Category Archives: Hugh Hefner

08/14/2012
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Anorexia, Bulimia, Catcher in the Rye, Cosmetic Surgery, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Emily Dickinson, Helen Gurley Brown, Hugh Hefner, Marie Curie, Mouseburger, Playboy Magazine, Sarah Harmer, Sex and the Single Girl, Valley of the Dolls

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Beauty is not caused. It is.” Emily Dickinson

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GOODBYE, MOUSEBURGER

Loyal readers of this space may remember my thoughts about one Hugh M. Hefner. To refresh, I lauded him for being the leader of the 50s and 60s avant garde knocking down the weird, crushing, Victorianesque walls surrounding sex.

On the other hand, I charged Hefner with creating an equally weird, crushing model of female beauty that was responsible as much as anything for maladies like anorexia, bulimia, and boob jobs.

Hef had a female doppelganger.

Helen Gurley Brown

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Helen Gurley Brown did as much as Hefner to make sex okay some five decades ago.

Sex wasn’t invented in the 1960s, but it was transformed from a virtual criminal, borderline psychotic act.

Gurley Brown and Hef were the Mom and Dad of the rebirth of humanity’s second-most natural act.

Helen Gurley Brown died yesterday at the age of 90.

She called herself a “mouseburger” and she held high the banner for tens of millions of other mouseburgers, young women who were neither classically ravishing nor exotically gorgeous. They, too, Gurley Brown said, could be attractive, chic, and smart.

Smart, that is, in the fashion sense.

Like Hefner’s, Gurley Brown’s celebration of then-modern young women went only so far. A Playboy playmate, for instance, might have read “Catcher in the Rye” — maybe — but she had no idea what Marie Curie had accomplished.

More likely, Hef’s playmates, if anything at all, read “Valley of the Dolls.” Gurley Brown’s young women might have, too. No mouseburger, though, ever read “Catcher in the Rye.” In fact, a mouseburger’s most challenging choice in literature probably was, well, Gurley Brown’s own “Sex and the Single Girl.”

Valley Girls: Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, Patty Duke

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Cosmo cover girls were as other-worldly perfect as Hefner’s centerfolds. Both Playboy and Cosmopolitan leaned heavily on the ministrations of air-brushers to make women spectacular.

Neither a Cosmo cover girl nor a Playboy playmate was a beautiful human being — she was a spectacle.

And tens of millions of young American women have stood on their heads for the last fifty or so years to become, themselves, spectacles.

Otherworldly

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What they never realized was that despite all the meals they’d ever thrown up, all the makeup they bought and tight jeans they squeezed themselves into, despite all the lips they had plumped up with botox and all the liquid-filled plastic bags they had surgically inserted over their own mammary glands, the bodies and the faces they possessed could never be air-brushed in real life.

Gurley Brown and Hef gave men and women permission to love other people’s bodies. But both made women hate their own.

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ALMOST

The Loved One turned me on to Sarah Harmer.

Terrific singer-songwriter and, unlike Cosmo girls and playmates, her beauty — as Emily Dickinson put it — just is.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present & Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ The Universe — A Facebook community of astrophysics and astronomy geeks.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2012

◗ IU Art Museum — New exhibit: “The Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; August 14th through December 23rd; 10am-5pm

◗ People’s Park — Lunch Concert Series: Don’t Call Me Betty; 11:30am

◗ Corner of Sixth and Madison streets — Tuesday Farmers Market; 4-7pm

◗ The Venue Fine Art & Gifts — Mohammed Mahdi & Anthony Duncan demonstrate soap making; 5:30-7:30pm

◗ Unitarian Universalist Church — Audition for the Bloomington Chamber Singers; 5:30pm

◗ IU Bill Armstrong Stadium — Hoosier men’s soccer; 7pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Bloomington Mac Users Group meeting: Apple’s New Operating System; 7-8:30pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — It’s Your Money series: You’re an Adult, Now What?; 7pm

◗ First United Methodist Church — Audition for The Quarryland Men’s Chorus; 7:30pm

◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Team trivia; 8pm

ONGOING:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center —Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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04/09/2012
2 Comments
60 Minutes, CBS, Don Hewitt, Gretchen Carlson, Hugh Hefner, Hunter S. Thompson, Mike Wallace, Playboy Magazine, Rachel Maddow, TV Guide

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people — including me — would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.” — Hunter S. Thompson

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THE SERIOUS PLAYBOY

Hugh Hefner is 86 today.

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As I’ve bloviated previously in these precincts, his Playboy magazine was my doorway to the worlds of civil rights, free speech, feminism, anti-war protest, and a host of other issues that define my overall philosophy.

Oh sure, I picked up the mag for the pix — natch — but the articles caught my eye as well.

Thanks, Hugh.

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WALLACE, GOOD AND BAD

So, Mike Wallace will ask no more questions.

The old interrogator signed off forever Saturday night at the age of 93.

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Wallace had a well-earned rep as a tough-as-nails interviewer who wouldn’t stand for the bullshit dished out by pols and other reprobates. I imagine his mug has been adorning the dorm room walls of journalism school students since the 1960s.

My own feelings about him are mixed. Viewed in a vacuum, Wallace was indeed the apotheosis of the hard-hitting reporter. On the other hand, he was part of a corporate media Frankenstein’s monster called “60 Minutes,” that, for my dough, has been mightily responsible for journalism’s descent to the level of pro wrestling.

See, long ago creator and producer Don Hewitt gave these marching orders to his charges at the nascent news magazine operation: Tell me a story.

“60 Minutes” personalized its delvings into corruption, greed, malfeasances, racism, crypto-fascism, and all the rest of the -isms that underpin this holy land.

Putting a face on a story made “60 Minutes” one of the most popular and successful shows in American television history. TV Guide mag once named it number six on its list of the 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

People actually planned their Sunday evening dinners around the show. It was the number one or number two most-watched show on TV in six of its seasons on the air. It’s the longest continually-running prime time show in the history of the medium.

People, in other words, dig it.

Over its 44 years on air “60 Minutes” has brought us such story-friendly, faux dramatics as the Point-Counterpoint hiss-fest, the “gotcha” interview, hidden cameras, and interviews edited for effect rather than pure accuracy. These gimmicks may have made for compelling viewing but they quickly transformed news gathering into a Broadway production or, worse, a made-for-TV movie.

The problem with “telling a story” as opposed to a straight reporting of the news is that stories need dramatic arcs, conflict, heroes and villains. “Telling a story” must be show business.

“60 Minutes” was nothing if not show business.

And because it was so wildly successful, the vast majority of news operations in whatever media you care to mention, quickly followed suit.

“60 Minutes” was the first TV news show to actually make money for its network. Before Hewitt’s baby was born, news was considered a loss leader. The networks aired news as a way to demonstrate how serious they were, how concerned, and how righteous. Because of that news producers decades ago had a freer rein than they could possibly imagine today.

But once “60 Minutes” became a profit center for CBS, television execs decided they no longer needed to appear serious, concerned, or righteous. They only needed to cash their news advertisers’ checks.

So now, big-time corporate news has devolved into a pulp novel, a cheap romance, a 24-hour-a-day soap opera. It’s all drama and next to no content. Hell, you can pick whichever news channel you’d like to tell you just what you want to hear. And guess what — your hero always wins!

Maddow Or Carlson — Take Your Pick

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Not that Mike Wallace alone was responsible for this mess. I’ll reserve my demonization for Don Hewitt. But Wallace was an integral part of Hewitt’s monster.

Sometimes you have think twice about the company you keep.

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02/17/2012
2 Comments
Amy Winehouse, Anthony Bourdain, Boice Tomlin, Book Corner, CNN, Darrell Issa, Eric Ripert, Etta James, Foster Friess, Groucho Marx, Hugh Hefner, IDS, IU Auditorium, Monsanto, Playboy After Dark, Soma Coffee, Steve Llewellyn, Tomas "Quorthon" Forsberg, Uncategorized, Whitney Houston

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Julius Marx

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THE BOYS OF SOMA WAKE UP

Believe it or not, the hairy men who inhabit Soma Coffee occasionally can form full and complete sentences before they’ve even finished their first cups of the life-giving substance.

Videographer Steve Llewellyn told us he lucked into a ducat for the Bourdain/Ripert gabfest last night at the IU Auditorium.

Bourdain

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“I never really knew that much about him but he was hilarious. I had no idea — ‘Some guy’s talking about food, wow’,” Llewellyn says. “He had a lot to say about vegetarians. He said what you ought to do is cook bacon in front of a vegetarian. ‘Bacon is the gateway protein’.”

Tyler Ferguson (a member of the Boys of Soma Women’s Auxiliary) was at the “Good Versus Evil: An Evening with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert” show as well. “Didja hear when he mentioned Monsanto and people booed? The first person down in front who started the booing? That was me,” she said.

Ripert

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After delivering his report, Llewellyn flipped open the IDS. Computer genius and web developer Boise Tomlin couldn’t help but comment.

Noticing that the news section of the paper carried quite a few column inches of sports-related gibberish, Tomlin opined, “Look at this. This daily newspaper has an entire section dedicated to sports. Half the paper is sports. And yet they still have sports stuff in what should be the news section. That’s ridiculous.”

Amen.

Speaking of non-news news, when I clicked onto the CNN website this AM, I noticed yet another three separate stories about the death of Whitney Houston.

I’ve been holding my tongue for nearly a week now.

In fact, I bit my tongue so hard on Facebook Sunday that I’m still tasting blood.

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No more.

I was dying to say Sunday that the whole Whitney Houston mourning thing is way over the top, no?

I mean, really, when was the last time any of these people who are so all broken up over her demise actually listened to her music? And if they did listen to her music, didn’t they hear one of the most annoying hit songs ever? That is “I Will Always Love You“?

Honestly, did she not have any other way of conveying emotion in a song other than to up her voice volume to eleven?

All I knew of Whitney Houston was that she sang a lot of boring stuff white people liked and that she had a lot of trouble with substances. Ergo, her untimely death was no surprise to me. How could it have been a surprise to anyone else?

Perhaps it was the timing of her death, coming on the heels of the check-outs of Amy Winehouse and Etta James. People love the idea that things happen in threes (although they don’t — it’s really only our human need to see patterns even when there aren’t any). The Winehouse and James deaths were met with real outpourings of emotion, considering they were, well, true creative artists.

Have you seen this image floating around the interwebs these days?

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So, it’s not that I have anything against Whitney Houston. She was a terrific singer, albeit one I never cared to listen to. But my preferences aren’t the sacred arbiter of what’s art and what’s not.

No, my quibble is with the folks who are trying to elevate her to some kind of weird martyrdom.

That’s all.

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BIG MIKE’S SHELF

We’re trying a little something new down at the Book Corner these days. We’re dedicating a shelf for a week or so to each of our august literary sales drones so they can display their fave tomes.

Well, whaddya know, I’m the first vict…, er, choice. Here are my books for the week (or until somebody feels ambitious enough to put up a new shelf):

Made In America, by Bill Bryson

A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich

J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography, by Rick Geary

The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, by Theodore Gray

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson

Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character, by Richard Feynman

Read. That’s an order.

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HE-E-E-E-E-E-E-ERE’S TYLER!

Now then. Speaking of the one-of-a-kind Tyler Ferguson, she’s making big plans for the spring.

She’s got this crazy idea that she wants to produce a Bloomington-oriented TV talk show. The host, natch, would be none other than one Tyler Ferguson.

Yup.

It will be modeled after the legendary late-night talk show, “Playboy After Dark,” hosted by Hugh Hefner back in the 1960s.

Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., Anthony Newley, and your host, Hugh Hefner

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Tyler wants to call her show “Nightcap.”

She plans to tape the pilot in her living room with a live audience comprised of invited friends. The idea, according to the aspiring TV mogul, is the thing’ll be a party and throughout the evening, a lineup of guests will appear. Bloomington, Tyler reasons, is chock full of musicians, authors, poets, singers, comedians, and others. They’ll be interviewed by Tyler in the usual desk-and-couch set-up.

Ferguson already has her video director set up as well as her very own sidekick. And guess who that sidekick will be. Yep, this guy, Big Mike, president and chief executive officer of the international communications colossus, The Electron Pencil.

My Dream Job: Second Banana

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Tyler banged away on her laptop this morning, taking notes on the show idea. The idea’s been floating around in her fertile cranium for a few weeks now. She expects it to run on You Tube and hopes to be able to secure a timeslot on CATS.

This thing just might be for real. Tyler already has set up one sponsor for the show, a start-up brewery  that’ll supply the booze for the party.

Look for a late May/early June release of the pilot.

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A WOMAN’S PLACE

Apparently the ideas of women are pretty much irrelevant to the blowhard who’s running Congressional hearings on contraception, religious myth organizations, and the Obama administration’s new rules on health care coverage.

You know, it wasn’t too long ago that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was considered just another loon in the GOP’s (POG’s?) stable of putative primates in Congress. Now, he’s chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“No Girls Allowed!”

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And whaddya expect from the Party O’god? Have you caught the video of that human-impersonator on MSNBC last night who said things were so much simpler back in his day: women simply squeezed an aspirin between their knees to avoid getting pregnant.

This unindicted moral felon, a fellow named Foster Friess, doesn’t like the idea of women having sex. He’s a billionaire, so his “thoughts” carry weight in this holy land.

“Y’see, I’m Obscenely Rich And You’re Not.”

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It occurs to me that these god-groupies who are so freaked over contraception really don’t need women. Females are so troublesome, after all. So I have a solution to all their problems. Here’s a partner that won’t file a paternity suit against you or demand birth control pills or even talk back when you just want to roll over and fall asleep the way the creator intended a man to act.

(I’d have posted a picture of the product here but — here’s a shocker — I thought it might be more prudent not to. You’ll just have to click on the link.)

I propose nominating the above-mentioned product as Mrs. Republican USA for the year 2012 — and for all the years thereafter!

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11/28/2011
4 Comments
Andy Rooney, Ayn Rand, Bill Veeck, Bob Dylan, Bob Greene, Book Corner, Brooklyn Decker, Christie Hefner, David Halberstam, Hugh Hefner, Hunter S. Thompson, Jr., Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe, Paige Young, Pete Hamill, Playboy Magazine, Pornography, Viagra

The Pencil Today:

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I USED TO READ IT FOR THE ARTICLES — HONEST!

We sell Playboy at The Book Corner.

We get about five of them each month. Surprisingly, we sell them all.

One Of The Most Iconic Logos In American History

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The guys who buy them are older, natch. Why would a young guy buy a quaint magazine that shows young women in various stages of dishabile when, on the interwebs, he can find nude women of every conceivable physiologic and topographic stripe?

Internet porn has made an entire generation of males far more familiar with the exo-geography of female genitalia than the typical country doctor of the 1880s was.

Every once in a while the news will carry a report that Playboy — the company — is in some kind of financial or market distress. Or that the Hefners, pere et fille, are venturing into something new — streaming video, say — that will make the brand relevant again.

But it’ll never be relevant again.

One day, probably soon, Playboy magazine will be no more. Andy Rooney’s gone, so he won’t be able to lament its passing. And Bob Greene probably is so gun shy about any topic having to do with sex that he’ll keep a mile away from it.

Maybe someone like Pete Hamill will write Playboy’s eulogy. We’ll see.

No matter. It’ll be dead. And that’s too bad. Sort of.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with Playboy magazine throughout my life which, coincidentally, almost matches the lifespan of the mag thus far. Playboy magazine and I both came out in the 1950s. Playboy’s made a hell of a lot more money over its lifetime than I have.

This Could Be The Start Of Something Big

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One afternoon, my little pals and I found a waterlogged old Playboy behind the factories a couple of blocks north of our neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side. It had to be around 1966. That would have made us ten.

We gathered around Danny, the toughest of us and therefore our leader, as he tore through the pages, looking for — as we so charmingly put it — the naked ladies.

August, 1966

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He didn’t have to look far. The ad on the inside cover gave us that first delicious eyeful.

At that time, Winston cigarettes used the tagline, “It’s what’s up front that counts.” You could hear it all day long on TV (yup, kids, TV used to carry ads for smokes). The line ran in all Winston’s newspaper and magazine ads, too. Even in family media, the ads were an obvious double entendre.

Of course, Playboy had to lop the double off the entendre.

A chesty (what else?) gal stared out at us from the ad. She was wearing a man’s dress shirt, completely unbuttoned. Her torpedo breasts seemed to jump off the page at us.

I’m surprised one or more of us didn’t pass out.

She held in her fingers a Winston. Just beneath that shocking, riveting, blood-pressure-spurting picture of the almost-naked lady ran the tagline, “It’s what’s up front that counts.”

We literally fell to the ground laughing.

The ad was, to our pre-teen sensibilities, the single most sophisticatedly funny thing ever conceived by the human imagination. We laughed for at least five minutes over it.

Of course, we collected ourselves and got back to the serious business of searching for more naked ladies, of which we found a good deal.

We pored over that magazine like anthropologists studying the earliest hominid fossil yet found. The only difference was, anthropologists aren’t likely to gasp every few moments as they examine ancient bones.

So I won’t snow you and say I never looked at Playboy for the pictures. Good heavens, I had a three-year-long crush on Miss November, 1968, Paige Young.

Paige Young

(Note from responding paramedics: Big Mike has passed out. He should be fully recovered within minutes. He will resume typing his post at that time.)

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But looking at naked ladies got old after a few minutes (oh, all right, a couple of hours). It was then I’d turn to the articles.

People today think of Hugh Hefner as the wizened old lech who gobbles Viagras like they’re Peanut M&Ms and tries to marry giddy blondes three at a time.

Man’s Best Friend

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At one time, though, he was one of the most forward thinking people in America.

Okay, let’s try to get beyond the fact that he sowed the seeds of what is now this weird American predilection for cantaloupe-chested, impossibly thin-waisted, freakishly long-legged virtual-females.

I thumbed through a recent edition of the mag and, honestly, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss is about. I don’t know what’s more disturbing — the look of blissful dumbness on the naked ladies’ faces or their quasi-human bodies.

Brooklyn Decker Does Not Exist In Real Life, Guys

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So yes, Hugh Hefner has to answer for screwing up this holy land’s female physical ideal.

But one day, long ago, he and his mag introduced me to — or broadened my burgeoning awareness of — the concepts of civil rights, feminism, birth control, the anti-war movement, free speech, consumer protection, apartheid, the environment, and a host of other issues that define liberalism.

I could read in-depth interviews with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Marshall McLuhan, Bob Dylan, Jesse Jackson, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ayn Rand (yes, it’s important to hear the bleatings of the deranged, too).

Malcolm X

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Let’s not kid ourselves and pretend Hugh Hefner was a great man of the ages. His Playboy philosophy elevated the acquisition of consumer goods and sexual partners to something akin to religious status. A man was not a man in Playboy nation if he didn’t drive a Corvette, drink Dewar’s, and bed at least two heretofore unknown women a week.

But, to borrow a phrase from that great philosopher Bill Veeck, I prefer tarnished genius to simon-pure mediocrity any day.

As loathsome as much of Hugh Hefner’s worldview was, just as much of it was liberating and enlightening.

“Hefner was fighting that part of the Puritan ethic that condemned pleasure,” writes David Halberstam of Hefner in the book. “The Fifties.”

True enough. If nothing else, Hefner helped America shed its prudish attitude toward sex. Sadly, we’ve now developed a giggly, dopey, 10-year-old boy’s attitude toward it. I don’t know which is better.

I do know Hugh Hefner’s mag awakened the socially conscious thinker in me. Nearly five decades later, I’ve gone way beyond Playboy when it comes to contemplating the issues of the day. Now I’d hope we’d all go way beyond its plasticized, airbrushed/photoshopped, vacuous image of female beauty.

Too bad. It hasn’t happened yet.

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