Dear Blogoriffic Reader:

We'll be taking an oh-so-brief hiatus from updating the blog until just after the new year. Until then, feel free to click on the calendar and topics at the right to check out what we've been up to. Happy holidays to all!

... Not to be confused with the Year in Sex, which is in the January issue on newsstands now. This is my top 10 sights, stories, and ... uh ... things that were sexy in some way in 2006.

Deutsch Treat: Here in the editorial offices, we'd been fans of Janine Habeck for some time. The naughty maid getup Playmate pictorial from February 2004 (shot by Florian Lohmann) got her off to a hot start, and her Playmate of the Year shoot (by Giovanni Cozzi) was another masterpiece. I wondered whether the German PMOY accolade would disqualify her from being a Playmate in the U.S. edition — not so, apparently. In case you're not familiar with Janine's German edition pictorials, here are a few links: A small gallery from the original Playmate shoot, a zoomable image from the Playmate of the Year shoot and an addictive match game from same. Wunderbar.

Britney Spears Over-share: Ugh. It makes the sexy list because it was the most egregious celebrity "accidental" nudity; the Tara Reid boob-out of 2006. Not providing a link or explaining any further.

Cherry, cherry: Rosario Dawson demonstrated her freakish tongue at a photoshoot for Petra Nemcova's book. She was also in Clerks 2, which had some amusing posters. If you were a fan of the original, maybe the shlubby mugs of Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith would entice you to see the sequel. If you didn't like or don't know the original... how about Rosario in a tight wife-beater tee and leather pants? That do anything for you?

Call 'Em Like You See 'Em: Scarlett Johansson's breasts topped InTouch magazine's list. Sure, she's a "serious" actress who will probably win Golden Globes and Oscars before all's said and done, but she's also very proud of her hooters and shows them off every chance she gets. While men's magazines like Playboy and Esquire wax rhapsodic about the overall package—the voice! the wit! the roles!—it's somehow cool that a female-friendly checkout-aisle rag can step up and say, "Chee, loookit the tits on this hoity-toity actress dame!"

"Legs" Aniston: After months in quasi-hiding following her break with Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston returned to the public eye wearing hot pants on Letterman. I thought it was cut and dried; I thought in the Jen-vs.-Angelina hypothetical my choice would be Angelina. Maybe it still would be if you're solely talking sex appeal. But Angelina would be no picnic as a girlfriend or wife. She seems a bit dramatic for my taste, what with the emphasis on human blood and tattoos. In the interview on Letterman (not included in clip), Aniston was charming and very funny even though the subject matter was awkward. What can I say—she won me over. Never thought I'd say it, but I'm a Jennifer Aniston fan now.

Adios, FHM: The lad mag that gave us Vida Guerra is folding, and we're big enough to admit they did a good thing or two over their seven-year run. Thing one being Vida—thanks, guys, she sold buttloads of our July issue. The other bold and totally sexy move I give them a thumbs-up for is putting Tera Patrick on the cover of their July issue. It was a culturally significant moment, I think, for a magazine that doesn't show nudity to lead with a porn star. It was also, in hindsight, a desperate ploy, but such is life on the newsstand. The photos were also just plain great; my experience with Tera's oeuvre is limited but I think she is a beautiful woman—and I won't even qualify that with "...for a pornstar."

It Can Be Done: There's an expression that refers to a dance move you see in a lot of hip hop videos—"booty clap." It's the talent or perhaps art of moving the waist and hips in such a way that the butt cheeks smoosh together and separate in time to the music. I had thought that "clap" was merely a visual description of the motion. I mean, no woman can actually make noise with her ass cheeks, right? Then I met rising Internet star Buffie the Body. Applause.

The Thrill of Victory: Leggy Russian Maria Sharapova won the U.S. Open. Similar to my feelings about Tera, Maria is not just beautiful "...for a tennis player." She's just beautiful. I suspect that people who still think Anna Kournikova is better-looking are smoking a lot of crack.

A Blow for Democracy: After too many years of incompetence and corruption, America breaks one-party deathlock on worst-ever legislative branch and puts seal of disapproval on worst-ever chief executive's administration. God, it gets me hot just thinking about it.

The 40-year-old Cleavage: Ten months into 2006, I was all set to give Elizabeth Hurley a make-believe award for Breasts of the Year. Everywhere she went, from red carpet to cancer fundraiser, her chest was elegantly crammed into some kind of Miracle/Wonder/Thankyoujesus bra that gave her something near perfect cleavage. I could have run a photo of Ms. Hurley's delightful decolletage on the Grapevine page every month—it was ubiquitous and always top notch. But then as October became November Salma Hayek made that cameo on Ugly Betty that made me waver in my devotion to Liz. Looking back, Hayek's body of body is equal to Hurley's. I call it a tie. Salma is 40; Liz is 41. It's the new 18, I hear.

For some of us, it wouldn’t be Christmas without the annual email from the fun-loving folks behind the Lee Atwater Invitational, reminding us that we have until midnight, December 31, to get in our entries.

The Atwater is a web-based death pool, a demented tradition that began on the web in 1996. You predict 10 famous people who you think are going die during 2007, in order of likelihood. At the end of the year, scores are tallied and the winner walks away with $2007 and a boatload of bad karma. Even your hosts admit it’s “a game of sickness and chance.”

Think it’s easy? Don’t be too sure. In years past, we’ve carefully researched the oldest, most decrepit, sickest celebrities we could find. All we accomplished, apparently, was guaranteeing even the most infirm another blissful year on the planet.

The Lee Atwater Invitational may be perfect antidote to too much holiday cheer. Besides, it’s more fun than your basic office party.

As annoying years go, 2006 was a fruitful one, with D.C., L.A., Madison Avenue and dark horse Kentwood, Louisiana accounting for much of the abundance.

10. “Hi, I’m Mark Horowitz. For seven straight days I lived in this Nissan Sentra.” Would somebody please slash his tires, pour sugar in his tank, arrest him? Something. Anything.

9. Lame ducking. You’re out, Rummy. Pack up your desk. Go. Git. And leave the stapler.

8. Momma Spears’s Driving Academy. It’s a southern thing. You wouldn’t understand.

7. $3 a gallon/12 miles to the gallon. No, but seriously. Where else will I put my groceries?  

6. Katie Couric’s foray into baking. Every day, ask yourself, “What would Cronkite do?”
 
5. “Ah, let’s make it an even nine trillion.” National debt limit? And all this time I thought it was like Amex, but with better terms.

4. Ken Lay’s bum ticker. Working all those long, stressful hours really pays off, just in unexpected ways.
 
3. The Passion of Mel Gibson. The redemption myth is alive and well.

2. Ann “Textbook Pathological Transference” Coulter. Hating yourself is one thing. Shanghaiing September 11th widows for your cruise to Psycho Island is, well, really fucked up.

1. Federline Records, Inc. He gangsta’, son. For realz.

Watch connoisseur Doron Basha, President of Milus USA, and the lovely Ana Martins, head of Ana Martins Public Relations, Inc. (Photo by Conor Hogan):

 

Let the other editors feel obliged to stick to a category. We’re going to wander. Here’s 10 things we liked about 2007.

10. Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke, and Douglas Brinkley’s book The Great Deluge. One’s a film maker, the other a historian, but both got into the muck to show in fine detail the destruction of Katrina and its terrible aftermath.

9. The second-to-last episode of Rescue Me. All the poor dysfunctional slobs who occupy the fire house were contemplating an escape, and each lacked something—the brains, the balls, whatever—to get out. A false alarm puts them at the corner of Liberty and Greenwich Streets, in front of the 6-foot high, 7,000-pound bronze triptych memorial to the fire fighters who died on 9/11. Amid the spirits of their fallen brethren, they grudgingly admit their failures, and subltly rededicate themselves to one another, and their vocation. A rare moment of authentic, inchoate emotion on episodic TV.

8. Utterly Monkey, by Nick Laird. A jolly, boozy, sexy, nasty, sarcastic rebellious romp by a young Irish novelist. Laird’s inventive use of language shows his enormous gifts as a poet.

7. Big fat books by Serious Journalists, like Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, and Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco laid bare the Bush’s administration’s pretentions, vanities, and willful ignorance. Anybody who thinks they can keep up with the news by reading Yahoo! headlines is a moron.

6. Middle age has been great to Alec Baldwin. Never quite large enough to be a convincing leading man, he has lowered his sights, and now manages to convey a wisdom and a heft that enables him to be our most convincing character actor. See him steal scenes (hilariously) in The Departed, The Good Shepherd and Running With Scissors (from Annette Bening!), while week after week being the best thing on 30 Rock. Maturity becomes him.

5. Meryl Streep. Might have made this list by virtue of her bravura summertime performance of Mother Courage in Central Park alone, but throw in her dark chocolate cookie of a performance in The Devil Wears Prada, and you see why she is unchallenged as our very greatest actress.

4. Flight 93. Paul Greengrass’s account of the 9/11 attacks, and, most especially, the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, honors all who were affected by sticking close to the facts.

3. The Sopranos. Part One of the Final Season meandered quite a bit, but where else would you see scenes like Johnny Sack’s breakdown after his daughter’s wedding, Christopher’s druggy evening at the Italian street fair, and most daring of all, the romance between the pathological, tortured Vito and his Johnny Cakes? Even when running on fumes, this remains an exciting, courageous series.

2. The Election Year. From Macaca to Mark Foley, this election year was as exciting and as improbable as any mini-series.

1. Bond. Back and better than ever. Is Daniel Craig the best Bond ever? Let’s put it this way: He’s the best actor who’s ever played Bond.

The January issue contains several well-considered letters in response to "The Basement" (October), Jonathan Littman's harrowing account of the hazing death of Matt Carrington at Chico State. Elizabeth Allan, a professor at the University of Maine, mentions that "hazing and being hazed are presented to young men as ways to prove their masculinity, to show they are strong, courageous and solidly heterosexual." Soon after we received Allan's letter, we got another from a college student that seemed to reinforce her point:

"I am a member of a fraternity at UC Santa Barbara. Your article overlooked an important point, which is that hazing has a purpose, namely to bind you together as a pledge class. While in the process of imposing humiliation, strain, physical pain, and mental endurance the pledges are placed on equal levels with each other and are able to be molded and instilled with the values and work ethic desired by the active members. The military exercises similar practices of physical pain and humiliation when they train soldiers.

They break them down physically and emotionally with the hopes of building them back up with the values and morals that almost every soldier shares. I am not justifying the actions of the Chi Taus at Chico State. But the real problem is that, unlike the military, hazing in fraternities and sororities is unregulated."

About the same time we also came across a note in Found: The Best Lost, Tossed and Forgotten Items from Around the World, which is a scrapbook of artifacts that people have found and submitted. In this case the note had been discovered outside a frat house at UC Berkeley:

"Aaron—Tonight's event was just a tradition of the house. It was not gay even though you had to pull down your pants. At least you don't have to show it to all the actives! Just your pledge master. It's meant to prove your manhood and that you are not a boy. You swear we want to see your dick! Every one has done it but none of us are gay. Aside from all this, I want you to know that I've seen some improvements out of you since you 1st pledged. Keep up the effort and have a positive attitude of things. I tell ya, it's all worth it once you have crossed. Take my word for it! Just hang in there, okay? I want you to have dinner with me when you free someday. It's a great chance for you to get to know me better and for me to answer questions you
may have, alright? Good shit little bro. A.J."

It's NOT gay, he claims, but then asks the pledge out for a dinner date! No wonder these kids get confused.

Best sitcom in the history of television: The Office. Actually, it captures everyone’s workplace so accurately, it’s almost reality TV.
Dumbest catchphrase that ended up meaning nothing: “Save the cheerleader, save the world”, from the otherwise entertaining and inventive Heroes.
Best reality show in which the losers still win: Amazing Race. Remember Dave and Mary, the coal miner and his hillbilly wife? They didn’t come close to winning anything except a big fan base, including Rosie O’Donnell, who put them on The View and quickly gave them a house, car, computer, digital camera, trips to San Diego and Disneyland and a cruise.
Best newscast: ABC World News with Charlie Gibson. He’s such an obvious choice that it’s stunning the network brass overlooked him the first time.
Best news reporter: NBC’s Chris Hansen from Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator” series. His steely confrontations with sweaty, panicky pedophiles are the squirmiest moments on TV. How long before someone decks him?
Worst show with the most strident defenders: Studio 60. Yes, Aaron Sorkin is arguably the best writer to work in TV. But it’s just a dumb, uninteresting premise.
Cheesiest, over-the-top show with the most gratuitous cameos: Las Vegas. Like a Wayne Newton performance, it’s mind-numbingly tacky and yet it works.
Best procedural crime drama: Anything produced by Jerry Bruckheimer or Dick Wolf. Since this includes CSI and Law and Order and their respective spin-offs, not to mention Cold Case, Without a Trace, and Justice, that pretty much covers the genre, except for….
Silliest procedural crime drama: Numb3rs. He solves crimes using math. What else can you say?
Best show most in danger of losing it: House, MD. Good writing, a great character, enough weird diseases to drive a hypochondriac to Xanax, but is it jumping the shark—Dr. House gets shot, Dr. House gets arrested, Dr. House ODs? They’ll ruin this one yet.

Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, was sworn in today, which means we can at long last bring a close to Donald Rumsfeld’s long, vainglorious, self-indulgent farewell tour. Though more than a month has passed since the electorate effectively and the president officially dumped the architect of Iraqi tragedy, Rumsfeld has stayed on the job, mostly to play a series of farewell engagements at which he justifies his thuggish, ineffective tenure, and receives praise from cronies like Dick Cheney, who called Rummy the "greatest Secretary of Defense’" in history. Check the stent, Dick—I don’t think enough blood is reaching your brain.

One of Rumsfeld’s final acts was to appear on the radio of Cal Thomas, the right wing Christian fundamentalist columnist. According to The Washington Post, Rumsfeld "told Thomas he hadn't given much thought about what he'd do after today's departure. Thomas invited him over to his home theater—complete with surround sound—to watch a movie.’’ Then his exchange occurred:

"I have not been in six years to the movies," Rumsfeld said.

"It'll be fun," Thomas said in the broadcast interview. "I got one for you that'd you'd really love. ... It's called 'Akeelah and the Bee.' Starbucks is involved in it. It's about a little African American girl, 11 years old, growing up in Crenshaw in L.A. Her father's been killed by some hoodie. Her brother's about to become a hoodie. And they discover that she has this great gift of spelling. ... I guarantee you I'll give you your money back if you don't love this movie. You will absolutely love this. It's got everything. There's not a white guy—the only white guy in it is the principal of the school. Everybody else is minority, everybody else gets along."

"Did you like The Sound of Music?" Rumsfeld asked.

"Of course I liked The Sound of Music," Thomas said.

"Well, so did I," Rumsfeld said. "People laugh at that."

"Well, I want to [tell] you something," Thomas said. "I stalked Julie Andrews for 40 years before I finally got her."

"Is that right?"

"On our shelf, a picture of us having tea together in New York," Thomas said."How long ago?" the defense secretary asked.

"Two years. But I . . ."

"She's showing her years," Rumsfeld observed.

When fiction writer and longtime New Yorker editor William Maxwell was asked what made a great writer, he replied, "Deprivation." I've had this on my mind a good deal lately as I've gotten to know novelist Stephen Wright. He recently reviewed Mailer's latest novel for us. If you catch the review (on stands in mid January) it should be indication enough of Wright's skill, but if you need more evidence, his most recent novel, Amalgamation Polka, won the cover of The New York Times book review, the book-review industry's gold star.

Better still, he was blurbed by Godot, I mean Thomas Pynchon. Still, the novel sold only 4,000 copies. Admittedly, the title did him no favors. But what of his other novels? All three won raves: Don Delillo called Going Native a "slasher classic"; The New York Times said of M31: A Family Romance that "long after one is finished reading it, the book glows like a strange neon sign in the reader's mind"; and The Wall Street Journal claimed that Meditations in Green "takes ones breath away." No real sales for any of these either. I'm not speaking out of school here.  Wright would tell you himself he's baffled and you'll hear in his voice he feels robbed – not once but four times. And though I can't address whatever losses or disappointments he endured before becoming a novelist, surely he had some. Has it made him a better writer?  Could be, and because life gives out hard knocks more readily than it does miracles, rewards, even flattering remarks, it's a balm to think that suffering is productive or somehow enriching.  
 
Surely choosing to make things up for a living in a non-fiction-loving time or one that is leery of accounts that do not foster order, control or watchfulness is a lonely choice. Never mind the hours one must spend alone. Nonetheless legions elect to write fiction.  Box after box of unsolicited fiction submissions arriving at our offices confirm there are no shortage of aspiring writers, and would Stephen Wright's poor sales figures deter them? Probably not.  
 
As of September of this year, we decided to stop considering unsolicited work. After 50 plus years, we had to concede we no longer had the manpower to answer the demand properly and give the material its due. All that effort and especially hope sat and sat. But will this decision by our magazine deter anyone? Probably not. For those drawn to writing fiction, odds are they know something of life's hardships and lacks and have ways to navigate them—namely by picking up a pen or turning to their keyboard. I have a few thoughts for those who are either trying to create or are struggling with a writing life—all are borrowed. One is from John Fowles who wrote, "My whole interest is in the act of writing itself." This sentiment is echoed and refined by Robert Stone who said, "You've got to get into the process. The process is liberating. The process is good. You take it word by word. You take it day by day. And you have to not worry too much."

If I were to offer these words to Stephen Wright, I'm guessing he'd be tempted to invite me to perform a sex act on myself. So this last quote from Jules Renard is for him and anyone who has produced one fine or distinctive or memorable story or book after another with no pay-off apart from the whatever possibilities are built in to the process itself. "Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none." I offer this, fully understanding it's self-incriminating and wishing it were not so, wishing Wright's books were the bestsellers they deserve to be, wishing this was a nation of more discriminating readers – hell, of readers period. I can't bend reality, but one of the advantages of good fiction writing is that it can. For me, there is enormous consolation in that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awards season is upon us, so brace yourself for more studio ads singing the praises of their Oscar-begging flicks than panties-free pictures of Britney Spears. A few of these movies are listed below, but many are not. Critics get swept up in the awards hype and often shower adoration on films few care about later (Is best-picture winner A Beautiful Mind a film you check out regularly with your pals? How about Shakespeare in Love?). Here is our list of the 10 most memorable movies from 2006 that you’ll still be watching on DVD a year from now:

 1. Casino Royale The best James Bond flick ever. Period.
 2. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Easily the most audacious, funniest movie of the year with a string of lawsuits to prove it. Very nyze!
 3. The Departed Martin Scorsese goes back to gangster-land to the joy of moviegoers everywhere.
 4. The Descent This tight British spelunking shocker about six adventure-seeking women trapped far underground with an unknown menace is the scariest movie in years.
 5. V for Vendetta Valiant vindicator V in his Guy Fawkes mask is visibly vexed about futuristic Britain’s virulent government. We’ll never forget the 5th of November or Natalie Portman’s passionate performance as Evey.
 6. For Your Consideration If you were wondering how the cast members of a buzz-worthy indie film implode once critical accolades suggest the possibility of awards and fame, check out Christopher Guest’s hilarious skewering of the Hollywood machine.
 7. Thank You for Smoking We’re still chuckling about the morally askew dinner meetings of the MOD squad (The Merchants of Death, featuring reps from the departments of alcohol, tobacco and firearms) and the gently evil brilliance of Aaron Eckhart’s turn as an unapologetic tobacco lobbyist.
 8. The Da Vinci Code So dark the con of man, but so thought-provoking is Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s mega-selling novel about Jesus’s lineage and the religious sect hell-bent on keeping the secret buried.
 9. Inland Empire It has no literal story structure, it’s shot on grainy digital film and we would need several blogs to tell you what it might be about. But David Lynch’s nightmarish look at the inner world of a struggling actress (Laura Dern) is sublime surrealism that will burrow into your subconscious…and stay there.
10. Pan's Labyrinth This haunting and heartbreaking dark fantasy is about a little girl who escapes her miserable existence shortly after the Spanish Civil War by discovering a magical world—one where she is revered as its long-lost princess. It is not only director Guillermo del Toro’s finest hour, it is a genre masterpiece.

What other 2006 flicks do you think will get heavy rotation in your DVD player? Let us know.

 

Ever notice how people throw around the word "irony" without really knowing what iet means? (They usually just mean "coincidence.") Anyway, dictionaries should just put in this story for the definition. Dare you to read this without chuckling.