Flashback Friday — Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: Viggo Mortensen Edition

This post originally appeared on September 27, 2009 at 6:55 pm.

It’s like bringing a gun to a knifefight.

“The way we present ourselves is a veneer, and beneath that, there are a lot more unpleasant things.” –Viggo Mortensen.

In addition to being an excellent actor, Viggo Mortensen is also a published poet, jazz musician who has released three CDs to favorable reviews, and a gifted painter whose provocative full-wall murals appear in A Perfect Murder, the 1998 adapatation of Hitchcock’s Dial “M” For Murder. Furthermore, your wife, girlfriend, mother, or sister would all leave you for him without a backward glance. Did you know?

According to the wiki, Viggo Mortensen has property near the seat of the teeny little county in the northwestern tip of the United States from which both sides of my family hail, but I have never seen him there even effing once. Total folklore. What gives, man? Next time you are in Bumfuck, Idaho, call a bitch.

“We all experience many freakish and unexpected events—you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.” –Viggo Mortensen

Y’all please excuse Viggo Mortensen while he blows ya mind.

The Girls of Summer: China Lee, Miss August 1964

Dazzle your friends with correct pronunciation! Say “China” so it rhymes with “Tina,” not the clinical term for bajango.

Photographed by Pompeo Posar.

During Spring Fever!, in the post on Gwen Wong, I mentioned Ms. Lee and promised to give her a post all her own in the future. Happy to say that the future is now.

Ms. Lee is a real trailblazer and true intellect. She was the first Asian-American Playmate of the Month. Not lovely Gwen Wong, and not PR (name removed at model’s request).

Extremely athletic, bright, witty, and outspoken, China (née Margaret) was totally busting up stereotypes well before it was chic to do so. Get it, girl!

Like past-spotlighted comic genius Laura Misch Owens, China Lee began as a Bunny in New Orleans before winding up at the original Chicago Playboy Club. Due to her winning combination of unique looks, well-above-average intelligence, and friendly, talkative nature, she quickly worked her way up to Training Bunny.

As the Playboy empire expanded and Hef opened Clubs in other cities across America, China got to travel and show new Bunnies — and club managers — the ropes all around the country.

Her teaching duties take her to a different location with every new Playboy Club opening — a job which suits her peripatetic nature to a T.

“If I had to describe myself in one word, it would be ‘active,'” China says. “I love to roam, and I love to keep busy!”

(“China Doll.” Payboy, August 1964.)

“Despite the fact that I’m always on the go, success has come to me without my seeking it. I didn’t even apply for my Bunny job — I was discovered in a New Orleans hairdresser’s shop.”

(Ibid.)

Ms. Lee was quite the jock at this time, enthusiastically describing the various sports she participated in:

High on her sports agenda is softball: Last season she pitched and won 12 games (“My windmill pitch is unhittable”), leading the New York Bunny softball team to the Broadway Show League championship.

(Ibid.)

Screeeee. What?! The NYC Club Bunnies had a softball team in a league?! And they were champions? Anyone with more info and especially pictures needs to be my hero and send it along, stat! That sounds wonderful and fun beyond anything the imagination can conjure.

Like icy-eyed Finnish novelist Kata Kärkkäinen, Miss December 1988, China Lee cheerfully reported in her interview that she traversed traditional gender/sports lines not only with that killer windmill pitch but also by handily mopping the floor with the competition at bowling.

“Miss August is also a pin-toppling bowler (she ran up a 217 at the age of 13), prize-winning equestrienne and jumper, expert swimmer and ping-pong player, as well as champion twister of all Bunnydom.

(Ibid.)

Twister like the party game or twister like “Shake it up, baby, now, etc,” with lots of cheerful shimmying around a dance floor? I’m guessing the latter. Seems more her speed!

Very little is made in the “China Doll” article of the fact that Ms. Lee was not exactly your garden variety gatefold WASP model. There is no deliberate, faux-innocent oversight of her heritage in some effort to prove super-open-mindedness, either, which I also consider a point in the magazine’s favor. A good balance is struck.

A native of New Orleans and the only member of her family of 11 not now in the Oriental restaurant line, China says: “Though I was born in America, my folks still follow Oriental ways: They speak the old language, read the old books, and follow the old customs. In this sort of environment, the men dominate and females are forced into the background. I rebelled, and I’m glad I did.”

(Ibid.)

Ms. Lee does not denigrate “Oriental”* tradition, merely comments on the aspect of that traditional environment that displeased her and from which she walked away. It’s done in a respectful and confident way. Very cool.

*When people use this word now it kind of makes my eyes itch for a second. I feel like it’s so high-handed and colonial. It’s like when people say “colored.” The original word meant no offense and is way better than a racial epithet, but we have even better ways of expressing that now, you know? It is a long-running joke with me, Paolo, and Miss D because we all lived in the Bay Area in the ’80’s when “Oriental” and “Hispanic” were leaving the vogue vocab in favor of more specific, group-elected terms. So when we see “Oriental” restaurant or “Hispanic” lawyer on a sign, we all eagerly point it out to each other the way hillbillies’ kids laugh at their grandparents for saying “Worsh.” (I can say that because I am one.)

After her Playboy appearance, Ms. Lee kept her ebullience and poise and continued to make friends and influence people. She is the dancer in the credits of Woody Allen’s first film, What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, a part which she supposedly lobbied very hard for with Allen, who was a friend of hers. The film itself is a farcical redubbing of the Japanese movie International Secret Police: Key of Keys; in Allen’s version, the intrigue surrounds the case of an egg salad recipe. China performs a striptease at the end credits for Allen, who plays himself, several dubbed voices, and the projectioner screening the film.

Here is a link to the clip of her dance on the youtube.

Ms. Lee also appeared on television series such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and alongside Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate in 1967’s beach movie Don’t Make Waves. The publicity campaign for Don’t Make Waves was of unprecedented size and ubiquity — though the film failed to live up to MGM’s box office expectations, the cultural impact was still very lasting.

As an example, the character Malibu, played by sunny and curvy Ms. Tate, is generally cited as the inspiration for Mattel’s world-famous “Malibu” Barbie, and several Coppertone tie-in ads for the film are still reproduced in text books for marketing classes. I will go deeper in to Don’t Make Waves in August, during Sharon Tate’s ACTUAL LIFE Awareness Month.

Ms. Lee dated Robert Plant for a while, but ultimately she settled with political comedian, activist, occasional Kennedy joke-penner, and all around cramazing dude, one of the Comedy Greats, Mort Sahl.

Sahl’s influence on aspects of comedy from modern stand-up to The Daily Show is basically immeasurable. You have probably seen Fred Armisen on SNL perform a political comedian character he created named Nicholas Fehn who is not a send-up of Sahl, himself, but rather a send-up of Sahl’s admirers who can never quite touch the master. It’s the guy with the pullover sweater and Armisen’s own glasses, an army surplus coat and a light brown longish wig, who shows up on the Weekend Update with a newspaper in his hand and tries to make jokes of the headlines but can never quite finish his sentences: this using the newspaper as a jumping-off point for humorous discourse was a trademark move of Sahl’s.

China and Mort Sahl married in 1967 and remained together until their divorce in 1991. They had a son, Mort Sahl, Jr., who passed away in 1996. R.I.P. to him and condolences to both of them. I’m glad I got to share about some really cool, interesting people in this post. I’m feeling more upbeat than I was. Thanks for coming along!

I suspect that cover is another Beth Hyatt/Pompeo Posar pairing. Note how the pose and her dress make the trademark, cocked-ear bunny silhouette, mirrored by the small logo sketched in the sand by her right hand. It’s similar, though not as racily sexy, to the rear shot one they did where her dress was open at the back and the straps snaking around her shoulders formed the ears. This time it’s her legs and kicked-off shoes. See it?

Spring Fever!: Felicia Atkins, Miss April 1958

I was feeling down, but I’m pulling myself out of it. I need to have more faith that things will work out for the best, for one thing, and for another, holy cannoli, is it ever a gorgeous day out there! I’ve been sitting on some of these shots for just about forever. I love this shoot. Lots of red clothes, cute hats, and opera-style makeup? Yes, please — I am a big These Pictures Guy from Way Back! Miss April 1958 is the lovely and talented Felicia Atkins.

Photographed by Bruno Bernard and Bill Bridges.

An awesome vintage brunette wonder from Down Under, Ms. Atkins still holds the record today for being the longest consecutively-employed showgirl in the history of the storied Folies-Bergère Revue at the Las Vegas Tropicana. Get it, girl!

Felicia Atkins: Pussy Magnet. Ow!

I find the history of Old School Las Vegas really interesting (mainly a result of the intersection between my undying love of The Godfather movies and the fact that I’m perpetually interested in the persistent concept of the fast-and-loose, fancy-free frontier “west” in the American mind especially as it played out in increasingly swift travel methods available to the middle class seeking recreation in the twentieth century — first, trains to national parks, then big steely cars on the new highways roaring along state routes dotted with crummy roadside teepees and Bob’s Big Boys by the mid-century; that interests the shit out of me, seriously), so I’m going to reproduce Ms. Atkins’ original write-up in its entirety and then go in to some historical Las Vegas points of emotional interest as far as the Folies-Bergère goes (went).

Gone are the drear, dread days beyond recall when we were led to believe that showgirls had a pretty bad time of it in the sunshine-and-health department — late hours, smoke-filled rooms, nightclub pallor, and other offenses to God and man. Today, tongue-clucking do-gooders would find it a tough task convincing us that the life of a showgirl (in Las Vegas, anyway) is anything but Reilly. Look at Felicia Atkins, if you haven’t already.

(“Showgirl in the Sun: A Vegas Venus Mixes Vitamins with Va-a-voom.” Playboy, April 1958.)

She spends her nights in the chorus line of the sumptuous Hotel Tropicana, gladdening the eyes of all beholders with her finely fashioned five-feet-seven-and-a-half-inches.

(Ibid.)

By day, she sleeps late in a swank suite of the same hostelry, eats a mountainous breakfast, then squeezes into a bikini and slips out to soak up a skinful of Vitamin C and splash about in a cool pool until it’s time to dry off the corpore sano andfoi get ready for the evening’s extravaganza. For this, mind you, she gets paid. Another nice thing that’s happened to felicitous Felicia is her appearance as our Playmate for the month of April. It’s nice for us, too. (Ibid.)

/End drivel. Phew! Before I go in to more about the show for which she famously worked, a few notes on Ms. Atkins — from what I can gather, after leaving the Folies, she went to work for the MGM Grand, which buffs know was bought by Bally’s. Sometime between the Bally’s acquisition, some bartending gigs at what is now the Crazy Horse, and the revamping of Vegas in to a family destination in the 1990’s (darkly pleased to see it returning to its roots after that failed experiment — boo to themed roller coasters, yay to sequined pasties), Ms. Atkins retired back to her native Australia.

The “Folies-Bergère” opened at the Tropicana Hotel in 1959. Famous for its Cancan girls and statuesque showgirls the “Folies-Bergère” has outlived many hotels as well as shows. The longest continuous running production show in Las Vegas has been updated many times over the years to keep its status as a sophisticated Parisian spectacular.

(“Folies-Bergère: We Can-Can,” Hooper, R. Scott. vegasretro.com.)

When you hear “showgirl,” and automatically picture a leggy glamazon in ostrich-tail and resplendently over-the-top headdress, you are picturing a girl from the Folies-Bergère, the hip grandma of all Vegas revues. As VegasRetro reported, it was the longest-running show in the history of the City, and Ms. Atkins, here, was its longest-running performer. That is really something!

Folies-Bergère, known the world over for gorgeous dancers is not just a show … it’s a legend. The theme of “women through time” beginning in the 1800’s to present day has gone unchanged, but the new interpretations enhance the Folies-Bergère experience.

(“Les Folies-Bergère.” PCAP, Las Vegas Lesiure Guide, 2003.)

The Dressing Room number gives the audience a behind-the-scenes feel of how the gorgeous showgirls prepare for their nightly appearance on stage. Each scenario flows seamlessly into the next such as in La Vedette where male dancers present a stunning showgirl who materializes through smoke with giant butterfly wings on her back.

(Ibid.)

Another popular scene is fashioned in the 1920’s where “women of darkness” were known as vamps. A private boudoir moment, black silk and velvet dressing gowns accompanied by tassels used as erotic props emphasize the sexual natures of these women.

(Ibid.)

The Las Vegas Folies-Bergère, which opened in 1959, closed at the end of March 2009, after nearly 50 years in operation.

(the wiki.)

The Folies-Bergère showgirls have been entertaining audiences at the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas for 49 years. In the show’s heyday in Vegas, “The Trop,” where they performed, was considered the “Tiffany of the Strip,” attracting stars like Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Patrons came to rub elbows with stars and with the Folies’ showgirls, who would “dress up” the hotel bar after performances.

But times are tight in Las Vegas, and the Tropicana can’t afford to produce the Folies-Bergère anymore. The showgirls’ last performance will be March 28, 2009 — just a few months shy of the show’s 50th anniversary.

(“Folies-Bergère to close in Las Vegas.” Meraji, Shereen. 23 February 2009. NPR.)

Coupl’a’fine-ass kittens chillaxin’.

These days, Felicia is, like I said, back in Oz. She now lives in a senior care facility where you can write to her at 4 Muller St., Salamander Bay, New South Wales, 4317. Be respectfully advised she has recently started being treated for advancing dementia and may not now recognize photos and autograph requests.

Speaking of these kinds of subjects, I need to go because I am being summoned to have a conversation with my grandmother, who is hot to tell me for probably the sixth time today about how her brother Alvin got the first Model T in Priest River when she was a kid with graduation money from their grandmother and he took all the kids in town for rides in it, and they were speeding and hit a bump and he had to jerk her back down on to his lap at one point because she flew up in the air and almost out the window of the car. She loves that story. He was her favorite brother. I don’t mind when she gets stuck in a groove for a day on the really sweet and good memories. It’s a wonderful break from the Bad Days, plus the repetition ensures that now I will hold on to the memory for awhile. And that’s what we’ve all got ears and got voice boxes for, most likely. Right? It happens. Catch you later!

Post-Holiday Pick-Up Day! : Miss December 1992, Barbara Moore

Thought I’d help you beat the weird post-holiday slump today (unless you are in Canadialand in which case you’re opening all your Boxing Day gifts and hoarking down the moose jerky and Molson’s today in front of a hockey game anyway, so you hosers wait and check it out tomorrow!) with some lovely and talented Miss Decembers of yore.

Unlike the NSFW November fiasco, I got no intention of doing every single Miss December ever: I have instead culled the herd to a manageable flock of interesting favorites. Enjoy!

Photographed by Stephen Wayda.

Besides having managed to keep quite a tenacious hold on the D-list spotlight of sorts (really it’s more like a kid shining a flashlight under their face at summer camp) over her career, the lovely and talented Barbara Moore, Miss December 1992, had quite the “electric” magnetism — she was struck by lightning three years before her Playboy appearance.

It was a rainy night in Nashville when the lights went out. Barbara Moore was walking down Acklen Avenue when it happened. Zap! A bolt of lightning whams down about 12 inches from her pretty ankles. Streetlights are blinking and so is she, tiptoeing down the avenue, thinking, “I almost didn’t live to turn twenty-two.”

Miss Moore was born in Spokane, Washington, which is where a lot of my cousins live. Those who abandoned Priest River, the small town we’re all from in the top of Idaho, and were drawn to the siren call of the sinful Big City — for shame! Spokane is the Sodom to Boise’s Gomorrah! (This probably means nothing to you, but trust me, it’s really funny. Would it help to add that neither Spokane nor Boise has over 210,000 people?)

Who else do you know who has worked a slime line? Barbara did, at a salmon cannery in Ketchikan, Alaska, where she gutted fish as they passed on a conveyer belt. She has been a flight attendant, a tournament polo player, a model and an actress who has made videos with Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., and Reba McEntire that have aired nationally on TNN and CMT. Now she is Miss December — a woman you’re sure to love if you desire a little excitement. (“The Moore, the Merrier,” Playboy, December 1992.)

More excitement than working at a cannery in Ketchikan? The hell you say! God, sometimes I miss the Pacific Northwest. Then I go to the grocery, in the sun, in regular shoes with no galoshes, and there are no crazy people with carts of cans raving front-door-side that AIDS is the lord’s punishment for homosexshualls, and no relatives with missing teeth working the register and reminding me of the time I fell in the crick and my bra came undone (worst. hike. ever.). There is just sterile, spray-tanned, PTA propriety, with small smiles and simple “Merry Christmases.” Mmm. I like you, Cali. I will keep you.

Barbara Moore’s celebrity rose in 2004 when she began dating actor Lorenzo Lamas. Ironically, she had met Lamas through her friend and fellow Playmate Shauna Sand, who was married to Lamas at the time. They were scheduled to marry in July 2005, however the wedding was called off at the last moment, reportedly after Lamas discovered Moore in the company of a male stripper at her bachelorette party. (the wiki)

No way! Lorenzo Lamas, you are a man whose sound and sober judgment I would normally implicitly trust, but I must ask: are you sure?? Because Barbie just doesn’t seem like the type to promote nor enjoy nudity!

Well, that’s it for your first Post-Holiday Pick-Up entry. I’ll schedule a few more of these for later in the day, so stay tuned!

NSFW November: Reneé Tenison, Miss November 1989

The lovely and talented Reneé Tenison, Miss November 1989, was named Playmate of the Year in 1990, making her Playboy’s first African-American Playmate of the Year. She hailed from my family’s home state of Idaho, land of potatoes, cricks, daveneaus, and … something else… oh, right, the Aryan nation (dicks).

Photographed by Arny Freytag

Reneé, who grew up in Melba, Idaho, is special for many reasons. First, she’s a twin, and her sister Rosie is every bit as beautiful as Reneé.” (“The Toast of Melba,” Playboy, November 1989)

Reneé posed with her twin sister Rosie for Playboy in 2002.

And then Reneé’s parents’ marriage is interracial — one of the first such in the state of Idaho, which is not known for its black population. “My mom, who is white, and my dad, who is black, met each other in the Fifties, and they had to go to Nevada to get married, because no one would marry them in Idaho.”

“When they came back to Melba [population approximately 300], they couldn’t even go to the grocery together. I really admire them for staying together. There aren’t many blacks in Idaho, maybe three thousand out of a population of more than a million.”

A former contestant in the Miss Idaho USA pageant, Ms. Tenison moved to first Boise, then Los Angeles with her boyfriend, and has made a modest career of television appearances, including roles on Living Single, Married With Children, and Judging Amy, to name a few credits from over the years.

She also had a cameo in the sequel to the Nutty Professor. She will turn forty-one on December 2nd. Birthday wishes! Finally, for the record, Idaho has come a long way in terms of progressive viewpoints since the ’50’s and even since the time of her interview, so please don’t think it is all rednecks, racists, and meth addicts. They comprise only 95% of the population, tops, at any given moment. The other 5% is dead, incarcerated, or passed out in a goose blind. (Why do I keep sick-burning things that apply to me?)

Finally, dig the cover: once again, the guys at Playboy believed they had solved the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. Amazing!

Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: Viggo Mortensen Edition

It’s like bringing a gun to a knifefight.

“The way we present ourselves is a veneer, and beneath that, there are a lot more unpleasant things.” –Viggo Mortensen.

In addition to being an excellent actor, Viggo Mortensen is also a published poet, jazz musician who has released three CDs to favorable reviews, and a gifted painter whose provocative full-wall murals appear in A Perfect Murder, the 1998 adapatation of Hitchcock’s Dial “M” For Murder. Furthermore, your wife, girlfriend, mother, or sister would all leave you for him without a backward glance. Did you know?

According to the wiki, Viggo Mortensen has property near the seat of the teeny little county in the northwestern tip of the United States from which both sides of my family hail, but I have never seen him there even effing once. Total folklore. What gives, man? Next time you are in Bumfuck, Idaho, call a bitch.

“We all experience many freakish and unexpected events—you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.” –Viggo Mortensen

Y’all please excuse Viggo Mortensen while he blows ya mind.

Sunshine on the vine, or, pretty girls make caves

Raspberries are my favorite fruit, possibly even my favorite food. They make me think of summer in my grandfather’s garden (my dad’s dad, Mike, never to be confused with the other one, who I call my mother’s father, period).

Don’t get the idea that was some recurrent thing I did in summers or in anytime, spend time with my grandfather in his garden; even though it is a special secret and sacred place in my memory, in actuality it was a place where I scarcely ever got to go, because my parents are vagabonds because they had this awesomely secure childhood in a small town and this strong sense of identity, so they can ramble from place to place, whereas I crave that exact type of feeling of belonging and having roots, and have never had it. I come closest where I live now, where I have chosen to carve out a little cave for myself, but I cannot ignore the fact that I am basically a person without a place I’m “From” when someone asks. If I have a memory of riding my trike, I have to stop and ask myself like, which mobile home park was that? Was that when we lived in the first or the second place in San Jose? There is no permanence, there is no consistency, until I was in my early teens and we moved to the Central Valley.

I get a shade of what it must be like for my parents, what it must be like to have an identity associated with a place, when we do on rare occasions visit family in Priest River. It’s weird to walk through a cemetery and realize how many dead people you’re related to because both sides of your family are from the same remote logging town in Northern Idaho. Honestly? I always buy newspapers from there and even bought a town anniversary book that had a history of it; I love it there. I suppose if I had grown up there I would have hated it, at least, that’s what I try to tell myself. Anyway, today my father sensed I was sick and maybe emotionally a little under the weather as well (awww, love that understatement), and he brought me some raspberries from the Raley’s.

I guess “home” is what you make it be; maybe it is more about people than about places or sights. Either way. Raspberries! Feeling that sparkly pop on my tongue is the best thing to happen to me in several days.