're also creating music, writing 
hits for Dre. And whenever the money runs 
out, Doc hits up Dre and Dre has his han- 
dlers cut a check and Doc buys 40s, weed, 
even ecstasy—this before every rapper in 
the world got into ecstasy, Doc says, "back 
when X was brand-new and nobody did it 
but white kids from Orange County." It 
took the edge off. 

"People were getting beat up in the stu- 
dio," Doc says. "It turned into gangland. 
"There was Bloods and Crips in there every 
day, and there was always that thing in the 
air—you didn't know whether or not there'd 
be some shooting. There were shots fired in 
that place. The only way I felt comfortable 
there was being loaded." 

And yet it felt safer somehow than trying 
to figure out what to do next. And when he 
finally does leave, years later, in 1994, it isn't 
because of the violence or because he's been 
dicked out of his piece of the company or 
anything else. It’s because he has a fight with 
Dre. Doc writes a song he wants to record 
as a comeback single, fucked-up voice and 
all. But Dre's making a record called Helter 
Skelter—a duets album, him and Ice Cube, 
back together for the first time since N.W.A's 
Straight Outta Compton. And when Dre hears 
Doc's song, he decides he wants to record 
it himself. It's the last straw. Doc packs up 
and moves to Atlanta, where he works with 
the rapper MC Breed. 

In 1996, with help from the Da 
ducer Erotic-D, Doc finally puts out. 
solo album; as а jab at Dre, he call: 
Skelter. Dre's Helter Skelter is never finished. 


They've been on and off ever since. 

“Dre and I have had this break-up- 
to-make-up kind of thing for fuckin’ 20 
years,” Doc says. “I think it's partly because 
we respect each other and partly because 
I don't give a fuck how much money you 
got, I'm not going to take shit from you. 
I'm not going to kiss your ass. I remember 
when you didn't have one dollar. Now that 
you have 100 million of them or 500 mil- 
lion of them, that don't make your ass no 
less funky to me." 

Last year, not long after Doc went to 
rehab, Huffman got a call from Dre's people 
saying Dre wanted Doc to come to Miami to 
help him out with a song he was cutting with 
Jay-Z and Rick Ross, which would eventually 


be released as “3 Kings" on Ross's 2012 
album God Forgives, I Don't, and Huffman 
had to explain to Dre's people that Doc was 
indisposed. When I talk to Doc in Dallas, he 
says he understands that this may have been 
the last straw. 

"I think he's at a point where he sees me 
as, you know, ‘You're never going to get it. 
You're never going to figure it ош,” Doc 
says. "And I don't blame him for that. I 
haven't given him any real cause to see that. 
I'm not the same dude I was then." 

(When reached for comment, Dre's 
longtime publicist spoke kindly of Doc but 
told me Dre and Doc's relationship was 
complicated and that Dre's willingness to 
participate in this article would depend 
on where he and Doc stood. A subsequent 
attempt to reach Dre through his After- 
math label also yielded nothing. A few 
months after I left Dallas, Doc's manager 
told me Dre's people had gotten back in 
touch with Doc. Doc has written five new 
songs for Dre. vorking on more 
new material for Detox with Memphis pro- 
ducer Jazze Pha.) 


Plaboi ta seat on the couch in the 
back of the studio control room, next to 
another / Got My Voice Back cast member, 
a 30-year-old white rapper who records 
under the name Blaze Won. Doc steps into 
the recording booth. He's written some 
new lyrics for a song he wants Blaze Won 
to record and wants to cut a demo version 
for Blaze to study. A studio engineer named 
Hal Fitzgerald plays the beat. It's an elegiac, 
synth-driven instrumental—kind of a rap 
power ballad, like something Eminem might 
emote over. Lyrics about war, “chemical 
verbiage,” the weight of history, politicians 
lying to Fox News. 

Doc takes a few runs at the song, and 
then—jokingly, almost off-mike, like a 
warm-up—he starts saying some of the lines 
in this voice. It sounds a little like Rick Ross, 
a little like Abe Simpson, a little like Vito 
Corleone's ghost. What it doesn't sound like 
is Doc's usual sandpaper growl. 

"There were these two Mexican kids with 
him in rehab, Doc tells me later, who to 
annoy people would walk around making 
weird-ass yawning noises without mov- 
ing their mouths. One day one of the kids 
made the sound, and Doc got 
made it back to him, as if to say 
it's you, motherfucker," and after a sec- 
ond he realized that when he'd made the 
noise, it didn't come out flat and gravelly 
like his regular voice. Without even trying, 
he'd used some other part of his throat to 
generate a tone. 

“I tried to do it again and couldn't, and 
then I et out a big-ass yawn and did it again. 
Every time I yawned, I yawned loud and 
tried to make that note stay, like a clear 
note. Once I started doing that, it got a lit- 
tle stronger." 

He's tried rapping in this voice before, but 
this is the first time he's done it in front of 
people. You can tell it's not something he's 
physiologically meant to do—he gulps air 
between bars and can't get too many words 
out at a time. He keeps asking Hal to stop 


e: 


the tape, wind it back, let him punch it in 
line by line. But in spite of all that, it's work- 
ing. He's rapping. 

When Huffman walks in and hears the 
sound coming out of Doc's mouth, his eyes 
bug out. 

“You hear that! 
сап you do with it? 

“I don't know yet," Hal says. Huffman 
doesn't look at Doc in the booth, as if mak- 
ing eye contact might break the spell. He's 
staring over Hal's shoulder at the Pro 
Tools readout. 

“That is fucking insane,” Huffman says. 

hat is fucking insane, dude." 
His newly adapted voice is only a lit- 
tle more expressive an instrument than 
his gravelly postaccident one. But there 
are possibilities. If he can create a tone, 
maybe he can Auto-Tune his vocals, like 
all the hot rappers do these days. They can 
piece together a song on the computer. 
He could put something out—just a 
gle. Maybe he won't put his name on it. 
See how people respond if they think it's 
a whole new guy. 

"One day that shit's gonna work," Doc 

s, hanging his headphones on a music 
nd, "and it's gonna freak you guys out." 


he says to Hal. "What 


si 
st 


He's decided to keep the song he was demo- 
ing, rewrite the lyrics to suit his own story, 
maybe put it ош as the first new D.O.C. 

in almost a decade. Duke gets on the freeway 
and Doc opens his laptop, cues up the beat 
in iTunes and opens a Word document— 
lyrics in all-caps boldface. The beat plays 
softly for the rest of the ride as Doc tinkers 
on-screen, fine-tuning a new first verse: 


“I watched the world pass while sleepin’ in 
first class 
Usin' bodies, rotten from following the world's 


issing the devils' asses while they 

laughin’ 

As if now for better or for worse I'm married 
to the math 

Not a Catholic, but rosaries tatted, a confused 
addict 

5150, medication habit, illegal racket 

White rabbits scattered through purple hills 

Another tragic ending, I can feel it, my hearts 
rapid, the end's near 

Another classic, sadly, whose Achilles heel was 
smokin’ and drinkin’ to cover cheers and 
hide fear 

Lost in resentments, and usin’ pain so cavalier 

Now I'm left with dreams of Puma 

Knowing what greatness is 

Always contemplating what could have been 

Leaving me emotionally suicidal for 20 years 

Cursing my higher power 

I choose to call God's ear 

And even after all of the shit I gave 

Pm still here, I’m still here” 


Doc is bobbing his head almost impercep- 
tibly, fingers moving on the keys, making 
tiny fixes—"smokin’” becomes "smoking," 
"but" becomes "cuz." It's a work in progress, 
but he knows he's onto something. 


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PLAYBOY 


DAVID BOWIE 


(continued from page 105) 
Kensington. I'd have a houseboy named 
Richard to order around. 
PLAYBOY: How much of that are we sup- 
posed to believe? Your former publicist, 
the celebrated ex-groupie Cherry Vanilla, 
says she's slept with you and that you're not 
gay at all. She says you just let people think 
you like guys. 
BOWIE: Oh, Га love to meet this impostor 
she's talking about. It sure ain't me. That's 
actually a lovely quote. Cherry's almost as 
good as I am at using the media. 
PLAYBOY: Yet the fact remains that you've 
never been seen with a male lover. Why? 
BOWIE: Oh, Lord, I got over being a queen 
quite a long time ago. For a while, it was 
pretty much 50-50, and now the only time it 
tempts me is when I go over to Japan. There 
are such beautiful-looking little boys over 
there. Little boys? Not that little. About 18 or 
19. They have a wonderful sort of mentality. 
They're all queens until they reach 25, then 
suddenly they become samurai, get married 
and have thousands of children. I love it. 
PLAYBOY: Why, at a time when nobody else 
in rock would have dared allude to it, did 
you choose to exploit bisexuality? 
BOWIE: I would say that America forced me 
into it. Someone asked me in an interview 
опсе—1 believe it was in 1971—if I were 
gay. I said, “Мо, I'm bisexual." Seventy- 
one was a good American year. Sex was 
still shocking. Everybody wanted to see the 
freak. There was very little talk of bisexual- 
ity or gay power before I came along. When 
they told me that a drag-queen cult was 
forming behind me, I said, “Fine, don't try 
to explain it; nobody is going to bother to 
try to understand it.” I'll play along, abso- 
lutely anything to break me through. All the 
papers wrote volumes about how sick I was, 
how I was helping to kill off true art. In 
the meantime, they used up all the space 
they could have given over to true artists. 
That really is pretty indicative of how com- 
pelling pretension is, that it commanded 
that amount of bloody writing about what 
color my hair was gonna be next week. I 
want to know why they wasted all that time 
and effort and paper on my clothes and 
my pose. Why? Because I was a danger- 
ous statement. 

The follow-up to that, now that I've 
decided to talk a little more—if only to 
you—was, "How dare he have such a strenu- 
ous ego?" That, in itself, seemed a danger to 
some people. Am I, as a human being, worth 
talking about? I frankly think, Yes, I am. 
I believe myself with the utmost sincerity. 
PLAYBOY: But aren't you having trouble 
getting other people to believe you? Take, 
for example, your well-publicized farewells 
to showbiz. You’ve retired twice, swear- 
ing you’d never have another thing to do 
with rock and roll. Yet you've just finished 
a six-month world concert tour, promoting 
your newest rock-and-roll album, Station 
to Station. How do you rationalize these 
contradictions? 

BOWIE: I lie. It's quite easy to do. Nothing 
matters except whatever it is I’m doing at 


142 the moment. I can't keep track of everything 


Isay. I don't give a shit. I can't even remem- 
ber how much I believe and how much I 
don't believe. The point is to grow into 
the person you grow into. I haven't a clue 
where I'm gonna be in a year. A raving nut, 
a flower child or a dictator, some kind of 
reverend—I don't know. That's what keeps 
me from getting bored. 

PLAYBOY: What else do you do to keep from 
getting bored? 

BOWIE: You name it. 

PLAYBOY: How about drugs? 

BOWIE: What year is it now? Seventy-six? 
I suppose I've been knocking on heaven's 
door for about 11 years now, with one sort 
of high or another. The only kinds of drugs 
I use, though, are ones that keep me work- 
ing for longer periods of time. I haven't 
gotten involved in anything heavy since 
1968. I had a silly flirtation with smack then, 
but it was only for the mystery and enigma 
of trying it. I never really enjoyed it at all. 
Ilike fast drugs. I hate falling out, where I 
can't stand up and stuff. It seems like such a 
waste of time. I hate downs and slow drugs 
like grass. I hate sleep. I would much pre- 
fer staying up, just working, all the time. It 
makes me so mad that we can't do anything 
about sleep or the common cold. 
PLAYBOY: How much have drugs affected 
your music? 

BOWIE: The music is just an extension of 
me, so the question really is, “What have 
drugs done to me?" They've fucked me 
up, I think. Fucked me up nicely and I've 
quite enjoyed seeing what it was like being 
fucked-up. 

PLAYBOY: Then you agree with the reviewer 
who called your Young Americans album “a 
fucked-up LP from a fucked-up rock star”? 
BOWIE: Well, The Man Who Sold the World 
is actually the most drug-oriented album 
I've made. That was when I was the most 
fucked-up. Young Americans probably is a close 
second, but that is from my current drug 
period. The Man was when I was holding on 
to some kind of flag for hashish. As soon as I 
stopped using that drug, I realized it damp- 
ened my imagination. End of slow drugs. 
PLAYBOY: That doesn't sound much like 
the guy who was recently busted in upstate 
New York for possession of eight ounces 
of marijuana. 

BOWIE: Rest assured the stuff was not mine. I 
can't say much more, but it did belong to the 
others in the room that we were busted in. 
Bloody potheads. What a dreadful irony— 
me popped for grass. The stuff sickens me. 
I haven't touched it in a decade. 

PLAYBOY: In the song "Station to Station," 
though, you do refer to cocaine—— 
BOWIE: Yes, yes. The line is *It's not the side 
effects of the cocaine...I'm thinking that it 
must be love." Do the radio stations bleep 
it out? 

PLAYBOY: None that we've heard. Did you 
have any reservations about using the line 
in the song? 

BOWIE: None whatsoever. 

PLAYBOY: One might easily construe it as 
advocating the use of cocaine. Or is that 
the message? 

BOWIE: I have no message whatsoever. I 
really have nothing to say, no suggestions 
or advice, nothing. АЙ I do is suggest some 


ideas that will keep people listening a bit 
longer. And out of it all, maybe they'll come 
up with a message and save me the work. 
My career has kind of been like that. I get 
away with murder. 

PLAYBOY: You claim you like to work all the 
time, yet you release only one album a year. 
What exactly do you do between record- 
ing sessions? 

BOWIE: I write songs and screenplays and 
poems, I paint, I do Kirlian photography, 
I manage myself, 1 act. I produce, I record, 
sometimes I tour. I could give you five new 
and unreleased David Bowie albums right 
now. I could just hand them over. I've got 
an incredible backlog of material. Work, 
work, work.... 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever relax? 

BOWIE: If you're asking whether or not I 
take vacations, the answer is no. I find all 
my relaxation within the context of work; 
I'm very serious about that. I've always 
thought the only thing to do was to try to 
go through life as Superman, right from 
the word go. I felt far too insignificant as 
just another person. I couldn't exist think- 
ing all that was important was to be a good 
person. I thought, Fuck that; I don't want 
to be just another honest Joe. I want to 
be a supersuperbeing and improve all the 
equipment that I've been given to where 
it works 300 percent better. I find that it's 
possible to do it. 

PLAYBOY: Surely you doubt yourself 
sometimes. 

BOWIE: Not so much anymore. About two 
years ago, I realized I had become a total 
product of my concept character Ziggy 
Stardust. So I set out on a very successful 
crusade to reestablish my own identity. I 
stripped myself down and took myself apart, 
layer by layer. I used to sit in bed and pick 
on one thing a week that I either didn't 
like or couldn't understand. And during 
the course of the week, I'd try to kill it off. 

PLAYBOY: What was the first thing you 
attacked? 

BOWIE: I think my lack of humor was the 
first thing I picked on. Then prissiness. 
Why did 1 feel that I was superior to peo- 
ple? I had to come to some conclusion. I 
haven't yet, but I dug into myself. That was 
very good therapy. I spewed myself up. I'm 
still doing it. I seem to know exactly what 
makes me sad. 

PLAYBOY: Doesn't taking yourself apart all the 
time tend to make you a little schizophrenic? 
BOWIE: The four of me will have to talk 
about that. Am I schizophrenic? One side 
of me probably is, but the other side is right 
down the middle, solid as a rock. Actually, 
I'm not schizophrenic at all. I think that my 
thought forms are fragmented a lot, that. 
much is obvious. I often think of six things 
at one time. They all sort of interrupt one 
another. Not very good when I'm driving. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever have trouble decid- 
ing which is the real you? 

BOWIE: I've learned to flow with myself. I 
honestly don't know where the real David 
Jones is. It's like playing the shell game. 
Except I've got so many shells I've forgot- 
ten what the pea looks like. I wouldn't know 
it if I found it. Being famous helps put off 
the problems of discovering myself. I mean 


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PLAYBOY 


that. That's the main reason Гуе always been 
so keen on being accepted, why Гуе striven 
so hard to put my brain to artistic use. I want 
to make a mark. In my early stuff, 1 made 
it through on sheer pretension. I consider 
myself responsible for a whole new school of 
pretensions—they know who they are. Don't 
you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I'm not. See 
what I mean? That was a thoroughly pre- 
tentious statement. True or not, I bet you'll 
print that. Show someone something where 
intellectual analysis or analytical thought has 
been applied and people will yawn. But 
something that's pretentious—that keeps 
you riveted. It's also the only thing that 
shocks anymore. It shocks as much as the 
Dylan thing did 14 years ago. As much as 
sex shocked many years ago. 

PLAYBOY: You're saying sex is no longer 
shocking? 

BOWIE: Oh, come on. Sorry, Hugh. Sex 
has never really been shocking; it was just 
the people who performed it who were. 
Shocking people, performing sex. Now 
nobody really cares. Everybody fucks every- 
body. The only thing that shocks now is 
an extreme. Like me running my mouth 
off, jacking myself off. Unless you do that, 
nobody will pay attention to you. Not for 
long. You have to hit them on the head. 
PLAYBOY: Is that the Bowie success formula? 
BOWIE: That's always been it. It's never 
really changed. For instance, what I did 
with my Ziggy Stardust was package a totally 
credible, plastic rock-and-roll singer—much 
better than the Monkees could ever fabri- 
cate. I mean, my plastic rock-and-roller was 
much more plastic than anybody's. And that 
was what was needed at the time. And it still 
is. Most people still want their idols and gods 
to be shallow, like cheap toys. Why do you 
think teenagers are the way they are? They 
run around like ants, chewing gum and flit- 
ting onto a certain style of dressing for a day; 
that's as deep as they wish to go. It's no sur- 
prise that Ziggy was a huge success. 
PLAYBOY: But you've said that you find rock 
depressing and sterile, even evil. 

BOWIE: It is depressing and sterile and, yes, 
ultimately evil. Anything that contributes 
to stagnation is evil. When it has familiar- 
ity, it's no longer rock and roll. It's white 
noise. Dirge. Just look at disco music—the 
endless numb beat. 

PLAYBOY: You say it's dirge, yet you had the 
biggest disco hit of last year in "Fame," and 
you scored again this year with “Golden 
Years." How do you explain that? 

BOWIE: It's a lovely escapist's way out. I quite 
like it, as long as it's not on the radio night 
and day—which it is so much these days. 
"Fame" was an incredible bluff that worked. 
I'm really knocked out that people actu- 
ally dance to my records, though. But let's 
be honest; my rhythm and blues are thor- 
oughly plastic. Young Americans, the album 
"Fame" is from, is, I would say, the definitive 
plastic soul record. It's the squashed remains 
of ethnic music as it survives in the age of 
Muzak rock, written and sung by a white 
limey. If you had played Young Americans to 
me five years ago and said, “This is an R&B 
album,” I would have laughed. Hysterically. 
PLAYBOY: What did you think of Barbra Strei- 


144 sand's recording your song “Life on Mars"? 


BOWIE: Bloody awful. Sorry, Barb, but it was 
atrocious. 

PLAYBOY: You're not noted for cordial rela- 
tionships with other artists. Yet there was 
the rumor that you flew to Europe to spend 
a sabbatical with Bob Dylan. What about it? 
BOWIE: That's a beaut. I haven't even left 
this bloody country in years. I saw Dylan 
in New York seven, eight months ago. We 
don't have a lot to talk about. We're not 
great friends. Actually, I think he hates me. 
PLAYBOY: Under what circumstances did 
you meet? 

BOWIE: Very bad ones. We went back to 
somebody's house after some gig at a club. 
We had all gone to see someone, I can't 
remember who, and Dylan was there. I was 
in a very, sort of...verbose frame of mind. 
And I just talked а! him for hours and hours 
and hours, and whether I amused him or 
scared him or repulsed him, I really don't 
know. I didn't wait for any answers. I just 
went on and on about everything. And then 
I said good night. He never phoned me. 
PLAYBOY: Did he impress you? 

BOWIE: Not really. I'd just like to know what 
the young chap thought of me. I was quite 
convinced that what I had to say was impor- 
tant, which I seem to feel all the time. It's 


Sex has never really been 
shocking. Everybody fuchs 
everybody. The only thing that 
shocks now is an extreme. 
Like me running my mouth 


off, jacking myself off. 


been quite a while since somebody really 
impressed me, though. 

PLAYBOY: Some psychiatrists would call your 
behavior compulsive. Does the fact that 
there is insanity in your family frighten you? 
BOWIE: My brother Terry's in an asylum 
right now. Га like to believe that the insan- 
ity is because our family is all genius, but 
I'm afraid that's not true. Some of them— 
a good many—are just nobodies. I'm quite 
fond of the insanity, actually. It's a nice thing 
to throw out at parties, don't you think? 
Everybody finds empathy in a nutty fam- 
ily. Everybody says, "Oh, yes, my family is 
quite mad." Mine really is. No fucking about, 
boy. Most of them are nutty—in, just out of 
or going into an institution. Or dead. 
PLAYBOY: What do they think of you? 
BOWIE: I haven't a clue. I haven't spoken 
to any of them in years. My father is dead. 
Ithink I talked to my mother a couple of 
years ago. I don't understand any of them. 
It's not a question of their understanding 
me anymore. The shoe's on the other foot. 
PLAYBOY: Are you still obsessed, as you 
reportedly once were, with the fear of being 
assassinated onstage? 

BOWIE: No. I died too many times onstage, 
man. And it's really not too bad. No, I 


don't have that paranoia anymore. I've now 
decided that my death should be very pre- 
cious. I really want to use it. ГА like my death 
to be as interesting as my life has been and 
will be. And being assassinated is not quite a 
hero's demise. Assassination is the...the snub. 
The Great Snub. It's the ultimate result of 
that Wilhelm Reich philosophy—nobody will 
be allowed to be any more than we are—that 
most people subscribe to in their hearts. Peo- 
ple aren't very bright, you know. They say 
they want freedom, but when they get the 
chance, they pass up Nietzsche and choose 
Hitler, because he would march into a room. 
to speak and music and lights would come 
on at strategic moments. It was rather like 
а rock-and-roll concert. The kids would get 
very excited—girls got hot and sweaty and 
guys wished it was them up there. That, for 
me, is the rock-and-roll experience. 
PLAYBOY: How is your relationship with 
Elton John these days? 

BOWIE: He sent me a very nice telegram the 
other day. 

PLAYBOY: Didn't you describe him as "the 
Liberace, the token queen of rock"? 

BOWIE: Yes, well, that was before the tele- 
gram. I'd much rather listen to him on the 
radio than talk about him. 

PLAYBOY: Do you feel you've been taken 
advantage of over the years? 

BOWIE: Not taken advantage of. Exploited. 
PLAYBOY: Are you suggesting you haven't 
made all that you should have? 

BOWIE: What, moneywise? Oh, Lord, no— 
we made nothing. All I've made is an impact 
and a change, which, of course, is worth a 
lot. I keep telling myself that. The best thing 
to say about it all is that it’s archetypal rock- 
and-roll business. Read the reports of the 
Beatles, the Stones and a lot of other big 
entertainers and take some kind of amal- 
gamation of all that; it's a pretty accurate 
picture of my business. John Lennon has 
been through it all. John told me, "Stick with 
it. Survive. You'll really go through the grind 
and they'll rip you off right and left. The key 
is to come out the other side." I said some- 
thing cocky at the time like, "I've got a great 
manager. Everything is great. I'm a 1970s 
artist.” The last time I spoke to John, I told 
him he was right. I'd been ripped off blind. 
PLAYBOY: You're not a rich man? After five 
gold albums? 

BOWIE: Now, yes, exceedingly. No! Wait, 
America! Not at all. Haven't got a penny 
to my name. I'm pleading poverty at the 
moment, but I'm potentially very rich. The- 
oretically rich but not wealthy. 

PLAYBOY: Are you as bitter about the music 
business as Lennon and Mick Jagger have 
said they are? 

BOWIE: No, no, no. You see, I needed to 
learn about it. You've got to make mis- 
takes. It's very important to make mistakes. 
Very, very important. If I glided through, I 
wouldn't be the man I'm not today. 
PLAYBOY: Last question. Do you believe and 
stand by everything you've said? 

BOWIE: Everything but the inflammatory 
remarks. 


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PLAYBOY 


146 


DUNHAM 


(continued from page 84) 


parts that are meaty enough to connect 
with. It's important to me to create fully 
formed characters who don't feel just like 
good guys, villains, creeps or sluts. I want 
it to feel real. I want my male friends to feel 
just as much ofa connection to my work as 
my female friends do. 


PLAYBOY: How do you want Girls to con- 
tribute to the ongoing conversation about 
feminism? 

DUNHAM: On Girls I like being a mouth- 
piece for the issues I think young females 
face today. It's always shocking when peo- 
ple question whether it's a feminist show. 
How could a show about women exploring 
women not be? Feminism isn't a dirty word. 
It's not like we're a deranged group who 
think women should take over the planet, 
raise our young on our own and eliminate 


men from the picture. Feminism is about 
women having all the rights that men have. 


7 

PLAYBOY: If you wi z up tomorrow in the 
body of a Victoria's Secret model, what 
would you do for the rest of the day? 
DUNHAM: I'd be really disoriented and won- 
der what had happened in the night. Which 
enemy had dragged me to the doctor? I 
don't think Га like it very much. There 
would be all kinds of weird challenges to 
deal with that I don't have to deal with now. 
I don't want to go through life wondering 
if people are talking to me because I have 
a big rack. Not being the babest person in 
the world creates a nice barrier. The people 
who talk to you are the people who are i 
terested in you. It must be a big burden in 
some ways to look that way and be in pub- 
lic. That said, I probably would want to see 
if I could get free food at restaurants. Then 
I'd call a doctor and see if she could return 
me to my former situation. 


"When I find the idiot who yelled Women and children first...” 


8 

PLAYBOY: What mon guy has a chance 
with you? 

DUNHAM: When I was younger I liked men 
who gave me some guff. I liked badasses 
with hearts of gold, though they often 
ended up not having a heart of gold. They 
were a little like the Adam character on 
Girls. Now I'm much more into someone 
who is interesting and open with his emo- 
tions, has a really good sense of humor and 
a passion for what he does, wants to hang 
out with my parents and doesn't want to 
stay out too late. If I can get excited imag- 
ining funny things he did as a kid, there's 
a pretty good chance I'm in love with him. 
It's a sad day when you stop believing in the 
idea of having a soul mate or having some- 
one who understands you deeply and loves 
you eternally. I'm a pretty unorthodox girl, 
but I guess people might be surprised to 
learn that despite what some of the char- 
acters on the show are doing, I remain an 
eternal romantic with a desire to hear all 
the things girls like to hear said to them. 


9 

PLAYBOY: You жес, won two Golden 
Globe awards. Is there a downside to be- 
ing critically adored and the object of great. 
expectations in your mid-20s? 

DUNHAM: Well, when you're 26 you're an 
adult, but you're not exactly ап adult. In me- 
dieval times I would definitely have been an 
adult, but I would've also been old and gouty 
and about to fall into a hole. But not now. 
The harder part is less about being scored: 
it's more about being my age, having a 
јо and people who depend on me—and ion 
being in service to someone else in their work. 
There's a reason people are apprentices 
first: You get the bigger responsibilities when 
you're ready for them. I feel Lam ready, and 
fortunately I'm not drawn to behaving badly, 
which is good because I don't have the option 
to disappear like some other 26-year-olds. If I 
did, you might find me eating a lot of cheesy 
carbohydrates, watching many episodes of a 
really shitty television show and sleeping in 
the afternoon. Of the seven deadly sins, I'm 
most guilty of gluttony and sloth. 


10 

PLAYBOY: What's m grocery checkout 
aisle routine? 

DUNHAM: I cannot get out of the market 
without six trashy magazines and seven 
packs of gum. I wish I could resist those 
things. Oh, and sometimes a Cadbury 
Creme Egg, if it's in season. 


оп 
PLAYBOY: Now that you're so admired, 
who's hitting on you? 
DUNHAM: Sometimes when we're shooting 
the show, extras don't know that I'm the di- 
rector. They'll come up and say, "How long 
have you been working as an extra? Want 
to walk over to the craft services table?" 
I'm always flattered when that happens be- 
cause there are a lot of very beautiful girls 
around in short skirts, and they chose me. 
Unless they're pretending they don't know 
who I am. Otherwise, despite all the atten- 
Чоп I'm getting (concluded on page 149) 


VICTORIA SILVSTEDT 


"For me it's important 
to wear pretty lingeri 
says PMOY 1997 Victoria 
Silvstedt. "It makes 

me feel modern, con- 
fident, glamorous and 
sexy." With that notion, 
she and the Marie Meili 


brand conceived a 

new luxe lingerie label 
called Very Victoria 
Silvstedt. Launched 

in Paris, the line uses 
eight different design 
motifs from jacquards 

to animal prints and 
features five different 

bra silhouettes includ- 
ing the Diva, which 
enhances a woman's nat- 
ural endowment by two 
cup sizes. “I think men 
should appreciate that 
we women have such a 
passion for pretty under- 
wear," Victoria says. 
“This collection is classily 
seductive and can be fun 
for all of us." 


@AmyLeighAndrews 
Here's a view of South Beach from the 
vantage point of Miss April 2010. 


е 
girlraLk 


E 1. Having fun with 
the paparazzi in L.A., 
Miss March 2011 
Ashley Mattingly laid 
one on her "girlfriend." 


K 2. Congratulations 
are in order for Miss 
February 1999 Stacy 
Fuson, who graduated 
this December from 
Azusa Pacific Univer- 
sity with a bachelor of 
science degree. 


Е 3. It was a happy 
day when Miss 
September 1963. 
Victoria Valentino 
met producer Garry 
Marshall at Vicki 
Abelson's Women 
Who Write salon. 


As if Miss May 2012 МТ AA t already "T ma, 
attention at the beach, лезе 000121 Spokesmodel - 
for Glo-Toob, a waterproof s that can be used 


gency situations. Nikki 
- 2 Ps E clothier 


Miss August 200- 


ee PLAYMATE* 


racer Mario Andretti as they 


opened Austin’s new Circuit of the 
Americas Fl track. г 


After Indiana University student 
PAMELA JEAN BRYANT shrugged 
off not being cast for a local 
fashion show, she tried out for 
our 1977 Girls of the Big Ten 
pictorial and was selected. One 
year later and 35 years ago 
this month she became Miss 
April 1978 and later starred 

in Don't Answer the Phone!, 
Lunch Wagon and HO.TS. 


DUNHAM 


(continued from page 146) 
lately, I definitely haven't had any Ryan 
Goslings saying "I love the way your mind 
works. Can I take you to dinner?" Maybe it 
would happen if I looked like a Victoria's 
Secret model for one day. Now I under- 
stand how I could use that. 


Q12 

PLAYBOY: How did you learn about sex, and 
who taught you? 

DUNHAM: I think I was five. A girl at school 
explained it to me. I didn't believe her be- 
cause it seemed so barbaric, so I went home 
and asked my parents if it was true. They 
sat down together and explained sex to 
me. My parents were sensitive. They said, 
"Your dad and I did this so that you could. 
get made." They gave me the male and fe- 
male perspective. That was the traumatic 
part. I remember thinking, I don't want 
and I definitely don't want 
looking at the faces of both 
of you. I wish one of them had taken the 
job and come into my bedroom alone. But 
I asked. It was because Amanda DiLauro 
told me, so it was really her fault. 


13 

PLAYBOY: Girls is set in Brooklyn. What does 
the media get wrong about New York's hip- 
pest borough? 

DUNHAM: I don't live in the same Brook- 
lyn neighborhood as my characters; mine 
is slightly more old-people-y. But I'm a 
Brooklyn girl and love it. The first time 1 
watched 2 Broke Girls, another Brooklyn 
show, I liked it, but there were people in 
Williamsburg saying, “You can't go out in 
that jacket in Brooklyn. You're going to 
get robbed!” Many parts of Brooklyn are 
tony suburbs of Manhattan, but the most 
interesting thing is the push-pull and the 
collision of young meets old, historic meets 
new. Most people don’t look at that. Also, 
not everyone has a handlebar mustache. 


14 

PLAYBOY: In your кегш independent 
feature film, Tiny Furniture, your character, 
Aura, has hot, clumsy sex in a drainpipe on a 
construction site at night. Why a drainpipe? 
DUNHAM: New York real estate is rough. 
When two people who want to have sex don't. 
have a place to go, what are their options? I 
was trying to think of both a comedic and a 
sort of dark place for people to engage. The 
funny thing is it was such a cheap movie and 
the pipe was the most expensive part of our 
entire operation. We needed a place to put 
the pipe where we could lightit properly. We 
had the pipe built in an iron yard. I had a big 
sewer pipe in mind, but they built one from 
a piece of scrap metal that wobbled around. 
When I noticed that I thought, We're done 
for. Everything is ruined because of this stu- 
pid wobbling pipe. Cut to: People wound up 
being amused that the pipe had a certain 
amount of give and jiggle. 


Q15 
PLAYBOY: What's the millennial generation's 
rule for how many times you can sleep with 


someone before one party or the other 
starts to feel it's no longer casual? 

DUNHAM: What an interesting question. I'm 
the worst. I could hate somebody and then 
if I slept with them once, I'd be planning 
our wedding in my head. Even though I 
knew they weren't fit to shine my shoes, I 
just couldn't separate those two acts very 
well. And yet, I know people who have 
been sleeping with each other for years 
who aren't anywhere near dating, and I 
know people who have had sex with some- 
one once and rent the U-Haul van to move 
in. Millennial men and women could stand 
to know that not everyone wants just ca- 
sual affairs, even though there's a lot of 
pressure to have sex and not care—and 
when you're a woman it's supposed to be 
a triumph when you can do that. I try to 
never push that methodology on Girls. I 
believe people want to be connected in an 
intense human way, but it's getting lost in 
the shuffle. So there's no rule, but most of 
my girlfriends start to get squirrelly about 
it and wonder what's going on 10 dates in. 


Q16 
PLAYBOY: Who do you dream of directing 
in a nude scene? 

DUNHAM: I don't want them to date in real 
life, but I wouldn't mind putting David 
Strathairn and Rooney Mara in a room to- 
gether and seeing what happens when they 
have sex in a movie context. 


Q17 
PLAYBOY: One of the louder criticisms 
of Girls is that it takes place in a narrow 
world of young, urban, middle-class white 
women and is thus not suitably diverse and 
representative of your generation. 


DUNHAM: I think that's a valid criticism, 
but we can't let that erase someone's ability 
to tell a personal story. While being racist 
and promoting inequality are crimes that 
should be punished, the sin of writing two 
Jewish girl characters and two Waspy char- 
acters feels less egregious to me. I've tried 
to be elegant about it and receive the criti- 
cism, and I understand what's hard about. 
it. At the same time I'm like, Really? 


Q18 
PLAYBOY: What's in your purse that would 
surprise us? 

DUNHAM: I still keep a paper date planner, 
which seems pretty old-school. I always have 
a novel. The stray-vitamin situation is pretty 
out of hand. But most surprising? A spoon. 
I'm always dragging one around. 105 a 
metal spoon. A plastic spoon makes sense. A 
metal spoon from your house makes it look 
like you're going to commit a spoon murder. 


Q19 
PLAYBOY: From which TV character should 
Hannah take love and relationship advice? 
DUNHAM: Mary Tyler Moore. Even though 
she's perpetually single, she has a positive 
attitude about it and doesn't psycho out on 
people. She believes she's gonna make it af- 
ter all. She's a pretty good example of chip- 
per, appropriate single-woman attitude. 


Q20 
PLAYBOY: What's the one interview question 
you don't want to be asked anymore? 

DUNHAM: If I could abolish one question, 
it would be “Why are you naked on TV so 
much?" I don't know. Use your imagination. 


“I think your parents giving you a pet is a sign of their love—even 
if E isa fate у aln dog." 


149 


FILMDOM'S JEDI MASTER. 


BILLION-DOLLAR BABE. 


THE DRUG WAR FROM THE INSIDE. 


NEXT MONTH 


TYRION TIGHTENS THE NOOSE. 


VA-VA-VROOM—IN A PICTORIAL THAT WILL GET YOUR HEART 
RACING, SOCIALITE, HEIRESS AND REALITY-TV STAR TAMARA 
ECCLESTONE—DAUGHTER OF AN ARMANI MODEL AND A 
FORMULA ONE MOGUL—SHOWS WHY SHE'S WHAT THE BRITS 
CALL THEIR "BILLION $$ GIRL." 


CANNIBAL—HE DISCOVERED HE НАР A SPECIAL ORAL TALENT, 
BUT IT MAY BE TIME FOR THE LADIES TO WIPE THE WET GRIN 
OFF HIS PIEHOLE. IT'S AN EXTRAORDINARILY BIZARRE PIECE 
OF FICTION FROM OUR MASTER OF MANIACAL MAYHEM 
CHUCK PALAHNIUK. 


EL GRINGO LOCO—IT'S NOT UNUSUAL THAT A MIDDLE-CLASS, 
COLLEGE-EDUCATED FOOTBALL PLAYER FROM CALIFOR- 
NIA WOULD LIKE GETTING HIGH. BUT HIS APPETITES LED HIM 
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WHERE HE BECAME A CONFIDANT 
OF MEXICO'S MOST VICIOUS DEALERS. THE MAN KNOWN AS 
"THE CRAZY WHITE GUY" GIVES JOHN H. RICHARDSON AN 
EXCLUSIVE LOOK INSIDE THE CARTEL. 


ACCIDENTAL CAPITALIST—HOW DID AN ADVENTURER WITH A 
DISTASTE FOR CONVENTION END UP BOTH RICH AND THE HERO 
OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION? CRAIG VETTER PROFILES YVON 
CHOUINARD, THE ICONOCLASTIC FOUNDER OF PATAGONIA, 
A COMPANY ACTUALLY STRIVING TO DO THE RIGHT THING. 


SALE OF THE CENTURY—MATTHEW COX APPEARED TO BE A 
REAL ESTATE GENIUS. UNFORTUNATELY, HE WAS A FRAUD. 
DESPITE EXTENSIVE PLASTIC SURGERY TO CHANGE HIS 
APPEARANCE, HE STILL GOT CAUGHT. FROM BEHIND BARS, 
COX PROVIDES DAVID KUSHNER WITH A UNIQUE VIEW OF 
THE MORTGAGE CRISIS THAT TRIPPED US ALL. 


ACTION!—AFTER A CAREER FILLED WITH BOX-OFFICE GOLD, 
J.J. ABRAMS HAS A SINGULAR CHALLENGE AHEAD: DIRECT- 
ING THE NEXT STAR WARS FILM, DUE IN 2015. HIS CURRENT 
FILM, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, ALSO FACES THE JUDG- 
MENT OF A LEGION OF PARTICULAR FANS. IN A FAST-PACED 
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW, ABRAMS REVEALS TO DAVID HOCHMAN 
THE SECRETS OF CRAFTING THE MODERN BLOCKBUSTER. 


ROYAL RUMBLE—PETER DINKLAGE LOOKS LIKE A BADASS—AND 
PLAYS ONE EXCEPTIONALLY WELL ON GAME OF THRONES—BUT 
SAYS CHOPPING OFF THE ARTIFICIAL LEG OF A 70-YEAR-OLD 
AMPUTEE ACTOR FROM BEHIND IS AS TOUGH AS HE GETS. THE 
ACTOR SHARES HIS WICKED SENSE OF HUMOR WITH ERIC 
SPITZNAGEL IN A LIVELY 200. 


PLUS—A CLASSIC PLAYBOY INTERVIEW WITH MUHAMMAD ALI, 
THE BACHELOR'S GUIDE TO INTELLIGENT LEISURE, SPRING 
SCENTS, THE MARVELOUS MISS MAY AND MORE. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), April 2013, volume 60, number 3. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July August issues by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 9346 


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. Always Rich! 
Always a Pleasure! 


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