So What Do You Do if you're a guy of average intelligence and you wind up on a blind date with a girl whose I.Q. is 200? Hope she loves you for your body, of course. But, seriously, our seven Women of Mensa, the national organization for people with extremely high I.Q.s, were, according to Senior Photography Editor Jeff Cohen and Contributing Photographer Arny Freytag, a bit unusual. "Of all the women we've photographed for Girls of . . . pictorials," says Cohen, "these were by far the most enthusiastic and curious about Playboy. Three of them brought cameras to make their own photographic records of the trip to our Chicago studios. It's amazing, but not a single model for any of our other pictorials has done that, as I recall." There's a bonus for those of you who've always wanted to own a prop from one of our pictorials. "For the shot of Sheri Blair, we ordered 7000 rubber balls," says Cohen, "and now I'm stuck with them. The first 7000 readers who send me a nice letter will get one of them."
Playboy, (ISSN 0032-1478), November, 1985. Volume 32, Number 11 Published monthly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy bldg., 919 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. 2nd-class postage paid at Chgo., Ill., & at Addl. Mailing offices, Subs.: In the U.S., $22 for 12 issues. Postmaster: Send form 3579 to playboy, P.O. Box 2420. Boulder, Colo, 80322.
Playboy, (ISSN 0032-1478), November, 1985, Volume 32. Number 11. Published monthly by playboy, playboy building, 919 north Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Subscriptions: In the United States and its possessions, $54 for 36 issues, $36 for 24 issues, $22 for 12 issues. Canada, $35 for 12 issues. Elsewhere, $35 (U.S. currency) for 12 issues. Allow 45 days for new subscriptions and renewals. Change of address: Send both old and new addresses to playboy, Post office box 2420, Boulder, Colorado 80322. And allow 45 days for change. Marketing: Ed Condon, director/direct marketing: Jack Bernstein, circulation promotion director. Advertising: Joe Mangione, advertising promotion director: Jay Remer, national alcoholic beverages marketing manager: Brian van Mols, national automotive marketing manager, 747 third avenue, New York, New York 10017: Linda Malanga, Chicago manager, 919 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611: 3001 west big Beaver road, Troy, Michigan 48084; Los Angeles 90010, Stanley L. Perkins, manager, 4311 Wilshire Blvd.: San Francisco 94104, Tom Jones, manager, 417 Montgomery St.
Well, Summer's gone and the silly season may give way to some autumnal movies about the honest-to-God problems of grownups. A real standout in the 1985 fall collection is producer-director Bud Yorkin's Twice in a Lifetime (The Yorkin Company), the kind of wholehearted human drama that makes people line up to see it, as they did for such pictures as Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment. Written by Colin Welland (author of the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire), Twice deals with the tumult in the family of a Seattle steelworker (Gene Hackman) who falls in love with a barmaid while he's out with the guys celebrating his 50th birthday. "It's been a long time since I haven't known for certain what a day had in store for me," he declares as the embers of romantic longing start to glow again. Ann-Margret, as the barmaid, delivers another vibrant acting job in very solid company--with Ellen Burstyn brilliant as the emotionally devastated homebody wife and Amy Madigan occasionally bustling on to steal the show as the couple's oldest, married daughter, who wants Dad to suffer for his sins. Ally Sheedy and Darrell Larson flesh out the ruptured family circle, with Brian Dennehy registering potent disapproval as the hero's former buddy.
Women Crimebusters: According to Raymond Chandler, the detective story came of age when Dashiell Hammett took murder out of the parlor and dropped it into the streets. What neither Chandler nor Hammett could have foreseen was that tough guys would have to make room on those streets for sleuths wearing mascara on their private eyes. Agatha Christie's extremely popular Miss Marple (whom Dodd, Mead celebrates this month with a profile by Anne Hart, The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple, and Miss Marple: The Collected Short Stories) set the pace for hundreds of other spinsters and widows and prissy snoops. But just as the dilettantes gave way to the Hammett-Chandler men of action, so the fussy old ladies are moving aside for a new breed of female detective. Today's sleuthing sisterhood tries to exhibit rugged independence without sacrificing femininity or making too big a deal of it.
Reeling And Rocking: Jimmy Cliff returns to film for the first time in 15 years. He'll be appearing with Robin Williams and Peter O'Toole in Club Paradise . . . . David Lee Roth has finished co-writing a film comedy and will now try to get it produced. He also plans to duet with Belinda Carlisle on her album. . . . CBS's planned remake of the classic 1939 film Stagecoach will star Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. . . . Stevie Ray Vaughan has recorded a James Brown song for the upcoming Rocky IV.
Call me cranky, Ishmael. Call me bewildered. Call me any time after lunch and explain to me why some people think college football is in trouble and why, since it's not, a lot of pious educators went to that special N.C.A.A. convention in New Orleans this past summer and nodded approvingly while Wartburg, Illinois Benedictine, Rensselaer Poly or what have you told Alabama, Oklahoma, USC--anybody else who matters--what to do with their football programs. That's what the convention was all about; don't gloss it over with high-minded fervor. Somehow, I get this feeling that the N.C.A.A. won't be content until the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines romp into a stadium and flog one another with copies of Proust on the same Saturday that Muskingum College plays Otterbein on national TV. OK, call me pissed. Ever since the pious educators announced that they were going to "take charge" of their athletic departments to prevent future "scandals," I've been wondering why the N.C.A.A. should be allowed to exist. I can come up with only one reason: to make me smite my forehead and blow spit bubbles through my lips.
It's been a great evening. You've taken the woman of your choice out on the town. You've been a good companion, if you do say so, listening carefully to her, talking about yourself, joking and laughing, being a friend.
I think it's important to bust your brain now and then, to give it something it can't chew, the way you might slip a ball bearing into an old man's bowl of peas, then sit there and listen for the grisly music that is the shattering of his last natural molar. For me, it's therapy like no other to make the intellect a hopeless idiot, a handful of meat thats final measure is best taken on a butcher's scale.
Something is puzzling me. I love sex. I'm in good health, tall and lean, and I get my share of women. My problem is that it seems to be all I think about: sex, sex and more sex. Let me describe my typical day. I wake up sometimes as early as 5:30 A.M. to watch Bodies in Motion on ESPN. It's an exercise show with sexily dressed women. At six o'clock, I watch Morning Stretch, with Joanie Greggains; at 6:30, it's 20-Minute Workout. I then get dressed for classes, and for the next couple of hours, I will constantly be on the lookout for girls in revealing shorts, low or, rather, high miniskirts, anything that will give me a cheap thrill. I go down to the gym hoping to see some pretty girl in shorts stretch out. If I'm walking to class and a girl passes me in a short pair of cutoffs, with her ass hanging out, or if she's in a mini, I'll follow her up a flight of stairs just to get a glimpse. Sometimes it helps when I have a girlfriend, because then I say, "What the hell; I'm gonna get laid tonight. I don't have to follow her." I once read somewhere that an obsession becomes harmful only when you let it interfere with your normal life. If that's true, I'm in big trouble, because I'll do almost anything to sneak a look at a woman's thighs. Then I'll feel bad about it, because I know that I could be doing something more constructive. I love sex itself, and many of my girlfriends have accused me of having only sex on my mind. I'm not into anything kinky, though; it's just that I think I may be too voyeuristic. Have you ever heard of a problem like this?--D. A., Clarion, Pennsylvania.
One score and three years ago, our founder brought forth in these pages The Playboy Philosophy, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that sex is OK. Hugh Hefner's philosophy was not, curmudgeons pointed out, as fully developed as, say, Jefferson's. But Hefner was a man known for going all the way. He realized that the freedom to enjoy healthy, happy sex can't exist in a repressed society, and he soon began tackling forms of repression--and oppression--outside the bedroom. In 1965-20 years ago--the Playboy Foundation was created to put the muscle of money behind his evolving philosophy.
When you're a skinny English kid with a name like Gordon Sumner, living near the docks in Newcastle, a poor coal and shipbuilding town, it's only natural to yearn for a little glamor, a little excitement. So, lugging your first guitar, your young wife and your new baby, you head off to London with a new name--they call you Sting, because you wear yellow-and-black pullovers--and form a rock-'n'-roll band. It's been written before.
My Girlfriend was very modern. She wore plastic jump suits and red Fiorucci boots, she went dancing every night till two a.m., she read i-D Magazine and listened to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. When she began, through no fault of her own, to systematically smash my heart to bits last spring, I began hanging out every night at a place called On the Air. It was a little New Wave bar we used to go to together, full of sleek, heavily moussed modern girls who were becoming more and more of a mystery to me. They were all very Eighties, cooler than Madonna, hipper than hip. I'd lean against a wooden rail and watch comforting U2 videos splash against the screen, drinking screwdrivers and trying to figure things out. Like, what do women want? How can we understand them? Is this my fourth or fifth screwdriver?
"Mainwaring,"' said Bud Kallen from the back seat of the humming car. "So that's the way you spell it over here." He folded up the deed he'd been studying.
There is another way to look at present economic events," Paul Hawken, a professional trend spotter, wrote in 1983 in a book called The Next Economy. "We have entered a period between economies, or, to be more precise, between economic structures, and the troubled economy reflects the passage from one structure to the next."
Although You probably won't find much on them in the medical books, growing pains are a very real and probably unavoidable affliction--and not just of the very young. Pamela Saunders could tell you about a few she has experienced recently. Right out of high school, for instance, she found herself hip-deep in Dallas night life, serving drinks in a bar-restaurant. When she talks about that period, there is fatigue in her voice. "I think I grew up fast when I (text continued on page 100) worked in the bar, because I was around older people. I got involved with them; they were my best friends, you know. I knew their drinks and what they wanted to eat." Pam had come in from Plano. "It's next to Richardson," she explains and, when pressed, offers, "That's about 15 minutes away from Dallas. That's where I grew up from the eighth grade on." Girls in Texas who aren't married five minutes after high school graduation are called spinsters. Pam somehow couldn't round up a hubby but did manage a tentative arrangement. Luckily, that's really all she wants right now. "I love men to death," she declares. "But, you know, they aggravate me. I let men get to me, and I've got a nervous stomach. I don't think I want to get married. I guess working in a bar ruined me--you know, watching the way some of these married men act." Pam medicates her nervous stomach with a steady diet of beer and junk food. She knows it's wrong and she pays for it, but, as she says, "You do it because you crave it. You wake up going, 'Ummmmm, burrito and hot (text concluded on page 104) sauce!' And I'll go off to Taco Bueno and pig out. And then I'll go home moaning, 'Ohhhhhhhhh."' Pam's more outgoing than she used to be. At school in Plano, she recalls, "I'd rather get a zero than give an oral report. Now I think that is so stupid, but then I was so clammed up that I couldn't do it." Meeting people and having them like her changed Pam's outlook on life. Now she dreams of having her own bar-restaurant. She has quit serving drinks and works occasionally as a pizza maker; on weekends, she deals blackjack at charity functions. Pam says she's good at it. "I like to challenge guys. I'm a better backgammon player than most of them. I suppose they think girls, especially blondes, are stupid. Well, you know," she says, laughing, "I'm not a true blonde." Since she'd drifted into a soul-baring mood, Pam decided to confess all. "Yeah, well, I am a klutz. I fall down stairs, spill things. I have to watch myself out on a date." Might not klutziness, like her shyness, go away? Pam offered her own theory, then rejected it. "I think it's nerves, too. When I'm nervous, I start knocking things over. No, I'm a klutz; a slob, too, probably."
Because of the distance between them, the chief of the surveying crew was using hand signals to communicate with his newly hired female crew member. He pointed to his eye, then to his knee and finally pumped his fist up and down in front of him.
I've always believed in waiting at least five minutes before falling in love with a woman, but in her case, I knew I'd have to make an exception. Who can explain these things? I wanted to marry her. I wanted to give her world-famous children, build her a home in the meadow, donate my kidneys to her parents, carve her visage in the Rock of Gibraltar with my teeth, climb into a clothes dryer full of razor blades just to be near her dirty laundry. She had northern lakes for eyes, full Cupid's-bow lips, a smile that could turn ball bearings to butter, palomino hair, an elegant neck, outstanding breasts, a real darling little pooter, so tight you could mill wheat with it, gams that made a ballerina's legs look like turkey wattles, and there was something in the way she carried herself that suggested royalty, the confidence of a princess, the power of a gypsy dancer--in short, I thought she was real cute. I had to meet her.
World-Class Hotels are never in short supply--especially in cities like Manhattan. So when disco denizen Steve Rubell and his partners purchased the Executive Hotel at 237 Madison Avenue, in the untrendy Murray Hill section, and renamed it Morgans, after the Morgan Library, which is a block away, skeptics snickered that it would take a miracle between 37th and 38th streets for it to succeed. Succeed it has--and what a success! A stay at Morgans is considered the hottest night in town, thanks in part to the eye-popping decor of French designer Andrée Putman. Working with her signature palette of gray, black and white, Putman redefined Morgans' guest rooms and public spaces, placing them along the cutting edge of opulence and austerity. Best of all, there are ideas there that you can take home. Morgans is a nice place to visit, and we wouldn't mind living with the sexy design ideas we found there, either.
Think of me as a hired gun, a hit man with a Government salary. I don't break kneecaps, though, or litter the landscape with bodies. I don't take the lives of my victims, just their pay checks and bank accounts. I collect past-due child support--in round figures, $250,000 in the past three years. I work cheap, too. For $25, your ex-wife can have your name added to my list.
20 Questions: Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas
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Of all the coplspy superhero duos to charge off the screen and into America's living rooms, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas (a.k.a. Detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs) have certainly done it with the most style. Their Eighties version of fraternity under fire has helped boost "Miami Vice's" fortunes as much as the show's heralded visual and musical panache. They are post-macho guys' guys. Our guy, Contributing Editor David Rensin, nabbed Thomas and Johnson for their first off-the-cuff interrogation. Said Rensin, "I wore vintage faded jeans, an unironed mauve cotton shirt, a thin black-satin tie, Air Jordans and a sharkskin sports coat I had picked up for five dollars at a Beverly Hills garage sale. Don and Phil looked OK, I guess."
Admit it: Ever since Ma Bell hung up in a huff, the world's finest phone service has gone to the bowwows. Sure, deregulation's been great for Cliff Robertson, but what about Mr. and Ms. Subscriber?
"Please don't touch me," cautions the alluring alien female, warding off the young man's advances. "We're not like humans, Jack." Suddenly, a dazzling laser-beam light show is zipping and zapping in and out of the waters of a flora swimming pool. It's a climactic scene from the hit movie Cocoon; and although actor Steve Guttenberg seems to be enjoying his sample of extraterrestrial sex--"If this is foreplay, I'm a dead man," he gasps--the audience may be excused for wondering, Is that all there is? In 1985's film fare the answer often is yes.
After An Exotic Year of material girls, smooth operators and Caribbean queens, it's now time to pick the winners in the annual Playboy Music Poll. It may not be as exotic as the music, but it's fun, so take a few minutes to sharpen your pencils and register your votes. You'll find our suggestions at right; if we've missed your favorite, a write-in is fine. But if you're voting for someone whose name appears on the list, please help our ballot counters and use the number given beside the name. When you've finished side one, flip the ballot over and make your choices for Hall of Fame and Best LP categories. Only official ballots count, and they must be postmarked before midnight, November 1, 1985. For results, see our April 1986 issue.
Since Hans Gmoser started dropping people off on the tops of mountains 21 years ago, an estimated 10,000 skiers have sampled the delight of helicopter skiing in Canada and the U.S. That makes heliskiing one of the most elite sports in the world, The people who returned from the trip wanted to keep the experience to themselves, so they embroidered embroidered their stories at night the way their tracks had embroidered mountains during the day. helicopter skiing developed a reputation of being for macho experts only. The people at Canadian Mountain Holidays faced the problem of how to qualify skiers. A guide explained, "We tried fitness tests, self-evaluation, motor-vehicle-type tests and mountain ratings. Finally, we found that we could take skiers who had come by accident, who had won raffle tickets to go helicopter skiing, and get them down the mountain." The philosophy shifted--an intermediate wouldn't hold up a group of savage ego skiers if everyone was an intermediate. Now C.M.H. is offering 20 heliski weeks for intermediates (prices range from $1219 to $2397). You have to be strong, regularly engaging in some form of physical-fitness regimen (hell, half the country runs marathons), and you have to have the right attitude. If you fall and view it as a failure, a day in the mountains can be a nightmare. If you learn, you'll be making turns by the end of the day. By the second day, you'll be looping turns down the mountain with the best of them. If you aren't ready to commit to a week in the wilds of Canada, you can go to Alta or Snowbird for a week of Utah powder lessons and then fly with the Wasatch Powderbirds as a present to yourself (cost per day--$275). We tool these photos on a bluebird day last spring As you can see; it was as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. The Powderbirds offer the best powder and corn-snow skiing in the U.S. For more information, write to Wasatch Powderbird Guides, P.O. Box 57, Snowbird, Utah 84092, or Canadian Mountain Holidays, P.O. Box 1660, Banff, Alberta, Canada TOL OCO--and then head for the hills.
Some skiers believe that powder skiing is for experts only, that it is extremely demanding. If you believe that, fine. It will keep the slopes empty. We'll have the powder to ourselves while you're negotiating icy moguls back East or avoiding the crowds on a catwalk. Powder is resilient. You have to slow down to ski powder. The moves are unhurried, as they are in a space walk. The analogy holds. This is weightless skiing. You keep your hands forward, using the poles as batons to set your rhythm and to keep your body facing downhill. You relax. The more you relax, the more you fly. Powder skiing is as easy and as natural as breathing.
It took Mark Twain to get jumping frogs some ink. Now running back Kenneth Davis is doing the same for another species of Ranidae. The Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University, riding Davis' broad shoulders, have jumped off football's endangered list for the first time since the days of Sammy Baugh.
According to the message on the computer screen, you are trapped in an underground cave. You have only one match. After considerable thought, you slowly type in, strike the match. The disk drives whir for a moment, then a new message pops up: A small breeze has come up, blowing out your match. Tough luck! what do you want to do now? This is the new world of computerized interactive fiction, a form of digital entertainment that is touted to change the way we respond to literature. It actually makes the reader a character in a fictional story. He moves the action along by giving the computer instructions and, through a cannily crafted program of answers, the computer responds as if it actually knew what was being said.
The event happens only every 76 years, and you'll not want to miss it this time around. Halley's comet, that famous sky burner, is due to be visible in this hemisphere from about November to April; and to facilitate comet chasing, we've assembled a sampling of scopes. The heavens, to be sure, move at a slightly slower pace than an episode of Miami Vice, but that doesn't mean the pyrotechnics are any less grand And what happens when Halley's comet passes out of view? Well, you can always train the optics on that high-rise across the way where another heavenly body--perhaps that yoga instructor you've been dying to date--contorts to the music of the spheres.
Here's a formula to take the work out of building a business wardrobe. We've dressed our model in a single-breasted herringbone suit, by Dimitri Couture, $825, and combined it with a cotton shirt, by Valentino Uomo, $47.50, and a silk tie, by Dimitri Couture, $40. To back up this basic look, we then chose four alternative shirts in colors, patterns and collar styles that go equally well with the suit, plus a sampling of ties. (You should have at least two ties per shirt.) This season's ties to bind are paisleys and foulards. A sampling of pocket squares that pick up colors from your ties, plus belts in black, Burgundy and gray, also offers flexibility. Oxfords and tasseled loafers are shoeins, while patterned socks are knee to knee with solids as a solid business choice. If you do wear a patterned sock, the accent color should be as dark as (or a bit darker than) the color of your shoe. Happy shopping.