Oh for goodness' sake, Grover, why're you dissing My Hero?! Yes, the pajamas are a bit over the top (of what, you ask?), but he's such a gentle and accepting man. One cannot help but engage with him, can one? He's a thoroughly Chicago institution, you know. His Cali persona's recent, and resides in minds that cannot imagine Chicago as the birthplace of All Who Are Totally Cool.
My first residing place in Chicago was on the famous Near North Side, and 'twas in a 12-story condo-rise. The entire interior we (3 collegemates and I) inherited was painted black. We wondered, at first, why we were so terribly popular with the males we'd known and newly met. 'Twas, we found out, because they could see from our livingroom window more, apparently, than we'd ourselves noticed: the Playboy Mansion's rooftop deck---and the Playmates sunning (yes, usually partially clothed). I rather enjoyed the view of Lake Michigan, m'sel'.
And to Christie Hefner, the brilliant inheritor of All The Truth That Needs Knowing---I think she's cool! Once I realized that HH's message was to Free All Humankind From Uptightness, then I relaxed and learned to love the bomb (oh, no, that's another issue---and a great film). The only HH habit that worried me was his smoking. But, then, did he actually INHALE, hmmmm....?
Well now I must gather my robe, and my entourage, about me, and retire for the night.
Best and warmest, always,
Celestial Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenneth Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2005 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: my Hugh Hefner poem
> Richard Jeffrey Newman wrote:
>
>>Important stuff you bring up, Ken. Thanks.
>>
>>Richard
>>
>>
> Since this morning, Rachel has commented on the comments, and it's
> fascinating...discerning how you can get (intellectual/poetic) fuel from
> a bunch of fossils. Amy Fisher...ye Cripes. Doesn't she write a
> newspaper column now? Colin Ferguson and his "Black Rage" defense. I
> worked with a guy 11 years ago who came from eastern Nassau County near
> the Suffolk line, and he said Long Island was a haunt of Evil. Remember
> Johnny Pius, the kid who was suffocated by neighborhood bullies who
> shoved pebbles down his throat? I could make something of my ex-wife
> coming from the North Fork, near Montauk, but let's not go there, I
> don't see a real connection. She could in her turn make something of me
> having grown up in the Bronx, another bastion of the insane and people
> waiting to go nuts.
>
> I remember the Playboy Philosophy but I have no idea whether anyone (1)
> read it, and (2) took it seriously. The idea of turning womanizing into
> an art form (seduction) isn't as weird as developing supposed ideas to
> bolster what one would do anyway. Maybe Hef wanted a whole world based
> on the pursuit of pleasure, a universe modeled on the court of Francois
> I in 16th century France. "And at the end, boys and girls, we ALL get
> to die of syphilis, won't that be a hoot?!"
>
> Picture Hef as a guest on _Sesame Street _fondling Miss Piggy. Picture
> Grover looking at the centerfold with a weirdly rapturous expression on
> his fuzzy face.
>
> Maybe this sounds like a Standard Disclaimer, but I should add anyway
> that I did not intend to mock the women themselves. Beauty is glorious,
> even if it's my sometimes outre concept of it. What I have find
> disturbing is the imagery--of taking a beautiful woman and converting
> her via filters, lighting, etc., beyond All American Girl into a Thing
> or Object. I can hear Andrea Dworkin shouting from her grave for all
> the good it did her in life. I read an interview in the late 1980s in
> _American Photographer_ with the man who did the Playmate of the Month
> photographs. His name was Pompeo Posar and he was fabulously talented.
> He had to be to get the kind of effects he achieved. He used an antique
> 8x10 Deardorff view camera with all sorts to tilts and swivels, filters,
> and exposure adjustments, and he knew that it was his job to turn
> "regular" woman, albeit beautiful as nature made them, into profane
> religious icons. "I don't want reality, I want magic." Someone said
> that Hefner's daughter is running the operation now that Hef himself a
> bit long in the fang. There's a study by itself in a woman running an
> enterprise dedicated to showcasing woman-as-thingie-do. Where, oh
> where, is Ms. Hefner's head at?
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman http://kenwolman.com http://kenwolman.blogspot.com
> --------------------------------------
> "Only silence is shame."--Bartolomeo Vanzetti
>
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