Spy Magazine October 1997 by Josh Gillette

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C1987 R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO.

WINSTON BOX

16mg."tar",1.1 mg. nicotine av. per cigarette by FTC method.

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.

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TENTSCONTE NTS CONTENTS CONTE^]TSCONTE^JTSCONTENTSCO[^!TE^JTSCO^ITE^ nuTMan

smapl BUI casual ^^OfF-DUTY" CELEBRmES: THEY WALK AMONG US

As recently as 15 years ago, famous people were always in one of rwo modes—publicly em bracing fame or privately fleeing it. You either saw a celebrity mugging for the cameras in a tuxe do, or you didn't see him or her at all. There was no middle way. And then, in 1982, US

magazine published a photograph ofLinda Ronstadt lounging around in jeans. Casual. Low-key. Off-duty. The public went wild. Since then, demonstrates Damon Trent,the road to true Fame

is paved with the accessories—baseball hats, sunglasses, ponyrails, etc.—of looking like you don't really enjoy being famous at all.

W EARIN G-A-S U rr-AN D-BLEEDIN G-SLIG HTLY Like Me

For more than a decade now, this magazine has succeeded in sneezing on the yogurt of the Rich and Powerful. Hooray for us. The other part of saving the world, however, is the part where you give a voice to the Wretched and Weak—and not just the ones who have access to the Rich and Powerfui's garbage, either. In this, we have been remiss. Too little, too late, we therefore present this undercover investigation by Sean Gullette into what life is like for that breed of men who is white, wears suits, but has nothing else going for it at all. Pulitzer please. Remembering Al Goldstein

In the squalid, exclusive fraternity of the 300-pound pornographer, Al Goldstein does an im pressive job of being the only John Belushi character. As fat as Larry Flynt, but seemingly proud Us!

of the fact, Goldstein rules his empire of flesh like a Caligula forced to share one pair of spandex jogging pants with his two most vile henchmen. And Mark Kramer used to work for him.

Which One Did You Get? As part of SPY'S continuing tribute to the

Xhe New YorkXimes Bookofthe Dead

The delusion that you have to explain a/l of life to a// of America every Sunday ofthe year can really suck the life out of a magazine. By Bruno Maddox and Jared Paul Stern.

way things can be one way, or they can

be the other, we've taken the liberty of publishing this month's Issue under two

different covers. Whichever one you've ended up with, we hope you're happy.

VlCTTMLESS CrIMESXHAT HURT US ALL

Why is it illegal to smoke marijuana? Invalids now do it. Filthy hippies have always done

it. If we can live with a society composed entirely of those two groups, Toby Young argues, then there's really no reason it shouldn't be legal to smoke the stuff.

Dead Men Who Could Save the World

Mankind will probably never get around to mating with monkeys, now that Louis Leakey, colossus of paieoanthropoiogy, sleeps with the fishes. By Will Self.

Cover Information: Despite at one point having contained sandwiches, the large brown paper bag on this month's cover was no picnic to work with. It was tardy, petulant, and shot up heroin between its fibers so as not to leave a mark. 2 SPY SCPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

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CONTENTSCONTENTSCOiSiTENTSCONTeiMTSC

Contributors

Wild-haired, somnolent, chiseled, discrete-looking. As long as you can write like

Jack London and are not too large for a photomat booth, then why not be a SPY contributor? Letters

Please stop sending us these things; this isn't a Jane Austen novel. Great Expectations

The seasons are changing, yes. But it doesn't mean we're all going to die! Party Poop

5<?

Celebrities say tlie darndest things! LJE-DETECTOR INTERVIEW

Internet visionary Douglas RushkofF tries to deny that he's made a career talking bilge.

A Cheap Shot at Cindy Adams Only in SPY, kids, only in SPY. "The Boys of Sweater And notes toward a "director's cut" ofsome old Tony Danza movie.

De-pulping the Juice Guys"^"^ Plus book-reviewer Janus Gottlieb whipping fatties into shape.

Following Homer

16>

How local TV news stations interpret The Odyssey. HISTORY TODAY

Magazines in cardboard boxes; the names of celebrities'children; the tributes of Patti Smith.

SPY Caller I.D.

A high-tech joyride through the wetlands of identity politics.

FUICKERS OF A WORLD THAT HAS LOST IXS WAY

TOP: Violence Is still vet7 much the norm. MIDDLE: Livestock is not being properly corralled. BOTTOM: People do not care about themselves anymore.

â&#x20AC;˘1 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

Cosmo's Bedside Editor How to get to be one of Cosmopolitan's most eligible bachelors.

Separated at Birth Plus, a letter from Andy Rooney.

SPY {ISSN 0890-1759) is published bimonthly by Spy magazine, LP, 49 East 21st Street, 11th floor, New York, NY 10010. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10010, and at additional mailing offices. Subscription rates for Spy: S18.00 for one year In the United States and Its possessions, $26.00 for one year in Canada, and $30.00 for one year foreign, prepaid in U.S.

funds(CANADA GSTNBR. R129021093). POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Spy magazine, P.O. Box 57397, Boulder, CO 80328-7397. For subscription information and customer service, call 1-800-727-9808. Copyright ÂŠ 1997 by Spy magazine, LP. All rights reserved. Spy magazine is a registered trademark. Material In this publication may not be reproduced in any form

without written permission. Permission and back-Issue requests should be sent to SPY Products, 49 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010.(Send $7.50 per issue for ly95 to present, or $12.50 per issue for older issues.) For article reprints, contact Reprint Management Services at 717-560-2001. Not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, Illustrations, or other ma terials. Printed and manufactured In the United States.

The former disc jockey and current

and the former RISC jockey and current

Sybase CEO Mitchell Kerzman...

Java Impresario, Bud Tribble of Sun?

Sybase

Sun

Sun and Sybase. An alliance founded on a series of firsts. As the first strategic partner for Sybase,Sun is the company with the most

Sybase experience.Sun is also the first company to develop a comprehensive service relationship wth Sybase to deliver the ultimate in customer satisfaction. And when Sybase develops new applications,Sun is the platform they're developed on. Which means that

you get business solutions with proven technology and optimized performance. The seamlessness ^§YBASE' between Sun and Sybase is the reason we can deliver the highest quality and best-performing products and services available. But then that's what true alliances are all about. To find out more, contact us

at www.sun.com/sepcio or www.sybase.com. THE NETWORK IS THE COMPUTER' Un,i.d S...<> .nd Oih.. «unt..... S,b....nd th.S,0...logo ore r.g......d ...dtm.'k. of

mo S.on..t.O .. b...h ... -.g «.'.d ir.dnn,„k o.spy M.ga,

4^Sun microsystems

RIBUTORSCONTRIBUTORSCONTRIBUTORSCONTRI BUTORS CONTRIBUTORS COM

JOHN P. COLMAN, president, ceo OWEN J. UPSTEIN, editor in chief

LAWRENCE W. ROSE, group publisher BRUNO MADDOX, editor ADAM LEHNER, deputy editor DAN BOVA, assistant editor

USA DEGUANTONI, asst managing editor DAVID U. ANDREWS,editor at large

ROBYN PONIES, copy editor USA MARIE GIORDANI, art director VIRGINIA M. CAHILL, assocart director JAMEY O'QUINN, photo editor

KARIN FUTANTE, photo editor KENNETH UN, digital artist LUKAS BARR, ALEX ROSS, WILL SELF,

Mark Kramer

Investigative humorist and failed pomographer, Mark Kramer {"Remembering A! Goldstein," page 46] has had his verbal installations and interventions appear in the pages of such publications as New York Magazine, Newiday, Nm York Press, The Weekly World News, National Enquirer, and The Realist. This marks his second appearance in SPY. Kramer, continuing his metajournalistic quest to afflict the comfort ed and comfort the afflicted, has gone online with his secret

history of the '80s; Dickless in Babylon: TheJoe Christ Story is being serialized in the acclaimed (by capitalization fens if no body else) journal BODY MODIFICATION EZINE (bme.FreeQ.com).

LOUIS THEROUX, contributors

ARI VOUKYDIS, CRAIG MAUSOW,

XoBY Young

JONATHAN BARRETT, CARA JOY DAVID, interns

Toby Young, who argues against the legalization of mar ijuana this month ["Ban the Bong," page 22], is a con tributing editor at Vanity Fair and writes a weekly column

VINCENT 0. MCCANN, chief financial officer DALE ROBBINS, controller

from New York for London's Evening Standard. "I was a real

RAFAEL THOMAS, accounting

sconer when I was a teenager," says Young. "I began to real

JANET LAZARUS, assoc circulation director

ize that cannabis was damaging my brain when I had diffi

ALYSON A. SCHENCK,asst circulation manager

culty recalling certain words. It wasn't as ifthese were words

AUDREY HAWKINS, circulation assistant ERIC J. BRAUNSTEIN, circulation assistant

young. And toby."

ANNA M. HERCEG, advertising manager ILYSSA SOMER, account manager KATHY CORTEZ, account manager MARY GILBERT, promotions manager JOHN STRAPP m,advertising coordinator

like schadenfreude or enteropathogenic. They were words like

Sean Gullette

Sean Gullette ["Wearing-a-Suit-and-Bleeding-Slightly, Like Me," page 40]is a freelance writer, art director, and film

ROSA FERNANDEZ, production assistant

actor. He was co-editor and co-publisher of KGB magazine

DOROTHY C. MONGIELLO, office manager

and has written for The Face and the Microsoft Network's

MINT magazine. He plays the lead role in the psychological RUSSELL JOHNS ASSOCIATES, Ltd. (800) 237-9851, classified advertising NEW YORK

49 East 21st Street, 11th floor New York, NY 10010

(212) 260-7210; fax (212) 260-7566 MIDWEST: LORRI DAY

thriller Pi. which enters the festival circuit this fell. Sick of

working for a living, Sean has planned the perfect crime, which will involve a feke film crew, the global currency mar ket, and the kidnapping ofThomas Pynchon. With his piece on the plight ofthe badly dressed bleeding man, he hopes to finally join the ranks offully Pulitzered journalists.

320 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 2300, Chicago, IL 60601

Jared Paul Stern

(312) 263-4100; fax (312) 263-4630

Former SPY culture columnist Jared Paul Stern returns

WEST COAST: MISHA ANDERSON

to the fold this month for our parody of the New York Times

Western Account Manager

Magazine ["The New York Times Book of the Dead," page

8101 Melrose Ave., Suite 202,

51]. A graduate ofBennington College, Stern is a columnist

Los Angeles, OA 90046

and contributing editor for Detour magazine, a reporter for the New York Posts "Page Six," the Sunday Netv York Post's Klieg Lights columnist, editor of Fashion Reporter maga

(213)852-9313; fax (213)852-9274

KURT ANDERSEN, GRAYDON CARTER, THOMAS L. PHILUPS, JR., founders

For subscription inquiries in the U.S., please write to SPY magazine, P.O. Box 57397, Boulder, CO 80321-7397.

zine and a regular contributor to the New York Press. New

York magazine, and Hamptons,though after this piece he in tends to devote himselffull time to a campaign to turn every remaining fiiton shop in the city into a 24-hour liquor store. "And after that," he vows,"the Fitness Centers!"

6 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

Separated at birth?

SAS Institute's Jim Goodnight, who

and Sun's Neil Knox, who believes

gives customers a vote in product

that someday everyone will vote

development.,.

by e-mail?

SAS

Institute

Sun

Sun and SAS Inslituie. Related? We might as well be. For the 7th year in a low,Sun is the open systems platform of choice for SASÂŽ software users. Together, we deliver proven applications and the most current and innovative technology this side ofanywhere. A combo that results in real business solutions,like the SAS Scalable Performance Data Serverâ&#x201E;˘. It allows customer to take full advantage ofscalable SMP architecture

in their data warehouse, and it's only available on Sun. SAS Institute and Sun also jointly staff Customer

Technolog)'Centers to give SAS software the full potential of Sun'" s)stems. So you ha\'e the ultimate products

SAS Institute Inc.

and solutions for your diverse business environment. Which is, after all, what this alliance is all about. To find

im/THE NETWORK \STHECONlPVjTER' out more,contact us atwww.sun.com/sepcio or www.sas.co: j-v

.1 1. TH. ComKjtoi J'S

or leg.tleted tml-marks Sorr M.ctosyslems.

lAc. in r^ie United Sutes end

Sun microsystems

letjersletterlettersletterslettersletterletterslet RSLETTER

From THE SPV Mailroom CRASH!BOOM! Friends, H'sthe dog days

bfthe season md this year's crop of sum mer blockbusters hasleft an indelible

mark on the minds of all of OS down here

in the mailroom.Why just the other day, Mailboy Jo took on a Malkovich/Spacey-

persona and tried to take us all hostage. He demanded $100 million as compensa tion for being forced to work under such harsh and uncomfortable conditions.

Things got a little hairy for a while, and it looked like one of us was going to haveto

pull a Bruce Wtliis-"Yippee kai-yay muthafucker"-styie rescue until someone point ed out to Jo that it wasn't the bosses

upstairs causing his distress, he simply had his trousen on backwards. Things then got supe^halry while he reveised his trouser situation, making us wish he just shot someone instead; Not exactly "the

The vexed Flies Trial by Science

Recently I came across the August issue, and I felt compelled to write you about "Experiment 1," page 35["SPYLAB," August

it is impossible for him to get a hit." This is pret ty much accepted conventional wisdom. Chad Carter

Brooklyn, NY

1997}. This topic is not to be made light of, satire, joke, or fiin...When companies "test" their products on animals,they don't duplicate

baseball thing as most probable. Sucks for you.

your method: They put concentrated products in the eyes of immobilized animals who don't

This is the 6>6>â&#x201A;Ź>'s

Not to nitpick too much, we actually hailed the

have the capacity ofproducing tears.I dare you

"The 999999s..."? What? Does that mean

to do this to your own eyes for a couple of

something? How the hell could Randall

weeks,or even days,and then report the results.

Rothenberg, as well as the entire editorial staff

For testing detergents, just get a siphon and

at Esquire, presume to get away with stupidity

force the product down your gullet. To com

as blatant as "the sentence" ("Sentence of

plete your experiments,chop your head offand send your eyeballs, your stomach, and your guts for further analysis. And don't argue with

Death," August 1997}? I have been noting the decline of Esquire in the past few years. Thank you for voicing the opinions of we, the silent,

me that magazines don't have heads, eyeballs, or guts: I thought you did.

periodical-reading masses. Sal Farvar

Angelika Kyritsis Sugarland, TX

Dorchester, MA

Good call, Angelika. After three days of Intensive eye-shampooing, an irritating tingling sensation did start to raise its ugly head. Luckily the staff of SPY is comprised solely of animatronic robot war riors. While typically peaceful, we can and will shoot lasers from our fingers if provoked...all the way to Sugarland.

tired of your high-and-mighty attacks on the publishing industry. I usually read SPY to sat

I must say that I'm beginning to get a bit

isfy my bloodlust for sleazy celebrities and sleazier governmental officials. Lately I read it to induce sleep. Get back to raising some hell! David Reilly Philadelphia, PA

Hde bf your iife''-type material, hut still, gretty excitinpMot that We have to ex

As a huge fan of The X-Files, I was thrilled to see Gillian Anderson on your cov

plain that to you! Sum'nii'' blpckburters have consumed

: yoUr thoughts as well, formerly gentle readers, as this month's correspondence seems to have been written in the voices

of stock characters from various shoot-

'em-up action flicks. For example, Josh Saitz of New York City writes to us in the

voice of the fuddy-duddy chief of police, shouting at renegade cops from behind his desk while rubbing his coffee-stained bel

ly."i don't have faith in you anymore," he states over-dramaticaliy after garbling

er [August 1997}. I found the SPYLAB to rank one notch above the TV show on the

bizarre scale. Forget about aliens, you for some reason put an egg in a glass of Coke. And any magazine that arms children with cigarette lighters is O.K. in my book. Roger Nicholls Stony Point, NY

Not to nitpick too much here, but in the in

terest ofscience I must point something out. In your "Mysterious World ofPatently Non-Existent Phenomena," you list the No. 1 most improba ble phenomenon as "in baseball, the man who makes a great defensive play to end an inning in variably being the guy up to bat first in the next." Nobody actually believes this. The correa base ball"myth" is as follows,"Ifa guy makes a stellar

defensive play,AND he leads offthe next inning, 8 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

The Good,The BaD, AND Th E Admittedly Stu pid

I thought I'd join the ranks of buffoonish, cranky letter writers you regularly and aptly taunt by writing this: Re: "The Comedy Stylings of Peter Vecsey,"[August 1997} the J.R. Rider ankle-bracelet joke was a reference to the increasingly common ankle-bracelets that the court orders offenders to wear to track

their scofflaw whereabouts. While other play ers twist their joints in "innocent" sports in juries, Rider [could whack} his three-time loser all-star anklebone into his electronic

prison shackle. This joke was actually fiinny. Jeanne Palomino New York, NY

You're right Jeanne. Once the joke was placed in your comedically able hands, our office was filled with

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A. Fiction

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LETTERS L E T T E R S !- E T T E

on about how the SPY team should

strictly adhere to rules set down hy the

L E T T E R S L E T T

Reading" section. You forgot one review:SPY

There is a benevolent almighty after all. Joy Sander

July/August 1997 by New York Snobs,6 oz.

Pasadena, CA

I noticed a little gaffe in your "Light

magazine 10 years ago. Josh's letter

Josh Harris Los Angeles, CA

does make one self-evident point, how

ever, when he states,"Your letters are as pointless as,ever." Now who are we to

S L ETT E R S L ÂŁ T T E R L E T T E R S L E T

Having been one of many Midwesterners who's been held hostage by overcast skies and

pissing rains for 17 days straight, it was a thrill argue with the chief?

Another reader, MrL Joseph A. lyibrinellij seems to fancy himself an incarnation of

to receive the August edition ofSPY in the mail. The sun even came out when I read it. Thanks

Eight hours alone in the lab? There you go citizens of Pasadena, the real reason a majority of newborns ail vaguely resemble your neighbor Joy.

"Storming Limbo" is an interesting article, but by calling himself "Voltaire" the author is spuriously placing himselfamong the millenni

for such an entertaining, enjoyable magazine.

um's elite satirists; except that the real Voltaire

Lillian Howerton

stood up for his beliefe and signed his own name.

0,James Bond's equipment expert. He

lain Ryrie

Evansville, IN

Boston, MA

writes,"I am looking for photographs,

posters, iiteiature, actual mackihes,ac

Your letter has got to be the stupidestâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;oh, sorry,

just a knee-jerk reaction. Uh...thanks.

True, true. Voltaire did sign his own name. Not his real own name, but a name, nonetheless.

cessories, props, anything that includes

tape recorders^i' Sorry, we haye hone of

Doubled Over Anthony Haden-Guest's post-Ironman ap

WWW.hu H?

the sort here, but good luck in your

pearances in your magazine will continue, I hope, as "Make Mine A Double" [August

XP>FONT COLOR ="FF0099">Internet

search. Maybe somewhere out there you'll

1997] was quite interesting and all that. But

stumble across a life as well.

why was there not even a sidebar about the surely hundreds of body doubles SPY has used

No crime-fighting force would he cpm-

on its covers over the years?

plete without a kinky, fiety femntefatale.

Gretchen Denker

San Francisco, CA

Unfoitunately the only letter We got along these lines rame from a guy. Specifically,

Edward,from decidedly unsexy Brick, New Jersey. He described some undercovr

er users every day for free!</FONT></P> <H1><A HREF="http://www.ticketsonthenet.com">CLICK HERE TO EN TER!</A></H2>

Sign us up, </B>! You guys clearly have this marketing thing nailed.

babes? "Leonard Maltin."

Skatb-Goats The Limbo Kings

course with thejr wives only when the wife

Marketing Secrets!</P> <P>Leam the secret to sending your message to 100,000 comput

</B>

Believe it or not, SPY has used the same body double throughout its 11 years of publication. The name of the curvy body behind all those beautiful

er work he did with a religjous group where the men "must engage in inter

<HTML><bodyBGCOLOR="#000000"

Leave it to Voltaire to solve the religious quandary that has tormented me for years. I too became disillusioned with the whole "soul

While I don't usually turn to your publica

tion for social help,I want to thank you for the insight on the appeal ofteen girls. I, being so un informed, always thought it was because by the

is covered entirely with a sheet, which has

at the moment of conception" theory for en

time we women reached our 20s, we have

a hole In it positioned over her vagina."

tirely different reasons than those mentioned in the insightful article, "Storming Limbo"

scrounged just enough self-esteem and indepen dence to scare the hell out ofyou. Teen Girls don't care that you're 24 and work atJack in the Box. Teen Girls don't make you talk too much about hard subjects. Teen Girls think it's cute your socks don't match. Your only requirement is to drive her around and buy her and her friends beer.

Sounds great, hut Is that a 200- Or 300thread count?

Hnally, we got a letter from a real-life

[August, 1997].

Working in isolation in an invitro fertiliza tion lab for eight hours a day left me with a lit tle too much time to ponder the nature oflife. If

warden who demanded we cease sending

tents were stirring the inmates. And with

the soul is imbued at the moment ofconception, what happens when we split a fertilized egg to create twins, triplets, and quadruplets? These poor babies have to share teething rings and col

that, dear thespiOnic readers, the illusion

lege funds; do they have to share a soul as well?

Amy Scott

of the summer hlockhuster is shattered.

Well, voila, Voltaire, your problem and mine mesh nicely. You might say it's the most

HotRodGrrl@aol.com

But do not dismay,just move on to the

elegant recycling program I can think of. All

next big movie season. Jo's already got his

those unbaptized limbo kids can be put to good use by sending their souls (do not pass

magazines to his federal prison, as its con

elf tights on, how about you?

10 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

While teen vixens might not scare you boys,they scare the fiick outta us women. We just don't look the same on roller skates.

Send letters to: Letters Editor, SPY,49 E. 21st St., nth Floor, New York, NY 10010(email: SPY MAGAZ@aoLcom). Please include

go, do not collect eternal salvation) directly

your daytime telephone number and address.

into the bodies of those needy t\vins. You see?

Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

Great

Expectat i on

H/vte ii\i a Cold Climat The demon spores of Evil are not dead.

They are frozen deep in the polar ice cap of...society SLIGHT CASE OF SEPTEM-BRRR, Occo-brrr, no? Are you cold? You look cold. OK, you don e look cold. And neither does anybody else.

It's probably just us. Nothing feels the

Wall Ave.... Studio 22...the vertiginous cab-

ride home though the canyons of the night

all^—or with a better idea of how to deal with

with a stomach of bubbles and powder...yes,

the whole situation—than a satirical magazine of the particular sort you happen to be holding. Left to their own devices, all other types of

you could say we caught that show.

magazines cling to Summer like a life-belt, and

you start to feel the chill, you should feel com

stand dawdling on the jetty at the yacht club in the treacle-light of evening, nuzzling each other's sun-lightened napes, whispering of

fortable wrapping yourself up in our pages. It's like in the epic poem "Understanding the Swedes" by the Irish poet William Higgins:

back, unobnoxious face of Evil? They've never heard of it. The chilly, stripped-pine purity of the modern bad guy? As far as they're con cerned, it doesn't even exist.

By now we assume you've heard that

Eskimos, in fact, have something like two words for snow rather than the famous

32 previously allotted them. Hot enough for you?

ping of corks...Donald Haden-Guest and Anthony Trump...the shady traders down on

changing of the seasons more acutely, after

Endless Love—long into one of this nation's moral and spiritual Decembers. The new laid-

Global Warming: The Latest

ban cesspool bubbling over with steaming oiks and weenies, dealers and wheelers...the pop

It does for us, though. We've seen how things have changed recently, how the Rich and Deplorable people have quietly put an end to the aping of B-movie Beelzebubs that was the vogue back in the '80s. Cackling when you've just made a million is out. Brapping off into the night in a big, black car is played. Even cigars are representative more of how your gypsy soul is transported by eddies of smoke and flame than of how much you like to watch things burn. Modern Evil runs cold and pure as a moun tain stream, or a bottle of Evian. It's holed up with Bill Gates in his eco-not-a-problem un

ALL WE ARE SAYING IS THAT IF

Agnetha Falzkog was Imn near here. Layering he>- voice with tree and granite. Black longship bites the tide. A nd in the morning we'll be hot-spring suicides. Pumping pine-ame biandy vomit. Coldness and Scandinavian-style purity, in other words,should scare you more than they do. It may seem like you know where you are with chilly weather and icy folk: that it's more like an absence of something than a thing that's been added, that something ftital and de monic is therefore much less likely to rear up at you. But, in fact, exactly the opjiosite sce nario obtains.

Let's make the best of the situation, shall

we? Think of us, SPY, as those polar fish, whose tails would freeze ofFif they didn't have special glands that secrete a natural, enzymat

derground compound. It throbs from the felt

ic antifreeze. Think of us as that band of sci

of Bruce Willis's Gandhi-esque-if-Ghandi-

pressed flat between Earl and Tiger Woods

entists chat lives on an outcropping of black lava in a country whose name we wrote down a few minutes ago but appear to have mislaid;

whenever they hug. Glue-like, it stops the pre-

anyway, those scientists who pipe cold water

scriptionless lenses from falling out of Tim

up from the depths of the ocean and turn it into electricity? Think of us as them. Think of us finally—and we hope you won't put addi tional emphasis on this third item just because, you know, it's third—-as "Cold as Ice," the frosty track by Foreigner that climbed to No.

had-worn-a-hat trademark black hat. It gets

Robbins's glasses. It repels stains from the cool white walls of Will Smith's minimalist moun tain retreat.

Not that we didn't enjoy that foghorn blast of Heat. We did. Real-estate moguls and

straw-haired trollops raising castles in the blood-red surf—oh yes, we were there. The ur

12 in the Billboard charts in September 1977. In the face of Cold, we're pretty cool. SEPTHMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 11

STORIES

THE

NAKED

CITY

,\/^fe<5/city Big Apples! Olme a Dozen!

only Evepywiiepe Else in me ipin, Kids, only El ack in the clays ofSinatra and Mantle, New York was special. You could dance with a showgirl, buy a hot dog after four in the afternoon, and get in a fight with some sailors—all beneath the world's tallest buildings. Recently, however, the rest ofthe

CINDY WRITES: 'A vocalist named 'The

Artist Formerly Known as Nanette Still Is" [TAFKANSI] was doing something at a place named Judy's. TAFKANSI has an agent

world has itself become pretty groovy, thus eroding the rationale for

named Stan Scottland. He came to see her

wizened Post columnist Cindy Adams to end her litany of metro minu tiae with the words, "Only in New York, kids, only in New York."

and...[his] S2,000 Dmitri coat was carried

CINDY WRITES; "Agent Peter Beilin was to meet Realtor wife Wendy Sarasohn of the Corcoran Group. At the airport, he set off the metal detector. Seems Beilin's had a hip replacement. Only in New York, kids, only

yuan...tropical and subtropical fruit trees, like banana and mango, were also badly afiwted, with the weather preventing large quantities of tropical fruits from being collected."

in New York." 4/9/97

CINDY WRITES: "Aiq^ort security always makes you turn on a computer, and this once I asked,'Why does security care what's on a screen?' They replied: "We only care if it

THE TRUTH: Not quite. One Sherwood

Moran of California has a titanium hip re placement that sets off airport metal detec tors—so often, in fact, so that he now carries

a special wallet-card from his doctor that fea

tures an X-ray of his right hip. The same goes for the novelist James A. Michener, who, de

doesn't turn on.' My luck. My fresh battery? Dead. And me, nearly, too. 1 thumped it, shook it. Nothing. People gathered. Security stared. I perspired. Forget it. The

spite being shown up by every metal detector

thing did not work. Eventually, as I pro

in this hemisphere, maintains,"The hip op

duced the receipt for this brand-new battery, they plugged it into a socket. It turned on. Only in New York, kids, only in New York." 3/28/97

eration is just a modern miracle!"

CINDY WRITES: "Last week's snowy day...this guy says; The weather's killing me. Yesterday I finally put my plants out side. The tops of my mango tree turned black and the leaves fell off. And my beau

THE TRUTH: According to the August 18, 1996,edition ofthe N«e

York Times:"At most German airports, passengers with laptop computers are

tiful Bird of Paradise now looks like my wife." Only in New York, kids,only in New

the computers are tested by the offi

York." 4/21/97

cers themselves using special elec

THE TRUTH: The following report was filed

tronic devices."

asked to turn them on. In some cases

by The Xinhua News Agency in Xinhua, China, on February 29, 1996: "The recent

The mitltlle finger In this picture does^

wave ofcold weather caused losses of3 billion

not actually belong to Cindy Adams.^

12 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

off by some carried-away fan. Only in New York, kids, only in New York." 3/27/97 THE TRUTH: Actually, on March 3, 1995, members of the University of Evansville Wind Ensemble reported their coats had been stolen while they were performing at a church in Indianapolis. There are few pure ly inner-city problems anymore.

Yel Mope ppoof Thai Bad Thloos come in iiipees... us Mets Pitching Staff Tragedies 2.) Derek Wallace:

freakish aneurysm in pitching shoulder.

1.) Pete

Harnisch:

depression, after giving up chew

3.) Jason Isrit ancient "tube

ing tobacco.

YANKEE Off-Field Clothing Tragedies

3.) Bernie Williams the brainy amphibian look.

1.) Cecil Fielder: world's first Stalinist-Gothic

topcoat.

2.) Wade Boggs: "I am the Light, the Sweater."

When they look back at Gipitalism, they will marvel longest at the "Directors Cut," that extended version ofa successful movie that, under the flag of artistic integrity and with the implicit promise of bonus nipples, manages to lure customers into watching a movie they've already seen. But is it only good movies like Blade Runner and Betty Blue that have all this unused footage? Posing as a Japanese re-

release studio, SPY asked Stan Dragoti, director of Tony Dan^a vehicle She's Out of Control, what gems his cutting-room floor might yield. SPY: Was there any unreleased footage from

People are so spoiled by television. They

She's Out of Control that maybe we could

want forward movement. Plot and forward

repackage as a special "Director's Cut" ver

movement.

sionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;any missing scenes? STAN: Um, well there was a scene that in volved, like, beautiful models.

SPY: Now what about the possibly of digi tal re-enhancement? Were there any scenes

that were either financially or physically im

thing is quite prevalent over there, where the fathers are overly protective. In fact, the exact translation in French was Ne Touche Pas

la Femine, or something like chat, which was "Don't Touch My Daughter." SPY: So Tony Danza as the father really

SPY: Uh-huh.

possible to produce at the time that we

touched a nerve with the French?

STAN: Tony Danza's girlfriend in the movie

could re-do in post-production digitally?

STAN: Um,ah, I think he might have. SPY: Great, so I can tell the executives

is a fashion coordinator. And while she's

STAN: Weil, we had a train hitting Tony's

working, he goes in to where these models are being fitted and starts to tell her how he is having tremendous problems and she, uh,

carâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which we did live. So we didn't really hinder, nothing was hindered.

that this is something you'd like to be a

SPY: That went off OK?

she tries to deny him saying,"If you do this

STAN: Yes.

Out of Control'^ STAN: Yeah, I'd like to tr>- to help the film

to her, you will really hurt her." And this is while she's pinning up these gorgeous girls. SPY: Why did you cut it out?

SPY: Do you think the re-release o(She's Out

if I could. I can't say I would have the time

ofControl could be successful over in Japan?

to get back in the editing room with the

STAN: Well, I can only tell you that it was

STAN: Ah, speed. That happens a lot.

a huge hit in France. The father/daughter

film, but I probably could give you some in teresting comments and things.

part of: the director's cut re-release ofShe's

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 13

K'2i<^JcTty^ Press Release

What in God's name were you thinking when you

BlufT-Call

SENT SPY A PRESS RELEASE FOR YOUR PRODUCT? Tom First (co-founder of Nantucket Nectars): "Go<k1 ques

tion, iinim...you want a good answer, umm...l guess there is something about your magazine that's like honest? I don't know. Like when I read your magazine 1 feel I'm getting kinda straight stuff. Whereas, with certain magazines I don't. I feel like I'm

watching a Pepsi ad or something. So, like our product, we ba sically just throw on the label and it just kinda...it 'is what it is' kinda thing."

Tom Scott(other co-founder):"I'll give you an example.

Have you ever noticed there is a naked guy jumping off the roof of our building on the back of the bottle? Well, that's something we wanted to

put on there, and the design people thought that it was ridiculous to do that. But we have a building off the end ofStraight Wharf in Nantucket and a friend ofours always jumps off naked and we wanted to put it on the bottle. It was just sincere and honest. It's a little bit quirky and funky so I guess that's why we kind of felt it mimicked what you guys are doing."—-Jonathan Bamtt

SPY has no interest in playing "the judgment game" with the various

some sort of granular min eral perpetually kicked in its face if it doesn't get its stuff together. "Being in a band in late 20th century America," according to a typically low-energy pas

books that come our way. "Oh, this book's good; oh, this book's bad." Whatever, you know? Ours, rather, is a very '90s agenda of wanting every thing to find and maintain its proper heaviness, and for this purpose alone we have retained the services ofJanus Gottlieb, the world's second-strongest man. Gottlieb, then, is not a book-ret'ieicer; he is a book pmonal-evalnator. NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING Ki

of Pablo Escobar's

foundation for fitness, but if you don't have good balance—all to gether now, people—then what have you really got? Minority art earns nary a mention. Conceptual art gets shafted too. This is the fat-free, crushed-ice, Karen Car|3enter, carrot-shake

everyone has been in trouble, Geniuses of Crack. Bulk up on re

stint as Gslumbia's

version of how American artists built a new

search, please.

terror-master,

New World of color and form to go along side the one they already lived in. Time to

TARGET WEIGHT:2 lb 5.2 oz

By Gabriel Garcia

Pi u ^

Marquez, Knopf CONTENT: This

Gabriel Garcia

Marquez

imposing account

though supple and readable with its

sage from Geniuses of Crack, o w

"was kind of like being in trouble—it seemed that

everyone had been in it at one time or another." Not

WEIGHT: 1 lb I.l oz

hook up to the intravenous protein power-

strong, sha|x'ly sentences, is still too tubby

pump, American Visions. In your face!

THE POWER OF

(by about 4 ounces) for the modern reader.

WEIGHT: 2 lb 10.3 oz

Needs to develop a much higher percentage of twitch-fiber. More gunfights and sex,

TARGET WEIGHT:3 lb 7 oz

FLOW By Charlene Belitz

please. The occasional crazy tequila sequence

GENIUSES OF CRACK

and Meg Lundstrom,! Harmony Books

wouldn't go amiss either.

By Jeff Gomez, Scribner

CONTENT: What

WEIGHT: 1 lb 6.9 oz

CONTENT; This book

we have here is

TARGET WEIGHT: Kb 3 oz

is about an indie rock tract and then enters

clmpter after chap ter ofa philosophy the Japanese had

a world "they don't quite get." What it really is, however, according to the calipers, is an under

tence approximately one millennium ago. This book, ifyou can call it a book, is as flabby as a thin book can be.

developed, 95 pound,

Should really be a postcard.

Am erican

band that signs a con AMERICAN VISIONS

By Robert Hughes, Knopf The Epic

CONTENT:/l/w/iaw Visions

is written in a loose, opin

',05 ARTi r.^'-AuflRicA'

ionated style and deals lithely with the broad sweep of mainstream American art. It's a decent

14 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

ROBERT HUGHES

boiled down to a sen

Gen X weakling that

WEIGHT:15.5 oz

seems destined to have

TARGET WEIGHT:.03 oz

ALOG 1 .800-624.2020

E-MAI L : BACCOBOOT@AOL.COI

roiiowing Toni a Human Beiny, Join'Chucli Sea" " E

Is he

Forevery big TV movie,there's a related item on thelocal news broadcasts thatfollow it;and there's notiiing wrong with tiiat. After two hours of watching one woman's struggle with flesh-eating baaeria, a chart of hard stats on the disease can really round out an evening's

viewing. But what if the big TV movie is about something less neu's-y? NBC's glitzy version of Homer's Odyssey, for instance, had local news stations scrambling for a zie-m.—Jonalhan Bamtl STATION: WBAL-TV, Baltimore

STATION: WHDH-TV,Boston

NEWS "ODYSSEY": "Future Odysseys" WHAT IT WAS: A visit to a laboratory in vestigating the medicinal potential of tiny, sea-born organisms.

NEWS "ODYSSEY": "Urban Odysseys" WHAT IT WAS: A debunking of "urban myths."

HOMERIC PARALLEL:"The scientists were

legends out there that get passed by word

suggesting, in effect, that we all take— much like Odysseus himself—a journey to the sea, to find our way to the future." Joe Buckley, producer

of mouth or through the Internet that

HOMERIC PARALLEL: "There are urban

aten't true. It's the alligator in the sewer system, or it's the Kentucky Fried Chicken-type thing, or now it's whether someone will steal your kidneys." Cliff Cohen, producer

ture of the Beast

No. Ill: The Don An Ongoing Guide to the Animal Kingdom's Power Puyers "As the owner of two male dogs who were 'altered' in their first year, I can tes

tify that my own dogs, at least, are com

pletely 'interesting' and far from docile. STATION: KARE-TV, Minneapolis NEWS "ODYSSEY": "The Odyssey in the Jungle" WHAT IT WAS: Cosmetics giant Aveda, scouting for hair-care products in Africa.

ing: do dogs become 'others,' estranged from some notional true nature, when they undergo surgery to prevent reproduction? ...|T]hese passions run high. Anyone who

But I find the word 'altered' itself intrigu

HOMERIC PARALLEL: "This is a rare kind

remembers the bad old days of antifeminist

ofwilderness. Not appealing to everyone. But

rhetoric (and, indeed, the bad new days as

if there ever was a conclusion all the world

well) might well recall the ultimate putdown for a powerful woman: 'castrating bitch'—from DogLoveby Marjorie Garber,

could agree on, it's that this place is remote." Rick Kupchella, producer and reporter

crossover Harvard academic.

STATION: WVIT-TV, Hartford, Conn.

NEWS "ODYSSEY": "Mystic Odyssey" WHAT IT WAS: A man teaches kids about

sea exploration in Mystic, Connecticut.

MtFiiceiiiesipaDge

STATION: WSAV-TV, Huntington, Va. NEWS "ODYSSEY": "The Mary Ingles

HOMERIC PARALLEL: "Many of you watched the Odyssey tonight—the epic story

2 RELATED KINDS OF QDDNESS,

of the adventures of Odysseus. The only

PRIED APART ONCE AND FDR ALL

Odyssey"

thing to rival his fantastic journey is one be

WHAT IT WAS: Story of woman who es

ing taken right now by a Connecticut man."

caped from Indians and fled across West Virginia 200 years ago.

Lisa Carberg, reporter and anchor

HOMERIC PARALLEL:"Putnam County is

STATION: WNBC-TV, New York NEWS "ODYSSEY": "A South American Odyssey"

quiet now and peaceful now—but every

September it comes alive {with people camping]...Mary Ingles could only have

been so lucky to find such encampments along her journey...especially when you consider she resorted to meals consisting ofgrubworms and beetles." Tim Irr, reporter

16 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

WHAT IT WAS: Anchor Chuck Scarborough visits Chile to find out about the country, particularly its innovative pension plan, HOMERIC PARALLEL:"Chile, the land of mountains and llama..."

Chuck Scarborough, anchor

QUIRKY

OFFBEAT

•Robin

•Batman

•Bjork

•Beck

•Jugglers

•Ventriloquists

•Carrot Top •Twitching

•Gallagher

•Stuttering

•Charles Manson

•Brian Wilson

•Elvira

•The Snapple Lady

•homicide

•regicide

•Fargo

•Fitzcaraldo

•The Loch Ness Monster •Nastase

•The Faceless Nun of Abercrombie •Lendl

History Today

Time Keeps on silppin', siippin', siippin'... The Wacky Celebrity-Kid Name ^400 BC

The magazine That Comes in

The Incomprehensible Path

A Cardboard Box

Smith Tribute

-►1294

King Minos names son "Androgeos." 6TH CENTURY AD

King Clovis names son "Clothair."

.SEPTEMBER 1971

Birth of Media, a "general

"When I was bad twice

interest" CD-

times/[Mama] pushed

ROM "maga zine," with

me in a hole/And cut

"shades of

off all my fingers and laid them in a finger

Wired's sharp wit and

bowl."—from a tribute to Sam

Robert the Strong names son "Odo."

humor."

Shepard and Bob Neuwirth, in Creem.

1585

FALL 1994

Playwright William Shakespeare

Birth of Blender, a CD-ROM

names son "Hamnet," like the play only slightly

magazine. "We really think people like to buy things. They still love to

different.

go to record stores and bring back

. 9TH CFMTIJRY AH

.JUNE 1975

"I woke up and the room was gone...and the DJ cut in and said that Jim Morrison was dead...

albums, and to magazine stands and

Ducks with musical notes

bring back magazines. It's something Clunky writer Herman Melville names son "Stanwix."

etched in their little wax

tangible; it's about owning and

skulls were revolving on the ceil

collecting."

ing."—from "Jukebox CruciFix," a tribute to dead performers.

1851

SUMMER 1995

General Tito, leader of Yugoslavia,

Birth of MagZ, a video maga

names son "Zarco."

zine for musicians. "Wouldn't it be nice to have a consultant

, 1979 "The plot of our life sweats In the

1968

from the world's coolest music

dark like a face/The mystery

Frank Zappa names son and daughter "Dweezil" and "Moon

store do a demo on a Howard

of childbirth, of childhood

Dumble?"

itself."—from "Dancin'

Barefoot," a tribute to Jay Dee Daugherty.

Unit."

MagZ dies.

1974

.1992

David Bowie names

son "Zowie" (later changed to

SPRIMG 1995

"Sooner stick his dick up the baby

Birth of Static, an audio-cassette

doll's ass/Shove pins in the heads of

"Joey").

"magazine." "A mix between All Things Considered and MTV."

innocents/Bad seed with a

, 1976

golden spleen/Ha ha."— from a poem in tribute to Arthur Rimbaud.

Sylvester Stallone

names son "Sage Moonblood."

Static dies. DFCEMBER 1992

, 1988 Bruce Willis and Demi Moore christen

MARCH 1996

"So I stand...looking at my

Media dies.

long dove-colored coat. I have always loved a good coat, and my pre

daughter "Rumer." HFCEMBER 1996

1221

Willis and Moore

produce daughter

Fairways, The Golf Video Magazine, is born. "Includes local golf pros

.SPRING 1997

Blender dies.

name next child

, MAY 1997 "Oh Allen, Allen Ginsberg/Oh, see what you have done/See see Allen/See what you have

Willis and Moore "Tallulah."

of a vent can carry me away."—from a tribute to Andy Warhol, others.

. < actually playing local courses!"

"Scout," and in... 1994

occupation with a sleeve or the detail

SUMMER 1997

Fairways dies.

done."—from an ode to Allen Ginsberg.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 17

SPY Caller I.D.

f/i Imagine^ briefly, that you are expecting a call from either Richard Simmons,the evil,sexless fitness guru, or Russell Simmons, luncher ofsupermodels and founder ofDefJam records, but when the call finally comes through,all you hear is a friendly, anonymous grunt on the other end of the line? Which one ofthe Simnwmes is it? Will lunchtime find you prodding seared tuna around your plate at a glassfronted Manhattan eatery, or stomping up and down like a trained elephant who happens to be wearing a TJMaxx sweatsuit? Are you about to learn more about "loving your tummy," or about intellectual copyright as it pertains to The Fugees? Protect yourself from this Shrodingerian nightmare by keeping this handy "Caller I.D." chart next to the phone. You can thank us later. Did you build your empire — with bearded

Are you driven by a

^ vision of big people

Do your fans have

^ trouble getting

trouble losing flab?

cabs?

groovin'?

Rick Rubin?

Are you "on the list" at every club —

a lisp that's really

Are you strangely fat, given what you

quite pronounced?

do for a living?

come through your shorts when you

Have you ever visited a 700-pound

visited Slick Rick

dance to "More

man stuck in his

in jail?

Than a Feelin'" by

bedroom?

downtown?

Are you strangely popular with super models, given what you look like?

Are your private thoughts and feel ings an influence

on your artists?

Have you ever

Boston?

Have you ever gone clubbing with

David Bowie's wife,

Is your dream to

Is your dream a

Iman?

cure cellulite and

new cell-phone that

chubby little

eliminate fear ?

—

woman?

Do you spend your days "sweatin' honeys"?

Do you spend your days "Sweatin' to the Oldies"?

your ear?

Is the modern epi demic of anorexia

nervosa in young women necessarily

a bacfthing?

Rus-sell! 'Sup, my man! What? You're

having lunch with

18 spy SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

^ you can just glue to

Why Richard, thanks so much for calling.

Amber Valletta? Why,

Yes, I'm doing fine:

that's just terrific! What's that? You're

sweatin'...tonin'...the whole enchilada! I am

heading into a tunnel? Alight, then. Bye.

still fat, yes. Thanks

for asking.

Vj/^o/city Men Overboard

Cosmopolitan'% "All About Men" issue called them their "101 Sexiest, Smartest, Funniest,

Most Passionate, Ready-to-Commit Men for You to Woo, Cuddle, Love,(and possibly) Marry." When we caught up with them, chough, the main thing these hunks seemed to

have in common was either knowing Cosmo co-editor Bartie Gillies or knowing someone who knew her. Oh yeah, that and a real aversion to Cosmo women.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;-Jonathan Barrett

Dan Isaacson: TV Reporter, Milwaukee, WI BARRIE BOND: His grandmother met a friend of Barrie's and suggested him for the issue.

WOOABILITY:"America is full of desperate, lonely women and they all wrote me!"

Mark Unruh: Mechanic, Lakeside, MT BARRIE BOND; A friend of Mark's friend

was in tight with Barrie.

WOOABILITY: "Ninety-nine percent of[the women

who wrote me]were 52", 250 Ihs., with three kids. They were tundra pigs. Most of them [were] poor as church mice, you Imow.Jhe whole problem is anyone who is

going to write f> someonefrom a magazine is hard up."

Paul NOCNE: Personal Trainer, Somerset, NJ BARRIE BOND; His neighbor, a freelance writer, is friends with Barrie.

WOOABILITY: "The women who wrote to me,I would say, were unrealistic in their expectation that I would go out with them. I mean,I train people. I'm not looking for another project."

Jay niBAPP: Lawyer, Brookline, MA BARRIE nblD: Old college buddies with ^rrie's brother, Rob.

WOOABILITY: "This ne\g^'s been calling

me, and I can't shake herTi^tn^t have^e heart to hit her over the head with a hamme

but these bitches are crazy. They're whacked.

ARtmreJ'ARTiE THE Party"

These fuckin' broads are whacked!"

DONOV/A: stock Trader, New York, NY

BARRIE B^^p: According to a friend:

"The issue wabupposed to be 100

Larry Waschka: Investment

Bachelors, but^bbie [Gillies] got Barrie

Adviser, Little Rock, AR

to open it up to 101. He's in there for

BARRIE BOND: He went out on a

some salvation."

blind date with Barrie.

WOOABILITY:"The letters were all the

WOOABILITY: "There sure are a lot

same. It was good for some easy laughs."

of lonely women out there."

Gary M. Morgan: Trainer for Computer

Robert Paul Armgnd Bacon:

Software, North Canton, OH

Tackle Company Executive,S/jre/eport, LA

BARRIE BOND: Friends with Barrie and Robert Paul

BARRIE BOND: Set up the date between Waschka and Barrie

Armond Bacon.

WOOABIUTY:"I got a lot of calls from drunk women in the

WOOABILITY:"One girl became a stalker. I'm like, holy

middle of the night. It Just goes to show what some women will

shit this girl's psycho, I mean,just a loon. It's like, who are the people clutching onto this magazine?"

do to meet somebody."

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 19

mmi ai bipid? (^legm, P-H-L-E-G-M, Phlegm

Tootling professional

...and professional Italian

Branford Marsalis...

Tony Danza?

King of All Media Howard

...and Son of God David

Stern...

Koresh?

Integrity Watcli

eit actt Âťr iriici

Ria isii. ri latif Xii

Lukas Barr

Spy Magazine 49 E. 21st St. NY, NY 10010 One Hundred and One Dalmatians Gi\enn Close.

...and 100-year-old-ish come dy sensation Phyllis Diller?

Dear Mr. Barr,

For what purpose would I submit to a lie detector test? Would it make me rich or famous? Win me friends I don't have? Make me

thinner, younger and smarter? Why would 1 spend my time doing that for an organization 1 don't work for? I hold these petty opinions in my heart that my brain wishes were not there. I don't know how a polygraph machine would read my answers to questions about these things. An honest response on Big, Queen Latifah...

...and Uttle Richard

my part might offend some people and I don't give dishonest an swers so I prefer not to be put in the

Penniman?

Sincerely,(but check that)

Andrew A. Rooney

Curvy Sports Illustrated supermodel Tyra Banks...

20 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

...and an alien?

aiuH riuKflKioN ^Diced TUM that lust woN't sta>id for the status quo.

VICTIMLESS

CRIMES

HURT

THAT

Ban the Bong

ALL

Why pot should stay

ILLEGAL, THOUGH IT MAY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A BLAKEIAN LOVE-GOD TO ARGUE OTHERWISE. By Toby Young

erhaps I ought to begin by admitting that I'm a complete hyp ocrite. I'm writing an anti-marijuana piece, and yet I've smoked

As a recovering reefer addict, I must con fess to being a member of that tiny minori ty for whom marijuana use was not medical.

sire to be governed by people who spend the

sent at the opening ofSan Francisco's Cannabis

Insomnia, anxiety, depression, stress, headaches? It certainly gave me all of those. As for recovering lost memories.,.sorry, what was that again? 1 won't go as far as saying it actively damaged my health, but it com pletely decimated my record collection. I mean that quite literally. About six months after discovering the dreaded weed, I traded in my entire collection of Beatles LPs for the soundtrack album of The Harder They Come.

small hours of Sunday morning loitering around Dupont Circle, looking for dealers.

Cultivators Club, Dennis Peron's "medical

(OK, it's not a bad album, but it was still a

Clinton eats enough cheese puffs as it is. Imagine how out of shape he'd be if he had to contend with regular attacks ofthe munchies. I generally feel more comfortable in the

ditions for which California doctors can now

dope in the past and,given my lack of willpower, I'll probably do so again. Soon. There, I said it. I can now no longer run for president, become a Supreme Court Justice, or join the CIA. I think the fact that I am now excluded

have all been touted as medicine. Earlier this

from public life is perfectly just. I have no de

year, a reporter for The Netv Republic was pre

knowledge char t he Supreme Court Justices do not smoke hash pipes when weighing the con stitutionality of a lower court's decision.

Admittedly, if this rule were strictly en forced, half the people in public life would have to resign (alright then, a quarter). But

marijuana" clinic. She discovered that the con

legitimately prescribe pot include AIDS,can cer, epilepsy, sciatica, "eye problems," insom

nia, anxiety, depression, "stress management," headaches, impotence, "writer's cramp" and "recovering lost memories."

Battling terminal liver cancer? Fire up a doo-

has been a concerted effort re

cently by various old hippies to

place this issue back on the polit ical agenda, prompted by the suc cessful passage of Proposition 215 in California last November. Thanks to the efforts of men like

Dennis Peron, a convicted dope dealer

and

self-confessed

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers addict, it is now legal to smoke marijuana

the

state of

California with the approval or recommendation of a doctor.

Don't be fooled by the pretense that California's "Medical Marijuana Initiative" is about helping the sick. At one time or

another morphine, laudanum, co caine, nicotine, alcohol, and LSD 22 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

IT DIDN'T DO MUCH FOR MY

personal hygiene either. Have you ever come within 10 feet of a bicycle messenger? I smelt

like that. Being English, my teeth are far from my best feature, but not bothering to clean

bie. Facing an outbreak of KS lesions? Take a

them didn't help, particularly after consum ing two bags offish and chips, three Mars bars,

bong hit. To quote Peron,"1 believe 90 percent

and a bottle of Lucozade. In The New Republic

to 100 percent of marijuana use is medical."

article, the teeth of the reefer addicts loitering

hypocrisy is surely preferable to legalizing the devil weed. There

poor trade.)

around the San Francisco dope "Aiumiric

clinic are described as "brown and

rotted with smoke, the color of

dead flowers, and covered by a slimy

film." Dennis

Peron

shouldn't have been handing out marijuana. He should have been

handing out Scope. My sense of humor suffered

even more than my teeth. As a preteen, 1 had remarkably sophisticat

ed taste in comedy and patiently worked my way through tlie entire oeuvre of such comic geniuses as Laurel and Hardy and Abbot and Costello. But the moment I be

came a dope fiend, I thought the most hilarious thing on television

was Starsky and Hutch, followed

closely by the racing results. i When you're hanging out with :

your friends doing bong hits, you '

think you're with the funniest guys in the

galize a widespread form ofcriminal activity of

world, but try hanging out with a bunch of stoners when you're straight and see how fun ny they are then. Quoting entire scenes from

lessen the contact ofotherwise law-abiding cit izens with the criminal underclass, but is that

Withna d' and I may be funny once, perhaps even twice, but a dozen times? It's as though

shady characters on street corners whispering

they've retreated back into the world ofchild hood where, to quote Freud, we had no need of humor to make us feel happy.

The fact is, smoking dope makes you lethargic and apathetic. It undermines your ability to take exercise, such as standing up

course it will reduce crime. O.K., it would

really a net social gain? I'd rather tolerate a few

fuzzy" capitalism? Ben and Jerry are bad

Mario Bros. 3- The apartments of reefer ad

enough. Actually, come to think of it, if pot were legal, Ben and Jerry would probably be

One of the most common arguments for

booze. Quite apart from the damage alcohol does to your liver, it can also result in the

death of innocent people,such as the victims of drunken driving. The only thing a pot head is likely to murder after a night of heavy partying is a tub of Cherry Garcia. There are several things wrong with this argument. For one thing, it assumes that al cohol and marijuana are mutually exclusive. "Some people drink, I get a buzz off this," the red-eyed dope fiend will tell you if you

try to engage him in a debate between puffs. But isn't that a can of Red Stripe in your

other hand, pal? Given a choice between be ing driven home by Keith Richards and Senator Edward Kennedy, I'll take my chances with Teddy. EVEN IF WE CONFINE OUR-

health above mental agility. Alcohol may de

stroy one of your vital organs, but it doesn't make you think Stonehenge is evidence of ex traterrestrial life. It may make you maudlin, violent, and depressed, but it doesn't turn your

brain to guacamole. Booze has killed offsome ofthe greatest writers of this century—F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Malcolm Lowry—but it didn't prevent them from cre

women. And Dr. Cutler tested it in 1994 on 38

heterosexual men in an 8-week, double-

blind, placebo-controlled study. Results? 74% of the 10X users reported Increased romantic attention from women. The

placebo users were not so "lucky".

Cutler packs heavyweight credentials: Ph.D. from Penn; post-doctoral work at Stanford In behavioral endocrinology; author of 6 books, over 30 scientific

papers and the pheromone chapter In an

and no one else? Aren't we born with an in

upcoming medical

alienable right to listen to reggae, pierce our tongues, and cultivate nose hair? That the state should protect people from themselves is anathema to many people—and downright un-American to boot. Surely individuals are the best judges of what is and isn't in their

textbook for

physicians. Her

was repor ted in TIME

(12/1/86);

Double-Blind

^HOWED 10X#ORK^

NEWSWEEK

/1/12/87); and a front

page story in

the WASHINGTON POST newspaper (11/18/86).

being spent on making it as difficult as possi ble for me to indulge my desire for a drug that

came from across the room and said, 'Hi!

1 just wanted to meet you and introduce myself!'". Another, on his wife's response: "She seemed to giggle more,

will reduce my bedroom to "a hellish pit fiill

be receptive to anything romantic." But,

of paper, and flecks of tobacco," to quote

Dr. Cutler cautions, 10X cannot be

Martin Amis.

guaranteed to work for every man.

Perhaps the best argument for keeping pot illegal is the Dutch. In Amsterdam,dope is to

/Uthough not a substitute for good looks or good manners, Cutler's Athena Pheromone 10X"" can increase your total pheromone

all intents and purposes legal, with cute little

power to get women's romantic attention.

coffee shops—the Starbucks of Europe—sell ing a variety of exotic-sounding brands like "Afghan Black," "Thai Stick" and "Moroccan

An unscented cosmetic, not an aphrodisiac, 10X vlals of 1/6 oz., added to 2-3 oz of your

Red."(The same people who will boycott con

months. Patent Pending.

aftershave or cologne should last 4 to 6

sumer products because of the conditions in Third World sweatshops will happily puff

Sea, and Under the Volcano. The only literature

Vietnam look like Microsoft.) The upshot is

I can imagine to have been inspired by

that a whole generation of Dutch people have grown up riding bicycles, listening to New

A more utilitarian argument is that legal

human

pheromones

Reports from two users who are definitely in the additive's 74% "success group": "1 was like a magnet...Thls one blonde

away at "Nepalese Temple Balls," even though most pot factories make Nike's plant in

izing pot would reduce crime. But if you le

1986

co-discovery

best interest?

Well no, actually, they're not. Beyond a grubby instinct for self-preservation most peo ple are completely incapable of pursuing their own interests, particularly when their brains are fried on hemp. As my own worst enemy,I have an inalienable right to be protected from myself. I have no objection to my tax dollars

1986

attention users get from

the first pot millionaires. Hash Cookies and Cream anyone? Moroccan Road? For some people such considerations are irrelevant. It's a straightforward case of Natural Justice. Why should anyone be pun ished for doing something that harms them

ating The Great Gatsby^ The Old Man and the cannabis is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao ofPooh.

her

human pheromones into

of sad little bits of cardboard, twisted pieces selves to fiver damage the argument is still weak since it depends on ranking physical

"bottled"

an aftershave additive that MnJK increases romantic S-^3?

ine the first pot millionaire holding forth on

less you count getting to the end of Super

legalizing cannabis is that alcohol isn't against the law so why should pot be? After all, dope's comparatively harmless next to

now

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Can you imag the merits of his particular brand of"warm and

dead and things that should be dead are growing. Just look in the refrigerator.

Biologist Winnifred Cutler has

epidemic ofStarbucks-like stores selling every different kind of marijuana, alongside the "VHI Book Club" abridged version of

when you pee. It saps all your ambition, un

dicts are characterized by squalor and ne glect. Things that should be growing are

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MEN

WHO

COULD

SAVE

THE

WORLD

The Galileo of Hot Monkey I_ov tz. Revivin g Leakey, paleoanthropologist. by

Louis

Will Self

setting worthy of the most verdant, Gaian fantasy: a forest

brachiate with the orangutans in the Sarawak region of Indonesia.

clearing dappled with sunlight. In and out of the shadows

Leakey chose women to undertake these delicate, long-term observations of great apes

move the partly furred forms,forms of indescribable beauty.

in the wild because anthropoid apes can dis

tinguish between male and female humans,

They touch one another with a peculiar intensity and intimacy,

and are inclined to respond more aggressively to the former. He also believed that women

and they couple publicly with joyful, social abandonment. Sated by sun and sex they recline in hispid huddles, lazily picking parasites and dagcails out of each other's pubic pelts. This, I venture to suggest, is the proper way forward for the human race. Instead of re lentlessly pursuing the dubious benefits of the Moloch of technology, which has already gift ed us global environmental devastation and the Third World, we should gnash our canines and pant-hoot to the skies our profound sense of loss. For we have lost, irretrievably. Dr. Louis Leakey, a man whose grasp on the par lous condition ofthe human race was second to

no one's. Leakey's research into the ori gins of humanity shows us a way for ward: devolution, rather than evolution.

Through the perverse method of in terspecific mating, I believe we can re gain our Golden Age. Modern mass society makes us strangers in our own strange land. We cannot touch one an other, or reach out to one another, be cause our very organizing principle is a denial and a distressing of our essential physicality. Only by rediscovering the

der. Possessed ofgreat charm and charisma, he was able to spellbind popular audiences in di rect proportion to the irritation his showman ship gave the academic establishment. AS IFTHATWASNT ENOUGH,in the twilight of his career Leakey launched the three major, longitudinal studies of primate behavior that have become the bedrocks ofour

modem understanding of the great apes. He sent Jane Goodall to Tanzania to study chim panzees, Dian Fossey to study the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and Birute Galdikas to

had greater patience and ability to record de tail than men; but perhaps more important, he himself conformed in every way to the no tion of an "alpha male." Really, these three

young women were kind ofsubordinate wives for him, and he made his moves on them all, with greater or lesser success.

Fossey was the only one of Leakey's three

ape graces that he actually managed to climb onboard; the others loved him platonically but found his distinctly simian body hard to take. Is it impossible to imagine that it was this brief liaison with Leakey that led directly ro Fossey's later—alleged—involvement with the objects of her field study? Yes, it's true—ru mor has it that some of those gorillas in the mist were, as far as Fossey was con cerned, obscure objects of desire. She had a particularly close relationship with a juvenile male she dubbed 'Digit'— telling that. And it was after Digit was killed by poachers that Fossey went doolally and embarked on the feuding that led to her murder.

But I say—why not? It's a well

known but clandestine fact among pri mate keepers in the major zoos that re

ape within ourselves can we escape this

lationships of an unhealthy proximity

sorrowful vise.

often develop out of the mere fact of

Dr. Louis Leakey (1903-1972) was the Kenyan-bom (but of British descent)

their charges' propinquity. There's a kind of love thang chat goes on between

paleoanthropologist who really zapped

apes and humans. Hell, you could ask Fay Wray what it feels like to have that whole-body palmar sensation, caressed by Kong's calluses ...mmm!

the study of human origins into the global consciousness with his discoveries of antediluvian human remains in

Kenya. But Leakey was no dry, earthsifting field researcher, he was also a bril

liant pedagogue, a linguist, a chronic womanizer and wassailer of the first or

24 Spy SEPTEMBER/CKITOBER 1997

I WOULD LIKE TO PROPOSE A

two-pronged approach to the problems

of environmental disaster, global pan-

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern demic, and world famine. On the one tine, an intensive genetic engineering project designed to make it possible for humans and chim panzees to mate productively: on the other prong, a drive to improve and refine our in terspecific communication skills. Once these

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objectives have been achieved we can begin to mate humans with wild populations ofapes in Your Fntnoal Insbtulion

order to devolve the human race.

NBms Hwe

If Leakey were alive today I'm convinced i:o u soQ&oac ;>ooo>L5

that is what he'd be doing: lobbying govern ments, multinationals, and wealthy individu als for funds—just as he did when alive. But

INSECT CHECKS (Roaches. Flies. Ants & Beetles)

the money would be used to teach the willing, procreative vanguard to sign with chim panzees...and how to seduce them. Then,

Leakey would lead the first teams of interspe cific argonauts into the bush. Sex with wild chimpanzees would be amazingly exciting and demanding. They're estimated to be between

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four and six times as strong as us, and they like

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their sex hard and fast. Human males wanting to get laid would have to be able to assert themselves in the dominance hierarchy, whilst human females would need to become accus MICHELANGELO (4 Designs)

tomed to receiving anything up to 20 "cover ings" within the hour.

Vii«nLirA«Q Dt.e5i>Mr

It sounds a tad rough—but exciting for our jaded palates. And just think how much happier we're all going to be when, after gen erations of intersj^ecific sex, we've become the found link. We'll be lithe and powerful! We'll

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be able to swing through the trees! People who are Biblically minded always talk of"the Fall' and they're right about this much: it's when we made the mistake of dropping from that last bough and heading off across the savan-

S«tu.2A

nali that our problems really got going. If we boink our way back into chimpunity—and we better get going as there are only 200,000

chimpanzees left in the wild—we will solve the problems of humanity.

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manity are mediated by a relentless drive to

improve technology and hence standards of living. But by devolving we'll remove all of these pressures. A reintegrated "chimpuman" would require far fewer natural resources, and possessed of the best attributes of both our species, I'm convinced that he/she would be a cuddly, community-minded parent with an unusual turn ofspeed. The only real objections

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Napalm,anthrax, and Agent Orange? I don't think so. No, we would do well to look treewards for our salvation, just one leap,a bound, and we'll be up there.

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■WHtUTY" iCOEBRnY' and yes,

rOBER iy97

ONE morning in JULY oF 1990,a compact female American megastar set off for a jouncing morning jog among the heaths and flower beds of historic Hyde Park in London, England. The residents of chat gloomy nation have always had a problem with the toothy radiance of American stars, the camera-tonguing hamminess with which they deport themselves, as if there were a movie camera pointed at them from dawn till bedtime. On this particular summer morning, however, that could hardly have been less

the walker of

of a problem.

IDENTICAL dogs

For to look at the woman...well, there was hardly anything to look at. Her yellow hair

k,'

was vacuumed back into a ponytail. She wore a grungy sweatshirt. The brim of a baseball hat obscured in shadow those of her features that had managed to crawl clear ofa big, black

pair ofsunglasses. If anything, the woman—and yes, it was the global nude singing sensa tion Madonna Ciccone—appeared to be the soul of anonymity. Therein, in fact, lay the

M 3-uce Spiungoteen

problem. For while there was clearly evidence that she was trying not to be recognized. Madonna had chosen to jog, surrounded by nine burly bodyguards, out of her hotel's front

hAUj 0? I'AHSR:

(Vill Snlth

OTHER eZPOHEETS:

Shav.x Kenp,

hISTORY: Hanging out v.'ith a dog

io a gioat •.vay to look like you

door into full view of the waiting paparazzi. And then, the next day, she did it again. And

aie trying to avoid the spot

then again.

light. It aendu the nebaage ttoti' ■

Was this a legitimate attempt to keep a low-profile? wondered a somewhat scandal ized English press. How inconspicuous did she think a flock of muscled Floridians with day glo tans, jogging two inches from one another in a tight diamond formation, with a

valuer the conpany of entities

nondescript morsel of blondness floating between them, was going to be? Or was this—the press speculated—in fact a complex and never-before-seen piece of i&me-niaximizing strategy? Was Madonna trying to make herself more famous by titillat ing the public with details—such as her compulsive exercise habit—of her private exis tence? Could this be in fact nothing less than the European debut of a new and ghastly

there ii aome part of you that

that don't care about your Fame. IiOiit the technique prove too ef fective, however, and you get Eiotaken for a non-celebrity, it maker sense to hang out 'with a

paiy of dogs: preferably large, preferably pedigree, and prefer- . ..

affectation into which tens of thousands of American celebrities were in the process of

ably with rone tiny variation in '

buying wholesale?

personalities for you to talk

To be honest, this possibility didn't occur to anybody. None of the English commen

tators actually speculated that they might be witnessing the European debut of a fescinating, and fiiscinatingly appalling artifact of late 20th century media-culture known as the "Off-Duty" Celebrity. If they had, however, they would have been exactly right.

about in interviews. ("Actually, they're not identical. Binky has a sensitive side; it s Ainky who really wears the pants in that relationship.

Kiotorical prece

the actual bIRTH ofthe "Off-Duty" Celebrity can be pinpointed to a sin

dents include RadOi., Lord of the Underworld who hung out with Cerberus, the three-headed Round

gle day in 1982.

of Hell.

Prior to this date, all the way back to the beginning of time in fact, you always knew

where you were with the famous. Kings and warriors, the only celebrities there were for thousands of years, refused to observe a distinction between public and private. If a queen pissed a king off in the boudoir, he had her beheaded in a public arena. If the king lost a game of cards in a bar, he'd make the winner a duke or something. According to the an cient theory of the Body Politic, in fact, the king was the whole country. If the king broke his arm,there might theoretically be a famine. Ifa region revolted, the king could get a rash. Even after Hollywood introduced the world to famous people who weren't responsi ble for at least 20,000 deaths, celebrities who weren't actually on a film set, or engaged in

doing whatever they were famous for doing, handled their downtime in one of two ways. Either they appeared in public and remained in character—smoking moodily if they were Humphrey Bogart, blowing kisses to everyone if they were Marilyn Monroe—or you didn t

doe

^ child duilne an inter

view. "'Hey, April. This is

April. April, hi honey!' Sandra Bullock slaps her leg, leading

April-10 quivering pounds of

gargoyle-faced, bull—cheated, stick-logged Boston terrier-to vault onto her lap....Just be

fore April (who belongs to the film's storyboard artist; skit tered into her office, Bullock .had been making it clear that

'the Speed sequel will be her

see them at all; they were at home doing private stuff.

But Linda Ronstadt changed all that. Within years, the world,seen from space, would be atwinkle with prescriptionless eyeglasses, its surface stippled with the crowns of base

ball caps, its sharp edges grayed and softened by the acreage of UVM sweatshirts worn by celebrities on trips to the supermarket, but on a Wednesday morning in 1982, there was only Linda Ronstadt, the rosy-cheeked queen of Country Rock, mooching across

rEliATED bliHAVIORS: 3orxoKing a,

last film, for a while." Solline Stone, June «;5, 1997*

•Other practitioners: Tim Bobbins, i David Duchovny, Iticole Eidman,

Ton Hanks, Julia Roberts, -a.7.

pages

of VS magazine in jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual rhinestone jumpsuit. She was SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 27

jusc, like, going to a rehearsal or something," recalls Michael Musto, strange-haired gossip man for the Village Voice and former US staffer, "and she had that off-duty kind of look. Nowadays you wouldn't think twice about seeing Meg Ryan in a T-shirt and glasses, but back then there was an outrage:'How could a star go out looking like that?'"

These days, how could a star go out looking like anything else? Celebrity life in 1997 has become a dawn-co-dusk mandarin opera of volitional paradox. On the one hand, you at

the oFF-dUTY

tend a Knicks game in a baseball hat and slouch unobtrusively in your seat—but you're sit ting in the front row between Tyra Banks and Robin Leach! You distribute sunglasses to your wife and brood and take them on a femily excursion—to the opening of a new Planet Hollywood! In the mood for a quiet beer, you don dowdy sweatshirt and skulk in the cor ner booth ofa seedy dive bar—but, whaddya know,the seedy dive bar is Manhattan's Hogs 'n' Heiffers,famed for its celebrity clientele and besieged on a nightly basis by paparazzi for that very reason. It's clearly you behind the glasses and under the hat, but just as clearly, it's the private you.

CELEBRITY WHO'S never o/V-dUTY

an argument could be made that the off-duty phenomenon is nothing but a fallow period in the cycle ofglamour. We do, as everyone knows, live in the age of"grunge," assumed by

hAlili oF i'AllER: iiichacl S'l-ipc

oSHER eXPOHEBTSj Jithan Kav.-ko,

most CO be a reflex of atonement for the excess and ostentation of

P.enee Zeilv.'eger, Janeane

the 80s. So why wouldn't movie and rock 'n' roll stars go with the flow and leave their tuxedos in mothballs for a decade or so? Plus the grunging of America has a moral corollary. It's no longer fashionable to be rich. More exactly,

javafalo, 'Beck

hISTORYt It iin't the eaa-

it's no longer fashionable to be the kind ofrich that seeks to erase the line between the person and the money. You can have money, you can even spend your mon ey—plough money into unworkable vanity businesses, collect toy dolls—but

ieat vay ir the '..'oild tc

cake a livliis» ^at ii' you can pull ol'l" the t-ick of not

acting like a celebrity even when you le perroiiclng, then you have it made. She '..'orld-beater

in the field hau for ueverai

decadeo no'.v been P.li.bi. frontman

Liichael Stipe, i.'ho commonly takej the otage in front of tena of thou-andb of acreaming unu-aahed fana

and before their eyea

^ undergoea an inutant auperhero-ityle tran..forTDation into iiichaei Stipe!

you'd just better not act like you have money.'Cause when you act rich, you look '80s. And when you start looking '80s, it's over. These trends are real, but they do not explain The Uniform. If Tim Robbins sought to express his voguish down-to-earthness with a battered sombrero he found

in a second-hand store somewhere,and Madonna chose to parade her unworldly pu

rity by jogging in an old painter's smock, then things might be different. The propo sition that the "Off-Duty" Celebrity is merely rolling with the dowdiness of the times might hold some water.

But these are not the decisions these people choose to make. Off-duty celebrities dress

like "Off-Duty" Celebrities: sweatshirt (the occasional substitution of a leather jacket is permissible, as long as it clearly has a few stories to tell, if it could); glasses of some sort, possibly dark though for maximum faux-privacy, prescriptionless; and, of course, the hat.

Additionally, do v.'hatever you can during your down time to hold the fact of

your fame at armi. length.

off-duty vs. incognito

( Sometimeb I car. be uo

unbelievably preten

tious!" marvels Kawke;

HOW DO YOU TELL SOMEONE who genuinely hates puhlicity from someone who Is merely pretending \q hate It? With the aid of this special chart.

I n never (juite sure

I've got '..'hat it

INCOGNITO

"OFF-DUTY"

takes," .^aya P.enee

Impenetrable sunglasses that mask your

Prescriptionless glasses that match your

.lell'weger, ^7. "iTom Cruise is a superstar

identity.

trousers.

and I'm, like, a dork and a faker.")

A fluffy white cat that you compulsively

A pair of identical rottweilers that simply

stroke.

have to be walked.

Writing an annual, rambling letter to your local paper about Amazonian deforestation.

Chaining yourself to a giant redwood in a Miramax baseball cap.

Janeane Sarafalo broke r.QVi' nevcr-on—

duty ground by naming her pro

duction company

Donning a disguise prior to

Donning a disguise and surrounding your

"l Rate alyself

going jogging.

self with a phalanx of bodyguards prior to going jogging.

Productions." -C.J.H.

Having prostitutes sent to your hotel room.

OCTOBER 1997

Going to Scores.

TO eRR is to become hUMAN: SANTA CLAUS DOESN'T EXIST. Professional wrestling is a sham. Celebrities deliber ately commit goofy gaffes while being interviewed by glossy puff magazines in order to make themselves appear more like "ordinary people" and thus become more famous. '"Why do I smell like shit?' DUCHOVNY Is in

wallet.'... 'Hey, I'm really sorry about

the middle of the Vancouver woods, inhal ing. He sniffs, gags, sniffs again."

this.'...We are having glasses of dark porter in the Sow and Pigs, and this $3 billion movie

GQ, January 1997

"Still, he [JIM CARREY] remains very much the irrepressible Canadian Peter Pan who wears his id on his sleeve. A grilledcheese sandwich dipped in ketchup is still his idea of fine dining. He can still get as hopped-up as a third grader on a Ouik ben der, particularly when he's working. And, when he accidentally snorts a booger

halfway out of his nose in the middle of a story, he can't resist exclaiming,'Wow— I've got a bungee jumper!"' Premiere, March 1997

guy is apologizing because he doesn't have

the price of a pint. He is absolutely sincere." GQ, December 1996

frequenter of "Do you want pizza?" [DEBBIE] REYNOLDS asks abruptly. "I ordered some

for you." She walks to the desk behind a couch and picks up a box of cold pizza. She puts a slice on a paper plate and tosses a cloth napkin over so carelessly that it falls Entertainment Weekly, January 24,1997

Premiere, March 1997

dRAG-qUEEN bars iiAT.T. oP lAiiEH; Leboiah

oTHBE eXPOHEHTSs Liadonna, Fran Drebhe*, Eennii. Podman

"A funny thing happened on the way down to

tHEORBTICAL uUBERPIHHIKGS;

Stromboli. NICOLE KIDMAN got lost."

(Vhile to mo&t oi ub, there

Premiere, June 1996

are lev.' experier.cei> leaj tit illating than ijittir-g

PHOENIX says apologetically. The tense 22in two with his fidgety hands."

VAGUELY SLEAZY

on the floor.

"'Sorry, I broke your pen,' JOAQUIN year-oid has accidentally snapped a ballpoint

oSTENTATIOUS

"The first time I lay actual eyes on the real DAVID LYNCH on the set of his movie, he's

peeing on a tree. This is on 8 January in

through a tinny and

unenjoyable rendition o±' a '"'Ou dioco an them that iome stub

L.A.'s Griffith Park, where some of Lost

"Providence, R.I., the morning after. For

bly 9-±'oot-tall diva

Highway's exteriors and driving scenes are being shot. He is standing in the bristly un

haa ir.6eniout.ly al

derbrush off the dirt road between the base

so it nov.' references

the first night in weeks, JAKOB [DYLAN] has caught 12 solid hours of sleep. And he is feeling great, until he tries to open a hotel

amp's trailers and the set, peeing on a

oral sex v.'ith men,

window and it smashes down on his finger.

stunted pine."

the tabloid media

He's bleeding on a tablecloth of the meeting room we're in. A nasty black swelling has risen alongside the nail." Rolling Stone, June 12,1997

Premiere, September 1996

tered the lyricu of

would disagree.

Anyone seen enjoy

"He [TIM ROBBINS] bonks his head on a hanging lamp but barely flinches; this must happen a lot."

ing the perfor mance of a

drag-^ueen v.-ill instantly be

US, June 1997

"'Look,'[TOM CRUISE] says, 'I forgot my

gifted an "edgy' private persona

by the likes of ibcti'a and

The baseball bar.

Janet Charleton, in her years as a gossip columnist for Star magazine, has watched the baseball hat rise over the horizon of celebrity fashion like a canvas sun with a brim."The

hat is the one item that every celebrity hides under, because it ha/f-gives the illusion of be ing inaccessible. Women have always been told chat if you wear a hat you seem more in accessible to men,so I think that's maybe where it comes from: I m a little less accessible because I have a hat on. It shows that I'm in my own world, so don't bug me.' I think that makes them feel hidden in a way, that hat and glasses, but it doesn't really do anything to rhe outside world." The hugely coifFed Musto confirms the enthusiasm ofcelebnties for this

ffard Copy.

s-BLaI'BD bBKAYIOFS:

Attending Scores, the

"classy" Kew iTori strip club. Scores patrons include Drew 3arrymore, Hugh C-rant, John Iravolta, Kevin

practical semiotics,"They seem to have a cap and glasses in their bag that they can just put

Costner, Charlie Sheen,

on and say,"Sorry..

Demi aioore, ITioholas

• l

It would,of course, be disingenuous of us to suggest that none of these accessories has

any disguise potential. Our point is simply that there are more ways of being cool and grungy than wearing a gray sweatshirt and tying your hair into a ponytail, just as there are

Cage, George Clooney, Robert DelTiro, Juliette Ifivvis, and all the guys from Friends. —C.J.D.

more and better ways of rendering yourself unrecognizable than putting on a baseball hat

and a pair of sunglasses. If Madonna,on her infamous series of morning jogs, had departSEFrEMUER/OC]

>PY 29

ed the back door of her hotel not in the company of what appeared to be an entire graduat

ing class of Nick Bolletieri's tennis academy, her cap and glasses would have rendered her as close to inconspicuous as someone that famous can be. But she didn't. She recognized the koanic truism at the heart of the off-duty persona: the more it looks like you're crying not to be recognized, the harder you're going to have to try to be recognized.

aCCX)RDING to leg bRAUDY author of The Frenzy ofRenoivn and professor of literature at the University of Southern California, "the urge to balance off, or

the family person

complement, the screen character, the fiction, with another kind of fiction about privacy, really goes back to the beginning of films." But the idea, even then, was to remain in char acter as much as possible when not actually acting. After all, it was a sufficiently bizarre idea for a First-World-War-sobered American public that they were meant to fall in love with

Sylveater Stallone, Kevin

the flickering, over-demonstrative caricatures that cinema presented. To have to further consider that these doe-eyed puppets might have private lives, in which they could be drug gies, homosexuals, or—by the same token and equally unsettlingly—stamp-collectors or fishermen, was far too much to ask. As a consequence, when the last piece of coal had been

Ooitner, Bemi Moore,

shoveled into the camera, and the klieg lights fizzed off, movie stars were under enormous

Tin Robbino, the aptly named

pressure to stay in character: handing droopy bunches of flowers to fat men's daughters or dangling lovably from the hour hands of civic clocks.

hAliL oP i'A&IKRs

Uadonr.a

oTHER eZPOHEHTSj Tiger Aooda,

ITicole Eidnan, Ton Ranta, John

Travolta, Shacjullle O'lTeal. hISTOHY: R'JII DMC gave ua "son o£ 3y±'ord, brorher o±" aI" and lamented that autograph aeehers

"even bother my poor father cau6e he a down with me." Whatever the implications of

-that, the Off-Duty Pamiiy Man or^' •Viidraan surrounds him- or herself

. wita spouse and/or kids to re

mind onlookers that they're just Iregular people like the rest of

Or the next best thing. The studios met the public need by stage-managing the at-

home personae of their cash-cows with every joule of the dream-weaving artifice they poured into the movies."The stock-in-trade of the old movie magazines, the ones of the '20s and '30s, was to show the celebrity at home. So rather than seeing the movie star in character from a film, you saw the movie star in character as father or mother or daughter or son or something like that."

Exceptions were rare but tended to be spectacular. The famous case being that of co median Fatty Arbuckle, whose screen nickname itself was a testament to the feebleness of

that era's sense of humor, and whose off-duty behavior would stretch it far past breaking point. A few days after signing a $3 million contract with his studio, Arbuckle celebrated by getting drunk and fatally introducing a broken whisky bottle to the mammalian canal

tie hint that they mustn't be

of a young, random starlet. After a pair of lurid trials, Arbuckle was acquitted. But the American public could no longer laugh when scripts called for Fatty, as a natural villain, to

disturbed when they have off

interact with the assorted rakes, anvils, and other instruments oftorture that served the co

us, and to drop the not-so-sub—

spring in tow. Of course, this doesn t stop them from doing interviews or photo ops—au coni'i'2ii-e.

They happily drag the family along. The en

tire O'Keal family has appeared in popular TV com mercials, while

golf ninja Tiger Soods rarely makes an appearance without

paddy rtoods at his side. And when

Madonna ran out of

ideas, she begat D'il iourdes, who, like the offspring of another famous Madonna, made her mother famouo ail over again. You get

bonus points for equip ping your toddling off spring with sunglasses and baseball hats of theix own. —a.r.

medians of the day in much the same way as jokes do our modern ones. ^ For the most part, however, this model ofcelebrity private life survived intact un

til the Ronstadt incident. In the Golden Age of Hollj^ood, stars were free to do what ever they wanted, as long as they stayed roughly in character. It was OK for Peter Lorre

to skulk eerily in alleyways, but not Shirley Temple.Steamy liaisons with Frank Sinatra were permissible for Ava Gardner, but not for Rock Hudson. Even Greta Garbo's

I recluse act was essentially just an in-character extension of her pure-hearted-Euro- woman-of-mystery shtick. If Shirley Temple wanted to smoke a cigarette or Rock Hudson wanted to kiss a man, it behooved them to pursue these activities behind closed doors.

PGR ONE rEASGN oR aNGTHER,though, the public is no longer satisfied with these stage-managed vignettes of privacy. Our parents' parents' generation may have been thrilled and titillated by an in-depth expose of Douglas

^ Fairbanks as an incurable nurturer of polo ponies, but the modern media consumer pr craves a little more grit. To an extent we have become cynical. Scandal after scandal has

encouraged us to look twice at people with happy home lives. But more significantly, American society has grown itself a media, and that media is driven by market forces. As Leo Braudy puts it, no paparazzi is going to make a lot of money selling a picture

of Linda Ronstadt or Julia Roberts ail dressed up and going to an opening. They're go ing to make money with someone caught in an unguarded moment,or what appears to be an unguarded moment."

If you happen to be famous, in short, the public is somehow going to find a way to hunt you down and gorge itselfon your private life. And the only hope you have ofcon

trolling this feeding frenzy is to let the mob gorge itself, as it were, on a limb ofprivacy .so SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997J

A brief history of fame and affectation SOME CELEBRITIES want to be famous ali the time. Some don't. Throughout history, both types of celebrities have acted ac cordingly, from Cincinnatus—who traded in his job as dictator of Rome for that of farmer—to Arnold Schwarzenegger. But then, in 1982, the Off-Duty Celebrity, who cultivates an air of privacy in order to become more famous, changed everything. —A.V. Degrees to which celebrities act as if they enjoy being famous 40,000 BC: Everyone is completely anonymous.

Degree to which

1500 BC: Ordinary man

ORDINARY PEOPLE

GODS

SEEKS FAME

ARE CONSIDERED

INTERESTING ^

GOD

moves up as God is reinvented in roughly humanoid shape.

AVOIDS FAME

[

RAMSES

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

CINCINNATUS

336 BC: First living

breathing person,

Alexander the Great, to

«<

become world famous. He

ELIZABETH I

is the first non-God to ap pear on the face of a coin.

LOUIS XIV

REAL AUTHOR OF HAMLET

MACHIAVELLI NAPOLEON

METTERNICH

1920: Hollywood is born, and immediately throws

its weight behind the aesthetics of the

Ordinary Man. Charlie Chaplin, as the Little Tramp, bestows instant fame on the ordinary man the world over, though only in a stylized symbol

CHARUE CHAPUN COCO CHANEL JOSEPH

ALBERT EINSTEIN

GOEBBELS

MAX-NOSFERATU SCHRECK

HITLER

GRETA GARBO

BABE RUTH

ic sort of sense.

UNDBERGH

ELVIS

COLONEL

MARILYN

TOM PARKER

MONROE

HOWARD HUGHES

ED MCMAHON HILSPECTER

FLOYD

MUHAMMAD AU JIMMY CARTER

-THOMAS PYNCHON

PATTERSON KING

YOKO ONO c

SALMAN RUSHDIE

1982: Singer Linda Ronstadt is photographed in casual clothing and

01 UNDA

Fighters]:^

Oprah Winfrey's show hits the air. The pri vate lives of incognito

RONSTADT SALMAN RUSHDIE X

SEAN PENN

celebrities come under

MICHAEL JACKSON

SANDRA BERNHARO

more intense scrutiny

by the media, forcing Salman

them to use their fists on

paparazzi. Celebrities

.'MR-

Rushdie UNABOMBER

wallowing in the limelight start to realize that the

more "private" they act,

MICKEY ROURKE SPIKE LEE

the more attention they

BARBRA

get. One by one, they buy

STREISAND

baseball caps and glasses.

JOSE CANSECO O

1997: Ordinary person Kathryn Harrison releases

LATOYAJACKSON

The Kiss about incestuous

ARNOLU

relationship with her fa ther. "Puff-Daddy"

Combs is music industry

3 fD

SCOTTIE PIPPEN ALEC SEAN "PUFF-DADDY BALDWIN COMBS

SCHWARZENEGGER

executive more famous

than any of his artists.

ROBERT DENIRO

TOM WAITS

Off-DUty Celebrities

(SEE SIDEBARS;

Pages 27-33)

SYDNEY BLUMENTHAL

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 31

JOHN JOHN iN the pARK: JOHN KENNEDY JR.—the man, the mutt, the blades, the blonde, the had haircut, the

sweaty gym shorts, the faded T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of one or another obscure liberal arts college in the Midwest—is the Off-Duty Celebrity by which all others are mea sured. Not that the guy didn't have a head start on the competition. He's a Kennedy, after ail. Which is to say that looking like a class act in a hooded sweatshirt is that much easier

ther was the President of the United States,

ing for an ultimate Frisbee on a campus green, or engaged in a leisurely walk through

and your mother was considered to be

the streets of TriBeCa.

when you hail from a compound, your fa

WEARERS OF pRESCRIPTIONLESS glasses IxAIiL oF i'AilER: Sylve-Lm Svailorii

among the more stylish women of the 20th century. And John John's is a lineage as renowned for its rolled khakis, weathered boat shoes, faded polos, and madras bathing trunks as for Its political ambitions. In short, there is every reason to believe

Blame it on the failed bar exams; the im

possible expectations destined to render any thing short of heroism the fumblings of a regular "shmo"; the near-obsessive attach ment to breaking a sweat, anywhere, any time, anyhow.

that Our Man was genetically coded for sportswear.

OTHER eXPOKERTS: Liaxwcli, Tim

But there is also the fact

Pobbin-, Hugh iiant, Sandra

that he is blessed with the laiiocX

kind of all-American comeli liXSTORX.

Ao iar

'..'g

know...it .j jubt ±'or, you

knov.', ahov." pur^pooea." Iiiaxivell .» pubiicii.t 'vOid

u.>«

Julia

Pobertj rei'uied

opeak to ui on the

.jubject. becaui,e, ac cording lo her agent, ohe

"rarely wearo glaaoeo." rte v.'ere told that Lerai Moore, who hau been oeen

occasionally '..'earing glas.,er,

would nor be available anyime soon" to comment on their prescription or lack thereol. SxgB'und Freud wao .»ald to

have '..'orn prescriptionless glasi.ei. to appear smarter, but the true

g pioneer oi' glasses-

jao-i'eeble disgui-e nay have been EC.

Comics s Superman. Stallone, not unlike Clark Kent, took to wear ing gla.,ueo to make him

ness that can more than with stand the intrusion of those

unsightly accessories that ac company most off-duty pur suits, half-naked rollerblading amongst them. Indeed, John Kennedy, unique among all men, looks hot in knee pads. Finally, and perhaps most

important, the magazine edi tor formerly known as The Sexiest Man Alive, has never

really been on-duty—or, at least, the

But the specter of dilettantism continues

on-duty pursuits have only ever

to haunt the on-duty pursuits of the Late

seemed like minor diversions from

President's Son.

the real work, that of play. Thus the image of John that

Bessette, however, there is reason to believe

lingers in the minds of the American Public is that of a man at leisure—if not

dodging paparazzi on his way to a

nightclub, then

lung

With last year's nuptials to Carolyn that an older, more stable, more serious—and ultimately more on-duty—John is emerging.

Speculation abounds that the KennedyBessettes will, like proper privacy-obsessed celebrities, soon vacate their relatively demo cratic downtown loft space for the doormanned fortress that is the Upper East Side.

the Rambo movies, the

The move seems not hard to imagine. Though currently careerless, the emaciated Carolyn with the Rapunzel-perfect ponytail

Sly '.vho preened lor' the

and dangerously thin eyebrows finds cause

camera^, v.'as a ne'.;, .,er.—

to appear job interview-quality dressed and

look like less of a burly superhero: shortly aiter

sitive, bespectacled

groomed for every brunch date she

Siy., iVere the new glass-

meets at the fly-infested TriBeca eatery,

es'real? "ri'e don't give out that kind oi' information," has agent sa_d. "rte don't kjiaw-and '.'.'c wouldn't tell

you anyway." -a.F.

Bodega. (Could a four-button-black-suited-even-

on-Sunday John John be far behind?) — Lucinda Rosenfeld

32 SPY SEPTCMBKR/OCTOBI'R 199

you feel you can live without, to dish the dirt on yourself by crafting a private persona and allowing the public access to it. And praying the public doesn't dig any deeper. Failure to craft one of these private personae can up your chances ofattracting a stalk er—a person so desperate to know who you are he or she will camp on your lawn—or dev

astating, shoddily researched dismantlements of your personality in glossy, snide multi-million-selling magazines such as this one. "A lot of people have been burnt about their private lives," agrees Braudy "[It's] motivation for trying to set up these controlled sit uations of, 'Here's a bit of my privacy, now leave me alone,' or, 'Here's what my privacy would look like if I let you into my living room or into my kitchen.'" But isn't there a fundamental and unconscionable, absurdity to the spectacle of a man who, in every aspect of his deportment and demeanor, appears to be pottering casually around his kitchen when the cold, hard fact of the matter is that he's actually competing in

/ the cynical

a pro-celebrity golf tournament or receiving an Academy Award.^

The off-duty pose may well have its roots in someone's inspired attempt—probably not Linda Ronstadt's, given the flatness of her overall oeuvre—to protect their real private life

adopter of a tem

by showing the public a fake one. But whenever that breakthrough occurred, it wasn't long after that the contrived private persona became established as just another trapping of celebrity, like a personal trainer or a swimming pool with an unusual shape. After this haj>

porary alternate hairstyle

pened, of course, suddenly everybody wanted one. But perhaps even this is too charitable an explanation for these casual celebrities, these

multi-millionaire baseball-hatted hams. The truth is that after decades of probing the pub lic faces of larger-than-life entertainers, ordinary Americans have discovered a more explo sive truth than that celebrities have skeletons in their closets just like ordinary people. They have discovered that celebrities are boring.

hAIil oP I'AiIEK: Sii.ah Jeujioa Par^ivcr

oTHEH eXPOHEHTSj

Steven Seagal,

'John John' P. Eemedy Ji., 3-ooke Shieldo

hISTORY: In the .8th century,

for the lastfew cEhTTURIES every human being born hiis at

you could clearly tell if oome- .

some point come to know the Hell that is having a conversation with an actor. It doesn't

one '..'ac on- or ofi-duty by v.'hat

have to be a successful actor; it could be a man who dresses up as a giant hot dog and dis tributes flyers—the experience will be the same. There will be implausibly dramatic, over-

hiu hair looked like. Shomaa

rehearsed personal anecdotes. There will be moments where the brow furrows and the actor

stares vexedly off into the middle-distance, waiting in agony for you to ask them what the

matter is. They are never really off-duty. The only reason they become actors in the first place is that they find the very idea of privacy abhorrent. In that alcove of personality where the rest of us have hobbies and imaginary friends, the actor has a well-dusted space where he hopes one day to put an Oscar. In the absence of constant validation from without, the actor's world-view would quietly crumble to a rubble of depressive pathologies. The media-consuming public is only now putting two and two together, and realiz

Jefi'erion, Lioiart, 3eethover.,

the Ahig party, and ju&l; about anyone elce '..ho ;.'anted to be considered an hoEnn aerieux

v.'ould alter his hairstyle v/ith powdered white wig whenever he wanted public attention, -o sig nal they were oi'l'-duty, con

versely, they would typically hang their powdered 'white wigs

ing—duh—that the experience of talking to Julia Roberts is probably the very same ex

on the bcdpost o±" a prostitute

perience they endured when they found themselves seated next to a limply mustachioed Gilbert and Sullivan freak last Thanksgiving. It has, after ail, been common knowledge for a while that people who want to be famous are the worst people in the world. It's just that the public is only just waking up to the fact that this category includes jjeople who are ac

bubbling 'With syphilis.

tually famous.

Private life is hot right now, and if you want to get real attention, you'll build your

self an interesting one. Much more toothsome to the modern palate than the latest Tristar wunderbabe is a man whose Jeep overturned in a forest, was forced to amputate his own leg

with the miniature pen-knife he'd been sent for renewing his subscription to Men'sJournal, and is now on the JennyJones show explaining how he did it.

-his trend survives in a

slightly altered

iorn. It's uccoptcd practice for nodeiT. celebs in '..'ant of an

"off-duty" personu to tie their hair-

back in a pory-

tail if they

Real private life is where the action is, witness the success of Kathryn Harrison's book

r.oiTcaliy -..•ear -i.

The Kiss, the story of a card-carrying non-celebrity having an incestuous relationship

long, or to weu-

with her father. Private life is hot, which is why off-duty celebrities try to cultivate it, even

thoir hair long i:

though it goes against the grain of who—since the day their mothers made them stand

it's typically tied back,

in line for 36 hours to audition for the part of Orphan Number 12 in a suburban pro

lonus points; tying you-

duction of Annie—they are deep down. Ultimately, though, the game is against the

hair back when it's al

Hollywood celebrity, whatever he or she tries to do about the species' creeping obsoles

ready quite short, in the

cence. The day can surely not be far away when it is only by ballooning up to 1,000

nod'.: of- JPK Jr. and tir.y-

pounds and being visited in his bedroom by Richard Simmons that a celebrity like Johnny Depp will elicit the slightest bit of interest from the sensible, and increasingly interesting, man in the street. — Carajoy David. Craig Malisow, and Ari Voukydis^

ponytailed nan-of-uction, Steven Seagal.

-G.J.L.

SEPTEMBER/OCT

Tlie

Foyers of Axnerica are tfieir Stalking: ClrxMuriels

Photography: Jordan Doner. Fashion Editor: Ann Caruso.

Hair: Amber King for Bradley Curry. Makeup: Mally Roncal for Makeup For Ever at Macy's. .^â&#x2013; I SPYSHPTi'MBnK/OCTOHER 1997

â&#x20AC;¢S'.

>V J ■

::"f'';iW'k: •JlrM

Top by Todd Oldham

Thanks to Mercedes-Benz, Park Avenue, NYC; for info call

1-800-FOR MERCEDES

Jf.

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Si 1 f / r" '

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• ',

•

Forty years after John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me

exposed the agony of black America, Sean Gullette goes undercover to expose the agony of white men

wearing suits in the '90s. We've got a good feeling about this one.

I pause with my hand on the doorknob and contemplate the image in the full-length mirror. The face could be anywhere from 25 to 40 years old, speckled with the evidence of recently applied acne medication, persistent eczema, shaving accidents. The skin has the pallor ofa lifetime spent un der fluorescent lights. Behind tortoiseshellframe glasses, the eyes are red and ringed. The awkwardly cut lapels of a maroon acetate suit frame a purple tie with swirling gold leaves. The shirt is a stained white. The two-tone loafers from Fayva suggest a past life in the flesh trade. The hair, which is thin

now. I have been preparing for this moment,

knowing chat I would have to see myself in this way, have to withstand the recoil of my instinctive sense of style. But the sight of my usually fine features under a mask of blemishes makes me shudder.

No,I tell myself firmly. No hesitation. Today is the day that I go out into the world,

unnaturally black with the shine of Murray's

that I make my investigation. To live out there with the blood and the disgusting hair.

Pomade. Between the shoes and the vast

To see how awful a man can look in a suit. To

flares of the hems, holes in stained white

see what happens to him when he does.

and combed flat over the perspiring scalp, is

sport socks reveal shocks of leg hair. The tang of body odor and Bijan, mingled with a hint of urine, fills the small foyer.

On the right side of my chin, a wad of

paper towels covers what appears to have been a bloody, morning misadventure. It looks realistic. I have done a good job. The overall effect is grotesque and I hesitate at the mirror. I am angry at myself PHOTOGRAPHY

I wait until the familiar penetrating

gaze returns to my eyes and then nod. Satisfied with my preparations, I walk out. The door leading back to self-respect and decency locks behind me with a decisive click. I am ready to go to work.

A score of years ago,there was no more doughty symbol of our country's ecoBY

GIRL

RAY

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 41

The bright and breezy color scheme of the modern temp-worker's suit—the essence of which is captured here in the author's own ensemble—is a further demonstration of his

redundancy. Stiff tents of olive-colored cheesecloth, porous as shredded wheat.

Dynamic, lightweight browns with an under tow of bacon. These are suits for men whose

job is simply to own one.

nomic mi^hc and democratic manifest des

breaks, who eat giant Peking ravioli on soft

tiny than the tight-knit gray 100 percent wool three-piece suit ofThe Businessman—

beds ofavocado noodle salad for lunch. Some

jacket, vest, and trousers moving smoothly in unison as he carried his briefciise home to

are happy. Many are sad. None are what they would have been 20 years ago. Indeed, when the world says "suit" to

a repulsively, unwearably ugly combo with the single paltry saving grace that they hap pened to be of the same color? What if he were—and it is only by testing the limits of the world that we learn what it intends for

us—what if he were bleeding slightly?

have not bowed to the winds of time, but

day, what does the world mean? Is the word still a metonym for Power—"put that thing out before a suit walks by"? Or has "suit" now become a literal term? Do corporate

the human scene in the station's Great Hail

aesthetes gaze down from their barbed-wire

surging through Grand Central Station and

confirms the deep sea changes that the past

then out. Across a dozen blocks, in the

50 years have wrought: the Women's

daises and say, "Hmm, I chink we need a yucca plant around here, and maybe a few

Movement, the Information Revolution, the

suits"? Watch the suits rustle across the

ple, the clean ones, respond to my plodding

New World Order, Downsizing, Diversity,

Great Hall and you will know, They ate for

advance with revulsion, with stares and

a family that felt it needed him. A great clock turns the years...The iron and concrete of Grand Central Station

and Decentralization.

Slouching across this Babylon, shad

The subway, a river of flesh, deposits me into the charcoal-and-blue ocean ofsuits

bright morning streets, I see the happy peo

men who wear their ancillary involvement

averted eyes. The flared hems of my slacks

in the actual running of the world on their

flap behind me.

owy figures come. I have seen them, men

sleeves and their inside legs.

racing home—from a day ofdesperate, lone

What if the process were complete? What ifa man had on/y a suit? What ifevery other crumb of worth and employability had been vacuumed up by Life's great cube,

ly, unlikely sales calls—on their way to a small apartment, maybe a gray envelope and a pink slip. Men who have menial jobs in tall skyscrapers, who take short cigarette

What, finally, if he were me?

and all he had left wjis a jacket and trousers.

I decide to begin my day with a snack. 1 stoj5 at a corner stand to purchase a hoc dog. The sunburnt and filthy vendor hands his flaccid product to me with winc ing distaste, as chough his Food Hygiene

"Timpe ape some miois mey caoi lake away ipem iis," I oo -iPiiiPiBiii. iioi me sDiPii II ■ ■ ii SPY .SnPTIiMUEU/OCTOHnR 19'J7

■■

Certificate training had warned him about people like me. And then I see them.

Outside every building in midtown Manhattan a familiar scene unfolds. Gone

are the rituals of the desktop humidor: the

streets have become our smoking room and the gutters our ashtrays and spittoons. I ap proach a group of nabobs in fitted Boss

"power suits" and club ties, smoking ciga

estrangement of homosexuality hiis caught them this tolerance and insight that they ex tend to me in my current state. Such wis

dom is sometimes the particular province of those society eschews. They see my suit, yes, and they see my blood, but they see some thing more. They see a man inside the suit.

As I cake my leave, my gratitude embar rasses them, and takes me by surprise.

rettes outside J.P. Morgan. How will men

SEAN GULLETTE

49 East 21st St., New York, N.Y. 10010 (212)252-4129

in suits treat one of their own, when he has

The 11 o'ciocK bells, find me in

clearly been wounded? I hope to provoke a conversation. "Have any of your colleagues been dramat

gadget store. Here is a pit stop for the bat tered engine of the urban professional, a

EDUCATION

Rockefeller Plaza outside Brookstones, the

ically fired recently?" I ask in the hearty tone that I know such men use among them

pharmacy ofinventions to ease the aches and

B.A., Behavioral Sciences, 1991

soothe the nerves of the office worker. As I

Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

selves. They respond to me with such acid

enter, a heavy businessman lies in a demon

condescension that I have to bite my tongue, reminding myself that "spurns that patient

stration model of a vibrating massage chair,

AWARDS:

his eyes shut and his head thrown back. His

L. Jamf Award for Conditioned Responses

merit of the unworthy takes" are the daily lot of people in suits like mine (although

breasts—the nipples moist through a white

mine perforce must be much worse). I must

stay in character. I nod and move away. They laugh behind me. I wonder what these men

would think if they knew who they were speaking to, and what they re vealed about themselves by their attitudes. To them, I am nothing

100 percent cotton shirt—jiggle with the movement of the chair. His Kmart-specia! suit jacket lies in a heap on the floor. 1 walk through the store, taking care ful notes and wondering at the wrisc-reiax-

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

Assistant Manager, Sam Goody Records 1993-1995

•Conceived and implemented displays and ran cash register.

but a smear of blood and a bowl

•Worked with staff and customers,

ing alley suit. Next I approach some more

developed interpersonal skills.

like myself, though much, much cleaner, a group of mailroom types, blazers tight across the bi ceps, pants sagging with bad dry

•Starting third baseman for softball team.

Waiter, Santa Maria Bakery/Cafe 1991-1993

cleaning and the moisture of the •Liaison between clientele and

midday canyon. Before I can join their conversation, they look at me

culinary staff.

in unison as though I were Jim Jones on a recruiting drive; one of them narrows his eyes with hate

INTERESTS AND HOBBIES

while pretending to ignore my question, then, acting as

Ponies, renting, avid whiffle ball fan.

spokesman, says brutally: "We're. Not. Interested."

ers and Japanese-made executive playthings.

Asha and Frank, two men in superbly tailored silk-lycra blends from Barneys and

An exotic-looking young salesgirl sees me

PRIZES

•Ethan Hawke prize for creative

CK Black Label, who are executive col leagues at Deutsch Advertising, surprise me

lowering myself tentatively onto a sheet of ergonomic Swedish sleeping foam,and hes itates before approaching. I look up at her

with their frank cordiality. I iisk about their

from a supine position. Her eyes fill with

suits, and they respond with pleasing hu mility. They enjoy their work a great deal

fear. She asks if I am OK. I assure her that I

and are confident that their steady advance

various sizes offoam. Barely controlling her

ment in the company will continue. Both

disgust and anxiety, she provides me with

JOURNAUSM PRIZES

wear their suits with casual grace,as chough

the information and then excuses herself. I lie back on the heat-sensitive foam,

•None

they were dressed for tennis ot dancing. We converse at length. It dawns on me tliat they are homosex

uals. Their courtesy to me is as impeccable as their wardrobe, and I wonder whether the

am and inquire casually about the price of

writing, 1996

•Runner Up, Mr. Teen Massachusetts 1985

INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED

lost in contemplation. Behind this facade of glittering technology, I now see the crum bling columns of Rome,smell the ripeness of the plague seasons of Europe: the termiSEPTKMBEU/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 43

Resources are far from scarce on the veldt of midtown Manhattan. But malnutrition—both actual and moral—is a fact of life for most

suit-wearing office men. The author does his best to ignore the gnawing fire in his stom ach, a sensation caused not by hunger, but

by the glistening fruits of the hot-food bins on the salad bar.

nal stages of a diseased civilization. And we

and the room is practically silent except for

are the hollow men, our suits—which once

a radio speaker in the ceiling over my head,

lawyer's houndstooth double takes at the sight of me,and crosses to the desk where he

which plays light jazz. I am afraid to ap

has a word with the concierge, who is too

proach anyone here—the atmosphere is too desperate, too clearly private, more like a

discreet to look up but clearly understands.

It Is ilinCll llmB. 1 enter a corner

men's room than a restaurant.

basement and duck into the barber shop. I

delicatessen and examine the hot foods laid

As I pass the cash register, squirting Binaca into my mouth, the Mexican cashier watches me with ageless, Mayan eyes.

for a shine, which is dispensed by an Arab fellow. He begins the shine by washing my

flattered kingpins and moguls—now as empty ^ls a ghosts white sheet.

out on the steam table. The air condition

ing does little to keep the oppressive heat of the day outside; the odor from the table is nauseating. A number of men have de

I bolt down another set of stairs to the climb in one of the elevated chairs and ask

shoes with water and a rag. I strike up a

Much lalep. i notice that my path

cided, in deference to the heat, to "create

has led me to the steps of the Harvard Club.

conversation with him, telling him that I am looking for work but the going is hard.

their own salads."

I have to know. How will I fare in this bas

The other man in the shop, evidently the

My metabolism bleating for protein, I

tion of white, well-dressed society? Will

boss, tells me chat his son-in-law runs a

heap sweet-and-sour beef onto one half of a plastic container and fill the othet half with

these "civilized" men accept me? Or will

fruit stand in Chelsea—perhaps I might

they see only the blood and the nylon?

like to work for him. Is he trying to bait me into an embarrassing gaffe? I say that it

lentil soup. I eat rapidly, with my back to

the corner of the room, watching the crowd closely. The other tables are crowded, but

the ones adjacent to mine remain empty, and I can feel eyes on me iis I write and eat.

I sniffsurreptitiously at my armpits, but my sense of smell has been dulled in the course

of the day, and the suit does not breathe. The stringy, tough beef is barely edi

ble. Most of the patrons are eating alone;

Three generations of my own Harvard men urge me up to the door, and it opens smoothly before mc. Elderly gentlemen stand around, mak ing introductions, with their hands in their ptxkets. There is the smell ofteak and kidskin and the old essentials: twilled cotton shirts,

sounds intriguing, but I'm wary of em barking on a career path until I'm certain that it's right for me. I tip generously, pass up the stairs and

through the dining room into the vast, cathedral-ceiling'd lounge. Before I can van

flannel, tweed,leather buttons, the whispered

ish into the wings of a crimson armchair, I

assurance of high-thread-count lamb.swool. A middle-aged man in immaculate

sec the chefd'hotel moving smoothly across the empty room in my direction. I take a

I He hatk on Hie heai-sensiiive loam. Behind this lacade ol nop SPY Sf'lTEMBHR/CKJTOBER 1997

PULITZER!

A TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE

deep breath. He stands over my chair,

"You don't want one," she says.

mighty, distant, his awesome suit dissolv

"No. I have just realized that even with

ing my willpower, like the mystical armor of an invincible army. "May I help you with

full-time employment the best I could ever hope for was..." I break off. I cannot afford

something, sir," he inquires. The neutrality of his tone is devastating. Beaten, I crumble under his gaze, mutter something, and rise

to break character, to give voice to the out rage in my heart, not here.

to go, denuded. The walk across the room is the longest in my life.

Mei slips outside and walks off, light ing a cigarette. I turn to go the other way and spot a temp from upstairs. I decide to

II IS lime top my imenview.

strike up a conversation: "When's the last time you had a job you enjoyed, that made

rescinded when she admitted to forging story.

This is the test, the final test. Will I be ac

you feel like a decent fellow?"

1983: Nan Robertson for "Toxic Shock," a

cepted? In the elevator up to the Mademoiselle Personnel Network, I reapply blood to my drying wound from the

1981: Janet Cooke for "Jimmy's World," about an 8-year-old heroin addict. Later

vial in my pocket and enter a circular dramatic account of her struggle to survive toxic shock syndrome.

South Africa," about the systematic abuses of the apartheid system.

away from us," I continue. "Not ever. Not

courtesy as the others. In fact, I suspect

our birthright. Not the spirit inside us." He nods once, and gives me a funny look. I reach over and adjust the lapel of his suit. It is polyester, but buoyant. Not a bad suit, I think. But would it be enough?

chat my street-bazaar suit may earn me a

Would it be enough?

room, cramped by the smell of despera tion. When my turn comes at the recep tion desk, the staff treats me with the same

1989: David Zucchino for "Being Black in

'Man, you're bleeding," he says. "There are some things they can't take

fraction more deference. The other details

of my appearance have no visible effect on

Thank God li s Friday bap, 42nd

the receptionists. Seated on the circular

Street. A glance around the room confirms

couches are perhaps a dozen prospective

that I will be safe here. The hollow men

employees. A few look up as I take a seat,

are already here, easing themselves into

1990: Lou Kilzer and Chris Ison for a story on

and I register both sympathy and shame

high-backed stools, staring up at the tele

people who used fire department connections

in their glances. My name is called. I go into a cubicle

visions or into their tabloids, or off into

to profit from fires.

and sit across from a woman named Frances.

1991: Sheryl James for her story about a baby abandoned in a dumpster.

She scans my resume with a practiced eye. After a glance up, she avoids looking at my face, but nods approvingly at my creden tials. I notice that a smear of blood runs

across the back of the application.

up in segregated Birmingham, Ala.

have I learned?

The good news is that a suit still trousers, your movements in the workaday

woman in the next cubicle. "And he's avail

world will be unrestricted. You will not be

able second shift."

turned away.

Mei turns and smiles at me and says, "Great!" As she takes in my appearance,I have

well. Ifa man who looks like me,a stratified

a moment offear that she will notice the mis 1997: ?

ror and order an Amstel, my eyes adjust ing to the darkness of the room. So what

works; that if your jacket matches your

"He has HTML, Mei," she says to a 1992: Howell James for story about growing

the shadows. With a sigh, I take a seat at the L-shaped bar across from a tinted mir

The bad news is that a suit works too

lasagna of blood and danger, of panic and poor taste, can survive because his upper-

match between my tone of voice, which re mains clear and assured, and my condition. If

and lower-wear are cut from the same cloth,

she does, she might question my authentici

then how far away can we be from the day

ty. But she just looks away disapprovingly. After a battery of questions about my

when the suit is all that matters, and the

computer skillsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I assure her that I am flu

man inside is replaced by a wire hangar? A movement in the mirror catches my

ent in all the popular softwareâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Frances

eye and with a start I realize it is not a mir

signs a pamphlet and hands it to me. It

ror, but a man, a human, like me. I do not

reads: "Congratulations! You

Have

notice his suit. We nod and turn back to our

Qualified To Be A Mademoiselle/USS Temporary Employee!"

still seated there, lost in our thoughts, like

While she goes to prepare my com

puter test I leave for the foyer. I have learned

beers. As the dusk stiffens to night, we are

figures in an exhibition at the Museum of Natural History. We are burned-out drones,

what I came to find out,

he and I, our suits just waxy carapaces, stur

Just as the doors of the elevator are closing, Mei squeezes through. She looks at me with surprise. "Aren't you going to take

dy applicators that will survive in the trash

the test?"

"No, I decided I don't want a job."

after the tampons of our usefulness have been flushed away. We may wear Today's Man clothes, my friend, but in truth we are yesterday's men.5 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 45

What do pdrndgraphers do all day? With this unbowdlerized reminiscence of plush, plump

SCffEIV PUBLISHER Al GgLDSTEIN, SPY OmCIALLY LOWERS THE CURTAIN ON

America's romance with loudmouth, garishly attired pornocrats. By Mark Kramer

THE...SHIT! It wasn't easy being the world's fattest pornographer. I ought to know: I was him.

Well, sort of. For two years in the late '80s, I intimately inhabited Al's payroll—as an editor at his weekly sex tabloid Screw. As the ghostwriter ofScrew You, Al's characteristically forthright editorial let ters, I was called upon to nurse grudges of .^0 years standing against obscure lawmakers and wage ver bally grisly jihads against hapless restaurateurs, retailers, and the other icons of Al's waking hours. In approximately 100 of these Goldsteinian screeds, I chopped away at the Gordian knots of Al's tsuris in such deep-dish think pieces as "How All Religions Use Guilt" and "Why Women Need So Many Orgasms," and in equally persuasive monographs on eating the homeless, jerking off to "Dear Abby," and stuffing bisexual comedienne Sandra Bemhard with crabmeat. Although I never took up residence with in his top-heavy, fur-bearing corpus, I labored many times within the dark disordered recesses of his brainpan to create ideas that Al could call his own.

To look at, though 20 years a millionaire, Al was still an emerging nation of a man—colonized by the wretched refuse of his teeming tastes. His craggy cheeks and jowls were kneaded with thrice-week

ly facials to the consistency of Kobe beef. His sun-lamped skin was basted to the color of nougat with costly unguents extracted from the glands of exotic rainforest fauna. Typically encased in a babushka-

sired, parakeet-colored T-shirt annotated with the words "SAVE THE NRA," Al's buttocky contours on any given day hovered somewhere between 250 and 400 pounds. Spilling off his lard-encircled neck were enough gold chains, cigar snippers, lorgnettes, and other vital personal appliances to stock a souk in Chechnya. He wore a jewel-stippled watch on each dimpled wrist—the right one sec to Gotham time and the other to wherever currently offered the most frequent-flier miles. His oft-pedicured feet—sockless and perfectly formed—were usually to be found nestling in buttery doeskin slippers suitable either for sedan chair or limousine.

Al had not tucked in his shirt since the Nixon years—except for divorce-court appearances and pistol-permit hearings—and on those sundry occasions when he was flashing a particularly flamPHOTOGRAPH

46 SPY SEPTEMBER/CICTOBER 1997

ICHAEL

PRICE

'via,

P5i? -

;>''y'£^fl8lli&'fri''''!: li'

>'■■ • viaS

.*/:• </

Oi •' >-i Jt^'

...

boyant belt buckle, codpiece, or other accessory whimsically and idiotically worn at the waist. Fortunately, Al—an aging, raging joyboy who'd rather eat than fiick—had not had a waist since at least the Reagan Revolution.

While Screw's erotopathic newsbeat appeared to service the public culture ofdesire, it was the cul ture of Al's own desire that really mattered, counting among its sacred texts such encrypted Goldsteinalia as the 1988 memo:"...in addition to atheism I want to do some theater reviews...and The collected MEMOS AND DIRECTIVES OF

Al Goldstein

movie reviews.,.include the one I saw last night. Find out what it was and review it for me." For Al's subordinates—a flinching anthropoid muddle ofchopped-and-channeled hairdos, bargain-bin leisure wear,studded black cowhide, inside-out undergarments,cosmetic cigarette-burn scars, and Hawaiian shirts—^his every whim and mood swing existed as a Delphic oracle in which destinies, mainly ours, could be divined.

The book 1 asked you to get, it's already too late so forget about it The Dickens book.

the time Al's plush East 60s townhouse boudoir While I am in the office at noon

erupted in nocturnal horror...when his stereophonic pillow spontaneously combusted. Had Al himself

during the editorial meeting or

not been miraculously in his kitchen eating a hot snack at the critical moment, his immolation on the

on the way home on Tuesday, I want Ion to swing by the knish place, get a dozen potato knishes. Change that to 16 potato knishes. Have people call to say I am coming by. We'll put 10 in

altar of product liability might have taken a less amusing turn.

Vexed by his near-death experience, Al staggered into the office the next day and wildly took aim against a certain high-ticket tchotchke emporium on a mysterious, unrelated matter. "Ofall the imbeciles I've ever come across," Al raged. "Hammacher-Schlemmer's the worst!" Like a rabbi about to be defrocked for handling snakes on Yom Kippur,the intricately bearded, man

the normal part of the refrigera tor. Actually it's 18 knishes...tell

atee-shaped publisher looked out upon his tabernacle. Cowering in his ample shadow were the slightly damaged human contents of an office high atop a Greenwich Village edifice known in the sex trade as The ^Idstein Building. Amid mottled carpeting, overflowing ashtrays, and bruised furniture. Team Goldstein, hastily assembled for an emergency editorial meeting, stared once more into the slavering

Dennis that he should add those

maws of Al's displeasure.

the freezer and six we'll leave in

knishes to the bill for knishes to

the party next week. That way the company pays for my knish

Burbling menacingly, he sucked the custard from another creme-filled doughnut.

All chewing in the room—except for Al's—^had already ceased. Sugary snacks had reluctantly been

TRAMI KING was brilliant. I

set aside and Screws malnourished staffers had taken up notepads. In an elaborate display offeigned in terest, we recorded—mainly in the form ofcryptic doodles—^Al's every word. "Hammacher-Schlemmer is run by a bunch of small-dicked Nazis," fumed Al, waving a fist ap proximately the size and texture ofa rotisseried Cornish game hen. "It's retailing's answer to Auschwitz. They treat their customers like Jews being shoveled into a crematorium." "I'm one Jew that'll never be trampled by the jackboots of Hammacher-Schlemmer's gestapo!" stammered Al, his peso-sized, diode-bright, crystal-blue eyes blazing,"I'm gonna counterattack with a

es.

Send telegram to Alan Dershowitz...the Lavwyer ...Dear Alan, your piece on the PAS concur 100%. Keep up the great

Fuck You and a Screw You!"

food writing. It obviously comes from your soul. Love and kisses,

Blue—^was, and remains, the Delta Force of Al's editorial arsenal. Since the very dawn of post-moderni

Al Goldstein.

ty, Midnight Blue and its capacious host have probed the frontiers and derrieres of contemporary com

I'd like...some...discount prices for the Panasonic RFBIO. It's a miniature short-wave radio.

I want to tape something called MISSILE. Seen at 9 pm chan nel 13.1 think that's for tonight.

The "Fuck You"—an ad-libbed,on-camera rant by Al on his twice-weekly cable program Midnight

mercial carnal culture and the inmost recesses of constitutional law. Al's pulpit-pounding sermonettes—climaxing with the words "Fuck You" and a close-up of Al's extended middle fingers— are among the highlights in Midnight Blue's low-watt, sub-vaudevillian rogues' gallery of porn-star in terviews and barf-slinging lampoons targeted at the ever-expanding population ofAl's enemies list. This and less is sandwiched between innumerable, pinkly explicit ad spots for phone-sex lines—some Goldstein-owned—and for outcall-prostitution services. "Hammacher Schlemmer's a nightmare from which you have yet to awaken, Al," suggested Screw's

Please check.

longtime managing editor Manny Neuhaus, a chain-smoking refugee

Bob Guccione, looking at Forbes,

from the Woodstock Generation doomed to find his niche as the tall

i new piili<liiei>iloi>. I winl ine

is he in the highest-paid people?

mustachioed Mutt to Goldstein's gelid Jeff. Neuhaus,whose only tion-^crew byline in the last decade had been an article on penis size for a muscle mag,exhibited a penchant for highly starched shirts and ob scure medical terminology. And for reasons best left to a Swiss specialist, he categorically forbade the use

As names come through that

of the word "Love" in Screw headlines.

what is his salary? What number

you're not familiar with...either

Al slipped a freshly smuggled Monte Cristo #2 cigar from a shoulder-holstered ExecUmidor that

ask Joey who they are... or ask PE...That's the way I want you to do it How you've been doing

bore the unmistakable imprint ofeither Hammacher-Schlemmer or Spencer Gifts. He placed the fiagrant, richly vegetal Cubano girth wetly between his broad lips.

it is irrelevant to me. Do it my

and then,the impending one-sided war ofattrition against Hammacher-Schlemmer stretched out before

48 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

Neuhaus reached across his desk with a lighter to stroke the tip ofAl's cigar until it glowed. There

Team Goldstein like eight miles of bad road.

way...because I'M THE BOSS.

For Al, however, his very cosmology was on the line. "They only want me in handcuffs," he was fond

of pontificating. ("They," of course, referring not only to The State and Organized Religion but to a multitude of other they% who had increasingly rained down on his leisure-time escapades—mainly culi

A two-part editorial beginning in issue #1028 will be done about

nary in nature—like a succession of Biblical plagues.) His narcissiscically delusional, vanguardistic mes-

the "invisibility of SCREW" to

sianism was best encoded in the invitation art for Screws 20th Anniversary parry. "Screw Marches On"

the media and the hypocrisy of

read the caption accompanying an implausibly trim, robustly testicular Al. With raised fist, the illus

the press. The second part of the

trated Al marched at the head of a parade that included—in hierarchically descending order behind him—such Free Speech bhodisattvas as Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Betty Friedan,John Lennon, Yoko

editorial should attempt to list some of the hundreds of publica

Ono, and Lenny Bruce.

tions we have outlasted in the

past 20 years.

tU fhU-U-Uic 'PO4, however, Al was finding it difficult to get even

chose A^ist iconoclasts who were sti/l alive to return his calls. Instead, like a Gertrude Stein of glut

A button reading "I am the NRA" will be added to Al's hat on the Christmas card.

tony, he organized the very cream of Manhattan's D-list into a moveable prix fixe bruncheon salon

that haunted a waning constellation of downscale eateries. These culinary gatherings—memorable for such noted gourmands, raconteurs, and schnorrers as Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis, washed-up 1970s

want to go to Macy's before I go

Sometime Tuesday afternoon I

porn actor Jamie Gillis,subway shooter Bernhard Goetz and his pet chinchilla, former Miss America

to the library.

and New York City official Bess Meyerson,a pimp named Moreno,and Al's watch salesman from ritzy Tourneau—supplied a colorful stream of anecdotes to be shared by Al at his daily Overeaters Anonymous meetings, and established him as a reliable source of slow-news-day items for the local

On Monday—deliver the follow

gossip pages.

look at the new issue of Screw

Al's editorial enterprises, meanwhile—in addition to providing Al with a budget-line for freshly chauf-

ing letter to Bill. Dear Bill: As I

featuring Mad Comics I'm very

feured Brooklyn knishes—had become little more than the mechanism for his Citizen Kane-like exploits as

proud. But I also realize that

a world-class shopper. This curatorial work-in-progress was so vast and so compulsive that Al, who'd pay any

you may get some static. My

thing for a bargain, maintained a squad offull-time shopper/schlepper-types who prowled the world's prici

recommendation would be that

est retailers and catalogs in search of consumer goods destined for warehousing in The Goldstein Building.

you have your lawyers send me

All this and less fell within the purview of Phillip Eisenberg, Al's wolverillo-faced former chief fi nancial officer and all-around factotum. Eisenberg's pinched cheeks and gothic pallor were a not-un common sight during Screw's editorial meetings as he huffed by the open door of the managing editor's office, disconsolately pushing a laundry bin filled with such Goldsteinian dreck as unworn novelty-mes

a nasty letter threatening me with a $25 million dollar libel action. This way if anything de velops that could hurt Mad

sage T-shirts in size Extra Gotham inscribed with brainless slogans and

Comics you would be in the per

hebephrenic images, inflatable Godzillas, unread books...and various offbrand electronic devices that came with subscriptions to the latest batch of

fect position to say that as a

magazines that Al unsubscribed to after receiving his free subscriber's gift

the satire in Screw and number

premium.

two you were taking legal ac

On one typical occasion, wobbling atop a tiny wheeled office chair that extruded like a robotic hemorrhoid from between his copious

glutes, Al suddenly swiveled as though Phillip, on his well-trod route past the door, had tripped some

sort ofsensor alerting him to the presence of human victimhood.

"Phillip," queried Al, in Oedipalized tones itali

cizing the implicit threat of castration that bound Al's inner cir cle of smut yuppies. "Why am I asking you this a second time?" "Why are you asking me what, Al?" answered Phillip, whose

fact you had nothing to do with

tion to punish me. This way instead of being possi bly damaged, you can look like heroes in taking on the great porno and Godless Tool of the Devil called Al Goldstein and

Screw

magazine. Yours with love and

some precaution, Al Goldstein.

Al says to do an editorial on the death of freedom in

cringing smile glistened with the eager ambivalence ofa dog about to be taken walkies in the pouring rain.

"As long as it's my name you're signing on your paycheck, I'll ask the questions around here," snapped Al, widely renowned for his dows er's occultic acumen for detecting human discomfort.

Al knew just exactly how long to let Phillip wilt. And so did Phillip. "Was there anything else you wanted, Al?" inquired the latter after a respeaably indeterminate silence measuring several New York minutes. "Get chocolate pudding," commanded Al, with the crisp author-

England, where censor

ship is strict and civil rights are under attack.

Manny to alert Al's of fice not to include SCREWS with other material sent to Al in London.

septemder/cx:tober 1997 SPY 49

Tell Manny on the editorial I dis

ity ofa red-headed stepchild drawing a line in the sandbox."That's diet chocolate pudding. And plenty

cussed with him at the editorial

of it."

meeting Tuesday, I want to make sure we run the names

big of the low lives, the shit heads from the TV stations, the newspapers, Jimmy Breslin, Hamlin, all these journalists who got party invitations and didn't come, we want to attack. And that requires looking at

"Consider it done, Al," panted Phillip, scribbling furiously on a notepad. "And a new refrigerator. One that doesn't have to be defrosted. And..."

Suddenly Al pivots on his perch to fece a smirking Manny Neuhaus—^who is evidently savoring this interlude in verbal abuse.

"As for you, Manny..."

Phillip takes advantage of this moment to tiptoe from the room. Neuhaus droops in the crosshairs of Al's ire. "What am I paying Phillip to pay you for me for?"

the invitation list...every jour

nalist who did not respond is a scumbag, cause it means that it's a journalist who does not

manier d^etreYm

A new refrigerator. I want one

some ofits roots in the icy dread that he must have felt seeing his name on a federal warrant. Nevertheless, his 19 obscenity arrests in the '60s and '70s, all of which resulted in acquittals, remain his finest mo ments—especially his two federal obscenity trials in Kansas(one of which landed in a mistrial and the other a hung jury—although a stipulation is still in force that Screw may not be distributed in Kansas).

that doesn't have to be defrost

And the result is that he's been chasing that dizzying sense ofsacrificial-lambism ever since.

think Screw has credibility.

ed. Hammacher Schlemmer

Al's eager-to-oflfend quest for attention would result, down through the decades, in a number of shameless media stunts,some of which—^like his abandoned run for sheriffofBroward County,Florida, and his mind-under-matter bid against Rupert Murdoch for the New York Post ownership—^would just

has one.

Tell Dondo If he was in the bed

room working on the big screen set when I came in here it did

not go on which means buttons

sputter and die. Much worse for everyone concerned, however, were those stunts that achieved varyingly hideous degrees ofsuccess. Foremost in this category was the descent into Goldsteinian madness that began with Al's words:"How can we cash in on Rushdie?" Shortly after Screw'% "Sluts ofIslam" issue hit Gotham newsstands, an ultra-Islamic newspaper—in

isfactory explanation from Steve

response to repeated calls from Al—^reported that death squads were en route to The Goldstein Building. Meticulously cizltivated rumors ofan FBI investigation and an NYPD anti-terrorist alert kicked in,en abling Al to blubber to People that,"I am really concerned for my safety and don't want to trivialize this

he'll be fired...Last week he had

by making it a press event."

excuses....if he wasn't in the

bedroom he has a fighting

As the death threats, real and imagined, mounted,Al—denied a pistol-carry permit by the NYPD— went into hiding behind a lobster bib at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami while the rest of us awaited a spray

chance.If he was in the bedroom

of bullets which,for better or worse, never came.

playing with the Sony he is in a

But perhaps the most quintessentially Goldsteinian publicity debacle was that surrounding Screw's 20th Anniversary party. Al's idea had been to stage an anti-smut protest by phony feminists. Neuhaus was instructed to leak this syntho-event to the gossip pages, and to send someone up to the offices of Women Against Pornography for a bundle ofleaflets. Unfortunately, the staffer selected for the pick up—not privy to the gag—was wearing an "Al Goldstein for President" T-shirt. The equally public

were touched. That as far as I

am concerned unless I get a sat

lot of fucking trouble. The air conditioner here...the

front of it, the air conditioner in the dining room...the front is fucked up. It keeps falling out. That has to be fixed.

I'll update PE tion with Lyie cludes buying interviewing a

on my conversa Stuart. That in a bookclub and Danish Ambass

ity-starved Women Against Pornography huckstresses retaliated with an item in a New York Post gossip page exposing Al's ploy—^printed just days before the anniversary party under the jeering head line "Nice Try." Perpetrated in a schlockadelic nightclub known for catering to Bud-guzzling suburbanites in acid-wash denims,the fell 1988 fete featured Al,clad in smartly tailored sweatpants and tented with a pu% chemise smothered in Disney cartoon characters, playing host to some of the world's ugliest men...Robin Leach, Morton Downey,Jr., Bob Guccione,the late Uny Hm,Michael Musto,Robin Leach again,and Danny the

Wonder Pony. Al's gun-loving teenage spawn Jordan Ari Goldstein—clearly a chip offthe old blob—^made

ador. More to follow.

a rare Planet Goldstein appearance performing magic tricks amid a co-dependent cavalcade ofAl's ex-wives,

Speak to Steve about the Sony pillow in the media room to

elderly parents, and many others to whom Al has been joined at the heart, mind,groin, or pocketbook in his long descent to these heights.Screw subscribers and other gawking members ofthe general public were charged $150 admission to ofl^t the cost of hiring fake feminists. Screw staffers, on the other hand, were

make sure it's working...I want

each issued a chit good for a drink and a knish—an apt reminder ofthe priceless freedoms,mainly Al's, which

to review with him how it works

we had gathered to commemorate.

so I can use it.

Such are my fractured memories ofa vanished decade. Working for Al Goldstein was an experience eerily evocative ofJamesJoyce's timeless aper^u:"We live in an age ofexhausted whoredom,groping for its god. Without lingering too obsessively on this thought,it was, needless to say,only a matter oftime before the entropic forces and farces that had made Al the patron saint of workplace misfithood arrayed themselves in a manner that tarred me with much the same unlucky brush that had slimed Hammacher-

The guy at Don Pepe, my waiter, his name is Tommy, talk to me about giving him a call to invite him to the party Monday night.

Schlemmer and others too numerous to mention. To this very day, whenever I have a hankering for a cheap depressant I narcotize myself with the knowledge that while there's very little Al Goldstein in most of

Macy's you know about.

50 SPY SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

us, there's a lot ofsome of us, myselfparticularly, in Al.^

Millions of Americans find life

boring and depressing. Is there an unworkable quIck-fix solu. tlon, or with weekly lessons can we

.«

jCf • learn to wallow In our misery? >' By Bruno Maddox and

■

Ja'ed Paul Stern

SUNDAY OCTOBER 1, 1997, AND FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN

TRAGIK MAGIK* There is only one magazine with the power to dictate all water-cooler conversation in the important comer of the world's most powerful nation: this one, The Magazine • Shouldn't that be "The New York Times Magazine?"• No, that isn't epic enough • Isn't it a huge responsibility having to explain the meaning of life every week to every American? • Yes, it is • What are these little dots? • That's for the monks • so they know when to breathe while they are chanting. QUESTIONS FOR

L.E Cooper L.F. Cooper is the author of a memorandum to the head of

the Metropolitan Refuse Company, announcing his in

tention to be out of the of

fice for a few days this fall.

Q: Arc you planning; a \ acati()n this year? A: Yes. Yes I am. My wife died at Christmas, and I guess as a kid growing up in the industri al slums of Cleveland, 1 always looked at vacations as a chance FOOD

Show Me the Pizza

Residents ofSpringfield, Mass.,with a hankering for Italian food have for the past four years been patronizing Aldo's Pizzeria, a specialist Italian food eatery just adjacent to

to kind of "get away" from where I was at and many of the things, positive and negative, that were surrounding me at the time. So that's something I'm verv^ much looking forward to at the moment.

the town's always-popular gas station. As he talks, Aldo the pro prietor, whose wife died last year, is making a pizza in the tradi tional fashion, spinning a large disc of dough on his hands.

Q: On your vacation, will you go camping in New Jcr.scv.'

"There is narthing going on here, no money trouboo, no special offer discown, no narthing." Running a pizzeria is a man-size job, however, and Aldo frequently enlists the help of son Julio, 14, and daughter Bianca, 9, whose doll T1ggy lost an eye in a Fisher Price garage incident last year. "The thing about pizza," reck ons one hungry customer, "is that it's kind of like sex. It's always

that my situation is \ er\' differ ent from that of, say, the stars in Hollywood who can funnel money into doing something ex otic and worth hearing about for

good, but it's never//w/good. No wait, I mean..."

A: I will. You have to understand

their vacations. My own plan is to drive around, go camping.

OUCH COUCH In an unexpected irony, Mark Eckstein, CEO of software giant Intratec, stubbed his toe on a new leather sofa last month. "How did you know that?" he asked The Magazine when confronted with the report. "And why would you want to write a story about it?"

read far too much into a brief conversation with a female

backpacker from The Hague, and then go home. This is the sort of thing I've been referring to in some of the memos I've

written recently. Q: You're the genuine article aren't you? A: Absolutely. I'm the real America. I^ike many people, I do find it interesting occasion ally to read about the new tat too

Dennis

Rodman's

bottom or that China is poised to invade Indonesia, but only in a ver\' fleeting, shallow sort of way. In the eyes of God, those topics are adctiuatcly covered by the smaller magazines. The real America is to be found here

in The Magazine, with the peo ple, the people who are living their lives day in, day out. And I think that's important

52 SPY SEPTi'MBER,OCTOBER 1997

CULTURE MOAN {Father Saf/ri/is contwued)

BY KAKUTANUS OF MICHIKO

"Please,just retire you loser. It's been like

a hundred years already. I'm seriously pon dering the difference between k'ukhigyour teeth in myself and getting this guy 1 know to come and son you oiitf writes Dr. Roland

The Americanization of

Pinkbowtie of the Language Institute in Chicago. This is one that we mavens hear

Amerii

all the time. Our stock response.^ The for mer mayfeel more correct, but the latter is

always more legally prudent.

Unaware that its sole purpose was to elicit responses of this genus, what's more, Dr. P proceeds to coal me over the hauls for a rogue formulation in last week's col umn.(This is the correct version of the id

iom, incidentally; think about it. Even though more usual, wouldn't hidin^haiiled over the coals be somewhat painful to the liaulee, even if they were coals to Newcastle:) "Surely," he writes, "when consecutively repeating the phrase indict

Wli.vi'DO I HE v\\.\\.lerryMaguire,

Washington, and the can-do spirit of the Wild West, a certain latent quintessential Americanness can be detected. I called up

prose, the proper separation between

cars with fins, the rock group Nirvana, and a man in golfing trousers scooping A-1 barbecjue sauce into

each iteration is a semicolon followed by

his mouth with his fingers have in com

Alan Brinkley, professor of American historv' at Columbia University. He was not

a space;(see, right there, I just did one!)

mon.^ The answer, of course, is that they

at home.

rather than the four, underlined exclama

are all American.

Clinton more than 50 times in a piece of

At the same time, however, a lot of

tion marks that you appear to have made

Just how distressingly American eveiy-

people seem to be saying that the

your 'stock in trade'." Dr. P's letter (as distinct from a Utter)

thing has suddenly become I had occasion

Americanization of America—like so

to discover last month. As I promised in my last column—which lumped together the rock group Beatles, the television se ries Barney Miller, and a recent spate of Broadway musicals tinged by cynical vio lence—I decided to venture outside my apartment for the first time in 15 years. As you can imagine, I was strangely moved. 1

of rampant greed, a politics of relentless cynicism, a media monolith rampantly and relentlessly inured to irony, senseless cin ematography, kiddie-porn perfume ads, and what a famous French philosopher— a book of \\ hose early work I ha\ e next to

is a nice (in the old sense) illustration of

la diference between me and the under class of worshipful, small-town language fascisti of which Dr. P, ironically, is a per fect example. lM)r it is I alone, writing in The Magazine, who has a feel for those rare instances when it is appropriate to kickback and celebrate the organic evolu tion of language as it is actually spoken. Take a chillpill, yo, before you upload your hard drive.

remembered a line from TS. Eliot. I heard

the suave voice of Frank Sinatra. I thought of a scene from a Francis Coppola film. For a moment, I was disoriented. I wandered, like Ahab in the Melville

novel Moby Dick or Hamlet in the epony FILLING SPACE

A clintonista, for her sins, whatever chat

means in this context, would surely have more trouble than this forging a transition from the preceding slurry of irrelevance

to the hyphenless neopropism spacefiller.

mous play by Shakespeare. I observed the passersby. And I was struck by how curi ously American everything seemed. There were white investment bankers lis

tening to black "gangster" rap. Black homeboys wearing tennis whites in wild

From the Rev. F id spacefiller, "one who fills space, a filler of empty

appropriation

space, a man whose column invariably

permarkets instead of shoes.

runs a little bit short, and who makes up

the difference by quoting in equal parts from reader mail and from the really small

of tennis-whiteness.

Homeless people wearing bags from su Contradictions were multiplying furi

many bad things—is the fault of a culture

my commode—calls simulacrization. In a

sense, the culture of politics has become the politics of culture, and vice versa. On the other hand, it hasn't.

Indeed, what really surprised me was the uncanny way old things appeared new, which is of course a paradox. But 1 shouldn't have been surprised. In this lowfat, sugar-free, canned-laughter, ser\'ice-included, virtual-reality, clip 'n' save, 10 percent more flakes, details-at-II, pleasedeposit-25-ccnts, cmployees-arc-requircdto-wash-their-hands world, life has

become strange and at times apocalyptic. For all we know, there will soon be some kind of television Music Channel broad

casting rock and roll songs at all hours.

ously. I hurried inside to take down my

The ironies would multiply again.

Finally, it occurred to mc that every thing is very sad, yet at the same time grimly poetic. The present may be a hope

print in the Oxford English Dictionary.

thoughts. No doubt the first thing to be said

The French, unfortunately, do not have a

about the Americanization of America is

word for spacefiller. Perhaps the French

that its roots must lie somewhere in the

are all losers'i Or, indeed, cyberwankers'^.

American past. In the hucksterism of P. T.

less muddle of high and low, real and fake, new and used. The good times may be

Indict Clinton.

Barnum, the wooden teeth of George

over. But at least thev're not "over-easy." SEPTEMBERyOCrOBER 1997 SPY 53

How Americans wrestle

with the drabness of life. Day in. Day out. s the rest of America settled down to watch the Olympics last Summer, Tom Hardy of Bleke, Mich., was examining a piece of mail he had just retrieved from his mailbox. It was

addressed not to him, but to one "Tom Hbrdy" instead. A few phone calls to the sender, a local pizzeria hawking a celebratoiy square-yard of sausage deep-dish, cleared up the confusion, But Hardy, whose wife died last year, was shaken up. As a child growing up

in rainswept Anchorage, Alaska, Hardy had dreamed of one day at least exploring the possibility of"being somebody." 1b receive, at the age of68, such a brutal reminder of his persistent anonymity and irrelevanceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with the apparent endorsement of the U.S. postal office, no lessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;was the last thing he needed. "You're the first journalists to make it down here," Hardy murmurs as he stands on his front

lawn, bleak and flat in the steely heat, and subjugates a wisp of his thinning gray hair with a leathery hand. "This isn't living; this is just siir\'ival. 1 just wish I knew what was going on." What's going on is that, like millions of Americans,Tom Hardy is just waking up to the fact

that human existence is inherently grim and drab. From inner-city schoolteachers on a pau pers salary, to the last remaining lawwer in a small Appalachian town, to the dvnamic voting shortstop of the New York Mets. Americans are waking up in greater and greater numbers to the fact that spouses die, projects take longer than anticipated, and that a grim survivalist work ethic is really the only value that endures in this gruelling charade that we occasionallv and 54 SPY SEPTHMBER/OCTOBER 1997

l don't even have a living room,"explains Hardy, whose wife died last year. "All I have is the room I exist in."

mistakenly refer to as Life. It's a situation made worse by the failure of Science to

nally come of age as an international 'ex treme' sport. But until then..."

maybe 5,000 years," he murmurs, sliding a locally made Milwaukee Yankees baseball

come up with anything in the way of

The prospects for improvement are

quick fixes. Could it be that our time on

bleak. Dr. Koch tells his patient with the almost flippant nonchalance of a man who deals with tragedy day in and dav out.

"Not great, but probably fine."

I'nscrolling a large, multicolored chart of

should consider the following: none of

the human vascular system, Koch isolates the problem.

toms of Monstro's distress, we'd have to

them isaut us to feel sorrv' for them. In fact, we should envy them. There is, after all, more to life than snorting cocaine with su permodels and appearing on the cover of some glossy rag with a little bagg>' of free shampoo stapled to one's face. There is the

start by removing if not a// of these es

Struggle, the day in day out battle for sur

this planet was simply not designed to be as fun and colorful as it appears in those other, little, magazines. According to Dr. Jurgen Koch of the Koch institute of Chicago, yes it could.

UnderDr Koch's upervision,

a suivey of citizens recently profiled in The Magazine turned up some distpiieting data. Seventy percent con fessed to staring at their shoes on windswept pieces of wasteground while a man takes photographs of them. Eight>' two percent have a thinning wisp of gray hair through which they periodically rake a claw-like hand. And a staggering 97 percent admit to hav ing laboriously drawn a seman tic distinction between "living" and "exist ing" in the previous 24 hours. in the uncomfortable wooden chair on

"It's all of this," he waves generally at the chart, "all these glands and veins and

things. In order to alleviate the symp

vival that has become the new national

key ones that keep blood flowing to his

pastime. And there are Thomas Hardy and

brain. And (juite frankly I just don't have the funding."

the millions of sufferers in his exact same

The few dollars he does receive come

ing president of newly democratic ft""" Drabuania. ^ i â&#x2013;ź Koch himself, whose wife Life is no picnic for the leather i and two sons died last year of fatigue, jacket-wearing chief executive. While most I exploring the grim, unchanging qualof his energy is spent trying to raise the ;l ity of all human existence is more

chock-full of so-called "daredevil excite

chioed Ivanesevic also wages a neverending battle against painful lumbar ero

one to which we yell "Rock and fucking roll!" before hurling ourselves out of mov

ing aircraft. There is the underpinning of quiet tragedy, for instance. "Skydiving has come a long way in the

last 450 years," opines the well-muscled glamour boy in a voice perhaps a shade above a whisper,"but for those of us diving

cious government, the wispily niusta-

sion, a hercditar," disease of the lower back that leaves his trademark "casual" T-shirt

filled with granulated yellow powder at the end of evcrv' day. Koch speaks warmly of his famous patient, and tiuotes extensively from Ivancscvic's Nobel-prize winning haiku,"Do Not Feel Pity For Me."

My life does not suck. My "existence"? that sucks. "Life"? Pai,you'/?jesting.

in the '90's, every day is still a gruelling

struggle for funding and recognition, a qui etly demoralizing war to which there seems

If it weren't for Ivanesevic's wife, Elsa,

with whom he now shares a loving embrace

to be no end." He layers a fistful of gelati

before she heads off excitedly to make the

nous unguent into his helmet of ebony hair.

first jump on a cheaply constructed new bungee facility, the blue-jeaned people's favorite might be even more gloomy than

"Not that we want anyone to feel sorrv^ for

us. Perhaps if we keep struggling there's a chance that in 150, 160 years we may fi

position who just happen to be that na tional pastimes' Was Boggses.

exclusively from the private coffers of his most illustrious patient: Mladtko Ivanesevic, much-loved, haiku-writ- _

spirits of a nation of illiterates, wcaiy after 1,500 years of small-minded and capri

realize that life has other faces besides the

Before we start feeling sorry for any of Koch's patients, the doctor counsels, we

sential systems, then at least a few of the

one side of Dr. Koch's stripped-pine desk sits Monstro Difranco, freestyle skydiving champion of the world. Difranco's life is as ment" as it possibly could be, but the 24year-old New Jcrseyite is mature enoughâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; perhaps because his wife died last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to

hat over his frail flcur-de-lys of gray hair.

he is. "Drabuania will be fine in 4,000

than just a job, it's an obsession. To

1^ replenish the stocks of potassium fluoride he needs for his experi ments, Koch rises at 4:.50 every morning and spends the often cold and bleak pre dawn hours collecting dog feces from the wasteground adjoining the local petro chemical plant. "After my assistant passed away, things have been a little tougher around here," he admits, dropping a promising-looking chunk of shit into his bag. "But the last

thing 1 want is for anyone to feel sorry for me. Fifty or so years from now, I'm confi dent we'll have a solid base of research

from which to really attack this problem.

Right now, it's more important that the public gain an understanding of the peo ple who have to live this way, day in and day out." He runs a gloved hand through his thin plume of hair. "That's if you can call it "Living." .Sometimes I think 'Being Depressing to Read About' is probably a better (continued on pages 61, 89, and 104} SEPTUMBERyOCTOBER 1997 SPY S5

The New York Times Book of the Dead

STYLE

HeroinChic—that'syesterday's news,so 19 6.Thefashioncognoscenti haveal BY BRUBACHIANDIVISTA

ready discarded it like last season's Prada mules. No, what's hot now, I hereby decree, is the look known as "Crack Cool" — characterized by strategically

placed pipe burns, a subversively hip nodding of the head, mindless jabbering of stylish phrases, matted hair, torn sweatshirts and urban-decay teeth; in a word, so hip it hurts. Believe me, the trademark ashen visages, nary a slash of crim son Chanel ombre creme in sight, will soon be popping up all over the fashion spectrum, from the Champs Elysees to Seventh Avenue and back again. Think of it this way: crack is about the only thing that hasn't been done to death. There are so few really "out there" drugs left, n'est-ce pas.^ Fashionistas know that the whole heroin chic thing was

played anyway. It had become little more than a narcotic bandwagon being jumped on by every arriviste with a mod eling contract or three-picture deal. Maybe what really sig naled the end was when former Night Couit star Markie Post played a smackhead in a Lifetime channel movie-of-theweek called Chasing the Dragon. Markie Post on the needle.^ How hip is that.^ Next. From the moment shutterbug Corinne Day discovered a scraggly little ginch called Kate Moss in a Croydon carpark up till now we've had to listen to a lot of heroin chic claptrap. Hell, most of the models weren't even shoot

ing up. The coolest trends are always about appropriation anyway — did you really think crack would stay in the ghet to.^ Not on your Gucci handbag, darling. Some say Karl Lagerfeld started the whole Crack Cool thing after a visit to South Central Los Angeles. Others credit John Galliano. Whatever. But not

Elegantly Wasted

everyone is hip to the news; "It's all fun and games until someone CD's," says Muffy McGuyver, senior fashion editor at Wogue. Goddamn supermarket magazines. But Crack Cool won't just be for garmentos and the Hamptons set; thanks to the miracle of

modern cosmetics, pretty soon you too will be able to get that oh-so-chic Avenue C glaze at your local Clinique counter — without the attendant nausea, cardiovascular stress and general men tal and physical deterioration that comes with actually smoking the stuff. An analyste de beaute will assist you in picking out the auto-stoner most suited to your skin type, income level and sex

ual predilection. Because some of us still have to get up in the morning, right.^ 56 SPY Sl-PTIiMBEJt/OCTOBER 1997

LIVING DEATHS BY G.P. NOTAMAN

When Work Is the Enemy Sometimes she wishes her husband were a cripple. It might get him out of the house.

Atfour in the morning, Doug shakes me awake and tells me he needs to go to the bathroom. He knows that in three hours I'll be bustling the kids off to school, maniacally scribbling notes for

a meeting I won't have prepared for, propping him up in front of the TV with the remote where

he can reach it. He knows this—his sad, slow smile tells me so—but right now he needs to go to the bath room and my anger isn't going to get him there. He's right. In the bladder-bursting silence, I gather up his limbs and lug him down the hall. The noise wakes up Cassandra. As my husband's fruity eau de toilette rattles noisily into the bowl, I hug my daughter in the darkened hallway. Tears fall onto her hair: a 5and-a-half year-old girl who looks about 6.

Please don't tell me you know what we're going through. Please. Even after reading this entire column and perhaps even memorizing it, please don't tell me you have any idea what it's like to be me. At all. If you've never had to explain to a child whose fa ther has never picked her up from school or taken her to the movies that Daddy's not sick. Daddy's just unbelievably lazy, then believe me. You ^o//'/know how it feels.

By the end of my First-Novel-for-the-Over-40's workshop, I can hardly keep my eyes open.(At one point I describe a man's smile as "gentle" and "banana-shaped," which earns some applause, but I'm too tired to appreciate it.) Back home, I find the TV blaring and Doug's chair tipped over and empt>: Suddenly, I'm wide awake.

Panic fulminates from the well-spring of my stomach, then fizzes

tripped over Doug on the floor and that he seemed to have fallen

asleep in the middle—actually after the first few pages—ofa nov el by Richard Ford."Ze side of ze book," she sobbed hysterically. "It make like a ted line on his face!" Later, when it became clear

Doug wasn't getting any better, we talked about seeking medical help. A woman in my Zen-homemaking seminar gave me the number of an indolence-nutritionist, but after initially agreeing to come with me,something in Doug's eyes told me the deal was off.

"Er...yeah," he said. "Oh actually...nah." In desperation, I wheedled Doug into taking a vacation in Tahiti. But while Cassandra and I donned helmets and wetsuits to

go scubaparascending, Doug stayed in the hotel and played table tennis with the locals. Later I heard them mimicking him in the bar—the sloppy, whistled version of the NBA-on-NBC theme tune, the way he leaves the final "g" off all his present participles—and my heart broke again. After searching the hotel complex with a bil lowing souffle of panic maturing in my esophagus, I found him in an inflatable deckchair: one hand trailing in the water, a book of

up to the filamented extremities of my hair. Half-dreading, half-

super-easy wordsearch puzzles in the other. As the tropical sun

hoping, half-suspecting that something terrible may have hap

flishelied\nio the ocean behind me, I screamed at him from the top

pened, I scramble up the stairs, screeching the name of the man I

of the 20-meter springboard,"Doug,what the fuck are you doing?"

love. The man I hate.

After two or three minutes, when his chair had floated round so we

could see each other, he gave me the nutty; loping smile I know so dirty sock from across our bedroom towards the laundry basket. well and said quietly, "Er...just chillin'." Nothing more needed to With a patter, the ragged sphere hits its target."Mutombo," he says, be said. I realized that I had raised my voice to the man I loved giving me that sad, pliered smile that says I'm sorry but right now (the man 1 hated), and he was right: It was chilling. I burst through the door just as Doug is launching a rolled-up,

My life is empty now. Empty like the gaping squares in the I'm fighting a battle that I have to fight alone. "For three!" It wasn't always this way. As an engagement present, Doug crossword puzzle that Doug can not, Doug will not finish. The gave me a spice rack that he'd spent hours and hours working on. grass in our yard grows longer and longer, and I am the only one of Once he even cooked me dinner. And then one day my world fell my friends whose refrigerator door bears a painting by a 5-year-oId apart. Out of the blue, Cassandra's babysitter called me at work to girl of a grown man sipping Mai Tais in a hammock. For now, tell me that while she'd been cleaning the guest bedroom, she'd though, this is how things are. I lie in bed, the alarm clock with the wom-through snooze-button showing 4:10 a.m. When I turn to my sleeping husband, I can see in his long, aluminum smile that he [G.P. Notaman is the author of"The Key West Murders:a Tabiiha Grey will sur\'ive. Doug can't, I realize, be bothered not to. ■ Mystery," an unpuhlished novel.] SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 SPY 57

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LIE

DETECTOR

INTERVIEW

Cvber-Guv a Liar? H E MAKES SCADS OF CASH AS A GENERATION X NEW-MEDIA CONSULTANT. But IS THE MAN A FRAUD? By Lukas Barr Is toda)' Sunday? Yes, it is.

Are you going to answer all my questions truthfully? Yes.

Is your first name Douglas? Yes. Despite having such a baby-boomerish first name, imapologetic cyber-guy Douglas

cyber-guy, he took to the polygraph ma chine like a sheep to pasture, and was very forthcoming.

things and advising big corporations about

though he decided to rule the answer true.

Generation X, the Internet, and what it's like to be what he calls a "screenager." Rushkoff

Do you think the Internet has changed the

has published a cairn of books about cyber space—Cyberia. Media Virus, Playing the

Have you taken any illegal drugs in the last

Future—-and, according to theNe/r York Titm, he earns up to S7,500 per hour. Glenn Almas, however, our certified polygrapher, had been

RushkofFs conscience was perfectly clear about

world? Yes.

year? Yes. this answer, however. His novel The Ecstasy Club is all about drug-taking rave kids, and,

properly unfazed by RushkofTs magnificence

like any good novelist, Rushkoff has appar

•as he hooked him up to the machine. Are you a cyber-pundit?-No. One might have thought that cyber-punditry was the sort of glamour occupation whose practitioners would proudly sport bumper stickers reading "Cyber-Pundits Do It For

ently done some research.

one of those jobs—like secretary or spin doc tor—that dares not speak its name. Do you make 57,500 an hour? No. Are you a sellout? No. Perhaps another problem with being a cyber-pundit is that when you achieve a mod icum of success, the cyber rabble from which you rose becomes resentful. The stories of his hourly rate provoked scorn in certain Gilifornia circles, as had the story of his deal with Miramax, which optioncxl his novel The Ecstasy

Club. Rushkoff was setting things straight. Has being a cyber-pundit improved your sex life? Yes.

Sex is what Rushkoff really wanted to be

M SPY SEITEMBER/OCTOBER 1997

it. They are more flexible and less linear, he says. But Glenn Almas raised an eyebrow at

ing people that he understands twenty-some

$7,500 an Hour." Instead, it turns out to be

lives In Manhattan's West Village. As a

video games—"controlling the pixel," he calls

RushkofTs answer."The subject showed signs of hesitation and doubt," he was to say later, al

Rushkoff has built a lucrative career convinc

Douglas Rushkoff

And then the polygrapher frowned. In his books, Rushkoffsays that kids today are big on channel-surfing, cruising the Internet, playing

Does "Generation X" exist? Yes.

Glenn Almas looked up again, having de

tected something fishy in Rushkoffs answer. It was ironic, at least one observer noted to

himself, that the editor of The Gen X Reader, someone who has advised Baby Bells on how to marker to Gen X, would doubt the exis

tence of the huge sprawling entity that puts food on his table and fresh lumberjack shirts on his back.

Is Wired magazine evil? Yes. Is Microsoft evil? No.

But maybe Rushkoff just likes to think un conventionally: his positions on Wired—the evil Plugged magazine in his novel—and Microsoft are the exact opposite of the con ventional wisdom!

Are kids more advanced than adults? Yes.

His position on kids isn't much more conven tional: he believes that skateboard gangs rep resent an enlightened form of tribalism, a step

interviewed about. "Ask me what's the

forward for humanity.

youngest girl I'd have sex with ifit were legal, ask me ifI've ever had anal sex, ask me how of

Is today Sunday? Yes.

ten I masturbate," he implored. We explained

Douglas Rushkoffdid fine, Glenn Almas said,

to him the lie detector only measured the truthfulness of"yes" or "no" answers.

philosopher would the man be, after all, if he

You're done. How'd I do?

hesitations notwithstanding. What kind of

Are kids today any different than they

didn't stop occasionally to wonder if he might

used to be? Yes.

actually be calking undiluted nonsense.

...

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