“Just in — corsets. [And remember to] Vote.” (Referring to upcoming election.)
But my favorite is:
“Just in: corsets vote!” (We now live in a truly inclusive democracy.)
1939.
To answer your next question, they vote as independents. They don’t support either of the major two parties’ agendas. Free thinkers, corsets. Not like stockings, those slaves to the Man (eye roll). Tiresome parrots of right-wing media outlets, them.
You’ve probably heard by now that Anne Hathaway, as I speculated and fervently hoped in the past, has been cast as Selina Kyle in the new Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight Rises.
I’m reading sassy molassy left and right about how Ms. Hathaway is unsuited to the role because she is “too nice” and wholesome. I guess you just don’t know her like me, fans of Havoc, GQ readers, the FBI, and the Vatican do.*
I predict this beautiful, complex, and plenty dark actress will prove the doubters wrong. Yes, I’m biased, because I’ve said before that she’s one of the best and most interesting actresses out there today, but even I am prone to take the long view when it comes to my number-one all-time favorite comic book character, so I hope my defense does not get dismissed out of hand.
I further add that she has merely been cast as Selina Kyle, and we have no idea in what direction the character will go in this particular film, as Nolan is slowly developing his own universe in his Batman movies — and, as a final warning to those who are up in arms about this casting choice, you think all people everywhere in the world were in unanimous excitement when Michelle Pfeiffer was cast in Batman Returns? Was there unilateral rejoicing at the decision to put Halle Berry in the Catwoman movie of which it’s best I just stop speaking?
Of course not. This is an iconic character. There will always be rumblings of discontent, no matter what. All I can say is, remember how you felt when you first heard Heath Ledger was tapped as the Joker? Misgiving-less? I wasn’t: I thought it was an inexplicable and potentially terrible decision. And how do I feel about that choice now? How do you?
Exactly.
Give Nolan, and the lovely and talented Anne Hathaway, a chance.
*The Vatican?? What am I talking about? Answer: I’m talking about taste in men almost as historically bad as that of your hostess. Read all about the sad affair. Saw her mock herself on SNL for it, though. You have to really respect a good sense of humor.
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
In the ruins of St. Ebba’s Lunatic Asylum. Epsom, Surrey, England.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,
Photographed by Ellen von Unwerth for her book Revenge.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
Playboy’s Miss August 2003 was the lovely and very talented Colleen Marie, a model, exotic animal vet, and all-around fun and straight shootin’ gal.
Photographed by Arny Freytag.
The centerfold is mainly godawful except for that sweet white denim corset — truly giving wonderful Jennifer Miriam’s similar 90’s gatefold a run for its fashions-of-the-era money — but the rest of the shots I’m sharing are good, I promise. This photoshoot is kind of hit and miss for me. The good stuff is great but the bad stuff is really bad. I noticed when I was done with it that there were literally no horizontal compositions that I thought were good enough to post up: all the pictures I’ve shared ended up being vertical exterior shots.
I feel that it was just a rocky spread. The outdoor part, exterior shots around a luncheonette, which you are now going to see through the rest of this post, is thematically unified, and wonderful and sweet and fun. The interior in some kind of hotel room is sloppy garbage. Not Ms. Marie’s fault at all.
Coffee, tea, or … ?
“I’m not a Southern belle who’s like, ‘Could you fetch me my coat?’ though I do prefer my tea with ice in it,” she says. “I have one older sister and our dad raised us like sons, so we did all the outdoor chores and went fishing with him.” In fact, Colleen’s tomboy ways persisted even after she blossomed. “I blended into the walls and got teased a lot at school, which made me realize in the eighth grade that I had to start brushing my hair. I never felt pretty until people told me.”
(“Road Trip.” Playboy, August 2003.)
“I work for one of the better-known exotic vets in [Las Vegas]. We see rats, snakes, ferrets, lizards — anything and everything. There was a traveling freak show that had an act featuring a tarantula, and it ripped off one of its legs. I handed it to my boss and said, ‘It’s all up to you. I don’t do spiders!’ We glued its wound shut and gave it an antibiotic injection. Then we were invited to watch it perform.”
(Ibid.)
For my money, this is the number one shot with a bullet from this spread. Why this is not the centerfold, I will never understand.
She waas a daaaaay tripper. Sunday driver, yeah… Driving is a turn-on. What can you do? Adventure and the open road are always going to get the blood moving.
“Don’t stand behind me and scope me out for 10 minutes, because I’ll see you doing it and it’ll make you look like a dumbass,” she says.
(Ibid.)
I mention this because of “dat ass.” Funny juxtaposition, yes? I am funny. I’m a funny girl.
You can hit Ms. Marie up on the myspace any ol’ time (current mood: determined ), or visit her very nice official site to keep up with her present doings.
I am new to this whole myspace shananigans so I may seem computer illiterate at times.
Yeah, she said “shenanigans?” so I’m pretty much sold, and will tumble you for her. Anyway, this concludes today’s Girl of Summer — a great, upbeat gal and some adorable shots to brighten your hump day!
Miss March 1997 was the lovely and talented Jennifer Miriam, and she is a delightful little pistol. You’re going to love her. Super-awesome!
Photographed by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda.
Lord, how I enjoy the glorious 90’s-rifficness of this centerfold photograph. Let me count the ways.
Neon x-treme snowsports gear: check.
Jennifer Aniston “Friends” shag: check.
Hemp woven choker: check.
Brown lipliner with pinky-nude lipstick: check.
Sunflower doodles on stockings: check.
Frayed blue denim top: check.
Is it also a corset?: double-check!
Does the corset lace-up with light colored leather straps?: you bet your sweet ass it does.
Crank up the Cranberries, bust out the hacky-sack, and let’s let it linnnnger, chitlins!
Jennifer grew up in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Colorado and Texas. Moving frequently taught her how to meet people, she says. She also learned how to be the class clown.
“Every time the teacher would leave the room,” she remembers, “I would entertain the class. I got sent home a lot. Like the time in first grade when I crawled under my desk and roared like a lion.” (“Maid Miriam.” Bain, Julie J. Playboy. March 1997.)
Oh, my effing god, that is so cute.
TURNOFFS: Anyone who tries to suppress the free spirit in me!
FAVORITE DISHES: Chicken-fried steak, biscuits, cheesy mashed potatoes, pecan pie — and the man who appreciates a woman with healthy appetites.
I EXPOSE MYSELF TO: New Orleans blues, Charles Bukowski poetry, art-house films, Andy Warhol paintings and the guitar player in the corner of the cafe.
Hell yeah, real food, Bukowski, and exposing yourself to musicians!
“I dated an actor once who called me from a golf course on his cellular phone. I said, ‘Never mind!’ He was into the right cars, the right possessions. I hate that. I would rather have a guy in a beat-up pickup who’s nice to me and brings me flowers he picked himself.” (“Maid Miriam.”)
Jeezy Creezy. I love this woman.
This 24-year-old model, actor and hotel concierge believes in past lives. She says she was a priestess who met, and lost, her soul mate 2000 years ago — and she’s been missing him in all her lives since. But a psychic told her she would meet him again in two years. She can’t wait. (Ibid.)
She demands of any guy she dates: “‘Let me be me!’ I like people who like to have fun and aren’t worried about what other people think. If he says, ‘You can’t do that,’ I say, ‘Bye.'” (Ibid.)
In her Playmate interview, Ms. Miriam stressed that her emphasis with acting was on finding roles in meaningful, small films. She had featured parts in The Newton Boys and Pressurecooker, before leaving Hollywood, a move which is not too surprising coming from a woman who does not like falseness and getting her free spirit hemmed in. Good on her for really sussing out the depth of her dreams! She is married with two children, and now makes her living as an artist.
I want a little sugar
in my bowl
I want a little sweetness
down in my soul
I could stand some lovin’
Oh so bad
I feel so funny and I feel so sad
I want a little steam
on my clothes
Maybe I can fix things up
so they’ll go
What’s the matter, Daddy,
Come on, save my soul
I need some sugar in my bowl
I ain’t foolin’
I want some sugar in my bowl
You been acting different
I’ve been told
Soothe me
I want some sugar in my bowl
I want some steam
on my clothes
Maybe I can fix things up so they’ll go
What’s the matter, Daddy,
Come on save my soul
I want some sugar in my bowl
I ain’t foolin’
I want some sugar – yeah – in my bowl.
A few weeks ago, the o.g. babydaddy treated me and the kidlet to lunch at the Soosh Gardino. He and his wife are mysteriously on the outs this month, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ve been trying to be neutral and supportive. They’re not living together any more, though, so I’m not sure what to make of it all.
I drafted her a friendly and supportive Valentine’s card and left it at a place where I knew she had a gig that night; a few days later she wrote me thanking me but then added some surprising stuff about “needing time as newlyweds.”
This was confusing to me because I had just talked to kidlet’s father the day prior and he said in no uncertain terms that he would only take her back to avoid living with his mother … then the next day he phoned and I asked if they had patched things up and he said sort of, but not really, then the following week he said they had certainly not, and were still living apart, so like I said, I am just staying out of it. Because I truly don’t know what’s going on.
I wish there was a way for me to wave a magic wand or wish on some special star and make things perfect for both of us, but I don’t have those kinds of means at my disposal, and I have never been much of a great shakes at relationship stuff.
Apparently neither has the o.g.b.d., for which I can vouch at least during our time together lo five years ago, and also because he asked me abruptly on our way to the Gardino, “Can I ask you something? It’s bad.” He is in the habit of blurting things out so I wasn’t as surprised as I would’ve been with someone normal. I said okay and he asked me, “What happened? With your marriage?”
My stomach lurched but as my kidlet’s father and knowing he wants to support her and be able to be a sounding board for her anxieties and dreams just the same as I do, so why would I not arm him with all information possible in order for him to succeed?, I felt like he deserved a specific reply and not my usual shrug or head shake. I answered as best I could without going in to too many details, but as directly as possible because the o.g.b.d. has a lot of tics and one of them is a strong dislike of roundabout bush-beating. I’ve always thought that was a fair bugaboo and done my best to respect it. I wound down my short explanation as we pulled in to the lot of the Soosh Gardino by saying:
Woman as banquet.
“You know how it is.” (he does) “Growing up, people like us don’t plan on someone loving us, because that means letting them know us. I thought I could let someone in and it didn’t work out. For right now, I’m just not interested even at all in trusting another person, not like that. The jury is out for me on the human race.” He made a tsking sound and started to shake his head, and I held up my hand and said, “Just for now. We’ll see. But maybe I was right, all those years; maybe I am supposed to just be alone.”
Still from Pierre le fou.
I had just parked and killed the engine so I was able to look him in the eye when he suddenly grabbed my hand. He said urgently, “No. Beth — don’t say that.” This is not a story about how I got back together with the o.g.b.d., or how there is still some unwritten chapter about us. I just realized that might be inferred.
That’s not at all the way of it. You don’t know him — everything he does is spontaneous, overemotional, and urgent. He can’t even brush his teeth without doing it slightly “off” like he is coming down off of heroin or flashing his eyes around like Rudolph Valentino. He’s an intense guy, that o.g.b.d. It was one of the things that attracted me so strongly to him when we were together: he is not like other people. He’s more vibrant. Like other people are watercolor and he is painted in oils.
Rudolph Valentino smoking a cigarette with probably much greater restraint than the o.g.b.d. might — less wild gesticulation and hair pulling — but the eyes are the same.
What this story is about is this: You are pretty low when your recently-split, moving-back-in-with-his-mother, hated-you-for-years ex feels sorry for you. I thought, “Wow. Maybe we are moving in to a new phase of our lives where he will be a good friend and confidante to me. That would be pretty unexpected and neat!”
After lunch, we went to a park and it turned out he’d been drinking sub rosa from a fifth of whiskey all day. I was kind of bummed that I’d thought we’d been doing so well and it might have not really been heartfelt on his half. Quelle surprise, I guess. I will never learn, it seems. I don’t want to sound pathetic, I just felt pretty stupid for thinking someone gave a crap about me.
I found this out when he took a hit out of the bottle in his pocket. In front of a bunch of kids. I said, “Um, no thanks, dude.” He said, “Oh, I know. I wasn’t offering. You’re driving.” He had me there: I was indeed driving. And it was a visit we were both in charge of. And he’d literally split from his wife the day before. And the day before happened to be Valentine’s. So I’m not going to judge or flip out unless it happens again. “Everybody gets one,” right, Spider-man on Family Guy?
The point is: Yep. Probably meant to be alone. At least for a good long while.
It’s lonely to want some sugar in the bowl, sure, but the trouble is it’s tough to tell the sugar from the rat poison. Better safe than sorry.
Excuse me, but do you have some Dark Knight chonies covering your private parts in your life? No? Maybe it’s time you got down down there!
Front: BOOM! Rear: WHAM!
I personally consider that to be unisex underwear. Sure, we girls don’t use the flap, but ladies got jackets with breast pockets and zippers and all manner of features they’ve never touched and that does not deter them from wearing those, so what’s the hangup? But if you are a lady who needs more ladylike things (meh, shrug), or are just a fan of corsets (heyo!!), those are out there, too.
), or visit her very nice 
The Thought Experiment 