Bunnies, continued.

Commenter Anonymous reminded me that I hadn't taken note of this article on a Playboy Bunny reunion cruise, the addition of which strikes me as the only thing that could have made the Arrested Development premiere funnier than it already was. Anonymous takes the high road and avoids poking fun at the women. But your humble host feels compelled to comment here and there...

"For Diane Walton, 62, it was 'the feeling of sisterhood' she knew as a bunny that drew her to the reunion."

[This is not ridiculous. Solidarity is damn powerful. But it does make me think of Monty Python's Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.]

"Ms. Walton, tall, with flowing auburn hair, was fresh out of Berkeley in 1968, with a degree in English and a yearning for adventure, when she joined the Kansas City club on a lark. Her traditional Catholic parents, she said, 'were slightly horrified.'

[This is where a reporter not keeping a bemused distance from the whole thing might ask, "Did they say why?" Or maybe it just wasn't that kind of story.]

"They eventually softened, especially after her strong-willed Irish grandmother told them to give her a break."

["In my day, we would have been grateful to be allowed to snag a man by showing off our buxom Irish figures! But no! We had to win him at the annual Milking & Digging Faire. Only the strongest cow-milkers and potato diggers could hope to find a husband; the rest of us were bundled off to America to work as scullery maids! Beauty counted not a whit!"]

"Ms. Walton recalled her grandmother telling her, 'If I was your age in these times, I’d do the same thing.'"

[Ah, these times. So unlike all the previous times.]

“She told me the same thing years later, when I was the first in the family to get divorced,” Ms. Walton said.

[Yay divorce! You win! Because in these times, a failed marriage isn't a failure!]

"Karen Drennan, who at 17 lied about her age so she could start working as a bunny in Dallas in 1977, went on to become an actress, but quit to home-school her two sons and teach Sunday school."

[See? Sunday school! Homeschooling! Playboy Bunnies - they're exactly the same as you or me. Except we're writing an article about them because they used to wear bunny ears and cotton tails and show off their assets while slinging drinks. So actually, they're special.]

"Like many other former bunnies, she lives quietly among people who have little idea about her Playboy past. She doesn’t talk much about it, but doesn’t hide it, either. When friends of her teenage boys visit, they sometimes gawk at the sexy young bunny in the photo in the house.

[Hello? Editorial? Ending a sentence with a clunker like "in the photo in the house"? Were you distracted by the thought of a sexy young bunny?]

“Who is that?” they ask.

“Oh, that’s just my mom,” her boys will reply, a bit sheepishly.

[A bit sheepishly. How quaint.]

The friends don’t buy it.

'My boys are a little embarrassed,' Ms. Drennan said, 'and I’m a little insulted that their friends don’t really believe it’s me.'"

[...]

[Image taken from this kind of heartbreaking slideshow.]

Today in Porn, What Almost Was Edition

Via Vulture, this profile of House Bunny star Anna Faris includes this tidbit:

"The character of Shelley was Faris' own invention, obliquely inspired by the dearth of roles for middle-aged women. 'I thought, we know what happens to actresses in their 40s and 50s,' she said. 'But what happens when you're a model or a Playboy bunny and you're too old? What skills do you have?'

Faris brought the character to writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, whose 'Legally Blonde' catapulted Reese Witherspoon into the top rank of Hollywood actresses. Her original conception of Shelley was, she admits, 'much darker': a hardened drug addict returning home to her conservative small town, perhaps to her abusive father. The reaction, fortunately, was skeptical. 'When I told the writers, they were like, "Hmmm. Or she could become a house mom!"' Faris says."

Fortunately, indeed. Ex-Centerfolds with drug problems and abusive pasts? Whoever heard of such a thing? What a total downer! Better to have her teach some frumpy sorority gals about the virtues of cleavage.

Local Boy Makes Good

Over at the day job, I've got a profile of Christopher Ashley, new artistic director at the La Jolla Playhouse (site of the world premieres for hit musicals such as Jersey Boys and Thoroughly Modern Millie!). I mention it here on the personal blog because of an interesting personal note: he spent his boyhood in my hometown, which is where he caught the theater bug. Our fathers both taught at the university there. To top it off, we both played the Jester in local productions of Once Upon A Mattress What are the odds?

Today in Porn, Mad Men Edition

New York's Vulture blog, which is almost as big a fan of the show as I am, links to a Bunny-frosted, Mad Men-themed fashion shoot over at Playboy.com. Any excuse to break out those old uniforms for the ladies, eh, boys? But the really interesting point is this: in Sunday's episode, Pete rifles through a stack of stag mags at the doctor's office, left there to help him along with his semen sample. Among the titles: Nudi-Fax, International Nudistour Guide, US News & World Report (!), and his eventual selection, Jaybird USA. Notably absent: Playboy.

Holy Crap

Amy links to this story about this man, who wrote these movies, and who has now gone and written this book about his new, deep love for the Catholic Church. In particular: "Mr. Eszterhas told The Blade that despite his mixed feelings over the church and the abuse scandal, the power of the Mass trumps his doubts and misgivings. 'The Eucharist and the presence of the body and blood of Christ is, in my mind, an overwhelming experience for me. I find that Communion for me is empowering. It's almost a feeling of a kind of high.'"

Interestingly, the conversion has had an effect on his storytelling sensibility: "Mr. Eszterhas said he spent too much of his life exploring the dark side of humanity and does not want to go there anymore. He was born in Hungary during World War II, grew up in refugee camps, and then moved to the United States and lived in an impoverished neighborhood in Cleveland.
He worked as a police reporter in Cleveland and 'was always fascinated with the darkness. I covered countless shootings, urban riots, and in several situations I was there before police were because I had a police radio and used to drift around the city until something happened,' he said. But after his spiritual transformation, he said, he had had enough of death, murder, blood, and chaos. 'Frankly my life changed from the moment God entered my heart. I'm not interested in the darkness anymore,' he said. 'I've got four gorgeous boys, a wife I adore, I love being alive, and I love and enjoy every moment of my life. My view has brightened and I don't want to go back into that dark place.'"

Dept. of Bumper Stickers, Obscene Phrase Traced in the Dust on the Rear Window Edition

"F*ck Jesus! It's ok! Be happy!"

I kind of wonder what happened to make the author believe that one has to f*ck Jesus in order to be happy so fervently that it was worth writing it out in the dust with his finger.

Decline and Fall

Bus as home, mausoleum as toolshed.

Mulletman

Sixtus

On the Approach of Middle Age

W. Somerset Maugham in Vanity Fair, 1923:

"It is like any of the other necessary trials of life, such as marriage or death; you think of it vaguely as something that must be endured, but you seldom give it serious consideration until you are face to face with it...Before he knows where he is, [a man] finds himself floundering in the perilous forties. He is now that baldish, stout person whom twenty years before he jeered at when he saw him dancing, a little out of breath, with girls who might be his daughters...I had been lunching with a woman whom I had known a long time, and her niece. This was a girl of seventeen, pretty, with blue eyes and very pleasing dimples. I found it vastly agreeable to look at her, and I did my best to amuse her. She rewarded my sallies with rippling laughter. Well, after luncheon we took a taxi to go to a matinee. My old friend got in, and then her niece. But the girl sat down in the tip-up seat, leaving the empty place at the back beside her aunt for me.

"For a moment I stood rooted to the pavement. Amid the clatter of street cars and the screams of klaxons I heard the ominous tolling of a bell. It was the knell of my dead youth. In the gesture of this maiden, I discerned the civility of youth (as opposed to the rights of sex) to a gentleman no longer young. I realized that she looked upon me with the respect due to age. Respect: it is a chilling thing for a girl to give to a man...

"It is not a very pleasant thing to recognize that for the young you are no longer an equal. You belong to a different generation. For them your race is run. They can look up to you; they can admire you; but you are apart from them: for boys you are no longer a competitor, for girls you are no longer marriageable. It is only the widow of a certain age who still casts an inquisitive eye on you. You may just as well marry and have done with it."

Suffering?

"Talk to the Wounded Hand."

(My brother came up with this one. It's not intended to be taken entirely seriously.)

Add to Bookmarks.

Hulu has Metropolitan. Advantage: Internet.

Woodshed, Sunflowers, Tent, Tree

Sky and Stream

Barn and Pump

Crabapples, Blackberries

Flowers, Wild and Cultivated

Chicken 'n Garlic

Back from Red Rose Farm:

East

Headed back to the home country, and Red Rose Farm:



May blog. We'll see.

West

D'ya know, I used to write a wine column...

Oops?

Just heard a promo for Dragon Tales storybooks/coloring books/activity books/etc. It ended with, "Collect them all (or some such)...and let your child's imagination fly away."

I'm pretty sure they meant "take flight." Then again, maybe not.

Trolls

"Over a candlelit dinner of tuna sashimi, Weev asked if I would attribute his comments to Memphis Two, the handle he used to troll Kathy Sierra, a blogger. Inspired by her touchy response to online commenters, Weev said he 'dropped docs' on Sierra, posting a fabricated narrative of her career alongside her real Social Security number and address. This was part of a larger trolling campaign against Sierra, one that culminated in death threats. Weev says he has access to hundreds of thousands of Social Security numbers. About a month later, he sent me mine."

Worth reading.

Well, now...

"NFP is the same: It's the worst possible method, except for all the others."

The comments are, of course, the point here...

Paging the Wisconsin Poet

Don't you need to live on Seneca Street in Ovid, New York?

Self-Portrait