Skip to main content

Full text of "PLAYBOY"

See other formats 


PLAYBOY 


ES om 


Playmate of the Year Eugena Washington 


INTRODUCING 


BOLD 


Confident and daring, 
Tiffany Toth is a risk- 
taker who isn't afraid 
to say what's on her 
mind. Suitors heed 
warning: this brazen 
blonde never backs 
away from a challenge, 
and you definitely don't 
want to bring out her 
bad-girl side. Or maybe 
you do. 


BAWDY 


Shelby Chesnes tends to 


invite a bit of chaos, but 
this troublemaker will 
tell you there's no fun 
without a little danger. 
Her loud, boisterous 
personality turns evel 
head and her risqué 
demeanor captivate: 
- every man who crosses 


Four irresistible Playmates brought together 


to embody the Blackheart spirit. 


k 


CUNNING 


Kimberly Phillips will 
have you wrapped 
around her seemingly 
sweet finger in no 
time. This charming 
Playmate always holds 
her ground. But be 
careful, she knows 
exactly what she 
wants, and knows just 
how to convince you 
it's what you want too. 


SEDUCTIVE 


Just one look will have 
you hooked on 

Raquel Gibson. 

She'll coax her way 
directly into your heart 
if you're lucky enough 
to catch her eye, and 

a single sexy smile will 
eep you wanting more. 


PREMIUM 


| Spiced Res 


Blackheart Premium Spiced Rum is a bold, 93 proof rum named 

after the sultry siren of the high seas who has forever been known as 
the unattainable. Now, for the first time, we're bringing Blackheart 
to life through four extraordinary Playmates that perfectly represent 


who she is — Bold, Bawdy, Cunning, and Seductive. 


PREMIUM 


Spiced Run 


98% 


RUM WITH SPICE 
D T 


WANT TO PARTY WITH THE BLACKHEARTS 
AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION? 


Blackheart Premium Spiced Rum and Playboy are sending one lucky winner and 
a friend to the annual Midsummer Night's Dream Party at the Playboy Mansion. 
Enter now for a chance to meet The Blackhearts and be a part of this epic night. 


ENTER NOW! "m PREMIUM 


www.playboy.com/theblackhearts 5) y Rum 


Blackheart Spiced Rum®. Bottled by Blackheart Rum Company Bardstown, KY 40004. 46.5% Alc/Vol. ©2016 
Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE and Rabbit Head Design are marks of Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. B 
Void where prohibited by law. Must be a legal resident of the 50 United States, age 21 years or older to enter. = 
Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. Visit www.playboy.com/theblackhearts for Official Rules and entry details 
PHOTO CREDIT: TIFFANY, SHELBY 8 KIMBERLY: CHRIS FORTUNA; RAGUEL: JOSHUA SPENCER; MANSION, JEFF MINTON 


DODGE.COM 


DODGE IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ЕСА US LLC. 


SMARTER, STRONGER, FASTER. THE 2016 CHARGER, VIPER AND CHALLENGER. 


Жюз Áq өзиөэц зәрип pasn pue Áoq/ej4 jo ssgeurspen sje ибеза реэн 119925 pue довдула Aoqfeld 5102 © 


FRAGRANCES FOR HIM 


presstoplay 


available at 


K sears playboystore.com P playboyfragrances.com 


Mitch Moxley 


We asked one American to return to 
China to get inside the head of an- 
other. Moxley, who spent six years 
writing about the country for West- 
ern publications, profiles expat sex- 
toy tycoon Brian Sloan, inventor of 
the Autoblow, in The Man Who Wants 
to Change the Way Men Get Off. 


Dani Mathers 


Who better to introduce you to our 
latest queen than the woman hand- 
ing her the crown? Playmate of the 
Year 2015 Dani Mathers dropped by 
Playboy HQ for a chat with Eugena 
Washington about all things PMOY. 
You'll find their interview alongside 
Eugena's triumphant pictorial. 


PLAYBILL 


Henrik Purienne 

Purienne, who last shot the cover for 
our May issue, reports an especially 
pleasant shoot with Miss June Josie 
Canseco. "Josie was stoked to follow 
іп her mom's footsteps,” he says, ге- 
ferring to Jessica Canseco's 2005 
pictorial. “She was totally natural 
and funny, old-school." 


Chris Berdik 


Inaworld that worships the certainty 
of science, what if DNA testing, a back- 
bone of modern criminal justice, were 
shown to be as unreliable as witness 
testimony? Veteran science journalist 
Berdik uncovers how misinterpreted 
data can become a life sentence in 
The Unraveling of DNA Forensics. 


Alex Scordelis 


"Rose Byrne may seem an acciden- 
tal comedian—she was known as a 
dramatic actor before Bridesmaids— 
but she's a closet comedy nerd,” says 
Scordelis, who interviewed Byrne for 
200 т advance of her X-Men: Apoca- 
lypse and Neighbors 2 roles. His proof? 
She's a die-hard Fawlty Towers fan. 


Julia Bainbridge 


The latest wave in inebriation? Less 
is more: less liquor in our cock- 
tails and less THC in our edibles, in 
pursuit of a smoother, longer ride. 
Bainbridge, who last contributed a 
sensual guide to Valentine's choc- 
olate, tackles the state of getting 
sloshed in our Food and Drink pages. 


Stacey Rozich 


Rozich's vibrant watercolors draw 
on folklore and myth to tell rich 
stories. Maybe that's why Father 
John Misty chose her to paint his 
latest album cover; it's certainly why 
we chose her to bring this month's 
fiction, Good-bye to Rootine, to life 
in illustration. 


Jason Lee Parry 


Our Playmate of the Year is a genu- 
ine California girl —a modern beauty 
with a vintage soul—who needed a 
master of the West Coast aesthetic 
to reintroduce her to the world. 
Parry, a fashion photographer and 
true storyteller with the lens, was 
just the man for the job. 


CREDITS: Cover and pp. 100-109: model Eugena Washington, photography by Jason Lee Раггу, styling by Shelly Glascock, hair by Tony Vin, makeup by Amy Chance for Tack Artist Group, manicure by Emi 
Kudo for Opus Beauty, prop styling by Enoch Choi. Photography by: p. 6 courtesy Julia Bainbridge, courtesy Chris Berdik, courtesy Jason Lee Parry, courtesy Henrik Purienne, courtesy Stacey Rozich, cour- 
tesy Alex Scordelis, Michael Magers Photography, lan Passmore; p. 15 courtesy Alder New York, courtesy Nike, courtesy Retrosuperfuture, courtesy TOMS; p. 21 courtesy IZIP eBikes, courtesy Stromer, cour- 
tesy Trek Bikes; p. 29 courtesy DC Comics, courtesy Marvel Comics (2); p. 34 courtesy A24; p. 36 Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images; p. 38 courtesy Fox Entertainment Group (2), courtesy HBO, courtesy 
Showtime, Shutterstock; p. 40 Eric Ryan Anderson/Contour by Getty Images, Alexander Attar, Lloyd Pursall; p. 47 © Universal/courtesy Everett Collection; p. 48 Molly Cranna; p. 66 courtesy Miranda Tay- 
lor; p. 69 John Kelly/Boise State University; p. 10 courtesy Chris “Daze” Ellis; p. 114 courtesy Playboy Archives/Mario Casilli and David Chan. P. 13 styling by Turner for the Wall Group, hair and makeup by 
Sara Cranham; pp. 14-15 prop styling by Janine Iversen; p. 16 prop styling by Janine Iversen; pp. 18-19 prop styling by Janine Iversen; p. 25 styling by Shelly Glascock, makeup by Jenna Kristina for Tomlinson 
Management Group; pp. 30-33 styling by Dianna Lunt for Art Department, hair by Harry Josh for Jed Root, Inc., makeup by Deanna Hagan for Kate Ryan, Inc.; pp. 50-57 styling by Shannon Turgeon, groom- 
ing by Jody Morlock; pp. 58-63 wardrobe styling by Lisa Mosko, hair by Sylvia Wheeler for Atelier Management, makeup by Gloria Noto for Atelier Management, location Simon House, simonhousela.com. 


WeatherTech 


Automotive Accessories 


errari - Ford - GMC - Honda - Hummer - Hyundai - Infiniti 
da - Mercedes-Benz - Mercury - Mini - Mitsubishi - Nissan 
Баги - Suzuki - Toyota - Volkswagen - Volvo - and more! 


R f cura - Audi - BMW - Buick - Cadillac - Chevrolet 
Accessories Available for uzu - Jeep - Kia - Land Rover - Lexus - Lincoln - М az 
Oldsmobile - Plymouth - Pontiac - Porsche - Saab - Saturn - Scion 


laserati - 
Order Now: 800-441-6287 Ше mann: CE 


Made in the USA 


European Customers 


O 2016 by МасМей IP LLC 


OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPH BY HENRIK PURIENNE 


CONTENTS 


Departments 


NO FILTER Anything a man can shred, X Games skateboarder Leticia Bufoni can shred better 13 
FOOD Meet a new generation of marijuana confectioners crafting epicure-class edibles 18 
TECH Can e-bikes get America in shape again? 20 
MY WAY How Alexis Wilkinson broke through the white boys’ club of Harvard comedy 24 
ADVISOR Sex on drugs? Rachel Rabbit White on (responsibly) rocking while you roll 26 
ALSO: Selfie-worthy music-festival style; cocktails with less alcohol but more fun; test-driving a stud ofa VW Bug 
THE RABBIT HOLE The mythic, historic and economic secrets of superheroes 29 
208 From Bridesmaids to Neighbors to X-Men, actress Rose Byrne reveals how she does it all (and then some) 30 
SPORTS with hockey goalies getting wider, taller and heavier, the sport faces an important question: Should the nets grow too? 86 
ТУ As the music industry enters hospice care, new shows rhapsodize the good times 38 
FRANCOFILE James Franco uncovers how author Tom Bissell quit coke, escaped Estonia and (sort of) learned to love Jesus 42 
CULTURE Can America just say no to the outmoded ideas of D.A.R.E.? 46 
POLITICS How Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump could accidentally dismantle the corporate-yoked organization behind debates 48 


ALSO: The director of Drive explains his female-driven horror film; putting the M back into EDM; love is fleeting at Trump rallies 
Features 


INTERVIEW The Daily Show's Trevor Noah on the wildest election ever SO 
ANTHEA PAGE Lounging poolside with a beautiful Australian model is a fine way to spend a summer day 58 
THE UNRAVELING OF DNA FORENSICS Chris Berdik investigates a problem that could препа American justice 64 
MISS JUNE what's in a name? For a goddess like Josie Canseco, nothing more than history 70 
THE MAN WHO WANTS TO CHANGE THE WAY MEN GET OFF by Mitch Moxley 84 
FICTION Miss Rowena Balfour knows how to shoot, ride and steal cowboys’ hearts in Ron Carlson's Good-bye to Rootine 92 
PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR Meeting Eugena Washington the second time is twice as sweet 100 
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE Chris “Daze” Ellis is a graffiti rebel in the streets and a collector's fantasy in the gallery 110 


ON THE COVER Eugena Washington, photographed by Jason Lee Parry. Our Rabbit gets his ears wet with a cool dip, floating alongside our new PMOY. 


VOL. 63, NO. 5—JUNE 2016 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


JASON BUHRMESTER EDITORIAL DIRECTOR 
MACLEWIS GREATIVE DIRECTOR 
HUGH GARVEY DEPUTY EDITOR 
REBECCAH. BLACK PHOTO DIRECTOR 


JAREDEVANS MANAGING EDITOR 


EDITORIAL 
CAT AUER, JAMESRICKMAN SENIOR EDITORS 
SHANE MICHAELSINGH ASSOCIATE EDITOR; TYLERTRYKOWSKI ASSISTANT EDITOR 
WINIFRED ORMOND COP Y CHIEF; SAMANTHA SAIYAVONGSA, ELIZABETH SUMAN RESEARCH EDITORS 
GILBERT MACIAS EDITORIAL COORDINATOR; AMANDAWARREN EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: VINCE BEISER, NEAL GABLER, DAVID HOCHMAN, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, DAVID SHEF| 


RIC SPITZNAGEL, DON WINSLOW 


JAMESFRANCO EDITOR AT LARGE 


ART 
CHRISDEACON SENIOR ART DIREGTOR; AARONLUCAS ART MANAGER; LAURELLEWIS ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
ELAYNE LODGE STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER 
EVANSMITH PHOTO RESEARCHER; ANNAWILSON PHOTO ASSISTANT 
KEVIN MURPHY DIRECTOR, PHOTO LIBRARY; CHRISTIE HARTMANN SENIOR ARCHIVIST, PHOTO LIBRARY 
AMY KASTNER-DROWN SENIOR DIGITAL IMAGING SPECIALIST 


PRODUCTION 
LESLEYK. JOHNSON PRODUGTION DIRECTOR; HELENYEOMAN PRODUCTION SERVICES MANAGER 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 
THERESA M. HENNESSEY VIGE PRESIDENT; TERITHOMERSON DIRECTOR 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
SCOTTFLANDERS GHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER 
DAVIDG.ISRAEL GHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, PRESIDENT, PLAYBOY MEDIA 
CORYJONES GHIEF CONTENT OFFICER 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING 
PHILLIP МОВЕГОСК GHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER AND PUBLISHER; MARIEFIRNENO VICE PRESIDENT, ADVERTISING DIRECTOR 
RUSSELLSCHNEIDER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED MEDIA SALES; AMANDACIVITELLO VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS AND PROMOTIONS 
NEW YORK: MALICKCISSE DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING OPERATIONS AND PROGRAMMATIC SALES 
ANGELALEE DIGITAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER; MICHELLETAFARELLA MELVILLE SENIOR DIRECTOR, ENTERTAINMENT AND BEAUTY 
ADAM WEBB SENIOR DIRECTOR, SPIRITS; OLIVIABIORDI MEDIA SALES PLANNER; JASMINEYU MARKETING DIRECTOR 
TIMOTHY KELLEPOUREY INTEGRATED MARKETING DIRECTOR; KARIJASPERSOHN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND ACTIVATION 
GRACESANTAMARIA ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS AMANDACHOMICZ DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER 
VOULALYTRAS EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT AND OFFICE MANAGER 
CHICAGO: TIFFANYSPARKSABBOTT SENIOR DIRECTOR, MIDWEST 
LOS ANGELES: DINALITT SENIOR DIRECTOR, WEST COAST; KRISTIALLAIN SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER 
VICTORIA FREDERICK SALES ASSISTANT 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), June 2016, volume 63, number 5. 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 Agreement No. 4003553 
Subscriptions: in the U.S., $32.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send ай UAA to CFS (see DMM 707.4.12.5); nonpostal and military facilities, send address changes to Playboy, Р.О. Box 62260, Tampa, FL 33662-2260. From 
time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings, please send your current 
mailing label to: Playboy, Р.О. Box 62260, Tampa, FL, 33662-2260. For subscription-related questions, e-mail playboy@customersve.com. To comment on content, e-mail letters@playboy.com. + Playboy assumes no 
responsibility to return unsolicited editorial or graphic or other material. All rights in letters and unsolicited editorial and graphic material will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright 
purposes, and material will be subject to Playboy's unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially. Contents copyright © 2016 by Playboy. АП 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 6. Three Bradford Exchange onserts in domestic subscription polywrapped copies. Certificado de licitud de titulo 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 publicaciones y revistas ilustradas dependiente de la secretaría de gobernación, Mexico. Reserva de derechos 04-2000-071710332800-102. Printed in USA. 


10 


Introducing THE Vodka, now also 
available in gluten free. Harvested 
from our fertile corn and buckwheat 
fields, the result is a gluten-free 
vodka, crafted from our fields to 
your glass. 


Gol 


THE 
VODKA 


SAVOR STOLI* RESPONSIBLY. Sto 
Dist d Buck 


F 


NOFIELER 


T 


U 
"T 
4 
шини 


“The on] 


Uinc your 


SCX defines 


is the role | 
you play in 


| babies? 


y 


"Women who skateboard 

do it for the same reason 
men do it: because we love it. 
Skateboarding holds a univer- 
sal truth. It always starts with 
you and your friends riding at 
your favorite spots. It's about 
hanging out and having fun 
For some reason, and for 

too long, there has been a 
perception that the only type 
of athlete worth sponsoring 
in this sport isa man. | hope 
to be a part of changing that. 
We all have physical and 
mental characteristics that 
can turn into strengths or 
weaknesses. How they define 
youis up to you." 
Skateboarder and three- 
time X Games gold medalist 
Leticia Bufoni will compete 
this month at the 2016 X 
Games in Austin. 


RAPHY BY DAN MONICK 


ССС 


ЕЕ т қылық 0. ss Н 


ZU HE 


se 


221111111111, 


44 4 


STYLE 


Dress 


for the 
Fest 


Stand out in the Instagram fray at this summer's 
music festivals with a killer jacket and accessories 
that are both practical and timelessly tasteful 


SUMMER STYLE SET LIST 


Aclassic silhouette upgraded with a 
matte-black frame and rainbow gradient 
lenses makes for old-school-meets- 


These woven-leather sandals provide 
just the right amount of ventilation, 
plus enough sturdiness to withstand 
any knocks the day throws at you. 
TOMS men's huaraches, $89 


contemporary style. Retrosuperfuture 
Terrazzo M3 sunglasses, $339 


Protect your neck with this fresh 

golf hat adorned with weeds, gators, 
skunks and other banes of the 
groundskeeper's existence. Nike 
Enemies of the Course bucket hat, $38 


Made of clay, rice powder and 
essential oils, this hair powder acts 
like a dry shampoo. Less bathing 
means more beats. Alder New York 
natural hair powder, $30 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT CORNETT 


15 


In Praise 
of Mindful 
Drinking 


As the mindfulness movement has entered 
the mainstream, so too has mindful drink- 
ing. “I want a martini, but could you put a 
little less booze in it? 
common customer request, says Tristan Wil- 
ley, a 
Brooklyn, New York. “Also, my 
depletes quickly these days.” Sherry and 
other fortified wines are relatively low in al- 
cohol by volume, clocking in at 15 to 20 per- 
cent, compared with gin, which runs around 
40 percent. The bamboo (equal parts dry ver- 
mouth and sherry) has been popping up all 
over New York Gityaslow-ABV cocktails gain 
popularity. Nitecap im downtown Manhattan 
even has one on tap. 

While the low-alcohol thing is about fewer 
caloriesand, frankly, fewer hangovers, itcan 
also be about drinking more. “І have the tol- 
eranceofa small gerbil, and I like to try a lot 
of different thin; ays Matt Tocco, bever- 
agedirectorof Strategic Hospitality in Nash- 
ville. “That's why low-alcohol drinks such as 
ап americano, made with Campari, sweet ver- 
mouth and Club soda, work for me.” Smaller 
doses work just as well) Willey serves snack- 
size negronis at the Long Island Bar, and in 
Tokyo, Gen Yamamoto offers omakase flights 
of four to six two-ounce Cocktails. Think of 
it as drinking less to drink more. Bonus: You 
can stay out longer. Julia Bainbridge 


is becoming a more 


artender at the Long Island Bar in 


jerry stock 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT CORNETT 


How To 
DRINK 
MORE 

(by drink- 
ing less) 


OLD-WORLD 
WINES 

A big California 
cabernet may 

go with that rich 
porterhouse, but 
with 15 percent 
alcohol in a 14- 
ounce goblet, you 
can't have more 
than one without 
getting soused 
Go with old-world 
European wines, 
which are typically 
around 13 percent 
alcohol. 


SHIFT DRINKS 
Working 
bartenders 
occasionally do a 
shot, a.k.a. a shift 
drink, to take the 
edge off. A lower- 
proof amaro (as 
low as 20 percent 
АВУ) or other 
liqueur could 

be just the right 
strength. 


BITTERS AND 
SODA 

Good bars stock 
good bitters. A 
few dashes in club 
soda over ice isa 
seriously low-ABV 
cocktail, 


16 


= z 


Gd WILLIAM 


4 


HENRY 


WILLIAMHERRY 


FOOD 


annabis 
Goes Gourmet 


Precise dosing and artisanal craftsmanship are revolutionizing the business of edible THC 


“Үоц know, I really want to make high-end 
edibles.” So said recent Berkeley grad Vanessa 
Lavorato back in 2010 in a moment of inspira- 
tion while riding the BART. 

At the time, the only edibles Lavorato could 
find at marijuana dispensaries in San Fran- 
cisco were Saran-wrapped snickerdoodles 
and Rice Krispies treats. Those options didn't 
cut it for Lavorato, who ran with the best of 
the Bay Area's slow-food crowd and learned to 
temper chocolate from a pastry chef at Chez 
Panisse, the famed Berkeley restaurant of 
Alice Waters, godmother of farm-to-table 
cuisine. Since her rapid-transit revelation, 
Lavorato has perfected her recipes for ТНС- 
infused fleur de sel caramels and raspberry- 
rose ganache in Los Angeles, where she now 
lives. Her artisanal cannabis confections are 
available online and at Cornerstone Collec- 
tive in Eagle Rock under the label Marigold 
Sweets. “We’re trying to get away from the 
stereotypes of Gheech and Chong,” she says 
of the name choice. 

California is, of course, not Colorado or 
Washington, two of only a handful of states 
that have legalized recreational marijuana 
use. Many signs indicate that the Golden 
State will legalize recreational use this year, 
but until then pot and related products remain 
legal for card-carrying medical patients only. 
For now the foodie must speak and behave 
strictly pharmaceutically: “I work with a li- 
censed dispensary. I’m a patient of that dis- 
pensary, and for my fellow patients I provide 
the chocolates,” says Lavorato. 

Since Lavorato started crafting edibles in 
2010, research and experimentation have 
vastly improved the product. Six years ago 
people were working with shake—basically 
the crumbs from a big bag of weed. “That’s 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT CORNETT 


why edibles from that time had this green, 
plantlike flavor,” says Lavorato. “You're try- 
ing to get a very small amount of tetrahydro- 
cannabinol, or THC, from the shake, so the 
result tastes bitter, like over-steeped tea.” 
Dosage was also a problem with the shake 
method. (That time you ate pot brownies 
in college, got all paranoid and wobbly and 
ruined the one chance you had with your long- 
time crush? Those brownies were made with 
shake, resulting in an uncontrolled amount of 
THC.) Today carbon dioxide extraction is one 
process that is favored for its purity and pre- 
cision. The resulting concentrates have en- 
abled Lavorato to achieve an end result that’s 
as high as 90 percent THC. “I can put that 
directly into my chocolate and ensure that the 
potency is consistent,” she says. 

Bigger operations go even further with 
quality control, and on a much larger scale. 
In northern California, Altai Brands has a 
40,000-square-foot production facility capa- 
ble of making 30,000 pieces of THC candy in 
asingle day. “It’s difficult enough to be able to 
make a good sea salt caramel bonbon, but to 
produce 30,000 with consistent levels of THC 
in them—that takes another level of skill,” 
says Altai CEO Rob Weakley, whose vice pres- 
ident of operations, Mark Ainsworth, pro- 
duced food lines for Costco and Whole Foods 
before joining Altai. As THC edibles move 
toward the moneyed mainstream, Weakley 
hopes to capitalize on that demographic’s 
good taste and desire for just the right amount 
of buzz. “We set out to make a product that 
had the same predictably low-key effect as a 
glass of wine,” says Weakley. “At 10 or 25 mil- 
ligrams, it’s about being coherent and social. 
You don’t get couch-locked like back in your 
college days.”—Julia Bainbridge 


THC FOR YOU AND ME 


ALTAI BRANDS 

Started by Ainsworth, Weakley (also 
co-creator of Pebble Beach Food & 
Wine) and Gavin Kogan, a marijuana- 
business attorney, Altai manufactures 
bars, bonbons, lozenges and more at 
its facility in Salinas, California, 


MARIGOLD SWEETS 

Lavorato's chocolates contain just 
25 milligrams of THC each (her tof- 
fees have 16), so there's little risk of 
overdosing. (She also makes non- 
medical chocolates.) 


DEFONCE 

Defonce (it means "stoned" in 
French) is the new kid on the block. 
Like Lavorato, the chocolatiers 

at Defoncć use sustainably made 
cannabis concentrate. 


OPUS 

Opus makes both THC and can- 
nabidiol (CBD) chocolates; CBD 
addresses patients' pain issues with- 
out producing a psychoactive high. 


KIVA CONFECTIONS 

One of the only bean-to-bar produc- 
ers in the industry, Kiva has more 
than a dozen edible offerings. 


19 


HAIBIKE XDURO URBAN RC 
This aggressively styled city bike features integrated 
lights and a beefy Bosch drive system. ($4,600) 


Gan the E-Bike Save 
the World? 


At the very least, it'll make hauling to the beach a little easier 


20 


Bike commutingis atan all-time high in the U.S., which 
is kind of a no-brainer. Pedaling to work saves money, 
eliminates parking hassles and reduces treadmill time 

at the gym. The catch: 
sy CORINNE IOZZIO It also makes you а 

smelly, sweaty mess. 
E-bikes (electric bikes) do all the same things, but 
without the same physical effort—and promise to get 
us riding faster, longer and more often. 

Think of an e-bike as a standard two-wheeler with 
superpowers. You pedal as normal, but when you hit 
a hill or start to tire, an onboard computer notices 
the extra torque on the pedals and signals the motor 
to help out. You keep pedaling, and you don’t slow 
down; instead, it’s suddenly no sweat (literally). It also 
means that maintaining a near-carlike cruising speed 
is within reach of even the modestly fit. Bikes top out 
at either 20 or 28 miles an hour in e-assist mode and 
have batteries that last at least 25 miles on a charge. 

As transportation, e-bikes are already a huge busi- 
ness overseas, and over the past few years major 
bicycle makers have started to bank on convert- 
ing Americans. “We're out of shape. We want to be 
outdoors. We want to be active,” says Ed Benjamin, 
founder and chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle 
Association. “We've got transportation challenges. 
We've got economic challenges. Electric bicycles fit 
into all of these.” Right now, e-bikes are a small frac- 
tion of total U.S. bike sales, but some reports show 
their numbers almost doubling year over year. 

It's a perfect half measure for people who want a low- 
emission transportation alternative. As far as the feds 
are concerned, e-bikes are the same as people-powered 
ones from a consumer-product-safety perspective. 
And currently 22 states’ DMVs agree, so there are no 
insurance, licensing or registration hassles to deal 
with. Advocacy organization People for Bikes is work- 
ing to clean up legislative confusion to ensure that if 
an e-bike crosses from, say, California to Arizona it 
doesn’t—boom!—become a motorcycle. 

The good news is that both dedicated e-bike com- 
panies such as ProdecoTech and stalwarts such as 
Specialized and Accell Group (which owns Raleigh, 
Haibike, iZIP and Diamondback, among other brands) 
are constantly improving the technology to make it 
more undercover. Batteries tuck into seat posts and 
downtubes, and motors, hidden behind pedal cranks 
and wheel hubs, are nearly silent. *I haven't ridden 
an electric bike that was louder than even the quiet- 
est engine-powered vehicle,” notes Court Rye, head of 
e-bike hub ElectricBikeReview.com. 

The only hiccups are heft (the average e-bike is 
around 50 pounds, double the weight of a conventional 
pedaler) and price. Rye says you should expect to spend 
at least $1,500 for a decent e-ride from a reputable man- 
ufacturer. But prices are dropping, and with proper 
maintenance the bike will last 15 years—which, coinci- 
dentally, is the best you can expect from acar too. W 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTTIE CAMERON 


TECH 


PLUG AND PEDAL 


Sleek e-bikes at every price 


IZIP E3 PROTOUR 
With fenders, running lights and rear cargo rack standard, this 500-watt 
bike handles anything an urban commute might throw at you. ($3,550) 


TREK GONDUIT+ 
Aluminum construction shaves weight off this city bike, while a hub- 
mounted motor and downtube battery keep things balanced. ($3,000) 


STROMER ST2S 
Wireless electronic shifting and a burly battery that yields a 110-mile range 
justify the steep price of this premium bike. ($9,500) 


21 


MEET THE MODERN-DAY 
VOLKSWAGEN DUNE BUGGY 


The Baja Bug is back and more refined than ever 


While the VW Bug is hardly the first car aguy 
aspires to drive on his everyday commute, 
Volkswagen is up to something strangely ap- 
pealing with its limited-edition Dune. For the 
first time in a long while, the brand has given 
us a Beetle that stands out and actually harkens 
back to the romanticism of the model's golden 
years: the mid-1960s, when tricked-out Bugs 
rally-raced down Mexico's Baja peninsula. 

There's no denying the Beetle has grown 
into a cultural icon since its 1949 U.S. intro- 
duction. In the past 67 years, Volkswagen 
has sold 5.6 million of the cars in the United 
States, including more than 128,000 of the 
current third-generation model. But is the 
Beetle a manly steed? Not so much. 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHANTAL ANDERSON 


Of course, it was never intended to com- 
pete against more serious performers like the 
Ford Mustang or the BMW 3 Series. Even with 
the Beetle's 1997 reintroduction in the States 
after an 18-year hiatus, it's really the car’s 
nostalgic appeal that has driven its fan base. 

The 2016 Dune is designed to build on that 
appeal, with a bolder spin on the Beetle leg- 
acy that's intended to give the car more street 
cred. It's the latest in a line of specialty mod- 
els, spruced up with features including special 
“Dune” graphics, polished aluminum sills and 
a huge rear spoiler. 

The new decked-out Bug also features a 
slightly increased ride height and a half- 
inch-wider body, giving the car a more rugged 


stance that evokes the true spirit of the Beetles 
that raced across the desert in the historic in- 
augural Mexican 1000 race back in 1967. And 
we have to admit, this modern Beetle looks 
decidedly masculine. 

Although the Dune doesn't offer a boosted 
engine or an improved suspension system— 
two features that made those 1960s Baja Bugs 
so iconic—it does have style. Truth be told, the 
new 170-horsepower high-tech Dune will prob- 
ably exceed the expectations of most driv- 
ers who have never been behind the wheel of a 
modern-day Beetle. And with a starting price 
of roughly $24,000, the Dune is a steal for those 
looking for atwo-door coupe or convertible with 
a flash of personality.—Marcus Amick 


22 


FOLLOW THE BUNNY 
000068 


/playboy @playboy @playboy playboy +playboy 


MY WAY 


Alexis 
Wilkinson 


The first black woman to lead Harvard's humor magazine is now Veep's youngest staff writer. 
How she snagged those lofty presidential appointments against the odds 


Ayear ago I was a confused, unemployed college 
kid applying to graduate schools in a panic and 
watching Obvious Child on repeat, crying. I've 
been thinking alot about the pz e of time re- 
cently and how school conveniently chops your 
life into four-year chunks with little landmarks 
of accomplishment. Puberty. Driver's license. 
Graduating. Drinking. Graduating again. 
When I was a junior at Harvard, I was elected 
president of The Harvard Lampoon, the 
school's 140-year-old humor magazine whose 
staff has included Conan O'Brien, B.J. Novak 
and Colin Jost. Let's just say it was a big deal, 
and not because I was an economics major but 
because I was the first black woman to hold 
the position. The Lampoon was notorious for 
being a white boys” club. After the announce- 
ment, everyone wanted at me. New York maga- 
zine, Forbes and the Chicago Tribune clamored 
for my story, which goes like this: 1 grew up in 
a small town outside Milwaukee—the type of 
place that causes people to say, “Oh, my grand- 
mother's best friend grew up there.” My father 
died when I was a toddler. In his absence, my 
mom single-handedly raised two hardworking 
ladies. Iwentto Harvard. My sister went to Yale. 
I applied to write for the Lampoon my fresh- 
man year. I was rejected. I tried again the 
following spring and nabbed a spot on the mast- 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAGDALENA WOSINSKA 


AS TOLD то SHANE MICHAEL SINGH 


head. Two years later they voted me president. 
Like I said: big fucking deal—to me, and to a 
bunch of people I never imagined would care. 

I've always been interested in the political 
process as another form of entertainment. As 
an undergrad I worked for Harvard's Institute 
of Politics and helped Mark Halperin and John 
Heilemann do research for their book Double 
Down. I had to track down Condoleezza Кїсе 8 
phone number and stalk the Instagram accounts 
of politicians’ daughters to see what the insides 
of their homes look like. It felt very Olivia Pope 
meets Anonymous. 

Getting a сай from Veep's executive producer 
Dave Mandel before graduation was a serious 
WTF moment. As much as I questioned whether 
I could handle being a staff writer, I realized it 
was arare opportunity where people would actu- 
ally care about what I have to say. As a woman— 
especially as ayoung woman of color—I thought, 
This might be it. This is my time. I accepted the 
job and became the youngest writer on staff. 

I showed up way too early on my first day. I 
didn’t know how to dress for awriters’ room, 801 
wore a blazer and a blouse. Trying to be as hum- 
ble and unassumingas possible, I didn’t sit at the 
writers’ table. I didn’t want to piss off anyone by 
sitting where I shouldn't. When Dave came in 
and started the meeting, he turned to me and 


said, “Alexis, what are you doing? Please join us 
at the table and be a normal person.” 

One thing I love about Veep is that Selina 
Meyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character, is a sex- 
ual being, but it’s not her whole story. Her story 
never focuses on her love interests, whether it be 
her ex-husband or, in this season, John Slattery. 
It’s aB-plot, and it’s rare to see awoman in charge 
as sexual without it being her weakness or flaw. 
That's really powerful and closer to the truth. My 
life never revolves around the dick I’m chasing. 

Asa23-year-old woman who has been in charge 
of a very male organization, I know what it's like 
towalk the fine line between being feminineand 
being the boss and having people respect you. So I 
identify with Selina. I know how hard it is. 

I will always strive to be surprising in my 
work. I remember the first time I wrote a dark 
joke for Veep anonymously. When it was re- 
vealed the joke was mine, the other writers were 
shocked. They didn’t think I had it in me. Those 
are the best moments, especially as a black 
woman. You think you know what you're going 
to get from me, but you have no idea. The only 
thing you'll know is that whatever I do is going 
to be good, and it's going to be funny. 

That's the epitaph I hope to walk away with at 
the end of all this: *Alexis Wilkinson: Here she 
lies, a funny-ass bitch till the end.” п 


24 


ADVISOR 


Gan Straight People 
Have Ghemsex Too? 


e Have you heard about “chemsex”? It's 

© apparently a trend among gay men: 
weekend-long parties, fueled by research chem- 
icals, that move from club to loft orgy back to 
club. I'm a straight man, and I seriously hope 
there's a straight-world equivalent. I've done 
party drugs, and Га like to meet women who 
also enjoy them—especially ones who are curi- 
ous about the potential of sex and drugs. 


A: Chemsex has a mix of critics and pro- 
e ponents both within and outside the 
gay community; media have branded it as ev- 
erything from a “пісһе sexual phenomenon” to 
a “modern sexual health c ” But as with any 


trend, activity or idea worth talking about, an 
accurate definition of chemsex (and to what de- 
gree it is or isn’t dangerous) ulti- 


mately depends on the individual 
participating in it. Regardless of 
how you weigh in on the chemsex 
debate, one truth we do know is that things only 
get hotter when they’re forbidden. 

Consider the Dionysian mysteries of ancient 
Greece. These celebrations used music and in- 
toxicants to lull partygoers into a sexual trance. 
Social inhibitions were shed as bodies twisted 
with abandon. At tod: Dionysian warehouse 
parties and boho gatherings, sexual assault is a 
danger—drugs can be used to lower inhibitions 
or induce blackouts. Yet there are positive facets 
of drugs and sex that don’t see the media light: 
Many of us view drug use as an invaluable part of 
our self-exploration, sexual and otherwise. We 
consensually engage in drugged-up sex and find 
it transformative, romantic, ethereal. 

So as I lay in bed, drying out from the pre- 
vious night’s Bushwick rave, I posed your 
question to a few of New York’s finest party 


sy RACHEL 
RABBIT WHITE 


girls. We decided on a few rules of thumb for a 
straight man looking to explore drugs and sex 
with a mind toward enthusiastically consent- 
ing and transcending. 

(1) A gentleman has drugs to offer: Always 
keep a few options on hand, with enough to 
share. As an engineering undergrad at Har- 
vard, Stefanie kept a vial of LSD in her bag at 
all times. “It was a great pickup line,” she says. 
“ГА go to parties and offer to dose back at my 
place. Men, women—it was sexier than asking 
them back for adrink.” 

(2) Know your drugs—and your partner. Be- 
fore dosing on a date, it's best to know the drug 
and how you react to it. (Ideally you've already 
tried the batch.) Note the many types of drug 
sex: the psychic playfulness of LSD, the deep 
joy and fated connections of 
molly, the Lynchian fever dream 
of ketamine, the lucid fluidity 
of opiates. Also know what your 
date likes sexually. Leila, a software engineer 
who throws research-chemical parties at her 
New York estate, asks that guests familiarize 
themselves with the concept of “set and set- 
ting”: Scope your surroundings and your men- 
tal state, and assess your comfort level before 
dosing. Leila has one rule: “Don't offer a drug to 
a woman if she isn't already familiar with it. 1£ 
you mention a drug and she replies with an an- 
ecdote about that time she did it in high school 
and it was awesome, then you can offer.” 

(3) Let her lead. “Drugs are communal, but 
they also pull you deeper into yourself,” says 
Monica, a poet. “It's about losing yourself in 
your own interior and in each other.” And since 
you want her to be present, ask that she direct 
the hookup. Let her be the boss. 

Questions? E-mail advisor@playboy.com. 


ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE PERRY 


Timepieces International Inc, 12800 N.W. South River Drive, Medley, FL 33178 


The Daniel Steiger 


TUNGSTEN ECLIPSE 
Men's Watch: $199 

Ladies Watch: $199 

Set Price: $339 


TIMES NEXT REVOLUTION 


he properties of tungsten make this the perfect metal for watch making. A rating of between 

8 and 9 on the Mohs scale of hardness, sitting just below Diamonds means it is extremely 
strong and scratch resistant. Tungsten is also able to take an extremely high polish giving it an 
attractive mirror like finish. A Yellow gold fused stainless steel case and link hold the entire crea- 
tion together, whilst a precision quartz movement works silently away under a designer grey dial 
emblazoned with 4 of our flawless created Diamonds. Magnificent presentation case. 


CALL NOW TOLL FREE 24/7 ON 1 
AND QUOTE PROMO CODE: 


Or order online at www.timepiecesusa.com/pl66and enter PL66TU 


DANIEL STEIGER 
30 DAY MONEY 
BACK GUARANTEE 


74% OFF 


74% OFF 


SRP 


NOW ON 
$199 


EACH 
PLUS SHIPPING & HANDLING 
(YOU SAVE $560) 


PLAYBOY 


Good Worth 


BOBBY LONG - OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA - 11:34AM 
THEGOODWORTH.COM 


2016 Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. Playboy and the Rabbit Head Design are trademarks of Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. and used under license by Pile, Co. LTD. 


THE RABBIT HOLE 


ON SUPERHEROES 


——— HOLY BOX OFFICE! 


The 10 top-grossing superhero films (since 
1978) have taken in more than $4 billion in U.S. 
theaters alone, according to Box Office Mojo: 


8623іп.... Т/еАгепдегв........... 2012 
$535m.... TheDarkKnight ........ 2008 
$459m . . . . Avengers: AgeofUltron.... 2015 
$448m.... The Dark Knight Rises .... 2012 
$409m.« «a ПОМЕТ a рено se 2013 
$404 т.... Spider-Man............ 2002 
$374 т .... Spider-Man2 .......... 2004 
$SEDT is DORADO ives ses sw дее 2016 
$337m .... Spider-Man3 .......... 2007 
$333m.... Guardians of the Galaxy . . . 2014 
—— HOLY KRYPTONITE! 


Kryptonite is more than 
just a green rock that de- 
bilitates Superman. For 
example: WHITE KRYP- 
TONITE damages plant 
life; SILVER KRYPTONITE 
causes hallucinations; 
PINK KRYPTONITE turns 
Kryptonians gay; RED-GOLD KRYPTONITE 
causes temporary amnesia; and GOLD KRYP- 
TONITE removes superpowers permanently. 


—— HOLY CENSORSHIP! 


In 1954 the comic book industry adopted a 
comprehensive ethical code that mandated, 
for example: “In every instance good shall 
triumph over evil.” | “Walking dead, torture, 
vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism 
and werewolfism are prohibited.” | “Females 
shall be drawn realistically without exagger- 
ation of any physical qualities.” | “Wherever 
possible, good grammar shall be employed.” 
Over the years, the code was relaxed until it 
was finally abandoned in 2011. 


sy BEN SCHOTT 


“Holy here we go again!”—ROBIN 


—— HOLY MISCELLANY! 


Twelve-year-old Billy Batson turns into Captain 
Marvel with the conjuration shazam, anacronym 
for: SOLOMON (wisdom), HERCULES (strength), 
ATLAS (stamina), ZEUS (power), ACHILLES (cour- 
age) and MERCURY (speed). ¥ According to Peter 
Coogan of the Institute for Comics Studies, su- 
pervillains come in five types and four subtypes: 


MONSTER nań d are e.g., the Lizard 
ENEMY COMMANDER ... Dr. Doom; Red Skull 
MADSGIENTIST isa бизе Lex Luthor 
CRIMINAL MASTERMIND. ..... . the Kingpin 
INVERTED SUPERHERO ......... the Joker 
“АЛЛЕН ren e ТҮРҮҮ the Super-Skrull 
~ EVIL GOD. .. . ee. Thanos 
~ FEMME FATALE. .... . . . Black Widow 
-SUPER-HENCHMAN . . . . the Absorbing Man 


Although the word superhero predates comics 
by some 40 years, it rapidly became a prized 
commercial asset. In 1981, after decades of 
wrangling, Marvel and DC Comics obtained 
a joint trademark (#1179067) for the term. 
KRYPTONITE is trademarked by DC Comics 
(toys and clothing) and Schlage Lock Сош- 
pany (bicycle locks). Y Below are some pioneers 
of superhero cultural diversity: 


[da Wa i. the Green Turtle (1944) 
. the Black Panther (1966) 


Gay.. Jean-Paul Beaubier (1992) 
Lesbian хүл às Batwoman (2006) 
Muslim «usos ЭРЭЭ Simon Baz (2012) 


— —— —HOLY EPOCHS! — —— 


The history of comic books—and superheroes— 
is divided into a number of epochs: 


GOLDEN АСЕ · 1938-1955 
Superman - Batman - Captain America : 
Wonder Woman - Captain Marvel 


SILVER AGE : 1956-1969 
The Flash - Batwoman - Spider-Man - Thor - the 
Black Panther · Iron Man : the Incredible Hulk 


BRONZE АСЕ · 1970-1985 
Green Lantern/Green Arrow · Tiger-Man · 
Wolverine - Spider-Woman 


MODERN AGE : 1986-PRESENT 
Hellboy - Elektra: Watchmen - Spawn - 
Deadpool - Batman: The Dark Knight Returns 


——HOLY SUPERPOWERS! 


Outpacing speeding bullets and leaping tall 
buildings are passé. To make a real mark, you 
need truly outlandish superpowers, such as: 


MULTIPLE MAN clones 
himself at will. ¥ mar- 
ROW grows extra bones 
to deploy as weapons. У 
ANIMAL MAN assumes 
the characteristics of 
any beast. Ұ MATTER- 
. EATER LAD consumes 
anything without ill 
effects. Y JOHNNY BLAZE (pictured) forces hisvic- 
tims to suffer every moment of pain they've ever 
inflicted via his penance stare. Y CYPHER speaks 
all languages and decrypts all codes. Y STRAW 
MAN is immune to all damage (except, problem- 
atically, fire). Y TAR BABY oozes a permanently 
adhesive mucilage. Y BIG BERTHA expands her 
physique from svelte to morbidly obese. Y squ1R- 
REL GIRL has an empathic bond with squirrels. 


ғ 


аг жн 


HOLY "KER-" WORDS IN THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY: Ker-blam! - Ker-blam-er-lam-er-lam! - Ker-boom! - Ker-chunk! - Ker-flip! - Ker-flop! - Ker-flummox! - Ker-plunk! - Кет-титр! - 


Ker-slam! - Ker-slap! - Ker-slash! - Ker-slosh! - Ker-slush! - Ker-smash! - Ker-souse! - Ker-splash! - Ker-swash! - Ker-swosh! - Ker-thump! - Ker-umph! - Ker-wallop! - Ker-whop! - Ker-woosh! 


29 


гоа 


ROSE 


BYRNE 


The Australian actress reveals her secret X-Men 
mutation, talks women in comedy and steals our bacon 


Q1: X-Men: Apocalypse is your second turn play- 
ing CIA agent Moira MacTaggert. How much of 
the surrounding geekdom do you participate in? 
BYRNE: When we did First Class, an 
X-Men expert came to the set to talk to 
each of us about our characters. It was 
phenomenal. He was the ultimate X-Men 
geek. He had massive folders about every 
character. He came into my trailer and 
talked me through Moira’s backstory 
and the evolution of her character. He 
was brilliant. It was like he’d been har- 
vesting all this X-Men information. 
@2: Does having an encyclopedia of Moira's 
backstory help or hinder your performance? 
BYRNE: It’s a bit of both. As an actor it’s 
always great to get as much information 
as you can. My character went to another 
planet for awhile and came back and had a 
son who was half human and half mutant. 
Thenshediedandcamebacktolife. There's 
a lot of context. Obviously they take only 
small strands of these stories for the film. 


sy ALEX SCORDELIS 


Q3: X-Men: First Class took place in the early 
19605. The new one, Apocalypse, is set in the 
198056. Is it just us, or did Moira not age at all? 
BYRNE: Twenty years have passed, and 
yeah, she looks pretty good. Everyone 
joked about it on set. Does time not apply 
to these characters? The mutants can 
probably get away with not aging, but 
I’m a mortal. Moira might have a good 
plastic surgeon. 
Q4: So you're not one of the X-Men, but in 
real life, is there a quality about you that you'd 
describe as a mutation? 
BYRNE: I have remarkably small ears. 
It’s almost a mutation how small they 
are. They look slightly weird, but I can 
hear very well. 
Qs: You already had geek cred from Star Wars. 
With the ubiquity of The Force Awakens, did you 
have any flashbacks to your role in Star Wars: 
Episode II—Attack of the Clones? 
BYRNE: I’m leaving. This interview is 
over. [laughs] You know what brought 


me back to that world? Working with 
James Earl Jones on Broadway in You 
Can't Take It With You. There were рео- 
ple waiting for him by the stage door 
every night because of Darth Vader. 
That was a trip down memory lane: see- 
ing the Star Wars obsession nightly. It 
was extraordinary being a part of that. 
I mean, talk about the fans! I have one 
line in that movie. It's a stretch to say I 
have acharacter at all. Buttothisdaygo 
percent of the fan mail I get is from Star 
Wars—90 percent—to sign pictures of 
me in a purple snood. 
@6: You and Bobby Cannavale became parents 
for the first time earlier this year. It's a cliché that 
once you become a parent you start noticing the 
ways you're similar to your own parents. Has that 
happened to you? 
BYRNE: Oh, I noticed that long before. As 
I started getting older, I began noticing. 
Luckily, I like my parents, so it's cool. 
But it's funny how it manifests itself. 


PHOTOGRAPHY By GUY AROCH 


go 


My parents are very no-nonsense Aus- 
tralians: They don't like fanfare or fuss- 
iness. They're incredibly self-sufficient 
and curious. I hope I'm like them in 
those ways. Australians are real wander- 
ers; we're well traveled because we're so 
isolated. That's something I'm proud of 
in being an Australian. 

Q7: Neither of your parents has a show business 

background. Were they supportive of your deci- 

sion to pursue acting at a young age? 
BYRNE: They were very encouraging. 
They wanted me to go to college. I went 
to university in Sydney and got my de- 
gree. It was lucky that I was getting 
work from the start. I started taking 
acting classes when I was eight, so it 
was always part of my personality as a 
child, beingapartofdrama and acting. 
It wasn’t out of the blue that I started 
working once I was of age. 

Q8: How hard is it for an Australian to relocate 

to Hollywood? 
BYRNE: I went to Los Angeleswhen Iwas 
18 or 19 and spent time out there. I went 
back and forth for about three years be- 
fore I got a job in America. I definitely 
wasn't an overnight success. And I 
didn'ttake to it at first. Іп my own naive 
way I felt prepared for L.A., but nothing 
can ever really prepare you for L.A. It's 
such a strange place. Even geographi- 
cally it's got such an odd layout. I enjoy 
it now, but when I was in my 20s it was 
overwhelming. I stayed out in Venice. 
These days I like the Eastside, Los Feliz. 
Really wherever they put me up. Wher- 
ever somebody pays the check. 

Q9: You studied acting at the Atlantic Theater 

Company in New York. Does that formal train- 

ing help when you're improvising in a Judd 

Apatow comedy? 
BYRNE: I've gotten more confident 
with improvising. I definitely don't fall 
into the category of Melissa McCarthy 
and Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph 
and Seth Meyers. My God, Seth is the 
funniest improviser. As with anything, 
the more I do it, the more confident I 


get. But I always prepare for scenes. I 
never wing it.... Is it nasty and rude if I 
steal your bacon? 
Q10: Not at all. With the first Neighbors movie, 
critics noted that your character, Kelly, was just 
as bonkers as those played by Seth Rogen and 
Zac Efron, and how uncommon that is for a 
comedic female lead. It seemed shocking that 
it was arare occurrence. Is that what drew you 
to the part? 
BYRNE: Absolutely. From day one, when I 
came onboard, the director, Nick Stoller, 
and I wanted to change that archetype. 
In these comedies the woman is tradi- 
tionally the killjoy. We really wanted to 
turn that stereotype on its head. As ir- 
responsible as Seth’s character is, we 
wanted my character to be equally irre- 
sponsible. They’re a team. And another 
thing—and this isn’t a radical thing, but 
itis in the context of these films—is that 
they have a great marriage. They’re on 
the same page. They enjoy each other, 
and sex, and they’re best friends. 
Q11: From Get Him to the Greek to Neighbors 2, 
you've become a go-to comedic actor. What 
comedies did you gravitate toward as a kid in 
Australia? 
BYRNE: My family sat around and 
watched Fawlty Towers together. I 
mean, Basil Fawlty, what a character! 
The precision of the physical comedy, 
John Cleese’s performance, the dia- 
logue...it’s beautifully orchestrated. It’s 
mad, but it has the comedy down to a 
science. That was definitely a huge in- 
fluence. And Seinfeld. It was huge in 
Australia, much bigger than Friends. I 
love Seinfeld. When I came to America, I 
got hooked on watching Saturday Night 
Live. I was fascinated by Kristen Wiig 
anytime she came onscreen. 
Q12: You worked with Wiig on Bridesmaids. 
Looking back, that movie was a significant cul- 
tural moment. Did it feel like that at the time? 
BYRNE: In the middle of it yowre just 
living day to day, but when I look back, 
it does seem like something really spe- 
cial. And you hope it paves the way for 


more movies like that. People like Paul 
Feig and Judd Apatow have championed 
female storytellers, whether it’s in Girls 
or Bridesmaids. They’re bucking con- 
vention, and we need more people like 
that. But promoting Bridesmaids was 
an eye-opening experience for me. 
Q13: What was eye-opening about it? 

BYRNE: With Bridesmaids, all the press 
focused on was “Wow, they’re all women, 
and they’re funny!” You would never say 
that about a comedy with all guys. No 
one would say, “They’re men, and they’re 
funny!” We were really treated like 


MOST OF MY FAN MAIL IS FROM 
STAR WARS—TO SIGN PICTURES 
OF ME IN A PURPLE SNOOD. 


за 


aliens in the press. I was so naive I didn't 
even think about it during the press tour. 
I didn’t realize that was all anyone would 
want to talk about—that we were women. 
Maybe Kristen, Melissa and Maya were 
prepared for those questions because 
they’re more seasoned comedic рег- 
formers, but I wasn't. It's something I 
wish we didn't have to talk about. 
Q14: Your X-Men co-star Jennifer Lawrence ad- 
dressed Hollywood's wage gap in an essay for 
Lenny Letter, writing that she's paid much less 
than “lucky people with dicks.” You've spoken 
out about the wage gap as well. Are steps being 
taken to correct this? 
BYRNE: I think the steps are beginning 
to be taken. The EEOC [Equal Employ- 
ment Opportunity Commission] has its 
investigation, which is extraordinary, 
that this is finally being taken seriously 
as legitimate discrimination. It's nec- 
essary. Jen is such a powerful presence, 
putting herself on the line and talking 
about her experiences as a woman and 


the differences in pay. Just starting the 
conversation is helping to shift perspec- 
tives. It's the same with the racial issue 


at the Oscars this year. My friends who 
recently went through pilot season are 
saying that the entire focus is on diver- 
sity in casting, which seems to be a di- 
rect response to the conversation about 
the Oscars. My hope is the more we talk 
about it now, the less we'll have to talk 
about it over time. 

Q15: As an Australian, what are your thoughts on 

the American presidential election? 
BYRNE: I'm fascinated, just riveted. 
My parents were here for a month, 
and we watched every debate, followed 
every poll. My dad's a punter, you know, 
a betting man. А the bettors online 
had Marco Rubio as the favorite, so it 
was crazy to see how it's turned out. 
But coming from Australia, the politi- 
cal world here is so much larger than 
life. This whole Donald Trump thing 
is such an unusual phenomenon. Aus- 


tralian politics are like asedative com- 
pared to this spectacle. 

Q16: It's interesting that you mention your dad 

watching the odds. Remember last fall when stat- 

istician Nate Silver gave Trump a five percent 

chance of winning the nomination? 
BYRNE: It's unprecedented. The differ- 
ence in tone between the two parties 
in the debates is so striking. When you 
see the desperation in the candidates 
who are losing and how they fight to 
stay alive in the race, it's an interesting 
character study. As a performer, it's 
fascinating to watch. 

017: Do you view the election with concern? 
BYRNE: Ifthere's a certain outcome. Cit- 
izens of the world are concerned about 
this, not just Americans. It is a terrify- 
ing prospect, sure. But I love America. 
The opportunities I've had here are ex- 
traordinary. The people I've met here 
have changed my life in so many ways. 

Q18: You've worked with Bobby Cannavale on 

three films: Spy, Adult Beginners and Annie. Is it 

challenging to act with the person you love? 

BYRNE: Not particularly. I imagine it 
would be more of a challenge if one of 
us were directing the other. As with any 
creative endeavor, you want the best 
for them. So if it's a failure, or if it's 
not going well, it can be heartbreaking. 
When we're working on something to- 
gether, the stakes can feel pretty high. 

Q19: You've been in comedies. You did five sea- 

sons of Damages with Glenn Close. You've done 

period films, sci-fi, horror. Is there a new genre 

out there you'd like to tackle? 
BYRNE: I've been doing more comedies 
lately, and I would like to do more dra- 
mas. I've done dramas in the past, like 
Damages, but I'd like to take what I've 
learned doing comedic work and apply 
it to dramas. And I'd been dying to do 
more theater and was thrilled to do 
You Can't Take It With You. I'm doing 
David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow in Aus- 
tralia at the end of the year. I'm such a 
big theatergoer, and obviously Bobby is, 
you know, Bobby Broadway. We're acou- 
ple of theater geeks. 

Q20: So what show should we see on Broad- 

way right now? 

BYRNE: Uh, Hamilton? I mean, come on. 
The soundtrack is on in our house all the 
time. I went with Glenn Close. I'm just 
going to go ahead and drop her name. 
She's the only reason 1 got a ticket. You 
can score hard-to-get tickets to great 
shows when you know Glenn Close. № 


33 


| dd 
Ž 


The Most Disturbing Movie 
You'll See This Year 


Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn finds his feminine side with The Neon Demon 


Squirming your way through his latest film, 
you start to wonde Nicolas Winding Refn 
messing with us for his own perverse plea- 
sure? Worshipped by some and mocked by 
others for making gleefully violent, macho, 
stylized and self-referential movies that have 
lent both gravitas and street cred to Tom 
Hardy (Bronson) and Ryan Gosling (Drive, 
Only God Forgives), the Gopenhagen-born 
provocateur is about to make heads explode 
with his new one—a harrowing about-face 
called The Neon Demon. 

The film, in which a young beauty hits Hol- 
lywood and gets devoured by fame (in more 
ways than one), is the most violent Refn out- 
ing yet, and the most personal. Strange, con- 
sidering the female-forward cast. “I believe 
every man has a 16-year-old girl inside him, 
and I wanted to make a movie about her,” Refn 
explains. “In this movie, I step out in the phys- 
ical body of a 16-year-old girl, played by Elle 
Fanning, as I'd done before in the male bodies 


of Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling. For me, it'sa 
whole new canvas of possibilities.” 
Unhinged, gut-wrenching, perched on a 
knife-edge of elevated horror and high camp, 
The Neon Demon stars the gorgeous Fanning 
as an aspiring model overpowered by the en- 
vious bloodlust she unleashes in youth- and 
beauty-obsessed dolls played by Jena Malone, 
Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee. “Гш very 
much dominated by women,” says Refn, who 
instructed Fanning to prepare for the role by 
watching Valley of the Dolls and reading film- 
maker Kenneth Anger's notoriously sordid Hol- 
lywood Babylon books. *Having only ever had 
one girlfriend, I only know one woman. You 
could say I came straight out of my mother and 
into my wife. Having a very beautiful wife and 
two daughters, I had become very interested 
in the insanity of beauty—insanity because 
as the power of beauty in society continues 
to rise, the longevity of how we define beauty 
continues to shrink. What happens when the 


obsession with, power of and need for beauty 
keep growing as our perception of the length of 
beauty recedes?” Cannibalism, necrophilia, 
predatory lust, obsessive-compulsive cosmetic 
surgeries and disembowelment, that's what— 
in the deranged art-house-meets-grind-house 
world of The Neon Demon. 

So why the detour, especially in the wake of 
rumors that Gosling was gearing up for a big- 
budget Refn-directed Logans Run remake? 
Turns out it was that inner 16-year-old girl 
screaming to be freed. “Тһе kind of fetishizing 
of masculinity and the male body that I did in 
Bronson, Valhalla Rising and Drive had peaked 
beyond homoeroticism,” Refn says. “I’ve wanted 
to make a horror movie with a female cast for 
years. After Drive, Iwanted to decompose every- 
thing, like when Lou Reed made one ofthe great- 
est rock albums, Transformer, and then had to 
make the distortion of Metal Machine Music. 
That's what was next in his creative evolution. 
This is what's next in mine."—Stephen Rebello 


34 


WeatherTech 


American Manufacturing Done Right! 


Laser Measured 


FloorLiner" 


Accessories Available for 


Order Now: 800-441-6287 


© 2016 by MacNeil IP LLC 


Acura - Audi - 
Isuzu - Jeep - 
Oldsmobile - 


BMW - Buick - Cadillac - Chevrolet - Chrysler - Dodge - Ferrari - Ford - СМС. Honda - Hummer - Hyundai - Infiniti 
Kia - Land Rover - Lexus - Lincoln - Maserati - Mazda - Mercedes-Benz - Mercury - Mini - Mitsubishi - Nissan 
Plymouth - Pontiac - Porsche - Saab - Saturn - Scion - Subaru - Suzuki - Toyota - Volkswagen - Volvo - and more! 


American Customers I» Canadian Customers European Customers 


WeatherTech.com WeatherTech.ca WeatherTechEurope.com 


SPORTS 


oes 
ockey 
eeda 
igger 
et? 


With towering goalies and shrinking 
scores, the NHL confronts a crisis 


Last November, Chicago Blackhawks backup 
goaltender Scott Darling, a bearlike 27-year- 
old who stands six feet, six inches tall, offered 
a simple yet thorny truth to the Chicago Sun- 
Times: “Fans want to see goals.” 

With the average goalie height exceeding 
six-foot-two, up almost three inches from the 
1994-1995 season, and the cage remaining 
at its standard 48 by 72 inches, the National 
Hockey League is staring down a progressive 
scoring drought. 

The average number of goals per game dur- 
ing the 1992-1993 season was 7.256; through 
January 4, the 2015-2016 season had an aver- 
age of 5.4.01. As professional hock rambles 
to compete for eyes and ears with the other 
major sports in most markets, changes are all 
but inevitable. 

A controversial fix took center ice last 
November when, during a press conference, 
Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Bab- 
cock ran the numbers. 

“It's impossible to score,” he said. “All you've 
got to do is a math equation. You go to 1980, 
when the puck went in the net. You get the av- 
erage size of the goalies in the NHL and the 
average size of the net. You keep growing the 
net bigger, and that would make the game the 
same. We change the game every year because 
we don’t want to change the game.” 

Former NHL center and current NBC 
sports analyst Jeremy Roenick agrees that big 


You shall not pass: Jacob Markstrom, the six-foot-six goaltender of the Vancouver Canucks. 


goalies pose a big scoring problem, but unlike 
Babcock, he doesn’t want the solution to come 
off the cage. “I’m a traditionalist,” he says. “I 
love the history of the game, and I don’t be- 
lieve that changing the nets or making the ice 
surface bigger is going to do much more to en- 
hance scoring. 

Roenick may take comfort in knowing the 
nets won't be getting any wider—not yet, any- 
way. “To have that for next season would be a 
stretch,” says Kay Whitmore, NHL director of 
hockey operations and goaltender equipment. 
“It's something that gets played up after a cer- 
tain team has trouble scoring. To deflect crit- 
icism from his team, the coach says the nets 
should be bigger, and then it kind of takes on 
a life of its own.” 

There is one thing that the NHL can shrink. 
Whitmore, a former goalie, announced in March 
that goalie padding will change next season “to 
fit the goalies’ body size a little better based on 


how big they really are.” It wouldn't be the first 
time: The league made players’ leg pads shorter 
for the 2013-2014 season. 

Among fans, the general consensus aligns 
with Roenick's traditionalism. So what hap- 
pens if another reduction in pad size fails to 
boost scores? Wider nets may make hockey 
more appealing to potential fans, but in the 
process it would produce a completely dif- 
ferent game. Its hard-hitting tightness, es- 
pecially in the playoff season, would quickly 
become a thing of the past. Instead of care- 
fully setting up quality scoring chances, play- 
ers would be free to shoot from all over the ice 
as soon as they touch the puck. The venerable 
Stanley Cup would be won merely by the team 
that shoots the most. 

The result? Well, let's put it in more famil- 
iar terms: Would football fans still turn outen 
masse if the NFL brought the end zone in 20 
yards?— Scott King 


36 


_ ama 
2 ім rz 


CHECK OUT THE NEW 


PLAYBOY.COM 


Z 
< 


ANA 
A > 
T 


YOU'RE WELCOME. 


' ; 
у 
tr 
5 

u 

indi 

IC 

IS; 

u. 

m 

e 


жи; 
si 

"ud 

ia 

at 

T 

pl 


TV 


Roadies, the new Showtime series created by Cameron Crowe, 


follows the managers, guitar techs, bouncers, bus drivers 
and miscellaneous crew of a touring arena-rock band, and 
while the music-industry milieu owes much to Crowe's clas- 
sic films Singles and Almost Famous, its hard-R treatment is 
much closer to his great early screenplays The Wild Life and 
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. There are expletives. There 
is nudity. There is a groupie having sex with a microphone. 


But the series is notable for another reason: 
It is the latest in a recent proliferation of TV 
shows that focus on the music industry, fol- 
lowing network hits Nashville and Empire, as 
well as FX's Sex&Drugs&Rock&Rolland HBO's 
Vinyl. This August, Netflix premieres Baz 
Luhrmann's The Get Down, about the birth of 
New York City hip-hop. 

It's no coincidence these shows have arisen 
during one of the most turbulent times in the 
history of the music industry. As Lucious Lyon 
pronounces in the pilot episode of Empire, 
“Times have changed. The internet has de- 
stroyed the musician's ability to make money.” 
That was in January 2015, and since then 
things have only gotten bleaker. 

According to the Recording Industry As- 
sociation of America, physical CD sales fell 
17 percent in 2015, while album and single 
downloads dropped five percent and 13 percent, 
respectively —numbers that would have been far 
worse had Adele not released her album 25 in late 
November. (In six weeks it sold 8 million copies, 
accounting for three percent of total album sales 
in the U.S. in 2015.) Meanwhile, streaming con- 
tinues to cannibalize the industry. Subscriptions 
to sites such as Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL 
were up a combined 52 percent last year, and 
when streams goup, artist payments go down. In 
2015, the per-stream rate dropped 24 percent, to 
$0.00506. And that’s what the label makes. 

For decades, musicians bashed the greedy 
executives, soulless bean counters and cor- 
rupt radio programmers who ran the record 


industry, from Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” 
to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime.” 
The internet was supposed to serve as the great 
democratizer, rendering extinct the parasitic 
middlemen in their towering corner offices. 
And so it has. Who needs A&R when you can 
get discovered on YouTube and SoundCloud? 
What's the point of a promotions department 
in the age of the surprise release? Why bother 
with payola when no one listens to the radio? 
But the truth is the middlemen didn’t go 
away; they’re just different middlemen now. 
They wear hoodies instead of suits, and they 
moved from corner offices to airy loft spaces 
or eco-friendly corporate campuses. And they 
got even greedier. The website Information Is 
Beautiful has calculated that a signed artist 
needs 1,117,021 monthly streams on 
Spotify just to make the U.S. mini- 
mum wage, a target that only two 
percent of artists on the service can 
hit. And let’s not forget that the website Ge- 
nius (formerly Rap Genius) raised more than 
$50 million for posting annotated song lyrics. 
It took five years and the threat of a lawsuit by 
the National Music Publishers Association for 
the site to finally sign a licensing agreement. 
Incomparison, there’s something quaint about 
the old ways of the industry—which in part ex- 
plains all these new TV shows. (It also explains 
why the one nonstreaming sector that increased 
in 2015 was viny] sales: up 32 percent, better than 
any year since 1988.) Watching Lucious Lyon 
conspire to steal artists away from a rival label or 


sy SEAN 
MANNING 


Vinyl’s Richie Finestra ply a 
DJ with cocaine in exchange 
for more airplay of a Donny 
Osmond record is sexier than 
today’s actual music indus- 
try, where shady moves are 
more likely to involve algo- 
rithms and the drug of choice 
is Red Bull. The premise of 
Roadies is itself a commen- 
tary on the industry today: 
With less money to be made 
from record sales, artists 
have been forced to tour more. 

But these shows aren't 
simply eulogizing a dying industry. They’re also 
throwing it a lifeline by doing what was once the 
job of radio and MTV: introducing audiences to 
new artists. Vinyl’s opening theme is by emerg- 
ing alt-country star Sturgill Simpson, and the 
show has featured young artists including Jess 
Glynne, Alex Newell and the British rock duo 
Royal Blood. Actors Jussie Smollett and Bryshere 
Y. Gray (a.k.a. Yazz the Greatest) both signed 
record deals with Columbia after their break- 
throughs on Empire—whose soundtrack debuted 
at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. Nash- 
ville used award-winning songwriter and pro- 
ducer T Bone Burnett to craft the show’s early 
music. Roadies will feature cameos by real-life 
acts, and Crowe told the Television Critics As- 
sociation earlier this year that he sees the series 
largely as “a great radio station.” 

One of those acts is the Head and 
the Heart. The Seattle-based indie- 
folk artists, who appear in the show’s 
pilot, have also done а stint on the CW’s Hart of 
Dixie. “The importance of TV introducing peo- 
ple to new music has a far greater reach than 
people my age want to give it credit for,” says 
singer-guitarist Jon Russell. 

Although he enjoyed watching the Roadies 
pilot—“It made me laugh out loud and some- 
times cringe at how cliché some things really are 
in our world” —Russell admits he isn't usually a 
fan of TV series based on the music industry. 

“I have not seen any of those shows you men- 
tioned,” he says. *I get enough of it firsthand. 
Too much sometimes.” п 


39 


MUSIC 


Meet the Future of EDM 


Three acts prove DJ David Guetta's proclamation that the genre “had to die so it could come back strong” 


Light a glow-stick руге for the corporate-coined, neon-tinged initialism “EDM.” With industry behemoth SFX filing for bankruptcy, bottle-poppers 
Swedish House Mafia announcing early retirement and Las Vegas club owners second-guessing celebrity-DJ culture, it'sno wonder Guetta released the 
tongue-in-cheek track “The Death of EDM.” But electronic music still dominates American festivals and raves, informing virtually every genre inits sphere. 
All summer long, new noise from savvy artists like the three featured here will drive the ever-diversifying evolution of electronic sound.—Jeff Weiss 


NOSAJ THING 


Back in the late 1990s, when other southern 
California adolescents still abided by strict 
subcultural boundaries, a 12-year-old Korean 
American kid from Cerritos named Jason 
Chung picked up the turntables, turned on 
the computer and instinctively fused G-funk 
hip-hop, jungle, art rock and British IDM (in- 
telligent dance music). Nosaj (Jason spelled 
backward) emerged as a breakout producer 
from L.A.'s beat-scene hub, Low End Theory; 
he has worked with Chance the Rapper, Kend- 
rick Lamar and Kid Cudi, among many others. 
His latest Innovative Leisure EP, No Reality, 
created partly on an iPad, blurs boundaries be- 
tween genre, technological format and even 
sensory perception. “Everyone is unsure what's 
goingto happen with virtual reality, Oculus Rift 
and all these new platforms that change how you 
see the world,” Chung says. “To me, No Reality is 
doing our own thing with no rules.” 


CLASSIXX 

Despite the vintage connotations of their name, 
few define contemporary eclecticism quite like 
Classixx. What says postmodernity more than 
a millennial duo, raised in the Brady Bunch 
suburbs of Los Angeles and influenced by soul- 
ful Chicago house and 1970s disco, whose latest 
album, Faraway Reach, was recorded in South 
Africa and other spots around the world and 
features T-Pain, How to Dress Well and Passion 
Pit? “Our first record (20135 Hanging Gardens] 
was just us and our immediate friends,” says 
Michael David (at left above), who spent his 
early years in apartheid-era Johannesburg be- 
fore moving to southern California, where he 
met future bandmate Tyler Blake. “For this one, 
we wanted to collaborate with artists of differ- 
ent styles and expand on what we’d done in the 
past.” That simple statement speaks for much of 
the best dance music happening right now. You 
can’t kill what you can’t pin down. 


ALUNAGEORGE 

Envision Janet Jackson as an art school dropout 
raised on reggae and Radiohead and you'll start 
tounderstand AlunaGeorge. Aluna Francis, the 
band’s half-Indian, half-Jamaican lead singer, 
is one of the most vital voices in dance music. 
(The group’s other member, producer George 
Reid, opts for a low profile.) That’s her vocal on 
“White Noise” by fellow U.K. sensation Disclo- 
sure, and the duo has collaborated with Skril- 
lex, Diplo, Flume and DJ Snake—whose remix 
of AlunaGeorge’s “You Know You Like It” hit 
number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 last year. 
Some predict that with its just-released sopho- 
more album, J Remember, the band’s efferves- 
cent take on house, Jamaican ragga and noirish 
glitchy beats will change the face of pop. Fran- 
cis aims for something more personal. “We use 
music when we need to feel something,” she 
says. *I want these songs to be the rhythm to 
those critical life moments.” 


40 


Bamford x Playboy 
Limited to Four 


Y PLAYBOY SHOP com 


COLUMN 


FRANGOFILE 


Author Tom Bissell on religion, drugs, video games and the 
wild legacy of the historically bad cult film The Room 


JAMES FRANCO: You spent nine 

years working and traveling, includ- 

ing to Jerusalem and Rome, for your 

new nonfiction book, Apostle. What 

were you looking for? 

TOM BISSELL: The framework of 

the book is me visiting the supposed 

tombs of the 12 apostles, but it's really 

about early Christianity and how 

early Christian storytelling worked. 

The foundation these storytellers set 

down reverberates across thousands 

of years and still affects the way we 

think today. Every American city 

is filled with churches named after 

these 12 guys who lived 2,000 years 

ago. Trying to figure out how their 

stories had such sticking power be- 

came my focus; that’s what the book 

is about. And I'm not religious. That's 

e other thing I always hasten to 

point out. It’s not a book by a believer; 

it's a book by a nonbeliever. 

FRANCO: You stopped working on 

Apostle to write Extra Lives, a book 

about video games. Why the shift? 

BISSELL: I got really depressed about Apostle, 
because at first I didn’t know what the fuck I 
was writing about. I was amassing pages and 
reading and writing thousands of pages of 
notes. I would sink into despondency about the 
project. But then BioShock came out. I would 
think, Oh, ГИ just play for a couple of hours 
and go back to writing. Then it would be 10 P.M. 
and I'd be like, Oh my God, what have I done? 
Then I discovered cocaine, which is great for 
writing frantically for an hour, playing Call of 
Duty online for four hours and then going back 
to write for an hour. I was alone a lot in Esto- 
nia, which is where much of this went down. My 
cocaine hookup was a, shall we say, disreputa- 
ble young lady with a mobster boyfriend. She 
helped me realize I needed to leave Estonia and 
stop doing drugs. We were fucked-up on drugs, 
lying in bed, and she said, “My boyfriend, if 
he knew about us, would kill you.” I remember 
lying there with her thinking, He would kill 
me. He would actually kill me. That’s when I 


= 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVE MA 


BY 
JAMESFRANCO 


thought, I have to get the fuck out of here; this 
is really bad. I’m not writing. I’m fucked-up all 
the time and spending 15 hours a day playing 
video games. I've got togo. Sothe great tonic for 
me with video games was actually becoming a 
video-game-industry professional. Now I play 
them a fraction as much as I used to. 
FRANCO: In Extra Lives you say the book 
isn't meant to be a comparison between video 
games and other art forms. Do you feel the 
same way about video games now that you've 
actually worked in creating them? 

BISSELL: I used to think the promise of video 
games was the narrative possibilities. But I 
don't think that's true anymore. The story is 
one tiny piece of the artfulness of games. This 
will sound stupid, but I'm going to say it any- 
way: Setting up combat encounters in an ac- 
tion game is a real art form—where enemies 
come from, how you place the geometry in the 
level, where you get firing lines. Thatisasuper 
interesting art form. 


FRANCO: You also discuss the idea of 
*ludonarrative dissonance.” 
BISSELL: That's when the game tells 
you the character you're controlling is 
a wonderful person who cares deeply 
about doing the right thing, but the 
gameplay involves shooting people in 
the face. It’s a core problem of gam- 
ing. The ludonarrative is the narra- 
tive that arises out of that. 
FRANCO: You co-wrote the book The 
Disaster Artist with Greg Sestero, 
who starred in The Room, areally bad 
movie that’s now a cult classic—P'm 
even making a movie about it. What 
drew you to The Room? 
BISSELL: It’s the only work of art that 
I know of—and I say this with fondness 
and affection—in which every single 
creative decision that was made was 
the wrong one. It's like a symphony in 
which every note is slightly wrong. 
FRANCO: Plenty of bad movies exist. 
What makes this one special? 
BISSELL: It’s this exuberant imag- 
ination that has no idea what it’s 
doing, working in a system that’s structurally 
designed to prevent people like the movie's 
director, Tommy Wiseau, from actually 
making movies. It’s different in literature, 
because self-published books appear all the 
time. The Tommy Wiseau of literature is a 
dime a dozen. The Tommy Wiseau of film 
doesn’t exist, because the Tommy Wiseau of 
film would have to convince literally a hun- 
dred other people to follow him. 
FRANCO: Yet there are a lot of outlets for bad 
movies. Just look on YouTube. 
BISSELL: But they’re boring. The Room isn’t 
boring. Every single moment is amazing. The 
Room is so watchable and entertaining. I’ve 
seen it a hundred fucking times, at least, and I 
would watch it again tonight. If you said, “Hey, 
let’s watch The Room,” I'd say, “Fuck, yeah. Let's 
do it,” and d probably notice something differ- 
ent. I think Tommy is a legitimate artist, and I 
say that with some reservation about the viabil- 
ity, or the respectability, ofthe termartist. M 


42 


7964 Melrose! Ave. 


www.moodsofnorway.com 


HUMOR 


Learning to 
Love Trump 
Supporters 
Through 
Graigslist 


It's hard to get a handle on the Donald Trump 
constituency. Since his campaign started, its 
daily contortions have dominated our news 
and social feeds with an ever-tightening focus 
on the rage-fueled pageantry of his rallies. 
The individuals are lost in the mob. 

But there's one area where we can glimpse the 
rawvulnerability ofthe people who make up the 
Trump camp: Craigslist Missed Connections. 

It turns out that Trump followers all over 
the country take advantage of the service, 
though some of the postings you'll find are 
obvious jokes or romantic fictions: “Slightly 
Overweight Redhead at Domino's That Gave 
Me a Footjob - там”; “Trump supporter who 
fell down stairs, dented car door with head — 
w4m”; “Compact woman with a subtle limp in 
Walmart Sunday night - m4w.” Then again, 
is anything really implausible in this waking 
fever dream of an election year? 

Here are some highlights—all presented sic, 
some accompanied by reminders of the violence 
that broke out at the same events where roman- 
tic sparks flew. Should any of these touch off 
an IRL flame, they’ll offer a disturbing reply 
tosome future child’s question, “Mom, how did 
youand Dad meet?” The answer, from beneath 
the cold shadow of an impossible wall, might 
well be this: “While we were making America 
great again."—Joe Veix 


No guns allowed in the arcade - w4m (Sunrise 
Mall, Corpus Christi, Texas) 

We talked about guns, knives and trump in 
your arcade. I wanted to ask you out on a date, 
but I was too shy. xo 


1-66 E Rest Stop - m4m (northern Virginia) 
You drove a red pick-up truck with a Trump 
sticker. 

I wanted to give you a hand. 


Blonde in Blue Dress and heels at Trump Rally - 
maw (Fayetteville, North Carolina) 

We were kind of walking beside each other, you 
had 2 girls with you, and you were in heels, Your 
heel actually got caught in a hole. 

You are the most beautiful woman 1 have 
ever seen. I hope you remember who I was, We 
parked across the road from the Charlie Rose 
expo center, and had to cross Mountain drive 
to get to our cars. 

I can't get you off my mind. 

[At this event, a78-year-old man in a cowboy 
hatnamed John McGraw punched a protester 
in the face. He later told an interviewer, “Next 
time we see him, we might have to kill him.”] 


trump rally deanna - m4w (Louisville, Kentucky) 
So we met at the trump rally. 1 believe your 
name was Deanna. Thought we had a connec- 
tion. You were very nice to my son i held onto 
your signs thru the rally. Im sure this is a 
long shot but never know. 1 believe your from 


mooresville. should have got your number luck- 
ing myself. send me a pic ill know ifits you. 

[At this event, a young girl was vio- 
lently shoved, reportedly by a known white 
supremacist.] 


Trump Event - m4m (Fountain Hills, Arizona) 
You sat behind me and 1 could not help but 
notice the huge buldge in your shorts. Not 
sure if you noticed me taking a few looks at 
it. Like to see it in private if your willing. You 
are tall, slim, tell me what you were wearing, 
age and who u were with, and tell me some- 
thing about me. 

[At this event, a protester in an American- 
flag shirt was severely beaten by the crowd 
while sprawled defenseless on the ground. 
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewan- 
dowski also allegedly grabbed the collar of 
another protester. On March 29, Lewan- 
dowski was charged with battery for assault- 
img a reporter.] 


ARTWORK BY ANDI MEIER 


CULTURE 


Modern-Day 
Delirium of 


“Just Say No 


As our nation barrels toward widespread marijuana decriminalization, what is D.A.R.E. going to do? 


The antidrug program D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse 
Resistance Education) began in 1983, at the 
height of Ronald Reagan's escalation of the war 
on drugs, with a wholesom 
to teach students “good decision-m; 
to help them lead safe and healthy lives. 
then, millions of adolescents have been taught 
the line-in-the-sand *just say no” approach to 
narcotics. But the intervening 33 years have seen 
asea change in American moral attitudes, espe- 
cially regarding drugs. Today the United States is 
headed toward a marijuana boom, with 23 states 
and Washington, D.C. decriminalizing the sub- 
stance and four (plus D.C.) making recreational 
use legal. Americans are smoking—not to men- 
tion eating, drinking, vaping and dabbing—in 
public, in greater numbers and with far greater 
acceptance than ever before. 

That has made “just say no” and other hang- 
overs of abstinence-based methods seem be- 
yond outdated. Even D.A.R.E. has come around, 
in a way. With public opinion leaning toward 
tolerance and with local, state and federal drug 
laws murkier than ever, the organization is fac- 
ing an identity crisis: How do youteach children 
about marijuana, especially in communities 
that basically respond to it with a shrug? 

The answer so far has been, more or less, to 
drop weed from the lineup altogether. “When 
we create a curriculum, we have to create one 


sounding mi 


Since 


that fits all geographic areas,” says Scott Gil- 
liam, a D.A.R.E. regional director who oversees 
pot-friendly states including Alaska and Cali- 
fornia and who has been with the organization 
since its inception. “With all the controversy 
and changes within the marijuana arena, we 
had to leave marijuana out—we couldn't teach 
the same thing in Colorado that’s being taught 
in some small community in Utah.” 

D.A.R.E.’s decision to drop marijuana came in 
2012, on the cusp of a national shift in pot laws 
that occurred when Colorado and Washington 
became the first two states to permit recreational 
se. The change was the culmination of an evo- 
lution that began in 2000, after 
research from the Department 
of Education and the Surgeon 
General revealed D.A.R.E. ineffective. An- 
other study found little difference in drug use, 
attitudes and self-esteem between students who 
had gone through the program and those who 
had gone through a “standard drug education 
curriculum.” D.A.R.E. switched from lectures to 
а discussion-group model, and in 2009 it estab- 
lished a new curriculum for adolescents called 
“keepin’ it REAL” that hinges on open dialogue 
between teachers and students instead of scare 
tactics detailing the horrors of drugs. 

These days D.A.R.E. is markedly different 
from the program of yesteryear, its directors 


sy ALEX SUSKIND 


contend. “It’s not the sage on the stage, like in 
the old days,” says regional director Mike Lien. 
“It's more the instructor teaching kids about the 
adverse impacts of drug use and ng them 
better life skills to make good decisions.” 
While D.A.R.E. seems content with its new 
model—everyone I spoke with from the organi- 
zation made sure to tout their “science-based” 
approach, perhaps because the group’s funding 
used to be directly tied to whether its methods 
were scientifically sound—not everyone buys 
the idea that the program has kept up with how 
young people and drugs intersect today. 
Pushing ascience-based system is D.A.R.E.'s 
“party line,” says Marsha 
Rosenbaum, director emer- 
ita of the San Francisco office 
of the Drug Policy Alliance, an anti-drug-war 
nonprofit dedicated to “promoting drug poli- 
cies that are grounded in science, compassion, 
health and human rights,” as DPA’s website 
states. (In a talking-points statement, the 
DPA describes itself as “firmly committed to 
reducing drug abuse among youth.”) 
Rosenbaum is known for creating the DPA’s 
“Safety First” booklet, a guide for parents and 
educators first published in 1999 that served 
as an alternative to hard-line abstinence-only 
programs. The DPA says it has distributed more 
than 350,000 copies of “Safety First” (nowin its 


46 


sixth edition), in at least seven languages. And 
though Rosenbaum was initially impressed by 
D.A.R.E.s move to drop pot back in 2012, she 
soon had a change of heart. 

“When that came out, at first I was excited. I 
thought, Oh my God, this is a real game changer. 
D.A.R.E. has decided that marijuana is not the 
dangerous drug they'd said it was, and they've 
taken it out of the curriculum,” Rosenbaum 
says. “I called them right away for clarifica- 
tion, and the more I talked to the guy, the more 
I realized, Wait a minute. I looked at what they 
tell kids if they ask about marijuana, and it’s 
pretty much the same old, same old.” 

What happens when kids ask about marijuana 
in a D.A.R.E. classroom today? Officers are in- 
structed not to bring up the subject on their own, 
but when students do ask, the organization’s pol- 


icy is to “keep the information very basic and at 
an age-appropriate level” and to tell children 
that marijuana is a drug that can affect their 
mind; cause them to forget; make it hard to con- 
centrate, learn and sleep; make them irritable 
and anxious; and affect their schoolwork. 

Gilliam tells me one goal of this policy is 
to avoid putting officers in a position where 
they’re forced to talk about ever-shifting mar- 
ijuana laws. But Rosenbaum scoffs at this, 
saying the plan does nothing to distinguish be- 
tween use and abuse and is no different from 
what D.A.R.E. was doing years ago. 

“I think it's a wolf in sheep's clothing,” she 
says. “It’s rhetoric. ‘Keeping it real’? What's 
real? I think the emphasis on decision making, 
which most of the drug education programs do 
now, is good. With D.A.R.E. there’s only one 


right decision, and that’s to say no—but kids 
are going to make their own decisions.” 

If Rosenbaum is correct, where does this leave 
kids? D.A.R.E. is still used in approximately 70 
percent of schools across the nation, and the or- 
ganization thinks it has successfully kept up with 
the times. Rosenbaum and the Drug Policy Alli- 
ance disagree. Meanwhile, a recent study in The 
Lancet Psychiatry found that legalizing mari- 
juana did not lead to an increase in adolescent 
drug use. The finding is counter to D.A.R.E.'s 
rhetoric—“Simply put, legalization would dras- 
tically increase marijuana use and use disorder 
rates”—but doesn’t necessarily negate its cur- 
riculum. Until there is concrete evidence on the 
efficacy of D.A.R.E.'s current model, including 
its marijuana policy, the issue will be stuck ina 
thick, decriminalized haze. a 


47 


РОШТЇС5 


THE DEBATE 
OVER DEBATES 


Big corporations control the presidential debates. Can the unlikely duo of Trump and Sanders end that? 


The past year has upended the D.C. 
establishment, and some amongthe sur- 
viving ruling class fear they may be next. 
Folks at the Commission on Presidential 
Debates are especially worried. For al- 
most 30years, the CPD hasorchestrated 
the most-watched political events in 
America—TV debates between the Dem- 
ocratic and Republican nominees. Соп- 
trolled by the two parties and funded in 
previousyearsby corporationsincluding 
Philip Morris and Anheuser-Busch, the 
organization symbolizes everything out- 
siders such as Bernie Sanders and Don- 
ald Trump have campaigned against. 

The idea behind the debate commis- 
sion was always slightly nefarious: to 
create an airtight showcase for the two 
big parties and their policies and to ex- 
clude insurgent candidates from chal- 
lenging them. The CPD permits the 
nominees to decide everything from 
moderators to topics. It also persuades univer- 
sities and colleges to host debates, though few 
students are admitted since most tickets go to 
high-dollar donors— “one nice way you can rec- 
ognize people who’ve helped you,” CPD execu- 
tive director Janet Brown once explained. 

When legendary CBS newsman Walter 
Cronkite saw how this game was played, he 
called it an “unconscionable fraud.” 

It wasn't always like this. In 1960, newsman 
Don Hewitt (who went on to create бо Minutes) 
persuaded Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice 
President Richard M. Nixon to debate. They met 
four times in TV studios without audiences, and 
journalists could askanything. The nextdebates 
were hosted in 1976 by the nonpartisan League 
of Women Voters, which convinced President 
Gerald R. Ford to face Georgia governor Jimmy 
Carter three times. The League debate became 
anational tradition. In 1980, it included a popu- 
lar third-party candidate, Representative John 
Anderson of Illinois, who appeared with Califor- 
nia governor Ronald Reagan. (Then president 


By JOHN MERONEY 


Carter refused to appear, believing Anderson 
might draw votes from him.) 

Later, stubborn politicians and growing ex- 
penses created uncertainty. “Sometimes we 
didn't know if we'd be able to pull off a debate 
at all,” says former League president Nancy 
Neuman. Washington elites wanted to steal 
control from the League and established the 
Commission on Presidential Debates as a 
private corporation with a name designed to 
sound like part of the government. 

The end of the League's debate dominance 
came when it fought to prevent Vice President 
George H.W. Bush and Massachusetts gover- 
nor Michael Dukakis from calling the shots 
in 1988. *The campaigns got together and 
gave us a list—pages and pages of rules,” says 
Neuman. “Тһеу included reviewing (һе mod- 
erator's script, and they wanted to run phone 
lines from the candidates’ dressing rooms into 
the producer's control room. That's when I said, 
“We're not going to be an accessory to the hood- 
winking of the American public.’” 


The CPD seized on the League’s 
crisis and took over. It scored huge 
donations from the likes of Atlantic 
Richfield (now oil giant ARCO) and 
agricultural behemoth Archer Dan- 
iels Midland. Negotiators for Bush and 
Dukakis signed a 16-page “memoran- 
dum of understanding,” agreeing not to 
participate in any other debate hosted 
by any other sponsor with any other 
candidate. The contract also prohib- 
ited the candidates from questioning 
each other, banned producers from cut- 
ting away to candidate reaction shots 
and even dictated the height of lecterns 
(48 inches). In every election since, the 
nominees have abided by those terms— 
and added more demands. 

While the CPD claims to welcome 
third-party candidates, facts show oth- 
erwise. When billionaire Ross Perot ran 
as an independent in 1992, then presi- 
dent Bush believed Perot would pull votes from 
the Democratic challenger, Arkansas gover- 
nor Bill Clinton, so Bush insisted Perot par- 
ticipate, over the CPD's objections. Bush got 
his way but lost the election. (Later, he admit- 
ted that Perot cost him support.) When Perot 
ran again in 1996, the big parties struck a 
secret deal excluding him from the debate. The 
CPD later kept third-party candidates Patrick 
Buchanan and Ralph Nader out and even threat- 
ened to have Nader arrested if he attended as 
a spectator. Meanwhile, guests enjoyed “an 
Anheuser-Busch refreshment tent, where there 
is beer flowing, snacks, Budweiser girls in red 
sweaters,” reported The Washington Post. 

Maybe this will be the year the bell tolls for 
the CPD. Even if Sanders and Trump falter, the 
anti-business-as-usual movement they’ve gal- 
vanized doesn’t bode well for the major parties’ 
continued control over debates. Even now, the 
debate commission seems to be girding for the 
inevitable battle to preserve its fiefdom. “We're 
sued all the time, every cycle,” says Brown. M 


48 


Urgent: Special Summer Driving Notice 


To some, sunglasses are a fashion accessory... 


But When Driving, 
These Sunglasses 


May Save Your Life! 


Drivers’ Alert: Driving can expose you to more dangerous 
glare than any sunny day at the beach can... 


how to protect yourself? 


TE sun rises and sets at peak travel periods, 
during the early morning and afternoon 

rush hours and many drivers find themselves 
temporarily blinded while driving directly into 
the glare of the sun. Deadly accidents are regularly 
caused by such blinding glare with danger arising 
from reflected light off another vehicle, the pave- 
ment, or even from waxed and oily windshields 
that can make matters worse. Early morning dew 
can exacerbate this situation. Yet, motorists strug- 
gle on despite being blinded by the sun's glare 
that can cause countless accidents every year. 


Not all sunglasses are created equal. Protecting 
your eyes is serious business. With all the fancy 
fashion frames out there it can be easy to over- 
look what really matters—the lenses. So we did 
our research and looked to the very best in optic 
innovation and technology. 


Sometimes it does take a rocket scientist. 

A NASA rocket scientist. Some ordinary 
sunglasses can obscure your vision by exposing 
your eyes to harmful UV rays, blue light, and 
reflective glare. They can also darken useful 
vision-enhancing light. But now, independent 
research conducted by scientists from NASA's 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory has brought forth 


Eagle Eyes® 
ens 


simulation 


ip on a pair of Eagle Eyes* and everything instantly 
appears more vivid and sharp. You'll immediately notice 
that your eyes are more comfortable and relaxed and 
you'll feel no need to squint. The scientifically designed 
sunglasses are not just fashion accessories—they are 
necessary to protect your eyes from those harmful rays 
produced by the sun during peak driving times. 


do you know 


ground-breaking technology to help protect 
human eyesight from the harmful effects of solar 
radiation light. This superior lens technology was 
first discovered when NASA scientists looked to 
nature for a means to superior eye protection— 
specifically, by studying the eyes of eagles, known 
for their extreme visual acuity. This discovery 
resulted in what is now known as Eagle Eyes”. 
The Only Sunglass Technology Certified by 

the Space Foundation for UV and Blue-Light 
Eye Protection. Eagle Eyes” features the most 
advanced eye protection technology ever 


Studies by the National Highway 
Traffic Safety Administration 
(NHTSA) show that most (74%) 
of the crashes occurred on 
clear, sunny days 


Navigator" 
Black Stainless 
Steel Sunglasses 


Receive the Navigator™ Gold Sunglasses 
(a $99 value) FREE! just for trying the 


Navigator™ Black 


Navigator" 
Gold Stainless 
Steel Sunglasses 


created. The TriLenium* Lens Technol- pum a = 
ogy offers triple-filter polarization to Certified EAGLE EYES MES developed 
block 99.9% UVA and UVB — plus the N A from original NASA Optic technology 
c © 
added benefit of blue-light eye protec- ISSUE and was recently DE а 
л Space Foundation Technology Hall of Fame. 


Zr 


tion. Eagle Eyes® is the only optic technology 

that has earned official recognition from the Space 
Certification Program for this remarkable technol- 
ogy. Now, that’s proven science-based protection. 


The finest optics: And buy one, get one FREE! 
Eagle Eyes” has the highest customer satisfaction 
of any item in our 20 year history. We are so 
excited for you to try the Eagle Eyes“ break- 
through technology that we will give you a 
second pair of Eagle Eyes? Navigator“ 
Sunglasses FREE—a $99 value! 

That's two pairs to protect your eyes with the best 
technology available for less than the price of one 
pair of traditional sunglasses. You get a pair of 
Navigators with stainless steel black frames and 
the other with stainless steel gold, plus one hard 
zipper case and one micro-fiber drawstring 
cleaning pouch are included. Keep one pair 

in your pocket and one in your car, 


Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. If you are 
not astounded with the Eagle Eyes” technology, 
enjoying clearer, sharper and more glare-free 
vision, simply return one pair within 60 days for a 
full refund of the purchase price. The other pair is 
yours to keep. No one else has such confidence in 
their optic technology. Don't leave your eyes in the 
hands of fashion designers, entrust them to the best 


Fit-ons available for 
$39 *S&H 
Black or Tortoise-Shell design 


scientific minds on earth. Wear your Eagle Eyes” 
Navigators with absolute confidence, knowing 
your eyes are protected with technology that was 
born in space for the human race. 


Eagle Eyes” Navigator" Sunglasses $99* 
Offer Code Price $49 * S&P Save $50 

PLUS receive the Navigator" Gold absolutely 

FREE!—2 pairs for the price of one! 


t jaata; 
ur 


Stauer ® 14101 Southcross Drive W., 
Dept. EEN409-03 

Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 

www.stauer.com 


Rating of A+ 


T Special price only for customers using the offer code versus 
the price on Stauer.com without your offer code. 


Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices” 


TREVOR NOAH 


INTERVIEW 


Has there ever been a more auspicious moment to chase after clown cars on the road to 
the White House? Since bravely taking over for Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show 
last September, South African comedian Trevor Noah has watched American pol- 
itics burble into a molten mess of a reality series that even Comedy Central would find 
too ludicrous to green-light. Then again, Noah did not campaign for the role of sati- 
rist in chief; it found him. In March of last year, he was in a taxi heading to an event in 
Dubai when his manager called to ask if he wanted the planet's most coveted fake news- 
anchoring job. This, after appearing a mere three times as a Daily Show correspondent. 


As Noah said around the time to his friend 
and early champion Jerry Seinfeld, “I get out 
of the car, and my legs—I didn't have legs.” 
Thick skin is what he really needed. The in- 
stant the gig was announced, social media cried 
out with a collective “Who the fuck?” followed 
by a judge-y indictment over a handful of old 
Twitter barbs that painted the little-known 
comic as a menace to Jews, Ebola victims and 
“fat chicks.” It didn’t help that TV critics held 
Noah to crazy-high standards: not to Jon Stew- 
art's early days but to Stewart at the glorious end 
ofa16-yearrun. But thesharp-suited newcomer, 
now 32, settled in with polish and intelligence 
(and without issuing any apologies) and contin- 
ues to build a following with a young, plugged-in 
crowd that no longer treats him like Job. 
Trevor Noah was born in Johannesburg on 
February 20, 1984 and survived a lot worse 
than web controversy. He grew up in the final 
decade of apartheid with a white Swiss German 
father and a black Xhosa mother who never 
married because mixed-race marriage was il- 
legal in that era. Noah spent his early years in 


a “whites only” neighborhood where his mom 
had to pretend she was the maid. (His dad 
would walk across the street from them “like a 
creepy pedophile,” Noah joked in one of his rou- 
tines.) After the relationship dissolved, Noah 
and his mother moved in with family members 
inthe black municipality of Soweto. Experienc- 
ing such contrasting worlds made him fluent in 
arange of cultures and languages, including six 
South African dialects, English and German. 

Noah’s dimpled charm and uncanny talent 
for mimicry led him to acting and a role on a 
South African soap opera in his late teens. A 
few years later, drunken friends pushed him 
to take the mike at a Johannesburg comedy 
club, and the dare set the stage for a stand-up 
career. Professional comedy barely existed 
under apartheid, but Noah blazed new trails, 
skewering elite whites, government wonksand 
township blacks alike. Sold-out performances 
at home led to tours around Africa, the Middle 
East, Europe and Asia. 

In 2009 Noah's mother was shot by an ex- 
husband. Noah confronted the man, who threat- 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN LOWRY 


ened to killhim, prompting Noah to move to Los 
Angeles. He did not immediately find a foothold 
there, but in 2012 he became the first South Af- 
rican stand-up to appear on The Tonight Show. 
A year later he was the first on Late Show With 
David Letterman. By the time he debuted as a 
correspondent on The Daily Show in December 
2014, insiders knew Noah as a funnyman sans 
frontières. “Be grateful for what you have” is 
what South African mothers say to their kids, 
he told Stewart's enchanted audience, “because 
there are fat children starving in Mississippi.” 
Contributing Editor David Hochman, who 
recently interviewed Rachel Maddow and Ray 
Kurzweil for PLAYBOY, met Noah after a Daily 
Show taping in midtown Manhattan, and they 
talked late into the night. “Тһе first thing you 
notice about Trevor is that he's definitely not 
Jon Stewart,” Hochman says. “He's quieter, 
more serious, more reflective. Then you think, 
Hmm, maybe that's what we need right now.” 


PLAYBOY: When you took over The Daily 
Show you vowed to continue the *war on 


bullshit” that Jon Stewart began. How's that 
going in this crazy election year? 

NOAH: Waging the war isn't difficult. Getting 
peopletojoinyouonthatcrusadeiswhat’sharder 
than you’d expect, and not for the reason yowd 
expect. It's because a lot of people simply don't 
want the whole truth. They want only a mirror 
of their version of the truth. That's true not just 
with Republicans and conservatives. I find that 
a lot of Democrats and liberals are not ready to 
hear the truth from their side. It’s human nature 
to look for people to validate your opinion, and I 
think people came to The Daily Show for that for 
along time. But just because you have a love fora 
candidate doesn't mean you shouldn't question 
them. What is the point of having 
your candidate pushed to a cer- 
tain level only to crumble under 
scrutiny because you didn't give 
them enough scrutiny early on? 
Bernie Sanders didn't have solid 
policy proposals, so I pointed that 
out. “Screw you, Trevor Noah!” Or 
I made the case that Hillary Clin- 
ton panders to whatever audience 
is listening to her. People are like, 
“ууро the hell do you think you 
are?” Come on, guys. 

PLAYBOY: Any predictions on 
where the contest is heading? 
NOAH: Ihave noclue. Idon’tthink 
anybody has a clue. So many truly 
bizarre things have happened 
already, particularly on the Re- 
publican side. We might see alast- 
minute candidate step in. The 
Republicans could go to a con- 
tested convention, which could rip 
the party apart at the seams. Don- 
ald Trump, presuming he contin- 
ues, is so divisive and so explosive that he can go 
all the way or else blow himself up. The enthusi- 
asm against him їз аз powerfulastheenthusiasm 
in his favor. Assuming Hillary is the nominee, 
people are almost resigning themselves to the 
fact that she’s the one. With Trump and Hill- 
ary, it's a really strange combination of terror 
on one hand and ambivalence on the other. And 
yet, wherever we are in the general election by 
November, people are going to have to say, “Well, 
you have to choose somebody.” Fortunately, I 
can't vote in this country, which helps a lot. 
PLAYBOY: You grew up under apartheid. You've 
witnessed hatred, racism, fear and a country 
divided by disagreement and hostility. It must 
be so refreshing to live in America in 2016. 
NOAH: Ha. We did this thing on the show 


INTERVIEW 


where we said Trump is basically an African 
dictator. We showed clips of him alongside 
clips of Idi Amin. They were essentially the 
same guy. But it’s one thing for everyone to lam- 
baste Trump. Every candidate has a right to be 
crazy. Why don’t we spend more time looking at 
the people who voted for him? It’s his followers 
who are truly scary. Everyone makes the com- 
parison between Trump and Hitler. The ques- 
tion nobody seems to want to ask is, Does that 
make America Nazi Germany? The madmen 
in history don’t do it alone. What’s important 
about Trump’s run is that it exposes the layer of 
hate, xenophobia and anxiety below the surface 
in America. That can't be ignored. 


The biggest 


thing I had to 
learn with The 
Daily Show was 
that I couldn't 
be the anger 


for people. 


Trump's campaign is fascinating because it 
threw out all the rules we've known about poli- 
tics. Everyone had the playbook, and he went 
and changed the game completely. It used 
to be that you would release attack ads, you 
would point out the fallacies and people would 
come around to your message. Trump some- 
how stayed immune to that longer than almost 
anyone else. Whatever was thrown at him, it 
didn't seem to matter. You show that he can't 
be trusted, but people still trust him. You show 
him stirring violence, but it just makes the 
crowds cheer louder. He branded himself early 
on as the candidate who represents angry peo- 
ple, and that has given him a huge foothold. 

Those who tried to play Trump at his own 
game—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio—mostly lost. He 


has picked them all off like a short-fingered as- 
sassin. People tried to meet anger with anger, 
and it failed every time. But then, if you don't go 
after him directly, you look weak or out of touch. 
John Kasich never went after Trump. Ben Car- 
son never went after Trump. Look where they are 
now. This isa popularity contest. This is areality 
show. If you've watched any reality shows, you 
know the quiet people get knocked out very early 
in the race. The loud people are the ones who 
makeittotheend. Donald Trump reminds me of 
Richard Hatch from the first season of Survivor. 
He came on, caused chaos, got naked, formed a 
few key alliances and walked away with the prize. 
PLAYBOY: If Trump is Richard Hatch, who 
does that make Hillary? 
NOAH: Honestly, I think a lot of 
people are hoping Hillary will be 
Barack Obama. She has said her- 
self that her presidency will be 
an extension of Obama's legacy. 
What's interesting about Hillary 
is that she's really versatile. She 
knows when to be alittle tougher. 
She knows when she needs to be 
more human. She also responds 
to the forces around her. She saw 
that with Bernie Sanders, cer- 
tainly. Bernie has done some- 
thing beautiful in that he has 
inspired young people to believe 
again. Hillary recognized that, 
and she adapted. New York City 
mayor Bill de Blasio said the rea- 
son he waited so long to endorse 
Hillary was because he wanted 
Bernie to push her until she was 
addressing income and equality, 
and eventually she did. She has 
adopted a lot of Bernie's ideas 
and rhetoric, and I think that has rounded her 
out as a candidate. She could take it all the way. 
PLAYBOY: What would it mean to have Bill 
Clinton back in the White House? 

NOAH: That would be interesting for every- 
one, because we've never seen anything like 
it. He'll be the first gentleman. Maybe he'll 
be giving tours of the White House and show- 
ing people around. Maybe he'll be advising on 
policy. There are so many maybes, it's impos- 
sibleto know. What we do know is that he's very 
smart, he's very involved, he's very informed 
and he loves talking to people. With Hillary in 
the Oval Office and Bill overseeing the Easter 
egg hunt in the Rose Garden or whatever, they 
could be quite the power couple. 

PLAYBOY: Nobody really talks about this, but 


since this is PLAYBOY, we can ask. Do you ever 
imagine what their sex life is like? 
NOAH: No! 1 don't imagine it. Never. It never 
crosses my mind. But if I had to guess, I'd say 
there's probably not much happening. Studies 
have shown that the sex life dramatically drops 
off for everyone, especially high-income, high- 
net-worth individuals who work hard. With 
these two, I don’t think it's like, Saturday night, 
11 o'clock, “Hey, Hillary, wanna watch Netflix 
and chill?” [laughs] We live in strange times. 
PLAYBOY: How does the United States look to 
the rest of the world right now? 
NOAH: Insane, pretty much. But 
the whole world is changing. Cer- 
tainly on a political level, we're in 
uncharted territory everywhere you 
look. I mean, you see these fringe 
parties coming up in Germany, 
France and South Africa; that's be- 
cause you're dealing with parlia- 
mentary systems for the most part. 
In those systems fringe parties don't 
get anywhere. The difference is, be- 
cause of the American system, there 
is no alternative. You have two par- 
ties, and the winner takes all. It's 
been designed to make the strong 
stronger, but nobody ever antici- 
pated that the strongest person 
would come from the outside. Trump 
could win his little ball of support 
and that could be it. 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of 
angry people in America. There's 
anger, there's hunger and there's 
fear, and there will always be some- 
body who taps into those anxieties 
to further a narrative about who to 
hate and who to blame. Trump has 
been truly masterful at that. The 
Chinese are taking our jobs. Mexi- 
cans are rapists. Muslims are out to 
kill everyone. If you're feeling overwhelmed or 
broke or disenfranchised and someone says, 
“It's because of that brown guy over there,” you 
go, “Hey, let's go get the brown guy.” 
PLAYBOY: Eight years with a black maninthe 
White House does not appear to have eased ten- 
sions around race. 
NOAH: This is hard to explain to white people, 
but the thing about race is that you can’t turn 
it off. Ifyow re black, you are constantly black 
and that blackness is always affecting you in 
some way or another. That’s a tough conver- 
sation to have, because it can be subtle. It’s 
often very small things, but they pile up. Cab- 


INTERVIEW 


drivers don’t pick you up. It happens to me. Or 
you go into acorner store and get followed, or 
people say things about you. It’s often not bla- 
tant, but it’s entrenched in the system. Over 
time, it might change, but if you're black in the 
United States, even after two terms of Presi- 
dent Obama, you still feel black. 

I think the benefit of a movement like Black 
Lives Matter is that people have seen the influ- 
ence they can have by actively getting out and 
doing something about ending the silencing ofa 
voice. It has been a fantastic proponent for new 


conversations about race, which is amazing. 
PLAYBOY: You and Larry Wilmore notwith- 
standing, late-night TV is a pretty white place 
as far as hosts are concerned. That extends to 
the writing staffs on most shows. Even now, 
Hollywood remains an old boys’ network. 
NOAH: I am very conscious of that. We put outa 
call for new people to be on the show not longago. 
Around 95 percent of the people who responded 
were white and male. We wanted diversity. 
But when we went out and asked some comedi- 
ans why they didn’t audition—black comedi- 
ans, women—they said they hadn't heard about 
the job. Word hadn't reached them. A lot of the 


time Hollywood jobs come through networks or 
through friends who have worked together, so it 
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not 
inthatcircle, you can't get in that circle. 
PLAYBOY: Should African Americans be as 
scared ofthe police as people say they should be? 
NOAH: I think black people haven't been 
scared of the police as much as people make 
them out to be, so much as they are...what's 
the word I'm looking for? They're enraged. 
They're disenfranchised because the police 
have been shown to not protect and serve all 
parts of the population equally. 
It's scary: Imagine if you lived in 
a world where every time you told 
someone something happened to 
you, it was met with disbelief and 
doubt, with people taking every- 
thing you say with a pinch of salt. 
Then you go through a period 
when every video that comes out 
contradicts the report the police 
have made, which then makes you 
question how many of the reports 
we can believe. So it's a very tough 
conversation to have going both 
ways, because many police feel un- 
fairly judged. Ironically, the way 
black people have been judged for 
so many years, with huge sections of 
the black population being lumped 
inascriminals—now the samething 
is happening to police. Police are 
going, "There's just a few of us. Why 
are you saying it's all of us?" 
PLAYBOY: As you look at what's 
happeningin the country right now, 
are you dumbstruck, or do you just 
feellike it's comedy gold? 
NOAH: I don't see it as comedy 
gold, because it's gotten to the point 
where there's too much comedy, and 
now it's so ridiculous that it's not 
funny all the time. When presidential candi- 
dates are making dick jokes, what are comedi- 
ans supposed to do? Maybe I'm not as shocked 
by it because I come from a country where that 
happened. It got to the point in South Africa 
where the politicians were making the jokes. 
PLAYBOY: Speaking of South Africa, what are 
your memories of growing up in Soweto? 
NOAH: It was weird. We lived how we were 
living and it felt normal. So many people 
were born into apartheid that nobody ever 
dreamed of a time when things wouldn't be 
that way. Black people fought for freedom and 
independence, but I don't think many of them 


53 


could say that they saw a real future where they 
would be running the country. They couldn't 
imagine gaining access to the wealth and op- 
portunities of the country. 

When you're poor, it's sometimes impossible 
to picture living any other reality. In Soweto, 
you live in a one-room house, maybe two rooms 
if yow re lucky. All the adults sleep together in 
one room; all the kids sleep together in another 
room. I’m not talking about another bedroom; 
you have a wall dividing two rooms. There’s no 
indoor plumbing. There would be an outhouse, 
and that outhouse was shared by four or five 
different families. Ifyou were lucky, you'd have 
running water. We had running water but not 
inside the house. It was shared 
among many houses. 
PLAYBOY: You have a book out 
this fall about coming of age 
under apartheid. Was it comedy 
that got you through the hard- 
est times? 

NOAH: You would never think 
you could laugh about life in a 
place like Soweto, but there are 
always funny moments in every 
situation, and those moments 
do help you survive. In the book 
I write about growing up in an 
abusive household, in a house 
where myself and my mom were 
held hostage by an alcoholic 
stepfather. My mom was shot 
in the head. That’s not exactly 
the stuff of comedy gold. But 
even in the darkest, darkest mo- 
ments, we found things to laugh 
about. To have your mom come 
out of surgery with a hole in her 
face and the first thing she says 
when she wakes up is “Stop crying. Look on the 
bright side. At least now you're officially the 
best-looking person in the family.” I mean, who 
says that? But that’s the family I grew up in. We 
always found some silly way to get rid of the pain. 
PLAYBOY: Your mother converted to Juda- 
ism when you were young. Did you have a bar 
mitzvah? 

NOAH: I did, yes. My mom had always been a 
religious scholar and had studied the Bible. She 
has taken multiple Bible courses and is very re- 
ligious. And one day she converted to Judaism. 
I had a bar mitzvah when I turned 13, but no 
one came because everyone in my family and 
my world is black. Nobody knew what the hella 
bar mitzvah even was, so it was just me and my 
mom going, “Okay, now you're a man.” 


INTERVIEW 


PLAYBOY: Youare the first major comedian to 
emerge from South Africa. Are people just not 
funny there? 

NOAH: We are an industry that's only as old as 
our democracy. There’s comedy everywhere, 
but there was no free speech. I’m lucky in that 
I'm a product of my time. A few comedians laid 
the groundwork for me. I’m the second gen- 
eration that got to take it to the next level and 
make it work on a world stage. 

PLAYBOY: You've said before that Ameri- 
cans think of Africa as a place where people 
wear cheetah skins and sit around waiting for 
UNICEF. Will that perception ever die? 
NOAH: I don't think ГИ live to see it die, and 


With Trump and 
Hillary, it's a 
strange combi- 
nation of terror 

on one hand 
and ambivalence 
on the other. 


that's because even if you look at America it- 
self, perceptions die hard. I'm very lucky in 
that I've traveled to all 50 states, doing stand- 
up. I remember I was heading to Tennessee 
and people told me, *That's the home of the 
Klan. Watch out.” But then I got to Nash- 
ville and had the best time of my life with the 
most wonderful people. If people don't see 
the nuance of their own country—and this 
happens everywhere—I can't expect them to 
appreciate the nuance of Africa. 

PLAYBOY: What was your first impression of 
the United States? 

NOAH: I was like, I've never seen so much 
choice in my life. 

PLAYBOY: What do you remember? 

NOAH: Walmart. That place absolutely blew 


my mind. I had never seen anything like it. 
Seventeen different types of milk. Twenty-two 
kinds of laundry soap. It is a land of unimagi- 
nable abundance, though it wasn't a complete 
surprise. You get a sense of the abundance 
when you watch American television. Just the 
fact that everyone in sitcoms has a house with 
an upstairs area is astonishing. A house with 
a second floor? As an African kid, you're like, 
Hey, who lives this way? 

PLAYBOY: Asyou developed your comedy, who 
was your biggest influence? 

NOAH: I watched a lot of Bill Cosby. I love Dave 
Chappelle. But I specifically remember seeing 
Eddie Murphy's Raw on VHS and thinking, 
Holy shit! The guy from The 
Nutty Professor does stand- 
up? It was a complete awak- 
ening for me because 1 was 
starting to do stand-up myself. 
Eddie is incredible. The hon- 
esty, the precision, the talent, 
the skill. Everything he exe- 
cuted was perfect. His imper- 
sonations. The way he walked 
across the stage. His command 
of the audience. Eddie watched 
my stand-up once, which was 
enough for me to go, I can die 
now. That's all I need in life. 
PLAYBOY: What about up- 
and-coming comedians? Who's 
the future of comedy? 
NOAH: Michelle Wolf is hilar- 
ious and outrageous. She al- 
ways makes me laugh. A lot of 
people don't know her yet, but 
they will. You can see her on 
Late Night With Seth Meyers. 
If you look on YouTube or Vine 
or Instagram, there's a guy named King Bach. 
He's huge online, but people don’t know him in 
the streets. He does short-form sketches. He'sa 
very funny actor who, because of social media, 
really made something for himself, carved a 
path, which I admire. 

One of the things I love about America is 
there's so much comedy. There's the alt scene 
with people like Kumail Nanjiani. There are 
the hipsters, who have avery different style of 
comedy. There are the mainstreamers. There 
are black comedians who cross over and do 
well with white audiences. There are a few 
white comedians, like Gary Owen, who do par- 
ticularly well in the black scene. Just look on 
YouTube. They're all there. 

PLAYBOY: It seems technology is changing 


everything about comedy. You no longer need to 
join the Groundlings or book a set at the Com- 
edy Store to find an audience. 
NOAH: Technology is great for the industry. 
Comedy is a form that works wherever people 
are funny. There are people who do comedy 
shows in the back of avan, in a bus, in avenue, 
in a small room, a giant room, theater, hall, 
church, restaurant, phone booth, and all you 
need is a tiny handheld device to record your- 
self doing it. When you go to a place like the 
Edinburgh Comedy Festival, you see all those 
things happening all over the city, 
and you realize that comedy is one of 
the most versatile art forms we have. 

YouTube has opened that up com- 
pletely, and you have Snapchat and 
Instagram and other vehicles as well. 
But I think these formats will come 
and go. The important thing is that 
young people get to express them- 
selves to an audience directly rather 
than looking to the gatekeepers to let 
them in. At the same time, the audi- 
ence is expanding in ways that were 
unimaginable only a few years ago. 
Think about the fact that you used 
to have to be 18 or 21 to get into a 
comedy club. Now there are 10- and 
12-year-olds who know Mitch Hed- 
berg and Louis С.К. and many more 
obscure comedians because, again, 
it's all just part of the deluge of in- 
formation available on your device. 
PLAYBOY: How did your social 
media habits change after old tweets 
of yours surfaced that some called 
racist, anti-Semitic and sexist? 
NOAH: The irony is that people had 
to go back five years to make a judg- 
ment about who I am today. We live 
in a world where you need to form 
your opinion about someone in- 
stantly. Ever watch the Grammys and read 
Twitter at the same time? Before the first pre- 
senter even appears, someone is already going, 
“Worst Grammys ever." It's not a 24-hour news 
cycle anymore. We live in a 24-second news 
cycle. I guess the lesson is: Some people will al- 
ways want to take you down. If you say some- 
thing silly, it can blow up. But also, it passes. 
PLAYBOY: How much do you and your writ- 
ing team focus on creating material that will 
go viral online? 
NOAH: 1 don't believe in working toward a 
moment just to have a viral moment. 1 believe 
in doing what you love and if a moment reso- 


INTERVIEW 


nates, it resonates. The Daily Show is differ- 
ent in that it is not all about sound bites and 
tiny moments. That is a fact of the show that 
I have to accept. But I won't lie: It's nice when 
you get a moment that goes a little viral. I’m 
always surprised at which moments take off, 
to be honest. I create each moment equally, 
and when one element hits, it's often foreign 
to me. Lindsey Graham came on the program 
and was one of the most engaging guests we've 
had. We played this game of pool where if you 
missed a shot, you had to give Donald Trump a 


compliment. That got a lot of attention. Trump 
tweeted insults at us. I would have never wished 
for Michael Hayden, ex-director ofthe CIA and 
the NSA, to come on the show, but honestly, I 
had some of the best moments with him. 
PLAYBOY: How much rivalry do you feel with 
your late-night competitors? 

NOAH: Because 1 come from the world of 
stand-up, I realize that success is a cycle. Peo- 
ple rise and disappear, they succeed, they miss, 
they return. As competitive as it is, you learn 
to celebrate the success of your peers because 
you know how hard that cycle is. I remember 
when I first came to America, Amy Schumer 


was running around doing comedy clubs. She 
was funny, but she was nowhere close to where 
she is now, and I loved what she was doing. Then 
you see her hit her stride, and it’s beautiful. 
There’s nothing more fun than seeing a come- 
dian come into their own, especially if you've 
watched them on the rise. So for me, it’s Amy 
Schumer, it’s Jerrod Carmichael, it’s Hannibal 
Buress, it’s Michael Che. It’s people where I go, 
Man, we are the class of now. 
In late night, I think every host will tell you 
the same thing, which is that we don’t have 
time to focus on what other people 
are doing. We're too busy making 
our own shows. Obviously I see oc- 
casional clips of what Stephen Со!- 
bert and James Corden and Jimmy 
Fallon and the rest are doing. But 
the only person I have time to watch 
regularly is John Oliver, because he's 
on Sunday evening and I'm free to 
watch. I loved what he did with Don- 
ald Drumpf, for example. That was 
amazing. John for me is an inspira- 
tion because he shows me the possi- 
bilities. Before him I didn't believe 
a foreigner could do a TV show like 
this in America, and I love him for 
that. Had he not taken over for Jon 
for a few months and then gone on 
to host his own show, I don't know if 
the network would have said, *Okay, 
let's give Trevor Noah a shot.” It 
seems less crazy to have some тап- 
dom African guy host the show after 
some random British guy has hosted 
his show successfully. 
PLAYBOY: Many people think Jon 
Stewart and The Daily Show played 
a role in getting Obama elected in 
2008 and 2012. How much influence 
do you feel you have in this presiden- 
tial race? 
NOAH: Oh, I haven't earned any influence yet. 
That's something you work toward. Jon had 
that effect on Obama’s rise because of how long 
and how hard he had worked and what he had 
been a part of. What people forget is that the 
first few years of Jon's show were barely a blip 
on the radar. I’m still in the blip stage. 
PLAYBOY: Do you ever call Jon and say, “Dude, 
remind me again how you do this?" 
NOAH: No. Never. I mean, I talk to him spo- 
radically, but it's about random things. The 
last conversation we had was about stand-up. 
I wanted to know if he was working on a new 
hour. How'sthe set going? Any fun jokes? That 


РД 
я 


was literally the conversation we had. That's 
not to say I haven't had moments of anxiety 
about The Daily Show or needed guidance. I 
was terrified in the beginning, and I still have 
some sleepless nights. Are you kidding me? 
There are nights here and there when 1 go, 
Shit, what do 1 need to do? What am I doing? 
Where am 1 going? Because 1 love what 1 do 
and I believe in giving it my all. But I don't let 
that consume me. 

PLAYBOY: Who has given you the best advice? 
NOAH: Jon said, “Don't listen to anyone. Just 
make the show you believe needs to be made.” 
Jerry Seinfeld was supportive long before I got 
the show. That helps in general with confidence. 
Louis С.К. said to me, “Regardless 
of what happens, don't forget to 
enjoy every single moment, because 
you can never get it back.” He said, 
“One day you'll go, Man, remem- 
ber that time when no one believed 
in me? Remember that time when 
no one thought what 1 was doing 
was good? I didn't take the time to 
enjoy and savor that moment.” Amy 
Schumer just looks at me and goes, 
“Fuck it, have a good time.” 
PLAYBOY: What do you do for fun, 
by the way? 

NOAH: I love boxing. I ride bi- 
cycles. I love roller coasters. My 
dream is to go on a tour and bounce 
around to every great roller coaster 
in America. But ГИ settle for an- 
other ride on T3 at Six Flags. I love 
the feeling that you're going to die 
even though you know there's no 
chance of being harmed. 
PLAYBOY: What are you listening 
to these days? 

NOAH: I'm listening to the new Kendrick 
Lamar, untitled unmastered. I'm listening to 
the new Rihanna. I listen to Otis Redding al- 
most every day. He just makes me happy. I like 
the most recent Justin Bieber. You may not like 
him; you may not like how popular he is, but 
don't deny his talent. The guy learned to play 
musical instruments, worked on his singing, 
worked on his dancing, worked on his social 
media. That's why he is where he is. 
PLAYBOY: How about TV? Do you binge much? 
NOAH: I do. I watch House of Cards, Game of 
Thrones, Broad City, Nathan for You, Billions. 
Ijust finished watching The Bachelor. 
PLAYBOY: Any fanboy crushes? 

NOAH: Charlize Theron. Not just because 
she's South African. I think she is aging 


INTERVIEW 


majestically. She's so beautiful. Jennifer 
Lopez as well. Does she even have an age? 
PLAYBOY: No doubt your dating life has im- 
proved since getting the show. 

NOAH: Things are good there. I have a girl- 
friend. But yes, you definitely get more atten- 
tion all over the place. You suddenly become a 
little more good-looking, a little funnier to ev- 
eryone. Remember, though, that I had some 
level of notoriety for a very long time. It just 
moves from place to place. I mean, don't get me 
wrong, getting the show was huge because I un- 
derstood it was going to change my life forever, 
and it has. American fametakes everything up 
alevel. Seeing your face all over New York City— 


I had a бат 


mitzvah, but 
no one came. 
Nobody knew 
what the hell a 
bar mitzvah 


even was. 


noone can deny that’s an insane experience. It's 
New York fucking City. It’s the Sinatra song. It’s 
Jay Z. It’s Beyoncé. You can’t deny what itis and 
how weird it is, even though many people still 
don’t know who I am. But put it this way: I’m 
very lucky in that if this had been my first ex- 
perience of fame, I probably would have caved. 
I would have crumbled. I would have gone mad. 
You can’t go from zero to The Daily Show. 

PLAYBOY: So many comedians get caught up in 
drugs and alcohol. Have youstruggled with that? 
NOAH: No. Never have. I’ve never smoked pot. 
Гуе never smoked, period. I was never drawn 
to it. ГЇЇ have а few drinks occasionally. Some- 
times I regret the fact that I missed that era, 
because that’s what comedy was all about at one 
point. Comedians were rock and roll. Now you 


goto a comedy club and comedians are ordering 
kale salads and telling you about how they’re 
going to the gym in the morning, whichis really 
interesting to see, because comedians were the 
first ones who switched over. All comedians 
used to be drunks and drug addicts. You'd hear 
about a suicide in the community every single 
week, and that has slowed down dramatically, 
which is fantastic. 

PLAYBOY: It is often said that pain is the 
source of all comedy. There's the need to have 
people laugh at your jokes, the need for valida- 
tion. Is that part of who you are? 

NOAH: It's part of most comedians. It's our 
dark bond. We all carry the heavy burden of 
depression in a different way. We 
alldealwith itin different ways. For 
most of us, our therapy is on stage. 
I meditate. I exercise. I always try 
to aim toward the light in life. I sur- 
round myself with positive people. 
I move toward positivity. I try to 
find the things that help me quell 
that voice in my head. It's one ofthe 
reasons I love Kevin Hart, who was 
the first guest on my show. Comedy 
was associated with skepticism and 
ageneral pessimism for so long, but 
Kevin came in with positivity, and 
he still does. Look at his Twitter. 
He's eating right, working out, add- 
ing value to people's lives. I'm glad 
for his success because he shows 
there's another way to do it. 
PLAYBOY: Does earning more 
money make you happier? 

NOAH: Ironically, I'm not nec- 
essarily making more money as 
host of The Daily Show than I was 
before. I was doing very well for 
myself as an artist, as a businessman, as a 
performer. So it's nota lifestyle change for me. 
Mine is not a Cinderella story. 

You know, it's good to have enough money. I 
liketosplurge on friends and family and people 
and charity. I like watches. I guess growing up 
with a Swiss father will do that. I don't buy ex- 
pensive watches, but I like unusual ones. I havea 
Hamilton Jazzmaster Face 2 Face, and there are 
only 888 of them in the world. I love the fact that 
it’s awatch whose face flips over to another face, 
which makes it two different watches in one. 

The biggest thing I have learned in Amer- 
ica is that it is expensive to be famous here. 
You have to pay for things. You have to pay for 
bodyguards. You have to pay for a driver. You 
have to pay for a publicist. You have to pay for 


а stylist. I never used to understand the stress 
around those things. I never experienced that, 
and I still try to not experience it. I tell people, 
“Ihaveastylistatthe show, but if Igoto events, 
alot of the time I dress myself." Га rather give 
the money to starving children. So if you see 
medressed really trashy somewhere, know that 
some kid somewhere got a meal. 

Honestly, having possessions gets boring. At 
some point, you have all you can have. I com- 
pletely understand why Bill Gates is working to 
eradicate malaria. Yeah, he can own 10 Bugat- 
tis, but so what? He can drive fast in 
astraight line. It's much more excit- 
ing to fix problems, education, help 
children. Maybe it's my African per- 
spective on the world. 

PLAYBOY: You have a keen ear for 

language. What are your favorite 
Americanisms? 

NOAH: Rah, rah, rah. 

PLAYBOY: Come again? 

NOAH: When Americans try to 

show you that they're keeping up 

with what you're saying in a con- 

versation they say, *rah, rah, rah" 

as in "right, right, right." Which is 

the weirdest sound to me. You go, 

*Make a right turn at that corner" 

and they'l interrupt with *rah, 

rah, rah" to speed you along. When 

I first heard it, I was like, What's 

going on? Then there's the sugges- 

tive nature of a request. “So do you 

want to go ahead and pass me that 

water?" That's such a strange way 

to say it, instead of *Please pass me 

the water.” “Do you want to go ahead 

and turn the lights on?” What do you 

mean? Is that a request or a com- 

mand? What if I don't want to do it? 

You could have just asked me to do 

it. It's strange guirks that I pick up 

on. I've also had to monitor myself with some 
South African words and phrases. People here 
don't really understand the word ag. It's an ex- 
clamation. “Ag! What a nightmare!” Also, esh, 
asin "Where's my phone? Esh!Ileftit at home." 
PLAYBOY: So do you want to go ahead and walk 
us through the process of putting together The 
Daily Show? 

NOAH: Wake up at seven. Spend a good 10, 15 
minutes meditating, just taking time to pre- 
pare myself for the day. Then ГИ read the news, 
as much of it as I can. It's usually The New York 
Times, The Washington Post. It's BuzzFeed 
News. It's The Skimm, which is a daily newslet- 


INTERVIEW 


terthat pulls togetherthe most interesting reads 
of the day. I'm a big fan of Vox and everything 
Ezra Klein is doing. I really love German Lopez. I 
love Rachel Maddow. ГЇ doa bit of a workout just 
togetthe body moving, and I'm at work by 9:15. 

We've got a big team. Making TV every day 
is a very tough job, so there are about 100 peo- 
ple helping in various ways. Around 20 of us 
will gather in the morning to figure out what 
the show is going to be. We talk out all the pos- 
sibilities, and then I make my decisions based 
ona few things. Number one, is it interesting? 


Number two, is it funny? Number three, do I 
have something to say about it? That's what I 
look for. You know, Lindsey Graham saying the 
choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz 
is like being shot or poisoned, you're going to 
run with something like that. I always go, What 
would I share with my friends? Because that's 
the way I see the audience. 

PLAYBOY: What adjustments have you made 
along the way? 

NOAH: I had to learn that I couldn't manufac- 
ture anger. I couldn't manufacture outrage. 
I understood that a lot of people looked to The 
Daily Show for their catharsis, but I think a 


lot of people maybe also got lazy in that they 
stopped fighting for change. Jon was very good 
at articulating a feeling for many people, but I 
think wealso evolved into an age of couch-place 
activism, where people just sit on their couch 
and hashtag. Whereas where I come from the 
idea is that you go out and you do something 
about it. The biggest thing I had to learn very 
early on with The Daily Show was that I couldn't 
be the anger for people. I had to find an audience 
in the same place that I was in. I had to find the 
things that interested me and the things I found 
funny and had to believe and still 
have to believe that there are enough 
people like me who will experience 
the world the way I experience it. 
PLAYBOY: You spend less time ac- 
tually sitting at the desk than Jon 
Stewart did. Is that intentional? 
NOAH: It’s funny. In my head I go, 
I didn’t work all these years to get 
a desk job. I sat because I was told 
that it was the format, because that's 
what everyone did. Then one day I 
stood because I was like, This is who 
Iam. This is what I do. Standing up 
is how I got here. 
PLAYBOY: You continue to do 
comedy on the road even with your 
busy schedule. 
NOAH: I have to. Stand-up is where 
I live. Stand-up helps me articulate 
my point of view. Stand-up helps me 
exist in my purest form, and that is 
talking to people, sharing and dis- 
cussing ideas. I try to go out every 
second weekend. Honestly, that’s 
where I feel alive. I get to relax. I get 
to explore myself, and I get to see 
America, which is very important to 
me. I find it weird to live in a place 
and comment on a place but have a 
level of ignorance. 

More than that, it’s easy to get caught in this 
world between youand the cameraand random 
reviewers. You have to remember what human 
beings are. If you live in an echo chamber, you 
run the risk of believing you know everything 
when in fact you know nothing. 

PLAYBOY: If the show ended tomorrow, what 
would you do? 

NOAH: I would pick up my U.K. tour where I 
left off. I would go back and carry on touring 
Australia. I would go and do my shows in Ger- 
many. I would do more shows in South Africa, 
maybe start some TV shows somewhere else. As 
long as I’m doing comedy, I’m alive. a 


"YVA 
Y 


4 


ао AY № 


St 
3 сэн ‚о о 9? 
® ( 
» UG o 
O 
+“ ei a, © 
“ WLR % 
/ э» © 
a Ža 3 mda e © 
* > sA «'* Gs ө, 
D 2 e - 9) 
«. Р > a “ше. 
.. The Unraveling о 
| е > a p dE ® 
e t ғ 


Under fire from the FBI and leading sciel А 


. 


EN EV 


RZE 
> AA 


Anita Frazier hurried across the manicured lawn of the stately old court- 


house in Moultrie, Georgia and up the marble front steps. It was four P.M. 
on February 26, 2002. Frazier had spent that and the previous day in 
court, watching the man she loved being tried for participating in the 
gang rape of another woman. Y Kerry Robinson, 26, had sworn to Frazier, 
his girlfriend of three years and the mother of his baby daughter, that he 
was innocent. She believed him, but his fate was now in the jury 8 hands. 


They had begun deliberating that afternoon, 
and Frazier had returned to her job at a local 
furniture factory, expecting them totakeuntil 
at least the next day. 

After scarcely an hour, however, Frazier got 
word that a verdict had been reached. She slipped 
back into the courtroom just in time to hear the 
judge ask the jury foreman, “Do 
you wish to read the verdict?” 

“ГІ be glad to,” replied the 
foreman. “On the State of Georgia versus 
Kerry Robinson, on the charge of rape: Wethe 
jury find the defendant guilty of this charge.” 

“I almost passed out,” Frazier recalls. “I 
don’t know if I screamed.” 

Just two pieces of evidence connected 
Robinson to the rape. One was the testimony 
of Tyrone White, a convicted felon who'd 
pleaded guilty. White had cut a deal, revers- 
ing his original not-guilty plea and testifying 
against his alleged accomplices in exchange 
for alighter sentence. White also happened to 
have an old beef with Robinson. 

The other evidence against Robinson was a 
partial match between his DNA and the DNA 
from the hospital rape kit. This genetic evi- 
dence was critical to the prosecution’s case. 
Without it, White’s self-serving testimony 
meant nothing. But with it, the jury barely 
hesitated to pronounce Robinson guilty. 

Most people, conditioned by countless CST 
episodes and hundreds of real-life exoner- 
ations, view DNA evidence as a direct line 
to guilt or innocence: The suspect either 
matches or doesn't. But in reality, interpret- 
ing DNA evidence is often a murky business 
that boils down to judgment calls—and those 
judgment calls can be utterly wrong. 

That’s primarily because the genetic evi- 
dence is often not from just one person. Sup- 
pose you handed your friend a beer at a party 
and later that night some drunk smashed that 


ILLUSTRATION BY TATIANA PLAKHOVA 


ey CHRIS BERDIK 


now-empty bottle and stabbed somebody to 
death with it. When police investigators swab 
that weapon, they may find cells from your 
skin, your friend's saliva, the murderer's skin 
and the victim's blood, all mixed together on 
the broken bottle neck. All those cells contain 
DNA, but the investigators” tests don't show 
which bits came from blood 
versus saliva or skin cells, nor 
from whom. It's up to foren- 
sic analysts to untangle the DNA they've 
detected and then use statistics and proba- 
bility to determine whose it is. 

Evidence like that is known as a DNA 
mixture—a jumble of genetic code from 
multiple people. It's the most common type 
of DNA in criminal investigations, and evi- 
dence is mounting that it gets misinterpreted 
with disturbing frequency. At least two men 
have been exonerated after being convicted 
based on misinterpreted DNA mixtures. The 
mishandling of mixture cases recently shut 
down one major metropolitan crime lab and 
sent others scurrying to reexamine the evi- 
dence in thousands of cases they thought had 
been settled. 

There’s good reason to believe Robinson 
may have been wrongly convicted thanks to 
such misinterpretation. In recent years, no 
fewer than 12 separate forensic analysts have 
concluded that he should have been excluded 
as a suspect because his DNA does not match 
that found in the crime-scene evidence. 

“Tt took me all of five minutes to look at the 
data and say, ‘Wow, this is an exclusion. This 
isn't even close, ” says Eric Carita, an inde- 
pendent forensic geneticist who analyzed 
Robinson’s case. “I showed the DNA evidence 
to three or four other experts at the time just 
to make sure, and they all looked at me like 
I had three heads. ‘What are you confused 
about? This is an easy exclusion.’ " 


Robinson is now hoping that the Georgia 

Supreme Court, where he has filed an appeal, 
will agree. 
Moultrie isa hardscrabble town іп southwest- 
ern Georgia, built on big farms and big timber, 
but today some 40 percent of its inhabitants 
live below the poverty line. In one of Moult- 
rie’s poor, predominantly black neighbor- 
hoods stands a dilapidated mustard-brown 
ranch house covered in a blanket of dry, rust- 
colored pine needles. On February 15, 1993, 
Sherri Lynsey (not her real name), 42, was in 
this house, cooking herself supper. By eight 
P.M. the temperature had dipped into the 
upper 50s and Lynsey had wrapped a pink 
housecoat around her floral nightgown. She 
heard a knock outside. 

She looked out a front window and saw 
three young black men standing outside her 
screened-in porch. Two had on gray hood- 
ies, and another wore a brown flannel jacket. 
Lynsey couldn’t see their faces in the dark, 
and she didn’t recognize them. She opened 
the door acrack and peeked out. 

“Yes?” she asked. 

One of the young men said they were trying 
to find the house of Emma Jean Harris. Lyn- 
sey told them she didn’t know the woman, shut 
the door and watched through the window as 
the men lingered for a minute before moving 
along. She took her meal into the den and ate 
while watching TV. Then she dozed off. About 
half an hour later, she awoke to the sound of 
splintering wood. 

The men had cut a hole in her porch screen, 
unlatched that door and then kicked in the front 
door. One of them, with his hoodie now cinched 
around his face, ran in with a black semiauto- 
matic Luger pistol. Lynsey bolted for the back 
door, but the man pointed the gun at her. 

“Don’t touch that door,” he said. The other 


A Georgia jury was told that the odds were one in 15 that the DNA of Kerry Robinson (right) 

would match crime-scene DNA evidence, when in reality one in five randomly chosen people 

would match the same DNA profile. Robinson is currently serving 20 years in prison, raising 
questions about the use and validity of DNA forensics. 


two ran in behind him, one with his hoodie 
also cinched tight and the other now wearing 
a ski mask. 

“Науе you got any money?” one demanded. 
Lynsey led them to her bedroom, where she 
took out her pocketbook and handed over about 
$180, her rent money. 

“You’ve got my money,” Lynsey said. “Please 
just leave.” That's when the guy with the gun 
told her to take her clothes off and get on the 
bed. He raped Lynsey while the other two ran- 
sacked the house. When he was done, his hood 
fell back from his face for a moment, just long 
enough for Lynsey to sneak a look. 

All three men raped Lynsey, and at least one 
of them forced her into oral sex. Before the 
three of them left through the back door, the 
one with the gun said, “We know who you аге, 
and we know where you live. If you tell anybody, 
we're going to come back and get you.” 

Shaking, Lynsey put on her clothes and 
reached underthe mattress forthe gun she kept 
there. She went to the back door and pointed the 
gun at the door. Then she picked up the phone. 
She stood there, with the gun in one hand and 
the phone in the other, her mind blank with 
fear. Eventually her parents’ number popped 
into her head, and she called them and told 


them what had happened. She finally put down 
the gun when the detectives showed up. 

DNA is what makes each of us who we are. It’s 
a molecule shaped like a long twisted ladder— 
a double helix—that contains the genetic rec- 
ipe for everything from hair color to height. 
Almost every cell in your body, whether bone, 
skin, blood or organ tissue, carries a complete 
set of your DNA. And 99.9 percent of everyone’s 
DNA is exactly the same; the tiny fraction that's 
different is what makes us unique. It’s this tiny 
fraction that is the focus for crime-lab analysts. 

Most forensic tests rely on 13 well-studied 
locations on the DNA chain where the genetic 
variation from person to person is greater. 
Each of these 13 locations contains about two or 
three dozen possible genetic variations called 
alleles. Every person has two alleles at each lo- 
cation, one from each parent. DNA forensic an- 
alysts identify the alleles, or genetic markers, 
at the 13 locations, codify the results with num- 
bers and string all that data together to create a 
“DNA fingerprint.” 

While it’s not uncommon for any two peo- 
ple to have the same markers at one or two lo- 
cations, the chances of two people having 
the exact same alleles at all 13 locations are 


infinitesimal—on the order of one in 2 quadril- 
lion (unless they’re identical twins). In other 
words, ifyour full DNA fingerprint matches the 
DNA ata crime scene, it's yours. No argument. 

While DNA matching is nearly incontrovert- 
ible under ideal circumstances, there are sev- 
eral ways it can mislead investigators. For one 
thing, today’s DNA tests are far more sensitive 
than they used to be, and that improvement is a 
double-edged sword. Investigators can now de- 
tect nanograms of “touch DNA” on everything 
from computer keyboards to coffee mugs. But 
that also means microscopic bits of other peo- 
ple’s DNA can get picked up as well. Skin cells 
can travel through the air suspended in com- 
mon house dust; DNA in saliva can spray out 
when a person speaks or exhales. This isn’t just 
atheoretical concern. For years German police 
were flummoxed by a supercriminal they called 
the Phantom of Heilbronn, awoman whose DNA 
they found on guns, cigarettes, half-eaten bis- 
cuits and other evidence at the scene of crimes 
ranging from burglary to murder. In 2009, after 
16 years on the case, authorities finally discov- 
ered that the mystery woman worked for the 
company that manufactured the cotton swabs 
used to collect DNA. Microscopic bits of her 
DNA had found their way onto the swabs. 

With police gathering more and more DNA 
evidence, crime labs are often swamped with 
samples awaiting analysis, increasing the risk of 
lab mix-ups. In 2002, Las Vegas crime-lab tech- 
nicians accidentally swapped the samples of two 
suspects in a robbery case, sending an innocent 
man to prison for nearly four years. Police real- 
ized their mistake only when the released man 
was caught for another crime in California. 

Another weakness is that crime-scene DNA 
is rarely in perfect shape. Heat and light break 
down DNA molecules. Over time, some mark- 
ers can simply disappear—called “drop-out”— 
especially when there is very little DNA to 
begin with. Moreover, to make analysis possi- 
ble, labs use chemical processes to “amplify” 
DNA, which can sometimes conjure phantom 
markers, called “drop-in.” 

Finally, there is the serious challenge of DNA 
mixtures. For an idea of how quickly DNA mix- 
tures get messy, pretend our genetic markers 
are Scrabble letter tiles. If you put all the tiles 
for, say, Barack Obama’s name in a hat (i.e., 
AORMABBCAKA), it would be easy to take out the 
letters, compare them toaname and determine 
if you have a match. Barack Obama? Yes. Ron- 
ald Reagan? No. 

But toss in the letters for Grover Cleveland, 
George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower, 
and now you have AHGLEHREDVLGMAGOWAIN- 
ONBVRAECEINWERDEROIOGTCEWERGAHKNOATSSB. 


66 


EVIDENGE IS MOUNTING THAT DNA 
MIXTURE IS MISINTERPRETED 
WITH DISTURBING FREQUENCY. 


Тһе number of possible names skyrockets. In 
addition to the original four names, you can 
also spell Ronald Reagan, Woodrow Wilson, 
Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert 
Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Hard- 
ing. Then consider that a few Scrabble letters 
might have gone missing from the hat, thanks 
to the possibility of drop-in and drop-out. 

Ata certain point, the evidence gets so com- 
plex that “it's basically a Ouija board of data,” 
says Greg Hampikian, a professor of biology 
and criminal justice at Boise State University. 
“You can see whatever you want to see.” 

Hampikian believes that's what happened 
in Robinson's case. The Georgia Bureau of 
Investigation found that Robinsons DNA 
mirrored the mix of degraded DNA from the 
crime scene at just two of the 13 locations on 
the DNA chain. No national standards exist 
for how labs should interpret the strength of 
these partial matches—when they should in- 
clude or exclude a suspect from a crime scene, 
or when the evidence is simply too messy to 
conclude anything. It's up to individual crime 
labs to make these calls. 

There have been at least two known false 
convictions due to misinterpretations of DNA 
mixtures. In 2003 Josiah Sutton was released 
from a Texas prison after four years, having 
been falsely convicted of participating in the 
gang rape of a woman. William С. Thompson, 
a criminologist at the University of Califor- 
nia, Irvine, analyzed the DNA from the rape 
kit and semen stains on the victim's clothes 
and car, to which Sutton's DNA was a partial 
match. He found that the lab analyst had wildly 
exaggerated the strength of that DNA link by 
caleulating the rarity of Sutton's DNA in the 
general population, rather than the likelihood 
that a random person's DNA could “match” the 
crime-scene evidence to the same extent. Re- 
working the numbers dropped the chances of 
a random match from about one in 700,000 to 


one in 15. These revelations led to new, more 
modern tests of the evidence by an indepen- 
dent lab that proved the DNA from the crime 
scene was not Sutton's. 

In another case, an Oklahoma crime lab mis- 
interpreted a DNA mixture in achild rape case 
as having come from just one man. The faux 
DNA fingerprint appeared to match a man 
named Timothy Durham. That was enough for 
him to be convicted, despite 11 witnesses plac- 
ing him at a skeet-shooting competition in 
Dallas at the time the rape occurred in Tulsa. 
Durham also had credit-card receipts from 
Dallas that day. The mistake came to light 
only when Durham's family had the evidence 


retested by an independent lab. 
More recently, investigations have exposed 
stemic flaws with mixture analysis. The 


most widespread problems involve the statis- 


tics that crime labs attach to their findings— 
probabilities meant to help juries weigh the 
strength of DNA evidence. 

These crucial statistics have come under 
fire. The FBI keeps tabs on the rarity of every 
known allele for each location in the DNA fin- 
gerprint, broken down by race. For instance, 
24 percent of African Americans might have 
the most common genetic variation at posi- 
tion D21, while fewer than one percent of the 
African American population has a much rarer 
marker. These “рор stats" are the Rosetta 
stone of DNA analysis. 

In May 2015the FBI notified labs nationwide 
that it had discovered clerical errors in their 
popstats. That prompted reviews, which uncov- 
ered an even bigger problem: Many labs were 


incorrectly applying combined probability of 


inclusion (CPI), the most commonly used sta- 
tistical formula for evaluating DNA mixtures. 
This calculation is supposed to yield the likeli- 
hood that a random person would be included 
as a contributor to a DNA mixture. But CPI is 
accurate only when you have a full DNA profile, 


including genetic-marker information at every 
location in your evidence sample. Instead, labs 
were using CPI to analyze degraded profiles, 
calculating probabilities at locations where 
they had good information and ignoring loca- 
tions where they had drop-out. Those bad anal- 
yses led some prosecutors to hugely exaggerate 
the probability that a suspect's DNA tied him to 
the crime scene. In some cases juries were told 
that the odds of a random person's DNA match- 
ing the crime-scene DNA as closely as the de- 
fendant’s did were a million to one—when the 
real likelihood was more like 10 to one. 

Last spring, Washington, D.C.'s crime lab 
was found to have misused the CPI so badly 
that it was barred for 10 months from han- 
dling any more DNA cases, pending reforms. 
And last fall, the Texas 
m 
of thousands of cases involving DNA mixtures 
stretching back to 1999. This vast undertaking 
will take many years and could open thousands 
of cases for potential retrial. 


Forensic Science Com- 


ion ordered state crime labs to review tens 


Miranda Taylor’s bracelets jangle as she leafs 
through a pile of neatly penned letters from her 
younger brother, Kerry Robinson. She’s at the 
front desk of the salon-spa she owns in Moult- 
rie, making photocopies of some of Robinson’s 
letters for me. A pretty woman in her late 40s 
with dark, curly hair, she carefully picks each 
letter from the stack with fingertips perfectly 
lacquered in a light taupe. 

When Taylor and Robinson were kids, their 
family moved around, but much of their child- 
hood was spent in the public housing projects a 
few miles north of here. There were five kids, from 
four different dads. Mostly the kids were raised by 
their mother, Alvera Robinson, who died in 2010. 
When Robinson wentto prison for rape, his mom 
ledthechargetoexonerate him, hiring an appeals 
lawyer. When her mom passed, Taylor picked up 
thetorch toclear her brother's name. 


67 


Robinson was the baby of the family. Ву the 
time he was 12, he'd started playing what he 
calls *the drug game.” It was the crack era of 
the 1980s and everybody was doing it, he ex- 
plains via telephone. “Тһе money was so easy,” 
Robinson says. “It was a rush for how fast the 
money came and how bad people wanted it.” 

“My brother was a hustler. He sold drugs,” ac- 
knowledges Taylor. “That's nothing to be proud 
of. But to be labeled a rapist? The things that 
were done to that woman, it breaks your heart 
into pieces.” 

The year Sherri Lynsey was raped, 1993, 
was a tumultuous one for the Robinson fam- 
ily. Their mother was dating a man named 
Nick. One day in early February, Nick's el- 
derly father, a man known around the neigh- 
borhood as Mr, Charlie, was shot and robbed. 
Word reached Robinson that Tyrone White 
was the shooter. 

Robinson told his mom, who told Nick, who 
told the cops, who arrested White. Taylor and 
the rest of Robinson's defenders are convinced 
White learned about Robinson snitching and 
was eager for revenge. 

Soon after, Robinson, then a high school ju- 
nior, severely beat and robbed a guy who suppos- 
edly stole some of his drug 
pleaded guilty and drew a five-year sentence. 

Robinson claims he and White pa 
other around April 1993 in the county jail 
where they were both incarcerated—Robinson 
for the beating, White for the shooting. Robin- 
son says White called out to him, “Yeah, moth- 
erfuc Theard what 
you for that. You going down too.” 


. He was arrested, 


ed each 


ou said. I'm going to get 


By that time, Moultrie police had put together 
enough of acase to question White about Sherri 


Lynsey's rape. A neighbor had seen the young 
men roaming the neighborhood and recog- 
nized one of them as White. Lynsey had also 
picked his photo out of alineup. 


Finding White was easy—he was already 
locked up for shooting Mr. Charlie. He ac- 
knowledged he was there at Lynsey's rape but 
insisted he was only a lookout and denied rob- 
bing or raping her. In fact, he claimed he tried 
to stop the other guys. 

“I’m being honest. I did not rape that woman,” 
he said, according to the interview transcript. 

“Well, who did?” a detective asked. 

“It was Sedrick Moore and Kerry Lewis,” 
White said and then quickly corrected him- 
self. “No, Kerry Robinson and another dude, 
and I seen them.” 

Asked again later who raped Lynsey, White 
answered, “Sedrick. No. I’m gonna say it’s 
Kerry Robinson. It sure was.” 

At this point, however, the case stalled. The 
Georgia Bureau of Investigation lab told the 
Moultrie police that they couldn’t analyze 
the DNA evidence until they had blood sam- 
ples from all the suspects, and Sedrick Moore 
could not be found. 

Robinson was released in 1999. He got a job 
atalocal furniture factory, where he met Anita 
Frazier. She liked his boyish looks and lean, 
five-foot-seven frame, and she especially liked 


how he helped raise her eight-year-old daughter 
from a previous marriage. Within a year, the 
couple had a baby girl. They named her Kerria, 
after her doting father. 

Then police finally found Moore, in Philadel- 
phia. They arrested him, and the ca 
on track. Shortly after Ke s birth, sheri 
deputies came to the furniture factory, de- 
manding Robinson's blood to check his DNA. 


sewas back 


That's when Frazier learned that the father of 


her infant daughter, a man who had never even 
raised his voice to her, 
raped a woman at gunpoint. 

The police sent the rape kit, Lynsey's night- 
gown and three purple-capped vials of blood 
from the three suspects to the Georgia Bu- 
reau of Investigation forensic analysts in 


suspected of having 


Atlanta. According to the GBI report, both 
Sedrick Moore and Kerry Robinson matched 
the evidence at only two locations. The GBI 
analyst decided that Moore and Robinson 
“could not be excluded” as contributors to the 
crime-scene evidence, meaning ії was possi- 
ble their DNA was in the evidence mix, but 
the match wasn't strong enough to conclude 
that with certainty. 

Tyrone White's DNA markers, on the other 
hand, matched the crime-scene evidence in 11 
of the 13 locations. The police had also found 
the Luger in White's mother's house. In short, 
White's “not guilty” plea was looking thin. 

Facing a possible life sentence, on top of the 
10 years remaining on his earlier sentence, 
White cut a deal. He agreed to change his plea 
to guilty and testify against Moore and Robin- 
son in return for certain charges being dropped 
and his sentence being slashed. (White was ге- 
leased in 2014.) 

Both Moore and Robinson pleaded not 
guilty. Robinson didn't have an alibi—he 
had been a teenage drug dealer at the time 
and didn't exactly keep a detailed calendar. 
(Moore was convicted in the same trial; he 
also maintains his innocence.) During the 
trial, Robinson's court-appointed lawyer 
went after White for the glaring inconsisten- 
cies in his testimony. But when it came tothe 
critical DNA evidence, both defense lawyers 
were out of their depth. Neither called an ex- 
pert witness to counter the testimony of the 
GBI forensic analyst. 

“You've got to realize you're talking to some- 
body here that's totally a novice when it comes 
to DNA stuff,” Moore's lawyer told the GBI 
expert during his cross examination. “I fell 
asleep in biology 

In a deposition given later, Robinson's trial 
attorney admitted he hadn't di 
challenges of DNA mixtures with anyone be- 
fore the trial. 


ussed the 


DNA EVIDENCE “15 BASIGALLY A 
OUIJA BOARD OF DATA. YOU GAN 
SEE WHATEVER YOU WANT TO SEE.” 


“Аге you aware of what a mixture analysis 
is?” he was asked. 

“Мо, not right at this minute,” the attorney 
answered. 

Both lawyers mainly asked the GBI analyst 
to explain the difference between the certainty 
of Tyrone White’s match and the “cannot be 
excluded” conclusion for both Moore and Rob- 
inson. What was the likelihood of a random 
person’s DNA matching the crime-scene evi- 
dence in 11 locations, as White’s DNA did? On 
the order of one in 10 billion, said the GBI ana- 
lyst. What about matching DNA in just two lo- 
cations? Maybe one in 15, the GBI witness said. 

“It’s a rough estimate,” the analyst said. “I 
haven't done the math.” This admission didn't 
faze the defense lawyers, but it shocked fo- 
rensic geneticist Greg Hampikian. While the 
physical evidence from the rape has long since 
been destroyed, Hampikian reviewed the tes- 
timony and the lab report in 2008 at the be- 
hest of Rodney Zell, a lawyer Robinson's family 
hired to file an appeal. 

“This was an ad hoc play with numbers that 
was misleading at best,” Hampikian said of the 
GBI analyst’s testimony. 

In fact, the odds of a random match were 
much higher. Studies of the millions of DNA 
fingerprints now stored in databases indi- 
cate that nearly one in five randomly chosen 
pairs of unrelated people will match at two of 
the 13 locations. An investigative reporter at 
an Atlanta TV news station who did a story on 
Robinson’s case in 2009 randomly picked four 
people in his newsroom for DNA analysis. All 
four matched the crime-scene evidence at least 
as strongly as Robinson did. 

Hampikian believes the DNA evidence not 
only fails to prove Robinson’s guilt, it strongly 
suggests his innocence. There are two big rea- 
sons why Hampikian thinks Robinson should 
have been excluded as a suspect. 

First, Robinson’s DNA markers don’t match 
those of the crime-scene mix at the most tell- 
tale parts of any DNA fingerprint: the D3 lo- 
cation. What makes D3 special? Out of all the 
locations, the DNA at D3 is the most likely to 
be detected in the lab. Basically, if even the 
smallest trace of your DNA can be found, it 
should be found at D3. 

Robinson’s DNA also doesn’t match that 
found at location D21. At this location, Robin- 
son is the only suspect who inherited the same 
genetic variation from both his parents. He 
should be contributing twice the signal here, 
and he’s nowhere to be found. 

In 2012, Hampikian asked 17 DNA analysts 
at an accredited crime lab to independently 
analyze the GBI data. Only one of the analysts 


Greg Hampikian (left), a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Boise State University and 
director of the Idaho Innocence Project, works to overturn convictions based on faulty DNA evidence. 


agreed with the original GBI report that Robin- 
son “could not be excluded.” Four said the evi- 
dence was inconclusive. Twelve concluded that 
Robinson should be excluded from the crime- 
scene evidence. In other words, these experts 
said Robinson’s DNA was not part of the ge- 
netic mix detected in the rape kit. Without 
that, there was no physical evidence linking 
Robinson to the crime. 

At Robinson’s sentencing, the judge allowed 
him to say good-bye to his family. As Robinson 
hugged Anita Frazier, he whispered to her, “Go. 
Get out of Moultrie.” 

“He didn’t want us to have to go through all 
the rumors and the finger-pointing,” she says 
when we speak by phone. Frazier followed Rob- 
inson’s advice and moved back to the Chicago 
area where she'd grown up. 

Their daughter, Kerria, is now a high school 
sophomore. She and Robinson send each other 
letters and talk on the phone most weeks. 
Frazier is going back to school part-time to 
earn acertificate in DNA forensics. 

“When I left Moultrie I took a lot of the pa- 
perwork on the case. I read over all the tran- 
scripts,” she says. “I remember sitting through 
that trial and hearing about how Kerry has a 
certain amount of alleles and thinking, Nobody 
here knows what the hell alleles are! The whole 
thing to me was botched.” 

DNA remains a powerful forensic tool. 
Across the country, criminal justice profes- 
sionals are trying to find ways to restore its 
solid-gold reputation. There are calls for crime 
labs to be made independent of police and 


prosecutors, which would remove the potential 
for a conflict of interest. Many also put their 
faith in the computational power of new soft- 
ware to solve DNA mixtures, free of the biases 
and mental fatigue of human analysts. But 
technological fixes are controversial, because 
proprietary software isn't open to scrutiny, 
and the assumptions built into its algorithms 
can't be questioned in court the way an ana- 
lyst's methodology can. 

Others are pushing for regulations that 
would mandate best practices in labs, such 
as a firm threshold level of DNA signal below 
which no analysis can be made. In addition, 
labs аге increasingly using a more cautious 
calculation for DNA mixtures, called a likeli- 
hood ratio, which compares the probability of 
а suspect's DNA versus that of a random per- 
son's having contributed to the jumble of a 
crime-scene mixture. So far, however, crime 
labs have been slow to embrace likelihood ra- 
tios, because it's a trickier calculation and not 
easy to explain to a jury. 

Meanwhile, Robinson says he spends his 
time in prison working out, reading and “try- 
ing to stay out of the way, trying to turn some- 
thing bad into something good.” 

If the Georgia Supreme Court rejects Rob- 
inson's latest appeal, his only recourse would 
be to file another habeas petition, this time at 
the federal level. If that fails, he'll likely stay in 
prison until 2023. 

*The main thing I think about, every single 
day, is when will I be heard?” he says. “When 
will somebody believe the truth of the whole 
situation?” " 


69 


PLAYMATE 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY HENRIK PURIENNE 


Josie Ganseco doesn't want to hear it. “I'm so over people asking, Are you related to the baseball player?’ Му 
family name has a lot of talk behind it,” says Miss June on the set of a photo shoot in Malibu. *I believe one of 
my biggest achievements to date is maintaining my career and image through all the chaos.” Indeed, like many 
children of famous parents, the 19-year-old model was unwittingly propelled into the spotlight early on. Pre- 
serving a sense of normalcy and centeredness has thus been Josie's ambition. “Тһе family name automatically 
brings me into a light I haven't necessarily been ready for,” she says, “but I think Гуе done a pretty good job of 
keeping a positive reputation.” Her forward-thinking attitude was exemplified this spring when she appeared on 
a family-therapy reality show called The Mother/Daughter Experiment. Reality shows often bring out the worst 
in their subjects, but Josie was barely affected by the experience. “I didn't learn anything surprising about my- 
self, because I don't want to be a reality star,” she says. “I’m actually a weird, goofy and friendly person. Giving 
in to drama simply isn't me.” At her age, such levelheadedness is impressive, and it makes sense that she aspires 
to work with other families one day. “I would love to own a dance studio for all ages where I can teach kids," she 


says. “After all, seeing my own family happy and healthy is one thing that will always make me happy in return.” 


70 


этос ANNC SSIN 


JOSIE CANSECO 


AGE: 19 BIRTHPLACE: Broward County, Florida GURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, California 


SOME LIFE-CHANGING WORDS 


| once read a quote that went 
something like "The true mark 
of maturity is when somebody 
hurts you and you try to under- 
stand their situation instead of 
trying to hurt them back.” Since 


my earthquake emergency kit, a 
pair of my favorite sweatpants 


much information about people's 
every move. I fear technology is 


would definitely be it. 


| think my eyes are the first thing 
people notice about me. I've 


always been told they are one of 


people's motives and actions has 


my most powerful features. 


changed. Now I try to see where 
they're coming from instead of 
acting defensively. 


MY TYPICAL FRIDAY NIGHT 


After a week of going to cast- 
ings, running errands and doing 


hour-long sessions at the gym, I 
like to come home, throw on my 


Іт still listening to "Dangerous 
Woman” by Ariana Grande. Нег 
voice is just insane. | don't think 
anyone can deny her talent. 


LIVING IN THE DIGITAL AGE 


The best thing about being a 


invading the idea of romance. 


Sometimes | wish | were dating 
in an era when people couldn't 


text and Snapchat. 


Jim Carrey has been my favorite 
actor ever since | can remember. 


He is such an inspiration, from 
his sense of humor to his worldly 


perspective. Without a doubt, 
The Truman Show is the most 
underrated movie of all time. 


APIECE OF ADVICE 


Always remember that being a 


sweats and turn on Friends or 
Family Guy. In fact, if | had to pick 


woman in 2016 is our power and 
independence. At the same time, 


kind, warmhearted person will 
get you further than being cold 


one nonessential item to have in 


I think apps are giving away too 


and cruel. Don't fight fire with fire. 


@JosieCanseco Y) @JosieCanseco 


Who Wants to Change 


the Way 


Get O 


The 


ff 


Beijing businessman Brian Sloan reinvented the male sex toy to the tune of $10 million. 
Is he the perfect entrepreneur for the digital-sex era? 


Meet Ruby Temptations. That’s her, spread- 
eagle and nude from the waist down on a king- 
size bed in the sun-drenched penthouse of the 
Berlin Sheraton, surrounded by a roomful 
of vibrators and dildos. Ruby, a 20-year-old 
adult-film actress from the United Kingdom 
with strawberry-blonde hair and porcelain 
skin, is a girl-next-door type—if the girl next 
door had double-D breasts and had filmed 40- 
odd scenes in just three months in the porn 
industry. Ultimately Ruby wants to move her 
career across the pond to Los Ange- 
les. The scene is “slightly more seedy 
in the U.K.,” shes 
But first, a mold of Ruby's vulva 

will be created for a line of adult toys, which 
she hopes will jump-start her American am- 
bitions. For that to happen, her crotch must 
be 3-D scanned, and that's why she finds 
herself in Berlin. A few weeks ago, Ruby en- 
tered an online vulva beauty contest orga- 
nized by sex-toy entrepreneur Brian Sloan, 


er MITCH 
ys. MOXLEY 


the brains behind a wildly successful crowd- 
funded blow-job machine called the Auto- 
blow 2. In all, 182 women submitted close-up 
photos of their vulvas, and more than 2.7 mil- 
lion votes were cast. Sloan flew the winners 
and a handful of runners-up, including Ruby, 
to Germany for the scanning. Likenesses of 
their privates will be available as removable 
synthetic sleeves for Sloan’: 
blow product sometime this summer, as well 
as for 3Fap, anew multi-orifice masturbation 
toy. But first, Sloan is scanning the 
women himself. 

Thirty-five years old with an ath- 
letic build, a shaved head, a dis- 
arming smile and protruding ears, Sloan 
was raised in the Chicago suburbs but has 
lived for the past nine years in China, where 
he has built a small but rapidly growing sex- 
toy empire. This year his company, Very In- 


signature Auto- 


telligent Ecommerce Inc., is projected to hit 
$10 million in sales, up from just $1.5 million 


in 2013—a 567 percent increase. He managed 
this feat with only one full-time employee, a 
handful of service providers and subcontrac- 
tors and no office space. The success has all 
come on the back of the Autoblow 2, which 
upon its summer 2014 launch went viral, 
being featured around the world, from Bos- 
nia to Ivory Coast—Sloan was interviewed by 
dozens of publications, radio hosts and televi- 
sion presenters. In May 2015 the Autoblow 2 
made a cameo on the HBO series Silicon Val- 
ley т an episode titled “Adult Content.” In the 
scene, a speaker at an adult-industry conven- 
tion points to a table of tech-age sex toys, in- 
cluding the Autoblow 2, and says, “Ladies and 
gentlemen, welcome to the future.” 

For Sloan, the future includes a plan to 
dominate the male-sex-toy niche. Part of his 
strategy includes focusing on clever—some 
might say gimmicky—internet marketing 
campaigns, such as the vulva beauty con- 
test, to promote his growing line of toys. He's 


84 


planning an anuscontest, a mouth contest and 
a penis contest, and has a balls contest already 
in the can. (The 3-D-scanned balls are being 
turned into decorative objects for the home.) 
First, however, he has to scan some vulvas. 
Other than Ruby, none of the participants 
in Berlin works in the adult-film industry; 
most entered the contest on a lark, and none 
of them is quite sure what to make of it all. 
There's 27-year-old Britney from Liverpool, 
whose boyfriend, Max, urged her to submit a 
picture. (Names of contestants, except Ruby, 
have been changed.) Max snapped the photo 
himself. “We had some drinks first,” Brit- 
ney says. There's Carmen, a pretty 23-year- 


“ROBOTICS ARE BECOMING 
CHEAPER AND MORE СОМ- 
MON. I JUST BRAINSTORMED 
ON HOW ТО APPLY ROBOTICS 
TO MASTURBATING.” 


old from Bavaria who will soon graduate from 
law school. She saw the contest on 9GAG.com. 
“There were already 15 or so pictures, and 1 
thought, Meh. So I sent my own,” she says. 
Carmen finished second behind Nancy, a 
slightly manic 27-year-old multimedia de- 
signer who lives in Scotland. Nancy plans 
to buy a used motorcycle with her $5,500 
winnings ($5,000 for the first-place winner's 
vaginal scans plus a $500 bonus for optional 
mouth and anus scans). 

In the penthouse suite, Sloan is accompa- 
nied by ajovial German ГИ call Dirk, who owns 
one of the few 3-D-scanning companies in the 
country. He's here to help out in case Sloan 
botches the scans. 

Ruby waits patiently on the bed, taking 
a few selfies for her Twitter followers. The 
room has the air of an awkward visit to the 
gynecologist. As Sloan slowly guides the 
scanner—a $20,000-plus instrument that 
looks like a clothing iron—a few inches from 
Ruby's exposed groin, an image assembles on 
a nearby laptop. The room is silent except for 
the beeping of the machine, the hum of the 
laptop and Dirk repeatedly telling Sloan he's 
doing it all wrong. 

Finally Sloan has the image he needs. “Now,” 


he tells Ruby, “we need to scan you doggy style.” 
Americans spend somewhere between $1 bil- 
lion and $2 billion annually on sex toys, experts 
say, and the market is growing. The success 
of the Fifty Shades of Grey books and film 
sparked a 7.5 percent increase in sales of sex- 
themed products, including adult toys, which 
are becoming more varied and sophisticated. 
Companies are increasingly exploring how 
to incorporate tech and robotics into sex toys. 
OhMiBod, aNew Hampshire-based company, 
offers vibrators that sync with musical beats 
and others that a partner can manipulate via 
Bluetooth on a smartphone from across the 


globe. It also offers an app that allows users 
to track orgasms. *My first intimate moment 
with a chick was in a movie theater, with my 
hand on her thigh,” says Brian Dunham, who 
founded OhMiBod with his wife, Suki, in 
2007. “When I look at the generation grow- 
ing up now, those intimate moments are hap- 
pening digitally.” 

Matt McMullen, creator of the ultra-high- 
end sex toy RealDoll, is working on a kind of 
artificial-intelligence technology that will 
allow a doll to develop a personality curated by 
the user, notunlike the operating system inthe 
Spike Jonze film Her. An app will connect wire- 
lessly to an animatronic head that features life- 
like expressions and movements. That product 
is still a couple of years away, and McMullen 
says a fully functioning sex robot that looks and 
feels like the real thing—a “machine that blows 
your mind”—isn't on the horizon yet. 

The problem is cost. Based on today’s tech- 
nology, such a product would retail for tens, 
if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. So 
the mass-market sex-toy robotics revolution 
may just start with Sloan’s blow-job machine, 
which currently retails online for a rela- 
tively affordable $160 under the name Auto- 
blow 2+. (The plus sign was added when Sloan 


upgraded it from two rows of beads to three.) 
“The idea, in short, was rooted in the fact that 
robotics are becoming cheaper and more com- 
mon,” Sloan says. “I just brainstormed on how 
to apply robotics to masturbating.” 

A few months before the 3-D scanning in 
Berlin, I visit Sloan in Beijing to learn the Auto- 
blow origin story. I find him working on his lap- 
top at a Starbucks on the kind of hot, smoggy 
Beijing day that stings your eyes and weighs 
down your lungs. 

Sloan is in the heat of the vulva beauty con- 
test, the prospects of which excite him greatly. 
“The appearance of a vulva that I like and one 
that you like might be different,” 
he tells me between sips of a double 
espresso on ice. “Since I’m going 
to make vagina sleeves—vulva 
sleeves—I want to make sure I’m 
including the vaginal appearances 
that most men prefer.” Sloan even 
hired an actual datascientist to pro- 
duce what he’s dubbed “The Vulva 
Paper,” which examines, with an 
absurdly academic degree of detail, 
voters’ vulvar preferences. (The 
contest wasn't without controversy; 
onecritic called it *a veritable man- 
wich of misogynist manure.") 

Sloan's path to becoming a sex-toy mogul in 
China was a winding one. Born in Skokie, Illi- 
nois, hestudied philosophy and political science 
at the University of Missouri before entering 
law school at Penn State. He had a summer in- 
ternship with the Cook County Homicide Task 
Force and was a summer associate at a down- 
town Chicago law firm, but he dreaded the work. 
“The first thing I would do when I would go into 
theoffice," hesays, *was putasticky note cover- 
ingthetimeon the computer, so I wouldn't have 
tosee what fucking time it was all day." 

While in law school Sloan began to drive 
to estate sales and antiques auctions in rural 
Pennsylvania, buying whatever he thought had 
hidden value. On one of his early trips he pur- 
chased avintage Monopoly board game for $30, 
which he sold on eBay for $100. The sale “set me 
off on a whirlwind of going to local auctions," 
he recalls. Once, Sloan found a restaurant that 
was going out of business and borrowed $8,000 
from his father to buy the antique signs deco- 
rating the walls; he later sold them for $30,000. 

By the time he graduated Sloan had lost in- 
terest in the law entirely, but his parents urged 
him to take the bar exam anyway. Relieved 
when he failed by two points, he dove headfirst 
into his eBay business. 


86 


z 
z 


Brian Sloan left Chicago (and a law degree) behind for Beijing. Now his sex-toy company is projected to hit $10 million in sales this year, a 567 percent increase from 2013. 


Sloan stored his bounty in his parents’ 
garage in Skokie, focusing on rare and unusual 
items—horn-rimmed glasses, vintage police 


handcuffs, cricket-fighting cages—many 
of which were sourced from China, where 
he began to make frequent trips. He made a 
profit of $80,000 in his first full year as an 
internet vendor. 

One ofthe strangest items Sloan sold landed 
him in the media spotlight—for all the wrong 
reasons. One morning in 2007 he received a 
frantic phone call from his landlord. Why, the 
landlord wanted to know, were police and news 
crews swarming Sloan's apartment? It turned 
out the cops were, according to the Chicago 
Tribune, investigating a tip from a well-known 
“local artist and part-time drag queen” called 
Jojo Baby, who had dropped by Sloan's apart- 
ment to buy vintage mannequins and instead 
saw a human skull boiling on the stove top. 

The skull had come from a supplier in 
China, and Sloan was cleaning it to sell on 
eBay. (While admittedly bizarre, the sale of 
human remains online isn't unheard of.) Jojo 
Baby phoned a friend—an anthropologist— 
who advised calling the police. Within a day, 
the story blew up. News crews from NBC, 
ABC, Fox and Telemundo camped outside 
Sloan's apartment; the Tribune headline read 


4 SKULLS PLUS 1 POT ADD UP TO HOT WATER. 
The police initially believed Sloan had mur- 
dered people and cooked their corpses; even 
after he explained the situation they threat- 
ened to charge him with dismemberment. In 
the end the cops couldn't find any broken laws, 
and Sloan was let off with a warning. “Not my 
proudest moment,” he says. 

By then Sloan was tiring of his eBay business, 
believing it to have limited growth potential. 
Not long after the skull episode, he decamped 
for the greener (though smoggier) pastures of 
Beijing, where he would seek his fortune in a 
decidedly different industry. 

In 2007, Beijing was one of the world's big- 
gest boomtowns, with a soaring economy, 
an ascending middle class and the summer 
Olympics not far off. It was also drawing for- 
eigners from across the globe who were look- 
ing for easy opportunities. Beijing became 
home to a thriving entrepreneurial culture in 
which Sloan was soon immersed. 

In China he focused on selling a single 
product: latex fetish wear. (Sloan had not 
actually sold his products in China until re- 
cently.) Не’ already become one of the inter- 
net's main suppliers of blow-up rubber suits, 
which he sold toinflation fetishists, aterm he 
uses to describe people who become aroused 


1. Sloan often works from cafés; his one full-time 
employee, a 24-year-old Romanian, handles the tech- 
nology side. 2. The type of small motor used in Sloan's 
signature product is the same kind used to dispense 
cash at ATMs. 3. Sloan crowdfunded the Autoblow 2 
with a modest goal of $45,000; within two months he 
had raised $275,000. 


from being inflated or deflated, including 
those who can achieve orgasm by reenact- 
ing the famous Violet Beauregarde blueberry 
scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Fac- 
tory. Operating under the brand name Kinky 
King Latex, Sloan sourced from a factory in 
China's Hunan province and sold the prod- 
ucts online for a fraction of the price ofthose 
offered by bigger brands. 

But Sloan wondered how many millions 
of dollars’ worth of latex he could sell. The 
latex-suit market was small, and he had big- 
ger ambitions. With his newly developed ex- 
pertise in the adult industry, he decided to 
expand. He noticed that sex-toy companies 
enjoyed unusually high profit margins but 
displayed poor knowledge of e-commerce. 
And Sloan was in the right place: China 
produces 70 percent of the world's sex toys, 
generating some $2 billion in sales glob- 
ally. He realized that if he bought from 


88 


SIM CHI YIN (1); PHILIPP ENGELHORN (2, 3) 


factories in China, rebranded the prod- 
ucts and sold directly to consumers on sites 
like Amazon, he could eliminate two sets of 
middlemen—distributors and retailers—and 
drastically cut the sale price while still mak- 
ing a handsome profit. He believed compet- 
itors were too focused on brick-and-mortar 
sales. “Тһе companies were operating in the 
world of the 1980s and 19908,” Sloan says. 

In other words, the sex-toy industry was ripe 

for disruption. 
Sloan's new venture initially sold garden- 
variety sex toys—vibrators and dildos. But 
he saw an opportunity in the male-customer 
niche. The enormously successful Fleshlight, 
an artificial vagina, had already become a 
game changer, but with it and other masturba- 
tion toys the user still had to do all the work—it 
wasn't something being performed on you. 

Mechanical masturbation devices called 
“strokers” already existed, but they were 
mostly battery-powered and ineffectual. In 
2008 Sloan found a factory in China that was 
making an oddly branded stroker called the 
World Master 2000. He had an epiphany. “I 
saw itand thought, That's a blow-job machine!” 

And so the first incarnation of the Auto- 
blow was born. The machine looked like a large 
coffee mug with a rubber orifice shaped like a 
mouth on one end. Inside was a small battery- 
powered motor that moved two circular rows 
of beads up and down beneath a rubber sleeve. 
Sloan ordered shipments of the Chinese stro- 
ker and built a website focused solely on selling 
it. (He also launched Mangasm.com, 
which sells other items for men, such as 
fake vaginas, anal toys and cock rings.) 

Sloan made a video demonstrat- 
ing the Autoblow that starred...Brian 
Sloan. In his apartment in Beijing he 
hung a bedsheet for a backdrop and po- 
sitioned the camera so his head was out 
of frame. He used the product until he 
reached orgasm, sent the video to India 
to be edited and added a techno music 
soundtrack. “I don't know how many 
people came to the website— friends, 
family or whatever—and said, ‘Please tell us 
that's not you! ” 

The first version of the Autoblow sold rel- 
atively well. The problem was, it wasn't very 
good. It broke down regularly; the weak motor 
couldn't power through bigger or curved pe- 
nises. Sloan envisioned something much bet- 
ter. “Ifwe just fixed everything that was wrong 
with it and made a totally new product,” he 
says, “it would rock the male-toys niche.” 

The Autoblow 2 took three years to develop. 


Sloan was worried about the machine being 
copied if he manufactured it in China, so he 
worked with a factory in Taiwan that made 
air conditioner controller units. The factory 
created a prototype, and it was a disaster; it 
broke down as soon as it was powered on. Sloan 
hired a boutique U.S. design firm to help with 
the concept, which he then took to a factory 
in Dongguan, an industrial city in southern 
China. The redesigned Autoblow used a small 
industrial-strength motor—the kind used to 
dispense cash in ATM machines—and fea- 
tured removable, easy-to-clean sleeves, offered 
in three different sizes. 

Once the prototype was finished, Sloan 
needed cash. He didn't want to accept outside 
investments and give up a stake in his com- 
pany, and adult businesses can rarely get bank 
loans. Instead he launched a crowdfunding 
campaign on the website Indiegogo. He filmed 
avideo that again featured himself as the pitch- 
man. The stated goal was $45,000; within two 
months he'd raised $275,000. 

The Autoblow 2 was something the industry 
hadn't yet seen, and it soon became an inter- 
net phenomenon. “There's a huge difference 
between masturbating and having somebody 
else get you off,” says RealDoll's McMullen, 
who has made a lifelike mouth sleeve for the 
Autoblow 2+, which has just been released 
(pictured on page 85). “And that device that 
he's got is accomplishing that simulation. 1 
think it's really cool.” 

Even as the Autoblow 2 blew up, the com- 
pany remained minuscule. Sloan has one em- 


ployee, a 24-year-old in Romania who focuses 
on the technology side and whom Sloan con- 
siders a business partner, but otherwise he 
relies on a small team of mostly part-timers 
scattered around the globe. Mail from his 
various brands is still delivered to his par- 
ents’ address in Skokie. “We're very support- 
ive,” says his father, Ben Sloan, with a laugh. 
Once, his parents helped Sloan film a promo- 
tional videothat featured him walking around 
a mall wearing a full-body latex suit. “When 


Brian first started his business, it took me 
two or three years to tell my friends,” says his 
mother, Cindy. These days, however, it makes 
for great stories at parties. 

Influenced by brand pitchmen he watched 

on TV asa kid—including Ron Popeil, inventor 
of the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie (“Set it and 
forget it!”) and Billy Mays of OxiClean fame— 
Sloan has become a shameless self-promoter 
by design. By posting videos online of himself 
shilling the Autoblow or by inviting women to 
participate in a vulva beauty contest, he's able 
to directly reach his target consumer. “Every- 
body has websites, but in terms of direct mar- 
keting on the internet like Brian does, I'm not 
really seeing it,” says Sara Ramirez, associ- 
ate publisher for retailing at XBIZ, an adult- 
entertainment trade magazine. 
In Beijing, Sloan invites me to his apart- 
ment, a penthouse in a luxury development 
with 20-foot-tall windows that offer an incred- 
ible view of the smog-shrouded skyline. But 
Sloan isn’t ostentatious—he’s more of a T-shirt 
and jeans kind of guy. He flies first or busi- 
ness class and stays in five-star hotels when 
he travels, but those perks don't cost him any- 
thing because he runs his entire business on 
credit cards to collect points. His biggest in- 
dulgence is travel, which he does extensively— 
including two jaunts to North Korea and an 
epic road trip from Zambia to Uganda a few 
years ago. Later this year, he plans to relocate 
to Berlin with his girlfriend, a 27-year-old 
Chinese woman he met on OkCupid. He's also 
looking to buy property in Montenegro. 


“LOOK AT THE GENERATION 
GROWING UP NOW—THOSE 
INTIMATE MOMENTS ARE 
HAPPENING DIGITALLY." 


Sloan's apartment is decorated with sex toys 
and the full jaw of a woolly mammoth that 
once lived in northern China. Just inside the 
front door stands a two-foot-tall rubber penis, 
complete with veins and an astonishingly 
realistic-looking scrotum, which he bought for 
$100 from a sex-toy shop in China. "This is my 
prize possession," he says. 

Onatable is a prototype of the Autoblow 2+. 
(Sloan's pitch: “It strokes 33 percent more of 
your dick!”) “You can try this one later," he 


89 


says, handing it to me. (Back home in New 
York, I do try it. Lacking the, let's say, im- 
provisation of the real thing, using the Auto- 
blow 2+ feels exactly like what the name 
suggests: robotic head.) 

Stacked around the living room are boxes of 
sex toys—large dildos, small vibrators, Auto- 
blow sleeves and a 17-pound fake vagina and 
ass—sold through Sloan's many websites. 

*Check this out,” he says, reaching into a 

cardboard box and pulling out a pair of sili- 
cone breasts with a vagina conveniently placed 
between them. “It's tits with a pussy built in! 
How's that! 1 mean, that's not a bad idea for 
nature to take note.” 
A few days later Sloan and 1 fly to Dongguan, 
in Guangdong province, where the Auto- 
blow is manufactured. Dongguan, sometimes 
called the “world's factory,” was 
once notorious for its sex indus- 
try, with thousands of prostitutes 
catering to the legions of workers 
who flooded there during China's 
boom. In recent years, however, 
the city has been cleaned up in 
Chinese president Xi Jinping's 
anticorruption campaign. 

In the morning we pay a visit 
to Sloan's Autoblow collaborator, 
a Chinese-owned, U.S.-managed 
company. In a tote bag he's carry- 
ing a new stroker, made by a com- 
pany in Japan, that he wants the 
engineers to examine. “Тһеге аге 
a lot of nice sex toys in Japan, but 
they have no fucking clue how to 
market them to Westerners,” Sloan tells me 
on the walk over from our hotel. “Т mean, it's 
called the A10 Piston. It's not a fucking саг!” 

Inside the modern, well-air-conditioned 
office we meet sales director John Hui. Hui 
is a genial 39-year-old Taiwanese American 
sporting a short Mohawk and wearing shorts, 
shower sandals and a baggy T-shirt featuring 
astylized skull; he looks a bit like the Buddha. 
Sex toys of all varieties clutter his office, and a 
hologram on the wall features the face of for- 
mer Chinese leaders Mao Tse-tung or Deng 
Xiaoping, depending on the angle. 

Sloan and Hui discuss the new 3Fap toy 
they’re working on (fap, according to Urban 
Dictionary, is the sound one makes while mas- 
turbating) and manufacturing details of the 
Autoblow 2+. Sloan worked closely with Hui 
on the development of the Autoblow 2, and he 
travels here every two or three months to dis- 
cuss product development—one of the main ad- 


vantages of living in China. The engineers and 
design team were tasked with taking Sloan’s 
original vision and making a product that both 
worked effectively and “wasn’t too crazy so that 
you wouldn’t stick your dick in,” Hui says. 

Later we drive to the nearby sex-toy factory 
where the Autoblow is made. Riding in a com- 
pany SUV, Hui reflects on the debauched city 
Dongguan once was. “You know they say Vegas 
is Sin City? Well, this city would make Vegas 
look like Martha Stewart’s home,” he says. 

The factory is clean and sterile and smells 
of glue and cleaning products—a high-tech 
factory for high-tech sex toys. In a glassed-off 
room are two configurable lines where workers 
in white lab coats and caps sit on baby blue 
stools and work under bright neon lights. Be- 
fore entering we put on coats and hats of our 
own and slip little booties over our shoes. 


CHINA PRODUCES 
70 PERCENT OF 
THE WORLD’S 
SEX TOYS, GEN- 
ERATING $2 BIL- 
LION IN SALES. 


Inside, the room is silent other than faint me- 
chanical squeaks and clicks and an air-pumping 
sound similar to Darth Vader's breathing. 
They’re not manufacturing Autoblows today. 
Instead, workers on one line are assembling a 
vibrator called the Tracey Cox Super-Sex Bul- 
let Vibrator; on the other, they put together tiny 
motors for a cock ring. (Neither the vibrator nor 
the cock ring is a Sloan product.) 

We exit the workroom into a large storage 
facility where a dozen crates of Autoblows 
and another dozen crates of Autoblow sleeves 
await shipment. 

“Гүе never actually seen so many Autoblows 
in one place. It’s kind of cool,” Sloan says. 

“Your jerk-off robot,” says Hui. 

“Tactually did a calculation once based on how 
many we've sold so far, and if every man used it 
once, how much semen that would create,” Sloan 
says. According to his mental math, all the Auto- 
blows sold would have theoretically filled six and 


ahalf10-gallon coolers with ejaculate. “That's a 
lot of semen,” he says, “and I’m proud of that.” 
Back in Berlin, Ruby Temptations has been suc- 
cessfully scanned and Britney, the Liverpudlian, 
is up next. She’s accompanied by her boyfriend, 
Max, and they’re both nervous. Britney is on the 
bed on her hands and knees, with Max spreading 
her butt cheeks apart as Dirk mans the scanner. 

Sloan tries to cut through the tension. “Are you 
going to enter my balls contest?” he asks Max. 

“My balls are a bit wonky.” 

“All balls are beautiful. I want to see your 
balls in my balls contest!” 

Britney is followed by Carmen from Bavaria, 
Anna from Hungary and Giulia from Italy. The 
last to be scanned is Nancy, the winner. She 
wears a black long-sleeve top, ankle socks anda 
Pussy Riot-inspired face mask with the slogan 
#KEEPITCOOL printed on the front. 

When the scanning is finished, 
Sloan reaches into a safe in a cabi- 
net under the television. As Nancy 
looks on, arms folded and wear- 
ing the balaclava, he counts out 
$5,500 in crisp greenbacks. 

“Congratulations on winning 
first place in the world’s most 
beautiful vagina contest,” he says, 
handing Nancy the cash. 

Dirk claps quietly off to the side. 

The next evening, Sloan and I 
grab dinner in Kreuzberg, Berlin’s 
version of Brooklyn. He's happy 
with the contest; there were no 
major disasters. A few of the women 
were upset that a free breakfast 
wasn't included with the hotel room, and Brit- 
ney and Max charged five hotel-priced Cokes 
to Sloan’s room. But it could have been worse. “I 
thought wed get a crier, I thought we'd get an al- 
coholic, Ithought we'd geta girl who changed her 
mind at the last minute." In the end, he says, “а 
group of pretty well-adjusted, intelligent women 
showed up to make a little bit of money." 

The contest cost him $30,000 in all, but he 
figures he's already made that back in Auto- 
blow sales. But most important, it was another 
campaign that went viral, gaining Sloan and 
the Autoblow more exposure (and notoriety). 

He's excited to get the scans made into 
sleeves. They'll also be used on his next big de- 
velopment: the Autoblow 3. Features Sloan is 
considering include movements that will sync 
with those of an actual adult star—say, Ruby 
Temptations—asthey play out on internet porn. 

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 
future. a 


90 


GOOD-BYE TO 


ROOTIN A | 


> A w > 2% 


RON CARLSON 
ILUUSTRATIONS BY 


` STAGEY ROZICH 


FICTION 


Sheridan Hayes had not seen Donnie s new hat. There 
was a great deal of loud talk and extended debate about 
whether he had sat down on Donnie 8 black Stetson on 


purpose, and how could he not see such a fabulous and 
not-small hat and how could he not see the shine of the 
silver hatband which alone had cost Donnie $23 cash, 
which was more than a week’s pay at the Rising H. 


Sheridan Hayes complicated the discussion 
deeply by saying—afterthe excitement subsided 
and Donnie was in the one-room clinic behind 
Doctor Wattel's bungalow on Back Street and 
Sheridan himself was in the one cell in the jail, 
his nose still dripping blood—that he hadn't 
seen the blinking hat, and further that if he had 
seen Donnie Gumson’s stupid blinking hat, the 
blinking hat of a main-street cowboy if there 
ever was one, he would have not only sat on it on 
purpose, he would have stood on it marching in 
place for the rest ofthe night. He did not use the 
word blinking. As it was, he did not see the black 
hat in the dim barroom of the Enterprise Club 
and he sat on it and then jumped up before any 
real damage was done, except the insult that re- 
sults from sitting on someone's hat, someone 
who had been sitting by Rowena Balfour, a young 
woman who had after one year resigned her post 
astheonly schoolteacher in Rootine, an outpost 
on the Manditory River consisting of almost a 
thousand souls. 

It was June 3, the last day of school, and 
Miss Rowena Balfour, after being shipped 
to Rootine, Wyoming from Probity, Massa- 
chusetts almost one year before to teach the 
children of the village, had found that Roo- 
tine was not a village at all but 33 buildings, 
some of them lean-tos, at the foot of the San 
Blister Mountains, and that the children were 
actually small untutored savages, and that 
the Rootine Unified School was a platform 
tent with a malfunctioning barrel stove and a 
two-hole outhouse it shared with the jail. Just 
that noon, Miss Rowena Balfour had pinned 
her notice to one of the two tent poles in the 
sour structure and it read, in her gorgeous 


loopy cursive: *Good luck with your blinking 
ABCs. I hereby resign. R.E. Balfour." She did 
not use the word blinking. She had told her 
one confidant, Mrs. Slater, with whom she 
boarded, that she had been stalling in her life 
longenough and was going to set out for some- 
thing new, something that her father, 2,000 
miles away, could not stop her from doing. 
Miss Balfour had saved all her money except 
for the $7 a week she paid Mrs. Slater for room 
and board and she was going to use this bank- 
roll of almost $400 to see the world or some 
part of it beyond the claustrophobic hills of 
Probity and the sage flats of Rootine. She was 
young and ready for adventure. At least two 
cowboys in the Enterprise Club, the injured 
parties on the night in question, would have 
said she was beautiful. She was the most pul- 
chritudinous female in the hamlet of Rootine, 
and she did have two form-fitting apron 
dresses that made it difficult to speak to her, 
and the days she wore those gowns she saw no 
oneon the street but felt the curtains parting 
all along her way. 

She had learned to ride a horse this spring 
with the help of Donnie Gumson, who had 
given her his sister's old saddle, which was 
still in good shape, and he also volunteered 
the horsemanship instruction gratis, and she 
had learned camp skill and shooting from 
Sheridan Hayes, who volunteered his ser- 
vices and gave her his old six-shooter Colt pis- 
tol, calling it old when it was not old and still 
quite valuable, but more valuable to him as 
a gift to her than as a sidearm. He had other 
guns. And he gave her a canvas tent and its 
five рїйоп poles and necessary sisal rope. 


All spring long she had ridden 
on Wednesday and Friday in the 
muddy corral of the Rising H, 
just a mile from town, under the 
guidance of Donnie Gumson, and 
on every other Saturday she had 
gone into the San Blister Moun- 
tains with Sheridan Hayes to 
learn howto select the best camp- 
site and how to set up a tent and 
then how to shoot her bone-handled pistol at 
targets close at hand and then some at a farther 
range. These were day trips always, and twice 
Mrs. Slater went along as a chaperone, but it 
was apparent to the town and every love-struck 
pup, both the schoolboys and their fathers, that 
a chaperone was not necessary. Miss Rowena 
Balfour did not need a chaperone. She learned to 
ride without allowing Donnie to board the horse 
behind her regardless of how necessary and 
dangerous the instruction seemed to be, and 
she learned to shoot her Colt without allowing 
Sheridan to stand behind her and guide her 
arm. She erected the tent in 15 and then 10 and 
finally six minutes and when it was right and 
tight, she had Sheridan go inside and see that 
it was square. She was never in the tent with 
him and everyone in the town knew it. By June, 
Miss Rowena Balfour was ready in the ways she'd 
wanted to be. Now she needed someone to give 
her a horse or sell her one at a charity price, and 
she would leave Rootine, going north or south or 
west. *Not east,” she'd say every time. *Never 
east again.” Just this week, Donnie Gumson 
had given her a horse and she'd stuffed his re- 
luctant hand with 811, which is quite a markup 
on what he wanted to be a gift. 

The Enterprise Club was the biggest room in 
Rootine, having previously been a warehouse 
for raw foodstuffs for the roughnecks work- 
ing on the railroad. It had a crude lumber floor 
and at the time the walls and roof had been gray 
waxed canvas erected with pińon pine. When 
the railroad finally came this far west, they ran 
it 90 miles to the south and after a month there 
was nothing but the great wooden emporium 
floor out in the weather. Miles DeLock bought 


93 


it for 540 figuring the lumber was worth 880, 
which it was. That very month Mr. DeLock 
was shot in an accident with a scatter gun dur- 
ing a poker game, and in an evil coincidence 
his own plank cabin, famously known to have 
been assembled without a nail, burned to the 
ground that same night and the group of Portu- 
guese shepherds with whom he had been play- 
ing cards marched through the town chanting 
his name in foreign slogans that made all the 
citizens of Rootine nervous. It was an entire 
town with thin walls, many of them fragile. 
Mr. DeLock had no place to go except his gar- 
gantuan wooden floor, and Mrs. Slater and 
Givern Borkel, her Swedish cousin, carried 
the wounded Miles DeLock along the rutted 
main street and onto the dry lumber floor and 
erected Mr. Borkel's cotton travel canopy as a 
tent. It served for several days, wearing hard in 
the increasing weather until it was consumed 
in total by a northeastern wind that swept 
through town in three cruel strokes, carrying 
the flimsy shelter into the Manditory River, 
which held the raw town in one loopy oxbow. 
Fortunately, Mr. DeLock was able to 
invoke his fortune, which he had installed 
in Rootine’s First Thrift, money he had gar- 
nered from two years of gambling with his 
own deck of playing cards in his first wooden 
shelter, a place which before its demise came 
to be called the Red Tower and then, before it 


FICTION 


collapsed, Cheater’s Tower, Cheater’s Palace 
and sometimes Cheater’s Hellhole. Everyone 
knew Miles DeLock was cheating at cards, 
but no one could catch him, and, as they say, 
itwasthe only game in town, notthat Rootine 
in those years was even a town. Despite its 
reputation, the round table was always full, 
never an empty seat. There will forever be a 
call in the rushing sound of a deck of cards 
being shuffled—even a deck of cards marked 
perfectly for the practiced cheater—that is 
irresistible to a lonely traveler at the end of 
a day, especially travelers who found them- 
selves camped along the Manditory River near 
Rootine, Wyoming. Even those who had been 
warned could not stay away. Those who were 
warned were sometimes the worst, marching 
with their doomed money into the nasty A- 
frame eagerly with the certainty that the com- 
mon fate would not capture them too. Miles 
DeLock prospered. 

He bought the railroad warehouse and had 
as his original plan the idea of taking it apart 
and building a proper saloon where he might 
be able to cheat at as many as four tables, but 
then he was shot by an unhappy shepherd and 
the bird shot that entered Miles DeLock’s 
torso and arm served as a vivid and perma- 
nent epiphany for the middle-aged gentle- 
man who saw, and felt deeply, the wages of 
sin. He vowed as Mrs. Slater, who had been 


a nurse for one year as a young woman in 
Virginia, pried steel BBs from his epider- 
mis in his makeshift recovery clinic on the 
biggest wooden floor in the county to build 
a hall for wholesome entertainment, and if 
not wholesome, honest—in other words, a 
dance hall—and make his living as a legiti- 
mate businessman. As he heard the steel shot 
tink-tink one by one in the pan Mrs. Slater 
was dropping the BBs in, he knew he would 
call it the Enterprise Club, a name that felt to 
him rich with respect and possibility. 

The Enterprise Club was the only saloon of 
its size west of the Mississippi River that was 
built floor-first, and Mr. DeLock lay in his cot 
all that summer as the outer walls were erected 
around him and the two massive ponderosa 
poles were installed in the middle to hold up the 
roof, and the sweeping stairway and the second- 
floor balcony, all with pine struts and beams. 
When the windows arrived from St. Louis that 
October, they were installed in the front and 
witnesses swear that when they were fitted in 
the sills and tapped tight with wooden mal- 
lets, that was when the wind started to blow 
again. By the time it snowed, Mr. DeLock was 
captain of this ambitious manor, his bedroom 
on the rear of the second floor with a balcony 
from which he could see over the many shacks 
lining the Manditory River and out to the great 
gates of the two ranches that dominated that 
world, the Rising H and the Bar Bar, both with 
a dozen hands—sometimes more—who would 
all become loyal customers of the Enterprise 
Club. The long sign reading THE ENTERPRISE 
cLuB arrived by wagon the next week, a var- 
nished masterpiece with the one-foot-high 
letters burned into the beautiful oak. They 
hung it with four-inch chains, and Mr. DeLock 
stepped backward down the two front steps and 
held his arms up to the sign and read it aloud to 
the assembly, the name of his proud establish- 
ment, though for years throughout the West it 
was referred to as Floor First. 

The night that Sheridan Hayes sat on Don- 
nie Gumson’s new black Stetson in one of the 
huge red leather banquettes in the back of the 
Enterprise Club, thinking he would take the 
opportunity to sit next to his camping student 
Miss Rowena Balfour, a woman he had taken 
on a dozen day trips into the beautiful San 
Blister Mountains and a woman for whom he 
bore overt affection, was the first time a gun 
had been fired in that place. Sheridan had not 
seen the hat where Donnie had left it to keep 
his place while he went out back to the men’s 
privy, and Sheridan sat and stood quickly, 


but not so quickly that Donnie Gumson did 
not see him commit the act. Donnie grabbed 
Sheridan by the collar and yanked him into 
position for a crushing blow to the nose, 
which did in fact break Sheridan's nose but 
not enough to deter what followed: Sheridan, 
who suddenly found himself inverted and 
stunned, instinctively drew his six-shooter 
and fired a .45-caliber bullet 
into Donnie's chest at that close 
range, where it struck his heart- 
rib and angled out under his arm, 
lodging finally in the lush red 
leather of the booth. “Goddamn 
it, Dave, you've shot me now!” 
Donnie said, still standing and 
examining the blood that kept 
appearing on his palm. Then 
Donnie folded onto the floor, sit- 
ting up with his hand pressed 
to the wound. *You sat on my hat,” he said. 
Doctor Wattel had been shocked out of his 
deep study of two red sevens in his hand and 
whether they merited a raise at the poker 
table, and he arrived in time to catch Donnie 
as he fainted onto the biggest barroom floor 
in Ardent County. Sheridan Hayes himself 
was also sitting on the floor with his handful 
of bloody nose. “I didn't see his blinking hat,” 
he exclaimed in a nasal moan, “and my name 
is not Dave and he knows it.” 

The doctor quickly made a makeshift com- 
press for Donnie's injury and enlisted his 
card partners to carry the young man across 
to his clinic. He knelt briefly at Sheridan, 
whom the sheriff already stood over, and the 
doctor reached up and reset Sheridan's nose 
with his hand, making a wet snapping noise 
that put half the drinkers in the big room 
off their drinks and the other half deep into 
them. Sheridan had been explaining that the 
bullet was one of a box that he himself had re- 
loaded with halfa charge and he was surprised 
it even broke the skin. When the doctor moved 
his nose that way, Sheridan passed out and 
thereby missed his transference to the jail. 

The portrait of beauty itself, the newly re- 
tired schoolteacher Miss Rowena Balfour, had 
witnessed the proceedings without movingher 
chin. Her calm and sumptuous appearance was 
a formidable obstacle to overcome, but seeing 
her two young mentors hauled from the room, 
both bleeding, several cowboys orbited closer to 
her table, and Griffin Boatright and his newly 
trimmed mustache lifted Donnie Gumson's 
hat, pressed his hand inside to right the dents, 
set it on the table out of the way of the bottles 


FICTION 


and glasses, and then sat down and removed 
his own hat with a modest sweep and a smile. 
*Are you all right, young lady?” Griffin 
Boatright said. “What a horrid exchange.” 
“And now you cover my hand with your hand 
as a comfort and a surety?” she said. “And 
later you walk me home with your arm around 
my waist and attempt to kiss me in the weeds 


outside Mrs. Slater's house? But then you imag- 
ine that I invite you in, shocking Mrs. Slater 
completely, and I draw you into my boudoir, Mr. 
Boatright, that is what we call it: boudoir. And 
there in my boudoir you help me with the dif- 
ficult buttons on this old dress.” Here, Miss 
Balfour leaned forward so the gentleman 
beside her could see the line of buttons down 
the back of her form-fitting garment. 

Griffin Boatright's face was a pale blank 
slate. He had never in his 29 years, 12 of them 
as a livestock auctioneer, ever been so con- 
fused. To his credit he cleared his throat and 
asked the young lady how he might be of any 
service at all, given the rough interlude she 
had just witnessed. 

She responded directly in Mr. Boatright's 
face without hesitating, “The rough interlude I 
have just witnessed was in fact the intermina- 
ble school year among the cretin children and 
troglodytes who came to this hideous school, 
their only intention to insult me and rob me of 
my native optimism, but I am free of that lin- 
gering malady and would most appreciate an- 
other big glass of the Raw Rain rye and a beer 
back, or so I think it is termed.” No one within 
earshot of the former teacher’s remarks under- 
stood what she had said in the word troglodyte, 
which she meant as nasty hyperbole, but in 
fact seven ofthe 43 students who had attended 
Rootine Unified School did live in caves at the 
southern end of the San Blister Mountains, 
aborted and abandoned old silver mine shafts 
really, which provided more complete cover 
and protection from the elements than many 
of the frame houses near the center of the ham- 
let. Some of her cave dwellers had been among 


the most docile and teachable of her students. 

Mr. Boatright, sensing in her ardor an op- 
portunity he had never sensed before, sprang 
up like a rider for the Pony Express and 
returned a moment later with an entire sealed 
bottle of the aforementioned rye whiskey, its 
yellow label like a warning for poison, and his 
other wrist bathed in spilled beer from the 


“AFTER A SHOOTING, 1 
ALWAYS LIKE TO DANCE. 
A PARTNER, PLEASE.” 


pint glass of soapy lager he carried. 

She immediately raised her glass of rye 
and said, “Here's to the blood of the cowboys, 
Donnie and Sheridan, and the great luck that 
none got on me or this dear old dress which 
is almost impossible to launder!” She exam- 
ined herself for errant spots of blood. With 
her mention of the dress, all the cowboys in 
the larger circle of her table, including the 
eager Griffin Boatright, felt free as they raised 
their smeared glasses with her to let their avid 
eyes fall upon the contours of the dress. There 
was an audible sigh, a moan like the letter N, 
from the small masculine assemblage. Seeing 
glassiness in her eyes, which Griffin mistook 
for worry and sadness and fear, he now presse: 
his fingers on her forearm and said, “It’s going 
to be all right, Miss Balfour. There'll be no fur- 
ther violence this evening.” She elbowed him 
and shifted so he would stand and let her out o: 
the booth. “Well, that’s too bad, Mr. Boatright. 
I was hoping you might shoot somebody next.” 

Before the confused auctioneer could respond, 
Rowena Balfour crossed the great lumber floor 
to where Ludwig Yarborough was picking out a 
repeating melody, some soft carnival ditty, on 
the shiny black Seethinghammer, a piano that 
Miles DeLock had purchased in Chicago the 
year before. It had been shipped in six pieces and 
assembled and strung by Mr. Yarborough as the 
first terms of his employment at the Enterprise 
Club. It was whispered that the elderly musi- 
cian had killed a man in Boston or Richmond 
or Albany, or maybe it was a woman he had 
killed. Regardless of his legend, he was a suc- 
cess in Rootine for he knew 400 songs. Early that 
spring, Rowena Balfour had marched the entire 


school on a field trip into the Enterprise one 
morning before it opened and Ludwig Yarbor- 
ough had demonstrated how the piano worked. 
For two hours he played music for the students 
and they were pacified almost into slumber and 
Miss Balfour rued not knowing how to play the 
instrument by which she might have tamed her 
raw minions. 

In the Enterprise Club, Rowena Balfour 
now placed her hand upon the worn suit-coat 
shoulder of the ancient musician and asked if 
he could play something lively. She had had 
four powerful beverages already in celebrat- 
ing her new freedom from employment, but 
she spoke without letting a word be squashed 
or shortchanged and she said, *After a shoot- 
ing, I always like to dance. A partner, please.” 
She lifted a hand and displayed an empty palm 
while she turned a circle and then another for 
the barroom crowd, so that the compelling 
shadows of her bosom were cast in a rollick- 
ing turbulence and echoed by the turbulence 
within every cowboy's heart, or not heart but 
close enough, until Griffin Boatright was 
pushed forward and he took the bold young 
creature in his arms in a posture аз stiff as the 
sepia funeral photographs that were becom- 
ing popular that year. They danced, or moved 
herkily and jerkily together for the six bars of 
awaltz that Ludwig Yarborough played at dou- 
ble time. The picture of such a sterling beauty 
inthe stiff arms of a man who danced exactly 
in the manner that many people take their 


THE KISS LIT THE COLOR 
IN HIS CHEEKS, STARTED 
HIS HEART ANEW. 


last mortal breath, pushing the pitcher and 
china teacup and kerosene lamp and its glass 
chimney from the bedside table to the floor, 
struck Glornina Soft so deeply that she stood 
from the lap of Tim Grush, who was inebriated 
intoasmilingrictus. She straightened her red 
satin dress as well as she could, tucking her- 
self or most of herself back into the puckered 
elastic bodice, and she stepped to the dancing 
pair and pulled Griffin Boatright away from 
the schoolteacher, an act which relieved every- 
one and drew a brief laugh before Glornina re- 


FICTION 


placed herself in the man's position, leading 
Rowena smoothly through the fluid machina- 
tions of the waltz, which turned out to be one 
of Ludwig Yarborough's own compositions, 
titled “Тһе Orphan's Return.” There were 
three women in the entire grand room of the 
Enterprise and now two of them were danc- 
ing together. When the night was retold, this 
terpsichorean event many times outshined 
the shooting as the highlight of the evening. 
Thethird woman was Lorraine Dinner, called 
Lorrie, and as Ludwig played the last note of 
his sweet song and the dancers stopped and 
bowed at each other, their smiles like lamps 
in the wilderness, Lorrie Dinner raised her 
glass of sparkling grape wine and from the 
second step to the balcony she said, "It's a 
tough world and we'll take tenderness when we 
find it. Bless this young woman! We have only 
been dance hall girls, which is to say whores," 
a word which received its own warm ovation, 
*but she has been a schoolteacher and for al- 
most a year. It is a wonder she's alive!" 

There was now applause anew and Lud- 
wig commenced a challenging drinking tune 
which many of the cowboys knew a version of, 
thelyrics beinga long, grinding ballad that in- 
ventoried all the things the wind steals from a 
cowboy in a year. It was a song that was open- 
ended. If the singers were young enough and 
drunk enough they could go through spring 
to summer and enter the fall again and the 
wind was renewed in its pernicious quest to 


get hoof, hide and bone. A cowboy's hat, ker- 
chief, last dinner plate and own true love. The 
list was long. 

After that melody, Mr. Ludwig Yarbor- 
ough wiped his forehead with the only mono- 
grammed handkerchief in thetown of Rootine, 
Wyoming, the ornate initials in black silk 
thread reading FNQ and being a prime part of 
his mystery. People who had seen the thing re- 
marked that it was taken from the body of the 
man he had killed so long ago. Or woman. The 
musician stood from his instrument and went 


back to his small table in the back, where he 
sipped plum wine from a small jar of the stuff 
and rested for his midnight set. In the vacuum 
created by the lapse of the music, the craps- 
table stickman, Wendell Phardo, rapped his 
stick on the worn green felt with a smart snap 
and called to the room, “Coming out. Your dice 
next. We're playing craps right here." A cluster 
of men tightened around the table and the dice 
began to roll. 

Miss Rowena Balfour had stepped up to 
Lorrie Dinner, who was the unofficial queen 
of the Enterprise Club and Mr. Miles De- 
Lock's highest-paid employee, and delivered 
her a sisterly hug in thanks for her toast. “I’m 
not long for this town,” Rowena told the older 
woman, “but I'll stop in before I depart for my 
adventures.” 

“Please do. You can dance here anytime 
youd like, dearie.” 

“Now, I'm off to see my injured friends and 
offer them my condolences, good-byes and 
this one black hat.” 

Rowena threw the blue shawl her mother had 
knitted her over her shoulders, picked up Don- 
nie Gumson's big new black cowboy hat and 
walked across the big board floor and out the 
beveled doors of the Enterprise Club. The room 
reacted to this loss by growing suddenly louder 
and more animated, and as if her presence 
had forestalled it, a fistfight began at the bar 
over nothing at all and the raw edge of belli- 
cosity emerged as it does sometimes when the 
teacher has left the room. 

The biggest danger in the clus- 
ter of sheds known as the town 
of Rootine was the footing in the 
street where ruts had begotten 
ruts, some of the mud dried to a 
stony blade and some of it still 
greasy and wet, ready to swal- 
low a shoe. In the light from a 
few window lamps, Miss Rowena 
Balfour lifted her skirts and 
stepped along the worn path be- 
tween the unpainted plank buildings until she 
arrived at Doctor Wattel’s hovel marked by a 
painted board above the door that said: M.D. 
There was a candle working in the window and 
Rowena peered in and sawa man in a black suit 
coat sitting over the body of the young cowboy. 
She knocked lightly and entered the room and 
found her nose, which had been lulled by the 
corpuscle-loosening molecules of rye whiskey, 
suddenly stunned and chastened by the power- 
house astringent of rubbing alcohol. The man 
whispering to the young cowboy, however, was 


96 


not Doctor Wattel of course, as the young for- 
mer schoolteacher had just come from seeing 
that medical doctor about to throw the dice in 
search of a nine. Donnie Gumson sat propped 
on a pillow, pale with bright eyes, and his con- 
sultant was Miles DeLock, who had come call- 
ing to see if Donnie's wound had served the 
same kind of life-changing blow that Miles 
himself had received some years before when 
shot by the righteous Portuguese shepherd. 
Miss Balfour could hear the older man's plead- 
ing questions. *Did you feel, when the bullet 
traversed your body and turned away when 
it struck the bone over your heart, that you 
wanted to renounce your evil ways and choose a 
new path?” Rowena could see Donnie consider 
the question. 

“It hurt like nothing,” Donnie said. “I knew 
instantly that Iwish it had never happened. I 
haven't felt anything like it since I lost my lit- 
tle finger in an accident with a bad barn door 
when I was just six years old.” 

“Do you play cards?” Miles DeLock asked 
the cowboy. 

“We play in the bunkhouse, some poker and 
some catfish.” 

Mr. DeLock quickened at the news. “Did 
you feel as the bullet entered and exited your 
body that you wanted to renounce your card 
playing and the questionable techniques you 
employed while playing with your friends?” 

“Гүе been shot, Mr. DeLock,” Donnie Gum- 
son said. “I'm glad I'm alive and I can still 
move my arms and legs and that the doctor 
has sewed me up the way he did so that I'll see 
my horse Caliber again as well as my friends 
and maybe, ifIever make any money, my dear 
mother, back in Tuscaloosa.” 

“Are you going to change your life?” DeLock 
continued. “Tell me.” 

“I’m going to have to get back to you on 
that,” Donnie said. “But thanks for asking.” 

Тһе older man stood up from his inquiry 
and looked at the woman, his expression fresh 
frustration, and then a new idea printed itself 
on his face and he said it: *It's the difference 
between bird shot and a bullet. Bird shot will 
change a man's life.” With that, he departed 
and Donnie Gumson looked into the beautiful 
face of his riding student Rowena Balfour. She 
held up his hat and handed it over. 

“It don't look too mangled,” he said. 

“No, it's good for the next rodeo, I'm sure.” 

“Thanks for bringing it over.” 

“I’m glad to. I’m glad you're not going to 
perish from the earth because of being gun- 
shot,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for the 


FICTION 


lessons and for that saddle which you've given 
me and that horse, and I wanted to say good- 
bye, for I am leaving this town very soon, to- 
morrow or the next day, and I will remember 
your advice as a rider for a long time to come.” 

“Did you decide where you are going?” 

“Not really, but generally,” she pointed 
out the western window in the little clinic, 
“that way.” She was still standing, and now 
she bowed and kissed Donnie Gumson on his 
cheek. “I’m sorry we did not get that dance. 
Perhaps on another day.” 

“On another day,” Donnie Gumson said, 
though he was whispering. The kiss had lit 
the color in his cheeks and started his heart 
anew. “I'll be the guy who was prevented from 
dancing with Rowena Balfour by being shot.” 

“You are,” she said at the door. “But you’re 
the guy who taught me how to ride a horse.” 

“Tt’s an honor,” he said, closing his eyes on 
the first tear since his injury. 

In the dark of the town now, Rowena Balfour 
could hear the syncopated clip-clop of Ludwig 
Yarborough’s horse-racing song rising and fall- 
ing in the summer air and she walked past the 
glowing facade of the Enterprise Club, the only 
painted edifice in town, and behind it to the jail 
and stepped up two steps to its uneven porch, 
the creaking of which had woken the sheriff to 
visitors on more than this occasion. The sher- 


iff of Rootine was Red Hannigan, known for 
his colorful neckerchiefs and the fact that he 
never wore or carried a firearm of any type. He 
considered his post as constable to be a sine- 
cure that paid for his daughter’s tuition ($45 
asemester) at Youdrew Academy at the south- 
ern tip of St. Louis. Red Hannigan had heard 
the porch yowl and was already standing when 
Miss Rowena Balfour pushed open the crooked 
door and entered the small office. It was the 
only room in Rootine with a wall calendar. The 
oversheet on the calendar featured advertise- 
ments for Wonder Powder, a glowing green 
vial that had conveniently 12 uses, one for each 
month (including January as a frostbite pre- 
venter, June, a blister cure-all, and October as 
a vitamin and vitality enhancer). The calen- 
dar, which was two years out of date, gave the 
law officer’s quarters an official air, along with 
the two handmade signs that hung beside it: No 
SPITTING and REPENT! 

“Thave come to see your prisoner,” Rowena 
told the official. 

Red shrugged off the nap he’d been in- 
volved in and swept his arm to the open rail 
doors of the one-cell jail. Sheridan Hayes lay 
on the cot, his knees up, his fist on his nose. 
He became aware of the young woman and 
swung his legs over so he could sit up. 

“Is your beautiful nose crushed?” Rowenasaid. 


97 


FICTION 


“I didn't see him swing at me or I would 
have ducked,” the cowboy said. 

*Show me your injury,” she said. Sheri- 
dan was still cross-wired by her appearance 
at the jail and then her question to him; in 
all their camping tutorials they had not ex- 
changed a personal note, what is sometimes 
called an encouraging word. And now, he 
seemed to have heard her say “beautiful” in 
regard to his nose. 

He looked at her through the top of his eyes 
and then he removed his hand from his dark 
rosy proboscis. 

“Oh relief,” she said. “You look just fine. Doc- 
tor Wattel has put the pieces back together.” 
The former schoolteacher turned to the sheriff. 
*What will become of thisyoung man?” 

*He'llgoon trial for murder and all of its legal 

cousins when the regional magistrate visits our 
fair town in seven weeks. Until then, he'll eat his 
beans exactly where you see him now.” 
She nodded at the benevolent official. 
“Sheriff, I have recently called upon the vic- 
tim of this crime, the shooting in the bar, and 
found him somewhat improved, in fact, by its 
occurrence.” 

“T understand that Mr. Hayes was shooting 
with diminished payloads, but still in many 
cases this is considered deadly force.” 

Sheridan Hayes spoke, his hand still on his 
nose, “Oh my God, with all due respect, Sher- 


iff Hannigan, everyone knows the diminished 
potency of my powder loads. I am the cheapest 
of the reloaders in the state of Wyoming. I load 
to make a caseful, not a killing. I knew my shot 
might discourage my rival, but I also knew it 
would not kill him dead.” 

“Your rival?” Rowena Balfour said sud- 
denly. “Rival in what?” 

“Oh my dear Rowena,” the anguished cow- 
boy moaned. “I have fallen in love with you 
as you must know, and I know that I am not 
alone in that condition. This has not befallen 
me before and I have been paying attention. 
This signal event has altered my plans. Please 
do not depart Rootine until my legal prob- 
lems are at an end.” 

“What in heaven,” Rowena said, looking 
at the cowboy as if for the first time. “I'm 
going. I’ve come to say good-bye. I thank you 
for what you've taught me about camping 
and my gun, but I must head out for parts un- 
known, or at least unknown to me. There is a 
plenitude.” 

“You say good-bye, but Ill tell you right now, 
Miss Balfour, I will find you again and not be 
so slow then to show you my true heart.” 

The sheriff was unaccustomed to hear- 
ing whispered sincerity or hearing the word 
plenitude, and he was stilled by this strange 
moment and he sat down again as the young 
woman went out the front door, lifting her 


skirts toward Mrs. Slater’s boarding house 
and her travels beyond. 

Rowena Balfour, her real troubles ahead of 
her, did leave Rootine even sooner than she’d 
planned. Stirred and shaken by the loud and 
sanguinary episodes of her evening at the 
Enterprise Club, she packed her kit in an old 
canvas mailbag that had been left in her shabby 
schoolroom by one of the children of an un- 
employed rider for the defunct Pony Express. 
She went to bed in her little room, but it didn’t 
take. She understood that to stay even for half 
an hour more would only lead to further noisy 
doings in the morning. She did not want to re- 
count the history of Sheridan Hayes shooting 
Donnie Gumson, regardless of the reason; it 
was all atangle and she wanted done with it. 
She pulled on her denim trousers under her 
teacher’s dress, and she secured the canvas 
carry to the back of her saddle with knots she’d 
been studying all spring, and at five minutes to 
midnight in a breeze that was cold but run with 
the warm scent of prairie grass, Rowena Bal- 
four mounted Necessity, the horse who was six 
years old that year and whom she'd bought for 
adime on the dollar from Donnie Gumson. She 
walked quietly back between the careless shel- 
ters of Rootine and headed west or more north- 
west, but it would do. Her fatigue vanished at 
being astride a horse in the significant dark 
and at the prospect of whatever world awaited. 
She'd had a feeling some many months before 
when she embraced her mother and said good- 
bye to her father and climbed on the Western 
Limited, a narrow-gauge rail carrier whose 
standard-class seats were boxes and trunks 
they were shipping, and sitting on a box of am- 
munition destined according to the stencil to 
Fort Payne she felt her heart fill with what... 
hope? No, she decided, room. It was room and 
she wanted it. 

Necessity was a stolid horse who whenever 
bitten by the great horned Western horsefly 
just lifted his head in annoyance and quiet 
suffering and blinked his eyes as ifto say, Feel 
free, you tiny man, you can't eat all of me. It 
was a good trait for a horse stepping steadily 
forward on a night trail of uncertain prov- 
enance and destination. Rowena Balfour 
snugged herselfin (һе saddle and slept the way 
any person would sleep on the largest animal 
she had ever encountered as it paced into the 
unknown. The night figure of the two of them 
climbing up and through the desolate hills was 
a fantastical caution to the nocturnal critters 
jostling in the sage. a 


E PEAY MATE OE MHE WEAR 


Washington 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON LEE PARRY 


РМОҮ 


When we first encountered Eugena Washington last year, she was determined to flaunt a different side of 


herself—a side unseen in her appearances on runways and in TV commercials. Stripped down, Miss Decem- 


ber 2015 proudly said of her pictorial, “For once, I didn't have to be anyone except myself.” Readers responded 


to the sex, charm and truth in her photos and voted Eugena our 2016 Playmate of the Year. To celebrate her new 


title, PMOY 2015 Dani Mathers met Eugena for an intimate chat about her path to PLAYBOY, what she'll do next 


and then some. As Dani learns, Eugena's vivacious spirit is nothing short of stimulating. 


DANI: The first time you and I met was in De- 
cember when Nightline interviewed us for a seg- 
ment about PLAYBOY. But I've actually known 
about you for some time. We have a few mutual 
friends, and they told me how much fun you are 
and how you're a total badass. You've already 
built a successful career as a fashion model. What 
attracted you to PLAYBOY? 
EUGENA: As a model, I've done a lot 
of nude shoots in the name of artistic 
nudity. European clients specifically go 
for that, but those projects always end up 
feeling the same. With PLAYBOY there's a 
brand behind the visual, and that brand 
isiconic. Iwaslike, “Yes, absolutely yes.” 
DANI: How did you become a Playmate? 
EUGENA: A PLAYBOY photographer 
texted me to say he thought I would 
be a great fit for the magazine. I was 
a little hesitant at first, but only be- 
cause I didn't know whether being a 
Playmate would overshadow what I'd 
done previously. Ultimately I knew the 
photographer would capture my best 
angles and my personality—and he did. 
DANI: In February you traveled to San Francisco 
with 23 other Playmates to attend Playboy's 
Super Bowl 50 party. How was the transition from 
working the catwalk to wearing the Bunny suit? 
EUGENA: I literally had this epiphany 
yesterday. I said, “Оһ my God, I'm one 
of those girls in a Bunnysuit!” It just hit 
me. I don’t want to sound cliché and talk 
about how girls aspire to this, but not 
everyone gets this opportunity. I have 
a Bunny suit. That's kind of cool. Being 
a Playmate is definitely different from 
anything I’ve done in the past, but I’m 
making it my own experience. 
DANI: It bears remembering that you became a 
Playmate only in December. This all happened to 
you in the span of six months—and now you're the 
first African American PMOY since 2009. 
EUGENA: It's a great time for this. The 
world is changing. I hope this brings 
different eyes to the magazine and new 


audiences. I always like going into situ- 
ations with the idea that I can change 
them. I'm not the type of person to con- 
form to what's happening. It feels like 
it's the perfect time for some change. 
DANI: Let's talk about your upbringing. I know 
you're from South Carolina, but tell me more. 
what did you like to do growing up? 
EUGENA: Listen, I was born in South 
Carolina, but that's it! [laughs] My mom 
drove us out of there a month later. My 
entire family is from the South, but 
Т grew up in California. Growing up 
Т was—and 1 still am—a girlie girl. 1 
wanted to be a makeup artist since 1 
was 10 years old. I'd watch newscasts to 
see how the anchors did their makeup. 
In high school 1 was the girl braiding 
everyone's hair and plucking every- 
body’s eyebrows. I always wanted to bea 
makeup artist, but modeling happened 
first. Strange as this is, in the back of 
my mind I always knew I was going to be 
in the fashion world—I just didn’t know 
in what capacity. 
DANI: Something I've noticed is that you always 
have a big smile on your face. | don't doubt that 
you're happy. Many people don't realize that 
happiness is a choice, but you do. That's a huge 
strength to play on. 
EUGENA: When 1 started in this career, 
I told myself I wouldn't pay attention to 
anything that could make me feel in- 
secure. Someone else's negativity has 
nothing to do with me. Thankfully, I 
don't get much of that, but I know who І 
am. Ilike to present myselfin such away 
that people don't have room to say any- 
thing bad. A lot of people aren't in touch 
with themselves anymore because they 
don't have to be. Social media has given 
us an excuse to be half a person. 
DANI: Speaking of that, one reason I love follow- 
ing you on Instagram is that you don't pigeonhole 
yourself. You'll post a photo of yourself wearing 
no makeup and being а total goofball with your 


friends, then a stunning photo from an editorial 
and then a photo of you with your family. 
EUGENA: This is my life. People will al- 
ways try to tell you who you are or what 
you stand for. I am a person who knows 
who I am, where I come from and where 
Tm going. I like to get along with ev- 
eryone, but to do that, you have to find 
compassion. You have to find that space 
where you can connect with someone. 
I'm а Ыр advocate of humanity. I know I 
can suck in different ways; I don't always 
take into account other people's feelings, 
for example. But if I see that someone's 
not having a great day, I try to connect 
with them. You never know where some- 
one else is coming from. 
DANI: / like meeting Playmates, because I love 
hearing their stories. We're entrepreneurs, doc- 
tors, lawyers and more, and it's up to us to show 
outsiders what we're about. What are your goals? 
what do you want to accomplish as PMOY? 
EUGENA: Someone in my life I'm close 
with has bipolar disorder. It's a terrible 
way to live. God puts challenges in your 
life, and you can either work through 
them or run away from them. I really 
want to get involved with this disease 
and become a mental health advocate. 
DANI: As the outgoing Playmate of the Year, the 
only advice I have for you is to keep pushing for 
what you believe in. We have this platform only 
once. Get out there and show people what you 
want them to see. 
EUGENA: This is a story and a chapter in 
my life to build around. I'm enjoying the 
ride, and right now I'm doing whatever I 
want to do, day by day. That's how I live. 
That's what my life is about. As long as 
I’m doing what I want to do, I'm happy. 
Right now, being a part of PLAYBOY is what 
I want to do. I’m still processing what it 
all means, but this is going to be fun. It’s 
going to be interesting. I’m thankful I’m 
able to be in this position. I mean, how 
many people can say that? a 


102 


ARTIST IN RESIDENCE 


CHRIS “DAZE” ELLIS 


It's no accident that the two seminal films about New York graffiti and hip-hop culture in 
the early 19808 both have the word “style” in their titles (Style Wars and Wild Style). When 
you're tagging a subway car with one eye looking out for the police, style is just about the only 
thing you have time for. No one knows this better than Chris Ellis, the veteran graffiti writer 
and street-art pioneer whose intricate, angular signature—DAZE—was a familiar sight in 
19708 and 19808 New York. Decades before Banksy and Shepard Fairey became household 
names and museums started to exhibit street artists’ work, Daze successfully transitioned 
from tagger to studio artist. Both “style” movies feature a young Daze in his element at 
a pivotal moment in graffiti and his career, and he never lost that sense of immediacy ав 
he moved from tags to murals and large-scale paintings, all of which are joined by a sense 
of place and dynamic movement. A 2012 Daze painting, appropriately titled Life in the 
Fast Lane, drops the viewer at street level, flanked by a speeding cab 
and a motion-blurred tourist bus racing down a Manhattan avenue 
toward a singular dark point in space. Although Daze has shown 
his work internationally in museums and galleries, New York City 
remains his inspiration. Despite the fact that New York is hardly 
the gritty urban scene it was 40 years ago when Daze got his start, 
he says the city continues to motivate him and his work, both in the 
gallery and on the street. “I don't think of myself as a street artist,” 
Daze insists. “I came aboveground a long time ago. Simply put, I am 
an artist who likes to paint in public. —Eric Steinman 


Above: Daze at work. Opposite page: 
Watery Grave. Acrylic, oil, spray paint, k at м қ Эрээн 
pumice on canvas, 82 х 66 inches, 2012 May 31; Schiffer Publishing is releasing DAZEWORLD: The Artwork of Chris Daze Ellis this year. 


The City Is My Muse, Daze's most recent exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, runs through 


110 


on. Bottom left: Cyclone Drop. Ой, spray paint 
wood, 96 x 132 inches, 2013. 


na 


PLAYBACK 


JUNE 1969 


Outtakes from Playmate of the Year 1969 Connie Kreski's photo shoot. 


114 


What Gets Your Motor Runnin’? 


THE 


GEARS 
ACTUALLY 


MOVE! 


PRECISION CRAFTED IN SOLID 
STAINLESS STEEL, 
POLISHED TO PISTON- 
POUNDING PERFECTION 
. 


REE 
WITH YOUR INITIALS 
ON BOTH SIDES 


= 
SLEEK CARBON FIBER INLAY 


www.bradfordexchange.com/21537 
2016 The Bradford Exchange 01-21 -001-JIS 


Over, please 


MEN’S WORKING GEAR RING 


Reservations will be accepted on a 
first-come, first-served basis. 
Respond as soon as possible to reserve 
your ring. 


Shown actual size 


SATISFACTION GUARANTEED 
To assure a proper fit, a ring sizer 
will be sent to you after your 
reservation has been accepted. 


"Plus 5998 shipping and service 

Please allow 4-6 weeks after initial 
nt for shipment of your jewelry 
subject to product availability 
der acceptance. 


RESERVATION APPLICATION SEND NO MONEY NOW 


en THE — R 
BRADFORD EXCHANGE 
— JEWELRY 一 


P.O. Box 806, Morton Grove, IL 60053-0806 


described in this announcement. Ring size: 
O Yes. Ple. ersonalize my ring with the following initials (Max. 3 initial; list in 
order of first, middle and last name): 


O No 


Please reserve the “Gearhead” Men's Working Gear Ring for me as 
(if known) 


1 chose not to have my ring personalized. 


Signature 


Mrs. Mr. Ms 


Address 


City 


E-Mail (Optional) 


Get geared up in bold style with our all-new PERSONALIZED 


“Gearhead” Men's Working Gear Ring. Precision 
crafted in durable solid stainless steel and pol WITH YOUR INITIALS 
ished to piston-pounding perfection, this exclusive ON BOTH SIDES 

ly designed ring features a standout centerpiece 
of real working gears inset within an outer gear 
band. Just spin the band and watch the gears 
turn! Unique carbon fiber insets (a material used in 
advanced aerospace engineering, high tech cars 
and custom bikes) add a distinctive look to both 
sides... where you can also add your initials at no 
additional cost! 

Each custom-crafted ring, available in whole and 
half sizes from 8-15, comes in a presentation box 
complete with a Certificate of Authenticity. A sure 
way to get your own motor running... in style, this 
exclusively designed ring would also make a great 
gift for a gearhead that you know 


GEARS 
ACTUALLY 


MOVE! 


Act now and the “Gearhead” Men's Working 
Gear Ring can be yours (or just 599", payable in 
4 convenient monthly installments of $24.75. To 
have a ring reserved in your name, backed by our 
unconditional 120-day guarantee, send no money THE 
now; just fill out and send in the Reservation 
Application. Be sure to indicate your ring size (if 
you know it) and, if you choose, the initials you 


would like engraved. This ring is not available in MEN'S WORKING GEAR RING 
stores, so don't miss out... Order Today! 
A JEWELRY EXCLUSIVE FROM THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


www.bradfordexchange.com/21537 


NO POSTAGE 
NECESSARY 
IF MAILED 


IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 7 MORTON GROVE IL 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 
PO BOX 806 
MORTON GROVE IL 60053-9956 


ЦОО 2101 01011111 011080 2016 The Bradford Exchange 01-21537-001-JIS 


Delivering all the joys of the season! 


= —- 
Features fully-sculpted 
Budweiser icons including the 
classic Budweiser Beer Wagon! 


Please enter my order 
for one Budweiser» Holiday Express 
illuminated electric On30 scale 
train collection, beginning 
with the "Steam Locomotive 
& Tender" as described in this 
announcement. 


+ Mrs. Mr. Ms 


9345 Milwaukee Avenue 
Niles, IL 60714-1393 


тик 
BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


HAWTHORNE VILLAGE DIVISION 


' Signature 


Name (Please Print 


Address 


¦ City 

+ State Zip 

+ E-Mail 

+ "Plus $9.99 shipping and service. All sales are subject to acceptance and product availability. 917899-E30202 
+ Please allow 4-6 weeks after initial payment for shipment 


PBaudweier 


val Ca 


Hawthorne is proud to introduce the Budweiser Holiday Express 
that’s positively brimming with the joyous spirit of the King 
of Beers®! This classic, heirloom quality train—that includes a 
working headlight on the steam locomotive—features dramatic, 
full-color artwork of the World Famous Budweiser 
Clydesdales, fully-sculpted Budweiser icons including the 
historic Budweiser Beer Wagon and is richly adorned with 


holiday motifs. ал ALONG DOTTED LINE 


тик 


BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


NO POSTAGE 
NECESSARY 
IF MAILED 


IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 
9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE 
NILES IL 60714-9891 


772 Holiday Express 


“Baggage Car” with FREE 16-рс. 
Track Set 


A precision-detailed 


train collection 


“Gondola Car” with FREE 
Power Pack 8 Speed Controller 


An exceptional value. Begin your illuminated On30 
scale train collection—that runs on HO-gauge track—with 
the “Steam Locomotive and Coal Car.” Your first of three easy 
payments of $26.66* is due before they are shipped. Soon, you 
can look forward to adding coordinating Budweiser” Holiday 
Express cars including the FREE tracks, power-pack and speed 
controller ... a $100 value! They will be billed separately each 
at the same attractive price and shipped about one every other 
month. You can cancel at any time and your satisfaction is 
assured with our best-in-the-business 365-day guarantee. 


Not available in any store. Act now! This is a limited-time 
offer and strong demand is expected. Send no money now. Just 
complete and mail the post paid Reservation Application today! 


set—creates а 
56" x 38" oval— 
power-pack and 

speed controller— 

| a$100 value— 


Adult Collectible. 
(02015 Anheuser-Busch Companies 
Hawthorne Village 14-00432-001-JIPB2015 


A Brilliant Tribute to a 
Timeless American Classic 


— 


High-gloss lamp base with sleek, 
sculpted sides recalls the Bel Air's* 
brilliant chrome and iconic tail fins 


m a 


Accented with the Chevy” Emblem, 
Chevy” V Hood Emblem, and 
“57 Chevy” Hood Rocket 


= 


Finial recalls the “Jet Airplane” 
‘55 and ‘56 Bel Air“ hood ornament 


“чы 


Fabric double box lamp shade 


Shown smaller 
than actual height of 
about 17 inches 


FREE CFL bulb included. 


Lamp is a features the Bel Air” grill and logo in 
prime golden script on one side, and a 
Podés ‘57 Bel Air* convertible on the other 


General Motors Trademarks used 
under license to The Bradford 
Exchange ©2016 


www.bradfordexchange.com/belairlamp 
RESERVATION APPLICATION SEND NO MONEY NOW Mrs. Mr. Ms 


THE 
BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


-HOME DECOR- 


01-21877-001-E30292 


Brighten your decor with 
a gleaming classic! 


Back in the fabulous 505, по car revved up excitement 
like the classic Chevy Bel“ Air“. With its gleaming 
chrome, stylized tail fins, hot V8 engine, and two-tone 
color scheme, it's no wonder this car was called 
“Тһе Hot One” Now the Chevy Bel” Air“ inspires a 
hand-crafted lamp loaded with features to bring its 
jet-age style and spirit into your home! 
The lamp's high-gloss base with sleek, sculpted 
i А ! sides recalls the Bel Air's* brilliant chrome and tail fins. 
ل‎ ы The base shines accented with the Сһеуу” Emblem, 
sama. Chevy*VHoodEmblem,and'57 Chevy* Hood Rocket. 
25 = Бәсеке лл و‎ The fabric double box lamp shade—a favorite 50s 
style-features the Bel Air” grill and logo on one side, 
( апа а “57 Bel Air* convertible on the other. For the 
( finishing touch, the finial captures the "Jet Аігріапе” 
‘55 and ‘56 Bel Air“ hood ornament. It's a must-have 
for true fans. But don't delay, or you could miss out! 


A rare value not sold in stores! 

Don't miss out, order now... 

If you act now, you can acquire this officially licensed, 

Bradford Exchange exclusive lamp design for five 

convenient installments of only $35.99, for a total 

| of $179.95*. Your purchase is fully backed by our 

unconditional, 365-day money-back guarantee. Send 

j по money now. Don't risk missing out! Put the pedal 

The front of the lamp shade showcases to the metal, and complete and return the Reservation 

a '57 Bel Air® convertible Application today! 


тик МО РОЗТАСЕ | 
BRADEOR CHANGE 6 
ZZ a> | | NECESSARY i 


IF MAILED 
IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE u | 


СС 1 Ассемей with the Chevy” Emblem, 
: Chevy* V Hood Emblem, and 
457 Chevy* Hood Rocket 


: Over, please 
Ш | өвпєвав 01-21877-001518° 


SEE WHERE GOOD TASTE - 
TAKES YOU. 


EFFEN 


VODKA 


#EFFENVODKA 


Dr ik шилээ Es EE ) Vodka, 100% neutra 
0 proof) © 2016 EFFEN Im тро 


5 distilled from wheat 
npany, Deerfield „AL