Remember earlier this year when a public interest group indentified 935 lies that the Bush administration told to justify the Iraq war? Harry Shearer, our favorite satirist, has put them to music.
The opening paragraph presents Lil’ d (as opposed to Big D, Dallas, 35 miles to the south) as a classic Texas town as imagined by a New Yorker. Piggly-Wiggly supermarkets! Pawnshops! Football fever! Yee-Haw!
Yes we have Piggly-Wigglys, lovingly referred to as “the pig” and barely patronized. Yes, we have pawnshops. So does NYC. Yes, one of our local colleges, University of North Texas (Texas’s fourth largest university) has a football team. Last year our record was two and twelve and our home games averaged 18,000 fans. The average for other NCAA Division IA games? 46,000. Yep. We’re crazy about our football, just like Texan stereotypes should be.
Curiously, our gourmet sushi restaurant, historic home district, and “South Denton” shopping haven, complete with such bourgeois trappings as a Barnes and Noble bookstore, Starbucks and multiplex theater, went unreported.
One of the greatest collections of music-oriented art is on display in New York for the next couple of days, prior to being offered for auction on May 14th. The works, amassed by British fashion designer Peter Golding and stretching back to the 1960s heyday of the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, include uncut printer's posters, hand-colored original album-cover art, and printing plates for familiar posters such as the 1969 Haight-Ashbury Festival. The sale will take place at the Madison Avenue showroom of Bonhams.
Josh Brolin is playing George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s film about our President, which is now in production. This image of Brolin as Dubya was just released.
In honor of the primaries, we thought we'd check in with what YouTube's coughed up onto our cultural landscape lately, election-wise.
Continuing the tradition of Barack Obama's supporters being 10 times funkier than anyone else in D.C. (letalone his opponents) comes TI$A with his Vote Obama music video. His lyrics may not be the most complex ("This is real and not for play, I'm a vote Obama way"), but the video won us over with its low budget hip-hop psychedelia.
In case you thought Hillary's campaign tactics had left her with no-one to rally to her defense, know that she still has Chris Crocker in her corner. And he means business. Finally, we couldn't help but notice that John McCain seems particularly amused lately at the free ride he's gotten for the last two months. Someone might think about getting him back on his medication, though.
Friendly neighborhood Spiderman has touched down in a big way at the Library of Congress. Through an anonymous donor, the library has acquired the 24 pages of original artwork from Amazing Fantasy #15, the omnibus Marvel title that brought the wistful web slinger into the world in 1962. Drawn by the elusive, mercurial Steve Ditko and co-created by Stan Lee, visitors to the library will soon be able to study HI RES digital scans of all the pages. This is shaping up to be quite a summer for the press shy Ditko. An illustrated biography, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, by Blake Bell, is due out in July from Fantagraphic Books. We’ll be reviewing it and revealing more about Steve Ditko in the coming weeks.
We were introduced to Andrea Grant at last year’s Comic Con and this year we met up with the Canadian beauty again to find out about her two new projects: The third installment of her comic book series MINX and her new book titled THE PIN-UP POET.
Standing over six feet tall, Andrea is a prolific artist and model who is devoted to expressing herself through many different mediums. Much of what she creates reflects her views about the stereotypes and traditional roles of women in society. She says of her work, "People want to play it safe. I don’t want to create safe work. I want it to be provocative, to smash all the ridiculous ideas to pieces. Boring ideals no longer serve us culturally.”
Andrea’s poems in The Pin-Up Poet haunt, inspire and provoke. Each poem is accompanied by a photograph of Andrea shot by various photographers, including Viva Van Story and Chas Ray Krider.
Check out the video to watch Andrea speak about her new projects and to find out what she shares with one of our most popular Playmates. Photo by Chas Ray Krider
The Drambuie Pursuit is a grueling 100-mile race consisting of hiking, rafting and biking. Oh yeah—it takes place all in one day. The trail follows Bonnie Prince Charlie’s famous flight through the Scottish Highlands in 1746. This year Drambuie extended invitations to Americans and of all people, the actor Jerry O’Connell accepted Europe’s premiere iron man challenge. We wanted to know why.
PLAYBOY: Why? O’CONNELL: By no means am I a professional athlete. They reached out to me and said, “We’d like you to be on the American team. We are going to hook you up with people who will make sure that you don’t die.” There was a writers’ strike, nobody was really working and I figured that it would be a good way to get back in shape. It could be fun.
PLAYBOY: We didn’t really peg you as a thrill seeker. O’CONNELL: I’m not at all. My father once told me that fear is a good emotion because it is a sign of intelligence. I remember going skiing a couple of times and walking down the backside of a mountain. I think this could be good for me.
PLAYBOY: Any more added motivation? O’CONNELL: I am a quitter by nature. I’m somebody who likes to quit when it’s too much and by talking to you about this I now feel like I have to finish so I’m a bit worried about that. Also my brother is going to be on an opposing team and we’ll have a side bet. I’m motivated to compete under the American flag, but truly I just want to beat my brother.
It was pop culture bliss this past weekend during the third annual New York Comic-Con, which has quickly become the largest convention of its kind on the East Coast.
Looking to hobnob with your favorite comic book artist? Jonesing for an autograph from Eva Mendes and Frank Miller? Do you want to find out how to write for video games? What about sitting in on a panel with the creators of the new animated Star Wars series?
You could do all that and more, including getting up close and personal with a Playmate. Cathy St. George, Miss August 1982, was a guest at the convention and we chatted with her to find out what she’s been up to:
Check back to see more clips from the convention that include Playboy magazine cartoonist Doug Sneyd and the beautiful model and comic book writer, Andrea Grant.
We gave our intern Callie Enlow a night off, and she invested it in a good cause. Here’s her report:
Sunday night’s Night of Too Many Stars benefit, hosted by Jon Stewart and aired live on Comedy Central, parodied Jerry’s Kids telethons while raising millions for autism education. Anyone who missed the live broadcast can still stream it on Comedy Central’s web site for a limited time, or download it from iTunes. The broadcast contained most of the hilarity, but there was plenty of funny stuff happening off-camera that only those of us in the theater could see.
Remember Tina Fey’s cleavage back in our January issue? Her bit last night included having White Castle Executive Brad Phillips hold her right boob in order for White Castle to donate $100,000.00. After their main stage performance, the pair shuffled off to the phone bank, Phillips’s hand still stuck on Fey’s chest. At one point, Phillips dropped his hand while the cameras weren’t focused on them but Fey grabbed it and put it right back on. What a professional!
But this brings up a nagging question: Were the onstage celebrity phone banks real at all?
The Mets got Rickrolled yesterday. I’m glad that their front office has the same sense of humor as the Internets and will be allowing the fans to vote live. According to Mets Blog tonight during the eighth inning, they’ll play "Never Gonna Give You Up," followed by "Living on a Prayer" on Wednesday, "I’m a Believer on Thursday," "Movin’ Out" on Friday, "Sweet Caroline" on Saturday and "Build Me Up Buttercup" on Sunday.
C’mon- Bon Jovi belongs to Jersey, “I’m a Believer” was in Shrek, “Sweet Caroline” is the Red Sox song and though “Buttercup” is a perfect sing-a-long/karaoke choice, Rick Astley is classic.
By now we know that Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon. We also know that Jimmy Kimmel is fucking Ben Affleck. However, did you know that Hillary Clinton is also fucking Obama? It's true! The Internet told me! In all seriousness, this is not only an extremely well-cut clip, it's also about as true as humor gets. At this point it's getting harder to see her staying in the race as anything but a ploy to definitively and decisively fuck Obama.
A nice online documentary on Chicago-based comic book writer Jeffrey Brown is up on this site. Brown's book, Clumsy is a favorite of mine because the story and art unpacks the tight ball of angst, desperation, depression and happiness that gets rolled up in one's head in the beginnings of a relationship; refreshing to see men get this wound up over love, too. Commentary is provided by Playboy.com book reviewer, Liz Mason.
Intern Callie Enlow has been reading the paper. She is surprised by what she’s learned.
One of the greatest collections of music-oriented art is on display in New York for the next couple of days, prior to being offered for auction on May 14th. The works, amassed by British fashion designer Peter Golding and stretching back to the 1960s heyday of the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, include uncut printer's posters, hand-colored original album-cover art, and printing plates for familiar posters such as the 1969 Haight-Ashbury Festival. The sale will take place at the Madison Avenue showroom of Bonhams.
Josh Brolin is playing George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s film about our President, which is now in production. This image of Brolin as Dubya was just released. 
Friendly neighborhood Spiderman has touched down in a big way at the Library of Congress. Through an anonymous donor, the library has acquired the 24 pages of original artwork from 
We were introduced to Andrea Grant at 
We gave our intern Callie Enlow a night off, and she invested it in a good cause. Here’s her report:
A nice online documentary on Chicago-based comic book writer Jeffrey Brown is up on 