Colby Campbell of Houston writes, “After graduating from high school in 2004 I moved into an apartment with friends. In our living room we had a glass-and-metal coffee table. The lower of its two shelves was filled with hundreds of Playboy magazines. We had a party one night and I thought it would be a good idea to kneel on the table while holding its metal edges. As soon as I lifted my hands, the glass tabletop shattered. My hands were sliced up but my knees hit and scattered the magazines, preventing injury. If it weren’t for Playboy I would have suffered far more serious and perhaps permanent damage. Thank you for saving me.”

Frank Brown of Lexington, Kentucky, writes: “Love Playboy, and love the blog. I have a tip on a sweet polo shirt from Attus Apparel. It’s called The Polisher and it has a pole dancer embroidered on the chest. It’s pricey but you can use the redemption code WOOT during checkout for 75 percent off your order.” Attus, which was founded in 2007, has a number of other knit shirts with edgy icons, including The Jerk (a hand giving the finger), The Hangover (a toilet), The 40 (a 40-ouncer), The Broken Heart Skateboard and The Sid (as in Vicious). Rex Vanderwoodsen (pictured at right) set the Planet Douche world record for most popped polo collars worn at the same time, at 23. He even tried running for president, but unfortunately fell short. 

As you may know we teamed up with Movember to help raise money and awareness to battle prostate cancer. How do we raise awareness? By growing (ridiculous?) mustaches throughout the month of November and when people give our upper-lip-hair funny looks, we hand them a card with data on prostate cancer. How do we raise money? Growing a mustache—or MO as they are called in Australia where this movement originated—is much less laborious (note: I did not say easier) than running a marathon or selling raffle tickets. Yep, we are accepting pledges to wear soup strainers this month. 

Throughout November/Movember we will be featuring our MO of the Day. The third in the series of many is our Associate Marketing Manager Neal Lynch.

ROCKY: Do you have a mustache icon?

NEAL: My dad used to rock a pretty mean stache throughout the '80s and most of the '90s. Recently I had a bunch of people mistake me for him, which was a great honor. Back-up icon would be a tie between Sam Elliot and Tom Selleck.

ROCKY: What look are you trying to achieve?

NEAL: Some say I look like a '70s porn star, which I don't mind. Others say I look like a child molester. So, if I had to pick, I'd probably go with the look that wouldn't land me in the clink.

ROCKY: Since you are in marketing, can you put a good spin on your stache?

NEAL: My grandfather used to own a bar called The Stadium back in the '70s. I was looking through some photos taken there and almost every dude had a stache. Back then it was a symbol of manhood, of bravado, of cojones. Over the years, the Mo has lost that stigma, but to me, it still can be a sign of masculinity, of virility, of animalistic power. It can be best described as a mullet for your face. Who doesn't love mullets? Working in marketing, it seems any offer with the word "free" seems to attract consumers, so I'd say the phrase, "Free mustache rides!" works like a charm.

ROCKY: I’ll pass, I take it that was for the ladies…

NEAL: I encourage girls to touch it and when they do, they get all giddy. It's hard to tell if they're really turned on or if they're really creeped out. Most women can't take their eyes off of it. They say I look better without one, but considering they approach me to break the ice says a lot about its influence. I definitely get more attention from the ladies.

ROCKY: Has your work-life changed since sporting the stache?

NEAL: Work production has been hindered because people can't get over how funny/different I look. I'll have a proposal that has to get out ASAP and I'm running around trying to get approvals, trying to be super- serious about deadlines, but co-workers are too engrossed with my lip fur to comply. However, it has enhanced my creative thinking -- a couple of strokes to the stache and an idea comes to me in seconds!

ROCKY: Did you ever grow facial hair before?

NEAL: I had a goatee freshman year in college (circa '98-'99) when celebs like P. Diddy, Mark McGwire and Stone Cold Steve Austin were popular. Then I went home during break and my friend said I looked like a gay pirate, and since I'm not about man booty I had to chop it off.

ROCKY: As a naturally-furry-faced guy do you feel like you have a leg-up on the competition around the office?

NEAL: Definitely, I have an all limbs-up advantage on the competish. Being hairy has its disadvantages - the trait usually ends up in the "turn-offs" section of the Centerfold's data sheet each month. Then there are times when I feel bad because co-workers are trying so hard but not reaping the results. I've offered to donate some of mine, but most have decided to go the Just for Men or Rogaine route.

ROCKY: Will you be keeping the Mo past Movember?

NEAL: I almost made a bet with a friend of mine over dinner that I would keep the Mo for the entire year. We couldn't settle on a prize, though, so most likely it will come off. Of course, if one of the Playmates were to tell me it's hot, I might have to reconsider. 

Long before there was gays in the military, there were gays in the military. That’s one of many issues explored at New York’s Roundabout Theatre’s excellent revival of David Rabe’s 1976 play "Streamers," directed by Scott Ellis. 

The play is unusual in several respects: There are no women to be found, no real love interests and not much of a war. While nominally about the Vietnam war, "Streamers" is set in a barracks in Virginia in 1965. Aside from a few references to the conflict, the only ways of dating the play are by the several copies of Playboy scattered about and the Centerfolds that adorn the lockers. (I believe I spotted Miss March 1965 Jennifer Jackson in one locker.)

The play is very well written. The language, while brutal—think Entourage but serious and for keeps—is rich and poetic in a David Mamet sort of way, except that "Streamers" predates most of Mamet’s work.

Throughout the piece, Rabe explores the relationships between straights and gays as he plays with images of violence and isolation. Streamers, for instance, are parachutes that do not open, and people are always falling out of control destined to meet violent ends. Knife images are dropped in throughout the conversation. So when fireworks erupt, the audience is somewhat prepared for it. I say somewhat because it is easily the most explosive 10 minutes of any play I have ever seen. 

The cast works well together. J.D. Williams, as Roger, a middle-class black man, is a good everyman, well, as close to an everyman as the play gets. He is straight and trying to understand the characters around him who are…out and about.

Also good is Hale Appleman as Richie, who spends the most of the play trying to convince his disbelieving friends that he is indeed gay.

And Brad Fleischer is very capable in the tough role of Billy, an upper-class, well-educated New Yorker who seems so far in the closet he’s liable to come out the other side.

The showcase role here though is Carlyle, who as played by Ato Essandoh is a scary presence almost from the moment he sets foot on stage. Carlyle is a loose cannon who gets no respect. He is a powder keg looking for a fuse, and one happens upon him in a most unexpected way.

After the white-knuckle climax, Rabe brings us down with a scene that may seem too long, but I think adds a layer of poignancy and gives the audience time to reflect on an unforgettable evening in the theater.

--Joseph Westerfield

Photo: Joan Marcus

Pictured from left: Hale Appleman, Brad Fleischer, J.D. Williams, Larry Clarke and John Sharian. 

Like everyone else in the media world, those of us at Playboy have looked at AIG and American Express with envy. “Hey, we’re suffering too,” we say. “Where’s our money?” The problem was, even we couldn’t think of a good reason for the government to write us a check.

But Megan McArdle at The Atlantic came up with a compelling argument:

“The news business is special. Without us, you wouldn't know anything. Besides, it provides millions of low-paying, insecure jobs to overeducated yuppies who are going to move back home, into your basement, if you don't do something, quick.  

“And the news business is the other industry that can, all by itself, send the real economy into a tailspin. You think you're worried about a depression now? We could make you really depressed. I'm not threatening, or anything; I'm just saying, it's a nice country you've got here. It would be a real shame if someone convinced consumers to stop buying Blu-Ray players and shift their savings into canned guns and ammunition.”

Her colleague Ross Douthat added this:

“And remember -- as a wise man once said, what's good for The Atlantic is good for America.”

If it’s good for The Atlantic, it’s even better for Playboy. At least, that’s what we think.

Jonty Powis of London writes: “Having recently acquired a few issues from the early 1960s I noted that a Party Joke in the September 2008 issue concerning a part of the body that expands 10 times had appeared previously in November 1963. This is not so remarkable—obviously good jokes get repeated over the years—but what gave me to pause was that the 1963 version depicted a college student as being sufficiently naive about sex while the more recent version had to use a sixth grader. Equally insightful are the subjects dealt with by the Advisor: in 1963 readers were worried about whether oral sex could be considered a perversion, and a woman asked about protocols for unmarried couples staying at hotels. In addition, the advertisements will make you weep—an Aston Martin DB4 for $10,500. Why not make extracts of back issues into a feature?”

We’ll go one better and give you the whole package on DVD in Playboy Cover to Cover The 1950s and the forthcoming Playboy Cover to Cover The 1960s. See playboyarchive.com.

I like to think of writer Jonathan Lethem as free – freer than most of us in his choices and attitudes -- though I imagine he’d laugh at that characterization. Some years ago, when I was editing an introduction he wrote for a New York Review Books Classic On the Yard by Malcolm Braly, he gave me a calling card which read “Go Where You Please.” It had been laminated. It’s still in my wallet some six or so years later, and I’ve come to rely on it when duty, routine, dark days gain on me. 

Jonathan is the author of seven novels, among them Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude, two short story collections, and countless essays. He’s prolific but what’s more striking is the license he takes with genre, from science fiction to noir, and how he makes it his -- alive and literary, and by literary I mean conversant in ideas and mindful of language, its possibilities, range, and rhythm. His essays cover subjects as diverse as John Wayne and Edgar Dahlberg, and he’s an active and avid music and comic-book fan. Over the last two years he wrote 10 issues of the reintroduced 70s strip Omega the Unknown and is a contributor to a series on comics in our December issue: He introduces The Epiphany, an uncomic superhero based on an image created by artist Scott Alden, and a riff on inspiration, how it comes and goes as it pleases. 

What’s more, Jonathan’s recently collaborated on an album (you see what I mean? The man’s got wind in his hair, nerves popping in his legs, air quickening in his lungs; he’s on the move) with Walter Salas-Humara of alt-country/rock-band Silos fame. Jonathan has been a Silos supporter for over two decades, and Walter will readily admit he thinks Jonathan’s Fortress of Solitude a “stone-cold masterpiece.” What Jonathan thought might be a short-lived collaboration on a few song lyrics, became I’m Not Jim: You Are All My People, an entire album of what Jonathan describes as “giddy pop songs and mournful blues that came from their own strange angle.” That angle was made stranger still by pop-music production team The Elegant Too (Philip Hernandez and Chris Maxwell) who added their own atmosphere to the album. Jonathan agreed to take the time (no small thing) to do a Q&A with us, to help us track this new collaboration – and him.

PLAYBOY: Who's Jim? Should he feel offended you are not him?

JONATHAN: Jim's a friend of Walter's -- he's shown up to at least one of our gigs -- and I'm Not Jim is some sort of unfinished film project of Jim's... The name seems suitable in that the whole project seemed defined by identity slippage: we're not the Silos, I'm not a musician, we're not a band, The Elegant Too (and our bass player, Mike DuClos) aren't Jim either; nobody knows whether we'll continue or not, and maybe the membership will change if we do.

PLAYBOY: For fans of your writing, where would you locate the overlap between the work on I Am Not Jim and your writing (the novels and stories in particular) in terms of themes -- love, the disconnect involved in love, isolation, alienation, the fantastic, music as refuge, language, inspiration, drugs, etc. The spoken word pieces are narrative-driven but also defy narrative, are about sound. 

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Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the rarest of movies: a sequel that is superior to the original. It seems that switching studios and the success of Pan’s Labyrinth opened the floodgates in visionary director Guillermo Del Toro’s imagination. He brings back Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as the red guy’s flame-throwing flame, Doug Jones and Jeffrey Tambor and immerses them in a surreal world of outlandish characters where they all try to stop the resurrection of a destructive Golden Army.

To celebrate the movie’s release on DVD and Blu-ray this week, Universal threw a devilish soiree at Hollywood’s Element where cast members like Selma Blair (pictured) and Del Toro mixed with guests and characters from the movie. The director spoke of some of the exclusive features on the Blu-ray Disc, including the ability to share favorite scenes with friends over a network and a “Comic Book Builder” that allows you to create an original Hellboy adventure by selecting still images from the movie. “We have a bunch of extras—more than you can ask,” said Del Toro. “Most people give up after a few hours, but we keep going like the Energizer Bunny.” Del Toro said the extensive extras are the best way to take a peek behind the scenes. “A lot of times you have requests from friends and family, ‘When are you going to invite me to the set?’ I tell them that it’s boring as fuck, but they don’t believe me. They think moviemaking is all champagne, caviar and whatever. It’s like carpentry, without the head injuries.”

If you want to submit questions to Del Toro about Hellboy II, the amicable director announced that he will participate in the first-ever live premiere live chat powered by BD-Live on Sunday, November 23 at 6PM PST. If you’re getting the movie on Blu-ray, click here to find out how to participate. Del Toro is one hell of a guy, so you won't want to miss it.  

There are plenty of books about athletes, but someone finally wrote a book for athletes. The tastefully titled Men With Balls: The Professional Athlete’s Handbook comes from Deadspin editor and the guy behind Kissing Suzy Kolber, Drew Magary aka Big Daddy Drew. It’s a self-help guide for athletes covering the essentials like groupies, trash talk and how not to get drafted by Utah. He humored non-athlete-staffer Rocky Rakovic’s inane questions:   

PLAYBOY: Do you mind if I call you something other than Big Daddy?


MAGARY: Please do. The first time I met another blogger, it was at a bar and he asked, “Should we call each other by our screen names?" I considered the idea for a moment, and then had a seizure. That would have been gay on about 30 different levels.



PLAYBOY: Niche markets are huge these days but aren't professional athletes an extremely small part of the pie?


MAGARY: Yes. But it's such a highly lucrative market to be in. Athletes spend money on anything. Last week, I sold Carmelo Anthony a Bloomingdale's bag for $700. It was not a bag I purchased
at Bloomingdale's, but the paper bag they put purchases in. I told him that the Big Brown Bag was the next hot designer. And the best part is, Carmelo can't snitch on me. That would be totally against his no-snitching platform. 

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Millions of people saw us on Monday Night Football, where we came up just short. It hurts how that game ended -- not even a yard away from the winning touchdown. Just talking about it is eating me up. But as Al Pacino said in Any Given Sunday, it is a game of inches.
 
Some Unleashed readers have warned me about getting distracted when I go up against Playboy's gaming girls, such as Jo Garcia, at the Super Bowl. But they'd better get ready for me, 'cause I'm going to bring my A-game!

It's been reported that the number of African-American head coaches in major college football is at its lowest total in 15 years with only four coaches. On the other hand, the biggest progress I've seen is what happened in last week's election with the Obama win. I felt really good about it -- what needed to happen, happened. It was a blessing.

Speaking of our president-elect, Mr. Obama feels we should have playoffs to determine the top college team. What do you think?
 
The Titans are 9-0 so far. What does it take to go undefeated? If I knew we wouldn't be 2-7. LOL! 

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