JOHN MAYER

Hot Pursuit

With the new Lexus LFA, Japan takes on Europe’s sexiest supercars

Lexus has offered highly refined coupes and sedans for 20 years, but until now it has left the supercarmakers alone. No longer. Only 500 LFAs will hit the streets in 2010, and though those numbers may look like a toe in the water, the metal they’re slinging makes it clear that Lexus is jumping into the supercar market with both feet. Nine years in development, the LFA is an engineering masterwork, meticulously handcrafted on a lightweight carbon- fiber- reinforced plastic monocoque shell with aluminum extrusions front and back. You won’t mistake its crisp, aircraft- like compound curves and razor edges for anything from Europe, and with a front- mounted 4.8-liter 552 bhp alloy V10 and six-speed sequential manual transmission, the LFA will impudently flash its unusual triple exhaust pipes past nearly anything you’ll encounter on the road. As expected, when we tested her at Miami’s Homestead raceway we found precise steering and instant throttle response as we blasted to 60 mph in a scant 3.6 seconds, thoroughly enjoying every decibel of the engine’s operatic 9,000 rpm wails. There’s just one catch: You can’t actually buy a $375,000

LFA. Lexus is taking a cue from the Ferrari Enzo and will lease all 150 U.S.-bound LFAs when they arrive in 2011.

American Chopper

The two easiest ways to screw up a fine cigar are to cut it imprecisely and to light it unevenly. We don’t take chances with our brown bazookas, so we use Blazer’s Chief II ($55, blazerproducts.com), which features a powerful blueflame torch and a guillotine cutter that magnetically stows in the lighter’s body.

Eau de Oh!

The urbane gents who run the upscale Odin boutiques in New York City are branching out from fashion to fragrance with three unique scents. 01 Nomad offers cedar and juniper, 02 Owari features citrus notes, and 03 Century brings in cypress, birch and mint. Each goes for $110 (odinnewyork.com).

Use Protection

PYFM—Protect Your Fucking Melon. It’s the cardinal rule of all motorcycle riding, before going fast or looking cool, and applies whether you’re tooting along on a Vespa or hauling ass on a hog. But there’s no law against protecting your melon in style. French design company Les Ateliers Ruby recently added a windscreen to its gorgeous Pavillon, giving it a retro- futuristic twist. The new guy is called Belvédère (from $970, ateliersruby.com).

Cold Comfort

The high heat of distillation destroys the subtle flavors of gin, so most makers employ a two-stage process. First they distill liquor, then they infuse it with juniper and other botanicals. Turns out, though, in a high pressure environment alcohol can be made to boil at low temperatures. Which is how the producers of Oxley gin ($50) can distill and infuse their spirit in one step without destroying its delicate flavors. Way to go, science!

Hack Your Life: Paint Up a Theater

If you want a TV you can measure in feet instead of inches, then turn a stretch of bare wall into a giant screen. It’s simple to do. First, pick up a low-end 1080p projector (Vivitek’s H1080FD goes for $1,000). Then grab a can of Screen Goo ($105 a can, goosystems.com) in either gray or white (the site will tell you which one is right for your projector) and paint the wall you want to use as a screen. For enhanced perceived contrast, figure out the exact image size on the wall and paint a black border around the edges. Depending on the throw distance (how far your projector sits from the wall; the longer the throw the bigger the image), you can get a screen that’s 10 feet across, or larger if you don’t mind slightly diminished brightness and resolution.

Pockets Full of Future

Thanks to Google’s open-source, Internet- focused Android OS for smart phones, we’re finally getting interesting options beyond BlackBerry and iPhone. And these all have built-in Wi-Fi (clockwise from bottom right): Samsung’s Behold II ($230 with T-Mobile contract) has a five- mega pixel camera and Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. The Motorola Droid ($200 with Verizon contract) offers a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. HTC’s Hero ($180 with Sprint contract) uses an iPhone-like all- touchscreen, no- keyboard approach. Finally, the Archos 5 (from $220, archos.com) isn’t a phone at all but a Net- connected entertainment device that lets you watch movies, listen to music and surf the web.

In November playboy published a report on women who could reach orgasm by fantasy alone, i.e. playboy without any physical stimulation. Can any men do this?—H.N., Cleveland, Ohio Most men have. It’s called a aDVISOR nocturnal emission, or wet dream, which is a climax with ejaculation that occurs during an erotic fantasy even when a sleeping man is not erect. (Sleep orgasms also occur in women.) As for spontaneous climax while awake, this is much more likely to occur during puberty. Alfred Kinsey noted that while two thirds of 3,588 men interviewed for his 1948 study of male sexuality said they experienced their first orgasm while masturbating, a small number (less than one percent) said it happened during innocuous activities such as reading a book, moving water around in the tub, hearing a bell ring, watching an exciting basketball game or walking down the street. Only a few men reported spontaneous orgasms as adults, either while under emotional stress (e.g., during an exam or while in combat) or by “deliberate concentration” on a fantasy. There’s also the case of a man in his mid-20s who told researchers in 1983 that his antidepressant (clomipramine, or Anafranil) not only made him want to yawn but produced a spontaneous orgasm whenever he did. I’m a 22-year-old college student with a bad habit: I fall head over heels for my friends’ girlfriends. I’ve never acted on these feelings, but I understand why I have them: I don’t meet many women who share my schedule, and I can’t spend time with these women outside the awkward world of dating. After another guy does the legwork and brings a woman into our circle of friends, all it takes is for him to go away for one night and leave his girlfriend to be entertained by a trusted friend (me, the scoundrel). She and I talk and laugh, and I become obsessed. How do I stop? After three years of this, I’m going bonkers.—I.H., Denver, Colorado

It makes perfect sense that you fall for these women; they’re attracted to guys who are a lot like you. And you’re right—it’s much harder to “cold call” a potential girlfriend than to have her grow to love you. Although harboring such crushes can be painful, getting to know these women has its advantages. First, you are honing your social skills with the opposite sex. Second, these women have friends who may find you irresistible (why not ask?). If your male friends are so proficient at finding women who appeal to you, solicit their help as well. Third, there’s always the possibility one of these women will finally fall for your charms, although talk about awkward dating. We’re sympathetic to your situation, to a point. It doesn’t get much easier to meet women than while living in a relatively closed environment of horny single people your own age. So fourth and foremost, quit spending so much time hanging out with women who have boyfriends.

Do you know of any way to get a crust on a steak like those you see at steakhouses?—B.H., Santa Monica, California A steakhouse grill burns at 1,000 degrees or more, so any moisture on the surface of the meat instantly evaporates. The result is a steak singed on the outside and juicy on the inside. This can be a challenge on a home grill because it doesn’t get anywhere near that hot. However, Tim Love, chef and owner of the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in Fort Worth, suggests seasoning the steaks with salt and pepper almost to the point at which you think you’ve added too much. Pour canola or peanut oil into a cast-iron skillet. Heat until you see smoke, then carefully add each steak and cook two to four minutes per side. “That should give you a pretty darn good crust,” he says. Or here’s another strategy, from the chefs at America’s Test Kitchen, near Boston: Pat dry four one-and-a-half-inchthick steaks, then rub with a mixture of a teaspoon each of salt (for seasoning) and corn starch (to absorb moisture). Place the unwrapped steaks in the freezer for 30 minutes to an hour, until they are firm and dry to the touch. Season with pepper, then grill covered to taste (four to eight minutes per side). My erection is not straight. TINA BERNING Should I be concerned?—T.M., Douglas, Arizona Yes, though not much can be done unless the curvature is severe I have a recurring fantasy in which I masturbate in enough to justify surgery. The confront of a beautiful woman or an audience of women dition, known as Peyronie’s dislarge enough to fill Madison Square Garden. I have ease after the French surgeon who no desire to pleasure myself in public, but I worry first described it in 1743, affects my fantasy could escalate into an illegal act. Can you about five percent of men, usually help?—J.K., New York, New York between the ages of 40 and 60. The

We’re confident you will remain an upstanding citizen, espe- curvature appears to be triggered cially if you feel no compelling need to take your act to the streets. when the fibrous sheath beneath the Besides, the creep in a raincoat is getting off on the woman’s shock, shaft skin is damaged—perhaps by not her glee. In Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an repeated minor buckling during Uncensored Age, a 42-year-old man describes to Nancy Friday a intercourse—and fails to heal propfantasy in which a group of women organize a penis beauty con- erly. If scarring occurs on top of the test, which, naturally, he wins. Friday believes these exhibitionistic shaft, the penis curves upward. If daydreams have become more common among men because femi- it’s on a side, the penis curves to the nism has made it okay for women to “feast their eyes” in the same left or right. If it’s on the bottom, the way the male gaze soaks up women. But we haven’t yet achieved penis curves down. If the bend isn’t equality, Friday notes: While society views female exhibitionism as severe, a doctor may suggest “watcha form of seduction, the display of the male body is a hostile act. ful waiting” for 12 to 18 months to That’s fuel for your fire—women are not supposed to cheer at the see if the curvature stabilizes. And sight of an aroused man and certainly not a stranger. why not? No vitamins, pills, injections or ointments have been found to be consistently effective. Recently some companies have started promoting traction devices worn over the shaft that slowly tug it back. Unfortunately, clinical trials have been underwhelming. Last year, for example, a team of Italian urologists tested a device on 15 men with curvatures of less than 50 percent. After six months of wearing the contraption for an average of five hours a day, one patient’s curvature had worsened and