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PLAYBOY 


ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN www.playboy.com e JULY/AUGUST 2013 


SUMMER DOUBLE ISSUE 
THE INTERVIEW: SEAN HANNITY 
AMERICA'S BEST BARS 
THE MAKING OF ENTER THE DRAGON 
FICTION BY T.C. BOYLE 
200 WITH ARMIE HAMMER 
DEPORTED WARRIORS 


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PROMOTION 


Some say that great music has been as big a part of Jack Daniel’s history 
as great whiskey. This spring, Jack Daniel’s kicked off a 5-stop tour to 
great American landmarks across the country, providing exceptional 
evenings filled with live music and smooth Tennessee Whiskey. 


On May 10th, live from the legendary backyard of the 5 acre, 22 room 
Playboy Mansion, and in support of Operation Gratitude, Jack Daniel's 
Live at the Landmark concert with Delta Spirit rocked the house for 

a night that will go down in history. 


Photos by Eric Reichbaum, Пуа Savenok and Christopher Victorio 


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Miss June 2004 Hiromi Oshima with Miss October 2012 Pamela Horton, Miss June 2004 Hiromi Oshima, Playmate 
Miss May 2012 Nikki Leigh of the Year 2013 Raquel Pomplun, and Miss May 2012 Nikki Leigh with guest 

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Jack Daniel’s and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks. © 2013 Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey alcohol 
40% by volume (80 proof). Distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. 


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В Д Mf elcome to our special summer 2013 
WW double issue, filled with stories and 
W W ideas that collectively paint a por- 
trait of the here and now. For starters, we've 
reached a watershed moment in gay rights 
in this country. Poet, novelist and all-around 
Renaissance man Isl d turns the 
debate on its head i in Who's Next? Asks 
Reed, “Should the issue of gay marriage 
be front and center when the situation of 
other groups is more desperate?” Interest- 
ing question, and he's only getting started. 
This summer marks the 40th anniversary 
of the release of Enter the Dragon—and the 
death of the film" s star, Bruce Lee. In Chas- 
ing the Dragon, Matthew Polly brings us 
behind the scenes of this seminal kung fu 
film, with original reporting from Hollywood 
and Hong Kong. Got your passport? From 
there we head to Tijuan in Deported War - 
riors; i 


introduce us # immigrant vets 
who’ ve been kicked out of the U.S. by our 
government. “They taught me it was easy to 
kill" says one. "Then they threw me away." 
We' re pleased to have Parisian photographer 

id Bellemere back in our 
pages. In La Beauté, Bellemere 
captures French model Liza 
in all her glory at the Sheats- 
Goldstein house, John Lautner's 
architectural masterpiece in Bev- 
erly Hills. Nice house, but wait 
until you see Liza. Next up: T.C. 
Boyle's new short story, The 
Marlbane Manchester Musser 
Award. A funny thing happened 
to Riley on his way to collect an 
award. “Sometime later," Boyle 
tells us, “he found himself in a 
desperate place, a place even 
the wildest of his wild years 
couldn't have begun to prepare 
him for.” Speaking) of literature, 


Davi 


BoD KWOT, intent on amassing a 
superlibrary. “Our goal is one copy of every 
book," he says, “in every language. Every 
book in the world." Why? The answer will 
surprise you, Rob Magnuson Smith reports 
in Brewster's Ark. Sean Hannity sits for the 
Playboy Interview this issue. The Fox News 
commentator and best-selling author has 
plenty to say about what's wrong with Amer- 
ica. "We're robbing our kids blind, because 
it's their money we're taking, and they're 
going to spend their lifetimes paying it 
back,” Hannity says. True? You be the judge. 
Another Fox newsman, James R 
follows our 68th secretary of state, John 
Kerry, on a tour of Europe and the Mideast 
for Secretary of Stagecraft. Kerry's legacy 
has yet to be defined, but this much is for 
sure, reports Rosen: "It's just not a fun time 
to be secretary of state.” Which brings us 
to Armie Hammer, who takes aim in 20Q. 
Hammer, the star of this summer's The Lone 
Ranger, riffs on his co-star Johnny Depp 
(who plays Tonto) and his own obsession 
with knots. So there you have it: Just about 
everything worth talking about in summer 
2013. Shall we get the party started? 


osen, 


PLAYBILL 


Ishmael Reed 


nous? 


Matthew Polly 


emere and Liza 


Sean T" 


à 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY SASHA EISENMAN 


it would make Riley 
: changehisthinking. 


MISS JULY 
ALYSSA ARCE 


: one wrong move and you're 
| banished. LUIS ALBERTO 
1 URREA and ERIN SIEGAL 
Í MCINTYRE meet our 

; shortchanged veterans. 


: PLAYBOY’S BEST 

: BARS 2013 

: Whoknows bars better 
than pLaysoy? It’s our 
survey of top taverns from 
Harlem to Portland. 


: CHASING THE 

: DRAGON 

: MATTHEW POLLY reveals 
Í the untold skirmishes 
behind the classic film 


Enier the Dragon. 


SECRETARY OF 
STAGECRAFT 
Secretary of state may 
be animpossible job, as 
JAMES ROSEN discovers 
while traveling the world 
With John Kerry. 


F THE STILL LIFE 
"TODD PARKER finds 
he rarest of Southern 
Measures: illegal, 


Authentic moonshine. 


FICTION 


1 THEMARLBANE 
: MANCHESTER 


MUSSER AWARD 


The trip meant a much- 


needed distraction and 


accolades for his book, but 


во, NO. 6-JULY/AUGUST 2013 - 


CONTENTS 


TAG T 


FEATURES 
> BREWSTER’S ARK 
Í ROB MAGNUSON SMITH 
meets Brewster Kahle, 
+ avisionary on a quest to 
: digitize our paper world. 


THE DICEMAN 
. 1i RECOMETH 
Andrew Dice Clay has 
: been to career hell and 
: (surprisingly) back. NEAL 
: GABLER examines his 
: unlikely resurgence. 


¦ LET'S GET SMALL 
: The next housing 

і wave? Modern, sleek, | 
; sophisticated—and 

: prefabricated. 


FAST EDDIE’S 

: LAST STAND 

; CHASSMITHtours Oahu 
with island tough guy 
Eddie Rothman as he 

: battles Monsanto. 


: COVER STORY 

A lock back at the best 

В from decades oftimeless 
: PLAYBOY covers. 


INTERVIEW 


: SEAN HANNITY 

; DAVIDHOCHMAN finds a 
: surprising personal story 
: and philosophy behind the 
Fox News host and con- 

* servative juggernaut. 


20Q 


: ARMIE HAMMER 
The new Lone Ranger 
tells BRANTLEY BARDIN 
і how he broke in his 

і cowboy boots far from the 
> comforts of Hollywood. 


Photo by TONY KELLY 

ı Summer's here and we're feeling the 
heat—especially our Rabbit, who found 
timetotake aninvigorating dip with a 
efreshing group of beauties. Who could 
urn down a poolside view ofthe fun? 


A 


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erg 


РАА 


> 


YOU'RE ONLY CRAZY IF YOU'RE 
THE FIRST ONE TO DO IT. 


Not long ago, monster waves were literally too fast to catch. Then, with the aid of a personal watercraft and a piece 
of rope, Laird Hamilton pioneered a way: tow-in surfing. And conquered the surf at Maui's ultimate big wave spot, 
"Jaws." This kind of conviction, creativity and courage is how Mazda has revolutionized the modern sports sedan. 
Later this year, Mazda will be the first Asian automaker to launch a diesel in North America. We dared to test our 
technology on racing's ultimate proving ground: the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Now, just four races into the Grand Am 
Rolex Sport Car Series, Mazda's SKYACTIV"-D* clean diesel has taken the checkered flag at the GX class race at 


Road Atlanta. Proving our technology on the track is how we engineer the highest quality into every vehicle we build. 
This is the Mazda Way. What do you drive? 


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+Mazda6 SKYACTIV*-D Clean Diesel GX Spec Grand Am race car shown, not available for sale. 


10 


PLAYMATE: Miss August Val Keil 


WHO'S NEXT? 

compares 
the black and gay civil 
rights movements. 


READER RESPONSE 
Debating atheism; a tale of 
bad cops gone digital. 


THE THINKING 
MACHINE 
J explains 
why the creative mind 
can’t be parsed in charts. 


TALKING WITH 
WIM WENDERS 

] learns 
realism and more from the 
versatile German director. 


THE CASE OF THE 
MISSING SHIRT 
Male shirtlessness is an 
epidemic, and J 

doesn't like it. 


WHY SHE HATES 
YOUR GIFTS 


spells out how to get her 
what she really wants. 


WHAT HAPPENED 
TO SCIENCE? 


looks at the 
growing rejection of 
hard data in favor of 
groundless faith. 


T 


mer RADE 


SHOW ME THE 
MONEY 


highlights the best new 
leather for old money. 


VOL. 60, NO. 6—JULY/AUGUST 2013 


PLAYBOY 


CONTENTS 


BODY HEAT 

You'll need sunglasses to 
handle fiery Karen 
Kounrouzan. 


PLAYMATE: 
ALYSSA ARCE 
We put Miss July 
onatrack with cars 
almostas hot as she 
is. Buckle up. 


PLAYMATE: 

VAL KEIL 

Miss August brings old- 
style cinematic glamour 
toour pages. 


LA BEAUTÉ 

Our French model rede- 
fines eroticism in this 
portrait of raw sexuality. 


WORLD OF 
PLAYBOY 

We crown Miss Social of 
the Year; Cooper promotes 
Playboy beer in Brazil. 


HANGIN’ WITH HEF 


Kudos for our Playmate 


ofthe Year; a Playboy- 
style birthday for Hef. 


PLAYMATE NEWS 
Jaslyn Ome goes street 
chic; Anna Sophia Berg- 
lundtakesastarturn. 


209: Armie Hammer 


PLAYBILL 
DEAR PLAYBOY 
AFTER HOURS 


REVIEWS 
DELECTABLE MANTRACK 
DEDINI PLAYBOY 
From the peculiar pen of ADVISOR 
our beloved cartoonist. PARTY JOKES 


PLAYBOY ON PLAYBOY ON PLAYBOY ON 
FACEBOOK TWITTER INSTAGRAM 


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


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 9346 CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210. 
PLAYBOY ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR GRAPHIC OR 
OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN LETTERS AND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC MATE- 
RIAL WILL BE TREATED AS UNCONDITIONALLY ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT 
PURPOSES, 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 U.S. 
TRADEMARK OFFICE. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL 
SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR 
RECORDING MEANS OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. 
ANY SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMI-FICTION IN THIS 
MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL PEOPLE AND PLACES IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE 
PAGE 194. BRADFORD EXCHANGE CHEVY BEL AIR CLOCK AND BRADFORD EXCHANGE TREETOP 
MAJESTY ONSERTS IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED COPIES. CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD 
DE TÍTULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993, Y CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO 
NO. 5108 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS POR LA COMISION CALIFICADORA DE PUBLI- 
CACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE LA SECRETARÍA DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO. 
RESERVA DE DERECHOS 04-2000-071710332800-102 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


PRODUCED BY ACADEMY AWARD*- WINNER FOREST WHITAKER 


“THE BEST MOVIE AT THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. 
AN UNSTOPPABLE CINEMATIC FORCE.” 


- PETER TRAVERS, ROLLING STONE 


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x THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY PRESENTS 


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BASED ON A TRUE STORY 
HF FruitvaleFilm.com COMING SOON : x 


PLAYBOY 


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"BEST NEW SHOW OF 2013" 


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Distributed By Anchor Bay Entertainment, LLC. Package Design © 2013 Starz Media, LLC 
All Program Content © 2013 SUNDANCE FILM HOLDINGS LLC. All Rights Reserved. 


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, JASON BUHRMESTER executive editors 
REBECCA H. BLACK photo editor 
HUGH GARVEY articles editor 


EDITORIAL 
FASHION: JENNIFER RYAN JONES editor STAFF: JARED EVANS assistant managing editor; 
GILBERT MACIAS editorial coordinator; CHERIE BRADLEY executive assistant; 

TYLER TRYKOWSKI editorial assistant CARTOONS: AMANDA WARREN associate cartoon editor 
COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND Copy chief; BRADLEY LINCOLN senior copy editor; CAT AUER copy editor 
RESEARCH: NORA O'DONNELL senior research editor; SHANE MICHAEL SINGH research editor 
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: BRANTLEY BARDIN, MARK BOAL, ROBERT B. DE SALVO, JAMES FRANCO, 
PAULA FROELICH, KARL TARO GREENFELD, KEN GROSS, GEORGE GURLEY, DAVID HOCHMAN, 
ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), SEAN MCCUSKER, CHRISTIAN PARENTI, JAMES R. PETERSEN, ROCKY RAKOVIC, 
STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, CHIP ROWE, DEBORAH SCHOENEMAN, TIMOTHY SCHULTZ, WILL SELF, 
DAVID SHEFF, ROB MAGNUSON SMITH, JOEL STEIN, ROB TANNENBAUM, CHRISTOPHER TENNANT 


ART 
JUSTIN PAGE senior art director; ROBERT HARKNESS associate art director; MATT STEIGBIGEL photo researcher; 
AARON LUCAS art coordinator; LISA TCHAKMAKIAN senior art administrator; LAUREL LEWIS art assistant 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
STEPHANIE MORRIS playmate editor; BARBARA LEIGH assistant editor; PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCES 
contributing photography editor; GAVIN BOND, SASHA EISENMAN, TONY KELLY, JOSH RYAN senior contributing 
photographers; DAVID BELLEMERE, MICHAEL BERNARD, MICHAEL EDWARDS, ELAYNE LODGE, SATOSHI, 
JOSEPH SHIN contributing photographers; ANDREW J. BROZ casting; KEVIN MURPHY director, photo library; 
CHRISTIE HARTMANN Senior archivist, photo library; KARLA GOTCHER, CARMEN ORDOÑEZ assistants, 
photo library; DANIEL FERGUSON 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 K. JOHNSON production director; HELEN YEOMAN production services manager 


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 G. ISRAEL president, playboy media; 
TOM FLORES senior vice president, business manager, playboy media 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: AMERICAN MEDIA INC. 

DAVID PECKER chairman and chief executive officer; KEVIN HYSON chief marketing officer; BRIAN HOAR 
vice president, associate publisher; HELEN BIANCULLI executive director, direct-response advertising 
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 associate marketing director; ERIN CARSON marketing manager; 

MICHELLE MILLER digital sales planning director; JOHN KITSES art director 
LOS ANGELES: LORI KESSLER west coast director; LINDSAY BERG digital sales planner 
SAN FRANCISCO: SHAWN O'MEARA Ni. O. m. e. 


THE WORLD ‘ss 
MANSION FROLICS 
OF PLAYBOY PET nores 


“There are always cultural 
icons that mean a lot to a lot 
of people, the Playmate being 
one,” said Neville Wakefield 
lower right), Playboy's cre- 
ative director of special projects. 
And PMOY Raquel Pomplun 
serves as amuse for artists 

o "refract that iconography 
hrough a more contemporary 
ens.” Aaron Young, Alex Israel 
and Malerie Marder displayed 
heir Playmate-inspired art at a 
Chateau Marmont soiree. 


We don't just like Playboy's 
Miss Social of the Year, Ashley 
Salazar. We love her. Meet her 
on our iPhone app. 


Cooper Hefner sat in with 
Mike Catherwood and Drew 
Pinsky on the venerable sex- 
advice radio show Loveline. 


The life of a pLayBoy editor: You 
might guess we spend half our 
day sifting through photos of 
potential Playmates and enjoy- 
ing a fine scotch while reading 
literature, but once a month we 
interrupt such duties to bring 

in a staff barber. In prepara- 
tion for the PMOY celebrations, 
Brian Girgus of the New Cali- 
fornia Barbershop gave our 
staff fades and touch-ups. 


Talk about a beer with body. We joined with brewer Kirin j 
to create Devassa by Playboy. In a few short years i 
Devassa has become the beverage of choice from Brasília 

to Rio de Janeiro, where Cooper Hefner and a cadre of «ват 1 
Playmates—including PMOY 2012 Jaclyn Swedberg (far DNE 
right)—toasted Mardi Gras with the blond (naturally) beer. ‘ E Ex 
Devassa, which means "libertine" in Portuguese, comes in | ч 

а Bunny-waitress can or an hourglass-shaped bottle. | 


AAA 


13 


HANGIN’ 
WITH 
HEF 


“This Playmate of the 
Year is a winner in every 
way,” Hef said as he intro- 
duced the first Mexican 
American PMOY and 
gave her the keys to 
a Jaguar F-Type. 
Raquel Pomplun 
thanked Hef and 
her Playmate 
sorority during a 
sunny luncheon 
at the Playboy 
Mansion. 


At Hef's Casablanca-themed 
birthday party, wife Crystal Hef- 
ner gave him an amazing mosaic 
portrait. Artist Jason Mecier 
created Hef's image using a col- 
lection of his favorite things: 
PLAYBOY, his pipe, Jack Daniel's 
and Haagen-Dazs ice cream. 


Jack Daniel's Tennessee 
Whiskey hosted a bash 
at PMW to benefit 
Operation Gratitude, which 
sends care packages to 
those serving in our military. 
Attendees included actor 
Shane West and Cooper 
Hefner, who rocked out 
to a live performance 
by Delta Spirit. 


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HOUSE OF CARDS 
Matthew Cox, the real estate fraudster, 
deserves a special place in con man hell 
(Sale of the Century, May). He is undoubt- 
edly gifted, but he also happens to be a 
sleazeball who took people’s money and 
property and destroyed lives. And all 
because he’d been slighted by his father? 
The irony is that Cox’s dad, while visiting 
Cox in prison, complimented him only on 
having “lived an incredible life.” 
Ron Thuemler 
Tampa, Florida 


MUSIC NOTES 
In “Rock Relic” (After Hours, April), 
Adam Baer laments the dearth of new 
guitar gods. I recommend he listen to 
Orianthi’s Heaven in This Hell, though 
technically it could be called blues. 
Orianthi is only 28, but Carlos Santana 
says he’s ready to pass her the torch. 
Dave Smith 
Winston, Oregon 


As a lifelong reader and metalhead, I’m 
disappointed to see the hands holding the 
headphones in *Metal Heads" (Mantrack, 
April) aren't throwing the horns but sign- 
ing “I love you.” Somewhere in England, 
Lemmy sheds a single tear. 

Mike Lyon 
Edina, Minnesota 


Rob Tannenbaum misses the mark in 
The 38 Best Songs About Sex (April). How 
could there not be a single mention of AC/ 
DC? He should have put more thought— 
or rock—into his list. 

Sandy Besemer 
South Haven, Michigan 


“You Suck” by Consolidated featur- 
ing the Yeastie Girls should have been 
listed among the best songs about women 
demanding cunnilingus. 

Michael Pampell 
Houston, Texas 


I'm surprised “Lola” by the Kinks isn't 
on your list of best songs about being a 
deranged male prostitute. Ray Davies's lyr- 
ics tell a tale of finding out the hard way 
that things aren't always what they seem... 
or are they? “She walked like a woman and 
talked like a man.” Anyone who knows the 
song will always wonder, Did they have sex? 

Dave Powell 
Sparks, Nevada 


THE GREATEST INTERVIEW 

I was one of those enthusiastic white 
college students Muhammad Ali spoke 
to (Playboy Classic, May). When he vis- 
ited Virginia Tech in 1971, he was well 
versed, told great stories, showed a great 
sense of humor and didn't preach. At the 
end of his talk, he took questions. Every- 
one wanted him to do the Ali shuffle, 
but he said he would need an opponent. 
The crowd started chanting, “Char- 
lie! Charlie!”—referring to a basketball 


DEAR PLAYBOY 


Diamonds Are Forever 


Thank you for the great pictorial of 
Tamara Ecclestone (The Diamond Heiress, 
May). Seeing the exquisite Tamara is 
just one of the many reasons I enjoy 
PLAYBOY month after month. 

Andrew Bejarano 
Las Cruces, New Mexico 


I love the March cover, but May is 
the best yet. As you've shown, a great 
cover does not need a lot of words. 
I also enjoy your classic Playboy Inter- 
views. Any chance you'll throw in some 
classic pictorials? 

Wylie Hnat 
Coralville, lowa 


player, Charlie Lipscomb, known for his 
long arms. After dancing around with the 
champ, Charlie took a swing—and con- 
nected. Ali felt his mouth. He had a split 
lip! The audience was hushed until the 
champ showed why he was and is the 
greatest. He reached behind the lectern, 
pulled out an eight-by-ten photo of him- 
self, signed it, added a smear of blood, 
handed it to Charlie and shook his hand. 
“Tell your kids and grandkids this blood 
came from Ali after you hit him,” he said, 
“though they probably won't believe you.” 
William Reid 
Corvallis, Oregon 


Ali shares the love at St. John's University, 1971. 


Some readers may be surprised by the 
content of your 1975 interview with Ali. 
Much of the media has presented him as 
a champion of liberal social policies for 
so long that it's easy to forget he had a 
more complicated message. As a young 
man Ali was attracted to the Nation of 
Islam because, he said, it gave him a sense 
of historical pride and religious disci- 
pline. Unfortunately he was expected to 


promote its divisive rhetoric. Since this 
sort of intolerance was at odds with his 
personality, it oftentimes led to such state- 
ments as We'll kill anybody who tries to 
mess around with our [Muslim] women.” 
But they should be viewed more as pious 
platitudes than sincere discourse. 

Paul Corning 

Madison, Wisconsin 


After winning, in 1970, the appeal for 
his suspension, Ali never “went on” to 
defeat Sonny Liston. He fought Liston 
in 1964 and 1965. He also wasn't “the 
only boxer in history to defend the world 
heavyweight championship 19 times.” Joe 
Louis retired in 1949 with 25 title defenses. 

Earl Flaherty 
Whitneyville, Maine 


THE GREATEST PHOTO 
The March cover photo of Liza Kei on 
a sheet, wearing a diamond choker and 
thigh-high stockings, is the epitome of, 
well, everything. It's the picture to end 
all pictures. It took PLAYBOY 60 years to 
get this one, and I doubt you'll be able to 
top it in the next 60 years. 
Wayne DeBarr 
Phoenix, Arizona 
What can we do but try? 


ROUGH AND READY 

The columns by Joel Stein and Lisa Lam- 
panelli in April hit on an important trend, 
the pussification of America. Although I 
agree with Stein’s confusion and disgust 
at being told by a supposed friend that 
his wine selection might get him punched 
in the testicles (“You Are What You Eat,” 
Men), if a friend said that to me, he'd be the 
one in danger of injury. Anyone who thinks 
a wine is too dry or hasn't matured enough 
doesn't understand why a man drinks. 1 
also like what Lampanelli says about what 
she would like a man to be (“Man Up!,” 


17 


JEWELRY UNLOCKS MORE 
THAN JUST HEARTS 


Playboy jewelry by Addison Taylor. 


Exclusively on the new 


PLAYBOYSTORE.COM 


Women). Somehow women’s liberation 
has been misunderstood by a generation 
of girlie men who fail to realize males and 
females can be equals but also different. 
Andrew Pastewski 
Miami Beach, Florida 


Lisa Lampanelli’s Women column is my 
first read every month. It is insightful and 
provides a guaranteed laugh. I'm sorry it 
will no longer appear in every issue. How 
about every other? 

Howard Hinderleider 
Columbus, Ohio 


I read "Why Money Makes Us Squirm” 
(Men, January/February) in the hope of 
discovering insights into the psychol- 
ogy of money. What I got instead were 
sexist comments such as “Women make 
new friends continually at every stage of 
their lives because most of their conver- 
sations are about shoes and handbags.” I 
hope in the future PLAYBOY will hire more 
socially conscious writers. 

Domingo Canizales III 
Santa Cruz, California 


IN THE BEGINNING 
Thank you for James Franco's interview 
with filmmaker Sam Raimi (Francofile, 
April). Sam was a grade or two ahead of 
me, but I recall the morning talk show he 
and a classmate played over the intercom 
in the mid-1970s at West Maple Junior 
High in West Bloomfield, Michigan. It 
always began with a Bachman-Turner 
Overdrive song. Then we'd hear “Hi, 
Steve!” “Hi, Sam!” and laughter. And 
they were off. It was clear even then he 
was a talented guy. 
Amy Patterson Quinn 
Marquette, Michigan 


CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? 

John Gray's essay “Atheism Wars” 
(Forum, April), in which he argues there is 
little reason to think our world would be 
a better place if no one believed in God, 
is so full of non sequiturs and inanity it's 
difficult to know how to respond. Theists 
live in a fairy-tale world where, if they're 
good, they'll go on to “heaven” and spend 
eternity with the deity. What a riot. Pull 
the other one. 

Johnny Cummings 
Boston, Massachusetts 


“In fact, atheism has little to offer any- 
body,” Gray writes. The truth is never a 
little thing. 

Isaac Shumard 
Wichita, Kansas 


Some New Age teachings fit perfectly 
with the science we have. They promote 
love and understanding and claim we are 
evolving physically and spiritually. Maybe 
the more established religions can't keep 
up with the human race. 

Al Merkel 
Sleepy Eye, Minnesota 


Religion is not some sort of primitive 
science. Being a de facto “truth,” it can- 
not correct its own errors. At best it's 
inaccurate history mixed with mythology 
and used as a method of controlling pop- 
ulations. It's a problem because it pushes 
ideas not grounded in evidence. 

Patrick Elliott 
Lake Havasu City, Arizona 
For more responses to Gray, see page 63. 


BLACK AND WHITE 
I would have loved to study the plans 
for your urban bachelor pad (Retro Ren- 
ovation, May), but there were too many 
distractions, such as the chessboard set 
up the wrong way, with the black queen 
on a white square. 
Steven Emmott 
Givrins, Switzerland 
You mean the chessboard next to the three 
nude Playmates? 


WALL CANDY 
In your report on great barbershops 
(Fade In, March), you show a rack filled 


a 
E 


A reader's home office, filled with distractions. 


with classic PLAvBovs. That required read- 
ing also makes great office decor. 

Joe Reale 

Raleigh, North Carolina 


A MODEST PROPOSAL 
It seems to me that if players have 

only a 15-year window to get into the 
National Baseball Hall of Fame, sports- 
writers should have to give up their vote 
after 15 years as well (“What the Hall?,” 
After Hours, May). 

Tony lamurri 

Las Vegas, Nevada 


TRAIL OF TEARS 
Leave it to Chuck Palahniuk, with his 
short story Cannibal (May), to ruin cun- 
nilingus for the rest of us. 
Lynn Johnson 
Beachwood, Ohio 
We suggest you not read Chuck's story Guts 


(March 2004). 


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


Y 


LIFEIS WORTH 


LIVING 


WITH A LITTLE 


STYLE 


THE NEW PLAYBOY FOR iPhone APP 


Download on the 


* App Store 


Oris Artix GT Chronograph 

Automatic mechanical chronograph 
Stainless steel case with turning top ring 
Special linear display for the small second 
Water resistant to 100 m 

See our story at www.oris.ch/journey-intime 


- JULY/AUGUST - 


2013 


your apartment in 
your underwear is 
a lot of fun," says 
Valerie Azlynn, 
lounging at home 
in Los Angeles. 
She plays Melanie, 
the smoking-hot 
beer-chugging 
paramedic in the 
tight uniform on 
TBS's Sullivan & 
Son. “| grew up a 
trombone-playing, 
opera-singing 
goofball," she says, 
"but I learned to 
love my body.” 
Although she's 
"one of the guys" 
on TV, that's not 
the case off- 
screen. "In real life 
Im a girlie girl." 


TALK| WHAT MATTERS NOW 


MAN 


THE PLAN TO RESCUE 
MEN FROM THE SUPER- 
MARKET IS AS DUMB 
AS IT SOUNDS 


is, naturally, 
ehaving-a- 
в, which is 

it and difficult 


degrees ofto 
longish conversations 
aboutthe NFL draft. 
But it's tough not to 
wonder, when consid- 
ering allthe explicitly 
dude-centered new con- 
sumer products on the 
market—the 10-calorie 
diet soda with the tag- 
line *It's not for women," 
say, or the cups of male- 
oriented yogurt—if 


OVERBOARD 


we're different enough 
to need our own brodas 
and (sorry) brogurts. 
The short answer, 
which doubles as 
apretty solid final 
answer, would seem to 
be “Of course not, and 
stop saying ‘brogurt’—it 
sounds terrible.” But 
as the recent boomlet 
in light-beer ads that 
define “manliness” as 
scrupulous brand loyalty 
and terrified conformity 
throws off some seri- 
ously sketchy gay-panic 
vibes, we must assume 
the ads work at least 
tosome extent. Still, 
attempts at a fear-based 
organizing of the male 
consumer’s brain must 


have limits. Any man 
who has avoided diet 
soda or yogurt because 
it seemed insufficiently 
masculine is not likely 
to be convinced by a 


brand of soda that super- 


swears it’s not some 
lame she-beverage or by 
eight ounces of yogurt 
packaged to look like 
little Arena Football 
League uniforms. And 
besides, it’s kind of 
insulting. We are secure 
and competent enough 
as humans to buy gro- 
ceries without needing 
a Man Aisle—the one at 
New York City’s West- 
side Market features 
beef jerky, condoms, 
hot sauce and beer—to 


STRIKE A CHORD 


23 Picking ир a guitar helps you 
pick up women, according to 
two recent studies. Ina French 
study, a subject introduced him- 
self to 300 women; 31 percent 
gave him their number when he 
was carrying a guitar, compared 
with nine percent when he had 
a gym bag. Students at Tel Aviv 
University found 14 out of 50 
people accepted a Facebook 
friend request if the photo 
showed a guy holding a guitar. 
Grab your ax, man. 


r 


Any man who has avoided yogurt 


because it seemed insufficiently 
masculine is not likely to be convinced 
by yogurt packaged to look like little 


tell us which foodstuffs 
and low-calorie sodas 
are appropriate for us 
men. Right? 

“Seventy percent 
of shopping is done by 
women,” says Stephen 
Hoch, professor of mar- 
keting at the Wharton 
business school. “But 
that means 30 percent is 
done by men, so you're a 
valuable demographic. 
And with men doing 
more shopping, and 
some ofthem maybe 
not confident about it, 
it makes sense to tar- 
get them specifically." 
He pauses. *Now, do 
you need a Man Aisle? 
Idon'tknow.Imean, 
whatthe fuck?" 

Finally, though, this 
may not be all that 
complicated. In 2006 
the chief marketing 
officer of marketing- 
communications giant 
JWT told Advertising 
Age’s Larry Dobrow 
what must have been a 


L Arena Football League uniforms. | 


hard truth. “We don't 
know [men's] passions 
and interests,” Marian 
Salzman said, *so we 
assume they're beer 
and babes." Not abad 
assumption, really, 
but it's not any less of 
aguess now than it 
was before. 

You don't need to 
watch Mad Men to 
know what happens 
next. These men-only 
sodas and guy-gurts 
are new, but the ideas 
that gave them to us 
are old. Long before 
there were Man Aisles 
inthe supermarket or 
these dude-oriented 
products to fill them, 
there was marketing's 
fundamental principle: 
create a grievance (what 
is up with all these girlie 
yogurts!) and then sell 
its solution (bro, try 
this). The amazing part, 
in retrospect, is that it 
took brogurt this long to 
get here.—David Roth 


— 


ILLUSTRATION BY BRUCE HUTCHISON 


HOW NOT TO GET ROBBED 
LIKE A CELEBRITY 


CELEBS FROM MEGAN FOX TO KANYE WEST HAVE BEEN CLEANED OUT BY CROOKS. 
HERE ARE TIPS FOR YOU—AND THEM—TO AVOID A POLICE REPORT 


2. 


ACCESS DENIED 


23 "There are many ways 

to handle access control, 
and a key is the worst,” says 
Alon Alexander, president 
of Kent Security. Try more 
sophisticated technology 
such as fingerprint scan- 
ners and facial recognition. 
“Any building | work for, 
rule number one is | remove 
the key.” Because when 
your face is your key, no 
one can duplicate it. 


4, 


STATUS UPGRADE 


23 As shown in The Bling 
Ring, Sofia Coppola's movie 
about real-life Hollywood 
thefts, someone is always 
watching celebs. Coming 
to grips with his or her new 
status can be a star's tricki- 
est adjustment. “You don't 
change the person; you just 
change how they do certain 
things,” says Bridwell. That 
means locking windows and 
keeping an eye on potential 
ne'er-do-wells. Better safe 
than sobbing over stolen 
diamonds.—Jeremy Gordon 


* 


2. 


FIRE AWAY 


— Hangers-on are as much 
a staple of celebrity life as 
tanning beds, and when 
things go missing, they're 
often the people to look at. 
“When it’s time for those 
people to get fired, they 
take it personally,” says 
private investigator Dennis 
Bridwell. “I met a guy who 
made a copy of a client's 
credit card. Six months 
after the guy was let go, he 
bought a car with it.” 


3. 


ROLE CALL 


— Don't employ anyone 
who will blab your secrets 
over a round of mai tais. 
Also, keep track of your 
home's foot traffic and know 
who has access codes. “It's 
not just Tom Cruise going in 
and out of his house. He has 
staff and other people who 
work for him,” says Richard 
Sedivy of DoorKing. “It's 
almost a small business." 


Tip: Don't employ 
anyone who will blab 
your secrets over a 
round of mai tais. 


Photography by DAN SAELINGER 


DEAD MAN 
TALKING 


STAYING SOCIAL FROM 
BEYOND THE GRAVE 


* For the garrulous 
among us, one of the more 
troubling aspects of shuf- 

fling off this mortal coil 
is the prospect of doing so 
unexpectedly, having left 
important things unsaid. 
Now, however, thanks to 
several new “digital legacy 
tools,” when you give out, 
your yap won't. Simplest 
of the bunch is If I Die 
(ifidie.net), a Facebook app 
that allows you to leave a 
message for the world to 
be triggered by three des- 
ignated trustees after you 
croak. Deadsoci.al allows 
you to schedule tweets and 
Facebook posts for certain 
dates so you can rickroll 
people from beyond the 
grave. Most ambitious 
is_LivesOn (liveson.org), 
which promises that *when 
your heart stops beating 
you'll keep tweeting." The 
service monitors your feed 
and creates posts based on 
what it thinks you'll like. 
You improve its accu- 
racy by telling it what you 
would and wouldn't post. 
When you die, an executor 
activates your account, 
unleashing tweets that will 
either comfort or freak out 
your followers. The service, 
scheduled to launch this 
year, already has a waiting 
list. But is it ghoulish? “It 
doesn't seem too absurd 
that this could constitute 
some sort of afterlife,” 
says Dave Bedwood, one 
of_LivesOn’s founders. 
"No more absurd than the 
one religion has sold for 
centuries.”—Dan Dunn 


PROP STYLIST: DOMINIQUE BAYNES. ILLUSTRATION BY TODD DETWILER 


23 


TALK |WHAT MATTERS NOW 


IF YOU SPENT 
JUNE LOAFING 
ON A COUCH, 
DON’TLET THE 
NEXT TWO 
MONTHS GO TO 
WASTE. FROM 
CONCERTS 
AND POOL 
PARTIES TO 
ART EXHIBITS 
AND SWANK 
HOTELS, THIS 
LIST WILL SAVE 
YOUR SUMMER. 


MONTELOBOS MEZCAL 


lrink 


rita mix and ce a mar 


* Catch one of summer’s best brawls 
by heading to Carson, California for 
Andre Berto vs. Jesús Soto Karass 
(homedepotcenter.com). The wel- 
terweight slugfest promises to be the 
year's most action-packed—unless 
ANDRE BERTO Floyd Mayweather Jr. finally agrees to 
VS. JESUS SOTO À 
KARASS fight Manny Pacquiao. 


775 
July 27 


PITCHFORK 
FESTIVAL 


July 19-21 


» Make your way to Chicago 
to celebrate the lovelywomen 
(onstage and off) atthe Pitch- 

fork Music Festival ($50-$120, 
pitchforkmusicfestival.com). 


ALL-STAR GAME This year’s lineup includes 
AT CITI FIELD bad girl M.LA., vampy model 
July 16 and songstress Sky Ferreira, 

» The holy trinity of Solange—the other, funkier : LAS VEGAS 
summer is baseball, Knowles sister—and your not-so- POOL PARTIES 
F secret crush Björk. If Belle and * Las Vegas pool Hotel is the grand- David Guetta), and 

ing ell threerat Sebastian kill your buzz, watch parties are de- daddy of 30-ounce the Boulevard Pool 
[an when You Bü : : 4 bauched even by vodka lemonades at the Cosmopolitan 

in your ok em at Killer Mike and R. Kelly instead. Sin City standards. and underwater features the best live 
i MILES y t Or just grab abeach towel. plant Don your swimsuit hand jobs, Encore at acts, including Twin 
pes Field аР in а т ы : and dive in. Rehab the Wynn nabs the Shadow (July 4) and 
Grab ч ao yourselfin the middle ofthe at the Hard Rock biggest DJs (Diplo, Weezer (July 27). ڪڪ‎ 
Shake Shack burger three stages and work on yourtan 
and watch Prince and your impending hearing loss. A Ў NTE 
Fielder crush hom- i — „ * 
ers into the New OR D и 7 
York streets. + b o" 

%% ³ AA EISE causa mE y . . 
\ 
MADERO СОАТЕ VANS * 3 
> Summer requires a pair of kicks tmu - 21 


that can keep up. The Madero Guate 
Vans ($60, vans.com) work every- 
A where from barbecues to bars. Bright 
$ " 
colors ensure they won't get lost dur- 
ing late-night dips at the beach. 


METALLICA 
PINBALL MACHINE 


» Take a break and 
blow a night at the 
bar, playing Metal- 
lica...pinball. The 
latest model (visit 
sternpinball.com for 
locations) includes 
an animated electric 
chair, a ball-eating 
snake and illuminated 
grave markers. Ride 
the lightning, indeed. 


LOLLAPALOOZA 


August 2-4 


* Return to Chicago for a second helping of 
killer music, overpriced bottled water and 
quality MDMA, at Lollapalooza ($75-$235, 
lollapalooza.com). Impress the ladies with 
your knowledge of Cat Power and Lana Del Rey 
after Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone 
Age blow what's left of your brains. 


TRILLIUM ertigo Comics (V fi 
GRAPHIC NOVEL acclaimed creator Jej 


WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, 
PLAYBOY STYLE 


By Nora O’Donnell 


LONDON 
SHARD HOTEL 


- You're pumped on sci- 
fi, so stay at London’s 
new Shangri-La Hotel 
atthe Shard (shangri- 
la.com/london). The 
1,016-foot skyscraper 
(the tallest in the E.U.) 
pierces the clouds like 
something out of Star 
Trek. Room prices are 
TBA, but the bar on the 
52nd floor provides a 
holodeck-worthy view. 


BOWIE EXHIBIT 
AT V&A LONDON 


until August 11 


* Catch the David Bowie exhibit 
at the Victoria and Albert Mu- 
seum (www.vam.ac.uk) before it 
closes. The show includes more 
than 300 objects from the Thin 
White Duke, including original 
costumes, instruments, handwrit- 
ten lyrics and set designs. 


| | 


кї) 


x» 


ELECTRIC ZOO 
NEW YORK 


August 30-September 1 


End your adventure back in 
New York at the Electric Zoo 
music festival ($330-$1,200, 
madeevent.com/electriczoo). 
Sweat it out to turntable su- 
perstars Tiésto and Steve Aoki. 
Then, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. 
This summer has depleted you. 


Y TRAVEL 


26 


| 
INSIDER IBIZA 


TOP TASTEMAKERS TELL HOW TO MAKE THE 
MOST OF THE FANTASY ISLAND'S LUXE LIFE 


* The Spanish party 
island of Ibiza has 
always attracted a 
certain breed of well- 
heeled hippie. Named 
for Bes, the Egyptian 
god of music and dance, 
theisland has beena 
playground for the gypsy 
jetset since as far back 
asthe 1960s—with 
everybody from Frank 
Zappa to Kate Moss hav- 
ing made the pilgrim- 
age overthe decades. 
But recent years have 
seen the boho bolt-hole 
smarten up its act, mak- 
ing this the best summer 
to visit yet. 
International res- 
taurateur Giuseppe 
Cipriani, who opened 


his latest restaurant, 
Downtown Ibiza, in the 
heart of Marina Ibiza 
last summer, explains 
why he picked this 
beachy paradise for 
his expanding empire: 
“Thizais attracting a 
much more interna- 
tional crowd now. All 
our customers are com- 
ing here.” Last year also 
saw private-jet traffic 
to the island double, and 
this summer Cipriani 
ups the ante again—with 
Bomba Ibiza, a nightclub 
he opened in May with 
superstar DJ Luciano. 
Where to party? Take 
the advice of Serena 
Cook, who set up her 
high-end concierge 


— Dancers make the scene at the SuperMartXé party 
at Ibiza's legendary club Privilege. 


NEVER SLEEP 
HOW TO 


DO IBIZA, 
FROM DUSK 
TO DAWN 


9:00PM 
BAR 1805 


> Pregame at this 
bohemian absinthe 
bar from expert 
mixologist Charles 
Vexenat. 


company, Deliciously 
Sorted, in Ibiza in 2002 
to cater to just a hand- 
ful of wealthy hedo- 
nists. Her business has 
burgeoned in the past 
decade, and she now has 
more than 6,000 clients 
on her books. Cook 
charts the rise of Ibiza's 
VIP scene by the ven- 
ues that have opened 
to cater specifically to 
the glitterati. Among 
the top spots: the Blue 
Marlin beach club (1), 
a Vegas-style daytime 
party palace; the Ush- 
uaia Beach Hotel; and 
cabaret restaurant Lío. 

Skip the raver-ready 
hotels and book a room 
at one ofthe island’s 
newest five-star 
accommodations, such 
as the adults-only Ush- 
uaia Tower and Pacha’s 
Destino (see “Haute 
Hotel” at right), new 
this summer. 

Ifyou want to hang 
with the high roll- 
ers, be ready to spend. 
The infamous Pacha 
nightclub renovated 
its DJ booth last year 
to accommodate the 
ever-expanding VIP 
section—where tables 


1:00am 
ENTER. AT SPACE 


> DJ Richie Hawtin’s 
“sake bar” concept at 
superclub Space has a 
reputation as a party 
for music lovers. 


start at 400 euros for 
two people but the aver- 
age nightly spend is well 
into the thousands. 

Ben Turner, one of 
the men behind Ibiza’s 
International Music 
Summit (a dance- 
music conference that 
was also held in L.A. in 
April), thinks an influx 
of American royalty is 
behind the Ibiza clubs’ 
deepening love affair 
with bottle service. 
“People like Andrew 
Sasson, Noah Tep- 
perberg, Jason Strauss 
and Dave Grutman— 
the kings of U.S. 
nightlife—have become 
the tastemakers,” says 
Turner. And guess who 
comes with them— 
private jets full of mod- 
els. Need we say more? 
—Ruby Warrington 


2:00AM 
BOMBA IBIZA 


> Giuseppe Cipriani 
has lured Europe’s 
top DJs to his hotly 
anticipated after- 
hours venue. 


| HAUTE 
| HOTEL 


| > Destino (2), a 
swish new resort 
hotel and the 
latest jewel in 
the Pacha crown, 
is situated on 
the outskirts of ' 
‚ Ibiza Town atop H 
the cliffs of Cap 
Martinet. The 
action cen- 

ters on a giant 

ı cherry-shaped i 
ı swimming pool ' 
complete with ! 
|. 20-seat VIP i 
ı Jacuzzi. Add 

a 200-seat 
“Mediterrasian” 

ı restaurant and 

ı daytime sounds 
from leading in- 

| ternational DJs to 
ı create an oasis of 
ı sheer indulgence. 


6:00 AM 
THE CAVE 


> Make it your mission 
to get on the list at this 
dark-and-dirty after- 
party hidden away in 
the hills of San Juan. 


50 SHOWS 
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PIMP YOUR SHRIMP WITH 
OUR SPICY GRILLED SPIN 
ON SHRIMP COCKTAIL 


* Shrimp cocktail, that 
mainstay ofthe country 
club dinner and the wedding 
reception buffet, doesn't 
need to be relegated to 
proper affairs. And sum- 
mer's parade of hastily 
assembled cookouts could 
usean injection of sophis- 
tication. To address these 
two issues simultaneously, 
we turned to the countries 
of Asia as the inspiration for 
a bolder, better version of 
shrimp cocktail, grabbing 
sweet hoisin sauce from 
China, the peppery-lemony 
spice blend shichimi toga- 
rashi from Japan and the 
ubiquitous sriracha hot 
sauce. Boost the heat ofthe 
cocktail sauce with a quarter 
teaspoon of wasabi powder if 
you like it superspicy. 


^ 


Hoisin Grilled Shrimp 
(serves four) 


—————— x 


** In a large mixing bowl, com- — 
bine first four ingredients and stir 

well. Add shrimp and mix to coat 

with marinade. Refrigerate for 30 

minutes. Heat a grill to medium heat. 

Spear shrimp on bamboo skewers 

and grill for two minutes per side. 


* 2 tbsp. hoisin sauce e 

* 2 tbsp. mirin Sriracha Cocktail Sauc 

+ 1 tbsp. vegetable oil ATA —— 
* 1 tsp. shichimi togarashi ** Place ingredients in a small mix- 
+ 1 lb. medium shrimp, peeled ing bowl and stir to combine. Serve 


as dipping sauce with shrimp. 


* 6 bamboo skewers 


* 4 tbsp. ketchup 

* 4tbsp. sriracha hot sauce 
* 3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice 
* a cup horseradish sauce 


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У DRINK 
NICE CANS 


The allure ofthe 16-ounce tall boy 
is pretty simple: It has more beer in 
it. Why drink a normal 12-ounce beer 
when you can drink four ounces more? 
The answer used to be because only 
crappy macro lagers came in big cans. 
Nolonger. The past year has seen sev- 
eral great American craft breweries 
opting for the big-can format. Cans 


SHIFT PALE 
LAGER 
New Belgium 

Brewing Company 

Э A damn fine lawn- 
mower beer. Crisp 

and light, it's zested 
with earthy hops and 


anchored by a good 
malt backbone. 


оодо vé 


| 


DALE'S 
PALE ALE 
Oskar Blues Brewery 
=> Artisanal canned- 
beer pioneer Oskar 
Blues now offers its 
classic pale ale in a su- 
persize 19-ounce can. 


TORPEDO 
EXTRA IPA 
Sierra Nevada 
Brewing Company 
— Craft beer master 
Sierra Nevada killed 
it when it created this 
perfectly balanced 
IPA. It delivers crazy- 
bold hops without 
being undrinkably 
cloying. 


SWEET ACTION 
Sixpoint Brewery 
A little sweet, 
tasting slightly of 
orange and peach, 
dark in color but 
light on the palate, 
this unique cream ale 
grows on you with 
each sip. 


G'KNIGHT 
IMPERIAL ALE 
Oskar Blues Brewery 
— A dangerously 
strong (8.7 percent 
ABV) hoppy beer with 
а пісе malty finish. 
It’s named in honor 
of a local brewer and 
Vietnam vet who died 
fighting a fire. 


Photography by GORMAN STUDIO 


чуй dys” 


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(AND EVERY ONE YOU PRETENDED TO) 


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STYLE 


— When it comes 
to clip-ons, a 
classic metallic 
navigator style 
keeps it look- 

ing dashing, not 
dorky. 


CLIP ART 


THEY'RE BACK! GLASSES WITH 
CLIP-ON SHADES ARE A ONE- 
TWO PUNCH THIS SUMMER 


* Itwas bound to happen. With NBA stars and rock 
stars alike wearing geek-chic horn-rimmed frames 
and military-style aviator and navigator shades, it 
didn’t take long for designers to meld the two. Con- 
vertible sets of specs and clip-on sunglasses give you 
cool convenience while avoiding the nerd factor. But 
don't just slap clip-on shades on any old frame: These 
are matched sets that are scaled just right and use 
gold and colored accents for subtle flair. 


Photography by JOSEPH SHIN 


Ne 


HORN FREE 


— These horn- 
rimmed glasses go 
from bookish to 
bold with a gold 
wire clip and a nod 
to traditional Danish 
design. 


ALL CLEAR 


Inspired by the 
low-key cool of 
James Dean, these 
glasses pair clean, 
clear acetate frames 
with gray clip-on 
lenses. 


MIRROR MIRROR 


4 L.A. designer Gar- 
rett Leight collabo- 
rated with French de- 
signer Thierry Lasry 
for this set that pops 
thanks to blue-wire 
mirrored shades. 


Timeless by Han 
($198) 


JD by Michael Bastian 
X Randolph Engineer- 
ing ($285) 


Number 1 by Garrett 
Leight X Thierry Lasry 
($445) 


BACK IN 


BLACK 
(AND WHITE) 


One of these days, that threadbare 
Def Leppard (or Ramones or Hüsker 
Dü or Bob Dylan) T-shirt is going to 
give up the ghost. Instead of trolling 
eBay and bidding on someone else’s 
hand-me-down nostalgia, you can 
start fresh but still rock the vote for 
your favorite band with a tee from 
one of the many designers who col- 
laborate with musicians. (Street- 
style pioneer Supreme has a Misfits 
line; Hurley had a Weezer series.) 
The best of the bunch are graphic 
and black-and-white, avoid the bom- 
bastic rock T-shirt clichés and go 
with anything you'll wear this sum- 
mer. Here’s how to get in on the act. 


LED HEAD 


Pay tribute to Led 
Zeppelin’s true genius, 
drummer John Bonham 
(apologies to Jones, 
Plant and Page), with this 
supersoft T-shirt from au- 
diophile fashion designer 
John Varvatos. ($98) 


2 3 


BOWIE LIFE 


Paul Smith 
designed this 
official T-shirt 
for Bowie’s new 
album, The Next 
Day. ($145) 


GO BLONDIE 


Dolce & Gab- 
bana meets Deb- 
bie Harry with 
this tee. Available 
at mrporter.com. 
($265) 


Photography by JOSEPH SHIN 


ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT HARKNESS 


Your geometry teacher was wrong. 


— 


Y 


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PORSCHE 


| 


MOVIEO 


PACIFIC RIM 


By Stephen Rebello 


FTHEMONTH 


* Huge destructive beasts 
called Kaiju rise from 
beneath the sea and spark 
an all-out war with human- 
piloted robots called Jaegers 
in the future envisioned 

by director Guillermo del 
Toro in Pacific Rim, his self- 
described “beautiful poem 
to giant monsters.” Despite 
the presence of mega-robots, 
any comparisons to Trans- 
formers are way offthe 
mark, says Ron Perlman, 
who stars in Pacific Rim 
along with Charlie Hunnam, 
Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi 
and Charlie Day. *Guillermo 
hastaken something that 


inthe hands of others could 
have been superficial," he 
says. In his fifth film for 

del Toro, Perlman plays an 
opportunistic black mar- 
keter who might have been 
at home in atough-talking 
Humphrey Bogart flick. Del 
Toro “is a poet, a filmmaker 
with old-school movie wir- 
ing, and you see itin my 
role, which is almost comic 
reliefin contrastto the rest 
of the movie,” Perlman says. 
“Guillermo has made an 
epic, engaging and conse- 
quential film that, frankly, I 
didn’t see on paper. It’s very 
unconventional, but it’s also 


very human. When I came 
on to film my stuff, they 
were 80 percent done after 
weeks of long hours and 
huge scenes of the kind that 
require physicality, travel 
and time and that chip away 
at major pieces of your life. 
Гуе been on long, unwieldy 
tentpole movies before with 
Guillermo, but on this, I 
have never seen him look 


better or be in a better mood. 


You can see why. Making it 
was joyful, and the movie 
is really fun and resonant. 
Whether or not you're into 
technology, you just get 
swept up init.” 


DVD OF THE MONTH 


THE PLACE 
BEYOND 
THE PINES 


By Greg Fagan 


* Sins of fathers and the 
destinies of their sons play 
outinthree successive 
stories to form this multi- 
generational drama that 
announces director Derek 
Cianfrance's arrival on the 
A-list. The opening seg- 
ment finds Ryan Gosling 
in Drive mode, in this case 
asacarnival-performing 
motorcyclist who turns 

to robbing banks to sup- 
port his ex-girlfriend 

(Eva Mendes) and kid. 
Bradley Cooper takes the 
lead in the second por- 
tion, tracing his journey 
from a young cop to a man 
compromised by years of 
rationalization. The third 
act picks up 15 years later, 
asthe sons ofthese two 
men face choices that echo 
the earlier acts. At oncea 
work of great restraint and 
nuanced performances, 
Pines plays with big arche- 
types. (BD) Best extra: 
Going to the Place Beyond 
the Pines, a making-of 
featurette. УУУ Y. 


VA 


MORE 
SUMMER 
CINEMA 


SEVEN REASONS TO 
SIT IN THE DARK, 
EAT POPCORN AND 


WAT 


D 


THE LONE RANGER 


Gore Verbinski gives the Old 
West adventure a blockbuster- 


THE WOLVERINE 
Hugh Jackman's clawed 
mutant faces his nemesis in a 
showdown in modern Japan. The 


ELYSIUM 


In Neill Blomkamp's dystopian 
sci-fi film, the elite live on a floating 


style do-over. Johnny Depp plays 
Tonto, the Indian companion of 
Armie Hammer's titular hero. 


man-made paradise while mil- 
lions, including Matt Damon, fight 
for crumbs on a ravaged Earth. 


ENJOY THE AIR- 
40 CONDITIONING 


film's neo-noir trappings have 
our X-pectations piqued. 


Forget Facebook. In 2084 memories 
aren't shared online, they're digitized 
to be bought, sold, traded and even sto- 
len. Remember Me (360, PC, PS3) really 
kicks off when former elite memory 
hunter Nilin wakes up in a coffin adrift 
in the sewers, her mind erased by 
authorities. In a smart mash-up of The 
Bourne Identity and Inception, Nilin 
scurries through a cyberpunk version 
of Paris while being pursued by robotic 
guards and Leapers, mutated humans 
who have tinkered too much with their 
memories. To survive, Nilin will need 
to remember the combat skills that 
made authorities fear her. Unlock- 
ingthem leads to bigger combos in 
rapid-fire martial arts battles. Nilin's 
greatest weapon—and the game's 


most ingenious feature—is memory 
manipulation, which she can activate 
by accessing nodes built into the necks 
ofeveryone in Neo-Paris. Once inside 
their minds, Nilin can alter their 
memories and, if done correctly, turn 
them against one another and over 

to her side—or to even more sinister 
outcomes. In one scenario Nilin raids 
an officer's memories and convinces 
him he murdered his girlfriend ina 
drunken rage. In another she swaps a 
bounty hunter's memories with that 
ofthe hunter's deranged husband. 
These memory tweaks require a deli- 
cate touch—knock over a bottle here, 
unlock a gun safety there but make 
Remember Me one ofthe year's most 
intriguing games. YYYY 


TEASE 
FRAME 


Mary-Louise Parker 


She was smoking 
for eight seasons on 
Showtime's Weeds 
(pictured). Now 
Mary-Louise Parker 
lights up the big 
screen by repris- 
ing her RED role as 
Sarah Ross, in RED 2. 


WHITE HOUSE DOWN 
Channing Tatum plays a 
Capitol policeman and Jamie 
Foxx is a U.S. president taken 
hostage by terrorists in Roland 
Emmerich's latest. 


R. l. P. D. 


This Ghostbusters call- 
back has Jeff Bridges and Ryan 
Reynolds as dead cops sent 
from the other side to hunt evil 
spirits trying to end the world. 


KICK-ASS 2 
Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor- 
Johnson) inspires Jim Carrey 
to stand up to the aptly named 
Mother Fucker (Christopher 
Mintz-Plasse). 


2 GUNS 


It's nonstop bullets and bro- 
mance when agents Denzel 
Washington and Mark Wahlberg 
smash a drug cartel, rob a bank 
and become fugitive buddies. 


al 


ENTERTAINMENT 


MUSIC 


QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE 


JOSH HOMME 


By Rob Tannenbaum 


Queens of the Stone 
Age badass Josh 
Homme (rhymes 
with “mommy”) talks 
about his new album, 
stupidity, drugs and 
sandwiches. 


Q: If Queens of the 
Stone Age were a 
movie, what movie 
would you be? 

A: | think we're the 
original Mad Max 
movie—but we're all 
the characters. Be- 
cause we're trying 
to do the right thing, 


but on the inside, 
we're accidentally 
the rogue biker gang 
that's trying to 
destroy ourselves. 
Q: 15 there a Mad Max 
influence on your 
new album, ...Like 
Clockwork? 

A: Our music is a 
kind of reminder to 
keep it simple. I'd 

say stupidity is what 
| have to offer. | love 
boneheaded move- 
ments in music, like 
the Cramps. I'll be 
damned if everything 
the Cramps did is not 
a deliberate exten- 
sion of primitivism. 
Q: One of your best- 
loved lyrics goes 
"nicotine, Valium, 
Vicodin, marijuana, 
ecstasy and alcohol." 
Which of them is 
your favorite? 


A: | love the social ex- 
periment of that song, 
even down to the title, 
"Feel Good Hit of the 
Summer." It's neither 
an endorsement nor 
a denouncement of 
drugs. Some people 
say to me, "You have 
two children. How are 
you going to explain 
the song to them?" | 
dunno. How are you 
going to explain the 
word sandwich to 
your kids? 

Q: That is a great 
analogy. 

A: [Laughs] The song 
felt like a soft and 
gentle poke into a 
discussion. | love hav- 
ing an audience just 
So we can poke each 
other together. Isn't 
that what PLAY is all 
about? Gently poking 
your neighbor? 


42 


MUST-WATCH TV 


e» 


» Saturday Night Live 
isinreruns all sum- 
mer, but that doesn't 
mean late-night TV is 
completely barren. Fox 
islaunching ADHD, 
a90-minute block of 
twisted toons designed 
toappealto those who 
think Family Guy is 
too tame (or too tired). 
Four different ani- 
mated mini-shows will 
be spotlighted, includ- 
ing Axe Cop (pictured), 
in which a superhero 
lawman (who sounds a 
lot like Parks and Recre- 
ation’s Nick Offerman) 
battles various villains. 
One of the bad guys is 
(literally) a piece of shit 
named Dr. Doo Doo. It’s 
completely silly, totally 
immature and very, 
very funny.—J.A. YYYY 


THE STEPHEN KING MINISERIES 
UNDER THE DOME 


By Josef Adalian 


* Television has a mixed track 
record when it comes to adapting 
Stephen King's novels, striking 

out (Bag of Bones, The Langoliers) 
far more than it has scored (The 
Stand). It's too soon to say whether 
CBS has found a winner with its 
take on King's 2009 Under the 
Dome, but the 13-part miniseries 
gets offto a promising start. The 
title gives away the central premise 
ofthe show: A small town suddenly 
finds itself shut off from the rest 
ofthe world after being enveloped 
by an invisible barrier. Neither the 
residents nor the audience knows 
whether it's the work of aliens, the 
Almighty or something else, but 


it's safe to assume producers will 
take their sweet time revealing 
the mystery force behind the 
dome. In the meantime, we get 

to follow about a dozen main 
characters as they cope with 
their bizarre new circumstances. 
Two immediately stand out: a 
mysterious out-of-towner (Mike 
Vogel, the deputy in Bates Motel) 
introduced to us as he's buryinga 
body, and an Alexander Haig-like 
politico (Breaking Bad's awesome 
Dean Norris) who doesn't want 
to waste this crisis. If it keeps up 
the tension and mystery, Under 
the Dome could be a fun summer 
diversion. УУУУ 


THE INFATUATIONS 


JAVIER 


BOOK OF THE MONTH 
JAVIER MARÍAS 


THE INFATUATIONS 


By Leopold Froehlich 


* Javier Marías is one of the world's 
great novelists. In his latest book— 
ably translated from the Spanish 

by Margaret Jull Costa—Marías 
investigates the seemingly random 
stabbing of a man on a sidewalk in 
Madrid. But the truth is more elusive. 
As we learn about the various parties 
involved, what at first appeared to 
have been random turns out to be part 
ofan elaborate and entangling plot. 
Don't expect the typical whodunit; 
what Marías does here defies most of 
the conventions of the mystery genre. 


MARÍAS 


A NOVEL 


SKINNER 


— Charlie Huston 
writes crime fic- 
tion for a new 
century but does 
so in the tradition 
of the masters. 
Skinner specializes 
in “asset protec- 
tion,” and his skills 
are tested here to 
their fullest. 


Salter 


ALL THAT IS 
— With his first 
novel in more than 
30 years, James 
Salter delivers 
an elegiac tale of 
a man's life. The 
writing is as beau- 
tiful as one would 
expect, but it's the 
characters that 
carry the day. 


A DELICATE 
TRUTH 


2 In his 23rd 
novel, John le Carré 
considers our post- 

Cold War world 
with his typical 
perspicacity. Was 
Operation Wildlife a 
success or a cover- 
up? The answer is 
complicated. 


CLAIRE OF THE 
SEA LIGHT 
— Edwidge Dan- 
ticat returns with 
yet another magi- 
cal novel about 
Haiti, this one 
about the adven- 
tures of a young 
girl who disap- 
pears from her 
fishing village. 


SUMMER READING 


THE LAST TRAIN 
TO ZONA VERDE 


3 Paul Theroux 
has made a career 
of travel writing. 
In his final trip to 
Africa he goes 
from Cape Town 
to Luanda, yet 
gives up in disgust. 
Smart, world- 
weary and profane. 


This is more anarrative work than 

a procedural one, and in the course 
of its telling we discover more about 
the elegance of the human soul than 
we do about the sordid crime itself. 
Infatuations is a murder mystery of a 


higher order. ¥¥¥¥ 


LIGHT OF THE 
WORLD 


> James Lee 
Burke chronicles 
the continuing 
adventures of Dave 
Robicheaux. In this 
one, our favorite 
homicide detec- 
tive encounters an 
escaped murderer 
in Montana. 


THE WET AND 
THE DRY 


— Lawrence 
Osborne jour- 
neys to the Islamic 
world to contem- 
plate the culture 
of drinking. He 
sets up a profound 
meditation on the 
role of alcohol in 
our lives. 


PACIFIC 


— We can rely 
on Tom Drury to 
construct a colli- 

sion of disaffected 
youth from Los 
Angeles and lowa. 
We know where 
Drury’s heart is, 
but L.A. in this case 
isn’t much different 
from lowa. 


A MAN WITHOUT 
BREATH 
> Bernie 
Gunther—Philip 
Kerr’s tough-guy 
Berlin cop—travels 
to the Eastern Front 
to investigate a 
war crime. It’s easy 
to see why Gunther 
is often compared 
to Philip Marlowe. 


T. J. ENOLISM 


WHITEY’S 
PAYBACK 


No one writes 
about the real- 
life workings of 

crooks as well as 

T.J. English. This 
volume collects 
some of his best 

reporting. Essen- 
tial reading for 
criminal minds. 


COLUM 
MCCANN 


THE NATIONAL BOOK 
AWARD WINNER TALKS 
ABOUT HIS NEW NOVEL, 

TRANSATLANTIC 


0 


Q: Had you avoided writ- 
ing about the Troubles in 
Ireland before? 


A: I hadn't consciously 
avoided it. It's one of the 
great stories I’ve wanted 
to tell since I was a child. 

Ijust wasn't ready to fully 
talk about it until now. 
Q: Did winning the National 
Book Award for Let the Great 
World Spin change the way 
you approached this book? 


A: Yeah. It completely ter- 
rified me. I could either 
come quickly out ofthe gate 
and try to get another book 
out and cure the nerves, or 
wait three or four years, 
which is what I did. 

@: TransAtlantic has an 
interesting structure. 


A: Ithas three nonfiction 
narratives, three male narra- 
tives set up in the real world. 
And they fold over onto three 
female fictional narratives. 
There's a mirror in the mid- 
dle of the book. One side of the 
male experience looks at the 
female experience. They're 
inextricably linked. 

Q: Who's your favorite 
Irish writer? 

A: This is going to sound 
completely pretentious, but 
Ilove James Joyce. He's 
absolutely incredible. 

Q: What will you be reading 
this summer? 

A: Bill Cheng's Southern 
Cross the Dog, a novel that 
takes place in Mississippi in 
the late 1920s during a flood. 
Q: What's the worst thing 
about publishing a book? 
A: The worst thing is the 
author's photograph on the 
back that makes you look like 
you have a stick up your ass. 


43 


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Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices — —— — — — — — 


OS MANTRACK 


RED HOT 


When you push a serious sport 
bike to its limits, you can expe- 
rience depths of emotion you 
didn't know existed. Lust, terror, 
the apotheosis of excitement— 
the machine brings it out in you. 
Pictured here is Ducati's new 
$29,995 1199 Panigale R, which 
the company built to race in the 
World Superbike Champion- 
ship. The rules state that for a 
motorcycle to race inthe World 
Superbike, it must be available 
to customers. Which means 
you can buy this machine—the 
fastest, most powerful produc- 
tion bike ever. The R's 1,198 cc 
L-twin produces 195 bhp and 
100 foot-pounds of torque, and 
at just 364 pounds, the bike is 
amazingly lightweight. How 
can it be so svelte? It's the first 
“frameless” production motor- 
cycle (see “Freeze Frame” at 
right for explanation). The 
result is violent acceleration 
that doesn't taper—even at 185 
mph. Atop this monster we hit 
the 202 mph limiter at Austin's 
new Formula One track, the 
Circuit ofthe Americas. In one 
emotion: adoration. 


BRAKE DANCE 


The Brembo M50 
radial brake calipers 
can bring the bike to 
a dead stop from 200 
mph all day long but 
are probably too sen- 
sitive for everyday 
road use. 


GONE WITH 
THE WIND 


A tall screen redi- 
rects wind over your 
helmet and back while 
you're in full racing 
tuck. Holes on each 
side break up turbu- 
lence so you can relax 
at 200 mph. 


* 


HANDS ON 


Not only does the 
bike come with anti- 
lock braking and 
stability control, but 
the rider can alter the 
settings on the fly to 
take weather condi- 


FOCUS, PLEASE 


The new king of performance compacts 


е How did the Ford Focus become the world's best-selling car? 
It's easy on the eyes, easy on the wallet (starting at $16,200) and 
easy on fuel (the 2.0 in-line four gets 40 mpg on the highway with 
a standard transmission). Upgrade to the new Focus ST (right), 
the most muscular of the line. The performance compact packs 

in 252 bhp and a 154 mph top speed. All that power is handled by 
bigger front brakes, a lower suspension and finely tuned dampers 
Prices start at $23,700, but budget another $2,385 for the ST2 
package with Recaro racing seats. Trust us. 


tions into account. 


WELL ADJUSTED 


The swingarm pivot 
adjusts to four posi- 
tions, allowing the 
rider to tweak the 
bike's stability and grip 
levels. The Óhlins forks 
and shocks are also 
fully adjustable. 


FREEZE FRAME 


The world's first 
“frameless” production 
bike uses the airbox 
to attach the forks to 
the front cylinder and 
the swingarm directly 
to the rear. The L-twin 
tucked inside redlines 
at 12,000 rpm. 


h 
FORD'S 


FORD BRINGS THE 
COMPACT INTO FOCUS 


* Despite all the drool 
caused by sports cars, the 
roads are packed with 
compacts. In fact, of the 
top 10 best-selling auto- 
mobiles worldwide, six 
are compacts or subcom- 
pacts. King among them 
is the Ford Focus. The 
Detroit automaker sold 
1,020,410 last year, mak- 
ing it the best-selling car of 
2012, according to research 
by R.L. Polk. (Toyota's 
Corolla came in second, 
with 872,774.) Ford engi- 
neered this by building a 
car with universal appeal 
and pushing it with a uni- 
versal message. Companies 
typically tailor cars to spe- 
cific markets, but Ford's 
new "One Ford" campaign 
appeared the same around 
the world. “Ifa customer 
chooses a Focus over a 
Corolla, that's a win. If a 
customer chooses a Focus 
over a Civic, that's a win," 
says Amy Marentic, the 
global-marketing guru 
behind the Focus. The plan 
is working. Sales in China 
shot up 50 percent last 
year; sales in the U.S. were 
up 40 percent. What's next 

for the Focus? See below. 


AMY 
\ MARENTIC 


ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT HARKNESS 


47 


OS MANTRACK 


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MODERN MAN 


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PROP STYLING BY DOMINIQUE BAYNES 


Photography by DAN SAELINGER 


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DRINK RESPONSIBLY. ад pw. (AM v 
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x MANTRACK 


OUTFITTER 


52 


UPPER CUTS 


CUTTING-EDGE DESIGNS UPGRADE THE 


CHEF'S KNIFE TO FIRST CLASS 


* Part of the appeal The design details 
of cooking is look- on these knives all 
ing cool while doing serve a purpose. 
it (just ask Michael With knives like 


Voltaggio or any these available at 
cook working the every price point, 
line ata hipster res- it’s high time fora 
taurant with an knife swap. 

open kitchen). And 


thanks to the food 
revolution, there are 
more opportunities 
to strut your stuff 
with a badass chef’s 
knife. But it’s not all 
about appearances: 


7 


THE TRAVELER 

» With a plastic sheath 
and red blade, this is 
one knife you won't 
leave behind at the 
summerhouse. 

Kai eight-inch chef’s 
knife, $20, williams- 
sonoma.com 


THE WORKHORSE 

»This series of professional knives has 
color-coded handles to prevent cross 
contamination in restaurant kitchens. 
Dexter-Russell eight-inch chef's knife, 
$39, dexter1818.com 


Photography by JOSEPH SHIN 


: THE ARTISAN 
* This handmade 
beauty is exqui- 
sitely balanced. 
Plus, the СТО 
laminate handle is 
as grippy as it is 
handsome. 

Cut Brook- 

Iyn nine-inch 
Prospect 

240, $575, 
cutbrooklyn.com 


THE JAPANOPHILE 

» The dimpled surface on this 
surgically sharp German- 
influenced Japanese knife prevents 
food from sticking to the blade. 
Glestain eight-inch dimpled blade 
gyutou, $170, korin.com 


STEEL THIS KNIFE 


* Even routine chopping can crimp the 


edge of a knife blade, which can hurt 
performance and lead to slipping. Buy 
a honing steel and use it every time 
you get out your knife. 


Limited Mintage Striking... 


WORLD'S FIRST 


F 


ше: "STATES 


Collectible 
2013 date 


Mirrored proof 
background 


Larger Franklin 
portrait 


New York Mint Announces the Limited Mintage 
Striking of an Extraordinary Silver Proof 
—the Newest United States $100 Bill Struck in 
Pure Silver Bullion. Discount Price $99 


This extraordinary piece of pure 
silver bullion has a surface area 
that exceeds 15 square inches...and 
it contains one Troy ounce of pure 
silver bullion! 

And now, for a limited time 
during the strike period, the very 
first Year 2013 $100 Silver Proof 
is available at a special dis- 
count price—only $99! 

EXQUISITE DETAIL 
The historic 2013 $100 Silver Proof 
is an exquisite adaptation of the United States 
Treasury's newly-designed $100 Federal Reserve Note— 


only the second new $100 bill design in 70 years. It is a true 
artistic masterpiece that will always be treasured. 


.999 SILVER 


Best of all, this stunning Silver Proof is even more beautiful 
than the original, because it's struck in precious silver bullion! 


It is a landmark in proof minting, combining unprecedented 
weight with extraordinary dimension. The specifications for 
this colossal medallic proof are unparalleled. Each one: 


* [s Individually Struck from Pure .999 Silver Bullion. 
* Weighs one Troy ounce. 

* Has a Surface Area That Exceeds 15 Square Inches. 
* Contains 31.10 Grams (480 Grains) of Pure Silver. 


* [s Individually Registered and Comes With a Numbered 
Certificate of Authenticity. 


* [s Fully Encapsulated to Protect Its Mirror-Finish. 
* [ncludes a Deluxe Presentation Case. 


Liberty Bell, quill pen 
& July 4th date 


AMERICA 


Minted in one Troy ounce 
of pure silver bullion 


LAST CHANCE AT $99! 

The price for this 2013 $100 Silver Proof will increase to $129 
on Nov. 1, 2013. 

By placing your order now, you can acquire this giant 
silver proof for only $99. But this is your LAST CHANCE at 
this special price. 

NOTE TO COLLECTORS: When you place your order for the 
$100 silver proof, it will be processed immediately, and the ear- 
liest orders will receive the coveted lowest registration numbers. 


ADDITIONAL DISCOUNTS 

Substantial additional discounts are available for serious 
collectors who wish to acquire more than one of these 
exquisite silver proofs. 

You can order: 

ONE Year 2013 $100 Silver Proofs for just $99 each + s/h 

FIVE Year 2013 $100 Silver Proofs for just $95 each + s/h 

TEN Year 2013 $100 Silver Proofs for just $89 each + s/h 

There is a limit of twenty $100 Silver Proofs per order, and 
all orders are subject to acceptance by New York Mint. 


ONLY 9999 AVAILABLE 


New York Mint will limit striking to only 9999 One Troy Ounce 
Silver Proofs for the year 2013. With over half of the mintage 
already SOLD OUT, the time to call is now! 

Telephone orders only will be accepted on a strict first-come, 
first-served basis according to the time and date of the order. 


Call Today to Order Your 
$100 Silver Proof! 


1-888-201-7064 


Offer Code: SPN225-03 


Please mention this code when you call. 


Actual size is 6" x 2 2” 


A major credit card is necessary to secure your reservation, 
and New York Mint guarantees satisfaction with a money-back 
policy for a full 30 days. 


New York Mint, LLC 


Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. NOTE: New York Мш is a private distributor of 
worldwide government coin and currency issues and privately issued licensed collectibles and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures 


deemed accurate as of April 2013. ©2013 New York Mint, LLC. 


S52 


Visit our web site at www.newyorkmint.com X= = * 


OS MANTRACK 


TECH 


HIGHER 
DEFINITION 


TELEVISIONS ARE ABOUT TO GET 
BIGGER AND BETTER. AGAIN 


* TV junkies barely had time to warm 
the couch cushions facingtheir big 
screens before electronics compa- 
nies announced plans to pull the plug. 
Plasma and LCD technologies are on 
the way out. OLED (organic light- 
emitting diode) is on the way in. The 
new screen technology, already found 
in the latest smartphones, produces 
brighter colors and deeper blacks. 
OLED screens are flexible (watch for 
curved versions, coming soon) and 
light enough that a 55-inch model 
weighs only about 16 pounds. LG’s 
55EM9600 (about $10,000, 1g.com) 
hasathin, 55-inch screen capable of 
contrast ratios 50 times greater than 
an LCD's. Plasma and LCD aren't the 
only things being phased out. High- 
definition television as we know it 
isonthe verge of being replaced by 
UltraHD. Also known as 4K, UltraHD 
produces four times as many 

pixels as your current flatscreen. 

To upgrade to UltraHD, pick up an 
OLED TV or an UltraHD set, such 

as the 84-inch Toshiba L9300 LED 
TV (pictured at right). The problem? 
Sets sell for around $20,000 and 
there isn't much UltraHD program- 
mingto watch yet. TV fanatics are 
better off waiting while UltraHD 
prepares for prime time. 


CUT THE CABLE 


: COUCH WITI ITE PLUGGED IN TV TIME 
The Roku 3 ($9¢ Catch nev 


> > 


Part one is groaning that there's nothing on TV. Part two is won- ES) streams Lil di MA AA 
dering out loud why you bother paying for cable in the first place. des Alle 0 * 

The answer used to be that it offered just enough channels you 
would actually watch to justify paying for another hundred that “ж 
you wouldn’t. (Hallmark Channel, anyone?) Save serious channel- ac n: 
surfing time and money by sending your cable box off to the land Plus, it’s smaller than г azon or 
54  oflandline phones, and try these suggestions. coaster. 99 per epis 


> 


MOVIE NIGHT 


> 


SUPERFAN 


WE’RE LIVE 


RAISING 
THE BAR 


For all the satisfac- 
tion of watching Band 
of Brothers on blitzkrieg 
volume, the tangle of sur- 
round sound cables tucked 
under the rug is a drag. 
To ditch the wires and 
still deliver serious sonic 
boom, audio engineers at 
Yamaha allegedly used 
submarine sonar technol- 
ogy to calibrate the audio 
timing in their new sound 
bars, ensuring that the 
bullets will seem to whiz 
behind your head even 
without rear speakers. 
The Yamaha YSP-4300 
($1,900, usa.yamaha.com) 
uses 22 tiny speakers and 
a wireless subwoofer to 
precisely bounce sound to 
your ears and re-create 
7.1-channel surround 
sound. Vizio’s S4251w- 
B4 (pictured below, $330, 
vizio.com) is the best and 
most affordable model 
we tested. The 42-inch 
sound bar uses a wire- 
less subwoofer with two 
wired rear speakers. Drop 
the subwoofer to the side 
of the couch, position the 
rear speakers and built- 
in Dolby Digital, and DTS 
technology will have Iron 
Man rattling the windows. 


FRANCOFILE 


56 


Talking 
With 
Wim Wenders 


by James Franco 


One of the most celebrated German film 
directors working today, Wim Wenders is 
known for both fiction and documentaries, 
from his classic The American Friend to Pina, 
which uses 3-D technology to capture dance in 
a way never seen before. He talks with PLAYBOY 
Contributing Editor James Franco about how 
a cold apartment got him his start, how he 
inadvertently saved Dennis Hopper's life and 
what's next in his career. 


FRANCO: How did you become a 
filmmaker? 

WENDERS: I was 19, in Paris, a painter's 
assistant in a tiny room without heat. That's 
how I found the Cinémathéque Frangaise. 
You paid one franc, and it showed six films 
daily. I saw Japanese, African and German 
classics. A retrospective of Anthony Mann’s 
work taught me what filmmaking was all 
about—and I was there only to spend time 
in his warmth. After a while that was it. 
Painting was only half as interesting as 
film. I sold my Selmer saxophone to buy a 
camera and never touched the saxophone 
again, out of sheer sorrow. 

FRANCO: What did you shoot? 
WENDERS: Mostly landscapes and 
cityscapes, without actors. Music provided 
the story. I recklessly used Hendrix and 
Coltrane without regard for rights. The 
editing was exhilarating, and that kick 
made me become a filmmaker, seeing how 
music could make sense of the imagery. 
FRANCO: How did your film The American 
Friend come about? 

WENDERS: I read Patricia Highsmith 
religiously. I decided to write her to ask for 
the rights to my favorite book. I wrote letter 


ILLUSTRATION BY RAUL ALLEN 


after letter, and she kept replying, “Sorry, 
young man, an American studio has the 
rights,” for film after film. So I visited her. 
She wanted to know why I was so desperate 
to film her stories. I guess I checked out, 
because she brought me a manuscript even 
her agent didn’t have yet, Ripley’s Game. I 
wrote the script and cast Dennis Hopper. 
FRANCO: Was this during his wild time? 
WENDERS: It was his worst time. He 
shot Apocalypse Now before we filmed. I 
picked him up from the airport with an 
open wound on his leg, on every drug 
imaginable, not recognizing me or why he 
was there. We were shooting three days 
later. He forgot lines, but he knew scenes 
and played it damn good. It was one of 
the first American films for Bruno Ganz, 
a theater actor par excellence, and this 
drugged-up asshole was farting and making 
up his lines. Bruno was horrified. He didn’t 
speak English well, and on the second day 
Dennis gave Bruno an answer he didn’t 
understand, so Bruno hit him in the face 
right there. They were on the floor, with 
blood and ripped costumes. I was so pissed 
I said, “Let them fight outside. I don’t give 
a fuck.” They arrived the next morning 
piss drunk, arm in arm, and something 
amazing happened. Dennis became a 
serious, sober actor. Bruno improvised. 
They became best friends. Dennis said 
it himself: We saved his life. And he was 
damn good. But Patricia disagreed. I 
showed her the film, and she looked at 
me afterward, shook my hand and left. 
That was one of the worst moments of my 
life. The film was successful, though, and 
she later wrote me, saying she had gone to 
a packed theater on the Champs-Elysées, 
and apologized: “I understand what you 
did now, and your Dennis Hopper is closer 
to any Ripley on screen ever before.” 
FRANCO: How did you approach your 
documentary Pina to capture a dance 
performance on screen? 

WENDERS: Before I saw Pina Bausch 
perform Café Müller, 1 found dance boring, 


but that night I wept like a baby. I couldn't 
believe dance could touch me so deeply. 
We became close friends. She asked me to 
make a film with her dance, and I said, “Of 
course—but fuck, how?" Every dance film 
I saw had the same problem: The dance 
wasn't the best part. I told her I wasn't 
ready, and our gag for 20 years was that 
I needed a little more time. Then I saw a 
3-D film in 2007, and that was the tool I'd 
been missing. It was too late, though. We 
took too long to get our cameras and crew, 
and she passed away shortly after we began 
filming. I sent everyone home, in shock, 
but the dancers came back: “Shouldn't we 
do this in spite of everything? Pina would 
have wanted you to go on." And we did it 
as an homage to her. 

FRANCO: What films are you interested 
in making going forward? 

WENDERS: I'm 67. Choices about 
what I make are more urgent now. 
Im questioning the films I made 
spontaneously, asking myself how I should 
spend my remaining time. I'm drawn to 
reality-driven film now. Fiction is beautiful, 
but I enjoy fiction rooted in what I can 
feel and know. Film is generally becoming 
more fantastical, which doesn't interest me. 
I find myself asking, What is real? What 
are we here for? What are we doing? 
FRANCO: We'll be working together on 
your next film, Every Thing Will Be Fine, 
which will use 3-D in a realistic way. Why 
does 3-D appeal to you? 

WENDERS: I'm convinced 3-D can 
immerse audiences in the real world, 
even in intimate stories like this film. It 
brings audiences closer to actors, to how 
we deal with pain and life. We're creating 
new realms of intimacy and presence 
with this technology. But the volume of 
the actors is more present in 3-D; their 
figure becomes a landscape in itself, so 
actors must find a new kind of acting. It's 
untapped wealth. Many are looking for 
the secret formula. ГП give it a shot, and 
eventually we'll crack the code. a 


When did men start forgetting 
to dress from head to toe? 


ou used to need an excuse to take 

off your shirt. Bathing. Swimming. 

Mining. Plowing a field. Working 
on a chain gang. Seeing a doctor. Get- 
ting a particularly large tattoo. Swing- 
ing a pickax in the summer between the 
Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Cap- 
ricorn. Writing a green A on your chest 
to help spell Spartans. Getting so drunk 
you appear on Cops or so high you attend 
a Grateful Dead show. Spilling a large 
quantity of poison on your shirt in a lab 
that does not store spare shirts. 

Being bare-chested, as it was once 
called, was never a comment on the man 
but merely on his situation. The only men 
who routinely walked around shirtless 
were those who were beyond caring about 
society’s judgment: the homeless, people 
who live near the beach and really fat men. 
There’s a Shirtless Man Twitter feed that 
runs headlines involving the phrase shirt- 
less man; on a recent day these included 
“Shirtless Man Damages Large Riverboat, 
Says He Was Angered by the Way It Was 
Looking at Him,” “Shirtless Man Barges 
Into Stranger’s Home With Stolen Samu- 
rai Sword and Blind Cat” and “Shirtless 
Man Bites Cops for Interrupting His Nap 
on the Floor ofa McDonald's.” 

Now no one is bare-chested. They are 
shirtless. Even Shirtless Man is shirtless. 
The shirtless lifestyle is chronicled on blogs 
that feature metrosexuals, waxed all shiny, 
walking the streets, shopping for groceries 
and going clubbing. Shirtless men first ap- 
peared in Calvin Klein ads, expanded to 
Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs and are now 
used to sell everything. Once confined to 
the covers of Muscle & Fitness, these men 
began to lose their shirts right in the mid- 
dle of airport newsstands, thanks to Men's 
Health. Now they're in lots of men's maga- 
zines, which are magazines meant for men, 
many of whom are straight. U.S. congress- 
man Aaron Schock, who is a U.S. congress- 
man, unbuttoned his shirt for Men's Health 
despite the fact that he's a U.S. congress- 
man. This year the MTV Movie Awards 


added a category for best shirtless perfor- 
mance. And Magic Mike didn't even win. 
Not long ago, to be topless on TV, on 
stage or in movies required an excuse: 
Ronald Reagan was lifeguarding; Burt 
Lancaster was about to bodysurf; Bruce 
Lee couldn't afford to get tangled up dur- 
ing a fight; Johnny Weissmuller didn't 
know better because he was literally raised 
by apes; Iggy Pop needed quick access to 
his veins. Now there has to be a reason for 
a guy on a reality-TV show to put a shirt 
on. There is no easier job on the sets of 
Big Brother, Survivor, The Real World or The 
Bachelor than men's stylist. It is half a job. 
Even in normal life actors walk around 


shirtless. I'm fairly certain a photo of Mat- 
thew McConaughey's closet would reveal 
it contains nothing but pants. Justin Bieber 
went through the security check at an air- 
port in Lodz, Poland without a shirt. This 
was in March. When it was below freezing. 
Not only do I wear shirts at airports, 
I wear them hiking, at the beach, by the 
pool and, when possible, during sex. 
Even when I take my shirt off it's like 
I'm wearing one since I have tan lines in 
the perfect shape of a shirt. There is ab- 
solutely nothing pretty about the sight of 
me without a shirt: In some quirk of evo- 
lution that I assume had to do with my 
ancestors sleeping on their sides in cold 
caves, I have more chest hair on the right 
side than the left. I have fat in places only 
women should have fat. I have nipples, 
which, in my opinion, is super girlie. 
Which is exactly the problem with the 
new shirtlessness. It's fine to reveal your 
chest and have women swoon. It's fine 


to be psyched that your particular chest 
makes women want to sleep with you. It's 
not okay to be turned on by your own 
hotness. That was solely for gay men, 
and that was fine. They looked good, so 
they deserved it. 

Without getting into feminist film theo- 
rist Laura Mulvey's 1970s theory of the 
male gaze, let's just say that straight male 
humans, unlike straight male peacocks, 
do the looking and not the trying-to-be- 
looked-at. Is that fair? Is it good for men? 
Is it good for society? Ask a 1970s feminist 
film theorist. When you do I'm pretty sure 
she'd rather you did it with your shirt on. 

The mixing of gay and straight cul- 
tures has been good for everyone except 
the people who own the rights to the old 
Hollywood Squares. But that doesn't mean 
straight guys should be forced to adopt 
everything from gay culture. Those of us 
who don't want to indulge in the shirt- 
less lifestyle, and in fact want to go back 
to a time when being in shirtsleeves was 
considered casual, should not cave. We 
do not need more things to feel insecure 
about in addition to our body hair, body 
shape, body size and body. 

So for those of you who are not com- 
peting for the kinds of women who go on 
television dating shows, keep your shirt 
on. When I asked my lovely wife, Cassan- 
dra, if she would have married someone 
in the shirtless lifestyle, she said no. “You 
just don't have those abs naturally," she 
said. “That guy is probably at the gym a 
lot and staring at himself in the mirror 
a lot. And that seems like a silly way to 
spend your life." And this is from a wom- 
an who thinks spending your life writing 
words in PLAYBOY isn't a silly way to spend 
your life. Imagine how badly the rest of 
them want us to wear a shirt. a 


57 


58 


ЛІ 


( V/ N f) 


SU 


IT'S GENETIC. MEN BUY 
BAD PRESENTS. LUCKILY, 
THERE'S A CURE 


() ne of my closest friends considered 
f J dumping a guy who got her a fuzzy 
U pink bathrobe for Christmas. She’s 
the nicest, most mellow person I know, 
but she never, ever wears pink. She’s not 
really into bathrobes either. Over a few too 
many drinks she lamented that he wasn’t 
as great as she had thought. He didn’t get 
her at all. A decade later, they’re happily 
married with two adorable kids. More im- 
portant, she picks out her own presents. 

Other women are far less forgiving. But 
don’t worry—you have my Girl’s Guide to 
Buying Girls Presents. 

If you’re with the right girl, it really is 
about the thought. Throwing money at 
the problem may have the unintended 
effect of making you look like a selfish 
asshole. Expensive presents will appeal 
to gold diggers, so go for it if that’s what 
you're after. If not, don't be afraid to make 
her a photo album. (Snapfish is easy and 
cheap.) Girls love that sentimental shit. Or 
just make her a nice dinner and do all the 
dishes and let her pick the movie. 

Wander into her closet and take notes. 
Check her sizes and favorite brands. 
Women love buying what they already 
own. If you get her a pair of shoes in her 
size from a store she likes, it won't mat- 
ter at all ifshe ends up swapping them for 
another pair she likes more. She will still 
brag to her friends about the great shoes 
her boyfriend bought her, and they will 
think you have magical powers. 

Research. Does she wear gold or silver? 
It matters. Does she like to get pedicures 
or massages at a certain place? I'm sure it 
sells gift certificates. What kind of flowers 
does she have planted in her yard? What's 
her favorite store? Women are not subtle 
about their needs. If you can't figure it 
out, ask her most stylish friend, who prob- 


ably works in the fashion business and is 
kind of annoying. She may even be able 
to get you a discount. 

When in doubt, go for the experience. 
Particularly at the start of a relationship, 
opt for a weekend getaway. Just remem- 
ber the golden rule that it's not where you 
аге; it's whom you're with. You can stay 
at the most luxurious hotel in the world, 
but it will be brutal if you're not into each 
other. Start off mellow. Go somewhere 
you can drive to. Save the passports for 
when you're sure the relationship is going 
in the right direction. An experience can 
be anything from a show to skydiving, as 
long as it's what Ше wants to do and not 


^, 
PA 


л MAM 
¢ nomnn 
ah e weneman 


something you used to love doing with 
your ex. That means you can’t ship her 
off to ski school or hire a surf instructor 
and pretend you're doing her a favor. 

Presentation matters. Even if you’re 
just giving her a used paperback, wrap 
it and include a card. You can make the 
card. You can wrap the gift in old news- 
paper. It’s the concept that you’re really 
trying here that matters. Throw a flower 
on top and you're a hero. 

Beware self-improvement presents. 
You may give a woman a present like yoga 
classes or a shrink appointment only if she 
specifically asks for it. Even cooking classes 
can be dicey, and I’m not talking about 
what she'll do to your fingers if she thinks 
you're insulting her culinary skills. I once 
got a guy boxing gloves and a free session at 
a cool gym where Manny Pacquiao trains. 
The guy went once, and I still feel bad 
about trying to trick him into working out. 


Never get a girl a pet. Sure, it’s cute 
when a guy on television gets his girl- 
friend an adorable puppy, but those 
actors go home alone at the end of the 
day. An ex once gave me a kitten he’d 
rescued from a cardboard box at a con- 
struction site. For months I tried to con- 
vince myself that my allergies were act- 
ing up because of the changing season. I 
developed a major Sudafed habit before 
we broke up and the cat was shipped off 
to my parents’ house in the suburbs. Of 
course they adore him, but I think they 
were mostly relieved he wasn’t a higher- 
maintenance dog. 

Never get a girl sex toys. It’s gross. Be- 
sides, do you really want to get her some- 
thing that makes you less important? 

Ask her what she wants. It doesn’t sap 
romance out of the gift if you get a girl 
exactly what she asks for. She doesn’t 
have to send you the web link for the bag 
she likes—though I have been known 
to do that—but she can give you a few 
options to work with. The more impor- 
tant the gift, the more you want to get 
her feedback before you buy it. Can you 
guess where I’m going here? The ulti- 
mate gift is an engagement ring. Do not 
do this on your own. Do not seek the 
counsel only of your mother. Do not buy 
her any kind of consolation ring once the 
two of you are serious enough that she'll 
want the real thing. Go ring shopping 
together. You don’t need to prove how 
well you know her by reading her mind 
about the ring she wants, because she’s 
not going to marry you for being a great 
stylist or a psychic. She’s going to marry 
you because you make her happy, which 
the right ring from the right guy will do. 
Plus, she’s going to wear it a lot more 
than a pink bathrobe. a 


M, girlfriend wants to take me 
to a strip club for my birthday. 
I'm not sure it's the best idea to 
mix those two worlds. If I go, 
should I act like I normally do at 
strip clubs and risk making her 
jealous?>—J.P, Columbus, Ohio 

Actually, your girlfriend wants 
you to take her to a strip club for 
your birthday. See the difference? 
She'll be the center of attention, and 
the sex afterward will be great, so 
enjoy yourself. We do suggest, how- 
ever, that you find a place you don't 
normally frequent. Although most 
dancers know better than to greet 
a regular customer with a big hello 
if he shows up with a date, it will 
help you relax. 


When I dream about my wife, 
it is always a younger and hot- 
ter version of her. She feels this 
means I don't like how she looks. 
I tell her this dream vision must 
be how I view her mentally and 
emotionally. Who is correct?— 
R.D., Dallas, Texas 

This would be easier to resolve if 
you were dreaming about someone 
else. How did this come up? Did 
your wife ask if you dream about 
her, and you said yes but then had a 
frontal-lobe freeze and felt compelled 
to add, "when you were younger 
and hotter"? You dug a deep hole 
and then made it deeper by chan- 
neling Sigmund Freud. If this comes 
up again, don't characterize it as a 
dream. These are recollections that 
just happen to occur while you're 
asleep. The hey is, you must be 
younger and hotter in the dream too, 
so it becomes "I dreamed about the 
time we....” For the record, we don't 
put much stock in dreams as repre- 
sentative of anything, so don't get 
caught up in that. They're a mash- 
up created from your memories and 
experiences of the day. 


Whenever 1 argue about politics 
with a friend, she accuses me of 
using "logical fallacies." It sounds 
like a cop-out. Is she saying 
this because she doesn't have a 
good counterargument?—K.R., 
Seattle, Washington 

Could be. You might call it the 
"logical fallacy" argument, though 
it would also qualify as a red her- 
ring, or changing the subject. Ask 
her to be more specific about her 
charge, because a reasonable discus- 
sion can turn into endless obfuscation thanks 
to various logical fallacies, including the ad 
hominem attack (“You're an idiot”), appeal 
to ignorance (*You can't prove God doesn't 
exist, so he must exist"), appeal to tradition 
("We've always done it this way”), bandwagon 
("Everyone does it this way”), circular rea- 
soning (“The Bible says God exists, and God 


PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR 


M, girlfriend claims women who act in adult films 
are doing just that when they reach climax—acting. I 
say at least some of the time the women enjoy the sex 
and have orgasms. I hope you know of a study that 
proves this, because my girlfriend said she'd watch 
porn with me if she knew the women's arousal was 
genuine.—B.R., Louisville, Kentucky 
Do you enjoy your work? It can be a grind, but it has its 
moments, right? It's the same for porn performers, no matter 
what they claim in interviews. We hope your girlfriend will 
watch with you despite her doubts, because every guy should 
be so lucky as to have a woman at his side to explain what 
makes an on-screen orgasm appear genuine. Foremost, if 
the woman's clitoris is not being stimulated, be skeptical. It's 
hard even for actors in non-adult films to portray an emo- 
lional connection, i.e., intimacy. In her autobiography, Jenna 
Jameson notes you can see porn stripped of its artifice when 
an actor performs with her husband or boyfriend: "She'll start 
saying things like Don't go that deep, you know that doesn't 
feel good,’ or ‘You know I don't like that,’ or Don't treat me 
like that —Im your wife” ” It'd be fun to see more of that. 


wrote the Bible"), confirmation bias (ignor- 
ing negative evidence), slippery slope (“If 
we allow gay people to marry, everyone will 
marry their pets"), straw man (making a false 
statement about your opponent and attacking 
that) and many others, which makes it a won- 
der people argue at all. We should also men- 
tion the Advisor fallacy, which is disagreeing 


with anything we say. Many read- 
ers have fallen prey to that. 


My girlfriend's husband aban- 
doned her several years ago, 
and now she has no idea where 
he is. She wants a divorce. What 
can we do?—J.R., Raleigh, 
North Carolina 

Try to find him. If you make 
a good-faith effort and take steps 
outlined by state law (in North 
Carolina the “affidavit of diligent 
search” requires that you use the 
internet and phone directories, as 
well as check with his relatives, 
friends, employers and landlords), 
a judge should allow you to serve 
the papers “by publication.” That 
means publishing a notice about 
the divorce for a set period of time 
(e.g., weekly for 30 days) in a news- 
paper that serves his last known 
address. If he doesn’t respond, 
the judge can grant a divorce by 
default. This could also happen if 
her husband is served but refuses 
to sign and then fails to show up in 
court to explain himself. 


A few years ago I took my then 
wife deer hunting so we could 
spend more time together. She 
got cold, so I offered to warm 
her up. While we were having 
intercourse, I spotted a buck 
through the window of the 
stand. I whispered to her that I 
had spotted a deer and pulled 
out to take a shot. The deer 
went down, and I returned 
to our activity. My friends say 
they’ve never heard of a hunter 
killing a deer this way. Do you 
think this might be a first?—J.T., 
Little Rock, Arkansas 

Congratulations on the shot, 
but your wife had nothing to say 
about you looking out the window 
during sex? 


TOMER HANUKA 


I like to think I’m fairly knowl- 
edgeable about sex, but one 
question has eluded me. What 
is a gimp? I saw one in the film 
Pulp Fiction, but what does he 
do?—PM., Columbus, Ohio 

Anything he’s asked. In BDSM a 
“gimp suit” is a full-body restraint 
that limits a bottom’s ability to 
move, whether through restraints 
or stiff fabric such as leather. 


| like this girl, but she drinks 

and parties a lot and I'm more of a chill 

kind of guy. I'm not sure it's the right fit. 

What should I do?—M.H., Boise, Idaho 

You won't find out if it’s a good fit by con- 
templating if it's a good fit. 


A friend said he wanted to take me out 
for my 21st birthday, but at the end of 


59 


PLAYBOY 


60 


the night he asked for separate checks 
and even split the tip. Am I missing 
something?—B.R., Alpharetta, Georgia 

No, that is unusual. If money is tight, he 
can say so and at least pick up the tip. When 
his birthday rolls around, demonstrate by 
example how it’s done, without further com- 
ment. He'll get it or he won't. 


Whats the best way to cook crawfish?— 
M.A., Las Vegas, Nevada 

In a crawfish pot, with friends. Fill the 
pot with enough water to cover the crawfish, 
which you'll add later. Add seasoning (about 
five pounds for a 60-quart pot; Zatarain’s is 
a popular choice) and the juice of six lemons, 
and bring to a rolling boil. Add side dishes to 
the wire-basket insert, e.g., onions, sausage, 
mushrooms, potatoes, corn on the cob. Cook 
these at a boil for about 10 minutes. Add the 
live crawfish to the basket and continue the 
rolling boil for four or five minutes (most 
crawfish come purged, but if not, first soak 
them in salt water). Turn off the flame and 
let the crawfish soak for 15 to 30 minutes, 
testing periodically for desired spiciness. 
To eat, twist the head away and suck the 
juices from it—but you may find this to be an 
acquired taste. Remove a few shell sections 
from the tail, pinch at the top to release the 
meat and pull it out. You can buy live craw- 
fish year-round, but the fattest and easiest to 
peel are harvested in the spring and early 
summer. Plan on three to five pounds per 
guest. Be sure to chill your leftovers; don’t 
leave them sitting in the sun. 


A reader wrote in April that his wife 
wanted sex only in the dark. You sug- 
gested a low-watt colored bulb. They 
should definitely experiment with 
red light. It’s flattering and somehow 
magical.—M.R., Orlando, Florida 

That’s why it has its own district. 


Im trying to help my divorced brother 
draft a response to a thank-you note he 
received after a recent date. Does this 
sound okay as a rejection letter? “This 
awesome, incredible, sexy lady I’m sitting 
with is trying to help me compose a polite 
note to tell you I have absolutely no inter- 
est in further interaction with you. When 
she completes it, I will forward ASAP“? 
Т.Е, Albuquerque, New Mexico 

Is everyone in your family an ass or just 
you two? We'll put aside your note as a poor 
joke. It’s always best to be honest, as in “It was 
great to meet you, but I didn’t feel a connec- 
tion.” And it’s best to express this before any 
notes are written. Rejection stings, but why 
also waste her time? 


Ira man is paralyzed, can he still have an 
erection, and if so, can he feel it? M.., 
Chicago, Illinois 

It depends on the location of the injury. 
The mechanics are explained well by Barry 
Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores and Beverly 
Whipple in their book, The Science of Orgasm. 
Our “genital outflow” nerves leave the spinal 
cord at the midrib and tailbone. If an injury 


is above the midrib, erotic impulses from the 
brain to the genitals are blocked, meaning 
the man may get turned on but it won't make 
him erect. However, since the nerves between 
the spinal cord and genitals are intact, he 
has the ability to become erect, climax and 
ejaculate if his penis is stroked. But because 
the impulses from his penis can't reach his 
brain, he won't feel any of it. If an injury 
occurs at a lower point, the man can get erect 
but won't be able to ejaculate, because the 
impulses aren't able to ascend to the nerves 
at midrib that control that function. There is 
hope, however. Some women with spinal-cord 
injuries are able to feel vaginal stimulation 
and reach orgasm. The likely explanation is 
the vagus nerve, which connects the genitals 
and brain while bypassing the spinal cord. 
Further, a fair number of women and what 
Kinsey estimated to be three or four men in 
5,000 can “think” themselves off. So perhaps 
someday soon people with spinal-cord inju- 
ries will be able to enjoy orgasms produced 
directly in their brains—and there will be a 


‚place for us to sign up. 


1 walked in on my girlfriend while she 
was on the toilet using a douche. She 
asked me to leave, but I found myself 
very turned on. When we had sex 
afterward, she asked what made me so 
energetic. The fact is, I was fantasizing 
about what I had seen. How should I go 
about asking her if I can watch the next 
time?—S.W., Las Vegas, Nevada 

We doubt this is going to happen. If your 
girlfriend is douching, she has the mis- 
taken idea that her vagina is dirty. In fact, 
douching is unnecessary—the vagina is an 
amazingly efficient self-cleaning organ; all 
a douche does is upset its pH balance and 
contribute to yeast infections. But the point 
is, your girlfriend views this as a toilet habit, 
which makes it hard for her to understand its 
appeal to you. It's not that complicated —you 
caught her in an intimate, uncouth act no 
one else was meant to see. We've had similar 
reports of guys being aroused by seeing women 
pick their noses, shave their legs, clean their 
earwax, pop a zit, pluck their eyebrows—you 
name it. You will have to be satisfied with this 
one encounter, though we hope bringing it to 
mind is not the only way you can now become 
aroused. You may have to give your girlfriend 
a sponge bath to reset your libido. 


M, girlfriend and I have been together 
for three years. Lately I find it difficult to 
stay interested. I couldn't care less about 
her anecdotes from grad school, I rarely 
find myself aroused, and her fashion 
sense is bland. We never go a day with- 
out seeing each other. That's half the 
story. The other half is that a few months 
ago my brother died, and I suspect I've 
been depressed. How can I tell if this is a 
bad relationship or depression?—C.M., 
Toledo, Ohio 

That's an age-old question. It could be both. 
The chemical high that drove the romance for 
the first year or two has worn off, and now 
you must decide if this is someone you want 


as a long-lerm partner. It doesn't sound like 
it, and your brother's death may have sent the 
message that life is 100 short. Make the break- 
up clean, with no lingering. You haven't had 
a chance to miss her, so if you do, you have 
your answer. The risk is that she'll move on, 
but anything worth keeping comes with that 
risk. Besides, for all you know, she's having 
the same lukewarm feelings about your role 
in her future. Most long-term relationships 
reach a crossroads two or three years in, so 
the timing isn't unusual. 


I read in the Style section (April) about 
nixing the undershirt with slim-cut 
dress shirts. But how do you keep the 
sweat from showing? Even after a mod- 
est spring walk, it will show through the 
shirt.—C.L., Albuquerque, New Mexico 
As a practical matter, if you're ruining 
your shirts, do what you have to do. On 
the other hand, an undershirt traps and 
retains moisture, and not wearing one will 
give your pits a chance to dry. There are 
also products that may help, including 
snug “sweatless” undershirts, pit shields 
and strong deodorants such as those sold by 
kleinerts.com (800-498-7051). 


| found a tick on one of my balls. Should 
I be concerned?—H.T., Atlanta, Georgia 

Depending on the type of tick, there is a 
risk of Lyme disease, which is why we stopped 
mowing the lawn in the nude (that and the 
misdemeanor charge). Remove the tick gently 
with fine-tipped tweezers, being careful not to 
leave any of its mouth parts behind. As you 
found, ticks prefer underarms and groins. 
They must usually be attached for at least 
36 hours to transmit the bacteria, which is 
why it's wise to do a body scan after work- 
ing or playing outdoors. About 70 or 80 per- 
cent of people who are infected will develop 
a red, expanding “bull's-eye” rash, usually 
about a week after the bite. With or without 
a rash, common symptoms are fatigue, chills, 
fever, headache, muscle and joint aches and/ 
or swollen lymph nodes. Lyme is treated with 
antibiotics, the sooner the better. 


| love when my husband comes on my 
tits. We’ve been on this kick every night 
for the past two weeks, even when we 
don’t have sex. I swear my tits are as 
smooth as a baby’s butt. Does his ejaculate 
have any properties that make them feel 
so smooth? L. P, Norwalk, Connecticut 
We can’t rule it out, nor would we. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, 
food and drink, stereos and sports cars 
to dating dilemmas, taste and etiquette— 
will be personally answered if the writer 
includes a self-addressed, stamped enve- 
lope. The most interesting, pertinent ques- 
tions will be presented in these pages. Write 
the Playboy Advisor, 9346 Civic Center 
Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210, or 
e-mail advisor@playboy.com. For updates, 
follow @playboyadvisor on Twitter. 


WIN A TRIP TO THE 
PLAYBOY MANSION 


INTRODUCING THE PLAYBOY FANTASY BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP 


Compete to win your share of $200,000 in the 
Playboy Fantasy Baseball Championship on StarStreet. 


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ВЕОКОМ В 


Gay rights Neuro-creativity The fall of science 


WHO'S 
NEXT? 


Are gays the new blacks? 


BY ISHMAEL REED 


recently participated in two 

panel discussions about gay _ 

rights. In both cases I 

was portrayed as the 

heavy. My fellow ¿2 
panelists—bright, ¿% 
young, black апа 4% 
gay—concluded that 
I was dwelling on the 
wrong side of history." 
Their language and 
style indicated that the 
LGBT movement, like 
the feminist movement 
before it, had been co-opted 
by the middle and upper classes, even 
though it was working-class blacks and 
Puerto Rican drag queens who were 
the trailblazers for gay rights. They 
were the ones who fought the vice 
squad on two historic occasions: in 
1966 at Compton’s Cafeteria at Turk 
and Taylor streets in San Francisco, 
and in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in 
Manhattan, an event that was the turn- 
ing point in the struggle 
for gay rights. Neverthe- 
less, when Time magazine 
decided to mainstream 
gay marriage, it wasn’t 
working-class or un- 
derclass types who ap- 
peared on the cover. 
It was two middle-class 
white women. 

The first panel fo- 
cused on whether gay 
studies should be taught 
at Morehouse College, a black all- 
male college in Atlanta. Morehouse 
boasts such distinguished alumni as 
Julian Bond, Spike Lee and Martin 
Luther King Jr. I argued that instead 
of a course on gay history, Morehouse 
should begin a course about the labor 
movement or business, since banks 
have been hostile toward black devel- 
opment since Reconstruction. 

I also argued that because More- 


The LGBT 


movement, like 


the feminist 


movement, has 


been co-opted. 


4 


house has a course on the Harlem 
Renaissance, a movement of black in- 
tellectuals and artists of the 1920s, it 
already has gay studies, as prominent 
members Langston Hughes, Countee 
Cullen, Wallace Thurman, Richard 
Bruce Nugent and others—includ- 
ing Alain Locke, who defined the 
term New Negro—were gay. They shot 
down that idea, but I made out better 
than an alumnus who 
said he was opposed to 
gay studies. He pointed 
out that in its history 
Morehouse has had gay 
students without any 
problem. Boy, did they 
jump on him! He was 
banished to the wrong 
side of history, which 
reminded me of the old 
Sunday school pictures 
in which a giant hand 
points to the exit from the garden for 
an embarrassed Adam and Eve. 

The topic of the second panel was 
whether gays were the new blacks. I 
said that before 1 could cast gays as the 
new blacks, I'd have to know whether 
the Montgomery bus company dis- 
criminated against white gays. I would 
also need to know the percentage of 
white gays on death row. Who had a 
better chance of getting a mortgage 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY JUSTIN PAGE 


l Wi.) READER 


RESPONSE 


THE RAP ON GOD 


John Gray claims in “Atheism 
Wars” (April) that “most of the 
leading Nazis” were atheists. This 
is highly suspect. Adolf Hitler 
repeatedly refers in Mein Kampf 
to his Catholic faith as a source 
of his views. He also received the 
support of most Protestant and 
Catholic churches in Germany. 
Many leading Nazis dabbled in 
paganism, but the Reagans dab- 
bled in astrology and were still 


Christians. Today there are 
organized atheists in Pakistan, 
Indonesia, Malaysia, all over 
Africa, Latin America, the Carib- 
bean, etc. It could be the day is 
coming when religion is severely 
challenged by nonbelievers. 


Norm Allen 
Buffalo, New York 


Allen is director of international pro- 
grams for the Institute for Science and 
Human Values. 


Gray pushes the limits of seman- 
tics when he describes Lenin as 
a secular humanist. He also sets 
up a straw-man argument about 
proselytizing “militant atheists.” 
Every field has its outspoken 


63 


64 


EJ Forum 


y 


READER RESPONSE 


authors; Richard Dawkins and 
Christopher Hitchens do not rep- 
resent all humanists, nor have 
they ever claimed to. I am an 
active member of several free- 
thinker communities. They are 
small, informal and lack the hier- 
archical structure to organize 
proselytizing efforts. Most of my 
participation involves community 
service, such as donating blood 
and volunteering in soup kitch- 
ens. If we are proselytizing, it is 
with our actions, which I hope 
send the message that you don't 
need God to be a good person. 
As for Gray's claim that abolish- 
ing religion would not make the 
world a better place, I suggest 

he read Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi 

Ali, Under the Banner of Heaven 

by Jon Krakauer, Going Clear by 
Lawrence Wright and Jesus Land 
by Julia Scheeres. And I guess you 
could also throw in all of recorded 
human history. 


Michelle Allred 
Kansas City, Missouri 


Neither atheism nor faith has 

improved the human condition. 
Rinaldo Pilla 
Des Moines, Iowa 


One thinker Gray does not men- 
tion in his fine essay is Albert 
Camus [below], for whom human- 
ity trumped all ideology. Camus's 


vision of existence, best pre- 
sented in The Plague, is that 

we all live under a sentence of 
death in an uncaring, indifferent 
universe. As such, we have only 
one another to rely on to build a 
tolerable civilization. 


Michael Pastorkovich 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 


in San Francisco—a white gay or a 
black heterosexual? This question 
was inspired by the gentrification of 
San Francisco's Fillmore District, which 
forced blacks out of the neighborhood 
but benefited affluent gays. 

I also pointed out that 
black gay writers includ- 
ing Audre Lorde, Marlon 
Riggs and Barbara Smith 
had written about racism 
in the LGBT world and 
that David Brock had 
outed powerful right- 
wing gays. 

When confronted with 
these arguments, my fel- 
low panelists rebutted 
me with such slogans 
as "Oppression is oppression," which 
means their end of history, unlike 
the Marxist one, will resemble that of 
Downton Abbey. The upper class will 
be oppressed upstairs and the work- 
ing class will be oppressed down- 


IN THE VANGUARD OF LIBERATION: DRAG 
QUEENS FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS AT A SAN 
FRANCISCO DEMONSTRATION IN 1969. 


stairs. And since the LGers have prob- 
lems with the B and T parts, maybe 
the transgender folks will get jobs in 
the stables. 

The smiley face that MSNBC attaches 
to same-sex marriage also conceals 
these fractures in the LGBT move- 
ment. Ardel Thomas, who has studied 
the culture more than talk-show hosts 
have, calls it a *chasm." Some gays see 
gay marriage and gays in the military 
as an attempt to normalize or assimi- 
late gays. One study reveals discrimi- 
nation against bisexuals by both gays 
and straights. Others want to remove 
the T from LGBT. There was no trans- 
gender person among the participants 
on either panel. 


Idon’t believe 


white gay his- 


tory and black 
history are 
interchangeable. 


I support gay marriage. But I don't 
believe white gay history and black 
history are interchangeable. Gays 
should stop comparing their condi- 
tion to the condition of blacks. Gay 
icon Oscar Wilde respected Jefferson 
Davis and the Confed- 
eracy. Should the issue 
of gay marriage be front 
and center when the sit- 
uation of other groups is 
more desperate? 

When blacks and His- 
panics see well-groomed 
gay presences such as 
MSNBC's Rachel Mad- 
dow and Thomas Rob- 
erts or Ellen DeGeneres 
as the faces of gay mar- 
riage or the gay movement, why 
wouldn't they say, "What the fuck? 
We have more problems than those 
three." Thirty-six percent of Hispanic 
children live in poverty, and the black 
unemployment rate is 13 percent. 


As a result of 1996's welfare reform, 
people from all groups are rummag- 
ing through garbage for food. So what 
happens if the bisexuals and the trans- 
sexuals break away from the lesbian 
and gay parts of LGBT on the grounds 
that the L and G parts discriminate 
against them? 

Who will be on the wrong side of 
history then? a 


* In its original meaning, the “wrong side 
of history” meant that socialism (a concept 
first tested in America, incidentally) would 
lead to the inevitable triumph of commu- 
nism. Those who denied this eventuality 
were on the wrong side of history. I sus- 
pect Marxist terms such as “political cor- 
rectness” and “the wrong side of history” 
entered the mainstream by way of neocons 
who, as young people, belonged to various 
factions of the Communist Party. 


THINKING 
MACHINE 


We don’t really know how 
our brains work 


BY CURTIS WHITE 


resident Obama announced in 
April that hundreds of millions 
of dollars would be spent over 
the coming decade to map 
the brain’s neurons. Accord- 
ing to the White House, this research 
could lead to treatment for disorders 
including Alzheimer’s disease. Obama’s 
initiative is likely to have 
broad popular support 
in large part because of 
the work of science writ- 
ers such as Jonah Lehrer. 
Lehrer has been banished 
from media circles for his 
lapses in journalistic eth- 
ics, but his ideas about 
neuroscience and creativ- 
ity remain unchallenged. 
Most research in neu- 
roscience proceeds from the assumption 
that if the maladies of the brain can be 
cured, or creativity understood, it is 
because the brain is a machine. Unfor- 
tunately, assuming that the brain is a 
machine has disturbing consequences. 
Most neuroscientists believe conscious- 
ness, will, creativity and even personality 
are the mechanical result of brain struc- 
ture, neurons and chemistry. Lehrer 
even claims the source of imagination 
is the “massive network of electrical cells 


Many com- 


panies fancy 


themselves 
to be creative 
dissidents. 


that allow individuals to form new con- 
nections between old ideas.” In other 
words, creativity is rewiring. 

And that assumption—a common one 
among neuroscientists—has profound 
social consequences. If creativity is a 
mechanical property of the brain, then it 
isn't the privileged preserve of art. Cor- 
porations value creativity too. Lehrer 
cites the process that led to the creation 
of the Swiffer mop at Procter & Gamble. 
P&G came up with its mop by using cre- 
ativity specialists, the “envisioneers” at 
Continuum, a design firm in Boston and 
Los Angeles. Continuum chief executive 
Harry West said of the Swiffer project, 
“They told us to think crazy.” They did 
and came up with “one of the most effec- 
tive floor cleaners ever invented.” 

This may sound like a Monty Python 
skit, but it's not. The irony 
that Lehrer doesn't get, 
and that Monty Python 
would, is that for the past 
two centuries “creatives” 
(what we used to call artists) 
have hated mop inventors. 

Strangely, many of 
these companies fancy 
themselves to be creative 
dissidents. At hip Sili- 
con Valley ventures, the 
employees have pierced tongues and 
tats and skateboards for lunch breaks. 
This fake bohemian culture acknowl- 
edges the essentially dissident character 
of art even while betraying it. But the 
corporate types, the suits, are under no 
illusions about the bohemian substance 
of their creatives. Lehrer approvingly 
quotes Dan Wieden, co-founder of the 
advertising agency Wieden- Kennedy: 
"You need those weird fucks. You 
need people who won't make the same 


FORUM 


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READER RESPONSE 


Atheists make religion too com- 
plicated. Religion provides hope 
that there is more to life than the 
70 or 80 years we may get. 


Melvin Beadles Sr. 
Murrieta, California 


Gray's pessimistic piece advises 
those of us who know the false- 
hood of religion to say nothing 
even as believers advance irra- 
tional political objectives. Benign 
bemusement is not good enough. 
On the bright side, he provides 
an object lesson to disprove the 
silly belief in equality he accuses 
us of. I repent of that. 


Stephen Van Eck 
Lawton, Pennsylvania 


I find it amusing that people who 
have little or no science education 
dismiss criticism of their petty 
hallucinations as examples of 
extreme "scientism." 


Prasad Golla 
Plano, Texas 


Gray's assertion that religion will 
outlast atheism is ques- 

tionable. As we gain 
more under- 
standing of 
fear and the 
underpin- 
nings of 
religious 
belief, more 
people will 
leave reli- 
gion behind. As 
an atheist, Iam 
free to pursue whatever 

political process best helps my 
fellow earthlings solve their prob- 
lems. My morality and ethics are 
grounded by many philosophical 
viewpoints and do not have to be 
verified by mysticism or myth. 


Ronald Hull 
Houston, Texas 


BULLET PROOF 


Why isn't there a law that 
requires all new guns to be 
stamped so they leave a distinct 
mark on the bullets they fire, 
allowing investigators to match 
casings to weapon (“Ammo 
Nation," March)? Casings could 
also be stamped with codes that 


65 


66 


EJ Forum 


Y 


READER RESPONSE 


lead investigators back to the 
point of purchase. There are 
ways around this system, but it 
would make anonymous shoot- 
ings a lot more complicated, 


and the knowledge that bul- 
lets can be traced may deter a 
great many shooters. It's hard 
to believe anyone would oppose 
these commonsense changes 
unless they support selling guns 
to criminals. 


Robert Schreib Jr. 
Toms River, New Jersey 


TAKE YOUR PICK 


In March a reader argues that pot 
causes misery and should not be 
legalized. If people could some- 
day visit a convenience store and 
choose among alcohol, tobacco 
and weed for a little pick-me-up, 
which would be the best-seller? 


Orin Oppermann 
Fort Myers, Florida 


BEHIND THE LINES 


We read with great interest your 
report ^E-Searches and E-Seizures" 
(March), which points out the ease 
with which law enforcement can 
track anyone online. Our blog, 
BadPhoenixCops.com, has put 

a target on our backs. In 2009 

the Phoenix Police Department 
raided our residence and seized 
computers based on trumped-up 
claims of “harassment.” They kept 
the equipment for nearly three 
years, claiming the investigation 
was ongoing. It is true cops don't 
need warrants or subpoenas to get 
e-mail or IP information. We had 
been blogging anonymously, but 


boring, predictable mistakes as the rest 
of us. And then, when those weirdos 
learn how things work and become a 
little less weird, then you need a new 
class of weird fucks." 

Of course, creativity is not all about 
weirdos in the workplace. Lehrer writes 
about music. He is particularly inter- 
ested in the moment when Bob Dylan 
reinvented himself as the rock-and-roll 
Dylan. The moment in question is the 
creation of the song "Like a Rolling 
Stone." According to Lehrer's version 
of the story, Dylan was bored with what 
he'd been doing, trapped between his 
own public image as a writer of pro- 
test songs and the lame platitudes 
of Top 40 music. So he retreated to 
Woodstock and began to let his neu- 
rons do the work, from which emerged 
"Like a Rolling Stone." Lehrer writes, 
“The story of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ is a 
story of creative insight. The song was 
invented in the moment, then hurled 
into the world." The song would “rev- 
olutionize rock and roll." 

Why is it good to revolutionize rock 
and roll? For Lehrer, the song, like the 
Swiffer mop, isn't really about revolution. 
It's about success. The song leads to the 
creation of more songs by other artists. 
Money is made. People become famous! 

Anyone who has been influenced by 
Dylan's music will know the song isn't 
about contributing to gross domestic 
productivity or economic innovation. It 
was written against that world. Instead, 
the song is "about" its formal freedom. 
Dylan proposes, ^Hey, this is what free- 
dom feels like to me. This is what being 


THERE'S REAL CREATIVITY (BOB DYLAN, 
ABOVE LEFT) AND FALSE CREATIVITY 
(SWIFFER WETJET, ABOVE RIGHT). 


alive feels like to me. What do you 
think?" In other words, Dylan's music 
asks, Can you return to being in the 
world in the way you were in the world 
before you heard this song? 

But for Lehrer, Dylan is just another 
example of a "creative problem solver" 
no different from Milton Glaser, cre- 
ator of the insipid IVNY logo. Lehrer 
throws out the social, ethical and 
aesthetic dimension of art for a few 
full-color brain scans and the instruc- 
tion “Go to work.” El 


Curtis White is author of The Science Delu- 
sion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture 
of Easy Answers. 


WHAT 


HAPPENED / | 
TO SCIENCE? ^ 


Scientists used to be viewed with respect. So why do we no 


longer believe what they say? 
BY TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER 


recently overheard two of my jour- 
nalism students discussing the ills of 
modern medicine. They talked about 
how Western science gets it wrong 
and how certain kinds of food can 
cure obsessive-compulsive and bipo- 
lar disorders. This led me to abort my 
second-half lecture on interview tech- 
niques in favor of a discussion on the 
value of information. What responsibility 
do we have to our readers to make sure 
information is true? How do we know 


anything? We need to ask about sources, 
their intentions, their education. 

I'm the mother of young children and 
I live in Los Angeles, which puts me at 
the intersection of holistic tantruming 
and the antiscience movement. Start with 
a fear of the future, add a self-assigned 
designation of "spiritual" and a deifica- 
tion of all things “natural,” et voilà: The 
antiscience movement is born. Take the 
internet, where all alternative views are 
celebrated, and the movement becomes 


mainstream. You no longer remember 
what the truth was in the first place. 

It's no fun to live with the implications 
of self-imposed ignorance. Consider the 
pertussis outbreak that plagued Califor- 
nia the past few years because parents 
wouldn't vaccinate their children. That 
outbreak wasn't limited to the unvacci- 
nated. Towns eschew fluoride in their 
water supply. Women give birth at home 
without a doctor. Parents subject their 
children with autism to bariatric cham- 
bers and chelation therapy in hopes of a 
cure that doesn't exist. 

If we're smart, we'll listen to my 
college-educated students and learn 
from them. Why do they believe so ar- 
dently in a holistic fantasy world? What 
made America stop believing in science? 

Of course science has the answer to 
why we turned on it. Say you're sus- 
picious of authority or wary of words 
such as preservatives. It could be that all 
your friends are Repub- 
licans and you believe 
they're right about most 
things. And then they 
bring up evolution and 
climate change. 

When you evaluate in- 
formation, a psychological 
phenomenon known as 
confirmation bias comes 
into play, which means 
your brain seeks to reaf- 
firm its core beliefs. Even 
if you try to research a 
question and are pure- 
hearted and want to know 
the answer, it's almost 
impossible to discern be- 
cause of how you phrase 
your questions. 

Ask Google a question. Research- 
ers say you can't phrase it in a way that 
doesn't demand the answer you're seek- 
ing, so ingrained are your biases. When 
you ask the question in such a loaded 
way—though your loading may be so 
subtle you don't even recognize it—the 
results will favor your point of view sim- 
ply because the question may have been 
asked at a like-minded site. Google isn't 
out to prove anything; it just wants you 
to be happy. If you believe eating off 
plasticware gives you cancer, you'll be 
able to find plenty of studies that suggest 
the same thing. What you won't be able 
to find is proof that it's true. 

You start by hanging out on websites 
that confirm your bias. Through those 
websites you find communities that 
agree with you. Pretty soon, your weird, 
marginalized notion takes root and be- 
comes fact. As political science profes- 
sor James Fowler, who studies social 
networks and their impact on us, told 
me, “A real difficulty with the internet 
is that we can seek out others who have 
exactly the same beliefs we have, mean- 


Online forums 
aren'ttown halls 
where free and 
spirited debate 
takes place. 


They're musty 


corners in 
which the like- 
minded gather. 


ing we are even more susceptible to 
false ideas because we are surrounded 
by other people who are susceptible to 
them too." Exposure to a strange idea 
makes the idea less strange. 

Then, suddenly, anything that 
disabuses you of this "fact" is a threat— 
especially when it comes to health or sci- 
ence. Your new friends send you conspir- 
atorial newsletters, and it becomes less 
difficult to believe the flu vaccine was de- 
signed to sterilize women. These forums 
are not town halls where free and spir- 
ited debate takes place. They're musty 
corners in which the like-minded gather. 

And of course the theory wins. With 
much of scientific theory already estab- 
lished, the “news” that pops up on the 
internet is alternative news. As Harry 
Collins, a social sciences professor at 
Cardiff University, told me, a zealous 
truth-seeker's work upon hearing a new 
theory should be to research legitimate 
peer-reviewed journals to 
see if the theory is true. 
Most people don't do 
that. They wouldn't even 
understand what they 
were reading. So they're 
left with the first piece of 
information, seared into 
their brains with the echo 
of a social studies teacher 
who, long ago, told them 
to believe only what they 
read in newspapers. That 
was back when newspa- 
pers were The New York 
Times, not Green Clean 
Daily. As Collins said, true 
expertise is incredibly 
hard to come by. 

We are a generation raised with def- 
erence for the printed word. When 
most of us were growing up, there was 
no internet. We read newspapers and 
magazines and textbooks, which had 
tireless fact-checkers whose sole job was 
to halt the dissemination of misinfor- 
mation. Writers and editors, who had 
been trained to evaluate and synthesize 
information, took their responsibili- 
ties seriously. Today anyone can have 
a WordPress account, whose fonts read 
no hazier than this one or the ones in 
The New York Times and Scientific Ameri- 
can. Worse, ardent proclamations of 
truth are far sexier than the reportage 
in most notable newspapers. Passion 
feels easier to get behind. 

The key, perhaps, is in arguing how 
the questions are asked and who gets to 
sit in on the debates. The key is in feeling 
the discomfort that comes when people 
disapprove of your thinking but listen- 
ing to them nonetheless. We need to 
know that instinct is no substitute for the 
neutral evaluation of a hypothesis. And 
we need to be willing to be wrong when 
we are confronted with contrary data. Bi 


FORUM | 


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READER RESPONSE 


the police only had to call Google 
and Go Daddy and ask for our 
information, and both caved imme- 
diately. Now we use Hushmail 
.com, which is based in Canada. 

It's not foolproof, but at least police 
can't obtain information with- 

out getting a foreign government 


involved. We have posted advice to 
help others keep their online info 
away from prying eyes. Ironically, 
we learned the best tips from good 
cops who support our cause. 


Name(s) withheld 
Phoenix, Arizona 


In 2009 10 Phoenix police offi- 

cers raided the home of Jeff Pataky, 
whom The Arizona Republic iden- 
tified as a blogger who runs Bad 
Phoenix Cops, on a warrant that 
alleged petty theft and computer 
tampering with the intent to harass. 
According to the newspaper, offi- 
cers also raided the home of a former 
homicide detective because of his sup- 
posed involvement with the site. (The 
detective had made public charges 
that the city crime lab mismanaged 
evidence.) A federal judge dismissed a 
lawsuit Pataky filed against the city, 
ruling that privacy laws do not apply 
when the “person possessing the mate- 
rials is a criminal suspect. ..and the 
police have probable cause." A grand 
jury refused to indict. Pataky never 
owned the site but was a contributor 
and has now "moved on," according 
to the writer(s) of this letter. 


DROP'EM 


You ask if "professional penis 
inspectors" might be hired to 
ensure adult performers adhere 
to a new Los Angeles County law 
requiring condom use on sets 
(“Porn Police," March). When I 
was in the Navy, we referred to 
the hospital corpsmen assigned to 
look for signs of venereal disease 
as "pecker checkers." 


Roger Werchan 
Montgomery, Texas 


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


67 


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и JEAN HANNITY 


A candid conversation with Fox News’s feistiest conservative about hating 
liberalism, rebuilding the GOP and sowing those youthful wild oats 


Fox News host Sean Hannity is a believer. 
He believes in God, country and the once and 
future Bush dynasty. In his opinion, global 
warming is a crock, kids today are oversexed 
and President Obama’s radical agenda is de- 
stroying our nation. Despite any upticks the 
stock market may experience, the economy is 
not improving, Hannity says (“It’s a bub- 
ble!”). And no, allowing same-sex marriage, 
taxing the rich and giving government hand- 
outs will not save America. 

Hannity—the man and the brand—holds to 
the far right even as fellow conservatives like 
Rush Limbaugh bitterly proclaim that liberal- 
ism has won in America. As long as debate rages 
over illegal immigration, government spend- 
ing, gun control, abortion, political correct- 
ness, the Kardashians, you name it, Hannity 
will wag a finger and stand his ground. 

Hannity was born on December 30, 1961, 
the grandson of four Irish immigrants, and 
grew up with three older sisters in Franklin 
Square on New York’s Long Island. He was a 
Catholic school bad boy, he says, and dropped 
out of two universities (NYU and Adelphi) af- 
ter realizing his opinions had a place on radio. 
From the start, he was controversial. In 1989 
Hannity was fired from his first radio job at a 
college station in Santa Barbara for casting 
doubts about the AIDS epidemic. He publi- 


cized his dismissal in radio trade ads, promot- 
ing himself as “the most talked about college 
radio host in America.” Fox News head Roger 
Ailes heard Hannity on the air in Atlanta a 
few years later and paired him opposite liberal 
political commentator Alan Colmes. The re- 
sulting live TV show, Hannity & Colmes, ran 
for 12 years on Fox News before Hannity went 
solo in the same time slot. In many ways, radio 
remains Hannity’s first love, and he broad- 
casts The Sean Hannity Show, syndicated on 
more than 500 stations, most days from Long 
Island, where he lives with his wife of 20 years, 
Jill, and their two young children. 

Contributing Editor David Hochman spent 
time with Hannity at Fox News headquarters in 
New York City. He says Hannity was jovial and 
charming even as the debate got lively. “The ul- 
timate question everyone has about Hannity,” 
Hochman says, “is, Does he really believe what 
he says, or is it all just an act? After spending 
hours with the guy and really getting into his 
head, I can say with utmost confidence, what 
you see with Hannity is what you get.” 


HANNITY: Fire away. Ask me anything 
you want. 

PLAYBOY: Excellent, so— 

HANNITY: You might not get an answer, 
but you can try. 


PLAYBOY: Let’s start with an easy one. 
What is it precisely about liberals that 
bothers you so much? 

HANNITY: Liberalism is failing the coun- 
try. This to me is fundamental. It’s a 
philosophical difference. Do I have 
friends who are liberal? Yeah. Do I like 
to debate liberal guests on my show? 
Absolutely. But look what’s happen- 
ing in Cyprus, in Greece, in Spain, in 
Ireland and other places. These coun- 
tries are going down the road America 
is now choosing to go down, which is 
socialism, in my view. Very high taxes. 
Promises that the government will take 
care of every need an individual has. 
These promises ultimately can’t be ful- 
filled. You can’t manage the cost of it all. 
The president tried to sell Obamacare at 
$900 billion. Now the latest estimate is 
$2.8 trillion, and a recent report by the 
Government Accountability Office says 
over the long term it could add $6.2 tril- 
lion to our debt. That is what I would 
describe as unsustainable. 

The other thing is energy. There is 
an answer to America’s problems right 
now. We are so stupid we don’t tap into 
our own energy resources. We have 
more oil than Iran, Iraq and Saudi 


“Obama is not managing the country well. 
We're talking about liberal socialism, high 
debt, high deficits. One in six Americans is in 
poverty. These are the issues that are going to 
affect the country for years to come.” 


“Frankly, I was a big troublemaker. I don't know 
how far I want to go with my honesty here, but I 
was taken home by the cops in the first grade. I'd 
get in trouble for sneaking out of the house late 
at night. And I started smoking at a young age.” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIUS BUGGE 


"I don't want to know anything about anybody's 
sex life when I’m voting for them. I want to 
know they can balance the budget, that they're 
going to stay out of my life and ensure more 
freedom. That's all Im looking for.” 


69 


PLAYBOY 


70 


Arabia combined. We have oil shale; 
we’ve got fracking available. We are the 
Saudi Arabia of natural gas. The Demo- 
cratic Socialist Party in America is so be- 
holden to environmentalists, we don’t 
even tap into our own resources. It’s 
just another example of how this presi- 
dent can’t meet the promises he made 
to the people. 

PLAYBOY: Obama’s supporters would say 
he’s done quite a bit. He passed health 
care reform. He passed the stimu- 
lus. He passed Wall Street reform. He 
eliminated Osama bin Laden. He turned 
around the U.S. auto industry. 

HANNITY: Do you know GM still owes 
the taxpayers $50 billion that we'll 
never get back? 

PLAYBOY: He recapitalized banks. He be- 
gan to end the war in Afghanistan. He 
ended the war in Iraq. He boosted fuel- 
efficiency standards and advocated for 
alternative energy. 

HANNITY: Whoa. With what? Solyndra? 
Obama squandered half a billion dol- 
lars in stimulus money, and the com- 
pany went bankrupt. We were paying 
money that went to build electric cars in 
Finland. I can give you the whole long 
laundry list, a lot of wasted government 
dollars. How many net new jobs did we 
create under Obama? 

PLAYBOY: Depending on which source 
you believe, it's anywhere from 325,000 
to 1.2 million. 

HANNITY: At the end of last year, we had 
8.3 million fewer Americans in the la- 
bor force than we had before he took 
office. We have people on unemploy- 
ment who have been there so long we 
no longer count them. When you look 
at real unemployment in the country, 
fewer Americans were working at the 
end of Obama's first four years than 
actually were working when he started. 
Next question. 

PLAYBOY: It's generally agreed that the 
Republican Party is a mess. It's divided, 
there's no real leadership or clear direc- 
tion, and last year's election was an enor- 
mous blow to the right. 

HANNITY: First of all, I’m a registered Con- 
servative. I’m not a Republican, though 
people often mistake me for one. Listen, 
it’s going to shake out fine. You know, af- 
ter any election, whenever there’s a loss, 
there are always people predicting doom 
and gloom and disaster. There’s a cer- 
tain purging process people go through. 
Democrats have been through it. The 
contractions, the hand-wringing—it’s 
natural. It’s part of the process. 

PLAYBOY: Can the GOP save itself? 
HANNITY: It can, and it'll do it by focusing 
on some very simple ideals. The Republi- 
cans have no message discipline. Obama 
has incredible message discipline. His 
message right now is "Republicans want 
to poison the air and water. Republicans 
want kids with autism and Down syn- 
drome and the elderly to fend for them- 
selves." He's brilliant at fear-mongering, 


at demagoguery. He is always on the 
attack, always politicizing everything. 
Meanwhile, he keeps spending and bor- 
rowing us into a trillion dollars in debt. 
The Republicans should be the party 
that wants balanced budgets, fiscal re- 
sponsibility. It should be the party that 
believes you don't spend more than you 
take in. We're not going to borrow 46 
cents of every dollar to run the govern- 
ment. Social Security and Medicare are 
headed for bankruptcy. The Republi- 
cans should be the party of energy in- 
dependence and of getting the country 
on its feet. Instead, we've spent all this 
money, and we have nothing to show 
for it. We're robbing our kids blind, be- 
cause it's their money we're taking, and 
they're going to spend their lifetimes 
paying it back. 
PLAYBOY: What about the massive budget 
deficit this administration inherited? 
HANNITY: No president has ever given us 
a trillion-dollar deficit, and certainly no 
president has given us $6 trillion in debt 
in four years the way Obama has. Not 
even close. He inherited a $10 trillion 
debt, not $16.5 trillion. 


I don't know why people put 
so much faith in govern- 
ment. It doesn't work. And 
the president has a big role in 
that. Obama is in a constant 
state of combativeness. 


Look, we can fulfill the promises that 
we made to the Greatest Generation 
right now. We've got to reform entitle- 
ments, and we need a better plan for 
health care. I don't know why people put 
so much faith in government—the same 
government that said we're going to have 
Social Security benefits waiting for us and 
then raided the lockbox. The lockbox is 
empty! They've squandered the money. 
So I don't have a lot of faith in govern- 
ment or bureaucrats. I like the concept 
of limited government and greater free- 
dom. With greater freedom comes great- 
er responsibility to the American people. 
We're not going to get there by spending 
ourselves into oblivion. 

PLAYBOY: If nothing else, the debt-ceiling 
fight in Congress has shown the world 
how completely dysfunctional and di- 
vided our government is. 

HANNITY: Absolutely. The system is dys- 
functional. It doesn't work. And the presi- 
dent has a big role in that. Obama is in a 
constant state of combativeness. I mean, 
he won fair and square, but I would have 
hoped that after the election we would 
have seen him say, "John Boehner, 


Mitch McConnell, Dick Durbin, Chuck 
Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, we've got to get 
together because this is a mess. The coun- 
try hates us." And he's not doing that. I 
think everything he does is to get Pelosi 
back as Speaker for 2014. 

PLAYBOY: Would we be living in a golden 
age now if Mitt Romney had won the 
presidency instead? 

HANNITY: No, but I think you would 
have had somebody with the experi- 
ence and the background and, frankly, 
not as driven by ideology as this presi- 
dent is. Obama's an ideologue. Now, 
this being PLAYBOY, you probably won't 
agree with me on this, but I think the 
president is pretty radical in his views. 
For instance, the disengagement almost 
bordering on stupidity of giving [Egyp- 
tian president] Mohamed Morsi 1.5 bil- 
lion taxpayer dollars—the guy's a 9/11 
Truther, a guy who refers to the Israelis 
as apes and pigs, a guy who was part of 
the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Obama is not managing the country 
well. We're talking about liberal social- 
ism, high debt, high deficits. Twenty 
million more Americans are on food 
stamps. One in six Americans is in pov- 
erty. There's $17 trillion in debt. Obama 
said $9 trillion in debt. These are the is- 
sues that are going to affect the country 
for years to come. 

PLAYBOY: Let's move on. Fox News's rat- 
ings are down, and your show in particu- 
lar has taken a hit this year. 

HANNITY: No, actually, our ratings are 
back up. 

PLAYBOY: Your ratings were down 35 
percent in February. 

HANNITY: Well, from the year before, 
which was an election year. 

PLAYBOY: Rachel Maddow has beaten you 
in your time slot. 

HANNITY: Never! Not once! 

PLAYBOY: She has in the key 25- to 
54-year-old demographic. 

HANNITY: But overall, we're at double 
her ratings. You've got to be careful how 
you make these comparisons. 

PLAYBOY: Fox News overall hit a 12-year 
ratings low in January and recently had 
a record low in a poll on viewer trust. 
The perception among many is that 
Fox News is out of it. Is there anything 
you're doing to change that perception? 
HANNITY: No. You know, I've been in 
this business a long time, and I'm not one 
who obsesses over ratings, but I will tell 
you this. There is a natural ebb and flow 
due to election years and major events 
such as Hurricane Katrina or Sandy or 
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any is- 
sue of that sort will drive ratings up and 
down. I will tell you that after the election, 
a lot of people who didn't want Barack 
Obama to get a second term threw up 
their hands in disgust, including myself. 
I can go back and show you all the years 
that I've been through presidential elec- 
tions on radio. You see the spike, you see 
the decline, you see the spike—it's part 


of the news cycle. It's the story of my life. 
PLAYBOY: Were you always a conservative? 
HANNITY: Kind of, yeah. 1 don't know 
what it was, but as soon as Reagan be- 
came president, I was hooked. I listened 
to talk radio as a kid and was just ob- 
sessed with it. Every kid is told “Stop 
doing this; stop doing that,” but late 
at night Pd stay up to listen to Barry 
Farber, Bob Grant and later Gene Burns 
and David Brudnoy. Pd pick up WBZ 
and all these other 50,000-watt stations. 
And you know, it just immersed me in 
politics. Barry Farber said something 
like “Look at your globe, and I'm going 
to tell you about Communist expansion- 
ism in Hungary and Bulgaria and Yugo- 
slavia and Poland," 
and literally I'd just 
stand there with 
the globe, learning 
about the world. 
PLAYBOY: Were you a 
studious kid? 
HANNITY: Frankly, I 
was a big trouble- 
maker. I don't know 
how far I want to 
go with my hon- 
esty here, but I 
was taken home by 
the cops in the first 
grade for hanging 
on the back of cars 
in the wintertime. 
We called it "skitch- 
ing." I'd get in trou- 
ble for sneaking out 
of the house late at 
night to have snow- 
ball fights. And I 
started smoking at 
a young age. I re- 
member pitching 
baseball games and 
smoking a cigarette 
between innings. 
PLAYBOY: Didn't 
Catholic school keep 
you in line? 
HANNITY: Nobody q 
could really dis- ANCHOR BAY 
cipline me. I re- 
member one day at 
Sacred Heart Semi- 
nary in Hempstead, Long Island, the 
boys hadn’t been good and one of the 
fifth-grade teachers was pulling their 
ears and slapping them on the head. She 
gets to me and I’m like, “You’re not pull- 
ing my ear, and you’re not slapping me 
either.” I stood up for myself pretty ear- 
ly. My father, on the other hand, if he got 
mad, you knew it. The belt would come 
flying off. I got my fair share. 

PLAYBOY: What did your father teach you 
about life? 

HANNITY: My dad was probably the most 
decent person I’ve ever known. Very 
moral guy, deep religious faith. Had the 
roughest upbringing and background, 
grew up very poor, Bed-Stuy. He deliv- 


ered papers to contribute to his family. 
His mom died in childbirth when he was 
born, and his father, who was a machin- 
ist, didn't have the ability to take care 
of him and the rest of the kids. He was 
shuffled around from family member to 
family member. But he grew up, signed 
up for World War II, fought his four 
years in the Pacific in the Navy and came 
back. He worked as a waiter on weekend 
nights and would get home at five in 
the morning, and we'd go to 12 o'clock 
mass every week. It was embarrassing 
because he'd fall asleep! But he never 
complained about a thing. Never want- 
ed anything. It was a big deal for him to 
get a Levitt-style house on a 50-by-100- 


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foot lot on Long Island -you know, four 
kids, one bathroom. I had three older 
sisters. It was rough. My parents sacri- 
ficed to put us through Catholic school. 
That’s how I grew up. 

PLAYBOY: Was it a better time in America 
back then? 

HANNITY: The honest answer is yes. You 
know, I delivered papers from the time 
I was eight years old. I was scrubbing 
pots and pans in a restaurant every Fri- 
day, Saturday and Sunday when I was 
12. Then I became a cook at 13. I was 
a busboy, a bartender, a waiter. I did 
that for many, many years of my life. 
Made a lot of money. 

PLAYBOY: What did money mean to you? 


| www.anchorbayent.com | 


HANNITY: It meant if I wanted a baseball 
mitt, I could go out and sell newspaper 
subscriptions as an eight-year-old and 
get the glove, plus tickets to the Mets 
game. I always had a wad of cash. My best 
friend from childhood is John Gomez; 
we still joke about it. His father made the 
best barbecue chicken in the world, and 
I would say, “Here's money. I want to 
buy some of your father's chicken.” And 
we'd make those deals all the time. 
PLAYBOY: Back then, did you ever imagine 
yourself signing a contract for $100 mil- 
lion, as you did in 2008 for your after- 
noon radio talk show? 

HANNITY: Never in a million years. When 
I left NYU after a year, I don't think Pd 
ever seen a look 
of greater disap- 
pointment in my 
parents’ eyes. 
They offered to 
help me financial- 
ly, but I knew they 
didn't have the 
money. I didn't 
want them go- 
ing into debt and 
spending their 
retirement money 
on me. I decided 
I was just going to 
go out on my own 
at that point, and 
I did. I started my 
adventures in the 
world. 

PLAYBOY: You 
sowed your wild 
oats? Details, 
please. 

HANNITY: Based 
on the PLAYBOY 
definition, it's 
probably the G- 
rated version. I 
used to go to all 
the clubs when I 
was young and 
17 in New York. 
q Then I worked in 
a couple of places 
as a bartender. 
I wasn’t Tom 
Cruise in Cocktail 
or anything, but I was pretty fast, and we 
made great daiquiris and piña coladas. I 
went through a period when I did okay 
in terms of dating. I was a skinny little 
kid, though. That was about it. 

PLAYBOY: What's one Sean Hannity fact 
that would shock a liberal? 

HANNITY: Tough one. Let’s see. Let me 
think. Okay, I like disco, believe it or not. 
PLAYBOY: Really? 

HANNITY: When I was a bartender we 
played it all the time, and I still like it. 
I used to love Donna Summer. She’s 
great. I met her before she died. It 
was a thrill for me. Her story was so 
fascinating because she began singing 
in church. She used to look out at the 


ANCHOR BAY 


T 


PLAYBOY 


72 


congregation and they’d all be crying. I 
love passionate people. 

PLAYBOY: Any other surprises? Are you a 
closet Grateful Dead fan? 

HANNITY: I like the Grateful Dead. [sings] 
“Sugar magnolia, blossoms blooming.” 
Want me to keep going? 

PLAYBOY: That's okay. Have you smoked 
marijuana? 

HANNITY: I'm not answering any ques- 
tions about that. Period. Nice try. 
PLAYBOY: Let's talk about the issue it- 
self then. 

HANNITY: I don't think there should be 
jail terms. I believe in decriminalization. 
I do have a problem...how do I say this? 
Thomas Paine, in 1776's Common Sense, 
said something to the effect that if the 
impulses of conscience were uniform 
and irresistibly obeyed, there would be 
no need for any other lawmaker. That 
not being the case, Paine goes on to 
describe the need for the formation of 
government predicated on the idea that 
government is going to protect you from 
people who would otherwise want to 
take your stuff and treat you unfairly. 
I prefer that people make good deci- 
sions. I like to drink beer on a hot sum- 
mer day, but I don't overindulge. I like 
a good glass of wine when I go out to 
dinner with my friends. If I have more 
than two drinks I take a cab or have 
somebody else drive home. My biggest 
fear about opening the door to legaliza- 
tion is that I've always believed, in spite 
of some disagreement, that marijuana is 
a gateway drug. According to everything 
I read, marijuana is more potent than it 
has ever been, and I believe that for a lot 
of people there is at least a minimal psy- 
chological, addictive component. 
PLAYBOY: How do you sleep at night? 
HANNITY: Very funny. 

PLAYBOY: Seriously. How do you sleep at 
night? 

HANNITY: I don't sleep a lot, but I sleep 
like a baby. 

PLAYBOY: Are you an Ambien guy? 
HANNITY: No, no. I just stay up until I 
literally pass out cold. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever find yourself wor- 
rying in the middle of the night? 
HANNITY: No, I'm not a worrier. I have 
faith. The way I look at it, I'm not in 
control of every aspect of my life. I be- 
lieve God exists. I believe God is real, 
and I really just put my faith in him. 
When you look at the majesty of cre- 
ation, it's so deep and so profound, from 
the smallest of things to the concept of 
universes. It's beyond human imagina- 
tion. I have deep faith. 

PLAYBOY: Given the molestation scandals, 
do you still have faith in the church itself? 
Can the church survive in the modern 
age without making major institutional 
changes? Women cannot be priests, and 
priests cannot marry. 

HANNITY: The church will survive, re- 
gardless. You don't have to be a Cath- 
olic if you don't agree with their point 


of view. Personally, the greatest disap- 
pointment is the cover-up of the sexual 
abuse cases at the highest levels. It's in- 
excusable to me, and I had a very hard 
time dealing with it. That said, these 
are human beings, and human beings 
are flawed. There's good and evil in 
the world, and that's just indisputable. 
I would hope they deal with it head-on, 
address it and make amends to the ex- 
tent that they can. 

PLAYBOY: What would you like to see 
from the new pope? 

HANNITY: I don't know. I think priests 
should be allowed to marry, because 
the apostles were married, all but one, if 
my theology is correct. And priests were 
allowed to marry, I think, for the first 
1,200 years of the church. 

PLAYBOY: How do you separate your 
views as a Catholic from your opinions 
about, say, abortion? 

HANNITY: I'm against abortion. I make 
exceptions for rape, incest, the mother's 
life. You know, as far as opinions versus 
fairness, it's all me. For better or worse, 
I'm pretty opinionated. Our society has 
this idea that you shouldn't feel guilty 


For better or worse, I'm pretty 
opinionated. Our society has 
this idea that you shouldn't 
feel guilty about anything, 
and maybe PLAYBOY 
perpetuates this. 


about anything, and maybe PLAYBOY 
perpetuates this. I think the conscience 
is the human ability to discern and de- 
cipher right from wrong. Guilt is your 
own inner voice telling you when you're 
doing something right or doing some- 
thing wrong. But in my personal life, 
the more I listen to that silent voice of 
conscience, the happier I usually am, be- 
cause that voice is telling me, exhorting 
me internally, to do the right thing. 
PLAYBOY: What does your inner voice say 
about gay marriage? 

HANNITY: Over the years I have evolved 
into more ofa libertarian when it comes to 
people's personal lives. I really don't care 
what people do privately. That doesn't 
mean I think society needs to change its 
definition of marriage. I don't. Pm okay 
with the way things are. But I don't think 
most Americans are tolerant and accept- 
ing. I think most people don't care. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have any gay friends? 
HANNITY: Do I know people who are gay 
that I'm friendly with? Yes. Absolutely. 
PLAYBOY: Can you imagine voting for a 
gay, lesbian or transgender president? 
HANNITY: I don't want to know anything 


about anybody's sex life when I'm vot- 
ing for them. I want to know they can 
balance the budget, that they're going to 
stay out of my life and ensure more free- 
dom. Do they understand good versus 
evil? Do they understand that we've got 
to have a strong national defense? That's 
all I'm looking for. I don't really give a 
flying rip what people do privately. It's 
none of my business. Maybe it's the tra- 
ditional way I was brought up. If some- 
body breaks into my house, it's my job 
to go downstairs and take care of it. You 
can call me Bamm-Bamm or Barney 
Rubble if you want, but that's who I am. 
PLAYBOY: Is the country as divided as it 
appears in Hannity's America? 

HANNITY: America is definitely polarized. 
In politics I think we have two very dis- 
tinct competing visions for the country 
right now. One of the great dangers of 
the democracy we have is that the media 
are biased; the other danger is apathy. 
There are too many people who care 
too much about Honey Boo Boo and 
the Kardashians or whomever. I've met 
Kim, and she’s nice, but honestly there’s 
too much of a celebrity culture. I wish 
people cared more about the budget 
being balanced, about national de- 
fense, security, rise of radical Islamists, 
immigration—things that I think are 
really going to matter and impact every- 
body’s lives. 

PLAYBOY: Let's talk about some of those. 
Your critics called you a water carrier for 
the GOP last year when you embraced a 
“pathway to citizenship” after Republi- 
cans failed to win over Latino voters. 
HANNITY: It's a position that's been evolv- 
ing since I made my trips to the border. 
I've traveled to Mexico, from San Diego 
to the Rio Grande and everywhere in 
between, and I've been out with Bor- 
der Patrol agents on helicopter, horse- 
back, all-terrain vehicles and boats. I've 
watched gang members being arrested. 
I've seen tunnels dug from Mexico into 
San Diego up through an office build- 
ing, sophisticated efforts at human traf- 
ficking. Гуе been to the warehouses 
where they confiscated drugs aimed at 
American kids. I see the financial impact 
on our educational system, our health 
care system, our criminal justice system 
in border states and the burdens they 
have to bear as a result of illegal immi- 
gration not being solved. We've got to 
fix it. I think you control the border first 
and then create a pathway for the people 
who are here. Do background checks, 
send those with criminal records home, 
have people pay whatever penalties and 
taxes are necessary. But yeah, we need a 
better solution. 

PLAYBOY: What about guns? The New- 
town shootings inspired many to call 
for stricter measures to prevent similar 
tragedies. 

HANNITY: I support commonsense mea- 
sures. We use armed guards to protect 
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Written By Luis Alberto Urrea md Erin Siegal McIntyre 


76 


Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Big 
Pac-Man still tucks his trousers into his 
high black jump boots. He learned to 
do this at jump school in the Army. He 
posts photos of jumps on Facebook— 
high up, looking down on paratroopers 
as they drop, Fort Bragg tiny below 
like a model-railroad landscape. His 
knees and back still ache from all the 
hard landings. But he walks through 
the pain in a brisk march. He has a 
loud laugh— you can hear him coming 
before he arrives. 

On the day we meet with him, he's 
driving his white beater car, the seats 
occupied by his soldiers. They're 
laughing and shouting over the ra- 
dio. They could be warlords in an 
insurgency or narcos swarming out 
of Tijuana, looking for targets. Big 
men. Shaved heads. Music blaring in 
Spanish. Their car comes in off the 
cracked street and rattles to a stop in 
the apartment courtyard. The com- 
munal chihuahua runs for its life as 
the soldiers burst out of the vehicle. 
"I'm hungry!" Big Pac-Man shouts, 


MEXICO HOUSES A CADRE OF BANISHED 
WARRIORS WHO BELIEVED THEIR SERVICE 
IN THE ARMED FORCES WOULD WIN THEM 
ACCESS TO AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. 


which is why they call him that: He's 
always eating. 

Itis not uncommon to find him in 
his dress uniform. He wears his beret 
and sometimes stands at attention at the 
U.S. border fence, watching lines of cars 
snake into San Diego. It's a kind of sen- 
try duty. Tourists and businesspeople 
avoid eye contact, but he stands firm 
before them. His colleagues often join 
him, and they form an honor guard, 
squared away as if awaiting inspection. 
"Their signs say BANISHED VETERANS. 


Hector Barajas, of the 82nd 
Airborne. Deported. 

Barajas is a member of a shadow 
army whose numbers are kept obscure 
by the U.S. government. He estimates 
that 3,700 veterans of the U.S. military 
are exiled in Mexico alone. It is hard 
to prove; even requests under the 
Freedom of Information Act yield scant 
data to prove or disprove his theory. 

He and his colleagues have created 
a tiny, unofficial VA center in Barajas's 
apartment: the Deported Veterans 


Support House. Here, between his 
social-media activism, impromptu 
health care, counseling and charity 
work, Barajas attends to his calcula- 
tions and his restless hunt to discover 
others like himself. 

"From my understanding," Barajas 
says, "we have had more than 10 vet- 
erans in each detention center. There 
are about 250 centers in the United 
States. Let's say 16 years of deportations 
since 1996. Ten times 250 equals 2,500. 
Twenty-five hundred times 16 equals 
40,000. I think you can get better stats 
than I can." 

But as we will see, that is not 
entirely true. 

Most Americans have no idea 
Mexico's border cities house a cadre of 
banished warriors who believed their 
service in the U.S. armed forces would 
win them access to American citizen- 
ship. Barajas and his partners have 
discovered fellow deported soldiers in 


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emains in touch via Skype and 
1 n-year-old daughter, 
back home in California. 3. В: 


Robles, г. bián Rebolledo, Е —— and 
nging Old Glory 


19 countries besides Mexico—Jamaica, 
Italy, Canada, Guyana, Peru, Trinidad, 
the U.K. and Bosnia among them. 
The deportees are not just Iraq and 
Afghanistan veterans; Korea and 
Vietnam vets live in dirty rooms all 
over Tijuana. 

Fabiän Rebolledo is Barajas’s part- 
ner in the Deported Veterans Support 
House. He can’t eat as much as Barajas, 
so they call him Little Pac-Man. But 
who can eat as much as Big Pac-Man? 
The vets scoff at the notion. Rebolledo 
was promised citizenship for enlisting, 
but after returning from active duty in 
Kosovo, he was deported. 

“They taught me it was easy to kill 
people,” he says. “Then they threw 
me away.” 


The Pac-Men’s small VA operation is 
in Rosarito, Tijuana's sister city to the 
southwest. Twenty miles north, across 
the border, the American coastal neigh- 
borhoods are billion-dollar enclaves. 
Here, not so much. The glory days of 
MTV Spring Break and college students 
cavorting in sombreros are gone. Now 
bodies and body parts are regularly 
found throughout the city—a woman's 
tattooed torso zipped up in a black 
suitcase left on the beach, an arm in the 
weeds by the highway. 

The Deported Veterans Support 
House is situated in Barajas's cramped 
two-bedroom apartment in a surreal 


compound. Painted bright colors, 

it is populated by expat gringos in 
various stages of distress. Radios com- 
pete for most obnoxious squall. A 
pregnant-looking American dude with 
unbuttoned shorts drags a heavily preg- 
nant Mexican woman wearing yellow 
rubber gloves onto his lap and kneads 
her ass. An addled evangelist barks, 
“You ever been shot in the mouth? I 
have!” He displays blown-out teeth. 
Then he tries to make the perfectly 
normal leg of a visitor grow an inch 


HOME IN COMPTON, HECTOR BARAJAS 
STARTED HANGING WITH OLD FRIENDS. 
ONE NIGHT THE HOMEYS THOUGHT 
THEY WERE BEING FOLLOWED. 
EA 


through the power of Jesus. Big Pac- 
Man sends him scuttling away. “Learn 
some manners,” he says as he fires up 
the computers. 

“T like Mexico and all,” he says. “But 
I hate being in this country. I want to 
go home. I'd gladly go to prison for five 
years if the U.S. would finally let me be 
a citizen and raise my daughter.” 

Barajas works the machines, sending 
messages to a growing army of contacts 
and followers. He is a tireless Facebook 


presence. Soldiers find him and seek his 
help. The Pac-Men have people around 
them all the time. It is unclear who they 
are or what they want. On this day a 
young man with the kind of scary neck 
tattoos that make suburbanites shy away 
sits in a corner. He could be a soldier. 

“Were you in the crazy life in Los 
Angeles?” he is asked. 

“Oh yeah.” 

“Were you a bad boy?” 

“Oh yeah.” 


“If we were in East L.A., would we be 
talking?” 

He smiles. Hangs his head. Chuckles. 

“Oh no.” 

Barajas says, “In my case, 1 didn't 
shoot anybody. Nothing like that. Okay, 
I may have shot a car.” 

They burst out laughing. And 
Rebolledo stares at his hands. Their 
dress uniforms hang on the wall, care- 
fully pressed. 

For Big Pac-Man, it started with party- 
ing. He was a fiery kid, a quick-fisted so- 
cial butterfly from a neighborhood ruled 
by gang law. Barajas popped in and 
out of high school, finally enlisting and 
reenlisting in the Army. He started to 
straighten out, snaring a 1997 certificate 
of achievement for providing “outstand- 
ing medical support to the 82nd Signal 
Battalion during immunization day.” By 
1998 there was a Good Conduct Medal 
for “exemplary behavior, efficiency 
and fidelity in active federal service” 
and by 1999 the Army Commendation 
Medal for meritorious service to Charlie 
Company, 307th Forward Support 
Battalion. It said his “outstanding per- 
formance reflects great credit upon him- 
self.” Barajas was honorably discharged. 

But home (continued on page 200) 


“I like ‘em low and inside...!” 


в BREWING 


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As if Red Rooster Harlem weren’t 
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It's modern, yet it identifies, as beverage 
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ginger, Chivas and ginger beer make a 
modern take on the Moscow mule. 


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ESSEX, SEATTLE 


Owners Molly Wiz- 
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with Pettit opened 
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Their new bar em- 
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Cheers to DIY. 


we 


$ You can thank 
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which is showing 
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* &inch strip 
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* вр. sugar 

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* Two bartenders 
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and loosened the 
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tie (no more house 
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without stuffiness. 
Order a Tommy's 
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BEI] per 

® Muddle the 
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A bar at a youth hostel in Miami: Must be 
sketchy, right? Not when the hostel is haute 
and its bar was created by the cocktail consul- 
tancy Bar Lab. The drinks have playful names 
(Bath Salt Zombie, Nobody F*#ks With Jesus) 
and are concocted using herbs from the on- 
site garden. The interior brims with old-timey 
touches, but the clientele prefers to swig by the 
swimming pool or over a game of Ping-Pong. 


“| Best Bar 
for Oddball 


Esoteric liquors, delicious drinks. 


rare beers and He’s currently 
niche wines pro- into Stoupakis 
vide the punch Homericon 

at this experi- Mastiha, a Greek 
mental bar on a liqueur made 
funky Uptown from mastic resin. 
block. Owner It appears in a 
Neal Boden- cocktail called 
heimer loves to Magic Tree, 

push the limits which has become 
while delivering a house favorite. 


(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 


Best Reason to.Give 


THE ORIGINAL OKRA CHARITY 
SALOON, HOUSTON 


Run by restaurant- organizations and 
and-bar charity social causes. Each 
OKRA (Organized drink buys a vote 
Kollaboration on that can be cast in 
Restaurant Affairs), favor of one of four 
this joint gives all nominated charities. 
its proceeds to an Drinking has never 
evolving list of local felt so virtuous. 


TRICK DOG, 
SAN 
FRANCISCO 


Best Waiting Room 


THE WHEY BAR, PORTLAND 


m gvintags * This offshoot of have a drink while rustic-chic decor 

warehouse in the perennially waiting for their and carefully crafted 

the Mission Dis- thronged Argentine- tables. The space cocktails such as 

trict, bartenders inspired restaurant has since become La Yapa, made with 

mix +. virtual Ox was conceived as а destination in its rye, lemon juice and 
a spot for patrons to own right, with a Fernet Branca. 


rainbow of con- ' 
coctions inspired ' QUU GU I I C I UC 
by the Pantone ' 

color wheel. 
You order off à 


fanned stack of | Best Place to Get 


cards designed ' 3 3 
т | Philosophical 


samples. The | About Potables 


sage-colored 


BAT ji RR PCR rere 
(Tequila Ocho ; 

reposado, Cam- It's reservations only at this bar below 
pari, grapefruit, | the two-Michelin-starred Atera. The chef, 
lime, egg white, : forager Matthew Lightner, offers will- 
cinnamon) is fully unusual locavore dishes and a drinks 
a favorite, but menu to match. You may not recognize a 
be prepared to ; martini of gin, beet, white cardamom and 
drink standing a hardy shrub called rue. But you will have 
up-Trick Dogis a mind-blowing woodsy adventure from 


always packed. the comfort of your leather chair. 


Best Place to, Give St our Best Shot 


NEAT, GLENDALE, CALIFORNIA 


y 


If ever there were midcentury throw- dash of rosemary 

a time and place to back bar there are no syrup brings out the 
do a foam-topped, menus, just skilled botanicals in a gin on 
sphericalized, gently bartenders who know ісе. With all spirits 
misted interpretive the 250 bottles of served (take a wild 
cocktail dance, it is top-shelf booze on the guess) neat or paired 
not nor will it ever wall well. A sidecar with fresh juice or 

be during operat- of fresh ginger and house-made syrups, 
ing hours at Neat. lemon will balance it's easy to see what 
At this streamlined out a deep rye. A the fuss is about. 


CGU E GL GG 


THE VARNISH, 
LOS ANGELES 


$ Civil 
> 

Best Science 

> e 
Project 

00000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 | Best Reason to Read 

The only piece of equipment Booker and Dax | | _SUGAR HOUSE, DETROIT 5 | "Phe Bramble 
seems to be missing is a flux capacitor. Liquid ' Ф ' 
nitrogen chills glasses. A rotary evaporator distills E" 
* We tend to keep our supplemented season- +: 


ingredients into essential oils. Bartenders plunge drinking and think- ally with an additional | | 


а 1,500-degree red-hot poker into cocktails to ing separate. But 20 or so original drinks, 
caramelize sugars just before serving. There’s a ¦ the 21-раде menu at such as the Knackery, a 
science to taking old standbys back to the future. ‚ this ER ta ina nie Й 
2 NEC А 2 a masterpiece, WI peach number, an 
Take the hood-famous gin and juice: Grapefruit 100-plus cocktails, ihe аБаБ cih- 
juice is spun through a centrifuge for clarification, ¦ punches, spirits, beers патопу Forager's 1 
mixed with gin and carbonated to perfection. and wines. This beast is old fashioned. 


(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 


Best Reason to 
Use a Phone 
Booth 


PDT, NEW YORK ` 


* Before countless pseudo- H as 
speakeasies opened across the (er 

country, there was PDT (which 

stands for “please don't tell”) 

Step inside the phone booth at 

Crif Dogs on St. Marks Place, 

pick up the receiver and ask to 

be let in. If there's an open seat 

in this civilized subterranean s 
speakeasy-style bar, prepare to ” / 
be blown away by the highest 

level of vintage and modern 

craft cocktails 


Best Reason to 
Book a Room 
in Portland 


The bar in Morgenthaler does 
Clyde Common the whole local arti- 
restaurant, at the sanal thing without 
úber-cool Ace making it seem 
Hotel, is refresh- precious. The cock- 
ingly un-Portland tail menu is smart 
(little flannel, no and satisfying. So 


taxidermy). This is Morgenthaler's 
isthe home ofthe response to 
barrel-aged cocktail requests such 

(a drink mellowed as “Give me 

in an oak cask). something tart 

It is also where made with gin.” 
bartender Jeffrey Trust him. 


(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 


Best Prohibition ofoke 


BILLY SUNDAY, CHICAGO 


* Named after temperance preacher William 
Ashley “Billy” Sunday, this Logan Square 
bar is like a church devoted to the heavenly 
realities of post-Prohibition America: Rare 
ingredients including wormwood and 
ambergris make their way into exquisitely 
balanced cocktails. And the kitchen turns 
out bar food of the highest order: pickled 
sardines, steak tartare and rabbit pot pie. 


Best Place to, Get Crafty | 


FATHER'S OFFICE, LOS ANGELES 


е L.A.'s original for its spacious in the United States. 
craft-beer mecca patio and long, The house burger is 
is still the place to sleek bar tricked out perfect beer food 
beat. We prefer the with an array of taps and justly regarded 
newer, Culver City loaded with some of as one of the finest 
location (pictured) the best microbrews in town. 


((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 


Best High- 
Altitude Bar 


Best One-Gwo Punch 


Situated in a former , . 
bank in the Wheeler ' PARLOUR, MINNEAPOLIS , 
Opera House, this bar has 
a charming historic feel. 

Drinks are often served ' 

from vintage barware 1 oI 

collected by “lead libation 

liaison” Joshua-Peter 

Smith, who excels at in- 

venting custom cocktails ' г up: D 

for guests. The 26-page ' downstairs restaurant-bar the nigh 
menu has a section for ' 

“group decision” punch ' зад 

bowls and offers more ' en) 1970 Е ке À 
than 70 whiskeys. ' Ly ) 2 g a 1d- 


“How much would you charge for listening to me talk dirty?” 


[ШҮ VERAS AGO 7% THE kb OPEN THE DOOR FOR ACTION FLICHS. 
BUT BEHIND THE SCENES, THE MOVIE THAT MADE BRUCE LEE А SUPERSTAR МАЗ 
NERNLF DERAILED BY CLASHES— BOTH CULTURAL AND PHYSICAL. f/ % TRACES 
THE MANING OF A HUNG FU CLASSIC FROM KOLLYWOOD ТО HONG HONG 


BY MATTHEW POLLY $ ILLUSTRATION BY GLUEHIT 


In August 1973 two teams of Chinese 
lion dancers paraded down Holly- 
wood Boulevard toward Grauman's 
Chinese Theatre for the premiere of 
Enter the Dragon. The raucous crowd, 
which had begun to form the night 
before, wrapped around the block. 
“Riding in the back of the limousine, I 
saw lines and lines of people, and the 
lines didn’t end,” remembered John 
Saxon, who plays the movie’s roguish 
gambler, Roper. “I asked my driver, 
What's going on?’ and he said, That's 
your movie.” " 

Saxon wasn't the only one sucker- 
punched by Enter the Dragon's success. 


"JUI HELLY SCREWED 
EVERYTHING THAT MOVED 
IN HONG: HONE. HE ENDED 
IP IN THE HOSPITAL. 


Despite the film being initially labeled 
as low budget and ultraviolent—a Chi- 
nese kung fu action flick with American 
production values—its explosive popu- 
larity launched in the West a new genre 
that continues to thrive, as evidenced 
by The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hid- 
den Dragon; Kill Bill and The Man With 
the Iron Fists, among other films. Enter 
the Dragon changed how action movies 
could be made, who could star in them 


2: Ñ 


and how our heroes fought. Gone was 
the John Wayne punch. After Enter the 
Dragon we required every action star— 
from Batman to Sherlock Holmes, from 
Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon to Brad 
Pitt in Fight Club—to be a martial arts 
master, as skilled with his feet as he is 
with his fists. 

Even New York critics, who wrung 
their hands at Enter the Dragon's violence, 
sensed the film's power. The New York 
Times declared, “The picture is expertly 

made and well meshed; it moves 
like lightning and brims with 
color. It is also the most savagely 


masculine fantasy, but I have to admit 
that deep down in the most shadowy 
recesses of my subconscious the fantasy 
struck a responsive chord.” 

Enter the Dragon struck a respon- 
sive chord across the globe. Made for 
a minuscule $850,000, it would gross 
$90 million worldwide in 1973 and go on 
to earn an estimated $350 million over 
the next 40 years, including profits from 
a recently released two-disc Blu-ray edi- 
tion. Producer Fred Weintraub likes to 
joke that the movie was so profitable the 
studio even had to pay him. Screenwriter 
Michael Allin recalls, “Warner’s lawyer 
sent me a letter saying, “The picture 
will be well into profit'—and here's the 
phrase I Іоуе— Бу anybody's formula.’ 
The picture made so much money they 
could not sweep it under the rug. The 
rug had too big a bulge.” 

For all the principals involved in 
making the movie, however, its over- 


“BRUCE DID А HOP SHIP AND A JUMP ANO BLASTED 
INTO THE SHIELD. | WENT FLYING BACH AND LANDED 
IN A CHAIR. WHICH SHATTERED. I MAS IN SHOCK 


murderous and numbing hand-hacker 
(not a gun in it) you will ever see any- 
where.” In The Village Voice, William 
Paul confessed, “In my most civilized, 
right-thinking frame of mind, P'd like to 
dismiss the film as abhorrently grotesque 


whelming critical and commercial success 
was bittersweet, because the person most 
crucial to its triumph was absent. Bruce 
Lee, the movie’s star, had died the pre- 
vious month at the age of 32, never 
witnessing the (continued on page 168) 


* 


RY Y 


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A 


SECRET 


—— 


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УЗ 
x y 
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БА 


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a 


ust over there,” said the 
tall, dreary-looking man 
in the raincoat, gray hair 
topping his deep-set eyes 
and long face. He was 
standing just west of the 
Brandenburg Gate, beneath Berlin's 
overcast sky, his finger pointing at some- 
thing. “It was 1954,” he added, but that 
was all you could hear. Following in the 
Man’s wake was an amorphous mob 
that included a dozen photographers, 
American and German, snapping away 
on their $7,000 Canon 1D Xs. Others 
were Foreign Service Officers, or FSOs, 
divisible into three subspecies: the pony- 
tailed sci-fi nerds, who talked your ear 
off on the van ride from the airport; the 
slim-fit Thomas Pink metrosexuals, who 
scarcely looked at you while massag- 
ing their iPhones; and the liver-spotted 
lifers, who got their starts under Jimmy 
Carter and swore this would be their last 
posting. Also in tow were Diplomatic Se- 
curity officers, their eyes hidden behind 
aviator shades as they muttered into 
miniaturized microphones, and their 
German counterparts, ripped dudes in 
pea-green vests with poLızeı emblazoned 
across their backs. 

Traveling press walks in the street! Herd- 
ing us like cats was the State Depart- 
ment's Ashley Yehl, a brown-haired 
Texan, 27 and already a veteran of VIP 
trips to 99 countries. Yehl was enjoin- 
ing the American reporters from even 
thinking about walking on the cobble- 
stones where the Man was leading the 
mob along a lordly half inch above the 
rest of us. Suddenly the Man—John 
Forbes Kerry, America’s 68th secretary 
of state—resumed his slow march across 
the Pariser Platz, and the mob slowly fol- 
lowed. Kerry was headed for the prime 


John Kerry is no mere diplomat traveling the globe to 
advance America’s interests. He's a scholar, a showman, a 
salesman, a target, an enemy and a man who's finding that 
being secretary of state might be an impossible job 


kk 
BY JAMES ROSEN 


Illustrations by Victor Juhasz 


real estate just beside the gate that is 

home to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. 
Even amid the din, reporters under- 

stood Kerry’s reference to 1954. We 

called it the Bicycle Story. Kerry 

was 10 years old, the son of an 

American lawyer and FSO then 

serving as a legal advisor to the 

high commissioner of Ger- 

many. Clutching his diplo- 

matic passport, the young 

Kerry, four-foot-11, 

mischievously pedaled 

through the Bran- 

denburg Gate and a 

checkpoint, where 

he got an eyeful 7 


of how the other ; до) 

half lived in what was A 
then, at the height of the 20 
Cold War, called East Berlin. 

“Ш noticed very quickly how dark ч 


and unpopulated and sort of unhappy 
people looked,” Kerry told the embassy 
staffers. After the wayward boy had ap- 
prised his father of his travels, the elder 
Kerry yelled his head off—"You could 
have been an international incident! I 
could have lost my job!"—grounded the 
kid and yanked his passport. 

We had all heard the Bicycle Story 
multiple times by this point. The day 
before, at a news conference in London 
with British foreign secretary William 
Hague—at which the five-foot-10 and 
balding Hague, to reach height parity 
with the six-foot-four Kerry, had to stand 
on a concealed box—the secretary un- 
spooled a different but similar yarn, this 
time about his having gotten lost, as a 
child, in the London Zoo. “I want to thank 
somebody for finding me," he joked. 
The bonhomie continued when Kerry 
told Hague, "This day, I must say, was 


~ 


made much 
easier. It was impossible for 
me to get lost, Mr. Secretary. Thank you.” 
These anecdotes were meant to be 
endearing: a conjuring of bygone child- 
hood innocence amid the jangly nerves 
of the Cold War and a reminder to all 
listeners, in every venue, that Kerry was 
the first child of an FSO to lead the State 
Department. Surely it was proper for 
the new secretary to bring along three 
dozen policy aides and FSOs, a small 
battalion of photographers and the CBS 
News pool crew, plus the traveling press 
and all the DS agents and stern-faced 
Polizei in order that this august event, 
this perfectly poignant moment, should 
be recorded for posterity, no? 


91 


92 


Except that the secretary had already 
performed this exercise the night be- 
fore, when he had bolted from Ber- 
lin’s Hotel Adlon—where visitors pay 
$19,500 a night to stay in the Royal 
Suite (“host to political leaders and 
rock stars”)—and taken a handful of 
aides to do the same thing: walk to the 
Brandenburg Gate and wistfully recall 
the Bicycle Story. Kerry’s staff had even 
tweeted a photograph of it. So the pres- 
ence the following morning of the mob 
was necessary solely to breathe oxy- 
gen into a pseudo-event, a photo op in 
which John Kerry, that act we 
in the press have known for 
years, feigned nostalgia. 

It was a fitting prelude to 
the steeper plunge into unre- 
ality that awaited us. Germa- 
ny was the second leg of our 
11-дау trek to 10 European 
and Middle Eastern coun- 
tries, a grueling marathon that 
marked Kerry’s first overseas 
trip as America’s top diplomat. 
As a White House and State 
Department correspondent for 
Fox News, I had logged hun- 
dreds of thousands of miles 
on similar trips, accompanying 
presidents and vice presidents, 
secretaries of state and defense, 
over the preceding decade. But 
this time was different. Never 
before had the world seemed so 
in flux and the American econ- 
omy so hobbled by self-inflicted 
wounds. This toxic cocktail of 
weakness at home and upheav- 
al abroad—the Arab Spring, the 
Syrian civil war, Iran’s march 
toward nuclear weapons, the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, law- 
lessness in Afghanistan and 
Pakistan—would make anxiety 
and frustration our constant 
traveling companions. As John 
Kerry and I were to learn to- 
gether, it's just not a fun time to 
be secretary of state. 


As chairman of the Senate Foreign Re- 
lations Committee the previous four 
years, Kerry had roamed the globe as an 
ex officio envoy on behalf of President 
Obama. He met with implacable dicta- 
tors, such as Bashar al-Assad of Syria, 
and prickly allies, such as Hamid Kar- 
zai of Afghanistan. The chairmanship 
capped Kerry's nearly three decades in 
the Senate, which in turn followed his 
decorated service in Vietnam and cel- 
ebrated conversion to leader of Vietnam 
Veterans Against the War. The Man, in 
short, knew his way around the world. Of 
the 40 leaders he met with on this trip— 
kings, presidents, prime ministers, for- 
eign ministers—all but one he had met 
before. "I've known him for so long,” the 
U.S. ambassador in one of the European 


nations could be overheard telling a se- 
nior Kerry aide. “And I like him. He's bet- 
ter at this meaning diplomacy—*than 
the president, in some ways.” 

Kerry had maintained a constant pres- 
ence in American political life. He intro- 
duced John Lennon to antiwar crowds, 
led the early congressional investigations 
into Iran-contra, spent decades as Massa- 
chusetts's junior senator, laboring in the 
ever-expanding shadow of Ted Kennedy. 
But of all Kerry's guises, the one most fa- 
miliar to Americans in the 21st century 
is, let's face it, that of loser—loser of the 


As John Kerry and I were to 
learn together, it’s just not a fun 
time to be secretary of state. 


2004 presidential election, the man who 
failed to oust George W. Bush from the 
White House, another in a long line of 
Democratic nominees painted, justly or 
unjustly, as soft, weak, indecisive: “I was 
for it before I was against it.” What few 
remember about 2004, however, is that if 
60,000 Ohioans had gone the other way, 
President Kerry would have stretched 
out those long legs in the Oval Office. 

As it happened, Kerry succeeded at 
State another well-known loser: Hillary 
Clinton, vanquished in the 2008 Demo- 
cratic primaries by Barack Obama. Ex- 
cept no one sees Clinton that way. She 
left Foggy Bottom with record approval 
ratings, as well positioned today for the 
Democratic primaries of 2016 as she 
stood back in 2005, after Kerry’s de- 
feat at the hands of Bush, for the 2008 
contest. And while Clinton’s record as 


secretary is far from great—she logged 
the most miles and countries, yes, but 
no major peace accords or foreign- 
policy doctrines bear her name, and the 
threats posed by Iran, North Korea and 
Al Qaeda’s evil stepchildren loom larger 
today than four years ago—her cautious, 
lawyerly demeanor, her focus on “safe” 
issues such as women's empowerment 
and the veneration of the Washington 
intelligentsia make it common to hear 
the former first lady described as a “rock 
star” on the world stage: an exalted 
status that Kerry, whose rhetoric leans 
toward unlistenable, could 
never hope to match. “I have,” 
he quipped on his first day on 
the job, “big heels to fill.” 

For Kerry's aides, some im- 
ported from the Senate, others 
inherited from Clinton, the 
first order of business was to 
brand the new secretary's in- 
teractions with overseas audi- 
ences. Clinton's press wizard, 
the roguish Philippe Reines, 
had combined “town hall” and 
“interview” to dub Clinton's 
road shows “townterviews,” 
a clumsy coinage that never 
stuck. At Base Camp, a hipster 
coffee bar in downtown Berlin 
where Kerry was to hold his 
first Q&A with young foreign- 
ers, a snazzy banner ginned 
up by embassy employees the 
day before our arrival signaled 
the path Kerry's communica- 
tions team had chosen. YOUTH 
CONNECT: BERLIN it read, with 
the Twitter logo and the in- 
scriptions “#YouthConnect” 
and “#SecKerry.” The event 
was partially sponsored by 
Facebook. So that was the tick- 
et: Sixty-nine-year-old John 
Kerry was to be repackaged as 
an avatar of the digital age. 

FSOs had spent two days 
scouring Berlin for just the 
right venue. Told that the 
Youth Connect event seemed “Clin- 
tonesque,” an FSO confided, “I think 
that’s what they’re trying for.” Dotting 
the wall behind Kerry were electronic 
scoreboards, each blaring a one-word 
slogan such as INNOVATE Or BOTSCHAFT 
(“message”), the lot of them linked by an 
ostentatious network of black cables that 
underscored the connectivity theme. 
The moderator was German TV per- 
sonality Cherno Jobatey, a smiley-faced 
man with dark wavy hair, dark blazer, 
dark shirt, dark jeans and dark Chuck 
Taylors. Kerry, who has a gift for foreign 
languages—he demonstrated fluency in 
at least three on the trip—delighted the 
students with some German off the top. 
"Sehr gut, danke. Alles gut. Deine Schuhe 
sind fantastisch, ja?" (“Very good, thank 
you. All is good. Your shoes are fan- 
tastic, yes?") (continued on page 190) 


“Гое forgotten more about blow jobs than you'll ever know.” 


Karen Kounrouzan 


ot and pre 


Warning: The following images are so torrid, the 
pages may burn your fingers. Proceed with caution. 
You are marveling at the backside of Brazilian 
bombshell Karen Kounrouzan, whom we photo- 
graphed on the beach in celebration of summer 
2013. With tanned skin and indescribable curves, 
Karen is truly a fantasy come to life. Some things 
you might want to know about the 23-year-old: She 
loves pasta and wine, the music of Michael Bublé 
and an afternoon with her toes in the sand. She 
says this pictorial marks the first time she ever went 
totally nude on the beach. Do you feel your temper- 
ature rising? We can almost hear the sizzle. 


zr Marlon "T ع‎ 
у Marlos Bakker 


BY TODD PARKER 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYLAN PERRY 


an you toss me that 
blowtorch?” Copper 
sheets have been bent 
and riveted into a 
perfect cylinder, and 
Michael is making a 
series of cuts with a pair 
of clippers. After the cut segments 
have been bent around the base of 
the cylinder, they'll be soldered down, 
and the foundation of a genuine 
moonshine pot still will be in place. 
"This thing is fucking busted," Michael 
says after repeated attempts to fire it 


up with a Bic lighter. “Can you run to 
the hardware store up the road and 
see if they have another one?" 

If sliding along a mud road in my 
SUV, blaring Creedence, isn't enough 
to remind me I'm in the deep, dirty 
South, the hardware store certainly is. 
The lady at the register greets me in 
true Southern fashion with a heartfelt 
"What you need, babe?" and takes 
my gaze away from the case of large 
fuck-off knives for sale. The store also 
sells stockpots big enough to hold 20 
chickens, dog food by the pound and 


102 


crickets by the dozen. “What you need this for?” 
she asks. “Just lighting a fire,” I reply, knowing 
I'm heading back to chronicle activities that could 
land a man in prison for up to five years. 

The word moonshine evokes images of 
backwoods rednecks spitting tobacco off a rickety 
front porch, producing their own booze either 
because they can’t afford to buy it or because 
the “local” liquor store is a two-hour drive on a 
two-lane highway. But as I roll up amuddy road 
to a tranquil farm in eastern Louisiana, those 
antiquated clichés disappear. No, there is no 
menacing Confederate flag, no major appliances 
strewn across the lawn, no banjo-strumming 
kid with a chromosomal disorder. Instead, two 
Renaissance men balancing a tattooed-and- 
bearded edge with a softer, creative side (one is 
an artist, the other a writer) emerge, waving me 
into their world—a world where simple supplies 
such as copper and corn combine with fire 
and air to produce one of the smoothest, most 
powerful liquors anywhere. 

Homemade hooch has been produced for 
hundreds of years in America, but a new breed 
of experts is taking it to another level. Just as 
menus at popular restaurants boast farm-to-table 
food, moonshine, or white whiskey, is bellying 
up to bars both rustic and refined. And we're 
not talking about the recent arrival of the many 
fully legal, federally approved brands sold in 
liquor stores. This is the real renegade deal. 

Any watering hole worth a damn has a bottle 


The art of artisanal 
moonshine begins: 
with expert metal- 
working skills. 


THE POT 5TILb 


There are several ways to construct a still, but the pot-still method has been used for hundreds of 
years and will deliver smooth, clean moonshine for as long as you have the stones to drink it. Like real 
barbecue, this is no rush job. Here's how the shiners do it. (Needless to say, don't try this at home.) 


COPPER IS KEY 

Copper conducts heat 
rapidly and evenly, is 
bacteria resistant, lasts 
forever, is easy to manip- 
ulate and looks gorgeous. 
Soldering, blowtorching 
and riveting skills are 
essential. To build the 
boiler tube, start with a 
three-by-five-foot copper 
sheet. Bend it around to 
form a tube, overlapping 
the ends by two inches. 
Drill rivet holes through 
the overlapping section 
one inch apart. Rivet and 
solder the edges together 
to make it airtight. 


е 


BUILD THE BOTTOM 
Leak-proofing is crucial. 
Cut a copper circle an 
inch and a half larger 

in diameter than your 
riveted tube. Clip a series 
of three-quarter-inch cuts 
one to two inches apart 
around the edge of the 
circle. Bend the segments 
up and around the bottom 
edge of the boiler tube. 
Solder each segment to 
the bottom of the tube to 
form an airtight base. Test 
the tube by filling it with 
water. If there are leaks, 
go back and solder until 
there are none. 


CONE HEAD 

Make the top of the boiler 
by cutting copper into a 
cone shape. The top of 
the cone should be small 
enough to fit an elbow 
joint tightly. Use card- 
board templates to size 
the cone so it hangs over 
the top of your boiler tube 
by about an inch. Use the 
same riveting method you 
used on the boiler tube, 
overlapping the edges, 
riveting and then solder- 
ing. Turn the entire tube 
upside down and solder 
the top of the tube to the 
bottom of the cone. 


ELBOW GREASE 

Insert a copper elbow joint 
into the top of the cone. 

If it doesn't fit perfectly, 
don't panic; simply cut a 
copper ring to cover gaps 
and solder it to the elbow 


and cone. (Patch leaks later : 


with a trick using oatmeal; 
see “Shine On.”) Solder 

an 18- to 24-inch copper 
tube to the elbow. In this 
tube, insert the end of a 
thin spiral copper tube, or 
worm, and solder together. 
Place the free end of the 
worm in a large barrel or 
metal trash can (this will be 
the cooling barrel). 


COOL DOWN 

Drill a hole in the cooling 
barrel one foot up from 
the bottom and feed the 
end of the worm through 
it to form a spout. Either 
solder or use cork to seal 
around the spout. 


Top row: the illicit elixir; 
smoked ribs fuel the moon- 
shiners; inspecting the boiler's 
cone. Middle row: the artist 

at rest; chickens, oblivious to 
the work at hand (and their 
destiny in the smokehouse); 
menacing sculpture decorates 
the barn. Bottom row: testing 
the alcohol level of the mash; 
corn, the essential ingredient; 
let the boiling begin. 


UW ( REAM MEAL 


FOR 


stashed somewhere. Getting access to that bottle 
is a different story. Not only is it hard to find, but 
bartenders treat it like a secret treasure. You can't 
just order it from your local liquor distributor. 
Like rare strains of weed or a vintage French 
burgundy, modern moonshine is held onto by a 
secret society of enthusiasts who share it only with 
their most trusted confidants. When I revealed 
my mission to three of the most renowned cocktail 
experts in the country, each offered to pay for a 
taste. The best offer was a vintage motorcycle if I 
could deliver three gallons. 

If Michael is the MacGyver of the two, 
torching and riveting his way through the still's 
construction, Dave is the Thomas Keller, cooking 
the moonshine. (Names have been changed to 
protect their identities.) Eyeing a mix of cornmeal, 


SHINE : 
ON 


A TRIED-AND-TRUE 
RECIPE FOR REAL-DEAL 
MOONSHINE 


corn sugar, yeast and water, Dave has clearly 
done this before. His brother Jimmy, visiting from 
Chicago, looks on, chain-smoking Winstons and 
adding his two cents on the recipe. Together they 
resemble a Southern rock band that's been on 
the road a few weeks too long. After seven hours 
the still is complete. Three days of fermenting in 
a 55-gallon food-grade drum has created enough 
mash to begin cooking. The brothers pour 20 
gallons of mash into the boiler. “You give that 
leftover mash to the pigs and they get fucking 
wasted," Dave claims. In 10 hours we'll have a 
gallon of 160-proof moonshine. 

Gathered in a woodshed that Dave built with 
his bare hands and decorated with his artwork, 
they start a fire directly beneath the still. The 
combination of highly flammable alcohol and dry 


Above: The aroma of wood 
smoke perfumes the air as 
the moonshiners build their 
still. Opposite page, from top: 
threading the worm into the 
cooling barrel; sketching out 
the process; a .22-caliber rifle; 
making the oatmeal seal that 
will cook onto the still and 
stop leaks; the finished prod- 
uct in all its 160-proof glory. 


wood makes me more nervous than does Dave’s 
“music box” fashioned out of an old Ouija board 
and a crucifix (it plays the theme to Love Story 
when you turn Jesus a few times). Three cases 
ofbeer later, we have enough to sample. “Get in 
there,” Michael says, handing me a mason jar. 
The vapors burn my nose. Bracing for impact, I 
knock back a full shot. A rush smacks me upside 


my head even before it hits my stomach. It's good. 


Very good. Strong, yes, but rich and rounded 
and slightly sweet from the corn. Everyone takes 
a turn, exchanging handshakes and backslaps as 
if we had just won the Super Bowl of booze. 

After a solid three hours of drinking, a 
-22-caliber rifle makes an appearance. Michael 
and Jimmy take turns shooting at two empty 
beer cans that have been placed about 50 yards 
down a trail leading into the woods. Michael 
rocks back and forth, trying to regain his 
composure after an afternoon of sampling his 
wares. He misses on two attempts. "I've seen 
him take the head off a squirrel from twice as far 
as this," Dave claims. “But he's way too fucked- 
up now to hit those." Michael turns around and 
stares at him, channeling his inner Cool Hand 
Luke. Somehow he pulls his shit together, takes 
out both cans with two shots, then hands Dave 
the rifle and grabs the mason jar. 

My head is spinning from the combination 
of gunfire and too many pulls on the jar. I see 
a sedan pull up the road but stop because of a 
muddy pond that has formed. Two old ladies 
emerge. They heard roosters crowing and want 
to know if we have any eggs to sell. Michael and 
Jimmy quickly defuse the situation by sweet- 
talking the women and giving them a tour of the 
garden. Dave walks double-time to the woodshed 
to guard the still. After a tense half hour, the 
women drive off. While Dave wipes the sweat 
from his forehead, Jimmy walks in and grabs 
the jar, taking a long drink and lighting another 
smoke. "They're gone, man," Jimmy says. “You 
can peel off that paranoia for now." 


HOW TO 


FIND 
SOME 
SHINE 


Finding moonshine— 
real moonshine—is 
like picking up a 
woman: You need to 
be cool, convincing 
and confident. Start 
at a cocktail-centric 
bar. Take a seat and 
chat up the bartender. 
Talk about liquor, 
bitters, wines, beer— 
anything that shows 
you’re in the know 
about booze. When 
you've established 
a rapport, slip in a 
story—true or not— 
about how you were in 
Alabama, Texas, New 
Orleans or Nashville 
and came across 
some moonshine. 
Compare it to grappa 
on steroids. Odds 
are the bartender 
will reciprocate with 
a story of his or her 
own. No one likes to 
talk about booze more 
than a knowledgeable 
bartender. Once 
you're at this point, it’s 
only a matter of time 
before they’re pulling 
out a jar or pointing 


you to another bar that 


has the real shit. 


After what he diseovered on the train, Riley 
would have to reconsider the literary laurels 


f you'd happened to spot Riley on the 

train that afternoon, your eyes drift- 
ing up momentarily from your Black- 
Berry, iPod or other handheld device, 
you probably wouldn't have made much 
of him. He was in his 50s then, taller 
than average, thinner than average, with 
a tendency to hunch inside the black 
leather coat he affected (knee-length, of 
a style 30 years out of date, replete with 
once-shining buckles, zip- 
pers and studs in the shape 
of miniature starbursts) and 
hair that would have been 
gray or even white but for the 
providence of the Clairol cor- 
poration. He'd applied a mixture called 
Chátain Moyen in the shower just that 
morning, expecting, as the label prom- 
ised, medium brown but getting instead 
something between the color of a new 
penny and a jar of marinara sauce. In 
any case, he was oblivious. He had his 
head down, studying the stained type- 
script of his generic acceptance speech, 
abbreviating in the left-hand margin the 
title of the award he was now on his way 
to receive, though he already had it by 
heart: the Marlbane Manchester Musser 
Award in Regional Depiction from the 
Greater Stuyvesant Area Chamber of 
Commerce and Associated Libraries. He 


T.C. Boyle 


just didn't want any slipups, that was all. 
Especially if alcohol was involved. And 
alcohol was always involved. 

Нед left Buffalo at 7:40 K. M. and ex- 
pected to be in Albany by two—at least 
that was what the Amtrak timetable 
proposed, and whether or not Amtrak 
would deliver was beyond his control. 
In Albany he was to be met by Donna 
Trumpeter, of the Greater Stuyvesant 
Women's Service Club, who 
would drive him in her own 
personal blue-black SUV the 
remaining 48.5 miles to the 
town itself. There would be 
a dinner, served either in the 
town hall or in a school cafeteria gussied 
up with crepe paper and a banner, he 
would give his speech and read a passage 
from his latest novel, Maggie of the Farm, 
accept a plaque and a check for $250 
and drink as much scotch as was hu- 
manly possible before he was presented 
at the local Holiday Inn for a lukewarm 
shower, a stab at sleep and, in the morn- 
ing, acidic coffee and rubberized waflles, 
after which Donna Trumpeter or one 
of her compatriots would return him to 
the train station so he could reverse the 
journey he was now undertaking. 

“Why do you even bother?” his third 
wife, Caroline, (continued on page 185) 


BY BRANTLEY BARDIN 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LORENZO AGIUS 


RMIE 


V THE NEW LONE RANGER TALKS BIG MACS AND VESPAS AND 
V TELLS HOW TO TIE ANYONE—INCLUDING HIS WIFE—IN KNOTS 


— QI — 


PLAYBOY: You're playing the lead in The Lone Ranger, 
which debuted 80 years ago, on radio. You're 26. Were 
you even aware of the character when you were a kid? 
HAMMER: My dad called me kemo sabe when I was 

a kid. I also remember hearing Lone Ranger jokes, 
including one that goes like this: The Lone Ranger and 
Tonto are riding through the desert, going over dune 
after dune and getting a little lost. They go over one 
last dune and all of a sudden there are Indian braves 


all around the top, completely circling them. The Lone 
Ranger panics, looks at Tonto and says, “Tonto, we're 
surrounded! What do we do?" Tonto goes, “What do 
you mean by ‘we,’ white man?" and runs away. 


— 02 — 


PLAYBOY: Let's talk Johnny Depp. He plays Tonto, 
and his interpretation of the role is reportedly entirely 
different from the 1950s television incarnation. 


HAMMER: In the old TV series, Tonto 
was really just the Lone Ranger’s slave. 
The Lone Ranger would say, “Tonto, 
go tell people this or that,” and Tonto 
would say, “Me do.” In our movie 
Tonto is a Comanche who considers 
himself one of the last spirit warriors, 
and the Lone Ranger is at first a dis- 


trict attorney who has this Lockean idea 


of bringing about justice in the West 
with discussions, not guns. But then 
he's ambushed and shot. Tonto nurses 
him back to health and explains that 
maybe the world doesn't work quite 
the way he thinks it does. What's funny 
and part of the rub between Tonto and 
the Lone Ranger in our movie is that 
even though my character is educated 
and believes people should treat one 
another justly, he still looks at Tonto 

as if to say, “Oh, pay him no mind; 

he's just an Indian.” But then you see 
Tonto be like, “You have no idea what 
you're talking about,” and sure as shit, 
Tonto's right. 


PLAYBOY: We heard Depp placed a 

scorpion in his mouth during the shoot. 

Is that true? 

HAMMER: That was recreational on 

his part, and I still don't understand 
110 it. We had these scorpion handlers on 


I HAVE A GUILTY, 
ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP 
WITH MCDONALD’S. 


set for this freak-show kind of scene. 
Now, these scorpions were so mas- 

sive that you'd barely be able to fit one 
in a cereal bowl. After the scene, we 
went to check out the dudes who han- 
dle them, and one of the handlers just 
opened his mouth and one of the scor- 
pions crawled out. I was like, “Okay, 
I'm good!" and walked the hell away. 
But Johnny said, "I want to try that!" 
and just shoved it into his mouth. He's 
a total character—a bohemian and an 
artist in the truest sense. 


PLAYBOY: Did you find putting on the 
Lone Ranger mask addictive while you 
were filming? It was such a narcotic to 
Clayton Moore, the 1950s TV actor who 
played him, that after the show ended 


he fought lawsuits that attempted to 
deny him the right to wear it for per- 
sonal appearances. 

HAMMER: Let's just say I kept one. 
[chuckles] And that my wife loves it. 


PLAYBOY: You're a guy who has gone 
on record saying he's obsessed with 
tying knots and who often carries a 
rope and a knot guide with him wher- 
ever he goes. Now we're hearing about 
a mask. Is there anything we need to 
know about your sex life? 

HAMMER: Well, if you're married to 
a feminist [journalist, restaurateur and 
actress Elizabeth Chambers] as I am, 
then it's.... I don't know how much we 
can put here without my parents being 
embarrassed, (continued on page 173) 


“Mind if I ask what you’re using for bait?” 


111 


love the freedom and independence of 
driving,” says Miss July Alyssa Arce in her 
native South Carolina drawl. "Actually, the 
truth is I'm a speed dem 
near a racetrack in Myrtle Beach, Alyssa 
caught the need for speed at a young a 
She rode go-karts, dirt bikes and four-wheelers 


Growing up 


a kid. Then she got her driver's license. "My 
iom says I have a lead foot,” she tells us. “She'll 
y seat, going, ‘I wish 
The fastest Гус gone 
on a highway is 120 miles an hour. It felt fan- 
tastic. Such an adrenaline rush!" The past four 
years, however, Alyssa has been on the fast track 
in the modeling world, signing contracts with 


top international agencies Wilhelmina and Ford. 
She has the perfect exotic look for fashion (her 
father is Honduran). Still, she's happiest wear 
ing no designer labels at all. “Гуе always been 
comfortable with my body," she says. "And I've 
always loved nude modeling. Throughout 
career my friends have asked, ‘Why have: 

done rLayuoY?”” Now she has. Given her lust 
for velocity, we photographed Alyssa at Willow 
Springs International Raceway in the Califor- 
nia desert, on a gorgeous day with some hot 
machinery—a Ford GT and a Magnum, P.I.-cra 
Ferrari. From the moment Alyssa stepped in 
front of the camera, her engine was humming. 
Гус never felt so sexy!” she says. And it shows. 


— 


FAST TIMES WITH MISS 


SA ARCE 


JULY ALYS. 
>» 


AAA 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAS 
ا‎ 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY SASHA EISENMAN 


Mahal IE DEBIDO! 


PLAYBOY’S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH 


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THE BEST WAY TO BLOW OFF SOME JULY STEAM:— 


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A 
X graduate Yachting inthe  Ciuboing C Liv 
at last! Virgin SIONS in Miami. 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


M, girlfriend is so ungrateful about orgasms,” 
a guy told his buddy. “Whenever I give her 
one she just spits it out.” 


A psychiatrist said to his patient, “Tell me 
your most life-changing memory.” 

"I remember it clearly,” the patient said. “I 
was running down the street, screaming, “It's 
a boy! A boy!’ With tears streaming down my 
face, I swore I would never visit another brothel 
in Thailand.” 


Why do women pay more attention to 
improving their appearance than to improv- 
ing their intellect? 

Because most men are stupid, but few are blind. 


An old woman said to her doctor, “Please, tell 
me how much time I have left.” 

“Ten,” he replied. 

“Ten?” she asked. “Ten what?” 

He continued, “Nine, eight....” 


A peephole was found drilled in the locker- 
room wall at a women's gym in Manhattan. 
Police are looking into it. 


What's the difference between Iron Man and 
Iron Woman? 

One is a superhero; the other is a simple 
command. 


What do your first motorcycle and your first 
girlfriend have in common? 

It doesn’t matter what either looks like; 
you’re just happy to have something to ride. 


The days before graduation: bacchanalia! 
The day of graduation: baccalaureate! 
The days after graduation: back at your 
parents’ house. 


A young man had scraped together enough 
money to take his date to a fancy restaurant, 
where she proceeded to order the most expen- 
sive items on the menu. 

Flustered, he asked her, “Does your mother 
feed you lobster, shrimp and caviar at home?” 

“No,” she replied. “But my mother doesn’t 
expect a blow job either.” 


How is visiting a woman of the night like 
bungee jumping? 
If the rubber breaks, you’re dead. 


Honey, if I die first, I know you'll eventually 
remarry," a man said to his wife. "As soon as 
I'm gone, I want you to sell all my possessions." 

"Now why would you want me to do that?" 
she asked. 

"Well," he replied, “I don't want some other 
asshole using my stuff." 

She replied, "What makes you think I'd 
marry another asshole?" 


A newly married man asked his wife, "Would 
you have married me if my father hadn't left 
me a fortune?" 

“Dear,” his wife replied sweetly, “Pd marry 
you no matter who left you a fortune." 


Im losing my mind,” a gorgeous woman com- 
plained to her doctor. “I can’t remember a 
thing for longer than five minutes.” 

The doctor said, “Just take off your clothes 
and lie down.” 


A blonde called an airline and asked, “How 
long is a flight from New York to Los Angeles?” 
“Just a minute,” the agent said. 
The blonde thanked her and hung up. 


Will 1 be the first to do this to you?” a young 
man whispered to his new girlfriend as they 
sat on her bed. 

“What a silly question,” the girl giggled. “I 
don’t even know what position you’re going 
to try yet.” 


How are parsley and pubic hair alike? 
You push both aside before eating. 


A woman in labor started to scream profani- 
ties at her husband. 

“Hey, don’t blame me,” he shouted back. “I 
wanted to put it in your ass, and you said that 
might hurt.” 


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. 


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By Rob Magnuson Smith 


An internet innovator is collecting a copy of every 
book ever written. Why is Brewster Kahle determined 
to preserve our written knowledge? 


Illustration by Yeghia Elvis Tchakmakian 


eep within one of 

the most dangerous 
neighborhoods in the 
San Francisco Bay 
Area, inside a ware- 
house complex for- 
merly used to assemble furniture, grows 
an enormous archive of books. The 
volumes range from best-selling novels 
to rare poetry manuscripts. They are 
not intended to be read—at least not 
anytime soon. Each day, more books— 
to date totaling roughly 1.5 million and 
counting—are scanned, digitized and 
sealed inside flame-resistant shipping 
containers. The vast literary archive is 


Clockwise from left: Internet Archive founder 
Brewster Kahle checks connections on his digital 
library; the Internet Archive headquarters in San 
Francisco; Kahle examining one of the thousands 
of volumes shipped to his storage facility in 
Richmond, California; Kahle inspecting a box of 
books inside one of his shipping containers. 


bakery, hookers duck in and out of un- 
marked buildings. Drug dealers keep 
watch under lowered baseball caps. 

The morning I visit the archive, books 
arrive from the Boston Public Library. 
The shipment comes by semitruck—12 
pallets’ worth, totaling more than 10,000 
volumes. No due dates are stamped 
inside. Like hundreds of cities around 
the country, Boston has paid to have 
its library's back holdings brought to 
Richmond because the books have been 
guaranteed to be stored safely and 
securely, under the crows, forever. 

The driver pulls up to a loading 
dock. Situated across the street from a 


“Pm worried about data being wiped out by 
the stroke of a pen. If you look at the history of 
libraries, they're burned. And they're burned 
by governments.” 


growing at such a rate that it is on pace 
to become one of the largest collections 
in the world. 

The archive's location was chosen 
for its microclimate. In the city of Rich- 
mond, ocean winds blast across the bay 
and converge in a vortex that maintains 
a nearly constant temperature. The 
windswept streets could belong to a 
whirling moonscape or a postapoca- 
lyptic wasteland. Crows drop copper 
bullets on the archive roof and fight 
viciously over squatting rights to the 


126 skylights. Around the corner, past a 


rail yard, the archive stretches across 
two interconnected warehouses that 
total more than 45,000 square feet. The 
driver steps out of the cab, wipes the 
sweat from his forehead and dodges a 
forklift that begins to scoop away his 
pallets of books. In less than an hour the 
truck is emptied, the driver sent on his 
way, the books shuttled into the shadows. 
Inside the warehouse a team of human 
scribes operates high-resolution scanners 
under booths of thick black curtains. 
This gargantuan time capsule of 
books fulfills (continued on page 175) 


BOOKS OF 
TOMORROW 


HOW A NEW BREED OF 
PUBLISHER CRANKS 
OUT BOOKS THE PUBLIC 
WANTS TO READ 


Roaming the dark corners of the 
internet are thousands of odd books 
with such titles as Unique Vaca- 
tions, Vol. 2: Sex Tourism and Where 
to Get Laid in the Philippines, Thai- 
land, Asia, Africa, North and South 
America, and Everywhere Else and 
Celebrities Who Fuck Hookers— 
Allegedly: Charlie Sheen, Gene 
Simmons, Tommy Lee, George 
Michael and More. These tomes are 
composed entirely of Wikipedia 
articles repackaged as print-on- 
demand books that sell from $19.75 
to $55. They are largely the work of 
Project Webster, a currently defunct 
offshoot of BiblioLabs, which spe- 
cialized in books from "the vast body 
of public domain (governmental) 
and open source (creative com- 
mons licensed) articles in existence." 
Project Webster offers a dysto- 

pian vision of publishing's future. 
The online description of each work 
begins with a modest disclaimer 
that "the content of this book pri- 
marily consists of articles available 
from Wikipedia," followed by copy 
such as (from The Celebrity Rumor 
Mill: Celebrities Who Might Be Lesbi- 
ans Like Tyra Banks, Kelly Clarkson, 
Oprah and More) “The world loves 
lesbians, especially when two beau- 
tiful women get together. It makes 
men go wild with fantasies and other 
women are just glad that there are 
two more women out of the never- 
ending quest to find a man." Such 
titles claim to offer "the convenience 
and utility of a real book,” and it's 
possible someone would buy one 
knowing it's nothing but Wikipedia 
articles. But Project Webster trades 
on ignorance, with convoluted titles 
from an SEO wet dream. Stranger 
still, these volumes are more expen- 
sive than traditional paperbacks, 
perhaps on the theory that people 
value books, like wine, according to 
price. Degenerate publishers have 
always preyed on unsuspecting read- 
ers; the web merely accelerates this. 
What distinguishes schemes such as 
Project Webster is that they aren't 
electronic; they trade on the value of 
the book as object. A mystique still 
surrounds a physical book: It seems 
more "true" than a website. Project 
Webster turned this on its head, 
bestowing that mystique on crap to 
make a quick buck. BiblioLabs has 
since suspended Project Webster, 
but in its wake imitators continue to 
spring up. Print-on-demand spam 
won't be going away anytime soon. 
In the future, the book as object may 
continue to develop more, not less, 
cachet—though not always in posi- 
tive ways.—Colin Dickey 


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He swaggers onto the stage slowly, de- 
liberately, looking like an overgrown 
juvenile delinquent with a grim menace 
and sneering fuck-the-world attitude 
that also exudes cool, and the years—the 
decades—seem to fall away. There is the 
same sleeveless black leather motorcycle 
jacket with the oversize wing collar, the 
same black fingerless gloves, the same 
black jeans, the same silver belt buckle 
the size of a serving platter, the same 
Zippo lighter that he flips open with a 
neat flick of his wrist and the same ever- 
present cigarette that he holds between 
his thumb and forefinger and puffs 


aggressively, the same Elvis sideburns, 
the same Brooklyn accent that was once 
described as being “as thick as a Peter 
Luger porterhouse,” the same sidewise 
head twitch, even a few of the same scat- 
ological, misogynistic, racist and gener- 
ally politically incorrect jokes. Sure, the 
once-tall pompadour is a little flatter 
and the hair a little thinner; the aviator 
glasses compensate for failing eyesight 
and aren’t there just for hipness; the 
audience is now middle-aged, mainly 
men in T-shirts and polos, with a smat- 
tering of women who giggle embarrass- 
ingly when he calls them “piglets”; the 


HE DOESN'T 
CALL WHAT’S 
HAPPENING 
TO HIM A 
СОМЕВАСК. 
НЕ PREFERS 
THE WORD 
RESURGENCE. 


room is smaller than the 
rooms used to be—maybe 
375 seats and about three 
quarters full on this Satur- 
day night—and there isn’t 
the same electric buzz that 
used to greet his perfor- 
mances. But for all in- 
tents and purposes, at 55, 
Andrew Dice Clay, once 
the self-professed “hottest 
comic in the country,” is back—not all 
the way back yet, but still back. 

To be fair, he doesn’t call what’s hap- 
pening to him—his five-episode story 
arc on the last season of Entourage, his 
comedy special on Showtime last New 
Year’s Eve, his featured role in this sum- 
mer’s Woody Allen movie, his latest gig 
in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel— 


1. Clay became the only comic 
to sell out Madison Square 
Garden two nights in a row. 

2. His controversial appearance 
on Saturday Night Live sent his 
career into a tailspin. 3. A guest 
spot on Entourage was Clay’s 
first step toward a comeback. 
4. At his peak he was a comic 
superstar. Even old-guard 
figures including Rodney 
Dangerfield championed him. 


a comeback. He prefers 
the word resurgence, as if 
he’d never been away, and 
in truth he really hadn't, 
though the more appro- 
priate word may be resur- 
rection, since Clay, by his 
own admission, had been 
"left for dead" by gloat- 
ing detractors. From the 
highest heights—playing 
before more people than any comedian 
in history—he had plummeted to some 
of the deepest depths: small clubs, low 
pay and serial indignities that included 
a VHI reality-TV show that was, thank- 
fully, Clay says, canceled after seven epi- 
sodes. He had even been exiled from The 
Howard Stern Show after a tiff. 

But one reason (continued on page 180) 


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«i 


A STAR 
IS BORN 


AN HOMAGE TO THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD, 
FEATURING MISS AUGUST VAL KEIL 


2 


here's an air of destiny about 
Val Keil. In her hometown 
of Philadelphia she's known 


as a beautiful bartender who 
loves her customers and doesn't take 
grief. But she always wondered 
there was something more for her. 
You know what?" she said to herself. 
"This is my life, and I get one chance 
at it.” So she had some photographs 
taken and sent them to rıaysoy. Just 
two hours later, she heard back. “I 
thought it was a scam," she says with 
a laugh. It wasn't. Soon she was on a 
flight to Los Angeles for a test shoot, 
and now you're looking at Miss August. 
What should you know about Val? She 
loves country music, Phillies games and 
long road trips "with all the windows 


PHOTOGRAPHY 


German and half Hispanic—“though 
a lot of people say 1 look Italian," she 
says. She also dreams of acting in film 
someday. Given her classic beauty, 
we created the ultimate fantasy for 
her—that of a star of the silver screen 
during the golden age of Hollywood, 
the apotheosis of glamour and deca- 
dence. Turn the page and you'll find 
our black-and-white photographic 
paean to old-school cinema. Most of all, 
you'll notice Val, playing the heroine 
with dignity and aplomb. "I think it's 
awesome that people across the world 
will be looking at me naked," she says. 
“Doors are opening for me. year 
is going to be so full of experiences. 
My mind is blown." Whoa! So is ours. 


BY JOSH RYAN 


Омка нека (анызы 


PYR 
ж 


за 


ПК ре + 


МИЧ TIN 


I "A ws 


> RU 


> 


~ MISS AUGUST 


PLAYBOY’S PLAYMATE, OF THE MONTH а: 
= 


hes Li е. 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


m Val Kaf 
sust: 220 mit A HIPS 89 


дори AG ee a g — 

BIRTH n LUAM BIRTHPLACE : — f hılade/phia., PA 

AMBITIONS: Т 5 { Fl (4 g= d 
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TURN-ONS: who nma 

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WHO PS - СИД CEK um Е 

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YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT: 


hà /nves in 
lan. and  peasmal;. Conds. 
A FRISKY WISH: 7» Кало рне cing! е 
amazed. by hw tse se CHS 
wrap themselves the pre. 


MY STYLE: / live Cowbry boots, Arn- jeans und showi 
in, preferably my belly and butt Cheeks. Yee haw! ù 


М 


к ap ee cmo 
Did per a joyida) Me ot a dude ranch. al 


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Tin; edña von Sc 


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nen, 


“They say this new professor's really strict!” 


PREFAB GETS 
PREFABULOUS IN 
THESE DOWNSIZED 
DECADENT SUMMER 
RETREATS THAT 
COME IN SIZES 
RANGING FROM 
SMALL TO EXTRA 
EXTRA SMALL. BUT 
DON’T BE FOOLED 
BY THE SCALE. 
THEY’RE ALL ABOUT 
LIVING LARGE 


LET’S GET 


small 


your idea of prefab housing is an 
eerily vacant aluminum-sided 
ranch house hurtling down 

the freeway on the ass end ofa 
semi, you're missing out on one 
ofthe foremost progressions in 
habitation since artists began to 
move into abandoned factories 
and popularized the industrial 
loft as a liberated alternative to 
apartments and houses. In re- 
cent years factory-built housing 
has seen a renaissance thanks to 
innovations in manufacturing 
technology, shipping and ma- 
terials and the cost efficiencies 
that result from more precise 
budgets and shorter construc- 
tion times—a livable structure 
can be erected in mere hours. 
Nowhere isthis more apparent 
than in the diminutive domi- 
ciles known as microdwellings. 
These sleek green getaways 

are atthe forefront of prefab: 

As size decreases, cost savings 
and environmental benefits 
increase because of reduced 
materials, shipping and labor 
requirements. Which leaves 
more time to concentrate 

on design—and where to put 
the damn things for the most 
jaw-dropping views, whether 
ofisland waterfalls or Burning 
Man bikinis. Now take a look at 


these Lilliputian lairs. 


JUST DESERTS 


Previously known 
for restoring modernist 
homes, Los Angeles-based 
architecture firm Marmol 
Radziner designed the 
seminal Desert House in 
2005, launching not only the 
firm’s prefab-construction 
unit but also an entire 
movement. Its Hidden Val- 
ley vacation home (above 


and at left) in Utah's Moab 
Desert emphasizes indoor- 
outdoor living and com- 
prises five interior modules 
and seven deck modules of 
recycled steel. The home 
was shipped to the site 
intwo days on 12 flatbed 
trucks and came complete 
with preinstalled windows, 
doors, cabinets, solar panels 


and appliances. A front- 
entry deck offers a broad 
view across the geother- 
mally heated pool, while the 
home's primary axis runs 
along arock ledge, creating 
dramatic views of red-rock 
boulder formations and 
snowcapped mountains 
through three full sides of 
floor-to-ceiling windows. 


SHIPPING MAGNATE 


Architecture firm LOT-EK's c-Homes 
series repurposes Cor-Ten steel shipping 
containers. Light-filled thanks to embed- 
ded glass walls, these open-plan dwellings 
start at 300 square feet and can be placed 
anywhere. Site preparation and off-site fab- 
rication occur simultaneously, making the 
structures efficient and affordable. Combine 
multiple units—horizontally or vertically—for 
homes of up to 1,300 square feet. 


DWELLER 


At 420 square feet and including a full wet bar, The base price of There are three types of 
compatible with water, beer fridge, sectional a fiber-cement-sided ceiling liners—sanded 
nduces shudders, the sewer and electrical sofa, deck, bike rack, model is about $10,000. plywood, pine and 
idea itselfis beyond systems, the Seattle- guitar hooks and— Upgrades take the form cedar—as well as 
reproach. And no one based company’s highly perish the thought of vertical tight-knot several window and 


does man caves better 
than Modern-Shed. 


customizable signature 
product offers options 


gym or home-office 


cedar or horizontal 
clear-cedar siding. 


door-framing options. 
Allthe sheds come 
with preassembled 
clerestory windows 
around the top to pro- 
vide naturallight and 
reduce daytime lighting 
requirements. 

A manufacturing 
team test-fits the units 
ata company facil- 
ity in Sedro-Woolley, 
Washington and then 
delivers the compo- 
nents to clients, who 
can either build the 
sheds themselves or 
work with an installa- 
tion team the company 
contracts at additional 
cost. After installa- 
tion the structures can 
be disassembled for 
transport to a beach 
house or country home. 


WATERFALL GUY 


Norway-based Canadian 
architect Todd Saunders's Salt 
Spring Island House proves 
you don't have to go all-in 
on modular—a home can be 
as prefab as you want. The 
only prefabricated elements 
in these two 650-square- 
foot blackened-steel-sided 
units—a landscape architect's 
home and studio in British 
Columbia—are the rustproof 
aluminum bridges that con- 


nect them. And they're locally 
made, by the same people who 
construct the island's boat 
docks and bridges. 

These particular bridges 
allow the structures, which 
straddle a 20-foot waterfall, to 
be elevated to avoid destroying 
the surrounding fir forest while 
also providing expansive views 
of Vancouver Island, Washing- 
ton State, the San Juan Islands 
and the Olympic Mountains. 


BURN UNIT 


CRICKET 


TO RIDE 


Edgar Blazona, 
an Oakland-based 
former Pottery Barn 
designer, is heav- 
ilyinfluenced by 
pioneering modern- 
ists such as Charles 
and Ray Eames, 
Richard Neutra and 
Donald Judd. Those 
inspirational sources 
are evident in his 
42-square-foot modu- 
lar dwelling. This 
highly mobile unit was 
built to withstand the 
extreme climate ofthe 
annual Burning Man 
festival, whose 50,000 


scantily clad and 
excessively painted— 
and intoxicated— 
revelers descend 
on Nevada's Black 
Rock Desert over 
Labor Day weekend 
to ritually desecrate 
the timbered flesh ofa 
Brobdingnagian effigy 
in the name of...well, 
who knows anymore? 
To offset the anar- 
chy, Blazona tricked 
out the shelter with 
midcentury-modern 
amenities. The six-by- 
seven-foot strong- 
hold (the company's 


design options reach 
280 square feet and 
are available with 
furnishings from 
sister company 
TrueModern) was 
assembled from 
$1,000 of steel, glass 
and wood siding. 

“It was designed to 
be a sliver of clean, 
minimal modernism 
in this dusty, chaotic 
environment,” says 
Blazona. Now it just 
has to survive the 
intergenerational 
dustups at your next 
family barbecue. 


@ The Cricket trailer was invented by 
Yale-educated architect Garrett Finney, 
who worked at NASA designing the 
International Space Station's habitation 


module—the place 


where astronauts 


eat, sleep, bathe and relax—before 


turning his celestia 


sights to Houston 


and trailer design. The lightweight, 


aluminum-composi 
a single-touch roof 
in seconds. The sty 
62-square-foot trai 


te Cricket features 
latch that opens 
ishly colorful 

er, which comes 


complete with a toilet and hot-water 
sink and shower, can comfortably sleep 
two adults and two kids. A base price of 


$16,700 gets you B 
cabinetry, flame-re 


altic birch plywood 
ardant Taslan tent 


fabric, nickel-pattern rubber flooring 
and 15-inch aluminum rims. 


ZEIT n 
“I was just passing by and happened ‘Tm sorry, but I’ve never been able to handle 
to have an erection.” arousal in a ladylike manner.” 


e 
"I don't know— what do you want to do tonight?" “We don't advertise—our salon has grown 


by word of mouth.” 


“I just noticed you're sitting all alone.” “Didn’t you see my note on the refrigerator?” 


2 


) 
Du 


"Are we going to make love or just screw?" 


— a 


1 ast Eddie EN is stand- 
ing on the front deck of 
-his perfectly tropical Oahu 
house, blocking the per- 
fectly temperate 75-degree sem, |, 
- waiting-for me. His hands; gnarled 1 
“and scarred with the memories of 
many teeth, are balled ‘up into tight 


ыз апа һе drums the: ECS railing. 
7. 5 ^. 


"FOR DECADES EDDIE - ROTHMAN HAS FEROCIOUSLY. . 
"DEFENDED THE NORTH SHORE OF OAHU WITH HIS: 
“FISTS TODAY HE'S FACING: BIOTECH. GIANT MO 
AND IT’ 5 TURNING. OUT TO BE THE a OFH 


ма 


EO 
LIFE 


His fists Have drummed often 


. drummed the teeth out of 
bota: There Was the ti e Г ey slapped thé vice presi- І 
' dent of fa major surf brand 11 times for bald- faced lying. 
¡There was the time they bashed the head of a pervert 
_Jacking off in the tropicál bushes near the bike path. Or, 


P D М 8 
"ROBERT. MAXWELL -` 


SIN 
"A 
1 was the uns they E 
Australian, surfer? 's 8. 
eo 
Е 
o 
m 
5 
<q 
— ir 
m 


wait—those weren't his hands proper, those were his hands 
Bi; a piece of rebar. There was the time they landed 

on the sunburned cheek ofa man who had part- 
Hera . quen a local podiatrist to smuggle pain pills by strap- 
ping them to children. This man threatened to blow up 
Rothman's house with.a grenade and bounced his secretary's 
head off a rock wall. Rothman gave him a drumming so solid 
that the man spent a week in the hospital, because like the 
Australian surfers, surf-brand vice presidents and perverts 
before him, he had it fucking coming. 


HAWAII LIKELY 
COMES FROM THE 
MAORI WORD 
FOR "HEAVEN" 


Ran FTIIT T ° 
AND BFE VI PI ри 


Oahu, the most mythical island in the Hawaiian chain, is 
not commonly associated with bloody beatings and broken 
teeth. It has, rather, been etched into the subconscious 
as an island paradise since the turn of the 20th century, 
when wealthy families, inspired by pastel-hued postcards, 
steamed across the sea on coconut-scented winds and 
basked in its flawless climate. GIs followed on their way to 
World War II's Pacific Theater, gaped at hula girls, got 
lei'd under a tropical moon and thought, Thank you, Uncle 
Sam. And their sons became surfers and went in search of 
their fathers’ dreams. They found them on Oahu’s North 
Shore, where the waves were massive and perfect if you 
had the courage and skill to ride them. They were joined 


154 by men with names such as Da Bull, Butch and Duke, and 


FROM HALE'IWA 


they too etched Oahu into the subconscious. As the 1950s 
turned into the 1960s, surf-ploitation films about exotic 
Waimea Bay and the Banzai Pipeline became the rage, and 
the Beach Boys crooned about riding the wild surf. 

But the decades between then and now have been marked 
by immense struggles for the men who were born into this 
paradise or who arrived and never left. Men like Eddie 
Rothman. Today I walk down a dead-end road not five 
miles north of Waimea Bay, where he is waiting for me. 

I turn left and push my way into his million-dollar beach 
compound. Rumors and whispers about his penchant for 
violence haunt the North Shore. Brave surfers speak of him 
in hushed tones, afraid they might turn around and see him 
standing there and then see the darkness of a knockout. 

On paper Rothman is simply a successful surf promoter 
and co-founder of the surf brand Da Hui, which makes 
boardshorts, surf apparel and, more recently, MMA fighting 
gear. But the past, as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, is 
when Rothman’s specter was born dark. He is the elder 
statesman of Hui O He'e Nalu, or Hawaiian Club of Wave 
Riders, which he formed nearly 40 years ago along with 


л 


local surfers Kawika Stant Sr., Squiddy Sanchez, Terry 
Ahue and Bryan Amona. The mission of the club (from 
which the surf brand later took its name) was to advocate 
for Hawaiian surfers on the professional circuit and to 
help bring a sort of sanity to the winter surf season, which 
had grown increasingly chaotic due to an influx of foreign 
surfers who had watched the films, listened to the Beach 
Boys and decided the North Shore was theirs. But it was 
not theirs. And Da Hui taught 
them this by knocking the teeth 
out oftheir mouths. During the 
winter of 1977, visiting surfers’ 
blood ran both freely and cold, 
and Rothman became the 
embodiment of fear. 


1. Eddie Rothman 

(far left) stands with 
the original members 
of Hui O He'e Nalu, also 
known as the “black 
shorts gang.” 2. Anti- 
GMO bumper stickers 
on Rothman's wall. 

3. Runoff and drift from 
pesticide spraying are 
among the concerns of 
GMO opponents. 

4. and 5. Rothman 
before and after his 
arrival in Hawaii. 


Hawaii was never, in truth, a 
pastel-postcard island paradise. 
Its name most likely comes from 
the ancient Maori word Hawaiki, 
meaning “heaven” and “hell.” 
Early inhabitants practiced a 
harsh form of governance that 
included human sacrifice by 


crushing the victim's bones. Captain Cook and the first 
European contact brought disease that wiped out half the 
population. Inter-island war followed inter-island war until 
wealthy American agricultural interests convinced President 
William McKinley to annex Hawaii, subjugating the 

locals and immigrant laborers under a feudal-like system. 
Eventually there were enough locals and immigrants in the 
U.S. territory to demand statehood, which was granted in 
1959. And then the surfers came, beginning a new sort of 
annexation until Fast Eddie Rothman shoved his gnarled 
and scarred fists down their throats. 

Stories of the “black shorts,” as the members of Da Hui 
were called after their austere beach uniform, beating down 
disrespectful foreign surfers are still told today. But the 
club has mellowed in recent years, hosting beach cleanups 
and preaching the gospel of water safety for surfers and 
swimmers alike. And it has been some time since Rothman's 
been in the local papers for illegal activity: In 1987 he was 
indicted on racketeering and drug distribution charges, 
which were dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct. 
He had been in and out of jail before and has been in and 
out since, but his relationship with “legality” is, again, only 
ever whispered about. Few are brave enough to ask directly 
what it is that he does. There are outrageous, whispered 
rumors that he's in the Hawaiian mafia, that he's a drug 
dealer, that he's a murderer for hire. But no one really 
knows, because when Rothman takes care of business his 
way, it quickly and quietly goes from rumor to whisper to 
legend. No one questions the legend. 

And he is waiting for me because I broke the rules. I 
wrote a book about the North Shore that included him 
and his specter, which was a severe breech, on my part, of 
North Shore whisper etiquette. (Welcome to Paradise, Now Go 
to Hell is being published by Harper Collins in December.) 
He got a copy of the unfinished manuscript from Scott 
Caan, who plays today's version of Danno on the remake of 
Hawaii Five-0, and Rothman ordered me to his house. 

He watches me approach from his wraparound deck, and 
the reality of the man matches the whispers, even though he is 
65 and only five-foot-six if generous, ^ (continued on page 197) 


156 


CONVER 
STYRY 


ake another look at the cover of this issue. The aerial 
image of 25 synchronized swimmers forming the 
Playboy Rabbit Head reminds us of all the incredible 
covers we’ve published over the years. On these 
pages are just a few classics that come to mind. 


PL AYBOY ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN 


JULY 1964 » 75 CENTS 


OCTOBER 1963 OCTOBER 1971 


Is cleanliness next to African American cover 
godliness? Playmate Teddi models were a rarity before 
Smith suggests there may be Darine Stern sat in the Rabbit 
something to the proverb. chair and showed us her smile. 


JULY 1964 ; 


4 | 
Cynthia Maddox dem- 4 « 
onstrates а talent for engaging : we Л 
the viewer in this widely imi- { q 
tated cover. А 


AYBOY IN 
ICUSES ON 
ETTING с: 
FFERS FACT 
PAUL GETI 


TERVIEWS ROD STEIGER, GOES ON A FUN-BUGGY BASH, 
A FLOCK OF SEXY AMERICAN BIRDS, EXAMINES THE SENSUAL 
>" MOVEMENT, PLUGS INTO THE WORLD OF ROBOTS AND 
AND FICTION BY JUSTICE WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, EVAN HUNTER, 
Y, HEINRICH BOLL, ROGER PRICE AND DONALD E. WESTLAKE 


= re ama A MI мт oo on жаш on 
Senne win num аси реве Mo CY 


JULY 1966 


FEBRUARY 1967 


Model Helen Kirk 
assumes a lapinary pose in 
this simple and elegant pho- 
tograph by Pompeo Posar. 


This photo, which 
inspired our current issue’s 
cover, was shot with five mod- 
els in a Chicago studio. 


JULY 1969 


Barbi Benton shows off 
some tan lines for this summer 
treat. It was Barbi's first cover; 
she would do three more. 


AUGUST 1956 


The Rabbit has 
been on every cover but the 
first. Here he seems to prefer 
abstraction to representation. 


AUGUST 1982 


: Miss September 1979 
Vicki McCarty dons a pair of 
stunner shades for this spec- 
tacular cover. 


FEBRUARY 1966 


low: Model Sissy makes this 
cover a particularly intimate 
one, with its revealing (and 
forbidden) fruit. 


ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN FEBRUARY 19 


a provorcalive pictorial 
on the girls of rio * 
playboy jazz poll winners • 
the latest in stereo and 

tv equipage * an interview 
with federico fellini е 

plus vladimir nabokov, 
james farmor, william 


soroyon, ray russell 


jack denton scott $ 


157 


APRIL 1973 
In one of PLAYBOY's most е " a 


provocative covers, Playmate 
Lenna Sjóóblom prepares a 
special delivery for readers. 


SEPTEMBER 1960 


Art director Art Paul 
designed this puzzling cover, 
in which the Rabbit provides 
the missing piece. 


MAY 1964 


Wearing a white 
leotard, Donna Michelle 
shows commendable agility in 
holding this memorable pose. 


hs. * 


ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN MAY 1964 * 75 CENTS 


PLAYBO 


APRIL 1971 


Alexas Urba shot this 
bubble-bath cover with model 
Simone Hammerstrand point- 
ing out the obvious. 


JULY 1955 


The Rabbit makes a 
striking appearance on the 
suntanned back of Playmate 
Janet Pilgrim. 


ENTERTAINMENT FOR ман 


Ay 
Un. i A 1 
Gi | 5 
== A 
== _ Z 2 


EB М 


FEBRUARY 1969 AUGUST 1962 JULY 1974 AUGUST 1972 


: Nancy Chamberlain Mario Casilli photo- Art director Tom Carol Vitale holds on 
embraces her inner Rabbit graphed this aquamarine gem. Staebler designed this sultry to her life preserver while 
in this playful cover photo- Art Paul created the undulat- cover, using the glorious mid- photographer Alexas Urba 
graphed by Pompeo Posar. ing Rabbit Head reflection. riff of Christine Maddox. captures this perfect moment. 


NOVEMBER 1965 


e: Beth Hyatt is the 
model for this i iconic cover. 
The BOND's GIRLS “tattoo” was 
added after the photo shoot. 


JANUARY 1986 


e: Nearly two years before 
he died, Andy Warhol created 
this cover. “I’ve got bunnies on 
the brain,” he told PLAYBOY. 


159 


LA BEAUTE 


AMYSTERIOUS FRENCH MODEL IN A FAMED PIECE 
OF ARCHITECTURE. C'EST MAGNIFIQUE 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID BELLEMERE 


o often great photography is the result 
of an ambitious production, with sets 
built by teams of carpenters, armies of 
hair and makeup experts on hand and 
lawyers arguing over contracts. Other 
times, however, truly wonderful work 
can come from nothing but a master shooter, a 
beautiful model and a quixotic scheme. Parisian 
photographer David Bellemere, known for his 
nudes and his work in fashion, had the idea to 
invite a French model named Liza to the Sheats- 
Goldstein house in Beverly Hills, a masterwork 
of midcentury-modern architecture completed in 
1963 by the American John Lautner. The goal? To 
spend four days relaxing and shooting, exploring 


each other and the mise-en-scéne. Bellemere had 
photographed Liza before, two years earlier, and 
wanted her specifically for this work. Only Liza 
would do. “I called her and proposed the idea,” 
he says. "She said, “Yes, with you I want to do it.’” 
Off they flew to the City of Angels. This portfolio 
presents an erotic realism that is at once beauti- 
ful and raw. You feel as if you're in the room, 
enjoying Liza's company yourself. You can almost 
hear her voice—and her thick French accent, of 
course. Bellemere wanted to capture "something 
more than desire." His model was a perfect muse. 
"Desire is wonderful when Liza is giving you 
her smile, her trust," he says. We couldn't agree 
more. Feast your eyes on La Beauté. 


PLAYBOY 


168 


CHASING THE DARGIN 


(continued from page 89) 
culmination of his dream to become the 
world’s first Chinese male superstar. 


ENTER THE LITTLE DRAGON 


Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 
1940—the year of the dragon—in San 
Francisco’s Chinatown. His father, Lee 
Hoi-chuen, was a leading actor in a 
touring Hong Kong Cantonese opera 
troupe, performing for American audi- 
ences with his pregnant wife in tow. 
Born on the road between curtain 
calls, Bruce faced his first camera as a 
squirming three-month-old extra in the 
movie Golden Gate Girl before his parents 
returned with him to Hong Kong. By 
the time he was 18 he had appeared in 
20 films, gaining fame in his hometown 
of Hong Kong under his stage name, 
Lee Siu Lung (“Little Dragon Lee”). He 
played orphans and troubled boys, roles 
that both reflected and bled into his life. 
Lee would later describe his youthful self 
as a “punk.” His real passion was street 
fighting, and he took up kung fu at 13 
to enhance his back-alley skills. After he 
had been expelled from an elite private 
high school and gotten in trouble with 
the law for fighting, his well-to-do par- 
ents, at their wit’s end, shipped their 
black-sheep son from Hong Kong to stay 
with a family friend in Seattle. 

When he arrived in 1959, Lee gave up 
on the idea of a movie career in Amer- 
ica. As he later told Esquire, “How many 
times in an American film is a Chinese 
required?” He had a point. The only 
Chinese leading characters were Fu 
Manchu, the yellow-peril villain, and 
Charlie Chan, the model minority. 
Both of those roles were almost always 
given, in Hollywood’s long-standing “yel- 
low face” tradition, to white actors with 
eye makeup. The only parts available to 
Chinese were pigtailed coolies, what Lee 
dismissed as “Hopalong Wong” roles. 

But he was still a performer at heart, 
and after giving kung fu demonstrations at 
local high schools, he discovered to his sur- 
prise that Americans wanted to learn from 
him. He opened his own kung fu studio 
in Seattle, the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. 
He quickly learned that running a mar- 
tial arts school is a difficult, low-margin 
business—particularly after he married 
Linda Emery, a blonde cheerleader, and 
had his first child, Brandon. Anxious to 
increase enrollment, he often took his act 
on the road, like his father before him, 
treading the boards in what was the equiv- 
alent of a one-man martial arts show. 

It was during a performance at the 
1964 Long Beach International Karate 
Championship that Lee was discovered 
by William Dozier. The TV producer, 
who had the radical idea of casting an 
actual Asian actor for an Asian role, 
watched Lee’s charismatic demonstra- 
tion and cast him in the role of Kato, the 


side-kicking Asian sidekick to the Green 
Hornet. Despite Lee’s magnetic martial 
arts skills, The Green Hornet, which lacked 
the campy wit of Dozier’s hit companion 
series Batman, failed to find an audience 
and limped along for one season before 
being canceled. 

Lee struggled to find worthy act- 
ing roles to support his growing family 
(daughter Shannon was born in 1969) 
and, in desperation, discovered a new 
source of income. He became the kung 
fu instructor to Hollywood's elite, count- 
ing as his private students James Coburn, 
Roman Polanski, Warner Bros. chairman 
Ted Ashley, Oscar-winning screenwriter 
Stirling Silliphant and box office king 
Steve McQueen. Although they helped 
him get bit parts and work as a fight cho- 
reographer on their movies, he couldn’t 
break through Hollywood's yellow glass 
ceiling. “No one would make a film with 
an Asian in the lead—it was as simple as 
that,” says Paul Heller, who was an exec- 
utive at Warner Bros. and would go on 
to co-produce Enter the Dragon. For four 
long years Lee burned with frustrated 
ambition. “Bruce vowed, ‘Someday, 
Pm going to be a bigger star than Steve 
McQueen,'” recalls Silliphant in a 1974 
biography. “I told him there was no way. 
He was a Chinese in a white man's world. 
Then he went out and did it.” 

Unbeknownst to Lee, The Green Hornet 
was sold in syndication in Hong Kong, 
where it became known as The Kato Show. 
During a quick trip back in 1970 with five- 
year-old Brandon, Lee was stunned at the 
reception. He may have felt like a fail- 
ure in Hollywood, but in Hong Kong he 
was the hometown boy made good. Hong 
Kong movie producers started making 
offers. Following the example of Clint 
Eastwood, who, unable to make the leap 
from American TV to film, had gone to 
Italy to make several spaghetti Westerns 
that turned him into a bankable star, Lee 
signed a two-picture deal with Raymond 
Chow and his upstart Golden Harvest stu- 
dio for $7,500 a film. If Lee could not 
climb Hollywood's mountain, he would 
make the mountain come to him. 

In his first Golden Harvest movie, The 
Big Boss, Lee looked transformed. Gone 
was the perfectly pleasant manservant 
Kato. Fueled by years of rejection, Lee 
leaped off the screen, pulsating with a 
volatile power all his own. Audiences in 
Hong Kong and across Southeast Asia 
loved their new Chinese superhero. The 
Big Boss broke all Hong Kong box office 
records. His second Golden Harvest film, 
Fist of Fury, shattered the record of The 
Big Boss. His third film, The Way of the 
Dragon, which he wrote, directed, pro- 
duced and starred in, broke both of those 
records. He was a juggernaut. 


THE ONLY COLOR HOLLYWOOD SEES IS GREEN 
When Lee was still struggling in Los Ange- 


les, Fred Weintraub, a producer at Warner 
Bros., tried to cast him in the lead role 


of the countercultural hit TV series Kung 
Fu, about a Shaolin monk who protects 
Chinese railroad workers from their rac- 
ist cowboy bosses. Lee was rejected for the 
part of Kwai Chang Caine because he was 
too Chinese, and it was given instead to 
the very white David Carradine. Before 
Lee left for Hong Kong, Weintraub asked 
him for a piece of film that would show 
Hollywood how much he had improved 
since The Green Hornet. When Lee sent him 
a copy of The Big Boss, Weintraub knew 
he had a winner. More than Lee's electric 
performance, it was the numbers. Made 
for only $100,000, The Big Boss became a 
blockbuster in East Asia. Weintraub was 
certain he could cover Warner's costs 
by pre-selling the Asian foreign markets 
(Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan) 
while producing a film of sufficient qual- 
ity to attract a Western audience. After 
some intense wrangling, Warner finally 
approved a still paltry budget of $250,000 
to make Enter the Dragon. 

Weintraub, co-producer Paul Heller 
and screenwriter Michael Allin banged 
out a 17-page story treatment about 
three heroes (one white, one black and 
one Asian) who enter evil Han's martial 
arts tournament and end his drug- 
dealing, slave-trading ways. While Heller 
and Allin worked on the screenplay, 
Weintraub flew to Hong Kong to reach 
a deal with Chow, now operating as Lee's 
business partner. According to Heller, 
the inspiration for the script came from 
a favorite comic strip of his youth, Terry 
and the Pirates. “It was about China and 
the Orient and the mystery and dragon 
ladies.” According to Allin, who knew 
nothing about kung fu or Hong Kong, 
the inspiration was a little more obvi- 
ous: “I stole from James Bond. If you get 
caught, you just claim it's an homage.” 
The slim, 85-page script was cranked out 
in three weeks, in large part because they 
skipped all the action sequences, writing 
in those empty spaces, “This will be cho- 
reographed by Mr. Bruce Lee.” 

In Hong Kong, Weintraub was having 
less success. As he maneuvered toward a 
signed deal, the elusive Chow, nicknamed 
the Smiling Tiger, politely deflected him 
at every turn. After a week, an exhausted 
Weintraub finally concluded that Chow 
was bargaining in bad faith, afraid that if 
the movie was made, Hollywood would 
steal Lee, his cash cow. On his final night 
in Hong Kong, Weintraub met Chow 
and Lee for dinner at a Japanese res- 
taurant. Word got out that Lee was in 
the establishment, and thousands of fans 
appeared. “I saw the opportunity to play 
one final card,” Weintraub recounts in 
Bruce Lee, Woodstock and Me. “*Bruce, Pm 
leaving tomorrow because we couldn't 
strike a deal. It's too bad Raymond 
doesn't want you to be an international 
star.’ Raymond—dropping the facade of 
cordiality—stared at me with sudden, 
all-consuming hatred. In that instant he 
knew he had lost. Bruce said, ‘Sign the 
contract, Raymond.’” 


169 


“If youd like to hear the menu again, press one.” 


PLAYBOY 


170 


Today in Hong Kong the still sprightly 
and charming 84-year-old Chow insists his 
reluctance was purely tactical. “Both Bruce 
and I had already talked about the whole 
thing. All we wanted was a fair deal. It's very 
difficult for an independent producer to get 
a really fair deal with a major studio.” 

Budget constraints largely dictated the 
American hiring process. Allin, as screen- 
writer, was promised a trip to Hong Kong 
as a bonus to his minimal compensation. 
Bob Clouse, who had made only two 
feature-length movies, was selected as the 
director because, according to Weintraub, 
“we could get him for a ridiculously low 
price.” Lee's old martial arts buddy Bob 
Wall agreed to the role of Han's evil body- 
guard Oharra as a favor. Newcomer Jim 
Kelly was a last-second replacement for 
the Shaft-inspired character Williams after 
Rockne Tarkington pulled out over money. 
The only person to receive an almost com- 
petitive salary ($40,000) was John Saxon. 
Weintraub needed a name actor, and Bruce 
Lee was still an unknown in the West. Even 
that amount was barely enough. Saxon's 
agent predicted that the movie would be 
“a little crappy thing with a Chinese actor 
that nobody will ever see.” Saxon was 
persuaded to get on the plane only after 
Weintraub promised him he would be the 
real star of the movie. 

Casting on the Chinese side was signifi- 
cantly less fraught. What seemed a paltry 
amount in Hollywood was untold riches 
in Hong Kong, where movie actors were 
paid, and treated, like factory workers. It 
was also a chance to work on the first Hol- 
lywood co-production with Lee, the biggest 
star in Hong Kong. Angela Mao Ying, star 
of the hit Lady Kung Fu, happily agreed to 
play Su Lin, the sister of Bruce’s charac- 
ter (Lee), who chooses to commit suicide 


rather than be violated by Oharra and his 
men. Bolo Yeung (Bolo) was a Mr. Hong 
Kong bodybuilder looking to move into 
acting. Shih Kien, who was famous for play- 
ing the villain in a series of movies about 
Hong Kong's most popular hero, Wong 
Fei Hung, was Lee's choice to play the one- 
handed, cat-stroking Mr. Han. The choice 
was deliberate: Lee wanted to signal to his 
Chinese audience that he was the inheritor 
of Wong Fei Hung's mantle. 


KING GORILLA 


Lee’s younger brother Robert claimed that 
in high school Bruce was “recognized as 
the king gorilla—boss of the whole school.” 
After years of groveling and rejection in 
Hollywood, Lee wasted little time estab- 
lishing his dominance over the production 
of Enter the Dragon. On Saxon's first day 
in Hong Kong, in January 1973, Lee 
brought him to his house and asked to 
see his side kick. “Then he said, “Let me 
show you mine, Saxon remembers. “He 
gave me a padded shield to hold. Bruce 
did a hop, skip and a jump and blasted 
into the shield. I went flying back on my 
heels and landed in a chair, which shat- 
tered. I was in shock for a few moments, 
and then Bruce ran over with a concerned 
look on his face. I said, ‘Don’t worry, Pm 
not hurt.’ He said, ‘I’m not worried about 
you. You broke my favorite chair.’” 

“Did you believe you were going to be the 
star of the film?” I ask Saxon. 

“Certainly not after that first morning.” 

Yet Lee refused to show up on set for the 
first day of shooting, then the second, then 
the third. His wife, Linda, yin to his yang, 
ran interference, telling the producers he 
was working on the fight choreography. Ini- 
tially, the Americans thought it was a power 


“Oh, it's you!” 


play, but word filtered back that the gorilla 
king was terrified. Bob Wall says, “Bruce was 
so fucking uptight. He couldn’t shoot. He 
wouldn’t even go on set.” Weintraub sent 
Bob Clouse out to shoot random footage 
of Hong Kong. Lee’s anxiety attack lasted 
two weeks and nearly scuttled the entire 
movie. When he finally came on set, all 
Clouse could film was a simple exchange 
of dialogue between Lee and actress Betty 
Chung, playing undercover operative Mei 
Ling, because Lee was suffering from a ner- 
vous facial tic. Twenty-seven takes later and 
Enter the Dragon had begun. 


LOST IN TRANSLATION 


While Lee fought with his nerves, the Amer- 
ican and Chinese crews were fighting with 
each other. During the filming ofthe tedious 
praying mantis fight scene Clouse realized 
he needed an English-speaking cameraman 
and sent for cinematographer Gil Hubbs. “I 
made three-by-five cards with half a dozen 
Chinese words for lighting cues, like ‘spot’ 
and ‘flood it,’” says Hubbs. “The Chinese 
thought I was hilarious. I think they gave 
me the wrong words. I think I was saying 
‘Tickle my feet.“ 

The most important translator on set 
was Andre Morgan, a recent University of 
Kansas Oriental studies graduate who had 
been working for six months as Chow’s 
assistant. According to Morgan, part of the 
problem was the Americans didn’t real- 
ize how much English the Chinese crew 
actually understood. “One day we were 
shooting the scene where Bruce Lee, John 
Saxon and Jim Kelly transfer from the lit- 
tle sampans to the big boat,” says Morgan. 
“We didn’t have walkie-talkies. We were 
using megaphones to cue. Hubbs yelled, 
‘Cut.’ Out on the sampan, they didn’t hear 
and kept going. Bob Clouse goes, ‘Fuck- 
ing Chinese.’ The continuity guy, who’s 
this little old man, says in Chinese, “That’s 
the last insult I’m going to take from these 
fucking foreigners.’ With that, he takes 
his clipboard and he’s coming over to hit 
Clouse from behind. We had to grab him 
and pull him off the roof.” 

The Americans’ frustrations focused on 
the archaic equipment and the Chinese 
tendency to say yes even when they meant 
no. The Chinese disliked the Americans’ 
arrogant attitude and tendency to yell at 
underlings. But despite their differences, a 
mutual respect between the two groups even- 
tually grew. “We admired how systematic 
the Americans were,” says assistant director 
Chaplin Chang. “In Hong Kong, everything 
was either make it or get by with it.” 

The Americans grew to appreciate the 
Chinese resourcefulness, hard work and 
courage. One sequence called for hench- 
men to chase Ying, playing Lee’s sister, 
along the edge of a canal until she kicks 
one of them into the water. Weintraub 
and Clouse decided to shoot the stunt 
from the top of a two-story building 
across from the canal. They took five of 
the stuntmen to the top of the building 
to map out the shot. After they explained 
what they wanted through an interpreter, 
each of the stuntmen backed away from 


the building’s edge, shaking their heads. 
“We were surprised by their trepidation,” 
says Weintraub. “It was a short, four-foot 
drop, a pretty standard stunt.” Finally, 
one ofthe men stepped forward and said, 
"Okay, ГП do it, but it's going to be hard 
to reach the water from here on this roof." 
Weintraub says, "I was dumbfounded. Not 
only because they all thought we were 
crazy enough to ask them to take such 
a hazardous fall but also because one of 
them was actually crazy enough to do it." 

Realizing how valuable the stunt crew was 
to the success of the movie, Lee was exceed- 
ingly loyal and solicitous, eating a box lunch 
with them every day instead of dining in the 
hotel restaurant with the Americans. It was 
a kindness remembered by one of the doz- 
ens of stunt boys who worked on the movie, 
someone so insignificant to the production 
that no one remembered him until much 
later: Jackie Chan. "He was very good to us, 
the little people," Chan writes in his mem- 
oir, I Am Jackie Chan. "He didn't care about 
impressing the big bosses, but he took care 
of us." Watch closely during the battle scene 
in Mr. Han's underground compound and 
you can spot Lee whipping a young Jackie 
Chan around by his mop of black hair and 
snapping his neck. During the first take, he 
accidentally cracked Chan in the face with 
his nunchakus. "You can't believe how much 
it hurt," Chan remembered. "As soon as 
the cameras were off, Bruce threw away his 
weapon, ran over to me and said, 'I'm sorry, 
I'm sorry! and picked me up. Of all the 
things Bruce did, I admire him most for his 
kindness that day." 

Accidents are inevitable on a kung fu 
movie set. The most legendary one occurred 
between Lee and Bob Wall in their climac- 
tic fight. The scene called for Wall to break 
two glass bottles and jab one at Lee, who 
would kick the bottle out of Wall’s hand and 
follow up with a punch to the face. After 
several rehearsals Lee's kick missed and his 
fist slammed into the bottle's jagged edge. 
"Bruce was very angry with Bob Wall," says 
Chaplin Chang, who drove Lee to the hospi- 
tal. "He said, ‘I want to kill him.’ But I don't 
think he meant it. My wife often says she 
wants to kill me, but she never does it." Mor- 
gan says, "Was Bruce pissed off? Yes. But 
he knew it was an accident. He was mostly 
angry because we were going to lose two 
days of shooting." 

The rumor that Wall purposely injured 
Lee and Lee intended to murder Wall was 
fed to the Hong Kong press to hype the 
movie. By the time Lee came back to the set, 
his ever-loyal Chinese stunt crew expected 
their champion to exact revenge. Although 
he came up with a face-saving excuse—“I 
can’t kill Bob, because the director needs 
him for the rest of the movie“ Chinese 
honor required some form of payback. 
The scene called for Lee to side-kick Wall 
hard enough in the chest to send him fly- 
ing into a crowd of Han’s men. Lee didn’t 
hold back. “They put a pad on Bob,” recalls 
stuntman Zebra Pan in Bey Logan’s Hong 
Kong Action Cinema, “but he took off like 
he’d been shot when Bruce kicked him! 
And Bruce insisted on 12 takes!” The force 
of Lee’s kick was so great that Wall flew into 


the crowd, breaking a stuntman’s arm. 
“We’re talking complex break—bone 
through skin,” says Wall. “That’s when 
everybody went, Holy shit.’ I don't think 
they realized how hard Bruce was hitting 
me until then.” 


WAN CHAI GIRLS 


Navigating the tricky terrain of Chi- 
nese face required the producers to 
turn some tricks when it came to hir- 
ing Han's harem for the banquet scene. 
No Chinese actresses were willing to 
play prostitutes in an American film, so 
producers were forced to hire the real 
thing. Responsibility for soliciting the 
prostitutes fell to Morgan, who knew his 
way around Hong Kong's nightspots. 
The difficulty wasn't finding them— 
along with Bangkok, Hong Kong was an 
R&R pit stop for American soldiers serv- 
ing in Vietnam—it was convincing them 
to take part in the movie. “Never mind 
what they did for a living. That stayed 
between them and their customers. But 
if you commit it to film, how do you 
know your mother's and father's friends 
are not going to see it?” Morgan says. 
“They wanted to be paid more than I 
would’ve paid them if I wanted to sleep 
with them. To them, the indignity was 
far greater.” When the stuntmen dis- 
covered how much the prostitutes were 
being paid, they nearly went on strike. 

In the scene in which the three heroes 
are offered their choice of harem girls— 
a scene that has launched a thousand 
cultural studies Ph.D. theses—the white 
guy (Saxon) selects the white madam 
(played by actress Ahna Capri), the 
black guy (Kelly) selects four prosti- 
tutes, while the Asian guy (Lee) picks 
his fellow undercover agent (Chung) for 
a Chaste discussion of strategy. The Chi- 
nese James Bond was a celibate. “He was 
a Shaolin monk,” says Allin. “He was 
always meant to be: “You have offended 
my family and you have offended the 
Shaolin Temple.“ 

Sexual escapades continued off-screen 
too. “Jim Kelly screwed everything that 
moved in Hong Kong,” says Heller. “He 
ended up in the hospital. We had a har- 
ness for him to hang over the acid pit 
for his death scene, but he couldn't wear 
it, because he was so sore. We had to 
specially make a cargo net for him.” 

It was 1973 and everyone on set 
seems to have enjoyed the era's free- 
dom, including the Shaolin monk. At the 
beginning of the shoot, Lee went through 
a tumultuous breakup with his mistress, 
Betty Ting Pei, after news of their affair 
broke in Hong Kong's tabloid press. “I 
had a nervous breakdown, ended up 
in the hospital,” Ting Pei tells me—the 
first time in 40 years she has discussed 
the details of their romantic relationship 
with a Western journalist. “Bruce didn't 
call me for three months during Enter the 
Dragon. 1 felt so depressed. I thought we 
were finished.” 

Lee apparently agreed. A collector of 
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the Playboy lifestyle and the fruits of his 
movie star success after years in Holly- 
wood's desert. “Once in a while Bruce 
would say, because we had a bunch of Chi- 
nese girls there, “Why don't we go out 
with some of them?’” says Saxon. 


GAME OF DEATH 


Like an Old West gunslinger, Lee was 
often challenged by young upstarts to see 
if he really had the fastest hands and feet 
in the East. He usually ignored the offers, 
smartly realizing there was no upside. Ifhe 
lost it would be front-page news. If he won 
it would be front-page news that he’d bul- 
lied a hapless extra. But while filming the 
climactic final battle scene on Han’s Island, 
with its tiers of stone walls, Lee grew tired 
ofthe extras, who had been recruited from 
local street gangs, taunting him as a fake, a 
movie star martial artist. “These guys were 
sitting up on the wall, bored out of their 
gourds, waiting for their turn to shoot. 
They were like, “This asshole Lee needs 15 
takes to do one roundhouse kick?’” Morgan 
recounts. “There was a lot of testosterone 
flying around, and Bruce was not afraid of 
people when it came to his martial arts skills. 
He was the real deal. The kids were shooting 


off their mouths, not realizing that Bruce 
had very good hearing. Bruce said, 'Oh, 
you think you're so good? Come on down.'” 

As witnesses later recalled, the kid came 
after Lee hard and fast, really looking to 
hurt. But Lee, the older master, methodi- 
cally took him apart. Lee turned the duel 
into a private lesson, at one point correcting 
the kid’s stance. Afterward, the kid bowed 
to Lee and said, “You really are a master of 
the martial arts.” 

But watching the opening scene, which 
Lee wrote and filmed himself after the 
American crew had returned home, it is 
impossible not to see how thin and pallid he 
had become during the shoot. “He'd lost a 
lot of weight,” Sammo Hung, a rising kung 
fu comedy star and the scene's co-star, later 
remembered. “I noticed that the pupils of 
his eyes were enlarged, making his eyes 
seem very dark.” Lee was suffering from 
migraines and self-medicating with Alice B. 
Toklas hash brownies. On May 10, 1973, 
while dubbing scenes in Golden Harvest’s 
studio, Lee collapsed and had to be rushed 
to Ше hospital I drove him in my car,” says 
Chow. Lee nearly died of an acute cerebral 
edema, excessive fluid surrounding the brain. 

Dr. Don Langford, testifying in the 
Hong Kong government's inquest into 


Lee's death, explained, “We gave him a 
drug (Mannitol) to reduce the swelling of 
the brain which we had detected.” Deeply 
shaken by the experience, Lee flew to Los 
Angeles after his release for a full physical. 
Doctors detected nothing wrong and told 
him he had “the body of an 18-year-old.” 
“He was in very high spirits when he came 
back to Hong Kong,” said his older brother 
Peter Lee in Alex Ben Block's 1974 biog- 
raphy. A test screening at Warner Bros. of 
Enter the Dragon had been a big success— 
everyone felt they had a huge hit on their 
hands. Lee had also rekindled his rela- 
tionship with Ting Pei. “One day he called 
to tell me he had finished his film,” she 
explains. “He came over and we were back 
together again. I was so happy.” 

On July 20, 10 weeks after his first collapse, 
Lee attended a meeting with Chow, Morgan 
and George Lazenby, the actor who had just 
played James Bond, to discuss potential ways 
to fit Lazenby into Lee’s next movie, Game of 
Death. “We sat around shooting the shit. That 
was the famous Bruce having a little munch 
on his hash,” Morgan says. “He was having 
a headache, and he asked for some codeine, 
but I didn’t have any.” 

After the morning meeting, Chow and 
Lee went over to Ting Pei’s apartment, 


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ostensibly to talk about the script. Lee had 
offered her a major role. When he com- 
plained about his head, Ting Pei gave him 
Equagesic, a prescription pain medication 
that combines aspirin and the muscle relax- 
ant meprobamate. “It's what my mother used 
all the time,” Ting Pei says. “Bruce had also 
taken it before.” The three ofthem had plans 
to go to dinner with Lazenby to celebrate. 
“When Bruce said he had a headache and 
wanted to lie down for a while, Raymond 
probably thought it was an excuse. He maybe 
thinks Bruce probably wants to....” Ting Pei 
trails off, smiling. “So Raymond jumped up 
and said, ‘Okay, ГП go first.“ 

When Lee failed to show up for dinner, 
Chow called Ting Pei and she told him he 
was sleeping. Then she called back in a panic 
to tell Chow she couldn't wake him. Ting 
Pei called her personal physician. Chow 
raced across town. When Chow arrived, 
Lee still couldn't be roused. By the time an 
ambulance arrived it was too late. Why an 
ambulance was not called earlier is still a 
sore subject. When I broach the topic with 
Ting Pei, she yells at me. Chow's answer: 
"Nobody ever thought, I'm sure, Ting Pei 
or myself, never even dreamed he might be 
dead. Well, he fell asleep. Okay, he'll wake 
up and get back to work. You never really 
dream of such a terrible thing.” 

The cause of death was conclusive: acute 
cerebral edema, the same thing that had 
nearly killed him 10 weeks earlier. What 
caused the cerebral edema is still a topic of 
controversy. The coroner's report found two 
things in Lee's stomach: Equagesic and traces 
of cannabis. The grief-stricken Chinese pub- 
lic—unable to accept that their invincible hero, 
a 32-year-old man at the height of his physi- 
cal powers, had died suddenly for no obvious 
reason—erupted in outrage and accusations 
of foul play. A government inquest held to 
pacify the furor concluded that the edema was 
the result ofa “hypersensitivity to either mep- 
robamate or aspirin or a combination of the 
two contained in Equagesic.” R.D. Teare, a 
forensic medicine expert at the University of 
London, supported the conclusion but noted 
that “hypersensitivity in this case is very rare 
indeed.” The court's findings satisfied almost 
no one—rumors, wild conjecture and conspir- 
acy theories continued unabated. Forty years 
later there is still no consensus on the cause of 
Lee's death. It remains a mystery. 

What isn't a mystery is the reason for Enter 
the Dragon's success: Bruce Lee. He was the 
first Asian American actor to embody the 
classic Hollywood definition of a star—men 
wanted to be him and women wanted to sleep 
with him. With his cocky smile, come-fight- 
me hand gestures and graceful but deadly 
moves, the chiseled Lee gave Chinese guys 
balls. “We lived in Alameda, near Oakland, 
where the Black Panthers came from,” says 
Leon Jay, a prominent martial arts instructor. 
“Before Enter the Dragon, it was “Hey, Chink, 
and after Bruce's movies came out it was like, 
‘Hey, brother.” But his appeal transcended 
race. “Every town in America has a church 
and a beauty parlor,” says Weintraub. “Now 
there's a church, a beauty parlor and a karate 
studio with a picture of Bruce Lee.” 


ARMIE HAMMER 


(continued from page 110) 


but I used to like to be a dominant lover. I 
liked the grabbing of the neck and the hair 
and all that. But then you get married and 
your sexual appetites change. And I mean 
that for the better—it's not like I'm suffer- 
ing in any way. But you can't really pull your 
wife's hair. It gets to a point where you say, 
“I respect you too much to do these things 
that I kind of want to do." 


6 

PLAYBOY: And how does she respond? 
HAMMER: The two us will literally break 
out laughing in the middle of it, finish up 
and be like, “Well, that was oddly fun!" So 
it becomes a new kind of thing that's less 
about "I want to dominate you" and more 
about both of us having a really good time. 
It's just a different style. 


Q7 
PLAYBOY: Where does your obsession with 
tying knots come from? 
HAMMER: Maybe it's a man's version of 
knitting. It's fascinating because you can 
pick up a piece of rope and know that if 
you do this, then this, then A, B, C, you'll 
get X every time. There are no variables 
in rope tying. It's all logic, and it's incred- 
ibly useful. 


8 

PLAYBOY: Should we assume those rumors 
about you playing the lead in the movie ver- 
sion of Fifty Shades of Grey are all false? 
HAMMER: No one actually offered me the 
movie, but while I was working on Lone 
Ranger my agent brought it up, and I said 
"Nope." I mean, come on—it's just mommy 
porn. I'm not going to sit on top of the laun- 
dry machine in spin cycle reading about 
putting a ball gag in someone's mouth. That 
doesn't do it for me. 


Q9 

PLAYBOY: You became famous playing the 
super-rich, super-entitled Winklevoss 
twins in The Social Network, the movie about 
the birth of Facebook. One of your great- 
grandfathers was Armand Hammer, the 
illustrious oil baron, philanthropist and art 
collector. How did you not become a Win- 
klevii type? 

HAMMER: My mom made sure I went to 
regular schools and not the ones parents 
send their kids to in L.A. to train them to 
become douchebags. The whole time my 
brothers and I were growing up, her thing 
was, "You're no different or more special 
than anybody else." 


Q10 

PLAYBOY: What do you remember about your 
great-grandfather? 

HAMMER: He had a plane, and I remember 
running up and down its aisle. He was a 
really eclectic, funny dude. On his plane 
he’d have a giant bowl of caviar, a giant 
bowl of lobster and then a humongous bowl 
of Kentucky Fried Chicken. And he could 
give a shit about the caviar or the lobster; 
he wanted to eat that fried chicken. That 


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was his happy place. I think that’s probably 
where I get my love for McDonald's. 


Q11 
PLAYBOY: You love the yellow arches? 
HAMMER: I have the most guilty, abusive 
relationship with McDonald's. Left to my 
own devices I'd probably eat four Big Macs 
a week. My wife, Elizabeth, says, “You can't 
fill your body with that crap—they put eye- 
balls in it!” And I go, “Sounds good!” 


Q12 

PLAYBOY: You own a restaurant, Bird Bak- 
ery, with your wife in her hometown of San 
Antonio. How do you keep yourself in shape 
when it's time to film? 

HAMMER: For a male actor the trick is to 
enjoy life so you know you're always about 
two weeks away from being “beach ready.” 
I mean, do you know how often those peo- 
ple have to think, What if I eat? It's a lot, 
and I don't want to think about myself as 
often as it is necessary to think about your- 
self in order to keep a six-pack all the time. 
Pd rather enjoy meals, order bottles of 
red wine and eat crème brûlée at the end 
of dinner. Then when they call you for a 
photo shoot, you just go, “Okay, time to 
hit the treadmill." 


013 

PLAYBOY: Lately horse meat has been finding 
its way into foreign hamburgers 
HAMMER: Which will make me a stallion, so 
ГЇЇ take it! You know, in places like France 
eating horse is totally acceptable. Elizabeth 
says, “You cannot say that—you're the Lone 
Ranger!” [laughs] But horse meat is appar- 
ently delicious and nutritious. It's funny: 
When we were eating at a burger joint 
with the cowboys in Lone Ranger 1 point- 
blank asked, “Did you ever eat a horse?” 
And every one of them said, “Oh hell yeah, 
man—that's good eatin’!” 


14 

PLAYBOY: What died the cowboys teach 
you? 

HAMMER: When we showed up at cowboy 
camp they said, "Here's your saddle and 
your bedroll." I said, "Seems kind of thin 
for a bedroll." The guy got in my face and 
screamed, "You're a fuckin' ranger, man! 
You lay down and cover up your ass. Are 
we clear?" 


015 

PLAYBOY: So it was а rough shoot? 

HAMMER: They beat the shit out of us, dude. 
We filmed in Utah, Colorado and New 
Mexico, among other places, and when we 
started it was cold enough to get shut down 
by blizzards. Then there were windstorms, 
then sandstorms, then electrical storms. In 
New Mexico they laid five miles of train 
track so we’d have our own rail to shoot 
on, and Johnny and I spent weeks just run- 
ning on top of trains. One day it got to 120 
degrees, and I was wearing this wool suit, 
leather gloves, leather mask and hat for 14 
hours of daylight. I got so skinny they had 
to put new holes in my belts. 


Q16 

PLAYBOY: Give us an example of young 
Armie as a middle schooler. 

HAMMER: I almost got kicked out of eighth 
grade for selling PLAYBOY. Me and this guy 
had a ring where we'd bring magazines 
packaged with a bottle of lotion to school— 
brilliant business plan, wasn't it?—and sell 
them to the kids for $20. Then I got called 
into a teacher's office. He said, "I've heard 
you're bringing in these nudie magazines." 
I said, "Nope, not me." He went, "So you 
wouldn't mind if we checked your locker?" 
Which he then went and did. We'd stashed 
the actual magazines in bushes by the school, 
but there was a ton of lotion in the locker. 
All he could say was, "Why do you have so 


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much lotion?” I said, “I get dry hands.” 
[/aughs] They couldn't prove I was selling 
the magazines, so I got away with it. Fun! 


Q17 

PLAYBOY: You're six-foot-five, yet you 
drove up for this interview on a Vespa. 
What's a king-size dude doing on such a 
pint-size bike? 

HAMMER: The usual joke is that I'm com- 
pensating for my huge penis. We'll skip that 
one, though, and say it's for ease of com- 
mute. I'm obsessed with Vespas—there's just 
no faster way to get around Los Angeles. 


18 

PLAYBOY: You and a wife once bought 
each other guns for Christmas. Are you a 
big gun lover? 

HAMMER: I wouldn't necessarily say I'm 
a gun lover—I’m a gun appreciator. I 
appreciate their function, the way they’ve 
evolved and the mechanics of them. I’m 
not sure I think anybody should be able 
to just walk into a gun store and walk out 
with a gun, but statistically, if you look at 
places where people are the most armed, 
there’s less crime. I’m by no means advo- 
cating a completely armed society, but at 
the same time, I appreciate the recreation 
of guns. Going out and skeet shooting can 
be a fun, adrenalized time. My wife and 
I were supposed to go skeet shooting on 
our first date, but it started to rain so we 
ended up going to a bunch of art galleries 
and then a porno store instead. 


Q19 

PLAYBOY: In 2011’s J. Edgar, directed by Clint 
Eastwood, you play Clyde Tolson, the associ- 
ate director of the FBI, opposite Leonardo 
DiCaprio's J. Edgar Hoover. No one knows 
for certain, but the two were so inseparable 
that many assumed they were lovers. The 
movie hints that the answer is yes. Where 
do you stand? 

HAMMER: On set I’d always say, “Clint, what 
do you think? Did they ever bang?” And 
he’d go [in a heavy Eastwood whisper], “I don't 
know. I don't think so.” Then I'd ask Leo, 
“So what do you think? Did they ever do 
it?” And he’d go [takes a deep breath], “I don't 
know...maybe.” But I was like, “Oh yeah, 
they did it for sure!” That was my stand- 
point, 100 percent. Like maybe one night 
they had a few too many martinis and all of 
a sudden [mimes passing out and waking up], 
“Oh! What did we just do? Oh my God, that 
felt so good! And so bad! I hate you, I love 
you, get away from me, get over here!” One 
of those things, you know? 


020 

PLAYBOY: Where do you stand оп marriage 
equality? 

HAMMER: I don't think anybody should be 
telling anybody else who they should marry 
or not marry. That's my official standpoint. 
This is social evolution, and the thing with 
evolution, whether you look at it in terms of 
a plant or a species or a mind-set, is it will 
always take time. But you just want to say, 
“The debate's over, folks. Get used to it.” 


BREWSTER’S ARK 


(continued from page 126) 


the dream of one ofthe world’s most deter- 
mined cultural archivists, Brewster Kahle. 
An MIT graduate and Silicon Valley entre- 
preneur, Kahle has spent more than $3 mil- 
lion out of his nonprofit to buy and operate 
this facility. He devised the archive as a sort 
of data backup, apparently, to his online 
archive, which preserves web pages (150 
billion and counting), concerts (including 
nearly 10,000 Grateful Dead recordings) 
and films (more than 500,000 of them)— 
all of which are available free to the public. 
You might say Kahle has a weakness for col- 
lecting things. You might also worry about 
ulterior motives. Regardless, his warehouse 
has quickly become the nation’s largest 
repository of unsold, unwanted, second- 
hand, duplicate and deaccessioned library 
books—which suits him just fine. "We'll 
take everything,” he claims. “Our goal is 
one copy of every book. Every book in every 
language. Every book in the world.” 


Each day brings more grim news for lovers 
of the printed word. Breakout sensations 
such as Fifty Shades of Grey occasionally re- 
vive the flagging publishing industry, but 
major publishers, after decades of consoli- 
dation, are declaring bankruptcy and shut- 
ting down. Brick-and-mortar bookstores 
are disappearing fast. Of the big booksell- 
ers, Amazon—an idea more than a place, 
a multitiered distribution center, like the 
internet itself—holds the lion’s share ofthe 
market. Public libraries, faced with ever- 
tightening budgets, have reduced buying, 
shortened hours and converted their read- 
ing rooms into glorified computer termi- 
nals. Librarians used to help customers 
find physical books—now they spend most 
of their time thinning holdings and help- 
ing patrons get online. 

If publishers are folding, bookstores 
closing and libraries decreasing their hold- 
ings, what is happening to all the books? 
Many are being sent to Kahle. After watch- 
ing Boston’s books disappear into his ware- 
house, I find the operational manager of 
the archive, Sean Fagan, in his office. 

Fagan is a young, stubble-faced former 
scribe from Kahle’s southern California op- 
eration. Not surprisingly, his office is full of 
books. He has built an ottoman out of vol- 
umes the archive already has in storage—a 
1928 copy of Don Quixote, The Modern Music 
Series Primer and Practical German Grammar, 
to name just a few—glued into a cube, at- 
tached to a plywood base and outfitted with 
wheels. Against the wall of his office, from 
floor to ceiling, he has almost 400 copies of 
The Da Vinci Code. 

“We get a couple of those a month,” he 
says with a sneer. "I'm thinking of making 
a bench out of them.” 

“Which libraries send you books?” 

“Carnegie, Penn State, universities all 
over the place. We get 10,000 to 15,000 
books a week. All the state libraries give us 
stuff. California just gave us another ship- 
ment. Want to see what they sent?” 

I follow Fagan down a long dusty cor- 


ridor, back toward the loading dock. (Nor- 
mally he gets around the place by foot 
scooter.) We keep walking, and every time I 
turn around 1 come up against more books. 
There are books spilling out of cylindri- 
cal containers, plastic crates and bankers’ 
boxes, books stacked against water pipes, 
books jumbled in sorting bins and lying on 
the cement floor, their pages fluttering in 
the stable microclimate. 

“As you can see, it's kind of an airport 
hub here,” Fagan shouts as we arrive at the 
main warehouse. “We have the capacity for 
3.5 million, but Brewster thinks we're go- 
ing to need more room. Only four of us are 
here full-time.” 

I ask him how he likes his job, but I don't 
think he hears. He's on his way to the ship- 
ment from the State of California. On the 
way we pass the archive forklift, temporar- 
ily at rest, followed by huge columns of 
shrink-wrapped books destined for “deep 
storage”—in other words, forever. 

Kahle's archive has given libraries the 
opportunity to cut costs, perhaps at the ex- 
pense of the reader. Research libraries must 
accept the “hard reality of off-site storage,” 
Harvard library director Robert Darnton 
recently wrote. The main branch of the 
New York Public Library moved more than 
half its holdings—3 million volumes—to a 
storage facility in order to trim its budget 
and make room for a circulating library. 
These books may one day become available 
online. But does the average patron of a 
public library own a digital reading device? 
What will be the quality of their reading 
experiences? And how can people browse 
books that aren't physically there? 

Fagan and l arrive at a long row of boxes 
against the wall. California's books are 
waiting to be checked against the archive 
database for duplicates, given a bar code 
and digitized. I pull out a sample volume 
bound in cheap plastic. It looks as though 
it has never been opened: Measurement 
of Zooplankton Biomass by Carbon Analysis 
for Application in Sound Scattering Models. 
Master's Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 
Monterey, California, 1974. 

I enjoy a good read, but I don't feel 
like tucking into this particular item. A 
few boxes down I notice antiquated large- 
format books bound in leather. 

“It's too bad the state didn't have room 
for these,” Fagan says, carefully opening 
one of the volumes. He gestures for me to 
come nearer. “Look, it's the London Times.” 

There they are, real newspapers, beau- 
tifully bound and tariff-stamped with the 
names of the reading rooms they were 
originally meant for. (“Smoking Room” is 
my favorite.) They date back to 1833. For 
years these newspapers would have told 
the readers of California the news from 
London just as it appeared to the Lon- 
doners themselves. The pages are thick 
and crisp, lovely to behold. They have ads 
for London-specific businesses. I want to 
take one of the volumes to a leather chair, 
pour myself a single malt and browse. The 
events of March 4, 1833 are chronicled in 
black ink, still dark and legible, printed in 
the original Times Roman typeface: 

“Charge of Child Murder: Jane, the 


wife of Joseph Hague, age 20, indicted for 
casting her child into a certain privy....” 

“Hunting Appointments: His Majesty's 
staghounds, Monday, at Ascot Heath...” 

"A review of the Rossini opera Matilde 
di Shabran at the King's Theatre: As a pro- 
duction, this opera far outdoes in extrava- 
gance and absurdity anything we have 
seen. Fine music ought not to be bestowed 
on such subjects; it is unfitting to the living 
and the dead...." 

"I think we're building a special scan- 
ner for these books," Fagan says some- 
what doubtfully. His name is called over 
the loudspeaker. "Hang on a sec. Another 
shipment's just come in." 

"More books?" 

"More books," he says. He starts off to- 
ward the loading dock. 

"Why is Brewster doing it?" 

Fagan looks at me in surprise. "He wants 
to create the next Library of Alexandria." 

"But this isn't exactly a reading room. 
Can't he donate these books after scanning 
them? He wouldn't have to pay for storage." 

"You'll have to ask him that yourself," he 
says and takes off at a sprint. The forklift 
operator is running too. They look like a 
couple of excited kids. 

I linger at the edge of the book islands 
that dot the warehouse floor. A metal lad- 
der rises to a storage platform where more 
books stand on pallets, ready to be turned 
into time capsules. Literary treasure sits 
inside those boxes—Shakespeare plays and 
forgotten classics, official maps and obscure 
drawings, Bibles and pulp, science and fic- 
tion, dog-eared poems and wine-stained 
prose. “Every word was once a poem,” 
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Maybe this is 
where all words are destined to retire, the 
city of Richmond. Whole libraries are be- 
ing buried like Egyptian mummies. 

As I wait for Fagan I hear a strange war- 
ble, like an Arabic ululation. It's the circular 
exhaust fans, whirring in odd intervals, cre- 
ating an otherworldly atonal fugue. I won- 
der if any crows are up there, dropping bul- 
lets. Fagan told me he doesn't know why the 
birds do this or where they find the casings. 
He told me a scanning engineer became so 
entranced by the archive that he stayed here 
day and night, by himself, for months. Along 
the metal rafters, computerized climate 
monitors measure my body's impact on the 
humidity. Suddenly I am uneasy being in 
the warehouse alone. I worry the forklift op- 
erator might mistake me for a book. 

I wander around, looking for Fagan. I 
walk past an open box of women’s shoes. An- 
other box holds rotary telephones. (As peo- 
ple learn about Kahle’s penchant for collect- 
ing, his repository has become something of 
a dumping ground for dead people’s attics.) 
The shipping containers tower in the center 
of the facility—30 of them, with a further 28 
on order—certified by the Port of Oakland, 
primed, painted gray, treated with sealants 
to protect against everything from fire to dry 
rot. I notice one has its door open. I cross 
the loading dock and step inside. 

It's cold inside a shipping container. All 
sensations—colors, smells, sounds—are 
collapsed into a dark void. A shipping con- 
tainer feels as though it might preserve 


175 


176 


something, anything at all, until the end of 
time. I make out endless rows of cardboard 
boxes. Near the front is a box overflowing 
with reels. The shipping label reads PENN 
STATE FILM ARCHIVE. Titles include Across the 
Silence Barrier and The Year of the Wildebeest. 
Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I 
wheel. It's only Fagan. He looks tired from 
his journey across the warehouse floor, and 
as he glances down at the films at our feet, 
he's still panting. “We're supposed to watch 
these, one of these days,” he says. “Put up a 
projector. See what it is we've got.” 


I take a cab over the Bay Bridge. I want 
to meet Brewster Kahle, the man behind 
the books. It's a sunny afternoon, and I'm 
grateful to be moving through open air. As 
my driver hurtles into San Francisco, down 
into this glittering city of pioneers and rad- 
icals and offbeat billionaires, I think of all 
those books back in their shipping contain- 
ers. What in the world is Kahle doing? 
Public libraries first appeared in Victorian 
England. A component of British social 


policies aimed at “mutual benefit,” libraries 
grew out of the belief that people without 
education needed the means to learn. For a 
small fee, circulating libraries lent out music 
scores, songbooks, folios of caricatures, 
even instruments. Not everyone thought 
positively of expanding public literacy. 
Thomas Goulding's polemical pamphlet 
“An Essay Against Too Much Reading” ar- 
gued, ""Tis not drinking and whoring, as 
your old sots attribute it to, that invigorates 
the spirits, and causes quick flights; they 
run to the libraries, which confounds all 
again." Libraries have always encountered 
various forms of hostility—mostly due to 
the tax burden on the public—but for many 
people they remain places of refuge to sit 
down, without charge, and read. 

It has been reported that Kahle is build- 
ing his ark to guard against a "digital disas- 
ter" like an electromagnetic pulse. A burst 
of radiation from a solar flare or a nuclear 
attack has the capacity to burn microchips 
and circuitry; experts contend data loss 
can be minimized with countermeasures. 
Others suggest Kahle is inspired by the 


Svalbard Global Seed Vault in arctic Nor- 
way, which houses the seeds of almost every 
plant on earth. But the Svalbard vault is 
designed to avert a global food crisis. Does 
anyone worry about the scarcity of physical 
books? Even Pulitzer Prize winner Junot 
Díaz writes, "Most people don't spend two 
or three hours thinking or reading. Books 
seem to be artifacts from a slower time." 

My driver tears across the city. He barrels 
down Geary, runs a red light and narrowly 
avoids an elderly man coming out of a restau- 
rant. Finally he pulls up outside what looks 
like a temple—a hulking, chalk-white edifice 
with ornate neoclassical columns overlooking 
the cypress trees of Golden Gate Park. 

"Here we be," the cabbie says, push- 
ing back his cap. I remain in the backseat, 
deciphering his words of existential wisdom. 

The headquarters of Kahle's Internet 
Archive occupy a former Christian Science 
church. In the annex next door, where the 
church's reading room used to be, a team of 
full-time scribes digitizes cultural ephemera. 
The day I visit there are 12 scribes, mostly 
young and surprisingly healthy looking, de- 
spite what must be the physically taxing job 
of scanning book after book, page by page, 
together with organizing the thousands of 
films, texts and audio recordings down- 
loaded each day onto Kahle's rapidly grow- 
ing archive. (Kahle's scribes operate in 21 
locations in six countries, at a rate of 1,000 
books a day. He even has a team inside the 
Library of Alexandria in Egypt.) 

In the former reading room a female 
scribe is digitizing a squeaky film reel of 
someone's home movie of the Grand Can- 
yon, summer of 1952. On the screen, a 
family waves at the camera from a picnic 
table. One man is shirtless. The frames of 
the film judder across his sunburned chest 
as he smokes his cigarette. Did this anony- 
mous American have any idea, back then, 
that his family trip to Arizona would one 
day be placed onto a database for the world 
to peruse? Her face expressionless, the 
scribe keeps one hand on her mouse and 
another on the reel. On the wall above her 
chair a whiteboard notes equipment issues: 
"broken lightbulb," "dongle not recog- 
nized," "scribe lower pedal malfunction." 

I leave the reading room and climb the 
marble steps to the giant columns of the 
church. I'm apprehensive—this is the control 
room of a repository much greater in kind 
than the Richmond facility, a place whose 
parameters I can't define, let alone escape. 

An attractive assistant appears in the 
lobby. She shows me into an open office 
area where fresh-faced young professionals 
perch in ergonomic chairs within a white, 
sun-drenched room. I recline in a leather 
armchair. A Labrador pads over and falls 
asleep near my feet. 

Soon an excitable man with a smile comes 
bounding over in blue jeans and a Hawaiian 
shirt. He sticks out his hand and laughs in 
a scratchy, high-pitched voice. "How many 
words they give you?" he asks, raising his 
bushy eyebrows above his eyeglasses. "What 
kind of angle you going to take?" 

"I'm just trying to figure this place out," 
I confess. 

He sits beside me and pets the dog. 


“We’re building an integration of machines, 
knowledge and people. It’s the opportunity 
of our generation.” 

Kahle resembles a singer from a Beach 
Boys cover band. The 52-year-old silver- 
haired archivist sprinkles words such as 
rad and cool into scientific jargon. His 
impish eyes often make him look caught, 
like a boy with his hand in the cookie jar, 
a boy who tries to convince you the jar 
is his. Kahle studied under legendary 
mathematics genius Marvin Minsky, co- 
founder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab 
at MIT. (After graduating, Kahle got rich 
from his inventions. In one transaction 
alone he made a quarter of a billion dol- 
lars selling a search engine to Amazon.) 
I don't understand his motives. I ask 
why he dedicates 
so much time to ar- 
chiving web pages. 

“We want to cre- 
ate a valid historical 
record,” he replies, 
waving his hands 
around the church. 
“We have a special 
role outside of com- 
merce: preservation 
and access.” 

“Preservation of 
the web? What for?” 

“George Orwell 
said something like 
“Don't lose the past 
as you catapult your- 
self into the future.” 
You never know 
what people might 
need to look back at. 
We've already had an 
effect on transpar- 
ency. We've changed 
White House press 
releases.” 

The motto of the 
Internet Archive is 
not short on am- 
bition: “Universal 
access to all knowl- 
edge.” The yearly 
operating budget of 
$10 million comes 
mainly from librar- 
ies and foundations 
paying to have mate- 
rials archived. Kahle says his ultimate goal 
is to build a library of the future. The entity 
will function as a kind of “world brain” that 
“removes barriers between humans and 
intellects.” Kahle doesn't think anyone, or 
any group, should monopolize information 
or own too much culture. He speaks glow- 
ingly of Napster, the music-sharing website 
credited with changing the industry before 
it was shut down for copyright violations. 

“What about privacy? What if someone 
doesn't want their website uploaded to 
your database?” 

"If it's in the public domain, we want it. 
But the world is shifting. In 25 years, it's 
going to be pretty uncomfortable for peo- 
ple like me. We respect people's requests. 
We remove things from the archive if peo- 
ple want us to, using robots." 


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A young man with spiky blond hair 
comes over and quietly asks Kahle to loan 
him $5 for lunch. I recognize him as one of 
the scribes from the reading room. "This 
is my son Caslon," Kahle says, taking out 
his wallet. “We named him after Benjamin 
Franklin's favorite typeface." 

Caslon nods hello. He waits while his 
dad fishes out a five. Kahle recommends 
what to order at the Chinese restaurant 
and tells his son what time he wants him 
back at work. 

"You named your kid after a font?" I ask 
after Caslon has left. 

“I love books." 

“Is that why you're storing them? Are 
you really worried about an electromag- 
netic pulse?” 


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“No. Only a little. I'm worried about 
data being wiped out by the stroke of a 
pen. If you look at the history of librar- 
ies, they're burned. And they're burned by 
governments." 

"But surely people could be reading 
those books. They were once on shelves 
in a library, and now they're destined for 
deep storage." 

"Libraries are throwing away books 
at a high velocity. We need a backup in 
case someone comes along and says, 'You 
didn't digitize that page accurately.' We e- 
loan our new books to the blind and the 
learning disabled. Also, we lend books to 
the Chinese." 

“The Chinese government?" 

"Yeah, their department of education 
pays us for large-scale loans, 100,000 or so 


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at a time. They scan the books into their 
own digital library and send them back in 
good condition." 

I try to fathom the logic of shipping 
bound copies of printed paper to China, 
6,000 miles away, so that further digi- 
tal copies can be made of books already 
scanned onto a public database. (Kahle 
also has a team of his own scribes in China, 
scanning their books onto his database. 
The reciprocal scanning arrangement pro- 
vides additional revenue.) 

"Come on," Kahle says, rising from his 
chair, “I’ll show you the Great Room." 

He hurries through the lobby, throws 
open a set of double doors and guides 
me into an enormous auditorium with a 
domed ceiling and stained-glass windows. 
Wooden  pews 
stretch from the al- 
tar to the back wall. 

"Look," he says, 
grinning. He points 
to two rectangular 
black boxes stand- 
ing upright in the 
corner, flashing 
with blue lights. 
"That's two and a 
half petabytes right 
there—the  pri- 
mary copy of the 
archive." 

"What are the 
blue lights?" 

"Each time some- 
one uploads or 
downloads some- 
thing. We average 
2 million a day." 

I try to picture 
what 2 million “visi- 
tors" to this place, 
none of whom 
leave their physi- 
cal homes, look like. 
Down near the altar 
are people, or what 
I think are people, 
sitting in the pews. I 
want to get away for 
a moment, to escape 
Kahle's manic en- 
thusiasm for his peta 
boxes and collect my 
thoughts. I wander 
down the aisle, only to discover the people 
in the pews aren't moving. They sit rigidly, 
their faces turned toward the altar, mouths 
frozen into oddly painted smiles. 

Kahle is right behind me. "What do you 
think of my statues? Aren't they rad?" 

Ilook at their faces more closely. I recog- 
nize Sean from the Richmond warehouse— 
his stubbly face, his childlike eyes. 

Kahle throws his head back in a laugh. 
"You work for me three years, you get a 
statue of yourself. Check it out—they're 
made of terra-cotta, just like the Chinese 
soldiers in Xi'an." 

I had officially entered Kahle's virtual 
world. I must have looked a little pale. 
He places his hand on my shoulder and 
says it's time we had lunch. He reassures 
me that we'll have real food from a real 


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restaurant and that it will taste better than 
I can imagine. 


Maybe Brewster Kahle is just concerned 
about our cultural heritage. He distrusts 
the behemoth of the book-scanning world, 
Google Books. (As of March 2012, Google 
had scanned more than 20 million books 
with the cooperation of the world’s most 
prestigious libraries, including Harvard’s 
Widener Library. Many remain skeptical 
about Google’s data mining, its supposed 
adherence to privacy and copyright laws 
and what it intends to do with our elec- 
tronic reading trails.) 

“They’re locking up the public domain,” 
Kahle tells me. “All the early press was that 
this would be open to all, but it's obviously 
not the case. We don't want central points of 
control -e want to scan every book beauti- 
fully and make them available to everyone.” 

I e-mail Danny Hillis, an inventor of 
the parallel supercomputer, to ask what 
he thinks of Kahle's archiving. He claims 
Kahle is a “rare visionary” whose collec- 
tions have “created a priceless human re- 
source that would otherwise have been lost 
to history.” Kahle came up with the concept 
of the Rosetta Disk, stainless steel encrypt- 
ed with 1,500 language exemplars embed- 
ded in nanoscale. Many of the world's lan- 
guages are dying without a trace, so Kahle 
wants to bury the disk “somewhere in the 
desert” with a target reader of someone 
alive 3,000 to 5,000 years from now. 

Even if Kahle’s motives are selfless, why 
is he keeping all the books he scans? Is 
there any basis for his concerns about gov- 
ernment book burning? I need advice. I fly 
to Los Angeles to meet a radical librarian. 

I call my friend Tony. He’s a highly 
paid information specialist for one of the 
biggest law firms in the city. He can find 
information on almost anyone, anywhere. 
(Recently a junior partner in the firm 
awarded Tony a $25,000 bonus for uncov- 
ering little-known facts about the layout of 
a certain celebrity’s mansion to fight a law- 
suit. The junior partner won the case.) 

Tony is an information revolutionary, 
medical marijuana aficionado and occa- 
sional associate of the hacker group Anony- 
mous. He wants us to meet in his tiny one- 
bedroom apartment between the movie 
studios of Culver City and the east side 
of Venice. The neighborhood gives him a 
perfect place to smoke, hack and read. 

“The preservation of books is a realistic 
pursuit," Tony tells me. He gestures for 
me to come inside, and he locks the door. 
"It has to be done, the physical part. Good 
librarians are obsessed with preservation. 
Believe me, it's both madness and logical." 

I've brought him a gift of Russian vodka. 
I pour out a couple of ice-filled tumblers. 
I join him on the sofa and watch him load 
high-grade medical marijuana into one of 
his 14 designer bongs—an "unbreakable" 
tempered-glass number, specially made in 
Germany to fit the exact contours of his palm. 

"But why is he storing all these books 
himself?" I ask. "Why not just let the Library 
of Congress do it?" 

"You think the guy's being paranoid?" 


Tony leans over and laughs in my face, 
bathing me in the remnants of his weed. 
"You need to read up, fool. Read the his- 
tory of libraries and book burning." 

He scribbles down the books I need to 
check out. I look across the carpet. Beside 
the TV stands an extensive collection of 
video games, most of them violent. On top 
of the game cartridges sits his stoned cat, 
staring at me with glassy eyes. 

“There's this data bank in Arizona," Tony 
says, "and another one in Nevada. I used 
to use them all the time for work, and now 
they've gone dark. It's the government shut- 
ting them down, intercepting e-mails, phone 
calls, shutting down websites. People need to 
guard against this shit. If Kahle is collecting 
millions of books, he has his reasons." 


Ileave Tony's and take a drive. It's just before 
sunset, and before the night comes I want to 
visit my favorite reading room in the Pasa- 
dena Public Library, where I can browse in 
peace under the soft green lamplight. When 
I get off the freeway and hit what's left of the 
orange trees, the humidity slowly climbs. 
Maybe it's the vodka and maybe it's the 
weed. Maybe the terra-cotta statues have 
frightened me into submission. I start to 


"Much of what comes down 
to us from antiquity was held 
in small private libraries, 
where it was more likely to 
escape the notice of zealots as 
well as princes." 


think Kahle could be a good guy. Recently 
he traveled to Bali to present to the island- 
ers, free of charge, a digital record of their 
entire written culture—a record that until 
now had been moldering on the backs of 
palm fronds. The number of hours re- 
quired for that kind of curatorial work 
must have been staggering. 

The Pasadena Public Library reading 
room is wood-paneled and furnished with 
leather armchairs. On the shelves you can 
find printed newspapers from around 
the world. There is a satisfying crinkle of 
paper pages slowly being turned. I find 
the books Tony recommends and bring 
them to an empty chair. 

It turns out Kahle is right. Here in my 
favorite reading room I am on dangerous 
ground. The history of libraries is also the 
history of libraries being burned. Kahle 
doesn't want to protect our books from 
a natural disaster—he wants to protect 
them from ourselves. 

The city of Alexandria in Egypt, home 
of the papyrus industry, was the hub of 
the Mediterranean book trade for more 
than 500 years. Ancient sources claim that 
Aristotle’s private library furnished the 
seed collection from which the legend- 
ary library grew. It’s said that more than 


700,000 scrolls were kept in one building 
alone. Then in 641 A. p. Caliph Omar al- 
legedly instructed his generals, “If what is 
written...agrees with the Book of God, the 
scrolls are not required; ifit disagrees, they 
are not desired. Destroy them therefore.” 
Omar’s men packed up the holdings and 
carried them to the city’s hot baths, where 
the ancient civilization’s books fueled the 
furnaces for six months. 

The Library of Alexandria’s fate is not 
unique. Emperor Shi Huangdi, after con- 
necting the stone fortifications that make 
up the Great Wall of China, decided to de- 
stroy all written texts that dated before his 
dynasty. Chroniclers say he ordered the 
largest book burning in history. Before the 
invention of paper, books in ancient China 
were composed of handwritten characters 
on strips of bamboo, sewn together with 
silk thread like Venetian blinds. The em- 
peror burned them all, then rounded up 
more than 460 “masters”—scholars, physi- 
cians, writers—and buried them alive. (Shi 
Huangdi died returning from a campaign 
against peasant uprisings; the terra-cotta 
warriors buried in modern-day Xi’an sup- 
posedly guard his remains.) 

The Spanish conquerors of Mexico, as 
they introduced the Bible, destroyed all the 
painted Nahuatl books they could find— 
invaluable codices that included the only 
written information on the very people they 
wished to assimilate. The Aztecs were prob- 
ably not surprised by this tactic. Their ruler 
Itzcóatl ordered the burning of the books 
of the peoples he conquered, the nomadic 
tribes of Mexica. Even the book-collecting 
Romans, worried about Druidic prophecies, 
burned thousands of Druid texts. Their 
burning didn't help them avoid their own 
biblioclasms: Cicero's fabled Palatine Li- 
brary, copied and maintained by educated 
Greek slaves, mysteriously burned to ashes, 
as did the Octavian Library built by the Em- 
peror Augustus. The Library of Congress 
was burned by the British during the War 
of 1812. (It burned again on Christmas Eve 
1851, destroying nearly two thirds of its col- 
lection.) More recently, the Nazis bombed 
and burned libraries (such as Louvain), as 
did the Taliban (in Kabul), and regardless 
of the official explanation—U.S. forces in- 
cinerated dozens of copies of the Koran. 
State-funded libraries such as Pasadena's 
are under constant threat. As Harvard 
scholar Matthew Battles writes, "Much of 
what comes down to us from antiquity...was 
held in small private libraries tucked away 
in obscure backwaters in the ancient world, 
where it was more likely to escape the notice 
of zealots as well as princes." 

Brewster Kahle may be right to hedge 
our bets. With his odd obsession for time 
capsules, he may be the only sane pack rat 
with the resources necessary to safeguard 
the written word. Tomorrow's invad- 
ers will probably ignore his warehouse in 
Richmond as they go about burning our 
cultural treasures—and if the Library of 
Congress falls under the torch, Kahle's 
shipping containers, sealed in their wind- 
swept wasteland, may just survive. 


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PLAYBOY 


(continued from page 131) 
Clay has been able to survive is that he 
knows what felled him wasn’t a sudden 
loss of talent or jaded audiences or even 
new comedic fashions. What destroyed 
Andrew Dice Clay’s career was a cultural 
war in which Clay found himself between 
two roaring armies, one conservative, one 
liberal, neither of which really understood 
him. In fact, you could say the Diceman 
was sacrificed on the altar of misunder- 
standing. His resurgence is certainly a 
function of a burgeoning sense of irony, of 
audiences that get what he is trying to do, 
but it is also a function of something deep- 
er. Andrew Dice Clay is a living testimonial 
to survivability. Ifthe Diceman didn't die, it 
was because he simply refused to die. And 
audiences now sort of know it. It's not just 
comedy anymore. It is respect. 


When fans think about Andrew Dice Clay, 
one of the things they remember is "the 
Garden," which is almost totemic with him. 
He begins his Showtime special, the aptly 
named Indestructible, with footage of his ap- 
pearance at Madison Square Garden back 
in February 1990, when he became the 
first and only comedian ever to sell out two 
shows at the world's most famous arena, 
though Clay is quick to add that he sold out 
even larger stadiums. That was the apex, 
not just of Clay's career but perhaps of any 
comedian's achievements, ever. There was a 
gold album produced by the legendary Rick 
Rubin, HBO comedy specials, a Hollywood 
movie—The Adventures of Ford Fairlane— 
directed by action maven Renny Harlin, 
who was fresh off Die Hard 2, and a host- 
ing gig on Saturday Night Live. And there 
were the profiles, dozens of them. Van- 
ity Fair touted Clay as “Hollywood's hottest 
comedian”—the consensus about him then. 

But Clay was more than hot. He was one 
of those rare entertainers who become a 
cultural phenomenon. His comedy—which 
purported to be the comedy of unregen- 
erate white male troglodytes, a comedy of 
derision that vented against everyone but 
white male troglodytes, a comedy liberally 
laced with “fuckin’” and “blow jobs” and 
“pussy” and “bitches,” a comedy of the most 
graphic sexual depictions—shattered every 
taboo and pushed every envelope. He made 
Lenny Bruce seem like Jerry Seinfeld. He 
scandalized, he antagonized, he brutalized, 
and in the process he changed not only the 
subject matter of comedy, he changed its at- 
titude and style. He called himself the first 
“rock-and-roll comedian,” and he was. 

To hear him tell it now, it had always 
been according to the Plan. When Andrew 
Clay Silverstein was a boy growing up in the 
Marine Park section of Brooklyn, he was a 
poor student (“F was the favorite letter on 
every test I took") and a terrible athlete and 
had no particular skills, save one. Andrew 
Silverstein knew in his bones that he could 
entertain. In fact, he felt he had failed at 
everything else only so he could succeed in 
entertainment. When he was seven his par- 


180 ents bought him a toy drum kit, promising 


to buy him a real one if he kept playing and 
assuming that, like most kids, he wouldn't. 
But he did, four hours a day for years, while 
his sister, who was three years older, sat 
in his room listening to him pound away. 
That's how he learned to become a drum- 
mer. Playing in the dance band at James 
Madison High School, he learned to become 
a showman. He took a 30-second drum solo 
at the spring concert and turned it into a 
three-minute Krupaesque virtuoso perfor- 
mance that had the crowd oohing, aahing 
and laughing. "That was the moment," he 
says, "I knew I could thrill the world." 
Most would-be stars pose in front of 
a mirror or warble into a hairbrush, but 
Andrew Silverstein wasn't your typi- 
cal showbiz dreamer. He not only knew 
what he wanted, he knew precisely how 
he was going to get it: He had the Plan. 
He couldn't do it behind a drum set, even 
though he spent two wild summers in the 
Catskills playing in a band. He had to do 
it where audiences could see him. So he 
abandoned the drums and began think- 
ing about an act. He really didn't care what 
kind, and he really didn't think it mattered 
much. The Plan was that he was so good, 
the act would get him attention and win 
him popularity, and he would then parlay 
that popularity into an acting career. 
That's another thing about Andrew Dice 
Clay: He never doubted the Plan would 
work. He had utter confidence that he was 
destined to be a star. He knew it. He was so 
cocky that when he was 16 and watching a 
Frank Sinatra special on TV with his girl- 
friend Sheryl Brown in her family's Coney 
Island apartment, he was thinking how 
great Sinatra was, but he was also thinking, 
I shouldn't be here; I should be up there. 
For a while he worked at a haberdashery 
and then helped his father, who owned a 
process-serving agency on Court Street in 
Brooklyn. But these were just diversions 
as he waited for the Plan to take effect. He 
was driving home with a friend after see- 
ing Grease at the Oceana Theater in Brigh- 
ton Beach when the act suddenly came to 
him. He looked like John Travolta. Every- 
body said so. He was lean and handsome, 
and he had that same urban strut. And he 
could mimic Travolta. He sounded just like 
him. So, wearing a gigantic tuxedo shirt 
that hung down to his knees, he would 
take the stage as nerdy, bucktoothed Jerry 
Lewis from The Nutty Professor. "Actually, 
ladies and gentlemen, I am what you call 
a human pity," he would whine in Lewis's 
adenoidal voice. Then he would announce 
that he was mixing a potion, drink it, turn 
his back to the audience, rip off his shirt... 
and he would suddenly be transformed into 
John Travolta. “So you thought it couldn't 
be done," he would mumble to the audi- 
ence in Travolta’s voice. After a few jokes, 
up would come the music, and he would 
break into “Greased Lightning," complete 
with Travolta’s gyrations and dance moves 
from Grease. When he debuted the act on an 
open-audition night in 1978 at Pips Comedy 
Club in Brooklyn, with his mother, father 
and sister in attendance, the mystified audi- 
ence booed his entrance and yelled for him 
to “fuck off.” But when he wheeled around 


as Travolta, puffed on a cigarette, stared 
them down and launched into his number, 
the crowd went wild. The act was only 10 
minutes long, but that night the club booked 
him as its headliner. "From the day I went 
onstage, I was onstage every day," he says. 

The Plan worked so well that at least 
as far as the local clubs were concerned, 
20-year-old Andrew Clay, as he billed him- 
self, literally became an overnight sensation, 
bringing home $600 a night from places 
named Electric Circus and Funhouse and 
from various discos in the boroughs. 

It wasn't long before an L.A. comic 
named Mitchell Walters saw him and rec- 
ommended him to Mitzi Shore, who ran 
the Comedy Store, which was the preemi- 
nent showcase for comedians in Los Ange- 
les. Though Clay insisted he wasn't inter- 
ested in being a comedian and wanted to 
be an actor—that was the Plan—he went to 
L.A. anyway and auditioned his Travolta 
act for Shore. Meeting him in the alleyway 
afterward, she was beaming. "You are a 
movie star," she told him. "There's never 
even been a comic that looks like you." 
Whereas most comics were plain or even 
funny looking, Clay had a smoldering 
handsomeness. He was charismatic. Shore 
made him a regular. "You could go on in 
front of her for 20 years and not be a regu- 
lar," Clay says. He did it in a night. 

Now he was a budding star. He lived 
behind the Comedy Store in the residence 
Shore owned to house her struggling come- 
dians. Everything was painted red, and as 
he remembers it, there were mounds of co- 
caine (though Clay has never done drugs) 
and scores of women. "The chick came in; 
I'm getting laid," he recalls. "That's it. Just 
one after the other. When they do a movie 
of me, that's what you're going to see: girl 
after girl just falling back onto a bed." 

But for Clay it was never about the perqui- 
sites of stardom. It was always about stardom 
itself—about the Plan. And what Clay came 
to realize was that he could never achieve 
movie stardom by imitating John Travolta. 
He needed something else. He needed mov- 
ie executives to see him in character. 

Now all he had to do was create one. 


It may have begun with the Shed. The 
Silversteins were peripatetic. The family 
moved from Marine Park to Staten Island 
when Clay was seven, then five years later to 
Florida, where his father walked girders on 
construction sites, then back to Brooklyn to 
move in with Clay's grandmother and then 
to Nostrand Avenue back in Marine Park, 
which is when his father began his process- 
serving company. Fans, not knowing his 
real name, assumed Clay was a roughneck 
Italian, but he was a Jew who of necessity be- 
came a tough Jew. During his stay on Staten 
Island, where Jews were scarce, he'd had 
to battle his way to and from school. “All I 
know is that when they called my name, Sil- 
verstein," he remembers, "and I raised my 
hand, I knew there was going to be a fight." 

The Shed was a tough Irish gang that 
got its name from a shed in Marine Park 
that became their hangout. Clay remem- 
bers one night his mother sent him to the 


store, and on his way home the gang ac- 
costed him. When he refused to show them 
what was in the bag, they pummeled him— 
about 15 of them—then knocked him over 
and kicked him in the face, splitting it 
open. He had no sooner recovered from 
plastic surgery than the Shed attacked him 
again, blackjacked him on the head and 
sent him back to the hospital. 

It was no wonder his heroes were sen- 
sitive tough guys— Travolta, Stallone, 
Presley, guys who could take care of them- 
selves. And when he hunted for a stage per- 
sona that would catapult him to stardom, 
he determined he would do for comedy 
what Elvis had done for music. Other com- 
ics didn't really understand performance. 
They told jokes, but they didn't move, they 
didn't excite the crowd, they didn't create 
an experience. He would. And he decided 
that to do so, his stage character had to be 
larger-than-life, a kind of comedic super- 
hero, a fellow who could tap the inner thug 
in every man in the audience who ever felt 
put-upon as Clay had been put-upon by 
the Shed—a character totally without fear. 
In fact, at the beginning, the idea of a meta- 
morphosis from weakness to strength was 
so integral to his new act that he would take 
the stage as a nerd he named Moskowitz, 
who would transform—just as his Jerry 
Lewis morphed into Travolta—into a 
leather-jacketed, chain-smoking brute. 

And that was how the Diceman was born. 

Clay never rehearsed his routines—he 
still doesn't—never tried out jokes, never 
hired writers. He worked on the fly. The 
first time he appeared as the Diceman— 
he refuses to say how he came up with the 
name—was in late 1981 or early 1982, at the 
Comedy Store. He didn't even have the full 
costume yet, only a black vinyl jacket. But 
he strode to the mike and just stood there 
staring at the packed house. Then he flicked 
open his Zippo and lit his cigarette. Then 
he took a few puffs, letting minutes pass in 
silence. And then he began: “You know, I've 
been up here for, I don't know, two min- 
utes, and 1 haven't told you any jokes. Sort 
of just been smoking a cigarette. But you see 
I could come up here, and only I could come 
up here, and sort of just smoke a cigarette 
for two minutes and yet keep your attention. 
And the reason 1 could do that, ladies and 
gentlemen, is the fact is. In just that fuckin’ 
good. You've been a great crowd.” And he 
left. The crowd loved it, and Clay knew it. 

From there he began developing jokes— 
what he called “attitude jokes,” because 
they were all dependent on attitude. “I 
know what you're saying: Cute comic, but 
he's got an attitude. It's where 1 come from. 
Jail. I was originally put in jail for killing 
my first wife. I never forget. I was in court, 
and the judge goes, “Why did you kill her?’ 
So I said, Hey, I needed the phone.“ With 
the attitude came the costume, and with the 
costume came the full performance, and 
with the full performance came the electric- 
ity. It got to the point where Mitzi Shore 
had to put him on last, after midnight, 
when the crowds had begun to dwindle, be- 
cause no other comic wanted to follow him. 

By this time, the Plan was working. 
As Deborah Miller, who headed the TV 


variety department at the William Morris 
Agency, puts it, “He was as much an actor 
as a stand-up.” He had been spotted by tal- 
ent agents and signed by William Morris, 
he was landing small movie roles playing 
variations on the Diceman, and he had won 
a regular part on the mob series Crime Story, 
which was produced by Michael Mann— 
the creative force behind Miami Vice while 
continuing to do his Diceman routine dur- 
ing the series’ hiatus. When Mann told Clay 
the show might be canceled after its second 
season, Clay took Mann aside and told him 
how unwise it would be for NBG to do that. 
“Pm going to be the biggest thing in the 
world,” he said. NBC canceled it anyway. 

What had given Clay this new boost of 
confidence was an HBO special hosted by 
Rodney Dangerfield that featured hot new 
comics and aired in February 1988. (An ear- 
lier Dangerfield special had launched Jerry 
Seinfeld.) Dangerfield had seen Clay’s act 
at the Comedy Store and signed him up. 
(Man, you're wild,” Dangerfield said.) 
Dice killed on the show. He recited ribald 
nursery rhymes: “Little Miss Muffet sat on 
a tuffet/ Eating her curds and whey./Along 
came a spider, he sat down beside her/And 
said, “Hey, what's in the bowl, bitch?” Or: 
“Jack and Jill went up the hill/Both with a 
buck and a quarter. / Jill came down with 
two-fifty, /Oh, what a fuckin' whore!” Or: 
“Little Boy Blue,/ He needed the money!” 
And his closer: “Mother Goose, remember 
her? I fucked her.” 

Again, Clay never doubted this would be 
his breakthrough. He even took out a full- 
page ad in Variety, just before the special 
aired, predicting his conquest: “Murphy and 
Pryor are great no doubt / But in '88 it is Dice 
they'll shout." After the Dangerfield special, 
"I didn't have a buzz," Clay says. "I had 
people screaming for me." He was immedi- 
ately booked at Town Hall in New York and 
sold it out. Then he was booked at Rascals 
Comedy Club in New Jersey, and people 
lined up in the snow to see him. He played 
28 shows. His agent, Dennis Arfa, who also 
repped Billy Joel, got him an engagement 
at a 500-seat theater in St. Louis, but Clay 
wasn't interested. He was thinking bigger. 
"You've got to make believe you're Colonel 
Parker and I’m Elvis Presley,” he told him. 
So they made a deal. Arfa could pick any 
theater anywhere, and if Dice didn't sell it 
out, they would do it Arfa's way with smaller 
venues. Arfa picked a 2,300-seat venue in 
Phoenix, just because it wasn't Brooklyn or 
Jersey. Dice sold out three shows. 

Meanwhile, about a month after the spe- 
cial, Clay got a call from Barry Josephson, 
who worked for Sandy Gallin, one of the 
biggest talent managers in show business, 
inviting him to attend an all-star benefit din- 
ner but with a warning: If he was called up 
to the dais to perform and he bombed, "the 
game is over." Clay arrived as the Diceman 
in a black leather motorcycle jacket with an 
American flag on the back. After the MC, 
Carl Reiner, introduced him as an advisor to 
the Bush administration, Dice strode to the 
dais, slapped Jack Lemmon on the cheek, lit 
a cigarette and looked at Reiner. "I notice all 
night you've been telling little stories. Well, 
you know, I got a cute little story," he said, 


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PLAYBOY 


182 


pausing a beat. "I've got my tongue up this 
chick's ass." Clay says there was five minutes 
of laughter. “Well, you know how boring it is 
on line at the bank." He closed with a riff on 
the size of black men's penises and asked Sid- 
ney Poitier, sitting in the front row, to "throw 
it up here." When he left, Reiner retook the 
mike and said, "I don't know what just hap- 
pened in this room, but I’m seeing these old 
cockers who I think are dead for the last 20 
years, laughing their balls off, and all I can 
say is, in this room here tonight, this young 
man, Andrew Dice Clay, became a star." 
Now came the deluge: the stadium con- 
certs and a 26-city tour that ended with an 
HBO special of his own, the two shows at 
Madison Square Garden and finally the ful- 
fillment of the Plan—acting in movies. Stu- 
dios were vying for him with three-picture 
deals. Joel Silver, the action-film producer 
and an attendee at the benefit dinner, of- 
fered Clay The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, 
playing a character very much like Dice, 
and he took it. He saw it as his ticket to 
superstardom, to $5 million and $10 mil- 
lion pictures, to the end of stand-up and 
the beginning of acting, though clearly the 
idea was that he would be acting as Dice. 
It was intoxicating. He was making as 
much as $500,000 a night as Dice and drop- 
ping or winning that much in a single sit- 
down at the blackjack table. Cher and Bruce 
Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger came to 


see him, and he was hanging out with Stal- 
lone, who introduced him to a former Mr. 
Yugoslavia named George Pipasik—Pipasik 
had trained Stallone for Rocky and would 
train Clay for Ford Fairlane—and Mickey 
Rourke and Axl Rose, who would some- 
times call him up in the middle of the night 
or come over to his Hollywood apartment 
and hang out, and later invited him to ap- 
pear with Guns N' Roses at the Rose Bowl, 
where Clay performed before 70,000 peo- 
ple. Clay knew comedians didn't hang out 
with these sorts of folks. These were movie 
and rock-and-roll stars. One New Year's 
Eve, when Clay was playing Bally's in Las 
Vegas for the first time, Wayne Newton 
threw him a party and then grabbed him 
and drove him to the Sands, took him in a 
back entrance to an Italian restaurant and 
introduced him to Sinatra. And Sinatra took 
him aside, to an empty booth, just the two 
of them, and gave him advice about how 
to cope with being a phenomenon. "If you 
have any problems, call me," he said. It was 
surreal. And sometimes Clay would think of 
this new life and look out into the cavernous 
halls he was now playing—15,000 seats or 
20,000 seats—and “I couldn't believe I had 
reached the goal I was aiming for." 


And then it all began to unravel, though 
"unravel" doesn't convey the rapidity with 


"Don't worry. .. His will go on overtime.” 


which it happened. As early as the Garden 
shows there had been rumblings of discon- 
tent. Jon Pareles's review in The New York 
Times was titled A LITTLE HATE MUSIC, PLEASE, 
and it opened with "When Andrew Dice 
Clay called himself 'the most vulgar, vicious 
comic ever to walk the face of the earth’... 
he left out two other adjectives: juvenile 
and calculating”—calculating because he 
"exploits the tensions that are arising as 
white heterosexual males find that the days 
of unquestioned dominance are over." 
Some of his shows were picketed. At a con- 
cert in Cleveland, 40 policemen packed 
his dressing room and demanded to know 
what he intended to say onstage. 

But the real backlash came with his ap- 
pearance as host of Saturday Night Live 
on May 12, 1990. Clay says he was called 
into producer Lorne Michaels's office the 
week of the show and told, after cooling 
his heels in the waiting room for an hour, 
that cast member Nora Dunn had decided 
she couldn't appear on the program with 
him and that the musical guest, Sinead 
O'Connor, had also left the show because 
of Clay's misogynistic, racist and homopho- 
bic humor. Clay had never heard of Nora 
Dunn—he didn't watch SNL—but under- 
neath the bravado, he was hurt. 

And then came the attacks. "The man 
who has turned comedy into a hate crime is 
being handed a passport to the center ring," 
snarled syndicated columnist Ellen Good- 
man. "The chain-smoking, leather-jacketed 
Diceman is clearly a persona, wrote Caryn 
James of The New York Times, "but it is a role 
without any redeeming irony." The Village 
Voice described his act as “hour-long vitu- 
perations on women, dwarves, dogs, Lat- 
ins, Pakistanis, Arabs...beggars, paraplegics 
and Oriental business acumen." Even the 
Borscht Belt comedian Henny Youngman 
weighed in with an op-ed eviscerating Clay 
and closing, “Be a mensch. Tell jokes. If 
you've got to go ethnic, take out the hate 
and bring us together." 

Inless than a month he had gone from be- 
ing the hottest comedian in America to pos- 
sibly the most reviled entertainer of all time. 
Certainly no one had ever had so sudden 
a career reversal. Ford Fairlane opened that 
July to harsh reviews—“a resounding belch 
from the belly of the new Neanderthal," 
read one—but fair box office. Still, the pic- 
ture was pulled after a week. Clay says that 
Fox chairman Barry Diller called him into 
his office and explained that gay groups had 
threatened to pipe-bomb Diller's house. “I 
love you,” Diller told him. “We all love you. 
But it's just too hot. We'll bring you back 
one day, but now is not that moment." But 
they never did, and Clay's film career was 
effectively over. Fox deep-sixed his concert 
movie, Dice Rules, too, keeping it out of re- 
lease for nearly a year. “It was over for the 
industry," says Clay's former agent Deborah 
Miller. "The career was done. There was 
nothing to talk about. There was no reason 
to go see him." And if the industry exulted 
in his demise, so did his fellow comics who 
resented his success. "There was a cadre of 
comics who were gunning for his ass," says 
Roseanne Barr, a longtime friend. "They 
wanted to take him down." Now they did. 


The funny thing was, stage persona aside, 
Andrew Dice Clay was basically an innocent, 
and he was blindsided by the attacks. Rather 
than let them go, he defended himself, in- 
sisting that his audiences were really laugh- 
ing at themselves, that he was a conceptual 
comedian like Andy Kaufman, turning the 
audience reaction into part of the act, that 
no one could possibly have taken him seri- 
ously, that he was playing a character, that 
his comedy was observational, not hateful. 
“I didn't make up the fact that people use 
women for sex or that marriage can be hor- 
rible,” he told the Los Angeles Times. To this 
day, Clay says, “Anybody buying a ticket 
to see me who thinks this is how I live my 
life and this is the gospel, well, I don't even 
want those assholes coming to my show. I’m 
not one of you.” But his defensiveness only 
enlarged the target. When he appeared 
on The Arsenio Hall Show on July 10, two 
months after SNL, and drew the distinction 
between the Diceman and Andrew Clay as a 
guy who “believed in himself” and “became 
the hottest comic in the world” and then be- 
gan to tear up, the audience began to titter. 
He had gone from Dice to Moskowitz. 

Clay never understood exactly what 
happened to him. When he began he was a 
naughty Fonz, an X-rated Archie Bunker, 
Ralph Kramden with a lascivious streak. 
For all his macho bluster, or because of it, 
he was essentially a bozo—not only an ex- 
pression of male insensitivity but a parody 
of it. Roseanne Barr says his act was basi- 
cally “a Jewish guy seeing a non-Jewish 
world”: the world of chest-thumping ma- 
chismo. That was the joke. And you can 
hear in those early days, on his second al- 
bum (whose title captures the idea: The Day 
the Laughter Died), that most of the audience 
seemed to get it; they are laughing at him 
more than they are laughing with him, 
moaning, “Oh boy” and “Oh man.” Those 
who didn't became butts of the joke. When 
a woman gets up during the show, Dice 
says, “She's got some sense,” and when 
another audience member yells, “You are 
such a jerk,” Dice ripostes, “Maybe it was 
something I said.” He was so aggressively 
oftensive that he transcended real offense. 

Clay thinks that what turned the tables 
was his success. As long as he was playing 
clubs, no one cared what he said. When he 
began playing stadiums, he was suddenly a 
cultural marker—a danger. He isn't entirely 
wrong. But the stadiums not only boosted 
his profile and made him a cause, they 
changed his relationship to the audience. 
The fist pumping, the chants of “Dice, Dice, 
Dice,” the constant acclamation, in which 
one critic saw shades of Nazism, converted 
his show from routine to rally, from mak- 
ing fun of sexism, racism and homophobia 
to channeling them. Clay was certainly vic- 
timized by liberal anger at the post-Reagan 
years, for which Dice seemed an ugly avatar, 
but he was also victimized by his own obtuse 
reactionary audience, though he invited 
that victimization because he let audiences 
keep feeding his stardom. The Plan had 
been to become an actor. But the audience 
demanded that Dice be their spokesman, 
and as such he now often crossed the line 
between being funny and being cruel, as in 


routines about AIDS or midgets. As Debo- 
rah Miller sees it, “All the people who used 
to laugh at him being a loser—those aren't 
the people who were laughing now. The 
people who were laughing were the losers 
seeing another loser being a winner.” And 
for this she blamed the managers who ex- 
ploited Clay by turning him into a comic 
demagogue. “That was all about money.” 


The house, which is offa cul-de-sac in a gat- 
ed community near the Las Vegas Strip, is 
unostentatious, with a white stucco facade 
and a red tile roof and a silver mezuzah near 
the door. It is the sort of home you might 
expect a suburban office worker to live in, 
not the Diceman, and in fact the Diceman 
doesn't live here. Andrew Silverstein does. 
The only traces of the Diceman are the 
framed Variety ad and a gold record over 
the bar. Everywhere else are family photos. 
And while there are similarities between 
the Diceman and Silverstein—the accent, 
the love for women, the penchant for giv- 
ing friends nicknames like Wheels, Happy 
Face (for his grim-faced bodyguard) and 
Club Soda—they are nothing alike. Dice is 
a heathen. Silverstein is typically described 
by friends as “sweet,” “kind,” “generous” 


In less than a month 
Andrew Dice Clay had 
gone from being the hot- 
test comedian in America 
to possibly the most reviled 
entertainer of all time. 


and “loyal.” He is without affectation. 
When his mother was alive, he would talk 
to her on the phone every night for hours. 
(Clay says she loved his act—except for his 
use of the word pussy.) He celebrates Pass- 
over and reads from the Haggadah. He 
pads around the house in sweatshirts, not 
motorcycle jackets. He creates mixtapes to 
provide a soundtrack for the day. He is an 
infrequent drinker. He seldom even curses. 

And he is a romantic. He married his 
first wife when he was still somewhat new 
to L.A. because she said she was pregnant 
and he wanted to do right by her. (They di- 
vorced shortly afterward.) He met his sec- 
ond wife when he was shooting Crime Story 
in Chicago and she was waitressing there. 
He later built her a nightclub in their guest- 
house so they would have a place to retreat 
to, and for his third wife the bedroom 
in his Las Vegas home is outfitted with a 
red entry light, a faux-zebra spread, lava 
lamps, an oil painting of Marilyn Monroe 
over the bed and a sound system for night- 
time mixtapes because, he says, you have 
to keep the romance in a marriage. “The 
guy who treats his girl as if she is just some 
fucking sperm deposit,” he says, “that's the 
guy I don't want to know from.” 


Perhaps most incongruously of all for 
those who disparage the Diceman, Clay 
is a devoted father—actually more than a 
devoted father. When he and his second 
wife, Trini, divorced in 2002 after 16 years 
together, their sons, Max and Dillon, then 
12 and eight, opted to live with Clay. He 
became a stay-at-home dad, taking them 
to school and picking them up and turn- 
ing these rides into a show (Clay says, 
“There would be families looking at me 
like, There's the animal" "), attending their 
school functions, cooking for them (every 
variant of chicken, his sons joke), hanging 
out with them, giving them advice (“Al- 
ways be a gentleman" and "No means no"), 
tucking them in at night. 

Though Clay bought a home in the San 
Fernando Valley just a few blocks from his 
ex-wife, for a maternal touch he counted 
on Eleanor Kerrigan, one of 10 children 
from an Irish Catholic working-class family 
in Philadelphia. She and Clay had met at 
the Comedy Store, where she was a waitress 
and assistant to Mitzi Shore and a would- 
be comedian herself. She once babysat the 
boys for Clay when he was appearing in Las 
Vegas, but he and Eleanor, who resembles 
a young Bette Davis, became friends when 
he began hanging out at the club during 
one of his serial separations, with the boys 
either in bed or in tow, and he was trying to 
kill the night, asking Eleanor for advice on 
how he might woo his wife back. Eventually, 
as the years passed and the separation from 
Trini became irrevocable, the friendship 
turned to romance, even though Eleanor 
fought it, and they became a couple. Clay 
now says, "Eleanor brought those boys up. 
Hands down. Brought them up with me. 
She loves them like they came from her." 

And all this time that he and Eleanor 
were raising the children—10 years— 
Clay let his career, which was already in 
steep descent, slide. "I didn't make career 
moves," he says. "I was doing gigs, but 
there really was no management. There 
was nothing." The boys were everything. 


And now he is roaring down Tropicana 
Avenue at midday—after show nights 
he doesn't get up until one or two in the 
afternoon—in a black 1996 Ford Bronco as 
big as a tank, a Dice car if ever there was 
one, blasting "Outlaw," which is a song from 
his sons' band, L.A Rocks, that suggests the 
anger and hurt of his long exile, an exile 
that began in the mid-1990s. “We would 
meet all these people in the industry," says 
Max Silverstein, now 22, “who were such 
big fans, and to me it was like, 'I don't get it. 
Everybody is such a fan. Why can't anybody 
do anything to further his career?’” Clay 
continued to work—he had a 13-year run 
at Bally's—but it was different than it had 
been before the media assault. He starred 
in a CBS sitcom in 1995 as a disgruntled 
postal worker, then rejoiced when the series 
was canceled after one season because he 
thought the show was dumb. He got anoth- 
er series, playing a record executive, which 
he liked better, but that was canceled too. 
And he had some close calls. There was a 
proposed concert tour with his friend Chris 


183 


PLAYBOY 


184 


Rock, but Clay says that Rock’s manager, 
who had once managed him, held a grudge, 
and that was that. Another time, Eminem 
flew in from Detroit to discuss an album 
deal, but that fell apart too because the label 
felt Dice wasn’t hot enough anymore. And 
that is how it went year after lean year. 

Clay was bereft, but he kept picking him- 
self up off the mat. “Look, you see how I’m 
not giving up,” he would tell Max and Dil- 
lon. “Pm still fighting.” The offers he did 
get were insulting: The Surreal Life, Celebrity 
Fit Club, a show sending up judge shows. 
He had signed up for his reality-TV series, 
Dice Undisputed, thinking he could use tapes 
he had been shooting of his own life, but 
the show made a mockery of him when the 
producers invented story lines and altered 
Dice's image by dressing him like a rapper. 
He did The Celebrity Apprentice, for which he 
got the call the night before the taping be- 
cause, he assumed, someone had dropped 
out. Although he had never seen the show, 
he took it and was the first celebrity fired. 

But it wasn't just the media hostility and 
industry humiliation that kept knocking 
him down. There was the turmoil in his 
marriage to Trini—he once canceled a 
13-city tour because he was too emotion- 
ally spent to tell jokes—and the agony of 
the separations and finally of the divorce 
he never really wanted. “I was crazy about 
her,” he says. “When I love somebody I try 
to give them the world.” But something 
happened—to this day, he seems as baffled 
about it as he does about what happened to 
his career—and the marriage ended. “He 
was lost,” Eleanor recalls. “He held it to- 
gether mainly because of the kids.” Eleanor 
moved in but finally decided to leave him 
to work on her career. When Clay heard 
she was relocating to New York, he pro- 
posed to her. The engagement didn't 
stick. They realized they were too good as 
friends to get married. 

He drowned his sorrows in sex. After 
he and Eleanor broke up in 2007, Clay, 
at loose ends, “went through women like 
crazy,” though he would “audition” them 
before Eleanor, seeking her approval. It 
was Super Bowl Sunday 2009 and Clay was 
eating a tuna sandwich with Max when he 
idly mentioned that they could be watching 
the game at the Playboy Mansion because 
Playmate and fellow Celebrity Apprentice 
contestant Brande Roderick was hosting 
a Super Bowl party there and had invited 
him. Max practically dragged him to the 
car. It was at the party that Clay met a beau- 
tiful young Mexican-Sicilian Jew from Los 
Angeles named Valerie Vasquez who had 
designed costumes for hostesses and wait- 
resses at events held at the Mansion. Val- 
erie, who is petite with lustrous black hair 
and looks like Mila Kunis, was only 24 at the 
time, less than half Clay's age, and she had 
no idea who he was, but the two hit it off, ex- 
changed numbers, began dating and were 
married a year later on Valentine's Day in 
Las Vegas. She called him her “movie-star 
husband.” Eleanor became her best friend, 
the two of them bonding over making 
chicken soup for Passover. The three of 
them are now practically inseparable. 

Meeting Valerie salved Clay's broken 


heart, but he was also beset by a financial 
crisis. With the divorce, he had to sell his 
8,500-square-foot Beverly Hills house, had 
to pay alimony and child support even 
though the children lived with him, had to 
buy a new house and then had to sell that 
to afford the house he bought in the Valley 
so his boys could be near Trini. The court 
decided to put the proceeds of his house 
sale in escrow to guarantee future alimony 
payments, and then the recession hit. He 
was crushed, especially with the slimmer 
paydays. Clay had given up smoking and 
forsworn gambling when he was caring 
for his kids. But after his father's death 
in 2011, he had begun smoking again, 
and with the pressing debt, he decided he 
needed to start gambling again. 

So he headed to Vegas with Valerie in 
the summer of 2010 with a small grubstake, 
hit the blackjack tables and wound up mak- 
ing close to $1 million over the course of 
four months. He calls it his Hangover sum- 
mer because it was a summer of extreme 
self-indulgence—one last blast. He bought 
himself three cars, ordered new furniture, 
moved from hotel to hotel and then from 
suite to suite. What he hadn't spent by 
summer's end, he lost to the tables. 


е 


t’s not about getting 
ripped,” he says of working 
out. “Let’s face it, Jews don’t 
get ripped.” It’s a metaphor 
for show business. You can 


give up or keep going. 


He returned to Los Angeles on a Mon- 
day, broke and basically hopeless, and 
was meeting Max at a Starbucks when an 
old friend, Bruce Rubenstein, whom Clay 
had known when Rubenstein worked for 
Mickey Rourke, walked in, his boots caked 
with mud from his new job as a contractor. 
They reminisced, exchanged numbers and 
met up again the next day. “The last time 
I saw you, you were on top of the world, 
and then you just disappeared,” Ruben- 
stein said. Clay told him about his travails, 
and all the while Rubenstein was half lis- 
tening, texting on his phone. Rubenstein 
asked why he had never done Entourage. 
Clay said they had never asked him, and 
that’s when Rubenstein told him he had 
just been e-mailing the show’s creator, 
Doug Ellin, and Ellin, a fan, wanted to see 
Clay in his office the next day. Thus began 
Andrew Dice Clay’s road back. 


Clay is working out at the Las Vegas Ath- 
letic Club—a cavernous gym decked out in 
muted pastels with neon accents for a bit 
of a retro look, which is certainly appro- 
priate for the man exercising. He moves 
quickly from machine to machine, doing 
21 reps at each—more than 500 crunches 


in all under the method he learned from 
George Pipasik years ago. This is where he 
retreated when he got the Entourage job, 
determined to be in shape, what he called 
“Rocky One” shape, and where he dropped 
45 pounds and four inches off his waist. 
“It’s not about getting ripped,” he says. 
“Let’s face it, Jews don’t get ripped.” But 
for him it’s not just conditioning either. It’s 
a metaphor for show business. You can give 
up or keep going. 

When Entourage was about to air in July 
2011, Clay warned his sons that he was likely 
to be skewered again. But he wasn’t. After 
Entourage, on which Clay plays a version of 
himself, there was actually new enthusiasm 
for Dice. Clay began strategizing—playing a 
sushi bar at the Palazzo in Vegas, working 
up to the Luxor, then the Riviera, then the 
Hilton, then the Riv again and finally the 
Hard Rock Hotel—a rock-and-roll comed- 
ian in a rock-and-roll venue. He landed In- 
destructible, his first TV special in 17 years. 
(Eleanor opened for him and L.A Rocks 
played him on.) The autobiography he 
wrote in longhand to pass time during his 
exile was attracting interest, and he sat down 
with James Franco to discuss a movie about 
his life. Then came the call from Woody 
Allen asking if he wanted to read for a role in 
Allen’s new film, Blue Jasmine. He landed it. 

All this time Clay was retooling the act. 
He had learned from his two-year bout of 
dating before meeting Valerie that women 
had changed since the Diceman’s heyday. 
While once he had demeaned them in his 
act as sexual playthings, he found that they 
were now the aggressors—the ones who 
used men as playthings. And he noticed 
that these blithe young women, and their 
boyfriends, appreciated his humor for what 
it was—not an angry gripe against male 
evisceration but a giant goof on changing 
sexual mores from an unregenerate cave- 
man. For the first time in 20 years, Dice 
was no longer politically incorrect. 

But he was working out now, straining 
and grunting and perspiring in a sleeve- 
less sweatshirt and baggy black shorts, 
because he was in training. Andrew Dice 
Clay would be returning to the site of his 
greatest triumph. Andrew Dice Clay wants 
to return to Madison Square Garden, and 
he wants to be in shape—1990s shape. It 
is a passion. He lies in bed at night think- 
ing about it, about how he hopes to make 
comedic history again. And lifting weights 
in that gym, he seemed to understand that 
in the end his story isn’t really about sexual 
politics or the blurring of his stage identity 
and his real identity or liberal and conser- 
vative misapprehensions. In the end, even 
with threats of foreclosure and bills piling 
up and the tax man at his door, his story 
is about gutting it out, not letting anyone 
or anything get him down. “The real fans 
know about the career, know the history, 
know the survival in me,” he says. They 
know that both the boorish Dice and the 
sensitive Clay have always been impervi- 
ous. They know they were down but not 
out. And they know that the Diceman and 
Clay are finally back. 


T.C. BOYLE 


(continued from page 107) 


had thrown at him as he was shrugging 
into his coat that morning for the drive to 
the station. “It's not as if you don't have a 
trunk full of awards already—awards you 
never even glance at, as far as I can see.” 

He had his hand on the doorknob, 
the slab of the door thrown back on the 
awakening light of a bitter morning des- 
ecrated with sleet, an inch ofit already on 
the ground and more coming. “For the 
publicity.” 

“Publicity? What kind of publicity you 
think the Greater Stuyvesant area is go- 
ing to give you? Nobody in New York's 
ever heard of it. I'll bet they've never 
even heard of it in Albany. Or Troy either. 
Or what, Utica.” 

“It all adds up.” 

“To what?” 

He sighed. Let his shoulders slump 
into the cavernous hollows of the coat. 
“For the money then.” 

“The money? Two hundred fifty 
bucks? Are you kidding? That'd barely 
cover dinner at Eladio.” 

“Yes,” he said, the draft raw on the left 
side of his face. 

“Yes, what?” 

"Yes, I'm kidding." 

She might have had something more 
to say about it, but really, what did it 
bother her what he did—she had a car 
and a credit card, and a night alone never 
killed anybody—but she just bunched 
her chin and squinted her eyes as if to 
get a better read on him. The sleet whis- 
pered over the pavement. The air tasted 
of metal. "My God,” she said. “What did 
you do to your hair?" 


He was in the club car, scarring his pal- 
ate with superheated coffee out of a card- 
board container and masticating an an- 
cient sandwich advertised as chicken sal- 
ad on wheat but which managed to taste 
of absolutely nothing, when a powerfully 
built middle-aged man came swaying 
down the aisle, pushing a boy before 
him. Riley glanced up, though he wasn't 
naturally curious, despite his profession. 
What he knew of people he knew from 
his early wild years—and from the news- 
paper and movies, or films as he liked to 
call them—and that had been enough to 
get him through 14 novels and counting. 
He believed in giving people their space, 
and if he didn't really have much use for 
the rest of humanity, that was all right— 
he led a pretty hermetic existence these 
days, what with his books, the cats (six of 
them) and Caroline, Caroline, of course. 
He liked to say, only half joking, that he 
resented strangers because they always 
seemed to be in his way but that he was 
willing to tolerate them—and here he'd 
shrug and grin—because, who knew, 
they might just buy his books. 

At any rate, there was something about 
these two that caught his attention, and 
it might have had to do with the fact that 
they were the only other people in the 


car but for the attendant, a recessive little 
man of indeterminate age and origin who 
looked as if he'd rolled over more miles 
than all the truckers in western New York 
state combined. Still, they made an odd 
pair. The man was white, fleshy in the 
face, with eyes that seized on Riley and 
then flung him away just as quickly, and 
the boy—he looked to be eight or nine— 
was dark-skinned, Hispanic maybe. Or 
maybe Indian—from India. All this went 
through Riley's head in an instant and 
then he dismissed it and returned to his 
sandwich and the newspaper he'd spread 
out on the plastic tabletop, even as the 
big man and the boy settled into the 
booth directly behind him. 

After a while he felt the booth heave 
as the man got up and went to the coun- 
ter to order a coffee for himself and hot 
chocolate and a sticky bun for the boy. It 
took no more than a minute or two for 
the attendant to irradiate the drinks in 
the microwave and hand over the cel- 
lophane packet with the bun smeared 
inside, but the whole while the big man 
kept his gaze fixed on Riley, a gaze so 
steady and unrelenting Riley began 
to wonder if he somehow knew him. A 
single jolt of paranoia sizzled through 
him—could this be the deranged yahoo 
who'd called up early one morning to 
say how disgusted he was by Maggie of the 
Farm because Maggie was such a slut, and 
go on to wonder, in a pullulating spill of 
profanity, why that had to be, why every 
woman in every book and movie and TV 
show had to be such a fucking slut? —when 
he realized that the man wasn't looking 
at him at all. He was looking beyond him 
to where the boy sat, as if the boy was a 
piece of luggage he was afraid somebody 
was going to dash by and snatch. 

Then the man was swaying down the 
aisle again, this time more gingerly—and 
dangerously—because he had his hands 
full, a cardboard cup in each hand and 
the sticky bun dangling from two fingers 
in its shrink-wrapped package. Again the 
booth heaved. There was the faintest rasp 
as the cardboard containers made contact 
with the table. The rails clacked. Scen- 
ery rushed past the windows. The man 
said something (Spanish, was he talking 
in Spanish?) and it was followed by the 
noise of crinkling cellophane as the treat 
was unwrapped—whether by the boy or 
the man, Riley couldn't say. 

All of a sudden he was irritated with 
himself—what did he care? Since these 
two had come into the car he'd been stuck 
on the same paragraph, reading it over 
and over as if the words had no mean- 
ing. Exasperated, he glanced out the win- 
dow as a lone clapboard house flashed by, 
then a series of brown rippled fields, then 
another house and another expanse of 
field, equally brown and equally rippled. 
He'd just brought his eyes back to the 
paper when the man's voice started up 
behind him. 

"Hello, Lon?" A pause. "I am on the 
train, yes. Just passing Syracuse. Were 
you able to place that bet for me? Two 
hundred, the over-under on the Bills, 


yes?" The voice was needling, breathy, 
the vowels elongated and the diction too 
precise, as if it were being translated, 
and here it was stuck in Riley's head. In 
disgust, he folded up the paper and slid 
out of the booth, leaving the empty cup 
and sandwich wrapper for the attendant 
to deal with. He didn't glance behind 
him, though he wanted to give the guy 
a look—cell phones, God, he hated cell 
phones. Instead he just brushed imagi- 
nary crumbs from the front of his coat 
and started up the aisle. 

"But I just wanted to tell you," the 
man's voice flew up and batted round the 
ceiling like an asthmatic bird, “don't wait 
for me at the Albany station—change of 
plan. I'm going to be taking a different 
route." He pronounced it rowt, but then 
what would you expect? "Yes, that's right: 
I have something I need to dispose of. A 
package, yes. That's right, a package." 


Anent Riley: He was a committed tech- 
nophobe, forever pushed to the brink 
by the machines that controlled his life, 
from the ATM to the ticket dispenser at 
the parking garage and the clock radio 
that kept him awake half the night with 
its eternally blinking light. Card keys baf- 
fled and frustrated him—he could never 
seem to get the elevator to work or open 
the door to his own room in a hotel, and 
once he did manage to get inside, the 
TV remote, with its gang-piling options, 
invariably defeated him. He distrusted 
computers, preferring to write by hand, 
the way he'd always done. And the keyless 
car Caroline had talked him into buying 
put him in a rage every time he got be- 
hind the wheel—it seemed to change its 
agenda randomly, confronting him with 
all sorts of warning beeps and whistles, 
not to mention a sinuous female voice 
with an Oxbridge accent that popped 
up out of nowhere and never seemed to 
have anything good to say, when all he 
wanted was to turn a key, shift into gear 
and go. To drive. To get somewhere—his 
destination—without having to take a me- 
chanical aptitude test. Was that too much 
to ask? Wasn't that what cars were for? 
Worst of all was the cell phone. He re- 
fused to carry one f you want to know the 
truth, there's nobody I want to talk to—and 
it irritated him to see the things stuck to 
the sides of people's heads as if generat- 
ing a nonstop stream of vapid chatter was 
essential to life, like breathing or eating 
or shitting. What he valued was simplic- 
ity, pen to paper, the phone on its stand 
in the front hallway where it belonged, 
starry nights overhead, wood split 
and stacked beside the fireplace in the 
100-year-old farmhouse he and Caroline 
had bought six years ago (though admit- 
tedly the farm itself was long gone, re- 
placed by tract houses, another irritant). 
Simplicity. Unmediated experience. 
Maggie, on her farm, tossing feed to the 
chickens or tugging at a cow's udders in 
the absence of electronic babble. Still, for 
all that, as he settled back into his seat 


after his annoying encounter in the club 185 


PLAYBOY 


186 


car, he couldn't help patting his pocket 
to feel the burden of the alien weight 
there—Caroline’s iPhone, which she’d 
insisted he take in the event anything 
went wrong on the other end of the line. 
What if Donna Trumpeter failed to show? 
What if the train derailed? What if ter- 
rorists bombed the Albany station? Then 
ГИ just go ahead and die, he'd said. Gladly. 
Because I won't have to carry this, this—but 
she'd thrust it on him and that was the 
end of the argument. 

He’d set the newspaper aside and had 
just opened the new novel by one of his 
former classmates at lowa—Tom McNeil, 
whose skyrocketing fame made his stom- 
ach clench with envy—when the pneu- 
matic doors at the end of the car hissed 
back and the big man entered, pushing 
the boy before him with one oversize 
hand and clutching a valise in the other. 
Riley noticed the man's clothes for the 
first time now—an ill-fitting sports coat in 
a checkered pattern, pressed pants, shoes 
so black and glistening he must have 
shined them three times a day—and what 
was he? Some sort of foreigner, that was 


evident, even to someone as indifferent 
as Riley. The term Pole jumped into his 
head, which was immediately succeeded 
by Croat, though he couldn't say why, since 
he'd never been to Poland or Croatia and 
had never known anyone from either 
country. Russian, he thought next, and 
settled on that. But Jesus, the guy wasn't 
going to sit across from him, was he? If he 
was, he’d just get up and 

But no—the man chose a seat facing 
him, two rows up. There were other 
people in the car, a trio of nuns bent 
over their cell phones, a young mother 
with two comatose babies, a few sales- 
man types, what looked to be a college 
girl with a book spread open on her lap 
though she too was busy with her phone, 
texting wisdom out into the world, and 
nobody so much as glanced up. The man 
made a show of heaving the valise up 
onto the overhead rack, then deposited 
the ticket strips in the metal slot on the 
seatback, pushed the boy into the inner 
seat and sat heavily in the other, his eyes 
raking over Riley so that he felt that tym- 
panic thump of discomfort all over again. 


“You may well ask what's up.” 


Enough, he told himself, dropping his 
eyes—he wasn't going to let it bother 
him. Nothing was going to bother him. 
He was on his way to pick up an award 
and he was going to have a good time 
because that was what this was all about, 
a break in the routine, a little celebration 
for work well done, an a-ward, a re-ward, 
something Caroline could never even 
begin to understand because she was 
about as artistic as a tree stump. And it 
all added up, it did, no matter what she 
thought. He was in the game still and any 
one of his books could go big the way 
McNeil's had. Who knew? Maybe there'd 
be a movie, maybe Spielberg would get 
involved, maybe word of mouth was op- 
erating even now.... 

He bent to the book—a sequel to the 
New York Times best-selling Blood Ties, 
which immediately made him wonder if 
he shouldn't attempt a sequel to Maggie— 
and followed the march of the paragraphs 
up and down the page for as long as he 
could, which was no more than five min- 
utes, before he fell off to sleep, his chin 
pinioned to his breastbone. 


Riley wasn't one to dream—sleep came 
at him like a hurtling truck—and when 
he felt the hand on his shoulder, the 
gentle but persistent pressure there, he 
was slow to come back to the world. He 
found himself blinking up into the face of 
the erstwhile Russian, the big man with 
the careful accent, who was saying this to 
him: “Sir. Sir, are you awake?” 

He blinked again, the phrase J am now 
coming into his head, but he merely mur- 
mured, “Huh?” 

The man’s face hung over him, pores 
cratered like the surface of the moon, 
tangled black eyebrows, eyes reduced to 
slits—Cossack’s eyes—and then the man 
was saying, “Because I must use the fa- 
cilities and I am wondering if you would 
watch over the boy for me.” And there 
was the boy, his head no higher than the 
seatback, standing right there. Riley saw 
he was younger than he’d first thought, 
no more than five or six. “I will thank 
you,” the man went on, making as if to 
usher the boy into the seat beside Riley 
but hesitating, waiting for assent, for per- 
mission. Caught by surprise, Riley heard 
himself say, “Sure. I guess.” And then, 
before he could think, the boy was sit- 
ting limply beside him and the big man 
leaning in confidentially. “I am grateful. 
There are bad people everywhere, un- 
fortunately, and one doesn't like to take 
chances.” He said something to the boy 
in a different voice, the tone caustic and 
admonitory—Spanish, it was definitely 
Spanish, but then why would a Russian 
be speaking Spanish, if he was a Russian, 
that is?—then gave Riley's shoulder a 
brief squeeze. “Very bad people.” 

Riley craned his neck to watch the 
man's heavy shoulders recede down the 
length of the car behind him before the 
door to the restroom swung open to block 
his view and the man disappeared inside. 
He turned to the boy, more baffled and 


irritated than anything else, and simu- 
lated a smile. He’d never done well with 
children—to him they were alien beings, 
noisy, hyper, always scrabbling and shout- 
ing and making incomprehensible de- 
mands, and he thanked God he’d never 
had any of his own, though his second 
wife, Crystal, formerly one of the students 
in the itinerant workshops he’d given 
over the years, had twice been pregnant 
and had actually thought of giving birth 
before he’d managed to make her see the 
light. But here was this boy, lost in a nylon 
ski jacket two sizes too big for him, his eyes 
fixed on the floor and a cheap tarnished 
cross suspended from a chain around his 
neck. Riley turned back to his book, but he 
couldn’t focus. A minute passed. Then an- 
other. Scenery flashed by. And then, over 
the rattling of the wheels and the shriek- 
ing metallic whine of the brakes— were 
they already coming into the Schenectady 
station, the stop before his?—he heard the 
boy’s voice, whispering, a voice no louder 
or more forceful than the breath expelled 
from his lungs, and turned to him. 

The boy's eyes jumped to his. 
"Socorro," he whispered, then glanced 
over his shoulder before dropping his 
gaze again. Very softly—the screeching 
brakes, the shudder of the car, the rafters 
of the station fixed in the window—the 
boy repeated himself: "Socorro." 

Ittook him a moment—French had been 
his language, both in high school and col- 
lege, though he recalled little of it now and 
had no access to Spanish whatever, if this 
was Spanish the boy was speaking—before 
he said, "Is that your name? Socorro?" 

'The boy seemed to shrink away from 
him, down, down into the depths of his 
jacket and the scuffed vinyl of the seat that 
loomed over him as if it would swallow him 
up. He didn't say yes, didn't say no, didn't 
even nod—all he did was repeat the word 
or phrase or whatever it was in a voice so 
small it was barely audible. There was a 
whistle, a shout, the train lurched and the 
wheels began to revolve again. Riley wasn't 
slow on the uptake, or not particularly— 
it was just that he wasn't used to people, 
to complication—but an unraveling skein 
of thoughts began to suggest themselves 
to him now. He glanced up at the rack 
above the seat the big man had vacated 
and saw that the valise was no longer there 
and then he thrust his face to the window, 
jerking his eyes back to the platform and 
the receding crowd there—men, women, 
strollers, backpacks, luggage, the nuns, 
a Seeing Eye dog and a woman in dark 
glasses, all that color and movement, too 
much, way too much, so that he couldn't 
be sure what he was seeing even as the 
checkered sports coat flickered suddenly 
into view and vanished just as quickly. 


What went through his head in those first 
few ruptured moments as he turned away 
from the window? That his eyes had de- 
ceived him, that the big man was in the 
restroom still and would be back any sec- 
ond now to claim the boy, who must have 
been his nephew or an adopted son or 


even his own natural child by a Hispanic 
woman, a Latina, an immigrant maybe 
with a green card or even citizenship. 
Wasn't that how the Russians did it? Marry 
a citizen and get a free pass? He glanced 
up and down the car, but no one had got- 
ten on and the conductor was nowhere 
to be seen. The boy was hunched inside 
his jacket, absolutely motionless, his eyes 
on the floor. Riley saw now that he wasn't 
wearing a shirt under the ski jacket, as if 
he'd dressed—or been dressed—hurried- 
ly. And his shoes—he was wearing only one 
shoe, a scuffed and dirt-smeared sneaker. 
His socks were wet, filthy. He looked—and 
here the awful truth slammed at Riley like 
a ballistic missile—abused. 

He came up out of the seat so suddenly 
he cracked his skull on the luggage rack 
and for just an instant saw lights dancing 
before his eyes. “Stay here, ГП be right 
back," he breathed, and then he was out 
in the aisle and heading for the restroom, 
the skirts of his coat flapping behind him 
like great enveloping wings. He seized 
hold of the handle, flung open the door. 
There was no one inside. 

A quick glance into the car beyond— 
nothing, nobody—and then he was eas- 


He took the kid by the hand, 
pulled him up out of the seat 
and down the aisle to the 
door, which at that moment 
clattered open on the 
platform. He needed a cop. 


ing himself down beside the boy and the 
boy was shrinking, getting smaller by the 
moment. The boy’s limbs were sticks, his 
eyes two puddles gouged out of a mud- 
dy road. Riley bent his face toward him, 
fighting to control his voice. “Where's 
your father?” he said. “Where'd he go? 
Votre pere? Papa? Where’s your papa? Or 
uncle? Is he your uncle?” 

The boy said nothing. Just stared down 
at the floor as if Riley were speaking a for- 
eign language. Which, in fact, he was. 

“Where are you going? What town? 
Where do you live—do you know where 
you live?” 

More nothing. Advanced nothing. Noth- 
ing feeding off of nothing. 

What he had to do, right this minute, 
was find the conductor, the engineer, 
anybody—the nuns, where were the nuns 
when you needed them?—to take this, this 
situation off his hands. He’d actually started 
to get to his feet again before he realized 
how sketchy this all was—he couldn’t 
very well leave the kid there. What if the 
big man came back? What if somebody 
else ? What if they thought he was 
somehow responsible? He shot his eyes 
around the car. Something came up in his 


throat. It was then that he thought of the 
phone, Caroline's phone, this miracle of in- 
stant communication secreted in his pocket 
for just such a moment as this. 

He eased to one side to slip it from his 
pocket, a hard mute monolithic thing, 
cold in his hand, its screen decorated 
with the imprint of his wife’s fingertips. 
He’d call Amtrak, that was what he was 
thinking—the emergency number. There 
had to be an emergency number, didn’t 
there? Or 911. He’d call 911 and have the 
police meet him at the Albany station. All 
right. But how to turn it on? He’d seen 
Caroline do it a hundred times, her fin- 
gers flicking lightly over the screen as a 
steady stream of colorful icons rolled duti- 
fully into position. He pressed the screen, 
expecting the thing to jump to life, but 
nothing happened. Again he pressed it. 
The kid was watching him now out of the 
reddened pools of his eyes—had he been 
crying, was that it? “It’s okay,” he heard 
himself say. “Everything’s fine. Just give 
me—give me a minute here.” 

The car rocked. Bleak dead trees flailed 
at the windows. The sky was made of 
stone. Finally—and he felt a surge of sat- 
isfaction so powerful he nearly sang out 
in triumph—he found the on/off switch 
hidden in the frame and indistinguishable 
from it, as if the manufacturer, clearly a 
sadist, had put all the company’s resources 
into making its function as obscure as pos- 
sible. No matter. The screen flashed at him, 
a parade of icons there, and they shimmied 
at the merest touch of his finger. But where 
were the numbers? How did you make a 
call? Why were ? 

And now the train was slowing and the 
loudspeakers suddenly crackled with a 
mechanical voice announcing Station stop 
Albany/Rensselaer even as he shoved the 
phone back in his pocket and sprang up to 
jerk his bag down from the overhead rack, 
the decision already forming in his brain 
because it was the only decision he could 
have made—anyone in his position would 
have done the same thing and you didn't 
have to be Albert Schweitzer to weigh the 
moral balance of it. He took the kid by the 
hand, pulled him up out of the seat and 
down the aisle to the door, which at that 
moment clattered open on the platform 
in a burst of noise and confusion, people 
swarming everywhere, and where was a 
cop? He needed a cop. 

A dirty white pigeon fluttered into the 
air. Somebody said, “Laura Jean, you look 
terrific, I hardly recognize you,” and a pair 
of policemen surfaced amid the crowd, 
moving toward him now, and here was a 
too-thin vaguely blondish woman rushing 
for him with her hands outstretched and 
the light of redemption in her cracked blue 
eyes, and she was going to say, "Mr. Riley?” 
and he was going to say, "Ms. Trumpeter?" 
but that never happened, because the po- 
licemen wrestled him to the pavement 
even as he felt the cold metallic bite of the 
handcuffs gnaw into his flesh. 


Sometime later—he didn't know how 
much later because they'd taken his 


187 


SERVING UP THE 


THE NEW PLAYBOY FOR iPhone APP 


watch—he found himself in a desperate 
place, a place even the wildest of his wild 
years couldn’t have begun to prepare him 
for. There were strange smells, unsettling 
noises, the rhythmic tapping of heels on 
linoleum. Cold steel. Corridors within cor- 
ridors. Here he was in the midst of it, his 
hands shaking as if he'd had a hundred 
cups of coffee, and he couldn't stop pacing 
back and forth across the stained concrete 
floor of the solitary cell they'd put him in, 
the guard or deputy or whatever he was 
giving him a rude shove and announcing 
in an overheated voice that it was for his 
own protection. “The people we got in 
here, they don't like creeps like you. And 
you want to know something? Neither do 
I.” And then he added, as a kind of oral 
postscript, “Scumbag.” 

Donna Trumpeter, aflutter with righ- 
teousness, had tried to explain that they'd 
made a mistake, that he—Riley, the man 
in handcuffs with the heart rate surg- 
ing like Krakatoa—was a famous writer, 
a celebrity, an award winner but the cops 
wouldn't listen. They produced a blanket 
for the boy, as if he were cold, as if that 
were the extent of his problem, and an- 
other cop—a female with a face like a blaz- 
ing gun—wrapped the boy up and led him 
away. Riley talked himself hoarse. He pro- 
tested in a high buzzing whine while they 
led him in cuffs through the cavernous 
station, and everybody, even the crack- 
heads and bums, stared at him; fulminat- 
ed while they strong-armed him into the 
backseat of the cruiser out on the bleak 
cold street; alternately raged, threatened 
and pleaded as they read him his rights, 
took his fingerprints and photo—his mug 
shot! —and booked him. Was he allowed a 
phone call? Yes. On a real phone greased 
with the slime of 10,000 penitential hands, 
a phone attached to a wall with an actual 
cord that disappeared inside it before 
connecting with a vast seething network 
of wires that ran all the way to Buffalo and 
beyond. It took four rings for Caroline to 
answer, each one an eternity, and what 
was the name of that attorney they'd used 
when the neighbor's pinhead of a kid set 
fire to the fence? 

“Hello?” Her voice was guarded, caller 
ID alerting her to the suspect number. Ab- 
surdly he wanted to throw his voice and 
pretend to be a telemarketer, make her 
laugh, goad her, but things were too des- 
perate for that. 

“It's me,” he said. "I'm in trouble." He 
felt as if he were in a submarine deep un- 
der the sea and all the air had gone out of 
it. The walls were squeezing in. He couldn't 
breathe. "I'm in jail. I've been arrested." 

"Listen, I'm just sitting down to a salad 
and a glass of wine and I really don't have 
time for whatever this is—humor, is that it? 
You think you're funny? Because I don't." 

He dredged something out of his voice, 
something real, that stopped her. “Caro- 
line," he said, and now he was sobbing—or 
almost, right on the verge of it—"I'm in 
jail. Really. It's crazy, I know, but I need 
you to...I need your help. That lawyer, re- 
member that lawyer, what was his name?" 

"Lawyer? What are you talking about?" 


He repeated himself for the third time, 
angry now, the humiliation burning in 
him, and what if the papers got hold of 
this? "I'm in jail." 

Her voice tightened. "For what?" 

“I don't know, it's all a mistake." 

Tighter yet: “For what?" 

There was a deputy right there, point- 
ing emphatically at his watch. The corridor 
smelled of cleaning solution, vomit, bad 
shoes, bad feet, bad breath. 

It took everything in him to get the 
words out. "They're calling it"—and here 
he emitted a strained whinnying laugh— 
"child abuse." 

"Jesus," she snapped. “Why don't you 
get a life? I told you I'm trying to have a 
bite of dinner here—in peace for once? Go 
try your routine on one of your group- 
ies, one of the literary ladies of where is 
it? Greater Stuyvesant. I’m sure they'll all 
love it." And then, because Riley must have 
committed some sin he wasn't aware of in 
another life and another time, something 
truly heinous and compoundedly unfor- 
givable, the phone went dead. 


Four hours later—half past eight by the 
watch they'd returned to him, along with 
his wallet, his belt and the flat inanimate 
slab of Caroline's iPhone—he was sitting 
across from Donna Trumpeter in a booth 
at the bar-restaurant of the Stuyvesant 
Marriott, trying to nurse his pulse rate 
back to normal with judicious doses of 
Johnnie Walker Black. He'd ordered a 
steak, blood raw, but it wasn't there yet. 
Donna Trumpeter flipped the hair away 
from her face. She leaned into the table 
on both her elbows and cupped her chin 
in her hands. She'd just finished tell- 
ing him, for the 10th time, how very 
sorry she was about all of this and that 
of course the ladies of the service club 
and her book group and the mayor and 
all the citizens of the Greater Stuyvesant 
area who'd driven who knew how many 
miles to hear him speak all understood 
that the circumstances were unavoidable. 
They’d held the ceremony anyway, ap- 
parently, the mayor's wife reading aloud 
from Maggie of the Farm in the booming 
tones she'd employed as a high school 
thespian a quarter century earlier, and 
everyone—at least at last report—had 
been satisfied with the evening, the high 
point of which was the turkey schnitzel, 
garlic mashed potatoes, brown gravy and 
peas provided by the high school cafete- 
ria staff doing overtime duty. “But,” and 
here she drew in a vast quavering breath, 
“of course, they all wanted you.” Her 
eyes, giving back the nacreous sheen of 
the overhead lights, fluttered shut and 
then snapped open again. “There's no 
substitute for genius.” 

This last comment, coupled with the 
tranquilizing effect of the scotch, made him 
feel marginally better. "I guess that'll teach 
me," he said, sounding as doleful and put- 
upon as he knew how. 

"Oh no,” she said, "no. You did the right 
thing. The only thing." 

"If I had to do it again," he began and 


then trailed off. He’d been trying to catch 
the waitress's eye for a refill, and here she 
was—a huge woman, titanic, as slow on 
her feet as mold creeping across a petri 
dish—backing her way out of the double 
doors to the kitchen, his steak balanced 
on one arm, Donna Trumpeter's Cobb 
salad on the other. The cops had realized 
their mistake after an interpreter was 
brought in to question the boy in Spanish 
and then they'd hurried to release him, 
their apologies rattling round the station 
like a dry cough. They didn't care. He 
meant nothing to them. They'd branded 
him a pervert and a pervert he remained, 
just another perp, another scumbag, in- 
nocent or not. He could go ahead and 
sue. They were just doing their job and 
no jury was going to give him a nickel. 
If anything, he was at fault—for inter- 
fering, for letting the real abductor get 
away when all along they’d been waiting 
to take him at the station. 

The waitress, breathing heavily— 
puffing, actually, as if she were trying to 
keep an imaginary feather afloat—set the 
plates down on the table and as the smell 
of the steak rose to him he realized how 
hungry he was. “Another scotch,” he said, 
and because he was calming down now, 
the earth solid beneath his feet the way 
it always had been and always would be, 
he added, “please,” and then, “if it's not 
too much trouble.” He cut meat, lifted it 
to his lips, sipped scotch. Donna Trum- 
peter kept up a soft soothing patter that 
revolved around what an honor it was to 
be in his presence—she couldn't believe it; 
it was like a dream and how deeply each 
of his books had moved her, Maggie of the 
Farm most of all. “Really,” she said, “the 
way you portray day-to-day life—and the 
insight you have into women, my God!— 
it's almost Tolstoyan. Or no: better. Be- 
cause it's real. In the here and now." 

He gently reminded her that the book 
was set in the 1930s. 

"Of course. What I mean is it's not 19th 
century, it’s not Russia.” 

“No,” he agreed, “it’s not.” It was about 
then that he noticed she wasn’t wearing a 
wedding ring. And that her eyes, for all 
the coiled springboard of theories and 
embroidery, vegetarian cookery, cats and 
poetry he saw lurking there, were really 
quite beautiful. Stunning, actually. And 
her mouth. She had a sensual mouth, full- 
lipped, just like the one he’d imagined 
for Maggie. And though she was thin, too 
thin for his taste, she had a pair of breasts 
on her. There they were, clamped in the 
grip of the tight pink angora sweater she 
was wearing, and what was he thinking? 
That skinny women, skinny literary wom- 
en with full lips and syntactical adulation 
shining in their eyes, could be lavishly re- 
ceptive in another arena altogether. And 
further: that he’d had a scare, a bad scare, 
and could do with a little soothing. 

He was about to lay his hand on hers 
when she suddenly pulled back to panto- 
mime a smack to her forehead. “Oh my 
God, I almost forgot,” she said, and then 
he was studying the crown of her skull, the 
parting there, as she bent to her purse, 


which she’d tucked away beneath the table 
when they’d sat down. In the next moment 
she was straightening up, slightly flushed 
from the effort, and smiling so forcefully 
her teeth shone. “Here,” she said, and she 
was handing what he at first took to be a 
breadboard across the table—the plaque, 
the plaque, of course—and along with it 
an envelope embossed with the logo of 
the Greater Stuyvesant Chamber of Com- 
merce. “God, if I'd forgotten....” 

He must have looked surprised—he'd 
been through an emotional wringer, but 
not, he reminded himself, anything even 
close to the sort of horror that poor abused 
kid must have endured, and he didn't give 
a damn what anybody thought, whether it 
was random chance that had put him there 
or not, he was a hero, he was, and he'd suf- 
fered for it—because she said, "I know it's 
not much. Especially, well, considering." 

“It's plenty," he said, and was he tearing 
up? "And I want to thank you, all of you, 
but you especially, you, Donna, from the 
bottom of my...." He lifted his head, cast a 
watery eye on the shadow of the waitress 
drifting by on the periphery. “But what 
I'd really like, what I need, that is, I mean 
after all we've been through together— 


He went to the window and 
looked out into a vast park- 
ing lot, a great dark sinkhole 
illuminated by the sad yellow 
light of the arc lamps rising 
hazily out of it. 


oh, hell, let me just come out and say it. 
Do you want to come up to the room with 
me?" 

He watched her smile retract, lips tight- 
ening like wire. "I'm seeing somebody," 
she said. 

He was desperate. He'd been in jail. 
He'd never even got to deliver his speech. 
"He doesn't have to know." 

"I'm sorry," she said firmly, and then 
she got up from the table. “ГЇЇ take care 
of the check," she added in a softer voice, 
and touched his hand in parting. The 
smile flickered back. "Sleep tight." 

He staggered up the stairs to his 
second-floor room like an octogenarian, 
as drained as he'd ever been in his life. 
For a long while he fumbled with the card 
key, trying it forward, backward, upside 
down, until finally the light went merci- 
fully green and he was inside. The room 
was like any other. Stucco walls, beige 
lamp shades, plastic night tables with 
some sort of fake wood-grain pattern 
worked in beneath the surface. Industrial 
carpeting. Sheets and blankets stretched 
tight as drum skin over the bed by im- 
migrant women who'd seen too much in 
their own place and time and now had 


to rake through the daily leavings of the 
class of people who had the wherewithal 
to couple here and gulp booze and do 
drugs and clip their nails over the sink. 
He didn't want to think about the wom- 
en's children and the hopes they might 
have had for them, about the boy and the 
big man and a room just like this one in 
Chicago or Detroit or wherever the bad 
people, the very bad people, did what 
they were going to do. 

He went to the window and looked out 
into a vast parking lot, a great dark sink- 
hole illuminated by the sad yellow light of 
the arc lamps rising hazily out of it. It took 
him a moment, his reflection caught there 
in the window, his jacket like a dead thing 
wrapped around him, to realize it was 
snowing. Or no, this was sleet, definitely 
sleet, the storm that had hit Buffalo finally 
caught up with him. 


In the morning, he took the train back, 
and if he lifted his head from the news- 
paper when anyone came down the aisle, 
it was a reflex only. The rails thumped 
beneath him with a pulverizing regular- 
ity that seemed to work so deeply inside 
him it was as if he were being eviscer- 
ated with each thrust of the wheels. His 
breath fogged the window. He tried Tom 
McNeil's novel again and again it put him 
to sleep. Back at home, Caroline seemed 
to find the whole business hilarious and 
he just couldn't summon the strength to 
give her the hard truth of it. Still, she 
did warm to him when they went out to 
Eladio and blew the $250 honorarium 
on abalone flown in from California, 
Kobe beef and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot 
Demi-Sec chilled to perfection. Two days 
later he learned from the newspaper that 
the boy's name was Efraín Silva and that 
he'd wandered away from his mother at 
the Home Depot in Amherst and was now 
reunited with her, though there seemed 
to be some question regarding her legal 
status, which had come to light only be- 
cause of her going to the police. As for 
the abductor, the big man in the pressed 
pants and checked jacket, he was still at 
large, and whether he was Russian or 
Croatian or Fijian for that matter, no one 
knew. No one knew his name either. All 
they knew was what he'd done to the boy 
and where he'd done it and they knew 
too that he'd do it again to some other 
boy in some other place. 

If Riley felt a vague unease in the com- 
ing days, he chalked it up to the cold he 
seemed to have caught somewhere along 
the line. And when the next invitation 
came—from Kipper College of the Dunes 
in Kipper, Oregon, informing him that 
he was one of three finalists for the Ever- 
green Award in Creative Literature for his 
novel Magpie of the Farm—he didn't show 
it to Caroline or anyone else. He just went 
in through the house to the fireplace, 
stacked up the kindling there and used 
the creamy soft vellum to guide the flame 
ofthe match into the very heart ofthe fire. 


189 


PLAYBOY 


STAGECRAFT 


(continued from page 92) 


But it wasn't long before Quintessential 
Kerry leaped to the fore. A pretty blonde 
student rose to ask about the emerging 
economies of Asia and Africa. Kerry's re- 
sponse extended to almost 700 words, 
droning on for long and stifling minutes 
about the imbalance of agricultural regula- 
tions between East and West and the need 
for “the appropriate application of stan- 
dards” to China's health and environmental 
systems. The student was almost instantly 
lost and could soon be observed texting 
her friends. It brought back memories of 
the 2004 campaign, when TV reporters 
complained to Kerry's press aides about his 
penchant for complex rhetorical construc- 
tions, his stately senatorial stacking of clause 
upon clause in great, wobbly towers of soar- 
ing Kennedyesque verbiage that became 
impossible to edit down and get on the six 
o'clock news. Kerry's aides would shrug: 
"You're preaching to the choir, dude.” 

Now a Muslim woman, wearing the tra- 
ditional cover and excited about her work 
with JUMA—a group for young followers of 
Islam who, as she put it, "stand up for righ- 
teousness, equality and tolerance"—wanted 
Kerry's evaluation of religious tolerance in 
the United States. Kerry worked his way 
around to saying that Americans "live and 
breathe the idea of religious freedom and 
religious tolerance"—but not before tying 
himself into pretzels: "Because in America, 
we have total—occasionally, you have; I 
can't tell you that a hundred percent— 
sometimes you have somebody who's a 
little...not as tolerant as somebody else.” 

To recover, the secretary figured he 
would acquaint these starry-eyed Berlin- 
ers with the American legal tradition of re- 
specting those forms of speech we find most 
obnoxious. He'd have been better advised 
to make merry again with host Jobatey, who 
mostly stood around looking befuddled 
and bored. "Some people have sometimes 
wondered about why our Supreme Court 
allows one group or another to march in a 
parade," Kerry said, "even though it's the 
most provocative thing in the world and 
they carry signs that are an insult to one 
group or another. And the reason is that 
that's freedom—freedom of speech." 

Somewhere down in his soul, Kerry 
likely grasped that he had lost his audi- 
ence, knew he was already closing in on 
250 words in this answer and had failed to 
strike a chord, failed to #YouthConnect. 
The moment called for something dramat- 
ic, something the kids could relate to. Now 
Kerry thought he had it: “In America, you 
have a right to be stupid.” Nervous laugh- 
ter ricocheted across the room. Immedi- 
ately Kerry was off again, trying to explain 
what he’d meant, blathering something 
about how “you have a right to be discon- 
nected to somebody else.” But the Ameri- 
can reporters were all wincing. 

#Yikes. From the whole two-hour event, 
“the right to be stupid” offered the only 
sound bite Reuters news agency fed to U.S. 
news markets across the Atlantic. It was not 


190 the kind of thing one expects to hear pass- 


ing the lips of the U.S. secretary of state on 
foreign soil, let alone on his first overseas 
trip, and it definitely wasn't Clintonesque. 


For more than two years Syrian president 
Bashar al-Assad, a mass murderer like his 
father, had sought to quash a popular up- 
rising against his tyrannical rule. The dic- 
tator had used virtually every military asset 
at his disposal: hundreds of thousands of 
soldiers, armored fighting vehicles, fighter 
jets, Scud missiles, heavy artillery. Many 
believed it was only a matter of time before 
Assad, increasingly desperate, unleashed 
the massive arsenal of biological and 
chemical weapons he was believed to pos- 
sess. (Indeed, credible reports of chemical 
weapons use in Syria began to surface after 
our return to the U.S.) The United Nations 
estimated the conflict had already claimed 
70,000 lives and sent more than 1 million 
Syrians fleeing to neighboring countries. 

Yet Assad's reduction of whole cities 
to rubble had only emboldened the Syr- 
ian rebels. That term, however—Syrian 
rebels—is a fiction, an umbrella term for a 
fractious coalition of fighters and civilians 
that hardly constitutes an organized op- 
position force, politically or militarily. At 
any given moment, the “rebels” will in- 
clude democratic-minded revolutionaries 
Americans would approve of; ad hoc local 
brigades that scour abandoned armories 
for weapons and answer to no one; and 
hardened battle units such as the al-Nusra 
Front, probably the most effective fighting 
force currently confronting Assad's troops. 
The only problem with al-Nusra is that it is 
openly allied with Al Qaeda. This has cre- 
ated a paradox: As Assad's military position 
worsens, suffering high-level defections and 
surrendering control of provincial capitals 
and border regions, the situation grows 
more worrisome for the United States. As 
the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, 
testified before Congress, “The longer the 
conflict continues, the greater the influence 
of extremists on the ground.” 

By the time Kerry was sworn in, the en- 
tire civilized world had condemned Assad's 
butchery. Seated alongside Kerry in Riyadh, 
Saudi Arabia's Prince Saud al-Faisal—the 
world's longest-serving foreign minister, in 
his post since 1975—brandished for Assad 
words of contempt even the Israelis had 
never elicited. “I have never heard or seen 
in history,” the prince said, his speech slowed 
by advanced age and Parkinson's disease, 
“that a regime would use a strategic missile 
toward his people. And [Assad] is killing in- 
nocent children, innocent women and old 
men. Nobody who has done that to his citi- 
zens can claim a right to lead a country.” 

Worried about supplying weapons that 
would fall into the hands of al-Nusra fight- 
ers and eventually be turned against us—or 
against the Israelis—the Obama adminis- 
tration had long refused to help the rebels 
militarily (even though then Senator Kerry, 
in May of last year, had so urged). No such 
qualms have inhibited the Saudis, however. 
Once Assad looked vulnerable, Riyadh 
swiftly assumed a lead role in arming and 
funding the Syrian opposition. In this the 


Saudis were joined by other oil-rich Sunni 
Arab nations in the Persian Gulf, most of 
which are eager to see the Shi’ite regime in 
Damascus collapse. The toppling of Assad 
would deal a huge strategic setback to Iran, 
the Shi'ite power whose regional bullying 
and pursuit of nuclear weapons have long 
posed a threat to the Sunni states. 

Yet Iran was not the only authoritarian 
government propping up Assad. So was 
Russia. Despite having signed on to the 
Geneva Communiqué, a multilateral ac- 
cord that calls for an orderly transition to 
a new and democratic Syria—i.e., one that 
does not include Assad—the Kremlin had 
steadfastly continued to back the regime 
throughout the crisis. Since the Soviet era, 
Kremlin warships have docked at a Rus- 
sian naval base in the Syrian coastal city 
of Tartus, and military contracts between 
the two capitals are now estimated to be 
worth $4 billion. For these reasons, the 
Russians have consistently blocked mean- 
ingful action against Assad at the UN Secu- 
rity Council and kept up their deliveries of 
weapons to Assad's forces. The Cold War 
is over, but Mother Russia remains strong, 
and President Vladimir Putin remains de- 
termined to check American power and 
influence wherever possible. 

Accordingly, shaping up as one of the 
critical events on Kerry's itinerary was his 
first sit-down as secretary with Russia's no- 
toriously acerbic foreign minister, Sergey 
Lavrov. Tall and bespectacled, an impos- 
ing figure with a deep voice and scowling 
mien, Lavrov has held his post for nearly 
a decade and has chewed up one secre- 
tary of state after another. At the Adlon in 
Berlin, a long table covered in white linen 
was set up in a conference room for the 
American and Russian sides, suitable for a 
major arms-control negotiation. Flanking 
Kerry, who was placed at the middle of the 
table, was State Department spokesperson 
Victoria Nuland; Phil Gordon, the assistant 
secretary for Europe and Eurasia, soon to 
move over to the National Security Council; 
Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a tall, blonde 
NSC officer, soon to receive a promotion 
to a more senior NSC post; Cynthia Doell, 
the official “note taker” for the American 
side; and U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Harry B. 
Harris Jr., a Tennessean with a chest full 
of medals and ribbons who was represent- 
ing the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Lavrov's 
side, chairs were reserved for Alexander A. 
Tokovinin, director of the Russian foreign 
ministry's Policy Planning Department; 
Evgeny S. Ivanov, Lavrov's staff secre- 
tary; and note taker Oleg V. Pozdnyakov, 
among others. These officials are seldom 
glimpsed by the American press. 

For an hour, Russian and American re- 
porters rocked on their heels, waiting for 
the principals to appear and hungrily eye- 
ing a platter of coffee and pastries that the 
Adlon’s German waitstaff had made clear 
was verboten. Then, suddenly, movement: 
Kerry and Lavrov shook hands and ambled 
over to a pair of microphones and flags set 
up in a corner so they could repeat the ex- 
ercise for photographers. “We are happy 
to see each other,” Kerry said jovially. “We 
know each other and have had some good 


discussions.” Lavrov was in no mood for it, 
though, and swiftly administered poison 
gas to the merriment. He scowled at the 
reporters and said, in English, “If they get 
out, I will be able to get to my chair.” 

With the reporters ushered out, sources 
said later, Kerry played possum while 
Lavrov harangued him with a long list of 
Kremlin grievances—not just on big topics 
such as Syria and Iran and Moscow’s recent 
decision to block Americans from adopting 
Russian children, but on small stuff, crimi- 
nal cases unworthy of the occasion. Kerry, 
of course, has long experience with foreign 
leaders fond of lecturing Americans. There 
was good reason to believe the new secretary 
of state handled this moment with consid- 
erable deftness—or about as well as Sergey 
Lavrov can be handled—by structuring the 
nearly two-hour session in a way that maxi- 
mized, at least in theory, the chances that 
Lavrov would honor his promises. When it 
was over, Kerry scooted off to more closed- 
door meetings. Lavrov, however, spoke to 
the news media—with his usual edge. “The 
discussion was, to my mind, constructive 
and in the spirit of partnership,” he said, 
“without, of course, ignoring the questions 
which are irritating these relations.” 

What President Obama and Kerry 
wanted from the Russians, above all, was 
for President Putin to make a final break 
with Assad: to recognize that the dictator's 
days were indeed numbered, as Obama had 
been saying since early 2012, and for Mos- 
cow to cease its supplies of arms and cash to 
the Syrian regime. The American message 
boiled down to this: If the Kremlin doesn't 
wake up, it will soon find itself sharing with 
Washington the burden of dealing with a 
new Syrian government run by al-Nusra. 
Surely Russia's billionaire oligarchs and the 
executives at Gazprom, the national gas be- 
hemoth, could be persuaded that the emer- 
gence of an Al Qaeda state in the heart of 
the Middle East would be bad for business. 

The true measure of Kerry's success 
in this opening duel with Lavrov would 
emerge a month later, on March 20, when 
Ambassador Ford told the House Foreign 
Affairs Committee, We would like Russia, 
first of all, to stop delivering arms systems 
to the Syrian government. This is an ongo- 
ing conversation that we have with them.” 


Kerry's a toucher. The physical contact he 
initiated during our first 15 minutes on the 
plane together, as he strode the cabin and 
chatted with his new press corps, easily ex- 
ceeded the sum total of my physical con- 
tact with cabinet officers in the previous 
15 years. He would scrunch your shoulder 
while talking to someone else, like a kindly 
uncle. When he and a foreign counterpart 
shuffled offstage after a news conference, 
Kerry, invariably the taller man, would 
place his hand on his colleague's back or 
shoulder, gently guiding his host out—in 
the host's own foreign ministry. Near the 
end of the trip, when I arrived for our 
one-on-one interview, Kerry shook my 
hand, then drew me in for a bear hug, like 
a fraternity brother. 

Far from displaying the cruelty some 


politicians are given to, Kerry is gentle in 
nature. He follows up jokes with “Only jok- 
ing!” and strives to do all the right things. 
On a recent trip he traipsed down the 
aisle toting a birthday cake for Margaret 
Brennan of CBS News. On the last stop 
of our marathon, a refueling mission at 
the duty-free shoppers’ paradise of Shan- 
non Airport in Ireland, Kerry returned to 
the cabin carrying shopping bags stuffed 
with tins of Irish toffee and chocolates, 
and tossed the sweets to us like Santa 
Claus. There were few people of conse- 
quence Kerry hadn’t met and about whom 
he couldn’t produce, on cue, a pleasing 
anecdote. Standing in the airplane aisle 
or seated over wine in a Middle Eastern 
hotel courtyard, Kerry might still be wear- 
ing the pin-striped pants from his suit or 
might have changed into jeans. He regu- 
larly wore a black alligator belt with a sil- 
ver buckle; a button-down shirt open at 
the neck, sometimes denim with brown 
pearl buttons; and for warmth a salmon- 
colored Polo hoodie adorned with Native 
American stitching. Sometimes his history 
of knee troubles could be observed, but 
mostly Kerry still moved, at 69, with a kind 
of preppy athleticism. It gave you a sense 


of what he must have been like at St. Paul’s 
or Yale in the 1960s. I liked him. 

But for someone with Kerry’s knowl- 
edge of the world and its leaders, his long 
experience in the fine art and crude reali- 
ties of high-stakes international diplomacy, 
he made on this trip a surprising number 
of—there's no other way to put it—rookie 
mistakes. The Americans as “stupid” busi- 
ness was only the beginning. At the Quai 
d'Orsay in Paris, where he fielded questions 
alongside French foreign minister Laurent 
Fabius, Kerry said, “Iran is a country with 
a government that was elected and that sits 
in the United Nations.” Again, the report- 
ers cocked their heads. Was Kerry forget- 
ting how the regime bloodied the streets 
of Tehran when the citizenry protested 
rigged elections in 2009? 

Sometimes it was a matter of craft. Kerry 
routinely wound up talking longer than his 
hosts. His well-known weakness is wordi- 
ness: He is forever hoping people will 
“have the ability to be able to” do this or 
fretting something will “undermine our 
ability to be able to” do that. “The ability to 
be able to” was like a virus that followed us 
from country to country. 

And in Ankara, appearing with Turkish 


ШО 


“Из the guy from the next building. He wants to know if we could 
stop while he freshens his drink.” 


191 


PLAYBOY 


192 


foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Kerry 
simply spaced out and forgot to wear his 
headphones while Davutoglu was speaking 
in Turkish. After realizing Kerry wasn’t lis- 
tening to him, the foreign minister stopped 
and mused, “I think you start to under- 
stand Turkish.” Amid peals of laughter, 
Kerry hurriedly fumbled with the head- 
phones. Davutoglu strained for something 
unifying (“We are speaking not from the 
tongue to the ear but from the mind to the 
mind”) and moved on. 

Only once did Kerry get testy with a re- 
porter. The undeserving victim was NBC 
State Department producer Catherine 
Chomiak. Chestnut-haired and slender, 
with impeccable manners and large eyes 
framed by exquisite features, Chomiak is 
the very picture of a stylish young profes- 
sional. At the news conference in Riyadh 
she followed up a question about Iran 
with a routine query about what Kerry 
planned to discuss during his upcoming 
lunch with Palestinian president Mah- 
moud Abbas. “What do you think I might 
discuss with him?” Kerry snapped. A shud- 
der rippled through the diplomatic corps; 


this was a guise we hadn’t seen. Kerry 
seemed to realize orneriness had gotten 
the better of him. The moment called 
for him to snap out of his funk and give 
Chomiak a substantive preview of the Ab- 
bas luncheon—something long enough, in 
any case, to dim the memory of his rude- 
ness. But Kerry, perhaps fatigued in this, 
our seventh country in eight days, couldn't 
be bothered. He mumbled perfunctorily 
about looking forward to the meeting and 
volunteered only that he and Abbas would 
discuss “all the obvious issues.” 


Kerry's frustration could perhaps be for- 
given. At his Senate confirmation hearing 
on January 24 he had conveyed his belief 
that things were changing rapidly and pro- 
foundly and in such unpredictable ways, to 
the point that he seemed to be hinting at 
the unspeakable, namely that the challenges 
confronting American diplomats might be 
insurmountable. “Today's world is more 
complicated than anything we have experi- 
enced,” Kerry told his old colleagues on the 
Foreign Relations Committee. He quoted 


“Where have you been?” 


his old nemesis from the Vietnam era, 
Henry Kissinger: “None of the most impor- 
tant countries which must build a new world 
order have had any experience with the 
multistate system that is emerging. Never 
before has a new world order had to be as- 
sembled from so many different perceptions 
or on so global a scale. Nor has any previous 
order had to combine the attributes of the 
historic balance-of-power system with global 
democratic opinion and the exploding tech- 
nology of the contemporary period.” 

In lay terms, this means the old frame- 
work that has effectively governed inter- 
national relations since World War II is 
coming apart. Leading nations, no less 
than internet giants, terrorist groups and 
criminal syndicates, blithely brush aside 
UN Security Council resolutions and other 
unenforceable constructs of international 
law. There's no unwritten pecking order of 
states anymore, no impenetrable nuclear 
club. The old order installed by FDR, 
Stalin, Churchill and de Gaulle in 1945 is 
being replaced by—who the hell knows? 
The post-9/11 era is proving to be just shy 
of anarchic. At the hearing, Kerry, in his 
usual style, reeled off 10 modern devel- 
opments that herald this death of the old 
order: “the emergence of China; the Arab 
Awakening; inextricably linked economic, 
health, environmental and demographic 
issues; [WMD] proliferation; poverty; pan- 
demic disease; refugees; conflict ongoing in 
Afghanistan; entire populations and faiths 
struggling with the demands of modernity; 
and the accelerating pace of technologi- 
cal innovation invading all of that, shifting 
power from nation-states to individuals.” 

All this, in short, is why no American 
secretary of state, upon assuming office, 
really expects to succeed anymore, to forge 
demonstrable progress on the major prob- 
lems, or “challenges,” of our time, the way 
secretaries of state from both parties once 
appeared able to do. Moreover, Kerry's 
ascent to the pinnacle of American diplo- 
macy comes in the #epicfail era, an epoch 
of suffocating U.S. debt, an almost comically 
dysfunctional slog through slowdowns and 
sequesters, fiscal cliffs and ratings down- 
grades, perpetually uneven job creation and 
quarterly growth. Secretary Clinton had 
warned about the constricting effect our na- 
tion's dismal finances, including the large 
share of our debt owned by China, can have 
on America's ability to influence people and 
events overseas: the very mission of the 
State Department. In such a time, American 
swagger abroad ain't what it used to be. 

Secretary Kerry found this out the hard 
way. From London he'd been forced to 
plead, in a desperate telephone call, for 
Sheikh Moaz al-Khatib, the civilian leader 
of the “Syrian rebels,” to show up at a ma- 
jor conference in Rome—the centerpiece 
of Kerry's trip—at which the U.S. was to 
announce a fresh pledge of $60 million in 
nonlethal aid to the opposition. To recap: 
At a time when Washington lawmakers 
were debating which vital domestic spend- 
ing programs to cut, the U.S. wanted to 
give the Syrian rebels $60 million worth of 
stuff—and the secretary of state practically 
had to beg their leader to show up. And 


when the wiry al-Khatib arrived at Villa 
Madama, the bucolic Italian foreign min- 
istry, he scarcely grunted out a thank-you 
to Kerry or to the Italian foreign minis- 
ter, Giulio Terzi, before launching into an 
Arabic rant that rebuked the allies for their 
preoccupation with al-Nusra. “I am tired 
of [this],” al-Khatib said, close to shout- 
ing, through his translator. “The mass 
media pay more attention to the length 
of the beard of a fighter than to the [gov- 
ernment's] massacres. No terrorists in the 
world have such a savage nature as that of 
the Syrian regime." Kerry could only stand 
there, occasionally stiffening his spine and 
blinking with annoyance. Three weeks 
later al-Khatib announced his resignation. 

In Cairo, Kerry's feckless interlocutor 
was the Muslim Brotherhood government 
led by Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, 
whose poor economic stewardship and 
ham-fisted power grabs had given rise to 
bloody unrest in major cities. A few months 
earlier a videotape from 2010 had surfaced 
in which Morsi, a bearded man with thick 
eyeglasses and a deceptively benign visage, 
declared Jews "the descendants of apes and 
pigs" and urged Egyptians to "nurse our 
children and grandchildren on hatred" for 
them. The leaders of the major civil-society 
opposition groups in Egypt—the individu- 
als who represented Washington's best 
hopes for displacing Morsi and the Broth- 
erhood and restoring to power a more reli- 
able ally in the world's most populous Arab 
nation—refused to be seen with Kerry. One 
opposition figure skulked into a private ses- 
sion with the secretary of state; the other 
spoke with him by phone. The interior min- 
ister refused to provide Kerry's motorcade 
with an escort from the airport to the Cairo 
Sheraton. And neither Morsi nor his foreign 
minister held a news conference with Kerry. 

The secretary's mission in Cairo was to 
prod major interest groups there to take 
shared risks to stop Egypt's downward spiral 
since the heady days of Tahrir Square. "It is 
paramount, essential, urgent that the Egyp- 
tian economy get stronger," Kerry told the 
business leaders. "You have to get people 
back to work, and the energy of this country 
needs to hopefully be able to move from the 
streets to enterprise." He urged the opposi- 
tion not to boycott parliamentary elections 
set for April. He implored the financial com- 
munity to invest more in women and edu- 
cation. Most important, he leaned on Morsi 
to press forward with some unpopular eco- 
nomic measures—raising taxes, eliminat- 
ing sacred-cow subsidies—so Egypt could 
qualify for a $4.8 billion International Mon- 
etary Fund loan, a deal the Obama admin- 
istration was eager to advance. Until now, 
though, Morsi's true intentions—toward 
the IMF, America, Israel, Jews, democracy, 
you name it—remained difficult for Kerry 
and his aides to discern. 

State Department officials later said the 
principals’ session lasted two and a half 
hours, including an hour of one-on-one 
time. Kerry emerged from it so persuaded 
of Morsi's sincerity in pledging to admin- 
ister the IMF reforms and extend an olive 
branch to his political opponents that Kerry 
decided on the spot to unlock $250 million 


in frozen U.S. aid. Within 72 hours the same 
aides stood in the same airplane cabin and 
informed us that the Egyptian Supreme 
Court had just canceled the parliamentary 
elections set for April and that the inten- 
tions of Morsi and the Brotherhood were 
again proving difficult to discern. 


The finalleg, a tour of Persian Gulf nations, 
proved anticlimactic. Nothing in Saudi 
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Qatar 
matched the architecture: sprawling hotel 
complexes with hundred-foot ceilings, tur- 
rets and arches, brand-new Disneyesque 
castles with Bellagio-style fountains and 
hypnotic Arabic design swirls. On our re- 
turn, little from the trip seemed to have 
exerted a lasting impact on world affairs. 
In April a 25-year-old FSO from the Chi- 
cago area named Anne Smedinghoff was 
killed during a suicide-bomb attack in Af- 
ghanistan just days after she had served 
as support staff for a Kerry visit there. For 
many the episode, which moved Kerry 
deeply, conjured the killings at Benghazi 
on September 11, 2012, the last time U.S. 
diplomatic personnel had been lost to vio- 
lence. I recalled my conversation with two 
FSOs in a Middle Eastern country during 
the trip. A young woman, probably Smed- 
inghoff's age, was lamenting how little at- 
tention Americans pay to the work of their 
diplomats. "How do we change that?" she 
asked. "Easy," said her colleague, a sci-fi 
nerd. "Get killed in the line of duty." 

Leading these dazed shock troops in the 
titanic struggle of ideologies—what Kerry 
likes to call "the clash of modernity"—is a 
secretary of state who, regardless of how 
you feel about his politics, was born for the 
job, has all the experience and tools, knows 
the geography and players, sailed through 
his Senate confirmation 94-3 and who, 
despite all that, represents a dysfunctional 
government and encounters a world whose 
hostility seems only to grow. 

Every sign of progress in establishing a 
new order that Kerry might have "the abil- 
ity to be able to" observe yields, sooner or 
later, to encroaching anarchy. America still 
has some money to give away, but as Kerry 
wanders the boneyard of ideas between 
engagement and isolation, brandishing his 
carrots and sticks and making his 10-point 
arguments for why the developing world 
should embrace liberal democracy over 
authoritarianism and radical Islam, the 
response is too often rooted in sheer per- 
versity, a Bizarro World inversion of, or 
just plain disregard for, everything the 
West considers the inherited wisdom of the 
ages. Up is down! maintain the Russians and 
the Chinese, the mullahs in Iran, Assad, 
al-Nusra, Morsi, Karzai. Black is white! God 
is on our side! The old order is dead! 

The diplomat who understands this best 
is Prince Saud al-Faisal, the dean of foreign 
ministers. On Hillary Clinton's last visit to 
Riyadh, a year before Kerry arrived there, 
the prince told her, "We are living in a 
world where truth and falsehood have be- 


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SEAN HANNITY 


(continued from page 72) 
armed guards to protect our Hollywood 
stars, armed guards to protect our athletes, 
armed guards to protect presidents and 
elected officials. I never want to wake up 
and hear another school shooting has hap- 
pened again. What would be wrong with 
putting retired policemen and retired 
military people in schools? You don't even 
have to put them in uniform. They'd be on 
the front line of defense to protect our na- 
tion's children. I support that. 

PLAYBOY: We already have more guns per 
capita than any other country. 

HANNITY: I urge you to read John Lott Jr.'s 
book More Guns, Less Crime. But with that 
said, I understand the argument. I under- 
stand that a lot of people may not want to 
have a gun. But I feel strongly that 99.999 
percent of law-abiding citizens should not 
be punished for the actions of either luna- 
tics or criminals who have not been prop- 
erly punished for past crimes. 

PLAYBOY: You have a license to carry a gun 
in New York state, right? 

HANNITY: Absolutely. I own a lot of fire- 
arms. I collect firearms. I have been 
around them my entire life. I’m 51 years 
old. I started shooting probably at the age 
of 10 or 11. I was a marksman at 12, and 
I can't urge safety enough. I could bring 
you to my house right now, tell you where 
my guns are, and you would not get them. 
You could spend the next month there 
and you would never be able to gain ac- 
cess to them. I handle the weapons I have 
properly, and I also have easy access to a 
weapon to protect myself. 

PLAYBOY: But a lot of people don't use guns 
properly. A dog in Florida recently shot its 
owner in the leg. 

HANNITY: A lot of people are stupid with 
cars and get drunk and start driving. A lot 
of people get high and get in a car too. Ev- 
ery time you get in an airplane it's danger- 
ous. Life is dangerous. You know, I wrote 
a book, Deliver Us From Evil. In the past 
century, a hundred million people were 
slaughtered. There was Stalin, Hitler, the 
killing fields in Cambodia, Communism, 
Nazism, fascism, imperial Japan—and now 
it's terrorism. There are a lot of evil people 
in the world. If you're a rapist or a pedo- 
phile and you don't give a damn about any- 
body but yourself, I don't think any law is 
going to stop you from committing the evil 
atrocity that is in your heart. And I want 
law-abiding people to have the choice. 
You don't have to have a weapon if you 
don't want one, but those who do want one 
should have the right to have it. Our fram- 
ers and our founders were very clear on 
the issue of the Second Amendment, and 
they weren't talking about deer hunting. 
PLAYBOY: Next issue. More than 30 acad- 
emies of science across the world have con- 
cluded that global warming is caused by 
human activity, but you've cast doubt on 
climate change for years. 

HANNITY: You want the short answer or the 
long? Either way, I think it's a crock of shit. 
I don't believe it's true, and I think that 
people have been put in a state of panic. 


I think the environmental movement is 
rooted in a political agenda, which is that 
capitalism is evil, that people are raping 
and pillaging the planet for profit. And I 
think it is rooted in redistribution. 

I find people like Al Gore are the big- 
gest, phoniest hypocrites of all. If global 
warming and carbon emissions are so bad, 
how does Al Gore justify getting on a pri- 
vate jet like we caught him on? How does 
he justify making money selling Current 
TV to Al Jazeera? That's all oil money, Al. 
I can respect a guy like Ed Begley Jr. rid- 
ing around on his bike. 1 even offered to 
bail Daryl Hannah out of jail after she was 
arrested for protesting the Keystone XL 
pipeline. She uses her own biofuels to drive 
her car. Beautiful! But you've got these 
other Learjet, limousine liberals, the hypo- 
crites and Hollywood phonies. Leonardo 
DiCaprio flying around on New Year's 
from Australia to Vegas, and he's lecturing 
people about the cars they're driving. So 
hypocritical. Come on! 

PLAYBOY: How should we be managing our 
natural resources? 

HANNITY: Hey, listen. I wouldn't mind 
having a car that runs on water. My at- 
titude is that we should seek out new 
technologies and inventions that will 
advance the human condition. And at 
the same time, we should be drilling, 
we should be fracking, we should be the 
Saudi Arabia of natural gas, we should 
be building refineries, which we haven't 
built in 35 years, and nuclear facilities. 
France gets 75 percent of its power from 
nuclear plants. Ifthe French can, we can. 
America is inhibited because of govern- 
ment regulation. You know all these peo- 
ple out of work? The minute you start 
drilling for natural gas and oil, every 
state can benefit, just as North Dakota 
does, which now has an unemployment 
rate of three percent. If we lessen our 
dependence on foreign oil, we're less in- 
volved in the Middle East, where there's 
such political instability, and the price 
of gas goes down to where the average 
American can pay less than $2 a gallon. 
That's a tax cut for everybody. 

PLAYBOY: Do you think you'd ever run for 
public office? 

HANNITY: You know, whatever God has 
planned for me, I guess I'll know what 
to do. 

PLAYBOY: It sounds as though you think 
about it. 

HANNITY: No. Not much. I would have to 
move out of state. Hell would freeze over 
before I would run in New York. I'm 
Florida-bound one of these days. That's 
where I want to live. 

PLAYBOY: Not Alaska? You had Sarah Palin 
on your show 55 times. Someone calcu- 
lated that she cost Fox News $19,868 per 
appearance. Was she worth it? 

HANNITY: Absolutely. She's a great guest. I 
like her a lot personally. I think she has a 
lot to add to the national debate, and I'd 
have her on again. 

PLAYBOY: What's your take on Donald 
Trump continuing to dabble in conserva- 
tive politics? 

HANNITY: He's a character; he's fun. The 


ties I wear on the air come from the 
Donald Trump collection. Listen, he’s 
great for the political contest, and I love 
his outspokenness and enthusiasm. You 
never know. If he’s ever able to give up 
aspects of his business, and that includes 
giving up running his TV show, the Don- 
ald could be a player. In the meantime, I 
enjoy watching him. 

PLAYBOY: Trump was one of the most vocal 
skeptics of Obama’s American citizenship. 
You’ve also said Obama grew up in Kenya. 
Do you regret saying that now? 

HANNITY: But he did grow up in Kenya, 
and he told The New York Times that he 
went to a school there and one ofthe most 
beautiful things on the planet is Islamic 
prayer at sunset. 

PLAYBOY: Are you fueling the myth that Oba- 
ma's a Muslim from Africa by saying that? 
HANNITY: I never fueled the myth. How do 
you come up with this stuff? He did go to 
a Muslim school. He writes about it in his 
own book. 

PLAYBOY: He did not grow up in Kenya. 
HANNITY: He went to a Muslim school in 
Indonesia, or wherever it was, Kenya. I 
forget. Now you've got me. I think it was 
Indonesia. I'm trying to remember his bi- 
ography. It's going back so long. He admits 
he went to a Muslim school. It's on his au- 
diobook, if you want a tape of it—you can 
hear him say it himself. 

I'm a Christian. All people are the chil- 
dren of God. I'm just telling you what 
Obama said in his own words. He didn't go 
to a madrassa, which has negative connota- 
tions, but he did study the Koran and Is- 
lam and learn prayers that he could recite 
with a perfect accent, according to Nicholas 
Kristof in The New York Times. As for the is- 
sue of his birth certificate, I thought that 
was one of the oddest things, a noncon- 
troversy that the White House easily could 
have ended but didn't. If you've got the 
birth certificate, just release it and move 
on. That's what I said. 

PLAYBOY: Let's talk about the racial dimen- 
sion of having successful black conserva- 
tives on your show attacking the president. 
What's the fascination? 

HANNITY: Who? I don't know who you're 
talking about. 

PLAYBOY: Dr. Ben Carson, Allen West, J.C. 
Watts, Herman Cain 
HANNITY: You know, maybe you see life 
through the prism of race. I don't. We're 
Americans. I don't look at life that way. 
You seem to want to make this a race is- 
sue that doesn't exist in my life. All right, 
so I guess we've had on some African 
Americans who oppose Obama. They're 
human beings. I mean, if you want to deal 
with the racial component of electing the 
first African American president, I think it 
was good for America. The beauty of our 
founders and framers, while nobody is per- 
fect, is they put into place a system of gov- 
erning where we can right the wrongs and 
correct injustices. Through their wisdom, 
that is what this country has shown it is able 
to do. Sometimes too slowly, but we usually 
get it right in the end. 

PLAYBOY: Okay, let's switch gears. Do you 
ever miss Alan Colmes? 


HANNITY: I see him all the time. Things 
have worked out pretty well for both of us. 
PLAYBOY: What ended Hannity & Colmes? 
HANNITY: We were at the point where the 
format was problematic. Let's say we had 
an eight-minute segment with one or two 
guests. Colmes and I would get in maybe 
one question each, and then you're fight- 
ing to get your words in. We just felt that it 
had run its course, and he was happy to go 
to Fox News Radio. 

PLAYBOY: How often do you see Rupert 
Murdoch? 

HANNITY: I don't. He has more important 
things to do than meet with little old Sean 
Hannity. But we've bumped into each 
other. I ran into him on the street once 
and said, “Hi, Mr. Murdoch." And he said, 
"Ah." So he knew immediately who I was, 
which was reassuring. 

PLAYBOY: What do you think of his position 
on climate change, which he believes is oc- 
curring, and his statement that the Key- 
stone XL pipeline isn't needed? He's also 
in favor of gun control, including a ban on 
assault weapons. 

HANNITY: I might disagree with him on 
all that. But one of the great things about 
working at Fox is I've never been told what 
to say or what positions to take, nor has 
anybody that I know. There's a real lib- 
erty and freedom here that I doubt exists 
elsewhere, from what I've heard from my 
friends in other media. 

PLAYBOY: What did you think when you 
heard about News Corporation's phone- 
hacking scandal that implicated key Mur- 
doch staffers? 

HANNITY: It's a corporation that has any- 
where from 50,000 to 100,000 employees. 
As somebody who had employees once in 
my life, people who worked for me...you 
know you're always going to have one or two 
bad employees. We have bad government 
officials all the time. It reflects on them, not 
on the company or the corporation. 


PLAYBOY: You never trained as a journalist. 
Any regrets? 

HANNITY: None. Absolutely not. Look, you 
can have people with multiple degrees who 
have gone to the finest journalism schools 
in the country. I'll give them a microphone 
and teach them how to do it, and they 
wouldn't be able to pull it off. You either 
have this innately or not, I think. You have 
a desire, first, to communicate, and for me, 
I just loved talk radio when I was a kid. I 
wanted to get behind a radio microphone, 
and when I eventually did, the minute the 
light went on, something changed. All the 
stuff started flying out of me, and people 
have hated me ever since. 

PLAYBOY: Does it bother you that some 
people hate you? 

HANNITY: Never. I don't care, not even a 
little bit. 

PLAYBOY: That's good. What's your secret? 
HANNITY: ГП tell you a story. There was 
somebody who works at Fox—I won't 
mention this person's name—and one of 
these websites started attacking this per- 
son. The first thing I said was, "Welcome 
to the big leagues." If they're not attacking 
you, you're not doing your job effectively. 
I also said, "If you want to feel better, go 
google my name." 

PLAYBOY: How often do you google your 
name? 

HANNITY: Never. And I don't read blogs 
except to get information. I don't read 
comments and stuff. Never read any of it. 
Don't care. I accepted a long time ago that 
people aren't going to like me for some of 
the things I say, and that's okay. I don't 
get invited to the White House Christmas 
party or the White House Correspon- 
dents' Dinner, but so what? I concluded 
a long time ago that most media people 
are biased. They don't like conservatives. 
They're never going to like conservatives. 
I don't want to hang out with those peo- 
ple, whoever they are. I'm really happy 


“This office-sharing thing just isn't working out." 


195 


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hanging out with my close friends, my fam- 
ily and my kids. 

PLAYBOY: Are you the same at home as you 
are on your shows? 

HANNITY: It's funny. My kids watch me 
do radio sometimes and go, “Dad, you’re 
screaming into the microphone!” And ГП 
go, [speaks softly] “Hi, this is Sean. Welcome 
to the program.” And they understand 
why that wouldn't work. 

No, I'm essentially the same person. The 
thoughts are the same, the expressions are 
the same. Everything is from my heart, and 
I think deeply about any issue before I take 
a position on it. I spend a lot of time pre- 
paring every day. I try to be as knowledge- 
able on a subject as I can be. The volume 
might be a little higher on my show, but 
you have to keep things interesting. 
PLAYBOY: How does your wife handle your 
outspokenness? 

HANNITY: Everybody in her life told her not 
to marry me. Even the minister who mar- 
ried us pulled her aside and said, "Don't 
marry this guy." 

PLAYBOY: Ha! Why? 

HANNITY: We had a big fight when we went 
through our pre-marriage counseling, and 
I said, “That's the problem with the liberal 
church." And he didn't appreciate it. So 
he ended the session. What's funny is that 
he married a number of our friends at the 
time. This is 20 years ago. We're the only 
ones still together. 

PLAYBOY: What are the keys to a lasting 
marriage? 

HANNITY: Don't leave things to fester, or 
you become resentful of each other. Be 
honest about everything. 

PLAYBOY: What do the Hannitys do for fun? 
HANNITY: Nothing. I'm terrible. I didn't 
dance at my own wedding. I never go out. 
I'm home every night. I eat cereal for din- 
ner. The one thing I'd like to do is build 
a racquetball court. I'm really into fitness 
and staying in shape, and it gets cold in 
the winter and I have to hit a ball. But 
that's it. The last place you'll ever see me 
is at the Playboy Mansion hanging out 
with Bill Maher. 

PLAYBOY: You watch Bill Maher? 

HANNITY: I hate him. Can't stand him. I'm 
a channel flipper. I saw him the other night 
for five seconds, but that's all I could take. 
PLAYBOY: Chris Matthews, Rachel 
Maddow—do you watch them? 

HANNITY: Never. I mean, have I seen 
MSNBC? Yeah. But honestly, I don’t 
watch it. I don't see CNN either. I don't 
even watch Fox News that much. I'll listen 
to Rush Limbaugh sometimes. He’s the 
Babe Ruth of our industry. We’re friends, 
and his brother has been my agent for 
more than 20 years. There’s nobody fun- 
nier, more unique, bright or talented. 
PLAYBOY: You almost have more Twitter 
followers than Bill O’Reilly and Limbaugh 
combined. Does that give you some satis- 
faction? Even your hair has a Twitter ac- 
count: @SHannitysHair. 

HANNITY: How about that! Someone set 
that one up. So funny! Honestly, I had to 
cut back on Twitter because it was an ad- 
diction. I've got all these amazing people 
I interact with. Early on, people were so 


helpful in showing me the ropes on Twit- 
ter, so we created the Let Not Your Heart 
Be Troubled Twitter army. Had T-shirts 
printed up and everything. They showed 
me how to retweet and all that. Regu- 
lar people like @TheFriddle and a girl 
named Natalie—@LNYHBTkid. And 
@PaulyShore too. He's a huge fan. 
PLAYBOY: Who do you like in Hollywood? Or 
are they all just a bunch of bleeding hearts? 
HANNITY: No, I loved Gladiator and Brave- 
heart. Y liked The Passion of the Christ. That's 
a great movie. 

PLAYBOY: Do you know the difference be- 
tween Kate Upton and Downton Abbey? 
HANNITY: Very funny. I'm not oblivious to 
the world, but I'm not a big Downton fan. 
Kate Upton? I prefer Megan Fox. She’s 
obviously very attractive. Angelina Jolie is 
very attractive. Scarlett Johansson is very 
attractive. But what do I know? P'm just a 
51-year-old fat guy. 

PLAYBOY: By the way, what's the deal with 
the football you throw around on set? 
HANNITY: It breaks things up. We keep one 
in a special place so people won't steal it. 
I love football, and we used to throw one 
around among the crew during breaks. 
One night I just threw it while on the air, 
and it took on a life of its own. There are 
videos on YouTube that have nothing to 
do with the show of me just throwing the 
ball and hitting things. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever just unplug com- 
pletely and spend time alone? 

HANNITY: All the time. I like being alone. 
If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re 
bad company. I like quiet time, downtime, 
even meditative time. I'll give you a liberal 
thought there. 

PLAYBOY: You meditate? 

HANNITY: I just close my eyes and still my 
mind. You know, there’s a lot of chatter 
24/7. Ineed to quiet myself sometimes, and 
I can quiet myself very quickly, actually. 
Sometimes ГП take the entire weekend 
offline and off media. I have two young 
kids who are both athletic, so we spend a 
lot of time doing their events. 

PLAYBOY: What's your hope for them as 
they grow older? 

HANNITY: You know what? It's hard as a 
parent not to wish that your kids succeed 
at the highest levels and take on every op- 
portunity this country can give them. I 
keep telling my daughter, who's 11, to be- 
come a doctor. "I don't like blood, Dad." 
My dream for them is that they become 
the people they were born to be. The Latin 
word that education derives from is educo. 
It means to bring forth from within. And 
whatever they were born with—and I be- 
lieve every human being is born with some 
gift, some talent, created by God—I want 
that to manifest itself in life. 

PLAYBOY: How would you feel if one of 
them turned out to be gay? 

HANNITY: I love my children. Period, end 
of sentence, unconditionally. 

PLAYBOY: And if one of them turned out to 
be a Democrat? 

HANNITY: Well, that might be a different 


story. 


л arpi 7 ni 

FAST EDDIE 

(continued from page 155) 
five-foot-five if honest. He is roping mus- 
cle. His arms, usually bare, are perpetually 
flexed. His expression rarely changes. His 
pug nose has been broken more than once. 
His gray hair is shaved to a fine stubble. 
The neck that holds that head up is as thick 
as a tree. He is a testament to the power of 
attitude and intention. He has bested more 
men than he can count, and it looks as if I 
will be counted among the multitude. 

Rothman looks at me and takes me by 
surprise. Instead of a left hook he drops 
this bomb: “If you want to tell a fucking im- 
portant story, then tell this one: Monsanto. 
"Those fuckers are here. They have all these 
experimental farms right over the hill and 
are poisoning the land and poisoning the 
people. Write that shit." While my eyes had 
been trained on the pounding surf and the 
surfers and the fighters, by Rothman's 
reckoning I'd had my head in the sand. He 
is asking me to turn 180 degrees and look 
squarely toward the island, to those ver- 
dant hills, to where Monsanto has alighted 
like so many interlopers before. 

Monsanto is, of course, the multinational 
agricultural biotechnology company based 
in St. Louis—some 5,000 miles from the 
North Shore. It is the staggeringly profitable 
company that once manufactured PCBs and 
Agent Orange but for the past 20 years has 
been making genetically modified seeds 
that grow herbicide-resistant crops such as 
soybeans, corn and sugar beets. In Hawaii, 
Monsanto, along with Syngenta, DuPont 
Pioneer Hi-Bred, Dow AgroSciences and 
BASF, is growing some 7,000 acres of crops, 
including soybeans and corn. These crops 
are not intended for human consumption 
per se; rather they are seed crops that will 
be shipped to farmers worldwide to plant in 
their fields to sell on the open market. Much 
of it ends up as feed for livestock in coun- 
tries around the world. While international 
farmers have become dependent on Mon- 
santo's incredibly effective Roundup Ready 
seed and Roundup herbicide, Rothman is 
part of a growing group of Hawaiians who 
see this as yet another encroachment on 
their beloved land. 

His take on them is quite simple: "They 
are greedy fucks. They don't care about 
anything but making money, and they 
are doing it all right here on Oahu and 
all over the islands—threatening farm- 
ers, closing the local people down, closing 
farmers’ markets. You know, if some of 
their GMO seed blows on someone's land, 
then they own it. They are controlling our 
politicians too. Laws to label food as GMO 
have come into our Congress, but they get 
shut down. They are taking over the land, 
just like in the past." 

And his rant continues as he lists past 
wrongs on Hawaii—the early explorers 
bringing diseases to the islands, the Mor- 
mons bringing Mormonism, the sugar bar- 
ons overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy 
and enslaving the people, foreign surfers 
coming and stealing the waves, the meth- 
amphetamine epidemic now engulfing 
the islands. He eventually brings it back to 


Monsanto. "And now they are fucking with 
our food. They are fucking with the very 
root of who we are as people. It's the worst 
thing they could be doing. Greedy fucking 
fucks. For what? For money? Money does 
strange things to people. Fuck them." 

I'd never heard him talk about anything 
with such passion other than Hawaiian 
wave sovereignty, the notion that these are 
their waves, to be surfed their way. With 
Monsanto, as with everything, Rothman 
goes with his gut. "They got all these re- 
search farms right over the hill from my 
house," says Rothman. "We're having a 
March Against Monsanto in Hale'iwa to- 
morrow." He grinds me with his eyes and it 
is completely expected that I will show up. 


The next day I drive up the volcanic range 
that bisects the island and toward the pro- 
test march in Hale'iwa. I pass the silly Dole 
Plantation tourist trap where the fruit com- 
pany grows pineapple only for show. After a 
century of dominance on the islands, pine- 
apples are now grown cheaper and more ef- 
ficiently in Costa Rica. I drive past land that 
used to be sugarcane as far as the eye can 
see. But sugarcane is produced cheaper and 
more efficiently in Brazil these days. Pineap- 
ple and sugarcane fields, now deserted, are 
the ghosts of agribusinesses that once ruled 
virtually every part of Hawaiian life. The 
barons used the islands as personal piggy 
banks, caring little for the ecosystem or the 
local population. And just as I drop down 
the other volcanic side, the North Shore 
splayed before me, I see a street sign that 
reads ADOPT A HIGHWAY, LITTER CONTROL NEXT 
TWO MILES: MONSANTO COMPANY. 

Monsanto was drawn to Hawaii for some 
of the same reasons that attracted the 
pineapple and sugar interests, namely its 
nutritious volcanic soil and its perfect, per- 
petually 75-degree weather. The islands 
are like a giant greenhouse. On the main- 
land most crops have one growing season, 
maybe two. In Hawaii they can have up 
to four, which suits Monsanto's purposes. 
More harvest cycles mean more seeds, and 
large tracts of land have been opened on 
Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Molokai to meet 
the seed demands of the world's farmers. 
These demands have made the seed in- 
dustry Hawaii's largest agricultural sec- 
tor. Worth more than $240 million, it is 
responsible for a third of Hawaii's agri- 
cultural income. While valuable to Ha- 
waii's fragile, tourism-heavy economy, the 
income does little to settle the apprehen- 
sions of men like Eddie Rothman. 

And Rothman is not alone, not by 
far. When I exit the main road toward 
Hale'iwa, hundreds of protesters have al- 
ready grouped together near the 7-Eleven 
at the south end of town, or the "bottom" 
as it is called. It's a motley bunch: moms 
pushing strollers, old people with canes, 
chunky white transplants in awful denim 
shorts, surfers, Japanese tourists, dread- 
locked hippies banging on ukuleles, girls 
in bikinis, tough mokes. Moke is Hawai- 
ian slang for an aggressive "braddah" who 
wears "da rubba slippas" and punches 
haoles. Haole is Hawaiian slang for “white 


man." Everyone has a sign with some varia- 
tion on the demand that Monsanto leave 
Hawaii. Pit bulls roam freely. A man wear- 
ing a V for Vendetta mask tells a man with a 
head as big as a Fiat, "Look at those clouds, 
brah. I hope they don't chemtrail us." It 
is a widely held belief here that Monsanto 
dumps heavy metals into the clouds in or- 
der to control the weather. As expected, 
Monsanto denies the protesters’ claims, of 
chemtrailing and otherwise. 

Across the parking lot a giant pickup 
truck draped in Hawaiian flags is sur- 
rounded by men wearing red Da Hui 
T-shirts. There is Kala Alexander, a surfer 
and actor who became famous as the un- 
likely star of a series of YouTube videos 
featuring the beatdowns he gave surfers 
who showed disrespect in the waves. Those 
videos are a relic of his past. Alexander's 
most recent activist star turn is as a con- 
cerned citizen speaking out against the en- 
croachments of the biotech companies in a 
documentary about GMOs and Hawaii. 

Rothman stands with the protesters, 
arms folded across his chest like a sentinel, 
and lets the others do the talking. As I ap- 
proach, he says, “You gotta meet the guys 
who started the march," and walks me over 
to two men busily directing the proceed- 
ings. "These are the real people. These are 
the ones changing shit." 

One of them is Dustin Barca, a profes- 
sional surfer and also an MMA fighter from 
Kauai. He is handsome, with severely cau- 
liflowered ears. "Five years ago I started 
studying, reading, watching the movies 
about GMOs,” he says. "I wanted to get 
my facts straight before acting. I learned 
how damaging they are to the people and 
to the land. It is poison. And so now I want 
to build awareness. I want to educate the 
local people on what is happening. I'm not 
interested in saving the world. I’m inter- 
ested in saving my island." 

Rarely is a word spoken here today that 
isn't rooted in fierce localism. Walter Ritte, 
standing next to Barca, nods his head in 
approval. Ritte, older and slight with a full 
gray beard, is from Molokai and is a legend 
among Hawaiian activists. His involvement 
in the GMO debate is tied to the Univer- 
sity of Hawaii's genetic experiments with 
taro, a traditional Hawaiian root. "Taro is 
a family member for Hawaiians," he told 
me. "It is our firstborn. If they're going to 
mess with our firstborn then they're go- 
ing to mess with us. This whole GMO is- 
sue is so complicated, and I like to make 
it simple. Basically GMOs package us, they 
own us. And I would like to tell them—the 
companies—if you hurt our culture and 
you hurt our land, you're in for trouble." 

In days past, Da Hui would have brought 
the trouble immediately and violently on 
the interlopers, but today its members have 
signs and slogans and bullhorns. They are 
joined in solidarity with farmers and other 
citizens, joined not by surfing but by living 
in and loving Hawaii. The march begins, 
and the energized crowd chants, "Thanks 
for visiting. Now go home like the rest of 
the tourists!" People fill the Kamehameha 
Highway, smiling, chanting and trading 
horror stories about the evils of GMOs and 


197 


PLAYBOY 


198 


“Mon-Satan.” I hear many stories about 
a Monsanto property on Oahu called the 
Kunia research farm. People say fish DNA 
is put into strawberries there and 70 dif- 
ferent kinds of chemicals are used on 
the crops. They say Monsanto is destroy- 
ing Hawaii’s native species by making 
Frankencrops that cross-pollinate with 
everything. They say the farm is killing all 
the bees and changing the weather, and 
that it isn’t from here. They say the farm 
does not belong here. 


There was a time when Rothman was the 
interloper, the unknown quantity on the 
North Shore. Although many people as- 
sume he is Hawaiian, he was born Jew- 
ish in Philadelphia. “I don’t know noth- 
ing about Jew stuff, but once this lady on 
the North Shore made me some Jew food 
and it was good,” he tells me. He has said 
that his mother physically abused him as 
a boy. Eventually she left, and his father 
moved to Long Beach, California with 
him. “My father would fucking beat the 


shit out of me because I was little, and 
that made him mad.” Eventually Eddie’d 
had enough. When he was 14 years old 
he stole enough money out of his father’s 
wallet for a one-way ticket to Honolulu. 
He had surfed in California and had seen 
the surf-ploitation films featuring Hawaii, 
with its perfect giant waves, palm trees, 
white sand and easy smiles. 

He landed in Honolulu knowing no one. 
He knew only that something felt almost 
right. He stayed in Honolulu for a few 
years, flying to southern California to pick 
up marijuana and bring it back to Hawaii. 
He briefly went to school in Long Beach. 
"I went to school a couple of times, but the 
school told me if I didn’t show up, they 
would pass me.” He eventually moved per- 
manently to the North Shore. It had every- 
thing he needed: surf, sun, a market for his 
marijuana. And as a 16-year-old he would 
get by selling it and stealing cars. 

One bright day he was in the bushes 
at the Sunset, one of the North Shore’s 
famous wave breaks, breaking into cars, 
when he ran into a pack of Hawaiian locals 


“Pm really okay with your videotaping us, Michael, but must you 
also do a play-by-play?” 


who were doing the same thing. How did 
they come to accept this unlikely out- 
sider? “I don’t talk good,” says Rothman. 
"I have bad speech like them, so it was 
easy, and everything went from there. I 
sounded like them, and they just accepted 
that I was like them.” He was tenacious, so 
they flew him around the islands to crack 
heads for such offenses as not paying 
debts within an appropriate time. When 
I suggest that the tough Hawaiians had 
adopted him, he bristles. “They didn’t 
adopt shit. I proved myself every fucking 
day. I proved myself with these.” Again, 
he holds up a fist. A scarred, tooth-nicked 
fist. On the North Shore, not speaking 
well goes only so far. 

Of all the enemies Rothman has faced 
over the years, Monsanto is by far the big- 
gest and most elusive. Bloomberg reports 
that the company did $5.47 billion in rev- 
enue in this year's second quarter alone. It, 
along with the other seed companies, owns 
or leases 25,000 acres on the islands. 

Before arriving in Hawaii, Monsanto 
had perfected its craft. Company scientists 
were among the first to genetically modify 
a plant cell in their laboratories, and they 
knew they had struck gold. Traditional 
seeds cannot be patented, since they oc- 
cur naturally. Genetically modified seed, 
on the other hand, can be, as ruled by 
the U.S. Supreme Court. The company 
realized it could make a higher-yielding, 
more-rugged product through science, 
and it could better monetize that product 
by applying patent law. And Monsanto 
protects these patents fiercely, suing any 
farmer who dares replant instead of pur- 
chasing. The company argues that it has 
spent billions of dollars perfecting these 
seeds and it only makes sense to recoup 
investment costs. The Supreme Court 
agrees. In May, the Court ruled that farm- 
ers are not allowed to replant Monsanto 
seed but must repurchase yearly. To many 
farmers, Roundup's near silver-bullet-like 
effectiveness is worth the cost. Still, Roth- 
man takes issue with this, seeing it as a 
form of extortion. Just as offensive to him 
is how close Monsanto is to his home. How 
it looms in his backyard. "That farm is 
fucking evil," he adds to the chorus, near 
the end of the march. 


“That farm" is the Kunia research farm, 
which sits just opposite the volcanic moun- 
tain range from the North Shore, halfway 
up a small, shack-lined road. It is unas- 
suming from the outside. A man wearing 
a Jurassic Park-looking uniform lets me 
in through the gate, and I am introduced 
to two scientist-farmers who take me on a 
tour of the property. The farm is virtually 
all corn and soybean, and as we drive for 
hours they point out the sustainability of 
the operation: the terraces, the drip irriga- 
tion. They show me an area that has been 
donated to small-scale local farmers who 
grow produce there, some of it organic, 
to sell at farmers' markets. It's not a night- 
mare factory out of The X Files. It is the pic- 
ture of American ingenuity, but American 
ingenuity is not the Hawaiian dream. 


When I raise the protesters’ concerns 
about cross-pollination destroying native 
species, Monsanto representatives point 
out that corn doesn’t cross-pollinate with 
anything on the islands and has no relatives 
here, so there’s no danger. Even if cross- 
pollination isn’t a worry, pesticide runoff 
still plagues Hawaii. Oahu has its pineapple 
and sugarcane ghosts. Researchers from 
Stanford, the University of California and 
the University of Hawaii have reported on 
pesticides in the groundwater and fragile 
reefs damaged by pesticide runoff after 
decades of largely unregulated rule by big 
agricultural interests on the island. 

But that’s not Monsanto’s past here in 
Hawaii, and the company claims to be 
dedicated to custodianship of the land. The 
company tells me it pulls up and recycles 
truckloads of plastic from old pineapple 
fields. But in many Hawaiian eyes—in 
Rothman's eyes—there is no difference be- 
tween the past and the present, which di- 
rectly affects Hawaiian protesters’ feelings 
regarding science. Hawaiians were told in 
the past that the pesticides used on pine- 
apples were good and that DDT spraying 
to control mosquitoes was good. They, even 
more than the mainland America popu- 
lation, are loath to believe the science is 
sound. Critics such as Michael Hansen, se- 
nior staff scientist for Consumer Reports, help 
feed the perception that GMOs are poison. 
He says, “We now have allergy problems 
from genetic modification, or adverse ef- 
fects on bone marrow, liver, kidney and 
reproductive systems. There have been ani- 
mal studies, but they need to be followed up 
on. There is just no control.” 

GMO proponents scoff at the lack of 
scientific rigor on the other side. After 
I leave the farm I speak with Alison Van 
Eenennaam, a specialist in animal genom- 
ics and biotechnology in the Department 
of Animal Science at the University of 
California, Davis. She says, “As a scientist, 
I don't just get to have a bad feeling about 
something. There have been 15 years of 
research, more than 400 scientific studies, 
and we’ve eaten more than 3 trillion meals. 
The jury is absolutely in. The overwhelm- 
ing bulk of the data says there is nothing 
biologically different in genetically modi- 
fied food. We eat it. We digest it. It breaks 
down. It turns into us. In fact, it is a crimi- 
nal injustice for us not to feed the world 
with these products, especially in countries 
where people are dying of starvation in- 
stead of obesity. It is morally bankrupt.” 

But if there’s anything Rothman doesn’t 
lack, it is moral outrage. He’s outraged at a 
company that has essentially patented na- 
ture for profit. He’s outraged at technology 
that has given rise to Roundup-resistant 
weeds that have forced farmers across 
the country to revert to using more toxic 
chemicals to protect their crops. Rothman’s 
distrust is a portion of America’s writ large. 
For a citizen, the first step toward truth of- 
ten begins with “just getting to have a bad 
feeling about something.” And Rothman’s 
bad feeling is about yet another threat to his 
vision of the Hawaiian dream. It is about 
defending his version of the pastel-postcard 
Miltonian paradise. Oahu is still an island in 


the middle of the ocean. It still has coconut- 
scented winds and waves so big and ideal 
that none have ever been found bigger or 
better. And he wants to keep it pure. And 
this dream, even if never true, dies hard. 


Rothman is smoldering when I go back to 
his house after visiting the farm. The sun 
is well into its downward slide, painting 
the firmament with soft oranges and fiery 
pinks. His shoulders, as big as hills, slump. 
He seems exhausted. We stand quietly for 
a minute, watching the ocean. It’s hard not 
to think this is essentially about Monsanto 
interlopers coming in and rewriting the 
rules of the island. Like the foreign surf- 
ers before them and Captain Cook before 
them. And it’s hard not to see that Roth- 
man doesn’t know exactly what to do. 

As if to comfort himself, he recounts a 
moral victory in his past, over an enemy 
he could physically best. “See that right 
there?” he says, pointing to a spot on the 
beach. I nod. “Years ago there were some 
little girls playing on the sand, and this big 
guy came and, you know, showed them 
his...you know...his thing.” He gestures at 
his crotch. “So I went over to his house. He 
was a big guy, and he was in there clean- 
ing his gun, so I got scared. But I knocked 
on the door and he answered, and then he 
made a move. I’ve always been a little guy, 
and so I just go on instinct and—pow—I 
hit him in the mouth. He knocked out but 
woke back up when he hit the ground and 
started moaning. His wife came running to 
the door, and they called the cops because 
I broke his jaw. But when the cops came 


they couldn't say nothing because the guy 
would have to say why I cracked him. He 
was a lieutenant in the Army or some shit. 
Fucking creep. But that's the last time he 
showed himself to any kids.” He lowers his 
head and rubs his eyes. 

“Why don't you just crack them?” I ask, 
referring to Monsanto. This is exactly how 
Rothman drove the surf world into a pan- 
icked fear, by knocking enough people out 
that no surfer ever steps out of line. He 
turns toward me, and his expression that 
rarely changes turns into a mask of helpless 
bewilderment. “I can't,” he says. “There is 
no them. I mean, they are everywhere. If 
I go and slap someone, they just gonna 
throw me in jail, and I don't even know 
who they are. They hide behind their cor- 
poration.” He looks back out at the Pacific. 
The sun is even lower now, and the orange 
is softer, the pink more fiery. He sighs 
deeply, carrying the weight of his own leg- 
end and facing a new foe that is far baser 
than any he has faced before. He wants to 
act, but how? He sighs again and growls, 
“Let's go.” 

We drive together in silence down his 
dead-end road, out to the main Kame- 
hameha Highway, then quickly turn into a 
gorgeous piece of unspoiled North Shore 
greenery. The land is terraced where we 
are standing, and I can see half-dug rows 
almost ready for planting. A large yellow 
tractor sits idle. The volcanic range rises 
in the near distance and is crowned with 
a strange sort of pine that 1 have seen only 
in Hawaii. “This is my farm,” he says as we 
start moving toward the patch of reddish 
dirt that is his organic farm. 


“Exhibitionism is a very complex issue and is likely to require 
many repeat sessions in order to find a cure.” 


199 


PLAYBOY 


200 


Eddie Rothman the specter has be- 
come Eddie Rothman the farmer, just 
on the opposite side of the range from 
where Monsanto’s Kunia research farm 
sits. He tells me he spends long days 
moving giant rocks by hand, because if 
he used the tractors they would “fuck up 
all the water hoses we have.” He tends 
to taro crops and digs holes for water- 
purification systems by hand as well. “I’ve 
seen them do it this way in Samoa. They 
use their hands and their feet like this...." 
He climbs down into an unfinished hole 
and starts to claw at the earth. He digs his 
own wells, installs solar panels and feeds 
his chickens and ducks. 

Rothman becomes more animated and 
less exhausted as we wander around his 
farm—this plot of land is a Hawaii he can 
control, where no outsiders threaten the 
balance he's struggling to regain. He tells 
me he worries about Monsanto's chemical 
drift but is doing everything in his power 
to limit his farm's exposure to the com- 
pany's tactics. He says the farmwork is 
good for his body, and the food, once it 
really starts growing, will be good too. 

As we walk, it becomes clear that farm- 
ing is the way he has chosen to physically 
go to war against Monsanto, by taking 
back the land, acre by acre. It's a tactic 
shared by other, more experienced farm- 
ers in Hawaii, who are lobbying the larg- 
est landowners to shift their proportion 
of GMO leases toward more natural and 
organic farmland. They want land tainted 
by pesticide use to be cleaned and re- 
purposed as incubators and education 
centers for organic farming. They want 
to be given a fighting chance to sustain 
their island their way. The chances that a 
few organic farmers in the middle of the 
ocean will evict a billion-dollar multina- 
tional corporation are slim. But Rothman 
will have none of that. 

Hawaii has been decimated by foreign 
disease, subjugated by foreign agricultural 
interests, annexed by foreign nations. It is 
a series of defeats. Rothman, though, has 
a victory to his name. Because of Da Hui, 
and because of him, visiting surfers' blood 
still runs cold. He wrestled and punched 
the North Shore back from the clutches 
of foreign surf interests, and he is dead 
set on doing the same for the land. He 
has played slim odds in the defense of a 
dream before and won. 

He also has the land on his side. The lo- 
cals talk about the curse of Pele, the legend 
that anything taken from the Hawaiian Is- 
lands will bring bad luck to the taker. By 
that reckoning, Monsanto is exporting a 
béte noire as its seeds get planted around 
the world. Whether because of a curse or 
the passing of time, the sugarcane and 
pineapple barons have come and gone. 
Captain Cook is dead. The interlopers in 
Hawaii have gotten their due. Eddie Roth- 
man is doing what he can, by protest and 
by pitchfork, to hurry it along. Before we 
get into his truck and head back down the 
hill, he kicks at a volcanic rock and then 
gives my shoulder a hard pat. It hurts. 


DEPORTED 


(continued from page 78) 
in Compton he started hanging with old 
friends. One night the homeys thought 
they were being followed. They weren't: 
They were high, strung out and para- 
noid. Shots were fired. Barajas pleaded 
guilty to discharging a firearm at a ve- 
hicle and served three years in prison. 
Then he was deported. 

Big Pac-Man tried to sneak home, but 
he got caught. Today he has pretty much 
given up on the idea of sneaking back to 
Los Angeles. 

Instead, from Rosarito he is assembling 
his own deportee army. 


These former soldiers live in a world of iro- 
nies. They are banished from the United 
States as a result of their crimes and infrac- 
tions, sometimes related to PTSD, some- 
times to outright cons and deceptions by 
recruiters. Many wrestle with drugs and 
addiction. They readily acknowledge they 
are not saints. But their problems could 
have been handled with treatment and 
therapy at real VA hospitals if they'd been 
U.S. citizens. And on the day they die, they 
are eligible for burial in the U.S. with full 
military honors. They were honorably dis- 
charged, after all. 

Barajas says, "We're only good enough 
to be Americans when we're dead." 

Although these banished veterans have 
been rendered officially invisible, they have 
transformed themselves into unlikely me- 
dia stars. Televisa interviews them. Activists 
seek them out. Photographers pose them 
with flags. A steady stream of reporters and 
now filmmakers flows out to the beach to 
study them and post their story. The sol- 
diers spend a lot of time trying to explain. 
Aggravated-felony charges got many of 
them tossed out of the country and are at 
the heart of their struggle; the key word 
that turns them into pariahs is felony. 

When Bill Clinton signed the Illegal 
Immigration Reform and Immigrant 
Responsibility Act in 1996, the American 
immigration system received a major face- 
lift. The 200-page bill effectively over- 
hauled existing law. It became a lot easier 
to be deported. 

Notonly did the Border Patrol gain more 
than 10,000 new employees, but fund- 
ing for Immigration and Naturalization 
Service investigations increased to unprec- 
edented levels. They needed something to 
investigate, and these new investigations 
needed new metrics to put check marks 
in the proper columns. Hence, stricter 
penalties for infractions were imposed. 
To keep the conviction flow healthy, the 
definition of what constituted an infraction 
broadened. For example, the act created 
a 10-year banishment for any "illegal" im- 
migrant caught living in the U.S. for more 
than a year. And there came a new defini- 
tion of the term aggravated felony. The bet- 
ter to catch you with, homeboy. 

Certain misdemeanors became felo- 
nies overnight. Shoplifting while Mexican 
became a felony. Driving under the in- 


fluence was now a potential felony. And 
felonies were deportable offenses. But the 
genius of it, the draconian stratagem of 
the deporters, was to make these hardcore 
penalties retroactive. So soldiers who had 
already served time for their infractions— 
even decades earlier—were immediately 
subject to deportation. And the system 
revved up its Hoover and started vacuum- 
ing them out of their houses. Immigration 
detainees, according to the system, have 
no right to counsel. 

At the same time, immigration judges 
were stripped of the one avenue for mercy 
left open to them: Their judicial discretion 
was denied. 

Green cards didn't matter, time served 
didn't matter, legal counsel didn't matter. 
An aggravated felony conviction—even af- 
ter the fact meant permanent mandatory 
banishment. President Barack Obama and 
his administration would not comment. 


Obama has deported more people than 
any other president in American history. 
His administration—until its recent em- 
brace of border reform and "pathway 
to citizenship" (you can hear the rus- 
tling sound of a vast Latino voting bloc 
coming of age beyond the White House 
fence)—maintained strict quotas for the 
Department of Homeland Security, keep- 
ing the Tea Party happy. Obama's target 
has been 400,000 humans a year. 

Since 2008 the U.S. has deported almost 
2 million people. Last year it set an all- 
time record: 409,849 humans through the 
goal posts. Fifty-five percent of them had 
been convicted of misdemeanors or felo- 
nies. That would leave more than 180,000 
who are not—even retroactively—guilty of 
such infractions. 

Interestingly, no government agency 
adrift in that vast trinomial soup of en- 
forcement claims to know how many U.S. 
veterans are among these numbers. 

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement 
does not currently track how many indi- 
viduals removed from the United States 
are military veterans," says spokesperson 
Lori Haley. 

Hold up now: The Center for Naval 
Analyses states that 70,000 immigrants 
enlisted between 1998 and 2008. The 
Department of Homeland Security posted 
numbers on its website: 83,532 immigrants 
naturalized through military service in the 
past decade—and hundreds of lucky bas- 
tards won citizenship posthumously. It's 
hard to believe no bean counter knows 
how many of these soldiers were kicked out 
of the country. 

President George W. Bush signed 
2004's National Defense Authorization 
Act, which made it possible for people to 
become American citizens on soil outside 
the United States. That means you could 
become a U.S. citizen in the middle of a 
battle—say, in Baghdad, where 161 immi- 
grant soldiers were naturalized on a single 
day in 2007. 

The head spins. Apparently Secretary of 
Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is feel- 
ing a bit dizzy herself: Writing of citizenship 


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202 


services held for 24 enlistees in 2010, she 
said “they come to America because of their 
commitment to our ideals and their belief 
in the American dream. Many of them risk 
their lives for their country even before they 
ofticially become citizens.” 

But before the moment they became 
citizens, they might have committed a mis- 
demeanor that magically became a felony, 
which means they can be thrown out with 
their medals. 

Immigration officials claim military ser- 
vice is taken into consideration during 
deportation proceedings, as mandated by 
a highly publicized June 2011 document 
known as the Morton Memo. In it, ICE 
director John Morton outlined factors for 
considering mercy in deportation cases. 

One factor, wrote Morton, is “whether 
the person, or the person's immediate 
relative, has served in the U.S. military, 
reserves or National Guard, with par- 
ticular consideration given to those who 
served in combat.” It gets better: “certain 
classes of individuals” deserve “particu- 
lar care.” Who dat? “Veterans of the U.S. 
armed forces.” 

Recap: We know how many of them ex- 
ist, but we don't know how many of them 
exist. We do, however, know what each of 
these unknown soldiers did and when they 
did it and have prosecuted them individu- 
ally, though we again do not know who 
they are. We honor their military service to 
this country and offer them full honors in 
a U.S. military cemetery upon their deaths, 


though we deported them for being an un- 
wanted burden to this country. And maybe 
they could become citizens right there in 
Tijuana if the U.S. invaded. 

No wonder Big Pac-Man feels confused. 


Big Pac-Man may be a big badass felon, but 
he became famous for crying. When re- 
porters from Univision came to visit, they 
were so taken with the deported veterans 
that a three-part special report resulted. 
They followed Barajas around: attending 
church, talking to other vets, manning the 
computer workstations with Little Pac-Man. 

And they taped him being a dad, 
Skyping with his seven-year-old daughter, 
Liliana, in California. 

“Chicky-boo,” he called into the screen. 
He lit up with delight as the little girl's face 
appeared. “Hey! Hi, Mama!” 

“Hi,” Lily replied. She sounded muffled. 

The pair giggled and started talking. 
Lily's image was purplish. The slow in- 
ternet connection made the conversation 
freeze and hop. 

"It's not enough,” Barajas said under his 
breath. “I can't hold her.” 

The Univision reporter, Santiago Lucero, 
next visited Barajas's mom, Margarita, in 
the U.S. He taped a greeting from her to 
Barajas with an iPhone. Later, in Mexico, 
while Univision's cameras rolled, Lucero 
played it for him. 

Margarita was tearful. She told Big Pac- 
Man she loved him, that she wished he 


"I've got to give you credit, Muriel—no obstacle has been too great 
in your climb to the top!” 


could return soon. That she prayed for him. 
Barajas sucked in a breath and looked 
away. His forehead crumpled under his 
beret. A tear ran down his cheek. 
“Word of a mother, broken by her son's 
deportation,” Lucero intoned in Spanish. 
The camera cut away, leaving Big Pac- 
Man gasping for composure. 


On any given day, those staying at the 
Deported Veterans Support House might 
be fielding phone calls, searching Tijuana 
streets for homeless vets, Facebooking 
maniacally or perhaps painting their 
names and a simple three-foot-high, three- 
character message—sos—on the wall di- 
viding Tijuana from San Diego. Really. No 
one who visits Tijuana's most western edge, 
where the city meets the sea and Mexican 
beachgoers suck down mangos and gamy 
fish tacos, can miss the plea for help. Seen 
by itself, with no veterans present, the sign 
might seem baffling. Next to it, they paint- 
ed a giant upside-down American flag: the 
soldier's sign of distress. 

It's easy to get sucked in by Big Pac-Man's 
laugh. He's likable, charismatic, candid to a 
fault. At times you want to say, “Hector, stop 
it. Don't tell me that. Too much, Hector." 
Like the time he fell off the wagon in the 
support house earlier this year, after five 
long months of sobriety. "I like to get high," 
he says. "I know I'm an addict. I know the 
bad outweighs the good." 

He pauses. 

“Just sometimes I go, “Fuck it.“ 

Big Pac-Man launches into the story. Yet 
another reporter was banging on the door 
of the support house, waiting to ping the 
vets with questions. Rebolledo didn't know 
what to do. Maybe the reporter would just 
leave. Barajas had been up for days; when he 
heard the front door, he dived into the musty 
bathroom. Tweaking and terrified, he'd put 
up barricades. Rebolledo pretended no one 
was in the house and stayed silent. 

Then a neighbor let the damn reporter in. 

"Aw, man, it was so bad," Barajas says. He 
rubs his hands over his head. "I go about 
a week and a half, no sleep, nothing. I get 
weird. Something like that could hurt the 
cause, the veterans. It could discredit me." 

But it doesn't stop him from talking, 
from revealing. Big Pac-Man exposes him- 
self. He lays it all out. You can like him or 
not, though it's hard not to. He sparkles. 
And what's clearer than anything is the fact 
that he's trying as hard as he possibly can, 
and he wants people to know he's trying. 

He has broken ground. No one else has 
been able to organize the vets. It's sort of like 
wading into the ocean and catching jellyfish 
by hand. Sometimes there are patches, two 
or three new deportees snared, a few more 
unofficial “intake” forms filled out. But for 
long stretches no new names appear. Lately 
it's been a slow trickle. 

Virtual vet hunting is almost a full-time 
job. Barajas and Rebolledo stalk around 
online, monitoring the news and online 
petitions and the go-to mainstay, Facebook. 
Then there are real-life passes through 
homeless territory, certain Tijuana streets 
lined with gutters of garbage and girls. 


High or sober, Big Pac-Man continually 
pulses with frenetic energy. 

Barajas taught himself HTML so he 
could run the Banished Veterans website. 
His baby mama, whom he desperately 
wants back, now pays the domain renewal 
fees. The rudimentary lists of deported 
vets taped up in the apartment crawled off 
the walls and into Google Docs. With help 
from a MagicJack, the phone calls started: 
with lawyers (pro bono, immigration, crim- 
inal defense), congressional aides (anyone 
who answers), journalists and missionaries. 
Evangelist Tony Lamson, a former marine, 
brought food and faith, words of motiva- 
tion to stay straight. The soldiers try. 

Sometimes things get messy. Drama. 
Petty fights break out, over girls or slights 
or respect. Every day is a new set of chal- 
lenges. The electricity shuts off. There's no 
food. Someone gets drunk, crashes a car 
and runs away from the scene. Someone 
sleeps with a reporter. Old childhood 
friends from L.A., gangbangers, show up 
with goodies to inject or sniff. The deportee 
army is one band in a sea of borderland 
deportees flooding Tijuana. Sometimes 
Barajas's perceived power is challenged in 
creative ways. 

But whatever the reason—candor, re- 
latable fuck-ups, nonstop leave-no-man- 
behind banter, genuine affability—Big 
Pac-Man continues as the unofficial leader 
of the Banished Veterans. And he's not fo- 
cused on deportees alone. He also tries to 
catch his “brothers in arms” before their 
boots hit foreign ground. 


Enlisting wasn't really Ruben Azevedo's 
idea. It was his buddy's. After the towers 
fell on September 11, they felt patriotic. So 
they became marines. 

Azevedo ended up loving the service, 
even after 14 brutal months in Iraq through 
2004 and 2005, after Falluja and after Najaf. 
"I loved being in,” Azevedo says. If it were 
up to him, he’d still be a marine. 

But it's not. Shortly after returning from 
Iraq, he broke his back in a car crash. He 
was subsequently honorably discharged. It 
was 2006. 


“After I got back from Iraq,” says 
Azevedo, “I was pretty messed up in the 
head.” One night a few summers later, in 
2008, police stopped the car he was rid- 
ing in. He recounts the story. His friend, 
who was driving, was charged with driving 
under the influence. During the arrest, 
Azevedo yelled at the officers and ended 
up with his own charge: disorderly con- 
duct. It didn't seem to be too big a deal. 

But a few months later, in August, a 
team of ICE agents surrounded his house. 
“They were in SWAT vehicles,” Azevedo 
says. They had come to deport him. 

The marine was baffled. When the 
Azevedo family emigrated from Portugal in 
the 1980s, they'd settled first in California 
and then in the small rural community 
of Twin Falls, Idaho. They’ve lived there 
ever since. It's classic small-town America, 
population 25,000, the land of big trucks, 
country music and camping. 

In middle school Azevedo met Idaho 
native Brittnie Bjornn. They fell in love 
and later married. The junior high school 
sweethearts have been together for 18 years, 
more than half Azevedo's life. He's 30. 

Azevedo tried to do the right thing. 
He turned himself in. Surely, he thought, 
there was some mistake. He was held for a 
day, he says, in “a little cubicle with a bunch 
of Hispanic people.” Everyone else spoke 
Spanish. He doesn't. ICE officials scoffed, 
he says, when he told them he was a U.S. 
marine and Iraq combat vet. 

He used his phone call to contact 
Brittnie, who brought in the documents to 
prove it. Before he was released, Azevedo 
says, he had to sign various court papers. 

It was confusing because he'd applied 
for citizenship before but had never heard 
back from the U.S. government. He hadn't 
expected any problems, given his combat 
service to the country, his American wife 
and the fact he'd lived in the U.S. since he 
was a baby. 

When he was in Iraq, he and “a bunch 
of other guys” even took a course offered 
by the military that walked service mem- 
bers through the naturalization process and 
helped them file their paperwork. The doc- 


uments were supposed to go to immigra- 


THE TESTS ARE BACK ON YOUR 
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tion processing centers specially designated 
for military applicants. Azevedo says neither 
he nor any of the others heard back. 

After the surprise ICE detainment, he 
applied again. He hasn't heard anything. 
At the same time, Azevedo hasn't hired a 
lawyer, shrugging off the idea. Would they 
really pluck him from Idaho and send him 
to Portugal? 

“If they want to deport me, they can sure 
as heck try,” he says. He's pragmatic and 
down-to-earth, but it's also clear he thinks 
the whole deportation-proceedings mess is 
silly. “ГА like to see 'em try.” 

When Big Pac-Man found Azevedo on 
Facebook shortly after the incident, he 
tried to warn him. “He doesn't get it yet,” 
Barajas says. “These guys, ICE, are serious. 
They don't care.” 

He throws up his hands. “I can only do so 
much. These guys! If they don't want to lis- 
ten, well, you can lead a horse to water....” 


For all the younger combat vets, there 
are also old ones. Hector Manuel Barrios 
is almost 70. Black-and-white snapshots 
from Vietnam show Barrios as a strapping 
young man of 24, trim and well muscled. 
One is a portrait of him slyly confident in a 
combat helmet. Then he's shirtless, sitting 
outside what might be barracks. In anoth- 
er, Barrios sits on a bench with three other 
soldiers, clutching a German shepherd 
puppy. Three of the four look unsure, but 
Barrios, one hand resting lightly across the 
dog's heart, is grinning for the camera. 

Barrios's mustache is small and neat. So 
is the one-room apartment in Tijuana's 
seamy Zona Norte, where he now lives. His 
shoes are tucked carefully beneath his bed, 
a twin mattress sagging on a metal frame. A 
single bare bulb, dangling from an exten- 
sion cord, reveals peeling walls. A tattered 
postcard taped to the door frame bears the 
emblem of the Ist Air Cavalry, a bright yel- 
low shield inlaid with a horse's head. In the 
corner of the room is a small TV. Its pic- 
ture shimmies and jumps. 

It's hard for Barrios to feed himself. On 
one of his ID documents, the small box for 
U.S. citizen is checked off with two faded 


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Xs, stamped in old typewriter ink. On oth- 
ers he's listed as a legal permanent resident. 
He makes a few dollars a week hunched 
and hobbling around a small taco stand. In 
2001 he was deported after an arrest at the 
U.S. border for transporting marijuana in 
a car. Now he's a heroin addict. It's hard 
for him to talk about Vietnam: His gravelly 
voice ebbs and flows and cracks. 

Sometimes Big Pac-Man visits. “He's 
not only my tocayo”—Spanish for 
“namesake”—“he's my brother in arms,” 
Barajas says. Sometimes he tears up, gets 
emotional. “It's the ultimate betrayal. If 
he died in combat, he would have been an 
American hero.” 

Barajas throws an arm around the el- 
derly man's frail shoulders, giving a hearty 
squeeze. Barrios grunts. Each time they're 
together, Big Pac-Man insists on a cell 
phone picture. The Hectors huddle to- 
gether on the weary bed. More fodder for 
the social-media networks. Each time, for 
photos Barrios breaks into a habitual grin. 
It transforms him. The old man is instantly, 
suddenly, temporarily that same guy in the 
photos from Vietnam: brave, strong, limbs 
unencumbered, spine strong despite every- 
thing. His eyes are cheerful and gleaming. 

When Big Pac-Man first arrived in 
Tijuana, he was scrambling for a job. No 
big shock: The entire city is scrambling— 
it’s the definition of Tijuana. He joined 
the great human tide, seeking something 
meaningful to do. He found it in an old- 
folks’ home, where he tended to faltering 
seniors in their last days. One can imagine 
what the conditions in a Tijuana retirement 
hospital might be. Big Pac-Man engaged his 
military discipline and walked into the smell 
and sorrow every day. There he found he 
had a real talent for helping others. 


Fourteen years ago, addressing the Senate, 
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont de- 
clared, “The zealousness of Congress and 
the White House to be tough on aliens 
has successfully snared permanent resi- 
dents who have spilled their blood for our 
country.” He said the INS was prepared to 
deport vets “for even the most minuscule 
criminal offenses.” 

Yeah. What else is new, senator? Leahy's 
bill, the Fairness to Immigrant Veterans 
Act, died, as did Representative José 
Serrano's version in the House. 

Even outspoken characters like former 
congressman (and current San Diego 
mayor) Bob Filner, who chaired the House 
Committee on Veterans' Affairs, are mostly 
powerless. “An incredible number of kids 
come back with an injury or illness that 
puts them in trouble with the law,” Filner 
once told the press. “To simply have these 
people deported is not a good way to thank 
them for their service.” 

Right. That was a few years ago. Now 
Filner's press director won't even grant us 
an interview on the subject. 

And now another Democrat from 
California, Representative Mike Thompson, 
has unveiled a plan to help. In 2011, he 
introduced the Support and Defend Our 
Military Personnel and Their Families Act. 


His press release about the bill said 45,000 
noncitizen vets were enlisted at the time. 
The bill would presumably speed up the 
process of citizenship for vets and guar- 
antee them a hearing in front of a judge; 
therefore it “helps to protect them from 
deportation.” Maybe—the bill was crushed 
in committee, but Thompson reintroduced 
it last February. The bill isn't that different 
from the previous one. “I feel optimistic 
this time around,” Thompson tells us. 

But it doesn't mention those already 
deported. When pressed, Thompson says 
that the deportees (and those in deporta- 
tion proceedings) will “certainly be taken 
into consideration.” That is, after the bill 
“shows progress.” 

“I know that the situation is bad,” 
Thompson says. The congressman, a veteran 
himself, sounds grim. “What I think I would 
tell them, face-to-face, is that I very much 
appreciate what you've done and your ser- 
vice to our country, and we very much plan 
to give you the support that you've earned. 
And that goes for your family as well.” 

Big Pac-Man and the deportee army 
have heard this for years. 


It's a bright day in Rosarito. The beach is 
only a few blocks away, and not far from 
the Deported Veterans Support House, the 
Baja Studios film lot sits quiet, locked down. 
The sets for Titanic are in there, along with 
51 acres ofsoundstages and dressing rooms, 
just waiting for film crews to return. Inland, 
about a quarter mile away, Tijuana's new 
convention center materializes in a field of 
golden grass and running dogs. It's going 
to bring big business to town—concerts and 
car shows. So they say. 

The banished warriors are in their car 
again. It's time to go eat. Everywhere 
Barajas goes lately, it's like a parade. The 
soldiers' car has become two cars caravan- 
ning into town, all seats full. 

The caravan pulls into a carnitas joint on 
one of the main drags into the southern end 
of the city. Carnitas Michoacána—braised 
pork done in the style of deep western 
Mexico—is a meal served here the way Big 
Pac-Man likes it. The platters are ordered 
by weight. Big Pac-Man orders a kilo. 

'The mountain of meat arrives, sizzling 
and fragrant. Tortillas fly around the table. 
Barajas leads the conversation and the 
laughter. He repeats, from earlier in the 
day, that he wants to go home for good. 
That he'd do anything to raise his daugh- 
ter. To be good. “I don't even know how 
to do a drive-by shooting," he says. "They 
done me wrong." 

The young dude with the neck tattoos 
says, "Sure you do." He holds out his left 
arm as if steering a car. He crosses his right 
arm over it, rests his wrist in the crook and 
squeezes off imaginary rounds. "That's 
how,” he says. 

Hector Barajas and Fabián Rebolledo at- 
tend to their food. Barajas smiles but shakes 
his head. "Nah, man. Staying out of trou- 
ble,” he says. “I’m never getting into trouble 
again." It sounds almost like a prayer. 


Li ATE NEWS 


“Л, 


pee > 


Miss April 2013 
| Jaslyn Оте 


© GRAFFITI 
= Ghi 


4 t’s not every day 
you see a beautiful 
Playmate juxtaposed 
against graffitied 
walls, let alone rock- 
ing a flat-brimmed 
ball cap. But isn’t this 
a good look for Jaslyn 
Ome? The folks at inde- 
pendent clothing brand 
Stache Haus follow 
Jaslyn on Instagram, and 
they asked if she might 
consider modeling for 
their summer look book. 
Jaslyn decided to give it 
a go. “It was really cool,” 
she says. 


Miss January 
2011 Anna 
Sophia Berglund 
stars in Unl 
Charms, available 
to stream online. 
The low-budget, 
high-thrills flick 
also features 
Miss May 2012 
Nikki Leigh 

and a gnarly 
leprechaun. 


If you think summer 
movies are trivial, 
check out Cine- 
Fix’s trivia game 
FilmStrip. A rota- 
tion of comely hosts, 
including Miss 
August 2008 Kayla 
Collins, quiz you on 
a film, shedding an © 


article of clothing „А 
after each question— b 
even if you get the 


answer wrong. 


ABOVE AND RIGHT: PHOTOS BY JOEL FLORA 


3 


@HeatherRaeYoung 
We've discovered 
Miss February 
2010’s secret trick 
for avoiding trouble- 
some tan lines. 


С 1. How is this 

for warming up the 
crowd? Miss August 
2000 Summer 
Altice killed a DJ set 
at Oro Nightclub in the M 
Dominican Republic. hM 


2. We've heard 
Playmate of the Year 
2007 Sara Jean 
Underwood is dating 
season six Bachelorette 
winner Roberto 
Martinez. 


3. Miss June 
2007 Brittany 
Binger appeared 
on Comedy 
Central's The 
Ben Show as 
Ben Hoffman's 
beautiful blind 
date. 


PLAYMATE* 
FLASHBACK 


Fifteen years ago LISA 
DERGAN became Miss July 
1998. Our blonde rose 
of Texas later appeared 
on Fox Sports and mar- 
ried baseball player 
Scott Podsednik—but 
not before becoming 
the only nonfictional 
Bond Girl written into a 
James Bond story. 


E 


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BEAUTY THAT IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. 


WORLD PREMIERE—ROSANNA DAVISON, THE FORMER MISS 
WORLD FROM IRELAND AND DAUGHTER OF SINGER CHRIS 
“THE LADY IN RED” DE BURGH, BECOMES THE FIRST WIN- 
NER OF THE 62-YEAR-OLD PAGEANT TO POSE FOR PLAYBOY. 
IT’S A PICTORIAL GUARANTEED TO SEND YOU INTO SPACE. 


MASKED BANDITS—LAST YEAR SECURITY CAMERAS FILMED 
TWO WHITE MEN HOLDING UP A CHECK-CASHING STORE IN 
QUEENS, NEW YORK FOR $200,000. THE CULPRITS TURNED 
OUT TO BE TWO BLACK MEN. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? THEY 
WORE SOPHISTICATED MASKS THAT SELL FOR NEARLY 
$1,000. T.J. ENGLISH EXPLORES THE NEW FACE OF CRIME. 


SECOND AND LONG—QUARTERBACK RYAN LEAF WAS 
DRAFTED NUMBER TWO BEHIND PEYTON MANNING IN 1998. 
TODAY HE SITS IN JAIL AFTER A STRING OF DRUG ARRESTS. 
IN HIS FIRST CONVERSATION SINCE RETURNING TO PRISON, 
THE FORMER HEISMAN CANDIDATE TALKS ABOUT HIS FAIL- 
URES WITH THE MOST UNLIKELY OF WRITERS—HIS ONETIME 
CELL MATE JOHN NASH. 


EMOTIONAL RESCUE—FOUR MILLION PEOPLE HAVE ATTENDED 
HIS SELF-HELP SEMINARS, AND 50 MILLION HAVE BOUGHT 
HIS BOOKS, TAPES AND DVDS. WHAT MAKES TONY ROBBINS'S 
INSPIRATIONAL SHTICK SO POPULAR THAT IT EARNS HIM 


ARE THE IRISH AND THE TIDE SET FOR A REMATCH? 


A MASTERFUL TALE FROM GEORGE PELECANOS. 


NEXT MONTH 


THE DASHING BILL HADER. 


$30 MILLION ANNUALLY? “IT’S NOT CONDITIONS, IT'S DECI- 
SIONS THAT SHAPE YOUR LIFE,” HE TELLS GLENN PLASKIN IN 
A PLAYBOY INTERVIEW THAT MAY GET YOU OFF YOUR ASS. 


THE DOUBLE—SPERO LUCAS HAS SOME WET WORK TO ATTEND 
TO, AND IT ISN'T GOING TO BE EASY. A FREAKY EXCERPT 
FROM A THRILLING NEW NOVEL BY GEORGE PELECANOS, AN 
AWARD-WINNING WRITER BEHIND THE WIRE AND TREME. 


THRUST BOOSTERS—IN THE LATE 1950S MASTERS AND 
JOHNSON UNDERTOOK WHAT WE DESCRIBED AS THE “MOST 
UNUSUAL EXPERIMENTS EVER CONDUCTED IN THE HISTORY 
OF SCIENCE”—ACTUAL PEOPLE HAVING ACTUAL SEX IN A 
LABORATORY. WHAT DID WILLIAM MASTERS AND VIRGINIA 
JOHNSON LEARN? PLAYBOY REVISITS OUR IN-DEPTH CON- 
VERSATIONS WITH THE GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCHERS. 


HARD-HITTING NUMBERS—OUR COLLEGE FOOTBALL SCRIBE 
BRUCE FELDMAN BOLDLY FORECASTS THE BEST OF THE BEST 
FOR THE UPCOMING SEASON. WILL ALABAMA REPEAT AS 
CHAMPIONS? BONUS: OUR PRESEASON ALL AMERICA TEAM. 


PLUS—A VISIT TO NEW JERSEY WITH JUNOT DIAZ, 20Q WITH 
BILL HADER, FALL FASHION PREVIEW, A GUIDE TO COMPETITIVE 
LAWN SPORTS, THE STUNNING MISS SEPTEMBER AND MORE. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), July/August 2013, volume 60, number 6. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August issues by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 
9346 Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210. Periodicals postage paid at Beverly Hills, California and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agree- 
ment No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $32.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS (see DMM 707.4.12.5); nonpostal and military facilities, send address changes to Playboy, PO. Box 37489, 
Boone, Iowa 50037-0489. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. Ifyou would rather not receive 


208 such mailings, please send your current mailing label to: Playboy, PO. Box 37489, Boone, IA, 50037-0489. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail plycustserv@cdsfulfillment.com. 


Own the first-ever 


Hand-crafted wooden cuckoo 
inspired by the distinctive 
design of the Chevy Bel Air” 


Striking montage of classic ‘55, 
‘56 and ‘57 Bel Air” models 


| 

| | Speedometer-style clock face 
| with accurate quartz movement 
| 


Hand-painted, high-gloss finish 
| with gleaming accents and 
sculpted “tail fins” 


Swinging metal pendulum with 
the Chevy “bowtie” logo 


Hand-numbered limited edition 
| with Certificate of Authenticity 


At the top of every hour, the "garage" light turns 
on to reveal a sculptural 1957 Chevy Bel Air” ac- 
companied by the sound of an engine revving 


“> ^ x 7 
ra ла со 


тик 
BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


“HOME DECOR- 


9345 Milwaukee Avenue · Niles, IL 60714-1393 


Y ES. Please reserve the Chevy Bel Air™ Cuckoo Clock for me as 
described in this announcement 
Limit: one per order. 


2 Signature 


Mrs. Mr. Ms. en 
Name (Please Print Clearly) 


Address 
Е City 


State 


Zip 
01-12886-001-E30291 


"Plus $21.99 shipping and service. Limited-edition presentation restricted to 10,000 
clocks. Please allow 4-8 weeks after initial payment for shipment. Sales subject to 
product availability and order acceptance. 


i ~ Po рай H I "FR re га Ё. M Vu . Ir 14 71 Er г; "c4 E. % 
GO Cruisin inrougn Your Day With Ine First-Ever 
LUCKO 


Back in the fabulous 50s, nothing revved up excitement like the 
Chevy Bel Air”. With its gleaming chrome, stylized tail fins, hot V8 
engine, and two-tone color scheme, it's no wonder it was called 
“The Hot One.” 


hark “Һолл Ra j , Ihr er niita hu mita 
PHIM DAA LIV y vt PII 1111115 mimte y "инче 


Now the classic 50s style and spirit of the these iconic cars 
inspires a first-ever cuckoo clock from The Bradford Exchange. 
Three classic Bel Air" models from the Chevy archives—the Teal 
55, Red and White 56, and Turquoise '57—sizzle on an asphalt- 
black "roadway" that runs across this hand-crafted, wood-encased 
treasure that measures 2 feet high! Gleaming accents and high- 
gloss, sculpted "tail fins" add more thrills. 


A precise quartz movement powers the speedometer-style 
clock. Below, you'll see the 1957 Chevy Bel Air" logo and badge. 
Shimmering "piston" weights and a swinging pendulum with the 
Chevy "bowtie" add even more style. 


Best of all, at the top of every hour, a LED "garage" light at the top 
illuminates and reveals a sculptural 1957 Chevy Bel Air" as you 
hear the sound of an engine revving. It's a perfect tribute to the 
Chevy Bel Air"—forever the classic car of the hour! 


ЗА ааа йн ба acd уч sd 
10,000 WII De ace ... Oraer C 


This officially-licensed, first-ever collectible clock is a must-have 
for Baby Boomers and Chevy Bel Air" fans. Strong demand is 
expected, and the edition is strictly limited to only 10,000 clocks. 
Act now to acquire the Chevy Bel Air" Cuckoo Clock in five easy 
installments of only $49.99, for a total of $249.95*. Your purchase 


is backed by our unconditional 365-day money-back guarantee Ш сао 
so you risk nothing. Send по money now. Just return the attached E Clockisa — ee 
Reservation Application. But do it today, before time runs out! : eg Bradford — 02012 


CUT ALONG DOTTED LINE 


BRADFORD EXCHANGE | | | | NO POSTAGE 
NECESSARY 
IF MAILED 
IN THE 
UNITED STATES 
BUSINESS REPLY MAIL — ت‎ 
men 
FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL ——— 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE — | Art montage features: 
— 2955 Bel Air” — America's 
— most popular car of that 
————— | year and the first to earn the 
THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE — nickname “The Hot One” 


9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE = 

¦ 1956 Bel Air” — Chevy's 
NILES IL 60714-9891 tto of “The Hot One Is 
Even Hotter” says it all. 
1957 Bel Air” — The last of 
the “Hot Ones” and one of the 


A III most iconic cars of all time. 


A 


Experience the Wonder I 
of wild Eagles 


2 — 
. er 
— ir 7 


< 


+“ & RESERVATION APPLICATION SEND NO MONEY NOW 


— тик 
Hand-cast and hand-painted BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


eaglets are fascinating Mrs. Mr. Ms 
d 9345 Milwaukee Avenue Niles, IL 60714-1393 
wee from any angle e 
سے‎ — dress 
4 — 
* YES. Please reserve the “Treetop Majesty” collectible for 


me as described in this announcement City 
www.bradfordexchange.com/nest 222 Please Respond Promptly 


State Zip 


tal of $8.99 shipping and 


02013 BGE — 01-14218-001-JISBG 


The American bald eagle is both a beloved national symbol 
and a wildlife recovery success story. Once listed as endangered 
in all lower 48 states, this magnificent bird, known for its 
proud, undaunted spirit and close family ties, was removed 
from the endangered species list only four years ago. 


This dramatic turnaround has been celebrated by researchers 
with the invention of popular "eagle cams." With millions 
viewing their daily life, eagles are an internet sensation with 
fans around the United States and the world. Now “Treetop 
Majesty" from the Bradford Exchange lets you recapture the 
thrill of exploring an eagle family's lofty treetop home any 
time—up close and personal. The limited-edition sculpture 
is meticulously hand-cast and hand-painted for true-to-life 
detail. Don't miss this fascinating tribute to an enduring 
symbol of freedom and its timeless family values. 


A Superb Value ... 
Satisfaction Guaranteed 


Act now to reserve your limited edition at just $59.99*, 
payable in three installments of $19.99, the first due before 
shipment. There's no risk with our unconditional, 365-day 
satisfaction guarantee. Send no money now, just return the 
Reservation Application today! 
www.bradfordexchange.com/nest 


CUT ALONG DOTTED LINE 


— 2 —— — o 


An Intimate Look at an Eagle Family 


Expert hand- painting captures 
every detail of the eagle's 
magnificent plumage and 

fierce expression 


Í $ 


ral 


Detailed, 3-D sculpture 
brings the bold parent 
eagles, endearing 
chicks, and their 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE 
NILES IL 60714-9891 


intricate nest to life 
NO POSTAGE 


NECESSARY 


IF MAILED 
IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


Meticulously hand-crafted 
for incredible lifelike 
detail from any angle 


02013 The Bradford Exchange 
01-14218-001-JISBG 


PLAN EVEP ЖШ 


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DISTILLED IN MEXICO. HORNITOS® TEQUILA, 40% ALC./VOL 


©2013 SAUZA TEQUILA IMPORT COMPANY, DEERF 


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IL 60015 


HECHO ЕМ М МЕХ!СО 
SAUZA 


250 MC 
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