Beauty and brains do not have to be mutually exclusive. Add razor-sharp wit and a dash of deadpan humor and you get Miss June: Juliette Fretté, a self-proclaimed “artist creatrix” from California who is just as stimulating to talk with as she is to gaze upon.

By day she is a painter of surreal, vaguely erotic colorful works who also writes art analyses for Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art online. By night, well, we can only dream. “How I adore written masturbation,” she says about writing her thesis “Posing for Playboy from a Feminist Perspective: How Media Images Impact Women’s Empowerment,” which she is currently expanding into a book. “The first time I worked for Playboy was for the Girls of the Pac 10 issue in 2005, followed by Special Editions and Coed of the Month in 2006. I used my thesis to sort of analyze women’s empowerment in the context of Playboy. I made a case that objectification is not necessarily a bad thing. Objectivity and subjectivity exist in the world, and it’s more about reciprocity to me. I found that it’s not horrible to be an object of beauty as long as you have a sort of mobility to be both a subject and an object. If you look at it within relationships, you change roles between the aggressor and the submissive person. My identity, our identities, can be as fluid as we wish them to be.”

For Juliette, this has meant reexamining the definition of “feminist” and tossing away the tired clichés. “In truth, a real feminist is anything but a man hater,” she says. “I am definitely a man lover. A lot more feminists are open-minded to the fact that celebrating sexuality is empowering. I’m just embracing this celebration of beauty and different manifestations of myself. I consider myself sexually liberated, but I think I still have a lot to unleash!”

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This summer, instead of reaching for a margarita or a tall glass of iced tea, grab a pickle pop. They have all the taste of real pickles, with the added benefits of being frozen and available in tube form. Sounds like they would go perfectly with hamburger ice cream and a French fry milkshake. 

Crown Royal invited Assistant Editor Rocky Rakovic to experience auto racing with the Royal treatment. He was given a pit pass, a ride in the pace car and shadowed the race’s Grand Marshal. Oh yeah, Rocky had never watched a race, doesn’t much like cars and is content on taking the subway to work. Here’s his first dispatch:

I received a call from the Crown Royal people inviting me to the Dan Lowry 400 at Richmond International Raceway. “Who is Dan Lowry?” I asked. Turns out he’s a regular guy. In the sport (I’ll call it a sport until I confirm or deny it’s “sportiness”) where advertising is king, Crown Royal bucked the trend by giving their naming rights away to a Regular Joe, or in this case: Dan. Dan Lowry won a contest in which he had to write a 50-word essay about his favorite experience with Crown Royal. To give you a feeling of how long that essay was the introductory paragraph to this post is longer. I was promised full access to the race and their cabinet of Crown—I’m in.

-I’m not a “car guy,” I don’t salivate over the new Audi or—hold on let me ask a coworker—Bugatti. I don’t feel the need for speed. I barrage the Crown Royal people with idiotic questions: ear plugs? How fast does the pace car go? Not to sound weird, but what do I wear? The answers: Yes. Fast. And khakis. I’m totally out of my element; I haven’t worn khakis since third grade.
 

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Lovely Texan model Danielle Trixie dropped by to say howdy. You may have glimpsed her in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, or on the film’s website. 

She also makes an appearance in our July issue. 

Here is a photo of Jake Long, the number one pick in 2008's NFL draft, and David Goodman, one of our photo assistants, taken at the photo the Playboy All-America Weekend last year. The photo has not been manipulated.  That’s really the size difference between the two...

By the way, Jake’s signing bonus was reported to be in the 30 million plus range. Last year at this time, he didn’t have enough money to buy me a burger.

The American Society of Magazine Editors presented their awards for excellence last Thursday evening. Stylish Playboy editors Amy Grace Loyd and A.J. Baime maintained a small carbon footprint by taking one of Manhattan’s fine crosstown buses to the gala. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners!

Playboy model, photo producer and radio host Mikki Chernoff is doing the hard part – racing all around Houston as part of an adventure challenge for charity, The Great Raise Houston.

Started by former winners of The Amazing Race, the event donates 100% of its proceeds to the Houston Food Bank and Casa de Esperanza de los Ninos, a children’s charity. Mikki and her teammate Zubi will compete against nine other teams on a series of obstacle courses and challenges around Houston from May 1st-3rd.

Like we said, that’s the tough part -- the easy part is making a donation via this online form.  

ProTraveler considers the "10 Of The Coolest Hotel Suites In The World," including, at No. 2, the Playboy Sky Villa Suite at The Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas .

As they put it: "This awesome suite features an outdoor cantilevered jacuzzi pool with glass sides, and the best view of the Las Vegas strip anywhere. There's also a media room, full bar, huge living room with fireplace, pop-up plasma TVs, glass elevator, rotating beds with ceiling mirrors above them and a fully-equipped gym. The Sky Villa suite will accommodate up to 250 people for parties. The Playboy suite is currently the most expensive hotel suite in the world, costing upwards of £20,000 [about $40,000] for one night of partying. But hey, if you get together 250 of your closest friends, and each of you chip-in £80, you can spend a night partying at the Playboy suite in Las Vegas and live like a celebrity for one night in one of the coolest hotel suites on the planet!"

This is the worst pitch I received this week:

A “mirdie” is a male girdle. It is also the nickname you will have for life, if one of your friend sees your wearing one in the locker room. That did stop the company Solidea from making a “Uomo” collection to “support, shape and tone.”

Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute, a respected one-stop shop for journalists, has named the “85 wonders of the journalism world,” including, under Story forms and shapes, the Playboy Interview. (Clark and two colleagues describe this selection, for some reason, as “whimsical,” which would apply only if we had ever interviewed Theodor Geisel.)

They are attempting to narrow down the list and invite public comment, although users must first register.

Colleagues from several international editions of Playboy visited our office this week. From left to right: Yan Ceh, editor-in-chief of Playboy France; Istvan Bus, Deputy Editor of Playboy Hungary; Olga Alekseenko, co-publisher of Playboy Russia; and Luis Guerri, editor of Playboy Argentina.

Every week, Playboy editors get pitched a slew of random items from a slew of random public relations firms. While some of these PR pitches eventually make their way into the magazine, there are plenty that never come close. Our pitch of the week? High-heeled bowling shoes from Striking Products.

This item from Jewlicious.com was news to us: “Josie Goldberg proudly declared that she will be Playboy’s first seriously pro-Israel Jewish centerfold appearing in Playboy next month.” Actually, Josie Goldberg was a Cybergirl in January, and it is not yet her destiny to be a Playmate. This was brought to our attention by Josie Goldberg, who explains, “I do come from grandparents who are Holocaust survivors, and I do support Israel. When I tested for Playmate I mentioned that if I got picked I would like the theme [of the pictorial] to be pro-Israel.”

(If you just can’t get enough of the adorable and adorably  misquotable Ms. Goldberg, be sure to tune in to Farmer Wants a Wife, premiering on the CW on April 30. As you can see from her profile, she is 52 years old, was born on an exotic island, and invented the game of tennis. “One thing I love,” she says, “is when my career wakes up and says ‘I don’t know where men are going.’” Too true!)

Charlton Heston, the iconic film star, died over the weekend. In 1983, he sat down with our David Rensin and answered 20 Questions for the August issue. With Question 11, Rensin asked Heston "What’s better than sex?’’

"Getting it right," replied Heston. "Getting it right one time. One thing about being an actor or a painter is that you never get it right—but always, MAYBE you’re going to. Sex is great. You get it right. Primarily it’s fantastic. You say, `It’s never been so good.’ But painting th Sistine Chapel or trying to write a symphony or playing Hamlet, you never fucking get it right.’’

Many of us at the company were proud to join Playboy CEO Christie Hefner at the UJA-Federation of New York’s celebration in honor of Bob Meyers, Playboy’s President of Media, at a dinner on Tuesday night at the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.

With an extensive range of social and humanitarian programs and services devoted to the poor and elderly, the UJA-Federation is one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations; Bob began volunteering for the UJA as a teenager, and now offers his expertise and leadership as a member of the board.

Congratulations to Bob and his family on this well-deserved honor.