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props="{"className":[0,"md:w-7/12"],"articles":[1,[[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/playboy-interview-ron-howard"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Playboy Interview:Ron Howard"],"type":[0,"Interview"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,57],[0,58]]],[1,[[0,60],[0,61]]],[1,[[0,64],[0,67]]],[1,[[0,70]]],[1,[[0,148],[0,149]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/56-57-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=57"],"body":[1,[[0,"a candid conversation with the child-star-turned-director about surviving mayberry, losing hair, outwitting hollywood and explaining away a dildo"],[0,"There are certain things Ron Howard likes to get off of his chest immediately. \"I am not Opie,\" he announces in a firm voice. \"And I am not Richie Cunningham.\""],[0,"Howard can be forgiven for being a bit defensive. Few actors have been as indelibly linked to two such saccharine juvenile roles and lived to tell about it. Howard actually grew up as these characters, spending his childhood as Opie Taylor on \"The Andy Griffith Show\" and his teenage years as Richie Cunningham on \"Happy Days.\" And that was back before cable and home video gave viewers a multitude of choices. Millions more people regularly watched Howard's shows than see today's top-rated sitcoms, and it's easy to forget how intensely famous he was for 21 years."],[0,"It's not that Howard hates his former roles as the son of Mayberry's widower sheriff or the clean-cut Richie Cunningham, who was continuously coming of age in a fictional Milwaukee suburb. It's just that they tend to overshadow his proudest achievement--ascending to the top rank of film directors with such hits as \"Backdraft,\" \"Parenthood,\" \"Splash\" and \"Cocoon.\""],[0,"Thanks to syndication--\"Happy Days\" and \"The Andy Griffith Show\" are still seen daily in most of the country--Howard may have the most familiar face among Hollywood directors. And despite a hairline that long ago betrayed him, he's constantly recognized, sometimes as Opie, sometimes as Richie, and he's polite to his fans. But Howard's face lights up when someone approaches him with a comment about one of his films. He's delighted as he relates how a nearby fire briefly shut down a Manhattan location shoot for his new movie \"The Paper.\" While the blaze was being brought under control, a firefighter walked over to him and said, \"We'll be out of here in a few minutes. This ain't no 'Backdraft,' Ron.\""],[0,"Howard has cemented his Hollywood reputation as a director the old-fashioned way: His movies sell tickets. \"Parenthood,\" a treatment of modern family life with Steve Martin leading a multigenerational cast, did $135 million worth of business worldwide. \"Backdraft,\" Howard's saga of the men who fight Chicago's fires, grossed an impressive $150 million."],[0,"He can also take credit for launching the career of Michael Keaton, who starred in Howard's \"Night Shift\" and \"Gung Ho\" and also has the lead in \"The Paper.\" And he gave Tom Hanks his first major film role in the 1984 fantasy-comedy \"Splash.\""],[0,"Howard remains faithful to the basics of Hollywood moviemaking: bankable stars, glossy production values and straightforward scripts. He's upfront about his goal as a director: \"I want to make sure the story is as engrossing and entertaining as it possibly can be.\" Critics haven't always agreed on whether he's achieved success. Adjectives such as syrupy and cornball have appeared in reviews of Howard's movies. But he insists that notices for \"Cocoon\" and \"Parenthood\" were as favorable as anything he could have written himself. Others, particularly the megabudgeted \"Far and Away,\" starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and the fanciful \"Willow,\" fared less well."],[0,"His tenth feature, \"The Paper,\" which stars Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei, is a return to the kind of ensemble film he does best. The story revolves around a day in the lives of reporters, editors and publishers on a scrappy Manhattan tabloid."],[0,"Howard was born in Oklahoma, but his feet are planted in show business in southern California. The son of an actor father, Ron made his first screen appearance before his second birthday. By the age of six, when he signed on to portray Opie Taylor, Howard had compiled a résumé of credits ranging from \"Playhouse 90\" to \"General Electric Theater.\" During breaks from \"The Andy Griffith Show,\" Howard acted in feature films such as \"The Music Man\" with Robert Preston. \"Happy Days,\" one of the top-rated Seventies sitcoms, catapulted him, along with Henry \"The Fonz\" Winkler, into the category of celebrities who could draw teen crowds to shopping-mall publicity events."],[0,"But by the time he began working on \"Happy Days,\" Howard's ambition was focused on landing in the director's chair. He approached Roger Corman, the B-movie impresario known for spotting talented newcomers--Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme among them--and negotiated a quid pro quo in which Corman agreed to let Howard direct a film titled \"Grand Theft Auto\" if he would also star in it. Appearing with his father, Rance, brother Clint, and a herd of expendable autos, Howard did a credible job of choreographing chases and crashes. He even included an appearance by Cheryl, his wife of two years. If the 1977 feature didn't break new artistic ground, it proved that Howard could earn money for a film's backers. \"Grand Theft Auto\" cost about $600,000 to make and brought in $15 million at the box office. Howard recalls being disappointed at the time: He still hadn't directed a major studio feature--and he was 23 years old."],[0,"He would have to pay his dues for a few years, directing television movies that included \"Skyward,\" a well-received 1980 film with Bette Davis. He finally scored in 1982, when he and his producing partner, Brian Grazer, managed to persuade Henry Winkler and an unknown named Michael Keaton to appear in \"Night Shift,\" a movie based on a true story about a prostitution ring run out of a New York City morgue. Why Winkler and Keaton? Because Belushi and Aykroyd said no."],[0,"Playboy dispatched Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker to meet with the 40-year-old who has spent 38 years in show business. Kalbacker reports:"],[0,"\"The adjective nice has been used so often to describe Howard that I was worried. He played nice characters when he was an actor. As a director, his movies are nice, among other things. He even married his high school sweetheart in 1975--and has stayed married to her. I called on my most vicious, cynical sources in Hollywood, and they all said the same thing. Ron is nice. I began to panic. Nice guys can be boring."],[0,"\"I shouldn't have worried. Ron is indeed a nice guy, and when I called to schedule our first session, he quickly invited me to join him for lunch. And yes, the clean-cut, all-American Howard does have a taste for white bread--crusty Italian loaves that he breaks into small pieces and dips into olive oil laced with black pepper. He said he'd picked up the taste while traveling in Italy."],[0,"\"It's important to keep in mind that he's been successful in an environment where the shark is by no means an endangered species. And like many successful men--particularly those who have been dealing with the press since toddlerhood--Howard is both candid and articulate. Much of his freshly scrubbed image is true, but there seemed to be much more to Ron Howard, especially when the subject turned, as it quickly did, to sex.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: A fan just stopped you on the street and praised Backdraft. How does that compare with being recognized as Opie Taylor or Richie Cunningham?"],[0,"[A] Howard: What's happened to me is perfect. I'm not current in a pop sense. When people recognize me there's a warmth that I really appreciate. Once in a while I'd rather not hear it. During my first-ever meeting with Robert De Niro, we were in a Manhattan restaurant and I was excited, trying to talk to him about a film. Over at another table were a bunch of people calling out, \"Hey Opie! Hey Cunningham!\" I was praying that they'd leave, but in the middle of our conversation they came over and wanted autographs. They were standing in such a way that they didn't see they were talking over Robert De Niro's shoulder. I thought, Boy, these people are really missing the boat here. But it worked out OK. De Niro seemed to be all right with it. And bald guys are tickled to death that I've lost my hair. They'll point at my bald head, \"Hey, Ron! I like the haircut.\" They just love the fact that we've both lost our hair."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You certainly haven't lost your clean-cut image over the years. How much of it is truly you and how much is smart PR?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I've had a couple of near misses, reminders to not fuck around. I honestly can't remember when I was anonymous. I learned to write so I could give autographs. I didn't want to have any secrets from the press, because I didn't feel I'd ever be able to keep them. I always felt there would be a price to pay for any outlandish behavior, like going down to Tijuana to spend a weekend in a bordello. From the time I was a kid in school, there was always some wiseass waiting for me to make an ass out of myself, to do something that they perceived as arrogant. To buy a Porsche. To get in trouble. I never had any interest in living out that cliché for any of those people. I think it probably became a kind of commitment to be different. I also fell madly in love my junior year of high school. Even while Happy Days was going crazy and we in the cast were treated like rock stars, I really was committed to Cheryl. The foil-wrapped condom in my wallet--I wouldn't say it absolutely stayed wrapped--didn't get unwrapped on the road. Not for groupies. I was in love with my girlfriend, who was soon to be my wife. We got married at 21."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Has your image limited you as a director? Do people expect you to make only wholesome movies?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. I'm interested in seeing sex when I go to a movie. But I know that when I direct a PG-13 movie, audiences ignore the 13 and say, \"Here's one for the whole family.\" That was my experience with Parenthood, which has dildos and Mary Steenburgen giving Steve Martin a blow job. But we didn't really describe the dildo in terms of what it was, and most kids didn't know what it was. Later I had parents tell me, \"My kid turned to me in the theater and asked, 'What's that, Dad?'\" Once, I had to explain one away in real life as \"something to massage the neck.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Besides the dildo, how much of Parenthood was actually based on real-life experiences?"],[0,"[A] Howard: There's a sequence where the Martha Plimpton and Keanu Reeves characters have taken pictures of themselves making love, and her mom inadvertently picks them up at the photo store. My partner, [producer] Brian Grazer, had that happen to him."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: What about your personal experiences?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I probably could help you out on the blow jobs, but I won't. Sorry. That's just what my 12-1/2-year-old daughter needs. One of her buddies from school reads the Playboy Interview and she comes back home talking about blow jobs. Vibrators would be another area where I'd have to say, \"No comment.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You and your wife named your children after the places where they were conceived. Is that some sort of Howard family kink?"],[0,"[A] Howard: We didn't want to get into a family-name hassle. All our children's middle names are based on points of conception. We were able to figure them out. We have a Dallas. We have twin Carlyles, after the hotel. One son has a street name for a middle name, but that's just because Volvo isn't a very good middle name."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Did some event in your family history inspire you to cover Tom Cruise's penis widi a bowl in Far and Away?"],[0,"[A] Howard: That was me. No one's ever put a bowl over their dick that I know of. We just thought it was a mischievous thing--a sheltered girl seeing a naked guy lying there would probably lift the bowl, take a look and, instead of being shocked at what a penis looks like, she'd kind of like it. I thought it was an interesting and funny choice. It was one of my favorite moments in the movie. And it always got a huge reaction from the audience. It was unexpected that Nicole Kidman's character would do that."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Did Cruise request an extra-large bowl for the scene?"],[0,"[A] Howard: No. We just found one that was a pretty good fit. A comfortable fit."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you feel compelled to feature nudity in your films just to confound the skeptics?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah, especially early in my career. If I'd left nudity out of Night Shift, not only would it have been wrong for the movie, it would have become an issue. People would have rolled their eyes and said, \"Oh, Ron Howard won't show tits in his movie. That's predictable.\" Night Shift wasn't a thinking person's movie. It was a party movie. A comedy about hookers without nudity wouldn't have been hot or fun to watch. There was a bordello scene with this topless girl in a hot tub. We shot that scene for three days. She was very comfortable, very at ease with the whole thing. Made the crew very happy for three days, I'll tell you. I had a much more erotic and graphic lovemaking scene in Backdraft between Bill Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh. They were great. We came up with some good erotic stuff. But when I started showing it to audiences, I got the sense they felt it was tacked on for commercial purposes, that it was gratuitous. I trimmed it down. But it was fascinating to do."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Which part of it intrigued you the most?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I was intrigued by the way they handled it as actors. And it was my first exploration into what was actually erotic. I was just beginning to learn about it. People who knew me saw that sequence and were a bit surprised. And I think it was effective. It made me think that someday, in a story where it really was appropriate, that kind of eroticism would be interesting to work with again."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You sound tentative."],[0,"[A] Howard: People aren't interested in fucking shots anymore. It's a huge challenge now to make a sequence that isn't the sort of lovemaking montage you've seen about a zillion times: tight shots going up the leg. Explicit images can be very powerful, but not just out of the blue. It's difficult to shock anyone. Sexuality is not a novelty in films anymore. What's sensational will not make a movie a commercial hit. At the same time, we've been liberated. When something is appropriate, we can deal with it openly and graphically. That's a great place to be. But all these things are pretty subjective, so I wouldn't be able--particularly in this publication--to say that I know something about sexuality that hasn't been explored by other filmmakers. But, God, sex is an important part of my life and everyone else's."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You have the distinction of going through puberty in Mayberry. Did it warp you in a serious way?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Puberty under any kind of a spotlight has its nightmarish moments. Going through puberty, you want to feel good about yourself and you don't mind in some small way being viewed as important. But you don't want to be noticed all the time. You've got zits on your face, for Christ's sake. A ninth-grade girl wanted me to sign her thigh. It was just when miniskirts were coming in. Now, that's one I wish I had back. I didn't sign her thigh."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: How did your other classmates react to you?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Among my peers I was embarrassed to be an actor. It was something not to be talked about. The Andy Griffith Show was the number one show in the country, so I always knew there was something I could do that was unusual and that I could function in an adult environment. But I was the butt of a lot of jokes. My character's name, Opie, rhymes with dopey. A few years later they called me Opium. I'd have to get into fights with people. Fortunately, I could sort of hang in."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you still answer to Opie?"],[0,"[A] Howard: My initial reaction every time I hear \"Opie\" is a little tightening in the gut. I'm not Opie. But I'm smart enough not to slug anybody. I used to get really tired of it. I'm sure Rob Reiner doesn't want to be called Meathead. Then I began to realize that I'm a baby boomer, and having gone through that phase with all the other baby boomers, there's a connection. I'm someone who grew up in front of people's eyes--as Letterman says when he introduces me. I hosted Saturday Night Live ten years ago and we covered this subject in a sketch. Eddie Murphy was playing Raheem the Film Critic, and he introduced me as Opie Cunningham. I had a mustache then, and he said, \"We don't like that mustache on you. We want you to shave it off.\" So while he was trying to shave the mustache off, I was saying, \"I'm a director now. I've got a movie out called Night Shift.\" Ever since that I'm always hearing \"Opie Cunningham.\" Once in a while I'd just rather not hear it."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: One of your high school classmates was model and actress Rene Russo. Did she make puberty more excruciating--or less?"],[0,"[A] Howard: She got a big bang out of the fact that Opie was sitting right in front of her in social studies class. I had this little practice of imagining sex with one girl in each class in each period. Rene Russo was my fourth-period fantasy. She had a great biker-chick look, with white lipstick and ironed hair. She was not part of the mainstream, not cheerleader material. No interest at all in school, but she had a cool sense of humor. I was shocked when she came to our 20th high school reunion, because I don't think she'd been to the tenth. Maybe it was her way of saying, \"Hey, look, I succeeded at something. And I still look pretty damn great.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Did you ever have a chance to realize your fourth-period fantasy?"],[0,"[A] Howard: No. Rene was pretty intimidating at that time. But she was nice. She would cheat off my tests all the time. I would happily slip her an answer."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You're telling us Opie cheated in school?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. With the Vietnam war going on, getting good grades was important to me. And I wasn't above writing answers on the inside of my glasses."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: How close did you come to being drafted?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I had a bad number, 41 or 42. I didn't want to go into the Army. And I made up my mind that I wouldn't go to Canada. I took Happy Days because I thought--though I hadn't seen an attorney--if I could get on a TV series the studio would try to keep me out of Vietnam. I read an article that said you could get a work deferment if your employment impacted the employment of 30 or more individuals. And a television production crew is 40 or 50 people."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the Happy Days phenomenon."],[0,"[A] Howard: It was awesome. For a couple of years it was like being in a rock band. We had this young, teen audience. When we'd make an appearance at a mall somewhere it wouldn't be unusual for 15,000 to 20,000 people to show up. You're coming into so many homes. Less so today than in those pre-cable days. But it's still true. I'll bet more people would immediately recognize Tim Allen than any number of movie stars, outside of Tom Cruise and maybe Harrison Ford, Stallone, Schwarzenegger. With American Graffiti and Happy Days, and The Andy Griffith Show kicking into syndication, I was at the height of my visibility. At that point it was difficult to go places. If I went Christmas shopping I had to keep moving. Once I stopped to pay for something, people would start to crowd around. I didn't take it very seriously, but I was glad to be on the wave."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You did enjoy the attention?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I got a kick out of it. But I'd already been on The Andy Griffith Show. I took the position on Happy Days as a veteran. Been there. Done that. I postured. There were times when I wanted to bolt that show. I couldn't argue with its success, but my heart wasn't in it every day. I didn't find the episodes creatively satisfying or challenging. I was chafing to get on with my life. There were times when I'd be driving along the San Diego Freeway and I was supposed to turn onto the Hollywood Freeway to go to work and I'd just want to disappear, keep going to Tijuana. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't do something dopey like that."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Why did you want to bail out?"],[0,"[A] Howard: When my celebrity or recognizability was at its absolute apex it was pretty smothering. I didn't enjoy it. I was just married at that time, and I said to Cheryl, \"I bet if I actually pulled this thing off and became a director, this would die down pretty quickly.\" And she said, \"Do it. Do it.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: When did you make the switch to directing?"],[0,"[A] Howard: From the time I was 18, directing was pretty much all I talked about. I created this scenario of how to build an empire based on one porno movie. Deep Throat had come out and I read how it was made for $8000 or something and it made $30 million. And I thought, Hmmm, that would buy a lot of autonomy. Then I began to imagine the marquee: Opie Gets Laid. I'd be kicked out of the business, but I'd have all this money to make independent films."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: How close did we come to seeing a version of Deep Opie?"],[0,"[A] Howard:Happy Days was going through a transition from a gentle comedy to a broader kind of show. Fonzie had started out as a minor character. Henry Winkler had a brilliant take on him, and the writers and the audience could sense it. It was a real phenomenon. And it was someone's idea at the network to change the show to Fonzie's Happy Days. As a kid I had seen this, because on The Andy Griffith Show Andy was the straight man and Don Knotts was wildly popular, winning the Emmy almost every year. So I understood that there was a role for me on the show as the straight man. Winkler and I talked openly about what was going on. We acted well together and remained good friends. But the network's wanting to change the name of the show was tough for me to take. I felt slighted. My contract was over, and Paramount and ABC assumed that I would re-sign because they were offering to double my salary."],[0,"When it came down to deal-making time it was nerve-racking. Here I am, 20 years old, sitting in this meeting with no agents or lawyers with me. I told them I understood what was going on with the characters, but that I didn't sign on to be on somebody else's show. I just wouldn't do it. Couldn't do it. Apparently [producer] Garry Marshall stepped in and told them not to change the name. I've enjoyed gambling once in a while. It turned out to be a good decision. I was on Happy Days seven and a half years. When my contract ended, I left the show and took a producing and directing deal at NBC. The show ran another three or four years after that."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: And Ronny Howard had discovered clout."],[0,"[A] Howard:Happy Days was important for me because I got a crash course in the business. I began to discover leverage and power, how the industry works, how the networks make decisions. I'd been sheltered up to that point. Happy Days was a coming-of-age period for a person who knew he wanted to become a director and maybe a producer."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: But who definitely didn't want to be an adult actor?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I didn't think I was going to be a movie star. I don't exude that kind of danger on-screen. I have an affable quality. But I was making the transition. I was getting good dramatic work in television movies. In the middle of doing Happy Days I got nominated for a Golden Globe for best supporting actor for a movie I did with John Wayne, The Shootist. And there was talk that I would get nominated for an Oscar. Every year Disney still sends me a family comedy they want me to star in. I'd probably go with a hairpiece."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You grew up in the public eye. How did you manage to avoid occasionally making a fool of yourself?"],[0,"[A] Howard: As I grew up, I wanted to emulate my father as a man. Now, as a father myself, I often think about how he might handle situations. You don't see him living an extreme lifestyle. He's a very moderate guy, almost an ascetic. He's relentlessly evenhanded and moral, that Midwestern, hardworking, no-nonsense breed of man. I've always admired that about him."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Those aren't qualities one often associates with Hollywood."],[0,"[A] Howard: Being in this business is not filling a void for me. Most people get into this business as the ultimate act of rebellion. For me, rebellion would have been to get out of the business. When kids are 14 years old and they say they want to be an actor or director, their parents say, \"No way. What are you thinking?\" As a result, people who go into the business tend to be more rebellious. They develop a code of behavior that may be a little more experimental, a little more dangerous. They make asses out of themselves and it's not a big deal. Then, all of a sudden, they break through, and they're concerned about what people think of them. Suddenly it's, \"Geez, I can't wear women's underwear out on the beach anymore. Someone will take a picture of me.\" Well, that's not the way I am. That's not what I do. There isn't a side of me that sneaks off across the border to dress in women's nightwear and have wild episodes."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: How did you avoid the crash that seems to befall so many child actors?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I see myself as a quirk. I don't know very many kids who successfully--or painlessly--made the transition from child actor to adult actor. My transition was about as good as it gets. My parents always felt a little guilty about having gotten me into the business. Even today I periodically have to reassure them that I'm really happy with my life. They often see me tied up in knots."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: So you're a quirk who has no regrets?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I don't because it worked out very well for me. The ease I feel on the set of a motion picture is a huge advantage for me. People tell me I never get upset, that I don't seem to be tense. Well, I'm unbelievably tense when I'm working. I just don't show it because it's comfortable for me to be there. When I was eight or nine years old a guy had a nervous breakdown right in front of me in the middle of a take on The Andy Griffith Show. All of a sudden he went off the script and drifted into this diatribe, wound up sobbing, fell off his chair and curled up into the fetal position. A bizarre experience. At the time I wondered if he was ad-libbing. Did he just forget his lines? Sometimes I don't feel very calm or composed, but having acted serves me well as a director. I understand what motivates people and what they're feeling."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Will any of the four Howard children follow in your footsteps?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Cheryl and I decided against that from the beginning. A lot of kid actors are treated as trained animals. They can do a cute look. They can say the dialogue. They gain enough technical proficiency to be able to hit the mark. And when they're no longer cute and they can't get away with those tricks, they're obsolete."],[0,"I wouldn't want to subject my kids to that. Not that I think they're without talent. They're clearly an interesting bunch and they are all drawn to various things artistic. You'll have to put in \"he said, beaming.\" But being a child actor can be brutal. If you succeed, you're an out-cast. It's unavoidable that child actors will have to prove themselves twice over, because they're not fresh anymore. If your child really wants to be an actor, the odds will be a lot better for a career if he or she waits."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: When did Ronny Howard become Ron Howard?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I tried to get it changed for American Graffiti, but they'd already done the credits. So after that I went with Ron."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: George Lucas' American Graffiti is a landmark coming-of-age film. Was it a coming-of-age experience for you as well?"],[0,"[A] Howard: It was a liberating experience. Being on location. Working all night. It was the first time I didn't have parental supervision. On the nights I wasn't working, I'd go off to San Francisco and try to sneak into clubs. I looked so young I'd always get thrown out. I'd walk in the door and it was like doing a U-turn. But I got an eyeful. While we were filming American Graffiti I followed George Lucas around with a Super-8 camera. I bugged him like crazy. He liked it, though."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Describe your documentary on the making of American Graffiti."],[0,"[A] Howard: Unfortunately, my mom lost all that footage. You know how some people complain about their baseball cards being thrown away? My mom dumped out all the Super-8 reels."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Is George Lucas a mentor?"],[0,"[A] Howard: We became real good friends. I have called him for advice. When we were doing American Graffiti, he said he wanted to do this science-fiction thing, like a serial in the old days with a comic-book feel. He couldn't begin to describe it in any way that was at all compelling. Star Wars just sounded bizarre. That's the thing about George. He's always been able to do something that you haven't quite seen before. Whether it was using the music the way he did in American Graffiti or the nonstop action in Raiders of the Lost Ark or the special effects in Star Wars. When he's at his best, he's making those kinds of breakthroughs. I think that's why he doesn't make a lot of films. I'm a little more content just to try to cook up a good story and get some good actors and to go out and make it."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Is that how you decided to make The Paper?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Coming off Backdraft and Far and Away I really wanted to do something that was logistically simpler. There were some terrific performances in both Backdraft and Far and Away. But I felt that my attention was pulled toward these big sequences that cost a lot of money and risk people's lives and are very difficult to execute cinematically. So I was looking for something simple. The Paper is not a deep, probing drama. It was a great excuse for me to hang around at The New York Daily News and The New York Post for hours and hours. And the actors started hanging around as well, particularly Michael Keaton. This is not a movie for kids. It allows the audience to look behind the scenes of the headline business, to relate to the pressures and stresses urbanites feel and everyone relates to. As soon as we started our research, I realized just how smart and funny that world is. There's a dry glibness and rhythm to the speech and the delivery. They have very good timing. It reminded me a lot of TV writers or actors."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Some journalists might not be so thrilled by that comparison."],[0,"[A] Howard: As a director it reminded me of watching Thoroughbreds run. What was exciting--and a huge relief--was that the likes of Michael Keaton and Robert Duvall and Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei really came set to work. I had heard that Duvall was kind of cut-and-dried and just wanted to do one or two takes and move on. And that he didn't have much patience for the process. I thought he would be more set in his ways. I found that to be untrue. He was eager to try different takes and variations. He was looking to be directed. He has great taste, so it wasn't like he was far off. But he wanted the help in finessing the performance."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You have made some high-grossing films, but do you feel you have attained the critical and artistic success of a Martin Scorsese or an Oliver Stone?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I really don't think I'm quite there yet. But I don't want to answer in a way that makes it seem like my goal is to grow up and be Oliver Stone. There's no doubt that it's an uphill battle to get rave reviews for the kind of story I'm drawn to. I know on a commercial level I'm right up there in terms of who the studios would like to bet on. I've been reliable. I have stature."],[0,"I had a great conversation with Clint Eastwood after I saw his Unforgiven. He has a reputation for making movies in an ultraefficient fashion. Fewer days of shooting. Fewer takes. A throwback to John Ford, who never would do more than a couple of takes."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Were you seeking advice on how to become an efficient filmmaker?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Not necessarily, but that was my question. I thought Unforgiven had a polish that was extraordinary and difficult to achieve, because I know what it's like to work outside in the elements. So I asked him if he took more time to do this, given that it clearly was a project he'd been nursing along for years."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Eastwood's answer?"],[0,"[A] Howard: He said, \"Nope. Just did it.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Your kind of story is upbeat. Do you think you've been typecast as the director from Mayberry?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. Mainstream moviemaker. I know I carry a sensibility born out of the kind of popular entertainment I grew up being part of. That's part of my outlook. Likable characters. And there's the celebration of the human spirit. I look around, I talk with people, look at their lives, read the paper and notice even with my own life that there are those moments when a person feels victorious. They feel they've achieved something very difficult. That's the stuff of memories, what makes life worth living. Each person has a highlight reel. Some people might have a perverted one [laughs], and what's fun and rewarding for them might not be for someone else. I find those moments rewarding as a moviegoer. But it has to be handled in the right way or it can be awfully corny and syrupy. But when it's handled well I find it rewarding. That's consistent with my personality."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You and Scorsese both directed films for B-movie impresario Roger Corman. Have you compared notes?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I'm a great admirer of Scorsese. Earlier this year I tracked him down and had lunch with him. Scorsese creates brilliant sequences. You might like one story more than another, but there will always be a great sequence, whether it's the boxing or one of the arguments between the brothers in Raging Bull, or Ray Liotta's cocaine-addled paranoia in GoodFellas. It's a brilliant sequence. He's trying things all the time. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it doesn't work for everybody. He told me there's a classic storytelling style and approach that I embrace. And I think he was saying to me, \"Relax, it's OK. That's what you do.\" Scorsese had come up with a list of 50 films for his daughter to watch."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Did any of your films make the list?"],[0,"[A] Howard: He didn't say anything about that. We were talking about classics. I don't think any of mine have reached classic status yet. My guess would be Cocoon is the leading possibility. Backdraft has established a passionate following. It has had real staying power in its post-release life. Far and Away is really a girl's movie."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Some critics were less than kind to Far and Away."],[0,"[A] Howard: Many of them were. It would have been great if I could have made it earlier. I'd been working on that idea for eight years, from the time of Splash. There were times on Far and Away when it would flash through my mind that while a certain scene made sense for the movie, it wasn't exactly the way I see the world today. The movie has a kind of innocence. That was the choice I'd made eight years before, and it was still right for the movie as I was making it. But at times during the shooting and editing I would say, \"This is a sensibility that is more representative of my outlook eight years ago. I think I've covered this ground.\" I love a great romance, and that's what Far and Away is. A romp like It Happened One Night. And I think it contradicted a lot of people's expectations, which were that the movie was going to be a sophisticated, historical drama about the Irish immigration. I'd seen the bleak look at the immigrant experience and didn't think we could do better than that."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: But you wound up with a big, expensive film."],[0,"[A] Howard: I'd always conceived of it as a modest film. The fact that it was shot in 70-millimeter became a marketing element. Maybe it was impossible to do the movie that was floating around in my head as inexpensively as I thought it might be done. But I certainly knew it wasn't a high-concept, easy-to-market movie. That's why it was nerve-racking when it became an expensive film. And it was competing against rock-and-roll party movies in an early summer market. Far and Away seems to be effective in its ability to entertain, but it isn't that kind of ride."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Were the critics waiting in ambush?"],[0,"[A] Howard: That's the first time a wave of negative criticism has hit me. I was frustrated by the way the movie was received critically and blindsided because the audience screenings were wonderful--with applause at the end of every preview. And I had a great time working on that movie. It was a dream come true. I got along well with Tom and Nicole. We went to great locations. The experience was perfect up until the film's release."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you feel there's ground that you have to recover since Far and Away?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Both Backdraft and Parenthood were very profitable movies, so I don't, thankfully, feel that pressure. Once the dust settled, Far and Away was perfectly respectable. I was relieved when we finally were able to generate enough money worldwide so that the studio broke even. Had it really flopped, I might not be so philosophical about it. But I was able to shake that off after a while and say, \"Well, nobody's getting rich off this movie, but nobody is getting hurt.\" They always say that once you establish yourself, you're allowed about three flops in a row. Nobody ever doubts that people are going to have an occasional flop."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Were you anxious when Tom Cruise invited you to discuss the movie at a Church of Scientology compound?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. There are certain things that you put up with. I chased John Belushi through the streets to try to get him for Night Shift. I jumped on a plane once and flew to New Orleans to have a meeting with Eddie Murphy. And flew right back. It was unbelievably inconvenient, but I did it. One day we were set to have a story meeting with Tom Cruise, and he was at a Scientology headquarters just outside of Palm Springs. It wasn't a big deal. It was interesting. I didn't feel that I was being recruited."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Was Cruise holding out for something in return for starring in Far and Away?"],[0,"[A] Howard: No. He was already in the movie. It was just where he happened to be. We wanted to have a story conference, he was there and so we scooted up and spent the day and had the meeting. I didn't feel I had to become a Scientologist because I had spent the day up there. I know a bunch of Scientologists. I've had almost no conversations with any of them about Scientology, beyond their lamenting that it's a burden because people are pretty judgmental about it. None of them makes a big deal out of it."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Did Cruise insist that on Far and Away you use sound-recording equipment developed by Scientologists?"],[0,"[A] Howard: That was some equipment of Tom's. He may have met people through Scientology he thought were good sound engineers and started working on it. I don't think the equipment is church-owned or -financed. I think Tom financed it. Having spent time around George Lucas, who's always pushing the technological envelope, I found the equipment interesting. One of the reasons that I went ahead and took the leap and used it on the movie was that I knew it could only help us. Far and Away was one of the first times the equipment was used--if not its maiden voyage. It doesn't so much create an effect for the audience involving speaker systems; it has more to do with recording technique, so that actors can go from speaking very loudly to speaking very softly, and it's not up to some poor sound mixer to catch that. There was this rumor going around that really bugged me--that Cruise didn't like the sound of his voice. But this equipment would never impact the quality of his voice or change its pitch or anything. And he never said one thing to me about that being a goal."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You, Penny Marshall and Rob Reiner are film directors who all came out of the sitcom world. That seems to be unlikely training for movie directing."],[0,"[A] Howard: We happened to be the first class to graduate from TV. People coming out of television seek to find a balance between the good idea that they can get behind and one that they can communicate thematically, keeping it lively. Comedy writing, acting and directing have a lot to do with rhythm. You have to feel where that spot is for the laugh. You develop an ear. Some funny things said in the wrong rhythm are no longer funny. Some unfunny things said in the right rhythm can actually be funny. That's where actors like Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks have a tremendous advantage. They understand what that rhythm is about, and they have this ability to tweak those lines so they don't sound like dialogue anymore. Hanks did two years on Bosom Buddies, which was as sitcom as they get--a good one. Keaton had been on a couple of sitcoms that didn't work. But he had worked in that style."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: How important is humor--just plain yucks--in your movies?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I love storytelling. But as much as I keep trying to stretch as a director and work in different genres, there's one thing I always come back to. It's the thrill of sitting in the back of a theater, hearing one of those really big laughs come through--like when Michael Keaton explodes into \"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!\" a million times in The Paper. I love feeling a little authorship or a sense of responsibility for getting people to feel that. Any kind of humor is like playing with a hand grenade. When it works it can be very exciting. When it doesn't, people immediately write it off as dopey. But then I use that term all the time. Dopiness is OK in my book as long as it's good. Wayne's World is a real dopey movie, but it's very well-executed."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you feel you get enough respect?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Actors give me a lot of respect. They want to work with me. Splash was the turning point. It was Tom Hanks' first major film. Daryl Hannah had been in films but was not a movie star. John Candy had been in some films but hadn't really done a big part. Actors loved Splash. They liked the way it established Hanks. I've established two people successfully, Keaton and Hanks. I don't claim credit for Kevin Costner's career. I put him in a party scene in Night Shift because I needed someone who could speak a line. Years later I saw him again and asked if I had been nice to him that day. He said yes."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You may have established Keaton, but he wasn't your first choice for Night Shift, was he?"],[0,"[A] Howard: The studio took a total chance on Keaton. At the time he was doing stand-up. We had a budget for the movie. But really we had to get it cast. The idea was to get Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. It was up to me to try to get to Belushi. My partner, Brian Grazer--doing his neophyte producer thing--and I managed what we thought was going to be a five-minute meeting. Belushi's holding court. And suddenly he grows expansive. He starts talking about Happy Days. He starts talking about The Andy Griffith Show. And he tells me, \"You're pretty funny. You know comedy. You could direct a comedy.\" And we're sitting around drinking beers with him for about three hours. No toots in there. So when we left we were high-fiving it. We thought we had it. It turned out we still couldn't get him to read the script. Never did get him to read it. We wound up getting the movie made anyway. And casting Michael Keaton. Belushi died while we were making the picture."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: We talked about sex earlier. What about power?"],[0,"[A] Howard: What is power in our business? It boils down to the ability to get people to say yes--which is almost impossible. So there has to be fear involved. People have to be afraid to say no. No is the easy and safe answer when someone's talking about investing millions in a project. When you reach a position where people are hesitant to say no because they feel they might be missing out on something good, then you have power."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: We assume you get your phone calls returned real fast."],[0,"[A] Howard: I get my phone calls returned pretty quickly nowadays. But this business has little patience for those who are not hot. That's a reality everybody lives with. You fight for the opportunity to prove yourself, so that once you do prove yourself, things become a little easier. Now I don't have to be a gladiator every day. Now people want to seriously consider my ideas. It's a great feeling. It's not like everybody says yes to me all day long, every day. But it's difficult for people to just cavalierly say no. I was familiar with that reaction for a long time when it came to my directing. You don't want it to be too easy for them to say no. That's what I fight for in this business."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You work in a business that is renowned for big egos. How big is your ego?"],[0,"[A] Howard: I don't overpower people. That's not in my nature. I don't provoke people to perform at a higher level because everybody in this business at this level wants to achieve. All I do is try to ask difficult questions. I hate discussing this because I run the risk of sounding as though I really know what I'm doing and that I'm marvelously consistent. I don't have some great insight to offer. There's a good scene in All That Jazz where the director, who is played by Roy Scheider, is watching in the editing room and he's cursing at the screen, at the actor: \"Why is he doing that? I can't believe it.\" And then he pauses. \"Why? Because I'm the asshole who told him to do it that way.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You and producer Brian Grazer have been partners in moviemaking for several years. You're known as a nice guy, while he has a reputation as a driven, aggressive money man. Tell us about your relationship."],[0,"[A] Howard: We're an odd couple. I think a lot of people probably scratch their heads and ask how the hell that partnership has sustained itself. Now, after almost ten years of working together, we know it works. We were introduced in 1977 or 1978 by this very cool woman named Deanne Barkley, one of the first top female power executives in Hollywood. She said, \"You guys have to meet each other. You're going to be running the business.\" A couple of years later, we were the two youngest guys on the lot with offices."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Is Grazer the player in the partnership and Howard the artist?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. There are some great players out there and he's one of them. He has a knack for it. He's a good industry strategist. He knows how to read people, what they want to do, what they're looking for--not just the agents and studio executives but actors, writers and directors as well. The true players are not writers, directors and actors, though some revel in it. The purest players--and I don't put a good or bad connotation on the word players--are people who make it their business to take an idea and gather enough momentum to get it financed and maneuver the project through this maze of insecurity, fear and ego. They understand the subtlety of the process enough to sense when they have the leverage to make a move, to know when they're holding a flush or when they have to fall back and regroup. It's sales-driven, yet there's nodthng tangible to sell. So there's a lot of talk. Brian Grazer is one of the best. We make big calls together if we have something we're really trying to accomplish."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: What are you trying to accomplish when you're sitting in the director's chair?"],[0,"[A] Howard: A big objective for a director is to get everybody to see the movie in roughly the same way. When everybody sees the same movie in their minds--it's obviously inexact--then the director can edit suggestions from the cinematographer, from actors, from whomever. The key is to be meticulous about casting. I call other directors. I call Bob Zemeckis. Oliver Stone. Steven Spielberg. Jonathan Demme. Casting is agony to me. It's important, yet I hate putting people through that process."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: And now we have to ask the obvious question about casting."],[0,"[A] Howard: I've never quite had an indecent proposal, but once in a while you'll get a girl in with a very short skirt who almost...but I've never had an indecent proposal. [Laughs] Everything's very businesslike, because it's too emotional otherwise. I can't do: \"Let's meet at your house. Let's meet at a hotel.\" There was a lot of nudity in Night Shift. I had to interview a woman and say, \"We need to look at your breasts.\" That was weird. People are ambitious. After I cast Shelley Long in Night Shift she called me and said, \"I'd like to come over to your house.\" She came over and she was wearing a wig, looking dowdy. And I said, \"Hi, Shelley.\" And she said, \"Oh, did you recognize me?\" And I said, \"Yeah.\" We sat down and started talking and she said, \"You may wonder why I have this wig on.\" The question had crossed my mind. [Laughs] She wanted to play all the girls in the movie. And she took a shot at it. I respected the effort, but I wasn't going to let her do it."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You've been involved in the business side of movies more than most directors. Let's trace your interest in commerce."],[0,"[A] Howard: I thought about the idea of buying a one-minute commercial on Happy Days and saving, \"Hi, I'm Ron Howard. You've seen me over the years on Happy Days and The Andy Griffith Show. Now I want to direct a movie. Send me a dollar.\""],[0,"[Q] Playboy: We assume you didn't consult a securities lawyer."],[0,"[A] Howard: I found out it was illegal and decided it could be pretty humiliating. Splash was flashy and showy and a huge hit. Brian and I became informal partners then. But we started kicking around the notion of trying to raise some money and gain influence. And in late 1984 or early 1985, Wall Street was (continued on page 146)Ron Howard(continued from page 66) hot--and high on Hollywood. The idea of taking our company public became interesting. No creative group had done that. I went out and bought a blue suit--I didn't have a business suit. Our dog and pony show consisted of me and slides from our movies. We thought it would be fascinating to see if it would work. And it did. We went public at eight dollars a share. I guess we went five or six years as a public company. Then, when our contract expired, we chose to take the company private."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: That was a controversial move. When you and Grazer proposed to take Imagine Entertainment, your film company, private, the financial press reported that some shareholders weren't happy, because there wouldn't be much of a company left once the two main assets--you and Grazer--quit."],[0,"[A] Howard: They were saying that you couldn't really walk away from a public company--contract or no contract. Well, in every report we made it clear how long our employment term was. Even at the dog and pony shows we talked about that. But in every situation like that people are going to be protective of the claims they think they might have."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Were you disappointed with the way Imagine Entertainment performed as a public company?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. Our television business did not live up to our expectations. We'd done a number of pilots and a couple of short-lived series, including one that was a spin-off of Parenthood. Brian and I were having a great deal more success making the movies. We were profitable. And we were proud of that, because a lot of companies had failed. But it became clear that for us to maximize the shareholders' value--and our own stake in the company--we were going to have to be more aggressive about raising capital, expanding our slate of films and trying to gain some assets, like a television station or distribution business. We were going to have to expand the company, learn to be corporate businessmen. And we did not want to do that."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Besides not wanting to dedicate more time to administrative work, you and Grazer also wanted more money, right?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Well, we were in a real catch-22. Initially we'd worked out a business plan that was designed in this way: We would take what amounted to about half of our street value in cash as salary. The company would get the full value, whatever our films could generate. So in our minds we were betting half of our salary, and our back-end profit participation, by not drawing it out but investing it in the company. As things evolved and the business changed and we grew more successful, the ratio changed from the original 50--50. Five years later we found that instead of betting half of our salary, we were betting more like 70 or 80 percent because even though our earning power had increased, our salaries hadn't. It was out of whack. Our street value went way up because we were having hits. And so we started analyzing the prospects of trying to draw larger salaries."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: In other words, you wanted a raise?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. In a way that would work for the company. We spent a lot of time with the board of directors analyzing it and dickering around. Basically, if the company paid us even half of what we could get from a studio, it would in a way be capping its own earnings potential, therefore stunting the stock."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Were you hurt by press reports that you were greedy when you succeeded in taking the company private?"],[0,"[A] Howard: No. I wasn't hurt at all by that. Directors' fees have really gone up. Superstar salaries have tripled. How are you going to attract an audience's attention? Right now in our business, one of the few insurance policies is using trade names: movie stars. And the actors want to work with experienced directors, people they trust."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You've wrapped your tenth feature film. You have final cut as a director. Satisfied?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. This is where I've always wanted to be. And I got here a little faster than I expected. After Cocoon I was in a position of not having to be a director for hire. I could green-light a movie. I have as much control as I ever imagined. I have final cut. But I'm not surprised that I became a director and that I've succeeded with it. I always thought it was a great job."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that your name can open a movie?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. It's unusual. They do research on that, and with my past few movies, the research has shown that between 40 and 50 percent of the people list the fact that I directed it as one of the reasons they come. From the studio's vantage point the fact that I've been around now for three decades and never too far out of sight is something they view as a marketing asset."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Will you continue to make movies about likable characters when critics often favor films about the darker side of life?"],[0,"[A] Howard: Yeah. A lot of critics see a darker kind of movie as more artistic. But I'm not sure it's fair to say I would never make one of those movies. I haven't yet. I suspect that one of these days I will. At the same time I doubt that I'll ever get reviews that are better than those for Parenthood or Cocoon or Splash. I'm pleased that I haven't settled in and become a guy who just does scary movies or light romantic comedies or gangster pictures. My films don't usually fit into a studio's plan for a given year. They don't say they need a movie about Irish immigrants, a mermaid picture or a senior citizen film. I feel respected in that regard. But I don't think I've done my best work yet. Most of us don't think of ourselves as craftsmen or technicians. We're storytellers. We're artists. I would hate to be in the situation where studios say--and it's probably inevitable that I'm going to have to face this--I'm just not bankable. I hope it never happens. There are a few-directors who escape. John Huston directed until he dropped. That's what I want to do."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: How does Ron Howard the artist and storyteller feel about the theme-park ride that Backdrafl spawned at the Universal Studios tour? Is it an embarrassing commercialization of your story about heroism?"],[0,"[A] Howard: No. I was thrilled with that. That's the nature of that movie. That movie was a ride--as much as I liked the story between the brothers. I even got to work on the theme-park ride a little bit. The best part was when I went on it and it scared me. You can feel the heat on that ride."],[0,"\"I honestly can't remember when I was anonymous, I learned to write so I could give autographs.\""]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/snow-white-redux"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Snow White Redux"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,72],[0,74]]],[1,[[0,141]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/72-73-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=72"],"body":[1,[[0,"a politically correct parable for our times"],[0,"Once there was a young princess who was not at all unpleasant to look at and had a temperament that many found to be more pleasant than most other people's. Her nickname was Snow White, indicative of the discriminatory notions of associating pleasant qualities with light and unpleasant qualities with darkness. Thus, at an early age, Snow White was an unwitting if fortunate target for this type of colorist thinking. When Snow White was quite young, her mother was stricken ill, grew more advanced in nonhealth and finally was rendered nonviable. Her father, the king, grieved for what can be considered a healthy period of time, then asked another woman to be his queen. Snow White did her best to please her new mother-of-step, but a cold distance remained between them."],[0,"The queen's prized possession was a magic mirror that would answer truthfully any question asked it. Now, years of social conditioning in a male hierarchical dictatorship had left the queen insecure about her own self-worth. Physical beauty was the one standard she cared about now, and she defined herself solely in regard to her personal appearance. So every morning the queen would ask her mirror:"],[0,"\"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?\""],[0,"Her mirror would answer:"],[0,"\"For all it's worth, O my queen, your beauty is the fairest to be seen.\""],[0,"That dialogue went on regularly until once, when the queen was having a bad day and was desperately in need of support, she asked the usual question and the mirror answered:"],[0,"\"Alas, if worth be based on beauty, Snow White has surpassed you, cutie.\""],[0,"At this the queen flew into a rage. The chance to work with Snow White to form a strong bond of sisterhood had long passed. Instead, the queen indulged in an adopted masculine power trip and ordered the royal woodsperson to take Snow White into the forest and kill her. And, possibly to impress the males in the royal court, she barbarously ordered that the girl's heart be cut out and brought back to her."],[0,"The woodsperson sadly agreed to these orders and led the girl, who was now actually a young womon, into the middle of the forest. But his connections to the earth and seasons had made him a kind soul, and he couldn't bear to harm the girl. He told Snow White of the oppressive and unsisterly order of the queen and told her to run as deep as she could into the forest."],[0,"The frightened Snow White did as she was told. The woodsperson, fearing the queen's wrath but unwilling to take another life merely to indulge her vanity, went into town and had the candy maker concoct a heart of red marzipan. When he presented this to the queen, she hungrily devoured the heart in a sickening display of pseudo-cannibalism."],[0,"Meanwhile, Snow White ran deep into the woods. Just when she thought she had fled as far as she could from civilization and all its unhealthy influences, she stumbled upon a cottage. Inside she saw seven tiny beds set in a row and all unmade. She also saw seven sets of dishes piled high in the sink and seven Barcaloungers in front of seven remote-controlled televisions. She surmised that the cottage belonged either to seven little men or to one sloppy numerologist. The beds looked so inviting that the tired womon curled up on one and immediately fell into a deep sleep."],[0,"When she awoke several hours later, she saw the faces of seven vertically challenged men surrounding the bed. She sat up with a start and gasped. One of the men said, \"You see that? Just like a flighty woman: resting peacefully one minute, up and screaming the next.\""],[0,"\"I agree,\" said another. \"She'll disrupt our strong bond of brotherhood and create competition among us for her affections. I say we throw her in the river in a sack full of rocks.\""],[0,"\"I agree we should get rid of her,\" said a third, \"but why degrade the ecology? Let's just feed her to a bear or something and let her become part of the food chain.\""],[0,"\"Hear! Hear!\""],[0,"\"Sound thinking, brother.\""],[0,"When Snow White finally regained her senses, she begged, \"Please, please don't kill me. I meant no harm by sleeping on your bed. I thought no one would even notice.\""],[0,"\"Ah, you see?\" said one of the men. \"Female preoccupations are already surfacing. She's complaining that we don't make our beds.\""],[0,"\"Kill her! Kill her!\""],[0,"\"Please, no!\" she cried. \"I have traveled so deep into these woods because my mother-of-step, the queen, ordered me killed.\""],[0,"\"See that? It's internecine female vindictiveness!\""],[0,"\"Don't try to play the victim with us, kid!\""],[0,"\"Quiet!\" boomed one of the men, who had flaming-red hair and a nonhuman animal skin on his head. Snow White quickly realized that he was their leader and that her fate rested in his hands. \"Explain yourself. What's your name, and why have you really come here?\""],[0,"\"My name is Snow White,\" she began, \"and I've already told you: My mother-of-step, the queen, ordered a woodsperson to take me into the forest and kill me, but he took pity and told me to run away into the woods as far as I could.\""],[0,"\"Just like a woman,\" grumbled one of the men under his breath. \"Gets a man to do her dirty work.\""],[0,"The leader held up his hands for silence. He said, \"Well, Snow White, if that's your story, I guess we'll have to believe you.\""],[0,"Snow White started to resent her treatment but tried not to let it show. \"And who are you guys, anyway?\""],[0,"\"We are known as the Seven Towering Giants,\" said the leader. Snow White's suppression of a giggle did not go unnoticed. The leader continued: \"We are towering in spirit and so are giants among the men of the forest. We used to earn our living by digging in our mines, but we decided that such a rape of the planet was immoral. Besides, the bottom fell out of the metals market. So now we are dedicated stewards of the earth and live here in harmony with nature. To make ends meet, we also conduct retreats for men who need to get in touch with their primitive masculine identities.\""],[0,"\"So what does that involve,\" asked Snow White, \"aside from drinking milk straight from the carton?\""],[0,"\"Your sarcasm is ill-advised,\" warned the leader of the Seven Towering Giants. \"My fellow giants want to get rid of your corrupting feminine presence, and I might not be able to stop them, understand? My men, we must speak our hearts openly and honestly. Let us adjourn to the sweat lodge.\""],[0,"The seven little men scampered out the front door, whooping and stripping off all their clothes. Snow White didn't know what to do while waiting. For fear of stepping on anything that might be scurrying amid the debris on the floor, she stayed on the bed, though she did manage to make it without stepping off."],[0,"Snow White heard drumming and shouts, and soon after, the Seven Towering Giants came back into the cottage. They didn't smell as bad as she thought they would and, thankfully, they all wore loincloths."],[0,"\"Agggh! Look what she's done to my bed! I want her out of here. I want to change my vote.\""],[0,"\"Calm down, brother,\" said the leader. \"Don't you see? This is just what we were talking about: contrasts. We can better measure our progress as true men if there is a female around for purposes of comparison.\""],[0,"The men grumbled among themselves about the wisdom of their decision. But Snow White had had enough. \"I resent being kept around like an object, just a yardstick for your egos and penises!\""],[0,"\"Fair enough,\" the leader said. \"You're free to make your way back through the woods. Give our regards to the queen.\""],[0,"\"Well, I guess I can stay until I figure out a new plan,\" she said."],[0,"\"Very well,\" said the leader, \"but we have a few ground rules. No dusting. No straightening up. And no rinsing out underwear in the sink.\""],[0,"\"And no peeking into the sweat lodge.\""],[0,"\"And stay away from our drums.\""],[0,"Meanwhile, back at the castle, the queen rejoiced at the thought that her rival in beauty had been eliminated. She puttered around her boudoir reading copies of Glamour and Elle, and indulged herself with three whole pieces of chocolate without purging. Later, she confidently strolled up to her magic mirror and asked the same sad question:"],[0,"\"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?\""],[0,"The mirror replied:"],[0,"\"Your weight is perfect for your shape and height, (concluded on page 139)Snow White(continued from page 70) But for sheer oomph! you can't beat Snow White.\""],[0,"At this news the queen clenched her fists and screamed at the top of her lungs. For years her insecurities had been eating away at her until now they turned her into someone who was morally out of the mainstream. With cunning and malice she began to devise a plan to ensure the nonviability of her daughter-of-step."],[0,"A few days later, Snow White, to be sure she didn't touch or rearrange anything, was meditating on the floor in the middle of the cottage. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Snow White opened it to find a chronologically gifted woman with a basket in her hand. By the look of her clothes she was apparently unfettered by the confines of regular employment."],[0,"\"Help a woman of unreliable income, dearie,\" she said, \"and buy one of my apples.\""],[0,"Snow White thought for a moment. In protest against agribusiness conglomerates, she had a personal rule against buying food from middlepersons. But her heart went out to the economically marginalized woman, so she said yes. What Snow White didn't know was that this was really the queen in disguise and that the apple had been chemically and genetically altered so that whoever bit it would sleep forever."],[0,"When Snow White handed over the money for the apple, you would have expected the queen to be gleeful that her plan for revenge was working. Instead, as she looked at Snow White's fine complexion and slim, taut body, she felt alternating waves of envy and self-revulsion. Finally, she burst into tears."],[0,"\"Why, whatever is the matter?\" asked Snow White."],[0,"\"You're so young and beautiful,\" sobbed the disguised queen, \"and I'm horrible to look at and getting worse.\""],[0,"\"You shouldn't say that. After all, beauty comes from inside a person.\""],[0,"\"I've been telling myself that for years,\" said the queen, \"and I still don't believe it. How do you stay in such perfect shape?\""],[0,"\"Well, I meditate, work out in step aerobics three hours a day and eat only half portions of anything placed in front of me. Would you like me to show you?\""],[0,"\"Oh, yes, yes, please,\" said the queen. So they started out with 30 minutes of simple hatha-yoga meditation, then worked out on the steps for another hour. As they relaxed afterward, Snow White cut her apple in half and gave one half to the queen. Without thinking, the queen bit into it, and both of them fell into a deep sleep."],[0,"Later that day, the Seven Towering Giants returned from a retreat in the woods, elaborately decked out in nonhuman animal skins, feathers and mud. With them was a prince from a nearby kingdom who had come on this male retreat to find a cure for his impotence (or, as he preferred to call it, his involuntary suspension of phallocentric activity). They were all laughing and high-fiving until they noticed the bodies and stopped short."],[0,"\"What has happened?\" questioned the prince."],[0,"\"Apparently our houseguest and this other woman got into some sort of catfight and killed each other,\" surmised one giant."],[0,"\"If they thought that by doing this they could make us slaves to our weaker emotions, they are wrong,\" fumed another."],[0,"\"Well, as long as we have to dispose of them, let's practice one of those Viking funerals we've all read about.\""],[0,"\"You know,\" said the prince, \"this might sound a little sick, but I trust you guys. I find that younger one to be attractive. Extremely attractive. Would you fellows mind...um...waiting outside while I--\""],[0,"\"Stop right there!\" said the leader of the giants. \"Those half-eaten apple pieces, that filthy costume--this has all the earmarks of some sort of magic spell. They're not really dead at all.\""],[0,"\"Whew,\" sighed the prince, \"that makes me feel better. So, could you guys take five and let me--\""],[0,"\"Hold it, Prince,\" said the leader. \"Does Snow White make you feel like a man again?\""],[0,"\"She certainly does. Now could you guys--\""],[0,"\"Don't touch her. You'll break the spell.\" The leader thought for a minute and said, \"My brothers, I see certain economic possibilities arising from this. If we kept Snow White around here in this state, we could advertise our retreats as impotency therapy.\""],[0,"The giants nodded in agreement with this idea, but the prince interrupted, \"But what about me? I've already paid for my retreat. Why don't I get to take the cure?\""],[0,"\"No dice, Prince,\" said the leader. \"You can look, but don't touch. Otherwise you'll break the spell. Tell you what, though. You can have the other one if you want.\""],[0,"\"I don't want to sound classist,\" said the prince, \"but she's not of a high enough caliber for me.\""],[0,"\"That's pretty big talk from a man shooting blanks,\" said one of the giants, and everybody but the prince laughed."],[0,"The leader said, \"Come on, brothers, let's lift these two off the floor and decide how we can best display them.\" It took three giants for each female, but they managed to get both bodies aloft. As soon as they did, however, the pieces of poison apple fell from the mouths of Snow White and the queen, and they awoke from the spell."],[0,"\"What do you think you're doing? Put us down!\" they shouted. The giants were so startled they almost dropped the womyn to the floor."],[0,"\"That was the most sickening thing I have ever heard!\" shouted the queen. \"Offering us around as if we were pieces of property!\""],[0,"\"And you,\" said Snow White to the prince, \"trying to make it with a girl in a coma! Yuck!\""],[0,"\"Hey, don't blame me,\" said the prince. \"It's a medical condition.\""],[0,"The leader of the giants said, \"Don't start tossing blame around. You both broke into our property in the first place. I can call the police.\""],[0,"\"Don't try it, Napoléon,\" said the queen. \"This forest is the property of the crown. You are the ones who are trespassing!\""],[0,"This rejoinder caused quite a stir, but not as big a commotion as when the queen warned: \"And another thing. While we were immobile and you all blathered on in your sexist way, I had a personal awakening. From now on, I am going to dedicate my life to healing the rift between womyn's souls and their bodies. I am going to teach womyn to accept their natural body images and become whole again. Snow White and I are going to build a womyn's spa and conference center on this very spot, where we can hold retreats, caucuses and ovariums for the sisters of the world.\""],[0,"There was much shouting and name-calling, but the queen eventually got her way. Before the Seven Towering Giants could be evicted from their home, though, they packed up their sweat lodge and moved deeper into the woods. The prince stayed on at the spa as a cute but harmless tennis pro. And Snow White and the queen became good friends and earned worldwide fame for their contributions to sisterhood. The giants were never heard from again, save for little muddy footprints that were sometimes found in the morning outside the windows of the spa's locker room."],[0,"\"With cunning and malice she began to devise a plan to ensure the nonviability of her daughter-of-step.\""]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/bunny-s-honeys"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Bunny's Honeys"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,76],[0,82]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/76-77-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=76"],"body":[1,[[0,"a roaring retrospective of photos by, and of, playboy's pinup queen: bunny yeager"],[0,"There's a Photograph from the late Forties of a woman getting an award for being selected as Queen of the Sports Carnival. She's wearing a one-piece black bathing suit, standing near the pool of the Monte Carlo Hotel in Miami Beach. A tall, instantly recognizable man is handing her a trophy. The woman has extremely long legs and she is approximately the same height as the man. She looks happy, as if she expected to win. The man looks slightly, well, intimidated. His name is Joe DiMaggio. Her name is Bunny Yeager."],[0,"Bunny is one of Miami's most enduring attractions, up there with Morris Lapidus' world-famous architecture, Joe's Stone Crab restaurant, the House of Serpents and all those fabulous mansions built for deadbeat Arab princes, religious con artists and semiretired gangsters. She earned her landmark status in the mid-Fifties. Having won the beauty contests and posed for the best-known photographers, Bunny decided she could do it better herself. And she did. Over the next several decades, she beat the boys at their own game, shooting glamour-and-cheesecake photographs and selling them to the best-known publications in the world. She was called \"the world's prettiest photographer.\" She seemed to have a special gift for putting her subjects at ease, for making unnatural poses--of semiclad and unclad women bending, stretching, jumping in the air and running in the surf--seem natural. The photographs are uninhibited without being sleazy or cheap. The models look as if they trusted her. As if they were having a good time. And they probably were."],[0,"Bunny didn't like the bathing suits being sold back then, so she designed and manufactured her own line. She wrote and published almost a score of books--of her own photographs and on how to take photographs, including the best-selling Photographing the Female Figure, one of the most popular guides for students of photography and, as I fondly recall, a perennial favorite of high school boys everywhere."],[0,"Over the years, Bunny turned out many Playboy pictorials, including the now famous Christmas centerfold of Betty Page in her Santa hat. The Yeager--Page relationship occupies a special niche in the history of cheesecake. Bunny's pictures of Betty on the beach and Betty in the \"jungle\" cavorting with various dangerous beasts are among the most cherished in the world of girlie pix. Bunny was one of the last photographers to shoot Betty Page before the legendary dark queen of pinups vanished in the Sixties. And when Betty surfaced a year ago, living quietly somewhere in California and seemingly unaware of the efforts of her fans to unlock the secret of her mysterious disappearance, it was Bunny who talked with her for Interview magazine."],[0,"Today, Bunny continues to take photographs in her Miami studio. She has been in a number of films and on television shows. She is the editor and publisher of Florida Stage and Screen News, a trade newspaper. She has been assembling retrospectives of her photos for publication. And she still has those great long legs."]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/how-dirty-pictures-changed-my-life"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,84]]],[1,[[0,86]]],[1,[[0,92]]],[1,[[0,147],[0,148]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/84-85-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=84"],"body":[1,[[0,"a former antiporn crusader muses on the positive powers of smut and its growing feminist audience"],[0,"Burn it,\" I said. \"Burn every last bit of it. Or it's over.\""],[0,"I pointed at the stockpile of hard-core porn that had just slid out of the closet in an avalanche. If looks could kill, my boyfriend would have dropped dead. How could he, Mr. Sensitive Guy, enjoy such disgusting trash? I was livid. I paced around his tiny one-room apartment, devising his punishment. \"Either all this sleazy shit goes or I go.\""],[0,"He looked at me like he was about to cry; his fingers nervously picked at the edges of his flannel shirt. \"I'll get rid of it all, I promise,\" he whispered. \"But first will you watch just one video with me?\""],[0,"The nerve. Here I am threatening to walk, and he's got the audacity to ask me to watch a fuck film before I go. He prattled on about how he just wanted a chance to show me why this stuff turned him on and that it didn't mean he didn't love me. If I didn't like it he would, as agreed, torch everything in a purging bonfire. I crossed my arms and chewed on the inside of my lip for a minute. If I was going to make him destroy his life's collection of porno, I guess I could allow him one last fling. So that evening we watched Sleepless Nights. It was the first dirty movie I ever saw. A seminal film."],[0,"I was 20 years old then. Now I'm 30. Since that time I've watched hundreds of X-rated videos, patronized many erotic theaters, put money down for live sex shows and even run up a few phone sex bills. Today I make porn for a living. I edit an erotic magazine called Future Sex, and recently I produced Cyborgasm, a virtual audio CD. I'm a firm believer that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."],[0,"Until I sat down and watched an adult film, the only thing I knew about porn was that I shouldn't be looking at it. Growing up female, I quickly learned that girls don't get to look at girlie magazines. Sure, you could take your clothes off for the camera (becoming, of course, a total slut and disgracing your family), but the pleasure was for his eyes only. The message to us girls was: Stay a virgin until you get married, then procreate and don't bother finding your clitoris. Whatever you do, stay away from porn because it's a man's world, honey."],[0,"Ironically, certain strains of feminism gave a similar sermon. Pornography can only exploit, oppress and degrade you. It will destroy any female in its path unless you can destroy it first. And if you don't believe this, you have obviously been brainwashed by the Patriarchy."],[0,"If anything, the forbidden aspect of pornography made me a little curious, but I wasn't going to risk renting a porn video. So Greg's challenge to watch with him gave me the chance to see for myself what all the fuss was about."],[0,"At the time, I considered myself an antiporn feminist. Before that I was a rock-and-roll chick from Chicago. I grew up on the northwest side of the city, not too far from Wrigley Field-- the last in a line of four Polish-Catholic, middle-class kids. My childhood was carved out of a loaf of Wonder Bread. It was like, you know, normal."],[0,"\"But how did you get so interested in sex?\" I'm always asked. I interpret this question to mean, \"What terrible trauma did you experience as a child to make you so perverted?\" The answer: I was a corrupted papist."],[0,"Catholic school was 12 long years of wool-plaid penance, confessing to empty boxes of sin and silently debating whether Mary stayed a virgin even after Jesus was born. I would stare up at the crucifix and wonder how much it must have hurt. Then I would wonder what Jesus looked like naked. Because of my profane thoughts, I always feared that I'd become a nun. Of course, I never got that calling. I chalked it up to the fact that God wouldn't pick someone who mentally undressed His only son."],[0,"Or perhaps I simply inherited a kinky gene. My brothers read Playboy. My dad read Hustler. I know that because I used to steal peeks at it every time I had the chance. Whenever I would start to feel bored, I'd think, Maybe I should go look at that Hustler magazine again. My father had a couple of them hidden with his fishing tackle in the basement. On hot summer days I'd go downstairs, lie on the cool concrete floor and study those bizarre naked pictures. The one I remember most was of an Asian woman smoking a cigarette out of her pussy. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. One day the magazines weren't there anymore. My mother found them and threw them out. I didn't look at sex magazines again until I got to college."],[0,"I moved to Minneapolis in the early Eighties and enrolled in premed at the University of Minnesota. Eventually, I dropped out of premed and went to art school, where I came out as a film major. My roommate came out as a lesbian. She was the first dyke I ever knew. Suzie was from California and was totally rad. Together we ate our first mouthfuls of feminism."],[0,"I had never heard the word feminist before. My mother wasn't a feminist, my older sister didn't call herself a feminist. Yet feminism gave me the words to describe my experience. I quickly learned that being treated with less respect simply because I was female was called sexism, and it was not OK. Feminism illuminated the offenses that I had chalked up to being a girl: enduring public comments on the size of my breasts, being paid less than my male counterparts for the same work, putting up with shoddy contraception. This knowledge was power--power to take control of my life."],[0,"Suzie and I resolved to be women, not girls. We tromped on every bit of sexism in popular culture. We marched for choice. We resented having to be constantly on guard against the threat of rape. We mourned the plight of women across the globe who lived in squalid cages. We turned into pink sticks of dynamite, the crackle and spit of our fast-burning fuses getting louder all the time."],[0,"Pornography, of course, was the big bang. At that time, Minneapolis was a hotbed of radical antiporn politics. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were teaching a class on porn at the U of M, and they drafted the very first feminist-inspired antipornography law, which defined pornography as a form of sex discrimination. There was a demonstration on campus against the Story of O, and fliers were distributed denouncing S&M as just another bourgeois word for violence. Not a Love Story, a documentary about one woman's adverse experience in the adult business, became a Women's Studies classic. One woman set herself on fire at Shinder's Bookstore on Hennepin Avenue, a martyr to the fight for a porn-free society. The message was clear: This battle was as important as the ending of the Vietnam war."],[0,"Meanwhile, the Meese commission was in full swing, bringing the disturbing coercion testimony of Deep Throat star Linda \"Lovelace\" Marchiano into the living rooms of America and alleging a link between pornography and violence. Women Against Pornography toured the heartland with its slide show featuring the infamous Hustler cover of a woman being pushed through a meat grinder. The tenet seemed to be: Get rid of porn and you'll get rid of all injustice against women. So I enlisted."],[0,"I had never watched an adult film, bought an explicit sex magazine or known anyone outside my family who did. Aside from a few stolen glances at my father's collection, the only pornography I saw was in the classroom. This carefully selected group of pornographic images didn't appear very liberating--she's tied up and gagged, with clothespins biting down on her nipples; she's spreading her legs wide open showing pink; his come is squirting all over her face. All were described as inherently degrading and oppressive. No other interpretation was offered. I studied the images (which were supposedly representative of all porn), added my firsthand experience of being sized up as a piece of ass and agreed that pornography was the reason women were oppressed. Pornography bred sexism. Like Justice Potter Stewart, I knew pornography when I saw it, and by now I'd seen enough to swallow the rally cries of the antiporn movement unquestioningly. I chanted and marched and applauded the spray-painting of Lies about women over Virginia Slims ads and across the fronts of black-veiled XXX bookstores. And I learned the slogan: \"Porn is the theory, rape is the practice.\""],[0,"But soon I began to wonder how it all fit in with what I did in my bedroom. I still liked men, even if I didn't like their piggish behavior. And I liked sleeping with them even more. I began to question the definition of pornography that I'd been taught. Yes, the images I'd seen offended me, but surely there were sexual images that weren't sexist. Where were the erotic alternatives? If looking at pictures of people having sex was wrong, then I hadn't come far from Catholic school after all. Plus, lumping all men under the heading Sexist Patriarchy seemed unfair. The guys that I hung out with were caring, respectful and intelligent. Could they suddenly turn into psychopathic rapists if I waved a porn mag in their faces? I had a lot of questions. And then my boyfriend's porn came tumbling out of the closet."],[0,"•"],[0,"\"Ready?\" he asked, looking at me with dark eyes that seemed full of some corrupt knowledge I didn't yet have. We were both nervous; he was afraid I was going to hate it and leave him. My fear was more complicated."],[0,"\"Yeah,\" I said, my voice cracking. Greg slipped Sleepless Nights into the VCR. I began churning up shame-filled scenarios: What if my roommate were to walk in and catch us watching this dirty movie? Or worse, what if I get so turned on by this hideous smut that I become a full-blown porn addict? I could hear a voice saying, \"What a disgusting girl. No one's going to want you once they find out about this.\""],[0,"Or what if I laugh?"],[0,"My initial reaction was, Boy, is this stupid. Everything was bad: lame script, lousy acting, garish lighting, crippled disco soundtrack, anachronistic garter belts and repulsive leading men. As a film student I was appalled that the director didn't bother with the basics of good filmmaking. The plot was forgettable. I vaguely remember a contrived sex scene on a pool table. I (continued on page 88)Dirty Pictures(continued from page 82) waited for the violent rape scene, but it never happened."],[0,"\"Is that all?\" I asked when it was over. I expected my porn research to yield some kind of groundbreaking vision, the way my initial glimpses of feminism had."],[0,"It's hard to remember what made me want to watch another one. Part of it was like social anthropology, peeling back the layers to see what I could see. And the unladylike act of watching porn was piquantly rebellious. But as we watched other X-rated films, I noticed they all suffered from the same plague of filmic badness. I spent my early viewing hours counting pimples on performers' asses and mimicking the orgasmic fakery of the starlets."],[0,"A paradox emerged that I didn't understand. Sometimes I'd see an image of a woman on all fours begging for a guy's cock and think, How humiliating. Other times during similar scenes, the actress' eyes filled with fire so genuine, and the actor stroked her hair so tenderly while she sucked him off, that it seemed romantic, like an unfiltered moment of pleasure. I began to separate the images, recognizing that all of them weren't the same. I began to have flashes of lust."],[0,"But I wanted what Greg was having. He was getting something out of these movies that I wasn't. The movies didn't turn me off, but they didn't completely turn me on either. I decided I needed to be alone with pornography. I wondered what might turn me on, if anything. God only knew what could happen to a girl who got excited by thinking of a naked Jesus. I wanted to perform an experiment. I had to get a little dirty."],[0,"My first date was with an \"all-lesbian\" action feature called Aerobisex Girls. I tried not to care about the plot and I didn't wonder about the performers' family histories. The movie featured an oily orgy where the women shook with the fury of real, uncontrollable orgasms. I could feel the heat between my legs. I started fingering myself in sync with the women in the film. I opened and closed my eyes, imagining I was part of their scene, replaying certain close-ups over and over. Then my mind began moving back and forth between the real-time video and the frozen frames of cherished erotic memories. I fed the screen with my own fantasies, splicing together an erotic sequence that played only in my head. When I came, it was intense."],[0,"•"],[0,"Now I knew firsthand what men do with sex magazines: Guys don't buy porno to look at women and think, I'd like to marry her. They masturbate to it. They jerk off. Masturbation is such a big part of every man's life, and to a much lesser extent every woman's, yet nobody talks about it. Men do it and don't talk about it, while women don't talk about it and don't do it. This is a fact. Studies like the Kinsey Report and the Hite Report have documented the high percentage of women who do not masturbate. The statistics are corroborated by our language. There aren't even words to describe female self-stimulation. Jerking, wanking and beating off all involve a penis, not a clitoris. It's a testimony to how cut off women are from their sexuality, both physically and psychologically."],[0,"I didn't masturbate until I was nearly 20 years old and a vibrator hit me on the head--literally. It rolled off a high shelf and bonked me. As if I were a cartoon character, a light bulb went on above my head and I decided to give myself a buzz. It was the first time I had an orgasm. I had never thought much about touching myself until then. Imagine a guy who doesn't masturbate until an appliance hits him on the head at the age of 20."],[0,"At the beginning of my porn adventures I was looking for a political theory instead of a sexual experience, and that's why it hadn't been working. Now I had the carnal knowledge that so few women possessed: how to use porn and come. What's important about this isn't just that I learned how to get aroused physically by pornography, but that I became sexually autonomous. I was now in complete control of my own erotic destiny. My experience was sexual liberation in action. I now knew how to use my mind to turn a two-dimensional image into a flesh-and-blood erotic response and how to explore sexual fantasies. Pornography made me aware that my sexual imagination wasn't limited to the heat of the moment or a sensual reminiscence. I could think about anything. I could use anything--books, magazines, videos--for erotic inspiration."],[0,"One of my formative sources of inspiration was a journal titled Caught Looking. Written by a group of East Coast feminist activists, this book combined academic refutations of the antiporn argument with hard-core sex pictures. As its title implied, it gave women the rare opportunity to look at a wide variety of pornographic images. This book confirmed what I had by now realized: The censorship of pornography is unfeminist. Here was a whole new breed of women who were reclaiming the power of female sexuality. I felt a part of that breed."],[0,"Soon I was reading On Our Backs, a lesbian sex magazine edited by a woman named Susie Bright. This was pornography created by women for women--how revolutionary! It challenged countless stereotypes about lesbian sex being boring and vanilla, and ripped apart the notion that porn was only for men. I uncovered Candida Royalle's series of feminist porn videos and watched every one with a feeling of fervent camaraderie. Other books, such as Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden, which detailed women's wide-ranging sexual fantasies, and Coming to Power, edited by the lesbian S&M group Samois, further validated my position that female sexuality was a powerful force that could not be pigeonholed politically."],[0,"My newfound sexual freedom was sweet, but finding pornography I liked was difficult. As I waded through the swamp of split beavers and raging hard-ons, I felt by turns critical, angry, depressed, pensive, embarrassed and bored. I began a relentless search for the right stuff. Often, I was surprised at the things that made me wet; things that would doubtless get labeled as \"male oriented\" and \"degrading\" by good feminist soldiers. Still, the good parts were so rare, I spent more time fingering the fast-forward button than anything else. I wanted images that reflected my own erotic desires and depicted authentic female sexuality. I scanned for cute guys with long hair, punk, butchy women, plots with lots of psychosexual tension, come shots where he doesn't pull out and, most of all, genuine female orgasms."],[0,"It seemed the biggest problem with pornography wasn't that it was evil-smelling and immoral--it was artificial and predictable."],[0,"Also, it's usually described as offensive. Yet I found that much of what is offensive about porn has to do with interpretations, not sexual acts. Take the controversial example of a woman sucking a man's cock until he comes all over her face. This image can be presented in a crass and repellent way, or it can be depicted as sensuous and (continued on page 145)Dirty Pictures(continued from page 88) kind. To me, the act itself isn't degrading; feeling my lover come all over me can be the most intimate gift. But no matter how artfully presented, the image is almost always received negatively because people refuse to believe that there can be other interpretations."],[0,"The words degrading and oppressive are often presented as absolute, objective terms. I found them to be vague and subjective. Was the act of a woman spreading her legs and wanting sex degrading? Were photographs of her genitals outright demeaning? Why is the image of a woman's sexual appetite seen as oppressive rather than liberating? And if we're going to talk about oppressive images of women, we'd better include laundry soap commercials. The depiction of women as vapid Stepford wives, valued only for their stain-removing talents, is, to me, completely oppressive."],[0,"Another thing that really surprised me as I explored this erotic underworld was the lack of violence. I was taught to believe that all porn is violent. However, the majority of commercial porn is rather peacefully formulaic. No knives, no blood, no rape scenes. Instead, there is a lick-suck-fuck formula that ends in orgasm, not murder."],[0,"Ultimately, I felt the antiporn feminists viewed women as having no sexual self-awareness. Their arguments for the elimination of porn were flawed. Their claims denied women independence by refusing to acknowledge that women have rich sexual fantasies, powerful libidos and the power to choose."],[0,"I chose to discuss sex in a way my older sister probably never did, particularly with my women friends. They related to my journey from antiporn to sex-positive feminism, because many of them were on the same trip. They, too, were fed up with everyone shouting \"Don't look!\" when it came to porn. They wanted to see it and they wanted me to show it to them. We traded vibrator advice, talked about our erotic fantasies--or lack of them--and shared the secrets of our guilt-ridden, latent masturbatory experiences. We didn't waste time dissing men. We mainly focused on ourselves and figuring out how to power up our own orgasms, though we did agree that the general lack of male nudity was lame. Tits and ass flood our culture, but male bare bodies are almost nowhere in sight. We also found it interesting that pornography is usually discussed as the sexual depiction of women, yet almost all heterosexual porn features women and men. We felt that if porn were to come of age, the images of women would have to change along with the images of men. Paunchy guys with overgrown mustaches who had little to offer except their big dicks weren't our idea of sexy. We wanted bad boys with angel faces who understood the meaning of seduction. We also wanted them to be a little vulnerable."],[0,"Men were intrigued but confused by my overt sexuality. It conflicted with their understanding of feminism. A lot of men my age were raised to believe that if you respected women, you didn't look at naked pictures of them. So if I was a feminist, how could I like pornography? To them, the concept of a loudmouthed, sexually self-governing woman was exciting and challenging, and sometimes a bit scary."],[0,"Surprisingly, or maybe not, I was never directly attacked by antiporn feminists. People expect me to tell horrifying tales of how I was branded a traitor and run out of Wimmintown on a rail. Actually, the response to my work has always been overwhelmingly positive. I believe it's because more women realize that erotic images have a necessary place in their lives. If a basic tenet of feminism is that women should have the freedom to choose, then it should include making choices about what we do sexually."],[0,"Of course, this freedom to go for the erotic gusto exists because of the tremendous gains founding feminists made. If it weren't for social and economic battles won during the past few decades, female sexuality would still be chained in ignorance and silence. The sexual revolution of the Sixties and Seventies paved the way for my generation's erotic liberation."],[0,"As a card-carrying feminist, I chose to pursue a career as a pornographer. After college I headed west to San Francisco and worked for two years with my mentor, Susie Bright, as the senior editor at On Our Backs. In 1991 I was hired to edit Future Sex, a magazine that explores the intersection of sex, technology and culture. I had written about so many aspects of sex, but not this one. What was the link between sex and technology anyway? Was it virtual reality sex? Digital porn? Fucking robots? While these concepts were certainly futuristic, I hoped they weren't the only things the future of sex had to offer."],[0,"That today's young women are able to think more critically about pornography is the result, in part, of technology. The VCR brought a female audience to porn and gave it the unprecedented opportunity to see what porn is. Video porn allows both women and men to investigate sexual imagery in a more independent way. Moving X-rated images out of public theaters into the privacy of the bedroom gave women safe access to previously off-limit behavior. In fact, women now represent the fastest-growing group of consumers of erotic material."],[0,"I now realize that technology may be this generation's key to taking control of our sexual identities. While computer technology may seem isolating rather than unifying at first, personal computers, modems, camcorders and a host of other tools offer the potential for unparalleled erotic communication. Technology puts the means of production back in everyone's hands. We no longer have to depend on someone else's mass-produced idea of eroticism; we can create our own--easily, cost-effectively, often instantly. Moreover, digital technology gives us the chance to transmit our ideas globally, not just locally."],[0,"But the depth of female and male sexuality can't be explored if we don't break the mold of prefabricated turn-ons. We've got the power to turn the tired, piston-driven porn formula into a fluid reflection of modern erotic culture. What's hot isn't limited to high heels and big cocks. That's why the genesis of this new erotic entertainment must be influenced by people with more diverse points of view. And I intend to be influential right from the start."],[0,"Since I watched Sleepless Nights almost nine years ago, I've learned a lot about myself and the power of being female. I've learned that the erotic impulse is a part of being human, that it can't be controlled through warfare or replaced by a silicon chip. Pornography is a mirror reflecting our rosiest desires and our blackest fears. It catches us looking. And these days I like much more of what I see--especially when I've created it."],[0,"\"Pornography made me aware that my sexual imagination wasn't limited to the heat of the moment.\""],[0,"\"Antiporn feminists refuse to acknowledge that women have rich sexual fantasies and the power to choose.\""]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/bad-girls"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Bad Girls"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,88]]],[1,[[0,90],[0,91]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/88-89-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=88"],"body":[1,[[0,"meet the babes who've been there done it had it nailed it nailed it shut"],[0,"She is dirty and disarming, hypnotic and mercurial. She is everything your mother warned you about. She can turn up on the front page, like Amy Fisher or Heidi Fleiss, or she can anonymously corrupt an entire high school class. She's a bad girl--and she's a handful."],[0,"Like a tattoo, she is virtually impossible to get rid of. She could be from the wrong side of the tracks or she could be the wife of the rich guy you caddied for the summer of your sophomore year. Doesn't matter, because all bad girls have one thing in common: the ability to bring you low. Whereas good girls are nurturers, bad girls are terminators. They are the women who run with the wolves--then eat them. You'll jeopardize your job, betray your morals and risk your family. Bad-girl chic has a velvety vise grip on our culture. These days, you can see the overriding expression of a bad girl on the face (and in the petulant private life) of a runway supermodel; a bad attitude is a necessary accessory to good fashion. The trend has also put a dimple in the women's movement. Bad girls, long adept at picking up things, have suddenly picked up an ideology: the intriguing \"do me\" feminism. The bad girl has achieved most-favored-notion status, one that speaks to a generation of women who understand the power and provocation of being good at being bad."],[0,"Born To Be Bad--And Then Some"],[0,"La Toya Jackson"],[0,"Amy Fisher"],[0,"Heidi Fleiss"],[0,"Drew Barrymore"],[0,"Shannen Doherty"],[0,"Tonya Harding"],[0,"Fergie"],[0,"La Cicciolina"],[0,"Sean Young"],[0,"Princess Stephanie of Monaco"],[0,"Stephanie Seymour"],[0,"Naomi Campbell"],[0,"Traci Lords"],[0,"Gennifer Flowers"],[0,"Jessica Hahn"],[0,"Donna Rice"],[0,"Mae West"],[0,"Bad Girls, Good Choices"],[0,"Sharon Stone Basic Instinct"],[0,"Lena Olin Romeo Is Bleeding"],[0,"Drew Barrymore Poison Ivy"],[0,"Rebecca De Mornay Risky Business"],[0,"Theresa Russell Black Widow"],[0,"Jessica Rabbit Who Framed Roger Rabbit"],[0,"Heather Locklear Melrose Place"],[0,"Marilyn Chambers Behind the Green Door"],[0,"Not As Bad As They Wanna Be"],[0,"Madonna"],[0,"Sandra Bernhard"],[0,"Camille Paglia"],[0,"Roseanne Arnold"],[0,"Shelley Winters"],[0,"Sylvia Miles"],[0,"RuPaul"],[0,"When Music Soothes The Savage Breast"],[0,"Best band name: Hole"],[0,"Best lyric: \"I'll fuck you till your dick is blue.\" --Liz Phair"],[0,"Best advice for mental wellness: In \"Rebel Girl,\" Bikini Kill suggests, \"Wipe your come on your parents' bed.\""],[0,"Where They Leave Wet Spots"],[0,"backseats"],[0,"front seats"],[0,"Sheep Meadow in Central Park"],[0,"elevators"],[0,"cockpits"],[0,"in the middle of a threesome"],[0,"under bleachers"],[0,"under tables"],[0,"on top of you"],[0,"Tiffany's"],[0,"taxis"],[0,"Accessories For The Perky-Butt Set"],[0,"another bad girl"],[0,"bite marks"],[0,"handcuffs"],[0,"gum"],[0,"beeper"],[0,"prior convictions"],[0,"rose tattoo"],[0,"dangerous boyfriend"],[0,"spare panties"],[0,"Rough Rider condoms"],[0,"backstage pass from Whitesnake concert"],[0,"incredibly dark glasses"],[0,"Axl Rose"],[0,"Anthems From The \"Smeared Lipstick Songbook\""],[0,"Sugar Walls Push It Whole Lotta Love Let's Get It On The Marine Corps Hymn I Wanna Be Sedated"],[0,"Bad Boys"],[0,"Joey Buttafuoco John Gotti Claus von Bulow Mickey Rourke William Kennedy Smith Wilt Chamberlain Mick Jagger"],[0,"Pick-Up Lines From \"The Torn-Stocking Manual Of Style\""],[0,"\"What are you looking at?\" \"You're kind of ugly. I like that.\" \"Nice car.\""],[0,"\"Can you help me get rid of this guy?\" \"Remember me? I went to school with your son.\""],[0,"Painful Truths"],[0,"(1) She will sleep with your best friend, as if she hasn't already."],[0,"(2) She will cost you your youth, your optimism, your hair, your 401 (k)."],[0,"(3) She will make you lose weight and introduce you to cold sweats."],[0,"(4) She will leave it up to you to break it off with her, which you will. Six times."],[0,"(5) She will always return."],[0,"Good Girl"],[0,"\"No\" Bazaar 60 Minutes Baptist Clean Sheets Chardonnay Baby-Sits Brings A Gift Cotton Dirty Dances Respect"],[0,"Bad Girl"],[0,"\"Yes\" Cosmo Nypd Blue Protestant Dirty Sheets Long Island Iced Tea House-Sits Brings Nothing Leather Thrash Dances Lust"],[0,"Good Luck"],[0,"\"This Might Hurt A Little\" Easyriders Midnight Blue Catholic Sticky Sheets Cranberry Juice Lap-Sits Steals Something Of Yours Latex Table Dances Fear"]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/playboy-s-electronic-lexicon"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Playboy's Electronic Lexicon"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,94],[0,95]]],[1,[[0,150],[0,151]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/94-95-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=94"],"body":[1,[[0,"don't know your dcc from your epg? read this asap"],[0,"If you're afraid to plug an MD into an A/V for fear of blowing up the whole shebang, you're not alone. These days, it almost takes ESP to keep on top of the technobabble that's standard operating procedure in consumer electronics. To resolve this, we've created a cheat sheet of electronics abbreviations to guide you the next time some jargon-spouter tries to sell you something."],[0,"AI: artificial intelligence. Computer technology that simulates human intelligence, now being built into cameras, televisions, etc. Open the pod door, Hal. (continued on page 148)Electronic Lexicon(continued from page 90)"],[0,"A/V: audio/video. The much-heralded marriage of entertainment sights and sounds. Combine an A/V receiver with a big-screen stereo TV set, or a high-fidelity VCR with audio components, and you're ready for a movie-theater-like experience at home."],[0,"Caller ID: caller identification. A service that displays the name and/or telephone number of the caller, thus enabling you to decide whether to pick up or take a pass when it's your boss or ex on the line."],[0,"CD: compact disc--but you already knew that."],[0,"CD+G: compact disc plus graphics. In addition to standard CD audio, CD+Gs carry text information and still images. Great for karaoke."],[0,"CD-I: compact disc--interactive. The 16-bit CD-I's resemble conventional CDs but are programmed with a mix of sound, stills, animated graphics and text. (You'll need a CD-I player in order to perfect your massage techniques while watching Playboy's Complete Massage, just released by Philips.)"],[0,"CDMA/TDMA: code division multiple access/time division multiple access. Dual-mode portable cellular phones that improve your chances of getting a channel and receiving data by fax or electronic mail on a connected laptop computer or personal digital assistant."],[0,"CDPD: cellular digital packet data. Technology that squeezes more users and information onto existing cellular networks. PDAs need CDPD to send e-mail."],[0,"CD-ROM: compact disc-read only memory. An optical data storage medium that can hold more computer text, graphics and audio than even Einstein's brain could absorb. They can't be re-recorded, so it's \"read only.\""],[0,"CD32: Commodore's new 32-bit multimedia compact disc system. It plays games, audio CDs and full-motion-video CD movies."],[0,"CD-WORM: It's short for compact disc-write once read many times, a term for recordable CD systems that are already on the market for professionals. Affordable consumer versions should be available in about four years."],[0,"CEBus: consumer electronics bus. A home automation standard created to ensure that products from different manufacturers will be on the same wavelength, so to speak, when communicating with one another through power lines, telephone wire, coaxial cable and infrared. Beam us home, Scotty, and draw the bath."],[0,"CPU: central processing unit. The brains behind any computer. And you thought it was Bill Gates."],[0,"DAB/DAR: digital audio broadcasting/digital audio radio. Think of it as the future of radio. Great sound is broadcast \"in-band\" on current AM/FM frequencies, satellite-delivered to your car roof antenna or zapped through your cable television lines."],[0,"DAT: digital audio tape. A sophisticated recording medium using pint-size cassettes with up to four hours of recording time. Digital audio tape never made it as a consumer product, but it's the favored tool of Deadheads crowding the tapers' section."],[0,"dbx: Audio signal \"companding\" (compression, then expansion) system used for noise reduction of stereo TV broadcasts."],[0,"DCC: digital compact cassette. An improvement on the analog cassette format, DCC uses digital audio coding to achieve near-CD-quality sound. LCD panels on players display album name, artist and song title. Conventional analog cassettes can also be played on a DCC deck."],[0,"Dolby-NR: Dolby noise reduction. Systems of noise reduction invented by Ray Dolby. Good: Dolby B. Better: Dolby C. Best: Dolby S and (professional) SR."],[0,"DSD: Dolby surround digital. The first digital-processing system for movie soundtrack reproduction in the home. Sound is sent to three front speakers, two back ones and one subwoofer. Good news, techies: Channel crosstalk (bleeding) problems suffered by even the best four-channel analog Pro Logic gear have been eliminated. DSD laser discs, LD players and A/V receivers will show up next year, and Stateside HDTV will be up and running with DSD as early as 1996."],[0,"DSP: digital signal processing. Enhances audio signals in home and car stereos by replicating the acoustics of a club, hall, church, theater or stadium. What, no shower stall?"],[0,"DSS: digital satellite system. A high-power direct broadcast satellite service that delivers 150 channels to an RCA dish antenna no larger than a pizza. Digital picture and sound performance are equal to that of laser discs--and the system is HDTV-ready."],[0,"e-mail: electronic mail. Subscribers send and retrieve messages and notes to and from on-line computer mailboxes. Unlike community bulletin board communiqués, e-mail is private."],[0,"EPG: electronic program guide. Onscreen TV program grids, such as FROX, Star-Sight Telecast (already active), Prevue Express and TV Guide On Screen, that display shows by time slots or let you customize program menus according to channel preferences and type (news, talk shows, movies, etc.)."],[0,"ESH: electronic superhighway. The dream of presidents and corporate kings to connect our home video and computer terminals to a fiber-optic cable network of data bases and entertainment sources. You'll be able to call up videos on demand, shop at video malls, teleconference, bank from home and more. Time Warner/U.S. West and TCI/Bell Atlantic are weaving ESH webs for a 1998 debut in 25 cities."],[0,"FMV: full-motion video. An FMV cartridge or circuit board can upgrade CD and CD-ROM drives to play new video CDs that meet the digitally compressed, 30-frames-per-second movie standard. The picture quality of FMV approaches that of standard-play VHS tape, with program access features that are far better."],[0,"GPS: global positioning system. A hand-held navigation gizmo that receives transmissions from several Pentagon satellites, thus enabling users to plot their chart positions in latitude, longitude and altitude. The car version features LCD screens and a moving street map, which should be marked \"you are lost here.\""],[0,"HDTV: high-definition television. The video standard of the future. Aside from delivering digital, multichannel sound and twice the picture clarity of current broadcast TV, HDTV will have a new, wide-angle picture format that has a ratio of 16:9 (similar to theatrical movie presentations). HDTV is targeted to debut with the broadcast of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics."],[0,"Hi-8: A high-end videotape format that produces sharp, vivid pictures with a horizontal resolution that measures 400 lines or better, compared with 250 for standard 8mm."],[0,"HX-Pro: A tape bias monitoring system developed by Bang & Olufsen and marketed by Dolby that allows you to record on analog tape at higher decibel levels, thus reducing tape hiss. Don't buy a cassette deck without it."],[0,"IDTV: improved definition television. A computerized line-doubling technique that improves the resolution of broadcast television."],[0,"ITAD: integrated telephone answering device. The hottest toy in phone land, ITADs combine a phone with a digital (tape-free) answering machine."],[0,"LCD: liquid crystal display. A flat-panel screen used for watches, laptop computers and TVs."],[0,"LD: laser disc. A 12-inch disc that contains analog video, two tracks of digital audio and two tracks of analog audio. Considered to be the best consumer movie format currently available."],[0,"MD: minidisc. First recordable audio disc system for the consumer. The 2.5-inch discs have a recording time of up to 74 minutes. The names of the album, artist and song are displayed on the player. You also get instant access to tracks, great sound, durability and portability."],[0,"MD-Data: Looks like an audio minidisc, but it's actually a computer medium with a storage capacity equal to 100 floppy discs. Holds graphics and audio as well as computer data. MD-Data drives also play audio minidiscs."],[0,"MPC: multimedia personal computer. A standard for PCs built around the Windows operating system, with requirements in memory, sound and video capabilities. P.S.: If your MPC's central processing unit doesn't have a 386 or better, deep-six it."],[0,"MPEG: Moving Picture Image Expert Group. A consortium established by the International Organization for Standardization to set requirements for digital compression of video software. So far, the group has established the MPEG-1 standard for VHS-quality full-motion-video CDs and is at work on a superior MPEG-2 standard for CD-ROM and MDs."],[0,"MTS/SAP: multichannel television sound/second audio program. The dbx technology that compresses a stereo signal and secondary monaural channel at the TV transmission point. It is then decoded for full stereo reproduction, making switching or mixing possible."],[0,"PC: The generic term for IBM-compatible personal computers using Microsoft disc operating system (MS/DOS) software."],[0,"PCMCIA: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. A mouthful either way, PCMCIA cards slip into notebook computers and PDAs to add software programs, extra storage, sound reproduction, fax and modem capabilities and more."],[0,"PDA: personal digital assistant. Also called personal communicators, PDAs are pen-based computers that serve as battery-powered private secretaries, reading your rotten handwriting, carrying out shorthand commands and sending faxes, e-mail and more."],[0,"Photo CD: A Kodak invention that allows you to store still pictures on CD-ROM. The 100-image discs can be viewed on most multimedia systems as well as on television-attachable photo CD players."],[0,"PIP: picture-in -picture. Great for people who want to be in two places at once, PIP is a special digital effect that floats a second TV image (from an additional tuner or external video source such as a VCR) in the corner of a television screen during normal viewing."],[0,"POP: picture-outside-picture. The ability of wide-screen 16:9 ratio TVs to show up to three additional pictures next to the conventional 4:3 ratio broadcast image."],[0,"PPV: pay-per-view. A business that sells video or live-event programming. Now a small factor in the cable industry, PPV will soar when phone companies are able to charge for TV show delivery as they do for local calls."],[0,"RBDS: radio broadcast data system. RBDS enables an FM station to broadcast text display (call letters, music formats, song titles), the correct time and emergency alert information to RBDS-equipped radios."],[0,"SCMS: serial copy management system. Circuitry built into all consumer digital recorders that allows you to make a digital copy of a source program, but prohibits you from making a copy of the copy. Bummer."],[0,"16:9 TV: New wide-screen televisions with movie-theater aspect ratios. The 16:9s are ideal for home theater presentation of \"letterbox\" movie discs and videotapes."],[0,"S-VHS: super-video home system. A VHS upgrade that records a sharper picture (400 lines of resolution, compared with 240 on VHS). The S-VHS VCRs can record and play both S-VHS and conventional VHS tapes."],[0,"3DO: A 32-bit interactive player for TV-based multimedia fun. Fast graphics microprocessor and double-speed CD-ROM drive pump programs with almost-three-dimensional, movie-like picture realism."],[0,"THX: Lucasfilm sound enforcement project named after director George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138. It originally set performance criteria for cinema sound and is now applied to home theater systems. THX-licensed speakers, used with a decoder and amplification, incorporate the Dolby Pro Logic Surround sound process."],[0,"TVCR: A television and videocassette recorder combined in one sleek chassis. A single TV tuner is usually shared between the two components."],[0,"VANS: voice activated navigation system. A CD-based audio navigation system that offers directions in a human voice. Understands a variety of American dialects."],[0,"V-CD: video CD. A CD-ROM format conforming to the JVC and Philips standard for full-screen, full-motion-video presentation."],[0,"VCR: videocassette recorder. The great viewing emancipator of the television age."],[0,"VCR Plus: When programmed with a code number found in the TV listings, this wireless TV remote controller automatically signals a VCR to turn on, tune to the correct channel and commence recording. Also built into many video recorders."],[0,"VR: virtual reality. A computer-generated world with which you can interact by donning devices such as data gloves or a stereoscopic head-mounted display. Do not wear your virtual reality helmet while you're pushing the lawn mower."],[0,"W-VHS: wide-screen-video home system. An analog video recorder for HDTV that JVC recently introduced in Japan. It may arrive in the U.S. when our own HDTV system is up and running. W-VHS can also record two standard broadcast TV programs simultaneously on one tape."],[0,"\"DAT never made it as a consumer product, but it's the favored tool of Deadheads in the tapers' section.\""]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/on-your-marks"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"On Your Marks"],"type":[0,"Pictorial"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,97]]],[1,[[0,99]]],[1,[[0,101],[0,102]]],[1,[[0,104]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/96-97-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=97"],"body":[1,[[0,"get set: miss may is a woman on the go"],[0,"Shae Marks is one beautiful collection of contradictions. This becomes clear the moment I open the door to greet her. Based on her photo and the conversations we've had on the phone, I fully expect to find a tall, bold woman. Instead, I discover a polite waif clad in faded jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers, carrying an armload of books. I think for a second that some schoolgirl has accidentally knocked on my door. But when she speaks, I realize that this is the same person. Oh, and those aren't books. \"These are albums of my photo shoot in Los Angeles,\" she says offhandedly, and plops them onto a table."],[0,"The contradictions continue to reveal themselves: Although Shae delivers cars from auctions to a wholesale lot for a living, she got lost on the way to the interview. She weighs just over a hundred pounds, but she eats a meal--including a fried cheese appetizer--fit for a hungry man. Clearly, she was born to be in front of the camera, yet she hopes one day to work behind it. The biggest contradiction of all? Shae Marks says of herself, \"I am very insecure.\" She says this staring me straight in the eye with all of the assuredness of the queen of England. The incongruity of these things doesn't immediately occur to Shae. But when I point it out, she explains each seeming conflict. Of course she can have no sense of direction and still earn money driving. \"We drive in packs, and I'm always in the middle. I was always a passenger before I took the job, and I didn't have to pay much attention.\" As for the high-fat food cooked in oil, well, she doesn't really have to think about it: \"I work out all the time.\""],[0,"But those are just the little things. I'm more concerned with how she could dismiss the possibility of putting her looks to good use in her career. \"Well, I'm thinking about going into broadcasting,\" she says. \"But I'd also like to do camera work or maybe screenwriting.\" And this is how the conversation goes. What you hear between Shae's frequent bouts of laughter are the words of an ambitious 21-year-old, one who still looks at the world as if she were a child, one who sees possibilities everywhere she looks."],[0,"She won't commit to one specific goal, because, Shae says, gesturing in the air, \"I have to see where this opportunity with Playboy leads me. I can't make my next decision until I see where this goes.\""],[0,"Still, Shae spends plenty of time exploring her options. \"I play this computer game,\" she offers as further explanation. \"It consists of a series of choices that take you on a quest. It relates to my life because I have so many decisions to make and I'm in the process of choosing different paths.\""],[0,"I steer her back to the confidence question. \"Well,\" she says, laughing, \"I'm real self-confident one-on-one. But if I'm in a place where I don't know people, I won't look at them and I don't talk. At parties I sit on the back porch.\""],[0,"We finish our conversation and I ask her to drop me off at a restaurant. Watching her eat all that food has made me hungry. We hop into her sports car and she revs the engine. We spend the next 20 minutes lost but not worried. I get the idea that for Shae Marks, the journey is more fun than the destination."],[0,"Playmate Data Sheet"],[0,"Name: Shae Marks"],[0,"Bust: 34D"],[0,"Waist: 23"],[0,"Hips: 34"],[0,"Height: 5'4"],[0,"Weight: 105"],[0,"Birth Date: 6-1-72"],[0,"Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana."],[0,"Ambitions: Earn a journalism degree work in entertainment. Enter the national jet ski competition."],[0,"Turn-ons: Convertible Porsches, men in suits, sushi, volleyball at the beach, working out."],[0,"Turnoffs: People without ambition rush hour traffic, overconfident men!"],[0,"Mad, Madder, Maddest: Bad pick up lines, overstyled hair, assuming I've said yes before I have."],[0,"Never again: Will I be afraid to speak my mind or speak up for myself."],[0,"One Thing I'm not: A housekeeper! Don't clean, can't cook. I'll do the books, you do the laundry."],[0,"I Pledge Allegiance: To my mother for making me strong and independent. I'm very grateful to have her as a mom and a friend."]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/dogs-walked-plants-watered"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Dogs Walked, Plants Watered"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,108]]],[1,[[0,114]]],[1,[[0,142],[0,146]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/108-109-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=108"],"body":[1,[[0,"shady characters often make unexpected exits andria provides quality care for what they leave behind"],[0,"\"Now, here's my situation,\" Keller said. \"Ordinarily I have plenty of free time. I take Nelson for a minimum of two long walks a day, and sometimes when the weather's nice we'll be out all afternoon. It's a pleasure for me, and he's tireless, literally tireless. He's an Australian cattle dog, and the breed was developed to drive herds of cattle vast distances. You could probably walk him to Yonkers and back and he'd still be raring to go.\""],[0,"\"I've never been to Yonkers,\" the girl said."],[0,"Neither had Keller, but he had passed through it often on the way to and from White Plains. There was no need to mention this."],[0,"\"The thing is,\" he went on, \"I sometimes have to travel on business, and I don't get much in the way of warning. I get a phone call, and two hours later I'm on a plane halfway across the country, and I may not get back for two weeks. Last time I boarded Nelson, and I don't want to do that again.\""],[0,"\"No.\""],[0,"\"Aside from the fact that the kennels expect you to make reservations a week in advance,\" he said, \"I think it's rotten for the dog. Last time, well, he was different when I picked him up. It was days before he was his old self again.\""],[0,"\"I know what you mean.\""],[0,"\"So I'd like to be able to call you,\" he (continued on page 112)dogs walked, plants watered(continued from page 106) said, \"when I find out I have to travel. You could come in every day and feed him and give him fresh water and take him for a walk twice a day. That's something you could do, right?\""],[0,"\"It's what I do,\" she said. \"I have regular clients who don't have the time to give their pets enough attention, and I have other clients who hire me just when they go out of town, and I go to their houses and take care of their pets and their houseplants.\""],[0,"\"But in the meantime,\" Keller said, \"I thought you and Nelson should get to know each other, because who knows how he'll react if I disappear one day and a few hours later you turn up and enter the apartment? He's pretty territorial.\""],[0,"\"But if Nelson and I already knew each other--\""],[0,"\"That's what I was getting at,\" he said. \"Suppose you were to walk him, I don't know, twice a week? He's not stupid, he'd get the idea right away. Then, by the time I had to leave town, you'd already be an old friend. He wouldn't go nuts when you tried to enter the apartment or resist when you tried to lead him out of it. Does that make sense to you? And what would be a fair price?\""],[0,"They worked it out. She would walk Nelson for a full hour twice a week, on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, and for this Keller would pay her $50 a week. Then, when Keller was out of town, she would get $50 a day in return for which she would see to Nelson's food and water and walk him twice daily."],[0,"\"Why don't we start now?\" she suggested. \"How about it, Nelson? Want to go for a walk?\" The dog recognized the word but looked uncertain. \"Walk, walk, walk!\" she said, and his tail set to wagging."],[0,"When they were out the door Keller began to worry. Suppose she never brought the dog back? Then what?"],[0,"Dogs Walked, Plants Watered, the notice had read, Responsible young woman will provide quality care for your Flora and Fauna. Call Andria."],[0,"The notice had appeared on the community bulletin board at the neighborhood Gristede's, where Keller bought Grape-Nuts for himself and Milk-Bones for Nelson. There had been a phone number, and he had copied it down and dialed it, and now his dog was in the care and custody of this allegedly responsible young woman. All he really knew about her was that she didn't know how to spell her own name. Suppose she let Nelson off the leash? Suppose she sold him to vivi-sectionists? Suppose she fell in love with him and never brought him back?"],[0,"Keller went into the bathroom and stared hard at himself in the mirror. \"Grow up,\" he said sternly."],[0,"•"],[0,"An hour and ten minutes after they'd left, Nelson and Andria returned. \"He's a pleasure to walk,\" she said. \"No, don't pay me for today. It would be like paying an actor for an audition. You can start paying me on Tuesday. Incidentally, it's only fair to tell you that the payment you suggested is higher than my usual rates.\""],[0,"\"That's all right.\""],[0,"\"You're sure? Well, thanks, because I can use it. I'll see you on Tuesday morning.\""],[0,"She showed up Tuesday morning and again Friday afternoon. When she brought Nelson back on Friday, she asked Keller if he wanted a full report."],[0,"\"On what?\" he wondered."],[0,"\"On our walk,\" she said. \"On what he did. You know.\""],[0,"\"Did he bite anyone? Did he come up with a really good recipe for chili?\""],[0,"\"Some owners want you to give them a tree-by-tree report.\""],[0,"\"Hey, call me irresponsible,\" Keller said, \"but I figure there are things we're not meant to know.\""],[0,"•"],[0,"After a couple of weeks he gave her a key. \"Because there's no reason for me to stick around just to let you in,\" he said. \"If I'm not going to be here, I'll leave the money in an envelope on the desk.\" A week later he forced himself to leave the apartment half an hour before she was due to arrive. When he printed her name in block capitals on the envelope it looked strange to him, and the next time he saw her he raised the subject. \"The notice you posted had your name spelled with an I,\" he said. \"Is that how you spell it, or was it a misprint?\""],[0,"\"Both,\" she said. \"I originally spelled it with an E, like everybody else in the world, but people tended to give it the European pronunciation, uhn-dray-uh, and I hate that. This way they mostly say it right, Ann-dree-uh, though now I get the occasional person who says uhn-dry-uh, which doesn't even sound like a name. I would probably be better off changing my name altogether.\""],[0,"\"That seems extreme.\""],[0,"\"Do you think so? I've changed it every year or so since I was 16 years old. I'm forever running possible names through my mind. What do you think of Hastings?\""],[0,"\"Distinctive.\""],[0,"\"Right, but is it the direction I want to go? That's what I can't decide. I've also been giving some consideration to Jane, and you can't even compare the two, can you?\""],[0,"\"Apples and oranges,\" Keller said."],[0,"\"When the time comes,\" Andria said, \"I'll know what to do.\""],[0,"•"],[0,"One morning Keller left the house with Nelson a few minutes after nine and didn't get home until almost one. He was unhooking Nelson's leash when the phone rang. Dot said, \"Keller, I miss you. I haven't seen you in ages. I wish you'd come see me sometime.\""],[0,"\"One of these days,\" he said."],[0,"He filled Nelson's water dish, then went out and caught a cab to Grand Central and a train to White Plains. There was no car waiting for him, so he found a taxi to take him to the old Victorian house on Taunton Place. Dot was on the porch, wearing a floral print housedress and sipping a tall glass of iced tea. \"He's upstairs,\" she said, \"but he's got somebody with him. Sit down, pour some iced tea for yourself. It's a hot one, isn't it?\""],[0,"\"It's not that bad,\" he said, taking a chair, pouring from the Thermos jug into a glass with Wilma Flintstone depicted on its side. \"I think Nelson likes the heat.\""],[0,"\"A few months ago you were saying he liked the cold.\""],[0,"\"I think he likes weather,\" Keller said. \"He'd probably like an earthquake, if we had one.\" He thought about it. \"I might be wrong about that,\" he conceded. \"I don't think he'd feel very secure in an earthquake.\""],[0,"\"Neither would I, Keller. Am I ever going to meet Nelson the Wonder Dog? Why don't you bring him out here sometime?\""],[0,"\"Someday.\" He turned her glass so that he could see the picture on it. \"Pebbles,\" he said. A buzzer sounded, one long and two short. \"What was it Fred used to say? It's driving me crazy. I can hear him saying it but I can't remember what it was.\" (continued on page 140)dogs walked, plants watered(continued from page 112)"],[0,"\"Yabba-dabba-doo?\""],[0,"\"Yabba-dabba-doo, that's it. There was a song, Aba Daba Honeymoon, but I don't suppose it had anything to do with Fred Flintstone.\""],[0,"Dot gave him a look. \"That buzzer means he's ready for you,\" she said. \"No rush, you can finish your tea. Or take it with you.\""],[0,"\"Yabba-dabba-doo,\" Keller said."],[0,"•"],[0,"Someone drove him back to the station and 20 minutes later he was on the train to New York. As soon as he got home he called Andria. He started to dial the number that had appeared on her notice at Gristede's, then remembered what she'd told him the previous Tuesday or the Friday before, whenever it was. She had moved and didn't have a new phone yet. Meanwhile, she had a beeper."],[0,"\"And I'll keep it even after I have a phone,\" she said, \"because I'm out walking dogs all the time, so how could you reach me if you needed me on short notice?\""],[0,"He called her beeper number and punched in his own number at the signal. She called back within five minutes."],[0,"\"I figure a few days,\" he told her. \"But it could run a week, maybe longer.\""],[0,"\"No problem,\" she assured him. \"I have the key. The elevator attendant knows it's all right to let me up, and Nelson thinks I'm his madcap aunt. If you run out of dog food I'll buy more. What else is there?\""],[0,"\"I don't know. Do you think I should leave the TV on for him?\""],[0,"\"Is that what you ordinarily do when you leave him alone?\""],[0,"The truth of the matter was that he didn't leave Nelson alone much. More often than not lately he either took the dog along or stayed home himself. Nelson had unquestionably changed his life. He walked more than he ever used to, and he also stayed in more."],[0,"\"I guess I won't leave it on,\" he said. \"He never takes any real interest in what I'm watching.\""],[0,"\"He's a pretty cultured guy,\" she said. \"Have you tried him on Masterpiece Theater?\""],[0,"•"],[0,"Keller flew to Omaha, where the target was an executive of a telemarketing firm. The man's name was Dinsmore, and he lived with his wife and children in a nicely landscaped suburban house. He would have been a cinch to take out, but someone local had tried and missed, and the man thus knew what to expect and had changed his routine accordingly. His house had a high-tech security system, and a private security guard was posted out front from dusk to dawn. Police cruisers, marked and unmarked, drove past the house at all hours."],[0,"He had hired a personal bodyguard, too, who called for him in the morning, stayed at his side all through the day and saw him to his door in the evening. The bodyguard was a wildly overdeveloped young man with a mane of ragged yellow hair. He looked like a professional wrestler stuffed into a business suit."],[0,"Short of leasing a plane and dive-bombing the house, Keller couldn't see an easy way to do it. Security was tight at the business premises, where access was limited to persons with photo ID badges. Even if you got past the guards, the blond bodyguard spent the whole day in a chair outside of Dinsmore's office, riffling the pages of Iron Man magazine."],[0,"The right move, he thought, was to go home. Come back in six weeks. By then the bodyguard would have walked off the job in steroid-inspired rage, or Dinsmore, chafing at his hulking presence, would have fired him. Failing that, the two would have relaxed their guard. The cops would be less attentive as well."],[0,"Keller would look for an opening, and it wouldn't take long to find one."],[0,"But he couldn't do that. Whoever wanted the man dead wasn't willing to wait."],[0,"\"Time's what's short,\" his contact explained. \"Soldiers, firepower, that's easy. You want a few guys in cars, somebody blocks the streets, somebody rams his car, no problem.\""],[0,"Wonderful. Omaha, meet Delta Force. Not too long ago Keller had imagined himself as a tight-lipped loner in the Old West, riding into town to kill a man he'd never met. Now he was Lee Marvin, leading a ragged band of losers on a commando raid."],[0,"\"We'll see,\" Keller said. \"I'll think of something.\""],[0,"•"],[0,"The fourth night there he went for a walk. It was a nice night and he'd driven downtown, where a man on foot didn't arouse suspicion. But there was something wrong, and he'd been walking for almost 15 minutes before he finally figured out what it was."],[0,"He missed the dog."],[0,"For years Keller had been alone. He had grown used to it, finding his own way, keeping his own counsel. Ever since childhood he'd been solitary and secretive by nature, and his line of work made these traits professional requirements."],[0,"Once, in a shop in Soho, he'd seen a British World War Two poster. It showed a man winking, his mouth a thin line. The caption read, what I know I keep to myself, evidently the English equivalent of loose lips sink ships. Keller had thought about the poster for hours and returned the following day to price it. The price had been reasonable enough, but he'd realized during the negotiations that the sight of that canny face, winking forever across the room at him, would soon become oppressive. The man on the poster, advising privacy, would himself constitute an invasion of it. How could you kiss a girl with that face looking on? How could you pick your nose?"],[0,"The sentiment, though, stayed with him. On the train to and from White Plains, on a flight home with his mission accomplished, the Englishman's motto would sound in his mind like a mantra. What he knew he kept to himself."],[0,"But he had broken that habit with Nelson."],[0,"Perhaps the best thing about dogs, it seemed to Keller, was that you could talk to them. They made much better listeners than human beings. You didn't have to worry that you were boring them, or that they'd heard a particular story before, or that they'd think less of you for what you were revealing about yourself. You could tell them anything, secure in the knowledge that the matter would end right there. They wouldn't pass it on to somebody else, nor would they throw it back in your face in the course of an argument."],[0,"Which was not to say they didn't listen. It was quite clear to Keller that Nelson listened. When you talked to him you didn't have the feeling that you were talking to a wall, or to a gerbil or a goldfish. Nelson didn't necessarily understand what you told him, but he damn well listened."],[0,"And Keller told him everything. The longings that had begun stirring during therapy--to open up, to divulge old secrets, to reveal oneself to oneself--now found full expression on the long walks he took with Nelson and the long evenings they spent at home."],[0,"\"I never set out to do this for a living,\" he told Nelson one afternoon in the park. \"And for a while, you know, it was just something I'd done a couple of times. It wasn't who I was."],[0,"\"Except it got so it was who I was, and I didn't realize it. How I found out, see, I'd meet somebody who'd heard of me, and he'd show something that would surprise me, whether it was fear or respect, whatever it was. He'd be reacting to a killer, and that would puzzle me, because I didn't know that's what I was."],[0,"\"I remember in high school how they did all this career counseling, showing you how to figure out what you wanted to do in life and then how to take steps in that direction. I think I told you how those years were sort of a blur for me. I went through them like somebody with a light concussion, I saw everything through a well. But when they got on this career stuff, I just didn't have a clue. There was this test, questions like 'Would you rather pull weeds or sell cabbages or teach needlepoint?' and I couldn't finish the test. Every question was utterly baffling."],[0,"\"And then I woke up one day and realized I had a career, and it consisted of taking people out. I never had any interest in it or any aptitude for it, but it turns out you don't need any. All you need is to be able to do it. I did it once because somebody told me to, and I did it a second time because somebody told me to, and before I knew it, it was what I did. Then, once I'd defined myself, I started to learn the technical aspects. Guns, other tools, unarmed techniques. How to get around people. Stuff that you ought to know."],[0,"\"The thing is, there's not all that much you have to know. It's not like the careers they told you about in high school. You don't prepare for it. Maybe there are things that happen to you along the way that prepare you for it, but that's not something you choose."],[0,"\"What do you think? Do you want to split a hot dog? Or should we head on home?\""],[0,"Back from his solitary walk, Keller looked at the phone and wished there were a way he could call Nelson. He'd avoided getting an answering machine, seeing great potential for disaster in such a device, but it would be useful now. He could call up and talk, and Nelson would be able to hear him."],[0,"And, if he really opened up and spoke his mind, it would all be there on the tape where anybody could retrieve it. No, he decided, it was just as well he didn't have a machine."],[0,"•"],[0,"At noon the following day he was in his rented car when Dinsmore and his bodyguard drove downtown and parked in front of a restaurant in the Old Market district. Keller waited outside for a few minutes, then found a parking space and went in after them. The hostess seated Keller just two tables away from Dinsmore. Keller ordered shrimp scampi and watched Dinsmore and the wrestler each put away an enormous steak."],[0,"A couple of hours later he called Dot in White Plains. \"Guy's 40 pounds overweight and he tucked into a porterhouse the size of a manhole cover,\" he said. \"Put half a shaker of salt on it first. How much of a rush are these people in? Because they shouldn't have to wait too long before a stroke or a coronary closes the account.\""],[0,"\"There's no cause like a natural cause,\" Dot said. \"But you know what they say about time, Keller.\""],[0,"\"It's of the essence?\""],[0,"\"Yabba-dabba-doo,\" Dot said."],[0,"•"],[0,"The next day Dinsmore and his bodyguard had the same table at the same restaurant. This time a third man accompanied them. He looked to be a business associate of Dinsmore's. Keller couldn't overhear the conversation--he was seated a little farther away this time--but he could see that Dinsmore and the third man were doing the talking, while the bodyguard divided his attention between the food on his plate and the other diners in the room. Keller had brought a newspaper along and managed to have his eyes on it when the bodyguard glanced his way."],[0,"At one point Dinsmore got to his feet, and Keller's pulse quickened. Before he could react, the bodyguard was also standing, and both men walked off to the men's room. Keller stayed where he was and ate his spaghetti carbonara."],[0,"He was watching out of the corner of his eye when the two men returned to their table. The bodyguard took a moment to scan the room, while Dinsmore sat down at once and shook some more salt onto his half-eaten steak."],[0,"Almost without thinking, Keller let his hand close around his own saltshaker. It was made of glass and fit his fist like a roll of nickels. If he were to hit someone now, the saltshaker would lend considerable authority to the blow."],[0,"Damn thing was lethal."],[0,"•"],[0,"That night Keller had a couple of drinks after dinner. He still felt them when he got back to his motel. He walked around the block to sober up, and when he got back to his room he picked up die phone and called Nelson."],[0,"He wasn't drunk enough to expect the dog to answer. But it seemed to him that this was a way to make a minimal sort of contact. The phone would ring. The dog would hear it. While he could not be expected to recognize it as his master's voice, Keller would have reached out and touched him, as they said in the phone company ads."],[0,"No, of course it didn't make sense. Dialing the number, he knew it didn't make sense. But it wouldn't cost anything, and there wouldn't be a record of the call, so what harm could it do?"],[0,"The line was busy."],[0,"His first reaction--and it was extremely brief--was one of jealous paranoia. The dog was on the phone with someone else, and they were talking about Keller. The thought came and went in an instant, leaving Keller to shake his head in wonder at the mysteries of his own mind. A flood of other explanations came to him, each of them far more probable than the first thought."],[0,"Nelson could have lurched into the end table on which the phone sat, knocking it off the hook. Andria, using the phone before or after the walk, could have replaced the receiver incorrectly. Or, most probably, the long distance circuits were overloaded, and any call to New York would be rewarded with a busy signal."],[0,"A few minutes later he tried and got a busy signal again."],[0,"He walked back and forth, fighting the impulse to call the operator and have her check the line. Eventually he picked up the phone and tried the number a third time, and this time it rang. He let it ring four times, and as it rang he imagined the dog's reaction--the ears pricking up, the alert gleam in the eyes."],[0,"\"Good boy, Nelson,\" he said aloud. \"I'll be home soon.\""],[0,"•"],[0,"The next day, Friday, he spent the morning in his motel room. Around eleven he called the restaurant in the Old Market. Dinsmore had arrived at the restaurant at 12:30 on both of his previous visits. Keller booked a table for one at 12:15."],[0,"He arrived on time and ordered a cranberry juice spritzer. He looked across at Dinsmore's table, now set for two. If this went well, he thought, he could be home in time to take Nelson for a walk before bedtime."],[0,"At 12:30, Dinsmore's table remained empty. Ten minutes later a pair of businesswomen were seated at it. Keller ate his food without tasting it, drank a cup of coffee, paid the check and left."],[0,"•"],[0,"Saturday he went to a movie. Sunday he went to another movie and walked around the Old Market district. Sunday night he sat in his room and looked at the phone. He had already called home twice, letting the phone ring, trying to tell himself he was establishing some kind of psychic contact with his dog. He hadn't had anything to drink, and he knew what he was doing didn't make any sense, but he'd gone ahead and done it anyhow."],[0,"He reached for the phone, started to dial a different number, then caught himself and left the room. He made the call from a pay phone, dialing Andria's beeper number, punching in the pay-phone number after the tone sounded. He didn't know if it would work, didn't know if her beeper would receive more than a seven-number signal, didn't know if she'd be inclined to return a long-distance call. And she might be walking a dog, Nelson or some other client's, and did he really want to stand next to this phone for an hour waiting for her to call back? He couldn't call from his room, because then her call would have to come through the switchboard, and she wouldn't know whom to ask for. Even if she guessed it was him, the name Keller would mean nothing to the motel switchboard, and it was a name he didn't want anyone in Omaha to hear, anyway."],[0,"The phone rang almost immediately. He grabbed it and said hello, and she said, \"Mr. Keller?\""],[0,"\"Andria,\" he said, and then couldn't think what to say next. He asked about the dog and she assured him that Nelson was fine."],[0,"\"But I think he misses you,\" she said. \"He'll be glad when you're home.\""],[0,"\"So will I,\" Keller said. \"That's why I called. I had hoped to be back the day before yesterday, but things are taking longer than I thought. I'll be a few more days, maybe longer.\""],[0,"\"No problem.\""],[0,"\"Well, just so you know,\" he said. \"Listen, I appreciate your calling me back. I may call again if this drags on. I'll reimburse you for the calls.\""],[0,"\"You're already paying for this one,\" she said. \"I'm calling from your apartment. I hope that's all right.\""],[0,"\"Of course,\" he said. \"But--\""],[0,"\"See, I was here when the beeper went off, and I figured, who else would be calling me from out of town? So I figured it would be all right to use your phone, since it was probably you I'd be calling.\""],[0,"\"Sure.\""],[0,"\"As a matter of fact,\" she said, \"I've been spending a lot of time here. It's nice and quiet, and Nelson seems to like the company. His ears pricked up just now when I said his name. I think he knows who I'm talking to. Do you want to say hello to him?\""],[0,"\"Well--\""],[0,"Feeling like an idiot, he said hello to the dog and told him he was a good boy and that he'd see him soon. \"He got all excited,\" Andria assured him. \"He didn't bark, he hardly ever barks--\""],[0,"\"It's the dingo in him.\""],[0,"\"But he did a lot of panting and pawing the floor. He misses you. We're doing fine here, me and Nelson, but he'll be glad to see you.\""],[0,"•"],[0,"Keller got to the restaurant at 12:15 Monday. The hostess recognized him and led him directly to the same table he'd had Friday. He looked over at Dinsmore's table and saw that it was set for four, and that there was a reserved card on it."],[0,"At 12:30, two men in suits were seated at Dinsmore's table. Keller didn't recognize either of them and began to despair of his entire plan. Then Dinsmore arrived, accompanied by the wrestler."],[0,"Keller watched them while he ate his meal. Three men, drinking their drinks and wolfing their steaks, talking heartily, gesturing broadly, while the fourth man, the bodyguard, sat like a coiled spring."],[0,"Too many people, Keller thought. Give it another day."],[0,"•"],[0,"The next day he arrived at the same time and the hostess led him to the table he'd reserved. Dinsmore's table had two places set, and a reserved sign in place. Keller got to his feet and went to the men's room, where he locked himself in a stall."],[0,"A few minutes later he left the men's room and threaded his way through the maze of tables, passing close to the Dinsmore table on his way, bumping into it, reaching out to steady himself."],[0,"As far as he could tell, nobody paid him any attention."],[0,"He returned to his own table, sat down, waited. At 12:30 Dinsmore's table was still unoccupied. What would he do if they gave it to somebody else? He couldn't try to undo what he'd just done, could he? He didn't see how, not with people sitting at the table."],[0,"Risky plan, he thought. Too many ways it could go wrong. If he'd been able to talk it through with Nelson first--"],[0,"Get a grip on yourself, he told himself."],[0,"He was doing just that when Dinsmore and the wrestler turned up, the executive in a testy mood, the bodyguard looking sullen and bored. There was a bad moment when the hostess seemed uncertain where to seat them, but then she worked it out and led them to their usual table."],[0,"Keller longed to get out of there. He'd been picking at his veal ever since it had been placed in front of him. It tasted flat, but he figured anything would just then. Could he just put some money on the table and get the hell out? Or did he have to sit there and wait?"],[0,"Fifteen minutes after his arrival, Dinsmore cried out, clutched his throat and pitched forward onto the table. Half an hour after that, Keller turned in his rental car at the airport and booked his flight home."],[0,"•"],[0,"In the cab from the airport, Keller had to fight the impulse to have the driver stop so he could pick up something for Nelson. He'd changed planes in St. Louis, and he'd spent most of his time between flights in die gift shop, trying to find something for the dog. But what would Nelson do with a snow shaker or a souvenir coffee mug? What did he want with a Cardinals cap, or a sweatshirt with a representation of the Gateway Arch?"],[0,"\"You hardly touched that,\" the waitress in Omaha had said of his veal. \"Do you want a doggie bag?\""],[0,"He'd been stuck for an answer. \"Sorry,\" he said at last. \"I'm a little rattled. That poor man,\" he added with a gesture toward the table where Dinsmore had been sitting."],[0,"\"Oh, I'm sure he'll be all right,\" she said. \"He's probably sitting up in his hospital bed right now, joking with his nurses.\""],[0,"Keller didn't think so."],[0,"•"],[0,"\"Hey, Mist' Keller,\" the elevator operator said. \"Ain't seen you in a while, sir.\""],[0,"\"It's good to be back.\""],[0,"\"That dog be glad to see you,\" the man said. \"That Nelson, he's a real good dog.\""],[0,"He was also out, a fact the operator had neglected to mention. Keller unlocked the door and entered the apartment, calling the dog's name and getting no response. He unpacked and decided to delay his shower until the dog was back and the girl had gone for the day."],[0,"He could have had several showers. It was fully 40 minutes from the time he sat down in front of the television set until he heard Andria's key in the lock. As soon as the door was open Nelson came flying across the room, leaping up to greet Keller, tail wagging furiously."],[0,"Keller felt wonderful. A wave of contentment passed through him, and he got down on his knees to play with his dog."],[0,"•"],[0,"\"I'm sorry you had to come home to an empty house,\" Andria said. \"If we'd known you were coming--\""],[0,"\"That's all right.\""],[0,"\"Well, I'd better be going. You must be exhausted. You'll want to get to bed.\""],[0,"\"Not for a few hours,\" he said, \"but I'll want a shower. There's something about spending a whole day in airports and on planes.\""],[0,"\"I know what you mean,\" she said. \"Well, Nelson, what's today? Tuesday? I guess I won't be seeing you until Friday.\" She petted the dog, then looked across at Keller. \"You still want me to give him his regular walk on Friday, don't you?\""],[0,"\"Definitely.\""],[0,"\"Good, because I'll be looking forward to it. He's my favorite client.\" She gave the dog another pat. \"And thanks for paying me, and for the bonus. It's great of you. I mean, if I wind up having to get a hotel room, I can afford it.\""],[0,"\"A hotel room?\""],[0,"She lowered her eyes. \"I wasn't going to mention this,\" she said, \"but it'd give me a bad conscience not to. I don't know how you're going to feel about this, but I'll just go ahead and blurt it out, OK?\""],[0,"\"OK.\""],[0,"\"I have sort of been staying here,\" she said."],[0,"\"You've sort of--\""],[0,"\"Sort of been living here. See, the place I was staying, it didn't work out, and there's one or two people I could call, but I thought, well, Nelson and I get along so good, and I could really spend lots of time with him if I just, like--\""],[0,"\"Stayed here.\""],[0,"\"Right,\" she said. \"So that's what I did. I didn't sleep in your bed, Mr. Keller.\""],[0,"\"Why not?\""],[0,"\"Well, I figured you might not like that. And the couch is comfortable, it really is.\""],[0,"She'd tried to keep her impact on his apartment minimal, she told him, stripping her bedding from the couch each morning and stowing it in the closet. And it wasn't as though she had been hanging out there all the time, because when she wasn't walking Nelson she had other clients to attend to."],[0,"\"Dogs to walk,\" he said. \"Plants to water.\""],[0,"\"And cats and fish to feed, and birds. There's this couple on 65th Street with 17 birds, and there's something about birds in cages. I get this urge to open the cages and open the windows and let them all fly away. But I wouldn't, partly because it would make the people really crazy, and partly because it would be terrible for the birds. I don't think they'd last long out there.\""],[0,"\"Not in this town,\" Keller said."],[0,"\"Just the other day one of them got out of his cage,\" she said, \"and I just about lost it. The windows were closed so he wasn't going anywhere, but he was swooping and diving and I couldn't think how to get him back in his cage.\""],[0,"\"What did you do?\""],[0,"\"What I did,\" she said, \"is I centered all my energy in my heart chakra, and I sent this great burst of calming heart energy to the bird, and he calmed right down. Then I just held the cage door open and he flew back in.\""],[0,"\"No kidding?\""],[0,"She nodded. \"I should have thought of it right away,\" she said, \"but when you panic you tend to overlook the obvious.\""],[0,"\"That's the truth,\" he said. \"Let me ask you something. Do you have a place to stay tonight?\""],[0,"\"Well, not yet.\""],[0,"\"Not yet?\""],[0,"\"Well, I didn't know you were coming home tonight. But I know some people I can call, and--\""],[0,"\"You're welcome to stay here,\" he said."],[0,"\"Oh, I couldn't do that.\""],[0,"\"Why not?\""],[0,"\"Well, you're home. It wasn't really right for me to stay here when you were out of town.\""],[0,"\"It was fine. It meant more company for the dog.\""],[0,"\"Well, you're home now. The last thing you need is a houseguest.\""],[0,"\"One night won't hurt.\""],[0,"\"Well,\" she said, \"it is a little late to start looking for a place to stay.\""],[0,"\"You'll stay here.\""],[0,"\"But just for the one night.\""],[0,"\"Right.\""],[0,"\"I appreciate this,\" she said. \"I really do.\""],[0,"•"],[0,"Keller, freshly showered, stood at the sink and contemplated shaving. But whoever heard of shaving before you went to bed? You shave in the morning, not at night."],[0,"Unless, of course, you expect to have your cheek pressed against something other than your pillow."],[0,"He got into bed and turned out the light, and Nelson sprang onto the bed beside him, turned around the compulsory three times and lay down."],[0,"Keller slept. When he awoke the next morning, Andria was gone. The only trace of her presence was a note assuring him that she would come walk the dog at her usual time on Friday. Keller shaved, walked the dog and rode the train to White Plains."],[0,"•"],[0,"It was another hot day, and once again Dot was on the porch, this time with a pitcher of lemonade. She said, \"Keller, you missed your calling. You're a great diagnostician. You gave the man a little time and he died of natural causes.\""],[0,"\"These things happen.\""],[0,"\"They do,\" she agreed. \"I understand he fell in his food. Probably never get the stains out of his tie.\""],[0,"\"It was a nice tie,\" Keller said."],[0,"\"They said it was cardiac arrest,\" Dot said, \"and I'll bet they're right, because it's a hell of a rare case when a man dies and his heart goes on beating. How'd you do it, Keller?\""],[0,"\"I centered all my energy in my heart chakra,\" he said, \"and I sent this bolt of heart energy at him, and it was just more than his heart could handle.\""],[0,"She gave him a look. \"If I had to guess,\" she said, \"I would have to say potassium cyanide.\""],[0,"\"Good guess.\""],[0,"\"How?\""],[0,"\"Switched saltshakers with him. The one I gave him had cyanide crystals mixed in with the top layer of salt. He used a lot of salt.\""],[0,"\"They say it's bad for you. Wouldn't he taste the cyanide?\""],[0,"\"The amount of salt he used, I don't think he could taste the meat. I'm not sure how much taste cyanide has. Anyway, by the time it occurs to you that you don't like the way it tastes--\""],[0,"\"You're facedown in the lasagna. Cyanide's not traceless, is it? Won't it show up in an autopsy?\""],[0,"\"Only if you look for it.\""],[0,"\"And if they look in the saltshaker?\""],[0,"\"When Dinsmore had his attack,\" he said, \"a few people hurried over to see if they could help.\""],[0,"\"Decent of them. You don't suppose one of them picked up the saltshaker?\""],[0,"\"It wouldn't surprise me.\""],[0,"\"And got rid of it somewhere between the restaurant and the airport?\""],[0,"\"That wouldn't surprise me, either.\""],[0,"He went upstairs to make his report. When he came downstairs again Dot said, \"Keller, I'm going to start worrying about you. I think you're going soft.\""],[0,"\"Oh?\""],[0,"\"There was only one reason to pick up the saltshaker.\""],[0,"\"So they wouldn't find the cyanide,\" he said."],[0,"She shook her head. \"If they ever start looking for cyanide, they'll find it in the uneaten food. No, you figured they wouldn't find it, and somebody else would use that salt and get poisoned accidentally.\""],[0,"\"No point in drawing heat for no reason,\" he said."],[0,"\"Uh-huh.\""],[0,"\"No sense in killing people for free, either.\""],[0,"\"Oh, I couldn't agree with you more, Keller,\" she said. \"But I still say you're going soft. Centering in your heart choker and all.\""],[0,"\"Chakra,\" he said."],[0,"\"I stand corrected. What's it mean, anyway?\""],[0,"\"I have no idea.\""],[0,"\"You will soon enough, now that you're centered there. Keller, you're turning human. Getting that dog was just the start of it. Next thing you know you'll be saving the whales. You'll be taking in strays, Keller. You watch.\""],[0,"\"That's ridiculous,\" he said. But on the train back to the city he found himself thinking about what she had said. Was there any truth to it?"],[0,"He didn't think so, but he wasn't absolutely sure. He'd have to talk it over with Nelson."],[0,"\"Suppose she let Nelson off the leash? Suppose she fell in love with him and never brought him back?\""],[0,"\"The bodyguard spent the day in a chair outside Dinsmore's office, riffling the pages of 'Iron Man' magazine.\""]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/20-questions-denis-leary"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"20 Questions: Denis Leary"],"type":[0,"Interview"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,117]]],[1,[[0,154],[0,155]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/116-117-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=117"],"body":[1,[[0,"Denis Leary first captivated us with his one-man show, \"No Cure for Cancer,\" a high-decibel diatribe on tobacco, meat and masculinity. Leary minced neither words nor music. The show's leadoff song was titled \"Asshole.\" And through it all, he puffed butts and swigged from longnecks. \"The New York Times\" pronounced his efforts \"terribly, angrily funny. \"After its stage run, \"No Cure for Cancer\" appeared as a Showtime special and was issued as a CD and as a book."],[0,"Massachusetts-born Leary, who remains \"blood connected and proud\" of his Irish roots, is also proud of his dues-paying years in comedy clubs and as an actor, college instructor, rocker, poet and pizza deliveryman. The course of \"life experience,\" he claims, made him a better storyteller and kept him out of the dreaded sitcom world and away from its corrupting big bucks. Leary insists he has turned down several television offers."],[0,"Although leery about selling out, he did have a price, and when MTV opted for an in-your-face series of promos, he signed. (He later did spots for Nike as well.) His MTV tag line, \"I think you hear me knocking, and I think I'm coming in,\" proved prophetic. Nowadays others are writing much of his material. After several small movie roles, he's currently starring with Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey in \"The Ref.\" Leary plays a burglar on the lam who takes refuge in the home of a bickering married couple. Another one-man show and several other projects are, as he puts it, \"in the drawer.\""],[0,"Warren Kalbacker met with Leary in--what else?--a smoke-filled room. \"The offstage Denis Leary is soft-spoken and thoughtful,\" says Kalbacker. \"And tolerant. He confides that he finds male bashing funny and adds that he has no problem at all with Asians or Italians dressing in green on St. Patrick's Day.\""],[0,"1."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You proudly savor red meat, beers and shots, and Marlboros. Have you ever considered having your cholesterol checked?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Never had it checked. How do they do that, anyway? Do they take your blood? The things that you're not supposed to eat taste fucking great. Suck down a piece of beef, that tastes great. So the arteries get clogged that much more and maybe you gain a couple of pounds. Big deal. The detriment is balanced by the pure fucking pleasure of the taste. It relaxes you and makes you feel great for two hours afterward."],[0,"2."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Share with us your appreciation of tobacco."],[0,"[A] Leary: Cigarettes tend to be much more about addiction and keeping your hands busy and nervous habit. There are cigarettes during the day that taste great and there are some that just happen to be there. A cigar is a whole different event. A cigar is about taste. You make a point of enjoying them after a meal or if you're out having a drink. It's not about inhaling. It's about savoring. Almost anything Cuban is great if you can get your hands on one. Especially if it's fresh. We should make a little deal with Fidel for cigars. He needs it now. He's getting old. Let him be part owner of a baseball team. They love baseball down there. They have some great players."],[0,"3."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you ever have lunch with vegetarians?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Vegetarians always have that look at the table when you're eating something else. They're looking at your food the whole time, thinking, Fuck, I really want to eat that meat. It's OK if somebody says, \"I don't like the taste of meat. Never have.\" Fine. It's the ones who have been there and then try to convince you so there will be more people like them and they won't always want to be eating what you're eating. There are vegetarians who don't eat anything with a face. Paul McCartney said that, didn't he? What the fuck is that about?"],[0,"4."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Could a sensitive man lurk within that cloud of smoke, beneath that loud, leather-clad exterior?"],[0,"[A] Leary: You speak from your own experience. Growing up Irish Catholic and working class, there wasn't a lot of hugging and kissing and talking about things. Italian guys were always hugging and kissing one another. Irish were very loud, but very staid. The men I knew expressed feelings in other ways. You'd beat the shit out of a guy and then stand him up and buy him a drink as opposed to kissing him on the cheek. It takes a little bit longer and it takes a little more out of you."],[0,"5."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Are you going to be the guy who finds something good to say about a Catholic priest this year?"],[0,"[A] Leary: All the shit they're finding out about the priests is not only frightening but unbelievable. We used to have a headmaster, Father Reynolds, who came from the neighborhood. A tough, Irish, Golden Gloves boxer. We were scared shitless of him. When he told us to cut our hair and tuck our shirts in, we did it. But at the same time he was one of those guys who, if you were a troublemaker, would pull you aside and have a little talk with you. \"Let me tell you something,\" he'd say. \"I used to be a troublemaker.\" So you got the tough-guy thing, and by the time you were ready to graduate you felt this guy was all right. It was always about growing up a little bit and being careful. He'd say, \"It's fun now but you've got to watch that stuff. You have to get a job.\""],[0,"6."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Your passion for playing hockey is well known. Are those front teeth your own?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Oh, yeah. These are all real. Hockey is, without a doubt, the most exciting sport to play. It's the speed. It's the best workout in the world. Every part of your body is working and it's a very improvisational game. You're not thinking about what you're doing. It's hard to describe to somebody who hasn't played it. It's like basketball but more extreme. In basketball contact is not as constant and intentional as it is in hockey. There's also the chance you're going to get belted up against the boards a couple of times. That's a great wake-up call for several enzymes in the body that get released only when you're seeing stars. I'm eager to play against Gretzky. Apparently he's the same size as me, but he never gets knocked down. (continued on page 152)Denis Leary(continued from page 115)"],[0,"7."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Are the citizens of Worcester, Massachusetts relieved and delighted that Denis Leary has taken his show on the road?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Some of them are. My brother and sister and one of my best friends, who married my sister, still live in the old neighborhood. You still end up late at night down at Breen's having a drink, talking and playing pool. You're not allowed in unless you know one of the guys who usually hangs around there. And then you can hang around after the place closes. It's an anchor. It's funny being as Irish as I was brought up to be. My parents came over on the boat in the early Fifties. I grew up in the Irish and black section of Worcester. It gives you perspective. There's a lot of fucking characters that you grow up with, run into, owe money to. They come into play later in life."],[0,"8."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You're an avid student of the human male. Have you reached any conclusions?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Simple. If you cut open a guy like a tree, what you'd find from the feet up to about mid-chest is just semen. It's old semen mixed up with new semen and brand-new semen. The rest of a guy is usually beer and pieces of meat like hot dogs, roast beef and some chicken. And different statistics--Yaz hit 44 home runs in 1967 and stuff like that. That's pretty much it. If they tested men the way they should be tested, they'd find that even their blood is full of semen. There's a reason that healthy guys wake up in the morning with an erection. If God decides that every morning it should be tested to make sure it's working, it's obviously the most important part of the body. Every morning you start out behind in the game because all the blood that should be circulating up to your brain and giving you the power of thought is actually concentrated right there in your cock. That's why I'm a really bad morning person. I think that most guys are. We start the day fucking way behind."],[0,"9."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: To paraphrase your own line, we've heard you knocking. Is Denis Leary just about to come in?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Getting the right meetings. Meeting the right people. I'm 36 and it's happening for me late in life. I never got to make money during the stand-up comedy boom because at that time comedians dressed in suits. There were a lot of guys who were mimicking Jerry Seinfeld's middle-of-the-road comedy. He could work in front of any audience because he was clean and talked about the small things in life that all ages understand. I started to hear from club owners, \"Don't say fuck.\" What do you mean don't say fuck? Don't say fuck! I wanted to get up in front of an audience and rant. I didn't want to do The Tonight Show. I didn't want to do Letterman's show. There's an easy way to do it, there's a hard way to do it. I didn't want to get pigeonholed. If I'd done a show like Beverly Hills 90210 when I was 21, I'd be fucking dead. Because I would have hated the work and ended up in a Mercedes with a bag of crack and a gun, on top of a fucking drug detox thing. I know I'd be dead. Guaranteed. I turned down television shows when I was starving. But I don't regret that at all."],[0,"10."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You have done promotions for MTV and commercials for athletic shoes, and we've spotted your photo in ads for a clothing chain. Are the pitchman and the storyteller comfortable with each other?"],[0,"[A] Leary: I didn't have to hold the products up. I didn't have to say the names of the products. And they were all limited runs, so I felt I could get in and get out without doing too much damage. Getting trapped in advertising is even worse than getting trapped in a television show. You get sucked up, and before you know it, when people see you, they say, \"Hey, you're the Nike guy.\" That was my nightmare when I was doing it. But I had to take the money anyway. I had to pay the rent."],[0,"11."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Are you up to date on your student loan payments?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Yeah. There was no question at this point that I had some money, so I paid them back. I lost them for a long time. And then, unfortunately, in the past year they called me. \"Mr. Leary?\" \"Yes?\" \"This is Vinnie Burke from the collection agency.\" I remembered his name from years ago. No question they got me because I started to get known. If you're a dentist or a doctor, they know they're going to get it back. In a way, I was a better investment, because by the time I paid it back, the fucking interest was incredible compared with the original cost of the loan. They lost me for like ten years or something, but when they finally got me back, they had a nice fucking profit."],[0,"12."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Pardon us for asking, but have certain personal habits taken a toll on your hockey prowess?"],[0,"[A] Leary: I've started to notice in the past couple of years. But it's like Mickey Mantle. Would he have hit more home runs if he'd stopped drinking and carousing? You start to hit a wall in your early 30s. Playing against 17- and 18-year-old Junior A kids doesn't count because of the age gap. But you start to notice that some of the guys in their late 20s can shift into this higher gear. I have the puck and I'm at the blue line and I'm coming up on a guy. I'm skating as hard as I can and I'm thinking: I've got this guy beat. Then all of a sudden he just shifts into high gear and he's right on top of me. Wait a minute! But you can always clutch and grab in hockey. A little trip. A little elbow."],[0,"13."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Some feminists accuse men of merely exchanging information instead of seriously discussing their feelings. Share your deepest thoughts with us."],[0,"[A] Leary: Guys like to watch other guys banging into one another and chasing balls and pucks, because when you're doing it you're usually with a bunch of other guys and you're staring at the action and you can pretend you're making eye contact. You talk to one another out of the corner of your mouth, but it's never what you actually want to talk about. It's \"Yaz is having a great year, isn't he?\" Which translates into: \"I really like you, Bob. I really like spending time with you.\" \"I really like you, too, Jim. I really like spending time with you. You're my best friend.\" It's all subtitles. \"That second baseman sucks\" reads \"How's the wife and kids?\""],[0,"14."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: You've professed great admiration for Cindy Crawford. Are you distressed by the current fashion trend away from supermodel glamour and toward waifs in Sixties-style bell-bottoms?"],[0,"[A] Leary: I didn't like bell-bottoms the first time. It's hard to believe they're back. I can remember when you couldn't even buy straight-legged pants. You had to buy small bells and then have them fucking pegged. Fortunately, when punk happened, there were black straight-legged pants again. Thank God. Cindy Crawford. Put Cindy Crawford in almost anything, and you go, \"You know what? I never thought of it this way before, but baseball uniforms are really sexy.\""],[0,"15."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do you follow the male instinct to find a place by trial and error, or do you cop out and ask directions?"],[0,"[A] Leary: I'm not going to stop and ask for directions. Usually the only time I drive nowadays is in New York, and I know where I'm going. I had a four-wheel-drive for a couple of months. I never got to drive it. It got ripped off. I'm going to buy a cab. No meter. I won't pick anybody up. They're the best vehicles, because everybody gets the fuck out of your way."],[0,"16."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Since you often ride in New York cabs, and many are driven by recent immigrants, do you find cabbies ask you for directions?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Getting into a cab in New York is still the greatest experience in the world. Thrilling. Scary. Frightening. I got into a cab with this driver a couple of months ago. The name on the license was John O'Connor. No teeth. Smoking a pipe. Three miracles in one: American, Irish and smoking. A commercial came on the radio with Tracey Ullman doing an American accent. He says, \"That fuckin' Tracey Ullman, she's a horror.\" What? I thought. According to the demographics this guy shouldn't even know who Tracey Ullman is. And he goes on, \"I watched her TV show. Some of the stuff she does is pretty funny, but with American accents she's always one or two syllables off.\" And he goes, \"I'll tell you something. I went to see her and Morgan Freeman in Taming of the Shrew in the park. That Morgan Freeman, I'll tell you, technically great actor, emotionally great actor. But I don't want to go see Shakespeare in the Park and see a fuckin' TV actress.\" Who is this guy John O'Connor? From Queens? Brooklyn maybe. I just had this great picture of him sitting in Central Park with a quart of Miller in a paper bag, smoking a butt, watching Shakespeare and enjoying Morgan Freeman every time he opens his mouth. You don't get these conversations anymore in cabs, and if you do, you have to really cherish them."],[0,"17."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: AS a keen observer of the Irish in America, do you have your own take on the Kennedys?"],[0,"[A] Leary: I've said a lot of nasty shit and funny shit about Teddy Kennedy. But I've never made fun of him just to make fun of him. I always used to get pissed off when comics would just write jokes based on the fact that he was down so you might as well kick him. He's ours. I've always admired Teddy Kennedy, even in the Eighties when he was the butt of jokes. I could see-- because I was voting in that district--how his power as a senator directly affected people's lives. Whatever you say about him, he's still for the working class and for health needs. So I've always had respect for him. The Kennedys embody the great elements of the Irish personality and their politics--the idea of knocking down people you need to get out of the way as well as the ability to compromise on certain levels. But they also have liberal ideas about helping people. And that pure stubborn element. But they also got caught in that huge fucking tragic element of Irish history."],[0,"18."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Tell us something surprising about the Irish."],[0,"[A] Leary: The real Irish colleen has jet-black hair. It goes back to sailors coming ashore from the Spanish armada. People think about the Irish colleen and the Irish guy as being red-haired. Irish guys have mostly pink or translucent skin. It's not even white. It can be white at certain times of the day. But when you first wake up you're see-through and you can actually be a pink guy. So, of course, if you get into a fight, you're going to bleed immediately. All the great Irish fighters were bleeders."],[0,"19."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Do the Irish really have a taste for corned beef?"],[0,"[A] Leary: Not really. But the idea is right: boiled food. Boil the shit out of it. Back in the days of the potato famine, when they had bad potatoes, the idea was that if you boiled them until you couldn't boil them any more, then all disease would be taken out. So you could eat a bad potato because you'd basically cured it in the pot. When you finally get Italians involved in your life or in your family--my brother married an Italian girl--you realize, 'Jesus Christ, food can taste good! You don't have to boil it. You can actually enjoy it!\" That's one of those problems at Irish--Italian weddings. All the Irish guys end up over at the Italian tables going, \"I'll have some more of that....\" And as soon as the food shows up we're all asking, \"Do you have any sisters or cousins?\" The Italians have all the good food. And we have all the good jokes."],[0,"20."],[0,"[Q] Playboy: Can you put the word fuck--which you use with great frequency--in the context of popular discourse?"],[0,"[A] Leary: It's a word of action. It's a word of description. It's a word of--you know, it's an object. It's, \"That fuck.\" It's a person. It's everything. I think it's the only word that functions as an adjective, noun, adverb and expletive. It may be the best word in the English language. The most powerful. The most oblique, depending on the moments you use it. I don't think there's an equivalent of fuck in any language. There isn't a Gaelic equivalent, though there's a Gaelic word for asshole. I'm happy that people still find it offensive, because it retains its power. All the words--like suck, which the censors passed for network television--will eventually pass through. Except for fuck. It's a fucking great word."],[0,"comedy's angry young man defends red meat, condones tough talk and explains the real difference between irish and italians"],[0,"\"If you cut open a guy like a tree, what you'd find from the feet up to about mid-chest is just semen.\""]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/playboy-s-1994-baseball-preview"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Playboy's 1994 Baseball Preview"],"type":[0,"Feature"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,118]]],[1,[[0,120]]],[1,[[0,156],[0,163]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/118-119-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=118"],"body":[1,[[0,"we pick the winners and losers, as baseball reinvents october"],[0,"The college baseball coach Rod Dedeaux had a rule: \"Never think. It can only hurt the ballclub.\""],[0,"Mitch Williams thought he would jam Joe Carter. Williams had Carter where he wanted him with men on base in the World Series' final game. Sticky jams were Mitch's specialty; he was always wiggling out of sword-pierced boxes. In the playoffs against Atlanta, trying to make a great play, he had fumbled a bunt, then nodded when Phillies manager Jim Fregosi came to the mound to say, \"Take the easy out.\" So Williams grabbed the next bunt, whirled off-balance and threw blindly to third for a miracle out that helped kill the Braves."],[0,"A week later he self-destructed in game four of the Series, a disastrous 15--14 loss. And now, in the last inning of the last game, with the Phils up by two runs, he walked the leadoff man. Paul Molitor soon singled. It was one of those temple of doom moments: A double would plate the winning run, but a game-ending double play would make Mitch a hero."],[0,"He thought Carter might be looking for a slider. A fastball inside, then, might become the grounder to short Philadelphia needed. Williams visualized a 90-miles-per-hour fastball on Carter's hands, the perfect pitch. It could have been perfect, too, except that the pitch was so sluggishly horrid that the hitter didn't recognize it as a fastball. (In Toronto's sudsy locker room Carter would say he hit a slider; Mitch had to correct him.) He turned that flider into a dent in Sky Dome's upper deck, making the Blue Jays the first World Series repeaters since the 1977-1978 Yankees."],[0,"Now the Wild Goat slouches toward Houston. The trade is his punishment. It's also a new chance. Most things in baseball are like that. Horrible and/or terrific, as hard to figure as a flider."],[0,"The Mitchless Phillies can afford to be upbeat. They look at this year as a chance to atone for their recent flop. They are the new Gashouse Gang, a bunch of burly, unshaven, chaw-packing dudes who went from last place in 1992 to NL champs a year ago. \"We may appear to be scumbags,\" says their Popeye-look-alike second baseman, Mickey Morandini, \"but nobody ever defined what a ballplayer is supposed to look like.\""],[0,"Still, the Phillies define overachievement. They needed injury-free summers from six brittle regulars and 43 suspenseful saves by Williams to slip into the Series. It won't happen again. They're phinished."],[0,"In the playoffs they beat the game's best team, the Braves, who have now been the best team for three years straight. But Atlanta keeps running afoul of postseason fate, including Mitch's miracle throw last year and Lonnie Smith's brain cramp in the 1991 Series--when Smith lost his bearings on the bases, stranding the Braves' winning run forever at third."],[0,"Of course Atlanta is also the decade's luckiest team. For the last dying gasp of the 1992 playoffs they sent up Francisco Cabrera, who had batted ten times all year. He promptly singled home the world's slowest runner to send them to the Series."],[0,"So are the Braves lucky or unlucky? You make the call. But if the best team happens to win this time around, Atlanta's cleanup man Fred McGriff can start with the National League's Most Valuable Player award and spend next winter cleaning up on other honors."],[0,"The Braves are the class of the newly aligned NL East. Montreal, probably the league's youngest team, isn't quite ready. The Phils gained 27 wins from 1992 to 1993 and will surely give some of them back. Plus they're ugly and should have shown Mitch some loyalty for his 43 saves instead of dumping him for two cheap contracts. So cross them off, too. Now cross off everyone else in the National League. The Giants have lost Will Clark, and their starting pitching isn't as good as it looked a year ago. They are a mortal lock in the new NL West but should fall in the fall to Atlanta, a club so good that it has no business being 0-for-October."],[0,"In the American League, Toronto's arms are tired. The Jays survived the stretch last year against the collapsing Yanks and Orioles. Both of their pursuers are better now. The O's have spent big-time to bring a pennant to Camden Yards. Their new first baseman, Rafael Palmeiro, happens to be better than his old Mississippi State teammate Clark, in whose favor he was dumped by the Rangers. Ex-Met Sid Fernandez' twitchy motion will mystify AL hitters all year. But young arms matter more; the Central Division's White Sox have young arms. Come October, Chicago's lineup will prove a match for New York and Baltimore, and the Sox have a younger version of Atlanta's super staff, plus fearless closer Roberto Hernandez."],[0,"Give me the Braves over the Sox in the Series."],[0,"This prediction is offered hesitantly, like Mitch's pitch, since foresight doesn't go far in the irrational pastime. Atlanta builds a roster better than the 1927 Yankees and goes hungry in the Nineties because three postseasons isn't enough time for the breaks to even out. I love Atlanta and Chicago, but there's also a good chance for an all-Canadian World Series this year--a puzzling prospect for America's national pastime."],[0,"Times are changing. Already there's far less television money for teams to spend on players, and NFL-style revenue sharing among owners is coming. In a year or two the playing field will level out. Rich clubs won't be able to plunder poorer ones, as the Braves did when they snatched McGriff from the Padres to provide some pop for the pennant run. Competition will tighten. Another tier of postseason playoffs will alter the role of fortune's dice."],[0,"But even Atlanta fans ought to cheer the new system. With money spread more evenly, brains will mean more. That puts a premium on scouting and money management. Sign the best high schoolers and collegians, track their progress in the minor leagues, test the best of them in the majors, reward the best of the best with big-league security. You can save millions by locking up promising rookies and sophs in multiyear contracts, making everybody happy. You can energize a city that way, showcasing exciting young players now with the hope of pennants later."],[0,"That's how they're doing it in the baseball town of the Nineties: Cleveland. Yes, Cleveland, where the Indians' fab new park will be the hub of the city's nightlife. It hosts a roster wonderfully nurtured by general manager John Hart, who has spent three years cultivating this unit--always with one eye on 1994, the Indians' gateway to contention. Hart was the first general manager to learn Nineties-style baseball economics and act accordingly. In 1991, the year the Tribe went 57--105, he invested a few million in his best young players. He paid them more than they were then worth but less than they would be worth in a few years. When Hart stole Cooperstown-bound outfielder Kenny Lofton from Houston, his club was ready to win a year early."],[0,"Then came the news that their fine young closer, Steve Olin, and teammate Tim Crews were dead--killed in a Florida boating accident. After that it seemed heartless to play the season at all. The black-patched Indians struggled to finish 76--86. Now, though, the wound is partly salved by Hart's success. As Gateway opens, the GM has added a couple of fine old mercenaries. Eddie Murray will protect Albert Belle in the lineup. Pitcher Dennis Martinez--an actual no-fooling unannounced candidate for president of Nicaragua in 1996--anchors the rotation. The Indians, featuring a future Hall of Famer in Carlos Baerga, are poised to revive a town that has been baseball-dead for 40 years. Best of all, they've done it the right way, the smart new way."],[0,"There is new thinking all over. The Giants, ignoring the common wisdom that San Francisco was baseball-dead, spruced up their home, scheduled a host of day games and made Candlestick Park a focus of sunny afternoons. Spurning the wisdom that said free agent zillionaires flop, they wooed and won the exceptional Barry Bonds, a $44 million bargain. This year, they'll win the new NL West by a mile."],[0,"Colorado and Florida also showed how to market baseball fun. You can't go anywhere without seeing their clever designs--the Marlins' teal caps, the Rockies' purple and black. Florida cracked the once-sacred 3 million mark in attendance while Colorado, where turnstiles spin with less wind resistance, skied to the ridiculous total of 4.5 million fans."],[0,"In fact, while the Braves and Giants staged what was widely bemoaned as the last true pennant race, the game crushed every attendance record. Some of that was the result of better marketing. With the diamond-studded (continued on page 154)baseball preview(continued from page 118) Bonds and Deion Sanders bringing flash to the diamond while the Rocks and Fish get rich by losing colorfully, the game gets livelier."],[0,"Congrats also to the San Diego Padres, who had the foresight to buy a huge tarp that will cover 13,000 seats at Jack Murphy Stadium, so that the sight of so many empties won't be quite so ugly. The only better move would be a bigger tarp to cover the whole park."],[0,"San Diego surrendered too soon. Revenue sharing, the owners' latest idea to fix a game that doesn't need fixing, is coming. Not in the form they smugly announced in January--that would require a salary cap approved by the players' association, the likely response of which is \"fat chance.\" But in some fashion the rich clubs will soon subsidize the poor."],[0,"To do so they must first increase the kitty. (The owners may have undiscovered virtues, but philanthropy ain't among them.) That means realignment: three divisions per league, a new round of playoffs to sell to TV."],[0,"Purists are up in arms over the prospect of more playoffs. The wildcarding of October (and soon, November), they say, will rob the regular season of its meaning. Of course, they're right. But the best case against it died long ago."],[0,"The regular season is long because baseball is the chanciest major sport. Unlike the NFL, where the best teams invariably beat up on the worst, baseball's Flushing Mets or Porto-San Diego Padres have a nearly even chance against the Braves in any single game. Over 162 games, though, the bad hops and bloopers that decide single games even out, leaving the cream on top."],[0,"Then comes the postseason, where short series restore the role of chance. The shorter the series that follows the season, the greater the role of luck. The game gets more like roulette, and while roulette is exciting, nobody argues after five or seven unpredictable hops that red or black is more \"deserving.\" If traditionalists want to see champagne spewed on only the most deserving teams, they are correct to oppose a new tier of playoffs. But, in order to be consistent, they should also decry the World Series."],[0,"Since 1903 the fall classic has been the focus of the game's grand tradition, the showcase for Ruth and Gehrig and a hundred other heroes. Last year's regular season clearly identified the two best teams, the Braves and the Giants. Neither made the World Series. Yet few people moaned when the fourth-best club beat the third-best in the Series. We'll all soon be used to a third round of postseason luckoffs. Opposition to realignment will be remembered, if at all, as a blip in baseball history. It is a misunderstanding of the postseason's function, which is to make October unforgettable."],[0,"There is nothing wrong with baseball. Grumbling about the crumbling state of the game is as old as second-guessing managers (yes, Fregosi was nuts to let Mitch pitch), but so is another sure thing: No season was ever remotely like the one to come."],[0,"Check the coming attractions:"],[0,"• Juan \"Igor\" Gonzalez, 24 years old, clubs 40-plus homers for the third straight season--this time in the Rangers' gleaming new stadium, which they call, simply, the Ballpark."],[0,"• Bonds poses at the plate, his jewelry asparkle, as another homer adds luster to his claim to be the best ever."],[0,"• Cal Ripken, Jr., the new Iron Horse, lugs his glove to shortstop 162 times."],[0,"• Ripken's Orioles bring a pennant to Camden Yards, the greatest place to play or watch a game since Wrigley and Fenway set the standard forever."],[0,"• Jim Abbott, born with no right hand, switches his glove from arm to arm as a bunt comes his way, tossing to first on his way to a 20-win season."],[0,"• A batting coach's son wins an MVP award. Not Bonds, but Griffey; Ken, Jr. has hit 132 big league homers and he's younger than Mike Piazza and Tim Salmon, the 1993 Rookies of the Year."],[0,"• Deion Sanders switches to warp speed as he rounds second base, legging out another triple. A Sanders triple is the game's most thrilling play. There will be more of them now that the NFL hero is playing every day for the Braves. Which means that when Atlanta tests its luck again this fall, we'll hear all about the secret of his success: a pair of lucky green undershorts decorated with dollar signs."],[0,"Purists say modern baseball is all about money. I say it's luck and fun. Maybe we can agree on the subject of Sanders' lucky boxers. Whether the shorts represent money or luck, they are liable to mean victory when he lands on them this fall, scoring the winning run in a fourth straight great World Series."],[0,"Of course, that's only a guess. Anyone who says he or she can scope the weird doings to come is bluffing. Ask Mitch Williams, who thought he would jam Carter and invented the flider instead."],[0,"Or ask Deion. His future's as golden as the dollar sign he wears around his neck, but in the thick of an 0-for-26 slump he summed up the trickiest game:"],[0,"\"Baseball toys with your mind.\""],[0,"They lost again. They were then (and still are) the finest collection of talent in the game, hampered only by a bullpen that stumbles in October. Rest assured that the Braves will overcome that flaw. They signed Gregg Olson, and have future closer Mark Wohlers on hand in case Olson's elbow pings. Plus they have steady Greg McMichael and erratic lefties Mike Stanton and Kent Mercker. When you're Atlanta your options are endless."],[0,"Nobody would be worried about the Atlanta bullpen if a hundred small misfortunes hadn't snowballed on the Braves three postseasons in a row. We'd all be saying how lucky we are to see this baseball machine in action six times a week on TBS. But we should be saying that anyway. Atlanta is brilliant and rich, a combination that in a rational pastime could have given the Braves four in a row this season. Instead they'll settle for one-for-four."],[0,"Atlanta is rich enough to pay Fred McGriff, the probable 1994 NL MVP, and smart enough to have gotten him for three of die lesser lights in their stellar farm system. They were scoring four runs per game before McGriff showed up; they plated almost six per game thereafter. Atlanta is also rich enough and smart enough to assemble a pitching staff that notched a world-leading 3.14 ERA while working half the time at Fulton County, the onetime \"Launching Pad.\" Maddux, Glavine, Avery, Smoltz: The front four won 75 games. If your fifth starter and five other guys can hunt down 25 to 30 more wins, you can repel a charge as monumental as die 1993 Giants' 103-win campaign. With Pete Smith banished to the Mets, the new fifth starter might be Mercker, who is capable of 15 wins of his own. Or it could be 20-yearold Hawatha Terrell Wade (Hawatha isn't a nickname), who blew away 208 minor-league hitters in 158 innings."],[0,"Deion Sanders leads off. Now 26, Sanders is about to be a star in the more demanding of his two sports. He sets the table for Jeff Blauser (.305, 15 homers), Ron Gant (36 homers, 117 RBIs), McGriff (37 homers, 101 RBIs), David Justice (40 homers, 120 RBIs), Terry Pendleton (84 RBIs after a hideous start), Rookie of the Year front-runner Javy Lopez and solid second baseman Mark Lemke. Offenses don't get much better than that. Gant broke his leg in a dumb winter accident: dirt biking a week after signing a huge new contract. He may be out till midseason, but young Tony Tarasco is a gifted understudy. Should Tarasco stumble, Ryan Klesko--the rookie slugger San Diego wanted for McGriff--might play left field. And for infield, there is shortstop Chipper Jones, the bluest blue-chipper of all. Jones, 22, has an iffy glove but a superconducting Louisville Slugger. If there's any justice in baseball, Atlanta gets a happy ending this time."],[0,"Felipe Alou's Expos have also been close but cigarless lately. They might be the pick in another division. Marquis Grissom is an ideal center fielder. Brittle star Larry Walker has power, speed and a cannon in right. Felipe's son Moises and/or rookie Rondell White complete a dazzling outfield. Ace Dennis Martinez is gone but Ken Hill, Jeff Fassero, Pedro Martinez, Kirk Rueter and kid lefties Joey Eischen and Gabe White can hold the fort until John Wetteland storms in to save the game. And now comes 6'4\", 220-pound first base banger Cliff Floyd, 21, to vie with White and Atlanta's Lopez for rookie honors. The Spos are a comer, but they seem to keep coming and coming and never quite arriving. Maybe next year."],[0,"The Phillies got famous last fall, largely because they stayed healthy. But all their stars are fragile, which probably means a return to the middle of the pack. With Williams' late-inning roller coaster a wild thing of the past, GM Lee Thomas wisely gambled $850,000 on Norm Charlton's delicate left wing. If that doesn't work out, Fregosi may try a committee bullpen. The pen will be fine eventually, with farm arm Ricky Bottalico preserving the leads that a league-best attack provides. The 1993 Phils scored 69 more runs than anyone else in the NL. But there were too many near-career years (most of the lineup) or illusions (like rookie shortstop Kevin Stocker's .324 average) to make a rerun likely."],[0,"Florida's Marlins beat the Dodgers on opening day and overachieved for three months, then wilted. Orestes Destrade, who used to hit like Cecil Fielder in Japan, hit like Eric Karros in the NL. Benito Santiago, once the majors' top receiver, was the same cipher the Padres gave up on. Leadoff man Chuck Carr, left fielder Jeff Conine, third-baseman-turned-outfielder Gary Sheffield and a thousand pitching prospects are the guys the smart Marlins are using to build a contender."],[0,"As Casey Stengel said, \"The only thing worse than a Mets game is a Mets doubleheader.\" David Letterman has beaten the stupid Mets tricks to death, so I'll only note that Gooden is a better than average starter; Bret Saberhagen will bring some useful kids in trade; Jeff Kent, Jeromy Burnitz and Ryan Thompson are semi-stars in the making; and if the Mets fail to trade Bobby Bonilla--after jumping the gun and signing him when a year's wait might have brought Bonds to New York--and he ends up at third base at Shea, they deserve to be kicked when they're down."],[0,"After four years of Lee Smith's 92-mph fastballs, the Cardinals have their best team this decade and no Lee to save the 90-plus leads they should take into the ninth. It won't matter if Mike Perez, who inherits the closer's role, can match the quality of his tough performances as Smith's setup man. The rotation is a bunch of misers who annually give the fewest free passes in the majors. Led by Bob Tewksbury, who walked only 20 men in 214 innings, St. Louis starters keep the Cards in games by keeping men off base. Starter Donovan Osborne is hurt, but Rene Arocha, Rheal Cormier and Allen Watson are bound to improve on their 24--21 record of a year ago, perhaps with support from 21-year-old Brian \"The Maglie\" Barber."],[0,"The Cards still steal--second in the NL in 1993--but can now go deep themselves. Their 118 homers were only 12th in the league, but it was the most die Redbirds had hit in 20 years. Mark Whiten, whom they stole from the Indians two winters ago, led them with 25 homers, including four in one night. He grabbed headlines from the club's true star, Gregg Jefferies, who left his glove troubles at first base and hit .342 with 16 homers, 83 RBIs and 46 bags. General manager Dal Maxvill wants to deal a second baseman but otherwise plans to stick with his lineup: outfielders Whiten, Bernard Gilkey (.305 with a surprising 16 homers) and Ray Lankford (a surprisingly listless .238); an infield of Jefferies, Luis Alicea or Geronimo Pena at second, 100-RBI man Todd Zeile at third and eternal shortstop Ozzie Smith (.288, 21 steals); plus sturdy backstop Tom Pagnozzi."],[0,"This leaves manager Joe Torre the pleasant task of finding room for impending star Brian Jordan. Like his former NFL teammate Deion Sanders (both were defensive backs for the Falcons), Jordan is due for a breakout season. He's 27, the age Bill James says is when hitters are at their prime. In 1993 Jordan batted .375 in the minors, .309 with ten homers in the bigs. For now he's a fourth outfielder, but by fall he should join Jefferies and Lankford in a lineup that helps the Cards spray suds--Bud suds, please, not champagne--in their Busch Stadium locker room."],[0,"The Astros quit too soon on intermittent slugger Eric Anthony, trading him for a midget pinch-hitter and a long-shot pitcher. They lost free agent Mark Portugal's 18 wins, spent the winter shopping Pete Harnisch (16-9, 2.98) and acquired Mitch Williams to be their closer (opener?). Still, by keeping Harnisch, Doug Drabek and Greg Swindell to go with young Domingo Jean, Houston could have the Central's top rotation. Third baseman Ken Caminiti and outfielder Steve Finley are also on new GM Bob Watson's trading block. Should they depart, there'll be space for primo prospects Phil Nevin and James Mouton alongside Jeff Bagwell (.320, 20 homers), Craig Biggio (.287, 21 homers), Luis Gonzalez (.300, 15 homers) and the ripening talent of shortstop Andujar Cedeno. Watson seems determined to juggle a roster that wasn't bad in the first place; if he can refrain from making more rookie mistakes like the Anthony trade, the new-look Astros can make a run at the NL wild-card slot."],[0,"Following last year's dog and Tony show, what tabloid travails are in store for the Reds? Maybe winning a lot more games than they did in 1993, when everybody got hurt and Cincinnati finished 30 games behind the Giants, who didn't even win the NL West. But without the Giants and Braves around, Marge Schott's club has a real shot at glory in the Central. Even in partial seasons Barry Larkin batted .315, Bobby Kelly .319. Both were All-Stars. Kevin Mitchell clouted 19 homers and had 64 RBIs in little more than half a year. Starter Jose Rijo's slippery slider helped him go 14--9 with a 2.48 ERA, even with the pen blowing half a dozen of his wins. Why call Cincy the sleeper of 1994? Because the Reds were as hurt as the Phillies were healthy in 1993. Because a downy-cheeked third base platoon, Willie Greene and Tim Costo, may be better than Sabo was. Because error-prone GM Jim Bowden hit a homer when he sent Seattle a pair of deuces for potential ace Erik Hanson and second baseman Bret Boone, and because Rijo and Larkin deserve fortune's favor."],[0,"A healthy Shawon Dunston would give the Cubs a surplus at short, a rare asset in any league. Closer Randy Myers (a league-record 53 saves) and catcher Rick Wilkins (.303, 30 homers) are coming off eye-popping years. But the rotation is a mess, there are too many sub-stars jostling for time in the outfield and Chicago hitters still don't get on base enough to make Wrigley Field work in their favor. But you can't win with a couple of famous infielders and no starting pitching."],[0,"On the other hand, last year I said Myers was finished."],[0,"The Pirates expected knuckleballer Tim Wakefield to be their ace. He wobbled his way to a 6-11, 5.61 season. The club has no money: Jim Leyland may be the league's smartest manager, but his cupboard is bare. Veterans Andy Van Slyke and Jay Bell can play. They each hit .310, combining for 17 homers and 101 RBIs--a strong season for an individual. Second-year men Carlos Garcia, Al Martin and Kevin Young can play a little, too. That's about it in nearly empty Three Rivers Stadium. Leyland, who was trying to quit smoking when he had Bonds, Bonilla and Drabek, will have to chain-sneak cigs in the dugout."],[0,"Pity the valiant Giants. Nose-to-nose with Atlanta on the season's last afternoon, they lost game 162 to the hated Dodgers--a payback for San Francisco's last-game knockout of Los Angeles in 1991--and watched the playoffs on TV. Now they're doomed to a tedious new year. Since the new NL West consists of SF and three furballs, the Giants can probably sleepwalk to the West title. Their off-season improvement seems like overkill: By signing hurlers Mark Portugal and Steve Frey and re-inking Matt Williams and Robby Thompson in addition to the nearly $40 million they still must pay Barry Bonds, owner Peter Magowan and GM Bob Quinn topped the $100 million Magowan paid for the franchise a year and a half ago. Their idea is to kick some postseason butt. They may well do it with the firepower of league MVP Bonds (.336, 46 homers, 123 RBIs), third baseman Matt Williams (.294, 38, 110) and second baseman Thompson (.312, 19, 65), plus a terrific defense that also features catcher Kirt Manwaring and center fielder Darren Lewis."],[0,"Number one starter Billy Swift is hardheaded; he didn't miss a start after a line drive caromed off his noggin for a ground-rule double a few years back. In 1993 he used his head and a brilliant arsenal of pitches to go 21-8 with a 2.82 ERA. John Burkett (22-7), 18-game winner Portugal and rookie Salomon Torres complete an all-righty front four. Lefties Bud Black and Trevor Wilson will wrestle for the five slot. Middle relief is in the sure hands of Mike Jackson and lefties Frey and Kevin Rogers, who set the stage for the untouchable split-finger fastball of Rod Beck. The fierce Beck saved 48 games, whiffing 86 and allowing just 70 base runners in 79 innings. With Eck on the ropes, he is now the game's premiere reliever."],[0,"Bonds, of course, is baseball's one su-perduperstar. He crassly failed to show up to claim his MVP trophy (his godfather, Willie Mays, ran that errand)--a show of attitude that won't help his chances in next year's voting. But for each of his failings there is at least one virtue. Remember how important 30--30 feats are to Bonds? Last fall, long after his 30th homer, he had 29 steals with more than a week to go. In the fires of a pennant race, there were no good chances to steal. He put his ego on hold, stayed at first and finished 46-29."],[0,"Whether you like, envy or loathe Bonds, you're sure to see him in the 1994 playoffs."],[0,"Tommy Lasorda's happy-talk Dodgers would have had no shot in the old West. In this reconstituted division, however, they could claim a wild-card berth or even a title if the Giants collapse. Lasorda's batting order starts with speed and batting average in Brett Butler and Delino DeShields. Then comes power from the Popeye forearms of Rookie of the Year Mike Piazza (.318, 35 homers, 112 RBIs--the best year ever for a Los Angeles hitter), Eric Karros (23 homers, 80 RBIs) and maybe even Darryl Strawberry, who says his back and personality are finally healed. Shortstop Jose Offerman and kid outfielders Billy Ashley, Raul Mondesi and Henry Rodriguez add to the attack."],[0,"There's nothing too wrong with a rotation of Orel Hershiser, Tom Candiotti, Ramon Martinez, Pedro Astacio and Kevin Gross, though they're all righthanded--a state of affairs that leads the Dodgers to audition any lefty with a pulse. Jim Gott, who saved 25, is the bullpen incumbent. A healthy Todd Worrell or million-dollar bonus tot Darren Dreifort could close as well. And then there's Park Chan Ho, the second Korean player ever to sign with a major-league team. The Dodgers say Park has a 99 mph fastball, but they're being modest. Look for him next year, when L.A. fans will start displaying Ho Ho Ho signs to mark his Ks."],[0,"Pity the Rockies, too. With more fans than any other ballclub ever--giving Colorado a bursting bankroll and a chance to build for the late Nineties--Denver's darlings have chosen to overspend on veterans who might help them finish second for a year or two. Their Weiss-Girardi-Bichette-Galarraga-Hojo-Burks-Hayes-Mejia batting order looks sort of pyrotechnic, but buying it in a futile effort to contend now merely assures a decade of diminishing returns. Soon Colorado's pound of offense will fade and require a ton of cure."],[0,"The Padres signed ace Andy Benes in hopes of trading him for cheap prospects. They signed Bip Roberts, a blip of a second baseman, to keep Tony Gwynn (.358) and Phil Plantier (34 homers, 100 RBIs) from being the only Pads who earned their pinstripes. Gwynn proves that big-time ballplayers aren't always selfish. By closing his career in San Diego he'll set a big league example for a team that would be the favorite in the Little League World Series."],[0,"Three smart moves make Baltimore the favorite in baseball's heavyweight division. The Orioles signed Rafael Palmeiro to shoot line drives at the warehouse beyond the right field wall at Camden Yards. They signed Sid Fernandez to bolster the rotation behind Mike Mussina and Ben McDonald; he'll boggle AL hitters with his tricky delivery. They signed hardheaded Chris Sabo to play third; he'll double the production at that position. The O's rotation now features the league's top 1-2-3 punch. Ul-traprospect Jeffrey Hammonds completes a sterling outfield. With Palmeiro, Mark McLemore, Sabo and Ripken on the infield, with more than 3 million fans making Baltimore nights an exercise in moonlight madness, a club that has finished third twice in a row can take two steps forward."],[0,"While writing checks to his three free agents, however, GM Roland Hemond nearly lost his bullpen. He failed to resign closer Gregg Olson, whose elbow worried Hemond. Other clubs lined up to offer Olson far more than it would have cost the O's to keep him. Hemond responded by writing another big check. (Some of this cash comes from Baltimore's new owners group, which includes movie maker Barry Levinson, writer Tom Clancy and sportscaster Jim McKay.) He signed elderly Lee Smith--the game's all-time save leader--who'll be ably supported by Alan Mills and lefty smoker Brad Pennington. When Ripken surpasses Gehrig's longevity record in the summer of 1995, there ought to be a crisp new pennant flying at the Yards."],[0,"The House Ruth Built has been cleaned up for a run at the flag the Yankees used to claim simply by throwing their pinstripes on the field. George Steinbrenner talks about moving the Yanks to New Jersey--his latest obscenity--but this year his club might turn the Bronx into Fun City. New York has improved each year this decade. There's nowhere left to go but to serious contention for the Bombers, who led the majors in hitting last year. Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, Danny Tartabull and Paul O'Neill are nobody's murderers row, but they combined to score and drive in more runs than the entire Florida Marlins roster scored. Catcher Mike Stanley came from nowhere (24 homers in seven years) to bat .305 with 26 homers. Bernie Williams chips in with speed and a little more pop, and the club took a sharp gamble by signing basher Sam Horn to a minor-league contract. But was trading kid pitcher Domingo Jean brave or foolhardy? The return was Xavier Hernandez, one of the majors' better setup men. He'll stabilize a bullpen that treated save opportunities like kryptonite. The trouble lies in getting to him. After Abbott, Terry Mulholland, Melido Perez and Jimmy Key, the starting staff could use someone like Jean. An aging bunch at the crest of its latest surge, the Yanks must win this year. If they don't, George may replace the mythic NY on their caps with NJ. That will be one of the signs foretelling Armageddon."],[0,"You know all about the Blue Jays. They had the top three hitters in the league, the first time that's happened in 100 years. They had Series megamen Joe Carter, Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar, plus the world's finest defensive center fielder, Devon White, and shortstop Tony Fernandez. Fernandez was finished when he batted .225 for the Mets, until he rejoined the Jays and mystically hit .306 (.326 in the postseason). They dumped Tom Henke, one of the league's top closers, and replaced him with Duane Ward, the best. They didn't have a lot of starting pitching after Juan Guzman and Pat Hentgen. All they did was win and win. But now it ends. Put them in the AL West and they win by 20 games. In the hard-bitten East the combination of skill and fortune that forged their Series rings is about to run out. Father Time frowns on clubs with aging stars--look what happened in Oakland."],[0,"The Red Sox, too, might run away with the new West. They might even have won the Central, but the East is where somebody good finishes fourth. Already an ancient club, Boston signed leadoff man Otis Nixon, 35, and catcher Dave Valle, 33. Not that those are rotten choices: Nixon's speed is just what they craved; Valle is ten times Tony Pena, whom he replaces. But Roger Clemens has started to show his age. Wizened starters Frank Viola and Danny Darwin can't be counted on again. Outfielder Mike Greenwell may be gone if Boston finds a gullible taker. He hit a soft .315 and demanded multimillions for it. What the fraying Sox need is more kids like bopper Mo Vaughn (.297, 29 homers, 101 RBIs in his first full season) and rookie starter Aaron Sele (15-4 in AAA and the bigs)."],[0,"Rob Deer takes his billion strikeouts east, far east, to fan all Japan. Mickey Tettleton, Deer's rival in whiffery, may be gone by opening day. Still, Sparky Anderson's swinging Tigers will give you a bang for your buck and cool you on hot nights with the breeze off their bats. Detroit's lineup--save for the underappreciated Travis Fryman--averages 33 years old. Bill Gullickson deserves a medal for going 47-31 over three years while being one of the game's top run giver-uppers, but his age and fastball are now both about 60."],[0,"After smoking to a 49--29 record in the second half of 1993 only to flame out in the playoffs, the White Sox return to dominate the Central. Too bad this team keeps getting distracted by sideshows. Last spring it was Bo Jackson's hip. So Frank Thomas used his big hurtful swing to hit .317 with 41 homers and 128 RBIs, slugging .607 (slugging percentages over .600 are Ruthian). But then his .353 postseason was lost amid Air Michael's retirement, the news of which was leaked during an ALCS game at Comiskey. Not content with that, Jordan may try to eclipse the spring training sun in his attempt to join the Sox."],[0,"Forget Dare Jordan. He has as much chance of actually making the club as does Madonna, who has more baseball experience. Focus on Thomas and Chicago's young pitchers. Even if owner Jerry Reinsdorf refuses to pay Jack McDowell $6.5 mil a year and deals him instead, the Sox are dangerously armed. Wilson Alvarez, 24, fulfilled his promise last season and has a decade left in his left arm. Alex Fernandez, 24, ditto in his right. Late-maturing closer Roberto Hernandez, 29, saved 38 games a year ago and ought to add 10 more to that total this year. This wondrous crew has been overshadowed by Black Jack (42--20 over two years). There's also the what'sin-a-name similarity of Alvarez, Fernandez and Hernandez, which may confuse some fans. Fortunately for the Sox, they confuse batters, too."],[0,"In a full season Jason Bere, 23, should win more than 12 games. If McDowell departs or anyone else falters, manager Gene Lamont can call on any of three rookie starters who are almost as precocious as Bere."],[0,"With that much pitching Chicago could win with an attack of Thomas and eight dwarfs. In fact, there are only two in the lineup: 5'8\" Tim Raines and 5'8\" Joey Cora, who hit a combined .284 with 170 runs and 41 steals. Center fielder Lance Johnson batted .311, swiped 35 more and was thrown out just seven times. Robin Ventura played a flawless third and supported Thomas with 22 homers and 94 RBIs; he earned his new nickname, the Little Hurt, by losing a brawl to Nolan Ryan. Beside him, Ozzie Guillen is steady at short. Ron Karkovice is the only catcher in either league who nails more than half the runners who try to steal on him. Now add DH Julio Franco (.289, 14 homers, 84 RBIs for Texas) to bat behind Thomas. And outfielder Darrin Jackson, a good bat and great glove, will prove to be a wise signing."],[0,"Weaknesses? It won't help the Sox to have a basketball player screwing around in their batting cage, stealing their thunder. And it hurts their feelings that they sell fewer tickets than the uptown Cubs. Both troubles will end soon."],[0,"The Indians are potentially fab up the middle with recuperating catcher Sandy Alomar, Jr., second baseman Carlos Baerga, shortstop Omar Vizquel and center fielder Kenny Lofton. On the flanks, first baseman Paul Sorrento quietly hits 15 to 20 homers a year, while Jim Thome may bat .300 in his first full year. Albert Belle, who socked 38 homers and drove in 129 runs, now gets some protection from Eddie Murray. The strong, silent Murray went deep 27 times and drove in 100 for the Mets. Murray's partner in free-agent banking, Dennis Martinez, has to win 40 games to bail out a rotation that capsizes after him. The bullpen can assemble a quorum but needs a chairman. The reason to think this Tribe can outrun all but Chicago is that Belle, Lofton, Vizquel, Thome, rookie Manny Ramirez and particularly Baerga are glorious young talents. After four decades in the dumps, Cleveland is due for a boost."],[0,"The royalest of Royals, George Brett, singled in his last at bat for hit number 3154. In the post-Brett era Kansas City hopes Vince Coleman can get about 154 hits and ignite an offense that often retired early. Coleman may have regressed in his Mets years--pulling his hamstring hourly, smacking Doc Gooden with a nine iron, tossing a small explosive at Dodger fans--but he's paid his debt to society. He did 200 hours of community service, helping clean up Malibu after last fall's brushfires. He is also exactly what KC needed. Vince can challenge Lofton for the league lead in steals. Felix Jose and Gary Gaetti, both sure to top their 1993 numbers, join catcher Mike Macfarlane (20 homers) and center fielder Brian McRae, the manager's son (.282, 12 homers, 69 RBIs, 23 bags) in a lineup that's bound to leap past its league-low total of 675 runs. Unfortunately for skipper Hal McRae, the rotation is Appier and Cone and reach for the phone. Unless GM Herk Robinson finds a starter or two (no easy task in the current seller's market), the Royals are doomed to lose sight of the Sox in May."],[0,"The Twins are out of money. Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek broke the bank years ago, and in small-market Minnesota there's nothing left for anybody else. Catcher Brian Harper, the club's only .300 hitter, cost too much and is replaced by rookie Matt Walbeck, whose virtue is that he makes the minimum wage. Even surefire closer Rick Aguilera, who makes modest millions, is trade bait. The lone bright spot among the starters is Kevin Tapani, whose 12--15 record disguised a terrific 9--4 second half. The light in the tunnel is revenue sharing, but until it arrives the Twins will have to hope Milwaukee keeps them on the cellar steps."],[0,"After making a heady run at the AL East flag in 1992, the Brewers dropped to 69--93 last year. Greg Vaughn's 30 homers were part of a lonely MVP performance. Darryl Hamilton, John Jaha, Brian Harper and rookie Matt Mieske are strong hitters, but the pitching is unrelieved horror. With Robin Yount's retirement, Milwaukee's marquee attraction is Gus the Wonder Dog, who chases birds off the field between innings."],[0,"The Seattle sound is a sigh of relief. With the White Sox gone to the Central Division, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Randy Johnson can lead the Mariners to nirvana. Only 24, Junior is a man Barry Bonds says might be \"better than me.\" Almost as striking as Griffey's eight-game homer streak last summer--the third such streak ever--was the scale of those blasts. They averaged more than 400 feet. He finished at .309 with 45 homers, 109 RBIs and a Gold Glove for his quick feats in center. His supporting cast includes 1992 batting champ Edgar Martinez, now back at third base after surgery, slugging outfielder Jay Buhner, first baseman Tino Martinez and ex-Astro Eric Anthony, who connects far less often than Junior, but can hit them just as far. And add multitalent Jay Buhner--unless he's traded to fill some of the holes GM Woody Woodward dug during a strange round of off-season moves."],[0,"The Mariners led the AL in fielding in 1993. They were the best in the game up the middle: catcher Dave Valle, Omar Vizquel and Bret Boone in the pivot, Griffey in center. So GM Woody Woodward dumped all but Griffey. The backstop is now rookie Dan Wilson, who can't throw or hit. The new double play combo is (as a radio announcer said of the 1993 Mets) \"just guys who are out there,\" which won't help manager Lou Piniella's top-heavy pitching staff."],[0,"Ace Randy Johnson, at 6'10\" the majors' tallest man, doesn't need fielders: He struck out 308 to finish a godly 112 Ks ahead of league runner-up Mark Langston, for whom he was traded five years ago. Johnson completed ten games, allowing four hits or fewer in half of them. Nolan Ryan, who became his mentor last year, calls Johnson the pitcher of the Nineties. Johnson's Drysdale is Chris Bosio. He had a rugged year: Last spring Bosio learned that an impostor living in his off-season home had run up a mess of bills, crashed his motorcycle and stolen his fax machine. Bosio tossed a no-hitter at Boston, only to collide with a base runner in his next start, breaking his collarbone. He's back to improve on his 9-9 record. Unimposing Greg Hibbard, Dave Fleming and Roger Salkeld fill out the rotation. Woodward thinks bullpen prospect Bobby Ayala, acquired from the Reds, can be a closer. But Ayala had a 5.60 ERA for Cincinnati. At least it was better than his 5.67 in the minors."],[0,"Any team in the West could win it or finish last. Seattle gets the call because of Junior and Johnson, the league's transcendent talents."],[0,"First to worst to first? Only the Athletics can do it this season. At least they can't finish seventh, as they did in a hamstring-popping, shoulder-sagging, foot-freezing 1993, when Tony LaRussa used 149 different lineups in 162 games."],[0,"Having re-signed Rickey Henderson, who recovered from an ice-pack-frozen foot to score 114 runs for the A's and Jays, Oakland returns with a lineup that should be the division's most dangerous. But starters Bobby Witt, Bob Welch and Ron Darling are a combined 100 years old, while their protégés, Todd Van Poppel and Steve Karsay, are unproven. A bullpen starring the aging Eck and Dave Righetti boasts 527 saves and has a good shot at 528. But if the club is out of the race in August, GM Sandy Alderson will dismantle it and look to 1996. The best reason to think the A's can rebound is that nobody west of Chicago has much pitching. Passable pitching, plus some fireworks from Rickey, Ruben Sierra and Mark McGwire, would rule this division of underachievers."],[0,"Lots of folks love the Rangers, whose lone star is the great Juan Gonzalez. He cranks 40-plus homers a year with bat speed that bends his bat like a golf club."],[0,"Yes, there's also Will Clark's sweet stroke, Ivan Rodriguez behind the plate and Dean Palmer at third. But Clark isn't the hitter Rafael Palmeiro is. Pudge Rodriguez has hit just 21 homers in 1173 big league at bats. Although Palmer has power and a mighty throwing arm, over the past two years he has also been the strikeout king of America. Jose Canseco, once considered the game's top power-speed combination, hit ten homers last season. He has stolen 12 bases since 1991 while being thrown out 13 times. Texas has a strong batting order and a fine old closer, Tom Henke. Still, after the sparkling Kevin Brown the staff is just guys who go out there. The Rangers could run away with the division if the pitchers shock the world and baby shortstop Benji Gil grows up fast in the Ballpark's rookie year. It won't happen. Even in the new, depressed West you can't win with three home-run hitters and two good arms."],[0,"During January's earthquake the Scoreboard at Anaheim Stadium toppled, smashing about a thousand upper-deck seats. Since the team bus crashed in May 1992, the Angels have been a star-crossed club. California bet wrong about closer Bryan Harvey's health, lost him and spent the past winter trying to convince a lesser hurler, Gregg Olson, to take a million more than they would have paid Harvey. Now Rookie of the Year Tim Salmon, center fielder Chad Curtis, ticket seller Bo Jackson and slick-mitt first baseman J. T. Snow support a rotation that should be solid enough--until the Angels trade Langston and Chuck Finley for cheap guys. Then skipper Buck Rodgers may be forced to hope for earthquakes in Oakland, Seattle and Texas."],[0,"Cook's Picks"],[0,"Al East"],[0,"Orioles Yankees Blue Jays Red Sox Tigers"],[0,"Al Central"],[0,"White Sox Indians Royals Twins Brewers"],[0,"Al West"],[0,"Mariners Athletics Rangers Angels"],[0,"Al Wild Card: Yankees"],[0,"Nl East"],[0,"Braves Expos Phillies Marlins Mets"],[0,"Nl Central"],[0,"Cardinals Astros Reds Cubs Pirates"],[0,"Nl West"],[0,"Giants Dodgers Rockies Padres"],[0,"Nl Wild Card: Expos"],[0,"Al Champs: White Sox"],[0,"Nl Champs: Braves"],[0,"World Champs: Braves"],[0,"\"Purists are up in arms over the prospect of more play-offs. But the best case against it died long ago.\""],[0,"Yer out!"],[0,"\"The Star-Spangled Banner\""],[0,"Fungoes"],[0,"Hookers"],[0,"Cocaine"],[0,"The Sporting News"],[0,"Thanking God"],[0,"Batting average"],[0,"Fielding percentage"],[0,"Morganna, the kissing bandit"],[0,"Poker"],[0,"The Eck"],[0,"Tommy Lasorda, Sparky Anderson, Dallas Green"],[0,"Lampblack"],[0,"The split-finger fastball"],[0,"Dodger blue"],[0,"Pitcher Nolan Ryan"],[0,"Yer in!"],[0,"\"0 Canada\""],[0,"Visits to the team shrink"],[0,"Wives"],[0,"Turkey jerky"],[0,"People"],[0,"Thanking your agent"],[0,"Slugging percentage"],[0,"Total chances"],[0,"Barbarella, the owner's wife"],[0,"Golf"],[0,"The Beck"],[0,"Cito Gaston, Dusty Baker, Felipe Alou"],[0,"Wraparound shades"],[0,"The forkball"],[0,"Deion's dollar-green underwear"],[0,"Governor Nolan Ryan"],[0,"National East League"],[0,"National Central League"],[0,"National West League"],[0,"American East League"],[0,"American Central League"],[0,"American West League"]]]}]}],[0,{"id":[0,"1994/05/elle"],"collection":[0,"articles"],"data":[0,{"issue":[0,{"slug":[0,"1994/05"],"collection":[0,"issues"]}],"title":[0,"Elle"],"type":[0,"Pictorial"],"pages":[1,[[1,[[0,126]]],[1,[[0,129],[0,130]]],[1,[[0,135]]]]],"preview":[0,"https://cdn.centerfold.com/magazine/issues/199405/two-page/126-127-medium.jpg"],"view":[0,"https://ipb-reader.playboy.com/19940501/index.html#p=126"],"body":[1,[[0,"the swimsuit supermodel as you've never seen her before"],[0,"For a woman whose perfectly honed, statuesque frame earned her the nickname \"The Body,\" supermodel Elle Macpherson has a decidedly cerebral approach to her work. \"As opposed to posing in a swimsuit, where there's more innuendo involved, nudity requires less implication,\" she says. \"But this isn't about sex per se as much as it is an idea of sensuality.\" Best known to Americans for her sensational starring appearances in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, Elle is a national institution in her native Australia, where her form has a higher profile than Ayers Rock. Her TV special The Making of the 1993 Elle Macpherson Calendar was the ratings smash of the year there. Now nude for all the world to see--both here and in a new film, Sirens--Australia's darling is a bit concerned about the reaction down under. \"Australians don't want to be disappointed by anything I do,\" she says. So why challenge their loyalty? \"I've wanted to work with Herb Ritts for years--there's a purity to his work that I admire. And what we've done for Playboy parallels an idea in Sirens. It's not just 'Come fuck me' sexy.\" The idea is both purer and more fun, she says. \"It's about the power of sensuality--but with a wink.\" Young Eleanor Macpherson never figgered (as Elle says in her lilt of an accent) to be a model. \"I come from a strict academic background,\" she says. \"My aunt was a model, but when people said I might be one too, I thought, Heaven forbid! My aunt wore weird clothes, slept a lot and didn't eat much.\" But after Elle won a slot in law school and was looking to pay for her textbooks, she sent her prom photos to a Sydney modeling agency. Suddenly she was off to New York for \"a most unusual career.\" Aptly enough, Elle magazine was her first high-profile forum. Soon came bigger fame: four covers of SI's swimsuit issue. Now comes a new chapter: film roles and this meeting of sensual minds with photographer Ritts, which is sure to make some waves back home. \"We studied old pinup photos,\" Elle says of her powwows with Ritts, \"and tried to add a little camp to the sensuality.\" A determined actress whose only previous film role was a cameo in Woody Allen's Alice, she gained 15 pounds to play Sheela in Sirens. \"Most women weren't lean in the Thirties, when Sirens takes place,\" she explains. But she melted those pounds before posing for Ritts. A Thirties look worked for the movie, but what you see on these pages was about \"creating something modern, done with a very modern body.\" She hopes the photos are both stimulating and entertaining. Nudity is not sex or art or pornography. Such judgments depend on the beholder. For Elle, the beholdee, the idea is to strip away all pretense, giving herself and her public something new to think about."]]]}]}]]]}" ssr="" client="load" opts="{"name":"TableOfContents","value":true}" await-children=""><section class="md:w-7/12"><header class="sticky top-10 z-40 border-b border-[#E0E1E1] bg-beige-200 p-3 sm:p-6 md:p-3 lg:p-6"><h2 class="pb-2 text-lg font-medium uppercase tracking-widest">Contents for this Issue:</h2><nav><ul class="flex flex-row flex-wrap gap-1.5"><li><button class="rounded-xl border px-2 py-0.5 transition-all hover:border-[rgba(128,128,128,1)] hover:bg-beige-200 sm:px-3 border-[rgba(128,128,128,1)] bg-beige-500">✓ All Articles</button></li><li><button class="rounded-xl border px-2 py-0.5 transition-all hover:border-[rgba(128,128,128,1)] hover:bg-beige-200 sm:px-3 border-[rgba(238,237,228,1)] bg-white"> Interviews</button></li><li><button class="rounded-xl border px-2 py-0.5 transition-all hover:border-[rgba(128,128,128,1)] hover:bg-beige-200 sm:px-3 border-[rgba(238,237,228,1)] bg-white"> Features</button></li><li><button class="rounded-xl border px-2 py-0.5 transition-all hover:border-[rgba(128,128,128,1)] hover:bg-beige-200 sm:px-3 border-[rgba(238,237,228,1)] bg-white"> Pictorials</button></li></ul></nav></header><ol class="p-3 !pb-12 sm:p-6 md:p-3 lg:p-6"><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/playboy-interview-ron-howard" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Interview</span><span class="italic">57-58, 60-61, 64-67, 70, 148-149</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Playboy Interview:Ron Howard</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/snow-white-redux" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">72-74, 141</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Snow White Redux</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/bunny-s-honeys" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">76-82</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Bunny's Honeys</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/how-dirty-pictures-changed-my-life" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">84, 86, 92, 147-148</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/bad-girls" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">88, 90-91</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Bad Girls</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/playboy-s-electronic-lexicon" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">94-95, 150-151</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Playboy's Electronic Lexicon</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/on-your-marks" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Pictorial</span><span class="italic">97, 99, 101-102, 104</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">On Your Marks</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/dogs-walked-plants-watered" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">108, 114, 142-146</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Dogs Walked, Plants Watered</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/20-questions-denis-leary" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Interview</span><span class="italic">117, 154-155</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">20 Questions: Denis Leary</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/playboy-s-1994-baseball-preview" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Feature</span><span class="italic">118, 120, 156-163</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Playboy's 1994 Baseball Preview</span></div></a></li><li class="group my-16 first:mt-0 last:mb-0 sm:my-12"><a href="/magazine/articles/1994/05/elle" class="flex flex-col gap-6 sm:flex-row sm:items-center md:gap-3 lg:gap-6"><div class="relative flex-shrink-0"><div class="absolute z-20 h-full w-full"><div class="flex h-full w-full items-center justify-center"><div class="magazine-sheen-left h-full w-full max-w-48"></div><div class="magazine-sheen-right h-full w-full max-w-48"></div></div></div><div class="animate-fade aspect-[250/175] w-full flex-shrink-0 object-cover shadow-md sm:w-48"></div><div class="magazine-shadow absolute left-0 top-0 z-0 h-full w-full"></div></div><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="leader font-harriet text-black/50"><span class="text-black/60">Pictorial</span><span class="italic">126, 129-130, 135</span></div><span class="font-headline text-xl text-[rgb(20,20,20)] group-hover:underline">Elle</span></div></a></li></ol></section></astro-island> </div> </main> <div class="bg-black px-5 pb-5 pt-6 text-white lg:px-10 lg:pb-14 lg:pt-8"> <div class="flex 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