Saturday, December 17, 2005
I see nervous…I see innocence…Playboy January 2006
I see nervous…
I remember watching that documentary Inside Deep Throat at the Mayan. It had this scene of Hugh Hefner on some talk show having a discussion with feminists. In the discussion Hef innocently addressed the women as, “girls.” This is probably the biggest taboo in the culture of feminists. Although I wouldn’t agree with this analogy personally, I’m sure in the grand scheme of things having the man who was one of the biggest catalysts for the sexual revolution call a group of feminists “girls” would be akin to some white guy in a crowd of black people addressing them as “niggers.” Hef’s word was not well received as these women started spitting slanderous venom toward him incessantly ridiculing his word choice. As the women started to verbally mal into Hef as he just sort sat there. He was silent, taken aback and seemingly nervous. This was not at all how I expected a world class businessman to respond. This was a man who built an empire. He is in the presence of the most beautiful women in the world 24 hours a day. Hef, this bigger than life man, didn’t have one rebuttal for these squawking hens. He looked-- he well--he looked awkward… (Ok I’ll say my first gut reaction to my subjective viewing. He didn’t defend himself so) he looked stupid.
Dream patron…
A couple days ago I received a magazine discreetly wrapped in black plastic. This is not a magazine-- really; it’s the world’s community garden of dreams. It was the January 2006 issue of Playboy. If one would look a little deeper than this issue’s gold background cover with a picture of Lisa Guerrero, former Monday Night Football reporter, standing at the fore then one would be invited to one of most culturally diverse artistic endeavor the world of print media has to offer. My girlfriend being a rabid Shel Silverstein fan was also pleased to find a feature about this creative cannon ball of a human being on page 74. The part of the article that best caught my attention was page 78. Shel was talking to Hef and he said, “You were always so supportive of the individual fulfilling what he had to do,” he told Hefner. “Those of us whose dreams were different form yours were still able to have the kind of life we wanted.” This dream concept has been a motif I regularly encounter being scribed about Playboy. Dream-Turn to page 142 in this specific issue and read about Vanessa Hoelsher’s work life. She’s a 23-year-old who is in the process of making her own Italian wine label called Bellisima. Dream- Hef paid Shel $500 for some of his pictures and this was the event that jumpstarted Shel’s career. Dream- Playboy was founded on one man’s dream to create the penultimate of men’s magazines. Hef already worked for Esquire and asked them for a $5 per hour raise to which they denied. He then laboriously sought after the frustration of his dream by writing, editing and taking care of the business aspects of his own (dream) magazine. Sounds like a Dream- It was in my first journalism class at Metro that my professor L. Washington said that as a journalist you need to keep your ear to the ground. Washington continued. Read anything you can get your hands on. You may be surprised but Playboy has the best journalistic articles out there. Stephen King writes for Playboy and they pay up to $20,000 an article. If Playboy pays that much per article I could write one article a year and be OK if I worked 20 hours a week somewhere. If I wrote two articles I would be better off than I am now. If I wrote three articles I’d be living better then anyone I associate with. If I wrote four articles a year I could maybe buy a house here in Denver in the Victorian clad Baker neighborhood were I’ve dreamed of living. That would be damn cool. The quality of life from such an endeavor would be miraculous. Let’s say a person wasn’t writing time sensitive material like features. If one was to spend one month writing each article then four months of their life would be spent in the laborious writing practice and eight months could be spent on…catching up on some sleep. I’ve always thought about volunteering for some environmental cause, or at some old folk’s home or for fundraising for school art’s programs. I guess I would be able to spend a month on each of those cause per year and still have five months to sleep. What is all this beginning to sound like? A dream patron- Famous people have an unfair advantage over us mere mortals. Famous people can continually cash in on their name (of course the big down side to such fame is the constant public scrutiny.) Famous or not people are people. We all do things that make us money but once we are secure in our ways, the best of us try to find a medium of artistic expression to divulge our soul and unsung desires. Jenny McCarthy the model, actress and playmate I best remember for being a host of Singled Out on MTV takes her artistic stab behind the camera for Playboy. Give the camera and recruiting freedoms to an old bunny…that sounds like Playboy is really out of touch with affording the freedom to let a person express their other talents.
The forest for the trees…
I’m a human. I have my hang-ups. I have instinctual stereotypes that spur up in my mind when greeted by a person. Fortunately, I don’t believe these stereotypes have control over me. I think people have fairly simple views in their head and they associate those ideas with a group and that’s when all hell breaks loose as their views go to the outer-realms of extremes. There is nothing sexier than a strong, intelligent, liberated woman. I love thoughts and ideas and you attack my soft spot when you introduce me to a woman who can eloquently express them. I know from experience. My girlfriend is 1,000,000 times smarter than me. She fluently speaks Norwegian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and English. She schools me on everything. She is one tough minded person but she is an example of how this can be done without being fascist. Feminists, when they take their stance as a group, run the gauntlet of being what they hate. Feminists stand for good causes, they don’t want be cast into subordinate roles and they want the same access to opportunity that men are afforded. How are these goals accomplished? Usually (not always but usually) this happens through reverse discrimination. They conjugate in a group and use that power to attack issues and people that really don’t exploit their group’s cause. When I meet a person I see their arm but it would be an injustice if my observation began and ended with that one little section of the body. “Oh your arm has a hairy mole where the joints connect at the elbow. You’re ugly!!!” That being said a person could have faults or one ugly virtue or one simple birth defect and be ostracized their entire life. It’s sad, but this happens more often than not. I wish we could see a person for the curvature of their lip, the texture of their hair, the color of their smile or the melody of their laugh. Then stand back and give the person the time it takes to really see them for who they are. Focus what you want, where you might-- but such extreme scrutiny destroys the content of the soul by not allowing its other parts to breathe into your complete picture of it. Breathe people breathe and find the middle ground. The contents of Playboy include a vast landscape of American culture from movie reviews, album reviews, facts, fashion, beautiful naked women, technology, humor, visual art, interviews, politics, short stories, comics…etc. etc. It sounds like a lot of lives and dreams being lived through a magazine that gets carelessly summed up as nudie hoopla. One may have no use for such content but it reaches out to more interests than you might think.
Shel says it better in his poem from his book A Light in the Attic titled Zebra Question…
I asked the zebra,
Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again.
I see innocence…
A child hurts himself while playing on a tree. He runs to his parent with tears in his eyes, in need of comfort and cleaning. The parent asks, “Why were you playing in that tree?” The child will respond with that blank defenseless stare. The child can’t defend himself because he is the defense, he is the dream, and he is the innocence fearlessly chasing up a tree to be closer to the sky. But, how can you explain that to a non-dreamer? My gut instinct, while watching Hef nervously say nothing in his defense to the feminist’s attacks during that talk show snippet, was wrong. That wasn’t the response of someone stupid. That was the response of innocence.
I see nervous…
I remember watching that documentary Inside Deep Throat at the Mayan. It had this scene of Hugh Hefner on some talk show having a discussion with feminists. In the discussion Hef innocently addressed the women as, “girls.” This is probably the biggest taboo in the culture of feminists. Although I wouldn’t agree with this analogy personally, I’m sure in the grand scheme of things having the man who was one of the biggest catalysts for the sexual revolution call a group of feminists “girls” would be akin to some white guy in a crowd of black people addressing them as “niggers.” Hef’s word was not well received as these women started spitting slanderous venom toward him incessantly ridiculing his word choice. As the women started to verbally mal into Hef as he just sort sat there. He was silent, taken aback and seemingly nervous. This was not at all how I expected a world class businessman to respond. This was a man who built an empire. He is in the presence of the most beautiful women in the world 24 hours a day. Hef, this bigger than life man, didn’t have one rebuttal for these squawking hens. He looked-- he well--he looked awkward… (Ok I’ll say my first gut reaction to my subjective viewing. He didn’t defend himself so) he looked stupid.
Dream patron…
A couple days ago I received a magazine discreetly wrapped in black plastic. This is not a magazine-- really; it’s the world’s community garden of dreams. It was the January 2006 issue of Playboy. If one would look a little deeper than this issue’s gold background cover with a picture of Lisa Guerrero, former Monday Night Football reporter, standing at the fore then one would be invited to one of most culturally diverse artistic endeavor the world of print media has to offer. My girlfriend being a rabid Shel Silverstein fan was also pleased to find a feature about this creative cannon ball of a human being on page 74. The part of the article that best caught my attention was page 78. Shel was talking to Hef and he said, “You were always so supportive of the individual fulfilling what he had to do,” he told Hefner. “Those of us whose dreams were different form yours were still able to have the kind of life we wanted.” This dream concept has been a motif I regularly encounter being scribed about Playboy. Dream-Turn to page 142 in this specific issue and read about Vanessa Hoelsher’s work life. She’s a 23-year-old who is in the process of making her own Italian wine label called Bellisima. Dream- Hef paid Shel $500 for some of his pictures and this was the event that jumpstarted Shel’s career. Dream- Playboy was founded on one man’s dream to create the penultimate of men’s magazines. Hef already worked for Esquire and asked them for a $5 per hour raise to which they denied. He then laboriously sought after the frustration of his dream by writing, editing and taking care of the business aspects of his own (dream) magazine. Sounds like a Dream- It was in my first journalism class at Metro that my professor L. Washington said that as a journalist you need to keep your ear to the ground. Washington continued. Read anything you can get your hands on. You may be surprised but Playboy has the best journalistic articles out there. Stephen King writes for Playboy and they pay up to $20,000 an article. If Playboy pays that much per article I could write one article a year and be OK if I worked 20 hours a week somewhere. If I wrote two articles I would be better off than I am now. If I wrote three articles I’d be living better then anyone I associate with. If I wrote four articles a year I could maybe buy a house here in Denver in the Victorian clad Baker neighborhood were I’ve dreamed of living. That would be damn cool. The quality of life from such an endeavor would be miraculous. Let’s say a person wasn’t writing time sensitive material like features. If one was to spend one month writing each article then four months of their life would be spent in the laborious writing practice and eight months could be spent on…catching up on some sleep. I’ve always thought about volunteering for some environmental cause, or at some old folk’s home or for fundraising for school art’s programs. I guess I would be able to spend a month on each of those cause per year and still have five months to sleep. What is all this beginning to sound like? A dream patron- Famous people have an unfair advantage over us mere mortals. Famous people can continually cash in on their name (of course the big down side to such fame is the constant public scrutiny.) Famous or not people are people. We all do things that make us money but once we are secure in our ways, the best of us try to find a medium of artistic expression to divulge our soul and unsung desires. Jenny McCarthy the model, actress and playmate I best remember for being a host of Singled Out on MTV takes her artistic stab behind the camera for Playboy. Give the camera and recruiting freedoms to an old bunny…that sounds like Playboy is really out of touch with affording the freedom to let a person express their other talents.
The forest for the trees…
I’m a human. I have my hang-ups. I have instinctual stereotypes that spur up in my mind when greeted by a person. Fortunately, I don’t believe these stereotypes have control over me. I think people have fairly simple views in their head and they associate those ideas with a group and that’s when all hell breaks loose as their views go to the outer-realms of extremes. There is nothing sexier than a strong, intelligent, liberated woman. I love thoughts and ideas and you attack my soft spot when you introduce me to a woman who can eloquently express them. I know from experience. My girlfriend is 1,000,000 times smarter than me. She fluently speaks Norwegian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and English. She schools me on everything. She is one tough minded person but she is an example of how this can be done without being fascist. Feminists, when they take their stance as a group, run the gauntlet of being what they hate. Feminists stand for good causes, they don’t want be cast into subordinate roles and they want the same access to opportunity that men are afforded. How are these goals accomplished? Usually (not always but usually) this happens through reverse discrimination. They conjugate in a group and use that power to attack issues and people that really don’t exploit their group’s cause. When I meet a person I see their arm but it would be an injustice if my observation began and ended with that one little section of the body. “Oh your arm has a hairy mole where the joints connect at the elbow. You’re ugly!!!” That being said a person could have faults or one ugly virtue or one simple birth defect and be ostracized their entire life. It’s sad, but this happens more often than not. I wish we could see a person for the curvature of their lip, the texture of their hair, the color of their smile or the melody of their laugh. Then stand back and give the person the time it takes to really see them for who they are. Focus what you want, where you might-- but such extreme scrutiny destroys the content of the soul by not allowing its other parts to breathe into your complete picture of it. Breathe people breathe and find the middle ground. The contents of Playboy include a vast landscape of American culture from movie reviews, album reviews, facts, fashion, beautiful naked women, technology, humor, visual art, interviews, politics, short stories, comics…etc. etc. It sounds like a lot of lives and dreams being lived through a magazine that gets carelessly summed up as nudie hoopla. One may have no use for such content but it reaches out to more interests than you might think.
Shel says it better in his poem from his book A Light in the Attic titled Zebra Question…
I asked the zebra,
Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again.
I see innocence…
A child hurts himself while playing on a tree. He runs to his parent with tears in his eyes, in need of comfort and cleaning. The parent asks, “Why were you playing in that tree?” The child will respond with that blank defenseless stare. The child can’t defend himself because he is the defense, he is the dream, and he is the innocence fearlessly chasing up a tree to be closer to the sky. But, how can you explain that to a non-dreamer? My gut instinct, while watching Hef nervously say nothing in his defense to the feminist’s attacks during that talk show snippet, was wrong. That wasn’t the response of someone stupid. That was the response of innocence.
# posted by Nick D @ 6:28 PM 
